The Labyrinth of Flame

by Courtney Schafer

  I focused on all that as hard as I could. “Yes.”

  The charm’s light faded. For a horrible instant I feared I’d been caught out, but Zadikah merely pulled the charm off me and looked to Yashad. “The stone never changed to white. He’s given us truth. Besides, if we help him as I promised, Sechaveh might look more kindly on your house when you renegotiate the Zhan-davi’s trade agreements.”

  Nice of her to argue for me, but if Yashad sent a message to Sechaveh mentioning me, that was as good as telling Ruslan. Still, I had to play the part.

  “Sechaveh would be grateful,” I agreed. “So long as you hold up Zadikah’s end of the bargain and get me two drams of soleius oil and four drams of icelight powder.” Teo had said anything less wouldn’t be enough for him to be sure of curing Kiran.

  Yashad considered me, unblinking. I tried not to show the least hint of my nerves. If she did know who Ruslan was, hard to believe she’d risk crossing him by helping me.

  Yashad said, “Release him.”

  When Bayyan took the wire from my throat, Zadikah looked far more relieved than I felt. Just because Yashad hadn’t ordered my death didn’t mean she wouldn’t sell news of me to Ruslan. I rubbed blood from my neck and edged away from Bayyan, who gave me a hard, mocking grin as he coiled his reddened wire.

  “Zadi says you plan to scale the Khalat’s cliffs. I hope you climb better than you fight.”

  For the thousandth time, I wished for my old boneshatter charm. “The whole reason I can climb those cliffs is that I spent my time learning a useful trade, not brawling about with idiots who’ve no more brains than sandcats. Sechaveh doesn’t need fighters. He’s got an army of mages ready to crush anyone who looks at him cross-eyed.”

  Bayyan snorted and Yashad gave her wheezing laugh. “Got a tongue on him, doesn’t he? Well, shadow man, I’ll admit I’m curious to see if you’ve the brains to match your mouth.” She pulled a sheaf of rolled paper from her robe. “Zadikah’s message said you needed to see our maps to make a plan. Impress me.”

  With Zadikah’s help, I spread the maps out on the floor, weighting the corners with shards of slate. Whoever sketched them had an exacting hand. All the notations were in Varkevian; I asked Zadikah to translate everything that looked like a measurement.

  At last I looked up. “I know how to pass the wards. I need a few supplies to do it, but nothing outrageously expensive or hard to get.” I rattled off a list of gear and charms.

  “Ah,” Yashad said. “I can guess your method. Clever indeed, as long as you have the skill to pull it off.”

  “I’ve seen him climb,” Zadikah replied. “He has the skill.”

  I didn’t think I’d hidden my weakness during my ascent to the cave so well. No, she simply wanted this to work so badly she was determined to forge on despite any danger.

  “He’d better have the skill,” Bayyan said. “Just like your Teo had better be worth all these gyrations meant to spare him. Leaving good warriors behind as guards, not to mention what you’re risking in this climb—”

  “The risk is mine alone,” Zadikah said. “If Dev and I are discovered, I’ll swallow a boneflower seed and escape into death before I reveal any secrets. You and Yashad will be free to find another way.”

  Bayyan crossed his muscled arms. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Yashad said to Zadikah, “I’ve no wish to find your body broken on the rocks below the Khalat. Do you think it easy to find a soul so brave?”

  I barely stopped myself from rolling my eyes, especially when I saw the shine in Zadikah’s. Come on! She couldn’t think the old bat actually gave a damn for her. Yashad would only be pissed if her grand plans got delayed.

  “Nobody’s going to die on the rocks,” I said. “But my friend will die if I don’t get him enough soleius oil and icelight powder. Those herbs are my price. No herbs, no deal.”

  Yashad said, “Get Zadikah safely into the Khalat, and I’ll make good on her bargain.”

  “No,” I said flatly. “The herbs first. You have my blood and my assurance I won’t betray you. I’ve got nothing of the kind.”

  “What you seek is rare enough I can’t simply snap my fingers and get the quantities you’re asking. I’d need time, and certain of my allies grow impatient.”

  I made a disgusted noise, but she held up a hand. “The moon’s near full, which should help with your climb. Pledge to get Zadikah into the Khalat tonight, and I’ll get you all I can find of the herbs today to show my good faith. More, I’ll show you on the maps where the collegium healers keep their stores. The charms Zadikah will use to breach the Khalat’s protections can easily break simple door wards. Once she’s broken the outer wards, she’ll hand the charms off to you, and you can break into the storeroom and take all that you need.”

  I chewed the inside of my lip, considering. Zadikah had originally promised I could retreat back down the cliffs the moment I got her inside. Hanging about to steal herbs would mean a dangerous delay while the Khalat became a battleground. But I wanted this over with for a lot of reasons. Samples of the herbs ought to be enough for Teo to start his trials.

  “If you get me what samples you can by tonight, and Bayyan agrees to have one of his kin carry them straight to Teo, then I’ll accept.”

  Bayyan said, “I won’t waste a warrior on courier duty. If the samples are light enough in weight, I can send them by one of our messenger birds. The birds fly much faster than a man can travel through the canyons.”

  I certainly liked the idea of getting the samples to Teo fast. “Where’s this healers’ stash?”

  Yashad bent to study the maps, and I caught a glimpse of myriad amulets hanging about her raddled neck. Among them was a copper necklace with a crescent moon of malachite.

  I’d seen the twin to that necklace before. I’d taken it off a dead shadow man in Ninavel and later given it to his son, Janek, the boy now traveling with Cara and Melly.

  Yashad caught me staring. “Counting my amulets, hmm? Suliyya knows there’s nothing else of interest to a young man down my robe.”

  “No,” I said. “That malachite moon you wear—is it your house sigil?”

  Yashad jerked upright. “You’ve seen the necklace’s like before.”

  I nodded.

  “In Ninavel?” She wasn’t even trying to hide her eagerness. “Who was the owner?”

  “I’ll gladly tell you. After I’m safe and sound out of the Khalat with those herbs in my friend’s hands.” Not much of an incentive against betrayal, but I needed any advantage I could arrange. If she insisted I tell her now, it’d be a warning I wouldn’t ignore.

  “Hah,” Yashad said. “Wary, are you? I suppose I can’t blame you. All right, shadow man. We’ll speak again after the Khalat is taken. Perhaps I can be of help to you in your efforts for Sechaveh.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed, silently vowing to get the fuck out of Prosul Akheba the moment I had those herbs and never come back. I was curious about Yashad’s necklace, but not so curious I meant to ignore the danger she presented. Bad enough what I’d agreed to already. I had the uneasy sense Zadikah wasn’t the only one here blinded by determination. But with Kiran’s health so tenuous, what other option did I have?

  * * *

  (Kiran)

  Kiran sat wrapped in a blanket, watching a fat orange moon rise over a phantasmal garden of crooked black spires. The moon’s light wasn’t enough to read the terse message on the strip of paper curled in his hand, but he’d long since memorized its contents.

  Got herbs. More coming after full moon. But forget the collegium. We have to go elsewhere.

  The message had come with a tiny vial of soleius oil and a twisted scrap of oilskin containing a pinch of icelight powder. Teo had wasted no time in mixing a trial dose, which Kiran had gladly swallowed. Teo wasn’t yet willing to say that his formulation was correct, but already Kiran felt his ikilhia was more stable than it had been in weeks.

  His quietly giddy hope of a cure was tempered b
y the meaning behind Dev’s crabbed, hurriedly written words. The first part was nerve-wracking enough: Dev and Zadikah meant to breach the Khalat’s wards tonight. But the second…what had happened to make Dev so insistent they abandon Prosul Akheba?

  All of their previous plans had assumed they could leverage the city’s resources to research the demons and decide upon a course of action against Ruslan. So much time had already been wasted in crossing the mountains and then dealing first with Dev’s illness, then his own. Panic swelled in Kiran every time he thought of how swiftly the days were passing. All these long weeks, Ruslan would have been studying demonkind with his typical combination of obsessive focus and cold, meticulous patience, discovering how best to bend them to his will.

  There was no telling how much time he and Dev had left before Ruslan acted. Hiding in the desert would do them little good, and it would take far too long to reach another city. They needed a better option.

  Kiran hoped to provide one. If we bring him to the veiled temple, Zadikah’s mother had said, as if the temple were somewhere within reasonable traveling distance. If it was the same temple he’d known as a child, his memories might hold the key to its location. He and Dev could go to the temple in stealth, and perhaps there find the knowledge they needed to send the red-horned hunters after Ruslan.

  Even if the thought of returning to the temple left him sick and shaking, torn between the inner voice that whispered in Ruslan’s tones, yes, you must remember, and a deeper, atavistic terror.

  Dev was risking his life even now on the walls of the Khalat for his sake. Kiran would not back down from something as insubstantial as memory.

  He opened his other hand. A faintly sweet scent emanated from a sticky ball sitting on his palm. Hadaf, Veddis called the herb. He chewed it often before sleep, saying it calmed the mind into a near trance. All Kiran’s glimpses of memory had come while he was dreaming or distracted. The wall in his mind had defeated all direct efforts, but if he chewed the hadaf, perhaps he could slip past the wall while still conscious enough to direct the experience.

  Kiran threw off his blanket and stood. After what Dev had said about him talking in his nightmares, he wanted to be certain any reactions he had while caught in the grip of memory would remain private. Veddis and Teo lay sleeping together mere feet away. Veddis snored in steady rhythm, one arm draped over Teo’s chest. Teo slept in silence, his jaw slack, his limbs sprawled wide.

  “Can’t sleep either, I see.” Raishal was a dark shape beside the stacked stones they used to conceal their cookfires. Behind her, horns of rock framed a brilliant swath of stars. One of the warriors Bayyan had left to guard them was somewhere high on a horn, keeping watch. The others were sleeping elsewhere—where, Kiran didn’t know. The snake-eaters were polite enough, but kept themselves apart from their charges.

  “Sleep’s been difficult,” Kiran said. “I thought I’d walk around a little and see if that helped.”

  Raishal said, “The only thing that will help me is seeing them come back safe.”

  Them, not just Zadikah. It warmed Kiran, even as shame pricked him. He wasn’t sure he’d be so kind in Raishal’s place. She must wish Zadikah had never helped him. She wouldn’t know what Zadikah had originally intended before Kiran offered her an alternative.

  “I want them back too.” Kiran wished he believed in gods so he might have hope that prayer would earn Dev’s and even Zadikah’s safety. Nathahlen were so terribly fragile. One slip on the cliffs, one mistake passing a ward, one stab of a guardsman’s knife—he had to stop thinking of it, or he would go mad with worrying.

  “I’m sorry Dev got dragged into her scheme. I know he only went because Zadi insisted.” Raishal gave a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “She’s such an idiot. Fighting a battle she can never truly win is foolishness enough, but hiding it from Teo…gods, it drives me wild.”

  “She’s trying to protect him.” Kiran didn’t think that was Zadikah’s only reason. She must be afraid that Teo would despise her if he learned of her methods.

  “It doesn’t matter what her intentions are,” Raishal said. “Love built on lies is not love. Or so Teo will think on the day he finds out.”

  Even dormant in sleep, Teo’s ikilhia burned like a star in the night, silent witness of the secret he refused to share with his lovers. “You might be surprised at what Teo will think.”

  Raishal only shook her head. Kiran hesitated, remembering the evening Teo had first told him he thought Dev would live. Afraid that hope would prove false, Kiran hadn’t wanted to leave Dev’s bedside. He’d watched out the sickroom window as the others took a moment to relax. Raishal had sat beside a magefire, clapping out a syncopated beat and calling out teasing comments while Teo, Zadikah, and Veddis danced in a scuffed circle of sand. Or rather, as Zadikah and Veddis attempted to teach Teo a whirling, leaping series of movements that looked halfway between a dance and a fight. The impromptu lesson had involved a lot of laughter and a lot of falling down on Teo’s part. The joy shared among the four had been palpable; Kiran had barely been able to watch, consumed by grief and envy.

  Now he found that his heart hurt imagining the bonds between them fractured, their joy turned to bitterness.

  “Sometimes when secrets come to light, even if they’re hurtful, there can be forgiveness.” Dev had forgiven him for lying about his identity, as had Cara. Eventually. Even though Kiran’s lies had caused far more harm than Teo’s or Zadikah’s.

  “Forgiveness is one thing, but what of trust? If I were in Teo’s place, I wouldn’t find that so easy to rebuild.” Raishal sighed. “But his soul is gentler than mine, so perhaps…” Her voice grew unsteady. “I just hope Zadi gets the chance for forgiveness.”

  Kiran’s own throat tightened. Watching Dev walk away with Zadikah, he’d found it harder than ever not to cast. He’d wanted to layer Dev in protective spells and bind him to life so tightly that nothing could ever extinguish his ikilhia.

  “I’m going to walk for a bit,” he said awkwardly to Raishal.

  “Don’t go far.”

  They’d seen no sign of the black-daggers. So far as Kiran was aware, Bayyan’s boast that no enemy could slip onto his lands unnoticed hadn’t been put to the test. Yet he knew better than to let that lull him into complacency. Remembering the fervor in Gavila’s eyes and her reckless courage in attacking him, he didn’t think she’d give up easily.

  “I’ll stay close,” Kiran assured Raishal. He clutched his little ball of hadaf and shuffled away from Teo and Veddis, glad the moon provided enough light to avoid lurking cactus. He rounded one of the rock horns until he could no longer hear Veddis’s snores, and sat down in the sand. To the west, the stars were slowly being eaten by a dark, spreading cloud. A distant rumble of thunder trembled the cool night air.

  Kiran’s anxiety heightened, thinking of the storms Ruslan had sent in the Whitefires. He strained his senses—an easier task now that his ikilhia was settled—but he felt no hint of magic beyond a familiar thread of earth-power coiled deep beneath the sand. When they’d first arrived, Kiran had feared the proximity of the current might cause further disruption to his ikilhia. Thankfully the current was so meager that it hadn’t been a problem. The pulse of its magic did feel a touch stronger now than when he’d first come, but natural currents often had tides that waxed and waned in concert with the moon and the seasons.

  At least the sky in the direction of Prosul Akheba was clear. Dev had enough to worry about in scaling the Khalat without a thunderstorm in the mix.

  Kiran put the ball of hadaf in his mouth and tried to shake the tension from his shoulders. What lay in his head were only memories. They could not hurt him.

  The hadaf was far sweeter than it smelled. As he chewed, a cool, soothing numbness spread over his tongue. His thoughts slowed, anxiety fading.

  Kiran summoned the flash of memory he’d seen in the cave while Zadikah and Nasham argued below. The great stone chamber, the adults in their scarlet robes, the ripplin
g veil of azure flame above the silver ring, so oddly similar to the charm in Sechaveh’s audience chamber that gave visitors a glimpse of Ninavel’s confluence. The mental image grew so vivid he could feel the stone beneath his feet, the hands hard on his shoulders…

  No. He didn’t want that memory, but another. Something that would tell him more of the temple. He must have heard adults talking…

  The phantom sensations changed. No hands clamped his shoulders, but his feet were locked to the floor. Wards made of yellowed, ancient bone encircled him. Colors pulsed behind his eyes and streaked his vision.

  He stood on the dais itself, so close to the veil of flame he was scared it would lash out and consume him. It hurt to stand this close. Not from any heat on his skin but from a raw, scraping pressure in his head. Kiran struggled to back away, but his body refused to obey him. Still he fought to move, cold tears slicking his cheeks.

  Before the dais, two adults were arguing.

  “This is a waste of time,” a sour-faced, mustached man said. Kiran had seen him before, but not often. He always wore a scowl, which at least was different from the other adults. Kiran hated how most people in the upper temple showed nothing on their faces, as if they were made of stone and not flesh.

  “We should start over again. With the Tainted, not the mage-born. Look at this mess.” The man stabbed a finger downward. “Her mind is gone entirely.”

  What Kiran had taken for a pile of bloodied cloth at the man’s feet was actually the huddled body of a child. Was it Ralia? Kiran couldn’t tell. All he could make out was a shock of dark curls and one brown ear, from which a black line of blood oozed downward in a slow, terrible trickle.

  Kiran whimpered. He tried to speak, to beg for release, but words would not come.