The Labyrinth of Flame

by Courtney Schafer

  Your master is indeed no fool, the demon said. The ssarez-kai agreed to claim him. None but they can touch him. But you, unclaimed and without kin, weaker than the least child of fire…you are easy prey.

  Kiran should have known freedom was too bright a dream to be so readily possible. And he was all too aware of how vulnerable he was here. The shield he struggled to hold felt as tenuous as a soap-bubble, yet required unrelenting concentration. Ruslan had taught him and Mikail to withstand such mental strain for hours on end, but his endurance was not infinite.

  What do you want from me?

  You know what I want, the demon said. The truth of why the ssarez-kai desired your creation. What did they think it would gain them to make a human that could survive in our fire?

  Kiran didn’t have the answers the demon sought. Return my amulet and take me back to human lands. I’ll look within my memories and show you all I learn.

  I think not, little cousin. You will not leave our fire until I have the knowledge I seek.

  I can’t look for it here, Kiran protested. I need all my concentration to shield myself. I haven’t any to spare for searching blocked memories.

  You ratlings are such low creatures, the demon said, disgusted. If it will silence your whining, I will lend you further aid.

  An indigo latticework burst out of the currents pouring around Kiran and sank through the blue veil of his shield before he could react. Sudden, needling pain stole his breath, only to fade as the black void before his eyes blossomed into dusky twilight.

  He stood amid dunes of pale, crystalline sand that glimmered with hints of rose and mist-blue and lavender. No wind brushed his face, but long streamers of sand twisted off the dune crests and spread into glowing veils of deeper, richer colors, cobalt and amethyst and viridian, brilliant against a black, starless sky. His own hands and arms—all of his skin exposed by his torn and bloodied clothes—crawled with light the same vivid azure as the demon-flame in his soul.

  Sand whisked past his ankles in a silent, constant rush. The dunes all around him were slowly shifting as if sculpted by some intangible force. Beyond the dunes, the light of the sky-veils revealed serrated shapes as large as mountains, but oddly intricate in their silhouettes. They also moved, their shapes altering like frost spreading over granite.

  What is this? His mage-sight still saw the same chaos of currents. Yet now he realized the chaos wasn’t complete. The turbulence contained larger patterns that mirrored the shifting of the dunes, the flow of the sky-veils, the vast, half-seen silhouettes in the distance. When he focused on the sand at his feet, the dune grew translucent, jeweled colors spiraling within crystalline depths. He had the dizzy sense he might fall straight through the sand, a fall that would go on forever.

  Now you see as a child of fire does. Or as close as your crude flesh can come.

  The demon was standing so close a tracery of scales showed on its skin. Its black braids twined and drifted like river-weeds caught in invisible currents, and its eyes burned as bright as two indigo suns.

  The jewel-studded disc of Kiran’s amulet dangled from one bone-white hand. Kiran eyed the charm, wondering if he dared grab for it.

  Better, yes? The demon asked.

  Yes, Kiran admitted, and not only because his disorientation had faded. His shield felt stronger. More natural. Not as instinctive as the barriers protecting his mind—he still had to concentrate to hold the demonfire, but the effort was not so strenuous.

  Show me the path to your memories, before I lose patience and rip what I seek from you. I know too little of rat-minds to be certain you would survive the experience.

  The demon’s real fear must be that in invading Kiran’s mind, it might destroy the very memories it sought. Ikilhia may be resilient, but the mind is a strangely fragile thing, Ruslan had told Kiran in Ninavel.

  He had some scant leverage, then. He would use it.

  I’ll show you. But first, give me my amulet. I don’t know how to leave here, but I want to know that it’s possible.

  Very well, you may have your trinket. The demon tossed the amulet to him.

  Kiran caught it. The cool weight of the charm in his hand was the first sensation he’d had that was based in his physical body and not his mind and magic.

  When he focused, the pattern of the amulet’s spell leaped bright into his inner sight. No trace of Lizaveta’s shielding remained on the charm—her spellwork might have been ripped away by the currents—but the original pattern bound within the metal was unbroken and undamaged. Perhaps because the magic was quiescent while the amulet was off his neck. Or perhaps metal had properties of protection in this realm?

  A hand gripped his neck, and a chill, alien presence slid through his shield to coil around his mind with impatient menace. No more excuses, the demon said. Show me.

  Kiran clutched the amulet tighter yet and shut his eyes against the demon realm’s strange beauty. He sank to the wall at the heart of his memories, and the demon followed. The block still stood, rebuilt by his recovering ikilhia, but either his brush with death or his exposure to the demon realm’s wild currents had damaged it. Dark cracks zigzagged across the spell’s energies. One thrust of power in the right spot could shatter the entire structure.

  Plus destroy the memories behind it, and likely his sanity. Kiran knew better than to try anything so foolish. Instead, he eased cautiously through a crack, ignoring the fresh pain that assaulted him upon crossing the barrier. The demon flowed after him, a cold, questing river.

  Beyond were jumbled, endless hours of a child’s incomprehension and loneliness and fear, as the world turned to shadows and specters and he slid inexorably toward madness. Kiran didn’t sink entirely into the morass of memories. He held back enough that he might watch the demon.

  It slithered through his past, pausing to listen to scorpion whispers, watching as Kiran endured spellcasting after spellcasting from the bone mage. Occasional flashes of comprehension brushed Kiran; the demon was learning far more than he ever had. Stealthily, he eased toward the demon’s consciousness. What the demon learned, he wanted to know.

  As if sensing his attempt, the demon’s cold presence grew stronger, bolstering the memories until they threatened to shake loose Kiran’s grip on the present. Again he was dragged along darkened halls by the sour man; again he escaped into the garden and collided with Ruslan.

  Kiran recoiled from the anguish of that meeting, which cut all the more deeply now that Lizaveta was dead. His shock was fading to leave a dark, acid grief that was all the more poisonous for his shame in feeling it. By the time he mastered himself and rejoined the demon, it had moved on to examine a different memory.

  He stood at Ruslan’s side in the great center sanctum of the temple, watching the veil of blue fire ripple above the silver ring inscribed on the dais. The fire didn’t make Kiran’s head hurt anymore. Ruslan had done something to stop the pain, muffling him in an invisible but comforting blanket. Even the four dead adults, one sprawled at each corner of the dais, didn’t bother him. They weren’t mangled like the shadowy bodies he sometimes saw in the halls, though their red robes had spilled over the stones like blood, and their mouths gaped wide as if they were still screaming.

  Ruslan had made the adults die without even touching them. Now his friend Liza was circling the dais. She didn’t look anything like Ruslan. She had great dark eyes and hair of glossy, perfect black, while Ruslan’s long tail of hair was an odd red-brown as strange as his golden skin. But she walked just like Ruslan did, as if she were afraid of nothing, not even monsters. They were both so beautiful and brave, and the way they looked at each other—Kiran had never seen anything like it among the adults at the temple. It warmed him inside, even as he yearned to have them look at him that way, like he was the most important thing in their world.

  Liza said to Ruslan, “Do you feel it? Magic bound in the stone, its roots sunk deep in the confluence. Yet it hasn’t the taste of bone magic.”

  Ruslan said, “
I suspect our opponent is little more than a clever scavenger. We’ve sensed no other magic so strong here. This must be the power she used to defeat Idarantis. If we could but study it…”

  He stepped toward the dais and shrugged off the bulging leather pack he wore. Kiran hurried after him. He didn’t want any chance Ruslan might leave him behind.

  “We haven’t time.” Liza looked at Kiran. “The bone mage has discovered the boy is missing. Already she tests my veils. She may be a scavenger, but she is not weak—you’ve seen how well she has layered her defenses. How can we best her quickly enough to be certain she can’t wield this strange power against us?”

  Kiran crowded closer to Ruslan, his calm thinning. What if the bone-lady killed Ruslan and Liza and took him back? He’d never escape the temple then.

  “We destroy her and all her spells simultaneously,” Ruslan said. “Do you remember the exercise Vasha once set us on how to disrupt the balance of forces in a confluence?”

  Liza turned to stare. “Are you mad? The backlash would kill us right along with her.”

  “We’ve no bonds tying us to this confluence. If we put enough distance between us and the disruption, we will live while the bone mage burns.”

  “How? We have to be here within the confluence to break its balance. Once the magic explodes free, we could not flee this canyon quickly enough to escape the conflagration.”

  “Not if we run, no. But there is another direction we might escape.” Ruslan took two rectangular plates of silver from his pack. The plates were thickly carved with symbols and set with fat red stones as large as Kiran’s fist. Long leather straps trailed from the plates’ corners.

  Ruslan waggled one plate at Liza. “To think you mocked me for spending so much effort in creating these. Did I not say the charms could be useful tools, not mere playthings?”

  Liza laughed, a low, delighted chuckle. “Rushenka, you are indeed mad. But perhaps just mad enough for this to work.” She slid a hand into Ruslan’s hair and kissed him. Not the way the amayas had kissed Kiran in the child garden, soft pecks on the cheek, but right on Ruslan’s mouth and for long enough Kiran wondered how they could breathe.

  Ruslan pulled back, smiling. He braced one of the plates against Liza’s back and bound the straps over her chest and shoulders until the silver was snugged tight against her silken shirt. She took the second plate and did the same for him.

  As she cinched a final strap tight over his broad chest, Ruslan said, “You’ve always been better at mapping confluence forces. Go set spellwork to strike the balance points. I’ll keep the bone mage distracted until you’re ready.”

  Liza stroked a hand down his cheek, saying something too soft for Kiran to hear, and ran from the room. Ruslan pulled a fat metal canister out of his pack. “Kiran, come here. I will lay wards around this dais, and you must stand within them.”

  Obediently, Kiran climbed onto the dais. He didn’t like being so close to the rippling sheet of flame. What if the scorpions noticed him?

  “You have to be careful,” he told Ruslan. “Don’t let the scorpions hear you. They’re much worse than the bone-lady.”

  Ruslan trickled a strange liquid out of the canister onto the floor around the dais. It shimmered silver like metal, but poured in fat runnels like oddly thick water. Ruslan didn’t look at Kiran, only at the loops and swirls he was making around one of the dead adults.

  “Hush, child. I must concentrate. Casting alone is far more difficult than with a partner and requires absolute precision with preparations.”

  The scorpions were far away tonight. Maybe it would be all right. But Ruslan was taking so long with the metal-water! Kiran fidgeted, worry rising.

  Ruslan moved around the dais until a gleaming pattern of metal-water surrounded it on all sides. At last he tossed the canister aside. Pack in hand, he stepped carefully within the lines. He shut his eyes, his golden face perfectly still.

  All around the dais, the lines of metal-water glowed a deep, sullen red. Silent, ghostly flames flickered on them, shredding away into the air above. The veil of blue fire beside Kiran blazed brighter yet, twisting violently as if angry. A dull ache started in Kiran’s head. He shrank away as far as he could from the fire and still remain on the dais.

  In a hesitant whisper, he said, “But, the scorpions…”

  Ruslan leaped onto the dais beside him. “Kiran, you remember what I told you about this whole canyon being full of magic, yes? This magic is too strong for a boy as small as you. It has hurt your mind. When your mind is hurt, it does not bleed as a wound in your body might. Instead, it confuses nightmares with reality. When we leave here, I will heal you and then you will see: the scorpions you fear are not real. They never have been.”

  The bone-lady’s dry, cold voice said, “You’ll soon find out differently, blood mage. The children of Shaikar do not tolerate thieves.”

  She was standing in the doorway, her eyes black, angry slits. She wasn’t clutching her book but an entire fistful of yellowed bones.

  The last of Kiran’s calm fled. He crushed his hands to his mouth to stop a whimper. He didn’t want Ruslan to think him weak, but he was so afraid the bone-lady would steal him back. She’d hurt him worse than ever for trying to get away from her.

  Ruslan dropped his pack and drew Kiran against him. “Do you mistake me for one of these superstitious fools you rule? I know the secret of your power, and it has nothing to do with mythical creatures. It lies within this stone, and I have warded it against you.”

  “The secret of my—?” The bone-lady rasped a gravelly chuckle. “Ah. I should have known a blood mage’s arrogance would not allow for the existence of Shaikar and his children. It’s true that superstition makes an excellent tool to keep the untalented properly industrious. I do as I please here, and I need not even grovel at the lord of Ninavel’s untalented feet.”

  She was circling the glowing red lines, studying them. Ruslan turned to keep her in view. When he spoke, his voice was as cold as hers. “Lord Sechaveh is nothing but a convenience to me. But his sister—to her I owed a debt, and you killed her before I could pay it. Did you think no one would come to avenge Idarantis?”

  “Was that her name? I did not ask her before she died. Her bones held much power. As will yours.”

  She wasn’t looking at Ruslan, but at the sheet of flame beside Kiran. Deep inside, he felt a faint but insistent summons, a cry for aid…in a horrified flash, he understood. She was delaying just as Ruslan was. Pretending the scorpions weren’t real, even as she sent out a call into the night, summoning them to come and strike her enemies down.

  Far away, the scorpions were stirring, their attention shifting. Faint whispers hissed at the edge of Kiran’s hearing.

  “Hurry,” he begged Ruslan. “Please, you have to—”

  “Shhhh,” Ruslan said. Calm settled thick over Kiran. He slumped in Ruslan’s hold, his eyelids heavy.

  The bone-lady stopped her prowling. “You claim you came for vengeance, yet you creep through my temple and steal this boy. I think you lie, blood mage. I also know your kind does not cast alone. Where is your partner?”

  Ruslan didn’t move, but red fire lashed out from the glowing metal-water toward the bone-lady. She snapped one of the bones she held, and Ruslan’s fire recoiled. Rivulets of deepest purple dripped from the broken bone and slithered like snakes toward the four dead adults.

  The pain in Kiran’s head sharpened, rousing him from lethargy. He cried out and clutched at his temples.

  “You will not break my wards. All you will accomplish is to further damage the boy.” Ruslan crouched and slid his arms around Kiran’s chest, gripping him so tightly Kiran could barely breathe. Ruslan tensed as if he were preparing to jump off the dais.

  The bone-lady smiled, sharp and terrifying. “What of it? We need only one child who can walk the labyrinth.”

  A shockwave of realization rolled over Kiran: not his own, but the demon’s. It was pulling free of him. What had it learned
? Kiran wanted to chase after it, but Ruslan was holding him so tightly…

  Ruslan shouted, deep and exultant: “Now, Liza!” The lines of metal-water blazed white-hot. Fire exploded out of the silver ring beside Kiran and boiled over the dais. But Kiran was yanked upward and away, held in Ruslan’s arms, great wings of red light beating the air around them with thunderous force. As they arrowed toward the temple roof, it shattered, stone blocks crashing past Kiran into the flames below. He and Ruslan shot up past the black bulwarks of cliffs toward the stars high above. Below, all the world was a boiling crimson sea of fire. The fire was in his head too, the pain growing so huge it swallowed his screams, crushing him into darkness…

  Kiran thrashed free of the past and back into the strange world of colored sands and deadly currents. The demon backed away from him. Its braids writhed as if in violent agitation.

  What did you learn? Kiran demanded, his mind still racked by echoes of remembered pain. The soap-skin of his protection felt thinner than ever.

  Ashkiza’s ban, the demon said, shock underpinning the mental words. Does the greed of the ssarez-kai know no bounds? To break Ashkiza’s ban and wield the greatest of weapons… A burst of alien emotion swept over Kiran, so tangled he could not make it out.

  What weapon?

  Saving you was not wise. Sand whipped upward from the dune at the demon’s feet to obscure its form. In Kiran’s mage-sight, currents frothed and churned. In another instant, both sand and currents subsided, but the demon was gone. Kiran was alone amid the creeping dunes.

  Curse the creature; where had it gone, and why? All Kiran had seen was that Ruslan and Lizaveta had indeed burned the confluence, far more literally than Vidai had ever dreamed of doing in Ninavel. The spell Ruslan had set around the dais had transmuted the energies backlashing through the silver ring into physical fire. Any nathahlen in the temple would have burned right along with the bone mage, caught in an inferno too sudden to escape. Adults and children alike…how many small bones lay amid the temple’s scorched ruins?