The Labyrinth of Flame

by Courtney Schafer

  Now. They stabbed as one.

  The pattern of the spell wavered, a gap appearing. Kiran’s unity with Lena dissolved as he threw all his effort into tearing the gap wider. The spell pattern blurred into a chaotic swirl of energies that Kiran greedily sucked back into his ikilhia.

  He was free. He slumped under Dev’s hands, his muscles quivering with exhaustion and release. “Thank you,” he whispered to Lena.

  She brushed her fingers over his cheek in gentle acknowledgment and said to Dev and Cara, “You can untie him now.”

  “Thank Khalmet.” Cara promptly set to work on his bonds. Dev was silent. When Cara freed Kiran from the rope, Dev shifted his grip to Kiran’s arms and pulled him up to sitting, but he didn’t let go. Kiran didn’t blame him for his wariness.

  “I was caught in a compulsion spell, but we broke it. I’m all right now.” Except that his head throbbed, his barriers felt weak as a child’s, and the heart of his memories was a blasted wreckage. At least he’d stopped the attack on the city, even if not quite in the manner he’d intended. Maybe the lives he’d saved would include Raishal’s, though Kiran was afraid to hope for that.

  Melly and Janek were still obediently surveying the desert. Lena crawled toward Teo, who lay in a motionless heap. Lena’s ikilhia was so faint Kiran thought it a miracle she was still conscious. Cara hurried to slide a supportive shoulder under Lena’s arm and help her over to Teo.

  Kiran tugged against Dev’s hold, wanting to join them, but Dev didn’t release him.

  “When Ruslan realizes his compulsion didn’t work, will he strike the city again?”

  “No,” Kiran said. “Renewing the attack wouldn’t gain him anything. I think it more likely he’ll try to break my amulet’s protection.”

  Dev didn’t look relieved. “How long before he succeeds? I’m guessing we won’t have the luxury of days like we did our first time through the Whitefires, seeing as he’s a hell of a lot more motivated now.”

  “I need to reach a source of ikilhia. Plants, animals…something.” Just not Teo. Kiran glanced at him, lying so still and silent under Lena’s hands, and ripped his gaze away. “Then I’ll cast to lay defenses. I know what chink in the amulet’s protection allowed Ruslan to see through my eyes last time. I’ve long since considered how to close off the flaw.” During endless nights in Teo’s house watching over a desperately ill Dev, Kiran had planned out the steps he would take if forced to reveal himself.

  Back then, he’d thought in terms of buying himself time and leverage to bargain. Now he meant to walk a different path. “I can’t hold Ruslan off forever. But I can stop him reaching my mind long enough to give me the time I need.”

  Dev’s worried frown deepened. “For what?”

  Kiran pulled free of Dev’s grip and stood. An ugly black roil of smoke was all that was visible of the devastated city. A promise from Ruslan: I will find you, wherever you hide. And anyone who helps and shelters you will burn.

  Kiran no longer intended to hide. “I’m going to get Ashkiza’s weapon. Not for any demon, but for myself. I’m going to wield it against Ruslan.”

  * * *

  (Dev)

  A trickle of ice slipped down my spine. Kiran’s cold certainty, the arrogant lift of his chin, the banked fire of his eyes—I’d never seen him look so much like Ruslan. I couldn’t help wondering uneasily if Lena had gotten rid of all Ruslan’s spellwork.

  She and Cara lifted their heads from Teo to stare at Kiran. Lena looked so exhausted I couldn’t guess her thoughts. Cara caught my eye, a sharp, worried line between her brows. She saw what I did.

  Lena spoke first, in an exhausted near-whisper. “Kiran. We don’t know how this weapon works or what might happen to Alathia’s wards if you take it.”

  Trust an Alathian’s first concern to be their precious wards. I had a host of more practical worries. “Not to mention how to find the cursed thing in the first place, or whether it’ll even do anything to Ruslan. What if it only works against demons?”

  Kiran said, “The scarred demon said the weapon lets its wielder control the currents of their realm. Ruslan’s oaths bind him to Ninavel’s confluence in a way he can’t break or block, and the confluence is as much a part of the demon realm as this one. I’ll use the weapon to force enough confluence power into Ruslan it’ll destroy him utterly—much as I feared he might ask the ssarez-kai to do to you.”

  I said, watching Kiran intently, “I thought you wanted to stay the hell away from the scarred demon so it couldn’t force you into a new kin-bond. Now you’re saying you’ll take the demon’s deal and then double-cross it?” A Ruslan strategy if I’d ever heard one.

  Cara muttered something to Lena, who shook her head. She too was frowning now.

  “I’ve no intention of going anywhere near the demon,” Kiran said. “It’s not the only possible source of information on the weapon. I’m going to the veiled temple. Zadikah told me it lies in those rocks.” He pointed westward, where a distant snaking slot of a canyon disappeared into a forest of stone needles that were just as red and fanglike as Bayyan had described.

  “That looks like the Demon’s Maw, all right,” I said. “But I thought you told us Ruslan destroyed the temple.”

  “He sent fire scouring its halls, yes, and the backlash from the confluence’s disruption would have destroyed everything magical in nature. But the bone mage kept notes on everything she did, and she stored her journals in a vault hollowed out of inert rock. I saw the vault once, when I was brought to her workroom. She didn’t protect it with spells. I think she specifically designed the vault to be dead of magic so demons wouldn’t notice it or venture within. I’m certain she planned to cheat the ssarez-kai out of Ashkiza’s weapon and use it for her own purposes. The vault must have held knowledge she wished to hide from them.”

  Cara said, “Even if the bone mage’s stash survived the initial fire, how do you know Ruslan didn’t empty the vault later?”

  “He wouldn’t have bothered to search the temple afterward. He’d already taken what he wanted.” On the last words, Kiran’s fierce assurance cracked a fraction. The pain darkening his eyes reassured me some, because it was so familiar. “Even if he returned to the temple after learning demons were real, it would never occur to Ruslan that a mage might stoop to crude physical measures to protect valuable information.”

  Lena said, “If you’re right, more knowledge of demons and their weapon would certainly be helpful.”

  Cara lifted her brows at me in silent question. Do you buy this?

  I tilted a hand, unsure. Maybe I was jumping at shadows, but Kiran’s newfound determination had me nervous. It wasn’t like he couldn’t be stubborn—Khalmet knew I’d seen him fix on an idea before—but after watching him nearly rip his amulet off, I was more than a little twitchy about which ideas were truly his. What if Ruslan had primed him to run straight into another trap?

  Cara slid away from Lena and dug her spyglass out of her pack. “I’ll take a look at the Demon’s Maw and the route to reach it.” As she passed me, spyglass in hand, she muttered, “Push him on this temple plan.”

  Oh, I intended to. Even if my worry over Kiran proved to be unfounded, I wasn’t too fond of this idea of finding the temple. Every hour we wasted in searching would give Ruslan more time to cast.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” I announced. “Summon your scarred friend. Tell him you’ll take his deal and get Ashkiza’s weapon, but first he’s got to kill Mikail.” Partnerless, Ruslan couldn’t cast channeled magic. No more spells powerful enough to destroy cities. Or translocating to set an ambush.

  “I already tried asking the demon to kill,” Kiran said. “It wouldn’t—”

  “The demon wouldn’t kill Ruslan. But you didn’t ask about Mikail, did you?”

  “Ruslan wouldn’t be so foolish as to leave Mikail unprotected, especially after Lizaveta’s death.” But Kiran’s gaze slid away from mine and his shoulders gained a defensive hunch. A reaction I’d seen plen
ty of times when he wanted to hide a deeper truth.

  “You need to wake the fuck up, Kiran. Mikail’s not your friend. He’s not some protective big brother. He’s as much a monster as Ruslan. You doubt me, you take a good long look at what’s left of Prosul Akheba.”

  Kiran’s jaw set in a taut line. “Do you think Mikail could have refused anything Ruslan ordered him to do? You know how the mark-bond works.”

  Either Ruslan really was influencing him, or he’d succumbed to an attack of total idiocy. Sadly, I couldn’t rule out the latter. “Mikail wouldn’t have refused, and you know it.”

  Kiran spat out, “I didn’t refuse when Ruslan asked me to help him cast against Vidai, though Julisi district was destroyed because of it. If Mikail is a monster, so am I.”

  I was leaning more toward “idiot” with every word out of his mouth. “Mikail is a monster because he’s not sorry. He doesn’t give a damn for other people! He doesn’t even care about you, not really—how many times does he have to betray you before you see it? All he wants is an obedient little partner to cast with.”

  “You know nothing of what Mikail feels, or how Ruslan taught him the obedience you scorn.” Kiran’s face was dead white but for a bruise blossoming black over one cheekbone. “You bend over backwards to make excuses for me, even as you worry I’ll turn into Ruslan—don’t deny it, I’ve seen the fear in your eyes! Yet now you ask me to murder his apprentice the way he did Simon’s. I tell you now, I won’t do it. I’ll stop him my way, not his.”

  Lena’s frown had dissolved into painfully obvious relief. I wanted to shake her right along with Kiran. Thousands dead in Prosul Akheba, and she thought Kiran’s stubborn refusal to hurt Mikail was a good thing?

  “You’re right, I worry about you and Ruslan. Like why you won’t do the one thing that’d cripple him. You sure you want to stop him at all, Kiran? Or does he still have his hooks in you, somewhere deep where you’re afraid to look—”

  “You hate Marten because he stops at nothing to achieve a goal, yet you’re just like him!” Kiran’s shout was loud enough to set echoes bouncing.

  Cara lowered her spyglass. “Quiet! Do you want everyone in this cursed desert to know where we are?”

  I choked back my first response, belatedly realizing I hadn’t exactly been whispering either. Melly and Janek had turned to stare at us. Cara pointed a stern finger at her eyes, then the desert, and they whipped back around with guilty speed.

  Kiran was still breathing hard and scowling at me. Maybe I should keep my mouth shut, but I couldn’t let that crack about Marten rest. I eased closer to him and took a breath to point out—viciously but quietly—how I was nothing like Marten, who fucked over his allies as readily as his enemies.

  “Cara, come quick. Clanfolk.” The urgency in Melly’s call hit me like a bucket of glacial meltwater. I dropped flat. Nothing like a figure standing on a ridge to catch a scout’s eye.

  Kiran got down too, more slowly. Lena was already crouched small beside Teo. Cara slid up beside Melly and Janek at the cliff’s edge, her hand cupped around the end of her spyglass to shield it from glinting. I crawled over to join her and found I didn’t need a spyglass to see the pack of figures loping out of the rocks that hid the sacred pools. The black-daggers were tiny with distance, but it was clear they were going for speed, not stealth—and heading straight for this ridge.

  “Let them come.” Kiran’s grim satisfaction set my nerves shivering all over again. “Didn’t I say I needed a source of ikilhia? Ruslan already knows where I am, so I need not take it by touch.”

  I twisted to scrutinize him. If he was happy to murder clanfolk when he wouldn’t touch Mikail…

  A flicker of exasperation crossed his face. “I won’t kill them. I’ll pull enough of their ikilhia that none of them will wake until we’re long gone. What power I take, I can give to Teo and Lena to help them recover.”

  I couldn’t deny that part sounded good. Lena looked terrible, and Teo hadn’t so much as twitched since she’d laid hands on him. Besides, we might still get something useful out of interrogating Gavila.

  But Lena was shaking her head. “Kiran, you must not drop your barriers to cast. It leaves you too vulnerable. Ruslan may be lying in wait for just such a chance to strike at you.”

  Kiran let out a weary sigh. “That’s true, but nothing I do is without risk now. The longer I wait to reinforce my amulet, the more chance he’ll attack me that way.”

  Without taking her eye from her spyglass, Cara said, “I say we run. Gavila and her kin know we’ve got at least one mage, yet they’re charging straight for us like they don’t care. That bothers the hell out of me.”

  “Not sure running’s an option,” I said, glancing at Teo. We could carry him, but on terrain this rough it’d slow us down so much we’d never escape a pursuit. Nor did Lena appear capable of much magic to aid us.

  Melly said, “I saw a bunch of plants on the ridge’s other side. Can Kiran use them to fix Teo?” Her hands were fisted, her whole body tense. She must be wishing she could use the Taint to fight.

  “Show us where,” I said.

  Past the crest of the ridge, the slope fell away in a steeply concave sweep of rock. Where stone plunged into coppery sand, a thick tangle of firethorn sprawled beneath a trio of gnarled ironwood trees. “Trees” was a generous term, compared to the massive cinnabar pines and graceful aspen of the western Whitefires. The ironwoods were barely man-high, their gray, spiraling trunks twisting more sideways than skyward.

  “Those could be enough to let Teo wake,” Kiran said. “Afterward, we can vanish into that canyon.”

  The lumpy sandstone plain west of our ridge was scored by several winding canyons so tight their depths couldn’t be seen. Kiran was pointing to the dark slot that zigzagged into the Demon’s Maw.

  “Determined, aren’t you?” I muttered.

  “If we’re running, why not run in a useful direction?”

  “Slots don’t make for swift traveling.” But they did make for excellent cover. I considered terrain and distance, judging it against my memory of what the black-daggers had to travel. Could we get into the canyon before they crossed the ridge and spotted us?

  Melly said stoutly, “If you’re worried about Janek keeping up, don’t. He’s good at climbing now.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” His endurance couldn’t match an adult’s, but I’d seen in the first days after leaving Alathia that he was a tough little scrap, despite his short legs. If Kiran could get Teo walking, we had a chance. Especially if we stuck to rock and left no trail. The slot Kiran wanted wasn’t the closest. The clanfolk might not guess which canyon we’d chosen.

  Still, I hesitated. I wasn’t convinced heading to the temple was any kind of wise decision.

  Kiran touched my shoulder. “I’ve trusted your choices even when my instincts warned me otherwise. This time, will you trust mine?”

  Damn him, anyway. How could I refuse that appeal, knowing the depth of faith he’d put in me and the price he’d paid for it?

  “Fine. You head for those ironwoods. We’ll bring Teo and catch up.” I just wished I was sure it was Kiran whose judgment I was trusting.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  (Dev)

  Cara was the one to stagger down the ridge’s steep side with Teo thrown over her shoulder. As the taller of the two of us, carrying him was a bit less awkward for her than for me, but the real reason was that I wanted a word with Lena. I didn’t get it right away. I was too occupied in hauling her and all our packs down the first, steepest section of the descent. Lena leaned heavily on me, her steps dangerously clumsy. Melly and Janek bounded past us, sure-footed as mountain goats, but they slowed when they sighted Kiran and the ironwood trees at the base of the ridge.

  Two trees were already blackened and dead. The third was dying under Kiran’s touch. The ironwood’s gray-green lacework of foliage browned and curled as if caught in invisible flame. Kiran’s head was bowed over the tree’s knotted trunk
. The tangled black fall of his hair hid his face, probably deliberately. He knew how unsettling we all found his pleasure in killing things.

  The angle of the rock underfoot finally eased a fraction. I said in Lena’s ear, “You were in Kiran’s head. Are you certain he’s clear of that spell? Or that Ruslan didn’t do something else to him through the mark-bond? He almost had that amulet off before I grabbed him.”

  She took a long time about answering. “Kiran’s mark-bond lies so deep within his soulfire that I can’t see it properly. I know he bears spells that Ruslan cast on him using the bond. Like the binding that stops him violating Ruslan’s vow, or the casting that chained his body to his magic to ensure his healing. But what other spells there may be, or if any are new…” Her shoulder moved against mine in an awkward shrug.

  I muttered a curse. “So we just have to keep an eye on him and hope?”

  “In more ways than one,” Lena said. “You fear spells, but I fear more ordinary influence. For most of his life, Kiran has had only one model of strength. One that includes nothing of compassion or concern for consequences.”

  Below, Kiran took his hand from the tree. Every scrap of vegetation around him was dead. Standing amid the withered, ruined remnants, he looked as if he’d risen straight out of some spine-chilling tale of demonkind. His features were too coldly beautiful, the contrast between his icy skin and night-black hair too stark to be human.

  But then he turned his head and I saw the bruise still dark on one pallid cheek. He hadn’t used even a glimmer of the life he’d taken to heal himself, despite how difficult it was for him to resist his body’s greedy instinct. He was saving all the magic for Teo and Lena.

  That reassured me more than anything Lena could have said. Yet still, a niggling worry remained. Ruslan was as cunning as they came. I couldn’t afford to assume Kiran was fine.