The Labyrinth of Flame

by Courtney Schafer

  “If you discover the weapon can’t be safely wielded, will you turn aside?”

  “I…yes. I would find another way.” But Kiran knew his answer had come a beat too late. He could not imagine defeating Ruslan without the demons’ weapon.

  Lena said, “Teo, we do still need you. If the weapon is too destructive to use, you must help me convince Kiran of it.”

  That she could believe he would need convincing cut more deeply than any of Teo’s accusations. But Teo’s obstinate expression had softened into uncertainty; with an effort, Kiran kept silent.

  “We haven’t time to argue.” Dev grabbed the rope and advanced on Teo. “Kiran says he needs you, so you’re coming. Even if I have to drag you.”

  Teo slashed one hand in a frustrated, angry gesture, but he stood still while Dev knotted one end of the rope around his waist and legs to form a rough harness. Cara sat in a shallow depression in the rock, braced her feet against a boulder, and looped the rope around her body in preparation to lower Teo down the cliff. Dev helped her bind strips of oilskin around her palms to protect her skin from being abraded away as she controlled the speed of Teo’s descent.

  Kiran watched Teo pull the rope taut and awkwardly inch backward over the canyon rim at Cara’s direction. He felt little relief at Teo’s capitulation, only weary acceptance. He might need Teo, but he didn’t look forward to enduring more barbed accusations and arguments.

  Dev was surveying the desert. “Can you feel any clanfolk?” he asked Lena.

  “Give me a moment.” Lena took a deep breath. Her ikilhia brightened in Kiran’s mage-sight as she released her outer barriers. With the desert so barren of other life, any humans within miles would stand out to her unfettered senses like stars on a clear night.

  “I sense nothing,” Lena said. “I can’t tell you the clanfolk’s exact location without casting a seeking spell, but they must still be quite far.”

  That cheered Kiran as nothing else had. His plan was working. All they had to do was get down the cliff.

  * * *

  Kiran untied from the rope and tugged sharply three times to let Dev know he was down. The rope whisked up toward the overhanging rim high above.

  Mere yards away, the cliffs leaned toward each other and the rock-strewn sand of the canyon floor ended in a smooth lip of stone. Beyond was a dark hole like a gaping mouth leading into the depths of the slot. Cara leaned over the hole, scouting the drop. Teo stood apart from her, his arms crossed tight and his jaw set.

  Melly and Janek were peering at the canyon walls, where an astonishing variety of holes honeycombed the stone. Some were pockmarks just big enough to fit a finger, others dark tunnels large enough that Kiran could have squeezed himself inside. Carved figurines of jade or bone or ironwood sat perched in many of the larger pockets. Symbols were scratched and painted on the stone around them.

  “Why’d people leave this stuff here?” Melly asked.

  “Offerings,” Teo said shortly. “To Shaikar and his children.” He pointed to the largest of the symbols, scored deep into the stone beside the mouth of the slot. “This canyon is Shaikar’s Gullet. Zadikah told me tales of it. Like the Maw, it’s said to be the haunt of demons, and only those granted Shaikar’s favor may enter and return alive.”

  Janek stiffened. “Demons live in there?”

  “Not anymore,” Kiran assured him. “Demons can walk only where there is magic, and I feel none here.” Perhaps an earth-current had once followed the course of the canyon, but it must have dwindled or shifted paths when Ruslan burned the confluence beneath the veiled temple. Thinking of the godspeaker saying, Oh, you are favored of Shaikar; of the scarred demon calling him little cousin, Kiran barked a sharp laugh. “Besides, if anyone qualifies as demon-favored, it’s me. We need not fear to travel the canyon.”

  Cara said, “The drop into the slot is short enough a doubled rope can reach the base. Good news; rappelling is faster than lowering, and Dev won’t have to do another downclimb.”

  She sounded more relieved at that prospect than Kiran would have expected. He looked up at the canyon rim. Lena was dangling in midair, sliding smoothly down from the overhang like a spider lowering on a strand of silk.

  The undercut cliff did look a difficult descent. He’d seen Dev manage worse during their recent crossing of the Whitefires, but perhaps not while this tired.

  Kiran said to Cara, “Don’t worry about Dev. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  Her pale eyes locked with his. She understood what he was promising: If he falls, I’ll save him. Even if it gives Ruslan a chance to strike.

  Dev might have argued with him over that. Cara gave him a slow nod. “When you first showed up as Dev’s apprentice, I thought you didn’t have the grit or heart to make a good outrider, the kind who’d always put his rope-partners first. I was wrong.”

  Surprised warmth kindled in Kiran’s chest. Cara had already turned away. She hurried over to help Lena untie from the rope and pull it down.

  Lena backed to Kiran’s side to dodge the falling coils. High above, Dev eased over the rim, his feet stretching with limber grace for footholds beneath the overhang. No matter how many times Kiran watched Dev climb ropeless, it never failed to make him sweat. Kiran wiped damp palms on his trousers, thinking Don’t fall don’t fall don’t fall…

  Lena touched his shoulder. “If Dev slips, I’ll cast. I’ve enough strength left for a simple lifting spell.”

  He didn’t need to look away from Dev to sense the diminished, exhausted flame of her ikilhia. “Be honest. You could stop his fall, but you’d collapse afterward. We can’t carry you any more easily than we could Teo.”

  “We’re already at the slot,” Lena said. “I’d rather slow our travel than expose you to attack.”

  “A delay in reaching the temple is just as much a risk. I have to find Ashkiza’s weapon before Ruslan can discover another way to reach it. Besides, I can’t avoid casting forever. I still need to bolster my amulet.” The slot was not likely to have any sources of ikilhia he might use to reinforce the amulet’s spellwork, but the temple might be different. The lush courtyard gardens he remembered would have burned away in Ruslan’s fire, but that had been over a decade ago. Vegetation would have had plenty of time to regrow, even if the gardens now held only the hardy native plants of the desert.

  Lena said nothing, her silence a reluctant agreement. Kiran waited, his gaze locked to Dev’s wiry figure inching down the cliff. The others rappelled one by one into the slot, until Kiran stood alone.

  When Dev at last stepped onto the sand, Kiran grinned at him in relief.

  “You see? Not such a bad plan. You even got in a good climb.”

  Dev didn’t return his smile. He shook out his arms, his dark brows drawn tight. “You feel anything on the rim? While I was climbing, I kept thinking I heard someone up there. Faint little skritches like footsteps on stone.”

  “Nothing,” Kiran assured him. “Maybe you heard the others descending into the slot. Lena was the last, only moments ago. We can soon catch up.” Cara had set the rappel by looping the rope through a miniature arch that protruded sideways from the cliff like a jug handle. Doubled strands of rope lay in the sand, disappearing over the lip of stone and into the gloom of the slot. Kiran bent to pick up the rope.

  Dev shouted and knocked him flat. Something dark whizzed over Dev’s shoulder and struck the cliff with a sharp crack. A flare of chill, dissonant magic brushed Kiran’s barriers, and a shard of obsidian landed in the sand mere inches from his face. In his mage-sight, the black stone crawled with livid blue light.

  Kiran scrabbled back from the spelled shard, layering his barriers tight. Fierce cries rang off the canyon walls. Astounded, Kiran gaped upward. He felt no hint of life, but a whole line of heads poked over the rim. One youth—surprisingly plump, for a clansman—leaped off the rim to land in a crouch on a protruding rock a bodylength below. He whipped a sling around in a tight circle, and the glint of silver on one brown wrist caugh
t Kiran’s eye.

  The black-daggers were wearing shield charms. Powerful shield charms, if Lena had not sensed their approach. Kiran could not take their lives without breaking their charms’ protection first. He’d have to lower his barriers and spend his scant strength, leaving himself open to attack.

  This was Ruslan’s doing. It had to be.

  Dev dragged him up. “Get in the slot!”

  Shaken out of shocked paralysis, Kiran snatched up the doubled rope and flung himself into the slot’s yawning mouth. Another spelled missile of obsidian ricocheted off the rock above, narrowly missing Dev, who swarmed down the rope after Kiran.

  Lena shouted up, “What’s happened? I can’t sense anyone but you.” She was the only one waiting below. Cara had chivvied the others deeper into the canyon. The scuffling scrape of boots and bodies sliding over stone reverberated back. It did not sound like progress was easy.

  Kiran’s palms were burning and slick with blood; the haste of his descent had ripped them open. He released the rope to jump the last few feet.

  “The clanfolk have shielding charms.”

  Lena gasped, dismayed; she understood the implications.

  “That’s not all.” Dev thumped into the sand beside him. “That kid with the sling is no clansman. He’s the scholar that Gavila mindburned. But mindburned people don’t leap around on cliffs. Either ssarez-kai or Ruslan did something to him. If the demons gave him power like Vidai—”

  “If the scholar was like Vidai, we’d never have made it to the slot.” Vidai’s demon-borrowed power had been like the Taint, an invisible yet physical force exerted by will alone and impossible for ordinary magic to block. Vidai wouldn’t have bothered flinging spelled rocks at Kiran to force him into casting. He’d have pinned Kiran to the cliff and gutted him with a thought. “But the spells bound in those obsidian shards feel like demon magic.”

  Dev cursed, yanking the rope down with frantic speed. The clanfolk’s cries had died away, but Kiran knew what that meant. They were finding a way down the cliff.

  Lena asked, “The charms—is their shielding physical as well as magical?”

  “I don’t know.” How could she sound so calm? The last of Kiran’s shock was fast giving way to a cold, creeping panic. Without channels and a partner, he was restricted to crude, brute force spells, yet he had only his own ikilhia to spend. The moment he cast, Ruslan would strike at his mind, and Ruslan was so strong. Kiran might manage one spell before Ruslan smashed his defenses, but not more. He looked up the smoothly contoured throat of stone to the blotch of light that marked the slot’s mouth.

  “I could cast to block the canyon. Give the rest of you a chance to escape.”

  “No!” Lena protested. “If Ruslan takes you, he takes all our hope of safety. We have to plan, we can’t cast in haste—”

  “Then move.” Dev scooped up the rope in an awkward armful of coils. “Think while you run.”

  “Run” proved a horribly optimistic term. The slot was so narrow Kiran’s shoulders brushed the rock on both sides, and soon the walls slanted sideways at such an awkward angle he couldn’t move upright. He had to lever off the lower wall with his forearm and hitch his body along in strenuous jerks.

  He barely noticed the increasing protest of his arm muscles. His thoughts chased in frantic, futile circles. He could not cast; Teo would not cast; Lena hadn’t the reserves to manage spells of any strength. They would need an exceedingly clever plan to have any hope of escape. But what? He racked his brains, but he could think of nothing certain to work.

  Scrabbling noises ahead grew louder. Someone was hurrying back toward them.

  “Cara needs the rope!” It was Teo, disheveled and breathless.

  Instead of passing the rope forward, Dev spidered up between the slot walls and scrambled right over Kiran, Lena, and Teo, bracing his feet and forearms against the slot’s sides. The rope was looped in messy coils over his neck and shoulders.

  They all hastened after him. The slot widened enough that Kiran could move more easily, though running was still impossible due to fat chockstones wedged in their path. Kiran squeezed under one massive rock to find Melly, Janek, Teo, and Lena crowded against the slot wall, while Dev and Cara worked with frantic speed to untangle the rope. Beyond, the canyon’s floor dropped away again and the walls belled outward to form a deep, smooth-sided, cylindrical pocket perhaps twenty feet across. But Kiran didn’t see why they needed the rope. The pocket’s floor was only a bodylength below where they stood, although the sand was strangely level and smooth, almost as if it weren’t sand at all, but…

  “Is that water?” The substance looked more like orange soup and smelled like rotting eggs.

  “More or less,” Teo said. In a shaky rush, as if hoping to distract himself from his fear, he added, “Thunderstorms sometimes bring rain violent enough for floods to sweep canyons. The flood subsides quickly, but water remains in pockets like these, shaded from the sun. It soon turns bad, full of mud and minerals and animals that get trapped, unable to climb out.”

  Looking at the pool, Kiran’s stomach sank in dismay. No telling the depth of the water, and the rock above the waterline looked vertical, slick, and absolutely holdless. He wasn’t sure even Dev had the skill to climb out of the pool to the pocket’s far rim, especially if the water was too deep to stand in. Traversing around the pool looked equally impossible on such featureless stone.

  Yet Dev and Cara seemed undaunted. They were speedily tying one end of the rope around both their packs.

  “How do we get across?” Kiran asked.

  “Pack toss,” Cara said, fingers flying with a knot. “Throw the packs over the pool’s far rim, they’re heavy enough to anchor a handline.”

  Now Kiran understood. She’d jump in the pool and haul herself up on the far side using the trailing rope. Once up, she’d help the next person out.

  “But I can’t swim,” Janek said, high and frightened.

  “Cara and Dev know how. The rest of us don’t have to,” Melly assured him, though she too sounded nervous. “All you have to do is jump in and grab the rope.”

  Looking at the fouled water, Kiran grimaced in revulsion. The clanfolk would be able to track them by the stink alone. How many animals had drowned here? In a patch of crusted muck right at the waterline, he thought he saw the gleam of bones.

  Dev and Cara lifted the bound-together packs. They swung the bundle back in preparation to throw it across the pool.

  “Wait!” Kiran snatched at Cara’s arm.

  “What?”

  Those were indeed bones at the waterline. Higher up, just beneath the lip of stone on the pool’s far side, he saw a faint, pale tracery, like a patina of bone in a pattern. Kiran strained through his layered barriers and caught the faintest whiff of magic, one that dragged up memories full of childish terror.

  “The bone mage warded the canyon. No wonder the clanfolk have stories—Lena, you have to look. I can’t sense the spell properly.” He should have known that if veils had survived, so had other, less innocuous defenses.

  Lena’s ikilhia flared bright as she released her barriers. She leaned toward the pattern as if that would help her sense it better. “I know little of bone magic. I can’t read the spell’s purpose, but the threads run down the stone and into the water.”

  Kiran snatched up his belt knife, struck by sudden suspicion. He cut a scrap of bloodied cloth from his shirt and tossed it into the pool.

  The scrap sizzled and dissolved, leaving only a spreading, oily stain.

  “Khalmet’s bloodsoaked hand!” Dev clutched Cara’s arm. “If you’d jumped in…fuck. Lena, can you break the spell?”

  “Don’t break the spell,” Kiran said, excitement rising. “Cast to solidify the air over the pool so we can cross, and then dissolve your spell and leave the pool just as we found it. When the clanfolk follow us—”

  “We’ll find out just how well those charms shield them,” Dev said in vicious satisfaction.

 
“You’ll have to cross quickly,” Lena said. “I can’t hold such a bridge long and stay conscious. Afterward, I doubt I can cast again. If there are more such traps—”

  “Temple child!” The shout echoed along the slot, distant but enunciated so sharply the words remained distinct. Kiran froze, listening. The voice was male and human, not silvery and sibilant like a demon’s, and it came from the direction of the slot’s mouth, where the clanfolk must be gathered. But only the ssarez-kai he’d met in the mountains had ever called him “temple child.”

  “You need not run…Your kin-bond is broken, but you are still our creation…I will not harm you. Nor even those traveling with you, if you leave them and come to me.”

  Kiran’s heart beat loud as thunder in his ears. His own shocked realization was mirrored in Dev’s wide eyes.

  “The scholar,” Dev said, in a rough, horrified whisper. “There’s a demon inside him.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  (Dev)

  The demon wasn’t waiting around for Kiran to answer. A cacophony of sliding and scraping noises announced the black-daggers were climbing down into the slot.

  I gripped Lena’s shoulder. “Bridge the pool!”

  Lena spread her ringed hands and sang, low and rhythmic. Kiran’s fingers flexed like he was dying to help her, his expression one of agonized impatience. I knew the feeling. Alathian magic was so damn slow!

  Cara was ripping our packs free of their knotted harness. I snatched up the rest of the rope and coiled it as fast as my hands could move. I kept seeing the scholar-boy’s empty white eyes, hearing the sly confidence in the words echoing down the slot. If not for Melly and Lena, that could have been me chasing after Kiran, my mind burned away so a demon could burrow inside me like a worm in a thornapple.

  The very thought made my stomach heave. Beside me, Janek was clinging to Melly’s arm and breathing in frightened whimpers. Instead of comforting him, Melly stood rigid, her forehead scrunched in ferocious concentration. She must be trying with all her might to raise even a glimmer of the Taint. It was Teo who knelt and took Janek’s shoulders, speaking in swift reassurance.