The Labyrinth of Flame

by Courtney Schafer

  Kiran was staring at me like he couldn’t possibly have heard me right. “That’s how you became Sethan’s apprentice?”

  “Not quite.” If Sethan had been horrified by my blunt bargaining, he’d had better sense than to show it. He’d been kind yet firm in his answer. “He said he was happy to take me as an apprentice, but he’d no interest in me as a bed partner. I didn’t believe him. I told him he had to want something.”

  Sethan’s smile had been full of a sadness I understood now as I hadn’t then. “He said he did want something. He wanted me to learn that friendship isn’t about seeking advantage, and that bedplay is a joy best shared between partners that can meet as equals, without any hint of obligation.”

  “You were fortunate in Sethan,” Kiran said, not hiding the bitterness of his envy.

  “Yeah, I was. I wish Khalmet had favored you like he did me. But you didn’t do anything shameful. That’s all on Ruslan.”

  Kiran gave a harsh laugh. “You’ll forgive me all I did in Ninavel, claiming it’s Ruslan’s fault, as if I were nothing more than his puppet. Yet you will not grant Mikail an inch of leniency. Which should I believe?”

  Khalmet’s hand, he was stubborn. Also wrong on so many levels I hardly knew where to start. “I don’t care whose bed Mikail shared,” I said. “I care who he’s murdered. And I don’t see you as Ruslan’s puppet, much as he’s tried to make you one. You loved him, and he used that love for his own gain. Same as he uses everything.”

  Kiran looked away, his mouth a hard, flat line, and said nothing.

  I let out a slow sigh. What, had I thought that one simple conversation could miraculously heal the damage Ruslan had caused? I should know better, having endured my own wounds that took years to fade. I tried to think what Sethan had done, back when I’d been nearly as fucked up as Kiran.

  He’d never pushed me too hard. He’d said his piece and then backed off so I had time to chew it over.

  “You hungry?” I asked Kiran, carefully mild. Eyes still averted, he shook his head.

  A lie, but not one I would call him on. “Well, I am. I’ll find out if we have any food left.” I picked up my pace. Lena and Cara were walking close together, murmuring to each other. When I approached, Lena broke off and turned to me.

  “Is Kiran all right?”

  “Of course he’s not all right,” I said. “Ruslan’s left his head in a mess, and not from spellwork. Still, he’s muddling along the best he can. He’s got something he needs to tell you about his amulet. If he balks, come talk to me. But whatever he says, don’t either of you stop walking until we sight this Shaikar-cursed temple.”

  Lena fell back, wearing a worried little frown. I checked to make sure Kiran didn’t slow when he saw her waiting for him. To his credit, his pace didn’t change.

  “Good move, forcing them to talk,” Cara said. “Though I’d sure like to know what’s going on, especially if it has to do with Ruslan or demons. That was one intense conversation you and Kiran were having.”

  I explained what Kiran had said about temple, Ruslan, and amulet, and his insistence that his casting hadn’t endangered us. “I swear I saw a pattern on the rock, but maybe it was just me being jumpy. For the rest…well. You ever wish you could give someone a charm that’d heal wounds of the soul, not just the body? Like a pains-ease, only different…a past-ease.”

  “Believe me, I’ve wished that,” Cara said, giving me a level look.

  I traced gentle fingers down her arm, and she took my hand. Just that simple contact made my blood leap in my veins. I let myself remember what it was like to touch all of her, my hands gliding over tawny skin, her body moving supple and sure over mine…

  My stomach growled, yanking me back into the worries of the present. “Do we have any food left?”

  “Gave most of it to Melly and Lena, but I saved a last strip of jerky for you. We’ll have to hunt tonight. Let’s hope this temple has some nice fat lizards.”

  “I’d settle for no demons or blood mages.” Suliyya grant Kiran was right about Ruslan deciding to lurk in wait rather than attack straight off. If not, my one hope was that Ruslan didn’t know Lena was with us. The demon chasing us had never gotten a good look at her.

  Cara dug out the jerky strip, which felt pitifully meager as I gnawed it. Teo was setting a good pace, with Melly bounding along close on his heels. Behind us, Kiran and Lena were talking in staccato mutters. Didn’t sound like much reconciliation was happening, but at least they were walking at a decent speed while they argued.

  Teo and Melly rounded another bend—and promptly started yelling, Melly’s voice carrying high over Teo’s. “Cara, Dev, everybody, come and see!”

  Cara was already running. I took off after her, every nerve on alert.

  Beyond the bend was a sight that stopped me dead. Our slot ended in a pour-off high on the side of a deeper canyon. And gods, what a canyon! The gorge was at least a mile wide. Cliffs reared skyward in massive ramparts topped by fantastically sculpted fins and spires, glowing scarlet in the sun’s last light. At the canyon’s distant head, the gossamer thread of a waterfall shimmered in the shadows, stretching from a dark opening in the cliff to the canyon floor hundreds of feet below. The infamous vanished river, I assumed, except in this stretch of canyon it hadn’t vanished yet. A fat stream looped in lazy whorls along the canyon’s broad bottom. The river must plunge underground again farther downstream. Such plentiful water was a welcome sight after weeks of parched desert.

  But no vegetation lined the stream’s banks. From the stream to halfway up the canyon walls, the stone was scorched black and utterly barren. From what Kiran said, Ruslan had burned the canyon well over a decade ago, yet not even a single swordplant had regrown in all that time.

  Kiran caught my arm. “There!” he cried, turning me to look down-canyon.

  Deep in the shadow of a massive undercut on the canyon’s far side, an entire warren of stone buildings spilled toward the river. Walls and roofs were carved in strangely fluid curves instead of hard angles. All of it was charred the same lifeless black as the rest of the canyon, but the buildings looked intact. Except right in the heart of the warren, where rubble fanned out in a radial pattern, like some enormous fist had once punched up through the stone.

  Kiran’s fingers bit deep into my bicep. “The temple.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  (Kiran)

  “That’s not a temple, it’s a fucking city,” Dev said. “I hope you’ve some idea of where this vault lies, or searching could take weeks. Which Ruslan’s sure not going to give us.”

  Kiran had not realized the temple compound was so large. The splintered memories he retained encompassed only a few places: the room he’d shared with Jain and Ralia, the bone mage’s chambers, the great sanctum with the dais and the flame, plus a few hazy impressions of the sunny, noisy quarters shared by the younger children. Yet a silent soul-quake of recognition had rocked him the instant he laid eyes on the shadowed sprawl of buildings. The rubble at their heart marked where Ruslan had shattered the sanctum’s roof and carried him away from the confluence’s destruction.

  Not long ago, that thought would have brought only pain. Now, his breath came fast with anticipation.

  “Give me the spyglass,” Kiran said. “I remember enough to know the bone mage’s workroom wasn’t far from that ruined area. If I can find the right spot to enter the intact halls beyond the rubble, I can lead us to the vault.” His childish feet had been forced to walk the path between sanctum and workroom so many times that even with his memories in tatters, sheer habit ought to guide his steps.

  Cara dug the spyglass out of her pack. Kiran scanned past fractured stone slabs to serpentine walls and domed roofs. His short legs had ached from climbing stairs…the bone mage’s chambers had been up from the sanctum. The temple’s uppermost reaches consisted of a single labyrinthine building with no obvious doorways. The main entry must have been through the sanctum, which was no good option, but he did spy
some dark holes of windows that might give access.

  Dev asked Lena, “You feel anyone lurking down there?”

  Questing threads of magic had long since arrowed out of the armored blaze of her ikilhia. Kiran had to admire her finesse. Her spell slipped through the dead emptiness of the canyon’s aether without causing any telltale echoes.

  “I sense no sign of life in the canyon,” she said. “The only spells I’ve found are the bone mage’s surviving veils anchored beyond the canyon rims. But it’s possible Ruslan could shield himself from me, much as his charms hid the black-daggers.”

  Beside her, Teo stood perfectly still, his head cocked as if straining to listen. The gossamer gates to his ikilhia were thrown open dangerously wide.

  Kiran lowered the spyglass. “You shouldn’t leave yourself so vulnerable.”

  Teo said, “From what you’ve shown me of Ruslan, I hardly think any defenses I might attempt would help me. If I leave nothing impeding my senses, I’ll have a better chance of sensing spellwork in time to give warning.”

  Kiran had far more faith in Lena’s trained seeking, but he didn’t want to say he thought Teo too weak to be helpful. This was the first time he’d seen Teo willingly use any part of his talent.

  Kiran said, “I’ve scouted a route that will let us skirt the rubble and enter the halls beyond. We just need to get down this cliff.” It was so frustrating to be limited to nathahlen means of travel. He wanted to cast and soar straight across the canyon to the temple’s ruined heart, not set painfully slow rappels.

  Dev reached for the rope, but Melly called to him, “Look, there are stairs!” She was perched right at the edge of the pour-off, leaning out into the yawning void with an outrider’s casual confidence.

  Hoping Melly remembered she could no longer fly, Kiran edged forward to look. “Stairs” proved to be an optimistic exaggeration. A series of chipped depressions led down the cliff, which was slick and streaked with mud where floodwaters had spilled.

  “I might need the rope,” Teo said, eyeing the dizzying drop.

  Kiran might have shared the sentiment if not for the urgency growing with every beat of his heart. The scarlet blaze of the canyon’s opposite ramparts was fading, shadows creeping ever higher as the sun sank behind sculpted stone. Kiran could wait no longer; he sat on the pour-off’s lip, ready to roll onto his stomach and wedge his boots into the first depressions.

  Dev caught his shoulder and hauled him back. “You let me go first. I don’t care how desperate you are to find this vault, you stay within arm’s reach of me, Cara, or Lena. I’m not giving Ruslan the least chance to cast something nasty at you without breaking his vow.”

  “He won’t cast. Not yet.” Ruslan never struck in haste when waiting might serve him more. His cold, deadly patience was his most dangerous quality.

  Cara planted herself in his way. “You may think you know Ruslan, but I don’t like to depend on guesswork. What if you’re wrong, and he’s lying in wait? There’s not a scrap of cover in that canyon. Anyone inside the temple is going to see us coming long before we arrive.”

  She wasn’t looking at Melly or even Dev, but Kiran knew how much she must fear for them. “If I’m wrong, then Lena must defend us. If her strength isn’t enough…” He fingered his amulet and sighed. “I won’t let you come to harm. Alhough I’d prefer my casting to be a last resort, and for Lena to first use what I can give her.” He darted a wary glance at Lena. He didn’t see how she could protest such a plan, but he’d found her anger in the slot equally baffling.

  Lena’s lips pressed tight, but she nodded.

  Teo said, “You don’t have to depend only on Lena. If we are attacked, I will do all I can to aid her in shielding you.”

  Kiran could not have been more startled if Lena announced she wanted to learn blood magic. “Are you saying you would cast?” Listening to the aether was one thing, but he had never guessed Teo would so swiftly agree to actual spellwork.

  “My soul is already damned,” Teo said, with an awkward shrug that did not hide his pain at the prospect. “Also…I no longer find certainty so easy to come by. I cast to protect Zadikah, though she is far from innocent.” He looked at Melly. “I can’t turn aside when a child needs my protection even more.”

  “I’m not a baby,” Melly muttered, but subsided when Dev aimed a kick at her ankle.

  “Thank you,” Lena said quietly to Teo. “I know how difficult this is for you.” Her dark eyes were filled not only with sympathy but respect. Sudden pain lanced Kiran’s heart. Maybe she’d once looked at him that way in Tamanath, during the days of their budding friendship that he could not recall. But that was before Ninavel. Nothing he could ever do would erase his murder of Stevannes. Nor should it. He did not believe in damnation like Teo, but neither did he believe that taking a life should carry no consequences.

  “We need to go,” Kiran said.

  This time nobody protested. Dev swung over the lip of the pour-off with his usual smooth grace and started down the cliff. Kiran followed, doing his best to pretend he was climbing down a sturdy ladder instead of nerve-wrackingly slick and sloping holds.

  The temple was a silent, beckoning presence urging him to move faster. Almost, he could imagine the bone mage speaking to him across the years in a voice made of ash and dust: Last of the temple’s children, come and take my secrets. I was once your tormentor, but now I offer you salvation.

  It seemed an eternity before everyone descended the cliff, and longer yet before Kiran forded the canyon’s shallow, surprisingly cold stream and faced the outer ranks of the temple’s sinuous buildings. No outer wall guarded the grounds, only a line of seared, crumbling statues, far too damaged for Kiran to tell if they represented humans or demons. At the midpoint of the line sat a massive lump of silver, misshapen as if it had melted in the magefire’s heat and then cooled back into solidity. A flash of memory hit him: a gleaming sculpture in the shape of a razor-edged, leaping flame, the base covered in carmine flowers, their sweet scent so powerful it clogged his nose and throat.

  No flowers now, only lifeless stone and metal under a fast-darkening sky. Kiran pointed between two buildings with sides as fluted and smooth as wind-eroded boulders. “This way.”

  Lena took the lead, her hands raised and her rings glimmering with magelight. Melly slunk cat-footed after her, shepherded by Cara and Teo. Dev had apparently been in perfect earnest about not letting Kiran out of arm’s reach. Ever since leaving the cliff, he’d crowded so close that Kiran had to take care not to bump into him.

  At first, Kiran had found it a touch exasperating, but now he was glad. Ascending the eerily barren pathways of the temple, he felt like a phantom in one of the visions he’d endured as a child. As if only the thinnest of veils separated him from his former self, and any moment he might step back in time and find himself that frightened boy again, his life as a mage nothing more than a mad child’s dream. The reassuringly familiar candleflicker of Dev’s ikilhia was an anchor holding him to the present. Even so, he half-expected to step in blood creeping dark over the stone, glimpse the shadow of a slouching beast, hear the laughter of scorpions…

  But the temple remained silent and empty. Nothing showed in the glow of Lena’s rings but blackened stone. Sometimes slagged streaks of metal glistened under dark openings where shutters and doors had melted in the magefire’s heat. No evidence remained of the men and women who had once lived inside, not even ash. That cramped Kiran’s heart with helpless sorrow; not for the adults, but for the temple’s other children. They had died with nothing to mark their presence in the world, as if they had never existed at all, and no one had mourned them. Until now. But how could he honor them when he barely remembered them?

  By making sure no more children burned at Ruslan’s whim. Kiran forced his thoughts away from the acid well of the past and onto more practical paths.

  In the demon realm, he had succeeded in creating a gateway between realms. The scarred demon had said he needed an anchor t
o safely cross. He’d felt the demon send him to Dev. He’d likewise felt the ssarez-kai inside the unfortunate scholar rip open its escape route. If he could decipher how the demons controlled their travel, the way he had deciphered the twist of energies necessary to create a gate…

  He was skirting rubble now, giant tumbled blocks of stone that were outlined sharp against a lavender-and-rose twilit sky. Beyond a collapsed colonnade, intact walls reared up beneath the great arch of the cliff’s undercut. High on the closest wall was an oval window like a black, watching eye.

  Kiran pointed. “We need to climb in there.” The window was several bodylengths up the wall. He’d assumed Dev or Cara could easily climb to reach the curved sill, but what he had not seen through the spyglass was the quality of the rock. All the stone here was a slick, flawless black, as if the magefire had been so powerful near its source as to transmute rock to glass.

  Dev slid questing fingers over the glossy surface and drew his hand back, frowning. “Lena. I need better light.”

  Lena stepped up beside him, her rings glowing silver.

  “No handholds,” Cara said, joining them. “And your boots’ll never grip.”

  “Maybe if I stand on your shoulders…” Dev squinted up at the window.

  “Maybe that would work if you were a few feet taller,” Cara said. “We might be able to find a route up the rubble to reach the roof, but that’ll take time. Much faster if Lena casts to lift you.”

  Melly abandoned Teo to catch Dev’s arm. “Lena doesn’t have to waste her magic. Dev, you’re not so old you’ve forgotten a Tainter’s tricks, have you? Kip me up there.”

  Kiran had no idea what she meant, and from Cara’s puzzled glance, she didn’t either. But Dev’s teeth flashed white in a sharp, sudden grin.