The Labyrinth of Flame

by Courtney Schafer

  “I remember, kid. We’ll try that, but…” He turned to Lena, his grin fading. “You’re sure you feel nothing up there that could hurt her.”

  “You know I’d warn you if I did,” Lena said. “But if you can’t do the climb, I don’t see how she can manage.”

  “Watch.” Dev crouched and braced his hands on his knees. Melly backed the length of the courtyard until rubble stopped her.

  She burst into a run, charging straight for Dev. When she reached him, she leaped up and vaulted off his bent back, even as he shoved hard off the ground with an explosive grunt of effort.

  Melly catapulted higher than Kiran would have thought possible. She smacked into the wall just below the window, her hands scrabbling for the sill. She caught the edge, swung a heel up and hooked it, and in a trice levered herself through the oval.

  Jubilant, she called, “Throw me the rope and I’ll anchor it for you.”

  Looking around at her amazed audience, Dev’s grin reappeared, broader than ever. “Who says you need the Taint to fly? Nice work, kid.”

  The glow from Lena’s rings wasn’t enough to show Melly’s expression, but Kiran could imagine her beaming with pride. Memory sank its thorns in his heart; how many times had he felt just that way after receiving a compliment from Ruslan?

  Melly’s pride and admiration would never be poisoned. She was lucky in Dev, and Kiran did not begrudge her one bit of that fortune. As for himself…he was not a child; he did not need a mentor. He should shut away the past.

  But first, he would use it. When he climbed through the window into the dark corridor beyond, Kiran let his sense of unreality deepen. He embraced phantom glimpses of the halls he’d once walked, bright with magelight, the blood-red, unburned stone carved into abstract but mesmerizing patterns. He summoned the sour man’s crushing grip that had pushed him along no matter how he cried or stumbled, and let his feet follow that guide. Left, then right, up an interminable set of stairs, right again, colors pulsing at the back of his eyes, threatening to crawl over his vision—

  “Hold.” Lena’s sharp whisper yanked him free of memory. Kiran halted, his heart hammering. He’d reached the atrium outside the bone mage’s chambers. Her workroom door was mere yards away, an arched black opening behind a knee-high slagpile of copper. The wall surrounding the doorway was deeply pitted and scarred; the bone mage’s wards had burned out with explosive force when the confluence’s unbound magic blasted through them. The domed ceiling of the atrium was scarred by cracks and even ragged holes that provided a glimpse of star-choked sky.

  But Kiran sensed no lingering magic, nothing beyond his barriers that would cause Lena’s hesitation. Dev was right at his shoulder, tension evident in his rough, rapid breaths.

  “What’s wrong?” Kiran whispered to Lena.

  She edged into the atrium with her barriers layered tight. “Traces in the aether, very faint. As if spillover lingers from a powerful spell cast some time ago. But I sense no remaining spellwork; the traces have almost faded. If the canyon was not so dead of magic, I would have missed them entirely.”

  Kiran cursed the need to hold his barriers. He couldn’t feel a thing. He glanced back at Teo, who shook his head, his hands tight on Melly’s shoulders.

  “I can give you no better information. What little skill I had in tracework is long blunted.”

  Kiran asked Lena, “Would you show me what you feel?” He knew the taste of Ruslan’s magic well enough to discern it even through the filter of Lena’s senses, if she were willing to venture blood contact.

  Lena moved closer, extending a hand. They both bore enough scrapes and cuts from climbing that no knife would be necessary.

  “Wait,” Dev said abruptly. “Lena, go back where you were. I need your light to see…Cara, is that a footprint? Right in front of that slagheap.”

  Fine-grained grit coated the atrium’s stone floor, doubtless blown in by the wind through the ceiling’s gaping holes. At the base of the melted mound of copper, sand had drifted into miniature rippled dunes. At the edge of one such dune was a blurred mark, though Kiran hadn’t Cara’s skill as a hunter to know if it was truly made by a foot.

  Cara eased forward with Lena following right behind. She crouched next to the mark. “Definitely a footprint. Awfully small print for a man as tall as Ruslan, though.”

  Kiran had a terrible suspicion whose print it was. “Lena, quickly, show me the traces.”

  She took his hand. Through her mage-sight, he glimpsed a subtle shimmer of violet, dark and deep and horribly familiar.

  Kiran’s ikilhia boiled up to batter at his barriers. “Lizaveta.”

  The others turned to stare at him. “But she’s dead,” Dev said. “Please tell me that’s still true.”

  “She’s dead.” Kiran’s heart hammered at a fever pace. Yet the rest of him was cold, so cold, just like when she’d stabbed him. He fought to think logically. The traces were days old, not weeks. “She must have translocated here before she went to the black-daggers’ sacred pools.” Kiran had counted on Ruslan’s arrogance preventing him from finding the bone mage’s concealed vault. Lizaveta, like Ruslan, would never protect valuable information with mere nathahlen methods. But Lizaveta, subtle, cunning Lizaveta, might not make her mage-brother’s error of assuming all mages thought as she did.

  If she had discovered the vault—

  Kiran wanted nothing more than to charge inside the bone mage’s chambers. He was desperate to discover if his one hope remained, or if it had been stolen from him. Instead, he forced himself to caution. Whatever Lizaveta had done, he was days too late to prevent.

  “You’re certain you feel no other spellwork?” he asked Lena.

  “Nothing so far. But please, stay back.” Lena released his hand and moved for the workroom’s dark entryway.

  Teo shoved past Kiran, calling to her, “Let me go first. If there’s a trap spell like the one in Cadah’s cave, best if you aren’t the one caught in it.”

  Lena hesitated, but she let him pass. Teo paused in the doorway. He cupped his hands and blew gently over them. A weak ripple of magic brushed Kiran’s barriers, and a spark of bronze-tinted light glimmered into existence above Teo’s palms.

  Only a magelight, and yet Kiran’s breath caught in wistful sorrow. He’d thought Teo’s beliefs foolishly rigid. Yet to see Teo cast, knowing how fiercely he had clung to his principles and for how long—it felt like a loss.

  Teo edged inside the bone mage’s chambers. The little spark of magelight was too dim for Kiran to see anything of what lay inside. He waited, his chest tight.

  After a long, awful silence, Teo’s voice floated out. “Kiran. You can come inside.”

  Just that, quiet and grim, but Kiran knew with bleak certainty what Teo had found. He vaulted straight over the slagged copper and ran through the doorway.

  The workroom was as barren as the rest of the temple. Stone tables and shelves held only amorphous lumps of cooled, magic-dead metal. The strange, spiraling pattern on the workroom’s back wall that had haunted his dreams was gone, charred into invisibility.

  The massive block of stone that formed the vault door had been pulverized to crumbled shards, leaving the vault yawning open. Teo’s magelight glimmered inside.

  “No,” Kiran said, in bitter, furious denial. “No.”

  “It’s not empty,” Teo said. “But the bone mage’s journals you spoke of, leatherbound with silver clasps—well. Come look.”

  Kiran ducked under the stone lintel. The vault was a rough cavern ten paces across, lined with shelves chipped into the rock. Ranks of books crowded the nearer shelves, but the back shelves held only thick gray drifts of ash.

  “Lizaveta burned the journals?” Kiran said, startled. He’d assumed she would have given the vault’s contents to Ruslan. But her attempt to kill Kiran in the cave might not have been her first act of sabotage.

  “Maybe.” Teo held up a slug of silver. “I found this in the ash. Could be the remains of the clasps you sp
oke of. I don’t see any other books that match your description of the journals. You’re certain they weren’t ward-sealed?”

  “Yes,” Kiran said. “But Ruslan wouldn’t know that. He would assume the ash was from warded books that burned when the confluence did. He would never guess Lizaveta destroyed them herself.”

  “If she destroyed them.” Dev crouched in the doorway, Lena peering over his shoulder. “Maybe she took them off elsewhere and left this ash so Ruslan wouldn’t think anything was missing. Maybe she wanted the weapon for herself, and that’s why she turned against him.”

  “No,” Kiran said. Lizaveta’s love for Ruslan had been terribly real. He’d experienced the overwhelming force of it in her final cry of warning. “She was afraid for him.”

  Lena said, “If something about the demons’ weapon is so dangerous it frightened a blood mage, that doesn’t fill me with confidence.”

  “We don’t know what Lizaveta read,” Kiran protested. “Maybe she discovered something else about the demons that worried her.” He pressed his hands to his eyes, struggling to rein in the wild swirl of his ikilhia. If ever he needed to think clearly, it was now. “Teo, what of these other books?” Much of the lettering on the spines appeared Varkevian, though he spotted a few Kennish titles, the words difficult to make out in the uncertain glimmer of Teo’s magelight. Kiran leaned closer to the shelves, squinting. Travels among the Kaithan Tribes…A Schema for Enhancing Talent in Mage-born Children…

  Kiran reached for that book. Teo was already flipping through another, his fingers careful on the cracked, yellowed pages.

  “Someone’s marked specific passages in this,” he said. “It’s a healer’s journal. Written in Adhavar, which is an older dialect of Varkevian, but I learned enough in the collegium that I can muddle through… ‘One of the more curious cases of dementia I treated in Prosul Shadari was a woman who claimed to have bargained with demons. She suffered from a wasting of the body that would not respond to any of my potions, but few such sicknesses do. The fantasies of her dying delirium were unusual for their vivid imagination. She spoke of Shaikar’s hells not as lightless pits, but as a strange and beautiful realm of crystal sand where the air was full of colored veils…’”

  “She saw true,” Kiran said, remembering sky-streamers of cobalt and lavender and emerald. “The question is if she saw anything I didn’t.” He turned to Dev. “I know how much you fear to waste time, but give Teo and me a chance to search these remaining books. Bargaining with the scarred demon may be the only course left. But the more knowledge I have, the better a bargain I can make.”

  “I won’t argue with that,” Dev said. “But Kiran…read fast.”

  “We all will.” Lena squeezed past Dev into the vault. She took down a book, careful as Teo had been, and gave Kiran a little smile. “You don’t remember the days we spent in the guesthouse library during your confinement by the Council. But I assure you, I can devour books every bit as fast as Ruslan trained you to do.”

  Kiran forced an answering smile, though his gut was a mass of ice. For all his brave words to Dev, he was far from certain they’d find anything beyond hints and half-truths. Soon you will beg to take my offer, the scarred demon had said. If Kiran agreed to a kin-bond, he dreaded how the demon might use it. Yet if that was the only way…

  He shouldn’t leap to that assumption. Dev pulled off miracles all the time. Could Kiran not do the same?

  “Would you mind casting a proper magelight out in the workroom?” Kiran asked Lena, and pulled books from the shelves, grimly determined. If there was an alternative, he would find it.

  * * *

  (Dev)

  I paced the atrium for the thousandth time, my feet scuffing in the grit. Back and forth and back again through the silver bar of magelight stretching out the workroom doorway. The scrape of turning pages and an occasional mutter of voices were the only sounds from within. Kiran, Teo, and Lena had been poring over books for hours. I ought to be resting like Melly, who was curled tight on a blanket in the workroom’s back corner.

  I couldn’t sleep, not until Cara got back. She’d left to hunt some hours before and insisted on going alone over all my protests. The ssarez-kai and Ruslan are watching you, not me, she’d said. Lena’s got to protect you all, and I’m not taking Teo away when Kiran can’t read Varkevian. Hunting’s a risk, but if I don’t take it, Lena will drain all her strength in keeping us from starving.

  Cara did have a signaling charm that we’d taken off the dead black-daggers. Lena had cast to fix the charm so that if Cara sparked it, Lena would hear her cry for aid. It didn’t stop worry from burning a hole in my gut. She’d been gone so long. Yeah, hunting was slow, and she’d have to climb toward the canyon rim to find any wildlife. But the sky visible through the gaps in the dome was growing pale. If she wasn’t back by the time the sun rose, I would demand Lena cast to find her.

  Another scuff of footsteps—someone was approaching the atrium. I tensed, my eyes on the dark arch of the entrance. That sounded like Cara’s measured stride, but the black blotch I saw moving in the shadows didn’t look right, the top misshapen and bulky. I backed toward the workroom, ready to yell for the mages.

  Cara stepped into the atrium. Slung over her shoulders was a hideous mass of black scales and clawed limbs.

  “Khalmet’s bloodsoaked hand! You took down a nightclaw lizard with nothing more than a belt knife?” Nightclaws were half as big as a man and whipsnake fast, with a viciously poisonous bite. Supposedly they weren’t bad eating so long as you cut off the claws and head before curing the meat, but I’d certainly never wanted to find out.

  “That and my wits.” Cara heaved the lizard onto the atrium’s stone. “Tricked it into a spot where I could pin it with a boulder and then use my knife. A lucky find, though first I had to climb near to the canyon rim. I was beginning to despair of finding anything bigger than a hopmouse.”

  “And you say I’m crazy.” I dodged the nightclaw’s body to peer at the blood darkening her leathers. “Are you hurt? Did it bite you?”

  Cara snorted. “What kind of hunter do you think I am?”

  “Sorry,” I said, silently promising Khalmet I’d make good on all the offerings I’d been vowing to make him. “Been a long night stuck here with nothing to do but worry. Thought I might go mad before you got back.”

  “Now you know how I felt when I had to sit in the Alathian embassy while you ran around Ninavel getting buildings dumped on your head.” She glanced at the magelit workroom. “How are they going?”

  “Still reading. Here, there’s some blood on your face.” I gently wiped a streak off her cheekbone with my sleeve. Oh gods, I was so glad to see her safe.

  I leaned in and stole a slow, sweet kiss. She pulled me close and turned the kiss into something that left me wishing desperately we had more privacy than the atrium could provide. I wanted nothing more than to peel off every scrap of the clothes hiding her skin. Hell, we were sort of private here. Maybe the others would be too busy with their books to notice. I tugged her shirt from her belt and slid my hands beneath the fabric. Soft skin over hard muscle—gods, I loved the feel of her. My fingers traced over her stomach, moving higher—

  “Dev.” She caught my hands. “Oh, damn it, I have to tell you—I don’t want kids.”

  “What?” I blinked at her, confused. “Is something wrong with your dry-womb charm?” I’d felt the cool metal of the stud still firmly fixed in her navel. The charms Ninavel women used to stop their courses and avoid pregnancy had to be replaced like any other charm when the magic wore out, but if that was the issue, I didn’t see why she couldn’t ask Lena…

  “No—charm’s still fine. I meant I don’t want kids ever. If you’re thinking of a contract with me, I thought you should know. I’ve seen how you are with Melly and Janek.”

  I said the first stupid thing that popped into my head. “But you like Melly and Janek.”

  “Didn’t say I didn’t like kids. I like them just fine,
especially when they’re old enough to reason with. I just don’t want to birth them. Some women like tending infants. I’m not one of them. Also…you and I can choose to love each other despite the risks we take. Kids don’t get to choose their parents. I couldn’t enjoy climbing with you if I had to fear that Shaikar taking us would leave a child unprotected and alone.”

  I understood her fear. Ninavel was no good city for orphans. But…“Cara, I promised Sethan about Melly. Even if I hadn’t, I can’t—maybe she’s not mine, but I still care about her like she was—”

  “No, no—I’m not talking about Melly. I care about her too, and she’s old enough to handle herself if we die. What I’m talking about is…future kids. If you decide you want any, you’ll either need a different partner or be willing to take a second one, and I know you’re not the sort who’d find Varkevian-style partnership easy.” She ventured a grin. “Well, mostly not. A shame Kiran can’t bear children.”

  Despite her teasing tone, a real question lay in her eyes. I shot a glance at the workroom doorway and lowered my voice. “I’m not angling to make him a bed-partner.” Much as I might enjoy that. Hell, given Kiran’s looks, I’d need ice in my veins not to be stirred by the idea of sharing his bed, and I certainly wasn’t ice-blooded. Even if now that I knew what all that exotic beauty was meant to mimic, I couldn’t help feeling unsettled as well as appreciative. But that wasn’t my reason.

  “Last thing he needs is someone pulling him into bed,” I told Cara. “What he needs are friends who’ll stand by him without the least hint of wanting something in return."

  “Hmm.” Her grin turned wicked. “If that changes, ask him if he’ll let me join the fun. Or at least watch. You two would be quite the sight.”

  Join. Gods. A vision of that jolted straight to my groin. I buried the image, fast, remembering Kiran’s flinches whenever bedplay was brought up, his strained, anguished voice saying, I let Ruslan and Lizaveta…