The Labyrinth of Flame

by Courtney Schafer

  Maybe Marten didn’t recall everything. “The Council bound his power.”

  “This is not the result of a binding,” Teo said. “I don’t know how bright his inner fire burned before, but now it’s a ragged little spark no brighter than any untalented man’s.”

  Kiran flinched from a memory of Marten’s ikilhia fraying away into the voracious currents of the demon realm. “Ikilhia can recover. After Ruslan took my memories, mine was so dim I was frightened I might never cast again.” He well remembered the horror he’d felt at the thought—and how Ruslan had reassured him, so confident, so gentle, as if he hadn’t been the one to cripple Kiran.

  “Inner fire that remains reasonably intact, yes,” Teo said. “But this man—it’s as if his fire was ripped from him so he hasn’t even the embers left. I fear his condition may be permanent.”

  Kiran’s stomach sank into his boots. He’d done this. At Dev’s request, true, but the responsibility was ultimately his. He shouldn’t have let Dev drown his doubt. He’d known he couldn’t shield Marten properly, yet he’d taken him anyway. If Marten had forever lost his magic—Kiran cringed at the bitterness of such an injury.

  “Does Lena know?” How could he face her after this?

  “If I were a crueler man, I would make you tell her,” Teo said, a sudden, raw darkness in his words. “But yes, she knows. She hasn’t left his side, and I’ve been open with them both.” His ikilhia surged violently high. “Do you know, I spent years praying to the goddess to show me a way to rid myself of my talent. Years. I looked in every library I could reach, read every healer’s journal, and found no way to cleanse myself of my curse that would not leave me a drooling ruin. Now, too late, you show me it is possible—even as you show me the worst of yourself.”

  Kiran flinched. “I made a terrible mistake. Nothing can change that. But that mistake was an error in judgment such as any man might make. It wasn’t some inevitable result of magic poisoning my soul.”

  “You still don’t understand.” Teo caught Kiran’s shoulders, his expression cracking into a fierce, almost desperate pleading. “Magic magnifies mistakes to terrible result. You tried to tell me I needn’t fear what I might do at Zadikah’s request. But look what you have done at Dev’s! If this weapon you seek is even half as powerful as you hope, how can we possibly trust you with it?”

  “Because I’ll seek your counsel and Lena’s before I use it,” Kiran said. “My mistake with Marten came from acting in haste. I won’t do that again.”

  Teo’s black gaze gave him no quarter. “You want my counsel? Stay away from this weapon. And sever your bond to Dev, now.”

  The very idea of losing the bond to Dev made Kiran’s ikilhia seethe hot in refusal. “The bond is our one advantage against Ruslan.”

  “You see? Counsel you don’t like, you don’t heed. Even though you can’t be blind to the shift in your inner fire. The more you use this demon magic you carry, the more it changes you.”

  “If the demonfire in my ikilhia had been stronger, I could have protected Marten.” Kiran had fanned the azure flame as bright as he could, and still it had not been enough to cover them both.

  Teo shook his head. “Tell yourself that if you choose. But for now, go talk to Martennan. You owe the man far more than that courtesy.”

  Kiran would rather argue with Teo until the sun fell from the sky than face Marten. But he walked on slow, reluctant feet to the makeshift shelter that Teo had constructed by stacking rocks between two leaning boulders.

  Marten sat within, wrapped in a blanket. At his side, Lena jerked to her feet. She gave Kiran a red-eyed, burning look and walked right past him without further acknowledgment.

  “I’m afraid it may take her some time before she’s ready to speak to you.” Marten’s drawling voice had become a gutted rasp. His olive face was no longer boyish in its aspect but sallow and gaunt. “I can’t say I welcome the sight of you, either. I had thought nothing could approach the pain of watching my lover’s mind torn to shreds. But this…it comes close.”

  Marten had given Kiran to Ruslan in Ninavel. Lied to Kiran. Used him. Betrayed him. Addicted him to a drug that had nearly killed him. Yet looking at him now, Kiran felt only a deep, weary sorrow.

  “I never intended to harm you,” Kiran said.

  “That, I guessed,” Marten said, with a brittle ghost of his old cheerful smile. “Otherwise, you’d have violated Ruslan’s blood vow, and both he and you would be ash on the wind.” He sounded more than a little regretful that hadn’t happened.

  “Has Lena told you all that’s happened, and why I sought you?”

  Marten drew a hand over his face. “You want the knowledge I hold on the source of Alathia’s wards. But I won’t tell you a cursed thing, unless I first speak with this demon who’s so eager to help you.”

  “What? Dev and I sought you out so we could avoid demons. You were the one who begged Lena to keep me from them. I thought you knew how dangerous they are.”

  Marten said, “You are asking me to break my oaths and betray my country. I will not do it without proof that the alternative would be worse.” His brittle smile died. “Be glad that I’m willing to consider helping you at all. If it were any other man who had so thoroughly wrecked my plans and destroyed my magic…but I am not blind to the ironies here. Nor will I let my personal feelings prevent me from protecting Alathia.”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything different,” Kiran said with irony of his own. “But it’s not safe to summon the demon. For any of us.”

  “Denarell of Parthus had a few tricks I doubt you know. I can summon your demon friend without risking anyone. If you want the knowledge I hold, you must let me speak with it.”

  Kiran did not need Dev at his side to remind him Marten couldn’t be trusted. Yet in speaking with the demon, Marten might well reveal information Kiran could use.

  “I’ll consider this,” Kiran said slowly. “If you first explain to me your method and agree to hold your conversation in a manner I can hear it. But Marten—truly, I fear we haven’t much time before Ruslan springs another trap or takes the weapon for himself. I’d never have gone to such desperate measures otherwise.”

  Marten gave a cracked laugh. “Oh, I well know the feeling. It’s what I said to myself every day after giving you to Ruslan in Ninavel.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  (Dev)

  “You sure about this?” I muttered to Kiran, eyeing Marten and Lena, who were crouched over a pair of message charms. Lena was singing something weirdly atonal that set my teeth on edge. Supposedly she was altering the charms’ magic in a way Marten said would let us summon the scarred demon and speak to it from a nice safe distance. Problem was, I trusted Marten even less than a demon.

  “Not entirely sure,” Kiran said. “So let me concentrate.”

  Belatedly, I noticed the glazed distance in his eyes. He must be focusing on whatever he could glean of Lena’s spell, trying to figure out if she was casting anything different than what she and Marten claimed.

  I backed a step. Fine, I wouldn’t distract him, though I didn’t think much of his chances of spotting a double-cross. He didn’t know Alathian magic, and Marten was too damn clever for an easy slip, even if he wasn’t the one casting. I still thought letting Marten say one word to a demon was as crazy a risk as climbing the Khalat ropeless and blindfolded. I’d tried to convince Kiran we could talk to the demon on our own using my bond to the confluence, no need for Marten, but Kiran flat-out refused that idea. Marten’s method of summoning is far less dangerous, he’d said. None of us will have direct contact with the demon, and we can take further precautions. I’ll speak first, not Marten, and you and I together will choose the safest ground for the summoning.

  I’d done my best in that. We stood atop a hulking, wind-smoothed ridge that thinned to a curling crest like a wave in a rapid forever frozen at the point of breaking. Fat boulders surrounded us like bubbles balanced on the wavetop. Beyond, the sinking sun turned buttes
and hogbacks and spires a thousand shades of russet and orange, as if the desert were a land of fire like Kiran had described the demon realm. The massive bulk of the Khalat was visible in the distance beyond one scarlet-tipped ridge. Maybe Prosul Akheba’s shaken survivors were still hunkered within. Or maybe Zadikah and Janek would arrive to find the city’s remains deserted, its residents fled in search of safety.

  Far below us, a dry gully zigzagged through cinnamon-colored dunes and clumps of ironwood. According to Lena and Kiran, the gully ran along the path of an earth-current. Marten had said all we needed was to be in sight of such a spot. Kiran had assured me no demon could reach us so high on inert rock.

  Cara had taken Teo and Melly to a different swell of rock to the south, so they’d be even farther from the earth-current and in perfect position to keep watch over the approach routes to our ridge. Just in case Ruslan or demons sent more clanfolk to sneak up on us during this summoning.

  Yet still, my stomach was a churning mess of nerves. Watching Lena cast, Marten was haggard, his eyes bloodshot and haunted. I knew what it was to lose the talent that defined your life. If my loss had been someone’s fault rather than the inevitable result of puberty—gods, how Marten must hate us. I regretted that, and not lightly, but I wouldn’t let guilt blind me.

  He had some underhanded purpose in this summoning. Maybe not against us directly—Marten wasn’t the sort to go for revenge at the expense of all else. No, he wanted something out of the demon that he thought would help Alathia. But I was equally certain that whatever he wanted, it would somehow fuck us over.

  We had to be ready to stop him when he made his move. I edged closer to Kiran, itching to touch him and regain the one weapon I had that no magic could stop.

  I fisted my hands and forced myself to keep clear. I wasn’t going to cause any more disasters. No distractions. For Kiran or for me.

  Lena stopped singing and sat back on her heels, wiping sweat off her brow. The sun had sunk low enough that the air no longer seared our lungs, but the sandstone underfoot still radiated a mouth-parching amount of heat.

  Marten hefted a pack with a pained grunt and poured out enough sand to make a knee-high mound in front of Lena. I’d had to haul that damn sand all the way up here. Marten said we needed it for what he called the medium of communication. He’d claimed inert earth would be far safer than water or air, and Kiran had nodded along like he understood perfectly. But nobody had yet explained to nonmagical me how a heap of sand would be communicating anything.

  Lena set one garnet-studded copper armband on the sandpile’s conical top. Her freckled face was carefully impassive, but her eyes—she wasn’t so good at masks as Marten. Grief and sorrow and anger simmered off her like fumes from a sulfur spring, though she wouldn’t give voice to any of it. I’d tried apologizing not long after I woke. I’d thought maybe it’d help if she yelled at me a bit. All she’d done was fix me with one of those looks like a knife-blade to the soul, and said, Tell me, did my excuses in Ninavel ease your anguish over Kiran?

  If we saved Alathia, maybe then her anger would cool. Maybe.

  Marten held out the other armband to me. “We’re ready. All that remains is for you to throw this charm far enough it lands in the gully. Not a problem, I think, with your newfound strength.”

  The edge in his tone suggested he was remembering me suffocating him senseless. I shot a warning glance at Kiran, who said, “Let me see the charm first.”

  I gave it to him. He frowned over the charm for a while, then handed it back with a quiet, “I sense nothing unexpected.”

  That didn’t much reassure me. But Kiran knew the risk, and I’d never been one for stalling.

  “You got a preference for where exactly I chuck this?” I asked Lena.

  “Anywhere within the gully will do,” she said, soldier-stiff.

  I held out a hand to Kiran. His fingers settled on my wrist, light and hesitant. It was the first time he’d touched me since our return from Alathia. My eagerness surged high; I winced, knowing he’d feel the strength of it. I couldn’t hide how badly I’d wanted to use our blood-bond again. To my surprise, I felt an echo of my desire. He’d wanted this, too. But my sense of him was oddly muted—he was fighting to hold back from our link. I caught a blurred glimpse of Teo rebuking him, the memory wrapped in a dark whirlpool of concern.

  You don’t have to worry, I told Kiran. I won’t fuck up again like I did in Alathia. I can use the Taint without losing my head. Go on, I’ll prove it to you. I was braced this time against the giddy rush. I’d stay cool and controlled, same as he did when he cast magic.

  I’m not any better than you at mastering my yearning for power, Kiran said, more darkness creeping around the words. But he pulled a trickle of magic through me, just enough to wake an answering spark in my head.

  Ah gods, it was so hard to block out the joy when I felt like a blinded man who’d been given sight again. Focus, damn it. I had to think like I was scouting the next pitch of a climb. Cold and clear and rational.

  I let go of the charm with my hand and gripped it with my mind. The armband hung before me, floating. One carefully judged mental shove, and the armband catapulted high in a glittering arc, the copper bright in the light of the setting sun. The charm fell back to earth within a nicely distant section of gully.

  Kiran was still pulling that slow trickle of magic; both of us felt more comfortable knowing I was ready to strike. Even if he was thinking of demons and I was thinking of Marten. I held my breath, glancing from the gully to the second charm sitting on the sandpile. Nothing. Kiran’s anticipation was even more jittery, carrying a flickering cascade of impressions from his previous encounters. The scarred demon’s red, razored grin, its sly confidence, the terror that welled up from the shreds of Kiran’s past, impossible to shut out…

  This was why he’d seized on Marten’s plan. He was like a man once burned who suffers an instinctual horror of fire. He really believed danger from the demon dwarfed any that Marten might present.

  That was a mistake waiting to happen. Don’t let your guard down, I warned Kiran. You know what Marten did to you in Ninavel—and that was when he liked you.

  Kiran sent back, I believe him when he says his first priority remains Alathia’s safety. He’s like you: he’s practical. He dragged up a memory I’d never wanted to revisit: me agreeing to work with Marten in Ninavel despite fury and hatred so black I could barely force out words.

  I almost yanked away from Kiran in pure reflex. Cold, clear, rational, I reminded myself; but I had to let out my nerves somehow. I demanded of Lena and Marten, “Is your Shaikar-cursed spell working or not? Where’s the demon?”

  Lena said flatly, “I cast the spell correctly.”

  “You shouldn’t doubt her skill,” Marten said. “She has the most finesse of any mage I ever worked with.” He touched her arm, the gesture brief but eloquent of affection, and the hard line of her mouth softened a fraction.

  This was the part of Marten I just didn’t get. He really did care for his friends. Yet he still put his loyalty to the Council’s gaggle of prejudiced, coldhearted assholes over everyone he loved.

  He looked up at me, his black brows angled in rueful sympathy that I damn well knew was an act. “Denarell of Parthus was unfortunately vague in describing certain particulars of a summoning. Such as how long it might take a ripple of spellwork to catch the attention of the demon the spell is patterned to find. But given the scarred demon’s interest in Kiran, I can’t imagine we’ll wait long.”

  Kiran’s nervous anticipation doubled; he thought Marten was right. I thought I might go crazy long before the Shaikar-spawn showed. I stared all the harder at the gully.

  One instant the distant gap between ironwood trees held nothing but sand. The next, I spied a pale blotch that might be a crouched figure.

  The sandpile before Lena stirred. The garnets on the copper armband glowed like opened eyes. With a grating hiss, streamers of sand swirled upward as if caught in
a dust devil. The sand whirled faster, thickening into a blurred figure about the size and shape of a man. But it wasn’t a man; even with its shape indistinct from the sand’s unsettlingly constant motion, the figure had the suggestion of a fanged grin, its stance predatory in a way I recalled all too well from the demon we’d seen in the cirque.

  Lena planted one hand at the sandpile’s base, her brow furrowed tight in concentration. From Kiran, I gathered she was making sure the demon didn’t twist the spell’s magic against us. Marten levered himself stiffly to his feet, though his expression showed nothing beyond cool interest.

  Me, I found the whole thing creepy as fuck, not the least because I felt a weird, faint ripple of the Taint. Sort of like I might feel from another Tainter using his or her talent, but bizarrely directionless. Nothing I could block against, just a constant whisper nagging at my nerves.

  Maybe you feel the effort the demon in the gully must exert to walk in our realm. But Kiran wasn’t at all sure; a slow tide of fear crept down the bond.

  I didn’t want to abort this summoning without even trying for information. Neither did Kiran; he faced the blurred whirl of sand, his hand tight on my wrist.

  “Child of fire. If you want alliance, I have questions I need answered.”

  I was proud of him for how it came out, clear and commanding. You’d never know how hard he was fighting to show no trace of his terror.

  The sand-figure spoke in a slithering rasp like a whole pit of snakes rubbing over each other. “Little cousin. Your danger grows with every moment you delay in taking my offer. Your master already moves to take Ashkiza’s weapon.”

  Dismay jolted into me from Kiran. Steady, I thought at him. Fooling a mark into thinking he’s almost out of time is one of the oldest tricks in the bag. Demand specifics.

  His chin lifted. Arrogant as Ruslan could wish, he said, “How does Ruslan plan to take the weapon? I thought I was the only one capable of walking this poisoned labyrinth of yours.”