The Labyrinth of Flame

by Courtney Schafer

  A vision swallowed Kiran: Dev lying spread-eagled on the anchor stone in Ruslan’s workroom, manacled and naked and helpless as Alisa had been in the terrible memory Lena had returned to him of her death.

  But it was not Ruslan raising a knife over Dev’s bared torso, ready to savage his flesh. Kiran’s own hands held the blade. He stabbed the blade into Dev’s stomach, helpless to prevent himself from obeying Ruslan’s will. The knife sank deep, slicing Dev open slowly, so slowly, and Kiran could not stop the blood running red over his hands, or heed Dev’s agonized screams—

  “No!” Kiran shook, his vision blurred by furious tears. “No. He’s nathahlen—he’s nothing to you—”

  “It’s your pain I wish to savor.” Ruslan’s dark satisfaction poured into Kiran. “As for demons…ah, Kiran. Always you underestimate me. Why do you think I waited so long to claim you?”

  “You wanted to know what I sought at the temple, but what I’ve found won’t help you.” He would never succeed in hiding his knowledge from Ruslan. Instead, he shoved the memory of the labyrinth straight at his master. You can’t take Ashkiza’s weapon. You can’t use it. You can’t even compel me to cast with it, or you’ll break your blood vow.

  “Oh, I think my compulsions have worked excellently,” Ruslan said. “Have you not kept me informed every step of the way since I burned Prosul Akheba?”

  “What? I broke your compulsion.”

  “One of them.” Ruslan bent to place a savage kiss on Kiran’s forehead. “Remember.”

  Doors in Kiran’s mind opened that he had not even known were there. As if in a dream, he recalled standing in the slot canyon after the flood. Cutting his hand, smearing a blood pattern on the cliff, infusing it with his memories and a wisp of a veiling to hide the pattern from nathahlen eyes. Leaving another such message in the temple’s starlit courtyard, tracing his blood over stone with his mind a calm blank, the memory of the act sinking away as soon as he’d completed it.

  “How?” Kiran whispered, horrified. Ruslan showed him, with pitiless clarity: the moment when Kiran had nearly removed his amulet before Dev tackled him. The sense of thorns driving deep into his mind—that one instant of connection was all Ruslan had needed to sink a second compulsion into him. Just as he’d done in the Cirque of the Knives, pushing Kiran to seek the truth of his past.

  His mind had never been his own. Lena and Teo had been right to distrust him.

  But thinking of Lena, he heard the echo of her saying of Ruslan: he is not some invincible, infallible god.

  Kiran bared his teeth at Ruslan. “You want me to despair. To believe that you control me so deeply I can’t fight you. It’s not true.” Ruslan might have forced him to leave messages, might even have wanted him to seek the temple, but Kiran’s other decisions had been his own. He had bound himself to Dev, taken Marten, walked the labyrinth, and none of that was Ruslan’s will.

  Irritation spiked hot and red through Ruslan’s continuing waves of grief. “Do you think your will is any match for mine? Show me what else you have to share.” With ruthless efficiency, he dragged up Kiran’s memories of temple and labyrinth, examining each and every one. Kiran fought to break Ruslan’s hold, all his anger and pain and loss uniting into a silent scream of injustice—and failed as he always had.

  Mikail was busy with the rope, binding Dev’s limbs cruelly tight. The sight tore at Kiran far worse than Ruslan’s use of him. He couldn’t bear to think of Dev screaming under his knife the way Alisa had screamed under Ruslan’s.

  But he would not let the horror of it break him. “You can hurt me,” Kiran said to Ruslan. “Destroy my mind, even, but you will never own my soul. I am no longer a child to cower before you, desperate for your love. I have known far better love than yours, and become far more than what you tried to make of me.”

  “What I tried to make of you…oh, Kiran.” Ruslan slid a palm up Kiran’s cheek. His fingers tangled hard in Kiran’s hair. “I was so certain I could correct your flaws. My failure will forever haunt me. When I think of what you might have been…”

  The grief spilling down the mark-bond showed stark on Ruslan’s face. For a brief, terrible instant, Kiran saw himself through Ruslan’s eyes, in a score of overlapping memories. A wide-eyed child bursting into a joyous smile after Ruslan praised his spell; a shy teenager, growing tall and lean and ever more beautiful, his ikilhia so bright Ruslan could hardly wait to bond it to his own; a young man, frustratingly rebellious, but responding at last to Ruslan’s guidance. Kiran kneeling before him in abject surrender; Kiran arching and shuddering in his arms, shared rapture blazing through their souls; Kiran at his side in the Cirque of the Knives, an eager, obedient partner in his casting.

  “You confuse love with ownership,” Kiran said, his eyes hot with the tears Ruslan would not shed. “You always have. You’ll destroy me because I’m not the adoring akhelysh you wanted. What will you do when Mikail shows he’s a person, not a pet?”

  Mikail jerked away from Dev and stalked toward Kiran. “Ruslan will destroy you because you killed Lizaveta. After all your talk of love, how you could summon a demon to murder her—!”

  “Mikail.”

  That was all Ruslan said, but Mikail stopped in his tracks. His face hardened back into impassivity, though the rapidity of his breathing betrayed the depth of his anger.

  Kiran shut his eyes, hope ebbing. There would be no help from Mikail.

  “Yes,” Ruslan said gently. “Mikail has the strength you lack. His heart remains true, though you have broken it along with mine. We have only one consolation. You have given us everything we need to punish those who poisoned and ruined you.”

  Accompanying Ruslan’s words was a flash of the passageway Kiran had left in the labyrinth, so open, so inviting, leading straight to the spell-structure’s heart. Through the dark ocean of Ruslan’s anguish ran a blazing thread of excitement—as if Ruslan had seen in a burst of insight the solution to some thorny problem that had plagued him.

  “You can’t walk the passage,” Kiran protested, but new fear seized him.

  “I won’t need to,” Ruslan replied. Kiran caught a glimpse of an arch—just like the Alathians’ gate, but made of gleaming, sigil-marked silver—standing amid a massive spell-pattern in Ruslan’s workroom.

  Ruslan had made a second gate to the labyrinth’s realm. But Kiran didn’t understand how Ruslan could use it. He couldn’t compel Kiran to cast in his stead without breaking his vow.

  Ruslan dragged his fingers from Kiran’s hair. He traced them down over Kiran’s throat to his chest. The sigil incised over Kiran’s heart burned at his touch. Kiran shut out the pain, his mind a frantic whirl. He had to figure out how Ruslan meant to use the gate.

  Slowly, Ruslan said, “Seeing you is harder than I imagined. You may be right in one respect: savoring your pain will not be enough to salve mine. Lizaveta thought your death the only cure. She was always wiser than I…”

  Through the mark-bond, Kiran felt the hardening of Ruslan’s resolve. He was steeling himself to burn Kiran to ash on the spot. The shock of it froze Kiran’s tongue. He’d been so certain Ruslan must keep him alive to use the labyrinth; that he might yet have a chance to fight.

  “Ruslan.” Mikail was abruptly right there, his hand on Ruslan’s shoulder. “I need to watch him kill the nathahlen. Please. Don’t take that from me.”

  Kiran held his breath, afraid to speak lest he tip Ruslan over the edge. If his death would stop Ruslan from all other revenge, he would welcome it. But he had seen that was not Ruslan’s intent. Whether he killed Kiran or not, he still meant to destroy Alathia.

  For a long moment, Ruslan didn’t move. At last he sat back with a sigh.

  “For you, akhelysh, I will endure. Hard as that is.”

  His will pressed on Kiran, impossible to deny. Kiran sat up. His heart was thundering in his ears. Had Mikail begged Ruslan to spare him purely out of desire for revenge, or did some sympathy still remain beneath his mage-brother’s anger?

/>   If so, he saw no sign of it in Mikail’s hard expression as he slipped a vial from his belt and smeared green paste in Kiran’s obediently opened mouth.

  The rancid taste was all too familiar. “Hennanwort?” Kiran said thickly.

  Ruslan said, “Given your newfound ability to translocate, I would prefer not to trust in wards or spend all my concentration on the mark-bond.”

  The dose was strong. His limbs went numb, halos spreading across his vision. His sense of self and time and place was fast sliding away. Kiran fought to stay conscious, though his heart told him Ruslan was not like Simon Levanian; he would not make mistakes. And with Dev captive at his side, this time Kiran had no hope of rescue.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  (Dev)

  I woke face-down in sand with my head pounding like I’d drunk an entire vat of firewine. Spitting out grit, I tried to push up, but my arms were stuck behind me. What…?

  Memory crashed over me: the demon uncoiling inside my mind and taking my body for its own. I slurred a curse, fighting to move locked muscles, desperate to break the demon’s hold—and realized it wasn’t the demon prisoning my body, but simple rope. I was trussed as tight as a goat meant for slaughter, and the knots weren’t giving an inch.

  Last I remembered, the demon had been calling Kiran over, all smugly certain of its strategy. Kiran must’ve realized what had happened to me. Somebody had tied me up—somebody damn good at it—and either Kiran or Lena had ripped the demon right out of me. I didn’t feel the least hint of the sly Shaikar-spawn lurking inside my head.

  Suliyya grant the demon hadn’t done anything terrible before they got it out. I rasped out Kiran’s name and turned my head, looking for anyone who could untie me and tell me what was happening.

  Shock froze me solid. Ruslan! Shaikar take him, Ruslan was a mere twenty feet from me, pulling a tangle of leather straps out of a pack with Mikail crouched right beside him. They had to know I was awake, but neither of them so much as glanced my way.

  Oh gods, where was Kiran? All I saw past Ruslan and Mikail were swordplants bristling from stacked layers of coppery rock. Frantic, I twisted my head the other way.

  Kiran was lying limp on his side, facing me. His eyes were blank and staring, the pupils tiny specks in a sea of blue. A thin trail of drool stretched from his mouth to the dirt.

  Mindburned? Mother of maidens, no—

  Wait. Those shrunken pupils. Ruslan might have drugged him instead of destroying his will. I prayed that was so, but I wasn’t sure, not at all. He wasn’t wearing his amulet. Our blood-bond should be open wide, but I felt nothing from him, not even a glimmer of thought. I strained harder along the link, screaming his name in my head, willing him to wake the fuck up.

  All I got back was echoing silence. My heart galloped in panicked rhythm. How had Ruslan got hold of us? Where were the others?

  I imagined Cara lying torn and ruined on the sand, Melly a bloody heap beside her, Lena and Marten and Teo dead too, flies swarming in the sun—

  No. No. I’d no proof Ruslan had killed them. I had to think, had to get Kiran and me out of this. I took a shaky breath and looked again at Ruslan and Mikail.

  They’d separated the mess of leather straps into two harness-like contraptions. Each harness had a sigil-marked rectangle of silver studded with fat crystals that glowed a sullen red. Mikail already had one harness on, the metal plate snugged firm against his back and the straps bound over his shoulders and chest. He was helping Ruslan put on the other.

  I didn’t know what they meant to do with the harness-charms, but I knew what was in those crystals. Power Ruslan and Mikail had raised by torture and murder and stored to fuel their spellwork in the absence of Ninavel’s confluence.

  At least Ruslan’s blood vow meant they couldn’t use any of that power against me. The rope binding me lacked any warning sting of a warding. I wriggled, trying to feel if any rocks lurked beneath the sand. Anything I could scrape my bonds against.

  No rocks. Damn it—

  A faint skittering, as of pebbles bouncing down stone, caught my ears. The sound had come from the stacked rock layers behind Ruslan and Mikail. I squinted at swordplants and sunbaked stone.

  Nobody was there. The sound could’ve been natural. Desert rock broke and slid all the time, sandstone crumbling away for reasons known only to the gods.

  But Ruslan strode away from Mikail to scan the cliff. He thought someone could be sneaking up on us. Someone hidden by a veiling spell? My heart jolted with sudden hope. Lena was good with veils.

  “Hey, asshole!” I yelled at Ruslan. Curses wouldn’t be enough to distract him. I needed to piss him off. “Remember how Lizaveta looked when the demon was done with her, all broken and burned and bloody? Oh yeah, you don’t, because I made sure she got burned to ash. Just in case she had any spark of life left.”

  Mikail growled something and started toward me. Ruslan didn’t turn, his attention still on the ragged rock layers. He raised a hand.

  Oh, shit. If he knew someone was creeping toward us, but not who, he was perfectly free to cast despite his blood vow.

  A female voice sang out, high and wild. Silver fire swallowed Ruslan, and something brightly metallic whizzed through the air straight toward Mikail’s back.

  It didn’t reach him. Mikail whirled with a shout. Green light flared bright in front of him, and the speeding projectile bounced harmlessly away. Mikail raised his hands as if to strike—only to curse, his fingers clenching.

  Lena had dropped her veiling. She wasn’t the only one vaulting down the final rock layer onto the sand; Cara and Marten were right beside her.

  I yelled to urge them on, praying desperately for Khalmet’s favor. Ruslan and Mikail couldn’t cast against any of them, but I well knew that was no guarantee of success.

  Ruslan shrugged out of Lena’s magefire, coolly untouched, and drew a blade from his belt. He lunged—not for the three attackers, but toward me and Kiran. Marten put on a burst of speed and slammed into Ruslan before he reached us. The two of them crashed to the sand.

  Lena ran right for Kiran. Mikail blocked her path, his knife ready. He slashed at Lena, but she sang something fierce and the knife went spinning from his hand. He snarled and grabbed for her. She dodged him, her rings blazing bright as silver suns, and snatched up Kiran as easily as if he weighed nothing.

  Mikail went for me, not his knife. I rolled toward an oncoming Cara. She got her hands on me and started to pull, but Mikail leaped forward and locked his hands over her wrists.

  “I can’t cast to harm, but there are other spells.” He grinned, cold and vicious.

  Cara gasped, her eyelids fluttering and her head rocking back; a look of searingly intense pleasure crossed her face.

  Mikail kicked her backward and hauled me up despite my thrashing. He locked an arm around my midsection, crouched, and sprang upward. Giant wings of red fire exploded outward to sweep the air around us. Shouting, Cara jumped in a desperate reach for my ankle—and missed. Mikail shot skyward with me trapped tight against his body.

  I screamed in wordless, furious denial, echoed by Cara below. Lena was racing away with Kiran slung over her shoulder. Marten was grappling with Ruslan. Ruslan’s knife arced in a swift slash, and blood splashed dark on the sand. Marten yelled Cara’s name and threw a gem-studded disc of silver at her.

  Kiran’s amulet! Cara snatched it from the air. Marten heaved against Ruslan’s grip, red spreading over his shirt. Ruslan hammered him over the head with the hilt of his knife. Marten slumped. Wings of flame sprang free of Ruslan’s harness, and he arrowed upward with Marten dangling limp in his arms.

  I didn’t dare thrash anymore. If Mikail dropped me from this high, I wouldn’t survive it. I braced to see Ruslan hurl Marten to his death on the rocks and then swoop after Lena and Kiran. Instead, he turned northward and away, his fiery wings pushing him through the air faster than any bird could fly. Marten was still caught tight in his arms.

  Mikail followed, and
my surprise turned wary. Why hadn’t they gone after Kiran?

  Maybe because Kiran was mindburned. Maybe I’d only thought he was drugged because I wanted so desperately for that to be true. I spat curses into the wind as it ripped tears from my eyes and chapped my face raw.

  I didn’t have to wonder why Mikail had taken me. Ruslan would want to kill me slow. A swift death by falling would be by far the kinder fate, but I didn’t struggle against Mikail’s hold. A kind death meant giving up. And I was far, far too angry to give up.

  As fast as we were flying north, it didn’t take long before we were over terrain I didn’t recognize. The spires and ridges and canyons of the clanlands subsided into dead-flat swaths of orange sand broken by occasional slender buttes poking skyward like lonely watchtowers.

  Ruslan spiraled down to land on top of a butte with a summit as flat as a highside courtyard. His wings flared and vanished as he dumped Marten on the stone. Mikail swooped down to land at Ruslan’s side.

  Marten sprawled limp at Ruslan’s feet, new rivulets of blood spilling through the rents in his shirt. A relief, since fresh blood meant he wasn’t dead. Yet. I kept my mouth shut despite the insults that wanted to break free. Watch and listen for opportunity, that was the game I had to play, no matter how hard it was to muzzle the fury burning in my blood.

  Ruslan threw Mikail a silver amulet on a thin chain. “Put this on the nathahlen.”

  The amulet was near as large as Kiran’s, though the gemstones amid the runes were all emeralds, not a variety of stones like the ones on Kiran’s charm. I bucked against Mikail’s hold, but his grip around my torso stayed hard as iron. He slung the amulet on me; I flinched when the charm hit my chest, expecting agony, compulsion, something awful.

  Nothing happened. Or at least, nothing I could feel. “What the fuck’s that thing for?” I snarled, more to make sure I could still talk than because I expected any answer.

  Sure enough, Ruslan ignored me. He stretched his hands wide. The air between them shimmered, and a misty line appeared, fast thickening into a rope that looked every bit as solid as that knotted around my limbs. Ruslan tossed the rope on the stone at Mikail’s feet.