The Labyrinth of Flame

by Courtney Schafer

  She wouldn’t reach the city in time to help him, but Kiran murmured assent.

  “I’ll give Cara and Melly everything Marten knew.” She hurried over to them.

  Teo approached Kiran. “I’ll help Lena get to Ninavel. As for you…” He pressed an oilcloth packet into Kiran’s hand. “Chew the herbs within this if you go inside Ruslan’s house. They’ll help you ignore illness. You said you felt sick just going near the labyrinth’s gate. That will be worse for you now. Every time you travel the demon realm, the demonfire in your soul grows.”

  Kiran was well aware that the azure flame in his ikilhia had swelled from a slender thread to a blazing column. It made riding the demon realm’s wild currents easier, but walking the labyrinth would be a different matter altogether.

  But that was not the true fear behind Teo’s warning. Kiran held Teo’s gaze. “I haven’t forgotten my promise to spare untalented lives. It doesn’t matter how much demonfire is in my soul; when I fight Ruslan, I will not strike without care for the cost.”

  Teo’s dark eyes searched Kiran’s; slowly he nodded. “I have not always been kind in my words to you, but I know why you’ve earned Dev’s loyalty. There is good in your soul along with demonfire and darkness. I don’t know if Nakoali still hears my prayers, but I will beg her to guide you.”

  Not the most encouraging of farewells, perhaps, but Kiran appreciated Teo’s raw honesty. “Is there any message you want me to give Zadikah? She’ll be worried for you.”

  “I…” Teo hesitated, and Kiran dared to hope he might say, Tell her I’ll come to her. But after a frozen instant, Teo sighed and looked down. He opened his satchel and pulled out a little figurine of bone.

  “Give her this. Tell her that if Raishal lives, it’s for her child. If not—Zadikah should keep it.”

  The figurine was a delicately detailed kitfox, head playfully tilted, mouth open in a silent laugh. Obvious that Veddis had carved it. Kiran closed careful fingers over the kitfox.

  “I’ll tell her,” he said, throat tight. He might not need to brave the labyrinth again. Even if Melly failed, all he needed was the chance to snatch Ruslan into the demon realm. If he could convince the ssarez-kai to do it for him, he might survive. If not…this would be the last time he saw Teo and Lena.

  Lena had finished with Cara and Melly. Cara hefted a pack and strode to Kiran’s side with a determined Melly right behind her. “We’re ready.”

  Part of Kiran was anything but ready. The rest of him clamored to move, to act, to hurry—with every passing instant, Ruslan and his captives got closer to Ninavel.

  He slid Teo’s herbs and figurine into his inner shirt pocket, and gripped Zadikha’s blood sample tight. He offered his free hand to Cara and Melly. “Both of you hold onto me.”

  Cara took his wrist, her grip firm and cool. Melly clutched his hand so tight the blood left his fingers.

  Kiran took a last look at Lena, standing straight and solemn beside Teo. Both of their faces were stiff with worry, but Lena’s eyes held hope, too. He would not forget that.

  The earth-current ran calm and shining beneath his feet. With a swift lash of its power, Kiran pulled Cara and Melly into the demon realm and reached for Zadikah.

  Chapter Thirty

  (Kiran)

  Kiran pulled Cara and Melly from the demon realm straight into ash and devastation. All around them, gray powdery drifts alternated with stretches of glassy black where sand had been fused solid by magefire heat. Twisted spars of half-melted metal and the occasional pile of blackened stone were the only remnants of Prosul Akheba’s tents and temples. Looming close at hand, the Khalat’s cliffs were likewise darkened and scorched, turning the butte into a black, brooding hulk. The sinking sun was a ghostly blotch in a sky thick with haze.

  Zadikah was a short distance away, digging through a pile of rubble with her back to them. Every inch of her from knotted hair to worn boots was coated in gray, making her appear eerily inhuman, an ash-creature made by some malign magic.

  Beside her was a heap of bones. Skulls, leg bones, arm bones, the curved spars of ribs, some intact, others splintered and dark. Without looking, Zadikah tossed another skull on the pile. A terribly small skull, still stippled with black flakes that might once have been flesh.

  At Kiran’s side, Cara made a dismayed noise. Melly pressed closer against him, her grip crushing his fingers.

  Kiran couldn’t shake off his own horror. He’d known that little outside the Khalat could have survived Ruslan’s attack. But to see the bones of the victims, breathe air gritty with their deaths—

  Ruslan had done this because of him. Would do it again, to all of Alathia, if Kiran failed to stop him. Urgency broke his stunned paralysis.

  “Zadikah!” He stepped forward, blinking away dizziness. The pain and difficulty of crossing the demon realm was far less than it had once been, but he still felt unsteady, and not just from the gut-wrenching reality of the destruction Ruslan had caused.

  Zadikah turned. She jerked back in surprise, her eyes wide above the ash-clotted strip of cloth she’d bound over her nose and mouth.

  “You promised help against Ruslan,” Kiran said. “We need that help now.”

  Zadikah’s gaze flicked from him to Cara and Melly. It wasn’t shock he saw now in her eyes, but swift-growing dread. “Where’s Teo? He’s not—”

  “Teo’s fine,” Kiran assured her. “He’s safe with Lena. But Dev…Dev’s been captured by Ruslan.” Just voicing it aloud brought anguish so sharp that for an instant it left Kiran blind, unable to summon further words.

  Cara said bluntly, “Ruslan’s about to turn an entire country into a wasteland like this one, except without any survivors left to sing over the bones of the dead. We’ve a plan, but we need charms to pull it off—”

  A gust of wind sent ash flurrying over them, leaving Cara doubled over, coughing. Kiran wiped streaming eyes and spat to clear his own mouth, but grit remained bitter on his tongue.

  “Whatever you need, I’ll help you get.” Zadikah’s firm assurance lifted a little of the weight on Kiran’s heart. She tossed Cara a waterskin. “Best if we talk in shelter. You don’t want this ash in your lungs.”

  Melly had yanked her shirt high over her mouth and nose. Muffled by the cloth, she asked anxiously, “Where’s Janek?”

  “I’ve kept him safe. Come; you can see for yourself once we’re in the Khalat.” Zadikah strode away from the rubble.

  Kiran hurried after her. Melly did not let go of his hand, though she was no longer clinging quite so tightly.

  She called to Zadikah, “If the ash is so bad to breathe, why are you out here digging up bones?”

  Without looking back, Zadikah answered, “To burn them with flashfire charms and proper songs so the spirits of the dead need not linger. Yashad will have enough trouble convincing trade convoys to return without fear of angry ghosts. She’s offered water rations for life to the families of any willing to dig.”

  Kiran exchanged a relieved glance with Cara. So Yashad had survived. If she had flashfire charms to provide, that was an excellent sign her store of battle charms might also remain.

  Kiran wanted to ask if Zadikah had found Raishal, yet he dreaded hearing the answer. Walking through the blasted wreckage, he found it hard to imagine that anyone at all had survived Ruslan’s magefire raining down upon the city. Yet following Zadikah toward the Khalat, they passed a scattering of other gray, ghostly figures sorting bones from rubble.

  Zadikah led them along a path that switchbacked up a skirt of shale toward the butte’s blackened cliffs. The wind had picked up; by the time they reached the great arch of the Khalat’s entrance, Kiran, Cara, and Melly were as chalky gray as Zadikah, and they’d long since emptied her waterskin in vain efforts to clear their throats.

  No guards stood in the archway, nor did Kiran feel any hint of ward magic. They passed unchallenged into a vaulted, shadowed cave-chamber as large as one of Ninavel’s staging yards. The stone of the floor was smoot
hly level, though covered with windblown grit. Elaborate friezes carved into the ceiling were scorched black near the cavern’s entrance, but the damage faded with distance; the carvings in the cavern’s deeper recesses looked untouched by magefire. A wide dark mouth on the cavern’s back wall marked the tunnel leading to the upper reaches of the Khalat.

  A little group of ash-coated men and women sat slumped and weary against the cavern’s righthand wall, with waterskins, pickaxes and shovels at their sides. Some had fresh bandages on their hands and arms, noticeable because the cloth was clean of grime.

  One woman waved to Zadikah and called in a broad Sulanian accent, “If you’ve need of food or water, a healer’s come down from the collegium with plenty to share.” She pointed to the cavern’s opposite wall, which had several iron doors set into the stone. One door stood open enough that a bar of warm lanternlight stretched across the cavern’s ash-streaked floor.

  Zadikah raised a fist in acknowledgment and headed straight for the opened door. Kiran didn’t understand why; didn’t she want to talk in private?

  But when Zadikah pulled the door wide and ushered them into a cramped storeroom, relief swept him with such force he nearly fell.

  Raishal and Janek were sitting on stools behind a table made of stacked crates. A fat urn stood beside the crates, and the makeshift tabletop held tin cups, bandages, potion jars, piled seedcakes, and strips of dried meat. Raishal looked tired, her eyes shadowed, but she was as solidly pregnant as ever—or rather, even more so, her belly larger than Kiran recalled.

  “You.” Raishal heaved off her stool, scowling at Kiran. Janek gave a happy cry and darted around the table.

  “Raishal, my friends have come! Melly and Kiran and Cara—oh, I’m so glad demons didn’t get you!” Janek flung his thin arms around an equally delighted Melly. Grinning, Cara knelt and caught both children in a hug.

  Kiran could hardly reconcile this bright-eyed, exuberant version of Janek with the tense, silent child who’d left them in the canyon. But he knew what had brought the change: Janek felt safe in the Khalat as he never had before.

  I will give you that same freedom from fear, Kiran promised Cara and Melly silently. And Dev…no. He dared not think about Dev, lest all his control fail.

  Zadikah pulled the cloth off her face and said to Raishal, “They showed up in the ash-fields. They say Teo’s safe, but Dev’s in serious trouble. They’ve need of my help—don’t glare like that, Rai. Remember what I said.”

  Raishal’s scowl didn’t ease. Kiran didn’t mind. She could glare all she liked; she was still the happiest sight he’d had in days.

  He fumbled the kitfox figurine from his shirt and offered it to her. “This is for you and your child. From Teo. I know you’re still angry with him, but he’ll be overjoyed to hear that you live.”

  Raishal’s breath caught. She snatched the figurine from Kiran and cradled it in her cupped hands. “I remember the day Veddis gave this to Teo. He said Teo needed a reminder of joy because he carried so much sadness in his heart.” Her head came up, her eyes fierce and wet. “Zadi insists it’s not you I should blame, but your enemy. She says if not for you and Teo, I’d have lost her along with Veddis. Yet now you return to drag her into more danger—this, after you’ve already taken one oath-partner from me and sparked a massacre!”

  A new vine-and-flower tattoo circled Raishal’s left wrist, still puffy and red. Zadikah’s left wrist bore a tight, neatly wrapped bandage.

  “You’ve married.” Of course Zadikah would want Raishal and the child to benefit from Yashad’s offer of lifetime water rations. Nor did Kiran think that was the only reason Zadikah had overcome her earlier reluctance to take marriage oaths. There was nothing like loss to make love seem infinitely precious. “Don’t worry, I won’t—we only need charms from Yashad, we—”

  “Let me do the explaining.” Cara stood, aiming a glance at Kiran that was half amused, half worried. “You sit down and rest. You need it.”

  It was true that Kiran hadn’t slept since Teo and Lena had roused him from his drugged stupor the day before. But Ruslan and his captives were drawing ever nearer to Ninavel and the labyrinth’s new gate. How could Kiran possibly rest knowing that?

  Still, he was happy for Cara to take on the task of explanations. Clear and concise as if she were giving a report to a convoy boss, she laid out the reasoning behind their arrival. Zadikah and Raishal listened, frowning, though Zadikah’s frown was thoughtful while Raishal’s was dark and distrustful. Melly was busy whispering her own version of events to a fascinated Janek—a version far more colorful than Cara’s, from the occasional phrase Kiran caught.

  Kiran shifted away from the children, unable to stand still. The room was too small to pace as his legs longed to do. His thoughts jumped past the immediate problem of the charms to the far larger one looming after he took Cara and Melly to Alathia. He must somehow convince the ssarez-kai to either turn against Ruslan or let Kiran through to Ruslan’s house. Without agreeing to a kin-bond that would let the demons force him to use the labyrinth. Kiran gnawed at his thumbnail, considering plans and arguments.

  A tug at his sleeve broke his concentration. Janek offered him a cup of water, and Melly handed him a dampened cloth.

  Grateful, Kiran took a long drink and swiped ash from his face. Cara had paused to gulp her own cup of water. After sharing their tale, her throat must be even more sandpaper-raw than his.

  What Janek had heard from Melly had erased his earlier delight. He edged closer to Kiran, his eyes round with concern. “Can you really save Dev?”

  “I hope so.” If Ruslan hadn’t already killed Dev or hurt him beyond hope of healing. If Kiran could defeat Ruslan. If, if. How he hated that word.

  “Of course he will,” Melly said, leaning in. “Just like I’m going to save Alathia.”

  She said it confidently, almost boastfully, but Kiran remembered the tight clutch of her hand on his. He summoned a smile for her as much as Janek. “That’s right. All we need are those charms.”

  Zadikah drummed her fingers on the table, her brow creased in thought. “Veiling charms and barrier charms, perhaps stonemelters and dragonflames, too…I think it likely Yashad has what you require, but she won’t give up such powerful charms easily. She needs every advantage she’s got to convince the clans to send aid to a city they fear Shaikar has cursed. The snake-eaters already broke their alliance with her after learning of Bayyan’s death. I would gladly argue for you, but…” She grimaced. “I am not welcome in Yashad’s sight.”

  Raishal said, “That’s because you made the mistake of telling Yashad far too much of the truth behind your actions. Of all the times for you to stop lying, Zadi—”

  “Yashad’s anger is fair.” Zadikah glanced at Janek and Melly, who were listening, intent and solemn. “That’s not to say there isn’t a way to get what you need.”

  Cara said, “If Yashad’s got the charms, I don’t see why there’s a problem. Kiran should march right up to her and demand them. Yashad will want to get him the hell out of Prosul Akheba before Ruslan strikes at him again—same as you do.” Her gaze shifted to Raishal, coolly assessing.

  Demanding the charms sounded good to Kiran. He could play the arrogant blood mage and he needn’t even lie. “If I tell Yashad I need the charms to destroy Ruslan, that’ll give her even more incentive to open her vaults. She must want to see him dead for his attack on the city.”

  “I certainly do,” Raishal muttered, but Zadikah shook her head.

  “You don’t understand how Yashad thinks. She’d give you what you ask. Then the instant you leave, she’d charm-send a message to the Varkevian ambassador in Ninavel, asking her to inform Ruslan of exactly what you took and anything Yashad could glean of your plans.”

  “What? Why?” Cara demanded. “Doesn’t Yashad hate Ruslan?”

  “I’m sure she does,” Zadikah said. “But Yashad would never let that get in the way of weighing risks. The way she’ll see it, Ruslan is almost cer
tain to win. If he captures Kiran and finds out she aided Kiran against him—well. You can’t possibly argue that Ruslan wouldn’t raze the Khalat and slaughter every last survivor.”

  Raishal was looking gray around the mouth. “Zadi. Listen to yourself. What will Ruslan do when he finds out you aided Kiran?”

  Defiant anger sparked in Kiran’s blood. “You talk like it’s certain I’ll be captured by him. But should I fail, it’s far more likely demons will have me, not Ruslan, and they care nothing for humans. Even so—Ruslan is not certain to win.”

  Raishal didn’t look convinced. Zadikah turned to her. “Where’s that warrior’s heart of yours, Rai? Are you really saying you’d prefer me to cower in fear rather than do my utmost to punish the man who massacred my friends—whose demon allies murdered Veddis?”

  Raishal flushed dark. She looked down and stroked a hand over the swell of her stomach. “You shame me, Zadi. My heart should burn for vengeance. But when I feel the little one move, all I want in the world is to keep our child safe.”

  Raishal’s child was fortunate in its mother. Wistful pain pierced Kiran’s heart. He didn’t know anything of his own mother, and with the bone mage dead and her journals burned, he supposed he never would. But he had friends to cherish; that was more than enough to soothe the ache of what might have been.

  Zadikah slid an arm around Raishal’s rigid shoulders and hugged her close. “Then we must make sure it’s Kiran who triumphs. I know how to get him those charms.” She turned to the children. “You two take the waterjar and refill it right up to the brim. Janek knows where the cistern is.”

  “How will water help us get the charms?” Melly asked.

  “Get it and you’ll find out,” Zadikah said.

  Janek sighed. “She gets like this,” he told Melly, and hefted the empty urn. The jar was almost as large as he was. “Come on. The lower cistern isn’t far.”

  Kiran thought Melly would argue, but she merely shot a narrow-eyed glance at Zadikah and slipped out the door after Janek.