The Labyrinth of Flame

by Courtney Schafer

  A hit; pain showed stark on Mikail’s face before he mastered himself.

  “Responsible,” he echoed, softly venomous. “Ruslan blames Martennan for turning Kiran so thoroughly against us, but I know differently. It’s you who are the cause of Kiran’s ruin. Worming your way into his affections and coaxing him into betrayal—if not for you, Kiran would have returned to us after escaping Alathia, and Lizaveta would be—”

  His voice broke, and he glared at me with renewed fervor.

  If her death had hurt him so deeply, maybe he wouldn’t want to endure similar grief over Kiran. “It’s not too late, Mikail. You still have the chance to stand with him the way you should with a brother. If you help him against Ruslan, you both could be free.”

  Mikail’s glare shifted into pure disgust. “Kiran may have forgotten the loyalty and love he owes Ruslan, but I have not. Nor will I ever.”

  I had to shake him out of his stubborn blindness. “Love you owe Ruslan? He treats you like slaves to fuck or whip at his whim. Kiran doesn’t owe him a gods-cursed thing, and neither do you.”

  “You,” said Mikail coldly, “have no idea what true slavery is.”

  “I’ve been a slave for half my life. First to a handler, then to a ganglord, and the only way I earned my freedom was by ripping it from that same ganglord’s dead hands—so, yeah, I think I have a fucking clue. Especially about the kind of slavery where your owner’s a lying, manipulative viper who wants you to think you mean something to him.”

  Mikail took a jerking step closer. “Ruslan gave me freedom. True slavery is when warriors come over the ice and slaughter your parents, your kin, every adult you know, leaving alive only you and a gaggle of other sniveling children old enough to walk but too young to fight. When you are chained and forced to march endless days over the icefields, starved and frozen and shown no kindness, beaten if you resist or walk too slowly. When your brother—too exhausted and injured to keep the pace—is ripped from your arms, and you must watch as warriors hamstring him and stake him in a pool of his own blood to draw the great bears of the snow.”

  In all Kiran’s passionate defenses of Mikail, he’d said nothing of this. I shouldn’t sympathize, but I couldn’t help picturing a little boy crying and writhing on bloodstained snow while an equally young Mikail watched, chained and helpless and furious.

  Mikail’s hand locked hard on the hilt of the dagger at his belt, but his eyes weren’t seeing me. “The men who’d taken us laughed and gambled on which bear would fight off its fellows to claim the kill. I watched my brother die screaming my name as the bears tore at his flesh, and I vowed I would make every one of our captors know that same agony. But I was a child; I knew how little chance I had of honoring my promise.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Enter Ruslan. Who tells you how delighted he’d be to help you take that revenge.” Fuck, Ruslan must’ve been over the moon to find a mage-born kid so primed to jump straight into slaughtering people.

  Mikail said, “Yes, Ruslan came. He freed me and cast on my captors—not to kill them, but to leave them weak, flopping like fish on the ice while I carved every one of them into meat for the bears. He gave me the choice, after—seek shelter with the other surviving children at camps where we had distant kin, or come with him to a land where snow never fell. He said he couldn’t return my brother or my parents to life, but he could give me a different brother to love, and teach me magic so I would never be prey again.”

  He looked straight at me, his every word ringing with conviction. “Ruslan kept those promises. He has never failed me. Never. So you can stop your pathetic attempts to suborn me. My life and soul are his forever, and I am glad of it.”

  “Are you glad of the part where you’ll get to watch another brother die screaming? If you’re so happy to help Ruslan murder Kiran, then why’d you sneak in here to chat with me?”

  Mikail’s face went still. He looked down at his knife. “Ruslan wants to save you for when Kiran comes. He wants you strong so you’ll scream the louder when he makes Kiran hurt you.”

  Oh, gods. If I’d had anything in my stomach, it would’ve come up.

  “Don’t count Kiran out so quickly.” I summoned from somewhere a shakily confident grin. “My coin’s on him throwing Ruslan into Shaikar’s hells.”

  Mikail shook his head. “Kiran will die, and I can’t spare him that when his own choices have sealed his fate.” His voice grew rough. “You say he loves me still. Nor have I been able to cast him from my heart, even as he fights to destroy our family. So I’ll do what I can for my mage-brother. I’ll take your life so he need not suffer the agony of killing you himself.”

  “What? What kind of fucked-up solution is that?” And Kiran wondered why I thought Mikail a monster! Gods, he was raising his knife, and I couldn’t budge an inch, between manacles and spikes—“You kill me, Ruslan will rip you apart! What happened to all that loyalty?”

  But Mikail knew what punishment awaited him. It was plain in his eyes as he took aim for my throat. All this while, he’d been nerving himself up into killing me despite the hell he’d catch for it.

  He said, “For Kiran’s sake, I’ll make your death quick.”

  I screamed at the demon within me, Quit hiding! Strike now, or we’re both dead!

  Mikail’s knife flashed toward my jugular—and stopped right before touching my skin, as if the blade had hit an invisible barrier. He shrieked and collapsed, the knife falling from his hand to clatter on the floor.

  For a stunned instant, I thought the demon had struck him down. Then I realized Marten wasn’t screaming anymore. The door slammed open, and Ruslan strode into the room.

  Mikail, sprawled face-down, gasped out, “I’m sorry, Ruslan! I couldn’t bear—I only wanted—”

  “I know what you wanted, and why.” Ruslan knelt beside Mikail and laid a gentle hand on his quivering back. His deep voice both tender and sorrowful, he said, “Ardeshka mayei, I know how hard this is for you. But you recalled me to sense in the desert; I do the same with you now. Our love for Kiran does not die easily. But die, it must; and afterward, you shall be all that Lizaveta was to me. We will take strength in each other, and the pain of our loss will fade, eased by the memory of our revenge and the slow erosion of time. After a few centuries, you’ll barely remember Kiran’s name.”

  I could stay silent, and Ruslan would leave me alone a while longer. Or I could piss him off and keep distracting him from Marten. Give Kiran that much more time to save us all. And this time, I knew just what’d get Ruslan’s attention.

  “He’s lying to you,” I told Mikail. “You help kill Kiran, it’ll torment you until the day you go to Shaikar’s hells.”

  Ruslan gave me a coldly considering look—and smiled. He helped a red-eyed Mikail to his feet and picked up the knife from the floor.

  “Here,” he said, still gentle, and pressed the knife into Mikail’s hand. “A taste of the satisfaction to come will help steady you. The nathahlen will still scream well enough under Kiran’s knife if we test his voice a little now.”

  Didn’t help that I’d chosen this; my knees almost gave way and dropped me onto the spikes. I pulled against the manacles, my mouth gone so dry I couldn’t have spit if I tried. Mikail stared at me, his pupils huge. Slowly, he lifted the knife.

  Ruslan would have to stay to make sure Mikail didn’t kill me. But oh, this was going to be bad.

  Ruslan tapped a finger on the green-jeweled amulet that still hung around my neck, and his expression turned thoughtful. He pulled the charm off me.

  “Go ahead, akhelysh,” he said to Mikail, all fond encouragement.

  Mikail plunged the knife into my gut, forcing me down onto the spikes, and I screamed every bit as loud as Marten.

  * * *

  (Kiran)

  Kiran ripped power from his ikilhia and struck at his prison, again and again. The magic holding him was black and slick and flawless, a mirror of frigid obsidian that reflected all his attempts to shatter it. His
further shouts and arguments had gone unanswered—he didn’t even know if the ssarez-kai were listening.

  He’d known the demons would be difficult to convince. He had not expected them to be so complacent as to ignore him entirely. How could they be such fools? He’d shown them proof of Ruslan’s cleverness. In desperation, he’d even offered to finish Ruslan’s spell himself if they would strike Ruslan down. Even if they knew Kiran’s offer for a lie, wouldn’t they consider him an easier opponent than Ruslan?

  He’d analyzed every last line of the channel design the ssarez-kai had shown him. Ruslan would link the labyrinth’s heart straight to his workroom, and it was plain he meant to circumvent his blood vow by having another mage cast in his place. If Cara and Melly succeeded in breaking the labyrinth free of Alathia, that would stop Ruslan’s proxy from ripping all life from Alathia by the mere act of casting—but it would also leave Alathia wardless, unprotected. All Ruslan had to do was anchor the labyrinth into Ninavel’s great confluence as Kiran had originally intended, and his proxy would wield enough power to turn every Alathian city into a wasteland of ash like Prosul Akheba.

  Kiran didn’t know how long he’d been stuck in this glacial prison. It already felt an eternity. If Ruslan had reached Ninavel…Kiran’s breath came short. He saw again the horrible vision Ruslan had forced upon him of Dev under his knife. Right now Dev might be shrieking in agony and pleading for help that would not come, because Kiran was trapped here by demons too foolish in their arrogance to listen.

  Kiran howled and sent magefire blazing at the spell encasing him, uncaring if the reflected power burned his flesh.

  That will not help you, temple child. A lone voice, and familiar. The darkness before his eyes lightened. Bleary and dim and distorted as if through rippled layers of lake ice, he saw the ssarez-kai he’d first met in the Cirque of the Knives. Prowling behind the demon were…things. Giant restless beasts whose shapes were half-seen shadows amid writhing tendrils of fire.

  The red-horned hunters. “Did you kill Ruslan?” Kiran yelled with voice and mind.

  No, the demon said—a snarl of an answer. He has locked himself within a well of the labyrinth’s poison. A new vision seeped into Kiran’s head: the blazing barrier of Ruslan’s house wards, and contained within them, a noxious mist of acid energies. Layered over the image, he felt the ssarez-kai’s fury, their agony when they tried to brave the poison within Ruslan’s wards, their amazed anger at a mortal rat having stymied them so.

  “I warned you,” Kiran said, coldly furious, because fury was better than surrendering to the panic that wanted to swallow him. “Has Ruslan used the labyrinth yet?”

  Negation came from the demon. That, we would feel, even at a distance. He has been too busy drinking the pain of your friends.

  His fears for Dev and Marten were true. No time to waste in horror. “You can’t reach Ruslan, but I still can. Let me go, and I’ll bring him to you.”

  Ah, but you intend to cheat us like your master. Throw him into our fire, destroy his spellwork, and run to the deadlands where we cannot find you. Is this not so?

  That was exactly what Kiran intended. “We haven’t time to argue! If you don’t let me through to fight him, we’ll all be doomed.”

  The demon gave him a red smile. Child, we will send you as our hunter. But afterward, you shall return to us—and this time, we will ensure the bargain is kept.

  The glacier encasing him vanished. Before he could react, the red-horned hunters swarmed him, their hungry, sobbing howls ripping across his mind. Phantom limbs passed right through his flesh to his soul within and tore greedily at the human energies of his ikilhia. Kiran cried out, fighting, but compared to the beasts’ strength he was as weak as the child the demons called him. The beasts devoured what they pleased of his ikilhia, even as the demon from the cirque forced a rush of chill power into Kiran, feeding the demonfire in his soul until it swelled from a core of azure to a blazing bonfire.

  There. The demon whipped the hunters back with crackling lashes of jarringly dissonant magic. Still human enough to endure Ashkiza’s poison for a short time, yet too much a part of our fire to ever fully leave it behind. Now when you walk your realm of mud, you cannot travel dead ground; cannot escape us as you have before.

  Kiran shook, agony still sparking through his body. All he had left of his ikilhia besides demonfire was a fragile flicker of mortal magic. His inner senses were all askew. The currents swirling around him no longer seared him with cold, but they carried a thousand clamoring tastes that assaulted his battered mind nearly as strongly as the pain of his savaged soul.

  He would worry later over what the ssarez-kai had to done to him. For now, Ruslan was problem enough. Kiran fumbled amid a bewildering array of sensations for the familiar tang of Ruslan’s house wards. He couldn’t find their red, sharp fire, the storm in his head too confusing—but all at once, his seeking found an even more familiar anchor.

  Dev. Ruslan was no longer blocking his bond to the confluence. He was alive, but in such pain—

  Go, child, the ssarez-kai whispered to him in a multitude of voices. Go, and remember: if you run, the hunt will find you. The hunters gibbered in hungry echo.

  Kiran reached a shaking hand into his shirt and snatched the packet of herbs Teo had given him. He’d need their aid more than ever against the labyrinth’s poison. He stuffed a sticky ball into his mouth, gagging at the sour sliminess, but swallowing the herbs down—and launched himself for the distant, agonized spark of Dev’s ikilhia.

  * * *

  (Dev)

  I sang in a cracked, distorted mumble through the gag that choked my mouth. Everything from drinking songs and prayer chants to little nonsense rhymes Red Dal’s den minder had sung to me when I was a kid. Anything, to keep from thinking about what Mikail had done to me. In the end, Ruslan had healed me as he had Marten, but the memory of the eternity beforehand was a red, awful weight ready to crush me.

  Only thing that had kept me sane was thinking of Cara. Imagining her holding me, fierce and sure and strong, bracing me against the pain, insisting that if I held on a little longer, Kiran would come and save me. Save us all.

  But she wasn’t really here. And Kiran had not come. Worse, Ruslan was gone, but Marten wasn’t screaming anymore. That worried the fuck out of me. Had the sand mage bound his will already?

  My throat was so raw I could barely speak, but I forced out another mumbled phrase of a song, desperate for the distraction. Ruslan hadn’t healed all the damage. He’d left a dagger stuck in me. The blade entered right below my collarbone and plunged all the way through my body to lodge in the wall at my back. I was pinned like a bug against a tree trunk. It hurt, but I had a new scale for pain now. A knife through the shoulder was nothing compared to having my skin flayed off and my genitals carved to ribbons.

  Besides, the knife helped keep me off the spikes. Now I knew exactly how much they hurt, I was almost grateful to Ruslan for leaving me pinned this way. Probably not the reaction he was going for. Maybe he just didn’t want Mikail tempted into returning to watch me slide down. Ruslan had been pretty damn quick to shove a gag in my mouth after healing me.

  He’d ordered Mikail to return to his workroom and continue laying channels while he finished “preparing” Marten for the binding. Mikail had hurried out with his arms still red to the elbow with my blood, and never once hesitated.

  Stupid fucking lapdog. So much for giving a shit about his mage-brother.

  Sweat dripped from my temples and soaked the rags of my shirt. My wrists were numb in the manacles. When I moved even the barest fraction, the gods-cursed knife grated against bone and sent fire boiling through my chest.

  I pictured Cara standing in the slanting shaft of sunlight, her pale hair turned to brilliant gold, her eyes shining with sympathy and resolve. Hold on, Dev. We’re coming for you.

  “Cara,” I pleaded. “Oh, gods, Cara, tell Kiran to hurry, tell him—”

  Kiran appeared out of thin air not
three feet from me.

  I stared, too stunned to breathe. I’d wanted so badly for him to show up, I wasn’t sure he was real.

  Kiran was in a tense crouch, one hand locked around his amulet. He retched and gasped for air like a man drowning, his face so bloodlessly white I feared he would faint.

  I called his name. All that came out through the gag was, “Knnngh!”

  His head jerked up. Relief blazed bright in his eyes, swiftly replaced by dismay, his gaze skipping to the knife in my shoulder, then the spikes still red with my blood. He lurched upright and stumbled toward me, reaching.

  I’d never been so glad to have someone touch me. The instant his fingers brushed my good shoulder, the bond between us snapped to life. He was right there in my head: beautifully, undeniably real, his concern for me a great welling wave over a black swirl of fear and nausea and pain, with determination hard as bedrock beneath it all.

  You’ve got to watch it—I’m bait in a trap! I shoved at him a hasty reckoning of everything I’d seen and heard since I woke to find myself Ruslan’s captive. I worried it was garbled as hell, but he seemed to follow—at least until he saw my conversation with the demon.

  “What?” He was so shocked he spoke aloud. “I thought it had left you!”

  At that, the demon uncoiled at long last inside my head, sly and cold and every bit as real as Kiran. Not at all, cousin. I am here, ready to offer you the help you so badly need.

  Don’t you trust it, I snapped at Kiran, showing him how the demon had refused to answer my pleas for aid even when Mikail was about to slash my throat open.

  You should be grateful I did not reveal myself, the demon told me, disdainful. Can you not see what the ssarez-kai have done to your friend? Without my aid, he will not escape them.

  I didn’t know what the demon meant, but Kiran did. I got a flash of shadowy beasts tearing at him, agony flooding him—pain he was still feeling now, along with a sickness so strong my own stomach twisted in knots.