The Labyrinth of Flame (The Shattered Sigil Book 3)

by Courtney Schafer

  Chapter Twelve

  (Kiran)

  Someone was speaking, but the words were little more than distant echoes. Kiran couldn’t spare attention for the world beyond his barriers. He was far too involved in holding his defensive instincts in check while Teo fumbled through his memories.

  It had been obvious from the first that Teo’s claims were true: he hadn’t touched another mage’s mind in a very long time. Blundering through the damaged lacework of Kiran’s past, he was as crude and clumsy as a child new to power, and he seemed to have no concept of how to restrict the contact. Welling dark around the bronze flame of his presence was an ugly jumble of grief and anger and pain that flooded outward in nauseating waves.

  Training urged Kiran to throw up blocks against the inadvertent assault. Temptation whispered he should sneak his own, far subtler tendrils into Teo’s mind and plunder his memories so Kiran might better influence his decisions. Instead, Kiran endured. He held his mind open and did not resist the dark waves buffeting him. If he tried to enforce control, Teo would take it for an attack.

  But oh, it was hard, especially when the welter of emotion coalesced into horrified revulsion. Kiran didn’t know if Teo’s distaste was for him or Ruslan. He didn’t want to see what memories Teo moved through. He never wanted to live those days in Ninavel again.

  More words fell upon his ears, sharper, louder. Without warning, Teo yanked out of Kiran’s mind. The world rushed back in upon Kiran, too loud and too bright. He was on his knees, Teo’s hand no longer in his, sky and stone reeling around him. For a vertiginous instant he feared a convulsion was imminent, but his disorientation was merely the shock of Teo’s graceless withdrawal. Already the world was settling.

  “Raishal?” Teo sounded as dazed as Kiran felt, though he at least had kept his feet. “Did you speak—do you need—?”

  “I said, Sivyan’s brother Idryk has come. No demons rose from the sand to take him when he climbed down off the horn.” Raishal advanced past the boulder. Her anger remained so vivid Kiran could imagine it crackling off her like magefire. Shuffling behind her, wary and worried, were Sivyan and a similarly stocky, amber-eyed young clansman who had Teo’s pack clutched in his tattooed arms.

  Raishal halted. “We three have held council, and we’ve made a decision.”

  With obvious effort, Teo collected himself. “What decision?”

  Kiran peered at him. Had Teo seen enough to understand about Ruslan before Raishal interrupted them? But Teo had regained enough control that Kiran saw little in his reddened eyes beyond exhaustion and grief.

  Raishal said, “I’m going with Sivyan and Idryk to the snake-eaters’ clan-hold. You said last night that staying high on rock offers the best protection from demonkind. The clan-hold is a series of caves in the upper reaches of a cliff, so it should be safe. Especially since we’ll be nowhere near you.” She swept a hand at Kiran and Teo. “Sivyan and Idryk say that you are no longer welcome on their land. They’ll give you enough food and water to reach Prosul Akheba. Then you will go. Both of you.”

  Both? Kiran’s heart leapt in traitorous relief.

  Teo flicked him a glance like the lash of a whip. “I am not hunted,” he protested. “The snake-eaters have no reason to fear me.” He switched over to halting Varkevian, looking between Sivyan and Idryk with his brows angled in appeal.

  Raishal cut him off. “The snake-eaters hold to the old beliefs. Mage-talent means your soul was once touched by Shaikar. Who is to say you will not draw the attention of his children, even if it’s Kiran they truly want?”

  Looking at the uncompromising set of Raishal’s face, Kiran rather suspected she had been the one to make this argument to Sivyan and Idryk. She wanted Teo gone, yet she knew he would not easily leave her.

  Behind Raishal, Idryk and Sivyan nodded in agreement. In anxious, stumbling Kennish, Sivyan said, “Idryk and I help, shai? But you mages go. We want no—” she said something harsh in Varkevian and twisted her fingers in a complex gesture. “Please, you go.”

  Idryk tossed the pack at Teo’s feet and edged back as if he feared Teo might boil his blood rather than pick it up. Teo opened his mouth again, but Kiran hurried to speak first.

  “I’ll gladly leave. But I need one of you to show me a route to Prosul Akheba that will let me intercept Dev and Zadikah. We have to find them and warn them before they reach this valley. If they set foot anywhere near an earth-current, they’ll be in danger. Particularly after moonrise.” Dev bore a binding woven from the ssarez-kai’s own power, and if he walked on ground that demons could reach, Kiran was terrified that binding would draw the ssarez-kai’s attention, acting as a beacon fire in just the way Sivyan and Idryk feared a mage’s ikilhia would.

  And while Kiran wasn’t certain if Zadikah would be traveling with Dev, the suggestion of it might make Teo more amenable to leaving Raishal.

  Sure enough, Teo said, “Raishal, we must warn Zadi—”

  “Zadikah won’t be returning so soon,” Raishal said flatly. “She told me that even if the Khalat was taken according to plan, her allies would need her help for some days afterward. Bayyan will tell her what has happened here.”

  Idryk, following the conversation with the intent frown of a man struggling to piece words into comprehension, announced, “I already send to Bayyan.” He tapped the jeweled copper band of a message charm on his wrist.

  Kiran wasn’t sure how much of the tale Idryk had been able to convey. The charm didn’t appear powerful enough to have sent more than a brief coded phrase or two. Teo’s suddenly strained expression said he was afraid the message had contained far too much.

  “I still have to find Dev,” Kiran said. “He might have left Prosul Akheba too early to receive any warning. Even if he did, it would only make him run the faster to reach me.”

  Idryk exchanged terse words with Sivyan. The conversation rapidly shaded louder into an argument. Whatever Idryk was suggesting, Sivyan did not like it, but Idryk appeared to win the debate. Scowling, Sivyan spoke to Raishal.

  Raishal said, “There’s a canyon nearby that cuts toward Prosul Akheba. It’s the same route Zadikah took Dev. Idryk will guide you to the canyon while I go with Sivyan.”

  Idryk nodded, his shoulders squared. “I take you. Come now.” Sivyan’s expression was still hard in a way Kiran recognized: she was afraid for her brother.

  He wanted to assure Sivyan that Idryk would stay safe, but in the aftermath of the hunt, she had no reason to believe him. Kiran sighed and climbed to his feet, ready to follow Idryk.

  Teo hung back, gazing at Raishal. “If you can’t bear to take my help as a healer, I’ll heed your wish. But please, Raishal. Have the snake-eaters bring you to the Seranthine collegium. You can ask the matria’s help in my name. She’ll ensure you have the best chance possible of carrying the child to term and surviving the birth. Don’t let your anger get in the way of that.”

  Raishal splayed a hand on her belly, the gesture fierce. “This child is all I have left of Veddis. You can be certain I will protect it as I could not him.” She turned her back on Teo and stalked away.

  Kiran sensed Teo’s control wavering, but this time Teo didn’t break. He snatched up the pack and followed Idryk over the dome’s rounded crest. To Kiran’s relief, Idryk led them down a different slope than the one they’d ascended. They would not have to cross the chasm where Veddis died.

  His head was aching, the sun too bright. Dizzy, Kiran shaded his eyes with a hand, trying to negotiate the dome’s steep side without stumbling over his feet.

  “Here.” Teo thrust a flask at Kiran. “You should take another dose.”

  A sign that Teo had changed his mind about helping? More likely, Teo merely wanted him healthy enough to leave the valley—and Raishal—behind. Kiran took a careful swallow from the flask, though the very act sent a spike of pain through his head. He wobbled, righted himself, and put a hand to his temple. His ikilhia didn’t appear dangerously disrupted. His discomfort was mostly the res
ult of Teo’s clumsiness in his search.

  Watching him, Teo said, devoid of expression, “I hurt you.”

  “It’s nothing, compared to…” Kiran shrugged awkwardly, not wanting to discuss the pain he’d felt bleeding out of Teo’s ikilhia, raw and savage and without remedy.

  “After what that man did to you, how can you think magic anything but the vilest of curses? Are you truly so blind?”

  Teo had thought he was referring to Ruslan? Proof that he’d understood at least some of what Kiran had wanted to show him. But still…

  “It’s Ruslan who’s responsible for his actions, not magic.”

  Teo shook his head. “He used your craving for magic to seduce and corrupt you, and he is using it still.”

  Shame seared Kiran, hot and quick. Defensive answers burned in his throat, but what point in voicing them? Teo had seen the truth of his heart, and his judgment was not undeserved. But Teo was wrong about magic. Kiran refused to believe that something so wondrous was wholly evil. Not even the Alathians were so rigid in their rejection. They had the sense to see that magic could be used to heal, not harm. Even in Ninavel, plenty of lesser mages fueled their spells without the need for blood and death.

  “Do you at least understand why I must stop Ruslan?”

  Teo grimaced. “What I saw in your memories…yes, your master intends an atrocity and should be stopped. But I’m not at all certain you’re the right person to stop him.”

  Kiran felt the words as a blow even worse than the first. It took him several tries to speak. “You think it would be better if I died. That Dev should take on Ruslan alone.”

  “I don’t want your death,” Teo said. “What I did last night, on the chasm’s brink—I am ashamed, bitterly so. Yet wherever you go, death follows, and I’m terrified of what you’re willing to do to bring down your master. The havoc Dev can wreak in his fight is at least constrained by his lack of magic. But if I cure you, then the blood of all those who die because of you will be on my hands.”

  A twist of frustrated anger set Kiran’s ikilhia surging. Grimly, he reined it in. “You would rather have the blood of all of Alathia on your hands?”

  “I would rather that no one died, but you have already proved that is not an option.” Teo sighed. “I will help you find Dev, so he will not be taken by demons. After…” He rubbed a hand over his mouth, frowning. “I need time to consider. I will pray for a sign from the three-fold goddess to guide me in what I should do.”

  Glancing back at the dome’s crest, Kiran muttered, “Maybe you’ve already had one.”

  The lines bracketing Teo’s mouth deepened as if carved by a knife. Kiran already regretted his words. He didn’t believe Raishal’s exiling of Teo was the result of any divine influence. She was lashing out in an attempt to salve her own pain.

  Just as he was lashing out now, out of fear that what Teo said of him was true.

  “I’m sorry,” Kiran said. “That is—I can’t deny I’ll be glad to have your help in finding Dev, but I wouldn’t have wanted it to happen this way.”

  Teo shot him a black look. “Among the tally of your regrets, this is surely one of the least.”

  Kiran looked away, discomfited by the reminder that Teo knew in detail what he had cause to regret. He wished with newly desperate force that Dev was not miles away. He needed Dev’s pragmatic optimism, his unshakeable faith that Kiran was not the monster Ruslan had trained him to be.

  Not to mention his cunning with plans. Kiran had to find out the full extent of Ruslan’s bargain with the ssarez-kai. For all he knew, Alathians might be dying right now. Though Alathia’s ground was so barren of natural magic, could demons travel there?

  If the demons couldn’t, Ruslan would consider that nothing more than a challenge to be solved with the right application of creativity and spellwork. Perhaps that was what he had offered the ssarez-kai—a way to travel lands that had previously been forbidden to them.

  The real question was, if the ssarez-kai were only one faction among demonkind, might Kiran enlist the help of different demons to stop Ruslan?

  He knew so frustratingly little. But he did know who could enlighten him: the demon who had warned him. He even knew what currency would serve as payment. He would offer the demon the chance to see his memories.

  Fear iced his heart, and not just because in trying to find that specific demon again he would risk attracting the ssarez-kai. He didn’t need Vidai’s example to know how dangerous a bargain with a demon would be.

  Dev had far more experience in negotiating dangerous alliances than Kiran. Soon, Kiran promised himself. Dev was hurrying to reach him, moving closer every moment, and Kiran would find him. Together they would plan how best to counter Ruslan—and Kiran would prove to himself, if not to Teo, that he could save lives and not just destroy them.

  * * *

  (Dev)

  I stared dully at my bound hands. They were tied tight to the saddle of the mule I rode. So were my legs. Sun beat down on my unprotected head. Sweat soaked my clothes and stung in all my unhealed cuts and abrasions, but pain was a distant, unimportant thing. The mule’s swaying gait kept conspiring with my drug-muddled head to make me drift off into a thoughtless void.

  At least I hadn’t suffered any bizarre visions in a while. Bad enough to think I saw god-statues stepping down off their temples, or sand dunes exploding into shrieking flocks of birds with human heads. What I really hated was seeing things I wished were real. Like Cara shoving toward me through a shouting crowd of Akheban traders, her pale eyes wide in concern and her mouth open in a call I couldn’t hear. I’d known in a confused way that she couldn’t really be in Prosul Akheba, but I’d still wanted so much for her to reach me.

  The black-daggers had forced the first dose of the drug down my throat before we even left the Khalat. I didn’t know how long ago that was. Felt like I’d been stuck on this mule forever, but part of that was the drug, blurring time. I thought it’d been at least a day. Maybe more. I had vague memories of cool night darkness and the sun’s blazing heat, of clansmen holding me down and pouring more drug-tainted water into me, but I couldn’t string the impressions into any real order.

  I did remember Yashad. I’d told her about Pello’s son Janek. I’d said he wasn’t in Ninavel and refused to explain where he was. She’d been eager to find out more, all right. So eager that I’d worried that she would whip out a painbender, except Gavila had come back and insisted on drugging me and dragging me off. As my mind slid into mush, I’d been so smugly convinced Yashad couldn’t resist the bait I’d given her. I’d thought she was certain to use her wiles and her wealth of charms to get me free.

  But no help had come. Maybe none ever would. In which case, I had fucking better think hard while I could think at all. It wouldn’t be long before the black-daggers dosed me again.

  With monumental effort, I raised my head.

  My mule was plodding along a sandy wash. The cliffs on either side were a rich gold rather than red, rising in stair-stepped layers toward a sky seared white by midday sun. A clansman trudged ahead of my mule, holding its lead, and more black-daggers surrounded me, fanned out across the width of the wash. Most wore wide-brimmed hats pulled low over their wild curls; a few were swathed in Kaithan-style headwraps. Wherever Gavila meant to go, she was pushing hard to get there, tromping along like this in the day’s worst heat rather than waiting it out.

  I sagged forward and tilted my head so I might look behind me without being obvious about it. Two more mules walked near mine. The slumped, bound figures in their saddles must be the scholars Gavila had grabbed from the collegium. The apt-Scholar was a stocky middle-aged woman whose graying hair was as straight and coarse as mine, despite the coppery tint to her skin. Even drugged up to her eyeballs, she had a certain set to her features that suggested she was the decisive sort who took no nonsense from underlings.

  The initiate was a plump, city-soft Varkevian youth in his middle teens. Tear tracks cut through the grime
on his cheeks. A memory rolled up from the depths: Melly’s blotchy, tearstained face when Ruslan had brought her to Sechaveh’s tower. This scholar-boy probably didn’t have any better idea of why he’d been ripped away from his home and his friends, or any more hope of escaping his captivity.

  I stared at the ropes binding me. I couldn’t think of how to get free of them. Or if I did, how to escape without the black-daggers pouncing on me. My lack of ideas should upset me more, but the drug made it so damn hard to care.

  I thought again of the scholar-boy’s silent, hopeless tears. Summoned images of Kiran, Cara, and Melly, and imagined them pleading, even angry with me. I had to get free. They needed my help. I couldn’t let demons take them.

  I tried to tug at my bonds, but my hands didn’t do much more than twitch. My mule plodded onward around a curve in the canyon. Ahead, a slender span of golden rock swooped in a great arc from the canyon wall to the sand. The gap beneath its curve was wide enough every one of the black-daggers could walk abreast through it. For a long, blank moment, I lost myself in gaping at the arch. I’d never seen one so large.

  “I see it’s time to call a halt. You’re looking far too bright-eyed for my taste.”

  I hadn’t noticed Gavila’s approach, but there she was, pacing beside my mule and wearing a smirk maddening enough to rouse me out of lethargy.

  “Not too bright-eyed. Too old. Same as those scholars.” The words didn’t sound right. My tongue wouldn’t cooperate much better than the rest of my muscles. “Think you can buy yourself a demon’s power with us, you’re wrong.”

  She must’ve caught the gist of my meaning despite my mush-mouthed speech. “You talk as if I’m bringing unwanted gifts in hope of favor. But trust me, Ninavel man, you are wanted. I saw plain in my dreams what the sacred flame desires: adults who were once Tainted. I don’t know why Shaikar and his children might want such sivayyah as you, but I am giving my god exactly what he has asked for. In return he will reward all my clan, not just me.”