The Tainted City

by Courtney Schafer

  Mikail’s ikilhia brushed against his outer barriers, a gentle touch carrying with it the memory of hundreds of childhood days spent casting together in sunlit workrooms. Kiran gave him a swift, warm smile in return, raised a hand to the boulder, and looked to Dev.

  “Ready?”

  Dev crowded forward. “Hell yes.” He glanced back at the Alathains. “Assuming you are.”

  Martennan nodded and said softly, “The moment Kiran breaks the wards, spark your charm.”

  Kiran dropped his barriers. Fire sheeted over his inner vision, the wards resolving into a labyrinth of carefully balanced energies. He threaded his senses through the wards’ perimeter. Confluence currents swirled beyond, beautiful and seductive, the power his for the taking. He drew in a great draught, fashioned it into a blazing lance of power, and hammered the lance straight into the heart of the wards.

  The maze cracked, energies bursting wild out of their pathways. He caught the magic, tore power out of the wards in a great rush, funneling it back down into the confluence. Dimly, he was aware of the boulder crackling and sparking before him. And beyond, a startled, furious shout.

  Dev yelled in answer, “Vishakhta!” Magic sparked to life, sickly green spirals springing from the charm on his wrist to pierce his ikilhia. Dev shouted again, a fierce, wordless cry of joy. The Alathians chanted, a cool blue wash of magic spreading from them to layer Dev’s body.

  The wards’ invisible barrier vanished. A hot, dry wind blasted past Kiran, sweeping away the fog sheltering them. “Go!” he shouted, and Dev raced forward.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  (Dev)

  I pounded past the boulder, its ward lines dark and empty of magic. The void in my mind sang with life once more, the thrill of it so sharp it wiped away all fear.

  The air was clear of fog for the whole breadth of the cirque’s basin, though clouds still sat low overhead, hiding the peaks. Fifty feet away on the lakeshore, glowing ward lines spiraled around a ring of slender pillars. The pillars were twice a man’s height, formed of stacked, pallid bones carved with sigils that flickered with indigo fire. The space bounded by the pillars contained a strange, smooth bubble of darkness. Hints of indigo chased over its surface like colors in a soap slick, but beneath them lay only dead, lightless black.

  Standing with one foot over the outermost ward line was Vidai zha-Dakhar. He wore his gabeshal robe, but his head was uncovered. He looked younger than I’d imagined, and sick, like a victim of wasting fever. His cheeks were sunken, his skin mottled and gray, his amber eyes fever-bright.

  Melly lay limply unconscious in his arms, the barbed copper band of a sleep-fast charm circling her brow.

  I didn’t waste time yelling at Vidai to stop. I just reached, with that gloriously resurrected part of my mind, and snatched Melly from his arms.

  A deep, vicious cramp stabbed my gut. Just as abruptly, it eased. A good thing, because Vidai struck. I felt the blow coming, like seeing wind ripples racing over a lake. I released Melly—she fell in a boneless sprawl on the stone, some ten feet from me—and shoved against his strike.

  A sharp crack echoed through the cirque. Vidai’s hollow-cheeked face twisted in frustration. I leapt into the air. If he’d never been a Tainter, he wouldn’t be used to thinking like a falcon.

  He struck again, this time at the mages behind me. I blocked it, barely—he might look sick, but fuck, he was strong!—and darted downward to kick at his head.

  He ducked, ripped a knife free from his belt and slashed at me. I darted backward, shoved. He staggered back, almost landed on a glowing ward line, but jumped just in time, soaring high.

  A crackling tornado of magefire shot past me. Vidai dodged it, releasing an angry shout. I glanced back. Kiran stood before the pillars, his hands raised and his teeth bared. Azure fire danced on his fingers and crawled over the charms on his wrists. Behind him, Ruslan and Mikail yanked flasks from Mikail’s pack and poured quicksilver into tangled lines with swift precision. The Alathians crouched behind a boulder in a tight huddle, chanting with their eyes fixed on me.

  I swooped after Vidai and struck again. He vanished; the pillars flared, blindingly bright. I soared over them, my heart in my throat, scanning snow and stone. Where was he, where—

  The flare of light subsided. Vidai reappeared above the Alathians. Again, that warning ripple brushed against my mind. I shoved, but too slow, damn it, couldn’t stop it all—

  Stevan slammed forward into the boulder, blood spraying from gashes on his back. He cried out as he hit and collapsed to the ground. Marten and Lena didn’t move, didn’t falter in their chant. Yet dull pain took root in my gut.

  Kiran whirled and slashed a hand. Another bolt of magefire exploded toward Vidai even as I shoved. Vidai jinked aside and vanished again. I darted through the air, straining my mind for the least hint of his Taint. Pain sank its teeth deeper into me, and I prayed Ruslan and Mikail would hurry.

  * * *

  (Kiran)

  Magic danced in Kiran’s blood, blurred his vision, the touch of it so sweet it hovered on the edge of pain. He kept the sensation at bay and spun in a slow circle, searching for Vidai.

  Dev shouted in warning. Kiran looked up, saw a rain of boulders catapulting out of the cloud hiding the slopes above. Some of the boulders jerked aside to drop harmlessly into the lake, and Kiran sent magefire boiling through the air to vaporize more, but it wasn’t enough. Ruslan and Mikail dodged aside as one boulder crashed onto their quicksilver pattern.

  Kiran shattered the boulder into smoking shards, but too late—the pattern was marred. What if they didn’t have enough quicksilver to rebuild the disrupted channels?

  A crack echoed in Kiran’s ears, loud enough to deafen. A blow knocked him down onto hands and knees. Pain lanced his back; he reached and felt the hilt of a knife jutting from just below his ribs.

  He ripped the knife free of his body and threw the gates of his ikilhia wide. Confluence energy seared through him, healing his flesh and burning away pain. Kiran’s vision doubled, dizziness making him stagger. He twisted and cast another bolt of magefire at Vidai; but his control was weak, the fire threatening to escape its bonds and burn through the entire basin.

  He risked a glance back. Mikail was bent over the marred area of the quicksilver pattern, a bloodied knife clutched in his hand, a long wound red on his arm. Ruslan dug fingers into Mikail’s wound and painted blood in a line on the granite.

  A solution, but a terrifying one. A channeler’s blood could be used to complete a pattern, but it made the danger in casting extreme.

  Vidai appeared again over Mikail—and Dev slammed into him, the two of them tumbling over and over in the air, clawing at each other. Claps of thunder boomed through the cirque. Dev shouted again, a hoarse, pained yell.

  Kiran didn’t dare try another magefire strike, fearing to burn Dev along with Vidai. Instead, he reached for the clouds above, yanked a veil of mist to coil around Dev and Vidai’s struggling figures. If Vidai couldn’t see Mikail and Ruslan below, perhaps he couldn’t strike at them.

  Mikail sheathed his knife and backed to stand beside the outermost channel line. The pattern was completed, quicksilver bridged by Mikail’s blood—yet it seemed somehow altered from the one Ruslan had shown Kiran. That diagram had contained multiple anchor points, but this pattern looked to have only one. And why hadn’t they taken any zhivnoi crystals from Mikail’s pack? Mikail had his eyes shut, his hands outstretched, ready to channel.

  Ruslan raced past Kiran to where Melly lay unconscious on the stone. He dropped to his knees and raised his silver knife.

  Understanding hit, a stab to Kiran’s gut sharp as Vidai’s had been. Ruslan did not need the crystals. Not with Melly’s life to fuel his casting. If her death came by his blade and not the spell itself, it would not break his vow.

  A wordless cry of denial burst from Kiran. Ruslan slashed the knife down.

  “No!” Dev’s scream was wild with anguished fury. Ruslan’s knife je
rked to a halt mere inches above Melly’s chest. High in the air, Dev and Vidai had burst free of Kiran’s mist veil. Dev still grappled with Vidai, but his movements had slowed, his face twisted with effort.

  Ruslan’s arms quivered, straining to push the knife down. The knife didn’t move. He hissed a curse.

  Fear gripped Kiran. Ruslan had made a terrible mistake in choosing this revenge. Dev would fail against Vidai, sacrifice them all and Ninavel with them before he let Melly die.

  But Ruslan had to cast. If he didn’t, if they failed—hundreds of mages would die, the city would fall—

  The desperate whirl of Kiran’s thoughts halted, as his gaze lit upon Stevannes.

  He lay sprawled not five feet away from Kiran. Blood leaked from his ears and nose, but he still lived; his eyes were slitted open, his mouth moving in silent syllables. A thin thread of magic twisted out from his ikilhia to join the rippling wash flowing from Martennan and Lena. No defensive wardings protected Stevannes’s body; he must have released them all in his effort to continue casting healing magic on Dev.

  The Alathians deserved death, as the child did not. If Kiran took Stevannes’s life and channeled it through the mark-bond to Ruslan, then Ruslan could cast.

  Kiran snatched up Vidai’s knife, still red with his own blood. He threw himself to his knees before Stevannes. Another thunderclap assaulted his ears; Ruslan’s knife descended another inch toward Melly, halted again.

  Stevannes’s eyes focused on him, hazed with pain. As Kiran aimed the blade, a smile terrible in its bitterness stretched his mouth. “Do it,” he said, his voice thick. “Show Marten I was right about you.”

  The knife felt as heavy as an iron spar in Kiran’s hand. Deep inside, a familiar, forgotten voice screamed, in frantic, agonized pleas that bound his arm as tightly as any spell.

  “Do it!” Stevannes spat at Kiran. “Better me than the child!”

  Kiran buried the screaming voice deep. He reached for Ruslan through the mark-bond, made of himself a perfect, open conduit…and drove the knife home.

  * * *

  (Dev)

  I clutched Vidai close, both of us struggling, striking at each other with hands and knees as well as Taint. My gut was a mass of agony, my hold weakening. If he struck at the mages again I couldn’t block him, not and hold Ruslan too—but I couldn’t let Ruslan kill Melly, couldn’t—

  Vidai screamed, fear and fury in the cry. He thrashed free of me in one convulsive move. I rolled mid-air, saw the quicksilver pattern burst to life, lines shining bright as the sun.

  Yet I still held Ruslan’s knife hand—how could Ruslan cast?

  Another shout, this one horrified. Marten reached toward Stevan, shock harrowing his face.

  Stevan, who had a knife hilt protruding from under his ribs, blood welling dark around the blade. Kiran gripped the hilt, his head thrown back, his expression that of a man drowning in ecstasy.

  The wards on the pillars ignited, flames running over the bones. Arcs leapt from the pillars to the bubble of darkness within. The bubble bulged, like a beast within was about to claw its way out. I abandoned Vidai and reached for Melly instead, sent her rolling away from Ruslan’s knife to end at Marten’s feet.

  The world exploded in light. A hammer blow slammed me to the ground. Fire roared over me, close enough to leave my skin smarting and my hair singed. Black spots bloomed in my vision, but I held onto consciousness with desperate determination.

  The light and heat faded. I scrabbled up to a crouch. My gut burned, though only a faint flicker of the Taint remained in my head. The bone pillars had collapsed into blackened shards. The black bubble was gone, but the air within the pillars still seemed strangely dark, details difficult to make out. The way Ruslan had talked in Ninavel, I’d expected to see some bizarre charm glittering on the stone. But the shadowed shape revealed by the vanished bubble was far larger than any charm, and it didn’t look at all metallic. It almost looked like the crouched figure of a man.

  Scant feet away from me, Vidai groaned and raised his head. He pleaded, “Lord of the fire, my work is not yet done! The lives I’ve given you, please—the children’s deaths cannot be for naught! Kavazh-adekh ammet tajik…”

  The shadowed figure laughed; a sweet, piercing sound. Words came, welling up in my mind through the place the Taint lived. There is no mercy in fire.

  Vidai’s body tore apart in a silent spray of blood. I jerked backward, stunned. Vidai was dead at last, just as Jylla had wanted—but mother of maidens, what had killed him?

  Magelight sparked behind me, grew bright, chasing away the last vestiges of darkness between the pillars. Ruslan said, calmly arrogant, “Who steals my rightful revenge?”

  The man—no, demon—before me laughed again. He was beautiful, just like the tales of the Ghorshaba—but it was a deadly, predatory beauty, sharp and cold as an icefall. And when I looked close, it was all wrong, not human. His black hair hung to his waist in what looked like countless slender braids—but the braids moved, slow and subtle, sliding over each other like snakes. His skin was the stark bluish-white of moonlit ice; but the blue tint came from a tracery of scales. He was naked, but despite the masculine proportions of his body, his groin was smoothly sexless. And his eyes—his eyes were pits of blue flame.

  The demon spoke aloud, the words sibilant and oddly inflected. “Who speaks so boldly to a child of fire?” His tongue flicked out, silver and triply forked. “Ahhh…I taste you, akheli. Greedy creatures, scratching about our hearthfire like rats seeking crumbs…though I see you are bold indeed.”

  He prowled toward Kiran. Kiran jerked the knife from Stevan’s chest and held it before him like a shield, magefire dancing on the blade. He looked unsteady, almost drunk, spots of febrile color high on his cheeks. He’d killed Stevan. Killed a helpless, injured man…but he’d saved Melly in doing it. I felt no horror, no relief, only the numbness of shock.

  Marten and Lena moved protectively in front of Melly as the demon passed them, their ringed hands raised and their eyes wary. The demon didn’t look their way. He stepped over Stevan’s body without glancing down and circled Kiran, his tongue tasting the air.

  He said to Ruslan, “You stole and bound a temple child, one molded in our image? Even for one as weak and poisoned as this, your life belongs to the red-horned hunters. A pity…your blood holds enough fire to taste sweet.”

  Molded in our image…and I could see it. The black hair, the icy pale skin, the blue eyes, the sharp lines of Kiran’s cheekbones…all a shadow of the demon’s inhuman beauty. Kiran was staring at the demon, his hands white on the knife.

  “I fear no hunters.” If Ruslan was rattled by facing a creature he’d insisted didn’t exist, he hid it well.

  The demon smiled, revealing ranks of disturbingly red, pointed teeth. “You will,” he said. “Did you think the temple’s worship false?”

  Something in Ruslan’s expression suggested he’d thought exactly that. But he said only, “Yours was the power Vidai zha-Dakhar borrowed. Did you give it freely?”

  I knew what he was really asking. Were you a prisoner who might be grateful for release? Or did you share Vidai’s goal, making you an enemy we must destroy? But how did you destroy a demon? In the tales, only Shaikar himself had the power to unmake them.

  “We bargained, he and I,” the demon said. “He provided me an ancient treasure, long lost from the halls of flame. In return, I gave him his wish: to touch the fire within me, wield it as I do…though only so long as he could hold me.” The demon glanced at Vidai’s remains and made a noise like water sizzling off a sun-heated rock. “He was so low a creature, the gap between us was too far without a bridge to span it.” The demon glanced at Melly, then turned his gaze on me. “Some of you rats born on our threshold have souls scarred by our fire, enough that I can touch you, use your lives as timbers.”

  Claws pierced the Tainted spot in my head and ripped through my mind. I screamed, clutching my head, the world lost in a red haze—

>   “The charm!” Lena shouted. “Take it off, Dev!”

  I choked out the trigger word and yanked the band from my wrist. The pain in my head faded, though my gut still felt packed with razor-edged shards.

  Ruslan hadn’t taken his gaze from the demon. “You call the Well of the World your hearthfire. Did you know Vidai meant to destroy it?”

  The demon’s head cocked. “Destroy? If a dam fails, is the water destroyed? We care not for how our fire flows.” He made the sizzling noise again. “If you seek favor, you will not find it, akheli. Your life is forfeit, and nothing you do will turn the hunters aside from your scent. But after long confinement, I am eager to taste sweeter lives than those of rat-children.”

  Ruslan pointed at Marten and Lena. “Take them and be welcome.”

  They drew breath to chant, light sparking on their rings. I jammed the charm back on my wrist with the trigger word crowding my mouth. But the demon shook his head.

  “Not first. Brighter blood than theirs was woven in the spell that freed me…” He blurred forward toward Mikail. Mikail leaped away, magefire blazing from his hands to strike the demon. The demon only shivered, as if caught in a cold rain, and pounced on him. Mikail cried out, wounds gaping open on his body; green fire limned his skin, and the wounds closed just as swiftly, only to rip open again.

  Ruslan leaped forward, horror and fury combined on his face. Magefire lashed at the demon; the demon laughed. “It was we who taught the akheli to savor pain.” His tongue darted to touch the blood pouring from Mikail’s wounds.

  Mikail gasped, his body slumping. Ruslan lunged for the demon, hands outstretched as if to tear him from Mikail bare-handed.

  Kiran shouted a string of sibilant, guttural words.

  The demon stilled. He dropped Mikail, who collapsed in a boneless heap, and turned to Kiran. Ruslan turned also, surprise writ large on his face.

  Kiran repeated the words, stumbling over them this time. His eyes were glassy and huge, his body shaking.