The Labyrinth of Flame

by Courtney Schafer

  A sudden memory of the dream he’d had long weeks ago when Dev was sick from the black-daggers’ poison swallowed him. He’d stood outside Ninavel’s great sandstorm wall, desperate to find a way to reach the city burning within, with an exasperated Mikail at his side—

  Look closer, little brother…at the spiraling pattern he’d seen on the sandstorm wall in his dream, the same pattern he’d seen in childhood on the wall of the bone mage’s workroom. Another memory wisped past: his fingers, childishly small, clutching a stick of chalk and laboriously sketching the pattern he’d already drawn a hundred times. The sour man snapped at another adult to make him trace it again, no, again. The boy must repeat this until it is instinct.

  The memory dissolved into another: Zadikah standing beside Cadah’s ancient trap and pointing to a different pattern she claimed was a map of the tunnels. He had wondered then if the pattern that haunted his dreams was likewise a map of some kind.

  A map to the labyrinth’s heart?

  Before he could think better of it, Kiran moved. Traveling here was an effort of will, not body, much as in the demon realm. He rose high toward the labyrinth and plunged into a gap whose curling shape matched perfectly the outermost end of the dream-pattern.

  He was in a narrowing tunnel of flame, and oh, that flame burned the fragile human energies shielding his ikilhia—but when he tried to bolster his energies with demonfire, the acid bite of the aether wrenched a scream from him, his vision darkening. He clawed back to consciousness and braced against the pain. Sweating, shivering, he propelled himself through the fast-closing tunnel. Another gap, there, in the right direction to continue the pattern—he dropped through just in time. Turquoise fire closed in a soundless, viciously powerful flash above his head.

  Kiran raced down tunnels and darted through gaps, his world narrowing to fire and pain and the bright tracery of the pattern in his head. On and on, ever deeper into the labyrinth, and all the while his pain increased, growing from a red mist he could shut out into a vast, gnawing beast that ate ever deeper into his concentration and slowed his travel.

  The tunnels closed so quickly! But only a few more changes of direction and he would finish the dream-pattern. The next gap waited ahead—

  He was too slow. The gap disappeared. Kiran cried out in fear and denial. Fire closed in upon him, the tunnel collapsing. Another gap remained—it led in the wrong direction, but he must escape before fire consumed him. Kiran flung himself through.

  Beyond was a broader space than the tunnels he had been traveling. The pain clawing at him eased a blessed fraction, but his fear did not. He was off the path. If he wandered the labyrinth blindly, he would die long before he escaped it.

  The gap he’d traveled had become a forbidding wall of cerulean fire, but if he waited, the tunnel might open again as the labyrinth shifted. The fire around him was moving, but not yet contracting. He could hold off pain. Had not Ruslan taught him endurance?

  Something was odd about the blue-green fire below him. Dizzily, Kiran focused.

  The fire was shot through with silver threads of magic carrying a subtly harmonic tang that was familiar. Alathian. That was Alathian spellwork laced through the labyrinth’s lattice, like vines twining around a tree trunk so tightly they’d grown into the bark.

  Cautiously Kiran reached his awareness into a silver thread of magic—and glimpsed a distant glittering panoply of coals and pinpricks of life, the latter as numerous as stars on a moonless night.

  Those were Alathia’s mages and citizens. This spellwork was part of the connection linking their lives to the weapon.

  He could not break them free. If he struck to sever the connection, the backlash of energies along the disrupted spells would harm the Alathians tied into them. Ruslan’s will-binding shackled him tight; he could not break his master’s vow. Nor would Kiran want to risk killing any nathahlen, even without the will-binding.

  The red beast of pain gnawed deeper into his vitals. The fire around him was contracting. The gap he’d passed through had not reopened. Kiran fought down panic. Another path remained open alongside the silver vines. Following the Alathian spellwork might lead him to the weapon at the labyrinth’s heart.

  Or out of the labyrinth entirely, but that was better than dying here. Kiran raced along the open pathway. He ducked in and out of gaps and along disappearing tunnels, desperately tracing the faint, harmonic tang threading the labyrinth’s fire. Agony was a weight like a mountain, ready to crush him into darkness. His every breath became a sob of pain.

  The vines spread into a tracery of silver over a curved wall of indigo so deep it approached black. A narrow gap breached the wall, already closing—Kiran plunged through.

  Pain ceased. Kiran cried out in startled relief, his body shuddering with reaction. The aether around him was blessedly clear of poison. This had to be the labyrinth’s heart.

  Yet the spherical space about him was empty. Kiran saw no artifact, nothing that might be a weapon. Dismay curled cold in his gut. Had Ruslan already taken it? How?

  In desperate hope that perhaps Ashkiza had left one last veil to fool any trespassers, he dropped his barriers and flung his senses wide, seeking any hint of spellwork in the calm aether.

  His awareness brushed the dark sphere of flame surrounding him. The fire did not hurt like the outer latticework. It felt good, it felt—

  Midnight-dark tendrils shot toward him and pierced his ikilhia, rooting deep into the demonfire at his core.

  His awareness exploded wide. He saw an ocean of power, rich and glorious and deep, but not wild like Ninavel’s confluence. The labyrinth’s shining latticework tamed the magic, constrained it into a reservoir waiting to be shaped. He felt that control, as if the labyrinth’s immense energies had become an extension of his own ikilhia.

  Astonished laughter bubbled out of Kiran. The labyrinth didn’t protect an artifact. It was the artifact. A single spell pattern so enormous and complex that Kiran couldn’t fathom how Ashkiza had created it. Yet the truth was undeniable. The labyrinth’s spellwork shone in his head in all its astounding complexity, linking him safely to that wondrous reservoir. Here at the labyrinth’s heart, he had no need for channels. He could wield the ocean of power as readily as Dev did the Taint, by will alone.

  With the labyrinth, he could destroy Ruslan with the ease of a man crushing an ant. He could sweep aside even the ssarez-kai. He need never be a victim again, nor see his friends hurt. He could reshape the very world to his desire, as if he were one of the gods Ruslan scorned.

  Except that the ocean was made of Alathian lives. He could not touch the least drop of the labyrinth’s power any more than he could cast against the demon in Dev. He had no wish to hurt anyone, but it was torture to feel the labyrinth waiting to direct all that power at his desire and yet be unable to cast the smallest of spells with it.

  Kiran’s ikilhia boiled wild with frustration. There must be a way to use the labyrinth against Ruslan. If he could somehow prune away the Council’s spellwork, he could will the labyrinth to root itself in the demon realm and not the human one. Draw on the ssarez-kai’s own fire to defeat them along with Ruslan.

  The very idea brought a sweet, hot surge of exhilaration. But how to safely break the labyrinth’s connection to Alathia? Lena might be able to analyze the spells in the gate chamber and cast to sever the labyrinth from Alathia. But he couldn’t bring a mage through the demon realm to the gate, the way he might Dev—

  Dev. He didn’t need an Alathian. If he freed Dev from the demon and brought him to the labyrinth’s gate, Dev could use the Taint to shatter wardlines and sigils until the labyrinth was safely isolated.

  Kiran bared his teeth, thinking of the demon. It hadn’t known the truth of the labyrinth. That, at least, was a weapon he could use. But to confront the demon and free Dev, Kiran must leave the labyrinth, and he’d already exhausted so much of his strength. He was terrified he might move too slowly through the labyrinth’s lattice and be consumed by its fi
re before he could return to the gate.

  If he followed the Alathian spellwork, that might be a faster route than retreating along the map-pattern. Kiran extended his awareness through the labyrinth’s fiery, ever-shifting halls—and drew in a surprised breath. Running nearly straight from the labyrinth’s heart to its outer boundary was a path blocked by a single cluster of magic isolated from the rest of the spell. As if the cluster was a barricaded door—left perhaps by Ashkiza to block a secret route only she had known.

  He could open that door if he cast using his own ikilhia to dissipate the barricade. Kiran didn’t like the idea of leaving a route open to the labyrinth’s heart, but who else could survive both poison and fire to walk it?

  Besides, he dared not risk another failure to walk the pattern.

  For a terrifying instant, he feared the tendrils of magic binding him to the labyrinth would not let him go—but Ashkiza’s spellwork responded to the frantic force of his desire. The tendrils pulled free of his soul, leaving him shivering, bereft. His ikilhia felt so terribly weak and small without the labyrinth’s embrace.

  Kiran plunged back into the labyrinth’s latticework—a dive into acid and agony—and raced to escape the fire licking so greedily at his ikilhia. Ashkiza’s shortcut was a shortcut indeed, despite the need to breach the barrier she’d left. In far less time than he’d spent seeking the labyrinth’s heart, he burst from its lattice and catapulted toward the shimmering oval of light that marked the gate back to Alathia.

  He staggered out into the gate chamber and nearly fell face-first into the veil of magic that encircled the arch. Pain throbbed hot in his head and his legs were wobbly as an invalid’s.

  He wasn’t alone in the chamber. Beyond the veil, a uniformed mage and a nathahlen man stared at him in surprise.

  He recognized both of them from Dev’s memories. The mage was Councilor Varellian, commander of the Watch, her lined face as proud and severe as it had been when she questioned Dev at Kiran’s trial. She was kneeling with one hand planted on a cluster of glowing sigils. Standing beside her was gaunt, red-haired Councilor Niskenntal, who’d argued Dev should be executed in punishment for his smuggling.

  Niskenntal shouted, pointing at Kiran. Varellian jerked her hands wide. Sigils flared silver, magefire crackling along the wardlines toward him.

  Maybe now they would have the sense to break their citizens’ lives free of the labyrinth. Kiran yanked power from the magic swirling thick in the aether, and leapt into the demon realm.

  Whatever the scarred demon had done to alter his sight seemed permanent. Though a frigid storm of magic battered his ikilhia, he saw not fiery chaos but a sea of crystalline dunes and glowing sky-veils. Yet here a sickly greenish cast shadowed everything. A sign, perhaps, that the poisonous aether bleeding out the labyrinth’s gate affected the demon realm along with the human one. Kiran certainly felt worse every moment, fighting to maintain a frail shield of demonfire over his human ikilhia in reverse of how he’d survived in the labyrinth. He wanted nothing more than to retreat to the human realm. Somewhere pain and illness would cease.

  But here, he could cast. Kiran marshaled his concentration. What would the demon expect Ashkiza’s weapon to look like? Demons didn’t seem to use charms. Or at least, they didn’t use them now. But in the days they had been flesh—Kiran remembered the curiously powerful artifact Simon Levanian had modified to create his border-crossing charm, and the strange charm Marten had used in Ninavel to block Kiran’s mark-bond.

  Kiran pulled labyrinth-tainted power from the currents swirling around him and shaped a spell pattern. Pale sand-stuff swirled upward before him and solidified into a metallic latticework reminiscent of the labyrinth in miniature, about the size of Kiran’s doubled fists. The charm was mere illusion, but one that should fool all of Dev’s blunted senses. When Kiran grasped the charm, it felt properly cool and solid in his hand. To Dev the charm would appear to be made of myriad strands of metal, just as Marten’s charm had been.

  It would have to do. Bile was climbing up his throat, pain shuddering along his nerves. Kiran reached for Dev’s familiar ikilhia and let that anchor pull him along the currents. Dunes and sky-veils blurred into a storm of color.

  Another few heartbeats, and he stumbled onto soft sand. Kiran looked around, confused. This wasn’t the boulder-strewn ridgetop where he’d left Dev. He stood in a wholly unfamiliar gully winding between stair-stepped orange cliffs. Mid-morning sun was warm on his shoulders.

  Dev loomed right in front of him, reaching. Kiran jumped back, the false charm clutched protectively to his chest.

  “Where are we?” he demanded.

  “Far enough from your friends to confound any attempt you’ve made to seek their help.” Dev gave him the demon’s mocking grin. “Did you think me so foolish as to remain where I might face ambush?”

  Kiran strained through his barriers for any hint of nearby ikilhia. Nothing.

  Lena had failed to find his message. He fought not to show the depth of his dismay. “I found the labyrinth’s heart.” Kiran brandished the false charm at the demon. “Leave Dev, and you can have your prize.”

  Dev’s green eyes narrowed, his head tilting. “You certainly look ill enough to have walked the labyrinth, but I’m not yet convinced that trinket you hold is Ashkiza’s creation.” The demon held out Dev’s hand. “Come, cousin. Show me your mind. Prove you speak truth.”

  He hadn’t expected the demon to believe him about the charm. Without Lena, he had only one lever to use.

  Kiran let the charm fall to the sand. “You want the truth? The labyrinth is the weapon. I can’t bring it to you, no matter what you threaten. All I can do is use it. And believe me, I intend to.” The demon might not understand that he could not cast with Alathian lives. “Get out of Dev, now. If he dies, I’ll destroy you right along with Ruslan.”

  The demon didn’t laugh at the threat. It stared at him unblinking, Dev’s body gone eerily still. “So eager for destruction. I am curious, little cousin. Let us assume you speak truth. If you cannot bring the weapon to me, can you destroy it?”

  The demon couldn’t be serious. What did it think to gain by the question? Kiran said warily, “I can’t imagine Ashkiza would be pleased with that.”

  “A better outcome than her edict broken and your mud-lands laid waste,” the demon said.

  “I don’t intend to lay waste to anything except Ruslan and the ssarez-kai.”

  “The ssarez-kai…” Dev’s eyes widened and the demon hissed, the sound all the more alien coming from a human mouth. “You intend to use our realm as your source. You—”

  Dev jerked and clapped a hand to his neck as if fly-bitten. He lurched toward Kiran and crumpled.

  Kiran caught him in pure reflex. He lost his balance and landed hard on his back with Dev a limp weight on top of him.

  The candleflame of Dev’s ikilhia was steady but muted as if in sleep—and unmarred by any hint of indigo. Nor did Kiran sense any barrier around his mind, which was dark and still but appeared blessedly intact. Had the demon left Dev? Why had the demon left him?

  A fat black dart glistening with some sticky substance was embedded in Dev’s neck. Hope bloomed wild in Kiran’s heart. Lena had gotten his message. Teo must have prepared a drug to put on the dart, and Cara certainly had the skill to hurl it. He couldn’t sense anyone nearby, but that only meant Lena had cast a veiling to hide them.

  Kiran heaved Dev off him and twisted to scan the gully. “Lena? Are you—”

  A raw blast of magic knocked him away from Dev and pounded him flat into the sand. Kiran gasped for air that wouldn’t come and struggled to shore up fractured defenses. The amulet was a live coal searing his chest raw.

  Strong hands rolled him over. Through blurred, watering eyes, Kiran glimpsed broad shoulders, a long tail of hair glowing russet in the sun, a terrifyingly familiar golden face—

  Ruslan. In instant, desperate reaction, Kiran called upon every scrap of ikilhia he possessed and claw
ed to reach the demon realm.

  The aether thinned. He tasted the barest hint of freezing currents, but without Dev and the confluence, he hadn’t the strength to reach them.

  Another blast of magic smashed against his inner defenses, leaving him reeling, his concentration shattered. Long fingers caught the chain of Kiran’s amulet and ripped it from him in a flare of spellwork.

  His blood-bond to Dev opened, but so did the mark-bond. Before he could reach the confluence, Ruslan’s will crushed his. Kiran lay frozen, all control of his body and magic gone.

  Ruslan bent over him. Past his shoulder, Kiran sighted a rigidly impassive Mikail crouched beside Dev’s limp body with a rope in his hands.

  A rope. Not a knife. But knowing Ruslan meant to save Dev for some later torment instead of murdering him here and now was little comfort.

  “This should have been a happy day.” No triumph lit Ruslan’s hazel eyes; they were as dark and bleak as his words. “Reunited with you after long weeks, Kiran…but instead of the akhelysh I loved so dearly, I see before me only a creature so poisoned and twisted he is happy to murder his own kin.”

  He wasn’t blocking Kiran from speech. “I didn’t want Lizaveta dead. I didn’t even want you dead. But you won’t stop.” He didn’t expect mercy from Ruslan, but Ruslan wasn’t the only one listening. Mikail. Please, brother, hear me. “Lizaveta tried to warn you about the ssarez-kai. She died to warn you, yet still, you won’t heed her. You’re so obsessed with this idiocy of revenge you’ll let demons lay waste to our world—”

  “All the nathahlen in this world could die and it would not make up for Lizaveta’s loss.” Ruslan’s grief swamped Kiran, crushing in its enormity, an anguish so deep that it bordered on madness.

  “Then why? Why kill them?” The old, helpless frustration boiled up in Kiran. How could someone as clever as Ruslan be so blind?

  “Revenge is to soothe the pain of the living, not bring back the dead. Shall I show you how pleasant it will taste?”