Let Me

Something in Dakshana’s chest stirred. She was entranced by the sight of him, couldn’t move, a bird hypnotized by a snake.

Then she stared down at her wrist. “I thought you couldn’t touch me,” she said.

“You let me touch you,” he said.

“No I didn’t.” But her head was spinning, and she was dazed by how close he was, the way she could feel his cool breath against her skin.

“Yes, you did,” he said, and lifted a hand to caress her cheek. She leaned into the touch automatically and felt his fingertips brush, feather-light, over her skin.

Never Know

Dakshana tried to wrench her hand out of his grip, but his hold on her was utterly implacable.

“What do you think I could possibly give you?”

His blue eyes gleamed like the core of a flame. “You know what I want.” He tilted his head to the side, like a quizzical bird - or a boy leaning in for a kiss.

“No. I won’t betray my friends --”

He gestured. “They’ll never know.”

She turned, and something akin to horror crossed her face when she saw her friends frozen in time.

He stepped closer, and the heat of her consumed him.

What's In a Name

Dakshana dropped to her knees beside her friend. Minka gasped, clutched at her chest - at her heart. Like she couldn’t breathe.

Dakshana cast a wild look at the walls. A single swirl of pale paint had gone still, pulsing. Minka’s name. Dakshana scooped up a rock and dashed it against the paint. Chips of rock flew. Srina cried out in alarm.

“She’s dying!”

Dakshana struck again - she had to free her friend’s name, save her. She drew back for a third strike, and a hand came out of the wall. Closed over her wrist.

Chadstone said, “You can save her.”

Horrors of Human Imagination

Cold fury crossed Chadstone’s face, but he was the youngest and powerless against whatever the Ancients might choose to inflict on him.

“Stay out of my way and out of my game,” he snarled, spun away, and vanished.

He reappeared outside the walls of the second chamber of the maze and watched, eyes narrowed, as the girls fled. He could control the entire flow of the spell if he chose, but he wanted to see what horrors humans would inflict upon themselves with their own imaginations.

“What now?” Srina cried.

Minka paused, staggered. Her hand went to her chest.

“Minka!”

Real Childhood

“Do they have all of our names?” Srina asked.

Minka cast a glance at the wall of gleaming paint swirls and tossed her head wildly. “I don’t know! I don’t --”

“Since this is your nightmare, they probably only have your name,” Dakshana said.

The tunnel went on forever, straight, unbending, with no end in sight.

“It’s not a nightmare,” Minka said. “It was just a story Mother told me. A scary story.”

Dakshana cast her a look. “Then why are we running?”

“Because as I child I believed it would come true, and this place turns our childhood into reality.”

Masterworks and Masterpieces

“What business have you in tinkering with my game?” Chadstone demanded.

His words were met with soft, sibilant laughter, like warm smoke curling up from a dying fire.

“Your game?” an Ancient asked.

“The Game is sacred - it is one of the Unwritten Rules,” Chadstone said.

“It is indeed - and we are not tinkering with your game,” another Ancient said. “We are merely - observing the masterpiece of our youngest. And my, what a masterpiece it is.”

And then Chadstone noticed it, the flash of movement on the surface of the water. Dakshana and the girls, running from the second spell.

Chasing

“Why are we running?” Srina asked. For all that she whined, she could run fast, and Dakshana was glad she could keep up. Her mind raced as she tried to remember more runes, any other magic that might help.

“Because of the Name-Takers!” Minka called over her shoulder.

“What do they do?” Srina asked.

“They take our names - and our souls!”

Dakshana glanced at the wall beside her, and it was alive. The names - and she didn’t understand how one could paint a name, for a name was a sound, not a picture - were writhing, sliding - chasing them.

Chasing.

Ancient Eyes

The Ancients lingered in a jagged circle around the World Pool, the dead, dark waters at the bottom of The Well, gazing into the water with eager, hungry eyes.

Chadstone was glad he could only see their eyes. Their eyes were every color of the elements, as beautiful and agonizing as his own. Their faces had once been as fair - fairer, even - as his, but time and the game had turned them to their true, final forms. Chadstone did not relish the thought of living in shadow as they did, but he could not resist the pull of the game.

Place of Names

Dakshana noticed the white symbols painted on the stone walls became more and more frequent the further they got.

“Do you know what those mean?” she asked.

“What does what mean?” Srina paused and turned.

Minka went very still.

Dakshana placed a hand on her arm, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

Minka’s voice shook. “Did your mother ever tell you about the place of names?”

“No.” Dakshana’s mother hadn’t told her much of anything that she could remember.

“Everyone’s name is painted on a wall deep below the earth where the magic creatures live,” Minka said. “And --”

“And what?”

“We should run.”

Malingerers

Chadstone was fraught with indecision. Follow the Ancients and demand to know what they were doing to his game, or keep an eye on the girls? The Ancients were up to something, and he refused to let them malinger on the threads of his delicately-woven web. Chadstone closed his eyes, invoked a rune, felt his mortal form dissolve and reform as shadows. Then he set off.

As an afterthought, he cupped his palm and whispered a rune so water pooled on his shadow-cool flesh, another rune so he could see the girls.

Time for good old-fashioned confrontation.

Bliss

“What now?” Srina asked.

Minka and Srina exchanged glances. The stone hallway stretched out before them.

“It’s probably best we go forward,” Dakshana said. The girls set off. Dakshana kept her hands curled at her side. She couldn’t believe herself - she’d wielded rune magic, the magic that had hurt her as a child.

The magic that shamans had used to kill her parents.

Just now, however, it had felt - different. It hadn’t felt bad at all. It had felt like the first ray of warm sun after winter, the full moon on a winter night.

It had felt like bliss.

Giving Gifts

This twist was beyond his control. Chadstone stared at the backs of the Ancients as they fled - as much as their old bones could flee from a mortal girl who’d flung rune fire at them. Firelight the shadows could withstand. Actual light - sunlight - was death to a shadow.

That Dakshana could wield rune magic made her far more dangerous an opponent than a Seer, and Chadstone knew that something was off. He’d met her as a child, and the power to See came later in life. Rune magic was inherent, unless it was gifted, and shadows did not give gifts.

Interesting

Dakshana threw.

Fire exploded against the stone floor, sent shadows skittering across the walls. The eyes shuffled with them, and Dakshana heard, with the moving eyes and shadows, a curious rattle.

Bones. As if piles and piles of ancient bones were moving all at once.

Srina ducked behind Minka, who had her fists up, ready to punch the darkness.

Angry shrieks subsided into laughter again, heartbreakingly beautiful laughter.

“What was that?” Minka asked.

“I don’t know,” Dakshana said, but she knew what she’d done. Magic.

The eyes drifted away, and a voice floated back to the girls.

It said, “Interesting.”

Obtenebration

Chadstone felt them before he saw them, and icy rage coiled in his chest. He started to dismantle the illusory walls to break into the maze, but a tendril of shadow curled around his wrist, halted him. The Ancients were interfering with his game.

“How dare you!” he shouted, and darkness dripped off his words.

The Ancients’ laughter in reply was a musical fall of midnight stars.

“We’re passing through, Cub. But this is a most excellent game.”

Chadstone felt the shadows under his skin roil, desperate to break free. And then rune magic - powerful, alien - exploded in the maze.

Second Chamber: Hall of the Mountain King

The second chamber was hollowed out of a mountain. Dakshana shivered. She hated the utter absence of sunlight.

"You all right?" Srina asked.

"Fine," Dakshana said. "And you?"

Minka nodded.

Srina clung to her. "I'm afraid. I don't like this place."

"Who does?" Minka muttered.

"Probably them." Dakshana stared at the eyes gazing from the shadows. She heard laughter and shuddered.

Srina screamed.

The eyes drifted closer, and the girls recoiled. The icy-blue glow from the torches vanished when the shadows closed over them.

Dakshana traced a rune in the air, murmured its name, and fire flared on her palm.

Play On

Minka’s voice broke through the daze in Dakshana’s eyes, and she jerked back, away from his touch.

Anger frissoned through him. He’d been so close to her revoking the guard that surrounded her. He’d been but a single instant from being able to bury his hands in her hair, to press his lips to her skin and feel her shiver and sigh in his arms.

“Don’t,” Minka said, and tugged Dakshana away. “He cannot touch you - don’t let him.” She met Chadstone’s gaze coldly.

He smiled in return and drifted toward the wall. “Have it your way, then. Play on.”

Not as it Seems

“This world is not as it seems,” Chadstone said.

Dakshana felt her hand curl into a fist, drew it back for an angry, untrained punch. “This is no world - it’s a nightmare. We could have been killed!”

“And yet you survived because you faced your fears.” He titled his head to the side and looked at her quizzically, his eyes jewel-blue in shadows. A smile curved his lips, one gentle and loving, and she felt something in her chest lurch. He reached out to her, and she drew back, but the longing in his eyes stopped her.

“Dakshana, no!”

Shock of Success

Chadstone straightened up, blue eyes wide, though with horror or surprise he didn’t know. Ashoken and the shamans looked equally horrified when Dakshana lunged, plunged herself into the heart of the runefire. Minka only had time for an angry yell before the rope that joined her to Dakshana dragged her along. Srina wailed, a wounded rabbit, but then she too sank into the flames - and through them.

Chadstone shimmered into being in the next chamber and waited while the three girls lay on the stone floor, recovering from the shock of success.

Dakshana lifted her head and spotted him. “You.”

Cold Fire

“No!” Minka cried, resisting. Dakshana, bound to the other two, was jerked back when she reached the end of the slack. Ashoken and the other shamans laughed.

“You first, pretty girl?”

Dakshana hissed at him. “Why did you kill them?”

“They knew too much,” Ashoken said, “and their child is dangerous - has too much magic. We’ll suppress it as she grows, ensure she’s a pariah.”

Minka and Srina turned to Dakshana; Minka’s eye were dark, Srina’s eyes were wet.

“Then yes,” Dakshana said, “I will go first.” Because she could feel it, the truth of the fire - it was cold.

Human Ashes

Chadstone rocked back on his heels, curious to hear Dakshana’s answer.

“I’m just a witness of the atrocities you commit in your search for unholy power,” she said, and Chadstone recoiled. Even though her words weren’t directed at him, her venom was unmistakable.

Ashoken laughed. “So you’ve discovered my sordid secret, my pact with the gods of the shadows. Too bad for you then - you must suffer the same fate as the last pathetic souls who knew.” He stirred human ashes with the toe of his shoe.


Dakshana lunged.

Ashoken flicked his wrist, strengthened the fire. “Who’s first, my ladies?”

The Blank in the Wall

Dakshana flinched the first time one of them touched her; they were real. The shamans made quick work of binding the girls together on one side of the room, and suddenly Dakshana could smell it, the scent of burnt human flesh. She wanted to retch.

“Who are you?” Ashoken demanded.

Dakshana gazed into his eyes and tried to remember the last time she’d seen him, what she knew about him.

“The door’s gone,” Minka muttered, and Dakshana followed her gaze. The wall was blank.

How would they escape now?

Ashoken sketched a rune; fire blossomed. “I said, who are you?”

Unexpected Players

Something wasn’t right. Chadstone narrowed his eyes and leaned in closer to watch. He’d seen Ashoken before, but it was difficult to remember well; none of the Shadowkind were much for remembering mortals who hadn’t been their own prey.

Chadstone reared back, blue eyes wide. That was it. Ashoken had been prey for some of the other Ancients. That couldn’t have been a coincidence, especially given that some of the Ancients had helped Chadstone with the spells for this game. It could only mean one thing - there were unexpected players. He had to sort this out - this was his game.

Living Memories

Dakshana drew back, shielding Minka and Srina as the shamans advanced on her with their spears. So this game wasn’t just meant to make her see her worst memories - she’d have to live through them. This time she wasn’t a child, and she was going to fight.

“Who are they and why are they here?” Ashoken demanded.

“Invaders, probably trying to help the demon-born,” another shaman said.

Ashoken’s eyes narrowed as he stepped toward them, and Dakshana saw recognition, if confused, flash in his eyes when he saw her. “Relatives,” he said. “Bind them. We’ll deal with them later.”

New Dimensions

Chadstone had listened to mortals scream through worse and was unaffected by the memories’ cries. Dakshana’s blank face was - dangerous, to say the least. He’d seen a mortal once go from hyper-emotion to none at all in a split second, and he’d realized, almost too late, what the real change had been. Dakshana grabbed Srina by the arm, nearly wrenching it out of its socket, and lunged for the door where the shamans stood. The shamans, alerted by the commotion, raised their spears. Dakshana drew to a halt, horror in her eyes, and Chadstone smiled. This dimension was new.

Did Your Parents Never Tell

“What’s going on?” Minka asked.

Srina was poking at the wood carvings in the corner, toys Dakshana’s father had made for her.

Dakshana lifted her chin defiantly, hands curled into fists. The shamans had come in the door - which meant she could go out the door.

Srina realized what was going on too late, when Dakshana’s parents were already drowning in rune-fire. She clung to Minka and wept, and Dakshana wondered, cruelly, that she still had tears to cry after all her weeping.

“Dakshana, what –” Minka began.

Dakshana said, “Did your parents never tell you how my parents died?”

Memories of Ashoken

The beauty of the game was that the players had to face down themselves as they advanced through the stages toward the center. Chadstone set the spells, but he didn’t choose what they saw - the spells were powered fully by the minds of the players. He hadn’t expected this, hadn’t known Dakshana as anything other than that single ray of light, brilliant from his place in the shadows. That her worst memory was of her parents’ death was unsurprising - Chadstone had seen many horrible memories in his time. What was surprising was the mortal man - Ashoken. Chadstone remembered him too.

The Burning

Dakshana’s head whipped around, but she knew that sound. She hadn’t heard that sound in years, hadn’t made that sound since - since her parents died.

Srina whimpered and clung to Minka.

Dakshana flung herself backward when a door suddenly appeared in the wall and was thrown open. People poured in - her mother, father, herself, merely a child - and the shamans. Ashoken. There was screaming; her mother was crying. And then Ashoken was yelling, gesturing - and Dakshana knew the symbols against the Eye of Shadows. He was casting them against her child self, and she knew what came next.

The Burning.

Outside the Walls

Chadstone hovered outside the walls, watching. This first test ought to be easy. His mouth twisted into a moue of distaste. He would be annoyed if Dakshana succumbed to this too easily. The Ancients pestered him for his inability to play a good game. He tossed his head, shaking his hair out of his eyes. He had a good game now.

Srina seemed oblivious to the fact that they were in danger and was enjoying the stroll down memory lane. Minka and Dakshana were searching for a way out, though there were no doors. Chadstone smiled, and the screaming began.

Center of the Maze: Childhood

Dakshana flinched back from Chadstone. He did rune magic - magic that was stronger and older and smelled more dark than anything the shamans had done. Ashoken had known this magic, though, and Ashoken was dead. Chadstone was some otherworldly wizard. Dakshana could survive him.

“Yes,” she said. “The maze.” She lifted her chin defiantly. Beside her, Minka looked equally defiant. Srina looked scared.

“After you, then,” Chadstone said, and made a sweeping, expansive gesture.

And the stone room vanished.

Dakshana jumped - and crashed into Minka, who toppled into Srina, who fell against the wall. Of Dakshana’s hut. From her childhood.

Painful Stubbornness

She looked pained, and he didn’t like that. What had hurt her? He wanted to reach out, to soothe her. He sketched a rune in the air - kenaz, for fire - and he plucked a torch from nothing. Was she unnerved by the shadows? Many mortals were, and the shadows of his realm were deeper than any mortal knew - or survived. He held the torch out to her, but she flinched back, and there was that pain again.

If she was going to be stubborn, he would have to offer incentive to cooperate. “You wanted to go to the maze, then?”