Snake Heart

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Why don’t you and I go chat with Sun Dragon, Dak?” Yanko said. “And feel free to bring as many burly Turgonians as you like.”

  “Do we get to come along?” Lakeo asked.

  “Sure. You’re burly enough.”

  “Thanks,” she said dryly.

  “What do you think Sun Dragon will reveal?” Dak asked.

  “Out loud, where you can hear him? I’m not sure. He likes to chat in my head. He offered to keep me alive if I went up to join him.”

  “Magnanimous of him.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Yanko started for the steps that led atop the forecastle, pausing only to make sure Dak followed. He didn’t want to be caught up there alone with Sun Dragon. Dak, Arayevo, and Lakeo were following him. He took solace in the support and allowed himself some confidence as he strode up the steps. That confidence faltered when he reached the top, for he found not only Sun Dragon but the white-clad mage hunter up there, her hair bound again, her hood pulled up so only her face showed. She stood to the side of Sun Dragon and watched Yanko with impassive eyes.

  Bodyguard, her stance said.

  Well, he had a bodyguard, too, and he would pit Dak against her in any fight. He just wished he was as certain that he could come out ahead in a fight against Sun Dragon.

  The graying mage stood at the railing, his elbow propped upon it, his chin resting on the lodestone. He wore a backpack, along with an ornate scimitar that hung in a wide scabbard on the belt that cinched his crimson robe shut. White and golden hems filled with runes adorned that robe, reminding Yanko much of the one he wore.

  “Planning a trip, Sun Dragon?” Dak asked, flicking a hand toward the pack.

  “Yes, very soon now,” Sun Dragon said without looking back at him. “We’re almost there.”

  Can you feel it, White Fox? he added silently.

  Yanko felt the presence of the lodestone, but, assuming the mage had more in mind, he let his senses trickle downward. They were approaching an underwater volcano, with lava oozing out of fissures in the earth’s crust. All manner of strange vegetation grew around the steamy water. Intrigued by the underwater growth, Yanko almost missed the more obvious thing down there: a pulsing crater that he felt with his mind, its magic almost pulling at him.

  He walked to the railing, half expecting to see some sign of it down there with his eyes. Quiet waves lapped at the black hull of the ironclad. The water and the depths hid everything else from mundane sight.

  “It’s calling for the key,” Sun Dragon whispered, pressing his lips to the lodestone. “It’s been waiting for centuries.”

  Yanko stepped closer to him, an inkling of what the man intended growing in his mind. What would happen, indeed, if the land rose up while the Turgonian fleet floated over it? As Dak had admitted, nothing good.

  Before he drew close to Sun Dragon, the mage hunter moved to intercept Yanko. Dak moved to intercept her. A throwing star appeared in one of her hands, a dagger in the other. Dak drew a cutlass he had acquired since boarding the ship. The two of them stared at each other.

  “It’s time,” Sun Dragon said, glancing toward the mage hunter, then smiling at Yanko. “It wants to be returned to its home. I don’t think it will take any earth magic, after all. Just a good toss.”

  He lifted his arm, like a hunter about to throw a spear. The lodestone flared golden in his hand.

  Yanko lunged for him, afraid of what would happen to all the ships that floated behind them. Metal clashed to his side, Dak engaging the hunter. Yanko caught Sun Dragon’s shoulder, but not before he hurtled the lodestone into the water.

  Chapter 24

  As soon as the lodestone tumbled into the water, Sun Dragon spun toward Yanko, his hands flaring with the orange of flame. Yanko wrapped a protective shield around himself and backed up, wanting time to react. Perhaps it was the wrong move. Smiling tightly, Sun Dragon seemed to think it a sign of fear. He lunged for Yanko, flames eating the air all around him.

  With his barriers up, Yanko did not feel the heat. He made a scoop of air with his mind and pulled water from the sea below. It floated up and doused Sun Dragon.

  His flames were powerful enough to burn even while water saturated his robe, but he snarled at Yanko, clearly annoyed with the trick. He raised both hands and hurled a blast of fire. It battered Yanko’s shield, but he was getting better at repelling attacks. His opponent was not weak by any measure, but he lacked the pure power that Pey Lu had thrown at Yanko.

  Sun Dragon drew his scimitar, and an eerie silver glow ran along the blade like fire. He swiped it at Yanko, who didn’t even have a knife. He was, after all, a prisoner on this ship.

  Yanko jumped back before the blade sliced through his gut—it had no trouble slicing through the shield he had created. Sun Dragon hurled another fireball at him, following it with an attack from the sword. Once again, Yanko could deflect the fire, but he had to skitter back to avoid the cut. His back struck the railing. He was aware of Dak and the assassin fighting, neither sparing a glance for him and Sun Dragon.

  As Sun Dragon raised the sword for an overhead blow, one that would have cracked down on Yanko’s skull since he was out of room to run, Lakeo came out of nowhere, barreling into the mage’s side. She caught him by surprise, shoving him against the railing. Sun Dragon snarled and flung his arm, hurling power along with it. She was blasted from her feet. She crashed into Arayevo, who’d also been coming to help, and they tumbled to the deck together.

  “Yanko,” Arayevo barked. She threw him a cutlass.

  He had no idea where she’d gotten it, but he caught it by the hilt. At the least, he could deflect the wicked scimitar with it.

  Sun Dragon turned back toward him. “I’ve wanted to kill you for weeks, boy,” he snarled, spinning his scimitar in one hand, as if he were performing tricks for some awed backwoods audience at a traveling stunt show.

  “Why?” Yanko asked. “Killing me doesn’t change any of the things my mother has done in her life.” He didn’t even know if that was why Sun Dragon hated him, but it seemed to be why the rest of the world hated him.

  “But it will hurt her, the bitch. Especially now that she’s met you.”

  Yanko felt bewildered. It wasn’t as if Pey Lu had cooed over him and leaped for joy at their reunion.

  Lakeo tried to charge Sun Dragon again, but she crashed into a wall of air. As Sun Dragon advanced on Yanko, soldiers ran up the steps, rifles in hand. A wall of flame burst into the air in front of them, and they halted. One tried to leap through it, not to get to Yanko, but to reach Dak, probably to help him, but the man bounced off the way Lakeo had.

  Yanko lowered into a fighting crouch, sensing he was on his own with Sun Dragon. He didn’t know how much time he had, since he could feel something happening below the surface. Through magic rather than throwing accuracy, the lodestone had found its home within that crater, the spot that had pulsed with magical energy. Now, the entire top of that volcano seemed to pulse. The waves on the surface barely stirred, but Yanko could feel the magic resounding in his mind like a drumbeat. If Sun Dragon worried about what he had started, it did not show on his face.

  He lashed out at Yanko, the scimitar in his right hand and a ball of fire burning above the palm of his left. Yanko deflected the blade strike, turning his side to Sun Dragon, as Dak had taught him to do when he had only one weapon. Almost without thought, he parried the sword blows while his mind focused on coming up with a magical attack that he could use against the mage.

  A woman’s cry of pain came from behind Sun Dragon, and he glanced back for an instant. Dak had the mage hunter down, down but not defeated. She rolled away from him, leaving blood on the deck. Dak lunged after her.

  Focused on Sun Dragon, Yanko took advantage of the brief respite. He blasted his opponent with the same mental attack he had used on others in the last week, trying to make him believe that his fiery hand had flared out of control and that the flames would burn him. Yanko doubted the tri
ck would fool him for long—or at all—so he scoured the sea under the ship, hoping he might find some ally to call upon once again. But every fish, jellyfish, octopus, and clam was swimming away or burrowing into the sand for safety. The lava had stopped flowing from the volcano, as if the tiny lodestone had somehow plugged up all of the outlets. Energy built up down below, distracting Yanko from his search.

  “You’ve gotten stronger, boy,” Sun Dragon said, wiping away the attack like a man dashing a splash of water out of his eyes. “She’ll be upset to lose you.”

  “Do you feel what’s going on underneath us?” Yanko asked, shouting to be heard over the clash of steel, because Sun Dragon was attacking him again, that silvery scimitar leaving streaks of light in the air as it slashed in and out. “We could all be destroyed if it keeps building up.”

  “Not me.” Sun Dragon paused his attack long enough to call upon another type of magic. Though his hand still burned with a fireball poised to throw, his feet lifted a couple of inches from the deck.

  “You can’t levitate all the way home.” Yanko summoned more energy and hurled another blast of wind at him. Maybe it would knock him over the rail.

  The attack did seem to startle Sun Dragon, but he recovered before he was knocked back more than a couple of feet, and he deflected the wind, turning it instead toward the soldiers crowding the top of the stairs. Flames still danced, threatening them, and keeping them back. But one or two had started shooting. A bullet clanged off the deck between Sun Dragon and Yanko.

  Grimly, Yanko realized he would be as likely a target for the worried soldiers as his foe.

  “I won’t have to levitate all the way home.” Sun Dragon nodded toward a distant horizon.

  Yanko couldn’t see anything, but could only assume that some other ship waited out there for him. Maybe even one hidden by an illusion or a shield of invisibility?

  “You’re planning to destroy the entire Turgonian fleet first?” Yanko kept yelling, hoping the soldiers would hear him and realize that they had a stake in the outcome of this Nurian-on-Nurian battle. He also hoped they would realize who the true threat was. “What will that accomplish? Some of them will survive and know you were responsible. It’ll be war again.”

  “Excellent. There’s nothing like an external threat to unite a squabbling people. Especially when a superior war chief appears to lead them.”

  “You?” Yanko asked incredulously.

  “Me. This seaweed-drenched mass is worthless. But we’ll weaken Turgonia by demolishing this fleet, and then we’ll send our armies to their homeland. Their ore and fertile farms will be ours, once a powerful leader takes charge.”

  “Are you addled? We can’t start a war now. Our people need to eat.”

  “There will be food aplenty once the world is ours.” Sun Dragon lifted his arm, the fireball growing from palm-sized to head-sized in his hand. He flung it at Yanko.

  Pure energy roared at him within the dancing orb of flames, and Yanko struggled to shield himself. Some of the fire got through, singeing his hair and blistering his skin. He couldn’t last if all he did was defend himself. He had to find a way to hurt his opponent. If they had been on land, he could have caused an upheaval beneath Sun Dragon, opened a fissure to swallow him, or perhaps knocked him off his feet. The metal deck offered him nothing.

  “Stop firing,” Dak yelled at the same time as he lunged for the mage. He broke through the barrier Sun Dragon had erected around himself.

  Sun Dragon’s eyes widened, the Turgonians’ rifles fell silent, and Yanko had one blessed moment when he wasn’t being pressed. He searched the sea below them again, hoping vainly to find some help. He didn’t spot any sea life, but the ship was floating past a massive kelp bed that bobbed among the waves.

  Fire scorched the air as Dak came within Sun Dragon’s reach. His cutlass clashed with the mage’s scimitar, but then he stumbled back, the fire too physical an attack for him to defeat with his mental barriers.

  Though Yanko felt silly even as he devised the attack, he sliced through the strands anchoring the kelp to the bottom and lifted the rest with his mind, raising it above the hull and over the railing. Though it seemed like sea trash floating on the surface, it lived, as any plant did, and he coerced it to move, as he had once convinced strands of grass to form traps to entangle people. The kelp struck Sun Dragon in the back. Long rubbery tendrils wrapped around him, startling him with their clammy dampness. He might have thought some creature attacked him, because he shrieked with surprise and tried to twist to find an opponent, slashing wildly with his scimitar.

  “Grow,” Yanko whispered, sending his own energy into the kelp cells, giving them the raw material to extend their reach, to wrap even more tightly around Sun Dragon.

  The fire faltered, and Dak leaped back in. He rammed his elbow into the mage’s back, then hoisted him into the air with both hands, hardly caring that kelp writhed all about him, like some living animal. He roared and hurled Sun Dragon over the railing.

  Yanko rushed forward so he could press the attack, keep the kelp wrapped around and entangling the man. But Sun Dragon seemed to burst into flame as he tumbled toward the water. He incinerated every shred of plant matter around him, and started levitating before he plunged into the sea.

  Yanko searched for something else to throw at him, to keep him from levitating back up to the ship. The energy continued to build in the caldera below them—Sun Dragon practically hovered over it. Could Yanko push the magic along its path? Would it shoot a geyser up, or would it simply shift some tectonic plate deep below?

  A whistle screeched on the ship behind them.

  “Now what?” Dak growled, only turning partway from the railing.

  Sun Dragon wasn’t trying to float back up. Instead, he hovered over the waves, his arms folded over his chest. He glared up at Yanko.

  Not as satisfying as killing you myself, but it will do, he spoke into Yanko’s mind.

  A horn blasted, drowning out the whistle. Someone made an announcement in Turgonian.

  “What is it?” Lakeo asked, joining Dak and Yanko at the railing and frowning down at the warrior mage.

  Dak glared down at Sun Dragon. “Boiler failure imminent. We’ll have to abandon the ship if it can’t be controlled.” He gripped Yanko’s shoulder for a second. “I have to go help. Lakeo.” Dak jerked his head toward Yanko’s back before sprinting toward the stairs.

  “Guess I’m guarding your back now,” Lakeo muttered. “Not that I could even get to your back last time. At least Arayevo is doing something.”

  That something was aiming a pistol at the mage hunter’s head. The woman knelt, gripping her ribs, her face bruised and blood dripping from her clothes to the deck. She had been disarmed, at least of the sword she had wielded earlier.

  Yanko faced Sun Dragon again, his fingers wrapping around the railing. He didn’t understand Turgonian technology, but he could feel the fear gripping the soldiers in the passages below decks, and he could guess what would happen if this boiler failed.

  This time, he didn’t think about an attack to throw at Sun Dragon. He simply lashed out with his mind, imagining the mage’s windpipe being crushed, imagining the earth beneath the sea erupting, and lava shooting up to burn him to death. The latter didn’t happen, but Sun Dragon’s smug expression faltered. Yanko clenched a fist, as if he could cut off the man’s air supply by doing so. Desperation and fury filled him with enough determination that he thought he could kill.

  “What’re you doing?” Lakeo whispered. “It’s working. It’s working.”

  He barely heard her. The alarm blared behind them, and Sun Dragon had started a counterattack. The mage would rather attack than defend. Yanko felt pressure building inside of his head. He tried to wall off his mind at the same time as he continued to squeeze on Sun Dragon’s throat. But despite what his mother had told him, he couldn’t split his concentration to do both at the same time. A pounding started in his head, pain coming with each thump. He imagined
his skull exploding and his brain gushing out. Terror filled him, and he lost all thoughts of attack. He pulled defenses close about him, trying to push the other man out of his head.

  Then a great boom sounded, and the deck quaked so hard that Yanko was thrown onto his back. The boiler. That was his first thought. He scrambled to his feet, not sure whether he needed to run and help people to escape, or whether it was too late, and they should dive overboard.

  But the explosion hadn’t come from the bowels of the ship. A meters-wide stream of lava shot straight up out of the sea, out of the spot where the lodestone had been planted.

  The ironclad was too close, and some of that lava would be landing on the deck soon, but Yanko couldn’t keep from rushing to the railing and staring. The power of the earth joined with ancient magic sent the lava shooting hundreds if not thousands of feet into the sky. And Yanko could feel far more happening beneath the sea. Earth shifted, massive slabs grinding together or pulling apart. The waves grew agitated, splashing on the surface like tub water after something was dropped in, but with even more agitation occurring below. Silt flew up from the seafloor, and the currents wavered and shifted. The ripples would be felt for miles, if not all the way to the closest islands and landmasses.

  More alarms blared from within the ironclad, and the other ships echoed them. Yanko looked for Sun Dragon, expecting to see him still levitating above the surface, still smiling smugly over at him, perhaps preparing another attack. But he didn’t see the mage anywhere.

  “Unbelievable,” Lakeo breathed. She’d kept her grip on the railing and had never been knocked back. “Yanko, did you do that on purpose?”

  “I didn’t do anything.” With a jolt, he realized he couldn’t sense Sun Dragon anywhere, not below the surface or above it.

  Lakeo stared at him. “That lava came up right under him and incinerated him.”

  “Incinerated?”

  That couldn’t happen. Could it?

  Yanko remembered imagining that, trying to make the volcano erupt, but he hadn’t truly been the one to do that, had he? His blood ran cold at the thought. No, the lodestone was what had started the chain reaction. Maybe he’d nudged it along, but if Sun Dragon had been floating above a volcano he’d activated, then he could only blame himself for his death.