Snake Heart (35 page)

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.

Yanko swallowed, not feeling as comforted by his reasoning as he’d hoped.

Lakeo cursed. “Look out. That stuff is landing.”

Grayish-orange lava splatted onto the deck, steaming where it struck. Ash was filling the sky, too, and getting indoors sounded like a very good idea. The ironclad’s helmsman was turning the ship, but it would take time to escape, and Yanko wasn’t even sure if they
could
escape. So far, only the eruption of lava was visible above the surface, but he could feel the seafloor bucking and heaving under the water. The formerly placid waves shivered and jumped all around, and even the big ironclad was affected, rocking as it turned away.

As more lava plopped down, Yanko started for the stairs, a notion of finding Dak in mind. He didn’t make it more than a step. A squad of soldiers had flooded onto their deck, rifles at the ready. Though Lakeo, Arayevo, and the mage hunter were up there with him, the Turgonians all aimed their weapons at Yanko’s chest.

“Uh.” He glanced at the lava fountain, which didn’t seem to be losing any of its vigor. “I didn’t do it.”

The alarms continued to blare from all over the ship, and Yanko did not know if the men heard him. They approached warily, their eyes full of trepidation, but determination as well.

“Drop your weapons.”

Yanko tossed his borrowed sword to the deck, where it joined Sun Dragon’s blade, the fancy scimitar no longer glowing.

“It’s possible I could help with the, uh...” Yanko flicked his fingers toward the interior of the ship, though he didn’t even know where the boiler room was. Dak’s tour hadn’t been that thorough.

“Shut up,” one of the older soldiers approaching him said, his finger tight on the trigger of his rifle. “And take off that dress.”

“It’s not a weapon,” Yanko said.

“Ancestor’s piss, it isn’t. And don’t even think of touching that sword.”

“I think they saw what you did,” Lakeo muttered, that rare note of awe in her voice again. It was the same tone she’d had when she had realized he’d called up a kraken to destroy a ship. Once again, he did not feel it was deserved. He’d done nothing but nudge an already-building magical charge over the edge.

He shook his head, as much for her as for the soldiers. He had no wish to remove his clothes, especially with lava raining down—even as he had the thought, one of the soldiers yelped when a clod of lava landed on his shoulder, burning through his uniform.

“That wasn’t a request,” the older soldier said, not realizing he was echoing Sun Dragon’s earlier words.

Yanko thought about disarming the men, knocking the rifles aside, or flinging an image of fire into their minds, but with everything else going on, did he truly want to pick a fight? He couldn’t levitate all the way home any more than Sun Dragon could have, and as long as Dak was still alive and on the ship, Yanko shouldn’t be locked up indefinitely. Or killed.

Yanko unbelted the mage robe and tugged the garment over his head. The soldiers waved for him to strip off his tunic and silk trousers, too, leaving him with only his knee-length smallclothes. They searched even those for hidden weapons. He shivered, enduring the torment. Nothing protected his torso from the spattering lava or the cold wind that had started up.

“This way, wizard,” the Turgonian growled, leaving the clothes in a heap and jerking his head toward the stairs.

“Is the boiler still in danger of blowing up?” Yanko did not want to be locked in a cell if the ironclad might explode all around him.

“Yes.”

Yanko hesitated. Four of the soldiers came forward, two disarming Arayevo and two more hoisting the mage hunter to her feet.

“Get them into the brig,” the senior soldier ordered.

Someone shoved Yanko toward the steps. Once again, he thought about fighting back, about diving overboard, but he told himself that he could escape from a mundane iron-barred cell at any time, with or without his robe. He would go along for now, stay out of the way, and hope to talk to Dak later. If he got a chance, he could tell Dak he might be able to help with the boiler problem. Once he had a quiet moment in his cell, maybe he could even discern the problem with his senses and help solve it.

Yanko looked back at the sea as the soldiers pushed him toward the steps. He faltered, almost tripping. The lava was still spewing, but it wasn’t the only thing that had broken the surface. In the distance, perhaps two miles away, a ridge had risen above the water, stretching as far as the eye could see to the east and west. The crest of that underwater mountain range.

Someone jabbed him in the back with a rifle muzzle, forcing him to continue walking.

If the ironclad did not blow up, and if it did not get stuck on the emerging land, maybe Yanko would be able to see this new continent coming into existence from a porthole in his jail cell.

Chapter 25

T
hey did not take Yanko, Lakeo, and Arayevo to the brig, not right away. Before they made it below decks, the first rock—or mountaintop—scraped at the hull of the ironclad. Half of the soldiers escorting them raced off, called away to duty stations. The other half forced Yanko and his friends to stand against a bulkhead on the main deck. The mage hunter stood with them, leaning against the wall, a hand to her stomach, blood staining her fingers. Her eyes were closed, her jaw clenched as she breathed deeply, dealing with her pain and ignoring everything around her. More soldiers than seemed necessary pointed their rifles at Yanko’s chest. He was tempted to point out that the woman—Jhali—was more dangerous than he.