Snake Heart (8 page)

Yanko used his meager telekinesis skills to prod at the ceiling with his mind. When nothing happened, he switched his prodding to the floor, reasoning that the trap would be set to trigger when someone walked across. If he were better at levitation, he might have simply floated through the area. Maybe the Kyattese had done that.

Something in the rock depressed as he was poking around. Even though he should have expected something like that, it startled him.

Light and heat flared with the intensity of a sun. He stumbled back, raising an arm for protection and trying to channel cool air from behind him into the passage to push back the flames. His attempt to diminish the fire did nothing, and it continued to flood the tunnel with heat. Fortunately, all that heat stayed in the passage ahead. Yanko and Lakeo were far enough back that they were not hurt. After a minute, the inferno died out, leaving the tunnel as empty as before.

“I feel it now,” Lakeo announced.

“Your skills are progressing nicely.”

“Dak’s not here. I could smack you.”

“I do win most of the encounters when we spar, you know.”

“Yeah, but if a woman smacked you, you would let her, because you’d know you deserved it. If Arayevo smacked you, you’d probably gaze back at her with adoring moon eyes.”

Yanko did not want to think about Arayevo, especially if she had slept with that knob-headed captain, and then taken off while leaving them behind.

“It looks like the trap can be triggered again and again,” he said, studying the ground and searching for more places that could be indented. “I think I can lead us past it now that I know what I’m looking for.”

“
Think
, huh?”

“Step precisely where I step.” Yanko thought of the skeletons near the mouth of the cave. Had they belonged to people who had been caught by the flames? Maybe they had run, their skin scorched and melting from their bodies, hoping to find relief in the pool. But they had never made it. Or maybe some of them had. If one dove to the bottom, would one find more skeletons?

“What if I wait here and don’t do any stepping at all?” Lakeo muttered.

Yanko had already started through the trap area, but he paused to look back. Maybe it would be better if she
did
stay behind. Why endanger both of them? But he didn’t like the way she was gazing back in the direction of the waterfall, her face full of contemplation. Was she thinking of stealing the underwater boat again? Yanko doubted that submerging and steering it would be easy skills to master, especially if it relied upon Turgonian technology instead of Kyattese magic. She might end up damaging it or sending it to the bottom of the pool where nobody could use it.

“That’s up to you,” Yanko said, “but I’m not going to loot anything back there except for the lodestone. If you want riches, you better come along.”

Lakeo propped a fist on her hip. “Really, Yanko? If you found a pirate’s stash, you wouldn’t bring back a valuable piece of treasure for a lady? That’s inconsiderate.”

Yanko continued on, concentrating on the ground and the trigger points rather than replying.

After issuing a dramatic sigh, Lakeo followed him, shadowing him step for step.

“We’re past the area,” he said when they had left the Made rock behind. “I’ll continue slowly and watch for more trouble.”

“Good thing you’re leading. Apparently, I have the senses of a rock.” Her tone had gone from flippant to disgusted.

“You just need practice.”

“I need a good school. That’s all I want the money for, you know. I don’t want to steal things to pay for it. But a seventy-year-old pirate’s treasure, that’s fair game, right? Anyone can claim it—and sell it to pay for a ridiculously exorbitant education.”

Yanko wasn’t so sure that Tomokosis’s stash would be considered “fair game” by the Kyattese, not when the stolen items had come out of their museum and had been recorded and itemized in their archives and newspapers. There would be no question as to who the rightful owners were. It was possible Tomokosis had dragged other items back here, he supposed, ones whose provenance would be unknown. Those might be claimed.

“Perhaps you could find someone who would take you on as an apprentice,” he suggested, then lifted a hand, sensing another Made item ahead of them. It felt similar to the last, where the rocks themselves had been treated. He spotted more of the places on the ground that could be indented and nodded to himself.

“I don’t know any masters who would train a... me,” Lakeo said.

“You are nettlesome.”

“Careful, Yanko. You’ll offend someone with that profane mouth someday.”

He pointed at the ground. “Follow my steps again.”

“Same kind of trap?”

“It appears to be so.”

“How unimaginative. I figured the second trap would involve a flood or maybe the walls would come crashing together and squish us.”

“Just be glad they’ve been magical so far.” Yanko walked close to the wall, avoiding the triggers on the ground. “Tomokosis must have had a Maker for a cohort. If he’d had an engineer... well, I wouldn’t be able to sense non-magical traps.” He grimaced at the thought. What if Tomokosis
had
brought an engineer with him, or had possessed such skills himself? Yanko had better watch for physical tripwires as well as magical ones.

A scream tore through the air, coming from ahead of them.

Yanko jumped, then cursed himself. If he was careless and brought a foot down on one of the trigger spots, he could never shield Lakeo and himself in time. He wasn’t even sure he had the
ability
to shield against the power of the infernos.

“That sounded like a woman,” Lakeo whispered, a step behind him.

A second scream traveled down the passage to them, this one followed by a man’s yell.

“It has to be the Kyattese team,” Yanko said.

He focused on the ground so he could get them through the dangerous area. Once past it, he resisted the urge to hurry, lest he stumble into more traps. But the screams and shouts continued. They made him want to rush forward to help. Even if these people were his competition, he didn’t want to see them get killed. Also, a selfish part of his mind couldn’t help but think he might sneak in and grab the lodestone while the Kyattese were dealing with... whatever it was they were dealing with.

An eerie screech echoed down the passage, raising the hair on the back of Yanko’s neck.

“The ox god’s puckered butthole, what is
that
?” Lakeo demanded.

“Nothing natural.”

Yanko drew his sword before continuing down the passage. More screams sounded, screams of utter pain. Someone was shouting choppy orders, but Yanko could not understand the language. The tunnel curved and grew lighter. Lanterns or perhaps a fire burned up ahead. The dancing yellow and orange flames flickered, reflecting off the walls and mingling with the blue from Yanko’s mage light. He let his magic fade, not wanting to herald their arrival.

The tunnel widened ahead of them. Something huge and reddish-gray ran—almost flew—through his view. It was gone before he could identify it. He’d received a vague impression of an animal, but as the inhuman cry sounded again, he became even more certain that nothing natural had made it. This must be some other trap, some eternal guardian left to protect its master’s treasures.

Bows twanged. The person who had been screaming stopped, though a few whimpers were audible underneath the scared shouts. Yanko crept closer to the chamber. He doubted that bows or swords would stop whatever this creature was. Unfortunately, he didn’t know if
he
could stop it, either.

A bow twanged from right beside the entrance to the chamber. Yanko hesitated. Should he reveal himself?

The reddish creature leaped into sight. It rose on two fat, column-like legs and beat at its chest with fists—no paws. Sharp fangs leered from a mouth more human than animal, and the red eyes that stared at Yanko were utterly alien. Visible to his mind’s eye, multiple auras swirled around it, almost like human souls, but they were knotted and tangled, all mashed together into one body.

As the creature crouched to spring, realization crashed into Yanko, and he knew what he was looking at, what was looking at
him
. A soul construct. One of the earliest ambulatory Made creations, powered by death, by the souls given up in a ceremony to create it. He’d read of such things, but had never expected to see one. Nobody used such savage and cruel methods for crafting magical constructs anymore. There were modern ways, more advanced ways, ways that didn’t require
killing
groups of people.

As indignant as he felt by the creature’s presence, Yanko had little time to contemplate it. Since its eyes had locked onto him, he was sure he would be its next target. Would his sword do anything to harm it?

An arrow clanked into the construct’s head. It bounced off, not leaving so much as a chip in the rock-like body. No, a sword wouldn’t do anything. The creature took a step toward Yanko. But then a wave of wind-driven power slammed into its side. Yanko could not see the attack with his eyes, but he felt the magic being used as a draft of air was sucked past him, drawn into the chamber before being channeled at the construct. The team had a weather mage, or the Kyattese equivalent.

The creature did not appear damaged from the gust of wind, but it screeched again and spun toward its attacker, someone that Yanko could not see from the tunnel. The construct charged in that direction. The bowman he’d heard earlier cursed, then ran into the chamber after the creature.

Hoping nobody was watching his passage, Yanko crept out. He would have liked to leap out, flinging fireballs the way Sun Dragon could, but he knew he should apply his strengths. He might only get one chance to attack.

To his left, a couple of bulky bags, a stack of books, and some other items he didn’t have time to examine leaned against the wall. To the right, two men and a woman battled with the soul construct. One other woman lay on the ground, crumpled against a wall, blood saturating her clothing. She might already be dead. The other woman carried no weapons, and Yanko felt her drawing upon power, trying to attack the soul construct with her mind while the men leaped at it with swords. They had dropped their bows and were trying to hack at it like loggers, driving it away from the woman. The creature must have known she was the most dangerous, because it wouldn’t be distracted from her.

No longer bothering to hide himself, Yanko tried to come up with an attack he could use. His first instinct would have been to collapse part of the chamber and bury the monster. But with the Kyattese all around it, he couldn’t risk burying them too. He considered how rock-like the construct’s body was and wondered if earth magic had been involved in its creation. If it was comprised largely of stone or clay, maybe he could affect it with
his
earth magic.

He stretched his hand toward it, as if that might help him get a sense of faults and weaknesses within the blocky body. His vision blurred as he tried to see how the pieces had once gone together, seeking tiny fractures he might exploit. But the thing seemed to have been melted together with great heat, and he could not find any cracks inside of it.

The construct knocked one of the swordsmen aside with a massive arm. The man cried out as he was flung into the air. He smashed into the wall with an audible crack, his head striking stone. He crumpled and did not rise.

Yanko cursed himself for hesitating, for taking so much time to assess the creature when people were in trouble. He threw an attack, trying to snap and break off one of the creature’s arms, using the same method he would to sheer rock from a cliff.

The construct screeched and spun toward him. Its arm did
not
fall off. It was as if his attack had slid right off the creature.

Both of those bulky arms raised, and it sprang toward Yanko, more like a cougar than a heavy two-legged monster. With no time to concentrate on magic, Yanko relied on his reflexes. He leaped to the side as the construct sailed toward him, throwing out a desperate slash with his sword.

The blade met what felt like solid stone, clanging uselessly off and jarring his arm. At least he avoided being hit. He rolled several times before coming up. A bow twanged and another arrow bounced off the construct. The creature did not even notice. It ran after Yanko again.

Cursing himself for wasting his surprise attack doing something that hadn’t worked, Yanko sprinted along the wall, trying to keep ahead of the construct. He glimpsed Lakeo—she was rummaging in the goods, but she leaped out of the way, pressing her back to the wall as Yanko raced past followed by the construct. He wanted to yell at her to help, but arrows and swords were doing nothing. It would take magic, powerful magic.

A gust of wind slammed into the construct with such ferocity that it tottered, bumping into the wall. Yanko felt the tail end of that blast and was almost hurtled into the wall himself. He caught his balance, sprinted to the other side of the chamber, and turned back, hoping he had time to launch an attack.

The construct’s attention had once again been diverted toward the weather mage. The Kyattese woman, her blonde hair tangled about her face, her clothes torn and stained with blood, stared grimly at the creature. She raised her hands and threw another gust of wind. It struck the construct, but again did not damage it, only delayed it. Still, it gave Yanko the seconds he needed to try another magical attack.

“Go with what you know,” he muttered and examined the ceiling with his mind. The chamber might have been carved out by a mage decades ago, the walls smooth and unmarred, but he sensed the ancient and porous lava rock above it.

As the construct recovered from the wind attack and started toward the woman, Yanko channeled his power into some of the pockets of air in the rock above the center of the chamber. Snaps and cracks sounded, a warning of the inevitable. The Kyattese heard it and understood what it meant—the two who still stood and fought skittered back to the far wall. Yanko held his final thrust of energy, waiting for the construct to step beneath the spot. Then he threw his strength into bringing down an eight-food-wide section of the ceiling.