Snake Heart (Chains of Honor #2) -Lindsay Buroker Page 0,112

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