Snake Heart (Chains of Honor #2) -Lindsay Buroker Page 0,21
maps and information that he and Dak lacked. But he hadn’t forgotten the pirates heading this way. He didn’t have much time, and if the Kyattese were already inside, he might be too late. What if they were pulling out the lodestone right now? What would he do if he came face to face with four armed men, one of whom might be a far more experienced mage than he?
Despite the worries jumping around in his head, Yanko kept going. He skirted ferns dangling in the water and found a six-inch-wide rock ledge that led up to the waterfall. Heavy droplets spattered him, soon drenching his silks, but he found his way behind the curtain of water and to the cave mouth.
In the utter darkness, he relied upon his mental senses to guide him. Even with that advantage, his sandals kept slipping on the damp rocks, and he nearly pitched over twice. He was considering whether a light would be visible to someone outside when he stubbed his toe on something. Whatever it was clattered away. Driftwood, he guessed, or the remains of some old campfire. He decided to risk his light, since his senses felt muted in here, as if he were trying to hear but someone had plugged his ears. Besides, entering a cave in the dark was eerie. He remembered warning Lakeo that there might be traps back here.
When he conjured a sphere of illumination, the soft blue light showed the cave, less rugged and natural than he expected. It looked like someone had hewn it from the rock, or even used magic to carve it out. The striated stone walls were relatively smooth.
Yanko looked down to verify that he had kicked a piece of wood, but gasped and stepped back. It wasn’t wood.
A human skull had rolled over to the rock wall, the jawbone missing, the empty eye sockets staring accusingly at him. The bone was yellowed and worn—it must have been there for years, if not decades. That did not make him feel better about stumbling across it here.
“Sorry, fallen one,” he whispered, then mentally added a quick chorus of the chant for the dead, one that encouraged resting souls to continue resting instead of returning to haunt those in the present. It seemed a wise precaution to take after kicking a skull.
“Talking to bones? Is that better or worse than talking to turtles?”
Yanko whirled, his hand dropping to his sword before he realized who it was. “Lakeo!”
He gaped at her. Her wild hair dripped onto her shoulders, and her clothes were ripped and stained. She still carried her weapons, though, a sword and a bow.
“Were you expecting someone else?” Lakeo asked.
“How did you get away from the pirates?” Yanko blurted at the same time as she looked around and asked a question of her own.
“Where’s Dak?”
“He went to rescue you,” Yanko said. “From the pirates.”
“What pirates?”
They stared at each other, their brows creased.
“I haven’t seen any pirates or anyone else since leaving you,” Lakeo said slowly.
“Then who was under the tarp?” Yanko scowled down at the skull as if it might have answers.
Realizing Lakeo had no idea what he was talking about, he waved for her to walk deeper into the cave with him and explained. He hadn’t had much time before, but now he worried that he needed to finish up more quickly so he could go look for Dak, who might be rescuing somebody they didn’t even know. And maybe someone who didn’t need rescuing at all. What if that had been a ruse? A trap designed to lure Yanko and his party in? If so, they had surely fallen for it.
“Slow down, will you?” Lakeo jogged a couple of steps and grabbed his arm.
“There’s not much time.” He looked into the darkness ahead, his light showing them a passage about ten feet high and wide that curved toward the cliff Yanko had been on top of earlier.
“Unless someone was using this as a burial chamber, we might want to make time.” Lakeo pointed to bones in the dirt at the edges of the tunnel.
Yanko had assumed they belonged to the same person as the skull and that some animals had been back here and scattered them around, but now that he took a closer look, he spotted duplicates of arm and leg bones. More than one person had died in here.
“I’m guessing the Mausoleum Bandit didn’t want people raiding his treasure chamber,” Lakeo said.