Flames of Mana

by Matt Larkin

  At least against threats from without.

  Nyi Rara found Kuku Lau in the heart of the Dakuwaqa compound, along with Commander Ake, and Tilafaiga. Her sister spoke in hushed whispers that the waters carried farther than she probably intended.

  “Aiaru has failed the kingdom. Indeed, the most complete failure in recorded history. Not even when the Sundering split Mu in half did we lose the capital. When, if not now, do you imagine Dakuwaqa will ever be in a better position to reclaim the throne?”

  Tilafaiga was already shaking her head. “Aiaru has sat on the throne for some twenty-four centuries. How do you think Ukupanipo ‘Ohana will react to us rising against them in the middle of a war? Deep! How do you think our own ‘ohana will react? They will say you jeopardize the whole kingdom for personal ambition.”

  Kuku Lau sneered, flipping her tail around. “So I should wait until Aiaru has restored the city and renewed the faith in her leadership? Now is when we are poised to reclaim what is rightfully ours. Unless you’ve forgotten, Aiaru also stole the throne during the Rogo War.”

  “After it,” Tilafaiga protested. “After your grandfather lost it.”

  “We didn’t lose!”

  “You delude yourself. The he‘e slaves were freed, half the ‘ohanas left Mu to found Hiyoya, our own ‘ohana split in half, and Mu lost three-fifths of its territories in the space of a few years. If that’s not losing, you may need to reexamine your definition of victory.”

  Kuku Lau drew herself up, dangerously close to her cousin. “You forget yourself. I lead this ‘ohana. I set our course.”

  Nyi Rara groaned and everyone looked at her. “Do you not think, maybe, you should focus your efforts on the cephalopods trying to destroy our hosts and banish us from this entire realm? That perhaps we ought to concern ourselves with the fact that Kanaloa has the Urchin and might use it to find us, wherever we hide? That the Muian civilization itself is at stake?”

  “That’s the point,” Kuku Lau snapped. “For more than two thousand years, we followed Aiaru and this is where she led us. Hiding in a hole in the seafloor, praying our former slaves don’t know where to find us. We are the gods of this world! Deities of the ocean, and we cower because in two thousand years Aiaru and Kuula ‘Ohana never managed to restore the glory of Mu. What makes you think we can count on her now?”

  Nyi Rara looked to Ake. “A coup risks civil war if the others don’t immediately fall in line.”

  The commander nodded with obvious reluctance. His eyes held enough answer. As if to say he would do whatever Nyi Rara’s sister commanded.

  “What would you have us do, Nyi Rara?” Kuku Lau demanded. “Stay the course and pray to the Elder Deep we don’t all wind up back in Avaiki before this is done? Or worse still … suppose the he‘e are truly working with Hiyoya. Suppose they figure out how to actually devour our souls the way Hiyoya did to Father. What then? Then we risk not just discorporation, we risk annihilation.”

  The image of herself taking the throne of Mu kept swirling around Nyi Rara’s head. A thought, a possible future, shared by the Urchin. Only if a throne remained to be claimed, of course.

  “I beseech you to hold off on any action while I deal with another situation.”

  Kuku Lau glowered. “So Commander Ake informs me. Something to do with the damn mortals again?”

  Nyi Rara floated there a moment. Kanaloa stole the Waters of Life from Kāne. Kanaloa stole the Chintamani stones from the Elder Deep. The dark god of the he‘e had his arms wrapped around everything. “I don’t think this is entirely unrelated. I just need more information.”

  “Chart your own course, Nyi Rara,” Kuku Lau said. “But don’t dawdle in that course. One way or another, the present situation cannot hold.”

  No, that much was undeniable.

  Given the choice, Nyi Rara would have sought out Opuhalakoa to consult with the high priestess about information regarding the Waters of Life. But Opu remained banished to Avaiki, and Nyi Rara would not make another Spirit Walk outside the Mortal Realm while any other option remained to her.

  Doing so would leave her body at risk, to say nothing of the dangers to her soul in visiting that reality.

  Instead, she pushed on, deeper into the colony, toward where Tilafaiga had suggested the College had once lain. Reaching it required squeezing through even more half-collapsed tunnels, carrying a wisp light just to get any illumination so deep. This place had been a center of learning during the First Age of the Worldsea, following the Deluge. If anyone knew about such forgotten lore as she now sought, surely it would be the scholars of old.

  The tunnel grew so narrow, her tail caught on rocks and she had to yank it through, scraping her scales in the process. Grumbling, Nyi Rara turned, then shrieked.

  A face floated right in front of hers.

  Hand to her heart, she shook her head. “Daucina …”

  The Ukupanipo mer grinned, helping her from the tunnel’s confines and out into a larger cavern. “It seems we had the same idea.”

  “Giving me a heart attack?”

  The mer raised a brow. “No host to a spirit has ever died from such, so far as I know. Having trouble controlling your own body?”

  No, not anymore. Now she had a whole plethora of other troubles. “Have you found it, then?”

  “Found what?” he asked.

  Cute. “The College of Triteia.”

  “Oh. I was looking for oysters, but I suppose that place might be worth investigating.”

  Ignoring that, she raised her wisp light to illuminate the cavern. Its faint, blue-green glow served mostly to spread the shadows, but for mer eyes, that was enough. Three side passages broke off this cavern, which itself seemed roughly circular. In the center of the chamber lay some kind of theater where mer could have rested, seated around a central region. A debate hall?

  An enormous crack split the seats and the central platform, opening a gulf almost large enough to slip into, had she been so inclined. Nyi Rara turned about slowly, taking all this in. “What happened here?”

  “No one knows. Survivors from Uluhai reported screaming from within the College grounds before the tunnels collapsed. A he‘e attack, perhaps?”

  Nyi Rara frowned. “Maybe.” She peered down into the crack splitting the theater. How did octopuses shatter a cavern? Had Kanaloa himself come here and done this? If so, how had he even fit inside?

  “A wise mer once told me,” Daucina said, swimming for another tunnel, “our ignorance of our world is surpassed only by the human’s ignorance of their own. We cannot be expected to understand everything that goes on in the Mortal Realm when we scarcely understand our own.”

  “You’re telling me you’re not curious?”

  He chuckled. “I never said that.”

  A sudden thought came to her. “Were you around during the Sundering?”

  The merman cast a wry look over his shoulder at her. “Do I look so old?”

  “Obviously you’d have a different host.”

  He shook his head, slipping into the tunnel. “Before my time.”

  Nyi Rara debated exploring other areas, but the truth was, Daucina had been a seeker after knowledge even back in Mu. He’d hunted the Chintamaniya on behalf of the kingdom, and that meant he might know more about this place than she did.

  Clucking her tongue, she followed the faint glow of his wisp light, slipping into the side tunnel. Up ahead, that light refracted strangely, the reason soon becoming apparent—there was an air pocket down here. Nyi Rara surfaced to find Daucina pulling himself up onto a platform. An instant later, his tail split into legs and he climbed to his feet, wobbling for a heartbeat.

  This place … it was like the Mirror chamber in Bulotu, Mu’s sister city in Avaiki. Daucina touched his wisp light to one set in a pedestal. Slowly, that one flared to life, filling the chamber with its soft glow. The platform was like a half moon with an elongated side. The chamber itself stretched for maybe a hundred feet, though a fair chunk of it was water.
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  The land side housed dozens of columns stretching up to the ceiling, covered in carved symbols that wrapped around in endless arcs. The part of her that was Nyi Rara recognized the script as Supernal, the spirit language.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “Our ancestors clearly wanted somewhere to record their observations and thoughts. Somewhere not so easily eroded by the current. I can only surmise they used the Art to create this airy chamber. As for the columns … While humans might record insights on dead plant or animal flesh, such substances would never survive here. Thus, stone.”

  Namaka moved to trace her fingers over some of the script. These columns might well be four thousand years old. Maybe older. Indeed, some of the characters she couldn’t even guess at. Words lost to the language? An older dialect? She had always heard Supernal was an eternal language, the resonance of its sounds drawn from the vibrational foundations of the universe. Was that a lie?

  “Look at this,” Daucina said, pointing to lines well above their heads. “According to the inscription, this column—or part of it—was carved by an heir of King Triton.”

  “Who?”

  “The father of Triteia in the legend.”

  “Uh, sure.” Namaka drifted among the other columns. “And who were the children of Danu?”

  “No idea. That’s my point. I don’t even really know who Triteia was. But these carvings imply she really lived some time before the Deluge. That means, maybe all the old tales hold some truth to them. It makes you wonder how much our people have forgotten over the passing of millennia.”

  Namaka had sometimes wondered about that. Spirits were theoretically immortal, so long as they could sustain themselves on souls. So why, then, were there so few spirits left who truly knew much of the eras before the rise of the Worldsea? What happened to the old ones? Was it simply too hard to hold one’s soul together past a certain point?

  No one had seemed to have the answer. Once, Ake had told her not to ask such questions. A mer had one great hope: to escape Avaiki into the Mortal Realm.

  “I need to know about the Waters of Life.”

  Daucina snorted. Then looked to her. “Deep. You’re serious. Huh.” He glanced around. “Well, I’ve hardly had the time to read everything in this archive. I think maybe this one …” He led her to a column near the back wall.

  Only then did Namaka realize a stone door led into yet another chamber.

  “Oh,” Daucina said in answer to her unspoken question. “It would take lifetimes to read everything recorded in the College. Which is why I have to ask … why the interest in the Waters of Life? Your host is already kupua and with you inside might last Deep knows how long. It seems a bit premature to worry about preserving the host’s youth at the moment.”

  Namaka shook her head. “It’s not for me.”

  “Either way, the obsession with those Waters is a mortal failing best left to humans and he‘e. If your soul weakens, devour the soul of another to sustain yourself. The Waters of Life will do very little for you.”

  There was no way he could ever understand about Hi‘iaka. Indeed, Daucina, like the others, clearly didn’t realize Namaka and Nyi Rara had become the same person. She was inclined to think of herself one way or the other, depending on whether she was in human or mer form, but the distinction had blurred. “Why did Kanaloa steal the Waters from Kāne?”

  “Supposing that’s even true, I’d venture he wanted to be able to restore youth and vigor to his most trusted servants.”

  “The he‘e,” she said. “But they’re not immortal.”

  “Well, not most of them. How would we know if a handful were? Besides, the he‘e were not Kanaloa’s only servants. Recall that once he controlled most of the taniwha across the ocean.”

  “Taniwha …” Had Kanaloa considered making the dragons immortal?

  Dragons … Mo‘o were descended from the taniwha. Had the god-king ever offered immortality to any mo‘o?

  She sighed and shook her head. “None of this helps me actually locate the Waters of Life.”

  Daucina looked at her a moment, still obviously bemused. “Unfortunately, I don’t have answers about that for you. Maybe Opu could have helped, if she yet lived. Regardless, given our current circumstances, we need to focus on efforts on recovering a Chintamani. Look what happened to Mu when Hiyoya used a single taniwha against us. What if they have another one? We can combat such power only with a Chintamani of our own.”

  She blew out a long breath. He wasn’t wrong, exactly. But Namaka had no idea how long Lonomakua and Kapo could hold Hi‘iaka’s soul in her body. She needed those Waters and she needed them fast.

  “Keep looking then.”

  Despite the pressure of an impending assault, Daucina held good cheer, his half smile never quite faltering as they plodded their way among column after column in the archives. He was right about one thing: she could have spent a century in here and not really learned all there was to know.

  Musings on the interrelations between the Spheres of Creation. Speculation on the origin of spirits and their connections to the Elder Gods. Even what looked like someone had begun speculating on the nature of the Elder Gods themselves, though that part of the column had been broken away. Intentionally broken, it looked to Namaka.

  Some mad philosopher had expounded on possible depths of reality existing beyond the Roil in the Astral Realm, going on to posit a whole other realm beyond the Spirit Realm.

  Elsewhere she found equally obtuse references to an eschatological catalyst. A force of absolute destruction that would cyclically unmake the Mortal Realm. It was talking about the eschatons, Namaka knew, though more than that she couldn’t say. Patterns spread out over thousands of years had long bored Nyi Rara and she hadn’t paid much attention to tutors rambling about them.

  Daucina had caught some reference to the Chintamani stones as pearls formed in the maw of the Elder Deep, like those created by oysters. The author believed one such pearl was stolen from Kanaloa by a mo‘o and carried somewhere far to the east of here.

  None of the musings, however, seemed helpful in either Daucina’s quest to locate a Chintamani, or Namaka’s desire to find the damned Waters of Life.

  They worked until her eyes hurt and her stomach rumbled, and even then Namaka had to drag Daucina away from the archives.

  “We have to eat, to rest.”

  The thought did not seem to much please the merman, but he guided her out.

  They heard the shouting before they returned to Uluhai proper. Screams, clashes of stone and metal. And soon thereafter, the scent of blood in the water, making her teeth descend and her pulse quicken.

  Nyi Rara raced forward behind Daucina to find the whole of Uluhai in an uproar. Had the he‘e attacked? Had they found them already?

  They reached the main tunnel and nearly spilled into a melee of fifty mer fighting one another. Judging by their tails, Dakuwaqa ‘Ohana was attacking Kuula ‘Ohana.

  Nyi Rara’s gut sank. Kuku Lau had refused her advice and gone ahead with the coup.

  Growling, she flung a jet of water to knock aside a Kuula warrior. A Dakuwaqan Ranger surged up out of the shadows like a frenzied shark, too fast for her to even follow his movements as he jabbed with a coral knife, bit, and slashed, tearing into Kuula forces.

  But they were too many and swarmed over him in a cloud of blood, wielding tridents and nets, until one snared his tail. Deep damn Kuku Lau. She had left Nyi Rara no choice at all. A wave of her hand slashed through the net, aiding the Ranger’s attempts to escape.

  An instant later, Hokohoko swam in, leading an army of Kuula guards. The mermaid had her teeth bared, a fell gleam in her eyes, as if mad with the thought of tasting Nyi Rara’s blood.

  Deep! They were truly going to force her to kill someone, weren’t they? Mu could not afford to lose a single warrior, and because of her Deep-damned sister, they were going to lose dozens.

  The sudden chill of a coral knife against her throat, p
erilously close to gills, froze her in place. Daucina’s words bubbled near her ear. “I believe that’s enough, Dakuwaqan.”

  4

  With a huff, Kamapua‘a hefted a plank across his shoulders, making certain the locals got a chance to ogle his bulging muscles. A boar needed to look good, after all. In fact, one of the local girls didn’t seem to be watching. That yellow-pa‘u wearing beauty was going to miss his whole show.

  “Aaaaloha!” he bellowed loudly enough to send a flight of birds scattering away from the trees. Wide-eyed, the girl turned to watch him. As did everyone else. “Just wanted to make sure everyone knows—I’m mighty!” For emphasis, he lifted the plank above his head with one hand.

  The villagers stared at him. Clearly awed with his incorrigible mightiness. He winked at the girl. “See you at the next luau, my little banana.”

  “Kamapua‘a,” Malie called to him.

  He tossed the plank aside, ignoring the shouts of villagers as he disrupted their work, then stomped over toward the bandit. Hāmākua village was technically part of Hilo district, which fell under Poli‘ahu’s dominion. Notwithstanding that Kama still needed to murder Poli‘ahu, he figured the villagers needed all the help they could get rebuilding.

  Shit, even his crew agreed burning down a village that was already smashed by a taniwha didn’t hold much reward.

  Malie folded her arms across her scarred chest. “Did you seriously just call that girl your ‘banana’?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean she’s pretty. And yellow. And tasty. Probably tasty. Like a … like a banana.”

  “What about that Queen in Puna?”

  “Pele.” Kama spoke her name with reverence. That was just the only way to say it. Even the name sounded glorious. Pele. Fiery goddess of love.

  “Uh huh. Listen boss, Ioane’s getting restless. Everyone is. Fixing up Hāmākua is well and good, but aren’t we supposed to be smashing Puna?”