Flames of Mana

by Matt Larkin

Insignificant in the vast cosmos, yes, but Poli‘ahu was a veritable giant while she remained tethered to the Mortal Realm. She, a kupua sorceress, could see further, do more than even the greatest kings imagined in their most dismaying nightmares.

  Feeling strangely weightless—or at least more buoyant than she was accustomed to—Poli‘ahu made her way from the fortress depths, half dazed. Out here, in the night air, more ghosts flitted about, watching the living. On the far side of the Veil, Kaupeepee’s men had become mere shadows, more like ghosts themselves.

  If Poli‘ahu focused upon one, she could see mana suffusing their bodies, radiating outward in auras that varied in intensity depending on the strength of that mana. There, a strong aura on the ramparts, must have been Kaupeepee himself. His mana, his aura, was wide enough it no doubt subtly influenced anyone who moved near him or heard him speak. But even his mana would prove a flicker compared to the gleam of a kupua.

  She looked to Lilinoe, but could draw less reading from her. The akua’s nature was too different from that of a mortal, her energies bleeding into Pō not from the Mortal Realm, but from some greater reality deeper in the maelstrom Poli‘ahu found herself within.

  Out there lurked Lua-o-Milu, the world of Mist, of snow, of cold, and sometimes the far reaches of death itself. From there, Lilinoe’s power must have come, an elemental force, a composite building block of reality.

  Mist, in its awful grandeur. The physical manifestation of entropic force, of the chill of death. The Mist akua could sense when death neared for a mortal, or so legends claimed.

  Poli‘ahu continued to stroll the fortress until she reached the battlements, then climbed upon the crenellations. Instinct guided her, the knowledge that—even as she could use Waiau’s power to become mist in the Mortal Realm, here she might of her own volition control her weight and guide her descent. She leapt over the side, gliding down on tenebrous astral winds, until she finally descended to the beach.

  Here, the ghosts were far more plentiful, and some stared at her with open hostility. She saw the walking corpses of men with skulls crushed by hail, those who had died from thrown rocks and javelins, even some few who had taken ill and perished after being coated in offal.

  She cowed them each in turn with a glare, trusting that not even the boldest among them would dare cross Lilinoe, who now descended behind Poli‘ahu. Oh, she knew well enough some ghosts—lapu, certainly—might still prove a threat even to an akua. But these newly dead men were weak, just waiting to get pulled down deeper into the maelstrom, into Manua’s court.

  The Roil.

  Waiau’s voice in her head jolted Poli‘ahu.

  A reminder that she did not actually belong here and if she tried to linger too long, she too might get pulled under the surface. This part of Pō was an echo of the world she knew. But there were deeper places, layers she had no desire to see.

  Wise.

  She passed among the invader camp, inspecting aura after aura. So many here, most weak, a few strong. Some with auras so powerful, she gave them a wide berth lest any possess the Sight and recognize her for what she was.

  A man had wandered away from his fire, making him easier to approach. Based on his posture, she assumed he was pissing, though Poli‘ahu could not clearly see nor hear him. It mattered little.

  She reached a hand into his aura and pulled. A tiny thread of it came undone, like a loose weaving, though it resisted her. A memory of trying to pull out a weed with tangled roots. From her childhood?

  The man squirmed and swayed, perhaps overcome by a sudden chill, a slight weakness. Perhaps thinking himself fatigued and needing a full night’s sleep.

  Probably, that would not be far from the truth … if Poli‘ahu did nothing else to him.

  Sadly, she had worse in mind for these invaders.

  The other ghosts fled from the glyphs she drew on the etheric beach. It was not for them, of course, but they instinctively understood the dangers of both her wards and her summoning sigils.

  Waiau helped guide her hand, Lilinoe occasionally offering advice, though neither akua actually drew any of the marks.

  Mostly, these things were to help reinforce her will, especially in this place. Will—intent—governed sorcery perhaps more than anything else. If one sought to rewrite the fabric of reality, one needed an implacable will, for reality tended to maintain itself, to push back against alterations.

  Blowing out a slow breath, Poli‘ahu approached the jungle’s edge.

  She glanced at Lilinoe, almost hoping the Mist akua would dissuade her from this course, despite having given her the name herself. Lilinoe nodded, however, forcing Poli‘ahu to see this through.

  There were numerous kinds of akua, each tied to different worlds out beyond Pō. Mist akua like Lilinoe and the others had a great deal of power over death and could be used for certain kinds of curses. But for this, for truly driving the invaders away while they perhaps didn’t even realize sorcery worked on them, Lilinoe had suggested another kind of spirit.

  A Wood akua.

  Poli‘ahu had to consider if Lilinoe had her calling an antithetical spirit simply to test her limits. It seemed … likely, if reckless … but the sisters always wanted Poli‘ahu to keep pushing herself, growing her power. Right up unto the point the Art consumed her, perhaps.

  “Kalai-pahoa,” she said, her voice reverberating on the psychic currents of this place, setting the etheric jungle shuddering.

  All around her, whimpers and wails intensified. The ghosts nearby fled, their fears confirmed. They wished nothing to do with what she summoned from that jungle.

  “Kalai-pahoa,” Poli‘ahu repeated.

  A crack resounded through the jungle, bark ripping apart. Moments later, trees writhed and shifted, making way for a man-like creature that plodded out. Its skin was gray-brown, covered in fibrous strands and bark, like a walking palm tree, hair a disheveled mess of roots and flowers.

  Poli‘ahu struggled to keep from squirming. Will was everything, and will meant confidence. Falter even a moment, and this thing would own her soul. “The invaders here make no offerings to you.”

  “No.”

  “So I shall offer them to you. One by one, I will reach into the Mortal Realm and tear off bits of their souls. And you shall feed upon them, weaken them. Claim them.”

  Wood was nature, was life, was abundance, health. And disease. Corruption. Rot, decay. A cycle of it, as suited the mood of such an akua at the time. Woodwoses, dryads, she knew some few names for these creatures—generally enemies of Mist.

  Kalai-pahoa himself was infamous for spreading poison within the wood of his trees, for bringing down even the strongest if they failed to honor him. And these invaders had no idea who, or what, he was.

  “And …” the Wood akua asked.

  Poli‘ahu tried to avoid grimacing and probably failed. All spirits craved flesh almost as much as they craved souls. Or, perhaps, it was all the same thing. Sex shared mana because it was so intimately tied to life.

  If a sorceress wanted to bargain with a spirit—truly bargain rather than attempt to overmaster with the Art—part of the price was almost always her body. As tended to be true with sorcerers, for that matter, and thus they tended to favor calling up female spirits.

  Poli‘ahu looked Kalai-pahoa in the eye. “Come into the circle and I will submit to your desires.”

  In the circle, the spirit’s powers would be limited. He could not harm her. Not seriously at least, though it would take pleasure in her severe discomfort. Lilinoe had warned her that, where moss did not cover the thing’s cock, it would prove coarse as rough wood.

  Poli‘ahu tried not to imagine.

  Her physical suffering meant very little. When it was done, Kalai-pahoa would feed upon the souls of a dozen men this night. He would spread his sickness and disease, and the invader camp would begin to crumble.

  Though it might take many nights, sooner or later, she suspected the illness would begin to leap among them even without t
he Wood akua’s interference. They would wither and falter and die in agony.

  And Kalai-pahoa would then begin to feast on their souls, at least some of them.

  Compared to that suffering, Poli‘ahu’s momentary discomfort would mean nothing. Or so she told herself.

  23

  It felt like Pele had only shut her eyes when Naia shook her awake. By the look of the sun, though, she had given her several hours’ rest.

  “Milohai?” she asked.

  “No change. He keeps talking about a sister.” Naia shook her head.

  Mumbling under her breath, Pele rose and excused herself to take care of basic necessities.

  Behind the palace she sat in the dirt, wanting to weep but having no tears. Not even the rage that had so often carried her forward remained to her now.

  She had done this.

  She had created this monster.

  Oh, she had been a child, yes. Did that excuse her selfish, thoughtless actions? Did it excuse murder? No.

  Maybe, despite it all, Kū-Waha-Ilo had been right to beat her and Namaka for what they’d done. They deserved death, but he’d spared them. Offered them more compassion than they had offered their infant sister.

  Oh.

  Would that end this? Would Pele’s own death appease Pu‘u-hele’s rage? Maybe that was the answer. Maybe that was real justice. She should die for what she’d done, and she’d enjoyed decades of reprieve. If her death now would spare the rest of Puna, didn’t she owe that much?

  In the daylight she couldn’t sense the lapu’s presence. Maybe she was still there, across the Veil, looking in. Waiting for the sun to set and increase her powers. Maybe she saw Pele now, judged her a monster, as Pele had once done to Pu‘u-hele. And with more cause.

  When Pele returned, she came not to the women’s house, but the men’s.

  “Aloha,” she called as she slipped inside. She didn’t belong in here, of course. Pele always found herself skirting the edges of tabu. Perhaps that was her destiny as kupua, or perhaps it was her own admittedly impatient nature. Try as she might, she’d never quite managed a fraction of Lonomakua’s patience. Not with anyone save for the kahuna himself.

  With the others gone, he was the only one left of her companions to occupy the men’s house, though some of Naia’s original people remained. They too scattered when she intruded on their house, which was just as well. She had words for Lonomakua alone.

  Lonomakua had come into her life after Pele’s mistake with Pu‘u-hele. Sometimes, she liked to imagine, had he raised her from the beginning, she might never have done such a thing. She liked to imagine someone else had committed that crime. Someone else had betrayed her kin thus.

  A pleasant self-delusion.

  She settled down across from the kahuna, staring hard at him. The man had a candlenut torch sitting beside him, and he glanced from it to her eyes, holding them with his intense gaze. At times, his eyes seemed like the sparkling sea, able to hold fast the attention of any who looked into them. As if he looked into a person and saw all the hidden things.

  “Guilt has its place,” he said after a moment.

  Sometimes, she almost thought he could read her mind. But his gift seemed more like an anticipation of probable courses of thought combined with the ability to read subtle changes in expression. As a young woman, she’d asked him if he could hear thoughts and he’d denied it. While he often withheld the whole truth, she’d never known him to outright lie to her or anyone else.

  “Guilt drowns me, as well it should. As it should have long ago.”

  Lonomakua nodded slowly. “Guilt serves to remind us of our mistakes so that we might not repeat them. That you feel guilt shows you’ve learned from your mistakes. It is not the purpose of the emotion to drown us, however tempting it becomes. And there is the temptation to wallow in the past and despair of all the ways we allowed our lives to become something other than what we wish they were. But to do so, to give in, is just another means of running away from responsibility for those actions.” He brushed a thumb over her cheek. “I know what it is to make mistakes, Pele.”

  She snorted without humor. “When have you ever made a mistake, kahuna?”

  “Oh, more often than you can imagine.” He rubbed his hands together. “Sometimes trying to fix one creates a thousand more.”

  “Evasive as ever.”

  “Soon you’ll understand what I’m talking about.”

  She sighed. “Always have to learn the lesson myself, eh?” She glanced down at the candlenut torch. “How do I appease a lapu?”

  “You already know the answer to that.”

  “Share her suffering?” Oh, she was afraid of that. The thought of it had become a dull ache in the pit of her stomach. A primal denial of such a thing. “We drowned that child in the tide, in the dark of night.”

  “You did.”

  And Pele had to go and suffer the same fate. Maybe it would end her. Maybe it should. But either way, she had to go into the darkness, leave fire behind, and embrace the terror and pain she had forced onto that child.

  The fear of it closed her throat.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  For a moment.

  Lonomakua grabbed the sides of her face. “All physical suffering is transitory. Facing this fear can be transformative. This pain has polluted your soul for decades. It changed who you were inside. Can you change it back?”

  A single, painful breath. She held his hands, wanting to beg him not to make her go through with this. To obviate the need for it somehow. To spare her the terror and pain to come.

  But he could do nothing of the sort, and would not if he could.

  Other firewalkers had to literally walk through fire to gain mastery of their Art. They had to burn, to writhe in agony and push through it. Pele’s kupua gift had spared her that necessity. Maybe it was time she felt the pain, too.

  Kapo sat beside Hi‘iaka, eyes so bleary Pele wondered for a moment if her sister was sleeping with them open. But the sorceress inclined her head toward Pele a moment. “You’ve come to say ‘aloha.’”

  Pele held Hi‘iaka’s cold hand with one hand, and Kapo’s warm one with the other. Her sisters. Just as much as Pu‘u-hele. Her sisters.

  And she’d failed Hi‘iaka as well.

  “If I don’t return, Namaka will bring the Waters of Life.” She had to. “You and her have to take care of Hi‘iaka.”

  “I promised I would train her. I won’t let anything happen to her.”

  “I love you both.” Pele forced the words out before she could stop herself.

  Kapo inclined her head. There was a hollowness in her eyes, beyond the fatigue.

  Lonomakua had warned that sorcery corrupted the soul. Calling upon such unnatural powers destroyed one’s humanity bit by bit, leaving something else in its place. Mostly, practitioners didn’t even feel it happening. How far gone was Kapo?

  Was that what had happened to their mother, too?

  Maybe Pele would never know.

  “I don’t want you to teach Hi‘iaka sorcery.”

  Kapo nodded, saying nothing, promising nothing. And leaving Pele helpless to spare her littlest sister from whatever tutelage Kapo would give her.

  She swallowed. “She is my redemption, Kapo. Don’t take that from me.”

  And they were the last. She had bid her farewells to everyone left she cared for.

  Soon, the sun would set, and she would go to face her own damnation.

  At twilight, she walked naked in the shallows, waves lapping against her ankles, watching the last flicker of light reflecting off the ocean. Night was coming in fast, coming to swallow her.

  Pō meant night, after all.

  It was the primal realm from which this reality had emerged and to which souls must one day return. She had damned Pu‘u-hele back to Pō long before the girl’s time. How then could Pele expect her judgment to come at any other time but night?

  And finally, the light winked out.

  The m
oon was high, beautiful and terrible, like a pale imitation of the sun, but lacking its power to hold back Pō.

  “I should have loved you,” she said, though the only sound was the falling of waves. She trod deeper into the surf, until it rose almost to her hips. “I should have loved you best, and I failed you. Namaka and I failed you completely. I have no right to ask it, yet I beg your forgiveness, Pu‘u-hele. I beg you, spare the world your wrath. Forgive me my mistakes.”

  Her breath frosted the air. A chill slithered over her spine and stood her neck hairs on end. An undeniable sense of presence, filling the ocean with disdain, haughty and pitiless, as well it ought to be.

  “I’m so sorry,” Pele said.

  And then she glanced down. A fog had risen up from the sea, was flowing over the land and engulfing her.

  “‘Aumākua,” she whispered. Not long ago she’d cursed the ghost, challenged it, threatened it.

  Now she only wanted to save her.

  But would Pu‘u-hele even allow that?

  The fog moved faster than she could have. It surged forward, chilling her arms and shoulders, welling above her in a semblance of a wall. But she would not let the ghost bar her path.

  Pele forced herself deeper into the waters.

  “Pu‘u-hele!” she shouted. “Please, see me. See me! I offer myself to you!”

  No response came, and Pele kept pushing forward. Right into the wall, deeper, until waters rose up to her ribs. The chill crept in, the vapors thick, threatening to suffocate her. And then the whispers started.

  A voice, or many, distorted as if echoing across a great valley.

  There were no words she could make out—only pain. Wailing. Anger. So much she gagged on it and slipped beneath the waters.

  “Pu‘u-hele!” Pele shouted again.

  She jerked her arms above the water, then ignited torches in both hands. The fog recoiled from the flames, bits of it burning away in wisps that she could have sworn hissed displeasure at her.

  “Show yourself, spirit! Enough games! I know who you are.” Even if she no longer did.