by Matt Larkin
The Burning Princess
The Worldsea Era: Book Two
Matt Larkin
Contents
Day 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Day 2
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Day 3
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Day 4
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Day 5
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Day 6
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Day 7
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Keep Reading
Read More
Did You Like This?
About the Author
MATT LARKIN
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.
THE BURNING PRINCESS
Copyright © 2016 Matt Larkin
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Edited by Brenda Pierson
Cover by Juhi Larkin
Published by Incandescent Phoenix Books
incandescentphoenix.com
For Kiran. Daddy loves you.
Day I
1
Old legends claimed the world rose from the confluence of elemental forces. The kahuna sometimes argued over the number of those forces. Some claimed there were seven, as there were always seven Princesses. Others held that the war god Kū was sent back to the Ghost World before he could sire enough children to represent every power. The Princesses, his children, were reborn into every generation as if searching for their absent father.
Pele knew that feeling. Except her father wasn’t absent, exactly, though she imagined everyone wished he was. Sometimes, absence was a blessing. She hated him for it, for abandoning her and her sister. And yet, had he been there, Kāne alone knew what kind of Princess she might have become.
Fortunately, she had been raised by the kahuna known as Fire-Keeper, the man now perched in a koa tree, overlooking the village below. Puako Village was a small settlement near the beach, on the island’s north shore. Pele didn’t think she’d ever visited it before, but the truth was, the hundreds of settlements tended to blur together.
She knelt on the mountain slope, placing her palms into the soil. The fires of the Earth pulsed under the land, surging and coursing far below. And despite the layers of dirt and rock separating them, Pele could feel those fires. They ran under all of Sawaiki, under the seas around it, under every island. But nowhere stronger than here, on the Big Isle.
Flame was the purest of the elemental powers. Fire alone could protect mankind from the perils of the cold, of the dark. A purifying conflagration could destroy evil and preserve good, save life. If harnessed properly, of course. If left to run rampant … fire became an all-consuming force of nature, devouring the source of its own sustenance along with anything she might hope to protect.
This was her island, these were her people. And she, the Princess of Flame, would protect them. In the past, she had done them more than enough harm. She had so many things to make up for. But her actions were not born of malice. No, the mistakes she most needed to correct were not her own. They were her father’s.
“He was there?” she asked, indicating the village.
Fire-Keeper was an expert tracker. She had neither the time nor the disposition to learn such arts and it was, in fact, rather surprising the kahuna had managed to do so himself.
“A person can learn to do just about anything,” he had told her once. “One need only make the choice to do so, and be willing to sacrifice something else.”
“Sacrifice?” she had asked.
“Every choice comes from sacrifice. The death of other opportunities, the loss of moments that can never be reclaimed.”
Up in the tree, Fire-Keeper grunted. “I followed the tracks there earlier, talked to the local kahuna. He said Ku-Aha-Ilo attacked a woman.”
Attacked. With her father that could mean anything from raped her to drank her blood and ate her flesh. Like her, her father—Ku-Aha-Ilo—was kupua, a half-god. Or, in his case, perhaps the spawn of some demon from the depths of the Ghost World. Either way, his crimes, his faults, tainted her blood. He had travelled from island to island, sowing his chaos for no reason she could discern. But two years ago, he had returned to the Big Isle and become her problem again. All she could do—pale effort though it seemed—was try to aid his victims. Try, in some small measure, to make up for his predations.
“You are not your father,” Fire-Keeper said, voice soft, eyes sympathetic. The kahuna had a way of reading her, of knowing her fears the moment she felt them.
“People don’t always see it that way.”
At sixteen, her powers had come to her. Dutifully, excited even, she had taken her first lover. And in the moment of her first pain, she had burned him with the fires of her soul, left him a scarred and useless wreck of a man. Word had come he died a few days later. In shame, she had not taken another lover for nearly a year. She thought, had allowed herself to think, it had only been her pain that had caused such suffering. But in truth, her passion had seared the next man, and the next. Until, at last, she had given over taking lovers. Her duty may have been to help the island, to ensure the rise of more kahuna—but that wouldn’t happen if every lover she took perished, or wished he had.
Even thinking of it, walking on the cliffs above the sea, sent her soul trembling. And with it, with her pain and anger, the land rumbled. Magma so deep below responding to her call. More than once her rage had unleashed itself in eruptions that darkened the sky and painted the sunset in all the hues of flame. The people feared her now, and with good cause. She lived atop the volcano, Kilauea, alone save for the company of Fire-Keeper. But sometimes, as now, she donned a kihei to disguise her hair and walked about the island.
“Most people have a small worldview. Anything outside of that view is a threat to be feared. Most of all if the threat endangers their own misconceptions.” Fire-Keeper paused as if to let his words sink in. He did that a lot. Always trying to teach her how to think for herself. He had called fire the light through which mankind could burn away ignorance. That served as his excuse to always force her to draw her own conclusions, to seek her own truths. “There is a time for reflection. But sometimes one must press forward to find the answers.”
Pele frowned. He meant hiding up here in the mountains might allow her to avoid the suspicious stares of her people, but she would not learn what her father had done here. “Are you coming with me?” She already knew the answer.
“Do you need me to?”
No. Fire-Keeper had raised her from the time she was six years old, taught her to control her powers, taught her all she knew. But he was not her father, though he was old enough to have been, even if he didn’t look it. Besides, even had he been her father, she was no child. She was a woman of thirty, approaching the latter years of her life. And, of course, she was kupua, and not least, the Princess of Flame.
And so she descended alone, walking through the village, wrapped in a kihei cloak to conceal her hair. Sometimes she walked with a slight stoop in her step, making herself seem older, making certain no one would recognize her as their Princess. Not that she recalled ever visiting this village before. But she had spent the past two years traveling around the Big Isle, always a step behind her father, always offering such small consolations for the horrors he visited upon the innocent and guilty alike. And what would she do if she ever caught the man? She wasn’t certain. That had never truly been her goal. Indeed, she feared any encounter with him. He had powers, a Gift, unlike any she had ever heard of, and she knew of no one who could fight that power.
Pele grabbed a boy by the arm as he tried to pass her. The boy was almost a man, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, and seemed somehow familiar.
“A woman was attacked recently,” she said.
The boy’s eyes widened, then he jerked his head toward a hut on the village outskirts. The simplest of dwellings, an uneven structure with a roof made of overlapping banana leaves. Part of her wanted to ask the boy what she would find, to prepare herself for the horror no doubt lurking within those unadorned walls. Instead, she released her grip and the boy scampered off.
Pele shut her eyes a moment before making her way to the house. “Aloha,” she called as she slipped inside. A normal person would have waited for an invitation. Pele always found herself skirting the edges of kapu. 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 Fire-Keeper’s patience. Not with anyone save for the kahuna who raised her.
A fat old man knelt over a woman. As she entered, he pushed himself up using his kahuna stick. “Aloha, stranger. You …” The old man rocked back on his heels, mouth agape.
It was difficult to conceal her identity from a kahuna. They could sense the mana within her, feel its flow, its magnetic pull. An inferno of power raging just beneath the surface of her skin. Maybe they felt it from all kupua, but they certainly seemed to detect it in Princesses. That was, of course, how she had first learned of her own nature. Fire-Keeper had found her, explained to her mother why he had to take her away.
With a sigh, she threw back her hood, revealing her red-tinged hair. “The kupua Ku-Aha-Ilo was here.”
“Your father, Princess.”
Pele grimaced. Too much to hope a kahuna might not know that.
“P-princess,” the woman behind him croaked.
Pele shoved the kahuna aside to inspect her father’s latest victim. Half her face was inflamed, covered in boils so bad one eye was swollen shut. Tiny rivulets of blood seeped from the burns. And still, despite the disfigurement, it took Pele only a moment to recognize the woman.
“Mama?” Pele fell to her knees at her mother’s side, hand trembling over her face, afraid to touch the wound.
Ku-Aha-Ilo could control blood, could wield it as a weapon as she wielded flame. He must have brought her mother’s blood to boil on one side of her face, tortured her. But why? The demon had shown no interest in the woman once she had given birth to his child. By Milu, he barely seemed interested in Pele most of the time.
“Why did he do this?” Pele hadn’t seen her mother since Fire-Keeper took her in. She had come back, looking, but her mother had left her home village. “Where have you been all these years?”
“Wanted to punish. I married years ago … after you were … taken.” Speaking clearly pained her mother. Pele placed a gentle finger on her lips and a hand on her mother’s shoulder. But her mother shook her head, as if the years of pent-up silence were about to burst. “We came to Hualali … before we wed … hoped you were there …”
It was the nearest volcano. But Fire-Keeper had taken her to Kilauea, on the far side of the island. Even had her mother known where to find her, it would have been almost impossible for her to make such a far trek. But her mother had come, seeking her blessing to remarry. The thought of it left Pele trembling. When she was young, she’d gone everywhere with her mother. Her father had been gone and it had been only the two of them. Her mother had assisted the kahuna making herbal poultices and remedies. Pele had often gone with her to visit the sick or injured.
When Fire-Keeper had come, had told her mother he had to take Pele, tears had welled in her mother’s eyes. Pele didn’t think she’d ever seen her mother cry before that.
Pele spun on the kahuna, ready to demand he do something to help her mother, when a boy—the same boy—slipped into the house bearing a calabash filled with water. “Who is this?” It wasn’t the first question she’d meant to ask, it merely slipped out.
“My son …” her mother said.
Pele’s knees wobbled. Son? That meant he was … her half-brother.
The kahuna took the calabash from the boy. “Mahalo, Kāne-Milohai. Please wait with your mother. The Princess and I have matters to discuss.” He paused to offer her mother a sip of water, then returned the calabash to the boy. A brother. Named after great Kāne, chief of the gods himself. As if to make up for her mother’s first lover being a demon kupua.
Her thoughts racing, she let the kahuna lead her outside. Her whole world seemed to have shifted. After more than twenty years, she’d found her mother again—found, too, she had a brother. And her father was out there, hunting her family. Damn, but maybe she should have asked Fire-Keeper to come along for this. His ineffable, unshakeable calm could be infuriating, but at times like this it proved a boon, keeping her centered.
“How—why? What happened?” she asked.
“Ku-Aha-Ilo must have learned about your mother and her husband. I suppose we’re lucky it took him this long. He murdered her husband and tortured her, trying to get her to reveal where the boy was. By Kāne’s will he was with me, had wanted to carve a new surfboard so we had gone seeking the right koa.”
Ku-Aha-Ilo assaulted a woman he had discarded decades ago, murdered the man she loved, and for what? To ensure she could have no other happiness? A rumbling built inside Pele’s chest, a violence she could not still. Flames escaped through her clenched fists and the ground itself began to shake with it. What monster would do such a thing? Two years spent offering shallow comforts to those he wronged, and what had she to show for it? She had been afraid to catch him, thinking she could not bring herself to strike out against her own father.
Well, that fear was gone now.
Villagers gathered, murmuring in fear as the ground quaked. Whimpering as her hair burst into flame. Even the kahuna backed away, making a sign of warding. Others fell to their knees, begging for mercy. Pele ignored them, or tried to. She always tried not to let their fear bother her. They had reason for it, after all.
“Where did he go?” she demanded.
The kahuna pointed away, along the shore to the north.
With a long, shuddering breath, she beat down the anger simmering in her chest, and with it, the flames. They vanished from her hands and hair in a puff of smoke, and with them gone, the land stilled. Quiet and calm.
For a moment.
Soon, she would burn. Burn very brightly, indeed.
“You’re going after him?” Kāne-Milohai asked, as Pele headed away from Puako Village. He had chased after her, away from the stares of the villagers.
She turned. A half-brother she had never known, never imagined. How was she supposed to even react to that? But the rage seething on her brother’s face, that she understood. All too well. “Yes. He’s going to pay for what he did to Mama.”
“Then take me with you!”
She chuckled, then shook her head. “Someone needs to stay here and care for Mama.”
Kāne-Milohai frowned. “I can fight.”
“I’m sure you can.” But the boy would have no means of fighting someone like Pele’s father. The Gifts kupua wielded left ordinary humans ill-prepared for a conflict. Ku-Aha-Ilo would boil her brother’s blood or worse, without so much as a second thought. Inde
ed, he would probably be thrilled to have the chance to kill the boy.
And maybe Kāne-Milohai knew that, but it clearly pained him to do nothing to avenge the wrongs done to their mother. The truth was, he must know the woman better than Pele ever could. He had grown up with her while Pele had been taken away by Fire-Keeper. She didn’t resent that, of course—the kahuna had proved both kind and challenging, driving her ever forward. Without him, she’d probably have buried herself and her whole village in a lava flow. But still, it would have been nice to know …
“What’s she like?”
Her brother scrunched up his face. “Huh? Who?”
Pele sighed and sat down on a rock, motioning for her brother to join her. “Mama. What’s she like?”
“I don’t know, she’s … she’s my mother.”
“Right. And she’s still a woman, coconut brain. Tell me what it was like, growing up with her.”
He scratched his head then sat on the rock beside her. “Well … she, uh … she talked about you a lot. Oh, she plays the ukeke sometimes in the evening.”
Pele had forgotten all about that, hadn’t thought of it in years, but she remembered … aumakuas, she couldn’t have been more than four years old. Sitting under the shade of a big koa tree, listening to her mother play, welcoming the sunset. Almost, she could hear the melody again, bringing back the smell of poi and the sound of laughter. Her laughter. Pele shook her head. And her mother had talked about her … had not forgotten her.
Her brother was staring at her. She must have the most wistful look on her face. But he couldn’t understand.
“Must have been hard, growing up without her.”
Well, maybe he could understand. Pele nodded, not trusting herself to answer, or to ask what she really wanted to know. Was her mother like her in some way? Maybe all Pele was came from Ku-Aha-Ilo, but she had to hope there was something of her mother inside her, too.