Islands of Fire

by Eldritch, Brian

  She raises her hands as they approach, in the universal symbol of peace. She hopes they can see she is unarmed. “Please,” she calls out. “I am searching for Keli`anu. I don’t mean to intrude.”

  The group of warriors surrounds her. One of them, a hardened, tall man bearing terrible scars on his chest, speaks to her. “Identify yourself, woman, or we will kill you on the spot.”

  “I mean no harm,” Kina says. Thinking quickly, she recalls a name from her youth in Huka`i. “My name is Mai Pu`i. I have come a long way and my canoe has sunk. I seek the Cult of the Ebon Flame.”

  The captain looks at her closely, suspicion written on his face. “Your canoe sunk? How did you make it these shores?”

  “I wasn’t far from land, and I am a skilled swimmer.”

  “Where was this?”

  Kina turns and points behind her toward a distant point. “It was far. The other side of the island somewhere. I’ve been traveling toward your smoke.”

  The captain looks back that way, and nods to one of the warriors. The warrior runs off down the beach in the direction she indicated.

  “What will my runner find, Mai Pu`i?” he asks.

  “My tracks,” she says, “coming from the forest. I crossed over the mountains this morning. Please, I seek Keli`anu, and don’t mean to break any local kapu.”

  “And why do you seek Keli`anu?” the captain asks. “Most people would not dare set foot on its shores.”

  “I’m looking for the Burning Warriors.”

  The captain regards her closely, still sizing her up. “You seek them? Why?”

  “Because I want to join.”

  The captain blinks rapidly at her, his expression one of slack-jawed shock. When he recovers, he

  asks her, “Why do you want to join the Burning Warriors? What do you hope to gain?”

  Here, Kina realizes her lie will have to be especially believable. She squares her jaws and replies, “People all across Keli`anu fear them. The name ‘Burning Warriors’ is whispered in huts and in tribal councils far and wide. No one knows how to deal with the raiding parties from Keli`anu, and they are scared. They are beginning to see what I have known for a long time: The future belongs to the Cult of the Ebon Flame. I have no patience for those cowards and weaklings who quake at the prospect of their own doom. I recognize the future and want to be part of it.”

  The captain eyes her, visibly skeptical. At last he says, “Well, if you’re looking for Keli`anu, you’ve found it. I have to say, you’re the first person from another island who has come to us willingly, seeking to join our order. Most are from villages across Keli`anu, or join in order to spare their families. Perhaps your appearance here is a sign that word is spreading. More might see what you’ve seen and come join us.”

  “I hope so,” Kina says.

  The runner comes back up the beach toward them. When he arrives, he reports just what Kina had described. The captain looks again at her, some of his distrust being replaced with a guarded respect. “I’m taking you to see the Council. Ultimately, it will be up to them to decide what to do with you.”

  “I understand.”

  The contingent of warriors leads her back toward the village. As it comes fully into view, Kina’s heart begins to race once more. She hasn’t seen Toko-Mua in the light since the days of her captivity, and even then she never got a clear look at it. Now she can see that it is a tangled maze of huts centered around the steep-roofed temple at the center. She can’t see the slave pits, but she knows they are on the other side of the village from the beach, out near the pens where pigs and other food animals are kept, in the most rotten and filthy portion of Toko-Mua.

  As they walk, Kina gazes into the eyes of villagers, but few return her look. They walk with their eyes cast downward, carrying baskets of clothing to be washed or taro to be pounded. They wear worn-out, dirty clothing that covers them minimally, and many of them bear scars. As the warriors approach, the townsfolk scuttle sideways like crabs to get out of the way, making sure to keep their eyes fixed firmly on the ground as if hoping to avoid notice.

  So all is not happy in Toko-Mua! Kina should have known. A regime as repressive and cruel as the Cult of the Ebon Flame is always likely to turn on its own people.

  They pass through a town square where, Kina is sure, public trials and slave auctions must take place, for off to one side is a platform made of logs and stones. All around the perimeter of the square are tall, sharpened poles upon which are impaled nearly a couple dozen people, most of them long dead and rotting in the heat and humidity. A couple of them appear alive still, their eyes rolled back into their heads, legs kicking feebly.

  The captain notices Kina looking at these grisly victims. “They disobeyed the Council,” he tells her. “Some of them broke kapu. Others tried to flee.”

  “It’s important to cut away weakness,” Kina says. “Those who cannot fall in line only drag down the whole, and must be eliminated if the Ebon Flame is to remain healthy.”

  “You sound like Nakali,” the captain says.

  “Nakali is your high priestess, yes?” Kina asks. “I’d like very much to meet her.”

  “She’s still at sea,” the captain replies. “She led much of the fleet to retrieve a runaway slave who also stole something from us.”

  “So the fleet is out?” Kina asks. She tries to sound disappointed, rather than excited.

  The captain shakes his head. “No, the balance of the fleet returned, but Nakali took some and went on. We await her return.”

  Kina tries to sound neutral. “I look forward to her return.”

  “Indeed.”

  They arrive at a long structure raised on a rectangular stone platform. Poles hold up a thatch roof, but there are no walls to allow for maximum airflow in the heat of the day. At one end is a statue chiseled from a broad chunk of lava rock depicting a raging woman wreathed in flame. Patterned tapa cloth is draped across the sides of the stone. A circle of older men and women sit cross-legged, passing around a human femur etched with fearsome designs, while near them a forlorn-looking family of five stand as if awaiting bad news.

  The captain dismisses most of the warriors who have accompanied them this far, telling them to get back to their duties. Meanwhile, the circle of elders pass the bone around, taking turns discussing some matter of great importance. At last they stand, and a bearded old man steps forward. Two young boys bearing red-feather standards rush up to stand near him.

  “The Council has found you guilty.”

  The three children begin to cry, and the mother to wail hysterically. The father’s nostrils flare, but other than that he remains standing tall and motionless, trying his best to stay stoic.

  “Your family is to be stripped of all possession and rights. Half of your possessions will go to the man whose taro patch you claim to have ‘accidentally’ harvested, while the other half will be confiscated by the Council to be included in the Order’s general funds. Your wife shall serve as the concubine for the claimant for one year, after which she will be offered the choice of death or exile. Your children shall enter a period of servitude to the Order that shall last until their sixteenth birthday. And you shall be impaled in the town square to serve as a warning to any others who would wrongfully steal from his fellows.”

  The woman falls down, nearly swooning in her grief. The oldest child, a male that Kina would guess to be about thirteen, turns and runs. The kid leaps down off the platform, heading quickly toward the forest, visible some ways off through the crowded village.

  The captain guarding her rushes off, leading two of the remaining warriors. They catch up with the boy before he has even made it to the first huts facing the Council hall, and savagely bludgeon him with their shark-tooth clubs until the boy ceases to move.

  Kina is now alone, save for one escort. She knows she could probably bring him down and take his club in the time it would take for him to blink, but it would ruin her ability to get close to Nakali. As much as it pains her
to see this miscarriage of justice, she knows there is nothing she can do.

  The family is led away, and the captain returns to bring Kina up to the Council. They watch as she approaches. Most of them look bored, sure this is another case of a petty crime that won’t take long to adjudicate. They hardly look at her in their distaste.

  “O Wise, and great Council,” the captain says, “I came upon this woman wandering up the beach. She claims to have voyaged to Keli`anu with the express purpose of joining the Burning Warriors.”

  This has caught the attention of the Council. The same elderly man regards her, and with a shock Kina recognizes him as a kupuna that had come with the fleet. For a moment she thinks about breaking away and running, before remembering she looks different, now, and he won’t recognize her.

  “Is this true, woman?” the man asks. “Speak.”

  Kina nods, looking downward in an attempt to portray humility. “It is, wise one.”

  “Have you confirmed this?” he asks the captain.

  “So far her story seems to check out,” he replies. “She says her canoe sank offshore and she was forced to swim in from the reef. I have a runner trying to find where she came ashore on the other side of the island.”

  The old man turns to Kina. “You’ll forgive us when we express our disbelief. No one has ever come to Keli`anu wishing to join the Ebon Flame. Most people run in fear from us. Why are you different?”

  She tells him the same thing she told the captain: She seeks to be on the winning side of history. As she speaks, she takes on what she hopes is a firm, strong tone, and raises her chin. If there’s one thing the Burning Warriors and their masters respect, it is pride — or at least so she hopes.

  “From whence do you come?”

  Now Kina tells him the story she has been concocting. She hails from Apahana, one of the islands

  that ring the volcanic Howe`a, home of Puahiki. Apahana is poor, rural, and most of the people there are from kaua stock, slaves who escaped from other, nearby islands. Kina tells of a hardscrabble life living off ground plants and what fish could be caught. Raids by the Burning Warriors so terrified the elders in charge of Apahana’s small villages that the entire island seemed to have been plunged into panic, and Kina had seen her elders for what they truly are: cowards. Realizing the day of the Ebon Flame is at hand, and that soon its influence will spread everywhere, Kina decided to steal a canoe and seek out these Burning Warriors in hopes they would allow her to join their ranks.

  The old man, along with the rest of the Council, listen impassively as Kina tells this story. It’s impossible for her to tell whether or not they believe it. Circling up again, they sit on the floor and pass the bone around for nearly half an hour, lost in fierce debate.

  At last they rise once more, and the old man summons Kina to stand once more before them.

  “The Council has considered your story,” he says. “While it is plausible, we find it difficult to grant you our full confidence. Some of the details do not seem to add up. That you happened to have lost your canoe, for example, or that you beached on the far side of the island, which is the opposite direction one would approach if coming from Apahana. But more than that, we simply remain pessimistic that a poor girl of kaua stock would be able to see the significance of the Order of the Ebon Flame, and have the pluck to cross the ocean by herself to seek us out.”

  “Please forgive me,” Kina says. “I know it sounds far-fetched, but it is the truth.”

  “That is for us to decide,” he replies. “But even so, we need warriors, not little girls who can pick breadfruit.”

  “I can fight.”

  The Council chuckles, glancing at one another in amusement.

  “You?” the old man asks. “You’re little more than a girl. You should be thinking of getting married and bearing your first child, not of battle.”

  “I can kill any man.”

  They start to laugh again, but something in Kina’s eye cuts them short.

  The old man grins wryly. “Is that so? Then I’d like to see. Prove that you can fight, and maybe we’ll consider you.” He nods to the captain.

  Hesitating, the captain walks to the other end of the Council hall to where several guard spears are mounted on a post. He takes one down and tosses it to Kina. She catches it, but is not expecting its weight, and the spear bounces to the ground. The Council, and all the attending warriors, laugh heartily.

  Kina picks up the spear and lowers herself into a crouch, then executes a series of mock thrusts. “I was trained by my uncle, who was in charge of our village’s protection,” she says. “He tried to stop me as I was stealing a canoe to come here, and so I killed him.”

  “You are full of stories,” the old man says. “You handle the spear well, but there’s a difference between running through memorized motions and actually fighting.”

  Kina stands with the spear, looking imperiously at the Council. “I will prove myself in battle. You won’t be ashamed of my prowess.”

  The old man shakes his head. “You’ll prove yourself now,” he says. Turning to the captain, he nods once more. “If you are so great at fighting, then what about him? Take your spear and kill him. Kill him, little girl, and you can join the Burning Warriors.”

  Three Lives

  The captain smirks, looking over at Kina like he might look toward a contrary child. “Her?” he asks. “Surely the Council then wishes her dead.”

  “Not at all,” the old man, who Kina now imagines is some kind of temporary leader during Nakali’s absence. “If she’s half the warrior she claims to be, she should do just fine. Otherwise, feel free to finish her off. We haven’t the time to deal with slave caste brats who would like to be soldiers.”

  Kina turns to point the spear toward the captain, dropping lower and spreading her feet wide. The warriors and every member of the Council laugh.

  “Better watch out, Hu`utalo, she knows the boar stance,” says one of the Council. This brings another laugh.

  But the captain is no longer laughing. “Little girl, quit now. I don’t like killing young women who would be better off bearing my seed.”

  Kina doesn’t answer. She dashes forward with the spear, thrusting it toward the captain. He is slow to react, barely knocking away her spear tip with his shark-tooth club and stepping to the side. Another ripple of laughter rushes through the Council, making the captain sneer.

  “That was your last warning,” he says, and swings the club toward Kina in broad, powerful arcs. His attack is meant to provide a killing blow against a novice while sparing him much exertion. This is exactly what Kina was hoping for: He still doesn’t consider her to be a legitimate threat. She ponders how long to keep up the illusion while deftly hopping back away from his attacks.

  Having missed, he places both hands on the haft and comes at her again with quicker, more targeted swings. She knocks a couple of them away with the spear. Then, waiting for him to overswing, she first smacks him in the shin with the butt end of the spear, then when he kneels in pain, she pivots the spear and drives it through his neck.

  The only sound in the Council hall is the clatter of his club falling to the floor, followed by the thump of his body sagging onto the flagstones.

  Kina jerks the spear back out of her victim and turns to the Council. By the look on their face, she half expects them to call for her death. Panting, she glares at them, eyes darting from one to the next. Already she’s planning which one to kill in case they go back on their word.

  But they don’t. The old man who leads the Council steps in front, hands outward. “You may drop the spear, girl,” he says. “You’ve shown your mettle.”

  Kina lets the spear tip lower, then drops the spear to the floor. Adrenalin surges hot and wild through her, but she assumes a position of deference, sinking to her knees and bowing.

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Mai,” Kina says. “Mai Pu`i of Apahana.”

  “Well, Mai, you have the
distinction of being the first outsider accepted into the Burning Warriors. You are no longer Mai of Apahana. You are Mai of Keli`anu, Initiate of the Flame. Rise, and accept your place.”

  Kina stands up, posture straight. Several other warriors emerge to drag away the twitching body of the dying captain. Soon another ranking officer arrives to lead her away.

  “I’m Kuana’i,” he says. “You’ll know me as your training sergeant.”

  “It’s an honor,” Kina replies.

  “Where did you learn to use a spear like that?” Kuana`i asks. He shoots sidelong glances at her as they walk.

  “As I told the Council, my uncle was in charge of protecting our village.”

  He nods, pensive. “And he taught you the boar stance?”