by Matt Larkin
Perhaps the war god, Kū himself—for which her own father was named—now took an interest in this slaughter. For Namaka could not help but feel a hand reached from the shadows of Pō and forced this ever onward.
“You speak madness. When will this end?”
“You know how it ends.” With her or Pele dead. Too much had passed for any other solution to be possible.
Pele’s volcano lay on the eastern side of the island, before Mount Halulu. At all times, a plume of smoke billowed forth from its top, announcing to all the world where the Flame Queen’s refuge lay. Oh, she kept her court at the volcano’s foot, yes, but—though Namaka had never seen it—she had heard tales of Pele’s secret abode very near to the crater.
And as long as she had access to that refuge, Pele had a place to come and soak up mana, making herself powerful. Getting here, this far east, it had cost a great many lives. Now, though, Namaka saw the way to end this.
Even if the price might prove extreme.
The volcano rose up, almost straight out of the sea, with but a small beach around it.
Now, while Pele’s forces engaged Namaka’s, Namaka walked along the beach, letting the sea answer her call. The waves whipped into a frenzy, a maelstrom of her fury and pain, swirling together. Crashing in a mirror of her own torment.
Pele had wrought so much death, so much destruction. What else did a volcano do, after all?
Well … then let it be ended. Let the whole smoldering crater be ended.
With a deep breath, Namaka spread her arms wide. Her mind and soul fled from her body, flowing into the tidal currents. For this, she had bathed long in the most sacred pools and waterfalls remaining on Uluka‘a. She had demanded the sacrifice of twenty men and—though she rather disdained her parents’ cannibalism—tasted of each of their hearts, drawing their mana into herself. She had lain with kāhuna and with Upoho, letting their mana flow into her with their releases.
Everything for a drop more power.
Because now she needed all of it. Because she needed to end this.
And the sea answered. It fell upon itself in great, crashing waves. It twisted and writhed in cacophonous fury. Her fury. The fury of Uluka‘a itself at the wreck Pele had made of their glorious land. The waters surged, higher and higher, waves like flowing mountains, smashing each other into oblivion over and over. Until the ocean roiled as if caught in a typhoon, until all the seas around Uluka‘a had become a turbulent incarnation of her wrath.
A kai e‘e. Larger than she’d ever created. Larger than she’d ever heard of.
There was screaming. Somewhere. The crashing waves drowned out the sound, though. A shower of brine fell over Namaka’s head, as she swayed, dancing about, her feather cloak streaming.
Her dance further wakened the furious tides. It called them. It demanded they obey. And as the waves became her, she became them. Her soul crashed and tossed about, as tempestuous as the ocean.
It—she—rose like a shadow overhead. A mountain taller than the volcano. Moving. Edging closer, seeming to others—she had no doubt—to come in with agonizing slowness. Her soul was on that kai e‘e, and she felt it surging with the speed of the wind, shrieking, coursing toward Uluka‘a in ultimate rage.
Coming closer, a roaring, all-consuming shadow now towering overhead.
The ground shook. Pele, perhaps at last realizing the danger, thinking she could hold back the tides themselves with a volcanic eruption. But she was too late.
The wave raced past Namaka, breaking around her to either side such that she could see nothing at all save a rushing, crashing, bellowing wall of water. But she could feel it. As the wave broke over the mountainside.
Cracked it in half.
Poured the furious sea into the crater, annihilating magma even as the sea burned away in a flash. The mountain ruptured from the pressure, rending itself apart. Only the sea’s embrace overhead kept flying rocks and molten stone for raining down over half Uluka‘a.
The waters ripped trees from the ground, tearing up roots and sweeping up trunks like kindling. They carried away boulders. They stripped the valleys and slopes clear of all foliage. Everything washed clean.
Namaka slipped to her knees, trembling with ecstatic rage at the power of her mana as it flowed out of her. She felt dizzy, euphoric. Hot and cold and wanting to laugh. Like she wanted to fuck her way through every man on the island and then move on to the women. That or sleep for a month.
Her senses, her understanding of the kai e‘e’s flow began to flee her, and it broke at random, pouring over the mountainside. All she had left was barely enough to keep the tide from sweeping her back out as it receded.
Hands over her head, mana spent, Namaka lay prone, suddenly wanting to weep. Shaking like a wailing babe. Chilled … so very cold.
Waters rushed back out to sea, racing past her almost as fast as they had come in. The fragile bubble of safety around Namaka cracked, the sea dribbling in, threatening to carry her out into the deep and drown her now she had no strength left.
She would die … she was going to die …
What in Milu’s underworld had she been thinking, trying to control such forces? No kupua, no akua, would wreak such devastation. But … none had possessed such reason for it.
She had to end this war.
And now it was done.
Pele’s power broken.
Ravaged by chills, Namaka crawled along the ground, struggling to keep back the waters flowing around her. She crawled, until she came to a ledge high enough up the mountain the waters would break around it naturally.
There she slumped down, cheek to the stone, and let the spasms take her. Weak thrashes held her, her body convulsing. Her throat seizing up. She’d poured too much of herself into the assault and now her very life tried to flow out from her.
The body could handle but so much.
Mana was, in a sense, the stuff of life as well as power. She could breathe it in, absorb more, assuming she had not pushed out so much her heart ceased to beat and her body gave out. Assuming she could …
Could … just …
Her teeth chattered.
Someone had wrapped a blanket over her shoulders, but it didn’t keep her half warm enough.
Namaka opened one eye and blinked in pain. Light flashed through her head like a drumbeat inside her skull, sending her into sudden, violent dry heaves. She managed to roll to her side, convulsing.
“It struck me,” a grandmotherly voice said from behind her. “It struck me that perhaps I ought to have let you drown. That saving you from what you had wrought might, in fact, anger the akua. But who am I to judge?”
Gasping, Namaka rolled over the other way, to look upon Milolii. The mo‘o lay stretched out over the rocks in the evening sun, her sleek, lizard-like form extended, tail twitching slightly, but otherwise very still.
“Y-you saved me.” Apparently Namaka had misjudged whether she’d be safe on that rock, then. More than that, she didn’t really remember.
“Yes. One of the few I could save.”
“I destroyed the volcano.”
“Yes. Along with most of Pele’s army and the better part of your own.”
Namaka struggled to sit, but her strength gave out. “My army?”
“Kahaumana and all his men are dead, Namaka. Drowned in your fury.”
What …? No. No, that wasn’t possible. She’d directed the wave over the volcano, not inland, where the army fought.
A slight twitch of Milolii’s mouth, as if she’d read the thought on Namaka’s face. It exposed one of the dragon’s fangs. “Did you really think you could control something so massive, so primal? Did you think you could call upon such rage and contain it? And what, Namaka, did you believe would happen when the exertion overtook you and left you faint? Look around. The flood has done more damage than even Pele’s flames managed.”
“K-Kahaumana …”
“Dead.”
“No.”
“Dead. Drowned
. Food for sharks, along with most everyone else. Oh, you’ll be pleased to hear Upoho survived. His kupua strength allowed him to swim in even after the receding tide swept him five miles out to sea. The others …”
Groaning, Namaka pushed herself up on her arms. This wasn’t happening. She was saving her island from Pele. This was not happening. Her husband, her other husband was dead? “Leapua?”
“The kahuna lives, I think. A handful of others with her.”
Namaka tried to rise, but her arms refused to hold her up any higher than she already was. All strength had fled her. And now, the sea seemed so polluted with ash and debris, it felt hard to breathe in mana from it. “I have to go to them …”
Milolii pushed herself up, slow, as if her joints ached, and wriggled her way to Namaka’s side. “And what will you do now?”
Namaka opened her mouth but had no answer. She had no idea where to go from here.
In the end, Milolii carried Namaka on her back, variously swimming through flooded lowlands and climbing over barren rocks, to find Leapua’s camp. Upoho came running toward them long before they reached the lean-tos and hastily constructed huts lining the shore.
“You’re alive!”
Namaka slipped off the mo‘o but swayed and had to steady herself against Milolii’s back to keep from stumbling to her knees. “I’m fine.”
“You smell like brine and a dead eel. You look worse.”
Namaka grimaced. “Rat.”
Upoho shrugged. “It has its advantages.” Ignoring the tabu—as usual—he slipped her arm around his shoulders and helped her toward the camp.
When they drew near, though, she pushed off him. The people needed to see her walking under her own power. They needed to see her strong.
Leapua came to meet them at the camp’s edge, and, after a stern looking up and down, embraced Namaka, drawing her close. “Praise the ‘aumākua, you live.”
Namaka was not a woman who wept. Such did not befit a queen, after all. And yet, the sudden urge to break down and bawl like a child, to grieve the loss of both her husbands, and of so many others … that urge hit her like a wave. All she could do was set her jaw and allow no emotion at all to escape, for fear a single drop would become another kai e‘e. To give a hair was to give all, and that, a queen could not afford.
Instead, she stood in silence a long moment. So long, Leapua shifted nervously from foot to foot. “Namaka?” She leaned in. “Are you well?”
“I will be fine. I used too much mana in that fight, is all.” Spent too much mana, and paid far, far too much in the price of lives. “Can anyone confirm Pele’s fate?”
“She escaped. I’m not sure where she’ll go now.”
Namaka winced. This was not possible. She was supposed to offer Pele in sacrifice to Kanaloa, appease the natural order, and put an end to all this. Instead, so many dead … Kahaumana dead … and Pele yet alive.
Namaka had won. She’d godsdamned won and still she’d lost.
So where would Pele go? A sinking sensation overtook Namaka’s gut and had her ready to sway once more. Where would Pele go? To Kahiki, of course. Uluka‘a lay in ruins, and now, Pele would seek out another volcano to soak in its mana, restore her power, and come back with a vengeance.
Namaka needed to be certain, of course. “I need you to do something, Leapua. I suspect Pele will seek to flee the island. I need you to find her, see if she does so and where she is headed. If she goes to Kahiki, find out where. I swear by all the akua and ‘aumākua, I will hunt her, no matter how far she flees.”
“Namaka …”
“Please, kahuna. Do as I ask.” After all this, she could not allow Pele to escape her wrath. Not after all her sister had cost them. All she had taken.
Leapua nodded with obvious reluctance. “I’ll return when I know if she has fled and to where.”
In the meantime, Namaka would need to regain her strength. This battle was far from over.
Part III
29
It was a creature of myth, a legend of the deep. A taniwha. And somehow, the he‘e had summoned it to their aid.
Not the he‘e. Hiyoya has a Chintamani.
Oh, damn. They’d concealed it in the years since Nyi Rara’s old host died. Maybe they waited to find a taniwha, maybe they waited until this last, most desperate moment to send it into play. That seemed to indicate Hiyoya possessed only one dragon servant. But how did this all fit together?
Were Hiyoya and the He’e Aupuni collaborating? They must be, otherwise the timing was too perfect. So Punga had played them all.
In truth, though, who called it and how didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she catch the monster. It paused briefly to crush some of Mu’s defenders. She arrived in time to see it swallow a merman near whole, biting off the end of his tail in a spray of gore.
Damn it. Damn the he‘e and damn Hiyoya and Milu damn their cursed taniwha.
She was going to end this. She summoned the currents around her and launched them at the taniwha, sending an enormous undersea wave crashing into it. The current pushed it over slightly, but didn’t slow it. The beast didn’t even look at her. Like she was beneath its notice. Instead, it swam on toward Sawaiki, propelling its bulk forward at a speed she could match only if she used those jets of water to accelerate her passage.
You will use up your strength before the battle begins.
And just how was she supposed to battle such a monstrosity in the first place? She’d thrown her full might at it and not even managed to annoy it. Could she bring it down with a water lance like Nyi Rara used on the he‘e?
Doing that rendered you unconscious. And that was against a creature your own size. How do you propose we generate enough force to penetrate those scales?
Well, she wasn’t about to give up. She had to warn her people.
They’ll know.
A sick feeling bubbled up in her stomach. As the taniwha drew near land, it would rise toward the surface. Its enormous bulk and uncanny speed would disrupt the sea around it, creating a kai e‘e sweeping toward the islands.
All the people of Sawaiki, in fact, now depended on her for their very lives. She had failed to protect Uluka‘a. Failed in the most spectacular way imaginable. She and Pele had destroyed their world.
And now this land was … was … Namaka faltered. Why would Hiyoya send the taniwha against Sawaiki instead of against Mu directly?
Because of you. They saw what you did in our last battle. They know who you are from your prior dealings with them. Had they any doubt, the Hiyoyan emissary recognized you. And they know your people fled to Sawaiki. This course of action forces you to abandon Mu in order to protect human lives.
And knowing that, Nyi Rara had still allowed her to chase the taniwha.
I offered you partnership.
Someone would see the kai e‘e. She could only pray they’d all run inland, flee the coming wave toward the relative shelter of the mountains. They couldn’t know what would follow was worse. Beyond any act of nature—or, perhaps it was nature in its purest, most wrathful form. The rage of the deep.
And it was headed for the last people she still cared for. Those probably still sheltering on Mau‘i.
Maybe Nyi Rara was right. Maybe she would only exhaust herself by using her power to move faster. But she had to. She had to get there before the wave wiped out what little was left of her own ‘ohana. She owed them that. She summoned jets of water to her hands, jerked them behind herself, and propelled her body forward even faster than she had done to reach Mu. Everything blurred around her as she finally broke out in front of the taniwha.
Her breath came in pants that stung her still-raw throat. She glanced over her shoulder to see the creature glaring at her, increasing its own speed as if intent on catching her. Swallowing her up like a late supper. Or maybe no more than a small snack.
Namaka screamed, expending even more energy to fling herself farther out ahead. Just a little more. A few hundred paces more and she�
�d be there, be at the nearest village.
And what will you do then?
She had no idea. Somehow, she’d buy the people time to escape. That was her duty as Queen. It was the least—and sadly, probably the most—she could do for them.
As the beach neared, Namaka launched herself upward, flinging herself from the sea like a whale venting. As she flew through the air she imagined herself walking, running, dancing. She locked onto that picture in her mind, not just a memory, but forced herself to feel it happening. A sudden, sharp pain stung her as her tail split apart and her scales receded beneath her skin. Swimming was magical, but legs had their uses.
She landed a dozen paces away from the sea in a crouch, just before the village of Hana. Much of the village had probably gone to sleep, but a man shouted at her arrival.
“Run!” she screamed at the people. “Run to the mountains! Run and find Milolii!”
Namaka spun back to the sea. The great wave rose, rushing forward. It would sweep over the village before they had gotten far enough away.
“Help me now, Nyi Rara.” The mermaid princess offered no answer, only a vague sensation of hesitation. Damn it. Damn her. “I fought to save your people! Now fight to save mine!”
There was only the barest hesitation more.
I am with you.
Namaka spread her arms wide, palms facing the onrushing sea, and sent her soul out onto it.
Break.
She fed all of herself into that thought.
Break!
She screamed with effort, touching the ocean with her soul, pouring what remained of her mana into it, and turning it back on itself. Even in her mind she screamed, her thoughts nothing more than a primal desire to defy fate. To hold back the sea, turn the tide, and stand against the inevitable.
The wave twisted, breaking in the wrong direction and falling backward in a cacophony that almost covered the taniwha’s roar of rage. The wave tossed the creature upside down and spun it around, before it broke through the surface a moment later, roaring once again.