Heirs of Mana Omnibus

by Matt Larkin

  How Lilinoe had ignored her rage and pleas with equal indifference.

  Don’t think about that at all.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  She didn’t even know what she would have said to her parents. Her father just sitting there, refusing to even watch as her mother threw her out in the middle of the night. The woman had … had …

  Poli‘ahu blinked away tears.

  No way. She wasn’t crying. She wouldn’t cry over that bitch who had abandoned her! What right did that woman have to do such a thing?

  Oh, ‘aumākua, what had Poli‘ahu done? What hadn’t she done that she ought to have? Was this because she’d made such bad poi the night before?

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  No, that was impossible. Surely no mother would abandon her daughter on account of a poorly prepared meal. Would she? Had Poli‘ahu shamed them somehow?

  “Your breathing is erratic. Calm your mind. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. Focus on the quiet. Focus on the dark.”

  Poli‘ahu sneered at Lilinoe. Goddess or not, the akua could shove a taro root up her arse for all Poli‘ahu cared. What kind of akua showed up in the middle of the night and took away a child? What if … what if Lilinoe was actually some kind of Nightmarcher? Had she brought Poli‘ahu here to feast on her soul?

  “Calm yourself …”

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  “Grrrr,” Poli‘ahu grumbled. “How in Lua-o-Milu am I supposed to calm myself with all that’s happened? Huh? My mother threw me out of the house. My father did nothing! Then you show up and feed me some rat shit about Snow Queens and the godsdamned king of the underworld. Then we walked all night just so we could sit in this miserable hole listening to the water falling over and over!”

  The akua leaned over, close enough Poli‘ahu could see her eyes, even in the half-light.

  Then Lilinoe slapped her.

  The blow sent her sprawling, a haze in front of her eyes, ears ringing. The next thing Poli‘ahu even realized, her cheek was against the cold rock and the whole cave was spinning around her.

  Finally, the ringing faded away.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  “Get up.”

  Groaning, Poli‘ahu forced herself to sit again, legs folded beneath her. Blood dribbled down her lip. “You hit me.”

  “You whined like a petulant child. I have told you that you shall become a queen, a kupua, an heir to ancient mysteries. And your response is to moan and complain? Has that availed you in life thus far? Has grousing ever in your life produced any outcome that improved your circumstances in the least?”

  “Well …”

  “If so, I assure you, those days have ended. Prove yourself worthy of my attentions, child. Or you become nothing but a mana-rich meal for my kind.” Lilinoe leaned back in her restive pose. “Now, focus on your breathing.”

  Maybe she could run for it. It was daylight outside the cave, and the akua had admitted to not caring much for daylight. Maybe that was why she’d come in the middle of the night. But the akua might stop her before she escaped.

  And even if she managed it, where would she go? Home? To scream at her mother as she’d planned? Maybe Lilinoe was right about that. What good would come from such a display? Poli‘ahu could not well browbeat her mother into loving her. That bitch had thrown her out into the night, handed her over to a dangerous goddess.

  Well, if that was all her parents thought of her—refuse to be discarded—then Poli‘ahu had no need of them either. No, if she ran, she’d run far, across the island maybe. The newcomers from Kahiki had camps on the south shores, near Kau, maybe she’d go there.

  And hope night never reached the southern shore so that Lilinoe couldn’t follow?

  Poli‘ahu snorted. The noise earned her a hiss from the akua, which itself seemed to press the air in around Poli‘ahu, ready to devour her with its chill.

  “Clear your mind of its prattle,” Lilinoe said.

  Sure. Easy for the goddess to say.

  There was fish, sometimes. Lilinoe often seemed to forget Poli‘ahu would get hungry, but eventually, she’d let her go out in the early morning to gather food. Father had shown her how to fish as a young girl, many years ago. Poli‘ahu made her own nets, caught what she could, and roasted it outside the cave.

  Lilinoe utterly forbade fire inside.

  Sitting by that fire, Poli‘ahu cast a glance at the cave, a few dozen feet away. Was the akua actually trapped inside in daylight? Or did she simply not like the brightness? The entity held an obvious connection to mist or fog or cold, and sunlight burned those things away. Poli‘ahu could make a run for it now.

  By evening she could reach her parents’ house. Staring into the flame, Poli‘ahu pictured that house burning. She could see herself, throwing a brand onto the roof, lighting everything aflame. Throw her out, would they? Well, they had sorely underestimated their daughter.

  It was a delicious, painful, horrible image in her mind, one she nursed over and over, playing it out a hundred ways while juice leaked from the sizzling fish.

  She didn’t know when she’d started crying, but realizing it, she scrubbed the tears from her cheeks. They didn’t deserve her sorrow. They didn’t deserve a godsdamned thing from her.

  The meditation Lilinoe wanted her to achieve did not come easily.

  Day after day, night after night, they sat in the dark, concentrating on not concentrating. On doing nothing. On being nothing.

  Poli‘ahu rather hated it.

  She hated her godsdamned parents. She hated this icy akua. She really hated this cave.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  The sound made her cringe, even as she tried to do as Lilinoe instructed. Tried to let go of her thoughts and think only of her breath.

  Which only allowed her a sigh. “What’s a Snow Queen?”

  Lilinoe opened her eyes. In the darkness, Poli‘ahu couldn’t judge her expression nor decide if the goddess was irritated or not. “Very well. If you cannot think of your breathing, perhaps it will do to have you concentrating on something else.” The akua paused. “Tell me of the Deluge.”

  “Uh … Kāne brought the Deluge because he thought the old world was full of wicked people and evil spirits. But he saved one family, that of Nu‘u, who some say came to Savai‘i in the first days of the Worldsea.”

  “Yes … most akua know little of what happened before the Deluge, though we retain knowledge lost to mortals. We know there were Snow Queens, even before the waters rose and claimed the Mortal Realm. Some believe there was always a Snow Queen, even unto the darkest recesses of history. I have heard it claimed that Milu was the first of them, but some of my kind dispute that, in secret, where the goddess cannot hear them.”

  “Y-you know Milu? As in queen of Lua-o-Milu, the frozen underworld of the damned?”

  “I am a snow akua,” Lilinoe said, as if that ought to answer anything. “Whether or not there were Snow Queens before Milu, whether she was indeed ever a Snow Queen, holds little actual bearing. Suffice it to say that, after the Deluge, Nu‘u’s wife became the first Snow Queen of this era. She lived and she died. And in time, another rose to take up her mantle. A god-queen of the mountains who could hold the line together in this new, inundated world.”

  “What does that have to do with you, with snow akua?”

  “You will know the answer to that when you are ready.”

  Poli‘ahu found her throat cold, making it hard to swallow. “And I’m … I’m the next one to take up the mantle? Why me?”

  “Nu‘u sired children, a line of kings.”

  “The ali‘i.”

  “Yes … and among his descendants was Manua, the first king of Sawaiki, established by Maui.”

  “Maui the Firebringer?” Poli‘ahu asked, drawing a hiss from Lilinoe. “You hate fire.”

  “Yes … but still, he let a man rise and rule these isles for many years. A descendant of Nu‘u, and your ancestor.”

  Poli‘ahu gnawed on her lip.
Something about all this didn’t quite fit, she couldn’t say what. The akua didn’t seem to be lying so much as holding something back. None of it really made sense.

  “Now, you want to focus on something else?” Lilinoe asked. “Focus on the line of Snow Queens. Given that power, the gift to control mist and snow, the Art of sorcery, and the longevity of a kupua, what would you do? Envision that past and the queens who have gone before. See their power flowing through the wind and weather, see their souls carried in the fog as it rolls in. See it suffusing your soul. Then, when you are ready, we shall talk of focusing on other things.”

  She shut her eyes, trying to see the things Lilinoe had spoken of. It felt dreamlike. This could not be a part of her life. It was like something from a mo‘olelo. A tale of kupua and great deeds and tragedy. But then, that was exactly what Lilinoe claimed Poli‘ahu was.

  A kupua.

  Could it be the truth?

  Could power from beyond Pō run through Poli‘ahu’s veins? Did that mean … No, wait. Her parents were not kupua. So if Lilinoe spoke the truth, if Poli‘ahu was kupua, that meant … her parents were not her parents.

  They had cast her out because she had never really belonged to them.

  The thought seemed so bitter, so cold, that it spread a numbness through Poli‘ahu’s chest. An icy sensation that passed into her gut and her legs, carried to all parts of her body with each beat of her heart.

  They were not her parents.

  Mama and Papa were … surrogates. Nursemaids someone had left her with?

  Poli‘ahu had no more tears for them.

  If she was truly the heir to the mantle of Snow Queen, she would earn it. Everyone on Vai‘i would learn her name, one day. They would fall at her feet and worship her.

  As Lilinoe had claimed, Poli‘ahu would become a god-queen.

  7

  A channel beneath Uluhai connected to a cavern adumbrated by the flicker of twin wisp lights, their gleam not nearly enough to fill the empty spaces. Unless Nyi Rara missed her guess, those at the College must have used this hidden recess to study the Art in the glory days of Mu. Since uncovering it, Tilafaiga had claimed the site as her workspace.

  Now, Apukohai, a distant cousin of hers, lay on the cavern floor whilst Tilafaiga plied her trade upon his back. With needles carved from one of the Urchin’s spines, she and her sister Taema inked the merman, each singing softly, in perfect harmony with one another. Not even Nyi Rara knew what they made the ink from or understood the Art that went into the creation of a new Dakuwaqan Ranger, save that only those who passed the Deep Ordeal were eligible …

  A sojourn back to Avaiki, passing through the edge of Naunet, surviving for days there, feasting on mana-infused wildlife while trying to avoid becoming a feast oneself. Nyi Rara supposed she might well qualify as having passed the Deep Ordeal, were she to push the issue. What Ranger here had actually stared into the fathomless eye of the Elder Deep itself and thus teetered upon the edge of oblivion, cast adrift from fragile illusions about their place in the world?

  The tremble that shot through her hands forced her to clench them at her side. She had heard that Tilafaiga had come here, had thought—perhaps—that some vestige of the ancient wisdom might linger in this cavern. Or perhaps she merely fled from the uncounted fruitless hours of excavating the College in search of salvation that might not even exist.

  For a moment, she closed her eyes, basking in the sisters’ song. All mer loved to sing—and to be sung to—and the golden-tailed sisters managed to entwine their voices in such flow that Nyi Rara might forget all other concerns. The music was akin to dreaming, leaving her in somnambulistic trance, adrift somewhere between this world and the next.

  Taema, ever timid with words, in song found herself, voice ringing through the cavern with such high resonance it left Nyi Rara trembling. And Tilafaiga’s deeper voice melded in perfectly.

  A disturbance in the water alerted her to the approach of another from down the channel, and she spun, wondering at who else would dare defile a sacred space claimed by Dakuwaqa. It was Ake, rambling under his breath, his course veering one way or another as if his equilibrium had been disrupted, rather than enhanced by the song. Watching his haphazard approach, Nyi Rara found herself fighting a grimace.

  This, too, would become Apokohai’s fate, should he live so long. The tattoos seemed to sap the host, as if the human body found such vast amounts of power little different from a poison. Ake had admitted to hallucinations, dreams he could not wake from. Living nightmares that drew substance from the Astral Realm. The Art had allowed him to gather and hold more mana, to harness it, but it came at a cost.

  Perhaps, were more mer able to claim hosts such as she had—kupua already replete with mana—such things would prove unnecessary, though Nyi Rara could not match a Ranger’s ability to apply mana to physical feats to nearly the same extreme.

  “I … feel the weight,” Ake mumbled when he came up to her side.

  She glanced at him. “What?”

  “I … I mean … That this might be the last new Dakuwaqan Ranger we ever create. Who can afford to risk the Deep Ordeal now?”

  Funny, Nyi Rara had just been thinking she could herself ask for the tattoos, were she so inclined. Though eventual madness and decline of her host did not much appeal. Either way, it seemed to her Ake’s mind had clearly been somewhere else entirely.

  These tattoo arts had been practiced in Old Mu, she knew, one of the branches of the Art favored by the high-blooded sorcerers from which Haumea was descended. Was there a connection between the Art of Dakuwaqa and Old Mu? Otherwise, she might have thought most mer Art more akin to the fabled spell-songs of Kumari Kandam.

  Old Mu … Everything had begun with the Deluge. Something destroyed the continents, and Kanaloa had come through from Avaiki then. What pieces yet eluded her? It was like she could see the shape of history in her mind’s eye, but it was fractured, drenched in shadows, buried in sand. A shattered mosaic of events that connected everything, if she could but reassemble the pieces.

  Was it … Nyi Rara felt fair certain her early apprehension was truth—that the Elder Deep itself had risen, had entered the Mortal Realm and destroyed it. An eschaton that had shattered Mu, Kumari Kandam, and the other continents. Kanaloa had … ridden her wake? Was that how the he‘e god-king had come to the Mortal Realm?

  She needed more answers, but who would know such things? Maui? Tales claimed he had taught the tattoo arts of Old Mu to the first kāhuna. But the College of Triteia dated to long before Maui’s day.

  “Princess?” Ake asked.

  She looked to him again, trembling in the dancing shadows of the water. On impulse, she stroked his cheek, though he flinched at the gesture. “I’m sorry for what is asked of the Rangers. For the price you pay to keep Mu safe.” Now she looked once more upon Apukohai. Maybe he would be the last. Maybe they would no longer need to make such sacrifices.

  If she could but find the answers.

  When she returned to the College, she found Daucina curled within the auditorium, head on his chest, eyes fluttering with dream. It was, she realized, approaching dawn, and time for the mer to sleep. But how was she to seek rest when her brain felt all atingle with energies, as if some revelation drew so close she could taste it in the water?

  Instead, she shook the merman awake. At her touch, his hand lunged for her throat. Nyi Rara caught his wrist and held it until his eyes widened. The nictitating membrane flushed over them twice before he seemed to recognize her.

  “Th-there …” He paused. Swallowed. “Diving into eldritch arcana somewhat alters the mind, I’m afraid. Mortals often go mad from such pursuits, but even our kind may find our thought processes skewed, shunted into angles others cannot imagine.”

  “The dreams.”

  He nodded once. Grimaced a moment. “You, uh … you saw them? Taema and … Tilafaiga?”

  With a nod, Nyi Rara swam deeper into the College, toward the airy chambers where the ancient
mer had pushed back the water with the Art and carved their records upon massive columns. At first, she had believed only one such chamber existed, but further exploration of Uluhai had revealed a second and a third, and now she half expected to uncover new secrets with each night of excavation. That process was stalled, however, because Daucina—and she agreed—allowed only a select few down here, claiming carelessness could destroy the history of this place.

  Daucina took the lead now, guiding her to the most recently uncovered column room. Rising up into it, the tenebrous chamber reminded her of a many-fingered hand reaching down from above, creating a maze they had to wend through.

  The merman assumed his human legs, climbed onto the platform and looked back at her as she did the same. From the look on his face, he still fought against the call of sleep, but they had no time to spare. “I haven’t made any progress in locating further Chintamaniya. Well, not exactly. There are certainly copious references to the flaming pearls throughout this chamber.”

  Nyi Rara nodded absently, rising to stroll among the pillars. “Do you recall, in that first chamber, how someone had broken away speculation about the nature of the Elder Deep—of all the Elder Gods, really?”

  “Hard to forget. Far be it for me to suggest some questions ought never be raised, but …”

  For a moment she hesitated. The mer had betrayed her, once, when Kuku Lau had led her ill-advised coup against Aiaru and failed. Daucina had cast Nyi Rara into Aiaru’s grasp—and the memory of that torture still made her tail ache—only to come to her rescue later. How was she to trust him? But she had no other ally to count on, no other scholar that might help her in her pursuit of the truth. And only in uncovering the truth of all of this could she hope to best Kanaloa.

  “I have a theory …” she ventured, turning over her shoulder to look at him where he now leaned against a column. “What caused the Deluge?”