Heirs of Mana Omnibus

by Matt Larkin

  Daucina shrugged. “If any of the elders know, they have not revealed it. Commonly, it’s believed sorcerers on Old Mu created a breach to Avaiki, probably in an imprudent attempt to end a war with Kumari Kandam.”

  “But what broke the continents themselves?”

  “The breach.”

  Nyi Rara turned back, took a few steps toward him. “Or something that came through it. No taniwha could shatter a continent and sink Old Mu. Nor could even Kanaloa, I suspect. I know of only one being large enough to wreak destruction on such a scale. I have looked into its gaze and seen something ineffable. Vast beyond imagining and terrible beyond comprehension.”

  Daucina shivered and glanced around as if afraid to give voice to her theory or allow anyone to overhear it. “You mean She came to the Mortal Realm … and somehow retreated back to Naunet after that.”

  “I think so.”

  The merman rubbed a webbed finger along his brow. “Even if that’s true—and it might explain how Kanaloa stole the Chintamaniya while she was away—how does it help us now? All that tells us is the sorcerers of the old world were imbeciles. Not where Kanaloa stored his treasures, nor how to overcome him or his he‘e progeny.”

  “No, I know,” Nyi Rara groaned. “I know. But I feel like, if we can complete the picture, at least we can compete on the same level as Kanaloa.”

  “Picture?”

  “I’ve been thinking of these events like the mosaic in the Chamber of Memory in Bulotu.”

  “I … have never seen it,” Daucina admitted. He was the Voice of Ukupanipo now that Opuhalakoa had fallen, so he theoretically had the right to enter the Chamber, but small wonder he had found no time to project back into Avaiki. Nor did many mer who managed to enter the Mortal Realm wish to return to Avaiki.

  If he had not looked upon the sight with his own eyes, it was not really her place to tell of it, and yet, she once again came back to finding herself with few other allies to help her understand where to go from here. “The mosaic depicts the Elder Deep in Naunet, as well as Kanaloa stealing the Chintamaniya, then using them to create the he‘e. Now I know he also used the pearls to turn taniwha into the mo‘o to be his servants on land. The mo‘o could take human form and …” And breed with humans. As her father had done with her mother. “Kū-Waha-Ilo was the son of Mo‘oinanea, the first mo‘o, the daughter of Toona, the last great taniwha.” She knew she was speaking to herself, but the words were flowing like a mountain fall, a plummeting cataract. “Kanaloa used the Chintamaniya to purify the blood springs of the Elder Deep and create the Waters of Life. He led his servant Kū-Waha-Ilo there to give him immortality—”

  “Deep, Nyi Rara!” Daucina threw up his hands. “What are you on about?”

  Nyi Rara faltered, looking hard at him. “Namaka’s parents.”

  “Namaka?”

  “My host,” she said, sparing him the effort of trying to understand they were one and the same. “Namaka, Pele, Kapo, Hi‘iaka, and Pu‘u-hele. Daughters of Haumea and Kū-Waha-Ilo.”

  “Huh.” Daucina flicked his tongue over his teeth. “What does any of this have to do with Kanaloa or the Chintamani stones?”

  “I don’t know, maybe nothing. But Kū-Waha-Ilo was a servant to Kanaloa, given custodianship over the Waters of Life, and deliberately bred with Haumea, a kupua heir of Old Mu.”

  “Wait, what?” Now the merman paced about her as if seeing her with new eyes. “So, your human host holds the sorcerous bloodlines of the Queens of Mu and of a mo‘o.” He chuckled. “I suppose that explains your great mana.”

  “Queens of Mu …?”

  Daucina nodded absently, walking to one of the columns, tracing a finger along the Supernal script engraved on it. “They’re referenced here. Sorceress queens who ruled the continent before the Deluge destroyed it. If you’re right about … uh, Her … coming to the Mortal Realm, it’s possible those same queens summoned Her somehow.”

  Nyi Rara paused to examine the pillar. As Daucina said, the faded carvings made brief reference to an order of sorceress queens. The royal bloodlines of Old Mu, from which modern man gained the arts of hula and tattoos, though the old ones had used them as schools of the Art. Lonomakua—Maui—had told her that. Had she more time, she’d have appreciated a longer conversation with the man, who seemed possessed of far more knowledge than any mortal ought to have access to.

  Had her ancestors destroyed the world? Had they, in their desperation to undo Kumari Kandam, broken both continents and Kêr-Ys and Hy-Brasil as well? Had her people allowed the Elder Deep and Kanaloa into the Mortal Realm?

  She blew out a long breath before moving on to other pillars, glancing at the references made here and there. Before the breach to Avaiki, she gathered, dragons—spawn of the Elder Deep—had been rare in the Mortal Realm. The taniwha had come with Kanaloa, some of which were later overmastered by the mer using the Chintamani stones. Most of the taniwha perished or fled during the Rogo War and the Sundering that followed, leaving mainly the mo‘o. Everything seemed to come back to those dragons. They had been with Kanaloa from the beginning, watching his progress.

  Through a mo‘o, Kanaloa had created the Waters of Life. Was that Kū-Waha-Ilo the Elder Deep had shown her? Or his mother, Mo‘oinanea?

  Daucina leaned against the pillar above her, drawing her gaze. “As long as Kanaloa and the he‘e hold all the Chintamaniya, they hold the power of the Elder Deep. We cannot defeat them unless we can reclaim at least one, probably several.”

  “Hiyoya has one,” she said, and Daucina nodded. “But Kuku Lau will not negotiate with them.”

  The mer groaned and stalked away. “Her damn pride. We could make Latmikaik see the he‘e will not long honor any alliance.” He looked imploringly at her now. “We could save ourselves by throwing Mu upon their mercy. But you refuse to consider alliance?” He slapped a pillar, drawing a wince from Nyi Rara. “I for one have no desire to find myself banished back to Avaiki!”

  Nyi Rara winced. “I refuse to countenance surrender, which is what it would amount to, should we beg mercy from Hiyoya or Lemuria or anywhere else.” She paused. “Can we sneak into the He‘e Aupuni and reclaim one?”

  A flash of irritation crossed his face. “We don’t know that Kanaloa left any stones among his brood. We have no idea where he’s hidden any of them. He probably brought at least one with him to Mu, but if we could get into the city, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” He shook his head. “No, our best chance is to recover one of the ones lost during the Sundering. There were five. Hiyoya has one, and records seem to indicate one may have shattered in the war. But three others should be somewhere.”

  “Unless the he‘e took them all when they rose up against us.”

  “Unless that,” Daucina admitted.

  “The College was abandoned during the war. Meaning, there cannot be any record here of what happened to the stones after that. If that’s what you hope for in these shadowy archives, you waste your time.”

  He snorted. “Knowledge is never wasteful.”

  “Be that as it may … the Urchin would know, but we cannot access it.” She paused. “What if Kanaloa hid some of the stones outside the Aupuni? You said we had no idea where, but that might have been recorded back during the First Age. If not the exact location, at least in what regions Kanaloa dwelt then. My grandfather went there, bargained with him, yes?”

  “Indeed.” Daucina opened his palm as if to offer her a pillar. “And if you won’t allow me a few hours sleep, I suppose we should get to work.”

  8

  The bellow that raced along the waves reminded Pele of the roar of an earthquake and the rage of a volcano, as if something chthonic had woken on Moloka‘i and come to damn the living. She stiffened, forcing herself not to glance back at Lonomakua and risk allowing the warriors behind her to see her worry.

  “What in Lua-o-Milu was that?” someone else demanded, giving voice to the question she dared not ask.

  “In Kumari Kandam, mo�
�olelo speak of such beasts,” Lonomakua said behind her, and Pele could not help but think him speaking to her. “Zaratans, some called them—island turtles. Hapless sailors came ashore on their mossy hides, thinking them small islands. Only to have the land move, waking from centuries-long slumbers to plunge beneath the waves.”

  Another bellow that left her ears ringing.

  Maybe no one spoke after that, maybe she just couldn’t hear them.

  Either way, it came into view soon—a cloud of dust rising up from the narrow beach below the cliffs. Sand and debris and chaos swirled up into a wall of nightmare and death, and through it, a crashing shadow the size of a mountain.

  Pele winced, not wishing to even imagine the devastation such a monster could unleash on a massed army. Carnage that might well outstrip anything she or Namaka had ever done.

  A sweeping flipper sent a swelling wave rushing toward her canoe. She saw it coming, a surge of doom, and could do nothing save clutch the prow of the canoe and—

  It hit with crushing force, tore her fingers from the wood, sent her hurtling off the canoe, underwater. Stinging brine rushed up her nose and choked her. Everything spun in turbulent blindness.

  She breached the surface only to find darkness.

  Blinking. Coughing out seawater. Gasping for air.

  It took a moment of heaving before she realized the outrigger had overturned and she had come up in an air pocket inside its now broken hold. Treading water, she looked down … and could not quite suppress the whimper as a chelonian shadow crossed beneath her. Its passing seized the overturned canoe and yanked Pele and it along as the behemoth dove deeper.

  Before it would no doubt come up once more for another assault—this time on Pele’s forces meant to join the invaders.

  Her breath caught, heart hammering.

  Death had come for her. The thought seized her and refused to release its grip upon her chest. After all she had been through, she would die here, now on the ocean, without even setting foot on Moloka‘i. Without the least chance to confront Poli‘ahu. An inglorious end to all her grand plans. A collapse of her people as she failed them utterly.

  Trembles ran through her, breath grown frantic, echoing off the hull that enclosed her. Panic edged in around her, suffocated her. She could dive, swim for the beach. Maybe … maybe make it … or maybe get snatched up before she’d gone fifty feet, swallowed whole by jaws that could bite a whale in half.

  No … Not like this …

  She had to at least go down fighting.

  There had to be something to do here, some way to drive back this island turtle. To breach it, even as she and Namaka had breached the taniwha. But Namaka wasn’t here to throw it ashore where Pele could bathe it in lava.

  There was just her.

  So … so … Magma ran beneath these islands. Even beneath the seafloor here. Sawaiki overflowed with volcanic power on the edge of her fingertips. She needed but reach out and claim it.

  Create a powerful enough eruption to harm even the behemoth.

  In the middle of the sea, no less.

  Fighting against another rise of panic, Pele dove underwater to look at her foe and peer down into the depths. Coral rose up on the seafloor, creating a reef arcing around the island. But beneath that, magma coursed, awaiting.

  Movement to her side caught her eye and she spun to see Lonomakua swimming for her. His hand caught hers, his crystal blue eyes seeming alight with fire. Lonomakua … Maui.

  Who mo‘olelo claimed had buried Toona in lava when the taniwha had slain his family.

  Though they could not speak, in his eyes she saw an understanding. Together, they turned to watch the approaching shadows of the zaratan, surging forward with mighty beats of those flippers. She felt his mana thrum, pulse through her, and seep down into the flowing flames buried beneath the reef.

  So much … so hot … So angry.

  The rage of the Earth. Blowing a stream of bubbles, she hissed, calling it up in the path of the closing turtle.

  The ground cracked.

  A billowing cloud of sulfuric gasses vented upward like some inverted waterfall, spewing poisons and pressure just as the zaratan soared over the reef. The world ripped apart.

  Delicious heat exploded in all directions. The water nearest the blast evaporated in an instant, while beyond it the seas boiled. The unfurling pressure flung the island turtle upward, actually casting it out of the sea and beyond her view.

  She turned to see Lonomakua wracked with spasms, seeming ready to tear himself to pieces.

  No.

  Whatever he’d bound to himself to allow him the Art of Fire that she came by naturally, that entity now plied for control of his body. He’d fed so much mana to the Fire spirit, he’d risked losing himself. She laced an arm under his and swam for the surface, pulling him into the air.

  Please, no.

  She could not lose him.

  Not him.

  It was Kana who swam out to them and guided them both back to shore. His speed in the water reminded her of Namaka as a girl, perhaps even more so. It was like being towed by a dolphin.

  The first thing she saw was the island turtle, its shell split, lying on its back in the shallows, motionless. For a breathless moment, she could not look away from the macabre destruction she had wrought on such a timeless creature.

  “Pele!” Kana shouted, grabbing her shoulders.

  Only then did she realize quakes tore the cliffside apart. The volcanic cataclysm she and Lonomakua had begun had not finished venting itself. From high above, chunks of rock the size of houses pitched down into the gulches.

  Kana’s people—those who survived—had raced up the slope toward a now-cracked wall, fleeing rising floods created by her eruption. A kai e‘e might well sweep in on this place.

  More tremors ran through the island, as if Moloka‘i itself might fly apart as a result of her desperation. In her mind’s eye, she saw the entire island sink beneath the waves, a testament to her unbridled wrath.

  She tried to rise, but tremors seized her and left her weak.

  “Shit,” Kana said, glancing out to sea at the rushing flood.

  He threaded his arms around both her and Lonomakua and hefted them upward, toward where his men now rushed into the breach and engaged Kaupeepee’s forces.

  With each step, Pele winced and gasped.

  They made it through a breached wall that seemed hewn out of the mountain itself, and upward, onto higher ground, before her knees gave out, forcing her down to catch her breath.

  “I have to push on,” Kana said.

  Pele nodded, not even watching him go, instead looking to Lonomakua where he lay in convulsions.

  She noticed the shadow the instant before it descended upon them, bowling her over and slamming her to the ground. The man settled atop her, knees pinning her wrists, a knife blade held to her eye, even as her gaze was drawn to the burned ruin of his own empty socket.

  “Upoho,” she rasped. She’d known he’d gone after Kana to help Niheu with the Waters of Life, wanting nothing to do with Vai‘i once Namaka had left.

  “Give me one reason not to take your eye as you did mine,” the wererat snapped at her, leaning closer, until the awful destruction of his face filled her world. “One reason, Flame Queen.”

  “I … I can’t …” she rasped. “I shouldn’t have … I …”

  ‘Aumākua, she had made so many mistakes in her wrath.

  The blade descended, until its bone point brushed her bottom eyelid. Pele tried to brace against the impending pain, though she knew it would never be enough.

  “I’m sorry …” she whimpered.

  Upoho sneered at her.

  It would come any moment. The agony she so deserved. The pain, the loss …

  But he cast aside the knife and abruptly rose, stalking off into the battlefield, leaving her trembling and wretched.

  9

  The unfolding chaos seemed now like the shadowy vision Poli‘ahu had beheld in Pō.
The destruction of Old Mu—she was fairly certain she had witnessed the coming of the Deluge—as if this were a precursor to such cataclysm.

  Another tremor shot through Haupu, a rumbling roar that sent her stumbling even as she stalked the halls. Her knee slammed against cold stone.

  Haupu shifted.

  The whole fortress groaned, then cracked like thunder. Some colossal piece of it must have broken off, collapsing into the sea below, where the glorious island turtle now rotted.

  Showers of dust rained upon Poli‘ahu. She scrambled to her feet, pushing onward, deeper.

  Madness!

  As if Pele were indeed a herald of annihilation. Utter madness had claimed Moloka‘i. Quakes, volcanoes, floods. Mountains breaking apart.

  Behemoths that must have endured uncounted millennia sundered in the wrath of that … whatever in Lua-o-Milu Pele was.

  Another quake.

  The path ahead of her pulsed and a great swathe of the floor dropped away, pitching down the steep mountainside. Tumbling boulders smashing through Kaupeepee’s great wall. The rockslides delayed the invaders for the moment, but dust would settle, and no one could hold Haupu now.

  No one.

  Beams of sunlight streamed in through the new gap in the fortress. Just enough of the floor remained for her to gingerly thread her way around, back pressed against the wall.

  There was screaming.

  So much screaming. No doubt it had gone on for quite some time, but with the thunderous cacophony of the fortress crumbling, Poli‘ahu hadn’t noticed until she drew near to Hina’s room.

  The other kupua—radiant in her terror, enticing even now, when Poli‘ahu should have feared—clutched a broken wall, peering out into a declivity below as if paralyzed by the sight.

  Empty space that would drop her hundreds of feet to the waters.

  Poli‘ahu studiously avoided looking down into the chaos playing out in the gulch.

  For a heartbeat, she stood poised, staring at Hina. This woman had brought so much trouble. Poli‘ahu had helped Kaupeepee take her as a symbol, a means of breaking the Kahikians. But this had not played out in the least the way any of them had intended.