Heirs of Mana Omnibus

by Matt Larkin

  “What are you doing here?” Namaka’s sister demanded.

  “I needed to speak with you. There are a great many things going on beneath the waves. Issues that affect even your kingdom.”

  Pele grunted, settling down across from them. She dug two fingers into the poi and shoveled it into her mouth before speaking. “I don’t care what’s happening in Mu or Hiyoya or wherever else. I have enough issues on this island. We won a victory, but Poli‘ahu herself escaped, and I imagine she will be coming to claim vengeance. I won’t let harm befall the people of Vai‘i.”

  “Harm is coming to you. The he‘e have taken Mu.”

  Pele shrugged. “So you said before. But then, the mer were the ones demanding regular sacrifices. Maybe we’re better off if octopuses rule the ocean.”

  Tilafaiga lurched forward like she might grab Pele. “Insolent—”

  “Sit. Down,” Namaka commanded.

  The instant the mermaid had moved, flames from the cook fire had swirled around Pele’s hand, now blazing there like a torch. “You’re in my home now, fish.”

  Namaka waved Tilafaiga and Taema off, then looked back to Pele. “Never mind them. And you don’t understand the threat arrayed before you. The he‘e are infinitely more dangerous to you than the mer. They’re taking over the entire sea. They’ll take it from our people, work behind the scenes until every chief, every kahuna, and in the end, every kingdom falls under their thrall. The sacrifices you make to Mu are nothing compared to the price of freedom for our entire civilization. Their king, Kanaloa, is ancient and powerful as a god. And he has been moving his pieces for this since the time of the Deluge.”

  Pele grunted in dismissal.

  “The he‘e, in conjunction with Hiyoya, sent that taniwha after us,” Namaka said. “You must believe me.”

  Pele sighed. “I do believe you. But I can’t fight an enemy under the ocean, Namaka. What I can do, what I will do, is hunt down the Snow Queen and bring peace to the land.”

  Namaka shook her head and sighed. She refused to see … “I must speak with you alone. There’s more to all this.”

  Pele glanced at her court a moment. “Clear the house.” When the others had all fled, she looked again to Namaka. “What is it?”

  Namaka leaned forward. “The mo‘o attacked the Muian refugees.”

  “And this was something you needed concealed from my ladies? From your own mer kin?”

  Namaka shook her head. “Of course not. What matters is that you and I know that Father was a mo‘o, a child of Mo‘oinanea. He was, in the past and possibly up until his demise, in service to Kanaloa.”

  “Both our parents were, you claimed.”

  Now Namaka nodded. “And the mo‘o attacked our hidden refuge, clearly at the behest of the he‘e or Kanaloa himself.”

  “So, the dragons still serve Kanaloa?” Pele asked. She folded her arms. “Lonomakua told me once that they are not driven by singular purpose any more than humans are. Or mer, I suppose. Surely that seems to indicate only some mo‘o yet follow the god-king.”

  “But if even some of them serve him, he still has his weapons for attacking those on land. Think, Pele. He’s done it before—transformed a taniwha in a mo‘o and through her engendered a race of land-walking dragons, many of which can take human form. They can breed with humans, interfere in human affairs. You think yourself removed from his machinations?”

  Her sister huffed. “I don’t have time for this …” A groan. “You were the one raised by one of the creatures.”

  “Rather my point. But …” She hesitated. So much mistrust had passed between them. How could she now share her intuitions—her fears? “After the mo‘o attacked Uluhai, I had a falling out with Kuku Lau when she would not move against the he‘e.”

  “War with another sister?” Pele asked in mock innocence, fingers to her chest. “I’m shocked.”

  Namaka ignored that. “In my desperation, I felt something inside. A kind of … heat. A power, a mana tinged with something else, not so unlike a flaming pearl. It rose up in me and gave me the strength to contend with an elder male mer many times my size.”

  Pele’s eyes narrowed at her intimation. “Speak plainly.”

  “We have mo‘o blood, you and I, and Kapo and Hi‘iaka, too. I couldn’t well see my own eyes, but it felt like the incandescence we saw in Kū-Waha-Ilo or the taniwha. That power derived directly from the Chintamaniya.”

  Her sister groaned again. “I’d have to discuss it with Lonomakua.”

  “Maui.”

  Pele’s frown only deepened. “Yes, insofar as he is still the person he was, I suppose. And he is currently wrestling with his own akua, caught in torpor.”

  Inconvenient, given Namaka too would have preferred the chance to consult him. “My point is, we are tied up in this, our whole ‘ohana. We always have been.”

  “I am not a piece to be moved about a kōnane board,” Pele snapped. “I care nothing for whatever our parents intended in siring us.”

  “If you turn your back on the threat Kanaloa poses, you may one day awaken to find his arms wrapped around your entire world in a grip so tight no amount of struggling will free you.”

  Her sister leaned back as if wanting to distance herself from the whole conversation. “Did you not just say the Queen of Mu betrayed you? Rejected your ideas of war against Kanaloa? Should you not consider that a sign? Isn’t that why you’re really on land?”

  True enough. But also … “I needed to warn you that something terrible is coming, Pele. Your petty conflict with Poli‘ahu—”

  “Petty! I fight to preserve the people of this island! I fight against a sorceress turning the darkness of Pō upon the land! Perhaps you wouldn’t understand that, akua.”

  At her shouts, armed females came bursting back into the women’s house, followed shortly by Naia. The fact that Tilafaiga did not come running made Namaka wonder if the mermaid hoped these people would kill her and thus free her cousin from her bond.

  Pele rose, forestalling her guards with a raised hand. “Unless you have come to join our war or rejoin our ‘ohana …” From the expression on her face, Pele clearly hoped otherwise. “Barring such intentions, I have nothing to offer you, sister. Find your answers elsewhere. I have plans to make for this evening.”

  With a frustrated sigh, Namaka, too, rose. “Let us hope you don’t realize too late the weight of danger closing in around us.”

  Namaka found the other two mermaids waiting outside and motioned for them to head back to the sea. They had not made it far when Hi‘iaka interposed herself in their path.

  “You are going to stay for my luau, I assume?”

  Namaka glanced over her shoulder at the palace. A luau for her sister. And Pele had not deigned to even invite her to it. That was … almost shameful.

  A slow, wicked smile crept across her face. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  The sun finished its descent, snuffing out the fire in the sky, as Namaka resumed human form and stepped onto the beach. The night sea was beyond beautiful, glistening with the light of a reflecting moon.

  She walked back up the shore. Staring at the ocean brought her a kind of peace. The other two mermaids remained disinclined to join the human celebration, so Namaka commanded Tilafaiga not to let Taema leave, trusting the mer’s oath to obey. She did not really blame them—after all, attending such an event would force them to remember that mortals had lives they cared about, serving as more than hosts.

  Alone, she made her way toward the village, taking in the flickering dance of torch poles, welcomed by the rhythms of pahu, the drumbeats hypnotic, drawing her into memories of a lifetime gone from her.

  One night with her old ‘ohana might well do her good.

  20

  Kanaloa, God of the Deep. The sheer scope of Namaka’s words, and her request, left Pele speechless. It was all too much. God-kings and octopus people were so removed from her reality … how could she begin to make this her problem? She wasn’t certain sh
e owed Namaka that much loyalty.

  More importantly, though, there was the chance Namaka was right. What little Pele knew of the he‘e were tales of mystery, fear, and yes, respect. Her few encounters with the creatures had not proved pleasant. The octopuses were old, some said as old as the Worldsea. And if Namaka spoke truth, if they worked schemes to subvert the ali‘i and kāhuna of Sawaiki, then more than one island was in danger.

  Pele groaned.

  No, this night was for Hi‘iaka, and she would not allow Namaka’s dire predictions to infect her final evening with her sister. In the morning, Kapo would insist on taking the girl away, and thus Pele planned to enjoy every moment of this night.

  Candlenut torch poles lined the village, welcoming the setting sun. Already, fire dancers practiced, tossing flaming batons between themselves, and one winked as she passed. It took Pele a moment to recognize him as the lover she’d claimed this morning.

  “Do you desire me so desperately?” he had asked with arousing arrogance, when she had come upon him outside the palace.

  “All desire is desperate,” she’d said. “It is born of needs of the body, the mind, or the soul.”

  While she’d spoken truth, she no longer harbored any feeling for him. He had been a moment’s relaxation—nothing more.

  Studiously looking away so as not to give him the wrong idea, she moved on. A line of hula dancers, male and female both, had gathered before the palace.

  Pele made a wide circuit around the dancers, careful not to distract them from their holy duty. She missed such nights, though only now, seeing them dance, did she really realize how much so. It felt like she’d been fighting for years now.

  The dance honored the akua and Hi‘iaka, and she owed it to them to respect that act.

  Idly, she wondered what her parents would have thought to see her now. Parents who served Kanaloa, according to Namaka. Servants of the very power her elder sister now warred against.

  A woman placed a lei of pink plumerias around Pele’s neck, the flowers smelling like jasmine, heady and wonderful. Yes, she had truly missed this—simple celebrations, music, laughter. All her days seemed filled with battle and death now.

  When the Snow Queen fell, Pele resolved to find a way to have there be peace on Sawaiki.

  She passed among those feasting and found Hi‘iaka herself leading a hula near the beach. The girl moved with such wild abandon as to have entranced all onlookers. Even Pele found it hard to look away from the mesmerizing flow that evoked the sunrise and the coursing of mana through the land.

  Hard, at least, until she caught a glimpse of Namaka, too, watching the girl. Growling, Pele turned aside. It was not as if she could banish Namaka from a luau honoring their common sister. But the mermaid served as a reminder of a painful past and yet more uncertain futures. So very much had gone between them, and now, for Namaka to have come here seeking aid in another war, and one beneath the seas … No!

  Pele would not be drawn into this. She had faced the horrors of Pō, slain her own father, all to bring Hi‘iaka a new life. Now Pele wanted the chance to live that life with her sister. To see her grow up and revel in her power and glory.

  She wanted … joy.

  Joy such as graced this night. Such as she had not seen before now in what felt an age.

  Trembling with frustration she couldn’t quite name, she stalked away from the hula, waved off a man offering her a bowl of fish, and made her way back up toward the temple, where Kamalo had enshrined Lonomakua.

  Perhaps she was too lost in thought.

  Perhaps that was why she didn’t feel the mana of it, thrumming through the night.

  She heard its snarl, though, an instant before the shadow crashed upon her. The mo‘o slammed into her, its weight bearing her down in an instant. Her head smacked the ground, filling her vision with white even as claws gouged her shoulder.

  All sense fled from her a moment.

  The next she knew, scalding saliva spewed onto her face as a saurian face leaned over her, its breath putrid with rotting meat stuck between its fangs. Its hiss set the land rumbling, the sky closing in around her as if reality itself responded to its ire. Her vision cleared only to fill with the light of its incandescent gaze.

  “You slew Kū-Waha-Ilo,” the mo‘o snarled at her. Its foreclaws tightened about her shoulder, shredding flesh, scraping bone.

  Pele wailed in pain and horror, unable to lift her hands to draw forth flame. Unable, either, to form any response, to plead she’d done only what he forced from her. Which was … a lie, regardless. “Do it,” she rasped instead.

  A forked tongue lanced out its reeking mouth and scraped over her cheek. “I’ll eat you alive.”

  A whoosh, and the side of its face exploded. Water somehow formed into an axe blade had sliced through its eye, chipped its tooth, and sent the dragon tumbling over sideways, shrieking in its own pain. The momentum yanked its claws free of her shoulders.

  Pele howled in fresh agony as she fell back against the sand.

  As Namaka stalked over, her eyes, too, gleamed with inner heat. Apparently lacking a further source of water, Namaka raced forward and kicked the mo‘o in the head. Inexplicably, the creature flipped over, as if her strength were enough to move its prodigious weight.

  Pele tried to rise, but the pain ran through her arms like molten rock.

  She saw it, though, as warriors raced past her to spear the dragon. She heard the shrieks as it fell, impaled over and over. Wondered, dimly, how many of them it would have torn through had Namaka not so wounded it.

  Her world lurched as Namaka hefted her in her arms as though she were weightless, carrying her back toward the temple. “I may have mentioned the mo‘o and he‘e were working in accord.”

  “F-fuck you, Namaka …” was all Pele could manage.

  Pulling herself to her knees left Pele wobbly, panting, and she had to pause to catch her breath before standing. Almost immediately she wavered, having to support herself against the wall. Deep breaths. She could do this.

  A dozen paces, maybe, she managed, before Kamalo caught her trying to leave the temple.

  And then the old kahuna was at her side, holding her steady. “Where are you going, My Queen?”

  Pele allowed herself a breath of relief. “Where’s Namaka?”

  “Gone to the sea.”

  Figured. “Hi‘iaka?”

  “Gone with Kapo once she was certain you’d recover. You spoke to her …”

  She snorted. She’d barely been lucid. Last night was a blur of fever dreams. “Lonomakua?”

  “Woke with the dawn and went to gather herbs for a poultice for you. There’s nothing for you to do save rest now, My Queen.”

  Pele groaned.

  Rest and wait? Sounded like torture.

  21

  In what seemed another lifetime, Aukele had once entranced Namaka in his tale of betrayal and vengeance. His brothers had cast him into a filthy pit to die—what was it he called that place? Well, she supposed it hardly mattered now. What mattered was that he had been saved there by a mo‘o. By the progenitor of all mo‘o, in fact, who gave her very name to her descendants: Mo‘oinanea.

  The dragon who had set him on his quest to cross the Worldsea, to find her in Uluka‘a, to make himself king. Which he had accomplished—after violence failed—through marriage.

  Nyi Rara could have gone straight for Kaua‘i and sought the place Aukele spoke of, but Moloka‘i and the Cave of the Eel was closer, to say nothing of the fact that Mo‘oinanea probably no longer lurked in the same hole.

  Instead, late in the night, she swam into the sea-drenched cavern where Kauhuhu had once laired, Tilafaiga and Taema in tow, wondering at the sense of emptiness that now pervaded this place.

  “What are we doing here?” Tilafaiga demanded, splashing in the waters just behind Nyi Rara. “This place reeks of decay and human food.”

  A low growl answered her, echoing off the dripping cavern ceiling, thrumming through the waters
and opening a hollow inside Nyi Rara’s chest.

  “Piika-lalau,” Nyi Rara called out.

  First, a scrape of claws over stone. A sense of enormous bulk, shifting in the darkness, slinking closer. Then came the faint glint of incandescence lurking behind the creature’s gaze, leaving Nyi Rara to wonder if such radiance lay ever nascent within her as well. Was it a power she could tap? Or a curse in her very blood worming its way to the surface?

  “Piika,” she repeated.

  “Why bring these others?” The dragon’s gaze lingered beyond Nyi Rara’s shoulder, drawing a whimper from Taema and a hiss from Tilafaiga. “Do you seek violence, little mer? Think to rid the world of one of my kind?”

  “I seek aid.”

  Piika snorted, a dry huffing sound that seemed to rise up from the earth itself. “I rather think I have helped you more than enough. Did Kauhuhu not join your cause through my actions? I recall you promised me repayment for the indulgence, not further entreaties to try my patience.” Piika’s voice deepened as he spoke, filling up more and more of the cavern, a palpable ire that had the whole expanse seeming to close in around her.

  From the splash behind her, one of the other mermaids had dived back underwater, too eager to escape Piika’s gaze. Dragons were, in a sense, mortal beings, insofar as they could actually die on the Mortal Realm, possessing their own physical bodies. But while spirits disdained most all mortals as inferior, few wished to cross the path of a dragon, much less one in a foul mood.

  This blood ran through Namaka’s veins?

  “I did promise you that … and I’m looking into how I can uphold my vow. I want to … make a pact with all mo‘o kind.”

  Piika lowered his head closer to the water. “What pact?”

  “Do you all yet serve Kanaloa?”