by Matt Larkin
The dragon leaned in closer, her enormous eye seeming to peer deep into his own. The tongue flicked out once more, the breeze of its passing tickling his ear. Her foul breath misted his beard and made him want—desperately—to back away and put a few feet between them. A few dozen feet, maybe.
“I am not a sorceress,” the mo‘o ancestress finally said, her open mouth giving him a close-up glance of the rotting fish causing the reek in her breath. “I cannot break a curse upon you, much less exorcise a spirit fused to your very soul. Of the latter, I cannot imagine anyone could achieve such an end without killing you. You are as much conjoined to the boar as that mermaid is to her host.”
Aww … Why did everyone keep telling him that? Couldn’t there be some light ahead for him? “So, I’m basically in pig shit and there’s no cleaning it off.”
“I cannot break the curse laid upon you, no, but I know one who could, assuming he yet lives. Last I saw him, Lono dwelt on Kahiki, though centuries have passed since then.”
“Lono? Like, god of the harvest, best buddy of all-powerful Kāne? The akua Lono?”
“Yessss. Seek his aid, prove your valor to him, and he may annul the power that now ravages you.”
Cross the Worldsea, sail two thousand miles into unknown lands, and risk the wrath of at least two mer kingdoms in his passing. Sure, sounded fun. Kamapua‘a scratched at his chin. “The boar problem?”
“You are what you are, and the only transmogrification that might lie before you lies in the opposite direction from where you wish to head. Rather, strive to let things grow no worse by fortifying your soul and the mana coursing through you.”
Now he folded his arms, glancing down at his legs. “You mean the weaker my body gets, the easier it’ll be for it to take over?” That being the case, Poli‘ahu had done the world no favors with her curse. If it failed to kill him, instead Sawaiki would face an enraged god that delighted in chaos and suffering.
The dragon inclined her head slightly before turning back to the waters. She paused, though, hesitating with her chin just above the surface. “In the name of the blood we share, I would aid you if I could, wereboar. But the truth remains, you alone can fight this battle, and you will fight it until it, or death, consumes you. Seek out Lono, and at least find some reprieve.”
Yeah, well, that or find a way to die and hope the Boar God couldn’t get into anyone else.
He joined the others and saw them already making ready to leave. “What happened?” he asked Niheu.
“Namaka got the answers she sought. The mermaids will travel with us down the slope, then break for the sea with all possible haste.”
“Uh, what answers?” he asked.
Niheu shrugged. “Not for me to know, I suppose.”
Typical, really. Kama let a hand fall on his nephew’s shoulder. “And you and me?”
“What of us?”
“Well, seems I’m bound for Kahiki. Best to travel out of Vai‘i, I imagine, so, if you don’t try to have anyone seize me, I’ll be heading out, well away from your home.”
Niheu snorted. “Ah, Uncle … did you really believe I’d turn upon my mother’s brother, no matter how much of a mess you’ve made of things?” He patted Kamapua‘a’s cheek. “I would not strike against you.” The young man started down the path, then called out over his shoulder. “Besides, whom, exactly, would I get to seize you against your will?”
Well now, that was a pretty good point, too.
The Boar God inside him had a few advantages.
25
Saveasi‘uleo brought her to Kaho‘olawe, the Lost Island, a rocky place devoid of fresh water sources and thus uninhabited by any save birds and a large colony of seals. He provided fish for Poli‘ahu, and a gourd of river water, and left her to sit and ponder, saying he would return.
For a long time she sat, blinking in the sunlight, listening to the crash of waves against rocks.
Across the water she could make out the leeward side of Mau‘i. She imagined, if she pushed herself and called upon her mana, she might even survive the swim, reach the shore, and follow the coast around to Hana. Queen Hinaikamalama might not relish her arrival, but the old woman would surely still aid Poli‘ahu.
An almost fair plan, save that she actually wanted the alliance with Saveasi‘uleo. Yes, the merman was untrustworthy as any spirit—and had violated her such that she found herself ever striving to loathe him—but they did share a common foe now.
Namaka, Pele’s older sister, had become host to Nyi Rara, a Muian princess. While the complexities of mer politics interested her little, what did concern her was that Namaka and Pele had apparently reconciled their differences. Meaning the two of them, and Kapo, represented three reincarnated Sorceress Queens of Old Mu.
As if Poli‘ahu needed further evidence that Pele was the greatest threat to her in all the Worldsea.
So, she sat in sunlight, kicked her heels in the waves, and waited.
When Saveasi‘uleo returned after sunset, it was with another merman, this one marked by iridescent scales and the less-human aspect of those who had possessed a given host for long years. Centuries, perhaps, given the extent of his shark-like transformation even while standing on legs here.
“I am Matsya of Rongomai ‘Ohana, Hiyoyan Surface Ambassador.”
“And a distant relative of Queen Latmikaik,” Saveasi‘uleo added.
Poli‘ahu kept her face impassive lest her total lack of interest in their social structure show through. “What is it you’d have of me?”
Matsya cast a wary glance at Saveasi‘uleo. One that seemed to question whether this plan was wise, whether it was safe. The other mer nodded once, and Matsya hefted a satchel in his webbed hands. “You know of the Chintamani stones?”
Poli‘ahu stifled a gasp. “Fonts of mana.”
“This one cracked when the taniwha it was bound to sustained catastrophic injuries.”
Poli‘ahu chuckled. “You sent that monstrosity against Vai‘i. The one Pele and her sister killed.”
The ambassador cast another glance at his fellow mer. “The queen did, yes, during a temporary alliance with the he‘e which has since dissolved. It was meant to distract Nyi Rara and hopefully destroy Namaka.”
Something about the way he said that name … “You know her?” Poli‘ahu asked.
Matsya grimaced. “Before, yes, in Uluka‘a. I … warned her that her pride and uncontrolled use of her power would have consequences. Now she leaves us no choice but to break her with any means necessary.” He seemed almost saddened by the thought. Remorse? From a spirit?
“I can’t fix a shattered Chintamani stone.”
“No,” Matsya admitted. “But Saveasi‘uleo calls you among the most powerful sorceresses in the Worldsea. One who might use the shards of the flaming pearl to perform a final working from them.” He paused … or faltered, rather. “Something not done in long eras.” From the bag, he withdrew a perfect shard of the pearl, one they had set into an elaborate working of some yellow metal that glinted in the moonlight. They had set it with thread made of thinner strands of the same metal. “A treasure of Old Mu,” he said in answer to her unasked question. “Gold, set now with one of the pearl shards. Yours, if you will but work the spell.”
Her fingers seemed drawn to the pearl of their own accord, and even brushing over it lightly, she felt the thrum of its power. Matched only by its glittering beauty as it seemed to sing to her, humming of the glories it might endow her with. A source of mana she could carry with her, granting her power far beyond the ken of any other kupua.
Even Pele.
“W-what do you want me to do?”
“The tales claim …” Matsya’s voice wavered, as if he was almost afraid to even speak such. “They claim mortal sorcerers created the first Shifter bloodlines. Bound them to humans, merging souls.”
Wide-eyed, Poli‘ahu turned to him. “You want me to create a new bloodline?” The hubris of it. The glory of it. If she succeeded, her works would e
ndure even beyond the breaking of the world. If, as Matsya claimed, mortals had created wereboars and the like, and had done so long before the Deluge, before even the rise of Old Mu. Those sorcerers had wrought something that could never be unmade. “Out of what?” she finally managed to rasp.
Matsya turned, slowly, looking at the herd of seals lounging on the rocks. “We need something to challenge Nyi Rara and her Muian allies.”
A handful of mer brought them in canoes. Dozens of men and women, grim-faced, sent by the Queen of Hana. Perhaps they were volunteers, though if so, Poli‘ahu seriously doubted they had any idea what fate they now wandered into.
Poli‘ahu found herself staring up at the almost full moon instead of inspecting her preparations for the tenth time. This was madness, she knew, but … the thought of it tantalized her. Idly, she stroked the golden amulet around her neck. Its power thrummed through her, hypnotic and dreamlike. A marvelous singing stone more precious than anything else in Sawaiki.
If you fail … Waiau’s voice in her head warned.
Oh. So now the Mist spirit was speaking to her once more? Now, after she had been forced to turn elsewhere for succor in her hour of desperation.
You do not understand.
No, she understood well enough. Either Waiau couldn’t stand up to Pahulu, or didn’t want to. In either event, it had forced Poli‘ahu to turn to the Hiyoyans, and now to create a new army for the imperiled mer kingdom.
They had gathered the seals, too, the mer using their innate abilities to overmaster sea life to drive the creatures into placidity. The animals watched as humans disembarked from the canoes and settled onto the glyph-carved rocks Poli‘ahu had prepared for them.
After guiding in a canoe himself, Matsya moved to her side, muscles taut with obvious pensiveness.
“You have misgivings?” she asked, her gaze once more drawn to the moon.
“I … I advised against the original bargain with Kanaloa,” he said, voice with tenor of one uncertain why he was even speaking. “Trusting the he‘e was a mistake, and blind ambition prevented the queen from seeing it.”
“What happened?”
“Once Mu fell, they reneged on their treaty with us, failing to deliver a Chintamani stone. Their kind has begun encroaching upon our borders. They used us to keep Mu distracted as a common foe, but I imagine they never had much intention of respecting our waters, either.”
Poli‘ahu clucked her tongue. “I won’t pretend to understand much about how you form boundaries under the sea.”
The merman frowned, then looked away as though lost in thought. “Did you know I knew Maui, whom you so venerate here?”
Poli‘ahu twisted to look at him, struck by the sudden change in the conversation. “Oh?”
“Mmmm. I remember when he first set out from Savai‘i at the end of the last age. I remember warning him about the Muian ‘Ohanas that ruled the waters he intended to ferry his settlers into. You see, beneath the ocean, we rarely hold clearly demarcated boundaries as you do here, one island to the next, one district separated from another by a river or so forth. But Mu and Hiyoya, there is a great ravine that divides them, a place we call Tenebrous Chasm. On the Muian side, it runs near to the He‘e Aupuni. So, the traditional boundary between our kingdoms now lies in the arms of those creatures, and they spread like a plague across the bottom of the ocean.
“Perhaps, were we wise, we would seek alliance now with Mu, rather than attempt to finish them off before they join the Lemurians. But pride and ages of blood allow no such peace.”
“Lemurians?” Poli‘ahu had no idea what he was talking about. His rambling indicated a distracted or unhinged mind. Perhaps he had borne this host too long, or perhaps he simply felt crushed by the weight of what they planned to do tomorrow night.
Matsya waved away any answer to that—a third mer kingdom?—and instead beckoned her to follow. “You said you wished the strongest, most mana-rich among the volunteers to serve as the progenitor soul that will bind the others.”
Ideally, from what Poli‘ahu understood of this spell, she’d have created one wereseal and allowed that one to breed a new generation with the others. From Matsya, she gathered something like that had created all prior bloodlines. But neither the Hiyoyan situation nor her own allowed them to wait a generation, and thus she would attempt to build an army, tether child souls to a parent one, and pray to the ‘aumākua it didn’t all devolve into madness around her.
She followed Matsya, who led her to a woman sitting apart from the others, one who in aspect and demeanor seemed different. She bore tattoos on her face and features not quite aligned with either Sawaikians or Kahikians. “You’re from another island altogether?”
The woman looked to her, eyes flashing with challenge.
“This is Sanna,” Matsya said. “Like you, a kupua descendant of Old Mu. She found herself stranded on Maui some years back, and eventually came into the Queen of Hana’s service.”
“I owe her,” the woman said, with just a hint of a foreign accent.
Poli‘ahu knelt in front of her and took her hand. “Do you understand what will happen here?”
Sanna glanced to the seals. “You will make me a Shifter with one of them?”
Clucking her tongue, Poli‘ahu patted the foreign woman’s hand. “I will make you … mother to all the wereseals, Sanna. Your soul will fuse with a Moon spirit, fuse more strongly than even the others. Who you are now shall blend until no distinction exists between the Sanna who lives here and the one of the World of Moon. You will be … an animal.”
Sanna shut her eyes a moment, swallowed. “I will be strong.”
“Yes,” Poli‘ahu admitted. “You will be very, very strong.”
“Strong enough to save Hana?”
Poli‘ahu hesitated. “I hope so.”
“Then let us begin.”
26
Days Gone
In the evening, at the foot of the mountain, Poli‘ahu followed Aiwohi along a circuitous trail worn by supplicants coming to see her. A single hut sat in a clearing alongside this path, a great bonfire burning before it. The sight of such flame left her feeling flush, weak, and part of her wanted to recoil from it as Aiwohi approached. He, of course, probably welcomed the warmth. Unlike her snow sisters, Poli‘ahu didn’t think the flame would actually harm her, but after so many years shunning it, she didn’t want to find out.
She pulled up short, and since Aiwohi held her hand, pulled him to a stop as well.
He turned back to her. “What happened?”
Well. Telling him she was afraid of fire would have made her look weak and foolish. “A man lives here. He trades supplies to those coming up to see me. Food, warm kiheis, that sort of thing.”
As if she had announced him, the trader slipped out of his hut. He had a great round belly that made him look like a walking snowball, an appearance accentuated by his near white hair and beard and jovial smile.
“Aloha! Welcome, welcome. Come in and see what I have in store for you.” He beckoned toward the hut with a grin. “Going to meet the Snow Queen, huh? Well, miss, you’re going to want a warmer kihei than that. Plus, I’ve got some dried mahi-mahi wrapped in poi. Believe me, you’ll work up an appetite long before you find our glorious ruler. Oh, and don’t forget to take a charm or two—blessed by kāhuna, I assure you.”
Poli‘ahu allowed the chuckling Aiwohi to lead her closer, not quite able to hide her smile. In the darkness.
“I’m not going to see the queen,” she said.
The jolly old man raised an eyebrow. “There’s nothing else up that path, miss.”
“She is the queen, trader,” Aiwohi said.
At that the old man paused, mouth open, whatever spiel he’d planned forgotten. It took him only a moment to recover, though. “Your Highness!” He dropped to his knees in obeisance, an effort that clearly pained him as his bones creaked.
“N-no,” she said. “Come on. Stand up.” Making her people climb the mountain to see
her was a fitting test of their dedication to a goal. Seeing them grovel was pointless and left her feeling self-conscious.
The man rose with a slight struggle, then beamed again. “I beg you, Queen, partake of my hospitality. I have a fish already in the imu. Come in, come in.”
She glanced at Aiwohi, who nodded, and followed the trader into his hut. There waited two women, and five children between them, the oldest of whom was probably twenty. All fell to their knees at her entrance. Which meant they’d been listening to the conversation.
Poli‘ahu motioned for the family to rise and they did so, then set about preparing the meal. Her instincts told her to duck back outside, slip off into the jungle and embrace the mist. Doing so would have offended her hosts, of course. Still, she longed to walk the night alone, consult with Waiau or lose herself in her work. Would her experiment with Aiwohi even be worth the trouble? She had to trust the snow sisters had a reason for their plans. They always did.
Before she came to any decision, the smiling trader was calling her back to where steaming fish was served with a side of poi. Unlike her usual fare, this was hot and colored. Poli‘ahu dipped a finger in the poi. It burned, and she immediately stuck her finger in her mouth.
Just like the food Father had … that they …
‘Aumākua, her mind was a bank of fog, swallowing her.
“I-it’s wonderful. Mahalo.” Her voice sounded ready to break, and she found herself rising, unable to look at their faces. Even Aiwohi she waved away, and stumbled outside into the bracing night air. What did it matter if she offended these people? She had to escape. What in Lua-o-Milu was wrong with her? She was getting so emotional over some smashed taro root and a fish she hadn’t even tasted. Damn it.
Off the mountain, everything was too damn hot. She always hated coming down here. How had she forgotten? The chill outside at least allowed her to breathe, finally, as though her lungs had only been half full inside.