by Matt Larkin
For an instant more, she thought the other mermaid might try to rescue her sister by herself. But Piika surged forward, caught her with a claw, and shoved her along in Nyi Rara’s wake.
Using jets of water, she cleared away from Vai‘i, pushing for Uluhai with all possible haste.
“What in the fathomless depths of Naunet were you thinking?” Taema demanded when they had put distance between themselves and the wereseals.
Nyi Rara spared the other mermaid a glance. “I’m thinking I don’t know why they took Tilafaiga, or where, but our most pressing need is to keep the Chintamaniya secure. And you know that.”
“She’s my sister!”
And Taema had picked a fine time to grow a spine.
Nyi Rara growled at her. “They didn’t kill her, which means they want her alive.”
“To what end?”
“I don’t even know who they’re working for!” she snapped. “I don’t know anything right now. I don’t know how to kill Kanaloa. I don’t know how to use the Chintamaniya to fulfill my oath to Mo‘oinanea, I don’t know a damn thing! That’s why we—”
“You what?” Piika’s growl cut in. “You don’t know?”
Nyi Rara spun on him. “No! That’s why we need to reach Uluhai. The College of Triteia has archives dating back to the First Age of the Worldsea. If anyone in the Seven Seas knew how Kanaloa did what he did to create the mo‘o, it would be the old scholars.”
The dragon groaned, his ire seeming to make the sea close in around Nyi Rara. “You assume they knew, assume they recorded it, and assume it will yet remain after the passing of millennia. Your assumptions may cost us all.”
Perhaps. But what other choice lay before her?
“Tilafaiga …” Taema cut in. Nyi Rara raised a finger, but the other mermaid continued before she could speak. “You let them take her.”
“I—”
“You could have stopped them!” Taema bellowed. “You were more worried about the damn stone than my sister.”
Nyi Rara fixed her with a glower. “That stone is the future of Mu. And yes, I will find a way to help Tilafaiga if I can. But first, I have other, more pressing duties to the whole of our kingdom.”
“No.” Her voice was a whimper.
“What?”
“No. Our kingdom left for Lemuria. This is you … this is … your pride. Your own desire to rule, Nyi Rara. And if Tilafaiga dies for it …” She shook her head. “I will never forgive you.”
34
Word came in from the harbor first, tales of the attacks happening here in Puna, much like what had enfolded elsewhere across Vai‘i. Pele had only just returned from meeting Kapo and Hi‘iaka, and, with her sisters in tow, raced down to the waterfront to behold the carnage left behind.
The moonlight illuminated bloodstains spread across the beach, broken by the occasional gnawed-off arm or torn piece of unidentifiable flesh. Everything reeked of offal, and blood, and brine. Kamalo and Lonomakua moved among the wounded now, the former clearly preparing a mourning chant to send the dead.
Pele faltered in her steps, finding herself once more drawn back, beholding the wake of destruction the taniwha had made of this place not so long ago. Was this forever to be the fate of her people? Prey to one marine predator after another? Was Namaka right?
Lonomakua drifted toward her. “She was here, fighting them, but retreated. I think she may have lost one of her people.” As always, he seemed to know the turn of her mind, in this case toward her elder sister once more.
Instead of answering, she turned back to where Kapo approached, and grimaced, wishing the woman had held Hi‘iaka back and stopped her from seeing the massacre. Instead, her youngest sister fell to her knees, retching, tiny bolts of lightning coruscating uncontrolled between her fingers.
This … this was what Poli‘ahu had wrought, she felt certain of it. The how and why of it she could not fathom, but surely this had been the disturbance she felt in Pō the other night. The sorceress Snow Queen had called upon some fell working of the Art to draw up minions from the deep.
Kapo had felt it too and returned from Mau‘i’s shores, having never made it to her refuge in the heart of the valleys. Had come back, sent word ahead to Pele, and Pele had gone to meet her, daring joy of all things at seeing Hi‘iaka once more.
A foolish indulgence.
She had elated while her people suffered and died.
She had felt her spirits buoyed at the thought of another moment with a girl who should not even be here. Should never have witnessed such a macabre sight.
“We must speak of this,” Lonomakua said behind her. “She cannot imagine what she’s unleashed.”
“No,” Pele agreed. Poli‘ahu had no idea what she had wrought here.
Immolation was coming for her.
The night dragged on, servants bringing plates of poi and fish to sustain Pele and her guests while they debated. They burned candlenut torches and stoked the fire pit, while everyone sat in horrified silence, struck mute by the implications of what Poli‘ahu had done.
“A magical operation of fathomless import,” Kapo had called it. “A ritual, not to invoke or evoke, but to contrive, giving existence to that which ought not be.”
And Hi‘iaka had shuddered, perhaps as much at Kapo’s tone as her words.
The Snow Queen had engendered a new kind of Moon spirit. Wereseals. To give voice to such an idea—a creation of a race of Shifters—tasted of madness and thus led to the silence that now saturated the common house of the palace.
Pele looked from face to face, tasting the brittleness of each in the air. The way Lonomakua stared into the flames as he had done for what seemed an hour, as if he could not believe such would come to pass.
The way Naia wrung her hands, averting her gaze, appearing not to want to accept that peace had lurked so close only to have it snatched away.
Kapo muttering to herself—or talking to ghosts?—seeming hardly present at all.
And Hi‘iaka—tiny sparks jumped from her fingers of their own accord. How desperately Pele longed to send her away from this council, to let her rest and not know this for the world she lived in. The girl deserved sheltering and care, but then, it would be a disservice to her to deny her a place here. She had seen the reeking beach, sands crimson.
Round and round the currents of war seemed to flow, like a maelstrom. The kidnapping of Queen Hina, the siege of Haupu, the calling of the zaratan. The fury Pele had unleashed to bring down the beast and obliterate the soaring fortress. And now this.
Actions and reactions, and none of them could escape the currents. Not until they were all pulled beneath the surface, drowned and crushed by forces so much larger than themselves.
“Moho said,” Pele ventured, her voice raspy as she looked to Kapo. She swallowed. “A Fire spirit I knew, he claimed that long ago, before the Deluge, men called up something primal, making a pact with the night in the hopes of surviving it. He spoke of Kamapua‘a and the origins of wereboars. Of all Shifter bloodlines. Somehow, Poli‘ahu repeated this ritual.”
Kapo nodded. They had spoken of this before, and Kapo had called it confirmation of her worst fears.
“Moho claimed the Moon spirits themselves could not die, but their hosts could.”
Another nod from the sorceress. “Etheric beings—ghosts and spirits—lack physical form and thus cannot exist in the Mortal Realm without a body to possess. Consequently, without a body, they also cannot be slain. But these progenitor Shifters are so powerful that killing their hosts might not be enough to send them crashing back through the Veil.”
“I have to try. If they attack again, I’ll bury them all in a torrent of lava so thick perhaps not even their souls can escape.”
Kapo sneered. “You keep making the volcanoes erupt to solve every problem, soon there will be no more island left to rule. Is that not exactly what happened upon our own homeland?”
Naia winced at her words.
Pele found all she could do was rub her brow,
though it made little difference to her growing headache. Kapo hadn’t been there for the war between her and Namaka, but … she was not entirely mistaken about the results. “What would you have me do?”
Lonomakua abruptly looked away from the fire, and all gazes fell upon him. He turned to Pele, a hint of uncharacteristic weariness clinging to his features. “She bargained with Hiyoya to create weapons they might use against Mu, and which she might use against you.”
Weapons. Living weapons, just as Kanaloa had tried to forge of Pele and her sisters. ‘Aumākua, was she sick of sorcerous ghostfuckers trying to manipulate people and turn them into tools.
“Now she has finally returned to Mauna Kea to recoup her strength. I think … performing such an act has taken something from her. Something she cannot easily regain.”
Pele looked to Kapo. “It weakened her?”
Her sister glanced between Lonomakua and Pele, seeming hesitant to answer. “Sorcery always carries a price. We pay with bits and pieces of ourselves. Memories, thoughts, fragments of our souls. Maybe it’s all the same. I have heard of spirits siphoning away mana, creating an abiding drain upon a sorceress. Perhaps that happened …”
“Then this is my chance to finish this. Kill her, and the wereseals are free of her bond, yes?”
Kapo nodded with obvious reluctance. “Who is to say what they will do after that? But we might dare hope they won’t remain beholden to the old dynasty.”
Either way, if Poli‘ahu had weakened herself, Pele might never have a better time to face her in her own domain. “I have to try. If there is any chance I can put an end to this, I must take it, for all our sakes.”
One last hope to escape the maelstrom.
35
A roil of scents carried through the waters in Uluhai. Old blood, perhaps from the altercations with mo‘o earlier. Certainly the rank, earthy scents of the dragons mingled in with the other smells. And an aura of … emptiness.
Piika made his way through the tunnels first, sniffing around the vestibule, a faint incandescent gleam in his eyes as he sought danger. Nyi Rara stuck close behind the dragon to assist, while Taema—glowering, sullen—remained behind her, practically dragged along by the tail.
“The mo‘o came through here again,” Piika said, finally turning to look back at Nyi Rara. “I don’t think they found anything.”
“They’re gone?”
The dragon growled in acknowledgement.
“Good.” Then they could begin. She turned to Taema. “The two of you are to remain here while I search the College archives.” The mermaid looked away. “Do not leave Uluhai,” Nyi Rara warned.
With a huff, Taema swam off, perhaps seeking out her old grotto.
Shaking her head, Nyi Rara dove deeper, wending her way through the half-collapsed tunnels to the College. Fresh debris had fallen now—dislodged during the mo‘o scouring of this place, no doubt—forcing her to squeeze even more tightly to reach the college’s lecture hall. Worming her way through, she yelped at the sudden sight of a shadow reclining just off center, against the lowest ring of seats.
“Daucina?”
The Ukupanipo Voice rubbed his palm over his forehead, looking up at her.
“What are you doing here?”
He flashed a grin, baring as yet human teeth. “Oh, after hearing about your abortive coup attempt, I knew you’d return here sooner or later. You and I, we both want the same things, after all, yes?” He waved a hand as if to indicate the whole of Uluhai, or perhaps the College of Triteia. “We seek the lost wisdom of the ages. The wonders not only of our ancestors in Avaiki, but of the crumbling glories once known to the Mortal Realm. They are fascinating, are they not? Mortals?”
His rapid shifts in the currents of conversation left her running her tongue over her teeth, uncertain how to respond.
“Ah,” he said, after moment. “But then, of course you agree, given you merged with one. Sadly, one of this age, and not the lost First Age, or even the forgotten eras swallowed into darkness long ago. Imagine what we would find, should we pluck the minds of those who walked Old Mu … what wonders, what horrors would they unfold for us? Did they—and I have been musing on this for hours, now—touch Realms beyond the Spirit Realm, such as our ancestors intimated upon the pillars in this very college?”
“That’s idle supposition without warrant,” Nyi Rara said, not so sure she believed it. “The Depths of the Spirit Realm melt away into chaos like Naunet.”
“Yes. And what of the old tales of intellects lingering beyond that chaos?”
She snorted. “Demons? Children’s fables, Daucina. ‘Demon’ is just another term mortals apply to us. The spirits they worship are gods, those they fear are demons, and in both cases, I suppose they are right. We prey on them. We steal their bodies, feast on their mana, perhaps even consume their souls. We are the nightmares haunting their world. Not so long ago, Taema told me she no longer even had her host’s memories—that the girl’s mind had collapsed. Is yours any different?”
Daucina rose, swimming closer, a slight frown creasing his face. “She’s here, by chance? You did take the sisters hostage, did you not?”
“Who, Taema?” Nyi Rara nodded. “She’s here.”
“And Tilafaiga?”
The way he leaned forward made it almost seem he feared something from the golden-tailed sisters. Nyi Rara blew out a breath, searching for words. “Captured.”
Daucina grimaced. “Hiyoya?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? How can you not know?” He’d swum uncomfortably close to her now. “Surely you saw who took her?”
“Uh … wereseals.”
Daucina leveled a flat stare at her a moment. “Do I look amused?”
“I’m not joking.”
The other mer massaged his temples before answering. “There is no such Moon spirit bloodline, Nyi Rara. Twelve Shifter bloodlines exist, the only aquatic one being the werecrocodiles, none of whom live in Sawaiki. You’d have to travel all the way to the South Sea to even have a chance of—”
“I know what I saw,” she snapped. “Dozens of seals, some of whom turned into humans. They attacked my sister’s people on Vai‘i and they attacked myself, as well as the sisters and Piika.”
“Piika?”
“Piika-lalau, a mo‘o currently in my service.”
“Eh …” Daucina scratched his head. “Are you certain you don’t jest with me now? I’ve no mood for it, if so.”
Nyi Rara beckoned him to follow. “Come and see them, then.”
“We have to rescue Tilafaiga!” Taema shouted, flinging her hands about, though Nyi Rara wasn’t quite certain whether she now addressed her, Daucina, or even Piika. “You know we do!”
After the shock of Daucina’s introduction to the mo‘o, they had all gathered in what had been the Council Chambers here.
Daucina, for his part, looked back and forth between Taema and Nyi Rara, his expression unreadable.
“We don’t know where she even is,” Nyi Rara answered. “Perhaps the wereseals serve Hiyoya, in which case she may be there. Perhaps they serve the he‘e.”
“No!” Taema blurted, as if denying the possibility existed would mean it could not happen. Or perhaps she too could not help but remember Tilafaiga describing the way the he‘e were treated in Kane-huna-moku, and wonder if they would visit the same horrors upon her sister.
“Assuming for the moment,” Daucina said, turning to look at each of them, “that the wereseals themselves do not represent a distinct faction, it would take powerful sorcery to summon and bind the spirits. I cannot even imagine the level of sorcery needed to actually create a new bloodline. Therefore, we face several possibilities. Firstly, the he‘e, being mortals, or Kanaloa himself, may have worked the Art to achieve this. Secondly, Hiyoya may have contracted a mortal sorcerer to do so. Thirdly, perhaps Latmikaik somehow struck an accord with the creatures, though that would not explain their existence.”
“Morta
l sorcerer …?” Nyi Rara asked. Because spirits could not easily summon other spirits, much less bind them. Something about their etheric natures prevented this. Only creatures of flesh could achieve such ends. “Or sorceress?”
“Certainly,” Daucina said. “The Sorceress Queens of Old Mu were famed for their craft. Had the continent not shattered, I’d say that was the most likely explanation. But alas, we are about five millennia too late for such an answer. Either way, we’d need to divine where Tilafaiga was taken.”
“No,” Nyi Rara said. It came out sterner than she’d have wished. “Not yet. We came to Uluhai to find answers about the Chintamaniya and how to use them. I have a bargain to uphold with Mo‘oinanea. That done, the ascended dragons will help me bring down Kanaloa. Once the he‘e god-king is fallen, we can easily scour their Aupuni for Tilafaiga, or turn our attentions to Hiyoya. But every moment we wait, we risk Kanaloa discovering what we have taken and coming back for it. We cannot afford to lose the pearls.”
Daucina grimaced, looked to Taema, then nodded. “She may have the right of it.” He looked back at Nyi Rara then. “But you never asked me what I found here. What I uncovered in the time I awaited your return, knowing you were seeking the Chintamaniya.”
“You found …?”
His eyes glinted with an eager light. “The answer.”
Nyi Rara laid her hand upon Piika’s face, relishing the pulsating warmth within. “Go now. Bring four of your most-trusted brothers and sisters. Those with no loyalty to Kanaloa. Those who will rise up and become the new race of dragon.”
Piika lowered his head a moment. “It is a weight, to make such a choice.”
Nyi Rara nodded in acknowledgment. Indeed, how did one choose who would rise and who, by default, would find themselves left behind? “Consult with your progenitor if you must, but do not dawdle. We can afford no delays, Piika.”
“Nor can we afford even a single mischosen ally.”