by Matt Larkin
A crunch of bones.
A spray of blood.
Shrieks and whimpers.
And wereseals vanished into nothingness. Some few escaped—whether the dragons allowed it or simply missed them, she didn’t know—but the vast majority of this powerful host vanished in a matter of moments.
There was a sadness that accompanied that.
Nyi Rara blinked it away, forcing compassion from her mind. She had not come here to pity the creations of Hiyoya who would prey upon her kin.
She had come here to be queen.
Despite the withering gaze she cast upon Nyi Rara, Kuku Lau held herself in admirable silence, arms folded. Her stare carried condemnation aplenty for Nyi Rara. That she was a traitor to her own ‘ohana.
‘Ohana is everything.
It had been the mantra of Mu—and Hiyoya too, for all she knew—from time immemorial. Kuku Lau had betrayed Queen Aiaru, but at least she was not Dakuwaqa ‘Ohana. Nyi Rara had crossed a boundary, and she felt the weight of it. Not only in Kuku Lau’s gaze, but too in Kauhuhu’s, Ake’s, everyone’s as they stared her down, sparing only the occasional glance to the draconic shadows circling in the far distance.
“Mu can be saved now,” Nyi Rara said, fingering the coral knife in her left hand, conscious of her missing finger and the attention her action was drawing to it, but unable to stop. “We can reclaim our home, drive out the he‘e, and break the spine of Hiyoya. All possibilities now unfold before us.”
Still, no one spoke. No one congratulated her on achieving the impossible. On recovering the Chintamaniya. On using them to create allies the likes of which the Worldsea had never known. A few mer murmured, but she could not even tell whether in support or censure.
Nyi Rara winced. If she had the ability to go back, to choose to follow Kuku Lau to Lemuria when ordered to do so, would she do it? Would she change anything?
No.
Deep damn her, but she knew the answer would always be ‘no.’
The Urchin had shown her a glorious future. A throne. Whole seas held beneath her tail.
‘Ohana is everything.
Almost everything, anyway.
She swam over to her sister and stroked a webbed finger along her cheek. “I truly am sorry it came to this. I wish there was another way.”
Kuku Lau scoffed. “You merged with a mortal, sister. Small surprise weakness and disloyalty have suffused your soul after such madness.”
They still failed to understand. Despite everything she had achieved, despite her power, her victories, and those they had to see now lay before her … they couldn’t fathom what she was. “Having two souls does not make me less, Kuku Lau. It makes me more. More than their sum, even, but rather reflections compounded upon one another, and thus capable of seeing into futures you fail to imagine.”
The Urchin had shown her … it had to be truth.
“Delusions of grandeur,” Kuku Lau snapped. “You betrayed your kingdom.”
“No.” Nyi Rara stroked her sister’s cheek one more time. “No, I’m going to save it. And I hope you can recover from this enough to rejoin us one day, and see what I have built. Because I … I’m going to miss you. I’d spare you this if I could, but I cannot have my authority undermined by your presence at a time like this.”
“Princess …” Ake warned.
She looked to the Ranger Commander. “It’s Queen, now.”
And she would be a better queen than she had in Uluka‘a, and a far better one than Kuku Lau could dream of.
“A maimed queen,” Kuku Lau spat. “A queen who lets the host—”
Nyi Rara drew the knife along her sister’s throat, opening her from gill to gill, biting deep to the bone. She drew the other mer into an embrace and held her while she convulsed.
Held her, even after her soul fled back to Avaiki and the body reverted to human.
There was the risk, of course, that something in the Astral Realm, or even in Avaiki, would devour Kuku Lau’s wounded soul before she could recoup the power lost in discorporation. Nyi Rara prayed to the Elder Deep that Kuku Lau would survive.
Would … one day … forgive.
At last, she let the corpse slip from her arms and settle down on the seabed. It held her gaze. Left her wondering … had this always been inevitable? Was this the future the Urchin had shown her? A throne for herself built upon the blood of those before her?
Aiaru and Kuku Lau overthrown, Daucina’s betrayal, Tilafaiga lost, and so many dead …
Slowly, she lifted her gaze up to take in the remaining Voices. Till Pimoe stared at her with a mixture of haughtiness and trepidation she failed to conceal. Kauhuhu’s visage was more predatory, perhaps wondering if she would attempt to take revenge for his betrayal—or lack thereof.
No, she could afford to lose no one else. So many were gone now.
No Voice even left for Ukupanipo ‘Ohana. That would need rectifying as soon as more immediate crises were overcome.
She blew out a stream of bubbles before turning to take in the vestiges of her kingdom. “I know you’re afraid. You’ve lost your home. You’ve lost two queens in short succession. You think you’ve lost everything.” Again, she turned back to Kauhuhu. Would he support her now? “But I give you a new queen. A stronger queen for this desperate Third Age. A queen, who will restore your home to you if you will but follow.”
Still, silence pervaded.
Did she need to remind them of the Dragon Kings? Was that what it would take to secure her throne?
At last, though, Kauhuhu swam forward. “You have a plan?”
“They’ll know we’re coming,” Kauhuhu said. “All of those waters are controlled by the he‘e now.”
“Yes. We’ll have to cut through their outer defenses first.” Nyi Rara pointed to Red Coral Reef on Ake’s makeshift map, drawn onto the seabed. “We know they have an outpost here. We have to take it out on our way to Mu. We may need to clear out the Wake, too.”
“We do that, and they’ll definitely know we’re coming,” Kauhuhu pointed out.
“We can’t rely on surprise,” Ake said, “save the hope Kanaloa won’t have anticipated the Dragon Kings joining us. We might, however, be able to count on his arrogance. He does, after all, call himself a god.”
Nyi Rara snorted, blowing bubbles. “Are you certain he’s not?”
“I’m not certain you are not,” Ake answered. “What is a god, anyway? An immortal? A being with powers beyond human comprehension? Everyone in this meeting fits that description. But you, two merged souls …”
The Urchin had shown Nyi Rara this blending, this possibility. Namaka and Nyi Rara becoming one being, one person. Joining two worlds for the betterment of both. Beautiful, but costly. Neither one would ever quite live the life they might have dreamed of.
It had shown her the throne.
It had shown her the battle with Kanaloa.
But she hadn’t understood these things back then.
“Red Coral Reef represents too tight confines for the Dragon Kings,” she said. “So they will press on, rooting out any he‘e they can in the Wake. Any mo‘o, as well, they may be able to turn them to our cause, save those directly under Kanaloa’s control. The reef itself we will have to claim with the Rangers and Nanaue.”
Till Pimoe swam forward now. “What if the he‘e—justifiably—refuse to show themselves or engage your monsters?”
Nyi Rara bit back the response to remind her the dragons were not monsters, but thinking beings straddling a line between spirit and mortal. “Then Piika will guide them on and besiege Mu itself. The he‘e retreating back to their Aupuni serves our end as well as destroying them.”
“The better part of Mu will face the same difficulty as the reef,” Till Pimoe pointed out. “Only a handful of structures would allow the dragons inside.”
“The same structures Kanaloa might occupy,” Ake said. “I don’t think the god-king can ignore them or hide half so easily as his misbegotten offspring.”
&n
bsp; No, but they still did not know how truly powerful Kanaloa was. If he chose to retreat and cede Mu back to them, she might achieve victory without undue risk. There was a certain appeal to that.
“What of Hiyoya?” Kauhuhu asked. “Suppose they intervene? Did you not claim they were previously allied with the he‘e?”
“Yes,” Nyi Rara admitted. “And if we see any sign of them or their wereseals, Piika has instructions to show them no mercy. Otherwise, we’ll attend to them in due time.” She glanced around the council. “So? Can this work?”
Kauhuhu nodded. “It rather depends on us not encountering any unforeseen complications.”
Till Pimoe snorted out a hail of bubbles. “You mean counting on the god-king not having any surprises for us?”
That was what it came down to, Nyi Rara supposed.
But they had come this far …
44
Hour upon hour Poli‘ahu had fled each convergence of the mists, each icy breeze. The sisters had chased her through the sky and up and down the mountain. Three times they had almost gotten their ethereal hands upon her. She was mist, but so were they. And now, prepared for her power as they were, once they caught her, she knew she’d not escape their grasp again.
She returned to Mauna Kea before dawn, ever fleeing, her strength waning. At last the sun rose, stinging her misty eyes and scorching her form. Exhausted, she dropped back down on the slopes before her refuge. If she were smart, she would have fled all the way to another island. But Vai‘i was her home, and she could not, would not allow herself to be driven from it. Not by the Kahikians. Not even by the snow sisters.
They would be here, she knew. Waiting for her, probably not showing themselves until nightfall. This time, though, she would be ready for them. Before that, she needed to regain her strength. And there was no better place for that than her home mountain.
She knelt in the snows and pushed her palms in deep, allowing the chill to suffuse her fingers and run up her limbs. Unlike the cold she had suffered when Lilinoe had drained her mana, this was a welcome cooling, one born from the power she drew from the snows themselves.
The ice and snow around her began to melt as she drew its power into herself. With the influx of mana, her strength returned, washing away fatigue and even her growing hunger. They would know what she was doing, of course. Maybe they thought they had no reason to fear her. She could not directly affect them with her powers. But their mistake had been in teaching her the Art, in teaching her so much of sorcery. Perhaps, as Lilinoe sometimes intimated, when it came to the Art, Poli‘ahu understood only the mere surface of an infinitely deep well. Nevertheless, she knew enough to protect herself from the sisters.
Lilinoe had made it clear she intended to kill Poli‘ahu. The erstwhile queen of Old Mu would stop at nothing to regain her lost power, of that she had no doubt. Lilinoe planned to rule all Sawaiki, using Poli‘ahu’s body as her throne. No doubt she would need to kill all her former sisters to ensure none could rise against her. While Poli‘ahu would shed no tears for Pele or Kapo—or Pahulu for that matter—she still had no intention of allowing Lilinoe to succeed.
You cannot stop us … Waiau mocked.
Poli‘ahu needed to do more than just protect herself. They had so nearly taken her last night. One more step and she would have plummeted into that abyss forever, all in pursuit of her Art. Maybe the sisters had known all along what would happen with Aiwohi, with Kapo, with Pele, known or suspected, and wanted to position Poli‘ahu. Everything was a manipulation. Always caught in machinations she had not begun to guess at.
They had intentionally driven her to burn away her memories and moral inhibitions, to sacrifice little bits of her soul. She knew she had lost those pieces, but could not even fathom what they had been with any certainty.
The abrasion of one’s own soul wrought through the pursuit of sorcery would, in death, transform most sorceresses into wraiths. Only peculiar affinity for Mist had allowed the sisters to become what they were, instead.
Poli‘ahu frowned. That was the answer, after all. The only answer she could see.
In mist form she flew up into her sanctuary, and into the chamber of the banyan, where she had once summoned a spirit into the hawks, what now felt so long ago. There she resumed solid form and stared up at the glyphs carved into the walls. All so carefully researched under the tutelage of the sisters. After so much study, she merely needed to refresh her memory. Once she was satisfied she could recreate the symbols, she strode back into the great hall where the mighty sea turtle sculpture waited. This had been one of her masterpieces, a symbol of her growing power.
In the name of this lifeless sculpture, she had poured out countless nights of study and so much of her life she no longer knew who or what she was. If there was a person who was Poli‘ahu, a girl, a fisherman’s daughter, that person had died the night her mother had cast her out.
After inspecting the turtle, Poli‘ahu began to replicate the banyan-chamber glyphs on the walls of this great hall. She had carved most of them when she felt the presence entering the chamber, accompanied by a chill mist seeping around her in a circle.
She embraced the Sight so she could see the two sisters come for her, at last.
“Back to your Art?” Lilinoe, her voice hinting at confusion.
“Yes.”
“We did not expect you to return.”
She had been counting on that, counting on the spirits not attacking her while the sun was up. “Because you tried to force me to cast a spell I didn’t want to? Don’t think I’m not grateful for all you have taught me of the Art. It is a calling.”
Lies …
“It is an addiction,” Lilinoe challenged. “An obsession that, even aware of it, one cannot be freed from. To taste ultimate power is to be forever changed by it.”
“The thirst for deeper truth … The idea that once true knowledge is glimpsed, one should ever hunger for more. Answers to all the universe?” Poli‘ahu twirled her finger, putting the last flourish on another glyph. “Is that what happened to you?”
The Mist spirit hissed at her. “You must complete the tetrad.”
Tetrad, was it? “A four-part symbol,” Poli‘ahu mused. One last glyph to mark on the walls. “It occurs to me—you had me split the spirit we put into the hawks into four parts. Why four? I had assumed it was random. But if you wanted to test my ability to split a soul, why not something easier, like two or even three? But no, you chose four hawks.”
“You are so close to understanding, to enlightenment. To apotheosis.”
Poli‘ahu snorted. Last night she might have believed that. “Four, the exact number of pieces Kahoupokane split our souls into. And mine was the last. Had I given in …”
“We would finally be whole again. And now you know why you must go through with the spell. Joined, the tetrad will become more powerful than even Kanaloa.”
Kanaloa? The Ocean God? Was that who Lilinoe sought to strive against with all her centuries-long schemes? As if all of this was some attempt to alter the course of fate Lilinoe had set in motion when she and her sister queens destroyed the world with the Deluge?
It was a temptation. To join and become so much more than she was now, more even than she had been before losing her mana to create the wereseals. But if Lilinoe was the first, and she did as the Mist spirit bade, Poli‘ahu would become at best a servant to this spirit. Perhaps, had she not seen the snow sisters for the inhuman abominations they had become, perhaps then she could have stomached such servitude. Not now, not knowing the price. They may have once been mortal women, but they had steeped for centuries in the dark of Pō.
Poli‘ahu carved the final glyph on the wall, leaving only the mark for the spirit she intended to bind remaining.
Lilinoe drifted around the room without elaborating, which was, in itself, answer enough. “Why persist with the sea turtle?” the spirit asked after a moment.
“Pride in my art?” Poli‘ahu began to carve the most important g
lyph, this one upon the sea turtle’s forehead. Lilinoe watched in silence. At least until she recognized the mark of her own soul upon the turtle. Then she shrieked in hatred so vile it ought to have frozen Poli‘ahu’s blood in her veins.
Already, though, Poli‘ahu had begun incanting, her Supernal words bombarding Pō. She had done this before, with the hawks. Now, she needed not split one soul into four bodies. Rather, she needed instill three divided souls into one. A small change. With a finger she carved Waiau’s glyph onto the sea turtle’s flipper.
Her body lurched of its own accord, the spirit bound to her writhing in hissing rage as it was yanked outward, toward its new prison.
Lilinoe’s shriek was joined by the bound spirit’s, and a moment later by Kahoupokane’s as well. They knew what she was doing. But she had already closed the circle, preventing the subject of her sorcery from acting against her directly. They could not physically attack her, and so, all at once, the three of them flung their Wills against hers, the bombardment threatening to crack her mind.
The power of it drove her to her knees, but still she continued to chant. The supreme irony of using spirits the snow sisters had taught her to summon to bind them was delicious, even as their assault caused blood vessels to burst in her mouth and nose and eyes. The copper taste of it filled her mouth, but she could not stop her invocation. Blood blurred her vision and ran down her face. She carved Kahoupokane’s glyph on another flipper.
Supreme coldness like that which Lilinoe had visited upon her in the night seeped into her gut. This was why she had needed to draw so much mana from the mountain. Because now it burned within her, tearing open the tiniest of breaches between the Mortal Realm and the Astral Realm.