by Matt Larkin
Euphoria filled her as success neared. Lilinoe was right—it was an addiction. And Poli‘ahu could no more let this go now than she had been able to in some past life as Lilinoe. Darkness settled in around the great hall. The sisters’ shrieks grew into wails of defiance and at last pain.
She had done it! She managed to—
Her Will fractured, wheezing like a dying gasp inside her head. It sent her crashing over sideways, not even the singing stone possessing enough mana to hold her steady. Her soul plunged through the Veil, no longer merely looking into Pō, but finding herself now having Spirit Walked there.
Slowly, convulsing in pain, she looked up at the three Mist spirits now glaring down at her, shrouds of white flapping about them in etheric winds. Enmity wafted off them in distorting waves of cold.
Lilinoe knelt beside her, icy finger digging into Poli‘ahu’s chest. “You thought you could overcome the three of us, even drained as you were?” A wispy, hateful chuckle. “What is left of your wretched soul would not fill a gourd.” A hesitation. “Let me show you.”
The finger dug deeper.
A crushing pain seized her chest.
As her heart stopped.
45
The wereboar was right about one thing—it had been a mistake to attack Poli‘ahu. Mauna Kea was the Snow Queen’s place, her element, and that gave her a natural advantage. Still, Pele couldn’t say what she ought to have done. Lonomakua had assured her Poli‘ahu had been weakened.
Just not weakened enough.
They had made grudging progress down toward Puna, sticking to the valleys and trusting to Kapo’s mastery of the wood and Kamapua‘a’s nose to keep them free from further wereseals. Even a few hours’ walking left Pele drenched in sweat, bone-weary, and ready to curse anyone who came near. The events of the past days had drained her, over and over, until she felt almost nothing remained to her.
Refusing the wereboar’s offer of help—she still could not look at her so-called husband without a twinge of loathing—she leaned instead upon her sister, making her painfully slow way home.
“With the death of their progenitor, the wereseals lose the greater portion of their strength,” Kapo said. “Still, we can imagine them yet bound to the Snow Queen, and I have reason to believe she lent some of the creatures to Hiyoya.”
“Namaka said …” Pele panted.
“That Hiyoya had previously allied itself with Kanaloa, yes,” Kapo agreed. “I’ve no easy means of divining the political situation under the sea at the moment. Does it concern you?”
Yes.
But then, Kapo had not heard the claims Namaka had made on her last visit to Puna. The way Kanaloa had orchestrated the birth of the sisters, the way the octopus god had plotted and schemed down through the ages. Taken in conjunction with Poli‘ahu’s assertion that their souls had all lived before, as the Sorceress Queens of Old Mu … What did it all mean?
Pele found herself floundering, feeling adrift on the currents of the endless Worldsea, uncertain anymore of either her intent or even … even her birthright. The one enduring lesson Haumea had imparted to her children—their knowledge of deific blood in their veins and the entitlement that presented. The right and duty to rule, as conduits of mana.
They, like Poli‘ahu, were god-queens, literally born for such.
But it had never been destiny that arranged their rise, and to learn the specifics of the self-styled god that had done so, to remove the abstraction and ground his machinations in the real, it stripped the wonder and left behind horror.
They had all been used.
And, were she honest with herself, she felt violated, as if the natural order of her life had been so perversely upended she could never again feel clean.
Were she to share it all with Kapo, no doubt her sister would feel the same. But the woman had a right to know.
“There’s …” Pele rasped. “There’s something we must speak of.”
With Kama and Kapo, she broke her fast on coconuts and roots. Kama was carrying on about his various escapades on Mau‘i and Kaua‘i, claiming to have once defeated a river in single combat. Pele paid him little mind save the occasional grunt.
First Kū-Waha-Ilo, then Shifters like Kama and the wereseals, and now Kanaloa and the he‘e … there were so many secrets in this world. Forces she had never imagined playing games with people’s lives, manipulating the whole world just out of sight. Poli‘ahu had learned of those secrets, had studied the Art. Part of Pele longed for that understanding, but it had cost the Snow Queen, too, she had no doubt. Pele had to believe the secret lore, the Art, had played a part in Poli‘ahu and Kū-Waha-Ilo’s descent.
And Kapo’s.
So. If she were to try to understand those secrets, to match herself against the forces controlling the world, would she also begin to slip, lose herself to the very power and knowledge meant to elevate her? No matter how pure her intentions, she might be twisted by the machinations she would be forced to engage in, corrupted by the Art itself. But the alternative was to go home, pretend like nothing had changed and try to live her life the way she always had. No one exposed to the true reality could really turn back from it. If she tried, she would always know it was out there.
She had the Sight.
“So that’s when I said, Moon, I’m sick of your shit. Then I punched it so hard it became a half moon.”
“Uh, huh.”
Pele shook her head. These were the sort of deep thoughts always troubling Lonomakua. Maybe they troubled all the kāhuna. Once one realized the depth of mortal ignorance, there was no going back to the innocence of unawareness of that ignorance. To know there was so much she didn’t know, that no one knew …
But Lonomakua, Maui, knew more than any others, and if any in Sawaiki could hope to fathom the import of these events, it would be him.
While Kapo helped her scale the slopes of Kīlauea, Pele sent Kamapua‘a to call for Lonomakua, trusting the wereboar to manage that much without making a mess of things. Her sister left her side well before reaching the summit, sweating profusely and clearly uncomfortable with the desolation wrought by recent eruptions.
Pele understood, but this was the only place she might recover her strength and heal from her injuries in a timely manner. And though she could not explain it—insight born of the Sight, perhaps—she had the inescapable sense of something impending. A change in the air she felt, setting the hair on her neck on end.
For a time, she luxuriated in the crater until something alerted her to a presence upon the slopes.
As she rose, rivulets of lava streamed down her back and ran over her breasts. She allowed herself a moment more to luxuriate in the sulfuric vapors that would have poisoned most mortals, then flicked the lava off her skin with a wave of her hand. After donning her pa‘u, she joined Lonomakua several hundred feet below the summit, where he’d constructed a tiny fire and now stared into it.
Wordlessly, Pele settled down across from him. For a time, she watched him peering into the flame. What did he see in his pyromantic trances? His ability at it was so much stronger than hers, despite her much greater control of the flames themselves. Perhaps it was his nature, or perhaps just the centuries of practice.
“You lived at least eight hundred years,” she said after a while.
Lonomakua looked up at her, his smile looking almost maudlin, or at least forlorn. “Oh, much, much longer than that.” His sea-blue eyes seemed to sparkle with reflected firelight. That, and the hint that he had borne the weight of more than she would ever imagine. “You would have called me ancient when your past incarnation breached the Veil.”
“It’s true, then.” It wasn’t really a question since he had all but confirmed Poli‘ahu’s claims about the prior life of her soul. “My sisters and I somehow came back from Pō.”
In lieu of an answer, Lonomakua stoked the flame with a stick, stirring the tinder.
Why demure now? Did he think he protected her?
Pele folded he
r hands in her lap. “So, you strove against Kanaloa from the beginning. You knew what he would do.”
“Ah, you of all people should know that no prescience can ever be perfect. Whatever I glean from the flames are but fragments of a shattered mosaic that no mortal mind could hope to glimpse whole, much less remain sane after so doing. The scope of history expands beyond our reach, even as we try to nudge it toward one trend or another.”
Pele leaned forward, feeling at once drawn back into the days of her youth and his endless lessons, and at the same time worn thin and bedraggled. “You evade the question. You knew—whether at the beginning or later—that the he‘e god-king would scheme to claim all the Worldsea, did you not?”
His faint smile answered her.
“You knew, even, that he attempted to call up the souls of the Sorceress Queens of Old Mu into vessels of his choosing. Children contrived, rather than conceived, by his followers. You saw how he sent Milolii to guide Namaka toward him, and maybe that would have been her fate had the mer not taken her body. And you knew something similar would lay in store for me unless you presented an alternative mentor. Your identity concealed from my parents, you inserted yourself into my life.”
His face fell, ever so slightly. “You intimate I am no better than Kanaloa.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Because, while you are no doubt guilty of similar manipulations and machinations, I know the truth you tried to conceal even from yourself. You came to love me like a daughter.”
A shuddering breath. “I … have lost children. So many loved ones down through the ages …”
Though his eyes remained dry, Pele felt her heart lurch from the pain in his voice. “You fear to lose me, as well. That’s … that’s why you never urged me to join Namaka in her war against the he‘e.” ‘Aumākua! How had she not seen this before? He had never wanted her to kill Namaka when they fought. Had he known, even back in Uluka‘a, where all this would lead? “You saved me, decades ago, not only to keep me from Kanaloa, but to ensure at least one weapon remained against the god-king.”
“Pele …”
She swallowed, staring hard at him. “And now, when the moment arrives, you refuse to heft your weapon for fear it will shatter against your foe.”
“You are not a weapon.”
She skirted around the fire so she could stroke his cheek. “No … Father, perhaps not in your eyes. But you always meant for me to fight this war and achieve something you could not.”
A faint tremor passed through him.
He was terrified for her, wasn’t he?
Pele rose. “I’m going to end this.”
And she would need a boat.
46
Red Coral Reef, so named for the towering maze of vermillion coral, had been ceded to the he‘e at Namaka’s behest. A gift promised to them to secure their aid against Hiyoya. It was only appropriate then, Nyi Rara supposed, that she should be the one to take it back.
Soon, she would have to fight.
Ake had suggested the Nanaue assault from the east, leaving Nyi Rara and the Rangers to close in from the west. It placed the Nanaue in greater danger, but then, they also represented the strongest fighting force available to Mu.
Save Nyi Rara herself. She was, after all, their greatest weapon.
She swam closer to the Reef. By now, the he‘e would have seen her. Oh, they ought to know who she was, too. Always avoiding a confrontation with her. Well, there was no way to avoid it now.
Nyi Rara glanced back at Ake, swimming a hundred paces behind her at the head of his Rangers and overmastered sharks. The Commander didn’t seem to see her, his gaze darting frantically one way or the other, as if fearing octopuses lurking invisibly all around them.
Not entirely inaccurate, unfortunately.
In the waters below, she could feel the he‘e, moving slowly, trying to remain concealed by matching their color and texture to that of the coral. Wasted effort. The sea was hers despite how it now overflowed with her enemies. The sea was hers.
The feel of so many of the creatures down there was enough to recall the coiling strength in Punga’s limbs as he strangled her. The clinging, burrowing clutch of his suckers.
So many … writhing … alien … abominations who thought to claim her sea. Who thought to claim the world. The Elder Deep’s anger rose in Nyi Rara. The fury at the child who had stolen from her, betrayed her, given rise to his own hateful brood.
All at once, she again swam before that colossal, incandescent eye as it bored into her soul.
Demanded … action …
Because, she too, had the blood of a mo‘o, an heir of the Elder Deep. That heat rose in her.
Surging, boiling blood coursing through her veins, beating behind her eyes until they must have glowed white-hot. Until the sea around her bubbled with unearthly rage.
She spread her arms wide, calling it to her. Currents stretched out around her, reaching for leagues, all stilling before her Will as her mana poured into it.
“Come and get me, defilers.”
Nyi Rara began to jerk her hands back and forth, twisting the water, pushing it all aside to expose Red Coral Reef to the shining moon high above. The seafloor stood bare for half a league and dozens upon dozens of he‘e—those not swept into the swirling currents surrounding the Reef—were dropped onto the sand. The octopuses had no faces, but she would have liked to see the looks on them if they had.
“Nyi Rara! What are you doing?” Ake’s voice barely carried over the maelstrom she had created.
Making a Deep-damned point.
Let Kanaloa spy on this with his scrying. Let him know she was coming for him.
Screaming in fury, Nyi Rara slapped her hands together. The waves followed her command, crashing back into the Reef with thousands of tons of force. The sheer weight of so much falling water obliterated the coral. The Reef imploded upon the he‘e she’d left stranded, their forms torn to pieces by an ocean filled with jagged coral debris.
And then the waters rushed back out, spreading that debris over leagues—along with severed arms, gore, exploded fish, and more blood than she had ever seen in one place. From the corner of her eye she spotted a he‘e propelling itself away, through the water, darting between the deadly mess she had created in the water.
With a wave of her hand she sent a fresh current arcing over the octopus, carrying with it a thousand shards of coral that sliced the monster to ribbons. Nyi Rara spun, chest heaving with exhaustion, but determined to let no foe escape her.
Numerous mer were lagging back, nursing countless cuts along their faces, torsos, and tails from the edge of the blast. And Ake … the Commander sped toward her, wrath across his face as he left his forces behind.
“What was that? We were supposed to drive out the he‘e and press on, not destroy an entire habitat our people have cherished for an age! To say nothing of the tens of thousands of fish you just put to waste.”
Nyi Rara faltered. True … this hadn’t been the plan. “Something came over me … I can’t quite explain the feeling of—”
Rage seeped out of her all at once as if sucked down a maelstrom itself, leaving her dizzy, blinking.
Ake growled at her. He bit at the water randomly, shark teeth gnashing, driving her back. His sudden lunge still caught her off guard. He grabbed her arms. He was strong, bearing her down. She crashed into the sand, throwing up a blinding cloud.
Groaning, she sent a jet of water slapping into his face. Dazed, his grip slackened. Nyi Rara used the opportunity to let her shark teeth descend, then sunk them into his neck where it met his shoulder.
He flung her off, but her teeth tore a wide chunk out of his flesh, filling the water with intoxicating blood. The commander gurgled, clutching his hand to his neck in a vain attempt to staunch the blood flow. She had ripped out some of his gills. He was doomed.
He was dying.
A second wave of dizziness seized her, more powerful than the first.
Elder Deep … w
hat had she done? The madness of his host had clearly driven him past the breaking point. But this … she hadn’t meant to … was it bloodlust? Mo‘o blood?
“Ake?” Oh, ‘aumākua. Had she meant to kill him?
“The he‘e attacked me …” Ake mumbled, his words distorted by the blood filling his throat. “Follow Nyi Rara …”
What was he saying? He wanted his people to believe she hadn’t done this? Wanted them to follow her, to still defeat the he‘e. Shame? His shame that he had lost control? No worse than she had.
Nyi Rara shut her eyes a bare moment. Then a twist of her tail carried her to his side. She cradled the commander in her arms.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Mu—”
“Sssh, don’t speak.” For a moment he lay trembling in her arms, and then he fell still.
Nyi Rara released Ake and offered him a final tail twirl.
“Your command, My Queen?” Apokohai asked. His look … as if he knew.
Nyi Rara ground her teeth, then realized they were still those of a shark. She rescinded those. Her mouth tasted of blood. Ake’s blood. Blood of a good mer, a mer she had liked, one Nyi Rara had even desired. Dead because of her.
The weight of ages seemed to press upon her. All she had done to get here. The pieces of herself lost in Pō.
The suddenness of Ake’s murder … Something had taken her from herself.
Nyi Rara shook her head, trying to clear it. “I’m sorry, Ake,” she mumbled under her breath. They had to act quickly, to make his death mean something. “The Nanaue will already be in position. We have to take back the city. Follow Commander Ake’s plan. Honor his sacrifice.”
The Dragon Kings had rained destruction upon the Wake. They had crushed the vestiges of Kane-huna-moku as surely as Nyi Rara herself had destroyed Red Coral Reef in her fit of madness. The opulent palace was reduced to dust, and—given the disconcerting tales Tilafaiga had told of it—Nyi Rara found little regret in seeing it swept away.