by David Hair
He caught her in half a minute, and they ran on, careless of whether Sassman followed. The path twisted and turned, passing long steep drops to the water. They went past the mouths of other, smaller caves, in which dark shapes scuttled. There was a roaring sound, back where the gunfight was taking place behind them, followed by shouting, and then two massive splashes. Mat tried to see, but the terrain blocked his view.
Further out on the surface, it seemed a huge bank of fog was forming, growing like a living thing. Something about it filled him with urgency. A dry voice seemed to be whispering into his mind, and it was all he could do to blank it out. All the while, they felt a dark shadow following, the presence of Tuwai, and Mat could feel the weight of the tapu like a cancer coiled about his heart.
18
Bribery and corruption
The waka seemed to leap through the water, the Ponaturi paddling with measured fury. The teens bailed frantically, grunting with fatigue. Only Aethlyn Jones spoke, standing erect in the other waka with his arms raised, facing towards the middle of the lake, chanting in what sounded like Gaelic. Riki threw a look over his shoulder, and sucked in his breath.
A fog seemed to be boiling out of the very waters of the lake, rising like dry ice at a rock concert. It was thick and constantly moving, tumbling over itself as it spread on the waters. Already the far shore was hidden from sight, and the view south towards Panekiri Bluff was blurring by the second. The birds on the lake surface rose and flapped away. Above them the sky was darkening, as the sun dipped into cloud above the western horizon. He wondered where and when the moon would rise.
They glided into the first tendrils of the fog, and visibility dropped to just a few feet in front of them. He looked back, where the cliff was a looming presence, but indistinct now. Maybe they can’t see us…
He opened his mouth, looking back at Cassandra, when a rattle of gunfire came from the cliff-top high above, more than a hundred yards distant. All around them came the now familiar whining sound, and then a series of splashes as the balls struck the water…most of them. One of the Ponaturi at the rear flung up his arms, and slumped sideways. Another couple of balls struck the waka, chipping splinters from the hull. Then the mist closed about them utterly, and they were lost in a whiteness as impenetrable as darkness.
Riki sagged, breathless, praying they were invisible to the men on the shoreline. Cassandra’s nose was swollen and crooked, blood smeared over her chin, her eyes already blackening. Beyond her, Damien went to cast a final bucket of water over the side, when a Ponaturi clutched his shoulder and put a warning finger to his lips. The one who had been struck moaned, groping at his shoulder, then grimaced as he reached in with gore-covered fingers and plucked something small and metallic from the wound. He grinned like a fiend.
Riki looked at him, aghast. Jeez, I’m glad they’re on our side today…
They floated onward, sailing on momentum alone.
The muskets suddenly opened fire again, the flare of the muzzles faintly visible through the mist as a red flash, but this time no balls came near. Voices carried across the water, and a dark shape glided alongside—the other waka. Riki saw Jones gesticulating to Piriniha, then slowly they slid about, and the paddles dipped silently into the water again.
He let out a slow breath. ‘You okay?’ he whispered in Cassandra’s ear. It sounded inane, but she seemed to appreciate the question.
‘Uh-huh, schure,’ she slurred.
‘I’ve never been so scared,’ he told her, not sure if the admission would encourage her, but he felt compelled to confess it anyway.
‘Me neither,’ chipped in Damien in a low hiss.
Cassandra blew a bloody bubble from her nose, and her voice cleared. ‘You guys should get out more. I was more scared on my first sky-dive.’ She fished into her pack, and came out with a first-aid kit. ‘And face-down abseiling is awful. Ha!’ Her laugh sounded shrill and ragged.
‘You’re “Miss Prepared”, aren’t you?’ Damien breathed, eyeing the first-aid pack dubiously.
‘Only a boy would go on a quest without gear,’ the girl sniffed.
‘How come you can do…anything?’ Damien asked her, almost reverently.
‘Oh, Dad always said to try anything once. So I do.’ She looked at the blond boy thoughtfully and added, ‘Except drugs and dweebs. I have my standards.’
Riki snorted softly to himself.
Wings flapped heavily, and then Godfrey dived past them, and glided towards shore, in gull form.
‘Have any of you seen him change shape?’ Damien whispered.
‘No, and I don’t want to, either,’ Riki replied. Icky special effects in B-grade horror movies had never been his thing.
They drifted with the thickest of the mist, no one speaking above a whisper, the only noise the lap of the water, and Jones’ low chanting. It seemed to take hours, but was probably only ten to fifteen minutes. The wind had gone, and most of the firing had stopped onshore, apart from the occasional rumble of Sebastian Venn’s big guns up on the redoubt hill, and they were evidently firing at something to the south. Occasional gulls called overheard, as if using sonar to pierce the fog. It was difficult to gauge direction, even with the shouting of their pursuers onshore, which was at times far away, and at other times shockingly close.
Jones gestured, and the second waka drifted into contact with the teens’ one, the sides grinding softly together. Jones spoke to Piriniha, then stepped quietly out into thigh-deep water. He made his way to the teens and leant over so that his head was close to theirs.
‘We’re only a few yards from shore,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m taking most of the warriors and going ashore. We have to find Mat and Lena, and I’m guessing they will be near where the petrified taniwha is said to be, here on the Aotearoa side.’
‘We’re coming too,’ Damien said instantly.
Jones shook his head tiredly. ‘No. For the last time, please, no. This is where push becomes shove. Men will die. They are tried warriors, both the men on their side, and the Ponaturi. You are not. You’ve shown great courage, and when we recover your friends, you will be of great comfort to them. But let the warriors do their work unhindered now, please.’
‘But—’
Jones shook his head. ‘No. You know I’m right. You’ve seen action now, so you know why I’m doing this. It’s not glamorous, it’s butchery. Let the professionals do it.’
‘We’re not afraid,’ Riki blurted, though inside all he mostly felt was relief.
Jones ignored his words. ‘Now, the hunted become the hunters,’ he said tersely, wading ashore with his musket held high until he was lost in the swirling fog. Just before he vanished, Godfrey landed on his raised gun, and cawed urgently. Within seconds the teens were alone, but for two Ponaturi in each waka, who reverse-paddled the big unwieldy craft back into the fog.
They huddled together, shivering. Damien still had Jones’ sword, and Riki his taiaha, but they seemed useless now. Cassandra was typing furiously into her laptop, beneath a blanket produced from her pack, so that the glow from the screen did not reveal their position. She was plugging in little pieces of hardware, muttering to herself. Riki was beyond trying to work out what she was doing.
He leant forward and whispered into Damien’s ear. ‘When it comes down to it, Jones doesn’t know Mat. Or Lena. He doesn’t value them. If it gets hard, he’ll break off.’
Damien chewed his lower lip. ‘That’s just what I’m thinking.’ He softly pounded the hull with his fist. ‘To him, it’s about thwarting Bryce and Kyle, I reckon.’
‘Yeah. So we’ve got to get there. We’ll be the only ones that really care what happens to Mat and Lena.’ Riki clenched his taiaha, and wondered what he could do to make the four remaining Ponaturi turn around. Or let them go.
Cassandra shut her laptop, and the glow died. Then she reached into her side-pocket, took a nibble of chocolate, and offered some to Riki.
He stared at it, and then took the entire bar.
The first Ponaturi stared at the chocolate as if it were a piece of the true cross, or made of gold or something. Then the second one sniffed it, and practically slithered over. Their paua-coloured eyes were fixed upon the chocolate bar. Riki put up a finger, and stabbed it at the shore. The Ponaturi shook their heads. The first one gestured towards the other waka, half seen in the mist but paddling closer. He held up four fingers.
You boys drive a hard bargain…
He broke off a row, split it in quarters, and showed it to them. They licked their lips. He pointed towards the shore.
They slowly, reluctantly, shook their heads.
He added another row.
The first one began sweating.
He added a third row.
They looked at each other and nodded. Two hands shot out. The two sea-fairies in the other waka silently slipped alongside to ensure they got their share.
He closed his fist. ‘Shore first,’ he said.
Riki wasn’t sure they understood his words, but they seemed to grasp his meaning. Scowling, they picked up their paddles.
As they glided towards the darkness of the shore, a sudden cry of pain, a death cry, echoed from above. The two Ponaturi grinned. Shots rang out, and then fell silent. Frightened calls echoed in the mist, American-accented men searched with their voices for friends in the gloom and mazy under growth. And marked themselves out as targets in doing so. Riki could picture the Ponaturi slipping invisibly through the trees, isolating the lone soldiers, stalking them like predators picking out the weak and vulnerable from the herd. The image made him shudder.
The sun slipped beneath the cloudbank to the west, and the eastern lake grew darker still. Then the hull of their waka crunched softly ashore. Visibility was no more than ten yards in any direction. The foliage seemed already suffused in night. They stepped over the side, into thigh-deep water, and stumbled ashore as quietly as they could, Damien grunting with the weight of Cassandra’s pack. The girl’s broken spectacles made her eyes seem even more strange, bulging and fractured, slightly mad. Right now though, Riki would have stopped a bullet for her.
One of the Ponaturi touched his shoulder, and smiling brilliantly, held out a hand. Riki dropped three rows of chocolate into the long thin hand. The sea-fairy smirked, and gobbled half, then gave the rest to his comrades. Then they plucked at the teens’ sleeves, and motioned up the slope. Their pale frames seemed to dissolve into the mist. The teens looked at each other, then hurried after them.
19
The stone taniwha
From what Mat could remember of maps and conversations, in the real world the southeast tip of Lake Waikaremoana, at the low point where the Ngamoko and Panekiri Ranges came together, there had been an ancient rockfall that had blocked whatever outflow there might once have been. But through underwater streams, water still flowed out of the lake, and of course the government had made races to feed the hydro-electricity dams below at Tuai and Kaitawa. A tiny group of houses on the southern slopes formed the settlement of Onepoto, and there was a road egress right to the lake shore, and a boat ramp.
A further landslip, which fell during the 1940s when the hydro-dams were under construction, had buried the rock about which the legend of Haumapuhia the taniwha had grown. No one in the human world could reach the stone taniwha any more.
But that was another world entirely.
One of Bryn Jones’ soldiers stepped from behind a rock above the path, and silently motioned Mat and Lena to halt. He leapt down, and another followed. Captain Taylor appeared from upslope, looking worried. He looked Mat and Lena up and down, and looked back the way they had come.
‘Where’s Dwayne? Where’s the musician?’ His voice was clipped and harsh. Coldly professional.
Mat matched his tones. ‘Dwayne’s dead. Sassman is following.’
Taylor looked at him dispassionately. ‘Was your mission successful?’
Mat held up the shrunken head. The horrid little thing seemed almost to leer at the captain.
Taylor gave a small shudder, and spat on the ground, then nodded. ‘What got Dwayne?’
‘Ask Sassman.’ Mat walked on.
Taylor grabbed his shoulder, his eyes narrowing. ‘Don’t lip me, boy!’ He jerked his finger at one of the soldiers. ‘Find the DJ.’ He looked at Mat and Lena. ‘You children follow me.’
Mat simmered, but Lena hurried after the captain. Mat didn’t think he should let her out of his sight now. The buzzing noise in his ears was getting worse, and he angrily willed it to stop, which quietened it a little.
They followed Captain Taylor down the path, winding down towards the lake’s shore. To their right, a thick bank of fog was covering the lake surface, and beginning to roll over the shore, so that the way ahead was becoming dim. Lena kept shaking her head, as if trying to clear her hearing.
Sassman caught them up as they reached the shore, just a ragged silhouette flanked by the two soldiers. Taylor spat again, and then jerked a thumb inland, where steps led downward, hewn out of rock. The thick forest reached out with crooked hands, brushing at them as they descended, but there were men ahead on the stairs, holding flaming torches that glowed in the gathering dusk. It was still some way till sunset, only 4.54 p.m. according to Mat’s watch, but the sun was lost in cloud near the western ranges, and the light was fading fast.
‘What time is moonrise?’ he whispered to Lena.
She shook her head. ‘Some time after five, I think,’ she responded, stepping away from him.
Mat cursed. Were they too late? ‘We’ve got to hurry,’ he murmured.
She threw him a strange look—one that made his fears rise—as if she was steeling herself. Before he could speak again, she strode away, keeping pace with the captain. He had to trot to keep up, cradling the mokomokai in his grasp. It felt queasily alive. He threw a glance back over his shoulder, and found Sassman watching him. Every direction seemed blocked, his choices narrowing with every step, the whole world conspiring to hurry him headlong into something he could not control.
Some hero I am! Some ‘Heir of Ngatoro’! What would the legendary tohunga think if he could see me now?
‘If you’d just open your mind and listen, I’ll tell you,’ a dry voice rasped in his head.
Bryn Jones was waiting with two dozen soldiers on a platform overlooking a huge, stone hollow at the foot of a flight of stairs carved into the north face. The bottom of the hollow was well below the level of the lake. Fiery torches guttered and smoked about the edges of the bowl, which was closed in on three sides. Only the eastern end was unenclosed, facing out down the valley towards Tuai, the hills, and ultimately Wairoa and the sea. The north and south walls were rough-hewn, free of vegetation but unadorned. But it was the western wall that drew the eye.
The first thing Mat was conscious of was that the western wall was all that held in the waters of the lake. It was well over a hundred feet high, smoothed by some caring hand which had sanded it flat, and etched carvings into it. But there were thin cracks too, through which oozed water, that trickled down the wall in green algae-lined veins into the basin below. A pool had formed there, clear and pure, and he could see tiny fish and, strangely, clamshells.
‘Maahu made this place, for his daughter,’ Bryn Jones told them. Lena, on the far side of Jones, nodded, staring down into the hollow with eager eyes.
Mat barely heard, between trying to hear the words of Ngatoro in his head. His attention was caught by the black rock in the midst of the pool. At first glance it appeared shapeless, like a grotesque statue. But then Mat looked closer, and used his imagination.
It was like the top of the head of a massive tuatara, or a crocodile’s head, peering above the surface of the earth. Yes, there were the nostrils, and there the bridge of the snout, and the lips and teeth on the side. He compu
ted the size of what might lie below the surface of the earth, and shivered. The whole beast could be the size of a jumbo jet.
‘The taniwha,’ breathed that dry voice in his head. The voice of Ngatoro-i-rangi.
It wasn’t like a conversation. Mat had to concentrate very hard, and the words came slowly, as much visual as aural. Some things couldn’t be communicated; complexities and nuances. It hurt too; he had a migraine forming, like boulders about to crush his skull. Nevertheless, he was talking to the long-lost tohunga, Ngatoro-i-rangi. It was alarming and frightening.
They had been fumbling with communication for the last few minutes, sending little in the way of clear words. Simple words and concepts seemed to work best. He wasn’t sure what the tohunga might have heard or understood. It was like trying to hear a radio signal in a static-storm.
‘What is going on? Who can I trust?’
The voice replied: ‘I don’t know, poai. I’m not there.’
Mat had a sudden uncomfortable feeling, like someone manhandling his memories. Images and remembrances seemed to spool behind his eyes as he walked. Faces and names, events and stories. Kauariki’s story, Hoanga, and the attack at Matawhero. Bryn Jones. Sassman. Kissing Lena. His pledge to Tuwai. He felt the presence in his mind thinking fast.
Bryn Jones pointed out across the hollow. ‘A natural amphitheatre,’ he said. ‘Carved by the taniwha’s father, in her honour. See the pool, the beginnings of the river he brought her, hoping to assuage his guilt with gifts from the sea. But she does not forgive, of course. She is a monster, made of fury and hunger.’
‘She must be freed,’ Mat replied. ‘She’s not a monster, she’s just a girl.’ He held up the head of the tohunga. ‘I have the mokomokai. What do we do next?’ It was so hard to talk, while Ngatoro was inside his head.
‘Ah, well done, my young friend, well done,’ said Jones. He seized Mat’s shoulder and gripped it. His eyes were burning with some repressed emotion. ‘Soon, we will free the taniwha.’