by David Hair
Asher Grieve drew a blade from his cane and walked towards him. ‘Ngatoro’s pet,’ he sneered. ‘You can feed me, too, you half-trained mongrel.’ He gestured, and the two veins plunged towards Mat.
With a desperate twist, Mat rammed the broken remains of his taiaha into the gaping maw of the nearest vein, caught the other in his left hand, and pulled. The vein was slick to the touch, but its instinctive retraction jerked him to his feet. He gripped the taiaha that was stuck in the side of the giant heart, and pulled. It came out with a sucking noise, and the whole heart pulsed. Every patient jerked, and opened their eyes. Black blood washed the taiaha, making his grip slick, but he twirled the weapon and dropped to a guard position.
Asher Grieve lunged, but Mat’s blood-wet taiaha swept the sword-stick aside. Mat leapt into a counter, leaping and striking. For a few seconds they thrashed at each other, until the heavy taiaha snapped the sword-stick in two.
The old wizard snarled as he staggered back, but he palmed a tiny derringer pistol, and placed it against Hine’s temple. ‘Halt!’ he commanded Mat.
The command was on two levels. One level was threat — ‘Move and I’ll kill the girl’—but the other was a sorcerous command that, if he succumbed to it, would hold Mat immobile. A double-bind: move and his enemy would kill Hine; fail to move and he would be held prisoner.
Jones hadn’t trained him rigorously for nothing. He solved the dilemma almost without thought, stepping away, but not holding immobile. He felt the magical energies reaching to bind him fail. He eyed the wizard warily.
Asher Grieve half-smiled. ‘Maybe a little more than half-trained,’ he acknowledged. He ground the pistol into Hine’s temple. ‘No closer, boy.’
Mat’s eyes met Hine’s as blood trickled down her throat.
There has to be a way …
Footsteps echoed from behind him, and he backed away. Donna Kyle lurched from the shadows, limping badly, her face drawn. Mat swivelled to keep father and daughter in view. The look on Donna’s face was murderous — and directed at her father.
Asher Grieve jerked his hand, and Donna was thrown against the heart-platform, where Mat had fallen a few seconds before. ‘Daughter,’ he breathed, ‘bring me the chalice. I must drink, and restore myself.’
Mat saw her give a soft sob, and thought he recognized what was happening. He extended his senses and perceived a cord of silver light running from her heart to the wizard’s hand. She looked at him mutely, and he could not honestly say what he saw in her eyes.
He stepped aside, lifting the taiaha, still dripping with heart-blood — and swept it through the silver cord.
She gave a small cry and fell against the stone dais, right in the shadow of that grotesque green heart, while Asher roared in sudden pain. Hine twisted and slammed her elbow into the wizard’s face, as if this were a bar-room brawl. His nose broke audibly, but he shoved at her, and she staggered towards Mat. Blood streamed down his face as he gestured towards Donna Kyle, who had lifted the chalice, black blood running down its side. He still held the pistol.
For a second everyone froze as the blonde woman lifted the chalice to her lips.
Asher’s voice rang out. ‘Yes! Drink, Daughter! Heal yourself! Then we will crush this pair of insects, and rule together.’
It took less than a minute of desperate defending for Wiri to realize two things: one, Col was faster and better than anyone he had ever fought; and two, his taiaha was going to splinter inside a minute. Perhaps when he had been an Immortal he could have beaten Col, but as it was he had only seconds left to live.
Except that winning was a habit. He had never lost, not since Tupu that first time. There would be a way. Parry, slash and retreat. Block, withdraw. Half-counter and jab. Lose slowly. He crabbed backwards up the stairs, keeping the Sluagh Sidhe from going after Mat. He took a slash to the shin when he was too slow with one disengage, but every second he bought gave Mat a chance.
The front doors burst open, and Tu and Manu and a cloud of warriors ran into the lobby. Col glanced sideways at them, then back at Wiri, his face suddenly resigned. ‘Ex-Immortal,’ he hissed, spreading his arms, ‘you’re going down with me.’
Two guns cracked from below, and Col staggered sideways at the impacts. His flesh splashed scarlet.
Wiri thrust. The Sidhe gurgled, staring down at the haft of wood that stuck from his chest.
Wooden stakes don’t really kill vampires. Well, they do, but the fact that they are wooden is irrelevant. Big, sharp things stuck through hearts kill vampires, and Sidhe and patupaiarehe and everything else.
But some beings die more immediately than others.
Col howled even as he began to crumple, and swung that huge sword as another fusillade of bullets hammered into him. Wiri literally saw the Sidhe torn apart before him, but still Col swung, even as he fell. With his only weapon stuck in Col’s chest, Wiri was helpless, but the Sidhe’s swing went awry even as it came. Steel sliced into Wiri’s thigh instead of his chest. He scarcely felt it, but his leg gave way in a spray of blood.
The magical hold that her father had had over her had been shattered by Matiu Douglas’s taiaha blow. How a mere taiaha could do such a thing she didn’t know, but maybe the blood it had soaked in for centuries had given it some supernatural power — one could only guess. But now Asher’s sorcerous binding over her was broken. She was free … whatever that was.
Donna stared at the chalice, every eye on her. Hine was beside Matiu Douglas, both of them ready to strike. Others burst in. Tu Hollis first, striding towards Hine. When their eyes met, love shone amidst the grotesque evil of this place. Asher Grieve’s derringer swung about, unsure where the true threat lay.
‘Drink, Daughter!’
Wiri appeared at the doorway, his left leg hastily bound, held erect by a ragged Maori in a hat and trench coat. The wound was clearly serious, but he was here. Ngati Maungatautari warriors followed, faces shining with fierce love and loyalty to their leader.
Loyalty … Now there’s a big word. And love … There’s another one.
She felt a pang of envy. Have I ever commanded actual loyalty? Has anyone loved me? Has there ever been someone I could trust out of love and respect and loyalty, not fear and compulsion?
No, no-one.
She felt the familiar, bilious taste of being excluded, being the outsider, the enemy. Not even the wicked thing that called her “daughter” would mourn her death. She measured her father out of the corner of her eye. My God, he looks utterly unchanged — and yet, she could tell he was exhausted. Until a few seconds ago he had been just another prisoner of the bloated heart above them. Perhaps he had aided Parukau by channelling the power of the Heart, but he wasn’t attached to that any more. He was spent, she realized. She was his only real hope.
But Wiri and his allies were similarly stricken. Wounded, tired, taken to the edge of mental and physical endurance. Few held a gun. Probably none could stop her if she drank.
I hold the balance of power here. What I choose decides this whole damned war … A sip of this blood and I can burn away the sigil, and I’ll be whole and free, and more powerful than I’ve ever been.
And still the Enemy.
The reek of the heart-blood stole over her senses. Unpleasant, oily and full of menace. She realized another thing: that if she drank it, it might tip her irredeemably down the path of the monsters — to be patupaiarehe, to be a monster, finally and forever.
But if I don’t drink, I lose everything.
‘Drink, Daughter,’ Asher Grieve repeated. ‘Drink. Heal yourself, and destroy these people. Then you will have won. Victorious, after all your suffering. The prize you have always sought.’
The prize.
What was this prize? Power? But what is that really? Influence? Dominance? The ability to command? Wealth and luxury? Safety?
No, this ‘prize’ would bring none of those things. Dominance would happen only by force; wealth, by theft. And safety would be a myth. There would never be safe
ty — whether she was under Asher’s thumb or free of him, there would never be safety. There were always rivals and enemies. How many assassination attempts had she seen upon Puarata even in the relatively short period of her service to him? Dozens, and he had lived centuries before she met him.
It was an illusion. There was no victory, and therefore no prize. There was only sacrifice of all the things she would never have: friendship; laughter that wasn’t scornful or derisive; affection that was not bribed or compelled — and love.
‘Daughter,’ Asher’s voice took on greater urgency. ‘Drink!’
She met Wiremu’s eye, realizing she had never seen him damaged before. She thought about what he had done: exchanged an eternity of servitude for a mortal span of weakness and vulnerability — and done it for love, yes, but also for honour, and to be free.
Freedom. The hardest word of all.
Was freedom possible? Could it ever be, when she was wanted dead or alive throughout Aotearoa?
But I’m so damned tired of all this …
It would be so easy to just drink, to turn into the monster her father wanted her to become. She could let the beast do all the thinking, and never have to take responsibility ever again. Blame everything on someone else and never acknowledge any complicity. To be a victim, a murderous victim, from now until someone finally knifed her in the back.
Wiri met her gaze, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. ‘Donna, you can’t go on blaming others for your acts. You have to make your own choice, and be judged by it.’
She looked back at him, his face strained, pain written all over him, but his eyes trained like lasers on her. She looked at Matiu Douglas, so like a younger Wiri, his young face pure and determined, on the verge of everything her life would never be. She knew he wouldn’t even have to think about this. She yearned for that kind of childlike clarity.
Something strange and unknown bubbled up inside her.
I’m doing this for you, she mouthed silently at the boy.
And emptied the chalice over the floor.
Mat stared in disbelief as Donna Kyle poured the black fluid to the floor. His brain refused to interpret her silent words.
An apoplectic roar burst from Asher’s throat. The wizard’s eyes bulged in fury, and his arms rose. Several warriors fired, but the balls froze and shattered before impact. He cast the derringer aside as fire leapt into his hands. It bloomed to a purplish-yellow conflagration in an instant as he shaped it, his arms spreading as he roared. Musket balls shattered around him, and the warriors tried to reach him, seemingly swimming through the air in slow motion as their deaths took shape before them in flame and shadow.
Mat did two things at once: he thrust the heart-blood-stained taiaha into Ngatoro’s hands, and he stepped in front of Asher Grieve, lifting up his right hand, shielding the others with his body. There was no plan, just the echo of a conversation with the Goddess of Fire. Her words echoed in his ears: You have learnt how to give and take, poai. Fire is yours, to conjure or shape it.
To shape fire.
The wizard stabbed his fingers at Mat, and the ball of fire billowed towards him. The heat filled his senses, as he called ‘Mahuika!’ and stood directly in its path.
His right hand, with its one black fingernail, met the wall of fire, and stopped it. As he shouted, four other fingernails, like chips of flint, grew on his hand. From them poured a shield against the fires of the wizard, which threw the flames aside. A curved wall of air rose about him, and the fire battered against it. He felt a furnace-like gust of wind wash over him, felt his skin go slick then dry instantly. But behind him his friends, and Donna Kyle, crouched, safe for now.
The curtain of flames fell away, and Asher Grieve stared at him, thwarted. ‘How did you …?’ he muttered, then fell silent, baffled. He sagged and wobbled, his blood-streaked face a mask of disbelief.
Ngatoro rose slowly to his feet, and the veins holding him fell away. He was clad only in a loin cloth and Mat could see his physique repairing itself. He gripped the bloody taiaha in strong hands. ‘Asher Grieve,’ he said in a rusty voice. ‘Surrender yourself.’
The wizard took a step away. ‘Surrender? I, Asher Grieve? The man who brewed poison for the Borgias, and burned London? Surrender to native scum like you? Who do you think you are?’ He tottered backwards down the ward, his eyes wild, beginning to fade into the shadows.
‘Halt, Asher!’ Ngatoro commanded.
For an instant, an unseen struggle was apparent on both faces, two terrible old men striving for mastery. Every facial tic, every tiny gesture was a clue as to the flow of the forces. Mat sought a way to help, but the forces were bewildering. To intervene was too dangerous. Instead he gripped Donna Kyle’s shoulder, holding her in place. ‘Don’t move,’ he whispered. ‘He doesn’t own you any more.’
She turned her hollow-eyed face towards him, the dark twist of moko stark against her white chin. She looked incredibly young, a frightened child. Somehow he could see it in her: the dread and exhaustion, the self-loathing, the surrender. The woman who had haunted his nightmares was gone, no longer a threat.
Something she saw in him made her cower, but she pulled closer, not further away, ducking her head, trembling. The desperate gratitude in her eyes when she looked up at him was almost alarming.
He looked away, straight into Asher’s eyes.
The wizard’s face was bereft, his only child stolen. In that split second, he was vulnerable.
Ngatoro struck. A small gesture, but Asher reeled as if punched, and crumpled.
The blonde witch at Mat’s feet began to weep uncontrollably.
Good for the heart
Saturday morning
They cleansed Te Iho, under Ngatoro’s direction. Each prisoner was carefully detached from the veins distending from that mighty greenstone heart. Most, Ngatoro scowled over, and traced a warding, a sigil that would prevent the newly freed tohunga makutu from using their arcane powers. Then they were bound to their beds, and wheeled outside. Asher Grieve was among them, lying as still as a corpse.
‘Who are they?’ Mat asked, his eyes still struggling to take in the fact that his hidden mentor was before him, alive and free. He wasn’t tall, and had been horribly weakened by his term in Te Iho, but he had a strong frame and there was every sign that he would recover strength quickly. For now, Mat and Riki were taking turns helping him walk.
Ngatoro-i-rangi smiled grimly. ‘They are tohunga makutu. Many old enemies of the people of Aotearoa, Matiu Douglas.’ He gripped his bloody taiaha like a walking stick, and exhaled with satisfaction. ‘We will transport them to the Maori King for judgment.’
Mat’s eyes strayed to where Donna Kyle sat, unbound, a sigil on her forehead. ‘What about her?’ he asked, feeling an odd empathy for the woman who had prowled his nightmares. She seemed to have shrunk somehow, but she still made him uneasy. She hadn’t spoken since Asher was taken.
Ngatoro looked him over. ‘Neither she nor her father are tangata whenua. We will send the Pakeha prisoners to Auckland, to Governor Grey, if he is still in charge there.’
Governor Grey has sworn to hang her, Mat remembered.
Wiri limped up, catching the end of the conversation. ‘Grey is still in charge there. Donna Kyle and I have a bargain, which she has honoured. I will speak for her before the Governor.’
They saw her listening, turning her head to catch their words. But she didn’t acknowledge them.
There were only two of the prisoners of Te Iho whom Ngatoro did not imprison. They were tohunga ruanuku: a revered old tohunga and his younger daughter, a girl who barely looked Mat’s age. They were shockingly weak, but they had a chance at life. They were taken away reverently to obtain better care. Miraculously, the Ngati Maungatautari had not lost a man — by the time they went ploughing through the tipua ranks, the goblins had lost their will to fight. Several had been wounded, but Wiri’s leg was among the worst injuries. ‘Kels won’t give me a second of peace over it, you’ll see,
’ he muttered in Mat’s ear.
The Birdwitch had vanished in the confusion. Riki seemed uneasy, but Mat was relieved. He wasn’t sure how Ngatoro would react to her, and he thought she needed time to be free in the wild, and remember herself fully. But already she had forged one new legend for the storytellers to recall her by.
Before they left, Ngatoro sang a low chant that made the timber walls of the Bath House sprout branches. They grew rapidly, entangling with the veins of the greenstone heart. The outflow vein pumped a thick black sludge — the last of the poisonous blood that had sustained Puarata — into the ground where it sank and was gone. Something seemed to change in the air. The stale, bloody reek of the chamber vanished, replaced by something cleaner and more wholesome.
‘Puarata and Parukau did not create Te Iho,’ Ngatoro told Mat. ‘They usurped it from me. It was once a force for good. I shall make it so once more.’ He closed off Te Iho again, restoring the shadow-maze. Mat didn’t ask him where he had repositioned the gate. He didn’t want to know.
They then simply walked back into the town of Rotorua-Aotearoa, wheeling the prisoners and patients on the hospital beds. Rotorua-Aotearoa had reverted to its more usual aspect of pa and colonial town. The locals had seen the conflagration about the shadow-maze, and gathered to witness this strange procession. They kept their distance at first, until the news that Ngatoro-i-rangi was here spread, and then they flooded forward, to see for themselves, and to help.
Sunday evening
The pain in his hands woke Mat, and he lay with his eyes closed. The smell of clean sheets enveloped him, and the warmth of deep soft fabric embraced him. Everything ached, but his skin was clean and soapy smelling.
Slowly images surfaced from memory. Hine and Tu smiling as they left the Bath House in each other’s arms. The way Kelly had cried as she greeted Wiri on Saturday morning, having discharged herself from hospital when she learned that the party had returned. Tim Spriggs brought her across to Aotearoa, baby cradled in her arms. She tried to look reproachful, but relief overtook her and she flew into her husband’s arms and all but knocked him off his feet.
