Tides of Mana

by Matt Larkin

  A shadow fell over them at the same instant a sound like the roaring of a typhoon swept across the beach. The men paused and turned to the sea, and Namaka did so as well. A wave thirty feet high surged forward—a kai e‘e, a Great Wave—thrown up by Pele’s volcano, summoned closer by Namaka’s fear and rage.

  The wave surged over the canoes in a cataract. The roaring of the kai e‘e drowned out the sounds of men screaming. And then all view was blocked by the rush of waters all around her.

  Namaka held up her hands, warding it off. Begging it to stop the instant before it struck. She flung herself over Leapua, throwing her soul outward, pleading with the wave not to take them all. The sea arched over them like she had wrapped a bubble over their heads, but rained in a downpour that left them drenched long before the tide receded back out to sea.

  The pain in her throat was the first indication she had been screaming. Hoarse, knees wobbling, she rose. Her whole body trembled as she took in the devastation around her. The hut farthest out on the boardwalk had been swept away by the wave, the dock itself splintered, and the sea littered with driftwood.

  Namaka raised a hand to her mouth to stifle a mouse-like squeak.

  In one instant of fear, of pain, of anger, she had whipped the sea as though she were a typhoon incarnate. What had she done?

  She stumbled to her feet, waving her arms to drive back the sea, to stop the flooding. The energy it took—pouring her mana back into the deep—left her breathless, trembling where she stood.

  Much of the village lay in ruins already, and hundreds of warriors on both sides had been washed out to sea. Namaka hardly knew what to do to—

  The ground shook again, and this time, the mountains nearby rent apart, spewing forth a geyser of lava a hundred feet into the air.

  Oh, Milu.

  With a desperate grunt, Namaka redirected the receding tides toward the mountain, knowing full well a stream of lava would be surging for the village. Her skin felt aflame already, her heartbeat irregular after expending so much mana. Screaming, she ran along with the tide, driving the flood toward the incoming flow of lava.

  Her waters smashed further houses, crashed into her own palace, and demolished what remained of the village. But it was still better than allowing a river of flame to engulf the people.

  That burning stream burst through the tree line, igniting the foliage as it passed. Whole tree trunks erupted into flame, while others, closer, were swept away roots and all in the torrent. Namaka’s kai e‘e crashed into the oncoming rocks, immediately throwing up a curtain of steam that obscured any view of what was happening.

  She felt it, though, as her waters were evaporated in a flash, boiled just to cool Pele’s flaming wrath. Namaka fell back onto her arse, panting, dizzy. Unable to quite hold a breath in her lungs.

  Hands slipped under her arms and yanked her back, away from the probably toxic steam cloud now drawing near. Upoho hefted her in his arms and ran, faster than a man could run, dashing away from the chaos.

  “People …”

  “Pele and her people went into the forest. Most of the village scattered.”

  Most? And how many were dead today? Hundreds? Thousands?

  But Namaka was too weak to argue, and let her head lie against Upoho’s chest.

  NAMAKA PULLED free of Upoho’s grip and drew him back toward the aftermath of the battle. Many of the bodies must now feed the sharks.

  Hundreds of corpses littered the shore, though, and even as she approached, Leapua began to sing the mourning chant. So sorrowful it froze her in place. Others of the village took up the song and Namaka joined in as well. The kahuna’s song would send the ghosts of the slain away from the Earth, on toward Pō lest they linger and become lapu.

  Warriors built pyres for each of the fallen while Namaka and the others sang.

  The kahuna lit each pyre in turn and soon acrid smoke stung Namaka’s eyes and lungs. Still she sang.

  At last the songs died out and still the fires burned. A hand slipped into her own, warm. Kahaumana, her husband. She looked to him.

  “Kanemoe is dead,” he said.

  Namaka flinched, unable to find words at the loss of her second husband. Kahaumana was looking at her, she knew, wanting her to say something, to make this mean something. To ease the pain they all felt at losing so many they loved.

  “The sea stays blue,” Kanemoe had used to say. But not anymore. Now it was dark.

  Those closest to the fallen would take their ashes out to the sea, paddle out on their surfboards and say their final farewells. There were very few people in the village Namaka could claim to be close to, but she would go out for Kanemoe’s funeral.

  She patted Kahaumana’s hand. “I’m sorry. Take me to him.”

  Her husband did so, leading her to a pyre Leapua had not yet lit. Kanemoe lay upon it, eyes shut now—by Kahaumana?—but spine still twisted at an unnatural angle. Her husband’s hand tightened around her own, perhaps even more pained than she was.

  All she could feel now, though, looking at her husband’s corpse, was numb. Drained of everything that had lain within her breast and left empty.

  She still had no words, when Leapua came and embraced her. And lit the pyre, singing the mourning chant. No words, even as it burnt down to smolders.

  Maybe there were no words for a time like this.

  “WAR.” It was the only thing left to say, really.

  She sat alone with Leapua, on the shore, staring at the sea and somehow finding it hard to imagine it had wrought such wanton destruction upon her home.

  After all that had passed, after what Pele had done, no other choice remained to Namaka. Some things could not be left to stand. Some defiance, some disrespect, could not be borne.

  Such an egregious violation of tabu risked unbalancing the world and the flow of mana. It risked letting Pō spill over into the Mortal Realm.

  Unless Namaka made it right through the offer of Pele’s blood. Only then could the akua and ‘aumākua be placated. Only then could this end.

  She’d offer her sister to Kanaloa and pray the god of the deep would restore the balance.

  “It will not end well,” Leapua warned.

  Namaka rubbed her arms. Expending so much mana had left her weak, prone to chills, even in the otherwise warm night breeze. “Duty does not bind us toward a course of action because it will be easy or even because it proves to be for our ultimate benefit. Rather, it binds us because strictures, natural and supernatural, hold society together and that, ultimately, benefits us all. Without order, the chaos and darkness of Pō would seep into our world and consume all we have built.”

  Leapua sighed and Namaka was suddenly struck at the pointlessness of lecturing a kahuna. The woman knew better than anyone what the akua would demand of them.

  “Am I wrong?”

  The kahuna shook her head. “You know you are not. Only … where do you imagine this will leave Uluka‘a when it is done? Where will the people be, caught between the power of your tides and Pele’s insatiable flames? Who will be glad this has happened, in the end?”

  “So, I should let it be? Let the dead go unavenged? Let the insult go unanswered? Let the ‘aumākua look on and think I did nothing, despite Pele’s flagrant violations of all order? You know I cannot do that, and I cannot believe you would advise me to.”

  The kahuna shook her head. “I have no advice at this moment. But war …”

  Namaka took the other woman’s hand. “I’m going to end this. I will offer Pele as sacrifice to appease Kanaloa, and this will be done. However many warriors choose to stand between her and my army, that falls on them. I will see this done.”

  24

  T he ice trees near the summit sang, not with an infused spirit, but from the howling wind rushing past their branches, like the mountain itself called out a mourning chant. Mauna Kea mourning the loss of pieces of itself, pieces Poli‘ahu had pitched down from the summit to defeat the Flame Queen. And still the intruder who had dared
bring forbidden flame onto these slopes lived, helped by some male kupua. Both should have perished.

  This place, Mauna Kea, was really Mauna a Wākea, the sky god’s mountain. He had welcomed Poli‘ahu into his bosom, while these kupua were invaders here, as surely as the Kahikians had invaded Sawaiki.

  It should have been Poli‘ahu’s night to research new depths of the Art. Instead, she found herself staring at the forest, unable to cast from her mind the niggling sensation of a man walking on her mountain, tending to a woman that ought to have been sent to Milu.

  Not even the haunting, wondrous melody of the trees could force the sensation down, away from her consciousness. She blew out a breath of frustration and made her way back into the sanctuary. She simply needed to try harder to focus. That should have been easy for her. She, unlike the Flame Queen, had discipline, had trained her mind and body every day since she was a child. It had made her an absolute master of her domain. The other kupua was powerful, but her power exploded all around her in conflagrations of chaos.

  Standing outside her sanctuary, Poli‘ahu cupped her hands to her mouth and blew out a whisper on icy breath. “Lilinoe.”

  At first, no response came to her. Poli‘ahu sat, idly tracing patterns in the snow. She need not actually touch the ground—snow, ice, mist, all she could reshape with her smallest whim. Over her years on the mountain she had grown skilled enough to form any pattern she desired.

  A howl of wind swept over the mountain, the snows growing colder than cold, announcing the presence of the snow goddess she had summoned. Snow maidens some called them, though Poli‘ahu had heard other names for this kind of akua. Lilinoe had said they came from Lua-o-Milu, the icy underworld beyond Pō, where the damned were drawn.

  Poli‘ahu believed it. She had seen their inhuman cruelty, even when the akua had aided her over the years.

  She embraced the Sight, allowing her vision to slip into Pō and thus bleed out all warm colors. Already, the two sisters had gathered around her. Both snow akua wore the same—white shawls that blended into the mountainside. Their hair, too, was white, and whipping in the breeze as though they had corporeal form. Like any spirit, Lilinoe had no substance on Earth. In order to truly interact with the world, she’d need a human vessel, and, in lieu of taking one, she existed much like a ghost in this realm.

  Lilinoe frowned, a sight that would have sent an ordinary person screaming about Nightmarchers and running to the nearest kahuna for protection. The two snow akua then drifted inside Poli‘ahu’s refuge.

  Once, they had been joined by their sister, Waiau. But circumstances had forced Poli‘ahu to bind the youngest of the snow akua to herself. They existed now in uneasy equilibrium, Poli‘ahu able to call on Waiau’s power, but always at the risk of having the akua take control of her body.

  Poli‘ahu followed the other two sisters into her ice cave, a hollow dug through the peak had become her sanctuary. It smelled of the cleanness of ice, a scent one found only on mountaintops. Rather than a mere tunnel through ice, prior Snow Queens had formed the ceiling into ring after ring of arches, all engraved with designs more intricate than the finest woodcarver could have managed. Floral patterns that stretched a hundred paces wide, constantly intersecting and blending seamlessly with designs of ki‘i faces. Triangles and geometric shapes that reminded her of the waves over the sea. A carving of a sea turtle the size of a communal hut—she’d been so proud of that particular one she’d rendered an ice sculpture of the creature as a centerpiece of the great hall the tunnel led to.

  Poli‘ahu paused to smile at her work. The sea turtle sculpture stretched forty feet around, a massive work of art. With her power, she had infused the ice walls with light, letting her appreciate every detail. At night, she dimmed those lights and then, in half darkness, the sisters would gather and regale her with tales of prior generations and times now lost.

  A fog permeated the sanctuary, gathering in the corners. No wind should have made it into the ice cave, and still, whispers were carried on a breeze that ruffled her hair. The sisters speaking to each other.

  They did not speak exactly the way a person might, not quite in sentences. More like thoughts congealing into shared impressions, concepts unburdened from the limitations of human syntax and grammar. It was how she imagined the wind would speak, were it given mind and purpose. The thought brought a smile to her face. Why would the wind not speak? She conversed with spirits of ice, mist, and snow.

  Though the sisters did not so often converse with one another thusly, Poli‘ahu could still garner the gist of their intent.

  Lilinoe’s voice ushered from the corners, soft and sibilant. “You leave an enemy behind you.”

  “The Flame Queen is defeated. Even if she survives the trek back down the mountain, she’s not coming back. She’s seen what I can do. Her training is nothing compared to mine.”

  “Because we trained you, sister.”

  Sister? They always called her ‘child.’ They referred only to each other as sisters. Did that mean she had so graduated in their eyes that her accomplishments had brought her to their level? “You trained me well.”

  “Already you have transcended the limitations of your mortal form. You stand on the threshold of greatness.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Mysteries and mysticisms begin to unfurl,” Lilinoe said.

  That cleared things right up. But they seemed to believe she was now ready for a new phase of her training. Transcendent, Lilinoe had called her. She rather liked the sound of that. “So tell me what to do.”

  Neither spoke and the silence grew so thick Poli‘ahu squirmed in discomfort.

  Kahoupokane finally broke the silence. “You will be left vulnerable. You cannot afford … risk.”

  “What risk?”

  “The return of an enemy.”

  She sighed. No, they were right. She could not disappoint the snow sisters, but besides that, she needed Kaupeepee to succeed and Pele posed a significant threat to that.

  Poli‘ahu could go down there, fight her foes herself. But it shouldn’t be necessary.

  Already, she’d intended to attempt a binding, a chance to create spies. Maybe she could use the spirit for something else, though. Something more immediate.

  Several other rooms broke off the great hall. All of them were filled with her designs, her notes scrawled along the walls. The snow goddesses had taught her ancient arts not known even to kāhuna, secrets like how to make shapes stand for words. She had used this writing to record her thoughts, etching them into ice walls with a simple motion of a finger. If she were to stretch out all she had recorded here it might reach for miles. The markings would mean nothing to anyone else, of course. Only she and the three sisters could recognize them as anything more than decorations. Even were someone to find her sanctuary, there was little threat of them uncovering the depths of her Art.

  That was probably well for both her and any such person. The sorcery she delved into had a dark side, a danger to it that could swallow the uninitiated whole. Pō, and the powers one could draw from it, they were deeper and stranger than even the kāhuna imagined. And without the proper care, without extreme caution, one could become lost to it. A misdrawn glyph, a misspoken name, and the Mortal Realm might fall prey to entities older than even the snow sisters. Older, and far more hostile. The truth was, even she did not know what lurked in the fathomless depths of realities beyond her own. Did not know in detail, but knew enough to fear. A fragile Veil separated the Earth from beings as far beyond mankind as humans were beyond insects.

  But spirits had their uses to a sorceress who could learn to master them. One had to know which spirits to call and which were too powerful to ever invoke. If done properly, she could wield powers beyond the darkest nightmares of any other.

  She ran her hand along the ice wall as she drifted into the chamber housing her latest work. She had formed a miniature banyan tree of ice, its branches stretching throughout this chamber, brushing th
e ceiling as though holding it up. As with all her work, she had spared no detail on the tree, etching every piece of bark individually, every leaf with loving care. The tree, however, was merely a place to house her true masterpieces. Four bulky hawks, perhaps as tall as her head, perched on its branches. She had spent days carving every feather, every perfection and imperfection of the ice birds into semblances of life. They had to be flawless or this would never work.

  Hands to her face, she took in the entirety of the glorious room.

  “You are ready?” Lilinoe asked.

  She hadn’t heard the snow akua approach—of course, given the ethereal creature made no sound. But she wasn’t surprised. They had all been waiting for this. The sisters had selected both the spirit and its—well, vessel was probably the wrong word, but she could think of no other—with extreme care. Poli‘ahu had argued against trying to divide a spirit’s consciousness among multiple birds, but Lilinoe had assured her it would work. The akua believed that long ago, before the Deluge flooded the land, sorcerers had accomplished such things. Imbued spirits into corporeal forms without a living host. It was, they said, one of the greatest achievements of the Art possible. If she could perform such a feat, then her sorcery would rival that of Old Mu and spell songs of Kumari Kandam. Waiau had once told her another kupua, nearly eight hundred years ago, had also accomplished a similar achievement. That was why the sisters remained so convinced Poli‘ahu could repeat it.

  She made no answer to Lilinoe, instead sweeping her arms outward in a wide arc, erasing all writing from the walls of this chamber. All her notes on the tree and the birds and the ritual vanished in a shower of ice crystals that fused into the walls instants after they broke away. The cavern was left bare, save for the glyphs engraved around the chamber in a circle. Circles were the embodiment of power, whole and complete, interlocking upon themselves. The most perfect form in the universe.

  With a wave of her hand, Poli‘ahu sent ice growing over the chamber entrance, sealing it and ensuring the circle remained undisturbed. Over the newly formed surface she traced a finger, carving out a final glyph to ward against the spirit she intended to summon. Finally, she carved the name of the spirit itself upon the ceiling.