Tides of Mana

by Matt Larkin

  She was hurrying. Using the water jets to speed herself in these narrow confines would accomplish nothing but slamming her into the chasm walls. Instead, she pushed off wall after wall, at last nearing the Urchin’s chamber.

  The priestess lay sprawled at the threshold, eyes empty. Hundreds of sucker-marks covered her throat and face and breasts. Her arms lay twisted at odd angles, clearly broken. Her body had reverted to human. The corpses of a pair of he‘e floated in the water as well, defiling the Urchin’s sacrosanct chamber.

  Opuhalakoa …

  Namaka shook her head. Milu drag the he‘e to her misty bosom and devour their souls. Seething pain surged through Namaka’s gut, a cold rage that soured the beauty before her.

  Hands outstretched, she reached toward the he‘e corpses and coiled water around them, yanking them out of the Urchin’s room and flinging them back through the gorge. Entering the chamber now, without the priestess’s presence, felt like a violation of some primal tabu.

  Instead, all she could think to do was twirl her tail in respect to the Urchin. It sat there, giving no indication of distress at the death of the high priestess. But somehow, Namaka suspected it knew. Sorrow filled her, not only for Opuhalakoa’s loss, but for her own failure to understand what the mythic creature had wanted to show her. Treachery, ambition, and death. Thousands of deaths. She had taken the funerals of her people as literal imagery, but perhaps it had been symbolic of losses here at Mu as well.

  Biting her lip against the wave of self-loathing, she wrapped her arms around the priestess’s body and swam from the gorge.

  The host was nearing the end of its life as it was.

  The host. The human host had died …

  But Opuhalakoa was merely banished from your world. If Mu survives, Ukupanipo ‘Ohana may try to recall her soul once more, once she regains some strength.

  That hardly made Namaka smile. Nyi Rara meant to say when another human girl was sacrificed, taken from Sawaiki, her life stolen so a mermaid could experience the pleasures of Earth for the thousandth time. And deny them to her human host.

  Nyi Rara said nothing, but Namaka could feel her recoil from the accusation. Perhaps it was easier for the spirit to forget that humans, too, had souls and hopes and dreams. Lives that were stolen from them for the use of spirits.

  I thought you loved being a mermaid.

  She did. She was, however, beginning to see not all mer were like Nyi Rara. And even Nyi Rara had wanted to force herself into dominance over Namaka, only she’d failed. The princess had given no thought to the death of Opuhalakoa’s human host.

  It’s not that simple.

  Namaka sneered as she breached the great circle chamber leading to the gorge. It was exactly that simple. The mer just didn’t want to admit they treated their hosts as disposable. She released the priestess’s body.

  She had only entered the next hall when a tremendous roar reverberated through the entire palace, shaking the very walls and sending a cloud of dust floating through the waters.

  “What the—” Namaka was interrupted by another roar. It was coming from above them.

  Not waiting for an answer, she darted through the corridors to the nearest grotto with an open roof, then swam up to see what the commotion was. A massive shadow passed overhead and Namaka looked up in horror.

  The reptilian creature bore some superficial resemblance to Milolii, but this was a dragon of a whole other magnitude. It had to be over a hundred feet long, that entire length covered in a ridge of spines, the largest of which reached as tall as a house. It had short, clawed feet like a sea turtle and moved like a slithering giant eel.

  And she knew. She knew what it must be.

  A taniwha.

  It swam at great speed, not for Mu, but for Sawaiki.

  28

  Days Gone

  A GATHERED ARMY met them in the valley, five hundred warriors on her side, giving Namaka a moderate advantage of numbers, though they remained unfortunately far from the sea. She dared to hope they were also far from any pockets of magma Pele might call upon.

  Upoho led Namaka’s warriors, hastily applied warpaint covering the wererat’s cheeks. A pale imitation of the elaborate war patterns their enemies wore. They charged up the valley, lining up in front of the village’s warriors.

  The largest of the invaders marched forward, spear over his head. He spread his feet wide and stuck his tongue out, grunting and waving his arms in a challenge, thumping his chest. The man marched up and down the warrior lines, repeating the gesture.

  Namaka slowed, taking up position behind the warriors. She wasn’t trained in war arts. Upoho, however, had taken up position and was flexing his muscles. Namaka glanced up at the sky. The sun limited her wererat friend’s powers, and the moon wouldn’t rise for hours yet. In sunlight, he was stronger than a man, still, but not half so strong as he’d be in moonlight.

  As the invading warrior stepped back into his line, Upoho stepped forward, repeating the man’s demonstration. He stuck out his tongue, grunted, and shouted, then beat his chest. A shout rang out among her people.

  Namaka glanced back at Kahaumana as he put a hand on her shoulder, scowling deeply. Her husband stepped in front of her, positioning himself between the battle and her. “It’ll be over soon,” he said. “All of it.”

  Yes, she prayed he was correct.

  A final shout went up from both lines, and like the breaking of a wave, they exploded into motion, crashing into one another. Namaka cringed as the first blood splattered the grass, but it was such chaos she couldn’t even tell who fell and which side was winning. Warriors impaled each other on spears, shoved one another into the sand.

  One of the men rushed toward her and Kahaumana.

  She had seen Kahaumana fight and maybe he could defend them, but his attacker was the size of a whale, with muscles on his muscles and tattoos covering his whole chest. She opened her mouth to shout for Upoho.

  But Kahaumana twisted out of the way of an axe blow and drove forward, his spear ramming straight through the whale’s bowels, spilling blood and foulness down the man’s legs. A swift jerk backward, and Pele’s warrior fell to his knees, guts strewn over the ground.

  Like that, it was over.

  Still, the chaotic melee continued, and still, no sign of Pele. Her warriors had met them here, cut them off, in an ill-advised attempt to destroy Namaka away from the sea.

  Oh, there were streams, waterfalls, sources of water she could call on if she had to.

  She did not, though. Upoho and his men made short, bloody work of Pele’s warriors, and in moments, corpses littered the valley as if strewn about by a receding tide.

  Knife in hand—cautious, of course—Namaka threaded among the bodies, watching Upoho and the others dispatch what remained of this force. This had been too easy, really.

  “Why would they ambush a force of superior size?” she asked Kahaumana.

  “Poor planning? Arrogance?”

  Namaka shook her head. No. Something else was going on here. “How many warriors do you think she has left?”

  “After today? Less than two thousand, I would guess.”

  “And where are they? They couldn’t have had more than four hundred men here, probably fewer.”

  Her husband shrugged. “Do not disdain the gifts of the ‘aumākua.”

  NAMAKA SHOULD HAVE SEEN it coming, of course. While her forces chased Pele’s warriors through the jungle, the other queen had burned Namaka’s taro fields. In a single conflagration she’d left half the island without hope for enough food, forcing them to turn to overfishing, to rely on dwindling stores of already harvested roots and coconuts. To slaughter pigs and dogs for meat.

  By the time Namaka returned, all that remained of the cultivated fields were embers.

  Embers, dead farmers, and furious, desperate villagers, all looking to Namaka for answers she could not give.

  HUNDREDS of dead lay strewn through the forest. Despite the inconvenience, Namaka had a
llowed Leapua’s people to gather the bodies for pyres rather than risk the dead becoming lapu. Gagging on the stench of blood and shit and viscera splattered over the valley, Namaka turned her back on the scene, as if not looking at it would allow her to pretend it did not lie behind her.

  Her foot snagged on something and she stumbled until Leapua caught her wrist.

  Namaka looked down.

  An arm, severed at the elbow, jagged flesh hanging loose like … like …

  Namaka stumbled to the ground and retched, spewing up the painfully little food she’d had that day.

  A hand under her armpit, her kahuna helped her back to her feet. “Is this not enough?”

  Namaka wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Was it enough? How could it be? Pele had not only shamed Namaka, but now she had killed thousands of Namaka’s people. Burned their crops. Destroyed their homes. Ruined … everything. The whole kingdom lay in ruins.

  An inundation of volcanic ash now choked the forests and polluted the streams. Uluka‘a was … savaged.

  Namaka looked to Leapua. “I think war has a spirit, is a living thing, complete and to itself. Once woken to such anger, it has to run its course. It feeds on … itself.”

  Perhaps the war god, Kū himself—for which her own father was named—now took an interest in this slaughter. For Namaka could not help but feel a hand reached from the shadows of Pō and forced this ever onward.

  “You speak madness. When will this end?”

  “You know how it ends.” With her or Pele dead. Too much had passed for any other solution to be possible.

  PELE’S VOLCANO lay on the eastern side of the island, before Mount Halulu. At all times, a plume of smoke billowed forth from its top, announcing to all the world where the Flame Queen’s refuge lay. Oh, she kept her court at the volcano’s foot, yes, but—though Namaka had never seen it—she had heard tales of Pele’s secret abode very near to the crater.

  And as long as she had access to that refuge, Pele had a place to come and soak up mana, making herself powerful. Getting here, this far east, it had cost a great many lives. Now, though, Namaka saw the way to end this.

  Even if the price might prove extreme.

  The volcano rose up, almost straight out of the sea, with but a small beach around it.

  Now, while Pele’s forces engaged Namaka’s, Namaka walked along the beach, letting the sea answer her call. The waves whipped into a frenzy, a maelstrom of her fury and pain, swirling together. Crashing in a mirror of her own torment.

  Pele had wrought so much death, so much destruction. What else did a volcano do, after all?

  Well … then let it be ended. Let the whole smoldering crater be ended.

  With a deep breath, Namaka spread her arms wide. Her mind and soul fled from her body, flowing into the tidal currents. For this, she had bathed long in the most sacred pools and waterfalls remaining on Uluka‘a. She had demanded the sacrifice of twenty men and—though she rather disdained her parents’ cannibalism—tasted of each of their hearts, drawing their mana into herself. She had lain with kāhuna and with Upoho, letting their mana flow into her with their releases.

  Everything for a drop more power.

  Because now she needed all of it. Because she needed to end this.

  And the sea answered. It fell upon itself in great, crashing waves. It twisted and writhed in cacophonous fury. Her fury. The fury of Uluka‘a itself at the wreck Pele had made of their glorious land. The waters surged, higher and higher, waves like flowing mountains, smashing each other into oblivion over and over. Until the ocean roiled as if caught in a typhoon, until all the seas around Uluka‘a had become a turbulent incarnation of her wrath.

  A kai e‘e. Larger than she’d ever created. Larger than she’d ever heard of.

  There was screaming. Somewhere. The crashing waves drowned out the sound, though. A shower of brine fell over Namaka’s head, as she swayed, dancing about, her feather cloak streaming.

  Her dance further wakened the furious tides. It called them. It demanded they obey. And as the waves became her, she became them. Her soul crushed and tossed about, as tempestuous as the ocean.

  It—she—rose like a shadow overhead. A mountain taller than the volcano. Moving. Edging closer, seeming to others—she had no doubt—to come in with agonizing slowness. Her soul was on that kai e‘e, and she felt it surging with the speed of the wind, shrieking, coursing toward Uluka‘a in ultimate rage.

  Coming closer, a roaring, all-consuming shadow now towering overhead.

  The ground shook. Pele, perhaps at last realizing the danger, thinking she could hold back the tides themselves with a volcanic eruption. But she was too late.

  The wave raced past Namaka, breaking around her to either side such that she could see nothing at all save a rushing, crashing, bellowing wall of water. But she could feel it. As the wave broke over the mountainside.

  Cracked it in half.

  Poured the furious sea into the crater, annihilating magma even as the sea burned away in a flash. The mountain ruptured from the pressure, rending itself apart. Only the sea’s embrace overhead kept flying rocks and molten stone for raining down over half Uluka‘a.

  The waters ripped trees from the ground, tearing up roots and sweeping up trunks like kindling. They carried away boulders. They stripped the valleys and slopes clear of all foliage. Everything washed clean.

  Namaka slipped to her knees, trembling with ecstatic rage at the power of her mana as it flowed out of her. She felt dizzy, euphoric. Hot and cold and wanting to laugh. Like she wanted to fuck her way through every man on the island and then move on to the women. That or sleep for a month.

  Her senses, her understanding of the kai e‘e’s flow began to flee her, and it broke at random, pouring over the mountainside. All she had left was barely enough to keep the tide from sweeping her back out as it receded.

  Hands over her head, mana spent, Namaka lay prone, suddenly wanting to weep. Shaking like a wailing babe. Chilled … so very cold.

  Waters rushed back out to sea, racing past her almost as fast as they had come in. The fragile bubble of safety around Namaka cracked, the sea dribbling in, threatening to carry her out into the deep and drown her now she had no strength left.

  She would die … she was going to die …

  What in Milu’s underworld had she been thinking, trying to control such forces? No kupua, no akua, would wreak such devastation. But … none had possessed such reason for it.

  She had to end this war.

  And now it was done.

  Pele’s power broken.

  Ravaged by chills, Namaka crawled along the ground, struggling to keep back the waters flowing around her. She crawled, until she came to a ledge high enough up the mountain the waters would break around it naturally.

  There she slumped down, cheek to the stone, and let the spasms take her. Weak thrashes held her, her body convulsing. Her throat seizing up. She’d poured too much of herself into the assault and now her very life tried to flow out from her.

  The body could handle but so much.

  Mana was, in a sense, the stuff of life as well as power. She could breathe it in, absorb more, assuming she had not pushed out so much her heart ceased to beat and her body gave out. Assuming she could …

  Could … just …

  HER TEETH CHATTERED.

  Someone had wrapped a blanket over her shoulders, but it didn’t keep her half warm enough.

  Namaka opened one eye and blinked in pain. Light flashed through her head like a drumbeat inside her skull, sending her into sudden, violent dry heaves. She managed to roll to her side, convulsing.

  “It struck me,” a grandmotherly voice said from behind her. “It struck me that perhaps I ought to have let you drown. That saving you from what you had wrought might, in fact, anger the akua. But who am I to judge?”

  Gasping, Namaka rolled over the other way, to look upon Milolii. The mo‘o lay stretched out over the rocks in the evening sun, her sleek, liz
ard-like form extended, tail twitching slightly, but otherwise very still.

  “Y-you saved me.” Apparently Namaka had misjudged whether she’d be safe on that rock, then. More than that, she didn’t really remember.

  “Yes. One of the few I could save.”

  “I destroyed the volcano.”

  “Yes. Along with most of Pele’s army and the better part of your own.”

  Namaka struggled to sit, but her strength gave out. “My army?”

  “Kahaumana and all his men are dead, Namaka. Drowned in your fury.”

  What …? No. No, that wasn’t possible. She’d directed the wave over the volcano, not inland, where the army fought.

  A slight twitch of Milolii’s mouth, as if she’d read the thought on Namaka’s face. It exposed one of the dragon’s fangs. “Did you really think you could control something so massive, so primal? Did you think you could call upon such rage and contain it? And what, Namaka, did you believe would happen when the exertion overtook you and left you faint? Look around. The flood has done more damage than even Pele’s flames managed.”

  “K-Kahaumana …”

  “Dead.”

  “No.”

  “Dead. Drowned. Food for sharks, along with most everyone else. Oh, you’ll be pleased to hear Upoho survived. His kupua strength allowed him to swim in even after the receding tide swept him five miles out to sea. The others …”

  Groaning, Namaka pushed herself up on her arms. This wasn’t happening. She was saving her island from Pele. This was not happening. Her husband, her other husband was dead? “Leapua?”

  “The kahuna lives, I think. A handful of others with her.”

  Namaka tried to rise, but her arms refused to hold her up any higher than she already was. All strength had fled her. And now, the sea seemed so polluted with ash and debris, it felt hard to breathe in mana from it. “I have to go to them …”

  Milolii pushed herself up, slow, as if her joints ached, and wriggled her way to Namaka’s side. “And what will you do now?”

  Namaka opened her mouth but had no answer. She had no idea where to go from here.