Tides of Mana
Page 36
She’d come back here to make peace.
This was not supposed to have happened.
NAMAKA LOOKED up at the uncertain footsteps approaching. Pele, leaning on … Kapo? They were together?
Namaka had tried to rest, to regain her strength, but it would probably be some time before she could manage any real control over the waters again. The mana she had drawn from Milolii was gone forever, and her own had yet to replenish itself. Spending time near the sea would help with that, of course.
She couldn’t fight the both of them at the moment, nor had she ever truly understood the extent of Kapo’s powers. If they intended to kill her, she might not be able to stop them.
She pushed herself onto unsteady feet and fixed a glare upon Pele. “Our sister is dead because of your betrayal.”
“Dead?” Pele’s voice was a squeak, thick with disbelief, eyes wide and seeming as if she was having a hard time seeing.
Kapo eased herself away from Pele and moved to stand between Namaka and Pele. “Is there not more than enough blame to go around for all you have both done? Can either of you truly believe yourselves not responsible for all this death and destruction?”
“Dead?” Pele repeated. “She can’t …”
“You did this,” Namaka snapped.
“Both of you, stop,” Kapo commanded, jabbing a finger in Hi‘iaka’s direction. “This is what your war has come to. A dead child on a smoldering beach.”
Namaka winced, shaking her head. Kapo was right. They had ruined Sawaiki nearly as much as they had ruined Uluka‘a. Now that she was, in a sense, Nyi Rara as well as Namaka, she felt an irresistible calling back to her other people. And the mermaids would always be her people now.
Maybe there was nothing left to do here.
Maybe she should flee the surface forever.
“You cannot fix all that has gone on,” Kapo said. “But there is a small chance you can fix this. You did it before, the two of you, working together.”
“Did what?” Pele asked.
“What did Maui seek?”
Namaka looked up abruptly. “The Waters of Life. There were three springs. One in Uluka‘a, which is gone. One at some unknown location …”
“And one in Sawaiki,” Pele finished. “He died in Sawaiki seeking the Waters of Life.”
“One more truce,” Kapo said. “Let the two of you work together and find the spring. Save your little sister before her soul is lost in Pō.”
Namaka looked to Pele. This woman had taken so very much from her. But Kapo was right. The only time anyone had ever found the Waters of Life before was when the two of them worked together.
It was a chance they would have to take.
Maybe their last chance.
EPILOGUE
L onomakua and Kapo had promised to keep Hi‘iaka’s soul from departing or becoming a lapu, and thus Namaka had carried the girl—she seemed to weigh nothing now—to a house in Puna.
In the dark, before a small fire, Namaka sat with her dead sister’s head in her lap. She and Pele had lost a sister before, once, and she could not forgive that loss. But this, this was worse.
Hi‘iaka’s brilliant, innocent vibrance had been snuffed out, and only because the girl wanted peace between her sisters.
Namaka stroked the girl’s cold cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
Pele’s kahuna ducked back into the house bearing an armful of candlenut torches which he began to arrange around a mat designed to hold the body. How long would they be able to keep her body from rotting? How long could they keep her soul from drifting off into Pō?
“Put her here,” Lonomakua said, and Namaka obliged, gently lifting the girl there, and watching as the kahuna prepared his chanting.
“I was so young when I first met you,” she said, after a moment.
Lonomakua stiffened, almost imperceptibly. “You and Pele both were.”
“I’m not talking about Namaka. I’m talking about a young mermaid princess who happened to find a chance meeting with a kahuna, in days before there were kāhuna.” Namaka shook her head. “I didn’t see it sooner, so caught up with everything. I wasn’t looking for it. After all, everyone said you died eight hundred years ago.”
The man hesitated a moment before resuming his work with Hi‘iaka’s body. “I did.”
“No,” Namaka said, shaking her head. “No, Firebringer, you are here. And now, you’re going to help us finish what you started so long ago. You’re going to help us find the Waters of Life.”
When he looked to her at last, with those crystal blue eyes, Namaka could not say whether hope or fear lurked behind them. Pain, certainly, of that she had no doubt. The weight of ages pressing down upon someone.
And a sudden, inescapable instinct that now screamed in her mind, telling her she was missing something.
But she was going to find it.
MUCH AS NYI RARA wished to begin the hunt for the Waters of Life immediately, she could not do so without first checking in on Mu.
At last the city came into view, but she had not crossed into it before a merman darted out from the reef and grabbed her, pulling her back into a crevice.
Ake looked her over, face grave. “I thought you had been lost.”
Nyi Rara frowned. “Maybe I was. I guess I found myself now.”
The merman shook his head, not bothering to hide his perplexed look. “The he‘e have taken the city. I’m only here with a small scout force, watching them.”
Taken the city … “Where is the queen?”
“Escaped just before Kanaloa sacked the palace.”
“Kanaloa?” The god-king of the he‘e. He was truly here. The thought opened a terrible pit in Nyi Rara’s stomach. The direct spawn of the Elder Deep had moved against them.
Unable to resist the sudden urge, she stuck her head out of the reef and peered at the palace. Despite the darkness, now she saw what she had missed before—octopus arms peeking out of the windows, the entrances, but arms far larger than those of the he‘e. It was impossible to judge their true size when seeing mere glimpses of them. But Nyi Rara had to guess this he‘e god-king must be near as large as the taniwha itself had been. Maybe larger.
This too, the Urchin had tried to show her.
The dragon had been a mere distraction, meant to draw her away while the he‘e took the palace, took the entire city. The taniwha had done its work well, and it had cost her more than she could measure.
And now Kanaloa, god of magic, lord of he‘e, controlled the Urchin and all the power and knowledge it represented.
This creature had brought all of this down on her. It had betrayed the alliance with Mu and slaughtered her mer brothers and sisters. It had defiled a royal palace that had stood for more than four thousand years. And it had sent a taniwha among the people of Sawaiki as nothing but a gambit, a ploy.
But if this creature had intended to kill her with the dragon, it had failed.
Nyi Rara turned back to Ake. “This battle is lost, Ake. It’s time we start planning for the war.”
THE EPIC CONTINUES …
Dear Reader,
THANK you for reading Tides of Mana!
NAMAKA’S WAR has destroyed all she loves.
NOW SHE HAS one last chance to fix things and save Hi‘iaka: to trust Pele.
CAN they work together to save their sister?
IF YOU LOVED BOOK 1, get ready for even higher stakes as the epic continues.
GET IT NOW.
The epic continues in Flames of Mana:
http://books2read.com/flamesofmanabook
THANKS,
Matt
AUTHOR’S NOTE
When my wife was pregnant with our daughter, I began to conceive of a fairytale about princesses blessed or cursed with extraordinary power. This idea eventually merged with my conceptions of a Polynesian-based setting within the Eschaton Cycle, and a world inundated by endless ocean.
I visited Hawaii for research and instantly fell in love with the place
and the energy that permeated it. This soon led me to begin a charming but simple series following various princesses on their adventures across the archipelago. The first book I published as The Seventh Princess in 2015, and two sequels shortly thereafter. The stories had many aspects I loved, though I can admit they were more problematic than many of my other works, in terms of tonal consistency and portrayal. Perhaps as a result of my original inspiration, the stories read like tales that wanted to be YA, but as that is not my genre, failed to fit into that mold and thus existed in a nebulous no-man’s land without a genre.
In 2016, I began the process of rebooting my publishing career, coinciding with the vast expanding and rewriting of The Apples of Idunn. This eventually led me to realize I wished to give the same treatment to all my early work. I removed the princess books from sale and began making notes on how to expand them, improve them, and—crucially—make sure that they, as stories within the Eschaton Cycle, had a tone consistent with that universe.
I also used the time to dig much deeper into the inspirations I’d chosen, which eventually led me to disregard a primary plot line from the original (namely a stand-in for Captain James Cook) and instead focus on an earlier period for inspiration. That is, the coming of the second wave of Polynesian settlers.
While legends and theories persist about prior inhabitants (e.g. the menehune), scholars generally accept that the Hawaiian Islands were originally colonized by Polynesians in two waves. The first wave arrived in the 5th century CE.
When the Roman Empire was collapsing, Polynesians sailed thousands of miles across the open Pacific to found new colonies on the islands.
A second wave arrived in the 11th century CE and becomes the inspiration behind this story. While the new dynasty came from a common ancestor, their arrival created major turmoil, especially for the ali‘i caste. The two dynasties fought numerous battles before eventually being amalgamated into a unified ali‘i through centuries of intermarriage.
Similarly, the Pele ‘ohana (family) were said to have migrated from Tahiti (Kahiki), traveling across the Hawaiian group before finally settling on Hawaii (the Big Island, here Vai‘i, an older name). These people were sometimes treated as human, often as akua (gods), and sometimes as somewhere in between. They were powerful, rich in mana, and not bound by the ways or laws of Kāne. More on that in a bit.
Many believe a Spanish explorer was the first European to find the Hawaiian archipelago, but as he never revealed the discovery, he receives no credit for it. Some centuries later, Captain James Cook found the archipelago (probably by accident though one theory holds he had heard of it from a Spanish source), making first contact in 1778.
The Hawaiians initially welcomed him warmly and believed him a second coming of their god Lono. Relations later soured and Cook was killed in an altercation. Nevertheless, from that time on, frequent contact with Westerners forever changed the archipelago.
At the time of the arrival of Cook, events that would lead to a unified Hawaiian kingdom had already begun. In 1795, Kamehameha I united the Hawaiian archipelago as the Kingdom of Hawaii. He reigned until his death in 1819 and was succeeded by his son Liholiho. Under the pressure of of his father’s widow (not his mother), Liholiho abolished the traditional Hawaiian system of kapu and destroyed many of the temples and idols. Speculation holds he did so after realizing the gods did not punish Westerners for violation of tabus, and thus held no real power.
Less than a year later, Christian missionaries arrived and found a people with only vestiges of native religion remaining. They began the process of converting the islands. At the same time, foreign businessmen gained increasing wealth and power through holdings in the islands. Both groups actively worked to suppress traditional Hawaiian culture.
Within forty years of contact with Westerners, 80% of the native Hawaiian population had died.
The last king of Hawaii was David Kalākaua, who became king in 1874. Having seen the traditional ways of his people being eradicated by Westerners, he undertook to collect many of the Hawaiian tales, which he published in The Legends and Myths of Hawaii, a book that served as a primary inspiration for this series.
Kalākaua died in 1891 and was succeeded by Lili‘uokalani, the last monarch of Hawaii. Her reign was overthrown by U.S. businessmen who seized control of the country in 1893 and forced the annexation by the U.S. in 1898 (for better trade deals). The annexation was opposed by the vast majority of native Hawaiians, but Queen Lili‘uokalani consented, under duress and with objections made to the Senate, in order to avoid violence. Despite her protests, power was never restored to the Hawaiian monarchy.
On the 100th anniversary of the overthrow, the U.S. government issued an apology and admitted the act was illegal. However, in 1959, Hawaii had already been given a vote to either remain a territory or become a state and voted for statehood. Nevertheless, a Hawaiian nationalist movement remains and works to preserve Hawaiian language, history, and culture, as well as to advance the cause of an independent Hawaiian state.
Back to the Pele ‘ohana. Pele is the nominal head of the family, and possibly the eldest sibling with the exception of Namaka, who, in some stories, drove Pele from Kahiki after Pele seduced her husband. All the members of the Pele ‘ohana were children of Haumea, blessed by their mother with powerful mana.
A primary conceit within the series comes from the Polynesian concept of mana. While popularized by fantasy fiction and gaming as a kind of magic points, mana actually represents a more subtle and complex concept. One that incorporates personal power, charisma, and a connection to the spiritual that can lead to support from the spirit world. This concept I took as roughly analogous to prana (qi, ki, pneuma, etc.) found elsewhere in the Eschaton Cycle cosmology, and assumed thus that those with sufficient mana could accomplish superhuman feats.
Furthermore, in Hawaiian thought there exists mana wahine (literally “female power”) a recognition of a certain kind of mana unique to females and prevalent within the Pele ‘ohana. This power, within the story, serves as the ability to reshape others and the world around themselves. To push forward and accomplish wonders.
Pele, Namaka, Hi‘iaka, and Kapo were all women with extraordinary mana, and thus forces to be reckoned with, more than a match for men and supernatural dangers. Their tribulations form the foundation of this series.
Poli‘ahu, another of Pele’s traditional rivals, was not of the same ‘ohana (she’s generally a daughter of Kāne) and thus presented a different type of queen, but still one with great mana wahine. One that could serve as a representative of the original Polynesian immigrants before the current wave.
A final note here on linguistics. Within the Polynesian languages, “t” and “k” are generally interchangeable. Consequently, “Tahiti” and “Kahiki” are essentially the same linguistically.
Additionally, many Polynesian words use an ‘okina (a reverse apostrophe) as a means of indicating glottal stop in words. I opted to use these spellings in deference to proper transcription of Polynesian words.
Special thanks to the artists for my beautiful cover, to my editor Regina, to my wife and daughter, and to my Arch Skalds: Al, Dale, Rachel, Bill, Jackie, and Dawn for feedback.
Thank you for reading,
Matt Larkin
TIDES OF MANA
Heirs of Mana Book 1
MATT LARKIN
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2019 MATT LARKIN
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by Regina Dowling
Cover Art by Felix Ortiz
Cover Design by Shawn T. King
Published by Incandescent Phoenix Books
mattlarkinbooks.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
> Skalds’ Tribe
Dramatis Personae
Terms
Prologue
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part II
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Part III
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
The Epic Continues …
Author’s Note
Copyright