Liquid Fire (52 page)

Zi drew a breath. “No, of course not,” he said. “Only you can summon Pele.”

“Pele?” I said. There was “spirit of their people made manifest,” and then there was the plainly ridiculous. “Surely you don’t think the dragon is
literally
the reincarnation of
Pele—
”

“Maybe,” Jewel said defiantly. “No one understands a dragon’s life cycle. There’s a spirit, and an egg, and the one precedes the other, before both are joined in the birth of the dragon. Who knows where that spirit comes from?”

“Not Hawaiian myth,” I said, squirming in my bonds, staring at the cauldron. This spell needed liquid fire—and if Daniel took my inks, the next best place to get it was my blood. “Dragons date back to the Hadean, when stones fell like rain into oceans of molten rock.”

“How poetic,” Jewel said. “But that just shows how little you understand. Whether she’s really Pele doesn’t matter. Even whether we
believe
she’s Pele doesn’t matter. All that matters is the role that the symbol plays in our ritual—”

“This isn’t just technical magic,” I said, my suspicion confirmed. “It’s
ceremonial
magic. A ritual designed to harvest the collective intents of a congregation. But you still need enormous magical power to catalyze it—a ley line crossing, a bloodline
mashiach
—or a blood sacrifice.”

The words hung there in the air, ugly and true.

“No one’s going to get sacrificed, Dakota.” The ground shook, and then Jewel scowled as Yolanda returned from the crèche with an
athame
, a blessed dagger that was used as a magical weapon in ceremonial magic. “Yolanda, I was serious earlier. I
forbid
human sacrifice—”

“I heard you, princess,” Yolanda said, quickly glancing at me, then back at Jewel, “and killing your girlfriend is not Plan A. But we’re running out of time. If the anointing fails, we
have
to have a fallback plan ready
before
Pele hatches!”

Again, a silence stretched, broken only by the guttering of torches in the wind.

“Yolanda,” Jewel said—and now
she
quickly glanced at me, then back at Yolanda. I scowled. Jewel had known that sacrificing me was a possibility all along. I wondered if she was merely acting when she said, “We have to be better than Daniel. Tell me you’re not serious.”

“I am. I don’t want that dragon to fly free to ravage Hawai`i—or to die, blowing the top of the mountain off. That would leave none of us alive, much less no liquid fire. But, I hope we don’t have to . . . uh, you know.” She glanced at me. “The ceremonial anointing will—”

“You don’t want it to fly free or die?” I asked. “What are you trying to do?”

“The hatchsign has been flying too long,” Jewel said. “If we could have called it down earlier, perhaps—no matter. At this point, with the physical egg this mature, Pele doesn’t really need our help to hatch. At this point, we have two choices: thwart the hatching—”

“You’re going to
abort
her,” I said, with growing horror. “A dragon, stillborn—”

“No,
Daniel
wanted to thwart the hatching,” Jewel said angrily. “To take a rare, beautiful, and independent creature and harvest it for its blood. That
is
what humans have done throughout the ages. But there’s a better option, a more humane option—to seize control of it.”

“To seize control . . . of the hatching?” I said. “You mean of the
hatchling?
”

———

“We can’t let Pele fly free,” Jewel said. “But she
will
live . . . under our command.”

56. To Enslave a God

“You want to . . . command the hatchling?” I stared again at the torches, the totems, and at last saw it—this was a
control charm
, writ large. More properly, a
geas
, a spell to steal a living thing’s will. The Dragon on my back convulsed. “You’re planning to
enslave Pele?
”

“Dakota—” Jewel began.

“You’re going to take a rare, beautiful, and independent creature and make it a slave,” I said, bile growing. “You have the hubris to capture a small-g god, and the cruelty to doom something meant to fly to a life in captivity. You’re going to
enslave
a
dragon
—”

“Enslave her or kill her,” Jewel said flatly. “Those are our choices. No matter how much empathy you or I feel toward Pele, she’ll become a monster the size of a mountain. She could destroy a city with a flick of her wing. She must be tamed, or destroyed—”

“She’s not an animal. She’s
communicating
,” I said. “Communicating with
me—
”

“Yes, and I’m sorry, dragon herald,” Jewel said, “but that’s why the spell will work. We haven’t tried it, but we’re confident we’ll tame her—as confident as we can be given this is a three-hundred-year-old spell from our spotty old records—”

“You don’t need old records, you need the
latest knowledge,
” I said. “For example, if you think baptizing me in that cauldron will let you collect the spiritual essence of the liquid fire in my tattoos by some kind of magical osmosis, you’re out of luck—”

“She’s . . . she’s just trying to throw us off,” Zi said.

“Skin acts as an
essence filter,
” I said. “Higher fractions of mana don’t penetrate. That’s why tattoos need graphomantic designs rather than directly projecting a caster’s intent. If you want the essence of magic in my blood . . . you’re going to need to bleed me out.”

“We add sandalwood oil and hyssop in the act of anointing,” Yolanda said. “And the cauldron is steeped with a mix of jasmine and cinquefoil for projection. A
minor
cut to start the bleed, amplify that through the infinity lens, and—what? What’s wrong with that, Frost?”

“That’s . . . that’s really good,” I said, staring at the lens and totems. “But an infinity lens tops out at a thirteen-to-one gearing. The most you can concentrate in that cauldron is a twelfth of the power within my skin. For what it looks like you need . . . it would still kill me.”

“We won’t have to,” Yolanda said, looking at the blade uncertainly in her hands. “The circuit started to activate as soon as we brought you into it, even with you covered with that goop. I think the spirit of the dragon has bonded with you—”

My eyes went wide. Maybe they’d realized about my new dragon tattoo what I’d long suspected. But Yolanda immediately showed she was off target—and hopefully, her misunderstanding was something I could use to my advantage.

“The spirit of the dragon was summoned to you every time you cast your dragon tattoo. Sometimes even when you don’t cast it,” Yolanda said. “If you stand at the casting point, the infinity lens will amplify the emanations of your tattoo—”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I’m not casting a fucking
enslavement spell
.”

“You won’t have to,” Yolanda said flatly. “When the spirit of the dragon tries to pass the upper focus of the infinity lens, it will become trapped, charging up the Dragon’s Noose. Jewel will take your place in the circuit, and when Pele hatches, the Noose will bind its will to hers—”

A voice whispered against my skin, oddly distant, oddly muffled, but clear enough in source and intention that I was now certain that it wasn’t me talking to myself, nor was it coming from the Dragon
off
my back. Something alien spoke to me . . . through my new tattoo.

Don’t let them make a slave of me!

I scowled. All right then . . .
I’ll do my best.

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this, Jewel,” I said. “No matter how much you pulled the wool over my eyes, I watched you deal with the people around you. I know how much you care. I can’t believe you’d enslave a dragon just so you can spin fire—”

“You don’t know me at all,” Jewel said. “To hell with the liquid fire. Sure, we’ll take it from her maw once we’ve tamed her. But we have to tame her, because if she hatches freely, she’ll destroy our world. If we can seize control of her, though, she’ll destroy what
we
want.”

My mouth fell open.

“Do what?” I said. “You want to use a Hadean Dragon . . . as a
weapon?
”

“Why not?” Jewel asked, extending her hand, encompassing both the cauldron and the caldera. “The Americans cracked the atom to make a weapon, even tested it practically on our doorstep. Why can’t the Hawai`ians crack the dragon’s egg to do the same thing?”

“Why do you need a weapon?” I said. “The atom bombs are on your side—”

“On
America’s
side,” Jewel said, eyes flashing. “Our conquerors.”

I set my mouth. Almost from the beginning, Jewel had described herself as a Hawaiian native, as an activist, as politically active—and I’d read enough on it to understand the issues that mattered to her, or so I thought. But I never realized how far she wanted to take it.

“You’re not a Hawaiian nativist,” I said. “You’re a Hawaiian
separatist!
”

“Not originally,” Jewel said. “But the more people that come here, the further we natives get squeezed out. But it’s not just the rich and the powerful that are squeezing us out—it’s your whole country, taking our land for granted as if it was its very own.

“We tried to work with the system, Dakota, we tried. Tried to create reservations for Hawai`ian sacred land. Flawed as they are, they at least would have preserved some buffer for the old ways. But the thanks we got for working within the system—was
that!
”

And she pointed over my shoulder. Puzzled, I followed her gaze. Far out, atop a distant ridge, were the twinkling lights of a construction site, reflecting off a half-finished dome. I’d seen the lights earlier from the safe house—good, we hadn’t gone far.

Something tickled the back of my neck. My eye caught a shimmer of movement, passing behind the dome. Without even seeing it clearly, I knew it was something I’d expected all along, and quickly, I looked away, staring at Jewel, hoping none of the others had seen it yet.

Then I looked back, as something tickled the back of my mind. Suddenly, I realized what the dome was. I’d seen it flying in. Jewel had mentioned it. I’d read about it in
Scientific American
. But I still couldn’t quite put two and two together.

“You’re upset . . . about a telescope?” I said.

“It’s on sacred ground,” Jewel said. “They call it Science City, and it’s on sacred ground. They’re burrowing hundreds of feet into our sacred rock to put up a . . . a temple to the sun, desecrating our lands, which they’ve already shit on for decades—”

“You’re upset,” I repeated, “about the
Advanced Technology Solar Telescope.
”

“Frost knows what it is,” Yolanda said, staring at me.

“Of
course
I know what it is!” I roared. “My girlfriend is a Hawaiian political activist and I looked up what that meant because you’re
supposed
to understand what your partner is into! What flabbergasts me is that you think it is worth going to
war
over a
telescope!
”

“That’s just a target of opportunity,” Jewel said. “Pele is hatching. As much as we love her, as much as we practically worship her, we cannot let that happen. The devastation would be awesome. We must kill her . . . or tame her. And if we’ve tamed her—”

“You’ll make her go to war,” I said, “from which the devastation would be awesome—”

“We aren’t out to hurt anyone,” Jewel said. “We just want to cleanse our land—”

“Oh, great,” I said. “Whatever happened to a spell turning back upon its owner?”

“Karmic redress!” she said. “They destroyed our
heiau
, so we’ll destroy
their
temple—”

“And no one will die in that incendiary outrage?” I asked.

“We are trying,” she said, “to
defend Hawai`i
—”

“What, from a telescope?” I said. “Get real—”

“You think you know
everything,
” Jewel said. “This place is sacred to us—”

“To the people who lived and died here centuries ago,” I said. “Not you—”

One of the fireweavers punched me in the gut. I doubled over, wheezing for effect. I’d needed to lurch forward anyway, and had tightened my abs and started mouthing off, figuring my flapper would win me some blow or cuff or shove that would give me a little cover.

“Enough—remember
kānāwai māmalahoe,
” Jewel said, outstretched finger warning both me and her fellow weavers. “This land is ours. It’s sacred. And it’s being desecrated. And it isn’t the first time that our land has been ruined by American scientists.

“You heard Philip—they marched us off Mokumanamana, our sacred island, at gunpoint! It took three years in
Federal
court to get our land back.
Three years!
And when we finally did, we found that so-called
scientists
from Fish and Wildlife had razed the sacred
heiau
we’d spent a decade rebuilding because they thought it was
vandalism
by
trespassers!

“The Americans, they’ve always been the same. They came here and took our land like they owned it. They tortured our people and turned them into trained monkeys in their tourist traps. They even pretended to convert our god Pele to their own joke religion by dropping rocks upon her. I quit Christianity after I learned what the missionaries did, and—”