Taniwha's Tear (24 page)

Then another earthquake made the whole cliff wobble, and she staggered, almost falling into the bowl. She looked down at Damien, bent towards him with arm extended…and suddenly he was gone, in a roar of falling earth.

For a second she teetered on the edge of the rockfall, while the bowl filled with dust, and men bellowed in terror
and pain below. Then a deafening CRACK filled the air, and splinters of stone flew like shrapnel. Her eyes caught a small fissure that opened along the top of the western wall, running through the stone until it was lost in the fog, out towards where the lake lay beyond. Where millions of tonnes of water waited, at a higher level than the bowl below.

‘Oh, crap!’ She backed, turned and ran, snatching up her pack, and sprang along the edge of the northern rim, above where the stairs had been, grasping at trees to keep herself from falling. She placed the laptop on the ground, wrenched open the pack and delved inside, spilling ropes and hammers and gadgets and all manner of essentials, until she found what she was looking for. She threw a harness on, trying to track everyone below, her practised hands blurring. She could see virtually nothing, just glimpses amidst the dust which had risen, hiding everything below, hiding the other side. There was nothing…

She pushed down the night-goggles, and heat-shapes appeared. There! The boys were there! She prepared to jump, as some thing immense suddenly rose, a massive cold thing uncoiling from centuries beneath the earth. A black reptilian head as large as a car rose from the dust, with scaled skin and eyes of amber weirdly luminescent in her night-goggles. The left eye flickered, swivelled, and then fixed on her.

Mat coughed out dust and brown spittle as some thing
massive rose, black within the dirty dust of the rockfall, from the centre of the bowl. The sound of stone snapping as it rose was deafening, and a fleeing man suddenly threw up his hands then collapsed, shot in the back by flying shards of stone. Mat flinched and stood, and then staggered into the blindness, holding his shirt over his face.

He groped at where he had last seen his friend, until a hand grabbed his, a brown arm, Riki’s arm, half-buried in the soil. He threw down his gun and pulled, shouting for help. No one came. All about him, men were fleeing the immense shape that rose from the earth, forgetting their foes in their terror. The massive shape roared—its very breath was enough to shred the dust-cloud, and let them see it.

It was three storeys tall and still not entirely out of the earth. Part-reptile, like a massive tuatara, it also echoed the crocodile in its long head, and the snake with its serpentine neck. Its mottled hide was black and grey, ridged with amber, like its eyes. Its breath was wet and cold, dank as the deepest cave. It roared like a jet engine as it climbed from the earth, making the ground shake like jelly. It seemed enraged. Its head seemed to be caught in some kind of shimmering golden net.

More rock fractured, and then with a hideous popping sound, a whole section of the western wall flew out, flying past the heads of the men in the dell. Water began to gush through the cracks in the wall, faster and faster, like fire-hoses.

Mat turned back to the brown arm—Riki’s, it had to be—and pulled. Another shape slid down the pile of dirt and rubble, and sprawled beside him, someone he recognised. ‘Damien, help! It’s Riki!’

Damien scrabbled to his feet, single-mindedly ignoring a terrified soldier clambering past him, stabbed his sword into the loose earth without a backwards look, and dug desperately with his hands. Mat pulled again, but lost his grip, sprawling onto his back into the remains of the pool.

‘You!’

Bryce loomed above him, his pistol smoking, his other hand still impotently holding Lena’s braid. Mat stared at it, and gasped. It was not so impotent…

The braid was glowing like gold, and the warlock had woven a cord of light that ran like reins to the skull of the taniwha. He flicked it, as if trying to master a horse, and the great beast roared, tossing its head.

‘Mine! It’s mine! There is still enough of that girl inside to hold it!’ Bryce roared aloud, then jabbed the emptied gun at Mat. ‘Lena-Hau! Kill the boy! Kill him!’

The head of the beast turned to the left, then dipped and snaked about. And focused on Mat.

Ponaturi swarmed out of the dell past Cassandra, as she finished putting her harness on. The mist was falling, and visibility was clearing. But the taniwha kept getting bigger, as it rose from beneath the earth. It hadn’t stopped
looking at her. It was hard to think, caught in the spotlight of that gaze. Hard to move. But then she saw it toss its head, like a horse that someone had just bridled, and look down.

She followed its gaze, and her heart hammered. Mat was there, and Damien, digging in the dirt. Above them, Bryce held some thing aloft, and unseen forces seemed to link that hand to the movements of the taniwha. She stared, baffled.

Then the taniwha lunged at Mat, and without thought she screamed a warning, her hands going to her mouth.

There was no time. The massive head lined him up and dropped, jaws opening.

Bryce half-turned, to watch the result of his command.

Some thing fell from the sky, a dog that became a hawk in a graceful spellbinding instant, and ripped at the man’s face, opening deep welts on his cheeks and forehead. The golden light flickered, and he flailed about, trying to guard his eyes.

The taniwha paused. Mat didn’t. In one motion, he snatched up Damien’s borrowed sword and swung, as Bryce raised his arm to regain command of the taniwha. The blade arced, and Mat barely felt it cut, as it took off Bryce’s hand at the wrist. The hand, still gripping the glowing braid, fell wetly to the rock and twitched like a dying spider. The golden light went out, and the taniwha roared. Bryce gaped at the stump as blood fountained,
his mouth wide with agony and fear. For an instant they were frozen like that, paralysed.

The taniwha trumpeted its freedom to the gods. Behind it, the western wall exploded in a cascade of boulders and torrential water. The lake broke out of its centuries-old prison, and thundered into the hollow.

I
t was a matter of seconds. Damien reached into the hole he had dug about Riki’s torso, and heaved with every piece of his strength. Less than a foot below him, the first wave of water from the lake roared. Spray soaked him immediately. But he could feel Riki coming free, felt his arms move, and grip his shoulders in return. He turned his head to shout for aid, and saw the torrent sweep over Mat before the boy could flinch. A wall of water, and he was gone.

Damien heaved as if all of life depended upon it. He felt his friend rise from the dirt, limp, barely functioning. Some thing huge struck the water behind him, and the wave knocked him flat. Then it too was gone, riding the mounting torrent.

The water was to his waist in an instant. He drew his head up, holding the barely conscious Riki to him.

Cassandra fell from out of the night, rigged in some kind of harness with a cord on her back that attached
her to some thing above, her arms wide. He instinctively thrust Riki up to meet her.

She smashed into them both, and he toppled backwards. The girl grabbed Riki’s arm and his belt with desperate fingers, wrapping her legs around him and then whatever she was attached to whipped her back into the sky.

She’s a bungy-jumping freakin’ angel!

Water swallowed the world, and sucked him to its belly.

Cassandra held on to Riki—just—in a crumpled heap at the top of the rockfall on the north side. She didn’t have the strength to climb that last section again, and certainly not to get Riki up to the tree-line. It had been for nothing. But quite clever, she thought. Among her abseiling gear she had a high-elasticity rope—not quite a bungy cord, but of a similar principle. It was more of a thrill-seeking device than proper gear, but she’d brought it along anyway—it was handy in certain types of descents. What would Damien and Mat say about her cleverness? What would Lena say? She raised an exhausted hand, dazedly, as the water rose towards them. Dimly she was aware that the floods would sweep them both away in seconds, but exhaustion had numbed her mind.
And I’m out of cool toys anyway…

Wiry white arms locked about her, and pulled Riki from her hands. She almost fought them, the ghostly blue-lipped faces and their hideous strength, but then
she realised what was happening. She was being rescued. They hauled her back into the trees, and left her gasping like a beached whale amidst the under growth on the edge of the flood. Jones was suddenly there, somehow on the near-side of the dell again. He hauled at her harness, pulled it off her, then he was gone again, running towards the lake, shouting and gesticulating at Piriniha and his warriors. ‘The waka, the waka!’

The warriors gibbered, and ran with him, but for one who stayed with her, holding Riki.

She wiped her eyes, and crawled to her pack, deflated and almost empty amidst the debris of her gear. She reached into the final unopened pouch of her pack, and pulled out a bag of jellybeans. She waved it in front of the sea-fairy. It followed the packet as she rocked it side to side, as if trying to hypnotise itself.

‘This is all yours, if you keep us alive,’ she told it. ‘Not that you speak Engish, I guess…’

Its eyes lit, and it reached out a long pale hand. It took the packet, opened its mouth wider than she imagined possible, and ate it, packaging and all. A look of sheer bliss stole over its face.

Below her, the hollow was now a raging rapid, flowing eastward to the river valleys. She tried to puzzle how many litres per second might be rushing past her, but couldn’t focus. All she could manage was to stroke Riki’s shoulders, and not faint. The far rim was empty now. Donna Kyle and her allies were either dead or fled or washed away. None of Bryce’s men remained; the warlock
himself had been swept away in the same initial torrent that had taken Mat.

Mat…Damien…Lena too, whatever you are now…

Cassandra didn’t really believe in God. And she didn’t believe that ‘no atheists in a foxhole’ saying—that was just panic. Clever people stayed reasoned and smart till the end, and made their own luck. But she did make a wish, because Jones had said that this was a land made of wishes.

Be safe! All of you, be safe!

Jones and the remaining Ponaturi burst out of the woods behind her. Both waka were on the Ponaturi’s shoulders; they positioned them at the edge of the torrent, poised to leap inside. Jones pulled her to her feet and knelt to look at Riki. Grim excitement lit his expression, as if beneath his harsh veneer he was actually enjoying himself immensely. Cassandra felt a surge of affection for him, despite the danger. ‘Well, girl, are you ready for some white water? Because I think this whole area will collapse in about thirty seconds.’

He virtually threw Riki into the nearest waka, whilst the Ponaturi warrior she had mentally christened ‘Jellybean’ hauled her in beside the semi-conscious youth. ‘My pack, my gear,’ she tried to protest, too late. Whooping like children, the Ponaturi thrust their craft into the raging waters, leaping aboard as they launched. Godfrey swooped above, and then vanished in the mists of the raging water.

‘My gear!’ she shrieked. ‘My gear!’
What’ll I tell Dad?

She nearly jumped out, but Jellybean held her tight. The torrent roared, and the primitive need for survival swept every other thought away.

As Mat stared at Bryce’s severed hand, the golden braid winked out. He half-turned to reach out towards Damien and Riki, when the torrent took him. It was like being hit by a falling house. He had time for half a choked breath, and then it swept him down, under, and he was a child again, caught in the undertow of breakers at Westshore Beach, helpless, flailing, turned over and over, no light except for flashes, his ears filled with roaring water.

Some thing buffeted his back, his whole torso scraped on the ground, and then he was lifted by the flow of water, and into the side of some thing flowing alongside, some thing ridged and massive. He scrabbled for footing, following the stream of bubbles seeping from his mouth and nose, the only things he could see in the tumbling rush. He felt his lungs slowly empty, a dizzying fog settling in his brain. Every time he almost blacked out, a shock like electricity jolted him. He’d never been a great swimmer, but it almost seemed he was breathing water at times. His arms and legs pumped automatically as he clung to the side of the log, or whatever it was, and he had no idea how he kept his grip, except that it seemed that forces ran through him that gave him strength beyond all reason.

All the while, he flowed downstream, clinging to the
side of the massive bulky thing. Part of him knew what it really was, but refused to tell the rest of him.

He broke the surface, and then went under again, but not before he gulped in fresh air, and redoubled his efforts, scrambling, desperate to live, onto the back of the taniwha as it flowed with the flood.

The waters had found a natural channel in the Waikaretaheke Stream, carved by Maahu to bring fish for his daughter. Through narrow gorges and wide plains, the water spread, initially a tumult as it thrashed through narrows, spilling out in every bend and wide point of the stream, but the taniwha swam it with ease, in its element finally after centuries trapped beneath the earth. He could feel its exultation in the movement of its head, the way its sinuous body rolled and shimmied, turning its trek to the sea into a thing of joy. All along the river he saw creatures scrambling for high ground, and people too, Maori fishermen and colonial farmers alike. But after the first murderous torrent, the flow had slowed, and become more gentle—still headlong, rapid and destructive, but palpably calming.

The head of the taniwha turned this way and that, like the skull of some dinosaur brought to life. At times it scooped the flood, and came up swallowing fish and eels, dozens at a time, then roared with a fierce kind of joy. Finally, as they washed onto the flat land northwest of Wairoa, it turned to look back, its neck coiled like a serpent, and Mat found himself a few feet from its jaws, its fishy-cold breath wheezing through its teeth.

It occurred to him that after centuries trapped in stone, it might still be hungry.

If she’d been able to see more than three feet in front of her, fright might have taken Cassandra’s capacity to act. Her throat was raw, her nerves shredded, and she was losing all belief they might survive. The waka flew down the torrent of water into the bottleneck of the Waikaretaheke gorges like a twig caught in a tsunami, thrown all about the flow without control. The Ponaturi flailed about them, their paddles blurring, stabilising and twisting them, keeping their nose down and frontwards. Their skill was miraculous. Time and again they plunged deep, yet came up like a surfacing submarine.

They were all soaked to the skin, and her pack was gone, her laptop gone, her ruined glasses gone, her energy snacks gone, and all she could see clearly was her bailer, which she could barely lift. If she tore her gaze from the interior of the waka, all she could see was churning froth and darkness. Her mouth was full of the taste of vomit, from losing her stomach contents within seconds of embarking on this insane ride. Riki was facing her, looking backwards as he too bailed, pale and shaking. He’d revived within seconds of them entering the water. It had been perhaps only ten minutes, but who could tell? His eyes looked glazed and, like her, he was close to exhaustion. But his face was fixed with determination beyond reason. They bailed, and consigned their fate to
the skill of the sea-fairies, all the while their thoughts on Mat and Damien, wishing and hoping and praying that by some miracle they might also still be alive.

There had been no sign of the other waka since they entered the water—the churning white water was simply too chaotic. It might have overturned, with all drowned or dead, or be ten feet away; there was no way to tell. How they might find Mat or Damien or their bodies, she had no idea.

Every thing changed very suddenly. They exploded through a canyon, and suddenly they found the waters ahead were rolling out across a valley, or what would have been a valley until the waters struck, and the nature of the canoe journey changed totally. Without the momentum created by the gorges, its sheer weight caused the water to slow as it was dissipated in different directions. The waters changed from frothy water to dark and calmer, though still swift. It seemed that this area had been forest, and the chief danger became the trees that had been torn from the earth by the wall of water, and now constantly snagged and pulled at the waka as they glided with the flood. The paddles became employed primarily for freeing the craft from debris.

They swiftly spotted the other waka when Jones lit some kind of beacon above them, and it came alongside them a few minutes later. The new moon hung above, a silver sickle that lit little, but the stars were bright, now that they were out of the spray and mist of the gorges. The relief was tangible, even in the faces of the Ponaturi
as they looked about them, flushed and grinning. Riki slumped to one side, staring out across the water, his eyes far away. Cassandra leant forward, with her head in her hands, panting slowly. Her face felt like one massive bruise, and her skull throbbed. But they were alive.

‘Reckon there’d be a market for adventure tourism here?’ Riki joked wearily. ‘A little rafting, a little jetboating? Whaddya reckon?’

Cassandra was too tired to reply, but she managed a grin.

We’re alive.

The thought reminded her that the others probably weren’t.

It was the Ponaturi that saw the first body—one of Bryce’s mercenaries, floating face-down in the waters. Riki thought he might have recognised him—maybe the one that he had sent spiralling down into the bowl, seconds before the western wall gave way, and the lake surged in. It was a horrible thought, that he had effectively killed the man, no matter whether it was deserved or not. There was no feeling of glory or exultation. Nothing that made him want to stamp his feet and punch the air. Only the profound relief that it wasn’t him, floating in the black waters.

The Ponaturi hissed, their faces jerking to one side. The teens followed their gaze, apprehensive again. A dark shape was struggling through the waters, pushing through the debris of the fallen forest, a colossus striding amidst the flood. Jones stood, and shouted something, and light
bloomed from a gem in his hand, causing the newcomer to blink, and hide its face from the sudden brightness.

It was Maahu, the old giant they had seen when they had paddled upstream; had it only been five or six hours ago? It seemed like a lifetime. Yet here he was, slogging through the waters towards them, in the wake of the trail of destruction his daughter had released. When he came closer, the waves from his thighs threatened to tip the waka. His face seemed even more sorrowful, the lines on his brow like canyons, and his eyes raw with weeping.

In his arms, he bore a form, lying unconscious against his chest. He reached out with both hands, offering the body to Jones.

Riki stifled a shout of hope and horror. Cassandra clutched his arm, and cried out.

It was Damien, and he was alive.

The giant slouched away, walking with the currents of the huge river as it ploughed through forest and plain, trying to find the sea. The two waka sought the hills though, where they could find dry ground, and fuel for a fire to warm the teenagers, who were all shivering uncontrollably. None of them was fully conscious as the Ponaturi laid them beside a fire that Jones lit, and swaddled them in blankets pulled from cavities inside a waka. They barely registered the broth that Jones brewed, which the Ponaturi gently fed them, their alien faces unreadable even to the Welsh adept as he stood over them. They were asleep seconds afterwards.

Jones watched the waters calm, and dared to hope that perhaps, this catastrophe might not have been overly ruinous. This was not a populous area in Aotearoa, especially since Puarata had made the redoubt below Panekiri his lair. The iwi native to the area had drifted away, or been destroyed. Below the highlands about the lake, the lands were wide, and hopefully the fury of the waters had been spent ineffectually against empty vales and dells, and lost its menace before the path of the river brought it to Wairoa.