The Lost Tohunga by David Hair Page B

cannot find it without my help.’
    She felt her skin become slick. ‘You, help me?’ Her voice betrayed her desperation.
    â€˜Yes, Daughter, you cannot find it without me. I wish to help you. But how can I trust you, you who so thoroughly repudiates me? No, there is only one way I can trust you.’ He smiled. ‘Pledge your soul to freeing me, and I will guide you to The Heart itself!’
    She backed away and sat on the bed. It was that or fall to her knees. A Pledge … she knew what he meant. This was no empty promise that could be broken. This was an oath that harmed the swearer if broken. The sort they all swore to Puarata. The breaking of that Pledge had been part of the fatal weakening that enabled Puarata to defeat Asher’s revolt.
    Not to you, Father! She straightened, and raised a hand. ‘Burn in hell or rot in prison forever, Father. Just don’t talk to me again.’ She exerted a little force, and the glass shattered. His cry of pain sweetened the feeling of vindication.
    But in the hours afterwards came the fear, and then the certainty, that she had just doomed herself.

Parukau
    Monday
    P arukau sat with his back to the wall all night, unsleeping. He was learning the mind of his new host, Evan Tomoana, and especially examining his memories of Hine Horatai. Hine … Parukau had seen her for what she was immediately. All those years trapped in the dog’s body, he had carried one clue regarding Te Iho: Blood of the Swimmer … He had wondered about who or what ‘the Swimmer’ might be. It was obvious now, as the answers to riddles often were. He would find Hine Horatai, and she would open the path to Te Iho.
    His mind reeled with the possibilities. Beside him, Tomoana’s friends slept; a mindless mountain who called himself Brutal, and a lamb in wolf’s clothing called Ronnie. This evening they would be released, and he would find Hine Horatai. Then Te Iho would be his.
    Â 
    It had been more than a century ago that Parukau’s attempt to supplant Puarata had failed. Puarata had punished him by imprisoning him in the body of a dog. In pre-contact days, Parukau had been a tohunga makutu serving Puarata, one whohad learned body-jumping as a way of living forever. Unlike most, he had embraced European settlement, enraptured with these alien beings and their elegant trappings. Plush clothing and foreign women had been his addiction. Literally enduring a dog’s life had nearly destroyed him. Only one thing had kept him going: Te Iho, The Heart. He had helped design and create it. One day, he would claim it and overthrow Puarata.
    However, that dog body could get into places a man could not. Parukau had watched and learned. He had seen the rise of successive favourites and pretenders, and laughed as they all fell. When Puarata died he had gone straight to the Ureweras, and slipped into the hidden caves which led to Te Iho … and found them blocked and disempowered. Puarata had closed the gateway. He had panicked for a time, but he clung to the fact that Puarata had needed Te Iho. It must be merely hidden. They had designed it with no fixed abode, a pocket of space and time independent of both worlds. The gateway was movable, and of course Puarata would have moved it from time to time. He just had to find the new door, and the new key.
    So he had ignored the war, and hunted for the gateway instead. The longer he used a body the better he controlled it, so he had kept the tramp-body despite its shortcomings. But now he was ready for a new phase. He was ready to enjoy this powerful younger frame, and make ‘Evan Tomoana’ a feared man.
    At dawn, the shifts changed and a new pack of uniforms swaggered in. His ‘friends’ slept on. Let them; he didn’t need them yet. He had plans to lay, a new world to explore. When last he had worn human guise, aeroplanes and cars were undreamt of, electricity a foreign rumour. Old Mac hadgone bush