At four thousand feet Hau pointed out excellent high grassland suitable for grazing cattle. At six thousand they entered and passed through a solid layer of cloud. At ten thousand they encountered isolated patches of icy snow.
Then Malone found himself gazing down into a black-streaked, rust-brown crater big enough to hold all of Manhattan Island.
Hau pointed to a distant cinder cone within the crater. “Down there, my friend, there is said to be a cave. In the depths of the cave is a tool. Only the truest of kahuna can recover it. Others have tried; none have succeeded. Whether anyone can even make use of it I do not know. I know only what the kahunas here tell me: that it is the only tool with which Kanaloaiki’s terrible plan can be foiled.”
Malone nodded. “Maybe it’s a big hammer that I kin whack him on the head with.” So saying, he flicked Worthless’s reins, and together man and unicorn started down into the barren, nearly lifeless crater.
Silversword grew in isolated bunches, thrusting their highly specialized leaves into a pristine pale blue sky. Exotic carmine, yellow, and emerald-hued birds fluttered in and out of the crater on air currents that rose from the volcano’s rain-forested eastern slopes, each exotic flyer more brilliantly colored than the next. They reminded Malone of a rainbow’s tears. Occasionally a pueo, the native owl, would dart low as Worthless’s hooves disturbed a mouse.
The browns and blacks and russets and rusts of the crater seemed endless, but eventually Malone found himself approaching the cinder cone that had been singled out by Hau. Trotting around its base, he skirted the edge of an undistinguished depression in the crater floor. According to what Hau had been told, the cave was to be found on the far side of the cone.
A few cinders slid away beneath Worthless’s hooves, tumbling toward the center of the depression. Each step sent a few more skittering downward. Before long the slide had become continuous. Just to be on the safe side, Malone urged his mount higher up the slope they were traversing.
But instead of ascending, Worthless, too, began to slide.
As steed and rider fought for stability, Malone saw that the sliding cinders were flowing rapidly toward the center of the depression, and not just from beneath Worthless’s feet but from all sides. It reminded him of something he’d seen before.
Despite the unicorn’s heroic efforts, they continued to slip. Finally Malone saw something else, something that at last brought back to him the memory of what they had encountered previously. This was very much identical, only on a larger scale.
A much larger scale.
Two projecting, curving, sharp-edged, sicklelike hooks, each taller than a man, clashed and clacked together expectantly in the exact center of the depression. The owner of those jaws would have been instantly familiar to anyone who had ever run across them in sandy, dry soils. They belonged to an ant lion.
An ant lion that, to judge by the size of the depression and its now-visible jaws, must be as big as an elephant.
What it subsisted on here in this barren crater Malone couldn’t imagine, but he understood now why courageous but foolhardy travelers who defied the old kapu to visit this sacred place never returned to their homes, and why even kahunas avoided the crater floor.
His first thought was to unlimber the Sharps, but even its fifty-caliber bullets would not be likely to have much of an effect on the slow-paced nervous system of the gigantic insect. Instead, as Worthless continued to slip and slide toward those expectant, waiting jaws, Malone began undoing one of his saddlebags. Fingering various vials and containers within, he sought hurriedly for the right one.
Those jaws, large and powerful enough to crack the bones of a man’s skeleton like twigs, were much too near when he finally found the vial he’d been searching for. Unscrewing the lid, he tossed the entire open container into the center of the depression, only to see it swallowed immediately.
For a few moments nothing happened, and they continued to slide lower and lower. Then the descent ceased. With Malone whispering in his ear, Worthless kicked and scrambled frantically to gain height.
The ground behind them began to tremble. It was an eruption, but not of Haleakala. With a violent, concussive roar the cinders and air behind them vomited skyward, forming a temporary but spectacular fountain. Malone held on to his wolf’s-head cap, his saddle, and his dignity as best he could as the wild rush sent man and mount flying out of the depression.
It had been, he reflected as he and Worthless picked themselves up and continued on their way, one hell of a sneeze. But then, the open vial that he had thrown into the pit and that had found its way into the ant lion’s mouth had contained absolute essence of cayenne, a substance useful in numerous spells and Tex-Mex cooking and not ineffective when employed strictly in its purest form.
In contrast to the encounter with the crater dweller, the cave in the cinder cone was very much an anticlimax, starkly unimpressive. Within, Malone found a few handfuls of bone tools, some old pots and desiccated baskets, and a frayed sleeping mat. Nothing more. Certainly nothing that on the face of it was potent enough to use against a formidable sorcerer.
Nevertheless, he knew from long experience that even the simplest object could be imbued with considerable power. Gathering up everything he saw, he secured it to one saddlebag and started back toward the crater’s rim, this time employing a different route. Being completely out of essence of cayenne, he had no wish to tempt the gargantuan ant lion’s energy and appetite a second time.
What was worse, he mused as he rode, was that now he was going to have to have his evening meal inadequately seasoned.
Hau could hardly believe it when Malone rejoined him just below and outside the crater rim. “You have survived!” the ali’i exclaimed. “No one has been to that place in living memory and returned to tell of it.”
“I reckon I know why.” Slipping down out of the saddle, Malone unpacked the artifacts he had accumulated. “Now, this ’ere basket, what’s it fer?” He passed a finely woven container to the ali’i.
Hau’s demeanor was less than reverent as he turned the object over in his hands. “Gathering fruit, I would imagine. It is a simple basket. What did you think it was?”
Malone grunted. “Never mind. How about this?” They went through every item in the mountain man’s perilously acquired inventory, Hau discarding one after another with nary a word. Malone was growing not just discouraged but angry, wondering if he’d risked his life only to recover some long-dead kahuna’s household goods.
So it was that when Hau’s eyes grew wide and his hands began to shake as he held up an ordinary-looking fishhook, Malone hardly knew what to make of it.
“You must have much mana, Amos Malone, to bring this out of the House of the Sun.”
“So I’ve been told in other ways.” Malone squinted dubiously at the hook, unable to discern anything remarkable about it. “What do we do now? Go fishin’?”
Hau cradled the object piously in both upturned palms. “Of course you cannot know what this is. But by its shape, which I recognize, and its design, which I well remember from the old tales, and by the picture writing on both sides, I know it for what it is.”
Malone was hungry. Behind him, Worthless whinnied impatiently. “A means fer catchin’ our lunch?” he asked hopefully.
Hau handed the artifact to his haole friend. “This, Amos Malone, is the Manai ikalani, the sacred fishhook which one of the god Maui’s ancestresses fashioned at his request from her own jawbone. Using it, Maui raised from the depths of the sea all the land that became the islands of my people and those of their ancestors. When Maui caught the sun here atop Haleakala, the fishhook fell from where it was tied at his waist. It has lain here ever since.” Without waiting to see if Malone would follow, he turned and started down the mountain.