The Snow Queen Part 33

Moon stood looking up. "Yes, I know it. And I hate it." She saw the death of countless mers among the countless stars. "The Change has to be changed."

"Then you understand how the absurd, tech-hating superst.i.tion of the Summers keeps us in chains while the off worlders are gone. We'll never break free from their control unless we have the time to start developing a technological base of our own. How else can we keep even what little the off worlders leave to us, unless we destroy the Change pattern?"

"Not by destroying our people!" My people; they are my people! Blotting out Arienrhod's mirror image with the memories of her family, her childhood, her island world.

"Then how?" Arienrhod's voice lost its patience. "How else will you ever convince them, or convert them?" But she stood as though she were actually listening, expecting a genuine alternative.

"I'm a sibyl." Her heart lurched as she confessed it to the Queen of Winter, but she knew that Arienrhod must already know it, too. "When I tell them the truth about what I am, when I prove it, they'll listen."

Arienrhod frowned her disappointment. "I thought you'd have lost your obsession with that religious mummery, after what you've seen off world There's no Sea Mother filling your mouth with holy drivel; any more than the other ten thousand G.o.ds of the Hegemony exist in any way except as straw men for the off worlders to curse at." A gust of wind poured out of the Pit, smelling of seaweed; Moon shivered inside her cloak, in spite of herself. But Arienrhod, wrapped in fog layers of filmy cloth, laughed at her mirror's reflection of fear.

"Sibyls aren't aa"" But Moon broke off again. She doesn't know the truth. She can't know ... suddenly aware that she held a hidden weapon, and that she had almost given it away. She felt her broken confidence begin to mend itself; tried to keep the knowledge from showing in her eyes, afraid that in some way Arienrhod would be able to read her every secret.

But Arienrhod was caught in the machinery of her own design. "I know why you wanted to be a sibyl ... because you couldn't be a queen. But you can be, nowa"" A light behind the agate translucency of her eyes.

"Forget Summer! You can share a whole world with me, a Winter world forever. Throw away your trefoil and wear a crown. Cut the strings that tie you to those narrow-minded bigots, and be free to think freely, and dream." She cast an invisible sign into the abyss. Moon felt the wind's blade at her back. "They'll never accept you as one of them, or trust what you are now. It's too late to save them, anyway. The wheels have been set in motion. You can't stop their fate, you can't change it... Accept it. Rule with me, as you would have ruled after me. We'll build our dream of a new world together. We can do it together, we'll share it alla"" She held out her hands, shining with pa.s.sion. Moon lifted her own hands, spellbound by the nearness, the undeniable reality of her own self, her original self... formed in the image of her creator...

"Arienrhod," Arienrhod said.

Moon pulled back, smarting: Realizing that Arienrhod did not see her at all, had no understanding of why words meant to win and seduce battered and bruised her other self like stones. Arienrhod's egotism saw only the thing she longed to see ... only Arienrhod. And you're wrong. A deep and unshakeable certainty that was more than her own relief moved in Moon, as though she had somehow been tested without knowing it, and had proven her worth. "What about Sparks?" She heard her own question, brittle ice to match Arienrhod's expectations. "Will we share him too?"

Arienrhod's placid face flickered, but she nodded. "Why not? Could I really be jealous of my ... self? Could I refuse myself anything? He loves us both, how could he help it? Why should he have to deny it?" as though she had to make herself believe it.

"No."

Arienrhod's head gave a curious twist. "No? No what?"

"No more." Moon drew herself up, feeling the limitless strength the word released in her. "I'm not Arienrhod."

"Of course you are," Arienrhod said placatingly, as to a stubborn child. "We share the same chromosomes, the same body a" the same man and the same dream. I know this must be difficult for you to accept, when you never suspected... I would never have had it happen like this. But how can you deny the truth?"

Moon wavered, felt a deeper certainty harden her resolve. "Because I know that what you plan to do is wrong. It's wrong. It's not the way."

"Why is it wrong to change the world for the better, when you have the power to do it? The power of change, of birth, of creation a" you can't separate those things from death and destruction. That's the way of nature, and the nature of power ... its inexorability, its amorality, its indifference."

"Real power," Moon lifted her hand to the sign at her throat, "is control. Knowing that you can do anything ... and not doing it only because you can. Thousands of mers have died so that you could keep your power while the off worlders were here; and now thousands of human beings are going to die so that you can keep it when they're gone. I'm not worth a thousand lives, a hundred, ten, two a" and neither are you." She shook her head, seeing the face before her, seeing herself. "If I have to believe that being what I am means I'd destroy Sparks, and destroy the people who gave me everything, then I should never have been born! But I don't believe it, I don't feel it," fiercely. "I'm not what you are, or what you think I am, or what you want me to be. I don't want your power ... I have my own." She touched her throat again.

Arienrhod frowned; Moon felt her anger like sleet. "So they were all imperfect, failures ... even you. I always believed I could supply the thing you lacked ... but no; no one can give you that. You're a gutless weakling a" thank the G.o.ds I don't have to depend on you now to achieve my goals."

Moon looked down at her hands, at white fists. "Then we really have nothing to say to each other, after all. You told me I could go." She took a step toward the bridge, her heart leaping ahead.

"Wait, Moon!" Arienrhod caught up to her again, drawing her back and around. "Can you really leave me like this; so soon, so easily? Isn't there some way for us to share something more than our stubborn pride? You above all should have been the one, the only one, who would understand the things no one else could ever reach in me, the things that I've never been able to give to anyone else." Her voice, her touch, softened. "Give me time, and perhaps I can learn to reach what lies unreachable hi you."

Moon swayed: a fatherless, motherless child hearing her own voice crying a lifelong loneliness; reaching out to embrace her own strength, and redouble it, parent and child hi one. But her inner eye showed her Sparks, scarred in body and mind, and what his final silence had sworn her to. "No. No, we can't." Her gaze fell. "There's no time left."

Arienrhod flushed; softness fell away from her face, left unforgiving iron. Her hand rose as if to strike Moon's face; but it caught the beaded choker instead and jerked, breaking the threads. "You think you can stop me. Then leave, if you can. My n.o.bles know that you're a Summer sibyl." She waved at the Winters still standing patiently beyond the bridge and behind them. "And they know that you came here disguised as me, to commit some treachery. If you can make them believe you're not those things, then you deserve to go free a" and to be a part of me." She turned away abruptly, striding back toward the palace halls alone.

As she went toward them the waiting n.o.bles advanced, bowing as they pa.s.sed her, and ringed Moon in at the foot of the bridge. Moon watched Arienrhod go on, never turning back, until she lost sight of her beyond the shifting wall of vengeful faces.

Chapter 43.

"Well, Commander. I hope you enjoyed the Queen's banquet." Chief Inspector Mantagnes broke off his conversation with the sergeant, hoping nothing of the kind, as Jerusha entered the hollow quiet of headquarters from the clamoring streets. Virtually everyone on the force was out, either protecting the Prime Minister or patrolling the festivities. The two men made a desultory salute; she returned it perfunctorily. Mantagnes eyed her dress uniform enviously. She knew that he must have spent the evening brooding because he wasn't at the reception in her place, strutting in front of his fellow Kharemoughis in the position that was rightfully his.

"I don't enjoy wasting my time, when there's still so much work to be done." She looked pointedly at the two of them; pulled off her scarlet cloak, opening her collar. "You're relieved as acting commander, Inspector."

"Yes, ma'am." He saluted again, his eyes reminding her that she wouldn't be hearing that for much longer. Yes, you son of a b.i.t.c.h, you'll have your turn. The Chief Justice's d.a.m.ning, unfavorable report on her and Mantagnes's own ambitious backbiting would ensure the record of her command here was painted as black as the void. Her career would be finished with this post, her seniority and rank swept under the carpet of official censure. She would never have a chance at a command again; she would be shipped off to some G.o.dforsaken outpost on the back side of nowhere acknowledging grimly that there were worse places than Carbuncle). And there she would rot for the rest of her natural life.

G.o.ds, I'm sick of Kharemoughi arrogance! She bunched her cape between her hands as she started toward her office. If I have to see one more d.a.m.ned, supercilious Technocrat face ... BZ Gundhalinu's face came suddenly into her mind, slowing her. One more face. That face she would give anything to see, right now, right here. But he had never arrived with his prisoner. She should have known a" but how the h.e.l.l could she know that Gundhalinu of all men would run off with the girl instead? Because it was obvious! She had put into her report that he was ill, unaccountable for his actions; and the G.o.ds knew it was probably truer than she wanted to admit.

And tonight she had seen Sparks Dawntreader, openly flaunting his sanctuary there at the banquet, drinking himself into a stupor. And Arienrhod, serenely beautiful as always, serenely unconcerned about her upcoming fate as she moved among her subjects and her supposed masters a" far too unconcerned. d.a.m.n it! What's she planning?

"d.a.m.n it, what's this doing here?" She stopped, glancing away at Mantagnes, and back at the pol rob standing as immobile as a tree in front of her office. "Why aren't you on duty?" addressing it directly. It made no response, and she realized that its power was off.

"It's malfunctioning," Mantagnes said irritably. "Came in here a while ago with some garbled story about its Winter lessor being mugged by the Queen's men. Probably just maudlin with lease-lapse syndrome. Needs a complete system wiping a" letting ignorant natives do even partial maintenance on sophisticated hardware like that is absurd."

"Even 'ignorant natives' would wonder, if they had to bring their brainless servomechs to the police for every loose screw." She threw the power switch on the pol rob chest, more out of aggravation than interest, watched the light sensors brighten inside its steel and plastic skull. She glanced at its identification plate. "Unit "Pollux." Who's your lessor?"

"Thank you, Commander!"

She stepped back, startled.

"Please hear me, Commander. It is urgent, and I cannota""

"Yeah, yeah a" just answer the questions." She would never get used to Their voices.

"My lessor is one Tor Starhiker Winter, Tiamatan female, t.i.tular owner of Persipone's h.e.l.l." It radiated impatience. "You said she was attacked by the Queen's guard? That's no business of ours."

"No, Commander. By off worlders By her fiance!a""

"A lover's quarrel?"

"a"one Oyarzabal, a casino employee, and his companions. She called to me for help, and was stun-shot by them. I could not reach her because the door was locked. So I came here for help."

"You know why they attacked her?" Jerusha felt her interest stir ring.

"Not clear, Commander. Perhaps she interfered with an illegal activity."

"Who controls that casino?"

"One Thanin Jaakola, male, native of Big Blue."

"The Source?" She felt even Mantagnes begin to listen behind her.

"Yes, Commander."

"Repeat everything you heard them say."

"OYARZABAL: Just the Summers, G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Perse. Not the Winters, they'll be safe; the Queen wants it this way. STAR HIKER No, you're lying. It's going to kill Winters too, the Queen wouldn't let you kill us. You're crazy, Oyar, let me go. Pollux, help me, Pollux."

Jerusha listened her skin crawling at the nasal dirge of words, until their meaning coalesced in her mind, catalyzed by two: the Queen. "Holy G.o.ds a" I've found it! I've found it! Sergeant!" Shouting as she turned, she found him already standing at her elbow. "Contact the dozen men closest to Persipone's a" tell them to get over there immediately and seal that place off! Mantagnesa""

"What's this all about, Commander?" She couldn't decide whether he was indignant or frightened.

"It's about life and death." She dropped her cloak on the floor, reaching to check her stunner. "It's about Arienrhod buying her own life with the death of half this city, or I'm not the Commander of Police." She watched his jaw fall. "Unit Pollux a" your prayers and mine have been answered." She clapped its metallic shoulder.

"G.o.ds, just let it be in time!"

"Please help Tor, Commander. I have grown a" attached to her."

She nodded, not quite believing shed heard that. "Mantagnes, you're always b.i.t.c.hing about how you want more action. Let's go find it."

"You're going up there yourself, Commander?" more astonished than critical.

Grinning now, she said, "I wouldn't miss this for sainthood."

Chapter 44.

"So, sibyl, you've threatened our Queen." A man spoke at last; Moon felt the group stare of the angry n.o.bles burn the tattoo into her throat like a brand. "And you're forbidden to come into the city. We have been given the privilege of seeing that you never do either of those things again."

Moon backed toward the bridge span, fighting the memory of what had happened here in the city to Danaquil Lu. "I'm going to leave the palace. If you touch me, I'll contaminate you. Don't try to stop mea"" Her voice slid.

"We won't try to stop you, sibyl," he said, his voice hungry and blurred. "Cross the bridge; go ahead." He grinned, and it turned his thin face into a death's-head. They were all smiling suddenly, with drug-drunken, heedless malice a" people who had been celebrating the end of their world, and knew who to blame for it. He took something out of a hidden place in his long outer robe and held it up; it looked like a dark finger. "Cross the Pit."

Moon covered her control box with her hand, staring at the thing he held; not sure what it was, but only that it was a threat to her. But she had to cross the bridge; she had to try. There was no other way. With clumsy hands she reached up to unfasten her gold st.i.tched velvet cloak. She folded it in threes, which was the Lady's sacred number, and stepped toward the windy lip of the abyss in a defiant ritual. The cape was only a hindrance on her back; but it was a worthy gift to the Sea Mother, if She lay hungry below. Hungry for tribute, or hungry for sacrifice ...

Lady, guide me! Moon pitched the cloak outward with a prayer, heard the laughter of the n.o.bles behind her. It bellied out in the cross drafts drifted and circled like a plummeting fisher bkd into the shaft's green darkness.

Moon pressed the first b.u.t.ton in the sequence at her wrist, and started out onto the bridge. The Winters watched and muttered, but did nothing. Moon sounded another note, walked on, not even breathing. At the far end of the bridge more n.o.bles waited; she tried not to see them clearly ... not to look down, not to listen to the demon dirge around her or the clamoring of fears inside her head...

But as she neared the center of the span the catch-spell of the sibyl's song invaded her again, slowing her, lulling her fears, dulling her instinct for survival. No! She froze, letting her terror rise up and counterattack before the song could snare her mind again. But even as she stopped moving, she saw the Winters ahead all holding the same hollow fingers, raising them to their lips a" whistles! To control the winds... And now at last she understood: They were turning the winds against her; this was how she would die, without a human hand shedding her blood.

Moon threw herself flat on the bridge span as the choir voice of the whistles collided and smashed her circle of quiet air. The winds swept over her, tearing at her. But in the middle of the wind lay the sibyl song a" like the clear air hi a hurricane's eye, the clarity of a strange madness filling her mind. Hypnotized, paralyzed, she plunged through into a refuge that lay in some other plane of existence. .

Why? Why does it call me here? "What's the answer?" she heard her own voice screaming wildly. "What's the answer?" You can answer any question, except one, Elsevier had told her. Not What is Life?" not Is there a G.o.d? ... The one question she was forbidden to answer was Where is your source point And in this moment, teetering at the eternity's edge of insanity or death, she knew that at last it had been answered, that she had been chosen again by the power that lived in her mind: Sourcepoint, fountainhead, wellspring ... here, here, here! Below this shaft that plunged into the sea, below this pinpoint city driven into a map of time, as secret as stone beneath the guardian se asking of this water world, lay the sibyl machine. And she alone would know. She felt her mind give way under the final a.s.sault of knowledge, and fall into the well of truth; cried out as she felt her body lose control to follow it down...

Like a startled dreamer she came into herself again, lying on the bridge span, gasping loudly in the quiet air. The quiet air... She pressed her hand over her mouth, pushed up slowly onto her knees. There was no wind at all; only a peaceful stirring and sighing around her. The Winters stood gape-faced on the far edge of the abyss, thena" whistles dangling from strengthless fingers. She dared to look away, past the wind curtains hanging slack hi a becalmed sea, to the storm walls beyond. The walls were closed, shutting off the flow of the cold crosswinds from the outer world, sealing off their only access to the well at Carbuncle's heart, and to her. She sank forward again, pressing her forehead against the surface of the span in silent grat.i.tude.

She climbed unsteadily to her feet, made her way on across the bridge. She moved slowly, for the sake of the watchers, for the sake of her uncertain legs. The Winters' expressions mixed awe and terror now; she set her face hi grim defiance, willing them to let her pa.s.s.

And some fell back, but there were some who turned angrier, more hate-filled and reckless at the sight of a Summer wearing the face of then: Queen, wielding the power of a G.o.ddess. And among them she saw the iron pole crowned with a halo of metal thorns, the witch collar that had torn open Danaquil Lu's throat. The collar came forward to meet her and keep her from stepping off the bridge. "Kneel down, sibyl, or go into the Pit!" The jewel-turba ned woman who held it thrust it at her; she took a step back, her hands knotting at her sides.

"Let me past or I'lla"" As she spoke she saw them turn, heard the processing echoes of many footsteps coming down the entry corridor toward the hall. And as suddenly the crescent of s.p.a.ce behind the n.o.bles began to fill with human figures a" but this time they wore homespun and kleeskin: Summers! Their faces were as murderous as any Whiter face had been until a second before; they carried knives and harpoons, and the faces looked at her, alone on the bridge, without changing.

"There she is! It's the Queen!"

Moon saw the one face that didn't belong with the rest, one man working his way forward among them with desperate determination.

"BZ!" She shouted over the rising noise as the mobs met, caught his searching gaze and felt it embrace her.

Gundhalinu elbowed aside a final Summer, making himself a s.p.a.ce to draw his weapon and let the crowd see it clearly. "Hold it! j, Hold it!" He jerked the thin-mouthed woman holding the spined collar half around and wrenched it out of her startled hands. He ' hurled it over the edge into the Pit. "That's gone far enough, Winter. i Get back a" clear away, all of you!"

"What right have you got to interfere with us, foreigner? This is Winter business, Whiter lawa""

"That's for d.a.m.n sure," BZ muttered, his eyes coming back to Moon even as he cleared a path for her through the human wall. "This woman's under arrest; she's mine." Moon caught the wink of an eye in it, and smiled in spite of herself.

"That's the Queen, Inspector Gundhalinu!" one of the Summers said angrily. "And she's ours. She's not going anywhere until the Change." The words were as deadly as frost.

"She isn't Arienrhod. She's a Summer, a sibyl! Look at her throat." BZ waved a hand. "If you want Arienrhod, you'll have to cross thata"" Following his own gesture, he looked out across the windless hall for the first time, and his face turned blank. "Whata"?"

"What business do you have with our Queen, fish farmers?" The jewel-turba ned woman who had lost control when she lost the sibyl collar tried to take it back again. "You're not welcome in this palace while it still belongs to Winter."

"Your Queen has business with us!" a Summer shouted. "She's trying to kill us all, and we've come to make sure she doesn't get away with it. And to make sure she goes down to the Lady for the third time."

Moon listened without moving, overwhelmed with aching, irrelevant joy at hearing a voice speak with a Summer burr. "I'm Moon Dawntreader Summera"" Her voice was in rags. "The Queen is inside. Cross the bridge now! As long as I stand on it you'll be safe." She waved them forward, felt BZ's astounded eyes on her.

The mob came more confidently as they saw her trefoil and put their trust in it. Her own belief wavered as the first of them joined her on the bridge; but the air lay resting, and the Summer smiled briefly and bent his head as he pa.s.sed. One by one the others followed, treading nervously but driven by the furious need to reach their goal. Moon waited until the last Summer had stepped safely onto the ledge at the far side of the hall before she took the final steps onto solid ground. The Winters backed away, sullenly watching her and Gundhalinu. She turned as she reached his side, hearing a tremulous sigh behind her. She saw the storm walls open like languorous whig spreading, felt the chill winds rise again, the curtains shudder into life. The Pit groaned and stirred, reeking of the sea.

"G.o.ds! Father of all my grandfathers," BZ whispered. "It was you, holding back the wind. How a" how did you do it?" He kept distance between them.

"I can't tell you," hugging herself. That it's Carbuncle. I can never tell anyone; never. "I don't even know." Must never let anyone know. She followed the Pit down in her mind, down, down to the sea and below it, into the timeless bedrock of the planet itself, where the ultimate receptacle of human wisdom lay in secret omniscience. "Take me away from here, BZ. This is no place for a sibyl; the Winters are right. It's too dangerous." She felt the hostile, disbelieving stares of the n.o.bles crawl over her.

BZ led her from the Hall of the Winds with regulation propriety, back down the corridor past the scenes of Winter's reign. No one followed them. BZ still kept a small distance between them as they walked. Shaking out her mind, she picked through the dazzling fragments of her last hours for the terrible secret that had been uppermost until she stepped out onto the bridge: "What were they doing here, the Summers? Did they tell you what Arienrhoda"" who almost killed me; she was suddenly dizzy, "what she had done?"

He shook his head, his concentration fixed on the motion of his feet. "I couldn't make anything of it; they were in too much of a hurry. I don't think they even knew. All a mob needs is a crazy rumor."

"It's not a rumor. It's true. And they won't stop it by holding her prisoner. She's hired off worlders to start a plague." Moon threw the words out at him heedlessly.

"What?" He stopped, stopping her. "How do you know a" ?" breaking off as the possibilities registered.

"Sparks told me."

"Sparks." He looked down again, nodding to himself. "So you found him, then. And it a" you and he, still..."

"Yes." Her hands locked in front of her.

"I see. Well." He sagged against the wall, kept his face averted for a long moment, with his coughing as an excuse. She realized that his reluctance to touch her wasn't all because of what he had seen in the Hall of the Winds. "He didn't come out with you."