The Snow Queen (62 page)

She took
another step, and another, until she came shivering to the brink of the Pit.
The sudden damp updraft rising out of the shaft caught her by surprise, butting
her back on the platform. And with it came the smell of the sea, pungently
sweet-sour, fish and salt and moldering pilings. Moon cried out in amazement,
her voice swallowed by the wind. “Lady!” The breath of the Sea blew her back
again, stumbling over her unaccustomed skirts; she caught her balance,
instinctively, a sailor on a pitching deck ... only a sailor, not a Queen.

She lifted
her head, saw the shuddering ghostly curtains not as clouds now, capricious and
uncontrollable, but as flapping sails un tended under the sea wind. And in her
hand, in this palm-sized box, were rudder and line to set a course across this
well of the Sea. The updrafts beat her back again, in final warning.

“I
will
go.” She touched the first button,
heard the first tone in the sequence, felt the air grow quiet around her. And
with the skill of a hundred generations before her, a people who had dared the
sea and the stars before that, she stepped out onto the rimless span and began
to walk. Every third step she sounded a new note, being sure each step was
neither too short nor too long, holding her concentration locked into the
sequence, the pattern, the rhythm.

And as she
passed over the center of the bridge, the greenish glow intensified and she felt
a nameless presence, a soundless voice, an echo from a distant place and time
... the song the sibyl cave had sung to her. She moved more slowly, until she
could not move at all; mesmerized by its inhuman beauty, imprisoned in the
moment. Her fingers relaxed on the control box, its shrill intruding tone grew
thin and faded .... A sudden clout of wind knocked her to her knees, the sound
of her own scream shattered the prism of spell and set her free. She scrambled
up again, recapturing the control note with frantic hands. She hurried on,
reckless with panic, feeling the call still tend riling through her mind, but
even fainter.

She reached
the far rim, stood sobbing for breath on solid ground, dazed and
uncomprehending. This wasn’t a choosing-place! How could it know her? ... She
remembered dimly that somewhere in this city Danaquil Lu had been called by the
sibyl machine. Was this the same well of the Sea that had sung to him? She
shook out of her cloak, backing away from its rim in silence; turned away from
the sight of the abyss, and left the Hall.

She chose
another corridor, tracing the arteries of the palace diagram Herne had drawn on
paper and graved into her memory. She began to hear music again—mortal music
this time, the sounds of a graceful Kharemoughi art song played by a string
quintet. She saw in her mind’s eye Aspundh’s gardens, the shimmering splendor
of the aurora dancing into dawn across a velvet sky. She reached the wide,
carpeted stairway leading to the vast hall that was half the palace’s second
story; met the music drifting sedately down it, and two startled servants who
bowed their heads and hurried on past her.

She hurried
on, too, climbing past the landing that gave entrance to the grand hall, where
tonight the Queen was holding a reception for the Prime Minister and the
Assembly members. She went on to the third level, where Herne had told her
Starbuck’s chambers were, knowing that he would probably still be in the
crowded hall below, but knowing that she did not dare enter the place where
Arienrhod herself was the center of attention.

But as she
left the stairway, she heard the music beckon unexpectedly, found a tiny,
half-hidden alcove overlooking the hall below. She wondered whether it was a
watchman’s perch—but there was no one watching from it now. She tiptoed forward
to the railing, looked down out of the shadows, her skin crawling with the
certainty that all eyes would be on her like searchlights.

But as the
hall opened out under her gaze she forgot herself, no more than an insect on
the wall to the mass of royal guests below: Pale Winter nobles and dark-skinned
Kharemoughis mingled freely, the eye-dazzling spectrum of their dress
diminishing the contrast of their origins. They feasted desultorily at buffet
tables spread with the last of Winter’s culinary art, the eclectic delights of
native and imported cuisines. Moon swallowed, her mouth suddenly full of
saliva, remembering the one inadequate meal she had eaten in the casino, hours
ago. Mirror-faceted balls suspended in the air above her eye level turned
silently, perpetually, sending a snowfall of fractured light down over the
crowd.

Moon let
her eyes rove, noticing the security force of off world police stationed
unobtrusively around the perimeters of the hall. She wondered whether the
Police Commander was here tonight, thought a curse at her for what the woman’s
untempered justice had done to BZ; what it would have done to her own life, and
Sparks
’s. Once
she thought she glimpsed First Secretary Sirus, but lost the face again as a
cluster of guests gathered for a toast.

But nowhere
in the vast hall could see a woman who looked like a Queen ... or one who
looked like her. And nowhere a man in black who masked his face like an
executioner ... or a red-haired boy whose face she would know anywhere, no
matter how it had changed. Wasn’t he here, then? Had he left the hall already;
would she find him in his chambers?

She moved
back from the balustrade, her heart beating like a caged bird’s wings. / will
find you. I will’ So there you are. Can’t you resist spying on your guests,
even to night?” A man’s voice directly behind her, slurred and full of teasing
hostility.

Moon froze,
feeling her face turn crimson with betraying guilt. She pulled her mouth into a
line, clenched her teeth to hold it there, hoping her blush would seem to be
anger. She turned, picking up her skirts, holding her head high. “How dare you
speak to—” Her gown slipped through senseless fingers. “Sparks?” She swayed.

“Who else?”
He shrugged, and hiccupped. “Your faithful shadow of a man,” bowing
precariously.

“Sparks.”
She brought her hands up, locked them together to still them, to keep from
reaching out. “It’s me.”

He frowned,
like someone hearing a tasteless joke. “I hope to hell so, Arienrhod; or I’m
not drunk enough to save me from real-time nightmares ...” He peered at her,
bleary eyed, rubbing his arms through his slitted shirtsleeves.

“Not
Arienrhod.” She struggled to pry words out of her dust-dry mouth. “Moon. It’s Moon,
Sparkle—” She touched him at last, felt the contact climb her arm like a shock.

He wrenched
free, as if the contract burned him. “Damn you, Arienrhod! Leave me alone. It
isn’t funny; it never was.” He turned away down the hall.

“Sparks!”
She followed him into the light, struggling with the clasp of her necklace.
“Look at me!” It came undone, she caught it in her hands. “Look at me.”

He swung
around truculently; she raised her hand to touch her throat, lifted her head
higher. He came back to her, squinting—she saw all the color go out of his
flushed face at once. “No! Gods, no . she’s dead. You’re
dead
. I killed you.” He pointed at her, accusing himself.

“No,
Sparks
. I’m alive.” She
seized his hand in both of hers this time, pulled it to her against his
resistance, ran it along her shoulder. “I’m alive! Touch me, believe me ...
You’ve never hurt me.”
Or if you have, I
can’t remember now.

His muscles
stopped fighting her grip; his hand closed slowly over her shoulder, slid down
her sleeve to her wrist. His head fell forward. “Oh, my thousand gods ... why
did you come here, Moon? Why?” fiercely, in anguish.

“To find
you. Because you needed me.
Because I need you ...because I
love you.
Oh, I love you ...” She let her arms go around him, buried her
face against his chest.

“Don’t
touch me!” He pried at her arms, pushed her roughly back. “Don’t touch me.”

Moon
stumbled, shook her head. “Sparks, I ...” She rubbed her face, felt the pain of
his bruise stir dimly in her cheek. “Because I’m a sibyl? But that doesn’t
matter! Sparks, I’ve been off world since then; I learned the truth about
sibyls. I won’t contaminate you. You don’t have to be afraid to touch me. We
can be together the way we always were.”

He stared
at her. “The way we were?” flatly, disbelievingly. “Just two simple Summer
folk, stinking of fish, with our nets drying in the sun?” She nodded,
faltering, feeling her neck resist the lying motion. “And I don’t have to be
afraid of you contaminating me.” A shake, sincere. “Well, what about my
contaminating you?” He struck his chest with his open hand, forcing her to see
him as he demanded: the shirt of flame-shaded satin tatters showing ribbons of
flesh between ribbons of cloth; the heavy jewelry that hung like golden chains
of bondage from his neck and wrists; the skintight breeches that left nothing
to her imagination.

“You’re ...
you’re even more beautiful than I remembered.” She told the truth; felt a
sudden rush of desire, was frightened by it.

He put his
hand up, covering his eyes. “Don’t you know? Why won’t you understand, damn it!
That was me you saw on that beach, killing the mers! I’m Starbuck—don’t you
know what that means; what that makes me?”

“I know,”
catching at the fragments of her breaking voice.
A
murderer .
a
liar
... a stranger
. “I know what it means, Sparks, but I don’t care.” Because
the price she had paid for this moment was too high a price for ruins and
ashes. “Can’t you see that? It doesn’t matter to me what you’ve seen, or done,
or been—now that I’ve found you it doesn’t matter to me any more.”
There is no time, or death, or past; unless
I let them come between us.

“It doesn’t
matter? You don’t care if I’ve been another woman’s lover for five years? You
don’t care how many of the Lady’s sacred mers I’ve butchered just so I can stay
young with her forever? You won’t
care,
when you find
out where I went today with the take from our last Hunt, or what’s going to
happen to your fish-stinking kin and mine in a few more hours because of it?”
He grabbed her by the wrist, twisting her arm. “It still doesn’t matter that
I’m Starbuck?”

She pulled
back, half in revulsion, half in anger, unable to answer or even struggle as he
began to lead her down the hall.

He reached
a door, hit the lock with his palm and kicked it open, dragging her after him
into a room. Light flared, hurting her eyes, as he shut the door again behind
her, and sealed them in with his fingerprints. Moon found her own reflection
gaping at her in every wall. She looked up at the ceiling to find herself
looking down; looked down again too quickly, and staggered sideways into
Sparks’s waiting arms. He smiled at her, but it was no smile she had ever seen
on his face, and it turned her cold inside. “Sparks ... what is this place?”

“What do
you think it is, Cuz?” He twisted her in his arms until she saw the wide bed in
the center of the room. His arms locked around her as she began to squirm; his
hand groped her breast. “It’s been a long time for you, hasn’t it, sweeting? I
could tell when you looked at me out there. So you’ve come all this way to be
Starbuck’s lover, huh? Well, any way you like it, honey—” He jerked open his
shirt front, she saw scars like thin white worms along his ribs. “I can oblige
you.”

“Oh, Lady,
no—” Her hand covered his side, shutting them away from her eyes.

“No? Then
we’ll make it fast and uncomplicated, the way Summer girls are used to it.” He
hauled her to the bed and threw her down across it, pinning her there with his
body. She kept her mouth i clamped tight against his rough kisses, bit back her
cry as his hand squeezed a breast hard enough for pain. “This shouldn’t take
long.” He fumbled with his pants, his eyes never leaving her face.

“Sparks,
don’t do this!” She worked a hand free, stroked his face with desperate
gentleness. “You don’t want it to happen, and I don’t—”

“Then why
don’t you fight back, damn it?” He shook her, with a kind of wildness in it.
“Contaminate me, sibyl! Prove you’re something I can never be. Kick me, bite
me, make me bleed—make me crazy.”

“I don’t
want to hurt you.” Staring up at her own face in the ceiling,
Sparks
’s
fiery hair, his body obliterating hers, she saw only the image of Taryd Roh’s
face going slack and mindless, the image of
Sparks
’s the same way ...
too easy, too easy!
She sucked in a
harsh breath. “I can! Believe me, I can do it! I can make you mad. But I don’t
want to hurt you.” She shut her eyes, turned her face away, feeling the weight
of his breathing body press the air out of her lungs. “She’s hurt you enough,
because of me.”

His eyes
were a wall. “Don’t waste your pity on me, sibyl, because you won’t get any
back.” He gripped her jaw with his hand, turned her face to him. “You’re with
Starbuck—you wanted Starbuck, and there’s nothing lower on this world than he
is.” But it was his gaze that broke under hers this time; and she realized
suddenly that even it he had wanted to go on with it, his body had refused him.

“I wanted
Sparks! And I’ve found him. There’s no crown of spines on you, no black hood,
no blood on your hands. You aren’t Starbuck! Throw them away, Sparks—you don’t
have to wear them any more.”