The Snow Queen (78 page)

Moon moved
her head slightly, a twinge of jealousy in it, but granting her clone-mother’s
last request. Arienrhod followed her glance to find Sparks standing among the
honored Summers, by the empty place that was the Summer Queen’s own in the
stands. But he stood with his eyes closed against the parting moment; or
against the chance that she might look up and see him one last time ....
He cares ... he does care
. She looked
back again at Moon.
They both do
. In
that moment infinitely surprised, eternally confounded, by life’s
imperviousness to reason or justice.

Herne’s
smoldering
stare lay waiting for her when she turned her head back again—knowing whom her
thoughts belonged to in this final moment.

“Forever
... Herne.”

He shook
his head once. “We’re forever. This is. Death is. Life’s what doesn’t last.”

“We live
while someone remembers us. And they’ll never forget me now—” Because her
reincarnation already stood in her place. She had no will left to let her look
back at Moon once more, or at Sparks.
Never
look back.

Moon raised
her hands to the Sea, crying like a gull into the storm of the crowd’s
anticipation. “Lady Sea, Mother of us all, accept our gifts and return them
ninefold, accept our sins and bring us renewal, accept the soul of Winter and
let it be—reborn.” She faltered imperceptibly. “Let spring come to Summer!”

Arienrhod
felt the cart lurch as the Summers pushed it forward, watched the oily water
surface draw near. The tide was at full, and it lay below the pier’s edge like
a distorted mirror.
Let it happen. It was
not in vain.
The howls and moans of the crowd were a hymn to the future,
praising her memory. The cart began to tilt under her; she leaned forward,
looking for her reflection as it
slipped ...

Moon saw
the cart strike the water, plunge and reemerge; heard it, felt its impact
vibrate in her bones. The crowd’s roaring went on and on, hideously. The boat
form drifted away from the dock, lowering in the water, swinging slowly until
she could see Starbuck’s hidden face and the face of the Snow Queen, Arienrhod
... herself: serene with drug stupor, bound to her impotent lover in a
grotesque parody of an embrace. The boat began to spiral more rapidly as it
filled with water. Moon tried to shut her eyes, but they would not close
against the hypnotic final movement of the death dance on the water. She
remembered her own ordeal by sea, remembered all that had brought her to this
place, again, sacrifice upon sacrifice. And still she could not look away The boat
lurched suddenly, as the faces revolved again toward the crowd, and in the
blink of an eye it was gone. Moon blinked again and again, but it did not
reappear. The sea surface lay in unperturbed undulation, with only a telltale
litter of boughs to mark Her acceptance of Her peoples’ offering. The crowd’s
roaring was like a storm, and the underworld trembled. Moon watched the lazy
motion of the swells, standing as fluid and unresponsive as the Sea Herself.

One of the
Summers came forward at last, touched her arm hesitantly. Moon shuddered under
the touch, and breathed again. “Lady?” He bowed as Moon turned at last. The
Summers acknowledged their Queen’s role as the Sea Mother incarnate, and did
not use the artificial off world form of royal address. “The unmasking—”

“I know.”
She nodded, looking back over her shoulder at the sea even as she spoke.
Fair voyage, safe haven
.
She moved away from the edge of the dock, into the crowd’s eye once more.
“Lady” ... I am the Queen.

“The Queen
... the Queen ... the Queen is dead. Long live the Queen!” The shouts of the
Summers echoed inside her, a mockery.

She placed
her hands on her mask, hands that felt damp and chill like the wind through the
underworld. “My people—” She felt her body resist the motion of exposing her
face again; suddenly, disconcertingly aware of the danger she had only glimpsed
in the eyes of the Summers who stood here on the pier around her. Now her
resemblance to Arienrhod would be obvious to everyone—and especially to the off
worlders. If they even suspected the truth ... She shook her head, shaking the
rest of the words loose that she must say to the waiting crowd: “Winter is
past, Summer has come at last. The Lady has taken our offering, and will return
it ninefold. The life that was is dead—let it be cast away, like a battered
mask, an outgrown shell. Rejoice now, and make a new beginning!” She lifted the
mask from her head.

All of the
crowd together—Winters, Summers, even off worlders-became one in this one
moment. Their shouts of joy and the rustle of countless masks being torn from
countless heads crescendoed, baring faces freed for that moment from all past
sorrows, sins, and fears. Their celebration and adulation lifted her up onto
its shoulders, swept into her heart.
This
world will be free!

But as she
spoke the words, holding her mask high, the crowd’s voice changed; the
cavernous underworld reverberated with the cries of a people who saw a thing
beyond their understanding, and could not deny it .... “Arienrhod—Arienrhod!”
Moon felt the Summers’ superstition curdle, felt the disbelief spreading like
paranoia through the crowd, imagined it echoing through the entire city.
Knowing that she must stop it now—stop it before she lost everything without
ever having had it. How ... how do I stop them? like a prayer, pressing her
hand to the sign at her throat. The sibyl sign ...

“People of
Tiamat, children of the Sea!” She reached up, pulling at the neck of her
clothing, to bare the trefoil tattoo. “I am a sibyl! See my sign—I serve the
Lady faithfully and truthfully. My name is Moon Dawntreader Summer, and I will
do the same as your Queen. The keeper of all wisdom speaks through me, but only
to you. Ask and I shall answer, and I will never speak falsely.”

A hush
fell, went on falling as the echoes died; all eyes throughout the city were on
her throat, or on its image on some screen. The Winters were speechless with
uncertainty, the Summers were speechless with reverence, at the undeniable
proof of their Queen’s transmutation, the symbol of her rebirth and holy
status. And from the corner of her eye Moon saw the strange look that passed
over the faces of the off worlder officials in the viewing stands, to see that
sign, below that face ...

As she went
on watching, her breath aching in her chest, she saw the look separating again
into a natural spectrum of expressions: horrified amusement, fascination,
disgust at the spectacle they had all just witnessed ... but still a lingering
unease and uncertainty. Nowhere among them did she see any guilt, any respect,
any real understanding of what they had seen.
Next time—next time whoever stands here will
see those things.

Letting her
gaze go on, she followed it, walking back toward her own place in the stands
among the Summer elders. Sparks stood waiting in the place reserved for her
consort; his flaming hair was a beacon to sign her place ... his face was
tight, like a drawn bow. She took her place silently beside him, looked away
from the crowd again to the spot where branches drifted on the sea. The crowd
still waited, murmuring and uncertain.

“They
expect a few words from you, Lady.” One of the Goodventures who had been her
ceremonial guides leaned toward her. She sensed a fog of unease among the
Summers, too.

She nodded,
wondering again, as she had wondered all through the mind-numbing song and
celebration of the Mask Night, what the words would be that could make her
people listen: How could one transform so many, and still keep their trust? But
somehow, somewhere, there had to be the words ...

The words
came to her suddenly, not from the strange guardian of her mind, but from the
strength of her own feeling. “People of Tiamat, the Lady has blessed me once,
by giving me someone to share my life with me.” She looked at Sparks beside
her; her hand touched his, hanging cold and strengthless at his side. “She has
blessed me twice, by making me a sibyl, and three times, by making me a Queen.
Since yesterday I have thought a great deal about my destiny, and this world’s,
which all of us will share. I’ve prayed that She will show me the way to do Her
will and be Her living symbol. And She has answered me.”
In a way that I never dreamed
She
could
.
Moon glanced toward the sea, and the secret that lay beneath the dark waters.

“I know
there is a reason why She has shown herself to you as a sibyl, through me. I
don’t know yet the full pattern of the future, but I know that to create it
fully I must have help—help from all of you, and especially from other sibyls.
Summer has come to Carbuncle, and this city is no longer closed to sibyls—more
than anyone, more than anyone can know, sibyls belong here! Islanders, when you
go back to your homes, ask your sibyls to make the journey here if they can—not
to stay, but to come to me and learn their part in the future’s design.”

She paused,
hearing the crowd’s voice whisper, trying to judge whether it was accepting her
words, and her. She stole glances at the Summers in the stands around her,
relieved to find a benign surprise looking back at her. The Winters would
resent it, she knew instinctively, remembering their fear and scorn firsthand.
She had to give them something of their own, a part in the future. She glanced
again at the waiting off worlders knowing the risk she took in this offering,
the delicate balance she had to maintain while they still walked this world.

“If I—if I
seem to stray out of tradition’s shallows as Summer’s Queen, and into uncharted
depths, have faith in me. Try to remember that I am the Lady’s chosen, and that
I only follow Her will,” secure in the knowledge that she told the truth. “She
is my navigator, and
She
charts my course by strange
stars,”
stranger stars than the ones that
lie above us
. She glanced at the off worlders again. “My first command as
your new Queen—” the potential of power sang in her head, potential energy, “is
that all the off world possessions of the Winters will not be thrown into the
sea. Hear me!” before the crowd could drown her out. “Things made by the off
worlders offend the waters, they choke the sea with filth. Three things from
each Winter are all She demands—and the Winters will choose what offerings they
make. Time ... time will take care of the rest!” She braced herself against the
rise of Summer outrage.

But there
was only a rippling water of dismay, here and there a shining drop of laughter
or applause from an astonished Winter. Moon took a deep breath, hardly daring
to believe—
They
trust me! They listen; they’ll do whatever
I say
... realizing at last what Arienrhod had known—and how easily power,
like fire, could break its bonds and destroy what it had been guardian to. Her
hands tightened over the rail. “Thank you, my people.” She bowed her head to
them.

The Summers
in the stands shifted into deferential resignation around her; but Sparks
watched her like a cat, with suspicion and unease, as he sensed her sense of
power.

She looked
away quickly, struggling to keep her expression even as she saw the Prime
Minister himself begin to descend opposite them, to start the final, official
acknowledgement of her rule, to pay the hypocritical homage of one figurehead
ruler to another. Watching him descend, she saw First Secretary Sirius among
the Assembly members, caught his own eyes on her with a dubious foreboding. She
nudged Sparks, led his gaze to his father’s; saw him struggle to meet his
father’s sudden smile. Sparks looked down again silently at his grandfather, as
the Prime Minister began his salutation.

The
speeches of the Prime Minister, the Chief Justice of Tiamat, half a dozen other
dignitaries whose function she had never even heard of, were brief and
patronizing. She stood patiently through them all, shielded from their
arrogance by her secret knowledge, but seeing in each face suspicion and
mistrust stirred by her own speech to her people. The Chief Justice looked at
her too long and too piercingly; but he only mouthed congratulations like the
rest, praised the traditional and ritual, her peoples’ smooth backsliding into
ignorance. He urged her not to stray from tradition’s path too strongly, to
beware the consequences. She smiled at him.

As he left
his place before her, the last of her tribute-bringers approached, and she saw
that it was the Commander of Police. As PalaThion passed the Chief Justice, she
glimpsed a silent exchange between them, saw the dullness of PalaThion’s eyes
as she came on.

“Your
Majesty.” PalaThion saluted with formal precision, and the dullness sharpened
and brightened as she took in Moon’s actual presence above her at the
red-draped rail. “I congratulate you.” Incongruity pricked every word.

Moon let
her smile widen. “Thank you, Commander. I think I’m as surprised to find myself
here as you are.” She felt suddenly awkward, as though she were speaking
through someone else’s mouth.

“I doubt
that very much, Your Majesty. But who knows ... ?” PalaThion shrugged
imperceptibly. She raised her voice, “The recognition of your position as the
Summer Queen ends my duties here, Your Majesty, and all police responsibility
for what happens on Tiamat. And all official rule by the Hegemony for a hundred
years, until we return again at the next Change. Keeping order will be your
responsibility from now on.”