The Snow Queen Part 23

Jerusha stood silently beside Miroe on the lifeless beach, listened to the far, high skreeling of the displaced scavenger birds. Her eyes swept the death-littered field of stones restlessly, not wanting to settle anywhere, register any detail of the scene, but unable to look back at Miroe ashen-faced beside her. Unable to speak a word or even touch him, ashamed to intrude further on a grief past comprehending. This was the Hunt, the mer sacrifice a" this stinking abattoir on the barren sh.o.r.e. This was the thing she had resented in principle, without ever trying to approach its reality. But this man had hated the reality.

Miroe moved away from the patrol craft began a path through the mutilated corpses of the mers, inspecting each hide-stripped, b.l.o.o.d.y form with m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic thoroughness. Jerusha followed him, keeping her distance; felt her jaws tightening until she wondered whether she would ever be able to open her mouth again. She saw him stop and kneel down by one of the bodies. Moving closer, she saw that it was not a mer. And not human. "A a" a dead Hound?"

"A dead friend." He picked the dillyp's limp body up like a sleeping child, she saw the dark stain that it left behind on the beach. She watched uncomprehendingly as he carried the body to the edge of the water, entered it without hesitation, wading further and further out until the frigid sea lapped his chest. And then he let the exile go quietly home.

As he came out of the water again Jerusha took off her coat and threw it around his shoulders. He nodded absently; she almost thought that the cold did not reach him. She remembered suddenly that one of the tech runners five years ago had been a dillyp.

"She must be dead, too." His voice was like steel. She realized that there was no sign of Moon Dawntreader. "Starbuck, the Hounds, did this." He gestured; the word was a curse. "The last Hunt. On my land." His hands coiled into fists. "And leaving them like this, mutilating them, this a" flaunting. Why?"

"Arienrhod ordered it." The simple statement seared her like a beam of light, as she saw the only conceivable reason that Arienrhod might have for las.h.i.+ng out at an off worlder a total stranger. Because of me? No, no ... not because of me!

Miroe turned as though her guilt shone out like a beacon. "This is a crime against a citizen of the Hegemony, on his granted land." His voice accused her without needing to say the words. "You've seen it with your own eyes, you have the jurisdiction. Do you have the control to charge Starbuck with murder a" Commander?"

She stiffened. "I don't know. I don't know any more, Miroe ..." touching the badges on her coat collar. She took a deep breath. "But I swear to you, before your G.o.ds and mine, that I will do anything in my power to make it happen." (seeing the ruined bodies) "She destroys everything she touches, G.o.dd.a.m.n hera"" (BZ's life gone up in a ball of flame) "a"and I'll make her pay, if I have to die to do it! She won't get away with ita"" (LiouxSked's life ruined) "a"she thinks she's untouchable, she thinks she'll be Queen forever; but she won't get away with ita"" (her own life ruined) "a"if I have to drown her myself!"

"I believe you, Jerusha," Miroe said, unsmiling; she heard the cold accusation fade from his voice. "But there isn't much time."

"I know." She looked away, deliberately imprinting her mind with the gaping ruin of a creature whose only crime was life. "I've never seen a mera"" She pressed her lips together.

"You haven't seen one here, either." His voice was unsteady.

"Not those mounds of dead flesh a" those are nothing at all. You haven't seen the mers until you've seen them dance on the water, or heard their song... You haven't understood the real crime until you know the truth about what they are. They're not just animals, Jerusha."

"What?" She turned back. "What are you saying?" No, don't tell me this; I don't want to know.

"They're intelligent beings. There weren't two murders on this beach today, there were half a hundred. And over the last millenniuma""

She swayed, shaken by the wind. "No ... Miroe, they're not. They can't be!"

"They're a synthetic life form; the Old Empire gave them intelligence as well as immortality. Moon Dawntreader told me the truth about them."

"But why? Why would they be intelligent? And how could the Hedge not know ... ?" Her voice faded.

"I don't know why. But I know the Hegemony has to have known the truth, for a millennium. I told Moon when I heard it that I didn't know whether to laugh or cry." Muscles twitched in his face. "I do now." He turned his back on her.

Jerusha stood without words, without motion, waiting for the brittle bowl of the sky to crack open and fall, waiting for the weight of injustice to crush this eggsh.e.l.l world of lies and bring it cras.h.i.+ng down on her... But there was no change in the sea, in the air, no difference in the profile of the cliffs or the suffocating awareness of death, waste, mourning. "Miroe ... come back to the patroller. You'll a" you'll catch your death."

He nodded. "Yes. The survivors will return, in time. I have to leave them to a" to their own. I can't help them, I can't help my own, any more." He looked toward the small outrigger beached at the water's edge, its sail flapping mournfully. "She gave me the most important gift anyone could have given me, Jerusha: the truth... She said she was told to come back here; shed had a sibyl's sending. I don't understand, I can't believe it was meant to end like this for her. What does it all mean?"

"I don't know. Nothing." Jerusha shook her head. "Maybe everything we do is meaningless. But we have to try, don't we? We have to go on looking for justice ... and settling for revenge." She started back toward the patrol craft her arms wrapped around her. As they pa.s.sed the abandoned outrigger it occurred to her that Arienrhod's Hounds had destroyed Arienrhod's clone child ... and Arienrhod would never know it.

Chapter 32.

"I was worried about you when they reported the storm."

"It was nothing. We just rode it out," listlessly.

Soft laughter. "How many of my Starbucks could say that without lying?"

Sparks did not answer, lying motionless on the bed, watching himself in the mirrors, watching her watch him watch, into infinity. Arienrhod lay beside him; the curving lines of her body were the folds of a continent rising from the sea, cloaked in the snow fields of her hair. Strands of thread-fine silver chain spilled down from her waist like a river of light. She ma.s.saged the fragrant oil into his skin with slow, exploratory fingers; but his body did not respond. Would not respond, to her most intimate touch, her most knowing suggestions. Like a corpse ... G.o.ds, help me, I'm buried alive.

Arienrhod's hand slipped from his thigh as his muscles hardened, rigor mortis. She rolled onto her stomach, resting across his chest as she looked down at him with concern in her agate-colored eyes. The wrong eyes a" as he saw the shadows that lay just below the surface, the depths of wisdom without mercy ... the eyes of a changeling who had made him a prisoner locked in his own mind. He closed his own eyes. But I did it all for you, Arienrhod.

"Are you so tired, then, after all?" She lifted the off worlder medal from his chest, turning it idly between her fingers; he heard the undercurrent of cool resentment below the shallows of her solicitude. "Or so bored? Shall I make it a threesome a" ?"

"No." He put his arms around her and pulled her down on him, filling his hands with the silken cloth of her hair, kissing her lips, her eyes, the hollow of her throat, and feeling nothing. Nothing.

The ghost-girl who had come to him out of the sea would lie between them whenever they lay together from now on, and he would see her eyes a" the right eyes, the only eyes. They would accuse him, weeping tears of blood, forever... "Arienrhod," despairingly. "d.a.m.n it, you know I love you! You know you're everything to me, everything she ever was, and morea"" But the word was a moan. His hands fell away from her.

Arienrhod turned rigid on top of him. "She?" ... What are you talking about, my love? Our Moon?" Her voice was soft and clouded-over. "Does she still come back to haunt you, after so long? She's gone. We lost her a long time ago; you have to put her out of your mind." She stroked his temples with her fingers, in slow circling motions.

"By all the G.o.ds, I thought I had!" He rolled his head from side to side, trying to look away from his own reflection, but it followed him inexorably.

"Then why? Why think about her now? Are you afraid of the Change coming? I promised you it would never come."

"I don't care about that." About killing my people ... then I don't care about anything at all. He s.h.i.+fted her carefully off of him, rolled over onto his stomach and propped his head in his hands. She sat up beside him, the girdle of silver threads whispering over her skin.

"Then what a" ?" a wildness in it. Her hands closed over his shoulders. "You're mine, Starbuck; you're all that I love in this world. I won't share you with a Summer dream. I won't lose you to a ghost even my own."

"She wasn't a ghost! She was real." He bit down on his fist.

Arienrhod's fingernails bit his flesh in turn. "Who?" knowing who.

"Moon." Something shook him, close to a sob. "Moon. Moon, Moon! She was there, at the Hunt; she came out of the sea with the mers!"

"A dream." She frowned.

"No dream, Arienrhod!" He threw himself onto his back, feeling her nails rake him. "I touched her, I saw the sign on her throat-and the blood. I touched her blood ... she cursed me." Death to kill a sibyl... death to love a sibyl...

"You fool!" But not for his foolhardiness. "Why didn't you tell me about this immediately?"

He shook his head. "I couldn't. Ia""

She slapped him; he fell back on the pillows hi disbelief. "Where is she? What happened to her?"

He rubbed his hand across his mouth. "The Hounds a" would have killed her. I stopped them. I a" I left her there on the beach."

"Why?" A world of loss in one whispered word.

"Because she would have recognized me." He tore the words out by the roots. "She would have known ... she would have seen what I am!" His reflection pinwheeled him, around and around and around.

"So you're ashamed to be my lover, and the most powerful man on this planet?" She tossed back her hair.

"Yes," ashamed to look at her, too, as he said it. "When I was with her, I was ashamed."

"But you left her alone on the sh.o.r.e with a blizzard coming, and you're not ashamed of that." Arienrhod wrapped herself in her arms, s.h.i.+vered as though it was herself he had abandoned.

"d.a.m.n it, I didn't know about the storm, there wasn't any report!" You only needed to look up at the sky to know-But he had shut himself into his cabin to hide his trembling loss of control from the Hounds; and he had come out again only when the storm was already sweeping down on them, when it was too late to think of anything but their own survival. And afterward a" it was too late for anything at all. He looked up angrily into Arienrhod's anger. "I don't understand you! Why does she matter so much to you? Even if she is your kinswoman, you were never close to her. Not like I was..."

"No one in this world is closer to her than I am." Arienrhod leaned toward him. "Haven't you realized that? Haven't you seen by now a" I am Moon."

"No." He pulled away from her; she caught the chain of his medal and held him tethered.

"Moon is my clone! I had her raised as a Summer to take my place as Queen. We're identical in every way a" every way." She took his hands and ran them down along her body. "And we both love you, above all others."

"It isn't possible ..." He touched her face and knew that it was. They were night and day, iron and air, gall and honey... Then why do I love you both? He bowed his head. Because I do love you both; G.o.ds help me! "Anything is possible. Even that she's come back to me." Arienrhod looked through him, through time. "But do I still need her ... I do I still want her?" Her focus narrowed to him again. "And do you, my love?"

He sagged against her; felt her arms circle him, her hands stroke I him lovingly, possessively. "No." No more than I ever wanted her, 9 only her. "Only you, Arienrhod. You made me everything I am. You're all I need." And you're all I deserve.

Chapter 33.

"Come on, sibyl! Come meet my other pets." Blodwed's sharp, high voice p.r.i.c.ked Moon like a goad, started her through the crowd of gawkers gathered at the entrance of the cavern. They had all come forward to stare at her, pointing and muttering, calling out vulgar questions that she ignored with all the restraint left in her dazed body: a prize fish, dangling on the pier. But none of the nomads would get close enough to touch her, and they parted before her stumbling progress like gra.s.ses before the wind. Even Blodwed had never actually touched her; but Moon recognized the stunner hanging from the girl's belt.

And even if she dared to break free from her captors, there was nowhere to go. They had traveled for two days on snow skimmers climbing into the icebound highlands of the interior, to get to this isolated nomads' camp. She had no strength left to carry her alone through the Winter wilderness ... barely the strength to carry her on across the immense floor of the rock shelter. Dogs barked and bayed at her pa.s.sing, chained among the bright-colored synthetic tents, the patterned gray-and-brown ones made from hides a" the tents dotted the cavern like grotesque fungal growths. Dozens of perpetual-radiance heaters and lanterns filled the looming s.p.a.ce with warmth and light, as the voices of the booty-haggling kinsmen behind her filled and refilled it with echoing noise. Moon slowed, holding out her mittened hands to one of the heaters as she pa.s.sed. But Blodwed's impatience radiated like heat a" "Come on, hurry up!" a" and she moved on, too numb with exhaustion and cold to protest.

Blodwed herded her into a narrow, down sloping pa.s.sage half in shadows at the rear of the cave; she saw light dimly, on ahead. A miasma of strange smells p.r.i.c.kled like smoke inside her head as she went forward, to find her way barred by a gate of wood and twisted wire. Blodwed pushed past her, pressed a thumb into the bottom of the heavy lock. The lock opened, and she waved Moon through.

Moon went ahead, hearing Blodwed come through behind her; stood still in place as she took in the details of her new prison. The rock chamber was twenty or thirty feet in diameter, with a ceiling almost as high, and an incandescent heater sat in its center like a sun. Around the perimeter, locked in cages, tethered by rope or chain, were creatures of half a dozen unidentifiable species, furred, feathered, covered with scales or ma.s.ses of naked wrinkles. She covered her nose and mouth with her hand as the smell of their squalid misery struck her full force. She saw them cringe, saw them snarl; saw the ones that lay sullenly apathetic with no response at all ... saw the human being lying on a bare cot by the far wall, as far from the gate, as far from the rest, as possible.

"d.a.m.n her! d.a.m.n her!" Blodwed shouted suddenly. Moon jerked around, the menagerie hissed and yowled and clamored, as Blodwed turned and ran back up the pa.s.sage. The gate banged shut behind her. Moon turned back, looking across the room toward the figure still lying unresponsive on the cot. She went forward slowly, limping as sensation began to burn in the soles of her feet again. The frightened animals cowered back from her.

She reached the stranger's side without waking him, seeing as she approached that it was a man, an off worlder ... a Blue. His heavy uniform coat was splattered with dark stains, and he wore the dingy white leggings and boots of the nomads. Looking down at his face she saw the finely-drawn features she had seen so often on aristocratic Kharemoughis; but this face was like cut crystal, the skin strained over the hollow bones. And still he did not wake. His breathing was labored, wrong. She put out a hand uncertainly, touched his face; pulled it back from the burn of fever.

She let her quivering legs go out from under her, sank down be side his cot on the cold floor. The animals had grown quiet, but she felt their frightened eyes still on her, and their misery overwhelming her, until her own cup of misery overflowed. She let her head fall against the cot's edge, hard dry sobs shaking her apart. Help me, Lady, help me ... everything I touch I destroy.

"What's ... wrong?" A feverish hand ruffled her hair; she jerked upright, swallowed her sobs. "Are you ... for me crying?" The words were hi Sandhi. The sick man struggled to lift his head; his eyes were red and crusted, she thought he barely saw her.

"Yes." Her answer was scarcely louder than his question.

"No needa"" A fit of coughing knocked the breath and the words out of him.

"Look at this! Look at it!" Moon stiffened back and around as Blodwed burst into the chamber again, dragging a larger girl after her. "Smell it! I told you to keep them right while I was gone!"

"I dida"" The older girl cried out as Blodwed caught her by the braid and yanked.

"I ought to rub your face in it, Fossa. But I won't, if you get this place clean beforea""

"All right, all right!" The older girl backed toward the gate, wiping away pain-tears. "You snotty little wart."

"Wait. What's wrong with him?" Blodwed pointed past Moon at the off worlder "He's sick. He tried to get away when we let him out to take a p.i.s.s; he ran right out into the blizzard, you know? He went in circles and we found him right outside." She made the crazy sign, and shook her head, backing up the pa.s.sageway.

Blodwed came on across the chamber, crouched down beside Moon, looking at the sick man's face. "Ugh." She clamped his jaw roughly hi her hand as he tried to turn his head away. "What did you do that for?" His eyes closed.

"I don't think he hears you." Moon put a hand over his, squeezed his fingers lightly before she let go. "He needs a healer, Blodwed," tentatively.

"Is he going to die?" Blodwed sat back on her knees, the truculence unexpectedly melting out of her voice. "There's no healer here. Ma used to do it, but she's not right in the head. She never taught anybody else. Can't you help him?"

Moon glanced up at her. "Maybe I can..." She began to put her hair into braids. "Do you have any off worlder medical supplies?" Blodwed shook her head. "How about herbs, anything?"

"I can steal Ma's. They're olda"" Blodwed stood up expectantly.

"Just get them." Moon watched her go, confused by her willingness. She lifted the off worlder hand again, feeling for the pulse in his wrist; caught her breath as she saw the inside of his arm, crisscrossed with ragged scars. She stared in silent disbelief, lowered his arm again carefully, wrist down. She kept her hold on his hand as she sat waiting, and kept her mind empty.

"Here they are." Blodwed came back through the gate at last, carrying a skin-wrapped bundle beaded with tiny bones and bits of metal. She opened it, spread it out on the floor between them. "Neutron activation," she said, waving her hands. "Ma always says power words. Do you say power words, sibyl?" There was no taunt in it.

"I suppose so." Moon picked over the leafy bundles of dried plants, sniffing at clear plastic bags of seeds and flower heads. Her hope faded. "I don't know any of these."

"Well, that one'sa""

She shook her head. "I mean, I don't know how to use these." KR Aspundh had told her about the Old Empire's exploration service, that before they opened new worlds for human colonists they had seeded them with a panacea of medicinal plants, different series for different ecosystems. "In the islands we used a lot of sea plants for curing." And called them the Lady's gifts. "I'll have to ask a" you'll have to ask for me, input me; will you?" Blodwed nodded eagerly. "Ask me their uses," Moon gestured. "Remember what I say a" exactly, or it won't do any good. Can you?"

"Sure." Blodwed grinned arrogantly. "I can sing all the landmarks of the trail song. n.o.body else can, any more. I can sing any song I ever heard on the radio even once."

Moon managed half a smile, stopped by the stiff bruise on her cheek. "Then prove it. Ask, and I will answer. Input..."

Blodwed cleared her throat, sat up straighter. "Oh, sibyl! Tell me uh, how to use these magic plants?"

Moon took up a bundle of herbs in her hand, felt herself begin to fall backwards down the well of absence... Clavally. She came into the light again, to find a face she knew, Clavally's flushed and startled face, tousled hair, bare shoulders as close to her as ... Danaquil Lu. She saw Clavally pull a blanket up to cover herself hastily. She thought, uselessly, Danaquil Lu, I'm sorry ... Clavally, it's only Moon... But she could not affect their lives even while she intruded on them so profoundly, to share her apologies or her happiness at even this reunion; to ask their help, or to communicate in any way at all.

But a tentative smile formed at the corners of Clavally's wide mouth, as though she saw a message fill the window of Danaquil Lu's eyes. She touched his cheek tenderly, still smiling, and with knowing patience lay back on the bed to wait...

"... No further a.n.a.lysis!" Moon slumped forward, drained, felt Blodwed's quick hands catch her and keep her upright.

"You did it! You're not a fakea"" Blodwed propped her against the cot and took her hands away, suddenly leery. "Wake up! Are you awake? Where did you go?"

Moon nodded, let her forehead rest on her knees. "I ... visited old friends." She wrapped her arms around her s.h.i.+ns, holding on to the memory: the only warmth, the only happiness she could remember.

"I know all the herbs now, sibyl." Blodwed's voice pawed at her. "I'll show you. Are you going to cure him?"

"No." Moon raised her unwilling head, opened her eyes. "I'm going to bring a real healer to use the herbs. But you'll have to help me, give me whatever I need." A nod. Moon readied herself, knowing that if she simply had the strength to begin, the Transfer would take her through to the end. Her body rebelled, refusing to gather for another ordeal, but she knew that if she surrendered to exhaustion now, it might be too late for the off worlder by the time she could start again. And she was not going to watch another person die because of her. She focused her attention on his face.

"All right, ask me how to treat him. Input!" and she flung herself through ... Into a white-walled anti-gravity chamber, where she watched a cl.u.s.ter of men clad in pastel and transparent suits drift weightless, tethered to a table, arguing an incomprehensible medical procedure. Beyond them, beyond the reinforced gla.s.s of a wide window, she saw thick fingers of ice deepening beneath an eave, and floodlights illuminating a field of drifted snow...

"... a.n.a.lysis!" She came back into herself, barely hearing the dry rattle of the end sign inside her head. She smelled the pungent reek of half a dozen strange herbs on her hands and clothing as she crumpled forward. Mind fog hal oed her view of Blodwed's peering face and the inert blanket-bundle of the sick off worlder turning them to a holy vision. Rea.s.sured, she found her hands and knees I and crawled toward the heater in the room's center. When the cloud of energy became so intense that her body could not endure more, she let herself down at last, and slept.

Moon came awake with the urgency of terror, stared at the unexpected walls that closed her in. Stone walls a" not the endless desolation of sky above a lifeless, stony beach, where an executioner in black wore a medal as familiar as the face of her only love... She hid from the phantom behind a wall of fingers, pressing the swollen soreness of her face. No, it isn't true!