The Snow Queen Part 32

But as the hall opened out under her gaze she forgot herself, no more than an insect on the wall to the ma.s.s of royal guests below: Pale Winter n.o.bles and dark-skinned Kharemoughis mingled freely, the eye-dazzling spectrum of their dress diminis.h.i.+ng 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 un.o.btrusively 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 bal.u.s.trade, her heart beating like a caged bird's wings. I 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 toa"" 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 h.e.l.l 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 s.h.i.+rtsleeves.

"Not Arienrhod." She struggled to pry words out of her dust-dry mouth. "Moon. It's Moon, Sparklea"" She touched him at last, felt the contact climb her arm like a shock.

He wrenched free, as if the contract burned him. "d.a.m.n 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 hi 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 a" she saw all the color go out of his flushed face at once. "No! G.o.ds, 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 G.o.ds ... why did you come here, Moon? Why?" fiercely, in anguish.

"To find you. Because you needed me. Because I need you ... Mt. 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 s.h.i.+rt 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, d.a.m.n it! That was me you saw on that beach, killing the mers! I'm Starbuck a" 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 a" 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 hi revulsion, half hi 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 hi with his fingerprints. Moon found her own reflection gaping at her hi 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, honeya"" He jerked open his s.h.i.+rt front, she saw scars like thin white worms along his ribs. "I can oblige you."

"Oh, Lady, noa"" 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'ta""

"Then why don't you fight back, d.a.m.n 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 a" 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 a" 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 a" you don't have to wear them any more."

"I'm not Sparks! And you're not even Moon..." He shook his head, she felt a tremor flow through their bodies. "We're ghosts, echoes, lost souls; caught in limbo, d.a.m.ned hi h.e.l.l." He let her face go.

"Sparks ... I love you. I love you. I've always loved you." Wincing, murmuring the breathless words like a charm to bring calm seas. "I know what you've done, but I'm here. Because I know you. I know it was meant to be. I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe we could make up for the time and the wrongs between us. If you don't believe it's true, then send me away... But first look at yourself, look in the mirror! It's only you there, only me beside you. We're the waking, not the nightmare."

He rolled off of her slowly, staring at her. "What a" what happened to your cheek? Did I do that to you?"

She lifted a hand to the smudged yellow remains of the bruise, nodded.

He got up from the bed, his face pale and expressionless, went toward his reflection waiting impa.s.sively in the wall. Their hands met at the interface; he pressed his forehead against its image, and Moon saw his body tighten like a coiled spring.

"Sparksa""

His hands turned into fists, and he smashed them into the mirror; sent his reflection clamoring down in a hail of splintered ice. He backed away, turned ... she saw blood trickling down his hand like zigzag lightning.

She pushed herself up and went to him, closing his hand in hers, staunching the wound.

"No, don't!" he cried. "Leave it, let it bleed!" eagerly, almost joyfully. She looked up at him, sickened, but he shook his head. "Don't you see? I'm alive! I'm alive, Moon ..." He made a sound that was like laughter, but wasn't. She saw his eyes become the color I of emeralds; and tears overflowed with the flicker of the lids. He raised his wet hand to his wet face. "Moon. My Moon." His arms went around her again; but this time there was nothing hurting about his embrace except the pain of rebirth and release. "Alive. Alive again..."

She felt sudden fire pa.s.s into her through her skin and kindle at his nearness. She reached up to unfasten her cloak, let it fall, pressing herself even closer. Her fingers found the slashes of his s.h.i.+rt; she felt his flesh, warm and smooth, his muscles sliding under her touch. His own hands slipped down along her sides, rose again, tracing the line of her back. He began to lead her to the bed, moving with her, drawing her down beside him on the cool sheets, this time with infinite tenderness. "No, let me... just let me..." He kissed her I softly. He slipped her dress down over her shoulders, along her body to the floor, with hands that sang against her skin. He removed his own clothes, self-consciously; she tried not to see the scars on his body.

They lay back together, and now looking up she saw nothing but the moment reflected, and her heart's desire. They began to touch f each other again; slowly, almost shyly, rediscovering the secret joys that had been theirs hi Summer, Time began to spiral toward infinity, and her body became the source point of the universe as he brought every part of his own body to the realization of her pleas' ure. He took her to the brink of ecstasy with a skill that had never I been his before, holding her there, circling in the ah-... with a motion letting her fall in glorious flames, to rise again like a phoenix again and again. Swept out beyond the depths of her antic.i.p.ation lost in time, she answered him as best she could, murmuring ' the breathless love words that could not tell him enough about her ytk joy, filling her own instinctive response with the pa.s.sionate energy of her pent-up longing set free. And at last they fell together, consumed in fire; lay as soft as ashes in each other's arms. Complete hi their love, complete hi each other, they slept.

Chapter 42.

"Moon ... Moon, wake up."

Moon sighed, dreaming in the warm embers. "Not yet." She kept her eyes closed, half-afraid to open them.

"Yes. You have to." Spark's voice stirred her gently, insistently. "We can't stay here much longer. The reception will be over soon. We've got to leave the palace before Arienrhod comes looking for me." Fear closed the words hi. "But the police are looking for me too."

"I know." She nodded. "We'll find a place where you can stay until after the Change."

"The Change!" He turned rigid under her hand. "Oh, my G.o.ds oh, my Lady!" He sat up, his fists clenched.

"What is it?" Moon sat up beside him, abruptly awake, and afraid.

He faced her, pale with anguish. "There won't be any Change, if Arienrhod has her way. She's going to start a plague that'll kill most of the Summers here in the city."

Moon shook her head. "How? Why?"

"She's hired an off worlder to do it, a man called the Source. He does a lot of her dirty work; he even had the old Commander of Police poisoned. I paid him today with the water of life." He bit his lips. "She wants to stay Queen, and keep Winter here forever; that's why!"

Moon shut her eyes, concentrating on the enormity of horror so that she would not see his hand in it. "We've got to stop it!"

"I know." He threw the covers back. "Go to the Blues, Moon, and tell them everything. They can stop it, if it isn't too late al ready." He twisted the covers between his hands. "Mother's Eyes! How could Ia"?"

Moon felt panic clog her throat as she remembered why she could not go to them either. "Sparks, I've been off world And they know that, too."

He looked up sharply. "They'll deport you."

She nodded, pus.h.i.+ng back her hair. "But they have to be told."

"Then we'll both go. Maybe ... they'll let us stay together." He let his hand fall along her back.

She felt her skin turn to gooseflesh. "Yes." She pushed herself up and off the bed, knowing that if she hesitated she would never be able to separate herself from him again. "We'd better go now." She remembered abruptly that BZ would be waiting; she closed her eyes again, blotting out their reflections.

They dressed in silence and left the mirrored chamber; she glanced back one last time through the closing door, as the mirror light winked out. They moved along the empty corridor quickly and still silently, in their silence discovering that the reception hall below had grown dim and silent, too. She watched Sparks's face turn tense and furtive. "Sparks a" remember that we belong here!" She pulled her hood up, half covering the rum of her disheveled hairdo, and made her movements regal.

He looked at her. He nodded, but his expression was equally troubled. They went on down the stairs, slipping un.o.btrusively past the reception hall where weary servants circled, clearing away the remains of the banquet. They reached the Hall of the Winds at last, shadowy and moaning as she remembered it, with the ghost s.h.i.+ps eternally adrift.

"How did you cross the Pit?" He whispered it, and she could not help whispering her answer.

"With this." She held up her wrist, letting him see the control box.

He started. "Only Arienrhoda""

"Herne. Herne showed me how to use it."

"Herne?" Disbelief. "How?"

She shook her head. "I'll tell you a" everything, later." The memory of the calling spell as she crossed the bridge came back to her vividly. "Just help me cross back now ... don't let me stop, whatever happens." She took a deep breath.

"All right." Worry touched his dim face again, without any understanding of why she was afraid.

They started toward the lip of the Pit, toward the bridge. Moon felt the Sea breathe, cold and damp against her flushed face; raised her hand to press the first tone of the calming sequence. But Sparks turned back, for one last look into the dark past. She reached out, her doubt quickening as he turned.

And then the rattling air filled with light, the hall was transformed. They shrank together, blinking, uncomprehending; s.h.i.+elded their eyes.

They were not alone. "Arienrhod!" Sparks gasped. Moon saw a woman standing where they had stood at the entrance to the hall, around her a gathering of richly dressed n.o.bles a" and palace guards. Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw more figures waiting across the bridge.

The Queen. The woman Sparks had named Arienrhod came toward them slowly; slowly coming into focus. Moon saw the hair, milk white like her own, twisted into an elaborate sculpture and crowned with a diadem ... saw Arienrhod's face a" her own face, as though she were moving into her own reflection. "It's true..."

Sparks didn't answer, not looking ahead but only from side to side, searching for an escape.

Arienrhod stopped in front of them, and Moon lost track of everything but the fascination that locked the moss-agate eyes of the Queen with her own. But there was none of her own amazement in the Queen's gaze. She almost thought that Arienrhod had been waiting for this moment forever. "So you've come at last, Moon. I should have known you would survive. I should have known you wouldn't let anything keep you from your goal." She smiled, and there was pride in it, but curiously wrapped with envy.

Moon met the gaze steadily, expressionless, not understanding its implications. But at a deeper level she felt their vibration like a sonic field, disorienting her. She expected me ... how could she know that I had to come? "Yes, Your Majesty. I've come for Sparks." She made it a challenge, knowing instinctively that it was something this woman would appreciate.

The Queen laughed, a high sharp sound like wind rattling ice coated leaves; but with disconcerting echoes of her own laughter. "You've come to take my Starbuck away from me?" Sparks glanced up at her, and past her at the waiting n.o.bles, as she let his secret out; but they were too far away to hear what was said over the sighing of the Pit. "Well, you're the only one who can." Again Moon heard the ache of secret envy. "But you wouldn't keep him long. You saw him hesitate. You don't really believe that he could be content Summer after he's belonged to Carbuncle, do you? You don't really believe he'll be satisfied with you when he's belonged to me?" almost sadly. "No, child of my mind ... you're still only a child. An incomplete woman; a pitifully inadequate lover."

"Arienrhod!" Sparks cried out, his voice raw with anguish. "Noa""

"Yes, my love. I was moved. You were very tender with her." She smiled. Moon felt her face flush, felt outrage and humiliation throb like poison in her blood. "You see, I do know everything that happens in my city." The words glinted. "I'm disappointed in you, Star buck. Although I can't say that I'm surprised. But I'm willing to forgive you." She reached out to him with the words, softly, without sarcasm. "You'll realize this was a mistake when you've had time to think it over." She raised a hand, and the guards came toward them, semi circled them at the Pit's edge. "Escort Starbuck to his chambers and see that he stays there."

Sparks stiffened. "It's finished, Arienrhod! You know that. I'm free, no matter what you do to keep me here. I'll never change back. You'll never touch me againa"" He took a long, unsteady breath. "Unless you let Moon go. Let her go away now, and I'll do anything you want."

Moon opened her mouth, starting forward; but he froze her with a look. She followed his urgent glance across the bridge a" to warn them...

"After we've talked together, alone. If she still wants to go then, I promise you I won't stop her." Arienrhod held out her hands to them, empty of deceit.

"Whatever she says, don't listen to it. Promise me, promise me you won't believe what she'll tell you." Guards closed hi on Sparks. Moon felt her own hands try to reach him. But Arienrhod stood watching, as she had watched... Sparks reached out, but the same unspoken knowledge stopped him, and his hands dropped to his sides. The guards took him away.

Moon stood alone between the Queen and the abyss. The wind lapped her, her s.h.i.+vering loss intensified; she kept it hidden under her cloak. "I have nothing to say to you." The words fell from her mouth like stones. She turned her back on the Queen, took a step toward the bridge's beginning. Don't think, don't think about it. You have no choice.

"Moon ... my child. Wait!" The Queen's voice caught her like a fishhook. "Yes, I saw you, but you no more need to feel ashamed of that than you would of seeing your own reflection."

Moon turned furiously. "We aren't the same!"

"We are. And how often does a woman have the chance to watch herself make love ... ?" Arienrhod held out her hands again, with a kind of longing. "Didn't he tell you, Moon? Couldn't he?" Moon stared, uncomprehending, saw Arienrhod begin to smile. "Well, it's better this way; if I explain to you myself... You're mine, Moon. You're of me. I've known about you since the day of your conception, watched over you all your life. I wanted to bring you here to me years ago; that's why I sent you that message about Sparks. Then you disappeared, and I thought I'd lost you forever. But you've come at last."

Moon stepped back from Arienrhod's intensity, felt the wind warn her. Lady, is she insane? She tugged the cloth of her cloak. "How do you know so much about me? Why would you even care? I'm no one."

"Moon Dawntreader is no one," Arienrhod said softly. "But you are the most important woman on this planet. Do you know what a clone is, Moon?"

Trying to remember, Moon shook her head. "A ... a twin." She felt a peculiar p.r.i.c.kling begin just under the surface of her skin. But you've been the Queen forever.

"More than a twin, closer than a twin. An ovum, a set of genes, taken from my body and stimulated to reproduce an identical person."

"From your body," Moon whispered, touching her own, looking down at it as though it had suddenly become a stranger's. "No!" raising her head again. "I have a mother ... my grandmother saw me born! I'm a Summer!"

"Of course." Arienrhod said. "You are a Summer ... I wanted you to be raised as one. I had you implanted in your mother's womb at the last Festival, along with other clones in other hosts. But you irik were the only one who survived, and was perfect. Come away from the edge..." She moved forward to take Moon's arm and draw her away from the brink of the Pit.

Moon tried to pull free, but her body belonged to the Queen ... and she felt it obey, stiffly, liquidly; a thing made of technology and magic. We're so alike ... everyone sees it, everyone. "Why a" why did you want so many a" copies; Summers, not Winters?" Refusing to include herself.

"I only needed one. It was my dream, then, to replace myself with you, when I died at the Change. With myself a" but raised to under, stand the Summer mentality, and how to manipulate it. I would have i brought you here, explained it all to you years ago a" so that you would have had time to adjust to your true heritage. But then I thought you were lost to me ... and I found Sparks, instead." Moon grew rigid; but Arienrhod was looking inward. "And I decided that I didn't have to die a" that I could live on, myself, and let I Winter live on with me. I made another plan, to let me do that; I didn't need you any more. But I still want you a" I've always wanted you here by me: my own fair child; and no one else's." She lifted Moon's face, with fingers under her chin.

No one else's ... Moon felt her eyes lock with Arienrhod's, her mind s.h.i.+fting heights a" the voice that spoke to her like a mother, the face of a girl, the face in the mirror; the eyes that call her down the endless spiral of time... Who am I? Who am I? "I'm a Summer! And you're trying to kill my people."

Arienrhod recoiled, the moment shattered. "He told you that ... he's a fool. He can't see that they're not his people, or yours. Moon, Myself, you are a Winter in your heart, just as Sparks is an off worlder She gestured at the stars. "You've been off world you know how the Hegemony oppresses us a" you've seen what they keep from us, and keep for themselves while they exploit us. Haven't you?" demanding an answer.