The Snow Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  “I’ve got these.” He held out his identification and his stunner. “They make me look considerably more regulation.” He sealed the open collar of his coat.

  “No.” She felt the tightness turn to pain. “I’m going in there to find Sparks, BZ.” She forced his shadowed brown eyes to keep hers when they tried to slip away. “However it turns out, I have to do that alone. I can’t do it ...” in front of another lover. Her mouth quivered.

  “I know that.” He did look away now. “And I—I couldn’t watch it happen. Moon, I want the best for you, believe me; I want whatever happens to be what will make you happy. But damn it, that doesn’t make it any—easier.”

  “Harder.” She nodded. “It makes it harder.”

  “The entrance ... let me take you that far. The guards would ask questions if you didn’t have some kind of escort. And I’ll stay here at Street’s-end until you come out of there—or I’ll learn the reason why.”

  She nodded again, not trying for words. They waded the whirlpool of the circle-dance; she felt her hopes and her regrets sucked down into a vortex of agonizing anticipation ... You are the Queen; be the Queen, stop shaking! She held her breath as the guards at the massive doors focused on their approach. The guards wore stunners, as Gundhalinu had predicted. Oh, Lady, do you hear me? She remembered that it was not a goddess who would guide her now, but only a machine; a machine that had told her she must come.

  At the moment she was certain the guards would challenge her she threw back her hood, keeping her head high, trying to believe strongly enough to make them believe.

  “Your Majesty! How did you—” The man on the left remembered himself, brought his hand up to his chest, bowing his head. The woman on the right joined him, their off worlder-style helmets gleaming whitely. The immense, age-darkened doors began to open.

  Moon turned quickly as her face began to fall apart, to Gundhalinu’s face taut with dutiful respect ... with a frustrated loss that only she could see. “Thank you for your—cooperation, Inspector Gundhalinu.”

  He bent his head stiffly. “My pleasure ... Your Majesty. If you need me again, call me,” emphasizing each word. His hands twitched uncertainly in front of him; he saluted, and turned away to lose himself in the crowd.

  BZ! She almost called after him; didn’t, as she looked back toward the open doors, the darkly shining hallway beyond, beckoning her on to journey’s end. The guards glanced surreptitiously past her at Gundhalinu’s seedy, retreating back. Wrapping her cloak close around her, Moon entered the palace.

  She moved like a ghost along the empty hall, her soft shoes’ passage belying her substantiality. She put blinders on her senses, afraid of stopping, of losing herself in the crystalline hypnotic wilderness of purple-black peaks and snow-burdened valleys, Winter’s domain that mural led the endless walls of the corridor. And ahead of her, gradually, her straining senses caught the murmur of the Hall of the Winds. Her hand gripped the control box Herne had given her; her palm was moist and cold.

  Herne had broken out in a sweat and his own hands had shaken while he told her what she would find there—the captive wind, the billowing cloud forms the single vaulting strand of walkway above the Pit. The Pit that he had almost made the grave of Sparks, his challenger; the Pit that had destroyed him instead—because of Arienrhod. Arienrhod had defied her own laws to intervene, to save Sparks, and left Herne a prisoner in a broken body, while pitiless love-hatred ate away his soul.

  Moon reached the end of the hall where it opened out on the air—vast, moaning reaches of restless air above her, pale cloud-wraiths swelling and shuddering under the caress of an unearthly lover. She felt herself dwindle and diminish as the frigid back flow of the outer air discovered her solitary intrusion, swept hungrily around her, pulling at her cloak. Beyond the breached walls the thousand thousand stars lay white hot on the ruddy forge of night; but there was no warmth here, no light except the haunted green glow of the gaping service shaft below her ... no mercy.

  She took one step forward, and then another, toward the thin span of utter blackness silhouetted above the abyss. He didn’t tell me it would be dark! Fear made her falter, her fingers playing over the sequence of buttons on the control box at her wrist—the sequence Herne claimed would unlock a safe tunnel through the air. Did he lie about everything? But she wasn’t the object of Herne’s twisted passion, only its surrogate. If her presence here was anything to him it was only as a tool for his revenge.

  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. 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 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, Sparkie—” 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.”

  “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, damned in hell.” 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.”