The Snow Queen (65 page)

“Damn it,
what’s this doing here?” She stopped, glancing away at Mantagnes, and back at the
polrob standing as immobile as a tree in front of her office. “Why aren’t you
on duty?” addressing it directly. It made no response, and she realized that
its power was off.

“It’s
malfunctioning,” Mantagnes said irritably. “Came in here a while ago with some
garbled story about its Winter lessor being mugged by the Queen’s men. Probably
just maudlin with lease-lapse syndrome. Needs a complete system wiping—letting
ignorant natives do even partial maintenance on sophisticated hardware like
that is absurd.”

“Even
‘ignorant natives’ would wonder, if they had to bring their brainless
servomechs to the police for every loose screw.” She threw the power switch on
the pol rob chest, more out of aggravation than interest, watched the light
sensors brighten inside its steel and plastic skull. She glanced at its
identification plate. “Unit “Pollux.” Who’s your lessor?”

“Thank you,
Commander!”

She stepped
back, startled.

“Please
hear me, Commander. It is urgent, and I cannot—”

“Yeah,
yeah—just answer the questions.” She would never get used to Their voices.

“My lessor
is one Tor Starhiker Winter, Tiamatan female, titular owner of Persipone’s
Hell.” It radiated impatience. “You said she was attacked by the Queen’s guard?
That’s no business of ours.”

“No,
Commander. By off worlders By her fiance1—”
I.
“A lover’s quarrel?” I

“—one
Oyarzabal, a casino employee, and his companions. She ] called to me for help,
and was stun-shot by them. I could not reach her because the door was locked.
So I came here for help.” i

“You know
why they attacked her?” Jerusha felt her interest stir ring. ;:

“Not clear,
Commander. Perhaps she interfered with an illegal activity.”

“Who
controls that casino?”

“One Thanin
Jaakola, male, native of Big Blue.”

“The
Source?” She felt even Mantagnes begin to listen behind her.

“Yes,
Commander.”

“Repeat
everything you heard them say.”

“OYARZABAL:
Just the Summers, goddamn it, Perse. Not the Winters, they’ll be safe; the
Queen wants it this way. STAR HIKER No, you’re lying. It’s going to kill
Winters too, the Queen wouldn’t let you kill us. You’re crazy, Oyar, let me go.
Pollux, help me, Pollux.”

Jerusha
listened her skin crawling at the nasal dirge of words, until their meaning
coalesced in her mind, catalyzed by two: the Queen. “Holy gods—I’ve found it!
I’ve found it! Sergeant!” Shouting as she turned, she found him already
standing at her elbow. “Contact the dozen men closest to Persipone’s—tell them
to get over there immediately and seal that place off! Mantagnes—”

“What’s
this all about, Commander?” She couldn’t decide whether he was indignant or
frightened.

“It’s about
life and death.” She dropped her cloak on the floor, reaching to check her
stunner. “It’s about Arienrhod buying her own life with the death of half this
city, or I’m not the Commander of Police.” She watched his jaw fall. “Unit
Pollux—your prayers and mine have been answered.” She clapped its metallic
shoulder. jjf1 “Gods, just let it be in time!”

“Please
help Tor, Commander. I have grown—attached to her.” y-\\

She nodded,
not quite believing shed heard that. “Mantagnes, ii you’re always bitching
about how you want more action. Let’s go find it.”

“You’re
going up there yourself, Commander?” more astonished than critical.

Grinning
now, she said, “I wouldn’t miss this for sainthood.”

“So, sibyl,
you’ve threatened our Queen.” A man spoke at last; Moon felt the group stare of
the angry nobles burn the tattoo into her throat like a brand. “And you’re
forbidden to come into the city. We have been given the privilege of seeing
that you never do either of those things again.”

Moon backed
toward the bridge span, fighting the memory of what had happened here in the
city to Danaquil Lu. “I’m going to leave the palace. If you touch me, I’ll
contaminate you. Don’t try to stop me—” Her voice slid.

“We won’t
try to stop you, sibyl,” he said, his voice hungry and blurred. “Cross the
bridge; go ahead.” He grinned, and it turned his thin face into a death’s-head.
They were all smiling suddenly, with drug-drunken, heedless malice—people who
had been celebrating the end of their world, and knew who to blame for it. He
took something out of a hidden place in his long outer robe and held it up; it
looked like a dark finger. “Cross the Pit.”

Moon
covered her control box with her hand, staring at the thing he held; not sure
what it was, but only that it was a threat to her. But she had to cross the
bridge; she had to try. There was no other way. With clumsy hands she reached
up to unfasten her gold stitched velvet cloak. She folded it in threes, which
was the Lady’s sacred number, and stepped toward the windy lip of the abyss in
a defiant ritual. The cape was only a hindrance on her back; but it was a
worthy gift to the Sea Mother, if She lay hungry below. Hungry for tribute, or
hungry for sacrifice ...

Lady, guide me!
Moon pitched the cloak outward with a prayer,
heard the laughter of the nobles behind her. It bellied out in the cross drafts
drifted and circled like a plummeting fisher bird into the shaft’s green
darkness.

Moon
pressed the first button in the sequence at her wrist, and started out onto the
bridge. The Winters watched and muttered, but did nothing. Moon sounded another
note, walked on, not even breathing. At the far end of the bridge more nobles
waited; she tried not to see them clearly ... not to look down, not to listen
to the demon dirge around her or the clamoring of fears inside her head ...

But as she
neared the center of the span the catch-spell of the sibyl’s song invaded her
again, slowing her, lulling her fears, dulling her instinct for survival. No!
She froze, letting her terror rise up and counterattack before the song could
snare her mind again. But even as she stopped moving, she saw the Winters ahead
all holding the same hollow fingers, raising them to their lips—whistles! To
control the winds ... And now at last she understood: They were turning the
winds against her; this was how she would die, without a human hand shedding
her blood.

Moon threw
herself flat on the bridge span as the choir voice of the whistles collided and
smashed her circle of quiet air. The winds swept over her, tearing at her. But
in the middle of the wind lay the sibyl song—like the clear air in a
hurricane’s eye, the clarity of a strange madness filling her mind. Hypnotized,
paralyzed, she plunged through into a refuge that lay in some other plane of
existence..

Why? Why does it call me here?
“What’s the answer?” she heard her
own voice screaming wildly. “What’s the answer?”
You can answer any question, except one,
Elsevier had told her. Not
What is Life
?
,
not
Is there a God?
... The one question she was forbidden to answer
was
Where
is your source point?
And in this
moment, teetering at the eternity’s edge of insanity or death, she knew that at
last it had been answered, that she had been chosen again by the power that
lived in her mind:
Sourcepoint,
fountainhead, wellspring ... here, here,
here
!
Below this shaft that plunged into the sea, below this pinpoint city driven
into a map of time, as secret as stone beneath the guardian se asking of this
water world, lay the sibyl machine. And she alone would know. She felt her mind
give way under the final assault of knowledge, and fall into the well of truth;
cried out as she felt her body lose control to follow it
down
...

Like a
startled dreamer she came into herself again, lying on the bridge span, gasping
loudly in the quiet air.
The quiet air
...
She pressed her hand over her mouth, pushed up slowly onto her knees.
There was no wind at all; only a peaceful stirring and sighing around her. The
Winters stood gape-faced on the far edge of the abyss, then— whistles dangling
from strengthless fingers. She dared to look away, past the wind curtains
hanging slack in a becalmed sea, to the storm walls beyond. The walls were
closed, shutting off the flow of the cold crosswinds from the outer world,
sealing off their only access to the well at Carbuncle’s heart, and to her. She
sank forward again, pressing her forehead against the surface of the span in
silent gratitude.

She climbed
unsteadily to her feet, made her way on across the bridge. She moved slowly,
for the sake of the watchers, for the sake of her uncertain legs. The Winters’
expressions mixed awe and terror now; she set her face in grim defiance,
willing them to let her pass.

And some
fell back, but there were some who turned angrier, more hate-filled and
reckless at the sight of a Summer wearing the face of then: Queen, wielding the
power of a goddess. And among them she saw the iron pole crowned with a halo of
metal thorns, the witch collar that had torn open Danaquil Lu’s throat. The
collar came forward to meet her and keep her from stepping off the bridge.
“Kneel down, sibyl, or go into the Pit!” The jewel-turba ned woman who held it
thrust it at her; she took a step back, her hands knotting at her sides.

“Let me
past or I’ll—” As she spoke she saw them turn, heard the processing echoes of
many footsteps coming down the entry corridor toward the hall. And as suddenly
the crescent of space behind the nobles began to fill with human figures—but
this time they wore homespun and kleeskin:
Summers!
Their faces were as murderous as any Winter face had been until a second
before; they carried knives and harpoons, and the faces looked at her, alone on
the bridge, without changing.

“There she is!
It’s the Queen!”

Moon saw
the one face that didn’t belong with the rest, one man working his way forward
among them with desperate determination.

“BZ!” She
shouted over the rising noise as the mobs met, caught his searching gaze and
felt it embrace her.

Gundhalinu
elbowed aside a final Summer, making himself a space to draw his weapon and let
the crowd see it clearly. “Hold it! Hold it!” He jerked the thin-mouthed woman
holding the spined collar half around and wrenched it out of her startled
hands. He ‘ hurled it over the edge into the Pit. “That’s gone far enough,
Winter
. Get back—clear away, all of you!”

“What right
have you got to interfere with us, foreigner? This is Winter business, Winter
law—”

“That’s for
damn sure,” BZ muttered, his eyes coming back to Moon even as he cleared a path
for her through the human wall. “This woman’s under arrest; she’s mine.” Moon
caught the wink of an eye in it, and smiled in spite of herself.

“That’s the
Queen, Inspector Gundhalinu!” one of the Summers said angrily. “And she’s ours.
She’s not going anywhere until the Change.” The words were as deadly as frost.

“She isn’t
Arienrhod. She’s a Summer, a sibyl! Look at her throat.” BZ waved a hand. “If
you want Arienrhod, you’ll have to cross that—” Following his own gesture, he
looked out across the windless hall for the first time, and his face turned
blank. “What—?”

“What
business do you have with our Queen, fish farmers?” The jewel-turbaned woman
who had lost control when she lost the sibyl collar tried to take it back
again. “You’re not welcome in this palace while it still belongs to Winter.”

“Your Queen
has business with us!” a Summer shouted. “She’s trying to kill us all, and
we’ve come to make sure she doesn’t get away with it. And to make sure she goes
down to the Lady for the third time.”

Moon
listened without moving, overwhelmed with aching, irrelevant joy at hearing a
voice speak with a Summer burr. “I’m Moon Dawntreader Summer—” Her voice was in
rags. “The Queen is inside. Cross the bridge now! As long as I stand on it
you’ll be safe.” She waved them forward, felt BZ’s astounded eyes on her.

The mob
came more confidently as they saw her trefoil and put their trust in it. Her
own belief wavered as the first of them joined her on the bridge; but the air
lay resting, and the Summer smiled briefly and bent his head as he passed. One
by one the others followed, treading nervously but driven by the furious need
to reach their goal. Moon waited until the last Summer had stepped safely onto
the ledge at the far side of the hall before she took the final steps onto
solid ground. The Winters backed away, sullenly watching her and Gundhalinu.
She turned as she reached his side, hearing a tremulous sigh behind her. She
saw the storm walls open like languorous wings spreading, felt the chill winds
rise
again, the curtains shudder into life. The Pit groaned
and stirred, reeking of the sea.

“Gods!
Father of all my grandfathers,” BZ whispered. “It was you, holding back the
wind. How—how did you do it?” He kept distance between them.

“I can’t
tell you,” hugging herself.
That it’s
Carbuncle. I can never tell anyone; never.
“I don’t even know.”
Must never let anyone know.
She followed the Pit down in her mind, down, down to the sea and below it, into
the timeless bedrock of the planet itself, where the ultimate receptacle of
human wisdom lay in secret omniscience. “Take me away from here, BZ. This is no
place for a sibyl; the Winters are right. It’s too dangerous.” She felt the
hostile, disbelieving stares of the nobles crawl over her.