The Snow Queen (77 page)

And not
only had that defective image of her own soul defied her will, and escaped her
curse, but she had stolen him back. And replaced him with this—this. She
glanced again at Herne, her nails marking her arms. She caught a hint of sea
tang in the air; they were in the lower city now. The end of her life’s journey
was almost in view.
Please, please, don’t
let it end like this!
Not knowing whom she asked it of—not the hollow gods
of the off worlders not the Summers’ Sea ... yes, maybe of the Sea, who was about
to take the offering of her life, whether she believed in the old religion or
not. She had not put her faith in any power beyond her own since she had become
Queen. But now that that power had been taken from her, the awareness of her
own complete helplessness closed over her, suffocating her like the cold waters
of the sea ...

The
procession reached the final slope at the Street’s foot, and started down the
broad ramp to the harbor that lay below the city. The ubiquitous mass of
humanity was even more tightly crowded here, a wall of solid flesh, a wall of
grotesque beast-faces. The cheering and the wailing rose from below to greet
her as the cart rolled forward, echoing and re-echoing through the vast
sea-cave. The dank chill air of the outer world flowed around her. Arienrhod
shuddered secretly, but pride masked her face.

Ahead,
below, she saw stands draped in red clustered at the far end of the pier, tiers
filled with off worlder dignitaries and influential elders of Summer families.
On the best-placed viewing stands she saw the Prime Minister and the Assembly
members—already unmasked, as if it were beneath their dignity to participate in
this pagan ritual—gaping without seeming to at her approach. Shimmering deja vu
overtook her at the sight of them. She had seen this tableau before, half a
dozen times or more, but only once that was like this time: the first time,
when she had been the new Queen who stood below on the pier and watched the
last of the Summer Queens pass this way—and sent her predecessor triumphantly
into the icy water.

All the
rest, all the other Festival pageants, had been only dress rehearsals for the
next Change, this Change. They had chosen the Queen for a Day by the same
ancient ritual rules, to reign over the Mask Night and make this journey at
dawn. But only a pair of effigies had been given to the sea at her command, and
not human lives.

And only
she and the Assembly members had remained unchanged, like the ritual itself, through
all of those Festivals, all the long years. But this final time would see the
end of her and all her efforts to break free of them, while they went on and
the system they symbolized went on forever. Her hands clenched on the soft
cloth of her gown. If I could only take them all with me! But it was too late,
too late for anything at all.

She saw the
Summer Queen at last; standing on the pier in the open space between the
red-robed stands, with the bitter-colored water lapping below her. Her mask was
a thing of beauty that stirred unwilling admiration in Arienrhod’s heart. But
it was made by a Winter. And who knew what homely, undeserving islander’s face
was hidden beneath it; what sturdy peasant body and dull-witted mind were
wrapped in the glistening fish-net cocoon of silky green mesh. The prospect of
that face, that mind, taking the place of her own made her stomach twist.

Herne was
silent beside her, as silent as she was. She wondered what his own thoughts
were as he looked on the waiting elite of his homeworld, and the waiting sea.
She could tell nothing about the expression beneath his mask.
Damn him.
She prayed that he was
regretting his suicidal impulse now; that he felt even a fraction of the
despair and regret that she knew, standing here in the ruins of her life’s
ambition.
Let death be oblivion, then! If
I have to spend it with this symbol of all my failures, knowing that I did
would be worse than all the hells of the god-damning off worlders combined!

The cart
had gone forward as far as it could into the open space along the pier’s edge.
The escort of her nobles slowed, stopped, let the traces settle. They circled
slowly three times around her, casting their off world offerings into the back
of the cart, as they sang their final song of farewell to Winter. They bowed to
her at last, and she could hear their individual weeping and lamentation above
the crowd’s cries as they began to file away from the cart. Some touched the
hem of her cloak to their lips as they passed her for the last time. Some even
dared to touch her hand—some of the oldest, the faithful followers of a century
and a half—and their grief touched her suddenly, unexpectedly, deeply.

Their place
was taken by a circle of Summers, also masked, also singing, a paean to the
coming golden days. She closed her mind and did not listen to it. They, too,
circled her three tunes around, throwing their own offerings into the
cart—clattering primitive necklaces of shell and stone, colored fishing floats,
sprigs of wilted greenery.

When they had
finished their own song, a greater silence fell over the waiting crowd; until
she could hear clearly the creakings and groans of shifting moorings, made
aware of the greater alien crowd of ships that covered the water surface; a
near-solid skin of wood and cloth and clanging metal. Carbuncle loomed above
them like a gathering storm, but here at this edge of the city’s under
structure she could see beyond its shadow, out across the gray-green open sea.
Endless ... eternal ... is it any wonder that we worship you? Remembering that
once, in a faraway time, even she had believed in the Sea.

The mask of
the Summer Queen came between her and her view of the sea, as the woman came up
between the cart’s traces to stand before her. “Your Majesty.” The Summer Queen
bowed to her, and Arienrhod remembered that she was still the Queen, until
death. “You have come.” The voice was strangely uncertain, and strangely
familiar.

She nodded,
regal and aloof, in control again of the one thing that was still within her
power. “Yes,” recalling the ritual response, “I have come to be changed. I am
the Sea incarnate; as the tide turns and the world has its seasons, so must I
follow to lead. Winter has had its season ... the snow dissolves on the face of
the Sea, and from it soft rains are reborn.” Her voice rang eerily through the
underworld. The ritual was being recorded by hidden cameras, broadcast sight
and sound over screens set up throughout the city.

“Summer
follows Winter as night follows day. The sea joins the land. Together the
halves become whole; who can separate them? Who can deny them their place, or
their time, when their time has come? They are born of a power greater than any
here. Their truth is universal!” The Summer Queen lifted her arms to the crowd.

Arienrhod
started slightly. She had never said that last line, never heard it before. The
crowds murmured; a prickling unease crept in her.

“Who comes
with you to be changed?”

“My
beloved,” keeping her voice even, “whose body is like the earth, coupled with
the Sea. Together beneath the sky, we can never be separated.” The cold wind
burned her eyes. Herne said nothing, did nothing, waiting with appropriate
stoicism.

“Then so be
it.” The woman’s voice actually broke. She held out her hands, and two of the
attendant Summers placed a small bowl of dark liquid in each. The Summer Queen
offered a bowl to Herne; he took it willingly. She offered the other to
Arienrhod. “Will you drink to the Lady’s mercy?”

Arienrhod
felt her mouth stiffen against the reply; said, finally, “Yes.” The bowl held a
strong drug which would dull her fear and awareness of what was coming. Beside
her Herne lifted his black mask and raised the bowl to his lips, grimaced.
Arienrhod raised her own. She had always intended to refuse it; rejecting the
idea of dimming her awareness of the moment when her triumph would have been
clear. But now she wanted oblivion. “To the Lady.” She sniffed the pungent
fragrance of the herbs, felt their numbing gall burn inside her mouth. She
swallowed the liquid, deadening her throat; the second swallow, and the third
were as tasteless as water.

As she
finished it and returned the bowl she saw Summers approaching, carrying the
ropes that would bind them to the cart, and to each other, inescapably. Terror
congealed in her chest, panic darkened her sight.
Deaden me, for gods’ sakes!
trying to feel the numbness spread.
Herne almost resisted as the Summers laid hands on him; she saw his muscles
twist and harden, and his weakness gave her strength. She sat perfectly still
and pliant as the Summers bound her hands, her feet, bound her body tightly
against Herne’s and fastened the ropes to the cart itself. Even though the cart
had the form of a blunt-nosed boat, she knew that its bed gaped with holes
beneath the heaps of furs and offerings, and that it would sink almost
immediately. She couldn’t keep her hands from straining at their bonds, or her
body from trying to pull away from Herne’s. His masked face turned toward her,
but she would not look at him.

The Summer
Queen was back in place before them, but turning to face the water as she
recited the final Invocation to the Sea. As she finished, the silence that had
fallen over the crowd continued, the silence of anticipation now. Now, at any
moment, she would give the sign. Arienrhod felt a dreamlike lethargy creep
along her limbs, along her spine; but her mind was still far too clear.
Is it meant to work that way?
At least
now her body was becoming too leaden to betray her, granting her dignity in
death whether she wanted it or not.

But instead
of moving aside, the Summer Queen turned back to face her again. “Your
Majesty.” The urgency of the muffled voice caught at her. “Would you—look on
the face of Summer’s Queen before you die?”

Arienrhod
stared uncomprehendingly, felt Herne stare, too. Tradition said that the new
Queen did not unmask, casting off her sins, until the old one had gone into the
sea; giving the sign for the crowd to follow.

But this
woman had stumbled off the ritual path once already.
Is she so stupid?
Or was it something else? “I would see your face,
yes,” forcing the words out between numb lips.

The Summer
Queen moved closer to the cart, where the crowd could not see her clearly.
Slowly she put her hands to the mask, and lifted it off her head.

A cascade
of silvery hair tumbled out and down. Arienrhod gaped at the face that the mask
revealed. The ring of Summers surrounding the cart gaped, too. She heard their
voices murmur as the wonder spread, as they all saw what she saw ... face to
face with her own face.

“Moon—” barely
even a whisper to betray her. Her body sat perfectly still, as though it saw
nothing unusual, nothing remarkable, incredible, impossible.
Not in vain. It was not in vain!

“Gods,”
Herne mumbled thickly. “How? How’d you do it, Arienrhod?”

She only
smiled.

Moon shook
out her hair, meeting the smile with forgiveness, and defiance, and compassion.
“Change has come ... because of you, in spite of you, Your Majesty.” She
lowered the mask over her head again.

The Summers
around the cart drew away, looking from face to face, their own expressions
caught between amazement and fear. “The Queen! They’re both the Queen—”
an augury, an omen
. The sibyl tattoo was
clearly visible on Moon’s throat; they pointed at it and murmured again.

Herne
chuckled with difficulty. “The secret’s out ... it’s out at last. She’s been
off world, she knows what she is.”

“What?
What, Herne?” trying to turn her head.

“Sibyls are
everywhere! You never knew, did you; you never even suspected. And those
stuffed dummies—” glancing toward the off worlders in the stands, “they don’t
suspect a thing.” His mangled laughter left him gasping.

Sibyls are everywhere? ... Can they be real?
No, it isn’t fair, there’s so much left to learn!
Closing her eyes, unable to focus her inner
sight.
But it wasn’t in vain
.

The chorus
of wailing and execration began to press again, inexorable like the process of
change, impatient for the sacrifice. All of the crowd’s overflowing grief, all
of its blame, all of its hostility and resentment and fear poured into this
fragile boat, onto the helpless beings of herself and Herne, to be taken down
with them at the ritual’s culmination. She no longer strained against the
contact between her body and Herne’s, grateful at last for someone to share the
trial, and this last moment, with her ... the passing through into another
plane. She had seen too many visions of heaven, too many hells, to choose among
them.
I hope we make our own.

She turned
her gaze outward a last time, to see Moon standing aside from the cart’s path:
Her body was taut with strain, as though she were about to speak an
unforgivable curse, one that she could never take back.
Why should it hurt her? I would rejoice
—
Not
able to remember why she would rejoice, or even whether it was true. She
rallied her mind one last time, before Moon could speak the fateful words, to
speak her own last words. “My people—” half obliterated by their cries. “Winter
is gone! Obey the new Queen ... as you would your own. For she is your own
now.” She dropped her head, catching only Moon’s eyes. “Where ... is he?”