Authors: Joan D. Vinge
The Snow Queen (5 page)
And he
could have told them that Starbuck was a traitor, the off world advisor for
this world’s Queen, who worked to protect her interests against the Hegemony’s.
He could have told them that Star buck was the Hunter, who called up his alien
Hounds and led the pack on the Queen’s orders to a grim harvesting of mers. He
could have told them that Starbuck was the Queen’s lover, and would be until
some quicker, shrewder challenger brought him down and became the new Starbuck—for
the Queen was traditionally the Sea
Mother
incarnate; she had many lovers, as the sea had many islands. All of those
things would have been true, and several more besides. He could even have told
them that he was Starbuck, collecting the confidences he needed to keep the
Queen’s position in negotiations firm—and they would have laughed, as he did.
Because
Starbuck could have been any one of them, and as easily none of them. He merely
had to be an off worlder And he merely had to be the best. Starbuck’s anonymity
was assured by ritual and law; he existed above and beyond all authority, all
retribution except the Queen’s.
Starbuck
turned, gazing over the rim of his drink at the incongruous clothing laid out
on a shelf along the mirrored wall by the mirrored door: the calculated black
silk and leather of his formal court attire, and the traditional hooded helmet
that masked his real identity, that made
helmet crested in a set of curving, steely spines like the antlers of a
stag—the symbol of all the arrogant power any man could ever want to wield, or
so he had thought when he first settled it onto his head. Only later had he
come to realize that it belonged to a woman, and so did the real power—and so
did he.
He sat down
suddenly on the turned-back covers of the long bed; watched his endless
reflections in the walls mimic him mindlessly into infinity.
Seeing the rest of his life?
He frowned,
pushing the image away, running a hand through the thick black curls of his
hair. He had been Starbuck for better than ten years now, and he was determined
to go on being Starbuck ... until the Change. He wielded power and enjoyed it,
and it had never mattered to what end, or where the real source of the power
lay.
Didn’t matter?
He looked down at the heavy strength of his
arms, his body still hard and youthful, thanks to privilege. And the butchering
of mers ... No, the slaughter didn’t matter at all, as an end it was only the
means to a greater end. But the source, yes, that mattered. She
mattered—Arienrhod. All the things that had the power to move him were
hers—beauty, wealth, absolute control . eternal youth. In the first moment he
had seen her at audience in the palace, with her former Starbuck at her side,
he had known that he would kill to possess her, to be possessed by her. He
imagined her body moving against his own, the bridal veil of her hair, the red
jewel of her bitter mouth ... tasting power and privilege and passion incarnate.
And so it
did not strike him as incongruous that he moved unthinkingly from the bed to
his knee, as the door opened and made the vision reality.
“... The time of Change is upon us! The Summer
Star lights our way to salvation ...”
Moon stood
hugging herself on the dock in the shrouded dawn, shivering with a chill born
of cold mist and misery. The breath she had held in until she ached puffed
white as she exhaled, dissipated into the gray fog breath of the sea like a
spirit, like an escaping soul.
I will not
cry
. She wiped at her cheek.
“We must prepare for the End, and the new
Beginning!”
She
turned,
looking back past Gran along the fog-wrapped tunnel
of the pier as the insane old man’s roaring broke like a wave over the sand
castle of her self-control. “Oh, shut up, you crazy old ...” She muttered it,
her voice quivering with the helpless frustration that made her want to scream
it. Gran glanced over at her, sharp sympathy etched on her weather-worn face.
Moon looked away, ashamed at feeling resentful, resentful at having to feel
ashamed. A sibyl didn’t say those things; a sibyl was wisdom and strength and
compassion. She frowned.
I’m not a sibyl
yet
.
“We must cast out the Evil Ones from among
us—we must throw their idols into the Sea.”
Daft Naimy threw his arms up, shaking fists at
the smothered sky; she watched the ragged sleeves of his stained robe tumble
back. Dogs barked and bayed around him, keeping a cautious distance. He called
himself the Summer Prophet, and he roamed from island to island across the sea,
preaching the word of the Lady as he heard it, distorted by the echoing of
divine madness. When she was a child she had feared him, until her mother had
told her not to; and laughed at him, until her grandmother had told her not to;
and been embarrassed by him, until her own growing understanding had taught her
to endure him. Only today her endurance was already tried beyond all reason ...
and I’m not a sibyl yet
!
She had
heard that Daft Naimy had been born a Winter. She had heard that he had once
been a tech-loving unbeliever ... that he had scorned natural law by shedding
the blood of a sibyl. That he had been driven mad by the Lady as punishment;
that this was how he served his penance. The trefoil symbol the sibyls wore was
a warning against defilement, against trepass on sacred ground. They said it
was death to kill a sibyl, death to love a sibyl, death to be a sibyl ... and
they meant a living death.
Death to kill
a
sibyl ...
“There is the Sinner who worships false gods!
See him!”
The
gnarled hand flew out like an accusing arrow.
pier into its line of flight as he climbed the laddered gangway. His face
hardened over with hateful resolution as his eyes focused on the old man in the
distance, and then on her own face.
Death
to love a
sibyl ...
Moon shook
her head in denial, answering another unspoken accusation. But his eyes were
gone from her again, looking at Gran instead; showing her with that look all
the things she had loved, and was losing. At last she understood what they
meant when they said that it was death to be a sibyl.
“But I’m
not a sibyl yet.” The whisper caught on her teeth.
Someone
called up to
and determined. The tide was ebbing; the water of the bay lay far below the
pier. All she could see from here of the Winter trader’s ship that would take
him away was the tip of its mast, like a beckoning finger. “Well, I guess
that’s about it. All my things are on board; they’re ready to sail.” He looked
down at his feet as he stopped before them, suddenly awkward. He spoke only to
Gran. “I guess—I guess I’m saying goodbye.”
“Prepare for the End!”
“Sparks
...” Gran put out a hand, reached up to brush his cheek. “Must you go now? At
least wait until your Aunt Lelark gets back from sea.”
“I can’t.”
He shook his head against the touch. “I can’t. I have to go now. I mean, it’s
not forever—” as if he were afraid that if he waited, tomorrow could become
forever too easily.
“Oh, my
beloved child ... my beloved children.” She stretched her other arm stiffly,
brought them both together in her embrace, as she had done since time past
remembering. “What will I do without you? You’ve been all my comfort, since
your grandfather died ... Must I lose you now, and lose you both at once? I
know Moon has to go, but—”
“Repent, sinner!”
Moon felt
the tightening of Spark’s mouth more than she saw it, as his head came up and
he glared at Daft Naimy. “Her destiny’s been calling her all her life—and so’s
mine, Gran. I just didn’t know they’d lead us separate ways.” His hand pressed
his off world medal like a pledge; he pulled away from them.
“But to
Carbuncle!” more like an oath than a protest. Gran shook her head.
“It’s only
a place.” He grinned, gripped her scarf-wrapped shoulder in reassurance. “My
mother went there; and she came back with me. Who knows what I’ll come back
with. Or who.”
Moon turned
away, clutching the sleeves of her parka as though she were strangling
something.
You can’t do this to me!
She moved to the edge of the pier, looked over the rail and down along the
sheer, sea weedy face of the stone-built jetty, at the trader’s ship rocking
patiently far below. She took a long breath of damp-heavy air, and another,
sucking in the harbor smells of seaweed and fish and salt-soaked wood ...
listening to the murmur of voices below, the creak and slap and whisper of the
moorage in the restless tide. So that she wouldn’t hear
“Your world is coming to an End!”
“Good-bye,
Gran,” his voice muffled by an embrace.
Suddenly
all that she saw and heard, that was so terribly familiar, took on an overlay
of alien ness as though she saw it all for the first time ... knowing that it
was not reality, but her own perception that had changed. Two saltwater tears
slipped down the sides of her nose, and fell thirty feet into the bay. She
heard him pass behind her toward the gangway without slowing.
“Sparks!”
She turned, putting herself in his way. “Without a word ... ?”
“It’s all
right.” She straightened her face, managed with some pride to speak as though
it were. “I’m not a sibyl yet.”
“No. I
know. That wasn’t why—” He broke off, pushing back his knitted cap.
“But it is
why you’re leaving.” She couldn’t tell, herself, whether that was a statement
or an accusation.
“Yeah.” He
looked down suddenly. “I guess it is.”
“
“But only
partly!” He straightened. “You know that it’s true, I’ve always felt this
pulling me, Moon.” He faced northward, toward Carbuncle at the back of the
wind. “I have to find out what I’m missing.”
“Or who?”
She bit her tongue.
He
shrugged. “Maybe.”
She shook
her head desperately. “After I come back from my initiation it won’t be
different, we can still be together!” / can have both, I can—”It can be like it
always was again. Like we always wanted it to be—” not even convincing herself.
“Hey, boy.”
The voice rose from below, breaking into echoes off the jetty wall. “You
coming? The tide won’t wait all day!”
“In a
minute!”
voice faded.
“That’s
just superstition!” Their eyes locked. And in that moment she knew that he
shared her understanding of the truth; as he had always known, and shared,
everything: It would never be the same again.
“You’ll be
changed. In a way that I can never change, now.” His fingers whitened on the
rail. “I can’t stay here, stay the way I am now. I have to change, too. I have
to grow, and learn ... I have to learn who I really am. All this time I thought
I knew. I thought-becoming a sibyl would answer all my questions.” His eyes
darkened with the new emotion that she had seen first as she came back to him
there in the hidden cave, on the
envied her, and accused her, and shut her out.
“Then go,
if that’s really why you’re going.” She challenged the darkness, afraid to
retreat. “But don’t go out of bitterness, because you’re hurt, or because
you’re trying to hurt me. Because if you do you’ll never come back.” Her
courage broke. “And I don’t think I could stand that, Sparkie—”
His hands
came up, but as she reached out to him they dropped to his sides again. He
turned away, shaking his head, with no forgiveness or understanding or even
sorrow. He moved to the gangway, started down the ladder.
Moon felt
Gran come up beside her, watch with her as
it rose on the water to meet him. He disappeared into the cabin on the broad
platform that joined the double hulls, and though she kept watching he did not
come out on deck again. The deckhands cast off the mooring ropes, the crab-claw
sails fell jingling down the masts and filled with moist wind.
The fog was
lifting as the world brightened. Moon could see as far as the channel leading
to the open sea, and she watched the trader’s catamaran grow smaller as it
angled out into the bay, reaching for the gap. She heard its engines start,
once it was well away from the Summer docks. At last it reached the channel
entrance and merged with the wall of fog, snuffed out in an instant, like a
ghost ship. Moon rubbed at her eyes, her face, wetting her hands with mist and
tears. Like a sleeper waking, she turned to look at her grandmother, small and
stooped with sorrow beside her. She looked beyond her at the silhouetted nets
and winches along the dockside; the ancient, sea worn storage house at the foot
of the steep village street. Somewhere further on was their own cottage ... and
her outrigger lying on the beach, waiting to carry her away from all that she
had left in the world. “Gran?”