44

“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, yl heard the laughter of the nobles behind her. It bellied out in the cross drafts drifted and circled like a plummeting fisher bkd 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! j, 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. i 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-turba ned 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 whig 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.

BZ led her from the Hall of the Winds with regulation propriety, back down the corridor past the scenes of Winter’s reign. No one followed them. BZ still kept a small distance between them as they walked. Shaking out her mind, she picked through the dazzling fragments of her last hours for the terrible secret that had been uppermost until she stepped out onto the bridge: “What were they doing here, the Summers? Did they tell you what Arienrhod—” who almost killed me; she was suddenly dizzy, “what she had done?”

He shook his head, his concentration fixed on the motion of his feet. “I couldn’t make anything of it; they were in too much of a hurry. I don’t think they even knew. All a mob needs is a crazy rumor.”

“It’s not a rumor. It’s true. And they won’t stop it by holding her prisoner. She’s hired off worlders to start a plague.” Moon threw the words out at him heedlessly.

“What?” He stopped, stopping her. “How do you know—?” breaking off as the possibilities registered.

“Sparks told me.”

“Sparks.” He looked down again, nodding to himself. “So you found him, then. And it — you and he, still…”

“Yes.” Her hands locked in front of her.

“I see. Well.” He sagged against the wall, kept his face averted for a long moment, with his coughing as an excuse. She realized that his reluctance to touch her wasn’t all because of what he had seen in the Hall of the Winds. “He didn’t come out with you.”

“The — Arienrhod caught us. She took him back.” She looked back along the hall, felt herself tearing inside. But the spur of alien prescience goaded her again: Leave him, leave him. Leave now… “He’ll be all right, now that the Summers have come to guard the Queen. They don’t know him,” trusting the power that protected her to guard him too. “I have to stop the plague. I know who’s behind it; Sparks told me everything. I’ve got to tell someone, the police…”

“He didn’t turn you over to the sibyl baiters, then?” BZ said, as though his mind couldn’t leave the idea alone. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve, pulled open his coat.

“No. Arienrhod did it.”

“Arienrhod! But I thought she—” He didn’t finish it, didn’t need to. She felt his wordless compassion reach out to her.

She wrapped a strand of hair around her finger, looked at it, pulled on it. “There were nine of us, BZ… and none of us suited her. We weren’t what she wanted us to be. So she — she abandoned us, she threw us away.” Moon lifted a hand, a farewell to her own lost soul. But sudden sun shafts penetrated her clouded sight. “You knew. You knew about me too. Why did you trust me here, if you knew all along?”

“I knew all along that shed never make you into her image. Do you think I could spend — so much time with you, and not feel the difference between you?” He shook his head; his smile grew stronger. “And it won’t be long now before she’ll damn her haste in getting rid of you. Come on, and tell me what you know about this plot.”

Moon walked with him again, holding the healing warmth of his trust against the scars of grief as they went on toward the looming palace entrance, moving toward the end of Winter. She told him everything she knew, forcing herself to keep her mind on the narrow path through wild lands The doors opened, letting in the life force of the city, sucking them back into its vortex of vitality. There were no royal guards at the entrance now, but instead a knot of belligerent

Summers squatting in a watch of their own. Moon stayed close in BZ’s shadow, until she realized that they had no more idea of what the Queen looked like than she had had. She saw one or two spot her trefoil tattoo instead, and look their surprise at her. “BZ, how did you know to come after me? How did you know I needed you?”

“I didn’t. When the Summers showed up, I decided I’d waited long enough. So I flashed my ID and made myself into a police escort.” He nodded left and right as the Summers let them by. “I’m going to miss that badge…” There was nothing to support the lightness in his tone, and it collapsed. He began to cough again, the ugly coagulation rattling deep in his chest. He stopped moving as they reached the no-man’s-land between the Summer guards and the milling onlookers. “Now… listen, Moon.” He wiped at his eyes, struggled for a breath. “I’ve got to face charges… sooner or later anyway. I’ve got to go back, I might as well get it over with now. I’ll report everything you’ve told me to the first patrolman I see. There’s no need for you to risk turning yourself in. Your people are here; tell them about you and Sparks before they learn he’s Starbuck. They can help you where I can’t.” His mouth pulled into a tight line, as though he couldn’t trust himself to say more. “BZ.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “How can I—”

“You can’t. Don’t try.” He shook his head. “Just let me go…” He began to turn away, but she saw his knees turn to water. He collapsed in slow motion and lay senseless on the white stones.

Загрузка...