The Summer Queen (112 page)

He made an odd sound that was not really laughter, either. “What
am I like, then? That miserable wretch who spent the last few days staring at
you across crowded rooms, afraid to say more than, ‘Good day, Lady’? Chief Justice
Gundhalinu—not Kharemoughi anymore, and not Tiamatan, neither fish nor fowl?
... Or a man who spent twelve years of his life dreaming about you; who went to
the end of the world for you, and wrestled spacetime to a draw in order to hold
you in his arms again—?” His voice was as wondering as if he were possessed, and
she remembered another night, the Festival night so long ago when he had spoken
words like these to her.

“Yes ...” she said, telling him everything in that one word;
giving him his answer. She reached up, touching her own reflection as she
touched his face. And she remembered again that it was Mask Night, and the time
of Change ....

“I want to get out of here,” he said, almost desperately. “Let’s
go somewhere else—there are parties all up and down the Street, there are—”

“No,” she whispered, feeling the pressure of his body along
her own, exquisite, unbearable “Come with me, instead ....” She broke away and
took his hand, leading him the last few steps across the floor toward the
stairway. She did not look back, because there was no one left in the
dwindling, faceless crowd who mattered, who cared where they were going now, or
why. He followed her without question, without hesitation, up the white cascade
of steps. They moved through the shadowed hallways of the upper levels until at
last they reached the bedchamber that had been hers alone for too long.

She stopped before the doorway, stopping him beside her. She
reached up and removed his mask, with infinite care; needing to see his face
before another moment passed .. before they crossed the threshold into an
unknown future. “This is the time of Change, when we cast off our sorrows—”

His hands removed her mask with equal tenderness, set it
down beside his against the wall. They stood, not touching now, but only gazing
at each other’s faces. At last he took her in his arms, holding her as if he
had never let her go, and she felt him trembling, as he had trembled on that night,
not with cold but with fever heat ...

They entered her bedchamber, and she let go of him only for
the moment it took to close the door, sealing them into a private space where
the greater universe could have no hold over them. But as the door closed
behind her, she felt him hesitate; saw him look toward the bed she had shared
for so many years with another man. “Are you sure ... ?” he whispered. “Moon,
are you sure?” He looked back at her. “Because this time, by the gods, I won’t
give you up.”

She glanced toward the empty bed, and felt her throat close.
But she looked at him again, and as she saw his face, all doubt, all regret,
vanished. She put her arms around him, drawing his head down, and kissed him
deeply, passionately, with the yearning of years; keeping her eyes open all the
while.

He lifted her off her feet in a sudden impulsive motion and
carried her across the room. And then the wide, soft expanse of her bed was
beneath her, and he was beside her on it, stroking her hair, caressing her
face, his kisses like nectar as she drank the sweet draught of his soul.

They broke apart at last; were caught up short by the sudden
tangle of silver in silver, the barbed spines of their trefoils tangled in an
embrace of thorns. She lifted her hands to slip the chain over her head. BZ did
the same, setting himself free; the trefoils dropped to the floor, still
entwined. But she saw the tattoo on his throat, like her own. still marking
them both.

She began to unfasten the clasps of her robes. Her fingers
stumbled over her sudden, painful awareness of time: of all that lay between
their first night of intimacy and this one. His eyes were to her the eyes of a
stranger, to whom she was about to make her body utterly vulnerable.

He stopped the stumbling motion of her hands, moved them
tenderly aside. “Let me .. “ he murmured, his voice husky. She lay back,
letting her body go fallow, as he began, lovingly and gently, to remove her
clothes. Every touch of his hands against her skin was like fire and ice, until
she lay beside him, shivering with desire, feeling as if even her soul were
laid bare. He touched her breasts, her belly, touched her softness—She caught
hold of his hand, pressing it against her.

But he withdrew his hand with a gentle insistence,
whispering, “Wait ....”

She watched him loosen his clothing, his own movements suddenly
hesitant and self-conscious, as if he were afraid she would be disappointed by
what she saw as he revealed himself to her. He stood before her, and she saw
how quickly his breath came, how his heart beat, the smooth sheen of
perspiration on his skin; how achmgly eager he was.

She touched him once, gently, felt him go rigid all over,
heard him gasp. He sank onto the bed beside her. She kissed the tattoo in the
hollow of his throat, as all her inhibition dissipated like smoke; kissed his
chest, tasting moisture and salt, kissed the dark, soft line leading downward,
while he buried his hands convulsively in the silver waves of her hair. His
hands opened again, falling free, circling down her back in motions that were
more and more urgent, as she devoured him with her hungry mouth; as he
discovered her every hidden and private place until she had no secrets left, no
thoughts, nothing but desire.

She felt his arms go around her again, lifting her gently,
drawing her down beside him as he laid his body against her, sliding onto her,
between her, inside her, until at last their separate beings were joined into
one. She sighed as he began to move inside her, with the same slow, sensual
motion of their dance. The rhythm of their lovemaking was like the restless
sea; they sank deeper into the waters of sensation, without fear, willing to
drown in the depths of pleasure.

She cried out as orgasm swept over her like an undersea
swell; he moaned softly, and shuddered with reaction. But the swell passed, and
the rhythm continued, building again.

“Gods ...” BZ murmured, his eyes stunned, his face dazed
with astonishment. “Oh, gods.” He murmured something more, in Sandhi, a lilting
flow of words, like a prayer to something inside himself. And then his lips
were on hers again, and his hands covering her breasts, and he was still inside
her moving like the waves, as he had been meant to be; as he had always been,
would always be.

Their lovemaking was as endless as the sea, and still she
sank deeper and deeper into the golden/black waters with every surge and fall;
until she knew that she had been falling forever, been born to drown in these
depths, and revive, and drown again ... that she had waited a lifetime to share
her own depths, and be filled with the waters of his life; to become one being,
one soul, one with his mind. It was impossible now to conceal any secret at
all: not her love for him ... the children already born of it ... even the impossible
secret that she could never share with anyone, although her tongue were to be
torn from her mouth—

And in the echoing golden/blackness where nothing existed
beyond the sea of their shared sensation, as all physical boundaries dissolved
in the fluid heat of desire, she dreamed that she swam like the mers, the Sea’s
Children ... that she felt the sensuous caress of the Sea against their silken,
brindle bodies, the slow fire of their passion, of their motion through the
heart of the secret machinery of the sibyl mind, which lay hidden far below the
place where she lay entwined with her lover; below Carbuncle, the ancient City
in the North, a pin pushed into a map of time .... She heard the mers singing,
a rippling golden vision, how their songs brought healing and order to that secret,
vulnerable, vital organ entrusted to their keeping. She saw at last why the
message of the mersong had been impossible to grasp .... The truths that had
never been revealed to anyone since its creators ... until now.

Caught inside an exaltation that swept her beyond thought, beyond
the boundaries of time, she was terrifyingly free. There was nothing hidden
from her view, and nothing that was not his to share, inside her body, inside
her mind, inside that rippling sea of lightmusic where their union was complete
....

And as he realized the truth, his epiphany became ecstasy,
and set him free. The energy of his release cascaded back through the matrix of
her body, shockwaves of light resonating through every nerve, the feel of him
inside her, his lips against her throat, his inarticulate cry, her incoherent
sob of joy She held him, held him, until she was sure once more of the location
of every atom of his body and her own; and that she was no longer made of fluid
light.

It was a long time before she was able to speak again, a
long time before he even tried, before there was any need for the superfluity
of sound, when their lips, their tongues, were still preoccupied with more
important tasks, while they had no breath to waste, while they still clung to
one another through the slowing spiral of their return to earth.

“I understand ....”he said, at last, with an awe and wonder
that seemed to fill his whole being. And his face changed, filling with anguish
and dread as he realized what it was he knew—why she would do anything to stop
the Hunt; why she had never told him the whole truth ... why he would never be
able to tell anyone else.

“It’s going to be all right,” he whispered, holding her. But
she did not answer him, her own face stricken as she saw his eyes. Her arms
tightened around him. “No,” she murmured, “it will be terrible.”

She felt him look back at her, felt the gentle touch of his
hand against her face. But he did not deny it.

Sparks climbed the stairs from the silent, empty ballroom,
still seeing in his mind the telltale detritus of the Mask Night: countless
masks with their empty, patient eyes, gazing at him from doorways or steps;
waiting for the dawn while their owners made merry within, all along the
littered empty streets. He had worn a mask tonight, the one given to him by
Fate Ravenglass, all reds and golds, glittering like the sun, as vital, as
angry as fire .... He had spent the early part of the night talking with his
father, and the rest of it wandering from party to party; but he had felt as
lifeless and hollow-souled as his mask, once he and his father had said their
goodbyes.

He had not gone for the night, or even for an hour, with anyone,
although he had had sufficient opportunities; because he was certain that Moon
was spending her night alone, faithful to the word, if not the spirit, of their
long-ago vow. He had broken both the word and the spirit of their pledge, many
times, since the offworlders’ return, although he had sworn at their departure
that he would never do it again.

But tonight he had talked with his father about memories of
family and home; he had shared the loneliness and regret of a man who had had
neither, for far too long. His father had told him that he planned to leave the
Assembly when it next visited his homeworld; that being here, at Tiamat’s time
of Change, had made him realize how disillusioned he had grown with an
existence that seemed ever more pointless.

Carrying his father’s words, his father’s sorrow, with him
as he wandered the streets, he had come to realize at last that this was a time
of Change for him as well, even if it was in name only; that there was still
time before dawn for him to lie with the only woman he had ever truly loved,
and promise her a new beginning.

He walked quietly down the hall to the bedroom he and his
wife had always shared, until these last few months. He stopped, standing
motionless before the closed door. Two masks lay side by side against the wall,
in mute testimony to the absurdity of dreams. He stared at them for a long
time. And then he turned away, and went slowly back down the hall.

BZ Gundhalinu took his place on the ribbon-draped platform
between Vhanu and the Prime Minister, aware that all eyes were on him now—the
last one sliding into place, like a guilty schoolboy, when he should have been
the first one here. Below the hastily erected viewing stands the sea waited,
covered by floating docks; the docks were now so crowded with the ships of
Festival-time that the water itself was barely visible.

But where the pier ended below him a space of water had been
deliberately left open, for the ritual to come. He watched its dark, glimmering
motion, feeling its relentness rhythms begin to hypnotize him. His mind sank
like a stone, drawn down into the depths by the weight of his new knowledge,
the unspeakable burden of the secret that lay hidden below ....

He forced his eyes away, clutching the rail in front of him
harder than necessary as he searched the clear space that separated the stands
filled with influential offworlders from the stands which held the most
influential Tiamatans—segregated, as they had always been. All the faces that
he could see across the way were still hidden behind their Mask Night
disguises, unlike his own people; the Tiamatans would not unmask until the
ritual was completed. Two real human faces stood out against the sea of alien
forms—Sparks Dawntreader and the Queen, standing side by side. They were not
touching, and their own faces were as fixed and rigid as masks.

He willed Moon to lift her gaze from the sea to look at him;
until at last she met his eyes. He saw her translucently pale skin blush; saw
the telltale redness of her mouth, the dizzying depths of passion and hidden
knowledge in her eyes. His hand rose unthinkingly to his own lips, his own
unmasked face; fell away again. His whole body still moved as if he were
sleepwalking, stupefied by revelations at every level of awareness, revelations
that still went on and on ....