The Summer Queen (130 page)

She saw again in her mind the Ariele carrying Kirard Set Wayaways
out to sea—the only one of her tormentors on whom she had been able to take
revenge. She let herself imagine him reaching shore, half-drowned, exhausted,
pulling himself onto the docks below the city ... saw herself waiting for him
there, with a knife in her hand, to keep her final promise to him ....

Sickened, she pressed her hand to her face; pain throbbed in
her head with every heartbeat, as the headache that had been threatening her
since she rose this morning burst into blinding life. She had eaten nothing all
day, but the very thought of food repulsed her. She reached her own bedroom and
stopped, leaning against the doorframe, unable to force herself to go inside.

She went on along the hall, until at last she reached the
doorway to the room that had been Arienrhod’s. The bedchamber waited as
Arienrhod had left it, over twenty years ago, and had not been slept in by
anyone since she had died. Moon opened the door, and stood gazing inside.

“Do you need anything, Lady?” A servant passing in the hall
hesitated, inclining her head.

Moon looked at the woman, pressing her mouth to stop its sudden
urge to ridiculous laughter. Need anything—? “I need to rest,” she said
finally, her voice thick. “I don’t want to be disturbed for a long time ....”

“Yes, Lady.” The woman nodded respectfully. She glanced at
the open doorway and hesitated, as if she wanted to say more, before she went
on down the hall.

Moon went into the room, retreating into its silence. Its
wide windows were hidden by heavy curtains; it was entirely self-contained, a
womb into which she could withdraw. She undressed and lay down in the nacreous,
shellform bed, wrapping the bedclothes around her, her arms and legs embracing
the softness and emptiness. No memory lay waiting for her here, no phantom arms
to reach out to her, no whisper of gentle words, the remembered heat of no one
else’s body to warm her own ....

She darkened the bedside lights, throwing the ghost-haunted
shadows of the room into utter blackness, so that it did not matter whether her
eyes were open or closed. Utterly alone at last, she folded her arms around her
shivering flesh and began to weep, silently at first, and then wrackingly,
because there was no one to hear her, no one to comfort her, no one to forgive
her.

She wept until she had no strength left, until she could
only lie still, closer to sleep than to waking. She waited there, her body unresisting,
her mind surrendering, ready to be taken by oblivion.

But instead she felt something else seize hold of her—an irresistible
force drawing her down into a darkness even more complete .... The Transfer.

She let go, let herself fall, through the darkness and into
the corruscating light/sound of a place she remembered, feeling hope come alive
inside her, almost unbearably. (BZ—?) she called, seeing her voice go out from
her in ripple-rings of harmonic light. (BZ, where are you?)

(No ...) the answer came, and the touch of it against her
mind was a stranger’s.

(Who—?) she thought, because there was something almost
familiar about the disembodied patterns of the other’s contact.

(KR Aspundh—)

(KR—?) Her disbelief rippled out from her like tolling
bells.

(Yes, my dear ....) His thought turned fond and gentle, like
the feathery touch of an old man’s hand against her cheek. (After so long. BZ
told me what had become of you, all that you have become ....)

(BZ—where is he, KR? How is he? How can I reach him?)

(Slowly,) he whispered. (Go slowly, Moon—though I should
address you properly as Lady—my strength is not what it was, even when you knew
me. This is difficult for rne .... BZ is being held by the Hegemonic
government. He will be sentenced without trial, the Golden Mean will see to it,
because they fear his popularity. They mean to be rid of him, because of his
opposition to the water of life ... to send him somewhere he will never return
from. He told me to contact you. Why has all this happened. Moon? He said that
you could tell me.)

(Lady’s Eyes—I can’t, KR ....) She felt her desperation and
fear grow blinding, making her thoughts incoherent, drowning his contact. She
forced the heart of ice that had formed within her these past weeks to cool her
blood, letting her see clearly, and think dispassionately. (It’s impossible. I
can’t explain it, any more than he can, even like this, even to you. I can only
tell you that if I fail in what I was meant to do, every world on which there
are still sibyls will suffer ... including Kharemough. And there are only two
people who can help me—BZ, and a man named Reede Kullervo. But something called
the Brotherhood has taken Kullervo, and my daughter. I don’t know how to save
them. My husband went after them to Ondinee ... BZ believed you might be able
to help them. But how can we save them, KR, how can we save BZ, if even the
ones he trusted have betrayed us—?)

His thoughts enfolded her like warm hands. (The Golden Mean
is only one facet of Survey’s hidden structure, as the Brotherhood is another
.... I am taking a chance in assuming you understand that. There are others,
they are all like mirrors within a kaleidoscope. There is still hope—there is
always hope. I will see what can be done to help save your daughter, and bring
Kullervo back to you. But beyond that ... a balance was thrown off when
Kitaro-fcen was killed. She was a counterweight: with her support BZ might have
held his own against his formidable opposition ... Reede Kullervo and your
daughter might not have been lost. The Golden Mean controls the water of life
completely now, and we who see further than they know enough to see that they
must be stopped.)

(Yes,) she thought. (Yes. The water of life has everything
to do with what is wrong, what went wrong .... The sibyl net is in danger,
because the mers are in danger ... the mers ....) Strident waves of
interference beat back against her brain, drowning her thoughts in undertow.
(It has to stop! They must stop hunting the mers.)

There was silence, shimmering like a reflection on water
through a moment’s eternity. (Very well, then. But what will make them stop?)
Aspundh asked finally. (We must find something that will make them stop.
Something that they desire even more than the water of life ....)

(I don’t believe anything exists that they want more,) Moon
thought bitterly.

(It exists, somewhere ...) Aspundh replied, with a faint
ripple of pained amusement. (But it is nothing easily discovered, or they would
have it already, like the water of life.)

(The stardrive plasma,) she thought. (But they have that, because
BZ gave it to them.)

(Perhaps that was his mistake,) Aspundh murmured. (But then,
we are all only human—none of us can see the future, and see it clearly. There
must be something else they want.)

She thought of the secret of the computer itself; if they
knew of its existence they would never touch another mer. But they could never
be allowed to possess that knowledge, after having proved so profoundly how
little they could be trusted with power. Even if she could give it to them ...
(I don’t know. I don’t know.)

(Nor do I. But we must not give up hope, or give up searching—)

(But where else can I search?) she thought, despairing.
(Where can I go? I have no options.)

(You have all of spacetime,) he answered (You are adrift in
it now. You are what you are for a reason; I have never been more certain of it
than now. I can send outward, through the network of contacts Survey has
provided me. But you have the greater resource—the sibyl mind speaks to you, it
opens itself to you in a way it does for no one else I know; this is something
I had only heard tales of, before I met you. There are secrets the sibyl net
hides e /en from its most trusted servants ... but clearly not from you.)

She made no answer, suffused with the radiance of his words,
and the vision they created in her mind.

(We are doing what we can for BZ. But the Golden Mean is
powerful in the Hegemony. You may be the only real hope BZ has. He needs a
force strong enough to turn back the tide ... perhaps it is why you are called
Moon,) KR thought gently, as strands of golden light began to unravel all
around her. (May the gods of your ancestors help you ...) Her mind sang with
his final benediction.

But she was alone in the darkness again, without an answer.

“There it is,” Kedalion said, pointing ahead over the
blasted heath of the Land of Death as the citadel became visible. He called up
enhancement, and a segment of the displays leaped into magnification, showing
them more detail.

“By’r Lady ...” Sparks murmured, beside him. “It’s huge. It
must be bigger than Carbuncle.”

“They’re entire self-contained city-states,” Kedalion said,
remembering the citadel’s labyrinthine streets and levels with sudden
vividness. A part of him was still casually amused by Sparks Dawntreader’s
tireless wonder, even while another, ^separate part of his brain felt sick with
dread as he watched their final destination fill I the screens.

It had been difficult to believe Dawntreader had never been
offworld, when they were back in Carbuncle. He belonged to the same secret
organization that Reede belonged to, and his single-minded obsession with
getting to Ondinee made his confidence seem utterly unshakable. He even had a
fair amount of knowledge about starships and how their systems worked; but it
was all textbook knowledge. He had never set foot on an actual ship, and on
board the Prajna he had been like a dumbstruck boy. It had reminded Kedalion of
Ananke’s first transit; but Dawntreader was at least his own age.

Dawntreader had asked them endless questions about their
past lives and home worlds, and how they had come to be here, in these bizarre
circumstances. He had not even complained about the cramped quarters—which had
been designed to suit Kedalion’s size requirements, and not those of his
passengers or crew. Dawntreader had tried everything, learned every task, no
matter how tedious or unpleasant, aboard the ship; and for the most part, he
had done them well. “I’ve waited my entire life for this,” he said once, when
Ananke had asked him why he wanted so badly to scrub down the control room
floor. There had been a desperate passion in his eyes when he said it; but the
emotion had turned to ashes, as he remembered what had finally driven him to
break the chains that had bound him to his home world.

Now Kedalion watched Dawntreader’s amazement slowly change,
darkening, as he realized that this was the stronghold of the enemy, the place
he had to bring his daughter out of. “Lady and all the gods ....” Dawntreader
murmured, and Kedalion read the rest of the thought in his eyes: How—?

“Nobody told you it would be easy,” Kedalion said, expressionless.
“You want to go to Razuma starport, instead? The citadel might still let us
turn around ...” He gestured at the image on the screen.

Dawntreader glanced over at him, and frowned. “No,” he said.

“Just asking.” Kedalion shrugged. He looked over his
shoulder at Ananke, sitting in the back, brooding in silence with his arms
folded across his chest. He looked naked somehow, without the quoll; seemed to
feel naked, from the way he held himself. Every time Kedalion looked at him,
the quoll’s absence was like a shout, reminding him of what they were planning
to do here, shouting at him that they were insane, and going to die. Or maybe
it was only his own common sense that he heard screaming. He sighed, and began
the approach codes; listening to the answering signal burst tell him that he
was doomed, they were all doomed now ....

The citadel beckoned them into its waiting mouth, on down
its throat into the designated docking bay. They climbed out as their craft
locked down, and were met by a reception committee of armed men.

“We were only expecting two of you,” the leader, a man named
Samir, said, holding his stun rifle at roughly Kedalion’s eye level.

Kedalion felt sweat burn unpleasantly down his back, as he began
the speech he had rehearsed in his mind a thousand times over on the way from
Tiamat. “TerFauw ordered us to bring this man with us, because he has important
data for Kullervo. He’s been cleared. Show him your hand,” he said, nudging
Dawntreader.

Dawntreader held up his palm. He had learned to speak Trade
on the way here, using an enhancer, practicing it on them. He showed off the
eye he had burned into his own flesh, a reasonable facsimile of the Source’s
mark; or at least Kedalion hoped so .

Samir stared at the brand, frowned. “Nobody told me about
that,” he said flatly.

“How could they?” Kedalion answered, his tension giving it
the snap of impatience. “I’m telling you now. Kullervo needs to see this man,
he’s got special information, he’s a local expert on the mers. If Kullervo
doesn’t get to see him, somebody’s going to be real pissed off.”

Samir looked at the scar. He looked back at Kedalion, his
stare long and hard. At last he shrugged, and nodded. “All right,” he said, and
waved them on.

They made their way through the maze of tunnels that led
into the heart of the citadel complex, where transportation waited that would
take them to Reede Kedalion pushed his hands into his coat pockets, feeling for
his huskball; hating the ct of being a passenger and not a pilot, especially
now, when he felt so owerless. The huskbali was not much more than a rough nub
in a nest of loose avings now; he had nearly worn it out, with years of nervous
fiddling. He wished “he knew where to find another one; even though he knew a
new one would never be the same, would be like encountering a stranger in his
pocket. “Well, here we are,” phe said, with relentless banality, as they
reached a transport stop.

“That was great, Kedalion,” Ananke said suddenly, glancing
over his shoulder. “The way you—Gods, I thought I was going to puke when Samir
stuck his gun in ^your face. Reede couldn’t have backed him down better.”