The Summer Queen (17 page)

As a grown man he sometimes wished that he could shed the
burden of his ritual name, sometimes felt self-conscious speaking it. Yet he
had never changed it. He knew that he never would, because it was still the
symbol of all he was, his heritage.

It had been Moon’s privilege as mother to name their
children. But she had not given their Festival-night twins ritual names; instead
she had given them names he was not sure any Tiamatan ever used. He had never
asked her why—had been afraid to, he admitted angrily, because he knew that
during the Festival she had been with another man—an offworlder, a Kharemoughi
police inspector, the man who had helped her track him down.

Ariele looked like her mother; so much like Moon that seeing
her made him ache sometimes with memories of his childhood, of running on
golden beaches with Moon, racing the birds, laughing and alive. But Tammis ...
The boy looked like her too, but he was darker than any Tiamatan child should
be ... dark like a Kharemoughi. Sparks touched the medal he wore again. His own
father had been halt Kharemoughi—his own skin was dark, by Tiamatan standards.
He didn’t know what the other man had looked like; he had not seen him, before
he went offworld with the rest. But there was nothing he could see of himself
in his son’s face, no matter how much Moon insisted on the resemblance. He
tried not to think about it, tried never to let his doubt show .... He loved
his children. He loved his wife. He knew they loved him. Together he and Moon
were building a new life, a future for themselves, as well as for their world.

So then why did he feel every day that it was harder to
climb this hill?

Moon stood alone in the chamber at the top of the palace, at
the top of the city—as close to reaching the stars as anyone on this world
would come in her lifetime. It was late at night; she had lost track of the
time, letting herself drift, ‘aching for sleep but without the strength to
release the day and go to her bed.

She gazed out through the dome, looking at the sea. Its
surface was calm tonight, a dark mirror for the star-filled sky. Its face
turned back her gaze, turned back all attempts to penetrate its depths, or
reveal the secrets hidden there. Only she knew the truth; that the hidden heart
of the sibyl net lay here, in the sea below her; that the tendrils of its
secret mind reached out from here to countless worlds across the galaxy. Only
she knew. And she could never tell anyone ....

Sudden motion disturbed the balance of sea and sky; she saw
mers, a whole colony of them, celebrating the perfect night, as if her thoughts
had caused them to materialize. It was their safety the sibyl net had charged
her with ensuring; their safety was tied, in ways that she did not fully
understand, to the well-being of her own people, and to the sibyl mind itself.
She watched them moving with joyful abandon between two worlds, inside a net of
stars; their grace and beauty astonished her, as they always did, until for
that moment she remembered no regret.

Tiamatan tradition called the mers the Sea’s Children, and
held their lives sacred; Tiamatans had lived in peaceful coexistence with the
mers for centuries, before the Hegemony had found this world. There were
countless stories of mers saving sailors fallen overboard, or guiding ships
through the treacherous passages among island reefs; they had saved her own
life, once.

But the offworlders had come, had been coming for a millennium
or more, seeking the water of life. And the sibyl mind had suffered with the
death of the mers, until after centuries of suffering it had reached out to her
alone, out of all the sibyls in the net—chosen her to stop the slaughter, to
save the mers and itself, to change the future for her own people, and perhaps
for countless others. It had forced her to obey ... forced her to become Queen.
And then it had left her to struggle on alone, dnven by a compulsion that never
let her rest; to hope that she was doing its will as it had intended.

She looked down, focusing on the room around her as the
night’s image suddenly lost all its beauty. All around her she saw the
stormwrack of her life: the projects indefinitely postponed or forever
abandoned that she had tried to find time to do simply for herself, out of love
and not duty. There were piles of books from Arienrhod’s library, most of them
in languages she did not know, but filled with three-dimensional visions of
life on other worlds that she had longed to pore over; there were pieces of
toys, fashioned from wood by her own hands but still unassembled; the unraveling
body of a half-knitted sweater; clothes for the children with half the smocking
done, that she had never finished before they had outgrown them .... And there
were the fragments of Arienrhod’s past, so much like her own past, of which she
possessed no mementos at all. Sometimes she began to imagine that those aged,
softly fading things were actually her own; or that they were her legacy ...

She shut her eyes. The darkness filled immediately with memories
of the day, reminding her that she had been standing here alone with her grief
for far too long. She had not even been down to kiss her children good night.
She had been unable to face her grandmother’s gaze any longer, one more word,
one more look or murmur of doubt. And still Sparks had not returned, tonight of
all nights, to his disappointed son and daughter; to her, when she needed so
much to talk to him.

Her hands caressed her stomach, as she thought of her
children and remembered the feel of life within her; the joy, the wonder, the
doubt. Unexpected motherhood had given her a new perspective on the future,
given her the strength to hold fast to her belief against the onslaught of the
Goodventures’ furious insistence that she was violating the Lady’s will ...
against her own doubts, a seventeen-year-old girl trying to imagine how she
would rebuild a world, or even a relationship.

She had needed desperately to believe that it was all worthwhile.
Feeling the life within her had made her believe there would be a future worth
struggling for. She had needed so badly to make Sparks believe it too ... and
yet all the while, she had wondered secretly whether the child she carried was
actually another man’s.

She rose restlessly from the couch, rubbing her face, as the
wraith of a dark-eyed stranger whispered through her mind ... as a strange
sensation began in the pit of her stomach, reminding her of morning sickness.
She felt as if something were falling away inside her, turning her thoughts
around, drawing her down into another reality—The Transfer, she thought;
suddenly recognizing the sensation. But no one had spoken, to ask her a
question. She caught the sibyl trefoil, feeling its spines prick her fingers;
felt her hand freeze in midmotion as the immobility overcame her. She had been
called. The Transfer enveloped her like a black wind, sweeping her away.

Blinking, she saw brightness again, through a stranger’s
eyes—another sibyl, on another world, who saw now through her eyes, gazing out
at a sky filled with alien stars .... Her new eyes focused on the questioner
who waited for her; she felt her borrowed body start with sudden disbelief at
the sight of a face she had not seen for eight years, except in her dreams.

BZ Gundhalinu stood before her like a vision out of the
past, his face weary and desperate, his eyes haunted—as she had first seen him
so long ago, in the white wilderness of Winter .... The man whose need had
become her salvation; who had become her sea anchor, her guide ... her
unexpected lover, for one night outside of time. Who had gone away with the
rest of the offworlders at the Final Departure, without betraying her secrets.
Leaving her to the future he had helped her win, to the man he had helped her
win back; leaving her ...

“Moon?” he murmured, his hand reaching out. “is it really
you?” His fingers brushed her cheek; his dark eyes searched her own
wonderingly, as if he were witnessing a miracle

“Yes ...” she whispered, feeling her captive body straining
with the need to touch him, to prove his own reality. “BZ!” She saw him start
and smile as she spoke his name. How did you bring me here? Where are you? What’s
\vrong—“What do you ... want of me?” She forced the words out between numb,
unresponsive lips: the only words the Transfer would let her speak to the man she
had not seen in so long. “Please ... give me more information?”

He licked cracked, bloody lips, and mumbled something she
could not understand. “I’m ... I’m here. On Number Four. A place called Fire
Lake.” He ran his fingers through the filthy tangle of his hair. “I need help.
Something gets into my head all the time, and ...”He broke off, wiping his hand
across his mouth, shaking his head violently, as if he could shake free the
thing that was inside his eyes. “I’m a sibyl, Moon! Someone infected me, the
woman who sees me now for you. She wasn’t meant to be a sibyl .... She’s out of
her mind.” He swallowed visibly. “And I think ... I think I am too. I’m trapped
here, I can’t get help from anyone else. Tell me how you control the Transfer!
Every time 1 hear a question—” His voice broke, and she saw naked despair in
his eyes.

“A sibyl ...” Her disbelief became empathy as she remembered
her own initiation, how the bioengineered virus had spread through her system
like wildfire—how much greater her disorientation and terror would have been if
no one had been there to reassure or guide her. “Don’t be afraid,” she
whispered, aching. “I know you ... 1 know that—” her borrowed hands twitched
impotently at her sides, refusing to obey her, as the memory came to her of
words she had spoken before, gazing into those same eyes, “the finest,
gentlest, kindest man I ever met ... must have been meant for this. That you
must have been chosen, somehow ...”

As 1 was chosen, somehow. She took a deep breath, fighting
to clear her vision of the memory of his face, eight years ago; what had filled
his eyes as she had spoken those words to him then. Trying not to remember how
his arms had pulled her against him, how he had kissed her with desperate,
incredulous hunger ... how often that moment out of the unreachable past still
intruded on her inescapable present. Frantic with frustration as her voice went
on mindlessly, relentlessly answering only his question, ignoring her burning
need to ask and not answer. “... There are word formulas for the channeling of
stimuli, patterns that become a part of your thought processes, in time—” The
flow of words interrupted itself, she felt the sibyl mind stop and search for a
meaningful analogy. “—like the adhani discipline practiced on Kharemough.”

“Really? I practice that—” Hope showed in his eyes, and she
began to believe, at last, in the wisdom the sibyl machinery had forced upon
her—the calm, insistent rationality of her response,

“Use it, then,” her own stranger’s/familiar voice murmured,
as she searched her memory for things Clavally and Danaquil Lu had taught her. “...
There is a kind of ritual to the formal sibyl Transfer; it starts with the word
input. No other questions need to be recognized. Learn to block casual
questions by concentrating on the word stop.”

“Stop’?” he echoed, his voice shaky with disbelief. “That’s
all?”

“It’s very simple: it has to be. But there is much more ....”
Her words flowed like water as she ceased fighting the tide of compulsion. He
repeated every phrase with painful intentness, his eyes holding her gaze,
barely even blinking, as if he were still afraid that she might disappear.

She went on until her voice was gone, and the wellspring of
her knowledge had run dry. “... ft takes time. Believe in yourself. This is not
a tragedy; it could be a blessing. Perhaps it was meant to be ....”

His mouth quivered, as if he held back a denial; his gaze
fell away, came back to her face again. “Thank you,” he whispered. His hand
rose into her vision again, to caress her cheek. She felt her borrowed eyes
fill with unexpected tears as he caught her hands in his and pressed them to
his lips. “You don’t know what this means to me. I love you, Moon. I’ll never
love anyone else. I’ve hated myself ever since I left Tiamat—” His voice fell
apart. He took a deep breath, still holding her, “I can tell you that now ...
because I know I’ll never see you again.”

She felt the black tide begin to withdraw inside her,
drawing her away, calling her back across the fathomless sea of night, back into
her own body. His image began to shimmer and fade. Never see you again ... never
.... She blinked her eyes, feeling hot tears slide out and run down her cheeks.
“I need you—” She heard her borrowed voice cry out the words, did not know
whether she was the one who had spoken them, or the stranger whose bociy she
had stolen.

“Moon!” he cried, clutching her shoulders, clutching at her
spirit as she began to fade. His kiss smothered the last words that came to her
lips; “No further analysis—” The black tide drowned her, sweeping her away
across spacetime, returning her—

I need you .... Her arms were free. She reached out blindly
as she began to fall ... felt arms catch her, circle her, hold her, stopping
her fall.

“Moon—?”

She opened her eyes, blinking, dazed, hearing a man’s voice,
a familiar voice, call her name. She opened her eyes, opened her mouth, tried
to speak his name, as her vision cleared .... “Sparks.” She heard the disbelief
in her voice as she put a name to the face in front of her; Sea-green eyes
gazed back at her; a blaze of flame-colored hair framed a face she had known,
and loved, since forever .... Goddess, was it only a dream—? Still feeling
another man’s lips on her own. A small, helpless sound escaped her, as her husband
drew her close, holding her in his arms.

“I need you. too,” he murmured, against her ear, kissing her
hair. “I saw Gran, I heard—Moon, I’m so sorry.”

She stiffened against him, almost pulling away. But then her
arms closed around him, holding him against her, feeling the tautness of his
muscles, his young, strong body hard against hers. She found his lips, began to
kiss them with a feverish hunger that she had almost forgotten, as an urgency
she thought had died inside her swept her away like the black wind.