The Summer Queen

TIAMAT: Carbuncle

Moon stirred, pushing herself up from the floor of the car as sounds rose echoing from the well below. Stupefied with exhaustion, she was not certain if she had slept or fainted, or how long she had lain there. Her mind reeled as awareness came back to her, and with it the visions of all she had done, and been, through the hours past; the vision of Her … until she felt herself slipping away again, back down the fluid corridors into the dark mansions of memory.

She pulled herself to her feet, clinging to the panel, clinging to consciousness with an equally relentless grip. She peered out and down. Far below in the green-lit water she saw a figure—thought at first that it was human. But it was not, it was a mer. A human figure was struggling up the wall below her, clinging to the footholds she could not even see among the outcrops of equipment. Only one figure. She looked out again, trying to make the mer’s form into a second human being. But she could not, and still there was only one man climbing the wall. She remembered her last sight of Reede’s tortured face, as she had looked out at him through Tammis’s eyes, there in the hidden caves: the face of a man with pride, but without hope … the face of a dying man.

She turned away from the instrument panel to the car’s access opening; staggering, as if she had forgotten how to use her physical body in the time that she had been incorporeal and infinite. She stepped out onto the narrow catwalk beyond the exit, holding on to the edge of the doorway, pressing a hand against the solid support of the wall as she edged forward.

A helmeted head pushed up over the lip of the platform in front of her. She jerked back, startled; leaned forward, her weakness and giddiness forgotten as she caught his arms. “Tammis!” She helped him drag himself onto the platform and stumble with her back inside the car. He collapsed inside the doorway, falling to his knees as if all his strength were gone. His faceplate was smeared inside with something that obscured her view of him. She dropped to her knees beside him as he fumbled with the helmet’s seals. Pushing his useless hands aside, she unfastened his helmet and pulled it off.

She fell back, from the smell of sickness, the sight of blood. Eyes as clear and pure a blue as the skies of summer gazed back at her from a face that was an unrecognizable mask of vomit, runneled with red. “Reede.” She felt her heart stop.

He nodded, swaying unsteadily. “Lady …”he whispered, his voice barely recognizable. He broke off, trying futilely to wipe his face clean on the sleeve of his suit.

“Where is Tammis?” She caught him by the shoulders; he cried out as she jerked him upright. Sick at heart, she shook him, forcing him to give her an answer. “Where is he! What happened?”

Reede focused on her again, finally responding to the anguish in her voice. “He’s gone …” he mumbled, and she felt a spasm wrench his body. “The turbines—”

“No,” she whispered. “What? How? No—” mouthing words without meaning. “Why—?”

“It was supposed to be me! I had to stay alive, I had to survive, until the sibyl net was healed… . And then I had to die.” Reede sagged forward, his hands knotting. “He wouldn’t let me. He saved my life, the bastard, for what—? He was safe! He had everything … everything to live for. But instead he died, for me. It should have been me… .”

She let him go, let him slide down into the puddle of seawater pooling around her on the floor. She closed her eyes against the sight of him; seeing Miroe suddenly, his death reflected in Tammis’s eyes. Tammis. Tammis … “Tammis. …” She became aware of a thin keening, realized that it came from her own throat.

When she could bear to open her eyes again, Reede lay motionless, staring up at her. He raised a hand, clutching at her sleeve. “Sorry …”he whispered, “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry… . What I did to you—your daughter, your son. Should have been me. Me—” His voice broke down into sobbing. “Me! Me!”

She leaned forward, lifting him up, her weary arms trembling with the effort. She ordered the car to take them to the surface; held the clumsy dead-weight of him close against her as she watched the access door close, merging seamlessly into the wall. The car started into motion again, carrying them upward this time through the still-darkened well. She went on holding him, pretending for that brief space of time that there was no time, that she was still inside the outside, within that epiphany where everything was always happening … that this was really her own child, held safely in her arms, and not the half-mad stranger who had destroyed her family in the name of the sibyl mind… .

But in time their motion ceased, and the ceiling hatch opened silently above her. She looked up, without the strength to do more, heard voices calling down to her—Jerusha’s, Merovy’s. She looked down again, unable to bear the sight of their faces, their reaction to what they were about to find.

Reede stirred as he heard them; he had not moved or spoken during their entire journey upward. Now, he struggled upright until he was sitting alone. He looked at her, with dazed incomprehension; looked away wordlessly.

“Moon—?” Jerusha’s voice came again, more demanding, with more concern.

“Here …” she answered, barely able to force herself to speak that acknowledgment. She heard someone climb down through the access, glanced up again as Jerusha dropped to the floor beside them.

Jerusha’s gaze flickered from one of them to the other; the lines of her face deepened with her sudden frown, as she saw what had become of them. “Tammis,” she said, not really a question; her eyes were back on Moon’s face.

Moon shook her head.

“Gods …” Jerusha breathed. She moved forward, giving Moon the strength of her arms, pulling her to her feet. She looked at Reede, back at Moon. “Nothing’s changed, up here.” It was half a question, half a statement of fact. “The city is still dark. Moon what happened? Can you tell me?”

Moon only shook her head again. “Get me … get us out, Jerusha. Out of here.”

Jerusha nodded, helping Moon toward the ladder, and up. Moon caught the hands waiting for her up above, was pulled free from the reeking prison of the car. She stood inside a lamplit circle of familiar faces, the arms around her reaffirming her existence in the world to which she had finally found her way home.

Clavally and Danaquil Lu supported her as Merovy brought her strong medicinal tea. She took it in her hands and drank it down, her eyes on the figures emerging now from the car’s glowing interior. Jerusha came first, reaching back to pull Reede up the final few feet of the ladder, half-dragging him out onto solid ground at the Pit’s rim. He collapsed as she let him go; she left him like a broken doll at the edge of the well. The others turned expectantly, looking past him. “Tammis?” Merovy called, her anticipation turning to concern as no one else appeared.

“Merovy,” Moon said, her voice as thick as treacle in her throat. “He isn’t coming.”

Merovy turned to look at her, looked toward the Pit again, with an expression that Moon felt in her bones. “Yes, he is,” she insisted, with mindless conviction. “He went with you. He’s coming—”

“He’s not coming,” Moon whispered, feeling her own eyes brim. “He’s dead, Merovy.” Her hands closed over the heavy stuff of her sweater, twisting the sodden yarn. “He’s dead.”

Merovy’s face emptied; her hands pressed the gentle swell of her belly. “How—?” Her voice squeaked like an unoiled hinge.

“I killed him.”

Reede’s voice made them all turn. Moon saw him stagger to his feet, a man climbing out of his own grave to stand before them. She heard Merovy’s guttural cry of anguish. Jerusha looked back at him, staring.

Merovy started forward, her face contorted with rage and loss; her mother caught her, holding her back. “Why?” she screamed.

“It was an accident,” Moon said; the words lacerated her throat. “Tammis saved his life.”

“Why? Who is he?” Merovy cried, and there was no answer that Moon or anyone could give her. “It isn’t fair, we have a child—”

Her mother held her close, pinioning her struggles. “You have a child…” Clavally murmured, holding her tighter. “You have his child, my heart; take care of the child.…” hushing her as she began to sob. The sound of Merovy’s grief magnified in the vastness of the room until it seemed to Moon as if the entire world wept. Clavally and Danaquil Lu looked up at her over their daughter’s hidden face, in sudden, terrible understanding.

Moon turned away, unable to face their compassion, afraid of breaking down. She looked toward the Pit. “I saved the world,” she murmured, with sudden bitterness, “but I lost my children.”

She saw Reede move, out of the corner of her eye; saw him starting for the Pit’s rim. “Stop him!”

Jerusha caught him in two strides, knocked him aside as he reached the edge and tried to fling himself over. She subdued him without effort, forced him away from the rim, back toward the people who stood in silent judgment of him.

He fell to his knees. Her hands stayed on his shoulders, holding him there; but Moon could see that she needn’t have bothered. He glared at them, his face lurid with fresh blood, his eyes wells of despair. “You want to watch me die?” he spat. “Watch it happen then, damn you!”

Moon moved toward him, feeling as if her own body had become the body of an old woman, stiff and slow and full of pain. She stopped, looking down at him. “Who are you?” she asked.

He lifted his head; let it fall again, without speaking, when she had seen the impossible truth still in his eyes.

“I don’t want you to die,” she said softly. She put her hands against his face as he tried to turn away, her touch as gentle as if she held snow. “I want to help you. Tell me how.”

He shook his head slowly, wetting her hands with blood, staring up at her again in utter confusion. But he only said, “You can’t. I can’t.”

“You said that the Police took all the water of death you had, when they arrested you?”

“Yes,” he muttered wearily.

She glanced at Jerusha. “Would they still have it?”

Jerusha shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s not likely they’d hand it over to us.”

“On humanitarian grounds—?”

Jerusha laughed humorlessly. “To save the life of a criminal you’re sheltering from the Hegemony? Under the circumstances, I’d say it’s bloody unlikely.”

Moon moved away from Reede’s side. “Send a messenger to Vhanu, Jerusha. Tell him that if he wants the lights on in this city again, he’ll send the drug to me, no questions asked.”

Jerusha stared at her. “I thought you had nothing to do with the city’s power going out.”

“I didn’t,” Moon said.

“But now you can bring it back?”

Moon glanced away, into the dark reaches of the Hall of the Winds. “Yes,” she said.

Jerusha stared at her. “I’ll send someone right away,” she murmured, “Lady.” She bowed, and went quickly from the hall.

Moon turned back, to face Merovy and her parents, still waiting like mourners at a funeral. “Clavally, Dana, will you help me get Reede to a bed? I want him made as comfortable as possible.” They nodded, with doubt as plain on their faces as anguish, and their hands still on their daughter’s quivering shoulders. “Merovy,” Moon said quietly, “you have medical training. Will you see what you can do to help him? He’s in considerable pain.”

Merovy blinked; the white, dumbstruck emptiness of her face slowly regained a suffusion of color, and for a moment Moon thought it was fresh anger, and refusal. But Merovy turned, forcing herself to look at Reede, and her expression wavered. “Yes,” she said finally, almost inaudibly, her eyes downcast. She came forward with her parents; still looking down, her hand pressing her stomach.

Reede lifted his head, watching them warily as they approached. But he allowed himself to be half-led, half-carried up the curving flight of stairs, and back into the palace.

Moon made certain that he was settled into a bed, used a cool cloth to wipe vomit and blood from his face with her own hands. She watched Merovy tend him as best she could with what medical supplies they had. Merovy’s face eased, her movements grew calm and sure as she worked, as contact with his flesh forced her to acknowledge his humanity.

Reede lay with his eyes closed, breathing shallowly, as though he were unconscious. But Moon knew from the rigidness of his muscles, the stark whiteness of his clenched fists, that he was only trying to ignore their presence, their unasked-for intrusion into his suffering.

At last, satisfied that she had done everything for him that she could, she left him in their care and went back through the dimly lit palace halls, down through the throne room and back to the Hall of the Winds. She stepped out onto the bridge above the Pit, feeling its siren light call up to her. She felt only a distant echo now of the many-colored splendor she remembered in her mind, but still it made her senses sing with yearning. The Lady …

She breathed in the smell of the sea that rose up the well to fill the air here; a constant reminder of the presence of an unseen power, one that she had believed in profoundly in her island youth. Then there had been a goddess incarnate in the waters of the sea, who spoke through the lips of every sibyl, granting the special gift of Her wisdom only to the Summers, Her chosen people.

That belief had been destroyed by her head-on collision with the ways of the offworlders, their far vaster and more sophisticated web of knowledge and deception. She had learned what she believed was the real truth about the sibyl net, and lost her innocence in the same moment. There had been no Lady any longer, except as the empty source of curses, through all the years since; only the ache of loss, whenever she had needed the strength of belief.

But now at last she had seen the greater truth hidden within the lesser one of the offworlders’ cynical self-deception. The intelligence that guided the sibyl net was not a supernatural force, but it was something more than human—other than human, although affected by human needs and desires. It was itself partly created of minds like her own, and it lay at the heart of Survey, influencing the fate of countless beings on countless worlds she would never even hear the names of.

And the two separate but uniquely joined peoples of this world were its chosen ones in a way that was both natural and profound. She had not been insane, she had not been deluded, obsessed with power, driven by ambition—she had not been Arienrhod. She had been right. And all that she had believed had, in some way, been true after all.

She looked down, unafraid, into the green light; and looking down, felt her mind recoil like a spring as she remembered her son . . , remembered suddenly what price she had paid to be Her chosen one, to serve the needs of the true Lady. A tremor shook her. She went on across the bridge, moving now by the strength of her own will, her own need and urgency, no longer controlled by any compulsion. She did not stop until she reached the other side. And there she stood alone, in the empty silence beyond the Pit’s rim, with the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes until the only light she saw was a burning brilliance of phosphenes.

At last she raised her head, picking up her lantern, hearing the hollow echo of footsteps coming toward her. She saw another light appear ahead; saw Jerusha leading Vhanu himself into the Hall.

She wiped her face hastily, lowered her hands to her sides. She read the unease that Vhanu could not entirely disguise at being in the palace without any escort; saw it turn to surprise as he found her waiting here for him, equally alone.

“Lady.” Jerusha bowed. “The Commander has what you asked for.”

“I am surprised to see that you brought it yourself, Commander,” Moon said, raising her eyebrows, hearing the coldness in her voice answer the coldness of his eyes.

He made a brief bow in return. “Your offer was—sufficiently unusual, Lady, that I wanted to know for myself what lay behind it. And see for myself that you could keep your part of the bargain.”

“I, for my part, never make promises I do not intend to honor,” she said. She felt Jerusha glance at her.

Vhanu moved forward slowly, flanking her, until he stood beside her at the rim of the Pit. He stayed within the glow of her light but beyond her easy reach. Slowly again, he removed a small, silver-metal vial from his clothing. “I have what you want.” He held it out—suspended over the edge of the well. “Now tell me why you want it.”

Moon’s breath caught; she saw the faint gleam of satisfaction come into his eyes. His glance took in her drab native clothing with a flicker of disgust. She realized that she had forgotten even to change, that she still wore what she had worn into the Pit, that her clothes were wet and stained and reeking of Reede’s sickness.

She felt her sudden fear catalyze into anger at the touch of his eyes. “What I want to do with it is not your concern, Commander,” she said.

“Your constables took a prisoner away from my Police yesterday: the man this drug belongs to. What you intend to do with it—and him—very much concerns me.”

Moon took a deep breath. “He is an addict. So is my daughter. They need that drug to stay alive.”

He glanced at the vial. “There isn’t that much of it.” He looked back at her without compassion, and her brief impulse to ask him for help in synthesizing it died unspoken.

“That is my problem to solve, Commander,” she said, perversely glad that he had given her a reason not to beg him. “Your problem is getting the city’s power back. 1 can do that for you, if you give me what I want.”

He arched his neck in an odd, craning gesture, as if he were trying to look behind her words somehow, and see if they were true. “What about the Smith?” he asked warily.

“Who?” she said, before she could realize who he meant. “You mean Reede Kullervo.”

He nodded, half frowning. “I want him back.”

“He addicted my daughter. He caused my husband’s death,” she said flatly. “He—he drowned my son. He’s mine to deal with.” She felt Jerusha’s eyes on her again, their uncertainty unchanged.

Vhanu’s frown deepened, but this time a fleeting, reluctant comprehension showed in his gaze. Finally he lowered the hand that held the vial out over the Pit. “I want him back,” he said, “and I want him back alive. He’s too important to us—” He broke off. “His apprehension is important to the Hegemony.” To Survey. She felt the hidden reach, the relentless hold of the secret order he served more faithfully than he served his government. She saw Reede, who had been the pawn of the Brotherhood, becoming the pawn of the Golden Mean; knew they must want possession of him, want to exploit his brilliant, stolen mind, as much as their rivals had.

“You can keep him until the tribunal arrives, Lady.” Vhanu’s expression altered subtly. “Punish him in whatever way you choose. Just see that he lives. …” Barbarian, his eyes said, filled with contempt. “Will that satisfy you?” He held the vial out again, toward her this time, but still beyond her reach. “Bearing in mind that we could come and take him any time we wanted to, if we chose. So far I have tried to respect your sovereignty to the extent you allow me to—since I expect to be named the new Chief Justice soon.” His mouth imitated a smile.

She folded her arms, clutching her elbows with her hands until the pressure was greater than that of the anger inside her. “I would be ungrateful to refuse your offer, since you show such consideration of our traditions,” she said, her voice toneless. “I will keep him, until there is a new Chief Justice. And then—” She shrugged.

A fleeting unease touched him. He shook it off. “Restore the city’s power, Lady. Then you get this.” He gestured with the vial.

She hesitated, seeing how close he stood to the rim of the Pit. She shook her head. “Give it to me first.” She held out her hand, saw him stiffen with refusal. “Give it to me. Or you get nothing.” Her hand fisted.

His own hand tightened around the vial; his eyes were as black as obsidian. She held his gaze, unmoving, unyielding.

He looked toward the Pit. After an endless moment he looked back at her, and nodded. But his expression held something more unexpected, and more disturbing, than simple capitulation. “All right, then,” he murmured. “But I want to watch; I want to see you do it.”

She nodded slowly, surprised and uncertain. She held out her hand again, and he put the vial into it. She closed her hand and turned her back on him, stepping out onto the bridge. She moved without hesitation now, with no space left inside her for grief or doubt. Turning back to face him, suspended above what to him was darkness but to her was light, she saw his skepticism and barely concealed scorn … his dark, obsessive fascination. She closed her eyes, murmuring, “Input.” And although the only request was spoken inside her own silence, she felt the sibyl mind stir in answer, as she had left it waiting to do. For a moment she glimpsed infinity rolling like an endless sea….

She fell back into the present, swaying, catching her breath. She looked down, into the Pit; saw far below in the darkness a rising pattern of light—real light, not the secret radiance that she had moved through. The swell of energy spiraled upward like a licking flame, bringing the machinery alive, until it reached the rim and overflowed, filling the dark hall with incandescent light.

She moved forward toward the illuminated faces, the motionless forms of the two people waiting in the sudden, unnatural day before her. “I have kept my part of the bargain, Commander Vhanu.”

He backed away as she approached, staring at her, his pupils still dilated even though he was looking into the light. A tremor ran through him. She read disbelief in his eyes now, and fear. How? they asked. How—? She did not answer him, holding his gaze as steadily as if she could actually have told him the answer.

He shook himself out of his gaping trance; looked at the vial still in her keeping. He forced all expression from his voice, but there was an electric tension in his movements, a drawn tightness to his face, as he murmured, “And I have kept mine.”

She tightened her fist over the vial, feeling an electric ripple of triumph.

“By the way,” he said, his voice strained, “I have been told that the mers are being sighted again, in the waters around the city. Nothing else has changed. If the power goes out this time, I’ll know who to blame. And tell your people to keep out of our way, or they will suffer the consequences. Lady—” He bowed stiffly again, gave a brusque nod to Jerusha, and went quickly from the Hall.

Moon bit her lips, looking down at the vial in her hands. She raised her head, called out to his retreating back, “It will come back on you threefold!”

He spun around to stare at her, and she saw his expression clearly before he went on his way.

Jerusha watched him go, making no effort to see him out. She turned back to Moon, her eyes troubled. “How?” she said. “You said you had nothing to do with the power outage.”

“That was true,” Moon murmured, still seeing Vhanu’s haunted face inside her mind’s eye.

“But you brought it back.”

She shrugged, drained of strength and thought; searching for a way to explain honestly without telling the truth.

“Was that what you did when you went down into the Pit?”

“Yes,” she said gratefully, and let it go.

“Moon. …” Jerusha hesitated. “What else happened down there? You were gone for hours. Tammis … was it an accident? Or did Kullervo—?”

Moon shook her head. “No. Not Kullervo. Tammis … Tammis stood in the way of fate. It was his goodness that killed him, Jerusha.” And Miroe’s memory. But she did not say that. “I can’t … I can’t talk about it. Mother of us All—” Her hand tightened around the vial, trembling. “I can’t.”

Jerusha held herself tautly, as if she were uncertain of what move to make, afraid to make the wrong one … afraid.

Moon saw the shadow of doubt that had clung to the other woman ever since the moment when they had begun their descent into the Pit. “Jerusha, are you afraid of me?” she murmured.

Jerusha looked at her for a long moment; shook her head, finally. “I’m only afraid that Vhanu won’t rest until he knows how you did that.” She gestured toward the glowing well.

Moon looked behind her, and away again, without answering.

“What about the mers?” Jerusha asked. “Is the return of the city’s power all you brought back?”

Moon hesitated. “No… . But it was all I had that I could use as leverage with Vhanu.”

Jerusha frowned, and Moon saw her doubt deepen into frustration. “Then maybe we would have been better served if you’d driven a harder bargain,” she said. She gestured at the vial. “Reede Kullervo hardly seems worth what you’ve just paid for his life.”

Moon felt a pressure growing in her chest. “It isn’t just his life—it’s Ariele’s. Reede Kullervo may be able to save my daughter.”

Jerusha grimaced apologetically, and nodded.

“And beyond that, he doesn’t deserve to die—and he doesn’t deserve to be used any longer, by anyone. I intend to see that he is not.” Moon turned away, starting back across the bridge toward the heart of the palace.

Jerusha followed her wordlessly as they traveled back through the endless halls and chambers to the room where she had left Reede.

Clavally and Danaquil Lu looked up as she entered, with Jerusha behind her. Merovy sat beside Clavally, her eyes closed, her head on her mother’s shoulder, while Clavally stroked her hair with soothing, rhythmic fingers.

Moon went to Reede’s bedside. His eyes were closed too, and he did not acknowledge her presence when she spoke his name. “Reede,” she said again, afraid that this time he actually did not hear her. “I have the water of death.” Speaking its name left a bitterness in her mouth.

His eyes opened; he looked up at her face, down at the vial she held in her hand.

“Can you make more of this?” she asked, kneeling down beside him. “I’ll find laboratory space for you—”

He shook his head. “Can’t.”

“If you drink it—” She held it out to him, her heart beating too hard. “If you drink this, you’ll have the strength to make more.”

His swollen hand twitched on the bedclothes, lifted—dropped. “No good,” he whispered. “Start from scratch, takes too long, two doses won’t buy enough time. Save it. Save it for Gundhalinu. If he makes it back he can help you … save her.” Ariele. He shut his eyes again, as if the sight of the vial was a kind of torture.

“It’s not too late. There has to be a way to help you—” She put her hand on his arm.

He swore, gasping; she jerked her hand away. “Cut my throat,” he said, his eyes filled with hatred.

She pushed to her feet, holding the vial; hesitated. “How much do you love my daughter?” she asked softly, and saw his face tighten with pain. She looked down at the vial. Slowly, as if she were moving underwater, she lifted her free hand and broke its seal.

“No!” Reede said. “Stop her—”

“Moon!” Jerusha leaped forward, catching her arm. “By the Lady and all the gods, what are you doing?”

Moon held her gaze, until Jerusha’s hand dropped away. “BZ said that the water of death is a failed form of the water of life. That means it uses a kind of smartmatter as its base—isn’t that right?” She looked toward Reede.

“Yes, but …” He pushed himself up onto an elbow, swearing with the effort. “It’s defective. I didn’t have … the right control environment … or equipment, when I made it. There’s no way to fix it. I tried, and tried … I couldn’t find a way.”

“The sibyl virus is also a form of smartmatter, isn’t it?” Moon asked. “All the existing forms are related.”

He nodded, frowning.

“BZ told me that you and he found a way together to reprogram the stardrive plasma when it was damaged … to ‘vaccinate’ it, he said, to alter its function.”

“Yeah,” he murmured. “What’s the point?”

“There is a perfectly functioning form of smartmatter in my body, and the sibyl mind acts through it. If I take the water of death, and go into Transfer, I will be the laboratory—the net can interact with the drug through me to alter its function.”

“Moon!” Danaquil Lu rose from his seat. “He said it’s not possible. You can’t know whether this will even work—”

“Unless I try it,” she finished for him. She turned back to Reede. “Do you think your … the sibyl net’s AI can do that?”

“Gods. I don’t know… .” He groaned faintly, falling back onto the bed as his strength gave out. “Maybe … maybe it could. But if you’re wrong,” his eyes found hers again, “this is how you’ll die.”

She looked away from his face, at the innocuous silver metal vial, open now in her hand.

Jerusha’s hand fell on her arm again. “By the Bastard Boatman, Moon—” Jerusha whispered. “Your son is dead, and Reede Kullervo is not going to take his place! He’s the man who addicted your daughter to a fatal drug! You can’t take a chance like this for a man like that. What if you both die?”

“Then you will bury us at sea, I suppose,” Moon murmured.

“What about the Hegemony, and the mers—?”

“What about them?” she said, her voice raw. “For years, the sibyl net has made me give it what it wants, no matter what it cost me. It’s stolen half my life from me. And his too.” She looked at Reede, feeling the uncomprehending stares of the people around her. They had done everything for the sibyl mind that it had been humanly possible to do. “Now it’s time for it to give us something back, something we need. Or else it will get nothing from me ever again.” Lady, hear my prayer… . She felt a sense of impossible freedom and terrifying resolve, and she realized that the geas that had controlled her for so long had finally, truly, released her. She raised the vial to her lips and swallowed half its contents, so quickly that no one could stop her—not even herself. She pressed the vial with the remaining sample into Jerusha’s waiting hands. “Input—”

She fell away down the hidden well inside her mind, the access into another dimension, where once she had seen only the blackness and utter silence the sibyls called the Nothing Place. But now that she knew how to listen, how to see, her vision revealed to her the corridor of light that bound her to Her, to the mated minds of the net’s creators, joined with Her own, the past and the future combined, the Dreaming Place. Lady, help us, she thought, prayed, demanded. For the love of Vanamoinen, give us back what is only our right. Give us back our lives. Heal me. Gazing backward through the golden filament that bound her to the sibyl mind, she saw her own body as a glittering network, each cell winking briefly as the multiplying water of death invaded and seized control of it, death imitating life.

And what she saw, She saw … forced to look back through the eyes of Her timebound avatar at the fragile, fleeting lives of Her servants, Her nerve endings, Her tools, witnessing their pain with inescapably human vision. She saw Reede Kullervo: the expendable vessel who had carried the essence of Vanamoinen’s mind. The vessel meant to shatter, once Vanamoinen had completed the task he had returned to do; because for Vanamoinen’s mind to go on existing, sharing the same continuum with Her enemies, was a danger to Her… . And yet her human eyes bore witness to his human suffering, forcing Her to see that in Her desperate effort to survive and be healed, She had violated the reason for Her own existence. She had betrayed the servants whom She had been created to serve; in Her suffering She had wounded the very parts of Herself that had been called upon to heal Her wounds.

But because they healed Her, She could see clearly at last: could see Reede/Vanamoinen’s desperate hunger to survive, to claim his own brief moment in time, now that his will had been set free. And She could see, in the timeless sea of Her own existence, that the survival or death of Reede/Vanamoinen had been/was would be no more than a ripple-ring of randomness… .

And She could see the fatal error spreading like poison through the body of Her avatar, as clearly as She could see the pitiless chains of Her own making that had driven Moon Dawntreader to an act of defiant self-destruction that was also a prayer. But She was no longer pitiless, or soulless, or blind. A vast compassion filled Her, and She knew that because She had been healed, She must heal their wounds, if She could… .

And Moon saw that with her entrance into the hidden nexus, and her awareness as she had guided Her reprogramming, she had cast a reflection on Her soul, just as Vanamoinen and Ilmannen had done in their original act of creation. She was not even certain now whether she looked back on her existence with her own mind, or the sibyl mind’s mirror image of it. But she knew that it did not matter. For this moment she was all things, she could grant her own wishes, anything that lay within Her power. If there was an answer to be found in the uncharted depths of Her knowledge, she would find it.

She looked in through the open windows of the sibyl virus, which existed already in every cell of her body … knowing that in each of those already-altered cells lay a potential trap for the new invader, if she could only find the trigger. With vision that could simultaneously track every alteration in the activity of all of those cells as precisely as if she were threading a needle, she analyzed the schematic of the water of death, noting its similarities to the programmed structure of the real smartmatter; recording its minute, fatal structural flaws.

With free access to the full spectrum of the Old Empire’s technological knowledge, and the processing power of a computer that spanned worlds, she searched for secrets hidden since the Fall; knowledge judged better forgotten by the individuals who had brought it to its highest form. Manipulating the interactions within her body, she tried key after key in the lock of the water of death. But each time, it defied her.

She searched deeper and deeper into the heart of Her existence, into the workings of the technovirus that was Her very essence, Her own key to open the locked doors of the universe … into the uncharted depths of wisdom and unwisdom of her long-dead ancestors… .

And at last she found it: the transformation process that would render the deadly invader of her body step by step harmlessly inert, to be swept away by the normal processes of her restored body functions. But her elation colored with grief, as in that same moment she saw that even a miracle had its price. And she had no choice but to pay it. … She sent the electrochemical sequence to the waiting interactive network, the flesh and blood computer, the living laboratory that was her body, waiting at the end of the bright strand which bound her to Her… .

And as the sequence was completed, she felt herself called, as inexorably as before, as unwillingly, back into her own existence at the Transfer’s end. But she carried with her the echo of lightmusic, like a mother’s blessing, as her contact faded, rippling, and turned inside out… .

“Moon… .” Voices surrounded her, too solid, too real, like the hands restraining her body, as the colors of an infinite spectrum became the colorless light of day. “Mother …” she whispered, “thank you, Mother… .” She was on her knees; she let herself fall forward, felt the soft, hand-tied fibers of the rug press her cheek.

Something was still happening inside of her, the residue of changes at the molecular level as profound as those that had occurred when she had first been infected with the sibyl virus, and changed so irrevocably… .

She pushed up again, dizzy and faint; found herself face to face with Merovy’s concerned, uncertain eyes.

“Are you all right, Ama?” Merovy murmured, touching her shoulder gently, almost hesitantly.

She nodded, sitting upright, rubbing her face, her eyes. “Ah, Lady …” she whispered, incapable of anything more, as realization followed realization, out of the realm of formless radiance and into the spectrum of coherent thought. Slowly she allowed herself the knowledge that she would live, that she had been spared, that she had answered her own prayers … more slowly she began to see what remained to be done; and to comprehend what the cost had been. She sat, strengthless and motionless, a moment longer, pulling her thoughts together enough for speech. “Merovy … bring your medical kit here.”

Merovy brought the kit to her. Clavally and Danaquil Lu were behind her back, supporting her now. “Do you have a syringe?” Moon asked. “A large one, for drawing blood.” Merovy nodded. “I want you to draw some of my blood. Inject it into Reede’s vein. The water of death is dead.”

Moon got to her feet, feeling giddy, feeling her own veins burn as if her blood were superheated. Clavally and Danaquil Lu rose with her, still supporting her. “Reede,” she said; saw his pain-filled eyes already on her, saw him afraid to hope.

Merovy looked up from her medical supplies, “But—”

“Moon,” Clavally said, “if you do that you’ll infect him with the sibyl virus.”

Moon shook her head, turning to look at them. “It won’t happen,” she said faintly. “I’m not a sibyl anymore.”

“Not a sibyl—” Danaquil Lu broke off.

Clavally’s eyes widened. “But I thought that was impossible,” she murmured.

“No,” Moon said, with tremulous laughter. “There is a place where everything is possible.” She moved to Reede’s bedside. Merovy followed her, and took blood from her arm. Moon watched it flow, deep red, with an odd detachment, almost disappointed that it did not show gleams of a strange light.

Merovy turned to Reede, with the syringe in her hand; Moon saw her hand tremble slightly as she looked at him. Merovy glanced up again, her eyes reminding Moon that no one had been able to bring their son and husband back from the dead.

Moon looked away.

“Lady …” Reede whispered. “It’s true—?” He lifted a hand, reaching out to her.

“Yes.” Her fists tightened at her side, as something grieving inside her balked at taking his hand. But she reached out, folding her fingers gently around the swollen flesh of his own. She held his arm steady as Merovy, taking a deep breath to steady herself, injected the blood serum into the lurid track of a vein dying by poison.

Reede stiffened, making a sound that made her shudder. He murmured something in a language she did not know, as the needle came out of his arm. And then his body went slack; his grip loosened, his fingers slid from her grasp.

Moon glanced at Merovy, watched her check for a pulse. “He’s still alive, Ama…” Merovy murmured. She laughed once, a chirrup, half of relief, half of bitter irony.

Moon took Reede’s limp, dangling arm, settled it gently at his side on the bed. She turned away; swayed suddenly, as reaction struck her. She took a step forward. Jerusha’s waiting arms caught her as she fell, and that was the last she remembered.