The Summer Queen

TIAMAT: Carbuncle

Gods, what am I doing here? Jerusha PalaThion bent her head, pressing her fingertips against her eyes. The feeling that she was a prisoner in someone else’s dream crept over her again as the scene before her suddenly turned surreal. She raised her head and opened her eyes as the disorientation passed. Yes, she was really here, standing in the Hall of the Winds; waiting for the Summer Queen, watching over the crowd that waited with her.

But still she seemed to hear the song of a goddess in the air high overhead, feel the living breath of the Sea Mother chill her flesh. The ageless chamber reeked of the Sea; the keening windsong carried Her voice to Jerusha, and to the small gathering of the faithful who waited with reverence and awe at the edge of the Pit for their audience with the Queen.

The Sea Herself lay waiting too, at the bottom of the Pit, three hundred meters below. A single fragile span of bridge crossed the dizzying well, giving access to the palace on the other side. But high above them gossamer curtains swelled and billowed with the restless wind, creating treacherous air currents that could sweep a body from the bridge with terrifying ease. The Lady gives, they said, and the Lady takes away.

“The Lady.”

“The Lady—”

Hushed voices murmured Her name as the Summer Queen appeared suddenly at the far end of the span. Jerusha took a deep breath and lowered her hand to her side, focusing on the Queen, the Goddess Incarnate, as she stepped carefully onto the bridge. Jerusha watched her come, slowly, regally, her milk-white hair drifting around her in a shining cloud, her loose, summer-green robes billowing like grass, like the sea. She wore a crown of flowers and birdwings shot through with the light of jewels, and the trefoil of a sibyl. The Lady.

Damn it! Jerusha shook her head: a head-clearing, a denial. She looked at the Queen again, seeing her clearly this time: Not a goddess incarnate, but an eighteen-year-old girl named Moon. Her lace was drawn with strain and weariness, her movements were made slow and awkward by the swelling of an unexpected pregnancy that was now near term, no longer completely concealed even by her flowing robes. There was no mystery to her, any more than there was any divine presence in this room.

Jerusha’s eyes still reminded her insistently that the Queen wore another woman’s face; memory told her that Moon Dawntreader carried another woman’s ambitions in her mind, in her heart. It was impossible not to stare at her, not to wonder about the strange motion of a fate whose dance had trapped them both…

She listened to the progression of high, piercing notes that filled the chamber as the Queen touched the tone box she carried in her hand; the sounds that controlled the movement of the wind curtains high above, to create a space of quiet air through which she, and the three people who followed her, could move. The tone box was an artifact of the Old Empire, like the Hall, the Pit, the palace above them and the ancient, serpentine city at whose pinnacle it sat. Technology was the real god at work here, and the Queen knew that as well as Jerusha did. She had come here today to try to reconcile this crucial gathering of her people to that truth, if she could.

Jerusha felt a sudden twinge of compassion for the fragile figure crossing the bridge toward her. Moon Dawntreader had defied the offworlder rule that Jerusha PalaThion had represented, to become the new Queen. And Jerusha had believed her cause was just, had believed in her; instead of deporting her, had let her become Queen. In the end she had even given up her own position as Commander of Police, stopped serving the Hegemony that had brought nothing but grief to her and to this world. She had chosen to stay behind on Tiamat at the Final Departure, and serve its new Queen instead.

But when the offworlders had gone away at the Change, they had gone forever, at least as far as Jerusha PalaThion was concerned. They would not come back in her lifetime; she had exiled herself, and if ever she changed her mind, she still could not change that. And had she changed her mind—? Jerusha’s face pinched. She rubbed her arms, feeling the rough homespun cloth chafe her skin. Gods, she was so tired, all the time, lately… . She wondered if she was getting some disease, or simply getting depressed. She dressed like a Tiamatan even though there were still plenty of offworlder clothes to be had; trying to do the impossible, to fit in, when her dark curling hair and upslanting eyes, her cinnamon-colored skin, marked her as alien. She had never felt at home on this world, in all the time she had served here. She had hated this ancient, musty, mysterious city the way she had hated its former Queen. But in the end … in the end it had worked its will on her. In the end it had still been the lesser of two evils.

Someone touched her shoulder. She started, caught off guard; raised her hand in a defense gesture that Police training had programmed into her reflexes. She stopped herself, chagrined, as she realized that the touch belonged to her husband. “Miroe,” she whispered, feeling the tension inside her dissolve.

He made a sound that was almost a laugh. “Who were you expecting?”

She gazed at him for a long moment. His offworlder’s face looked as out of place here as her own. And yet he belonged here, had lived here all of his life. It was not impossible to learn to love a new world… She only shook her head, and put her hand over his as she glanced away at the Queen. “How is she?” she asked, looking again at the swell of the Queen’s belly. Miroe had offworlder medical training, and Moon had chosen him, trusted him over any local physician or healer to attend her; as she had chosen Jerusha to watch her back.

“I think I picked up two heartbeats today. I think she’s carrying twins.”

“Gods,” Jerusha murmured. She shifted from foot to foot, wondering why her hands and feet went to sleep on her so easily lately.

He nodded, with a heavy sigh. “She shouldn’t be doing this. I told her that—she ought to let go of it, let the Summers treat her like a goddess. That’s all they expect—or want—of her.”

Jerusha looked back at him, feeling unexpected irritation rise inside her. “She doesn’t want to be a puppet, Miroe. She wants to be a queen. Just because women are the ones who get pregnant—” The sudden thought filled her head like strange perfume: Am I pregnant—?

He looked back at her, frowning. “Goddammit, you know that’s not what I meant.”

She looked down. Am I—? Feeling wonder fall through her like rain.

“She’s pushing too hard, that’s all. She wants it all to change now. She should let it go until she delivers. That’s all.” The frown was still on his face; concern now, instead of annoyance. “Carrying twins causes complications in a pregnancy; you know that.”

Jerusha forced her attention back to his words, saying nothing about what she had just felt, thought, imagined. She wasn’t even sure; there was no reason to mention it now. She looked at Moon again, at the swelling curve of her stomach. “If she waits that long, the Summers will smother her in ‘worship,’ ” she said sourly. The Goodventure clan, whose ancestors had been the Summer Queens during the last cycle, had gotten a taste for power, and nursed their hunger for it through a hundred and fifty years, through Tiamat’s near-endless Winter. They still believed in the old ways of Summer’s conservative outback, and they still believed they held their Goddess’s favor, over this heretic upstart who was trying to unnaturally force the Winters’ offworlder, technophile ways on them. “She’s made enemies of the Goodventures already, by pushing them too hard. But if she doesn’t push they’ll drown her. She’s damned either way.”

“The sibyl net is behind her—”

“Who knows what it’s really telling her? Nobody understands how it acts, Miroe, or half of what it says.” She shook her head. “Who knows if she really even hears it at all… or only the ghost of the Snow Queen whispering in her ear.”

Miroe was silent for a long moment. “She hears it,” he said at last.

She looked away, shifting the projectile rifle’s strap against her shoulder; feeling the distance open between them, reminded by the words that he shared a history, a bond of faith that did not include her, with this world’s Queen.

She focused on Moon Dawntreader again, as the Queen began to speak. The small crowd of islanders, almost all of them sibyls, shuffled and bowed their heads as the Queen greeted them. They were obviously awed by the trefoil she wore and by her surroundings, even though her soft, uncertain voice barely carried above the sighing of the wind. Sparks Dawntreader, the red-haired youth who was Moon’s husband, stood close beside her. His arm went around her protectively as he looked out at the crowd.

Behind them stood a middle-aged woman with dark, gray-shot hair hanging in a thick plait over her shoulder. She wore the same trefoil sign the Queen wore. She gazed aimlessly over the crowd with eyes that were like shuttered windows, as the fourth person, a plain, stocky woman, murmured something in her ear—describing the scene, probably.

“Thank you for coming,” Moon murmured, her pale hands clutching restlessly at her robes. The words sounded banal, but gratitude shone in her eyes, a tribute to the people standing before her, whose quiet reverence belied the long and difficult journey they had made to this meeting.

“I …” She hesitated, as if she were trying to remember words, and Jerusha sensed her fleeting panic. “I—asked all the sibyls of Summer to come to the City when I became Queen because …” She glanced down, up again, and suddenly there was a painful knowledge in her eyes that only the two offworlders understood. “Because the Lady has spoken to me, and shown me a truth that I must share with all of you. The Sea has blessed our people with Her bounty and Her wisdom, and we have … we have always believed that She spoke Her will through those of us who wear the sibyl sign.” Her hand touched the trefoil again, selfconsciously. “But now at last She has chosen to show us a greater truth.” Moon bit her lip, pushed back a strand of hair.

Oh gods, Jerusha thought. Here we go. Now there’s no turning back.

“We are not the only sibyls,” the Queen said, her voice suddenly strong with belief. “Sibyls are everywhere—on all the worlds of the Hegemony. I have been offworld, I have seen them.”

The rapt silence of her audience broke like a wave; their astonishment flowed over her. “I have seen them!” She lifted her hands; they fell silent again. “I have been to another world, called Kharemough, where they wear the same sign, they speak the same words to go into Transfer, they have the same wisdom. They also say—” she glanced at her husband, with a brief, private smile, and pressed her hands to her stomach, “that it is ‘Death to kill a sibyl, death to love a sibyl, death to be a sibyl.’ … But they also showed me that it doesn’t have to be true.” She turned back again, this time to touch the arm of the blind woman, drawing her forward. “Fate Ravenglass is a sibyl, just as you are and I am. But she is a Winter.”

“How—?” “Impossible—” The astonished murmurs broke over her again; she waited for them to die down, her hands pressing her swollen stomach.

“It’s true,” Fate said slowly, as the voices faded. ” ‘Ask, and I will answer.’” She spoke the ritual words, her voice filled with emotion. “For more than half of my life I hid my secret from the offworlders and my own people. The offworlders lied to us all about the true nature of what we do.”

“We are a part of something much greater than we ever dreamed,” Moon said, moving forward, all her hesitation gone now. “A part of a network created by our ancestors, before we even came to this world.”

The sibyls in the crowd pulled their homespun clothes and kleeskin slickers closer about them, staring at her with every face among them showing a different emotion. “But, Lady—” someone began, broke off. “But how can the Lady …” He looked down, speechless, shaking his head.

“The Sea Mother is still with you, in you, all around you,” the Queen said, forcing into the words a conviction that Jerusha knew she no longer felt. Her time offworld had taught her more than one truth; and it had taught her that no truth was a simple one. “She has blessed your ways, because you serve Her selflessly, as sibyls everywhere do—”

“Stop this blasphemy!”

All heads turned at once, as the voice echoed down the entry hall toward them.

Jerusha stiffened as she saw Capella Goodventure stride into the Hall of the Winds. “How the hell did she get in here?” Jerusha muttered. The Queen had ordered all the Goodventures, and particularly their elder, out of the palace after their last bitter theological argument. Jerusha had directed the palace security guards to make certain it was done; but some of the palace guards were Summers, and the gods—or their Goddess—only knew where their loyalties really lay. Someone had let her pass.

Jerusha took a step forward, her face hardening over, and pulled the rifle strap from her shoulder. Miroe caught her arm, stopping her. “Wait.” He looked toward the crowd, as Capella Goodventure showed herself to them. Jerusha nodded, lowering the gun. She moved forward more slowly, only watching now.

“This woman who claims that she speaks as one of you is telling you lies!” The Goodventure elder’s voice shook with anger. “She is not a true sibyl; not even a true Summer! She wears Winter’s face, and Winter’s ways. She has tried to keep me from speaking the truth—but I will speak it!” She turned to face the Queen. “Do you still deny me my right to be heard? Or will you order your offworlders to drag me from the hall? Because that is what they will have to do—”

Jerusha stopped moving, looking toward the Queen.

The Queen glanced her way, looked back at Capella Goodventure. “No,” Moon said softly. “Say what you must.”

Capella Goodventure deflated slightly, her defiance punctured by the Queen’s easy capitulation. She took a deep breath. “You all know of me. I am head woman of the clan that gave Summer its last line of queens. I have come to tell you that this woman who calls herself Moon Dawntreader Summer has brought you here to fill your minds with doubt—about yourselves, about the Lady’s place in your lives. She would strip away the beliefs, the traditions, that make us Summers. She wants us to become like the Winters—miserable lackeys of the offworlders who despise our ways and butcher the sacred mers.”

She turned, confronting the Queen directly. “You do not speak for the Sea Mother!” she said furiously. “You are not the woman who was chosen Queen. You have no right to wear that sign at your throat.”

“That isn’t true,” Moon said, lifting her chin so that all the watchers could clearly see the trefoil tattoo that echoed the barbed fishhook curves of the sibyl pendant she wore.

“Anyone can wear a tattoo,” Capella Goodventure said disdainfully. “But not just anyone can wear the face of the Winters’ Queen. There is no Moon Dawntreader Summer. You are the Snow Queen, Arienrhod—you cheated death and the offworlders, I don’t know how. You stole the rightful place of our queen, and now you desecrate the Mother of Us All with this filth!” She faced the crowd again, her own face flushed with an outrage that Jerusha knew was genuine.

But a woman’s voice called out from the crowd, “I know Moon Dawntreader.”

Capella Goodventure’s broad, lined face frowned, as she peered into the crowd.

The Queen stared with her as the speaker pushed through the wall of faces. Jerusha saw a sturdy, dark-haired island woman in her mid-thirties; saw sudden recognition fill Moon’s face at the sight of her. “Clavally Bluestone Summer,” the woman identified herself, and Capella Goodventure’s frown deepened. “I made her a sibyl. She has the right to the trefoil, and to speak the Lady’s Will.”

“Then let her prove it!” Capella Goodventure said, her face mottling with anger. “If she has the right to speak as she does, then let her prove it.”

Moon nodded, looking surer now. “Ask, and I will answer,” she said again.

“No,” Capeila Goodventure said. “A sibyl Transfer can be faked, just like a tattoo. Let her show us real proof. Let the Sea give us a sign of Her Will!”

The Queen stood where she was, listening to the crowd murmur its doubts, her own face furrowing in a frown as she tried to imagine how to lay their doubts to rest. Jerusha stood unmoving, her body drawn with tension as she waited for a sign from the Queen to come forward and remove the Goodventure woman. But she knew that Moon could not take that step now, without losing all credibility.

Moon glanced over her shoulder at the Pit waiting behind her like a tangible symbol of her danger; looked back at Capella Goodventure again. “The Sea Mother is with us here,” she said, clearly enough for all the crowd to hear her. “Do you feel Her presence? The waters of the sea lie at the bottom of the Pit behind me. Smell the air, listen for Her voice calling up to you.” Capella Goodventure stood back, a faint smile of anticipation pulling at her mouth. But then the Queen held something out in her hand. Jerusha caught her breath as she saw what it was. “This is called a tone box. It controls the wind in the Hall of Winds; it is the only way for a person to cross the Pit safely.” She handed the control box to Capella Goodventure, and turned back toward the bridge.

Jerusha swore softly. “No—”

“Moon!”

Jerusha heard Sparks Dawntreader call out to his wife, reaching after her as she left his side.

The Queen glanced back over her shoulder; something in her look stopped him where he was, with dread on his face. She turned away again, raising her arms, bowing her head, and murmured something inaudible that might have been a prayer. Jerusha saw her body quiver slightly, as if she were going into Transfer. The moaning of the winds was loud in the sudden, utter silence of the hall, as she stepped out onto the bridge.

She swayed as the wind buffeted her; froze for an instant, regained her balance and took another step. Jerusha’s hands tightened; she felt a surge of sickness as she remembered her own terrifying, vertiginous passages over that span. She fought the urge to close her eyes.

The Queen took a third precarious step, braced against the wind. And then something happened. Jerusha looked up as the Queen looked up: she sucked in a deep breath of wonder. The clangorous sighing of the wind curtains faded, as the wind spilled from the sails, and the air currents died … as the open windows high above began to close. Blue and gold sunlight shafted down through the inert cloudforms of the curtains to light Moon’s hair like an aura. “By the Bastard Boatman—” Jerusha whispered, feeling Miroe’s hand tighten around her arm with painful awe.

“By the Lady,” his voice answered, deep and resonant; although she knew that he could not mean it.

A slow murmur spread through the crowd, and one by one the watchers dropped to their knees, sure that they were in the presence of a miracle, a Goddess, Her Chosen … until at last only Capella Good venture was left standing. As Jerusha watched, even she nodded, in acknowledgment, or defeat. The Queen stood a moment longer, her head held high, her face a mask that Jerusha could not read. The air stayed calm; the ancient hall and everyone in it seemed frozen in place. And then at last Moon Dawntreader moved again, stepping off of the bridge onto solid ground.

She looked back, at the flaccid curtains hanging in the air, as if she were waiting for something. But they did not begin to fill again; the window walls remained closed. She took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling visibly, her own face showing traces of the awe that had silenced the crowd. She looked ahead again, with her gaze on her husband’s white, stunned face. She returned to his side; Jerusha saw the uncertainty that was almost fear in his eyes as she took his hand. “It is the Lady’s will,” she said, facing the crowd again, at last, “that I should be here, and that you should be here with me.” She gestured at the span behind her, open to anyone who chose to cross it, now that the winds had ceased. “This is Her sign to you that a true change has come; the ways of Winter are not forbidden to us anymore.”

She hesitated, looking out at their faces, her own face changed by the emotions that played across it. “We are who we are,” she said, “and the old ways have always been our survival. But no one’s ways are the only, or the best. Change is not always evil, it is the destiny of all things. It was not the will of the Lady that we were denied knowledge that could make our lives better; it was the will of the offworlders. And they are gone. I ask you to work with me now to do the Lady’s will, and work for change—”

Capella Goodventure threw down the tone box and stalked out of the hall. The echo of its clatter followed her into the darkness. But the rest of the watchers stayed, their eyes on the Queen, waiting for what came next; ready to listen, ready to work the Lady’s will at her bidding.

“How did she do it, Miroe?” Jerusha murmured. “How?”

He only shook his head, his face incredulous. “I don’t know,” he said. “I only hope she knows … because she didn’t do it herself.”

Jerusha looked up, her eyes searching the haunted shadows of the heights, her memory spinning out the past. But all the history of this place that she had experienced spanned less than two decades. The layers of dusty time, the hidden secrets, the haunted years of Carbuncle the city stretched back through millennia. Jerusha rubbed her arms, feeling its walls close around her like the cold embrace of a tomb, and said nothing more.