World's End

Page 107

to me, when I know that my heart's desire is waiting.

And she is waiting--just as I remember her, just as I

left her so long ago. But now she is the queen she was meant to be. Her hair falls around her like a shroud, white/black as the fields of snow, and I am snowblind with longing. Her face is patterned with an intricate filigree of red stains. The trefoil shines against her robes.

Her eyes are like moss-agate and mist... when she looks at me my eyes cannot break her gaze.

She stands motionless, holding me with her eyes for an endless moment.

The awareness of her power, over these people, over me, leaves me shaken.

Goldbeard plants a hand in the middle of my back. I

stumble forward, slipping in the blood, and fall at her feet. I touch the dusty hem of her red/gold cloak. "Moon

..." I whisper. "I knew it would be you. I knew it." I look up at her again, and her face fills with surprise.

Goldbeard kicks the severed body off the platform behind me. "We found this garbage on the shore, Song."

He comes forward and pulls me to my feet; he makes her name into the name of a goddess when he speaks. "He

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JOAND. VINGE

say he's come for you. Even had your picture." She looks at him sharply, and back at me. "He's a sibyl. You want him, or--?" There is a barb of jealousy in Goldbeard's voice. I wonder if I will have to kill him.

"You're not afraid," Moon murmurs, and reaches out to touch me, as if she cannot believe I'm real. "You're not afraid of anything." She traces the scar on my forehead.

"Yes . . . oh, yes," she says to Goldbeard. "I want him desperately. You don't know how long I've waited for this moment--" Her fingers feel cool and dry against my skin. She lets them wander down my cheek and across my lips. I kiss them hungrily; she pulls away. "I knew he would come someday. The Lake showed him to me.

Someone who was not afraid; who knew the answer.

. . . And he comes from my mother!" She gives a shrill laugh. Goldbeard looks at her blankly.

Her restless hand falls to the trefoil hanging in the gap of my ragged shirt. "Sibyl. Then the Lake called you

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