Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

All of the crowd together — Winters, Summers, even off worlders-became one in this one moment. Their shouts of joy and the rustle of countless masks being torn from countless heads crescendoed, baring faces freed for that moment from all past sorrows, sins, and fears. Their celebration and adulation lifted her up onto its shoulders, swept into her heart. This world will be free!

But as she spoke the words, holding her mask high, the crowd’s voice changed; the cavernous underworld reverberated with the cries of a people who saw a thing beyond their understanding, and could not deny it… “Arienrhod — Arienrhod!” Moon felt the Summers’ superstition curdle, felt the disbelief spreading like paranoia through the crowd, imagined it echoing through the entire city. Knowing that she must stop it now — stop it before she lost everything without ever having had it. How… how do I stop them? like a prayer, pressing her hand to the sign at her throat. The sibyl sign…

“People of Tiamat, children of the Sea!” She reached up, pulling at the neck of her clothing, to bare the trefoil tattoo. “I am a sibyl! See my sign — I serve the Lady faithfully and truthfully. My name is Moon Dawntreader Summer, and I will do the same as your Queen. The keeper of all wisdom speaks through me, but only to you. Ask and I shall answer, and I will never speak falsely.”

A hush fell, went on falling as the echoes died; all eyes throughout the city were on her throat, or on its image on some screen. The Winters were speechless with uncertainty, the Summers were speechless with reverence, at the undeniable proof of their Queen’s transmutation, the symbol of her rebirth and holy status. And from the corner of her eye Moon saw the strange look that passed over the faces of the off worlder officials in the viewing stands, to see that sign, below that face…

As she went on watching, her breath aching in her chest, she saw the look separating again into a natural spectrum of expressions: horrified amusement, fascination, disgust at the spectacle they had all just witnessed… but still a lingering unease and uncertainty. Nowhere among them did she see any guilt, any respect, any real understanding of what they had seen. Next time — next time whoever stands here will see those things.

Letting her gaze go on, she followed it, walking back toward her own place in the stands among the Summer elders. Sparks stood waiting in the place reserved for her consort; his flaming hair was a beacon to sign her place… his face was tight, like a drawn bow. She took her place silently beside him, looked away from the crowd again to the spot where branches drifted on the sea. The crowd still waited, murmuring and uncertain.

“They expect a few words from you, Lady.” One of the Goodventures who had been her ceremonial guides leaned toward her. She sensed a fog of unease among the Summers, too.

She nodded, wondering again, as she had wondered all through the mind-numbing song and celebration of the Mask Night, what the words would be that could make her people listen: How could one transform so many, and still keep their trust? But somehow, somewhere, there had to be the words…

The words came to her suddenly, not from the strange guardian of her mind, but from the strength of her own feeling. “People of Tiamat, the Lady has blessed me once, by giving me someone to share my life with me.” She looked at Sparks beside her; her hand touched his, hanging cold and strengthless at his side. “She has blessed me twice, by making me a sibyl, and three times, by making me a Queen. Since yesterday I have thought a great deal about my destiny, and this world’s, which all of us will share. I’ve prayed that She will show me the way to do Her will and be Her living symbol. And She has answered me.” In a way that I never dreamed She could. Moon glanced toward the sea, and the secret that lay beneath the dark waters.

“I know there is a reason why She has shown herself to you as a sibyl, through me. I don’t know yet the full pattern of the future, but I know that to create it fully I must have help — help from all of you, and especially from other sibyls. Summer has come to Carbuncle, and this city is no longer closed to sibyls — more than anyone, more than anyone can know, sibyls belong here! Islanders, when you go back to your homes, ask your sibyls to make the journey here if they can — not to stay, but to come to me and learn their part in the future’s design.”

She paused, hearing the crowd’s voice whisper, trying to judge whether it was accepting her words, and her. She stole glances at the Summers in the stands around her, relieved to find a benign surprise looking back at her. The Winters would resent it, she knew instinctively, remembering their fear and scorn firsthand. She had to give them something of their own, a part in the future. She glanced again at the waiting off worlders knowing the risk she took in this offering, the delicate balance she had to maintain while they still walked this world.

“If I — if I seem to stray out of tradition’s shallows as Summer’s Queen, and into uncharted depths, have faith in me. Try to remember that I am the Lady’s chosen, and that I only follow Her will,” secure in the knowledge that she told the truth. “She is my navigator, and She charts my course by strange stars,” stranger stars than the ones that lie above us. She glanced at the off worlders again. “My first command as your new Queen—” the potential of power sang in her head, potential energy, “is that all the off world possessions of the Winters will not be thrown into the sea. Hear me!” before the crowd could drown her out. “Things made by the off worlders offend the waters, they choke the sea with filth. Three things from each Winter are all She demands — and the Winters will choose what offerings they make. Time… time will take care of the rest!” She braced herself against the rise of Summer outrage.

But there was only a rippling water of dismay, here and there a shining drop of laughter or applause from an astonished Winter. Moon took a deep breath, hardly daring to believe — They trust me! They listen; they’ll do whatever I say… realizing at last what Arienrhod had known — and how easily power, like fire, could break its bonds and destroy what it had been guardian to. Her hands tightened over the rail. “Thank you, my people.” She bowed her head to them.

The Summers in the stands shifted into deferential resignation around her; but Sparks watched her like a cat, with suspicion and unease, as he sensed her sense of power.

She looked away quickly, struggling to keep her expression even as she saw the Prime Minister himself begin to descend opposite them, to start the final, official acknowledgement of her rule, to pay the hypocritical homage of one figurehead ruler to another. Watching him descend, she saw First Secretary Sirius among the Assembly members, caught his own eyes on her with a dubious foreboding. She nudged Sparks, led his gaze to his father’s; saw him struggle to meet his father’s sudden smile. Sparks looked down again silently at his grandfather, as the Prime Minister began his salutation.

The speeches of the Prime Minister, the Chief Justice of Tiamat, half a dozen other dignitaries whose function she had never even heard of, were brief and patronizing. She stood patiently through them all, shielded from their arrogance by her secret knowledge, but seeing in each face suspicion and mistrust stirred by her own speech to her people. The Chief Justice looked at her too long and too piercingly; but he only mouthed congratulations like the rest, praised the traditional and ritual, her peoples’ smooth backsliding into ignorance. He urged her not to stray from tradition’s path too strongly, to beware the consequences. She smiled at him.