Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

Arienrhod’s hand slipped from his thigh as his muscles hardened, rigor mortis. She rolled onto her stomach, resting across his chest as she looked down at him with concern in her agate-colored eyes. The wrong eyes — as he saw the shadows that lay just below the surface, the depths of wisdom without mercy… the eyes of a changeling who had made him a prisoner locked in his own mind. He closed his own eyes. But I did it all for you, Arienrhod.

“Are you so tired, then, after all?” She lifted the off worlder medal from his chest, turning it idly between her fingers; he heard the undercurrent of cool resentment below the shallows of her solicitude. “Or so bored? Shall I make it a threesome—?”

“No.” He put his arms around her and pulled her down on him, filling his hands with the silken cloth of her hair, kissing her lips, her eyes, the hollow of her throat . , . and feeling nothing. Nothing.

The ghost-girl who had come to him out of the sea would lie between them whenever they lay together from now on, and he would see her eyes — the right eyes, the only eyes. They would accuse him, weeping tears of blood, forever… “Arienrhod,” despairingly. “Damn it, you know I love you! You know you’re everything to me, everything she ever was, and more—” But the word was a moan. His hands fell away from her.

Arienrhod turned rigid on top of him. “

“She?”… What are you talking about, my love? Our Moon?” Her voice was soft and clouded-over. “Does she still come back to haunt you, after so long? She’s gone. We lost her a long time ago; you have to put her out of your mind.” She stroked his temples with her fingers, in slow circling motions.

“By all the gods, I thought I had!” He rolled his head from side to side, trying to look away from his own reflection, but it followed him inexorably.

“Then why? Why think about her now? Are you afraid of the Change coming? I promised you it would never come.”

“I don’t care about that.” About killing my people… then I don’t care about anything at all. He shifted her carefully off of him, rolled over onto his stomach and propped his head in his hands. She sat up beside him, the girdle of silver threads whispering over her skin.

“Then what—?” a wildness in it. Her hands closed over his shoulders. “You’re mine, Starbuck; you’re all that I love in this world. I won’t share you with a Summer dream. I won’t lose you to a ghost . even my own.”

“She wasn’t a ghost! She was real.” He bit down on his fist.

Arienrhod’s fingernails bit his flesh in turn. “Who?” knowing who.

“Moon.” Something shook him, close to a sob. “Moon. Moon, Moon! She was there, at the Hunt; she came out of the sea with the mers!”

“A dream.” She frowned.

“No dream, Arienrhod!” He threw himself onto his back, feeling her nails rake him. “I touched her, I saw the sign on her throat-and the blood. I touched her blood… she cursed me.” Death to kill a sibyl… death to love a sibyl…

“You fool!” But not for his foolhardiness. “Why didn’t you tell me about this immediately?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t. I—”

She slapped him; he fell back on the pillows in disbelief. “Where is she? What happened to her?”

He rubbed his hand across his mouth. “The Hounds — would have killed her. I stopped them. I — I left her there on the beach.”

“Why?” A world of loss in one whispered word.

“Because she would have recognized me.” He tore the words out by the roots. “She would have known… she would have seen what I am!” His reflection pinwheeled him, around and around and around.

“So you’re ashamed to be my lover, and the most powerful man on this planet?” She tossed back her hair.

“Yes,” ashamed to look at her, too, as he said it. “When I was with her, I was ashamed.”

“But you left her alone on the shore with a blizzard coming, and you’re not ashamed of that.” Arienrhod wrapped herself in her arms, shivered as though it was herself he had abandoned.

“Damn it, I didn’t know about the storm, there wasn’t any report!” You only needed to look up at the sky to know-But he had shut himself into his cabin to hide his trembling loss of control from the Hounds; and he had come out again only when the storm was already sweeping down on them, when it was too late to think of anything but their own survival. And afterward — it was too late for anything at all. He looked up angrily into Arienrhod’s anger. “I don’t understand you! Why does she matter so much to you? Even if she is your kinswoman, you were never close to her. Not like I was…”

“No one in this world is closer to her than I am.” Arienrhod leaned toward him. “Haven’t you realized that? Haven’t you seen by now — I am Moon.”

“No.” He pulled away from her; she caught the chain of his medal and held him tethered.

“Moon is my clone! I had her raised as a Summer to take my place as Queen. We’re identical in every way — every way.” She took his hands and ran them down along her body. “And we both love you, above all others.”

“It isn’t possible…” He touched her face and knew that it was. They were night and day, iron and air, gall and honey… Then why do I love you both? He bowed his head. Because I do love you both; gods help me! “Anything is possible. Even that she’s come back to me.” Arienrhod looked through him, through time. “But do I still need her… I do I still want her?” Her focus narrowed to him again. “And do you, my love?”

He sagged against her; felt her arms circle him, her hands stroke I him lovingly, possessively. “No.” No more than I ever wanted her, 9 only her. “Only you, Arienrhod. You made me everything I am. You’re all I need.” And you’re all 1 deserve.

“Come on, sibyl! Come meet my other pets.” Blodwed’s sharp, high voice pricked Moon like a goad, started her through the crowd of gawkers gathered at the entrance of the cavern. They had all come forward to stare at her, pointing and muttering, calling out vulgar questions that she ignored with all the restraint left in her dazed body: a prize fish, dangling on the pier. But none of the nomads would get close enough to touch her, and they parted before her stumbling progress like grasses before the wind. Even Blodwed had never actually touched her; but Moon recognized the stunner hanging from the girl’s belt.

And even if she dared to break free from her captors, there was nowhere to go. They had traveled for two days on snow skimmers climbing into the icebound highlands of the interior, to get to this isolated nomads’ camp. She had no strength left to carry her alone through the Winter wilderness… barely the strength to carry her on across the immense floor of the rock shelter. Dogs barked and bayed at her passing, chained among the bright-colored synthetic tents, the patterned gray-and-brown ones made from hides — the tents dotted the cavern like grotesque fungal growths. Dozens of perpetual-radiance heaters and lanterns filled the looming space with warmth and light, as the voices of the booty-haggling kinsmen behind her filled and refilled it with echoing noise. Moon slowed, holding out her mittened hands to one of the heaters as she passed. But Blodwed’s impatience radiated like heat—”Come on, hurry up!” — and she moved on, too numb with exhaustion and cold to protest.

Blodwed herded her into a narrow, down sloping passage half in shadows at the rear of the cave; she saw light dimly, on ahead. A miasma of strange smells prickled like smoke inside her head as she went forward, to find her way barred by a gate of wood and twisted wire. Blodwed pushed past her, pressed a thumb into the bottom of the heavy lock. The lock opened, and she waved Moon through.