Joan Vinge - The Summer Queen

She had made a choice when she became a sibyl. It was a hard, restless life, traveling from island to island, speaking the Lady’s wisdom to those who needed her, seeking out and training the ones who would follow after her, to guide a new generation of Summers. They said that it was “death to kill a sibyl, death to love a sibyl, death to be a sibyl.” … Few if any men who were not sibyls themselves would dare to be a husband to one.

But even after she had met Danaquil Lu, she had gone on taking childbane, because it was too hard a life to inflict on a child, and she had no close relatives to help her raise one. And Danaquil Lu, with his bent back and aching joints, needed more and more of her care. She squeezed his hand tightly, and told her restless body to be quiet. Soon enough her childbearing time would be past, and the questions in her heart would be answered once and for all.

“A question, sibyl—?” A boy came up to them hesitantly, his brown braids flopping against his sleeveless linen tunic. His eyes chose Danaquil Lu to ask his question of; she guessed it was probably a question about girls.

“Ask, and I will answer.” Danaquil Lu spoke the ritual response, smiling kindly.

Clavally let go of his hand with a farewell glance, granting the blushing boy privacy. She moved on through the crowd, halfhearing Danaquil Lu’s voice behind her murmur “ Input …” as he fell into the Transfer, and the boy’s mumbled question.

“Sibyl?” A middle-aged, gray-haired Goodventure woman came up beside her, and Clavally stopped, expecting another question. But before her response could form, the woman said, “Are you going to Carbuncle?”

Clavally looked at her blankly. “To Carbuncle? Why?” she asked.

“Haven’t you heard?” The woman looked annoyingly smug. “The new Summer Queen. She has asked all the sibyls of Summer to make a pilgrimage to the City in the North. She claims it is the Lady’s will.”

Clavally shook her head, expressing her disbelief as much as her ignorance. Carbuncle was the only real city on the entire planet, located far to the north, among the Winter clans. Its name meant both “jewel” and “fester.” Tied to the offworlders’ starport, it swarmed with their wonders and their corruption during the one-hundred and fifty-year cycles with the offworld Hegemony controlled Tiamat. During that time the Snow Queen reigned, the Winters claimed the city and all the lands around it for their own—and sibyls were forbidden in Carbuncle. The offworlders despised them, the Winters hated and feared them. Danaquil Lu had been born in the city, but he had been exiled when he became a sibyl.

But now the Change had come again. The Black Gate that the offworlders used to reach Tiamat had closed; the offworlders had gone away, and taken their technology with them. Even now the seas were warming. Gradually they would become too hot for the klee the Summers herded and for many of the fish they netted at sea. The mers, the Sea Mother’s other children, were migrating north, and the Summers were preparing for their own migration as well. Their ways would become this world’s ways again, as the Winters relearned the old rules of survival and harmony with the Sea, and the Summer Queens showed them the human face of the Lady’s wisdom.

“But why would the Summer Queen—or the Lady—want sibyls in the city,” Clavally asked, “and not among the people, helping them to find the way to their new lives?”

“She said that she wanted to tell all the sibyls of a greater purpose, their true purpose, that had been revealed to her by the Sea Mother.” The Goodventure woman shrugged and wiped her perspiring face. “But there are those who ask, What possible purpose could a sibyl find, which is better than to do what you do now—?”

“Yes,” Clavally murmured uncertainly. “It’s a strange request.”

“What is?” Danaquil Lu came up beside her, raising his eyebrows.

“The Summer Queen has asked all the sibyls to come to Carbuncle, so that she can speak to them,” she said. And she watched her husband’s face turn ashen. The scars on his cheek—the cruel legacy of his casting-out from Carbuncle—suddenly stood out like a brand. He took hold of her arm, not-quite-casually, steadying himself.

“Oh,” was all he said. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with clear sea air.

“We needn’t go,” Clavally said softly, looking up at him. “There will be enough others without us.”

“A wise decision. But why do you look like the news brings you no joy, Clavally Bluestone?” A heavyset, weathered woman joined them; Clavally recognized Capella Goodventure, the clan head woman.

Clavally didn’t answer, looking hack at Danaquil Lu, who was gazing out to sea as if he were suddenly there alone.

“Or your pledged, either,” Capella said, her voice prying like fingers. “What clan is he with—’?” Clavally heard the tone in her voice which said she knew the answer, although Danaquil Lu wore no embroidery on his shirt, no token of clan membership.

“Wayaways,” Danaquil Lu said flatly, looking back at her. His expression said that he recognized the tone in her voice, too.

“Wayaways? But isn’t that a Winter clan?” Capella said, with sour insinuation. The sound of her surprise rang as false as a cracked bell. “I would think you’d be eager to return to your home.”

“It isn’t my home,” he snapped. “I am a sibyl.”

“Of course you are.” She stared at his trefoil. “A Winter who worships the Lady. Aren’t you unusual.” She rubbed her arms, looking out at the sea.

Danaquil Lu looked away from her again, irritation plain on his face. He did not believe in the Lady; or in anything at all except his calling. But the Lady believed in him. Clavally looked back at Capella Goodventure, frowning. She had never been fond of the Goodventures’ elder. She was becoming less fond of her now with every heartbeat. She opened her mouth to inquire whether Capella had a question to ask, or not.

“I would go nowhere near the City, if I were a sibyl,” Capella said, looking back at her. “I was in Carbuncle at the last Festival. It was my duty to oversee the crowning of the Summer Queen—and the drowning of the Snow Queen.” She smiled slightly; Clavally tightened her jaw, and held her tongue. “And what I saw then made me wonder whether the Lady has abandoned Carbuncle forever.”

“What do you mean?” Clavally asked, her curiosity forcing the words out against her will.

“The new queen claims to be a sibyl.”

Clavally’s eyes widened. Her hand touched the trefoil hanging against her chest. “But isn’t that a good—”

“—But,” Capella Goodventure went on, relentlessly, “she’s white as snow; she looks exactly like the old queen, Arienrhod.” Her voice dripped vitriol. “She forsook the proper rituals of the Change; she speaks blasphemies about the Lady’s will. She chooses to live in the Snow Queen’s palace—and she went so far as to have me turned out of it when I tried to show her how her willfulness could harm us all,”

Ah, Clavally thought.

“The Winter gossip says that she is the old Queen’s illegal clone, an unnatural copy of herself, made for her by the offworlders to oppress us,” Capella Goodventure went on. “She couldn’t possibly be a Summer, even though she claims to belong to the Dawntreader clan—”

“The Dawntreaders?” Clavally said, startled. “I knew a sibyl of the Dawntreaders, about five years ago. Her name was Moon—”

This time it was the Goodventure woman who looked surprised.

“Is she the new Queen?” Clavally asked, incredulous. She read the answer in the other woman’s eyes.

“You know her?” Capella Goodventure demanded. “What did she look like?”