Joan Vinge - The Summer Queen

“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.