Joan Vinge - World's End

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

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

139

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

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Page 108

here?"

I shake my head. "I came for you."

She frowns unexpectedly. "Do you wear this honestly?"

Her eyes are too black as they stare into mine.

I shake my head again, barely.

Her hand tightens over the trefoil until the chain bites into my neck. "You will," she whispers.

Aloud, she says, "The Lake has chosen another servant! The Lake has shown me his coming. ... I claim him for the Lake; for myself." She holds my trefoil up so that it catches the light. The crowd rumbles with amazement. She looks back at Goldbeard. "Give me the solii you took from him."

Goldbeard stiffens. Slowly, reluctantly, he takes the stone from his pouch and hands it to her.

She holds it up in the air for the crowd to see, turning it between her fingers. She presses it between her palms

. . . and suddenly there is a large, sparkling gemstone in

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

140

WORLD S END

her hand instead. The crowd laughs and cheers. "Your reward." She flips the gem to Goldbeard.

He catches it.

I watch greed and awe commingle on his face. "My

Watchman," she says almost tenderly, "you've brought me the right one at last--the one I've waited for, the one

I prophesied to myself."

Goldbeard's expression turns dark and uncertain. "He wants to take you away from us!" he says.

The crowd's voice echoes his suspicion ominously.

"I will never leave you," she says calmly, to him, to the watchers. "I can never leave the Lake."

"Then what you want with him?" Goldbeard's eyes are hot with anger. She stares at him. He looks down, glances at the Lake with fear on his face.

She turns back to the crowd. "This speaking is over!"

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

She raises her hands and claps them. The red/gold cloak drops from her shoulders, to lie in a puddle of blood. It is lined with black. She wears only a thin, white shift beneath it; the shift Page 109

clings to her sweating body, concealing nothing. I suck in a breath of furnace-hot air. The crowd mutters and shouts its disappointment. They call out for something more, they want her to show them proof of what I am .. . they want more miracles, or more blood. But she ignores them. She ignores me, too, as if my gaze does not burn her flesh where it touches her.

"I will return to the tower," she tells Goldbeard.

"Bring him."

She goes down the ladder as lightly as a ghost. Figures materialize, bearing a canopy to shade her as she walks.

I want to go after her. Goldbeard knows it; he holds his gun on me. He holds me back until she grows small in the distance, following the canyon's edge . . . until I am ready to throw myself over the rail to keep from losing her. "Nobody goes with her," he says. "You only go to her." He lets me leave the platform at last as she disappears from sight; his men are still waiting below.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

141

JOAND. VINGE

They watch me even more darkly as they take me back to town.

We cross endless plazas piled with rubble, climb shallow steps chipped into the rockface and hot shining ladders. I climb awkwardly, using one hand. There are towers rising above the maze of tumbled structures;

round ones, square ones, two or three stories high, with tiny windows that stare like skeleton eyes. This place is old, older than memory. We come to a tower whose middle story is now a slab of red stone. The path to its base shines with beaten metal. A fence of bones beckons us, a human skull leers above two human guards lounging against the wall at the foot of the steps that circle it.

I feel as if I know this place; that it can only belong to her, only be what I've been moving toward, all this time.

. . . "Our time has come," I whisper. Goldbeard glances back at me.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

We stand beneath the skull's empty gaze as the guards come forward to challenge us. They wear a grotesque parody of armor; one of them is a huge woman nearly two meters tall. The other has a pot jammed onto his head. I laugh, and they glare at me with death in their eyes. Goldbeard mutters to them in a language I don't know, and they back away from me suddenly. They let me pass, and Goldbeard with me. We leave his men behind again.

Oh gods, oh gods, this is the way of return. It is all I can do to keep from running as we climb the stairs. Soon. Soon. Every second is an eternity passing, every step closes the gap of time. We Page 110

circle the tower of stone, pass through a heavy metal door into the chamber at its top. A breath of cool air greets us. I run my hands self-consciously over my filthy clothing: I am to appear before a queen.

It is cold in the chamber, as cold as the frozen wastelands of Tiamat, and I begin to shiver.

Moon rises from a massive carven seat filled with rich

142

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

WORLD S END

rugs and pillows: a queen's throne. She holds out her hands. I start toward her, but Goldbeard jerks me back.

"Let him go!" she orders. "He is the Lake's chosen.

You are not to harm him." Goldbeard lets me go, angrily.

"Leave us," she says. As Goldbeard goes to the door with heavy reluctance, she calls, "We are not to be disturbed!"

We are alone. I am trembling now from the urge to take her, to feel her body-- I lift my hands, drop them again.

She glances at me, licking her lips, as if she knows exactly what I want. She touches my trefoil.

"The fishhooks--the bait." Her fingers slip downward to my belt and toy with the catch. "No one ever touches me.

It's been so long. . . ."

I feel my erection pressing painfully against my pants.

My hands make fists. No! I'm not an animal--! some dying thing inside me cries.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

She smiles at me--a strange, guarded smile, not one that I have ever seen on her face before.