But she had failed. Failed to hold onto the key to Tiamat’s future; failed to carry out her altered plan of guiding Tiamat’s future herself; failed again to keep her hold on Moon, when Moon would have been her last hope… And somehow, in the meantime, she had lost her perspective about her own future. She had lived the way the Summers lived, once, but it had been far too long ago now. She could not even imagine going back, doing without, living like a barbarian again. And even if the Summers weren’t allowed to destroy every bit of technology they found remaining in Carbuncle, the city and all of Tiamat would still cease to be even a blurred hologram of the thriving interplanetary stopover that it had been.
She had believed once — secure in her faith that Moon, her clone, would reincarnate her — that she would go willingly to sacrifice. She would play out the traditional role to the end; and death would be one final new experience for a body that had experienced every other imaginable sensation. She would not regret leaving her life behind, because life as she knew it would have ceased to exist.
But after she had lost Moon, and found Sparks instead, after she had begun to build new plans whose foundation lay in herself, she had lost sight of all that. She had forgotten that she and her lover would have to grow old and endure hardship to keep Winter and its heritage alive. No, not forgotten — she had ignored it, because the greater goal, and the greater chance for immortality, had so outweighed it.
But now — now she had failed, utterly, completely. She would end here in this dawn forever; become one more in an endless chain of forgotten Queens who lived and died without meaning. And she wasn’t ready to die that way! No, no — not without leaving her legacy to the future! Damn them, damn the bastard off worlders who had ruined her plans for the future to keep their own intact. Damn the miserable stupidity of the Summers, those jeering, stinking imbeciles who would cheerfully carry out their purge of knowledge… She looked from side to side, radiating her useless fury.
“What’s wrong, Arienrhod? Did you finally realize this is the end?”
She froze, her gaze on Starbuck. “Who are you?” Whispered, it was louder in her mind than all the shouting of the crowd. “Who are you? You aren’t Starbuck!” She wrenched herself free from his encircling arm. Sparks — Oh, gods, what have you done — with him?
“I am Starbuck. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me already, Arienrhod.” He caught her hand in a vise grip. “It’s only been five years.” He turned his black-helmeted head until she could see his eyes, pitiless earth-brown eyes with long, dark lashes…
“Herne!” shaking her head. “It can’t be — gods, you can’t have done this to me! You cripple, you dead man — you can’t be here, I won’t permit it!” Sparks… damn you, where are you! “I’ll tell them you’re the wrong man!”
“They won’t care.” She felt his grin. “They just want an off worlder body to pitch into the sea. They don’t care whose it is. Why should you?”
“Where is he?” frantically. “Where is Sparks? What have you done to him? And why?”
“So you really love him that much.” Herne’s voice rasped. “So much that you want him in your grave with you?” Black laughter. “But not enough to let him live on without you… or with your other self instead: greedy to the end. I traded places with him, Arienrhod, because he doesn’t love you enough to die for you — and I do.” He pressed the hand he held to his forehead. “Arienrhod… you belong with me, we’re two of a kind. Not with that weakling; he was never enough of a man to appreciate you.”
She buried her hands beneath her cloak as he let her go. “If I had a knife, Herne, I’d kill you myself! I’d strangle you with my bare hands. You see what I mean?”
He laughed again. “Who else but me would want to spend forever like this? You tried to kill me once already, you bitch, and I wish you’d finished the job. But you didn’t, and now I’m going to get my wish, and my revenge too. I’ll have you forever now, all to myself; and if you spend forever hating me for it, all the better. But like you said, love, ‘forever is a long time.’”
Arienrhod wrapped herself in her cloak, shutting herself away, shutting her eyes against the sight of him. But the singing of the nobles was not enough to stop her ears against the wailing and taunting of the crowd; it seeped in through her pores and gave her despair a killing weight and substance.
“Don’t you want to know how I did it? Don’t you want to know who put me up to it?” Herne’s mocking voice tangled in the voice of the crowd. She didn’t answer him, knowing that he would tell her anyway. “It was Moon. Your clone, Arienrhod, your other self. She arranged it — she took him away from you after all. She’s your clone, all right… no one else gets her way quite like you do.”
“Moon.” Arienrhod clenched her jaw, keeping her eyes shut. For the first time in more years than she could remember, the fear of losing control in public came back to her. Nothing, nothing short of this could break her — nothing short of losing everything that had any meaning at all. And to know that the last blow had been delivered by herself! No, damn it, that girl was never me — she’s a stranger, a failure! But they had both loved him — Sparks with his summer-green eyes, with his hair and his soul like fire.
And not only had that defective image of her own soul defied her will, and escaped her curse, but she had stolen him back. And replaced him with this — this. She glanced again at Herne, her nails marking her arms. She caught a hint of sea tang in the air; they were in the lower city now. The end of her life’s journey was almost in view. Please, please, don’t let it end like this! Not knowing whom she asked it of — not the hollow gods of the off worlders not the Summers’ Sea… yes, maybe of the Sea, who was about to take the offering of her life, whether she believed in the old religion or not. She had not put her faith in any power beyond her own since she had become Queen. But now that that power had been taken from her, the awareness of her own complete helplessness closed over her, suffocating her like the cold waters of the sea…
The procession reached the final slope at the Street’s foot, and started down the broad ramp to the harbor that lay below the city. The ubiquitous mass of humanity was even more tightly crowded here, a wall of solid flesh, a wall of grotesque beast-faces. The cheering and the wailing rose from below to greet her as the cart rolled forward, echoing and re-echoing through the vast sea-cave. The dank chill air of the outer world flowed around her. Arienrhod shuddered secretly, but pride masked her face.
Ahead, below, she saw stands draped in red clustered at the far end of the pier, tiers filled with off worlder dignitaries and influential elders of Summer families. On the best-placed viewing stands she saw the Prime Minister and the Assembly members — already unmasked, as if it were beneath their dignity to participate in this pagan ritual — gaping without seeming to at her approach. Shimmering deja vu overtook her at the sight of them. She had seen this tableau before, half a dozen times or more, but only once that was like this time: the first time, when she had been the new Queen who stood below on the pier and watched the last of the Summer Queens pass this way — and sent her predecessor triumphantly into the icy water.
All the rest, all the other Festival pageants, had been only dress rehearsals for the next Change, this Change. They had chosen the Queen for a Day by the same ancient ritual rules, to reign over the Mask Night and make this journey at dawn. But only a pair of effigies had been given to the sea at her command, and not human lives.
And only she and the Assembly members had remained unchanged, like the ritual itself, through all of those Festivals, all the long years. But this final time would see the end of her and all her efforts to break free of them, while they went on and the system they symbolized went on forever. Her hands clenched on the soft cloth of her gown. If I could only take them all with me! But it was too late, too late for anything at all.