The Summer Queen by Joan D. Vinge Read Free Book Online

knife-edge of anger that he had not
intended in the words, and said hastily, “You should be resting, sleeping ....
I thought Miroe gave you something to make you sleep.” After meeting with the
sibyls this afternoon—after she had stopped the winds—she had come up the
stairs from the Hall below ashen-faced with exhaustion. She had let him support
her as they climbed; he had felt her shaking with fatigue. She had no reserves
of strength these days; the child—or two—growing inside her demanded them all.
    He had helped her to their bedroom, and Miroe Ngenet had
given her a warm brew of herbs to calm her, forbidding anyone to disturb her—even
him. He had not argued. When he had come to bed himself she had been sleeping.
    But he had wakened in the middle of the night and found the
bed empty beside him, and had come searching. He had not expected to find her
here, like this. “Moon ...”he said again, tentatively, as if some part of him
was still uncertain whether she was the one that he saw on the throne, whether
it was not really Anenrhod. “Are you ... are you all right?”
    Her face eased at the words, as if it were something in his
face that had disturbed her. She nodded, her tangled, milk-white hair falling
across her shoulders. Suddenly
    —\\<-v §[\
    ^ i w *
    I
     
    she was his pledged again, and barely more than a girl, the
porcelain translucency of her skin bruised with fatigue and her hands pressing
her pregnant belly, “I’m all right,” she said faintly. “I woke up. I couldn’t
get back to sleep ....” She brushed her hair back from her face. “The babies
won’t let me rest.” She smiled, as the thought brought color into her cheeks.
    “Two—he whispered, coming closer, stepping up onto the dais
beside her. “Gods—Goddess—” barely remembering to use the Summer oath, and not
the offworlder one, “we’re doubly blessed, then.” Ngenct had told him the news,
after insisting that Moon should not be disturbed from her rest.
    “Yes.” She made the triad sign of the Sea Mother with her fingers.
Her hand fell away again, almost listlessly, although she still smiled, still
shone with wonder. He glanced at the sibyl tattoo at her throat; covered her
hands with his own on the swell of her soft, white sleepgown. Once he had
believed it was impossible for them ever to have a child together, and so had
she. Summer tradition said that it was “death to love a sibyl ....” That
saying, the fear behind it, had driven them apart, driven him here to the city ...
into the arms of Arienrhod.
    But it was not true, and here beneath his hand lay the proof
of it. He felt movement; heard Moon’s soft laugh at his exclamation of
surprise. She got up from the throne, in a motion that was graceful for all its
ungainliness. He had always been fascinated by her unconscious grace, so much a
part of her that she was completely unaware of it. He remembered her running
endlessly along the beaches of Neith, their island home; saw her in his mind’s
eye climbing the crags in search of birds’ eggs and saltweed, never slipping;
or darting along the narrow rock-built walls of the klee pens, never falling.
He remembered her dancing, held close in his arms while the musicians played
the old songs .... She was not tall, and so slender that Gran had always said
she barely cast a shadow, but she was as strong physically as any woman he
knew. Strength and grace were one in her; she rarely doubted her body’s responses,
and it rarely betrayed her.
    Ngenet had told him that carrying twins was doubly hard on a
woman’s body, especially under circumstances like these, when Moon pushed
herself endlessly, relentlessly. He had tried to make her listen, but she would
not stop and rest, even for him—as she had never stopped pursuing anything she
believed in, even for him. He could only hope that her body would not fail her
in this, but see her through until their children were born into the new world
she had become obsessed