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was
left standing. As Jerusha watched, even she nodded, in acknowledgment, or
defeat. The Queen stood a moment longer, her head held high, her face a mask
that Jerusha could not read. The air stayed calm; the ancient hall and everyone
in it seemed frozen in place. And then at last Moon Dawntreader moved again,
stepping off of the bridge onto solid ground.
    She looked back, at the flaccid curtains hanging in the air,
as if she were waiting for something. But they did not begin to fill again; the
window walls remained closed. She took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and
falling visibly, her own face showing traces of the awe that had silenced the
crowd. She looked ahead again, with her gaze on her husband’s white, stunned
face. She returned to his side; Jerusha saw the uncertainty that was almost
fear in his eyes as she took his hand. “It is the Lady’s will,” she said,
facing the crowd again, at last, “that I should be here, and that you should be
here with me.” She gestured at the span behind her, open to anyone who chose to
cross it, now that the winds had ceased. “This is Her sign to you that a true change
has come; the ways of Winter are not forbidden to us anymore.”
    She hesitated, looking out at their faces, her own face
changed by the emotions that played across it. “We are who we are,” she said, “and
the old ways have always been our survival. But no one’s ways are the only, or
the best. Change is not always evil, it is the destiny of all things. It was
not the will of the Lady that we were denied knowledge that could make our
lives better; it was the will of the offworlders. And they are gone. I ask you
to work with me now to do the Lady’s will, and work for change—”
    Capella Goodventure threw down the tone box and stalked out
of the hall. The echo of its clatter followed her into the darkness. But the
rest of the watchers stayed, their eyes on the Queen, waiting for what came
next; ready to listen, ready to work the Lady’s will at her bidding.
    “How did she do it, Miroe?” Jerusha murmured. “How?”
    He only shook his head, his face incredulous. “I don’t know,”
he said. “I only hope she knows ... because she didn’t do it herself.”
    Jerusha looked up, her eyes searching the haunted shadows of
the heights, her memory spinning out the past. But all the history of this
place that she had experienced spanned less than two decades. The layers of
dusty time, the hidden secrets, the haunted years of Carbuncle the city
stretched back through millennia. Jerusha rubbed her arms, feeling its walls
close around her like the cold embrace of a tomb, and said nothing more.

TIAMAT: Carbuncle
     
    Sparks Dawntreader hesitated in the doorway to what had been
the throne room, when this was the Snow Queen’s palace; suddenly as incapable
of motion as if he had fallen under a spell. He stared at the throne,
transfixed by its sublime beauty. Its blown—and welded-glass convolutions could
have been carved from ice. Light caught in its folds and flowed over its
shining surfaces until it seemed to possess an inner radiance.
    It had seemed to him to be uncannily alive, the first time
he had entered this room and seen her seated there: Arienrhod, the Snow Queen,
impossibly wearing the face of Moon, the girl he had loved forever. It still
struck him that way, even after all the years he had spent as Arienrhod’s lover
... even now, as he found Moon seated there, wearing the face of Arienrhod;
sitting silent and still in the vast white space, in the middle of the night,
like a sleepwalker who had lost her way.
    He took a deep breath, relieving the constriction in his
chest, breaking the spell that held him as he forced himself forward into the
room. He crossed the expanse of white carpet as silently as a ghost—his own
ghost, he thought. “Moon,” he said softly, in warning.
    Her body spasmed; she turned on the throne to stare at him. “What
are you doing here?” he asked. He heard a