Free The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge

frightened, protesting kinsman down to
the docks and set him adrift in a boat. There had been a witch-catcher of iron
studded with spikes around his neck; they had pushed him along at pole’s
length, rightfully afraid of contamination.
    Then, down
the steep dropoff to the harbor, they had pushed him too roughly, and he had
fallen. The spikes bit into his throat and the side of his face, laying them
open. The sibyl’s blood that the crowd had been so afraid of spilling had
welled and run like a necklace of jewels under his chin, patterning down his
shirt (the shirt was a deep sky blue; she was struck by the beauty of the
contrast). And stricken with fear like the rest, she had watched him sit
moaning with his hands pressed against his throat, and done nothing to help him
...
    Gundhalinu
touched her elbow hesitantly. She looked up, embarrassed, into the faintly
scornful face of the Elder Wayaways. “Whenever you’re ready, Inspector.”
    She nodded.
    The elder
lifted the small whistle suspended from a chain around his neck and stepped out
onto the bridge. Jerusha followed with eyes looking fixedly ahead, knowing what
she would see if she looked down, not needing to see it: the terrifying shaft
that gave access for the servicing of the city’s self-sufficient operating
plant, servicing that had never been needed as far as she knew, during the
millennium that the Hegemony had known about it. There were enclosed elevator
capsules that gave technicians safe access to its countless levels; there was
also a column of air, rising up this shaft at the hollow core of Carbuncle’s
spiral the way an updraft formed in an open chimney. Here was the only area of
the city not entirely sealed off by storm walls; the bitter winds of the open
sky ran wild through this space, sucking the breath out of the subterranean
hollows. There was always a strong smell of the sea here high in the air, and
moaning, as the wind probed the irregularities of cranny and protrusion in the
shaft below.
    There were
also, suspended in the air like immense free-form mobiles, transparent panels
of some resilient material that flowed and billowed like clouds, that created
treacherous cross-currents and back flows in the relentless wind. And there was
only one way across the hall to the upper levels of the palace: Here the
corridor became a drawbridge vaulting the chasm like a band of light. It was
wide enough to walk easily in silent air, but it was made deadly by the hungry
sweep of the winds.
    The Elder
Wayaways sounded a note on his whistle and stepped forward confidently as the
space around him grew calm. Jerusha followed, almost stepping on his heels with
the need to include herself and Gundhalinu in the globe of quiet air. The elder
continued to walk, at a calm even pace, sounding another note, and a third.
Still the globe of peaceful air surrounded them; but behind her Jerusha heard
Gundhalinu take some god’s name in vain as he lagged a little and the wind
licked his back.
    This is insane! She repeated the litany of fear and resentment
that always went with her crossing. What
sort of a maniac would build this sadist’s fun-house ? ... knowing that the technology that had designed it could
easily have circumvented it, if it had simply been meant as a security measure.
At the tech level permitted the Winters on Tiamat now, it was effective enough.
Whatever nerveless madman had had it put here in the first place, she suspected
that it suited the purposes of the present Queen all too well.
    They were
midway across already. She kept her eyes fixed on the elder’s back, hearing the
atonal wind-charmer’s notes that held back death shrill above the groaning pit.
It was not the weaving of some magic spell, but the activation of automated
controls that diverted the wind curtains to the travelers’ protection instead
of their destruction. Knowing that was no great comfort to her when she
considered the potential for human error, or for a sudden failure in such