The servants were already gladly guiding Argent away to his pavilion, and Roric started to pluck a bouncing melody, a simple lighthearted children’s song going in a round, and with that going beneath his voice, he started to tell the summerlings a story—a story of how a group of foolish knights attacked a hill fort of the forest animals, and were driven off by a small army of rabbits with twenty sacks of carrots, three bars of solid brass, nine bolts of good woolen cloth, and ten cartloads of firewood.
It wasn’t a story she’d told him before; the account-stories weren’t stories to remember, and they always laughed and forgot them even as she told them. But it wasoneof them—a silly story that teetered wildly from one side to the other like a cart being unbalanced with every new number being crammed into it, threatening to tip over into nonsense all the way. They were stories that needed a generous audience, but this story had one, and the summerlings laughed the way that Roric had laughed, willingly, every time the story asked them to, or even just gave them the least excuse, glad to be distracted. When he was done, they applauded as wildly as if he’d sung them the entire Lay of Lethien from memory, and Roric said, “I could do another, if you want,” and Elithyon said, “Play on, so long as you can!”
Celia didn’t eat another piece of bread that night. Roric told them three more of the silly account-stories, bringing in some of the handful of characters she’d used more often: the clear-eyed vixen, the determined hedgehog, the one brave true knight who turned up to rescue the pack of silly ones from their misadventures whenever she’d gotten them stuck in an impossible corner, and chided them for attacking the kingdom of the forest. The summerlings drank toasts to him out of their drinking horns and laughed more and more with each one, growing giddy with merriment, until the sun went down, and Elithyon gladly called for the feast tables. Argent was seated on his right side, and Roric on his left. Celia didn’t think Argent had recognized Roric; he looked as if he barely even saw what was around him, his face remote and lined a little with pain, wan as fresh linen, but he still had that lightness in him, a calm that made him seem almost ethereal, a ship about to slip out with the tide into a morning fog. Elithyon looked only at him, his hands clenched as if on a rope to hold it back.
The next morning, Elithyon asked Roric to keep going, and Roric told them thirteen more stories, each one more or less absurd. When he started to find it hard to invent more numbers, without the account books in front of him, he turned to the summerlings themselves. He said, “And then the lambs opened up the sack that the shepherd had left in his hut, and inside they found forty-two…”and looked around at the audience, beckoning with a hand, until one of the summerlings suddenly shouted out, “Silver arrows!” and Roric went on from there, and after that all the summerlings were truly alive with delight, twenty or more of them calling suggestions every time he held open the door for them to add their own part into the tale, gleeful and congratulated by their companions when their offering was taken.
Only Elithyon paid no attention to the stories. He was still looking at Argent, who was pale and bowing a little over his place with each breath, a hand resting over the wound in his side, even though Elithyon had filled his horn with the silver-gold potion three times the night before. Elithyon gave him another draught in mid-morning, but even that only brought a brief flush of health into his cheeks. Almost at once it faded away again into pallor, and when Elithyon tried to give him another, during the midday rest, Argent held it off and lifted his head, and Celia heard him say, “Haven’t I put on enough of a show already?” with a note of impatience in his voice.
Elithyon lurched back as if he’d been struck across the face. He said, “No—no—” inarticulate, and Argent paused, looking at him with a slow stirring of surprise rising through the veiling fog of pain and weariness, as if he’d only just noticed that Elithyon—cared.His eyes widened, staring at him, and Elithyon stared back, his own face caught with the same understanding, as if he’d justnoticed it himself, and for a moment Argent lifted a hand towards him.
But before Elithyon could do anything—before he could choose, to lean in, or to put the hand aside—Argent stopped and said to Elithyon again, slowly, “Will you give me my sister?” like someone putting a foot gingerly out onto a bridge, to see if it would hold his weight.
But Elithyon said faintly, “I have—I have sworn an oath—” with a kind of horror in his voice.
Argent was already letting his hand sink, pulling back to solid ground: the easy, serene calm had returned, even as Celia’s eyes were prickling with sorrow. Of course it wasn’t enough to break the curse, not when Elithyon would still put honor first. That wasn’t anything that Argent would call love. He nodded, unsurprised, and said simply, “Farewell then, Your Highness,” and then he pushed himself up from his seat with an effort and walked away from the tables to his pavilion, and inside he began to put back on his mail. The sun had just begun to dip below the trees again, throwing the cool shadows over the palace.
Elithyon looked as if a blade had been put through him from front to back, too, and he just hadn’t pulled it out yet. He sat watching Argent’s pavilion, his face unmoving and blank, while some of the other summerlings along the tables began to call hesitantly for Roric to give them another tale, glancing to see if Elithyon approved,and some of the summer knights, seeing Argent arming himself, looked at him uncertainly, and a few of them rose, and went to put on their own mail.
Roric had been careful before then not to look up at the tower, but with everyone looking at Elithyon, he flicked his eyes up and caught Celia’s. She gave him back a small nod, trying not to hope, as Elithyon jerked beneath the rising murmuring of his court and asked Roric with a desperation bright in his voice, “But I have commanded you to sing as long as you can. Have you no more songs nor tales to share?”
“Well—I do knowonemore, Your Highness,” Roric said, with an air of reluctance, “but it’s very long—”
“Sing it!” Elithyon said, all the more eager, a chorusing murmur of encouragement joining him from the court.
Roric put on a show of wavering, and then he blurted, “—and I’m afraid it might offend you! Please don’t ask me to sing it.”
“If that is all, sing without fear,” Elithyon said. “I swear to you that you shall suffer no punishment nor retribution.”
Roric hesitated again and said, “Do you promise? If I sing it, you won’t do any injury to me, or let any of your subjects do one, even if you’re very angry? Or to any of my kin?” he tacked on hastily, like an afterthought. “I know a summer prince won’t break his oaths.”
“Indeed I will not,” Elithyon said. “You have my word upon it, spinner. Therefore, sing on!”
There was a heaviness on the court this time as Roric started, as if they all shared in Elithyon’s misery, and Celia didn’t know if Roric would be able to catch them again. But he didn’t tell another one of the account-stories. Instead he started playing a song Celia recognized: it was the tune of “The Foolish Miser,” but when he started singing and talking his way through the song, he’d changed the words around a little to make it a lord instead who’d had his jewel stolen, and started looking for it in all the wrong places. In Roric’s song, first the lord met an honest baker, who said he hadn’t taken the jewel. “So then he killed the baker dead, and tore up all his loaves of bread, but he didn’t find his jewel,” Roric went on, singing the chorus through twice as he went up and down the tables, and a few of the summerlings started joining in with him the second time, another handful clapping along.
The lord in his song met and murdered an honest potter, and smashed all his vases and his jugs, without any more success. Some more of the summerlings joined in the chorus with Roric that time, and then the lord met an honest shepherd who said he hadn’t taken his jewel, and killed him too. “The lord said, ‘I swear I’ll find my jewel,’ ” Roric sang, “ ‘if I have to search every ram and ewe,’ and he went through them one by one,” and Roric paused the music and put a hand to his mouth and said loudly in afalse aside, “Baaa-aah!” making it sound deeply distressed. It took a moment, but all the summerlings took his meaning; even Elithyon jerked his eyes away from Argent’s pavilion to gawk at him, and the whole court exploded into gales of laughter. When Roric went on, they all chorused with him in delight, “But he didn’t find his jewel!”
He had the court with him wholeheartedly, then. Roric kept the song going through ten more honest men and women, all murdered for nothing: a merchant, a butcher, a candlestick maker; a tavern wench, a weaver, a hedge knight, a priest; a cook, a nursemaid, and even a young bride on the way to her wedding. The summerlings had laughed at all the others, but they gasped in indignation when the lord killed her and hunted through her dower chest, and the whole court was still murmuring when at the last the lord met a fine city man, who kept one hand in his pocket. Roric sang, “The city man furrowed his brow and said, ‘Is your jewel agleam in shades of green?’ And the lord cried out, ‘It is!’ The city man furrowed his brow and said, ‘Is your jewel the finest ever seen?’ And the lord cried out, ‘It is!’ ” Roric made a great burst of strumming and then spoke for the city man in a mock whisper. “ ‘Why my lord—I know who took your jewel!’ ”
All the summerlings were leaning forward in eagerness as Roric continued, “ ‘I saw such a jewel just this day, a sly fox holding it on the way, taking it to bury far away,in the hillside over the ridge.’ And the city man pointed the lord to the hill, with the hand that wasn’t in his pocket.” The lord thanked the city man and praised him for the first honest man he’d found, and he ran to the field and started digging in every gopher hole and rabbit burrow he could find. “And the city man strolled on down to the market town, to have a fine green jewel set into a crown, while the lord went on digging in the mud,” Roric finished.
The summerlings all applauded riotously for a long time, many of them throwing jeweled ornaments and summer gold at Roric’s feet. Elithyon himself was smiling again, mirthfully, the coming sorrow slipped away from him entirely for a glad moment; he said, “Well, song-spinner, why should this song have offended me?”
Roric said, “It’s called ‘The Summer War,’ ” and all the summerlings stopped laughing.
After a moment, Roric added into the heavy silence, “It’s the song that everyone’s singing in Prosper about the war. You made peace with the heirs of the Betrayer, and they still rule the kingdom, and all you did was kill a lot of people who had nothing to do with it at all.”
The summerlings were deep in shock, darting looks at Elithyon, who was sitting rigidly, his hands clenched on the arms of his throne, a rising storm about to burst. But before he could say anything, Argent ducked out of his pavilion, wearing his armor. He looked to see that the performance was over, and the sun wasn’t quite down, yet.He reached back in for his woven blade, and then he went straight to stand in the center of the courtyard, in the challenge ring. His eyes were too-brilliant in his wan face, but he still wore the serene look, almost smiling, and he didn’t even notice the appalled silence of the court at first, until he’d stood in the middle of it for long enough to feel it lapping against him like a tide against a shore, and then he stirred, and looked up a little puzzled at Elithyon.
Elithyon looked down at Argent, and then jerked and looked over at the summer knights ranged against the side of the courtyard, already gathered to kill him. Memory swept over him, and the storm broke instead. He gasped, and said, his voice thick with agony, “May Eislaing’s shade forgive me, the song is true. I have taken the wrong vengeance.” He put his face into his hands with a cry of grief.
The court was silent with him, sharing the sharp point of sorrow, and they all glared with sudden furious hate when Roric broke in on the silence and said, “But it’s over now. You gave your word.”
Elithyon raised his head to look down at him. His jaw went murderously tight with anger, and he said through lips that barely moved, “I gave my word that no harm would come to you, song-spinner, and wise you were to demand it. Otherwise you would not leave this court alive, for the insult you have given me this day—even if you have but shown me my own error. You will be no witness to my sorrow. Go forth from my lands at once, and wellyou should fear returning. You are a strange fool, to dare come to mock a prince in his own court.”
“That’s not why I came,” Roric said.
He’d come to stand next to the challenge ring, before the throne, and as he spoke, Argent’s brows began to furrow. He turned and looked into Roric’s face under the red cap and said, “Roric?” in sudden bewilderment.
