There was a faint murmuring all around, and Celia suddenly felt eyes on her again. For a while thesummerlings had forgotten to glare at her, lost in their own merrymaking, but now they all looked at her with pleased little smirks of satisfaction while Elithyon joined the other summerling in his dance, as if she was being insulted. She wasn’t sure what was the safest feeling to show them. Did they want her to be unhappy, or angry, or offended? She just went on watching, trying to keep her face as neutral as she could, so they could read whatever they wanted to into her expression.
Elithyon and the other summerling man were reaching new heights of grace, the two of them sending a dozen light-trails flying, throwing them out into wide shimmering loops around the whole courtyard, other summerlings reaching up to dip their own fingers into the trails, adding more colors to go along, and then many of them began to come into the courtyard to join the dance—a dance that now turned into a circle around Elithyon and his partner, with Celia left alone and outside the gathering at the deserted high table. But she didn’t mind; no one was looking at her anymore, and the dance was so dazzling, every movement so perfectly right, that Celia fell back into that dreamlike fascination. She didn’t even realize for a little while that she was still watching while Elithyon waskissingthe other man, and even as it slowly dawned on her, she noticed that many of the summerlings were openly embracing within the dance, coming together to move in slow lush sinuous movements against one another, handsmoving into their silken garments to trail sparkling light over naked skin.
She had only ever taken a few furtive peeks intothosesummer books, in the back corner of the market where the merchants kept them in chests under their tables. She’d never quite been able to bring herself to buy them and bring them into the castle, even after Father had sunk into his torpor: less afraid of punishment than pure embarrassment. The occasional sneaked passage hadn’t been nearly enough preparation. Celia couldn’t find a safe place to look; she ended up staring down at the table, but she couldn’t remember to keep doing it. The music would rise to a sudden heated speed, and she’d look up, and then she’d watch for a little while, just caught by the beauty of it again, and then suddenly realize what she was watching and jerk her eyes back down.
She understood now why all the summerlings had thought she ought to feel insulted, to have her husband dancing with someone else at her wedding feast, but she was only desperately relieved. She hoped Elithyon made love with a dozen summerlings to insult her some more, and then slept for a week afterwards. No one was paying any attention to her, the rest of them also dancing and making love together as if the two were nearly the same thing, changing partners now and again. She took the chance and tried surreptitiously to take the ring off her finger with both hands underneath the table, but itwouldn’t so much as turn, even when she gripped it with a corner of the tablecloth.
She thought of trying to slip away, but she was too afraid of being noticed while they were all drunk and ever more wild-spirited. There were tales of summerlings hunting mortals who’d offended them and tearing apart their prey, and she was still sewn into her heavy silken wedding-gown, which had taken two dressers to put on her, with nothing but thin slippers on her feet.
So she just tried to stay small and quiet while the wanton revelry kept going, hoping they would all fall asleep, until suddenly Elithyon was coming back to his throne, breathing hard, his skin glowing with a sheen of sweat, smiling and his eyes brilliant. He dropped into his seat and held his horn out to be refilled with sunset by two summerling servants who appeared at once with the flagons of gold and silver as if it had been a rehearsed moment. He drank and then looked over at her with a puzzled and open expression, curious and easy to read: Who was she, and what was she doing there next to him?
Celia stared back at him and couldseethe memory come rolling back over him. His hand clenched on the horn unmoving, and a blank, stricken look came into his face, as if he’d just been told something dreadful, and then he hardened back into that terrible rage and glared at her as furiously as if the brief moment of delight had never happened.
“Now you know the fate that lies before you,” he said, murderously. “Think not that I will forget. Though we do not cling to the faint shades of the past as you scrabbling mortals do, I swear to you that even should a thousand of your mortal years pass, still I will remember Eislaing and seek vengeance for her pain. I willneverlove you. You will wear a crown as hollow as the one your king gave her, and be queen in nothing but name. I will never come to your bed or look at you with desire, or show you the least honor. Others shall have my love, and you shall sit beside me in silence and humiliation, and know that nothing will ever win you my heart. I swear it to you by silver and by gold.”
He finished in a savage, triumphant rush, and suddenly the feasting was ending, all the music and crowd ebbing away from the courtyard and vanishing away into the palace like an unstoppered bottle pouring out, and Elithyon had her hand again. Celia had to stand up or be pulled, and with a single step she was suddenly with him at the side of the courtyard and being drawn into a tower made of pale white stone that didn’t fit into the rest of the palace at all. It looked just like the winter tower of a mortal castle, eight-sided with the hinge sockets waiting for autumn walls to be put in, and when he pulled her inside, the floor of the tower was even tiled, with the ventilation holes in the back corner to let the smoke out of the oven that would warm them from beneath during winter—awinter that would never come into these lands.
There wasn’t even anything inside the tower; it was like a hollow shell with a winding stair that ran up around the inside. Celia’s heart was pounding in fear as Elithyon dragged her up behind him, no matter what he’d said. What if he forgot by the time they got upstairs? She’d tried to be ready in her mind for her wedding night, but she’d hoped anyway that maybe Gorthan would let her have a few weeks at least, if she asked, to know him a little, and she’d thought she would have sorcery to protect her against anything really dreadful. But she couldn’t be ready forthis.
The staircase went around seven times until it reached the only floor, and ended in a single chamber that filled the space. There was a low wooden bed that seemed very much like the palace itself, only made of thinner branches. It also stood on a platform raised a few inches above the ground, and was lavishly dressed with bedclothes of embroidered silk, with filmy bedcurtains draped around it from the ceiling beams overhead. There was no fire and not even a hearth to light one upon; there were no candles, just shining round lanterns hanging all over from the ceiling at different heights, some of thin paper and some of metal pierced with patterns to let the light gleam out.
Elithyon let her go and went to a pair of doors in the side of the wall and flung them wide onto open air and a world of treetops, a thousand different kinds, vines entangling even the upper branches, and the moon hangingbrilliant above, making the leaves silver. He turned and smiled at her, hard and glittering, and said, “I wish you joy ofyourwedding night, Princess,” and went out and slammed the door behind him.
Celia sat down on the bed in a gasp of relief and shut her eyes a moment. Then she pushed herself up and went to the huge window and looked out. The great courtyard stood below, empty and deserted, except for the sparkles of the gleambugs and glimmering shapes of sunfish moving deep down in the pools of water. In the time it had taken Elithyon to bring her upstairs, great sheets of ivy had climbed up the tower walls outside, and Celia reached out to try and tug on some of the vines, to see if they might hold her weight. But they drew back from her fingers, and the floor at the edge of the windowshifteda little underneath her foot, as if it would have liked her to fall out. She pulled back; she wasn’t in any hurry to leap from her tower like Eislaing had.
There was a large hanging chair near the window, panels woven of thin reeds and the joining parts made of silken cloth hung from the rafters, heaped inside with many cushions. She went and sat down inside the slightly unsettling swinging cocoon of it and took the bread out of her pocket: she’d gotten nine pieces, which all did still look like bread. She was hungry, but she didn’t know when she’d get any more food, so she took one of the cushion covers off and put eight of her pieces inside, and ate onlyone. And then for lack of any other ideas, she went and lay down on the bed still in her gown and went to sleep; she was too tired and frightened to think of anything at all todo.
In the morning, she jerked up in bed with the curtains held open and Elithyon staring at her in baffled anger, as if he hadn’t expected to find her there. He glared at her, and then looked at the window and back, and snarled at her, “Do you think I have made a false oath, then? You imagine that youcouldwin my heart?”
“What did you think I’d do?” she said, edging back as far as she could against the pillows. “Throw myself out the window?” But even as she spoke, looking at his seething frustration, she realized that hehadthought just that. He’d expected her to follow along with Eislaing’s story—tofinishEislaing’s story, with its mirror image: the princess of Prosper driven to her death by the summerlings, the vengeance that he’d agreed to take in place of the war. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she’d do anything else, as long as he played out Sherdan’s part, by refusing to love her.
He looked at the window again. Celia said, desperately, before he could decide to throw her out himself, “Sherdan didn’tbetrayEislaing! He just didn’t love heryet—”
Elithyon whipped back, blazing up with brilliant rage all over again. “And once more you try and trick me with the same foul lies, even though they have failed you everytime,” he said. “The roots of the trees drank her blood and her tears. Do you think they would refuse to tell me the truth of what my sister suffered? How the Betrayer took her from her wedding feast to a foul, low tavern, where he drank and amused himself with his companions, and took himself a slatternly serving-wench to enjoy before her face, leaving Eislaing to wait for his pleasure afterwards, all to teach her that he meant to be the master of a miserable slave, and not the husband of an honored queen?”
And it was true. As soon as Celia heard the words, she knew that of course it was true. Sherdan hadn’t had his mother’s sorcery. He’d only been a mortal king, and he’d been forced to marry a great lady with magic of her own and a dangerous man at her back, and he’d resented being made to feel small beside her. So he’d insulted her in what he’d thought was a safe and petty way, the way a mortal lord could insult his wife with impunity, to make himself feel more powerful, and hehadn’texpected her to throw herself out the window. And when she’d chosen to die instead of staying trapped in a loveless alliance, he’d lied to everyone else about what he’d done, so no one would blame him for the war. Just the way Gorthan and the king were surely lying to Father and everyone in Prosper right now about what they’d done withher.
Elithyon stood seething another moment, and then he said, “I gave an oath: nothing to be done to you, but whatwas done to her. If you have so little pride, cling to life as long as you wish. But you will never leave this room again, save the way she leftherwedding chamber. This I vow to you as well.” He turned and stalked from the room, and as he left, the wall closed up tight behind him.
No one came into theroom the rest of the day. Behind a hanging curtain of thin living vines, as thin as embroidery silk with small green knots tied at intervals, Celia found a beautiful washstand with a mirror so clear that she could have counted her own eyelashes. It showed her no great sorceress, only the face of a frightened girl, with her carefully dressed hair fallen down around her ears, and her heavy gown snagged and crumpled. She managed to wriggle her arms out and twist the gown around her body so she could snap the tiny threads sewing her in, enough of them to shove it all down along with her stays and climb out in just her linen shift, relieved.
There was a washbasin and a jug of summer make on the washstand, both made of the gold that was as hard as steel. As she finished fighting her way out of her gown, it started raining—abrief thrumming downpour so strong that she could fill up the jug for the trouble of holding it out the window and bringing it back inside, in almost asingle movement. She filled the washbasin up and drank the jug dry, the water sweet, and ate one piece of her precious store of bread, and then she grimly tried to find something in the room that she could use to cut off her finger, so she could get the imprisoning ring off.
The jug and washbasin were too thick, with carefully blunted edges. She tried to smash the mirror, but even when she threw the jug at it as hard as she could, it only clamored with a sound like bells and didn’t even show a mark. The living wood of the bed was smooth and rounded, and when she tried to break off a piece, it only slipped out of her hands. She climbed up on it to try and reach one of the lanterns, but they were too high above her head.
She was about to drag over the washstand and tip it onto the bed so she could climb onto it, and reach them, when she heard horns blowing outside the window. She went and looked down to see the court assembled below again: no feast tables, just Elithyon sitting on his throne upon a dais before the palace, flanked by summer knights, waiting as if to receive visitors. Her tower prison stood to one side of the court, so she could see their faces clearly. Across from him, the trees had arranged themselves into a wide lane, and wonder filled Celia: a great blue-eyed shaihul was coming down the path with pale feathery iridescent scales in a thousand shades of purple and green—acreature that was half legend even to most summerlings, and held a sign of good fortune whenever one appeared.
The shaihul padded into the courtyard, the tips of its talons clicking on the flagstones, and went all the way up to the throne. “Be most welcome in our court, noble Alimathisa,” Elithyon said, inclining his head, as warm and gracious as if he’d never felt a drop of hate. “You honor us with your presence. Let us see you refreshed, you and your companion. Eager am I to know what cause has brought you hence.”
The shaihul gave a great snorting noise and shook its heavy maned head and answered in a voice like wind blowing in the trees, “Welcome me not, Prince of Endless Summer. I have borne my companion to the heart of your realm in payment of a life debt owed, for the destruction of the vile wyrm Ingrunsir, and the wind whispers that I have brought the doom of many a valiant knight of your realm.”
Elithyon was frowning, but he said, “Still I would make you welcome, Alimathisa, and trust in the valor of my knights. But let your companion name himself, and his purpose in coming here.”
The knight swung off the shaihul. His back was to her, but as he took off his helm, Celia caught her breath at the familiar movement. She almost called out, but before she could, Elithyon laughed, a ringing sound. “Why, this is nosorrow you have brought me, Alimathisa, but a doubled joy. The Knight of the Woven Blade is a welcome guest to my court indeed.” He rose and stepped down the stairs from his throne, holding out both his hands. “Long have I desired to feast you again, Sir Argent, since last we parted at the summer games; all my court are eager to hear more of the deeds that have rung so bright in song throughout my realm. You will sit beside me at table—”
He paused, because he’d reached the bottom step, and Argent wasn’t reaching for his hands. Argent said, harshly, “Did you know?”
Elithyon went still, looking him in the face. “What is there for me to have known?”
