“Did you know that she’s my sister?” Argent said, and Elithyon stiffened. He didn’t answer. “Where is she?”
“Argent!” Celia called then, and Argent turned and looked up towards her. He didn’t look much older than the last time she’d seen him. He’d been in the Summer Lands the whole time. But he looked so different anyway, as if the strangeness from that last terrible night when he’d left had come to settle down for good inside his face. He’d become even more beautiful, but with the hardness of a statue carved out of stone in a crypt. There was a downturning at the corners of his mouth, where there had always been a lurking smile.
But when he saw her, he smiled anyway, a little softness coming back, and he said, “It’s all right, Celie. Don’tworry. I’m here,” and he sounded almost just like himself, if you didn’t know him well enough to hear the effort that it took him to sound cheerful.
Her eyes were smarting with tears. “Argent, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I tried to find you. I was going to come and find you—”
“Silence,” Elithyon said, and Celia’s voice died in her throat as if someone had put a hand over her mouth.
Argent turned back to face him. “Will you give her to me?”
“Never,” Elithyon said sharply. “She is forfeit to the Summer Lands, in return for Eislaing given to the mortal world.”
But a low murmuring was going around the court, uneasy, and Elithyon was frowning himself. Summer lords showed their honor bygrantingboons, and they hated to refuse the request of any guest, much less an honored one, and especially one that had done them any kind of service. He threw a savage, glittering glance up at her, in the tower, and then he turned back to Argent. “For the sake of the great deeds you have done, and the evils you have righted in my realm,” Elithyon said, sounding as if the words were being pulled out one by one from between his teeth, “I will have her shown small mercy, for in justice, that was notdeniedEislaing; she simply had too much pride and courage to accept it. The sorceress will be given food and drink, so long as she chooses to take them, and shemay live out as many of her mortal days as she wishes. Ask me for nothing more. Your king surrendered her to us full willing.”
“My father didn’t,” Argent said.
Elithyon paused, looking into Argent’s face, and narrowed his eyes as if he’d spotted a weakness in his armor. “You have no father,” he said, with sudden certainty, and straightened, a look of relief coming into his face, even as Argent flinched back from him a little. “You have no father,” Elithyon repeated, with an air of satisfaction. “You have cast him off, for just cause, and she is no kin of yours anymore, for you share no mother’s blood. No honor binds you to her cause, and you have no claim to act on her part.”
Argent stood a moment, his face rigid with a ghost of remembered pain and anger, and then he said, “I’m not here forhonor.” He stepped back a pace from Elithyon and drew off his gauntlet. He said, “My name is Argent, son of Veris, and I’ve come for my sister Celia. Bring her to me, or let any lord or knight who would bar my way stand forth and meet me, if he has the courage,” and he flung it at Elithyon’s feet, the metal ringing against the stones.
“Argent, no!” Celia cried in horror, even as the gasp of thrilled shock went up all around the court. He’d offered an open challenge to every summer knight who chose to face him, and the only difference between that and trying to fight his way to her alone through Elithyon’s entirearmy was that he’d get to fight them one by one, so it would take longer until they killed him.
Elithyon raised his head from the gauntlet to look at Argent. His eyes were so brilliant green, they were almost glowing, and he breathed three times before he spoke again. “For the sake of the injury I have unwitting done you, I will forget the challenge you have made,” he said. “Take up your gauntlet and go in peace.”
“And let you keep my sister?” Argent said. “No.”
Elithyon stood glowering another moment, and then he said icily, “So be it. What knights of my court will take up the challenge?”
There was almost a crash as all six of the summer knights standing by the throne lunged for the gauntlet at once, and others were pouring into the courtyard on all sides, a hundred of them or more, all their faces gone even more inhumanly beautiful, alive with the dreadful joy of their eagerness to be the one to spill Argent’s blood, and Celia put her face in her hands in horror. But only for a moment. Then she was up and going for the washstand, even more desperately than before.
She didn’t stop to watch the fighting. She could hear too much of it: the formal insults offered to Argent’s honor, the threats of how horribly he’d die, and she knew from all her favorite stories that those threats would come true if his opponent managed to disarm him instead of killing him on the field. The ringing clash and scrape of swordscame clearly through the window, but even that sound became musical, here in the Summer Lands. She tried not to listen, struggling to heave the heavy washstand onto the bed, but she let it go to slide down with a thump and dashed back to the window in a panic when she heard the choked gurgling cry, and her heart didn’t stop beating itself frantically against the walls of her chest even when she saw Argent standing, his sword dipped in red, and the summer knight lying dead at his feet.
By the tenth fight, she’d stopped running to the window every time. She’d gotten the washstand onto the bed, and she’d pulled down all the lanterns that she could reach, now left sprouting around the floor like glowing mushrooms, but none of them had a sharp edge, and their light wasn’t even fire, just magic. She put down the last one, and then she looked at the washstand itself; she dragged it to the edge of the bed, and partway off, and when it was teetering back and forth on the edge, she gripped the marble top with just her ring finger around it, the rest of her fingers tucked tight out of the way against it, and then she used her other hand and tugged it to come sliding off towards the ground.
But all the work had been for nothing; the washstand smashed down with her finger in between, just the way she’d hoped, but there wasn’t any pain: she wriggled her finger out, and it wasn’t even bruised. She stared at it, and then she picked up the jug and just tried bashing it downon her finger, and then on her whole hand: it didn’t hurt at all.Nothing done to her but what was done to Eislaing,Elithyon had sworn, and Celia realized dismally that nothing in the tower he’d made was going to hurt her, even if she wanted it to.
She threw the jug against the wall and sat down in a heap on the bed and took a pillow and let herself put her head against it and let out a muffled howl of frustration.
Then she did go to the window. Argent was fighting a summer knight who looked like he was half a troll, head and shoulders taller, with a blade as wide as an axe head. She sucked in a sharp breath as Argent had to dive away from a swing, and the summer knight charged after him and swung his blade over and down, but Argent rolled in towards him and stuck a knife into the knight’s armor right at the joint below the knee, and then shoved the other leg out from under him, while the momentum of the swing was still going. The troll-knight gave a howl of pain and fell heavily onto his face, and Argent got up behind him and stabbed his sword straight down through the knight’s back, and the knight gave a shudder and lay still.
The bodies of twelve other summer knights already lay in a row along the side of the courtyard, draped with red silk and garlanded with vines blooming with pale blue flowers. Argent jerked his blade up and out and stepped back, his shoulders heaving with breath, and four other summerlings came and took the knight’s body and carriedit reverently to the side to join the horrible line. Argent took his helm off. He was panting heavily, almost trembling a little, and his hair was plastered down to his head with sweat. Celia put her hands over her mouth, tears springing to her eyes. Hecouldn’tkeep fighting like that for much longer, and the ranks of summer knights waiting to face him had barely been thinned.
But Elithyon had been watching the whole time from his throne, flanked by a rapt audience of summerlings; many of them were applauding, even cheering, as if they’d all forgotten the purpose of the challenge, or were simply overwhelmed by admiration, and Elithyon himself looked as though he would have liked to join in. When the thirteenth knight was borne off the field, Elithyon looked at Argent and then stood up and abruptly announced, “The sun grows high; the next challenge must wait for the heat of the day to pass,” and as if he’d given the sun a nudge, it was rising over the trees and blazing heat down into the courtyard as he spoke. “Let all the challengers be given refreshment.”
A murmuring swelled through the court, but not of the objections that his people might sensibly have made to Elithyon giving an enemy more chances to kill them. Instead the summerlings all seemedpleasedby their prince’s graciousness, even the other knights who were waiting for their chance to fight. A cool breeze came suddenly blowing out of the trees, and ruffled through Argent’s hair andleft it smooth and dry and curling again, as if even the forest approved, and a flock of summerling servants went hurrying eagerly towards him, offering him a cup of water to drink, guiding him to a pavilion standing in a small shady grove of trees.
Celia’s heart was still beating with fear; she felt like a condemned prisoner with a brief stay of execution granted. She sat down heavily on the cool, low bed and then slowly stretched out and fell into a half-drowsing sleep herself.
But after the sun dipped below the trees on the other side of the forest, the fighting started again. Argent killed another thirteen knights before Elithyon called another halt for the night. Argent was led to the pavilion again, and came out bathed and in fine summerling feasting garb, and was taken to the tables; Elithyon had him seated by his side, and even poured his cup full and served him from the platters with his own hands, showing him all the grace that a summerling host could offer. But Argent only ate steadily through the food and didn’t look at him. At the end of the feast, as they all rose, Elithyon burst out in frustration, “You have done great honor to your blade, but you must see that soon you will fall. Will you not withdraw your challenge and be named a guest-friend of my court, welcome to come and go, and see for yourself that the sorceress lives yet?”
Argent said only, “No,” and turned to look up at herwindow and smiled, before he strode away to the pavilion they’d given him. She could see him in silhouette inside, a light glowing as he sharpened his sword and oiled his armor. Below, Elithyon stood watching his shadow too, with the unhappy, half-wincing expression of a man watching a priceless vase teetering on the edge of a shelf, about to be smashed to pieces. When Argent finished and lay down to sleep, the light softly faded and then went out, and Elithyon turned and glared up at her before going away into the palace, as if he blamedherfor it all.
Most of the summerlings had drifted away to sleep already, but a few of them wandered into the woods and the gardens, and from her high window, Celia heard two different summerling musicians softly singing to themselves as they worked on rival versions of a lament for the Knight of the Woven Blade, the greatest knight in all the world, who had taken up a hopeless challenge to try and avert the vengeance of the Summer Prince, with a line for every knight he’d met in battle, trying out rhymes for different numbers of the fallen, guessing how many would die before Argent was killed himself.
She listened with her face pressed against her knees, and when at last the last of the musicians had fallen silent, she got up and went to stand at the wide-open window. She looked out straight ahead and tried to pretend that the edge wasn’t there. Just one step, and a short fall, and it would be over. Argent wouldn’t have anything to keepfighting for, and Elithyon would be glad to let him go. And maybe Argent would have to live out his life in the shadow of the curse she’d left on him, but at least he would live.
And then—Argent would leave the Summer Lands and go back to Father and tell him and Roric what had happened. And they would kill Gorthan and the king, and find some way to lure Elithyon back out of the Summer Lands and kill him, too, and avengeherdeath. Thatwasa better story than just living miserably in the power of a proud, cruel man, who was determined to only ever saynowhen you asked him to care. Eislaing hadn’t been stupid, after all.
