Page 19 of The Summer War

Roric threw a half-surprised look up at Celia, uncertain whether to be glad or not.

But her own heart was tumbling down as if she’d taken it in both her hands and dropped it off the tower.

The summerlings were all weeping, many of them hiding their faces in their hands, their heads bowed low.

Elithyon stepped proudly forward into the ring of challenge and stood facing Argent with his shield lowered and his spear held aside, his guard wide open, inviting in the killing blow.

Elithyon’s face was exalted with having found a way out of his own trap, but the rest of Argent’s serenity, already muddled with confusion, was draining away into horror.

He didn’t move. Both of them just stood there.

After a long moment, Elithyon frowned and said to him, “Why do you hold your blade? Strike, strike true, and you shall have your sister, in fulfillment of your challenge,” as if he thought Argent needed it explained, and then he even smiled at Argent brilliantly and added, “Indeed it comes to me that my own sister told me, chiding me once for my hasty temper, with what now I see was a gift of prophecy, that I was foolish to indulge it, and one day I would be more glad to die than have vengeance for my deepest grief. So it is, for it seems to me now that all my days would have been shadowed without any hope of end, had I watched you fall in my court as the price of my revenge. Better this by far!”

Argent didn’t say a word. He only gave a strangled cry of anguish and bowed his head; tears were dripping from his face, down onto his woven blade, tracing along the threaded bands of gold and silver and steel.

Roric was looking from him to Elithyon in rising dismay, realizing that he’d snared both of them in his trap.

And above, Celia was caught in her own horror and understanding: it was the curse.

Argent had struggled his way through all its terms. He’d ridden a shaihul and slain a dragon, he’d become the greatest knight in all the world, and through all of it, he’d never stopped caring about love more.

He’d come to save her, to die saving her, for love; he’d met a hundred summerlings in battle, one by one, and never wavered, and at last his courage and strength and skill had brought him to someone stupid enough to love him again —

And now the curse would force Argent to kill him, for her sake.

To fulfill the childish, resentful wish of a little girl’s heart, to be more important to him than anyone else he might ever meet.

To stand between him and a summer lord with shining green eyes who would have asked him to stay, to care.

Tears were pouring down Celia’s face. She would so much rather have jumped from the tower herself after all; only that wouldn’t work either, because Argent loved her, too.

He did love her. It would shatter his heart just as much to know that she’d jumped to spare him.

How could he ever stay with Elithyon, after that?

But if he killed Elithyon now, then he’d never be able to stay with her, either.

He’d be truly loveless then, forever, either way. There wasn’t a way out.

She looked despairing down at her hand, at the ring of cold black steel tight around her finger, locking up the sorcery that she’d wrung out of all this pain in advance.

Her own sorrow and rage had only been the first payment, and the rest was now due.

And she’d saved it all for nothing, to sit in her belly the way she had to sit in this tower, useless, helpless.

She was the one who’d made the curse; she was the one who had to find the way to break it.

She’d known that all along. If only she could have done anything at all, she would have known what to do; she was her father’s daughter.

If she’d had even a drop of sorcery, she would have—

Celia slowly turned her head and looked the other way out the window, towards the open end of the courtyard, where the shaihul was seated in state underneath a great shaded canopy, with a silver bowl of golden wine to drink.

But it wasn’t drinking at all; it was sunk low on itself, its head resting on its forelegs and its enormous eyes wet and full of sorrow, watching the terrible drama playing out. She called out, “Lord Alimathisa!”

Argent had been starting to raise up his sword, without raising up his head.

Roric put out his hand to hold Argent’s arm back, and Argent turned, both of them looking up at her.

But she was looking at the shaihul, which lifted its head and blinked at her like an owl.

“Lord Alimathisa,” she said, “would you mind coming up here, so if I jump from this tower, I’ll land on your back? ”

Roric burst out in a squawking awkward burst of laughter, pure relief, and put his fist over his mouth to press it in.

The shaihul had pulled its head back into its neck, swelling out an enormous collar of puffed-up feathers, as if it was a little indignant at the idea—but then it got up on its legs and shook itself out, and sprang in a single leap up to the tower.

It landed on the wall outside on all four feet, standing just below the window as if the world could turn sideways for it, and bent its head to look inside.

Celia lurched back a little; the shaihul had looked much smaller below.

Its head filled the entire window, and it blinked its dinner-plate eyes at her a moment before it turned and offered her its back.

The distance was more of a step than a jump, but she didn’t think anyone was going to quibble; she took a small hop off the ledge and sank through a cloud of feathers to land on its back.

Celia hadn’t felt the curse when she’d made it, but she thought she could feel the awful weight of it lifting away from her, left behind in the tower prison as Alimathisa lightly jumped down to the ground, a single bounding leap onto soft enormous paws, and Roric darted forward to help her slide down to the ground.

“There,” she said to Elithyon, sliding down with the help of Roric’s hand; he’d darted forward to meet her. “I’ve left the tower the same way Eislaing did, and none of your oaths are broken, as long as you don’t hurt me or my brothers.”

Elithyon slowly lowered his spear and shield, almost a little puzzled, or maybe deflated; the solution surely wasn’t grand and tragic enough for him.

But then he drew a deep breath and said, low, “That I shall not do. But still I cannot let you go—save by breaking the peace between our realms, which you would have died to preserve.” And he looked over at Argent, who stared back at him miserably, and maybe he’d found a way to dig up his tragedy after all.

Celia bit her lip, thinking, but before she could come up with anything, a muffled voice said, “Wait.” Celia turned around.

Some low shrubs were clustered together at the base of the tower, right where the ivy went climbing up, and a knight came pushing his way out of the undergrowth, as if he’d been hiding there.

He stepped into the courtyard, a hedge knight in an old and rusty suit of armor without a tabard or even a painted sigil to mark his crest: Father.

He took off his helm, and looked around the courtyard, taking all of them in with bright and narrow eyes: his sons, his daughter, and his enemy.

Roric had his chin jutting a bit defiantly as Father looked at him.

Father didn’t say anything, but after a moment, he gave a little nod, the little nod that meant: Yes, well done.

Roric had never gotten it aimed at him before, but he still recognized it.

He swallowed visibly, his hand clenching and unclenching around the neck of his lute.

Every last summer knight in the court had put their hands on the hilts of their blades and was looking around as if they expected an army to suddenly pop out of their own forest at any instant.

But Father just came over to Celia and held out his hand; she gave him hers with the coal-black ring, and he turned back with her to Elithyon, who was eyeing him with more than a little wariness himself.

“You gave Prosper your sister, a princess of the Summer Lands, and King Morthimer offered you a princess of Prosper in return,” Father said.

“But my daughter isn’t one, and never will be; she’s going to be the queen.

So take back your ring, and let her go home to be crowned.

” He paused and looked at Argent, whose eyes were bright with tears as Father finished softly, “And she’ll give you her brother to seal the peace, instead. ”

The last battle of the summer war wasn’t very long.

Father had worked out the king’s plot as soon as Gorthan had come out of the grove alone, claiming that Celia had been snatched by the summerlings.

Father had pretended to be overcome with fury and said he was going to prepare an assault on the Summer Lands, but instead he’d sent his men riding away to every town along the border, to spread the word of how the king and Crown Prince Gorthan had treacherously given away the power of sorcery to their enemies, and that Grand Duke Veris had bravely gone into the Summer Lands in disguise to save his daughter.

By the time they came out again, the word had spread through all of Prosper.

The royal court had been very empty of support by the time Father marched up to the palace with an army greatly swelled by an angry mob of common folk and armed with spears and arrows of summer make.

Elithyon couldn’t invade again, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t help.

They’d held a parley on the drawbridge with Crown Prince Gorthan, who darted a guilty look at Celia and offered, in a stilted way, to marry her after all.