a woman comfortable with an excess of feeling.” He lowered his hand. “Diamond, gold, silver.”
“You did not expect them.”
“No. And yet, they feel natural to me.” He lifted face and gazed at the height of the Ellariannatte. “But these? One could almost feel young again beneath their bowers. I have served as the Terafin mage for decades; I have worked in this City for longer. These trees are at the heart of the hundred holdings—where any child might play atop exposed roots. Did you not see them?”
Celleriant nodded.
“Did you not wonder?”
“The trees in the mortal city are silent, Illaraphaniel. They do not speak, they do not wake.”
“Yet they grow. I do not think they will remain sleeping; before this is over, even in a forest of wood and stone and human foibles, you will hear their song.”
“It will not please my Lord.”
“No, perhaps not. Perhaps she will be content to let them sleep; they have slept long. But where other trees might wither in mute silence, these do not, not there. In the Terafin grounds they are not mute, but their voices are subtle,” he added, “and curious.”
“Curious?”
“They do not speak with a single voice. They speak with two, and one of them is Jewel Markess ATerafin’s.”
“She does not realize how much of a danger you are.”
Meralonne chuckled. “No. No more does she realize how much of a danger you are.” He turned; the Winter King had followed at a safer distance than the Arianni Prince. “Will you not bespeak your Lord?”
“No. I will leave that in your hands.”
“I do not serve Jewel.”
“No, you do not. But I perceive that you better understand the subtleties of her thought than I.”
“Did you not first encounter her upon the hidden path, Lord Celleriant? Were you not then part of the Winter Host?”
Celleriant nodded. “And I have waited, APhaniel. I have listened. I have remained in this forest. But I have not heard the song of the Summer Queen. I have not felt the call of the Summer Court.” He smiled, and to Meralonne’s surprise, it was rueful, not bitter.
“What is this?” the mage asked softly.
“The Summer is not for me, now.”
“It is not,” Meralonne replied as he stepped away from the trunk of the rising Ellariannate, “for any of us.”
Celleriant stiffened and turned. “Explain yourself.”
“Have a care, Lord Celleriant. I do not wish to engage in combat here, but your Lord will allow it if it does not endanger either your life, or mine. She might not notice it at all if we do not damage her trees.”
For a moment the very air around the Arianni Lord’s hands seemed to waver. Merlonne’s hands, however? They now contained his pipe. “I have become accustomed to mortal arrogance,” he said, when Celleriant failed to draw sword. “It never fails to amuse. But you are not as they are, Lord Celleriant.”
“. . . No. Why has there been no Summer? She called the long hunt against the Winter King; I heard the horns; I saw the host pass.”
“She did. The Winter King perished, as he must, at her hands.”
“Then—”
“There are no Summer trees.”
Celleriant stared at Meralonne APhaniel as if the mage had lost his mind.
“I make no cruel, tasteless jest. There have been no Summer trees, and it is my fear that there will be none. She will not reign in Summer, nor again ride in Winter; both faces of her power will be denied her.”
“Illaraphaniel—what could now prevent it?”
“The Lord of the Shining Court removed the Winter seedlings. His Kialli planted them in mortal lands—in the newly killed flesh of mortal children.”
No words escaped the Arianni Prince, but Meralonne did not expect them, not yet. “I traveled the length of the borders of the Terrean of Averda, at the side of Kallandras of Senniel College.”
“Kallandras.”
“Yes.”
“He has returned?”
“No, but he will. The South holds him until the coronation of the new Tyr—but it is to Averalaan that he is drawn. The trees were planted in such a corrupting fashion along the border of the Terrean. We hoped to find one we could purify without destruction.”
“You did not.”
“No.”
Celleriant closed his eyes briefly. “They will die, for this. Does she know?”
“That the seedlings are gone? Almost certainly. But if the Kialli sought to remove Ariane from the game, they have also hampered themselves; there is no Winter upon which to draw power.”
“They have never derived power from Summer.”
Meralonne was silent for a long moment. “Not never, Celleriant. But if not for the suspension of all natural law,