The Dreams of Gods
The war raged for years before the walls of the Moonlord's keep. Countless gods died, Onyenai and Surazemai alike.
Urekh the Wolf King perished howling in a storm of arrows. Azinor of
the Oneyenai defeated the Windlord Strivos in combat, but before he
could slay him, Azinor was himself butchered by Immon, the squire of
great Kernios. Birin of the Evening Mists was shot by the hundred
arrows of the brothers Kulin and Hiliolin, though brave Birin
destroyed those murderous twins before he died.
— from The Beginnings of Things The Book of the Trigon
It…SOUNDED LIKE you said… that you were there." Briony didn't want to offend her hostess (especially not before she'd shared whatever food the crone had to spare) but even in the throes of fever and starvation, the habits of a princess died hard: she didn't like being teased, especially by grimy old women. "When the gods went to war."
"I was. Here, I'll put a few more marigold roots in the pot for you- you'd be surprised how nicely they cook up once you boil the poison out. I've been in flesh so long I can scarcely remember anything else, but one thing I don't miss about the old days-all that bloody, smoking meat! I don't know what they thought they were doing."
"Who? Wait, poison? What?" Briony was trying to keep still and avoid sudden movements. It had only just occurred to her that an old woman who lived by herself in the middle of the Whitewood was likely to be quite mad. She felt sure that even as weak and sick as she was, she could defend herself against this tiny creature, bony as a starveling cat-but how could she protect herself when she slept? She didn't think she could survive an¬other night on her own in the rainy wood.
"I'm talking about those bloody men and their bloody sacrifices!" the old woman said, which explained very little. "They used to be everywhere in this part of the forest, chopping wood, hunting my deer, generally making a nuisance of themselves. Some of them were handsome, though." She smiled, a contraction of wrinkles that made her face look even more like a knot in the grain of a very old tree. "I let some of them stay with me, bloody-handed or not. I was not so particular then, when my youth was on me."
It was no use trying to make sense of what the woman was saying. Briony shivered and wished the fire were big enough to keep her warm. Her hostess stared at her as she dropped more roots into a clay pot sitting on the stones beside the fire, then began to wrap two wild apples in leaves. When she had finished, the old woman reached out toward her. Briony shied away.
"Don't be stupid, child," she said. "I can see you're ill. Here, let me feel your brow." The old woman put a hand as rough as a chicken's foot against Briony's forehead. "That's a bad fever. And you've other wounds as well." She shook her head. "Let me see what I can do. Sit still." She brought up her other hand and flattened both palms on Briony's temples. Startled, Briony reached for the knife in her boot, but the woman only moved her hands in slow circles.
"Come out, fever," the old woman said, then began to sing in a quiet, cracked voice. Briony could not understand the words, but her head had begun to feel increasingly hot and vibrantly alive, as though it were a bee¬hive in high summer. It was such an odd sensation that she tried to pull away, but her limbs would not obey her. Even her heart, which should have sped up when she found herself helpless, did not comply. It bumped along, beating calmly and happily, as though having an ancient stranger set your head on fire with her bare hands were the most ordinary thing in the world.
The heat traveled down from her skull into her spine and spread throughout her body. She felt boneless, woozy: when the woman at last re¬leased her it was all Briony could do not to tumble onto her face.
"The rest of the healing you must do yourself," the old woman said. "Foo! I have not expended so much energy in a while." She clapped her hands together. "So, do you feel well enough to eat now?" When Briony did not immediately answer, because she was more than a little stunned by what had just happened, the old woman spoke again, more sharply. "Briony Eddon, daughter of Meriel, granddaughter of Krisanthe, where are your manners? I asked you a question."
Briony stared at her for a long moment as her thoughts caught up with her ears. Her fingers went numb and hair rose on her neck and scalp. She snatched out her small knife and held it out before her in a trembling hand. "Who are you? How do you know my name? What did you just do to me?"
The old woman shook her head. "Every time. By the sacred, ever-renewing heartwood, it happens every time. What did I do? Made you better, you ungrateful little kit. How do I know your name? The same way as I know everything I know. I am Lisiya Melana of the Silver Glade, one of the nine daughters of Birgya, and I am the patroness of this forest, as my sisters were the protectors of Eion's other forests. My father was Vo-lios of the Measureless Grip, you see-a god. You may call me Lisiya. I am a goddess."
"You're… you're…"
"Do I mumble? Very well, a demigoddess. When my father was young, he fathered a brood on my mother, who was a tree-spirit. It was all very ro¬mantic, in a brutal sort of way-but it's not as if my father stayed around to help raise us. I didn't call him 'Papa, as you did with yours, and sit on his knee while he chucked me under the chin. The gods aren't like that- weren't then, and certainly aren't now." She chuckled at some private joke. "Like tomcats, really, and the goddesses weren't much better."
Briony lowered her knife to her lap but did not put it away. Even if the woman was completely mad, she had skills. Briony felt much better. She was still cold and tired, and still definitely hungry, but the weakness and misery of her illness and her many wounds seemed to have vanished. "I… I don't know…"
"You don't know what to say. Of course you don't, daughter. You think I might be mad but you don't want to offend me. In your case, you're being careful because you're cold and lonely and hungry, but you have the right idea. It's never a good idea to annoy a god. If a mortal offended us in the old days, even in the smallest of ways, well, we were likely to turn him into
a shrub or a sandcrab." The old woman sighed and looked at her wrinkled hands. "I don't know that I could manage anything that impressive any-more, but I'm fairly certain that at the very least, I could give you back your fever and add a very bad stomachache."
"You say you're a goddess?" It wasn't possible. A forest-witch, perhaps, but surely goddesses never looked like this.
"Only a demigoddess, as I already admitted, and please don't rub my face in it. There aren't any true goddesses left. Now don't be dull." Lisiya frowned. "I can hear some of your thoughts and they're not pretty. Very well. I hate doing this, especially after I already spent so much vigor heal¬ing you-ai, my head is going to hurt tomorrow! — but I suppose we won't be able to get on with whatever the music has in mind unless I do." The old woman stood, not without difficulty, and spread her thin arms like an underfed raptor trying to take flight. "You might want to squint your eyes a bit, daughter."
Before Briony could do more than suck in a breath the fire billowed up in new colors and the darkening sky seemed to bend in toward them, as though it were the roof of a tent and something heavy had just landed on it. The old woman's figure grew and stretched and her rags became di¬aphanous as smoke, but at the center of it all Lisiya's staring eyes smoldered even brighter, as though fires bloomed behind volcanic glass.
Briony fell forward onto her elbows, terrified. The maid Selia had changed like this, taking on a form of terrible darkness, a thing of claws and soot-black spikes; for a moment Briony was certain she had fallen into some terrible trap. Then, drawn by a glow gilding the ground around her, she looked up into a face of such startling, serene beauty that all her fear drained away.
She was tall, the goddess, a full head taller than even a tall man, and her face and hands, the only parts of her flesh visible in the misty fullness of her dark robes, were golden. Vines and branches curled around her; a corona of silvery leaves about her head moved gently in an unfelt wind. The black eyes were the only things that had remained anything near the same, al¬though they glowed now with a shimmering witchlight. How terrifying anger would be on such a face! Briony didn't think her heart could stand the shock of seeing it.
The seemingly immobile mask of perfection moved: the lips curled in a gentle but somewhat self-satisfied smile. "Have you seen enough, daughter?"
"Please,," Briony moaned. It was like trying to stare at the sun."Yes enough!"
The figure shrank then, like parchment curling in a fire, until the old woman stood before her once more, wrinkled and stooped. Lisiya lifted a knobbed knuckle to her eye and flicked something away. "Ah," she said. "It hurts to be beautiful again. No, it hurts to let it go."
"You… you really are a goddess."
"I told you. By my sacred spring, you children of men these days, you're practically unbelievers, aren't you? Just trot out the statues on holy days and mumble some words. Well, I hope you're happy, because now I am quite exhausted. You will have to tend the roots." The old woman gingerly set¬tled herself beside the fire. "Every season it is harder to summon my old as¬pect, and every time it takes more out of me. The hour is coming when I will be no more than what you see before you, and then I will sing my last song and sleep until the world ends."
"Thank you for helping me." Briony felt much better-that was unde¬niable. The mist of fever had cleared and her breath no longer rattled in her lungs. "But I don't understand. Any of this."
"Nor do I. The music has decreed that I should find you, and that I should feed you, and perhaps give you what advice I may-not that I have much to offer. This is no longer my world and it hasn't been for a long time."
Briony could not help staring at the old woman, trying to see the terri¬ble, glorious shape of the goddess, once more so well hidden beneath wrin¬kled, leathery flesh. "Your name is… Lisiya?"
"That is the name I am called, yes. But my true name is known only to my mother, and written only in the great Book itself, child, so do not think to command me."
"The great book? Do you mean The Book of the Trigon?"
She was startled by how hard the goddess laughed. "Oh, good! A very fine jest! That compendium of self-serving lies? Even the arrogant broth¬ers themselves would not try to pass off such nonsense as truth. No, the tale of all that is and shall be-the Book of the Fire in the Void. It is the source of the music that governs even the gods."
Briony felt as though she had been slapped. "You call The Book of the Trigon lies?"
Lisiya flapped her hand dismissively. "Not purposeful lies, at least not most of them. And there is much truth in it, too, I suppose, but melted out
of recognizable shape like something buried too long in the ground." She squinted at the pot. "Spoon those hot stones out, child, before the water all boils away, and I will try to explain."
The night had come down in earnest and Briony, despite the strange ness of her situation, was feeling the tug of sleep. She had been frightened by the woman's display, by seeing what Lisiya had called her true aspect, but now she also found herself strangely reassured. No harm could come to her in the camp of a forest goddess, could it? Not unless it came from the god¬dess herself, and Lisiya did not seem to bear her any ill will.
"Good," she said, spooning up the marigold root soup.
"It's the rosemary. Gives it some savor. Now, that song you were singing, there's an example of ripe modern nonsense, some of it stolen from other poems, some of it straight out of the Trigonate canon, especially that fool¬ishness about Zoria being helped by Zosim. Zosim the Trickster never did anyone a good turn in his life. I should know-we were cousins."
Briony could only nod her head and keep eating. It was glorious to feel well again, however preposterous the circumstances. She would think about it all tomorrow.
"And Zoria. She was not stolen, not in the way that the Surazemai al¬ways claimed. She went with Khors of her own free will. She loved him, foolish girl that she was."
"Loved…?"
"They teach you nothing but self-serving nonsense, do they? The hero¬ism of the Surazemai, the evil of the Onyenai, that sort of rubbish. I blame Perin Thunderer. Full of bluster, and wished no one had ever been ruler of the gods but himself. He was named Thunderer as much because of his shouting as the crashing of his hammer. Oh, where to begin?"
Briony could only stare at her, dazed. She took a bite of the marigold root and wondered how long she could keep her eyes open while Lisiya talked about things she didn't understand. "At the beginning…?" Maybe she could just close her eyes for a bit, just to rest them.
"Oh, upon my beloved grove, no. By the way, that's not just a bit of idle oathmaking-this place where you sit used to be my sacred grove." Lisiya waved her gnarled fingers around the clearing. "Can you tell? The stones of this fire pit were once my altar, when all men still paid me homage. All gone to wrack and ruin hundreds of years ago, of course, as you see-a lightning fire took the most glorious of my trees. More of the Thunderer's splendid work, and I've not always believed it was an accident. A sleeping
dog can still growl. Ah, but they were so beautiful, the ring of birches that grow here, Bark white as snow, but they gleamed in moonlight just like quicksilver…" Lisiya coughed. "Mercy on me, I am so old…"
Briony belched. She had eaten too fast.
The goddess frowned. "Charming. Now, where was I? Ah, the beginning. No, I could not hope to correct all you do not know, child, and to be hon¬est, I do not remember all the nonsense that Perin and his brothers declared their priests must teach. Here is all you need to know about the oldest days. Zo, the Sun, took as his wife Sva, the Void. They had four children, and the eldest, Rud the Day Sky, was killed in the battle against the demons of the Old Darkness. Everyone knows these things-even mortals. Sveros, who we called Twilight, took to wife his niece Madi Onyena, Rud's widow, and she bore him Zmeos Whitefire and Khors Moonlord. Then Sveros Twilight was lured away from her by Madi Onyena's twin sister Surazem, who had been born from the same golden egg. Surazem bore him Perin, Erivor, and Kernios, the three brothers, and from these five sons of Twilight-and some sisters and half sisters, of course, but who talks of them? — sprang the great gods and their eternal rivalries. All this you must know already, yes?"
Briony did her best to sit up straight and look as though she were not falling asleep. "More or less…"
"And you have to know that Perin and his brothers turned against their father Sveros and cast him out of the world into the between-spaces. But the three brothers did not then become the rulers of the gods, as your peo¬ple teach. Whitefire, the one you call Zmeos, was the oldest of Sveros' chilren, and felt he should have pride of place."
"Zmeos the Horned One?" Briony shuddered, and not just from her still-damp clothing. All her childhood she had been told of the Old Ser¬pent, who waited to steal away children who were wicked or told lies, to drag them off to his fiery cave.
"So Perin's priests call him, yes." Lisiya pursed her lips. "I never had priests myself. I do not like them, to be honest. In the days when people still sacrificed to me I was happy enough with a honeycomb or an armful of flowers. All that bleeding red meat…! Animal flesh to feed priests, not a goddess. And I would not have been caught dead in their stone temples, in any case. Well, except for once, but that is not a story for tonight…" The old woman's eyes narrowed. "You are falling asleep, child," she said sternly. "I begin to tell you the true tale of the gods and you cannot even keep your eyes open."
"I'm sorry," Briony murmured. "It's just been… so long since,"
"Sleep, then," said Lisiya. "I waited a day for you-and years since my Last supplicant. I can wait a few more hours."
"Thank you." Briony stretched out, her arm beneath her head. "Thank you… my lady…"
She did not even hear if the goddess said anything, because within mo-ments sleep reached up and seized her as the ocean takes a shipwrecked sailor grown too weary to swim.
For a moment after waking she lay motionless with the thin sunlight on her closed eyelids, trying to remember where she was and what had hap¬pened. She felt surprisingly well-had her fever broken? But her stomach felt full, too, almost as if the dreams had been… real.
Briony sat up. If the last night's events had been dreams, then the dreams still lingered: only a few yards away from her sleeping spot the fire was burning in its pit of stones, and something was cooking, a sweet smell that made her mouth water. Other than Briony, though, the little clearing was empty. She didn't know what to think. She might have imagined the old woman who claimed to be a goddess, but the rest of this-the fire, the careful stack of kindling beside it, the smell of… roasting apples? In late winter?
"Ho there, child, so you've finally dragged yourself upright." The voice behind her made Briony jump. "You didn't get your sweet last night, so I put some more in the coals."
She turned to see the tiny, black-robed figure of Lisiya limping slowly down into the dell, a pair of deer walking behind her like pet dogs. The two animals, a buck and a doe, paused when they saw Briony but did not run. After a moment's careful consideration of her with their liquid brown eyes, they stooped and began to crop at the grass which peeked up here and there through the fallen leaves and branches.
"You're real," Briony said. "I mean, I didn't dream you. Was… was every¬thing real, then?"
"Now how would I know?" Lisiya dropped the bag she was carrying, then lifted her arms over her head and stretched. "I stay out of mortal minds as a rule-in any case, I spent the night walking. What do you recall that might or might not be a dream?"
"That you fed me and gave me a place to sleep." Briony smiled shyly. "That you healed me. And that you are a goddess."
"Yes, that all accords with my memory." Lisiya finished her stretch and grunted. "Ai, such old bones! To think once I could have run from one side of my Whitewood to another and back in a single night, then still had the strength to take a handsome young woodsman or two to my bed." She looked at Briony and frowned. "What are you waiting for, child? Aren't you hungry? We have a long way to go today."
"What? Go where?"
"Just eat and I will explain. Watch your fingers when you take out those apples. Ah, I almost forgot." She reached into her sack and pulled out a small jug stoppered with wax. "Cream. A certain farmer leaves it out for me when his cow is milking well. Not everyone has forgotten me, you see." She looked as pleased as a spinster with a suitor.
The meal was messy but glorious. Briony licked every last bit of cream and soft, sweet apple pulp off her fingers.
"If we were staying, I'd make bread," Lisiya said.
"But where are we going?"
"You are going where you need to go. As to what will happen there, I can't say. The music says you have wandered off your course."
"You said that before and I didn't understand. What music?"
"Child! You demand answers the way a baby sparrow shrieks to have worms spat in its mouth! The music is… the music. The thing that makes fire in the heart of the Void itself. That which gives order to the cosmos- or such order as is necessary, and chaos when that is called for instead. It is the one thing that the gods feel and must heed. It speaks to us-sings to us-and beats in us instead of heart's blood. Well, unless we are wearing flesh, then we must listen hard to hear the music over the plodding drum¬beat of these foolish organs. How uncomfortable to wear a body!" She shook her head and sighed. "Still, the music tells me that you have lost your way, Briony Eddon. It is my task to put you back on the path again."
"Does that mean… that everything will be all right? The gods will help us drive out all our enemies and we'll get Southmarch back?"
Lisiya threw her a look of dark amusement. "Not expecting much, are you? No, it doesn't mean anything of the sort. The last time I helped some¬one to get back onto his path, a pack of wolves ate him a day after I said farewell. That was his rightful path, you see." She paused to scratch her arm. "If I hadn't stepped in, who knows how long he would have wandered around-he and the wolves both, I suppose."
Briony stared openmouthed. "So I'm going to die?"
"Eventually, child, yes. That's what's given to mortals-it's what 'mortal' means, after all. And believe me, it's probably a good deal more pleasant than a thousand years of ever-increasing decrepitude."
"But… but how can the gods do this to me? I've lost everything everybody I love!"
Lisiya turned to her with something like fury. "You've lost everything? Child, when you've seen not just everybody you love but everybody you know disappear, when you've surrendered all that I have-beauty, power, youth-and the last of them slipped away centuries in the past, then you may complain."
"I thought… I thought you might…"
"Help you? By my grove, I am helping you. You're not starving anymore, are you? In fact, it seems like that's my sacred offering of cream on your chin right now, and Heaven knows I don't get many of those these days. You had a dry night's sleep, too, and you're no longer coughing your liver and lights out. Some might count those as mighty gifts indeed."
"But I don't want to get eaten by wolves-my family needs me."
Lisiya sighed in exasperation. "I only said the last person I guided was eaten by wolves-the remark was meant as a bit of a joke (although I sup¬pose the fellow with the wolves wouldn't have seen it that way). / don't know what's going to happen to you. Perhaps the music is sending some handsome prince your way, who will sweep you up onto his white horse and carry you away into the sunset." She scowled and spat. "Just like one of that Gregor fellow's unskilled rhymes."
Briony scowled right back. "I don't want any prince. I want my brother back. I want my father back, and our home back. I want everything like it was before!"
"I'm glad to hear you're keeping your demands to a minimum." Lisiya shook her head. "In any case, stop thinking about wolves-they're not rel¬evant. There's a stream over that rise and down the hill. Go wash yourself off, then drink water, or make water, or whatever it is you mortals do in the morning. I'll pack up, then if you need more explanations, I'll provide them while we walk. And don't dawdle."
Briony followed the goddess' instructions, walking so close past the graz¬ing deer on her way to the stream that one of them turned and touched her with its nose as she went past. It was an unexpected thing, small but strangely reassuring, and by the time she'd washed her face and run her fin¬gers through her hair a few times she felt almost like a person again.
With her worse fears placated, a little food in her belly, and the company of a real person-if a goddess as old as time could be said to be real- Briony found that there was much to admire about the Whitewood. Many of its trees were so old and so vast that younger trees, giants themselves, grew between their roots. The hush of the place, a larger, more important quiet than in any human building no matter how vast, coupled with the soft light filtering down through the leaves and tangled branches, made her feel as though she swam through Erivor's underwater realm, as in one of the beautiful blue-green frescoes that lined the chapel back home at South-march. If she narrowed her eyes in just the right way Briony could almost see the dangling vines as floating seaweed, imagine the flicker of birds in the upper branches to be the darting of fish.
"Ah, there's another one," said Lisiya when Briony shyly mentioned the chapel paintings. "Don't your folk hold him as an ancestor, old Fish-Spear?"
"Erivor? Why, is that a lie, too?"
"Don't be so touchy, child. Who knows if it's true or not? Perin and his brothers certainly put themselves about over the years, and there were more than a few mortal women willing to find out what it felt like to bed a god. And those were only the ones who participated by choice!"
"This is all… so hard to believe." Briony flinched at Lisiya's expression. "No, not hard to believe that you're a goddess, but hard to… understand. That you know the rest of the gods, know them the way I know my own family!"
"It isn't quite the same," said Lisiya, softening a bit. "There were hun¬dreds of us, and we seldom were together. Most of us kept to ourselves, es¬pecially my folk. The forests were our homes, not lofty Xandos. But I did know them, yes, and while we met each other infrequently, we did gather on certain occasions. And many of the gods were travelers-Zosim, and Kupilas in his later years, and Devona of the Shining Legs, so the news of what the others did came to us in time. Not that you could trust a word that Zosim said, that little turd."
"But… but he is the god of poets!"
"And that fits, too." She looked up, swiveling her head from side to side like an ancient bird."We have made a wrong turn. Curse these fading eyes!"
"Wrong turn?" Briony looked around at the endless trees, the unbroken canopy of dripping green above their heads and the labyrinth of dumji earth and leaves between the trunks. "How can you tell?"
"Because it should be later in the day by now." Lisiya blew out a hiss of air. "We should have lost time, then gained a little of it back, but we have gained all of it back. It is scarcely a creeping hour since we set out."
Briony shook her head. "I don't understand."
"Nor should you, a mortal child who never traveled the gods' paths. Trust me-we have made a wrong turn. I must stop and think." Lisiya suited word to deed, lowering herself onto a rounded stone and putting her fingers to her temples. Briony, who was not lucky enough to have a rock of her own, had to squat beside her.
"We must wait until the clouds pass," Lisiya announced at last, just as the ache in Briony V legs was becoming fierce.
"Shall we make a fire?"
"Might as well. It could be that we cannot travel again until tomorrow. Find some dry wood-it makes things easier."
When Briony had returned to the spot with half a dozen pieces of rea¬sonably dry deadfall, Lisiya piled them into a tiny hill, then took the last piece in her bony grip and said something Briony could not understand, a slur of rasping consonants and fluting vowels. Smoke leaked between Lisiya's fingers. By the time she put the stick down among the others, fire was already smoldering from a black spot where she had held it.
"That's a good trick," Briony said approvingly.
Lisiya snorted. "It is not a trick, child, it is the pitiable remains of a power that once could have felled half this forest and turned the rest into smok¬ing ruin. Mastery over branch and root, pith and grain and knot-all those were mine. I could make a great tree burst into flower in a moment, make a river change course. Now I can scarcely start a fire without burning my hand." She held up her sooty palm. "See? Blisters. I shall have to put some lavender oil on it."
As the goddess rummaged through her bag Briony watched the fire begin to catch, the flames barely visible in the still-strong afternoon light. It was strange to be in this between-place, this timeless junction between her life before and whatever would come next, let alone to be the guest of a goddess. What was left to her? What would become of her?
"Barrick!" she said suddenly.
"What?" Lisiya looked up in irritation.
"Barrick-my brother."
"I know who your brother is, child. I am old, not an idiot. Why did you shout his name?"
"I just remembered that when I was in… before I found you…"
" You found me?"
"Be-fore you found me, then. Merciful…! For a goddess, you certainly are thin-skinned."
"Look at me, child. Thin? It barely keeps my bones from poking out- although there does seem to be more of the wrinkly old stuff than there once was. Go on, speak."
"I was looking in a mirror and I saw him. He was in chains. Was that a true vision?"
Lisiya raised a disturbingly scraggly eyebrow. "A mirror? What sort? A scrying glass?"
"A mirror. I'm not certain-just a hand mirror. It belonged to one of the women I was staying with in Landers Port."
"Hmmmm." The goddess dropped her pot of salve back into her rum¬pled, cavernous bag. "Either someone was using a mighty artifact as a bauble or there are stranger things afoot with you and your brother than even I can guess."
"Artifact… do you mean a magic mirror, like in a poem? It wasn't anything like that." She held up her fingers in a small circle. "It was only that big."
"And you, of course, are a scholar of such things?" The goddess' expres¬sion was enough to make Briony lower her gaze. "Still, it seems unlikely that a Tile so small, yet clearly also one of the most powerful, should be in mortal hands and no one aware of it, passed around as if it were an ordi¬nary part of a lady's toiletry."
Briony dared to look up again. Lisiya was apparently thinking, her gaze focused on nothing. Briony did her best to be patient. She did not want the goddess angry with her again. She did not-O merciful Zoria! — want to be left in the forest by herself. But after the sticks in the fire had burned halfway down, she could not keep her questions to herself any longer.
"You said 'tile'-what are those? Do you mean the sort of thing that we have on the floor of the chapel? And what is Zoria like? Is she like the pic¬tures to look at? Is she kind?" Once, she recalled, her own lady-in-waiting, Rose Trelling, had gone back to Landsend for Orphanstide and had been asked an extraordinary number of questions by her other relatives-about Briony and her family, about life in Southmarch Castle, a thousand things. So we wonder about those who are above us-those who are well-known, or rich, or powerful. Are they like us? It was funny to think that ordinary folk thought
of her as she thought of the gods. Who did the gods envy? Whose doings made them sit up and take notice? There were so many things Briony wanted to know, and here she sat with a living, breathing demigoddess!
Lisiya let out a hissing sigh. "So you have determined on saving me from this painful immortality have you? And your killing weapon is to be an un¬ending stream of questions?"
"Sorry. I'm sorry, but… how can I not ask?"
"It's not that you ask, it's what you ask, kit. But it is always that way with mortals, it seems. When they have their chances, they seldom seek impor¬tant answers."
"All right, what's important, then? Please tell me, Lisiya."
"I will answer a few of your questions-but quickly, because I have con¬cerns of my own and I must listen carefully to the music. First, the Tiles used in the most potent scrying glasses are pieces of Khors' tower, the things that the foolish poem you were bellowing through the forest called 'ice crystals' or some such nonsense. They were made for him by Kupilas the Artificer-'Crooked, as the Onyenai call him…"
"Onyenai?"
"Curse your rabbiting thoughts, child, pay attention! Onyenai, like Zmeos and Khors and their sister Zuriyal-the gods born to Madi Onyena. You know the Surazemai-Perin and his brothers, the gods born to Madi Surazem. The Onyenai and Surazemai were the two great clans of gods that went to war with each other. But old Sveros fathered them all."
Chastened, Briony nodded but did not say anything.
"Yes. Well, then. Crooked helped Khors strengthen his great house, and the things that he used to do it ensured that Khors' house was not found just in Heaven any longer, nor was it on the earth, but opened into many places. Kupilas used the Tiles to make this happen, although some said the Tiles only masked its true nature and location with a false seeming. In any case, after the destruction of the Godswar, after Perin angrily tore down Khors' towers, some of the remnants were saved. Those are the Tiles we speak of now. They appear to be simple mirrors but they are far more- scrying glasses of great power."
"But you don't think that's how I saw Barrick…?"
"I am old, child, and I am no longer so foolish as to think I know any¬thing for certain. But I doubt it. In all the world only a score or fewer of the Tiles survive. I find it hard to believe that after all these ages another would wind up in a lady's cosmetics chest in… where did you say? Landers Port?"
Briony nodded.
"More likely something else is afoot with you and your brother. I sense nothing out of the ordinary from your side, nothing magical-other than your virginity, which always counts for something, for some reason." She let out a harsh, dry chuckle. "Sacred stones, look at Zoria. Millennia have passed, and they still call her a virgin!"
"What do you mean?"
"A rare possession among both the Surazemai and Onyenai, I can prom¬ise you. In fact, other than perhaps the Artificer himself-there's irony there, isn't there? — only our Devona remained unsullied, and I think that may have been as much from inclination as anything else. Just as among mortals, the gods were made in all sorts of shapes and desires. But Zoria… certainly not, poor thing."
"Are you saying that the blessed Zoria isn't… wasn't… she's not… a…
Lisiya rolled her eyes. "Girl, I told you, Khors was her lover and she loved him back. Why do you think she ran away from the meadows and the Xandian hills? To be with him! And had her father not come with all his army of relatives to defend his own honor-foolish men and their honor! — she would have happily married the Moonlord and borne him many more children. But that was not fated to be, and the world changed." For a moment the brittleness seemed to soften; Briony watched a sadness so deep it looked like agony creep over the goddess' gaunt face. "The world changed."
Her expression was too naked-too private. Briony looked down at the fire.
"To answer your earlier, unfinished question…" Lisiya said suddenly, then cleared her throat. "No, Zoria was not a virgin. And now she simply is not-nor are any but we pathetic few, stepchildren and monsters, castoffs of Heaven. Like insects crawling out of the scorched ground — when a forest fire has passed, only we survived the last War of the Gods."
"You mean… the other gods are dead?"
"Not dead, but sleeping, child. But the sleep of the gods has already been ages long, and it will continue until the world ends."
"Sleeping? Then the gods are… gone?"
"Not entirely, but that is another story. And I do not doubt that a few more aging demigods and demigoddesses like me are still caring for their forests, or landlocked lakes that once were small seas. But I have not
talked to one of my kin in the waking world for so long I can scarcley remember."
"No gods? They left us?"
Lisiya's smile was grim. "Not by choice, mortal kit. But they have slept since your ancestors first set stone on stone to build the earliest cities, so it is not as though anything has changed."
"But we pray to them! I have always prayed, especially to Zoria…!"
"And you may continue to pray to her if you wish, and the others as well. They may even answer you-when they sleep, they dream, and their dreams are not like those of your kind. It is a restless sleep, for one thing… but that is most definitely a tale for another time. As it is, we have dallied too long. Come, rise."
"What? Are we going to walk again?"
"Yes. Follow." And without looking back to see if Briony had obeyed her, Lisiya went limping away through the forest.
The late afternoon sun was burrowing into the distant hills when they reached the edge of the Whitewood. As they stood with the great fence of trees behind them, Briony looked out over the meadowlands of what she could only guess was Silverside. The grassy plains stretched away as far to the north and west as she could see, beautiful, peaceful, and empty. "Why have we come here?" she asked.
"Because the music calls you here." Lisiya fumbled in her shapeless robes and drew out something on a string, lifting it over her head with surpris¬ing nimbleness. "Ah, a little sun on my bones is a kindly thing. Here, daugh¬ter. I am sorry we have not had more time. I miss the chance to speak to something less settled and slow than the trees, and for a mortal child you are not too stone-headed." She held out her claw of a hand. "Take this."
Briony lifted it from her hand. It was a crude little charm made from a bird skull and a sprig of some dried white flowers, wrapped around with white thread. "I am too old to come when summoned," Lisiya said, "and too weak to send you much in the way of help, but it could be that this might smooth your way in some difficult situation. I have one or two wor¬shipers left."
As she drew the leather cord around her neck, Briony asked, "Have we reached the place you were talking about? You're not going yet, are you?"
Lisiya smiled. "You are a good child-I'm glad it was given to me to help you. And I hope this path will lead you to at least a little happiness."
"Path, what path?" Briony looked around but saw nothing, only damp grass waving in the freshening evening wind. It was the middle of nowhere no road, no track, let alone a town. "Where am I supposed to
go…?"
But when she turned back the old woman had vanished. Briony ran back into the forest, calling and calling, looking for some sign of the black-robed form, but the Mistress of the Silver Glade was gone.