by Tad Williams
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 someone 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 everincreasing 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 suppose the fellow with the wolves wouldn’t have seen it that way). I 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 relevant. 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 grazing 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 fingers 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 Southmarch. 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 hundreds of us, and we seldom were together. Most of us kept to ourselves, especially 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 damp 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’s 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 reasonably 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 smoking 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?”
“Before 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 rumpled, 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’ expression 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 ordinary 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 pictures 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 unending 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 important answers.” “All right, what’s important, then? Please tell me, Lisiya.”
“I will answer a few of your questions—but quickly, because I have concerns 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 anything 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 promise 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 scarcely 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 shape
less robes and drew out something on a string, lifting it over her head with surprising nimbleness. “Ah, a little sun on my bones is a kindly thing. Here, daughter. 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 worshipers 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.
24. Three Brothers
Listen, my children! Argal and his brothers now had the excuse they needed and their wickedness flowered. They went among the gods claiming that Nushash had stolen Suya against her will, and many of the gods became angry and said they would throw down Nushash, their rightful ruler.
—from The Revelations of Nushash, Book One
“This does not seem a good idea to me,” Utta whispered. “What does he want from us? He is dangerous!”
Merolanna shook her head. “You must trust me. I may not know much, but I know my way around these things.” “But...!”