“Take it!”
He did, reaching toward her with as much caution as toward a poisonous serpent. She stared at him as he let the heavy gem rest on his hand, and he swore he saw hatred in her eyes, although he was not entirely certain why.
“Because I am a mortal?” he asked. “Because my family stole the Fireflower?”
She understood him. “All of it,” she said. “And more. Fight if you wish. It will only make the end harder. And what if the cosmos spins a-widdershins and you are victorious? The People are still doomed. The Fireflower will find no more bearers—the royal line of the Qar is dead and only Saqri remains. So go, little mortal, and tell the others how you taunted Lady Porcupine and lived. It will be a pretty tale to while away the hours before death takes us all.”
So fierce was the heat behind her words, so furious her stare that Barrick suddenly could not speak. He turned, the Seal of War dangling from his fist, and stumbled out of the tent.
Briony was not so foolish as to go far from the perimeter of the camp but she could not simply spend the day sitting, as Eneas and his Temple Dogs seemed perfectly content to do. Too much anger and too much frustration were inside her. She had to move.
She found a little hill overlooking the camp and in sight of the sentries, then set off to climb it. The day was gray, but patches of sunny sky slid by overhead, and the way up was just difficult enough to engage her mind. By the time she reached the top about midday, she felt better. Still, she dared not think about her father too much. To have been so close to him after all this time, and then to lose him again… !
Prince Eneas and his captains were planning swift, unexpected raids to harry Sulepis’ mainland troops, and to prevent supplies from reaching the autarch’s army. This last was largely pointless as long as the autarch still controlled Brenn’s Bay, but at the very least Eneas meant to make the autarch aware that he had enemies behind him as well as in front of him.
But although Briony didn’t really expect the Syannese prince and his troops to do anything else, she could not escape the bitter idea of her father being taken away into the depths. But why should he be taken down into the tunnels under the castle? What lunacy did the southern king have planned?
Her father had also told her that his old, bad feelings were coming back to him as he returned to the castle. Perhaps that had something to do with why the autarch had brought him here. And gods? Her father had said something about gods, too, and Midsummer’s Night, which was far less than a tennight away.
If only I had a longer time to talk with him. If only I could see him again, embrace him again… The tears were coming back.
Briony pulled out Lisiya’s charm and turned it over and over in her hand, trying to find some kind of peace. So many questions, and none of them likely to be answered soon, or at all. And meanwhile, the sun slid by overhead, in and out of the clouds, on its remorseless passage toward Midsummer’s Day.
Despite her climb, she lay awake for a long time that night listening to the soldiers talking and singing quietly and playing dice. The scouts the autarch had sent out to search for the raiders had long since returned to their encampment along Brenn’s Bay, so the men were enjoying the relative security.
Briony was still clutching the charm in her fist. Please, dear Lisiya, she prayed, help me to sleep. I feel like I will go mad if I do not get to sleep tonight! But when sleep came at last in the deep watches of the night, Briony did not immediately recognize it for what it was....
She was walking through what had once been a forest, something deep and green and quiet—but that had been before the fire. Now it was a scorched wasteland, pocked with the blackened remains of trees both standing and fallen, the grasses and undergrowth burned away, even the earth itself blackened. It was hard to tell what time of day it was because of the pall of smoke that lay over her and made the gray, hot sky seem shallow as a bowl. Smaller wisps still rose from the ground, as though the flames had stopped burning only a short while before.
It was as she crunched through the burned stubble that she realized she was still holding Lisiya’s charm tight against her breast.
Briony found the demigoddess at the base of what had been a great silver oak tree, but was now little more than a tortured sculpture made of charcoal. Lisiya was leaning on a staff, frail and gray as a dandelion puff. She looked half her previous size, as though the hot winds had leached all the moisture from her, leaving only skin and bones.
“Somebody is angry at me,” she said with a weary grin.
“Who did this?” Briony asked. The demigoddess looked so delicate that she almost didn’t dare approach her.
“I cannot say. I am being watched.” Lisiya lifted a clawlike hand. “The sky itself listens.”
“Is this because of me?” Briony asked, sinking to her knees on the scorched earth. “Because you helped me?”
“Possibly.” Lisiya shrugged. The demigoddess had previously seemed inexhaustible, but now moved as though she was afraid any effort might snap her brittle bones. “It does not do to speculate, child. The gods are asleep and that makes it hard to understand them, or even to recognize them…”
Briony didn’t understand. “Is there something I can do to help you?”
The specter of a smile crept across the gaunt, wrinkled face. “Listen. I will tell you what I can. I am… limited, though.” She sagged a little, then pulled herself upright on her staff again. “The hour is coming. It is almost here. The hour when the world we know will end.”
“But… do you mean it’s too late?”
“It is too late to turn things back to the way they once were,” Lisiya said. “It is too late for the world that was. What kind of world will come—that you may yet be able to influence.”
“Influence? How?”
“That is not for me to say. But you have only a little time.”
“Do you mean Midsummer Night? My father said…”
“Men call it Midsummer, but here in the place of the gods and their dreams, it marks the moment when the sun begins to die. And every year since time itself began, since Rud the Daystar first mounted the firmament, the battle rages. Mortal men celebrate Midsummer as if it is a victory, but it has always been the opposite—the moment when the sun, when light itself, begins to lose its battle. It is an ill-omened day.” She shook her head.
“But what can we do? It’s almost upon us!”
Now the frustration showed on Lisiya’s bony face. “I do not know! I am only a small thing, when it comes to it—a servant, an errandrunner—and I am out of my depths. But I called to you, or you called to me, so there must be something I can give you, some word…” The old woman closed her eyes, making Briony wonder what was happening: Lisiya seemed so tired she could barely breathe, swaying in place like a long stalk of grass. At last, she opened her eyes.
“Omphalos,” the demigoddess said faintly. “Look for the omphalos, that which connects the past to the womb and the womb to the future—that which is the center of the spinning universe.”
“What does that mean?”
Lisiya waved her clawlike hand. “I have told you what I can!” she said angrily. “Even now my words have attracted attention.”
“But I don’t understand… !”
“You must, because there is nothing else I can…” She broke off suddenly as red light flickered across the sky, flaring like blood against the gray smoke. “Go,” Lisiya said. “There is nothing more I can do. Farewell, Briony Eddon. If you survive, build me a shrine!”
Briony tried to ask her another question, but thunder was rattling the burned trees and making the parched ground shudder, and the harsh red light seemed to be growing by the moment.