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."