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.