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.