"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 smok¬ing 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?"
"Be-fore 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 rum¬pled, 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' expres¬sion 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 ordi¬nary 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 pic¬tures 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 un¬ending 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 impor¬tant answers."
"All right, what's important, then? Please tell me, Lisiya."
"I will answer a few of your questions-but quickly, because I have con¬cerns 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 any¬thing 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 prom¬ise 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."