by Tad Williams
It was no use trying to make sense of what the woman was saying. Briony shivered and wished the fire were big enough to keep her warm. Her hostess stared at her as she dropped more roots into a clay pot sitting on the stones beside the fire, then began to wrap two wild apples in leaves. When she had finished, the old woman reached out toward her. Briony shied away.
“Don’t be stupid, child,” she said. “I can see you’re ill. Here, let me feel your brow.” The old woman put a hand as rough as a chicken’s foot against Briony’s forehead. “That’s a bad fever. And you’ve other wounds as well.” She shook her head. “Let me see what I can do. Sit still.” She brought up her other hand and flattened both palms on Briony’s temples. Startled, Briony reached for the knife in her boot, but the woman only moved her hands in slow circles.
“Come out, fever,” the old woman said, then began to sing in a quiet, cracked voice. Briony could not understand the words, but her head had begun to feel increasingly hot and vibrantly alive, as though it were a beehive in high summer. It was such an odd sensation that she tried to pull away, but her limbs would not obey her. Even her heart, which should have sped up when she found herself helpless, did not comply. It bumped along, beating calmly and happily, as though having an ancient stranger set your head on fire with her bare hands were the most ordinary thing in the world.
The heat traveled down from her skull into her spine and spread throughout her body. She felt boneless, woozy: when the woman at last released 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. “Pfoo! 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 Volios 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 romantic, 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 anymore, 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 forestwitch, 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 healing 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 diaphanous 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, although 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 settled herself beside the fire. “Every season it is harder to summon my old aspect, 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 undeniable. 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 terrible, glorious shape of the goddess, once more so well hidden beneath wrinkled, 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 brothers 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.”
The night had come down in earnest and Briony, despite the strangeness 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 goddess 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 foolishness 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 always 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 heroism 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 grew 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 honest, 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 people 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 Serpent, 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 moments 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 happened. 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 everything 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.
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 drumbeat 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?”
