hadn’t that Matty Wringtight fellow, that poet, said that she was Zoria? A virgin princess? Wrongly stolen from her father’s house?
But I ran away. It was the house that was stolen.
It didn’t matter. She had always felt deeply about Zoria, the daughter of Perin. When she had been a little girl the tales of Perin and Siveda and Erivor and the others had interested her, but it was the tale of Zoria the merciful, Zoria the pure, brave shield-maiden, that had inspired her. Although she knew many of the old tales and romances, it was only the poems about Zoria she had learned by heart. She recited the line out loud—haltingly at first, then with more strength. It gave her a rhythm to push through the brambles, a marching cadence to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
“...Clear-eyed, lion-hearted, her mind turned toward the day when her honor will again be proclaimed, the Lady of the Doves walks out into the night, toward the fires of her family.”
Briony had little strength, and the words came out as scarcely more than a croaking murmur, but it was a pleasure to hear any voice, even if it was her own, so she said it again.
“...Clear-eyed, lion-hearted, her mind turned toward the day when her honor will again be proclaimed, the Lady of the Doves walks out into the night, toward the fires of her family.”
She had to stop for a moment while a coughing fit shook her. The next part of the tale was something about walking and singing. That seemed appropriate: she was walking right now, and she supposed she was singing, too, after a fashion. Branches slapped at her, wet leaves against her face like angry kisses, making it hard to think, but at last she came up with the next lines: “Walking, she sings, and singing, Perin’s virgin daughter is truly free, despite her terrible wound and unstanched blood.”
Briony felt better with something to think about, and it fit her mood of self-pity to think of how Zoria too had suffered. Merciful goddess, she prayed, think of me and help me through these days of sorrow. In Gregor of Syan’s famous romance, the ice and snow had seemed to fill the world. Briony could still think clearly enough to be grateful that there was no snow here under the trees, but it was still cold enough to make her shiver. The pattering rain was coming down harder now, drizzling heavily through open spaces in the cover. These little waterfalls became another obstacle to be avoided as she trudged on, along with the worst of the brambles and the fallen trees.
Somebody came to help Zoria, she remembered—one of the other gods. Wouldn’t that be fine, to be saved by a god! Except that god hadn’t really saved her, had he...?
“Zosim the Helper, grandson of old Kernios the Earth Master, hears Perin’s daughter’s tripping footfalls and offers to show her the way, but the night’s shadows are long and confusing even for the grandchild of the Lord of Owls, and the dark magic of Everfrost delays them.
“Thus the Moon King’s fate is marked and sealed by the mysteries of his own great house...”
Whatever that meant. Her voice trailed off.
A shadow seemed to jump from behind one tree to another at the top of the rise. Briony stopped, heart beating fast. She squinted but could make out nothing among the paperwhite birches except the columns of weak sunlight between the trunks, each one shot through with falling rain so that they looked like pillars of smoky glass and diamonds.
Could it be a wolf? She touched the hilt of the long Yisti knife sheathed in her belt. She knew she might be able to fight one wolf, perhaps even kill it if she was lucky—but they hunted in packs, didn’t they? For a moment she was overwhelmed by a dark vision of herself surrounded by wolves in a wet, lonely forest as darkness came on. She began to cry.
“Most beasts of forest and field are more afraid of you than you are of them,” her father had once told her, and she tried hard to believe it now. “They are right to fear us, of course—we men are more likely to be their death than the other way around.”
“That’s me!” she said aloud, as harshly as she could. “Your death!” Nothing moved, no sound except the rain broke the silence after her words had echoed away. Briony coughed again and shook her head, leaned in toward the slope and started to clamber up again, scratching her hands as she grabbed for roots and vines when the way was steep.
“When morning’s sun rises...”
she sang out, loud enough for the wolves to hear, trying to make her voice steady enough to scare them away, “...All father Perin rides with the gods of his house behind him, the lightnings in his hands and his eye full of fury. The shining towers of Everfrost loom above the icy earth, burning with a pallid gleam like twilight, like bone, and a moat of killing ice surrounds it.”
The story was making her feel cold again. She realized her hood had fallen back and her hair was getting soaked.
“Before his own door stood the Moonlord in shimmering armor of ivory and electrum, pale hair blowing, with his great sword Silverbeam in his hand.”
Just before she reached the top of the rise she saw the shape once more, a movement of darkness a score of paces ahead. Afraid to see it too closely, fearful that it was some predatory beast moving just ahead of her and that the sight of it would freeze her throat, she raised her scratchy voice even louder.
“‘Go away from my door, Cousin,’” speaks Khors. “‘You ride unasked in the Moon’s Land, on the sovereign road of Everfrost. You have no rights here. This is not vasty Xandos, citadel of the gods.’ “‘I have the right of a father,’” bellows Perin, ‘and you have stolen that right from me when you stole my daughter! Set her here before me, then never cross into my lands again, and I will let you live.’”
At the top of the rise Briony could make out only a deer track or old streambed at the base of the hill on the far side, a snaking line of reddish mud. It was nothing like a road, but at least it was a direction and she would not be pulling berry brambles from her feet at each step. She made her way down toward it with cautious speed, aware for the first time in some hours that if she stumbled or slipped and broke her leg she would certainly die here. When she reached the stripe of rust-colored mud she raised her voice again in a note of ragged triumph, a hymn to her newfound path.
When you are this badly beaten, she thought distractedly, climbing over a huge, damp trunk, terrified that it might start rolling downward while she was on it—when you are this badly beaten, you must take any victory you can find.
“No one orders me on my own lands,” Khors cries, “and least of all a braggart like you, Lord StormCloud, heavy with thunder like a tempest that blows and blows but does nothing more. She belongs to me now. The dove is mine.
“Thief! Liar!” shouts Perin. “Now you shall learn for yourself whether this storm is all wind, like the stables of Strivos, full of his godlike stallions of the blowing gale, or whether it brings lightning, too!”
She reached the bottom of the hill at last, muddy and panting until her lungs ached in her chest, but she had a clear track for walking now and she wanted to go as far as she could before the light failed.
And then what? a silent voice asked her—her own voice, the sensible part she thought she had lost somewhere on the road outside the forest. Then what? You cannot even make a fire, and in any case the wood is all wet. Will you sit on a damp rock all night and try to keep the wolves at bay with your knife? And the next night? And the next...?
No. Quiet! What else can I do? Go forward. Go forward.
She raised her voice again, just as Allfather Perin raised high his weapon against his daughter’s kidnapper. Run, wolves! Run, all you enemies!
“And with that he lifts his mighty hammer Oak Tree and rides at Khors and the world shakes at the sounds of his golden car, the very mountains swaying to the drumbeat of his horses’ hooves.
“Khors is fearful, but rides out himself on his white horse, brandishing Silverbeam his potent blade, swinging the great net his father Sveros had given him, in which once the old god had captured the stars of the sky.”
When the two meet it is as the shock of a thunderclap, so that all gods in both armies, who would have rushed at each other, must instead fight to keep their feet beneath them. Indeed, some like Yarnos of the Snows are thrown to the ground; Strivos is one, and as he lies there he is almost destroyed by Azinor of the Onyenai, always swift to strike and eager to slay his father’s enemies.
