Shadowplay

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 hundreds of us, and we seldom were together. Most of us kept to ourselves, especially 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 damp 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’s 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 reasonably 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.

“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 smoking 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?”

“Before 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 rumpled, 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’ expression 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 ordinary 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 pictures 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 unending 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 important answers.” “All right, what’s important, then? Please tell me, Lisiya.”

“I will answer a few of your questions—but quickly, because I have concerns 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 anything 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