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 di¬aphanous 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, al¬though 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 set¬tled herself beside the fire. "Every season it is harder to summon my old as¬pect, 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 unde¬niable. 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 terri¬ble, glorious shape of the goddess, once more so well hidden beneath wrin¬kled, 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 broth¬ers 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 strange ness 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 god¬dess 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 fool¬ishness 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 al¬ways 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 hero¬ism 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 grow 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 hon¬est, 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 peo¬ple teach. Whitefire, the one you call Zmeos, was the oldest of Sveros' chilren, and felt he should have pride of place."