(Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay (40 page)

While the Highwardens were absent the others milled about the Council Chamber and talked. Some, anticipating a long deliberation, even stepped out to the tavern around the corner for a cup or two. Chert, who had the distinct feeling he was the subject of almost every conversation, and not in a way he’d like, went and joined Chaven, who was sitting on a bench along the outer wall with a morose expression on his round face.

“I fear I’ve brought you nothing but trouble, Chert.”

“Nonsense.” He did his best to smile. “You’ve brought a bit, there’s no question, but if I’d come to you the same way, you’d have done the same for me.”

“Would I?” Chaven shook his head, then lowered his chin to his hands. “I don’t know, sometimes. Everything seems to be different since that mirror came to me. I don’t even feel like precisely the same person. It’s hard to explain.” He sighed. “But I pray that you’re right. I hope that no matter how it’s got its claws into me, I’m still the same man underneath.”

“Of course you are,” said Chert heartily, patting the physician’s arm, but in truth such talk made him a bit nervous. What could a mere looking glass do to unsettle a learned man like Chaven so thoroughly? “Perhaps you are worrying too much. Perhaps we should not even mention your own mirror, the one Brother Okros has stolen.”

“Not mention it?” For a moment Chaven looked like someone quite different, someone colder and angrier than Chert would ever have expected. “It may be a weapon—a terrible weapon—and it is in the hands of Hendon Tolly, a man without kindness or mercy. He must not have it! Your people…we must…” He looked around as though surprised to find that the person speaking so loudly was himself. “I’m sorry, Chert. Perhaps you are right. This has all been…difficult.”

Chert patted his arm again. The other Funderlings in the wide chamber were all watching him and the physician now, although some had the courtesy to pretend they weren’t.

“We have decided,” said Highwarden Sard, “not to decide. At least not about the most dangerous issue, that of the legitimacy of the castle’s regent, Lord Tolly, and what if anything we should do about it.”

“We know we must come to a decision,” amplified Highwarden Travertine. “But it cannot be rushed.”

“However, in the meantime, we have decided about the other matters,” continued Sard, then paused to catch his breath. “Chert Blue Quartz, stand and hear our words.”

Chert stood up, his heart pounding. He tried to catch Cinnabar’s eye, to glean something of what was to come, but his view of the Quicksilver Magister was blocked by the dark, robed bulk of Highwarden Caprock.

“We rule that the boy Flint shall be punished for his mischief, as Cinnabar so quaintly put it, by being confined to his house unless he is accompanied by Chert or Opal Blue Quartz.”

Chert let out his breath. They were not going to exile the boy from Funderling Town. He was so relieved he could barely pay attention to what else the Highwardens were saying.

“Chert Blue Quartz himself has done no wrong,” proclaimed Sard.

“Although his judgment could have been better,” suggested Highwarden Quicklime Pewter.

“Yes, it could have been,” said old Sard with a sour look at his colleague, “but he did his best to remedy a bad situation, and then realized that he could not go on without the advice of the Guild. To him, no penalty, but he must no longer act without the Guild’s approval in any of these matters. Do you understand, Chert Blue Quartz?”

“I do.”

“And do you so swear on the Mysteries that bind us all?”

“I do.” But though he was reassured by what had been said so far, Chert found he was not as confident about what would be done in the long run. Also, he had grown used to doing things that others—especially the Magisters and Highwardens—might think were beyond his rights or responsibilities. He and his family were dug very deep into a strange, strange vein.

“Last we come to the matter of the physician Chaven,” said Sard. “We have much still to discuss about his claims and will not make a decision recklessly, but some choices must be made now.” He stopped to cough, and for a moment as his chest heaved it seemed he might not go on. At last he caught his breath. “He will remain with us until we have determined what to do.”

“But he cannot remain in your house, Chert,” said Cinnabar. “It is already nearly impossible to keep our people from whispering, and it’s likely that only the fact these Tollys have banned us from working in the castle has kept his presence secret from them this long.”

“Where will he go…?”

“We will find a place for him here at the guild hall.” Cinnabar turned to the Highwardens. Sard and Quicklime nodded, but Travertine and Gneiss looked more than a little disgruntled. Chert guessed that Cinnabar had cast the deciding vote.

“I am sure Opal will want to keep feeding him,” Chert said. “Now that she’s learned what he eats.” He smiled at Chaven, who seemed not entirely to understand what was happening. “Upgrounders don’t like mole very much, and you can’t get them to eat cave crickets at knifepoint.”

A few of the other Magisters laughed. For the moment, things in the Council Chamber were as friendly as they were likely to be—still tense, but no one in open rebellion.

“So, then.” Sard raised his hand and all the Magisters stood. “We will meet again in one tennight to make final decisions. Until then, may the Earth Elders see you through all darknesses and in any depths.”

“In the name of He who listens in the Great Dark,” the others said in ragged chorus.

Chert watched the Magisters file out before turning to Chaven, who was still staring down at the floor of the Council Chamber like a schoolboy caught with his exercises unlearned. “Come, friend. Cinnabar will show us where you’ll stay, then I’ll go back to my house and pack up some things for you. We’ve been very lucky—I’m surprised, to tell you the truth. I suspect that having Cinnabar on our side is what saved us, because old Quicklime trusts him. Cinnabar will probably replace him one day.”

“And I hope that day is far away,” said the Quicksilver Magister, striding up. “Quicklime Pewter has forgotten more about this town and the stone it’s built with than I’ll ever know.”

As they began to walk toward the chamber door, Chaven at last looked up, as if wakening from a dream. “I’m sorry, I…” He blinked. “That veiled figure,” he said, pointing at the fabled ceiling. “Who is that? Is it…?”

“That is the Lord of…that is Kernios, of course, god of the earth,” Chert told him. “He is our special patron, as you must know.”

“And on his shoulder, an owl.” The physician was staring down again.

“It is his sacred bird, after all.”

“Kernios…” Chaven shook his head. “Of course.”

He said no more, but seemed far more troubled than a man should who had just been granted his life and safety by the venerable Stone-Cutter’s Guild.

“I
T…IT SOUNDED LIKE you said…that you were
there
.” Briony didn’t want to offend her hostess (especially not before she’d shared whatever food the crone had to spare) but even in the throes of fever and starvation, the habits of a princess died hard: she didn’t like being teased, especially by grimy old women. “When the gods went to war.”

“I was. Here, I’ll put a few more marigold roots in the pot for you—you’d be surprised how nicely they cook up once you boil the poison out. I’ve been in flesh so long I can scarcely remember anything else, but one thing I don’t miss about the old days—all that bloody, smoking meat! I don’t know what they thought they were doing.”

“Who? Wait, poison? What?” Briony was trying to keep still and avoid sudden movements. It had only just occurred to her that an old woman who lived by herself in the middle of the Whitewood was likely to be quite mad. She felt sure that even as weak and sick as she was, she could defend herself against this tiny creature, bony as a starveling cat—but how could she protect herself when she slept? She didn’t think she could survive another night on her own in the rainy wood.

“I’m talking about those bloody men and their bloody sacrifices!” the old woman said, which explained very little. “They used to be everywhere in this part of the forest, chopping wood, hunting my deer, generally making a nuisance of themselves. Some of them were handsome, though.” She smiled, a contraction of wrinkles that made her face look even more like a knot in the grain of a very old tree. “I let some of them stay with me, bloody-handed or not. I was not so particular then, when my youth was on me.”

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 forest-witch, 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…”