Even in the midst of all these unexpected happenings, Briony was stung. “I was just trying to keep myself going.” She slumped to the ground and tucked the knife back into its sheath, still finding it hard to get her breath. The old woman was scarcely as high as Briony’s own shoulder and looked to weigh no more than a roast Orphanstide duck.

“Maybe it was the song, then, daughter,” said the old woman as she bent to rummage in a sack that hung from the front of the wagon. “I’ve never cared much for that Gregor. Too full of himself, and a dreadful man for a stretched rhyme. I told him so, too.”

Briony, recovering her strength a little, shook her head. Perhaps this ancient was a little mad—surely she’d have to be, to live in the forest this way, by herself. “He’s been dead for two centuries.”

“Yes, he has, bless him, and not a moment too soon.” She straightened up. “Hmmm. If I’d known yesterday I would have company, I would have gathered more marsh marigold, and maybe some chestnuts. But I didn’t know until this morning.”

“This morning what?”

“That you’d be coming. It took you long enough.” She shrugged her thin shoulders, two bony points beneath the cloak. “It’s not just Gregor, though, it’s that song of his—more of it wrong than right, you know. Zosim the Helper—there’s a laugh. That snake-eyed trickster helped himself to a few things, but that’s all the helping he ever did. And the snow. Pure nonsense. Khors’ castle wasn’t made of ice or anything like that, it shone that way because of the elfglass it was covered with—fairy-shimmer, they used to call the stuff. And ‘Everfrost!’” She smacked her lips in disgust, as if she’d eaten something that tasted foul. “He just took the real story and mixed it up with that Caylor story about the Prince of Birds—and that was a mumbled-up porridge of the story of the Godswar in the first place!”

Briony blinked. She wished that the woman would stop talking and get cooking. Only the griping pain in her stomach was allowing her to remain upright. “You…sound like you know…a great deal about…about the War of the Gods.”

The old woman snickered, then the snicker became a full throated laugh. She laughed until she was wheezing and had to sit down beside Briony. “Yes, daughter, I do know a great deal about it.” She chuckled again and wiped her eyes. “I ought to, child. I was there.”

20

A Piece of the Moon’s House

As the battle began, innocent Zoria escaped the fortress and on her pale, bare feet went in search of her family, but although Zosim found her and tried to help her, they were separated by a great storm, and so Perin’s virgin daughter wandered far from the battlefield.

Before the walls of Khors’ mighty fortress, Kernios the Earthlord was killed by the treachery of Zmeos, but the tears of his brother Erivor raised him again and he was thereafter undefeatable by any man or god.