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…”