“If we were staying, I’d make bread,” Lisiya said.

“But where are we going?”

“You are going where you need to go. As to what will happen there, I can’t say. The music says you have wandered off your course.”

“You said that before and I didn’t understand. What music?”

“Child! You demand answers the way a baby sparrow shrieks to have worms spat in its mouth! The music is…the music. The thing that makes fire in the heart of the Void itself. That which gives order to the cosmos—or such order as is necessary, and chaos when that is called for instead. It is the one thing that the gods feel and must heed. It speaks to us—sings to us—and beats in us instead of heart’s blood. Well, unless we are wearing flesh, then we must listen hard to hear the music over the plodding drumbeat of these foolish organs. How uncomfortable to wear a body!” She shook her head and sighed. “Still, the music tells me that you have lost your way, Briony Eddon. It is my task to put you back on the path again.”

“Does that mean…that everything will be all right? The gods will help us drive out all our enemies and we’ll get Southmarch back?”

Lisiya threw her a look of dark amusement. “Not expecting much, are you? No, it doesn’t mean anything of the sort. The last time I helped someone to get back onto his path, a pack of wolves ate him a day after I said farewell. That was his rightful path, you see.” She paused to scratch her arm. “If I hadn’t stepped in, who knows how long he would have wandered around—he and the wolves both, I suppose.”

Briony stared openmouthed. “So I’m going to die?”

“Eventually, child, yes. That’s what’s given to mortals—it’s what ‘mortal’ means, after all. And believe me, it’s probably a good deal more pleasant than a thousand years of ever-increasing decrepitude.”

“But…but how can the gods do this to me? I’ve lost everything—everybody I love!”

Lisiya turned to her with something like fury. “You’ve lost everything? Child, when you’ve seen not just everybody you love but everybody you know disappear, when you’ve surrendered all that I have—beauty, power, youth—and the last of them slipped away centuries in the past, then you may complain.”

“I thought…I thought you might…”

“Help you? By my grove, I am helping you. You’re not starving anymore, are you? In fact, it seems like that’s my sacred offering of cream on your chin right now, and Heaven knows I don’t get many of those these days. You had a dry night’s sleep, too, and you’re no longer coughing your liver and lights out. Some might count those as mighty gifts indeed.”

“But I don’t want to get eaten by wolves—my family needs me.”

Lisiya sighed in exasperation. “I only said the last person I guided was eaten by wolves—the remark was meant as a bit of a joke (although I suppose the fellow with the wolves wouldn’t have seen it that way). I don’t know what’s going to happen to you. Perhaps the music is sending some handsome prince your way, who will sweep you up onto his white horse and carry you away into the sunset.” She scowled and spat. “Just like one of that Gregor fellow’s unskilled rhymes.”