"Then—all that I saw—I really saw it. I didn't imagine it."
"Imagine it? Do you mean did you see what was true? I do not know. One learns, eventually, usually to know, to be able to say if the seeings are to be believed or are … imagined. But imagined as you mean it—no. The Water sends these things, or brings them."
There was a pause again, but nobody relaxed, least of all herself. There was more to it than this, than a simple—simple?—hallucination. She looked at Corlath, frowning. "What else?" she said, as calmly as if she were asking her doom.
Corlath said, "There is something else," as if he were putting it off. He hesitated, and then spoke a few words in a language she did not recognize. It wasn't the usual Darian she heard the natives around the Residency speak, or the slightly more careful tongue that Dedham and Mr. Peterson used; nor did it sound like the differently accented tongue the Hillfolk spoke, which was still recognizable to those who were fluent in Darian. This was a rougher, more powerful language to listen to, although many of the sounds—strange to her Homelander ears—were common with the Darian she was accustomed to. She looked at Corlath, puzzled, as he spoke a little further. She knew nothing of this language.
"It is not familiar to you?" Corlath said at last; and when she shook her head, he said, "No, of course not, how could it be?" He turned around. "We might sit down again," and sat down with great deliberateness. She sat down too, waiting. The look she had seen before on his face, that of a man facing a problem he would far rather avoid, had returned, but it had changed. Now his look said that he understood what the problem was, and it was much more serious than he had suspected.
"There are two things," he said. "The Water of Sight does not work so on everyone. Most people it merely makes ill. To a few it gives headaches; headaches accompanied by strange colors and queer movements that make them dizzy. There are very few who see clearly—we nineteen, here tonight, all of us have drunk the Water of Sight many times. But even for us, most of us see only a brief abrupt picture—sometimes the scene lasts so little time it is hard to recognize. Often it is of something familiar: one's father, one's wife, one's horse. There is a quality to these pictures, or memories, that is like nothing else, like no voluntary memory you might call up yourself. But often that is all.
"Occasionally one of the people of our Hills sees more. I am one. You have just proven yourself another. I do not know why you saw what you did. You told us something of what you saw as you were seeing it. You may have seen a battle of the past—or one that never happened—or one that may yet happen; it may occur in Damar, or—in some other country."
She heard may yet happen as if those three words were the doom she had asked for; and she remembered the angry brilliance of the yellow-eyed Hill-king as he stood before the Residency far away. "But—" she said, troubled, hardly realizing she spoke aloud—"I am not even of your Hills. I was born and bred far away—at Home. I have been here only a few months. I know nothing of this place."
"Nothing?" said Corlath. "I said there were two things. I have told you the first. You told us what you saw as you saw it. But this is the second thing: you spoke in the Old Tongue, what we call the Language of the Gods, that none knows any more but kings and sorcerers, and those they wish to teach it to. The language I just spoke to you, that you did not recognize—I was repeating the words you had said yourself, a moment before."
CHAPTER SIX
She remembered little more of that day. She settled herself on a heap of cushions a little way from the long table while the king and his men talked; and if they spoke at all of her, she did not know it, but she did notice that none but Corlath ever allowed his eyes to rest on her. The feeling she had had earlier, before she had tasted the Water of Seeing, that the closeness among the king and his men in some way supported her, was gone; she felt lost and miserably alone, and she decided that when there were eighteen people pretending you didn't exist in a small enclosed area, it was worse than two people pretending you didn't exist outside under the sky. The shadows nickered strangely through the tent, and the voices seemed muffled. There was a ringing in her ears—a ringing not like the usual fear-feeling of one's blood hammering through one's body, but a real ringing like that of distant bells. She could almost discern the notes. Or were they human, the shifting tones of someone speaking, far away? The taste still on her tongue seemed to muffle her brain. And she was tired, so tired …
When his Riders left, Corlath stood looking down at his captured prize. She had fallen asleep, and no wonder; she was smiling a little in her sleep, but it was a sad smile, and it made him unhappy. However much formal honor he showed her, seating her at his left hand, setting his household to serve her as they served him—he grimaced—he knew only too well that by stealing her from her people he had done a thing to be ashamed of, even if he had had no alternative—even if she and the kelar she bore were to do his beloved country some good he could not otherwise perform. Perhaps she could learn to see something of what made the Hills and their people so dear to him as a man, not as a king—? Perhaps her Gift would bind her to them. Perhaps she would hate them for her lost land and family. He sighed. Forloy's young wife had not wished to hate the Hills, but that had not helped her.
Harry woke in the dark. She did not know where she was; the shapes beneath her were not of pillow and mattress, and the odor of the air had nothing in common with Residency air, or Homeland air. For a moment hysteria bubbled up and she was conscious only of quelling it; she could not think, not even to decide why she wished to bottle up the panic—her pride automatically smothered her fear as best it could. Afterward she lay exhausted, and the knowledge of where she was reformed itself, and the smell was of the exotic woods of the carven boxes in the Hill-king's tent. But as she lay on her back and stared into the blackness, the tears began to leak out of her eyes and roll down her cheeks and wet her hair, and she was too tired to resist them. They came ever faster, till she turned over and buried her face in the scratchy cushions to hide the sobs she could not stop.
Corlath was a light sleeper. On the other side of the tent he opened his eyes and rolled up on one elbow and looked blindly toward the dark corner where his Outlander lay. Long after Harry had cried herself to sleep again, the Hill-king lay awake, facing the grief he had caused and could not comfort.