'Speak. I will repeat any words you like. Is it a very solemn oath?'
'It is the most solemn that ever was sworn, for it is the oath of the gods themselves. I shall give it to you slowly, and you must try to pronounce it right, word by word, holding out your hands, like this, with the palms downwards.'
'I am ready,' said Baraka, doing as he bade her.
He quoted in Greek the oath that Hypnos dictates to Hera in the Iliad, and Baraka repeated each word, pronouncing as well as she could.
'I swear by the inviolable water of the Styx, and I lay one hand upon the all-nourishing earth, the other on the sparkling sea, that all the gods below may be our witnesses, even they that stand round about Kronos. Thus I swear!'
As he had anticipated, Baraka was much more impressed [{264}] by the importance of the words she did not understand than if she had bound herself by any oath familiar to her.
'I am sorry,' she said, 'but what is done is done, and you would have it so.'
She pressed her hand gently to her left side and felt the long steel bodkin, and sighed regretfully.
'You have sworn an oath that no man would dare to break,' said Logotheti solemnly. 'A man would rather kill pigs on the graves of his father and his mother than break it.'
'I shall keep my word. Only take me quickly where I would be.'