“How comes she here?” said Nam again. “I gave no orders that she should be taken.”
“She comes of her own free will, Father, having somewhat to say to you.”
“Fool, how can she speak to me when she does not know our tongue? But of her presently; take her aside and watch her. Now, Saga, your report. First, what of the weather?”
“It is grey and pitiless, father. The mist is dense and no sun can be seen.”
“I thought it, because of the cold,” and he drew his robe closer round him. “A few more days of this——” and he stopped, then went on. “Tell me of Jâl, your lord.”
“Jâl is as Jâl was, merry and somewhat drunken. He speaks our language very ill, yet when he was last in liquor he sang a song which told of deeds that he, and he whom they name the Deliverer, had wrought together down in the south, rescuing the goddess Aca from some who had taken her captive. At least, so I understood that song.”
“Perhaps you understood it wrong,” answered Nam. “Say, niece, do you still worship this god?”
“I worship the god Jâl, but the man, Dweller in the Waters, I hate,” she said fiercely.
“Why, how is this? But two days gone you told me that you loved him, and that there was no such god as this man, and no such man as this god.”
“That was so, father, but since then he has thrust me aside, saying that I weary him, and courts a handmaid of mine own, and therefore I demand the life of that handmaiden.”