"I promise."
She studied his face, what she could see of it in the darkness, and then seemed to lose some of her fear.
"I was to stop you. I was to say what I've already said, about being Malthor's daughter and the rest of it, and then I was to say that he wanted me to lead you into an ambush while pretending to help you escape, but that I couldn't do it, and would help you to escape anyhow because I hated Malthor and the whole business about the Lost Ones. So you would believe me, and follow me, and I would lead you into the ambush."
She shook her head and began to cry again, quietly this time, and there was nothing of the woman about her at all now. She was just a child, very miserable and afraid. Stark was glad he had branded Malthor.
"But I can't lead you into the ambush. I do hate Malthor, even if he is my father, because he beats me. And the Lost Ones...." She paused. "Sometimes I hear them at night, chanting way out there beyond the mist. It is a very terrible sound."
"It is," said Stark. "I've heard it. Who are the Lost Ones, Zareth?"
"I can't tell you that," said Zareth. "It's forbidden even to speak of them. And anyway," she finished honestly, "I don't even know. People disappear, that's all. Not our own people of Shuruun, at least not very often. But strangers like you—and I'm sure my father goes off into the swamps to hunt among the tribes there, and I'm sure he comes back from some of his voyages with nothing in his hold but men from some captured ship. Why, or what for, I don't know. Except I've heard the chanting."
"They live out there in the gulf, do they, the Lost Ones?"
"They must. There are many islands there."
"And what of the Lhari, the Lords of Shuruun? Don't they know what's going on? Or are they part of it?"