If there had been any wavering it was not in the councillors, whose attention seemed to stiffen to the point of expectation as she went on steadily.
“When it was a question more than a year ago whether the Far-Folk should send us their best man and cunningest as a hostage for accomplished peace, you know that I was against it, though I had no reason to give, beyond the unreasoning troubling of my spirit. Later when Ravenutzi was brought into our borders, and I had met with him, there was something which sang to him in my blood, and a sense of bond replaced the presentiment. All of which I truly admitted to you.”
So still her audience was, so shadowed by the drift of cloud, that she seemed, as she stood with her face whitened by the moon, and the low fire glinting the folds of her dress, to be explaining herself to herself alone, and to admit the need of explanation.
“And because,” she said, “I could not be sure if it was a foreseeing, or merely my traitor blood making kinship to him, you took the matter to council and accepted the hostage. Are you sorry for it?”
At this, which had been so little anticipated, there went a murmur around the hollow as of doubt not quite resolved. Several cried out uncertain words which a ruffle of wind broke and scattered. Prassade wagged his red beard, shouting:
“No! By the Friend!”
“Then,” she went on, more at ease, I thought, “as it was with Ravenutzi, so with these. I saw trouble, and now I do not see it; trouble that comes of keeping them, or trouble of letting them go. That I cannot determine for you. So I say now, if you do not regret what you have done by Ravenutzi, do the same with these, accept and hold them, waiting for a sign.”
She left off, and the moon came out of the cloud to discover how they stood toward it, and went in again discovering nothing.
Then a man who had already pricked himself upon my attention, stood up to argue the matter. He was short and exceedingly stout of build. Above the thick bands of leather that protected his lower limbs, he wore no dress but a cougar skin bound about the thick columnar body and held in place by a cord passing over the shoulder. He was armed with a crotched stick that had an oblong pointed stone bound in the crotch by thongs, the handle of which was so long that, as he stood with his hands, which were wide and burned but shapely, resting upon it, the head of the weapon lay upon the ground. What was most singular in his appearance, as he stood blocked solidly against the half-lit sky, was his hair. It was pale yellow, crisp and curling, and rayed out erectly from his head as though it were the emanation of some natural force or property of the man, curiously and independently alive above the square and somewhat meaningless regularity of his countenance.
“Why,” inquired he, “were these House-Folk brought here to Deep Fern? Why not made to drink forgetfulness when first taken?”