Mathin regarded her with his inscrutable expression. "No one knows," he said. "Luthe is ... someone who lives in the mountains, who sees things - things something like what some of us see when we taste the Meeldtar. He has been there a very long time. No one can remember when Luthe came, or when he has not lived on his mountain."
"And the Lake of Dreams?"
Mathin stared into his cup. "There is a spring that runs into the Lake of Dreams, and it is where the Water of Sight is found; but sometimes the water from the spring is only water, and no one knows why; although it is believed that Luthe knows. Water drunk from the Lake of Dreams does not give the Sight, as the true Meeldtar does; but it is not quite like drinking ... water."
Harry sighed.
Corlath explained briefly for the newcomers what the army was proposing to do. The Northerners must, perforce, choose the one wide pass in the mountains that led into the great central plain and then the bare desert of Damar, for it was the only gap large enough to accommodate an army's numbers. The gap was a bit west of the midpoint of the length of the mountains from the curve where the north-south mountains, the Ildik range, became the east-west Horfel Mountains. When the last of Corlath's little army had collected in the hollow at the elbow of the two ranges, they would ride as quickly as horseflesh would allow to the mouth of that pass, and prepare to engage the enemy among the empty villages and deserted fields of Damar.
Then there was a silence, for all in the king's tent knew that Corlath's force could not win a victory from the Northerners; nor were they likely able to resist them to the point that the invaders would decide Damar wasn't worth the trouble and return home. The best the defenders could hope for, and this they did hope for, was to cause enough trouble and loss that the Northern army would not have the strength left to seize all of Damar in quite so tight and effective a grip as Thurra would wish; and that pockets of renegade Hillfolk might hide in the Hills, or under the kelar of the City. If they succeeded so much, the battle would be worth what it would cost them, for they would have preserved themselves a future.
Harry swallowed uncomfortably. She heard, a little dizzily, what Corlath was saying about the foothills the mountain pass gave into, and where the army would stand; and she cast in her mind for her best memory of Damarian geography, for she had the unpleasant sensation that something was being ignored, something that shouldn't be. Corlath was saying that they would decide more exactly once they arrived, but he seemed to know every stone and clump of grass there, the exact location of every farmhouse, as did those who listened; no one fell so low as to seek recourse to a map. She frowned in concentration. She could almost see the Residency map of Dana; it was very poor at the eastern end; it barely admitted to the existence of the mountains where the king's City stood - the City itself was one of Jack Dedham's native legends - but about the west it was pretty accurate ... Ah!
Corlath had fallen silent. Murfoth said something and there was another silence, and Harry put in, timidly but stubbornly: "Sola, what of the pass just northwest of the ... of the Outlander station? It is narrow, but not so narrow that the ... the Northerners could not send a line through to come up behind us."
Corlath frowned. "Let them take the Outlander city - it will keep them amused long enough to delay them, perhaps. Even the Outlanders will try to stop them when they are on the threshold."
There was a silence so rigid that Harry felt that speaking words into it was like chopping holes in a frozen lake. "They would do a better job trying to stop them if they were warned," she said. Her words didn't make much of a hole; the ice thickened visibly. She didn't want to do anything so obvious as put her hand on her sword hilt; but she did press her elbow surreptitiously against it, and stiffened her spine.
"They were warned," said Corlath, and Harry raised her eyes to his and saw the golden tide