Elspeth tentatively rounds to 'god, in like the pagan sense'.

Yeah, that fits even closer than you're thinking, Yavanna's the Vala of plants and Aule of ores and metalworking and Orome of the hunt and Manwe of the airs and birds and Varda of the stars and so on. The Enemy's the Vala of bad things, pretty much.

The difference being that Zeus and so on don't exist, but it's still nice to have a reference.

The Enemy definitely exists. And it's important to stop him. The King enjoys riding into orc villages and killing everyone in them far too much but it's not like I think he's wrong.

Assuming the orc villages are military targets one way or another sure.

All orcs are sworn to the Enemy. So even if right now they're just raising their children and doing their laundry in the stream, if the Enemy orders them - and he can do that at a range of several hundred miles - they'll murder you tomorrow. And even if they spend their whole lives doing nothing but raising their children, the Enemy doesn't want millions of orc children because he thinks orcs are cute, he wants millions of orc children so he can torture and kill everyone else.

That'd be 'or another'. Maybe Addy and the other witches will figure out a way to come here and the entire thing can be over, if the gods aren't too godlike compared to vampires.

That'd be great. 

Not sure what you'd do with all of us afterwards, but still.

Well, Mama is pretty humane with all the vampire ex-serial-killers. It'd probably depend on what Aunt Alice said about the future.

The King would be a saint if it happened to be to his advantage. So there's that.

Mama's standards are lower than that. Couldn't call Addy a saint by any stretch of the imagination.

I hope your friends find you. We probably shouldn't plan on it.

Elspeth is planning to assume that they will try indefinitely, that everybody but Jake will cope if they fail indefinitely, and that she shouldn't assume it will be anytime soon that she sees rescue.

Okay. That's everything I can think of about the local geopolitics. Want to murder our way out of here and try to make the ensuing war clean, or hope you can find another way out?

Elspeth has never actually killed anyone. Even in the dubiously nonlethal mnemic blast fashion; she only knows she can do that because Addy did.

Okay. We don't have to make a decision right away or anything.

Elspeth has hit a person with incapacitating memories and then let someone else kill them, that's happened. Maybe she should sit here until she gets some sourceless truth about whether Aredhel is legit or not. Or she could try the thing that doesn't work very well even for all Addy's coaching with the analogies, but, well, it doesn't work very well.

I can come back and swear to things, if you want to learn enough of my language for that to work.

Elspeth should certainly learn the local language but doesn't actually know how/that oaths work in the first place.

When we give our word - spoken aloud - it's binding. Forever. Using it to promise to do things is really dangerous and stupid but using it to promise 'I've been telling Elspeth only the truth and everything I'd expect her to find relevant' is safe, it doesn't commit you to future actions. Of course, I guess I could be lying right now about that fact.

That would be the issue, yes. It's possible Elspeth's magic will go all delighted over another form of truth magic and she'll know a real oath as soon as she hears one or something; failing that, analogies or waiting for soothsaying.

Which usually takes how long?

Analogies are easier when she knows a person because she has to draw the analogy in terms of what would make an idea make sense to them if Elspeth said it. It'll probably take a while. Sourceless truth is totally unreliable and it was probably dumb to have her near magic experiments just in case she had a bolt from the blue about them.

Well, you have until my husband finds you. And a while after that I guess if you want to just play along.

What would she be playing along with?