g but
thy poor slave!'

Then he coaxed her to give him the Jewel, and she would not; he commanded
her peremptorily, and she hesitated; so he grasped her tightened hand,
and his face loured with wrath; yet she withheld the Jewel from him
laughing; and he was stirred to extreme wrath, and drew from his girdle
the naked scimitar, and menaced her with it. And he looked mighty; but
she dreaded him little, and stood her full height before him, daring him,
and she was as the tigress defending a cub from a wilder beast. Now when
he was about to call in the armed slaves of the palace, she said, 'I warn
thee, Vizier Aswarak! tempt me not to match them that serve me with them
that serve thee.'

He ground his teeth in fury, crying, 'A conspiracy! and in the harem!
Now, thou traitress! the logic of the lash shall be tried upon thee.' And
he roared, 'Ho! ye without there! ho!'

But ere the slaves had entered Bhanavar rubbed the Jewel on her bosom,
muttering, 'I have forborne till now! Now will I have a sacrifice, though
I be it.' And rubbing the Jewel, she sang,

Hither! hither!
Come to your Queen;
Come through the grey wall,
Come through the green!

There was heard a noise like the noise of a wind coming down a narrow
gorge above falling waters, a hissing and a rushing of wings, and behold!
Bhanavar was circled by rings and rings of serpent-folds that glowed
round her, twisted each in each, with the fierceness of fire, she like a
flame rising up white in the midst of them. The black slaves, when they
had lifted the curtain of the harem-chamber, shrieked to see her, and
Aswarak crouched at her feet with the aspect of an angry beast carved in
stone. Then Bhanavar loosed on either of the slaves a serpent, saying,
'What these have seen they shall not say.' And while the sweat dropped
heavily from the forehead of Aswarak, she stepped out of the circle of
serpents, singing,

Over! over!
Hie to the lake!
Sleep with the left eye,
Keep the right awake.

Then the serpents spread with a great whirr, and flew through the high
window and the walls as they had come, and she said to the Vizier, 'What
now? Fearest thou? I have spared thee, thou that madest me desolate! and
thy slaves are a sacrifice for thee. Now this I ask: Where lies my
beloved, the Prince my husband? Speak nothing of him, save the place of
his burial!'

So he told her, 'In the burial-ground of the great prison