Then Asti knelt down by the pool, and bent her head, and stretched out her hands over the water, and Tua touched the strings of her harp and began to chant very solemnly in an unknown tongue.  The words of that chant were low and sweet, yet it seemed to Janees that they fell like ice upon his hot blood, and froze it within his veins.  At first he kept his eyes fixed upon her beauty, but by slow degrees something drew them down to the water of the pool.

Look!  A mist gathered on its blackness.  It broke and cleared and there, as in a mirror, he saw a picture.  He saw himself lying stripped and dead, a poor, naked corpse with wide eyes that stared to heaven, and gashed throat and sides whence the blood ran upon the marble floor of his own great hall, ruined by fire, with its scorched pillars pointing like fingers to the moon.  There he lay alone, and by him stood a hound, his own hound, that lifted up its head and seemed to howl.

The last words of Tua’s chant died away, and with them that picture passed.  Janees leapt back from the edge of the pool, glaring at Asti.

“Sorceress!” he cried, “were you not my guest who names herself the mother of her who shall be my Queen, I swear that to-night you should die by torture in payment of this foul trick of yours.”

“Yet as it is,” answered Asti, “I think that I shall not die, since those who call upon the gods must not quarrel with their oracle.  Moreover, I know now what you saw, and it may be nothing but a fantasy of your brain or of mine.  Now let us sleep, I pray you, O King, for we are weary, and leave its secrets to the future.  In three days we shall know what they may be.”

Then, without another word, Janees turned and left them.

“What was it that lay in the pool, Nurse?” asked Tua.  “I saw nothing.”

“The shadow of a dead man, I think,” answered Asti grimly.  “Some jealous god has looked upon this poor King whose crime is that he desires you, and therefore he must die.  Of a truth it goes ill with your lovers, O Star of Amen, and sometimes I wonder if one who is dear to me will meet with better fortune at those royal eyes of yours.  If ill befalls him I think that at the last I may learn to hate you, whom from the first I cherished.”

Now at the thought that she might bring death to Rames also, Tua’s tears began to gather, and her voice choked in her throat.

“Say not such evil-omened words,” she sobbed, “since you know well that if he is taken hence for whose sake I endure all these things, then I must follow him over the edge of the world.  Moreover, you are unjust.  Did I slay the Prince of Kesh, or was it another?”

“Another, Queen, but for your sake.”