Then she exclaimed, as in play, ‘See me, how I look by its beam.’  And in her guile she snatched the Jewel from him, and held it to her brow.  Then Aswarak started from her and feared her, for the red light of the Jewel glowed, and darkened the chamber with its beam, darkening all save the lustre that was on the visage of Bhanavar.  He shouted, ’What’s this!  Art thou a sorceress?’

She removed the Jewel, and ceased glaring on him, and said, ’Nothing 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.’