Then he waxed white with rage, exclaiming, 'Yea, 'tis she! a serpent in
the slough! and Ukleet in the torture hath told of thee what is known to
him. Unveil! unveil!'
She threw the veil from her figure, and smiled, for Mashalleed was mute,
the torrent of invective frozen on his mouth when he beheld the miracle
of beauty that she was, the splendid jewel of throbbing loveliness. So to
scourge him with the bitter lash of jealousy, Bhanavar turned her eyes on
Ruark, and said sweetly, 'Yet shalt thou live to taste again the bliss of
the Desert. Pleasant was our time in it, O my Chief!' The King glared and
choked, and she said again, 'Nor he conquered thee, but I; and I that
conquered thee, little will it be for me to conquer him: his threats are
the winds of idleness.'
Surely the world darkened before the eyes of Mashalleed, and he arose and
called to his guard hoarsely, 'Have off their heads!' They hesitated,
dreading the Queen, and he roared, 'Slay them!'
Bhanavar beheld the winking of the steel, but ere the scimitars
descended, she seized Ruark, and they stood in a whizzing ring of
serpents, the sound of whom was as the hum of a thousand wires struck by
storm-winds. Then she glowed, towering over them with the Chief clasped
to her, and crying:
King of vileness! match thy slaves
With my creatures of the caves.
And she sang to the Serpents:
Seize upon him! sting him thro'!
Thrice this day shall pay your due.
But they, instead of obeying her injunction, made narrower their circle
round Bhanavar and the Chief. She yellowed, and took hold of the nearest
Serpent horribly, crying:
Dare against me to rebel,
Ye, the bitter brood of hell?
And the Serpent gasped in reply:
One the kiss to us secures:
Give us ours, and we are yours.
Thereupon another of the Serpents swung on, the feet of Ruark, winding
his length upward round the body of the Chief; so she tugged at that one,
tearing it from him violently, and crying:
Him ye shall not have, I swear!
Seize the King that's crouching there.
And that Serpent hissed:
This is he the kiss ensures:
Give us ours, and we are yours.
Another and another Serpent she flung from the Chief, and they began to
swarm venomously, answering her no more. Then Ruark bore witness to his
faith, and folded his arms with the grave smile she had known in the
desert; and Bhanavar struggled and tussled with the Serpents in
fierceness, strangling and tossing them to right and left. 'Great is
Allah!' cried all present, and the King trembled, for never was sight
like that seen, the hall flashing with the Serpents, and a woman-serpent,
their Queen, raging to save one from their fury, shrieking at intervals:
Never, never shall ye fold,
Save with me the man I hold.
But now the hiss and scream of the Serpents and the noise of their
circling was quickened to a slurred savage sound and they closed on
Ruark, and she felt him stifling and that they were relentless. So in the
height of the tempest Bhanavar seized the Jewel in the gold circlet on
her brow and cast it from her. Lo! the Serpents instantly abated their
frenzy, and flew all of them to pluck the Jewel, chasing the one that had
it in his fangs through the casement, and the hall breathed empty of
them. Then in the silence that was, Bhanavar veiled her face and said to
the Chief, 'Pass from the hall while they yet dread me. No longer am I
Queen of Serpents.'