sed she not a serpent
from the host to strangle me even as yonder black slaves?' Bhanavar knew
the mind of Aswarak, and considered, 'The King is cunning and weak, a
slave to his desires, and in the bondage of the jewel, my beauty. The
Vizier is unscrupulous, a hatcher of intrigues; but that he dreads me and
hopes a favour of me, he would have wrought against me ere now. 'Tis then
a combat 'twixt him and me. O my soul, art thou dreaming of a fair youth
that was the bliss of thy bosom night and day, night and day? The Vizier
shall die!'

One morning, and it was a year from the day she had become Queen of
Mashalleed, Bhanavar sprang up quickly from the side of the King; and he
was gazing on her in amazement and loathing. She flew to her chamber,
chasing forth her women, and ran to a mirror. Therein she saw three lines
that were on her brow, lines of age, and at the corners of her mouth and
about her throat a slackness of skin, the skin no longer its soft rosy
white, but withered brown as leaves of the forest. She shrieked, and fell
back in a swoon of horror. When she recovered, she ran to the mirror
again, and it was the same sight. And she rose from swooning a third
time, and still she beheld the visage of a hag; nothing of beauty there
save the hair and the brilliant eyes. Then summoned she the serpents in a
circle, and the number of them was that of the days in the year: and she
bared her wrist and seized one, a gray-silver with sapphire spots, and
hissed at him till he hissed, and foam whitened the lips of each.
Thereupon she cried:

Treble-tongue and throat of hell,
What is come upon me, tell!

And the Serpent replied,

Jewel Queen! beauty's price!
'Tis the time for sacrifice!

She grasped another, one of leaden colour, with yellow bars and silver
crescents, and cried:

Treble-tongue and throat of fire,
Name the creature ye require!

And the Serpent replied:

Ruby lip! poison tooth!
We are hungry for a youth.

She grasped another that writhed in her fingers like liquid emerald, and
cried:

Treble-tongue and throat of glue!
How to know the one that's due?

And the Serpent replied:

Breast of snow! baleful bliss!
He that wooing wins a kiss.

She clutched one at her elbow, a hairy serpent with yellow languid eyes
in flame-sockets and livid-lustrous length--a disease to look on, and
cried:

Treble