Then my spirit moving me, I played a part in this ineffable tragedy. Yes, I, Ayesha, threw back my veil, saying,
“Queen, if it pleases you to listen I will tell you how your son died.”
She looked at me wondering, and asked like one who dreams,
“Is this a woman or a goddess, or perchance a spirit? Speak on, woman, or goddess, or spirit.”
“Queen,” I said, “look through the window-place and tell me what you see.”
“I see the image of Dagon, the brazen image towering to the housetops, blackened with fire and staring at me with empty eyes, and beyond it the temple and above it Heaven.”
“Queen, yesterday I looked from this window-place and saw that image of Dagon, only then from those empty eyes came flame. Also I saw King Tenes lead out a beauteous, black-eyed boy of three summers or so, which boy he declared to be his son. This boy he gave to a woman, although the child clung wailing to his robe. The woman gave him to a priest. The priest climbed a ladder—look, there it stands—and laid him upon the red-hot hands of the idol whence he rolled amidst the plaudits of the people into a womb of fire, to be perchance reborn in Heaven.”
Beltis heard, and as she heard her face seemed to freeze into a mask of ice. Then she stared at Tenes and asked almost in a whisper,
“Are these things so, O dog of a Sidonian, that like a dog can devour your own flesh?”
“The god claimed him,” he mumbled, “and like others I must give when the god claims, that victory may crown our arms. Who can deny the god? Rejoice, O mother, that he has been pleased to accept that which was born of you.”