Slowly, while they watched, the star descended, foot by foot dropping until the topmost pinnacle of a hidden temple seemed to support it; and there it rested, throbbing with light, now bright, now dull.
Amber shook himself impatiently. "Silly charlatanry!" he muttered, irritated by his own susceptibility to its sinister suggestion…. "I'd like to know how they manage it, though; the light itself's comprehensible enough, but their control of it…. If there were enough wind, I'd suspect a kite…."
"Thou art not dismayed, my king?"
He laughed, not quite as successfully as he could have wished, and, "Not I, Naraini," he returned in English: a tongue which seemed somehow better suited for service in combating the esoteric influences at work upon his mind. "What's the next turn on the programme?"
"I like not that tone, nor yet that tongue." The woman shivered. "Even as the Eye seeth, my lord, so doth the Ear hear. Is it meet and wise to speak with levity of that in whose power thou shalt shortly be?"
"Perhaps not," he admitted, thoughtful. "'In whose power I shall shortly be.' … Well, of course!"
"And thou wilt go on? Thou art not minded to withdraw thy hand?"
"Not so that you'd notice it, Naraini."
"For the sake of the reward Naraini offers thee?" she persisted dangerously.
"I don't mind telling you that you'd turn 'most any man's head, my dear," he said cheerfully, and let her interpret the words as she pleased.