The sleepy-eyed Dionaea poked her head above the covers at the sound of their entry. At sight of them, she hissed like a great snake, and writhed the long hideous body of Baena free of the encumbrance of the quilts, and Baena reared his own hideous, fanged head up beside Dionaea's.
Druga stood astonished to see the fabled Amphis-Baena here in the bed of Dionaea, and with the head of Dionaea! A great laugh broke from him to see the reptilian change the grafting had wrought in Dionaea's beauty.
Dionaea did not say anything, but Baena coiled swiftly on the bed and struck out full length, his fangs meeting in Druga's arm. Druga felt the terrible venom, like fire in his veins, and seized the great serpent-head in his two hands, squeezing in terrible anger. But Eos seized him.
"No, do not kill her! Carry her into the disk, and make her captive. I have conceived of a way of conquering Diana, and we need this creature alive."
Druga wrapped the great body around and around his body and arm, seizing the neck of Dionaea in one hand and the neck of Baena in the other. So burdened, he staggered down the steps and up again into the disk, and the trip took him a good hour, for Baena twisted loose and tried to flee, and he wrestled and fell from the ladder, and only succeeded by tying the writhing pillar of strength into a bow-knot and pulling it up into the ship with a rope.
Meanwhile the people of Armora had awakened from the tumult, and crowded everywhere about the gardens, getting underfoot and wondering loudly what this was all about. Eos hurried from the bed chamber of their Queen with a great bundle of material she had selected as of possible future use. They tried to stop her, but one glance of the potent magnetic power that flamed from her great eyes sent them all to their knees in worshipful, helpless adoration.
Druga, waiting above with the snake wound round with ropes and lashed to the pillars, watched this evidence of her powers with awe, for he had himself but narrowly escaped the swords of the guards, and had been about to plunge down the ladder with his own sword in a futile attempt to rescue Eos.
She sent the disk spinning upward in flight, and Druga took himself from her and went and sat by the writhing, fettered body of the Amphis-Baena, or Dionaea-Baena, or two-headed snake, saying to her as she spat venom at him:
"Listen to me, Dionaea, the best thing you can do for yourself is to try to win the favor of Eos. She is an enemy who has suffered as greatly as yourself from the work of Diana, and would help you if you earned it, to acquire a human body again. I think the snake himself would like that better too. He is too greatly married, I would say, to relish the state overmuch."