"And what of the jewels?" asked Geo. "When will you show us their power so that we may use them to penetrate the palace of Hama?"
"I will show you their power," said Argo, smiling. With one hand she held up the map over which she had spoken. With the other she tapped the white jewel with her pale fingernail. The map suddenly blackened at one edge, and then flared. Argo walked to a brazier and deposited the flaming paper. Then she turned again to Geo. "I can fog the brain of a single person, as I did with Snake; or I can bewilder a hundred men. As easily as I can fire a dried, worn map, I can raze a city."
"With those to help," smiled Geo, "I think we have a fair chance to reach this Hama, and return."
But the smile with which she answered his was strange, and then suddenly it was completely gone. "Do you think," she said, "that I would put such temptation in your hands? You might be captured, and if so, then the jewels would be in the hands of Aptor once more."
"But with them we would be so powerful...."
"They have been captured once; we cannot take the chance that they be captured again. If you reach the palace, if you can steal the third jewel, if my sister is alive, and if you can rescue her, then she will know how to employ its power to manipulate your escape. However, if you and your friends do not accomplish all these things, the trip will be useless; and so perhaps death would be better than a return to watch the wrath of Argo in her dying struggle, for you would feel it more horribly than even the most malicious torture of Aptor's evil."
Geo did not speak.
"Why do you look so strangely?" asked Argo. "You have your poetry, your spells, your scholarship. Don't you believe in their power? Go back to your berth, and send the thief to me." The last words were a sharp order, and Geo turned from the room into the night's darkness.