Samlor patted her, blinking both at the sudden return of darkness and his realization of what he had just seen. Star might not know what she had done or why, but the caravan master did.
“Khamwas, come over here, will you?” he said, amused at the elation he heard in his voice as he strode to the sidewall where the thing of light had disappeared. “You know, I’d about decided we were going t’ have t* give up or come back with a real wrecking crew.”
“A hundred men are slain through one moment of discouragement,” said the manikin on Khamwas’s shoulder.
“In this town,” the caravan master responded sourly, “you can be slain for less reason ‘n that.”
“I, ah,” said the Napatan scholar. “What would you like me to do?”
“Star, come closer, sweetest,” Samlor cajoled when he realized his niece had not followed him. Something was wrong with her, or else she was reacting strongly to the malaise of this house-which affected even the relatively insensitive caravan master.
She obeyed his voice with the halting nervousness of a frequently whipped dog. Her hands were hidden again within her cloak.
Samlor put his arm around her shoulders, all he could do until they’d left this accursed place, and said to the other man, “Can you make it lighter down here? By the wall?”
Khamwas squatted and held his staff parallel with the edge molding. The phosphorescence was scarcely any light at all to eyes which had adapted to the spark from Star’s finger, but it was sufficient to distinguish the square of black marble from the pieces of travertine to either side of it in the intaglio flooring.