midnight
This very night , Noma , with your help I will consult the dead , as I have done in bygone time , and learn the future from their lips which can not lie . '' `` So be it ; though the task is hateful to me , and I hate you who force me to it . '' Noma answered thus with passion , but her eyes shone as she spoke : for those who have once tasted the cup of magic are ever drawn to drink of it again , even when they fear the draught . **** It was midnight , and Hokosa with his wife stood in the burying-ground of the kings of the Amasuka . Before Owen came upon his mission it was death to visit this spot except upon the occasion of the laying to rest of one of the royal blood , or to offer the annual sacrifice to the spirits of the dead . Even beneath the bright moon that shone upon it the place seemed terrible . Here in the bosom of the hills was an amphitheatre , surrounded by walls of rock varying from five hundred to a thousand feet in height .