"I've read about it - and if I ever talk to Maharet, I'll ask her in more detail. She hasn't been able to do it for about six thousand years, though."

And then?

Bianca just smiles. And begins to talk. Not to Ramon, but to the spirits hovering around them. Ramon can't see them, but maybe he can feel the brush of them as they listen to her. She speaks in her childhood Flornetine Italian, although really it doesn't matter. She talks and talks and pleads and humours and tempts and seduces and praises, her hands constantly moving...

And something, or rather some things, lift Ramon up off the sand.