The Ninety-Ninth Bride

by Catherine F. King

  “Giving you a lesson in politics.” Shirin was on her knees now, picking up the discarded chess pieces and arranging them by type, rather than by color. “Listen up, Sultana-to-Be. This—is the King.” She held up the king piece. “The Sultan.”

  “What do you remember of our chess lesson?” Morgiana asked Dunya.

  “I remember enough,” Dunya said. She planted herself on the other side of the game board. “Go on.”

  Shirin had gathered up a set of little war elephants. “These are the Viziers. Some of them inherited the position. Some married into it. Some actually earned it. They are also called Councilors, and they are supposed to advise the Sultan on various things… and they are supplemented,” she gathered up the little cavaliers into a pile, “by the Guild leaders. There are guilds for merchants, guilds for alchemists, guilds for craftsmen… there’s an entire guild dedicated purely to maintaining the river.”

  “What do they do?” Dunya asked, and then felt herself go pink. Shirin laughed again.

  “Talking to you is an education! I’m glad you came along. We were very bored.”

  “Really?” Dunya asked. “I just find that hard to believe. Who are the Sultan’s other advisors?”

  Shirin paused. She paused long enough for Morgiana to say, “Maybe we should have a little breakfast before discussing this further—” and then Shirin unceremoniously shoved all of the pieces off of the carpet and set another king in the center of it and said, “and this is the only one that the Sultan listens to, and I mean the only one.”

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s the little voice inside of his head that says, ‘Kill! Kill! Kill!’” Silence greeted this little pronouncement, but Shirin laughed at her own joke.

  Morgiana sighed. “You’re going to have to pick up all of those pieces, you know.”

  “No, no, I’ll help,” said Dunya.

  “You don’t have to—” Shirin started.

  “I’ll help,” Dunya said, her brow set.

  Shirin let her help.

  Dunya eventually gained the courage to ask, “What do you think Munir will do? When the other Vizier asks for prisoners of war?”

  Shirin shrugged. “He’ll probably oblige. He’d do anything to placate the Sultan.”

  “You don’t know that,” said Morgiana. “He may yet surprise us all.”

  “An unmarriageable cousin has a right to her opinion,” said Shirin.

  “You’re Munir’s cousin?” Dunya asked.

  Shirin grinned wickedly. “I’m also Sultan Sayyid’s cousin—I notice you didn’t ask about him.”

  “Let her be,” said Morgiana, while Dunya blushed. “We have been given a reprieve. We ought to be grateful for every minute of it.”

  “Oh, I am,” said Shirin, putting the last pawn away in its box. “Is it too much to ask, though, to be hopeful as well? I had heard that Al-Rayyan was a city of magic, and where there is magic there is always hope. But no phoenix has burned the Sultan out, no shadhavar has gored him with its horn.”

  “Faith should be put in God alone,” said Morgiana quietly. “We cannot see His entire plan, but that is no reason not to trust in Him.”

  “I would rather put my faith in… ” Shirin rubbed her forehead and sighed. “An open road, a good pair of shoes, a pocketful of silver.”

  “Why don’t you run away?” Dunya asked.

  Morgiana and Shirin looked at one another again. “This harem is now more heavily guarded than any other part of the Palace, including the treasury,” Morgiana said. “We have thought out a thousand and one ways, and they have come to nothing. We must have faith.”

  Shirin shook her head, her eyes furious.

  Dunya looked at her hands, and thought, I will be sixteen and dead in a very short time. What will I make of what’s left of my life?

  Two weeks passed in a strange fashion—fear of what was to come made the time slip by, but the sheer boredom of life in the harem slowed time to a trickle. Shirin and Morgiana, though a strange pair, made good company. Dunya was mastering chess under their careful tutelage, when the Sultan returned.

  Four of his bodyguards came to the harem. They frightened Dunya, these tall men with their sharp eyes. Their gleaming swords separated Shirin as Dunya clung to Morgiana. An attendant covered Shirin with veils of red and white. They led her away. She was glimmering and beautiful, but with her jaw clamped shut, lest she curse the Sultan and his entire revered ancestry.

  Dunya stared at the door after Shirin’s departure. She started when Morgiana laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” Dunya stammered out.

  “For what?” Morgiana asked.

  Dunya drew the little prayer book out of her belt. “I’ve kept this hidden—I didn’t want Shirin to see, because I thought she would laugh, but… it seems stupid now, doesn’t it? Hiding it away… I’m sorry I hid it.” She felt Morgiana’s gaze and held the book up, as if in surrender. “It was a gift from the first Sultana,” she said.

  Morgiana gently took the book from Dunya’s hands. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Shirin would have loved it.”

  Dunya hugged herself close and tried to swallow her tears. “I should have shared it with her. But I was afraid she would… ”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Morgiana said. “Come, let’s sit.” When they were seated away from the door, Morgiana asked, “So this was a gift from the Sultan’s first wife?”

  “Yes.” Dunya checked over her shoulder. “Father said not to mention her name… ”

  “Best not to, then.”

  “And it—wasn’t a gift. It was a loan. But I never got to return it.”

  “Well, it’s now in the Palace, where it belongs. Be at peace.” Morgiana took the book from Dunya’s hands and gently turned the pages until she arrived at a prayer asking for peace. “Do you want to pray?”

  “Um, if you like,” Dunya said. She was silent as Morgiana read the prayer and then clasped her hand in silence. Dunya looked in her heart, but didn’t feel any special reverence or joy or peace—but she was glad to have Morgiana there.

  Of course, Dunya realized, it couldn’t last.

  A few hours later, another pair of guards appeared at the door, and one of them—Dunya couldn’t tell which—said, “Morgiana? Sultana Shirin asks for you.”

  “I may not be back,” Morgiana said, getting to her feet.

  “But it’s not your time yet!” Dunya exclaimed.

  “The Sultan,” Morgiana said in a careful voice, “in his generosity, allows his wives to spend their time with a friend. I will send for you.”

  Dunya nodded, the words Please don’t leave me stuck in her throat. She hugged Morgiana tight, but couldn’t come up with anything else to say. Morgiana left.

  Dunya got very little sleep that night; rather, she fretted and paced. When the harem’s braziers had burned down and the light of dawn filled the room, Dunya realized it was the day before her birthday.

  “Shirin is dead,” she repeated to herself, softly. “Morgiana will be dead tomorrow. And then… me.”

  She tried to pray, but peace and silence didn’t come to her. It was a long and fruitless waiting period until the moment that the guards appeared at the door and asked for her, in the name of Sultana Morgiana.

  Dunya hesitated, her hands on the prayer book. Should she bring it with her? Or… when one of the guards snapped at her to hurry up, she tucked the prayer book among the chess sets and hurried to join the guards.

  Dunya followed the guards, barely aware of the route. When she crossed the final doorway, and saw Morgiana in a vast, splendid bedchamber, she cried out and ran to her.

  “As Sultana, I welcome you, for what it is worth,” said Morgiana. “I understand it is your birthday?”

  Dunya said that it was. Morgiana ordered the Palace servants to bring
out pastries and wine, as haughtily as if she had been doing this all her life. She relaxed onto the cushions of silk from distant China, and gestured through the cedar screen to the Palace gardens.

  “Look at this splendor. Such glory and grandeur! But I miss Shirin. Oh, you don’t believe me?” She smiled at the look on Dunya’s face. “She was a friend. Without her, this landscape suffers.” Morgiana sighed. “I’ve walked every inch of these grounds. I have found many marvels. In the garden, there is a fountain that spurts water so cold it burns. In the Palace’s basement, there is a carpet, woven in red and black. It has a great magic in it… though I’ve never been able to name what that magic is. There is… well, there was the tree whose leaves sang lullabies.”

  “I remember that tree.”

  “It was cut down… I’m sure you can imagine. But even with that loss, what a place to live in! A scholar would dream of finding such a menagerie of wonders. But I have never wanted anything more than freedom.”

  “I understand… ” Dunya murmured. She settled herself uneasily onto the couch. Looking around, she felt a jolt of shock.

  “What is it?” Morgiana asked.

  “That mirror… ” Dunya pointed, “The one hanging opposite the bed. My father bought that mirror for the Sultan’s marriage. I was there when he bought it.” On a whim, she added, “The seller was not a human, though. It was a nasnas—only a right half of a human being, and the inside all like rough gems. You know,” she grabbed a lock of her hair and played with it, “I’ve never told anyone else that before. No one else saw that the mirror seller was not human.”

  “I’m honored that you told me,” said Morgiana.

  “Well, of course. You believe in magic. I thought you only believed in God?”

  Morgiana shrugged. “All kinds of forces are at play in this world. I have a passing acquaintance with many of them… not that it ever did me any good. There was a time—oh, when I was a little girl—I thought that the sea was the greatest power in the world. But I haven’t seen it in so many years. Have you ever seen the sea? I sometimes worry that even I have forgotten what it was really like.”

  “How did you come to be here?” asked Dunya.

  “I was captured as a prisoner of war. I was brought here to grace the bed of the previous Sultan, but instead, he left me to languish and wait. Like thieves, forty years have taken away bits of my life. But I am not afraid. Come tomorrow, I will be at last free. I hope you will have a pleasant Feast of Sacrifices, and a wonderful birthday.”

  After that, the Sultan arrived. He entered the bedchamber, tall and forbidding, and sent Dunya away without even looking at her. Two of the Sultan’s bodyguards escorted her back to the empty harem.

  She did not sleep that night.

  At sunrise, the old servant, Nadirah, arrived to tell Dunya that Morgiana had died. Dunya, who’d thought she was all wrung out, cried some more at this news. All the while, Nadirah stood there, faintly embarrassed, waiting for her tip. Dunya had nothing except her gold earrings, so she gave away those. She wouldn’t need them anymore.

  At noon, the soldiers and attendants came to the harem. The attendants wrapped Dunya in red and white veils. Trembling like a rose in a storm, she was brought before the Sultan, and a holy man. Some prayers and promises were said, and just like that, she was Dunya, the little Sultana.

  With the title of Sultana came immediate responsibilities. To fulfill her spiritual obligations, she was guided to the royal mosque under armed guard, to honor the Feast of the Sacrifice.

  She felt ridiculous in her new veils, leading the procession as if she fit in there. But she could be silent, and when the imam began to lead prayer, she gave a sigh of relief. Listening, that was a skill she had long since mastered. She listened to his words, and prayed as well as she could, while trying to order her tormented soul to be peaceful.

  The imam, in his prayer, recounted the day when Abraham bound his beloved son Ismail to the altar rock to be sacrificed before Allah. At the last moment, Allah sent an angel to stay Abraham’s knife. But Dunya’s mind lingered on the image of the ram with its horns tangled in thorns. Did the ram think that was fair? Was the ram grateful to Allah?

  Silently, Dunya the Sultana prayed for the souls of Morgiana, Shirin, and the others; she prayed for her family; but in her most honest heart, she prayed that Allah would send a way to save her.

  Night fell. Dunya had to preside over a feast where she could not eat a morsel. Her father was there, and he did not acknowledge her in any way. Dunya did not even bother trying to get his attention—aside, of course, from sitting at his side swamped in rich fabrics.

  The Sultana did not look at her husband, and she did not look at her father, either. She spent most of her time watching the door, hoping against hope that something extraordinary would happen. But, a phoenix did not appear, nor did a furious shadhavar—not even so much as a nasnas. And all Dunya could think about was, I will die in the morning.

  When the feast was over, the Sultana had to retire to her rooms. Dunya entered the bedchamber, just as luxurious and beautiful and perfect as it had been the night before, with the same mirror twinkling on the wall opposite the bed.

  Servants arrived, removed her finery, and helped her to dress for bed in what she assumed were a dead woman’s clothes. She shivered when the servants left, and took herself to the window seat—just where Morgiana had sat.

  It had been a long day, and she was very tired. She laid her head down on the pillow and fell asleep as the stars came out.

  She woke up suddenly. The lanterns were dim, the starlight was bright in the room, and there was a strange woman in the bedchamber with her.

  “Do not be afraid,” the woman said, before Dunya could cry out. “I am here to help you.”

  And Dunya, looking at the woman, was not afraid. The woman was very beautiful. She was tall and strong beneath rich black robes glinting with silver. Her hair was black and glossy, and her eyes were as brilliant as diamonds.

  “Who are you?” Dunya asked.

  “I have been watching over you since the day you were born, young Dunya,” said the woman, with a gentle smile.

  “What is your name?” Dunya was now quite confused.

  “You may call me Zahra,” the woman answered. “May I presume to make a request?”

  Dunya, bewildered and wondering if the woman could have possibly scaled the Palace walls, nodded.

  “When the Sultan has arrived and is at ease, ask that I tell you a story. Do you like stories?” Zahra asked.

  Before Dunya could answer (or ask another question), the Sultan entered. His eyes were full of anger, despite the sanctity of the night. He shed his robes of state like a snake shedding his skin. As he passed into the bedchamber, he looked around for his bride.

  Dunya shrank back, afraid of him, but Zahra stepped forward, greeted him, and said, “Husband.” Sultan Sayyid looked at her.

  “You’re Shareef’s daughter? From this morning? You seemed shorter then.” He pointed to Dunya, curled up against the screen. “You. I’ve met you… ”

  “You remember her, but not me?” Zahra asked. “She is my little sister, come to keep me company in my last hours. We are the both the daughters of your faithful Vizier. My modesty obliged me to remain in our Father’s house and care for him.” She was so graceful, so elegant, that the man forgot the small lady in the corner entirely.

  After a time, when Zahra’s charms failed to move him any longer, the Sultan took himself to a table, set against the western wall. He pulled a cloth away to uncover a tray full of silver blades, all shapes and sizes, glinting in the lamplight. He picked the instruments up, one by one, and toyed with them.

  Dunya started to breathe too quickly, fear stealing her breath; she was regarding the Sultan, the man sitting not even ten feet away from her, with a low hum of horror. It was horribly easy to imagine the Sultan k
illing his first wife. He had sent ninety-eight women to their deaths, killing them as surely as if the executioner’s blade was in his hand. Dunya couldn’t help but remember what Shirin had said—that the only statement the Sultan made after killing his wife was, “It was over too quickly.”

  And yet Zahra did not seem perturbed at all. She called for wine to be poured, and asked Dunya to sit at her knee. As Dunya settled herself comfortably, she looked up at Zahra—uncertain if she was looking at a blessing from God, or a cunning thief, or maybe both—and asked, “Sister, would you please tell me a story?”

  “If the Sultan does not object,” Zahra answered.

  The Sultan did not object, but waved his hand in a generous gesture. He turned to them, now sharpening a blade with a whetstone.

  “Dunya,” Zahra looked at the girl with a sly and curious expression, “do you know the story of Ali Baba, the forty thieves, and the slave girl?”

  Dunya shook her head. And Zahra began her story.

  ***

  There was once a poor woodcutter named Ali Baba, who chanced upon a bandit’s treasure trove. Ali Baba stole their gold with the help of the magic words, “Open, Sesame!”

  But what had at first seemed like a marvelous boon turned into a deadly threat. Ali Baba told his brother, Caseem, about the treasure, and against Ali Baba’s warning, Caseem sought out the cave himself. In his delight at finding more gold than he could fit into his saddlebags, Caseem forgot the magic words to leave the cave.

  Well, Caseem reasoned, in his gold-filled prison, he could fight off the cave’s owner. He was a strong man, he could take a cowardly bandit or two. But when he heard the words “Open, Sesame!” the door opened to reveal forty thieves. They stared in surprise at an intruder in their treasury—but they weren’t surprised for long.

  After three days, Ali Baba sought out Caseem at the cave, and he found his elder brother murdered—in a manner most gruesome—for his greed. Ali Baba retrieved his brother’s body, took him home for burial, and put out word that Caseem had died of a sudden illness. Now, all that had been the brother’s belonged to Ali Baba—and first among these assets was a slave girl, known to be both brave and clever, whose name was Morgiana.