by Der Nogard
The prince rose from where he sat and the lady rose to.
“I shall meet you there, milady,” said the prince. “One of the eunuchs will have to escort you, hopefully not one of the smellier ones. You know they sometimes have a scent. It is all that musk they perfume themselves with. Please excuse the odor. I am sorry.”
They found Princess Rusudan in the throne room. Here, all the Emirs, Wazirs, and Nabobs of the kingdom were gathered in their turbans and jeweled caps, attended by teams of slaves, eunuchs, and various other orders of hangers-on. The sultan and his close entourage sat in a corner of the great hall, fanned by servants from the distant land of Komoro, wearing the characteristic hat of blue gold of their people. They used fans comprised of feathers of the raa bird, an enormous flightless bird that also hailed from the land of Komoro, with its thousand cities and hundred walis.
The floor of the throne room was inlaid with garnet and tanzanite, not to mention the throne itself which glimmered in the multi-colors of elephantine, that fantastic gray stone that was quarried in the land of Shoshenq, far to the south. The garnets and rubies were arranged in shapes of manticores, griffins, basilisks and other fantastic creatures, as the decadent sultans of Maler had a passion for myths and the creatures that inhabited them. These royals would scour the eight seas of the world searching for these beasts, not taking pleasure in the numerous dragons that haunted the land. There was nothing rousing about a beast that was commonly seen, Prince Ghazan supposed. He too found that his father’s passion for beasts was strange. He imagined that if he were to enter the sultan’s mind as he slept, he would find there the basilisk, the wym, the manticore, and all the rest.
Princess Rusudan was sitting across from the sultan on a well-apportioned couch of narwhal ivory. She held in her hand a miniature house that her goldsmiths had made. This house was fashioned to resemble the palace of the sultan, and it was covered in a great frost.
“See,” said the princess, whose youthful beauty belied her middle age. “This means that there will be a great storm. Look, even the menagerie windows are covered in frost.”
The lady, who as yet had no name, struggled to imagine what the well-attired woman looked like under her gauzy veil. The blue eyes ringed in black stibium and the curve of full lips seen through the gauze of the veil only made the onlooker more drunk by Princess Rusudan’s loveliness.
“Might I eat it?” asked the sultan. “The house I mean.”
“No,” said the princess with a stern look.
The sultan was known for his passion of covering his food in gold leaf. If that was not luxury, he added to this the practice of dissolving young pearls in boiled wine. This formed for the sultan his favored drink. For the sultan, this house seemed like something that his cooks might have created.
“Well, what is the use of baking a house if it cannot be eaten,” the sultan wondered aloud, looking for support to his chief guardsman, yet another eunuch.
“It was not baked for eating,” said the princess.
“And what of us?” asked Prince Ghazan, who stood beside the lady that had washed up on the sea.
The princess would not answer then as just at that moment a chamberlain was announcing that the Great Khagan of the Yinisar had arrived with a thousand precious gifts for the sultan. These gifts were just now being brought into the sultan’s great treasure-chambers. The ambassadors themselves, with their robes embroidered with dragons and their tall caps, were being led into the throne hall, eliciting the gasps of the court because of the splendor of their robes and their foreign appearance.
“What of us?” asked Prinece Ghazan later as he walked through the subterranean grotto of the palace with Princess Rusudan and the lady. They had repaired here after the sultan had received his noble guests.
“Us?” asked the princess.
“I have declared my love for this fair maid,” and Prince Ghazan indicated the lady, “and she has refused me.”
“And what pray tell is the name of the maid?” asked Rusudan, regarding the maid’s kelp dress with wonder.
“Her?” replied the prince. And after a pause: “I call her Xenia.”
“That is a beautiful name,” said Princess Rusudan, darting her eyes towards the lady to gauge that she was worthy of it. “It is a beautiful name, but I cannot gleam the maid’s future in this state of dishabille. Bring her to me in more suitable attire and I shall see what I can do.”
The prince had the lady arrayed in a chiton of red gold and a collar of young pearls so that when Princess Rusudan saw her again she was quite satisfied. The princess met them at the threshold of her chambers, the suite of rooms she always took when she came to visit the sultan. The ruler of Maler was her uncle on the distaff side. The suite of rooms set aside for her was large and well-apportioned. The prince and the lady, now called Xenia, traveled through corridors of gold tile and persimmon vines until they reached a low ceilinged, narrow room. It was filled with wondrous miniature houses at the center of which was a house of dark brown stone. Through a tight window peered the head of a dragon covered in blue scales. “This one is for you,” said Princess Rusudan.
“For me?” asked the prince.
“For both of you.” The princess beckoned the pair closer. “Here you dwell in the house your father built, together. You two shall one day wed, but misfortune hovers over you.”
“And this is represented by the dragon?”
“No,” said Princess Rusudan. “Misfortune is represented by the roof sloping downward. See how the silver ceiling comes in just here? Even the waves of the sea are brushing against the house. The dragon is something altogether different. He is Aisin. Whatever you do, you must never see him. Meeting him shall dash your future forever, prince.”
Ghazan was alarmed, pacing the room, finding little comfort in the gold, gems, and silver hangings. Rather, he felt oppressed by them. He wanted to get away, just at that moment. He wanted to find the dragon then and there, telling Fate exactly what it could do with itself. And if it did not want to, it would meet the tip of his kujala.
Ghazan turned to look at the lady. The lady reached for the prince’s hand and he gave it to her. “Be still, my princess,” said the prince, “as that is what you shall be. One day. There is naught to fear. I shall consider the matter. Perhaps this misfortune can be averted.”
To put her mind at ease, Ghazan took Xenia to an oasis, where horned deer cavorted with saljak, that, darting spotted animal whose fur formed the favored stuff for the coats of the twin sultans of the Banu Yunus. This oasis was a veritable forest, stretching twenty leagues on either side. It was so densely planted with trees that it took a horseman four hours to get from one end of it to the other, even if traveling on the stone road that the present sultan had built. Here the prince noticed the strange mendicants in their black robes, begging for dirhams with one hand outstretched and clutching their azags with the other. The daggers of these wretched beggars were not of the pricey make that the members of the sultan’s household sported, but they looked sharp and Ghazan’s intuition, a hunter’s instinctive sense, suggested to him that these daggers had tasted blood.
“What shall your father think now that you have taken me from the city,” Xenia wondered aloud. “He shall not be pleased, I imagine.
“I do not care,” said the prince. Fate was already at work, though he would learn this only too late. They sat gazing at the moon that was just then making its appearance though the sun had not completely set.
“If we leave this wood now, we may reach the city before nightfall,” said the lady. She watched as the prince wiggled his toes in their comfortable golden slippers. “The sultan’s spies will have told him that I am gone, but he may forgive you if you return me before the dark hours.”
“It is too late,” said Ghazan, feeling the smoothness of the ivory hilt of his kujala. “It will be evening by the time we reach the gates of the outer walls and it will take another hour to reach the palace, even if we were to leave now. Th
e sultan will be having his first supper now. He’s swallowing the first bite of gold leaf as we speak. He will know that we are gone.”
“But he dines with Princess Rusudan,” said the lady. “She shall speak on our behalf. She will not tell him anything, but she will say that we are young, little more than children, and that he should have pity on us. Twain that love each other cannot be undone by something as simple and meaningless as a few hours passed in a juniper wood.”
“So you love me then?”
But the lady looked away.
Ghazan and Xenia slept in a tent in the wood, erected by the servants that they had brought with them. A wall of cloth was placed in the center of the tent, dividing it into two chambers; Ghazan slept in one while the lady slept in the other. They both awoke before the sun had fully arisen, almost as if awoken by the same Jinni or dragon. Xenia did not have to be told that they should return to the town, to meet whatever fate his father had in store for them. She was ready, she had steeled herself, and she would go now.
Though she had never ridden a horse before, not alone, Xenia took the reins of the mare when it was offered to her. She gripped these straps and she mounted the horse without saddle, in the fashion of the wild Cerkes. “Is she of the land of that barbarian land?” Prince Ghazan wondered aloud. The lady’s mare broke off into a run, with its lady on its back, tracing a pattern so wild and so beautiful that Ghazan felt a sense of joy that he had never before experienced in following her. The lady even worked her whip gently to speed the wild horse on, its horsetail whipping in the gusting wind like a dragon in flight.
So Ghazan chased her, in the fashion of his distant ancestors, the forefathers of the warrior Yunus. It was this Yunus who had peopled this land with his ninety-nine sons until he finally died. Yunus himself had founded the city of Maler on the Tell-Babi, a city arising on top of the ruins of an older city. It was said that the forefathers of the Yunus were savage horsemen that had entered this land of northern desert and oasis from the East. They rode their horses without saddles, like the barbarian Cerkes, and they worshipped the many-helmeted gods of the sky. They were a brutal people, so the stories tell. It was said that when their kings, or chiefs as they really were, grew old, the people slew them, replacing them with younger chiefs who were capable of siring more members of the tribe and leading the people to victory in battle. This tradition formed sort of a kingly sacrifice, which Ghazan found particularly distasteful, as he was one day to be a king himself, but when he told Xenia the story she said it was only a way of establishing a bond between the people and the land. A king who died went back to the land, a land from whence he had come, a world that was better than the world in which they lived.
These fierce people had chased their brides across steppe, desert, and oasis. When a man wanted to marry a woman, he followed her with his horse in tow and, when he found the proper moment, he kidnapped her, took her up onto his horse, and rode off with her to his animal skin tent. The people had lived this way for time immemorial, the men chasing the women and siring a race of hearty sons and bountiful daughters. Xenia did not know any of this when she fled back to Maler, and neither did the mare, but they fled anyway, as time flees, away from the present whose true meaning no one knows.
They arrived at the palace to find the sultan waiting for them on the steps of the inner court. The palace was ringed by two walls. The outer walls of the palace contained the storehouses, treasure-chambers, kitchens, and quarters for the numerous Wazirs, eunuchs, chamberlains, and slaves who served the sultan. There was even a large secondary palace designated for the crown prince when the sultan officially designated a successor. As Ghazan had just reached his twentieth year, it was not surprising that he had not yet been graced with the title of crown prince. Some princes were not given the title until they were thirty, including Ghazan’s father. This practice did cause a problem. For example, if the sultan should die suddenly without designating a particular man as his crown prince. As the law of the land did not specify any particular pattern of succession, any adult male of the royal house could potentially claim the throne. This naturally would lead to civil war, and Maler had been plagued with much of this through the twenty centuries of life that the city had atop the Tell-Babi.
“This palace is closed to you,” said the sultan, placing a hand on the hilt of his kujala. “You have married this woman without your father’s consent and his palace is now off limits. She is a girl with no rank and position in this country and too humble for a son of mine.”
“But father,” said Ghazan. He wanted to tell the sultan that he had not married the lady, but he understood that malicious tongues had told him that he had and the sultan was of the sort inclined to believe any story he heard.
“Return when you have rid this land of her sea-cursed shadow.”
Xenia asked Ghazan why he had not told his father that they had not married and Ghazan told her she would not understand. Besides, it had nothing to do with marriage even if that was what the sultan said. He knew his father well enough.
Ghazan had no choice but to seek shelter in the home of a wealthy merchant as he was too proud to beg his father to reconsider. The merchant had a tall watchtower attached to his house. This tower served as a beacon to ships at sea and as a lookout point for armies invading by land. The man treated his royal guests to a fine repast and told them that they had full use of the palace to do with as they pleased. Xenia, as the prince had named the lady, said she wanted to see the heights from the tower. She could easily access it from a hall behind the merchant’s zenanah, where she stayed. While the prince slept she repaired there.
She felt the mist as it sprayed her veil, reminding of her of when she had been in the sea. She felt her neck, wondering if she had gills like a sea creature, she was sure she had them, but she did not find any there. Not then. The rain picked up, seeming to weep, and she felt a dark voice calling to her. She wanted to leap from the tower, back into the sea, but the voice chided her not to. “No,” said the voice, deep like a tremor in the Earth. “No, you are mine.”
As Ghazan slumbered, Xenia, in her veil of silver thread and all her finery, leapt into the sea. She wanted to drown herself, but the sea rejected her, washing her back onto the shores of Maler, finery and all. The residents of the town took Xenia back to the prince. He paced his well-apportioned chamber in the fine kaftan that the merchant had gifted him. It was embroidered with images of the suns of Yunus quarreling for the throne, even though it was against the customs of the Banu Yunus to create images of mankind. In spite of this prohibition, some of the finest works of art in the lands of the eight seas hailed from Banu Yunus, their repression seeming to make the flowering of their art even more pronounced.
Xenia survived the fall, but she was too weak to rise from bed. It was said by anyone that saw her that she had not long to live. The sorcerers and mages of the town, afraid to anger the sultan, avoided the prince’s place of refuge, though some of them prided themselves that they knew the solution to the prince’s problem. These wizards knew that the sultan had given his son ten days to leave the town and most were wary to risk his displeasure. In spite of this collective fear, three mages decided to risk life and limb to offer words of wisdom to the prince.
“I do not know what to do,” said Prince Ghazan to the men who had gathered in a court of the merchant’s grand house.
The prince sat on a divan in the merchant’s palace, feeling as oppressed by the doors of inlaid pearl and ebon wood as he had in his father’s palace. If he could take Xenia far away from here that would solve all of their problems, but that opportunity had been missed.
“What do I do?” the prince asked the mages, leading them into the zenanah where Xenia lay.
The first sorcerer looked at the time missing from Xenia’s brow and said: “You must discover her true name and speak it. Only then will the maid return to her former self.”
The second sorcerer gazed at the lips of the lady, of an enchanting crystalli
ne blue, and said: “You must offer a lover’s kiss to strengthen one who grows weaker by the day.”
Prince Ghazan had never kissed Xenia. This seemed to him like the best course of action. He placed his azag and his kujala down upon the end table of silvered ebon wood, so as not to disturb the lady by these clumsy objects, and he bent down to kiss her, though it was unseemly for a high-born woman, as this lady presumably was, to raise her veil and kiss a man who was not her father or her brother. The prince placed three fingers gently upon her veil in preparation for raising it.
“Wait,” said the third sorcerer. This man wore a high crown that seemed to be fashioned of human bones. These bones were whittled into a pair of reversing horns. The sorcerer gazed at the storm clouds forming outside the window and he clasped his hands together. He said: “My name is Dir-en-Shad and my advice alone you should take. The dread dragon Aisin hangs over this land like a shroud. You must slay him, prince, and thereby earn the everlasting respect and admiration of the maid as well as your father.”
Prince Ghazan’s face evinced his new worry. “But Princess Rusudan told me that I must never go to see Aisin,” he said. “If I do, I risk everlasting ruin.”
“Yes,” said Dir-en-Shad, “but did she predict the present circumstance? Were the paltry houses her goldsmiths made able to predict this terrible outcome? No. Her powers do not begin to approach mine, and I shall say nothing of these knaves,” and the mage glanced at his peers. “Mine is the greater mind. Mine are the greater powers. Go to the dragon Aisin and earn your destiny.”
Ghazan glanced out of the window where a great ship was just pulling into the harbor. The town of Maler had twin harbors, one located right outside the town’s outer wall, and a second located about three miles to the south and connected to the city by a wall. Maler received all of the major sea trade coming from the Yinisir lands to the east and the Komoro lands to the south, to say nothing of the overland trade that came from the Randalkand.