Shame of Man (42 page)

The king indulged him in this too, being intrigued by the continuing arrogance and mystery of the man. “Do what you wish,” he said. “Do not spare my cavalry, for they will not spare you.”

Then Kamar kissed the princess and mounted the horse. He set himself and touched the two pegs, and the horse responded by shaking, panting, pawing the ground, and leaping sideways in a remarkable manner. Then its belly filled with wind, and it sailed up into the air as quickly as an arrow, carrying Kamar away.

Suddenly the king realized that he had been fooled. “Catch him!” he cried, but it was too late; the prince had escaped them.

At this the Princess Shams wept for the loss of her lover, and smote her
face and fell seriously ill. The king tried to console her, but she swore, “As Allah lives, I will neither eat nor drink until I am reunited with my love.” The world darkened before the king's eyes, as he saw the case, and he fell into a melancholy.

Meanwhile Prince Kamar flew toward Persia, glad for his deliverance, but his mind was filled with dreams of the lovely Princess Shams. Then he reached his father's city and descended, landing on the palace roof. He went down into the palace, which was strewn with ashes, and found his father, mother, and sisters all clad in mourning raiment. “What's this?” he inquired. “Has someone died?”

There was a considerable commotion, and in a moment he was buried under the embraces of his family, especially his youngest sister, who lavished kisses on him and soaked his face with her tears of joy. Then he told them the whole story. The king gave orders for a great feast, distributed gold, and threw open the dungeons in a general pardon. It seemed he was pleased with his son's return.

Then Kamar inquired after the sage, and at his behest the king pardoned him too and released him from prison and rewarded him richly. But he would not give him the princess as wife, and so the sage still raged inside.

The king distrusted the ebony horse, and urged his son to stay away from it. But Kamar could not forget the Princess Shams, and longed to be with her again. The king tried to distract him by summoning a handsome handmaiden, skilled in playing the lute, and she played and sang most eloquently.

“Memory dies, but never my love for you

So I will die in your wonderful love so true

And in your love I will my life renew”

When the prince heard this, the fires of longing flamed anew in his heart. He went forthwith to the ebony horse and flew into the air. It was evening, but his passion was such that he did not care. He could find the way.

When the king realized what had happened, he was sore afflicted. “By Allah, if I get my son back again, I will burn that accursed horse!” Then he resumed his mourning, fearing that he would never see the prince again.

Kamar flew directly to Arabia, and landed unobserved on the high terrace as before. He went to the same room and found the Princess Shams al-Nahar, clothed only in her long hair, weeping unconsolably. He entered the room and made himself known to her, and she threw herself upon him, covering his face with kisses. “O light of my eyes, I have been desolate because you were gone from me! Had you stayed away longer, I would have died. How could you leave me? How can life be sweet to me, without you?”

“I could not stop longing for you,” he replied. “But what am I to do, when your father will not suffer me to wed you?”

“Take me away with you,” she pleaded, “rather than make me taste the bitter gourd of separation from you.”

Amazed and pleased, he agreed. So the princess opened a chest and donned her richest and finest things, including expensive gems. Then she went out with him, her handmaids not daring to protest.

They went to the horse, and the princess mounted behind the prince, and clung to him most tightly. He turned the pegs, and the horse flew up into the air.

When the handmaidens saw this, they screamed, and the king was roused from his sleep and discovered what was happening. He came up to the terrace and called out “O king's son, I conjure you by Allah, do not take my daughter away!” But the princess urged him to continue, for she did not trust her father to allow them to marry.

They flew to a meadow, where there was a spring. They landed and drank, then mounted again and flew the rest of the way, arriving by morning. They landed on the upper terrace, and Kamar left the princess while he went to notify his father. “I know my family will welcome you in proper style.” For of course a princess could not be brought in like some slave girl. Shams was glad to agree.

The king was overjoyed at his son's return, and made immediate arrangements to prepare a suitable palace for the princess to occupy. Then he made up a procession in honor of the visitor, a vast array of richly dressed nobles, and litters of gold with brocaded canopies, and many slaves with great feather fans.

Kamar went ahead to rejoin the princess. He hurried to the roof of the palace—and found that both princess and ebony horse were gone.

Soon he realized what had happened. The evil sorcerer had spied the horse, and flown it away. And somehow managed to take the princess with him.

And indeed, that was the case. The cunning sage, discovering the horse, had also smelled the sweet scent of Princess Shams, and gone to her and inquired as to her identity. She, thinking him to be a servant who had come to bring her to the welcoming ceremony, had naively agreed to ride the horse with him, though she had had to close her eyes against the indignity of his awful ugliness. He had caused the horse to fly far up and away from the palace. Only then did she realize the cruel trick fate had played on her.

“Fear not,” the sage told her. “You will not be neglected. I will marry you, and you will live out your life in Christian Constantinople. It will not be difficult, after you give up your idolatrous faith in Allah.” For though the sage was Persian, he knew that there would be no safe place in Persia for him after this, and he did have connections in infidel Constantinople.

Then Princess Shams knew she was truly lost, for she was a virtuous maiden who would die rather than live among the infidels.

But Constantinople was a long way away, and the old sage was uncomfortable
traveling for an extended period, so he brought the horse down in a meadow near a great city. It happened that the king of that region was out hunting, and a member of his party saw the strange horse come down, and told him. So the king sent his slaves out to fetch back this oddity. They came upon the sage unawares, and brought him, the damsel, and the horse to the king. “What is this?” the king asked them, astonished at the old man's loathsome aspect and the ravishing beauty of the girl.

“She is my wife,” the sage said.

But the princess gave him the lie, saying that he was a sorcerer and a heathen and a villain. So the king had the sage beaten and thrown into a dungeon, and brought the girl and the wooden horse to his palace.

Meanwhile Prince Kamar was riding out across the lands, searching for his lost love. He questioned everyone, and soon was able to trace the course of the marvelous flying horse, for people did tend to notice such a thing as it flew over them. He located the city where the horse had landed, and learned that a hideous old man and a beauteous young woman and a strange carved horse had appeared there. The ugly man had been thrown away, but the king was smitten with the girl and would fain marry her. Unfortunately she was mad, for she talked wildly, and sprang at the king as if to attack him, and screamed in animal rage when any man approached her. The king had offered an excellent reward to any healer who could cure her, but so far none had succeeded.

Kamar pondered this, and realized that the princess was feigning her illness in order to protect herself from the lust of the king. Therein lay his hope to rescue her. He made himself up to be a traveling healer, versed in the arts of Persia, and presented himself at the court. The king was a portly figure of middle age. “So you are a healer,” the king said. “Can you cure madness?”

“Indeed, that is my specialty,” Kamar said. “I believe I can help. But first you must tell me all the particulars of her situation, so that I know exactly what I am up against.”

The king proceeded to tell him everything.

“A wooden horse?” Kamar asked as if in surprise. “This might be the cause of the mischief. Perhaps if I examine it, I will find something that will serve for the recovery of the damsel.”

“By all means,” the king said, and conveyed him to the place where the horse was kept. The people of the city did not realize its magic nature; they thought it a mere statue.

Kamar was overjoyed to discover that the ebony horse was undamaged and in perfect working order. “Surely some enchantment here,” he muttered, accurately enough. “Now I must see the girl.”

So he was brought to the presence of the madwoman. She was twisting her hands and writhing on the floor and tearing her clothes to tatters, as was her wont. She hissed as she saw his approach, for she did not recognize
him in his disguise. Her hands and feet were tied, to prevent her from scratching or kicking.

Then he kneeled down beside her and whispered “I am Kamar. Do what I tell you, my beloved.”

Shams recognized him, and cried out with excess of joy, and swooned. But the king thought that this was just another of her fits.

“I believe she has been touched by a thing of evil,” Kamar said. “The evil is in that statue of a horse, which the ugly old man must have used to bewitch her. But perhaps I can use it to reverse its spell, and free her of the madness. Can you bring it here?”

The king immediately ordered it done, and the ebony horse was set up outside the madwoman's chamber. Kamar had the slaves carry her out to it and he placed her bound hands on its flank. “Now be cured—for an hour,” he whispered.

Then he turned to the king. “I believe I have cured her, for a time. But the evil is very strong, and I am not sure how long my cure will last.”

Then the king came somewhat hesitantly to Shams and addressed her. “Are you cured, fair lady?” he inquired.

“Welcome, sire,” Shams said to him. “You do great honor to visit your handmaid this day.”

The king was delighted. “Strike off her bonds and garb her as befits her station,” he cried.

This was done, and soon Shams al-Nahar was as regal as the princess she was. The king approached her and kissed her on the cheek, and she bowed to him most graciously.

“But we must not presume too much,” Kamar said warningly. “For the genie that possessed her has been merely stunned, and may return.”

Indeed, as he spoke, the woman began to twitch, just slightly in her hands, and her eyes widened. The king, perceiving this, hastily stepped away from her.

“What is the matter, my lord?” she inquired dulcetly enough. But her hands continued to twitch.

“You must complete the cure,” the king said to Kamar. “Abolish the genie completely.”

“This I may be able to do,” Kamar said cautiously. “But it will require more effort.”

“Whatever it takes,” the king said.

So Kamar had them place incense all around the horse, and draw magical figures around it, to contain the malice of the genie when it was exorcised. Then he brought the woman back to the horse. She was now twitching considerably, and spitting at folk, and her eyes rolled recklessly, but he managed to lift her onto the back of the horse, behind the saddle. At that she calmed somewhat, as if cowed by the contact with the demon. Kamar climbed into the saddle. “Now this may become somewhat violent,” he
warned, “for the genie does not want to be driven from the girl and forced back into the horse. It will struggle. But be ready, for once the exorcism is done, we shall have to flee the horse, and then you must burn it, so as to destroy the demon forever.” This made no sense, of course, for genie were indestructible; if the bottles or other objects they were confined in were destroyed, they were freed for further mischief. That was why such bottles were normally thrown into the deep sea, where no one would find them. But the king did not know enough about Persian magic to realize that. He and the others stepped back, concerned that the genie might hurt them if they remained within its reach.

Then Kamar went into a spell of exorcism, and while he chanted it, he touched the two pegs on the horse, carefully. The horse pitched about, as if shaken by an evil spirit, and the madwoman put her arms around Kamar and clutched tight, as if being rent from within. She groaned piteously. The folk watching stepped back farther, alarmed. The smoke of the incense became thick, half hiding them.

“Hold tight,” Kamar said. Then he twisted the right peg hard, and the horse shot straight up into the air so swiftly that no sensible person would have believed it. In moments the palace and city were so far below as to be of no account, and Kamar set the course of the horse for home.

There was great rejoicing when they arrived, and the happiest of all was Kamar's little sister. Indeed, when the two princesses stood together, it was hard to tell which one was lovelier, for they were like two moons on a warm spring night. Each had been threatened by the foul sage, and was relieved to be forever free of him. Kamar married Shams, and her father soon became reconciled, for the two kingdoms adjoined and made common cause against enemies. And King Sabur assured the future by breaking the ebony horse in pieces and burning them. And thus was their happiness, until there came to them the Destroyer of delights and Sunderer of societies. And glory be to Allah, the merciful and mighty, who holds in His hands the dominion of the worlds visible and invisible!

Mou'se looked up. “And that was the tale of ‘The Enchanted Horse,’ “ she concluded.

An'a fixed on something. “In your family—there was one brother and three sisters?”

“True,” Mou'se agreed.

“Of which you were the youngest?”

“Yes. And my brother married the world's most beautiful woman. I envied Se'ed, though she had suffered privations.” She smiled. “I always did like that tale, for some reason.”

The others laughed. “It is a fine tale,” Huo said.

“But I'm sorry about the magic horse,” Miina said.