Princess of Dhagabad, The (5 page)

“Everything is ready for the ceremony
tomorrow, your majesty.”

Nimeth noiselessly appears by the door in the
royal quarters. Her dark dress and skin are almost invisible
against the dark outline of the doorway, and only the silver around
her neck and at the hem of her skirt shimmers in the light of the
lanterns.

“I am so worried about the princess, Nimeth,”
the sultaness says, impatiently standing up. Her long nightdress
clings to her rounding figure; loose hair, slightly touched by
early gray, falls down to her waist. “She is almost twelve, and she
still plays mostly by herself. And her toys are so strange—flowers
and rocks…”

“Most parents would be proud of such a
well-learned daughter, your majesty.”

“I am very proud of her, Nimeth.” The
sultaness sits down again.

Nimeth’s gaze lights up with affection as she
looks at her mistress and friend, at her fresh rosy cheeks, at the
black curls with scarcely shimmering silver strands, at the
roundness of her figure, more revealed than hidden by her light
nightdress.

“She rarely laughs, Nimeth,” the sultaness
continues. “And she worries about others so much! Remember how she
cried at the bazaar when she thought the cloth merchant Mustafa
broke the law?”

“The princess is a rare creature, your
majesty. Do you know the palace rumors that she is related to the
peri?”

“I’ve heard it said, Nimeth. She is so thin,
so fragile. And her white skin makes her look almost transparent. I
know she will grow up to be a rare beauty, Nimeth! Blue eyes and
black hair is such an unusual combination. Only it won’t be easy
for her, she is so reserved.”

“She often plays with Alamid, the daughter of
the master of ceremonies.”

“Not so often, the nannies tell me. Alamid is
a completely different girl. Oh, I’m so worried for the princess,
Nimeth. Why does the sultan think she can be treated like a boy?
Why does she have to be raised in such freedom? All those history
lessons, lonely walks in the garden, equal conversations with men
in the palace. I’m told the sultan even plans to teach her horse
riding! I think it is completely unnatural.” The sultaness drops
her hands in frustration.

“You know how hard the sultan takes the fact
that he cannot have a son, your majesty.” Nimeth’s voice wavers and
dies, leaving the room in stiff silence.

They both remember all too well how, a long
time ago, the sultaness nearly lost her life giving birth to a
stillborn baby boy. How, a year later, she finally bore a son who
died in two days, leaving her barren and her husband, the sultan,
completely heartbroken. The princess, their firstborn, was three at
the time, and remembers nothing of these futile attempts to obtain
a brother for her and a male heir to the throne of Dhagabad. Ever
since, the sultan has insisted on giving the princess almost as
much freedom and exactly as much education as he would give a crown
prince, thus unofficially naming her the heiress to the throne.
Perhaps things could have been different if one of the sultan’s
concubines had borne him a son. Perhaps, he could even forsake the
law and make the lucky concubine his new sultaness. But all his
sons by his concubines were born dead, leaving him surrounded with
numerous daughters, making him lose his hopes, making him bitterly
disappointed in his own abilities as a man.

“I almost wish somebody else would give him a
son, Nimeth,” the sultaness says softly. “The princess is too
fragile for such responsibility.”

“She is a very rare creature, your majesty,”
Nimeth says again. “She will be perfect for the part. You’ll see.
After all, it is not she but her husband who will rule. And even if
it were entirely up to her, she would not be the first woman ruler
in this palace.”

“You mean…the sultan’s mother?”

“Yes. How do you think she became the ruling
sultaness? Her father did not have any sons. It is obviously a
curse on their whole dynasty. Why do you think she wished for the
princess to inherit her favorite bottle? Why didn’t she leave it to
the sultan’s heir in general, for instance?”

“There was no heir at the time.”

“And nothing has changed since then. I am
wondering if she had reasons to think there never would be a son.
She was, after all, said to be a witch.”

“And this is precisely why I worry about the
princess so much, Nimeth! Tomorrow she will open this strange
bottle. There could be
anything
hidden inside! I never
trusted the sultan’s mother. Have you ever heard what people in the
palace say?”

“Don’t believe the gossips, your
majesty.”

“I don’t know what to believe, Nimeth. I know
the sultan is putting extra guards in the ceremonial hall. And I
heard the slave women whisper among themselves that there is a
curse on the bottle. As if the guards could do anything against a
curse!”

“Surely you don’t think a grandmother would
place a curse on her own granddaughter, your majesty?”

“I simply don’t know, Nimeth. I even heard
the rumors that the old sultaness stole the princess’s soul when
she was born, and concealed the stolen soul in the bottle. And you
know, Nimeth—when I see how the princess never laughs and always
plays alone, I begin to believe it.”

“Nonsense, your majesty. Why would you care
about silly rumors?”

“In any case, if after opening the bottle the
princess starts to laugh more often, I will be ready to believe
that she simply got her soul back.”

“But why would the old sultaness want to
steal the princess’s soul?”

“You remember what a horrible woman she was,
Nimeth! Sometimes it looked as if she simply enjoyed harming
people. And at other times she seemed to regret it. Perhaps she
could not resist the pleasure of harming even her little
granddaughter but, feeling guilty about it, was decent enough to
leave behind the means of correcting the damage? Or even worse,
what if the bottle hides the spirit of the old woman herself? What
if this spirit will possess the princess as soon as she removes the
cork?”

“The only thing I can say, your majesty, is
that I am not at all surprised that the princess has such a wild
imagination. I know precisely where she got it from!”

“It is so hard to have children and keep your
sanity, Nimeth!”

“It will be all right, your majesty. Try to
get some sleep.”

The princess often has the same dream. And
tonight, on the eve of her twelfth birthday, the dream seems to be
more real than before. She is walking in a desert. Wavy dunes run
beyond the horizon, and the low sun is concealed by a hot crimson
haze; but her feet do not sink into the sand, and the heat cannot
touch her. She hears the tinkling of water and the singing of
birds; she smells sweet aromas, as if she is walking not in a
desert but in a beautiful garden.

She knows she has to meet someone here, but
as she is looking around searchingly, she can see only the dunes;
there is no one there. And then she sees the temple. Dark ancient
stones compose its walls. Giant domes run in cascades toward a row
of columns surrounding the temple. A chilling cold comes from
inside the semi-darkness of the columnar gallery.

She has to go there. She has to enter the
temple, and she walks toward it along the invisible path. She comes
closer and closer. She can see the entrance, and she knows that
inside the temple there is something she needs, something she
cannot live without. She can see giant rough steps covered with
small cracks, but she is not able to set foot on them… And she
wakes up in frustrated despair, not knowing what is hidden inside
the temple, but realizing that she must enter it at any cost.

Chapter 3. Juniper Smoke

The great ceremonial hall comprises in large
part the central palace and has enough windows to be illuminated
entirely by natural light. But today, on the princess’s twelfth
birthday, the hall is filled with so many lanterns and torches that
their light seems to brighten up the day itself—as if another sun
had risen in the upper city, lighting up the garden and the palace
plaza with special holiday glow.

The ceremony is scheduled to begin at noon,
but the main doors to the hall were opened at ten to accommodate
the courtiers and noblemen of Dhagabad, dressed in their best
holiday finery. A row of low tables with pillows extends along the
periphery of the hall, prepared for the hundreds of guests invited
to the birthday feast. At the end of the hall the royal canopy,
shining with golden embroidery, awaits the sultan whenever he
chooses to make his appearance. The arrangement leaves the center
of the hall empty for everyone to stand around and chat, filling
the air with the low buzz of a beehive.

Servants are scurrying around with dishes of
fruit and
sankajat
, and trays of sour rye cakes and sweets,
offering them to the guests. Musicians in the corner are playing a
slow tune and seven Ghullian dancing girls move sensuously around
the room, twisting and bending to the rhythm of an exotic dance.
Their dark smooth bodies, glistening with aromatic rubbing oils,
are barely covered, raising in the guests desires of a different
order than the delicious aromas wafting in from the kitchens.

Only one thing disturbs the celebratory
mood—the presence of fully armed guards standing motionless around
a marble table at the center of the hall. The courtiers and other
guests circling around the room subconsciously keep their distance.
It is the table, the guards, and the mysterious ceremony itself
that occupies their minds and conversations, leaving no room for
usual subjects like the feast, the dancing girls, or the princess’s
beauty.

Noon draws near, and the rumors and gossip
that started here early in the morning are inevitably approaching
their highest pitch. The most fearful ones are starting to doubt
whether they should be present at all. Is it really so important to
know what is hidden inside the cursed bottle? Would the sultan
really notice their absence at the royal celebration? After all,
they
could
lock themselves in the safety of their quarters
and wait for an account of the events! But so far nobody is
leaving.

The princess is standing in front of the
mirror in her quarters, trembling with joy at the sight of her new
white outfit. The blouse and pants made by the skillful Zulbagad
from Mustafa’s cloth shine with silver embroidery. The slave women
are fixing the white cloudlike shawl in her black hair wrapped in
braids around her head, with a sparkling diamond hairpin. The
princess watches the misty waves of cloth flow down to her feet,
enhancing the transparent fragility of her small figure. She
imagines herself to be a fairy of the magic tales, a peri, capable
of gliding on the smooth surface of a mountain lake as if it were
solid ground.

She tries to imagine what is now happening in
the ceremonial hall. Before opening her gifts and sharing her
birthday feast, she is finally, after so many years of waiting,
going to open her mysterious bottle. She doesn’t share in the
fearful mood filling the great hall; she doesn’t care about why her
father, the sultan, has put armed guards at the center of her
celebration. For years she wondered what was hidden inside the
bottle, and today she doesn’t want to think of her guesses anymore.
Today she will cast them all aside and see the contents of the
bottle with her own eyes.
What if it holds something ordinary
and boring? she thinks. What if the bottle is empty? What
if…?
No, if any of those were the case, why would her
grandmother make such a point of keeping the bottle closed? No, she
knows there is something very exciting inside the bottle, and today
she is finally going to learn what it is! She shivers with
anticipation, pulling her shawl around her, overwhelmed by anxiety
matching the mood that now rules the great ceremonial hall.

In the hall, the bright sound of fanfares
breaks the unbearable tension. The doors at the end of the hall
swing open to reveal a long corridor. Two figures approach from its
very far end, clad in shining holiday robes: the sultan and the
sultaness of Dhagabad. The sultan—tall, with his bushy black beard
sticking out from his dark face, a curved saber at his belt, and a
giant ruby shining in the folds of his turban—is terrifying like a
proper warrior and ruler. And the sultaness—full-figured and
majestic in her white-and-gold robes, with a diadem of pearls and
rubies crowning her shawl-covered hair—is beautiful like a houri
from heaven, like a proper queen and mother.