Princess of Dhagabad, The (9 page)

Left alone in the middle of the yard with a
raging horse, the princess freezes with fear. She cannot even move.
She doesn’t hear the terrible cries of the sultaness and her slave
women, and the wild neighs of the horse high above her. Hooves
flail by her face as the horse rears again, and she sees its
raven-black underbelly rippling with muscles as the massive body
descends to squash her.

Strong arms close around her, enfolding her
in their protective ring. Metal glints in front of her eyes, and a
voice by her ear utters a word, or rather, a combination of sounds,
since it doesn’t seem like any human language she has ever heard.
She can still see the shining black belly and the silvery sparkling
horseshoes flailing above her face. The neigh that started on a
high note sinks and dies in the echoes of the word spoken near her
ear by the unknown but somehow familiar voice.

The silence that follows seems to last
forever. Or maybe it lasts for just a few seconds, allowing the
princess to come to her senses, to feel a slight touch of the quiet
breeze on her cheek, to inhale the faint smell of juniper that
enfolds her in a dizzying cloud. She sees the pale-faced sultaness,
surrounded by slave women, rushing downstairs from the gallery, and
the perfectly calm black stallion quietly letting the badly shaken
Veriduan grooms to get hold of him again. She feels the strain that
encased her body slowly release its grasp, giving way to deadly
fatigue. The unknown arms support her, keeping her from sinking
limply to the stone floor of the yard. She raises her head and sees
Hasan’s face, still calm but not impassive anymore.

“What did you say to the horse, Hasan?” she
whispers.

“I ordered it to calm down, princess.”

“With one word? Why did it listen to
you?”

“This word belongs to the language of the
highest order, princess.”

The princess shivers, remembering the strange
sounds of the unknown word, the crazy horse suddenly standing
still, the quieted breeze. She sees the pale face of the sultaness
who finally reaches them and is saying something to Hasan, but the
princess cannot make out the words anymore. She feels Hasan’s arms
release their supporting grasp, letting her fall semiconscious into
the arms of the sobbing sultaness. She feels Nanny Airagad and the
slave women fussing around her, holding her from all sides, helping
her up and guiding her through the first uncertain steps, as if she
has just learned to walk. And, through all this noise and bustle,
she watches the face of Hasan who, pushed away from her by the
crowd, excluded from all this activity, returns to his usual
indifference.

“Drink it, princess.”

The princess, not yet recovered from her
trance, takes a cup of hot steaming drink from Nanny Fatima. A sip,
filled with aromas of herbs and flowers, fills her body with
pleasant warmth. Somebody wraps a blanket around her, someone’s
hands slip a pillow under her back, and she, leaning back in
relief, looks around.

An unusual excitement fills her chambers. The
slave women crowded around her are talking all at once, somebody is
patting the princess on the head, and she sees the sultaness
sitting in front of her, and the dark shape of Nimeth at her
back.

“What’s the matter with her, Hasan?” the
sultaness asks, worriedly.

“The princess will recover any moment,” Hasan
says softly. “She came under the spell of my word.”

“You put a spell on her with your magic!”

“This word wasn’t magic, your majesty. It was
just a part of my knowledge. I cannot use my magic without the
princess’s orders.”

The princess sits up on the pillows. “Mother,
Hasan saved me! You saw it, didn’t you?”

The sultaness sighs in relief. “You scared me
to death, princess! How could you jump in front of a wild horse
like that!”

“It is not the princess’s fault, your
majesty,” Nimeth says. “It was just an accident.”

“It was all my fault!” Airagad moans. “Why
did I have to drag the princess out into the yard!”

“It is nobody’s fault,” Nimeth says
peacefully. “Luckily, Hasan was near.”

“Now you can see that Hasan is not dangerous,
can’t you, mother?” the princess demands. “He saved me even though
I never ordered him to!”

The sultaness slowly raises her eyes to look
at the djinn.

“I must apologize, Hasan,” she says
reluctantly. “I never believed you wished the princess well.”

“The only purpose of my existence is to serve
the princess,” he says quietly.

Do you really believe the words you just
said? Do you really know what is, or ever was, the purpose of your
existence? Are you aware of the power that made you rush to her
rescue, when she, frozen with fright, didn’t even remember that you
existed? Or of the power that allowed you to speak of your own will
the word of the language of the highest order, mastered only by the
most learned mages? Perhaps you heard her silent plea that she was
unable to say aloud. Or perhaps the purpose of your existence
really is to serve your mortal mistress, to whom you belong
entirely by the will of the unknown powers that rule your
destiny?

You watch how she, still shivering with the
terror she lived through, is slowly regaining her senses after the
word you threw by her ear, just as the black stallion is now
regaining his senses in the hands of the Veriduan grooms, and as
the wind you quieted is now slowly resuming its careful gusts. And
you think of how little you know about your destiny and about the
fate of the djinns, belonging entirely to their containers and thus
to any mortal who, one way or another, came to possess them.

Chapter 5. The Essence of a Stone

You never thought much about the fate of the
djinns. Starting out on your way to absolute power you never
believed that your knowledge about the world could have a limit,
that your marvelous existence among books, talks with wise people,
mysteries gradually opening to your widening vision, would suddenly
come to an end. The old formula that everyone had been taught since
childhood kept its place somewhere in your mind, constantly
reminding you, in an inner voice resembling the voice of your
childhood teacher, that the world is endless and unknowable, that
absolute knowledge is unattainable, and that absolute power belongs
only to the gods. Even the smoldering scroll that caught your eye
in a dusty corner of the Dimeshqian library didn’t alert you—at
least not at first.

Trying with difficulty to make out on the
age-darkened parchment the faded hieroglyphs of the dead language
Agrit, you were reading with amazement an ancient warning to
someone who wished to learn everything about the world. The scroll
said that such a man was doomed to eternal suffering. You learned
that the gods—the same gods that exist in great numbers for some
people and are united into the one protector from heaven for
others; the gods that symbolize for people everything
incomprehensible and unknown and whose existence somehow explains
for people their very inability to know and comprehend certain
things—these gods never forgive one who achieves absolute power,
being unrelenting to those trying to discover their secrets.

Not believing a single word of the ancient
scroll, at the same time you had to acknowledge its inner logic. If
the gods, or some forces symbolizing them, really existed, having
no power to prevent a man from learning, they should be able to
appoint a punishment for obtaining absolute knowledge, a punishment
so terrible that no one would ever wish to discover their highest
secrets.

Straightening out the folds of the ancient
parchment, you eagerly consumed the information about a man close
to absolute power. The spare phrases told about the already
familiar satisfaction of learning, of the infinite mysteries and
the joy of discovering them…and the burden of wisdom, lying on
one’s shoulders heavier than a mountain. The man who many centuries
ago wrote those intricate hieroglyphs on the piece of parchment
achieved great wisdom but lost his peace and, feeling that his end
was near, left a warning to those who could insanely wish to follow
the same path…

You were reading the ancient lines with
wonder and mistrust. You, who had just overcome time itself, you,
who were rapidly walking along a path that seemed in your euphoria
to be endless and victorious, you, who along with hard work felt
great joy in every step along this path—you simply couldn’t believe
that the author of the scroll, who obviously was ahead of you on
the same path, could possibly feel such pain. Maybe, you thought,
the unknown sage had chosen the wrong path; for no pain, no burden
of knowledge, no fear of the dark mysteries could possibly overcome
the joyous thrill of the awareness that the world around you was
becoming more and more dimensional, further and further opening to
your vision its distant secret corners…

The Agritian scroll stopped in mid-sentence.
You never learned the fate of this man and whether he was able to
reach absolute knowledge. Later you returned to the parchment again
and again, and even translated it into another language, one of
those more familiar to you, before the scroll completely
deteriorated. From this scroll you learned for the first time the
strange word—djinn…

The jasmine smell, floating in waves from
behind the boulder covered with plants, mixes with the tinkling of
running water, with the rustling of the giant magnolia leaves, and
with the fleeting warmth of the patches of sunlight moving over her
face. The princess’s heart races with joy at the thought of how
they would soon walk around the boulder to find themselves in her
favorite glade. She glances at Hasan walking beside her, looking
forward to sharing one of her most precious secrets with him, a
secret nobody in the palace understands but which, she is somehow
sure, the djinn will understand very well. Maybe she would even
have time to catch on his face one of those fleeting expressions
that break from time to time his impassiveness. She even dreams
that today will be the day when the djinn will smile at her and not
at his inner thoughts—smile, meeting her eyes, and let her steal a
single look through the defenses of the iron shutters.