Nine White Horses (10 page)

And yet, Khalid reflected as despair rose to darken his
eyes, rumor had joined her in congress with her savior. Kehailan had been a
mighty warrior of the bedchamber, but he had been and remained the most
fastidious of stallions. He would not have sullied his white body with a tusked
and taloned horror.

Close by the sultan stood a figure which Khalid had taken
for a slave: a handmaiden, perhaps, of no more than mortal stature, demurely
and modestly veiled. Now that Khalid paused to examine her, she was not so ill
to look on. Her garments were of surpassing richness, even in this realm of
supernal wealth. Her jewels were dazzling in their profusion. Yet they paled
before the splendor of her eyes. The hand that held her veil before her face
was slender and graceful and white as milk. One midnight curl had escaped to
kiss the satin of her forehead, where between her brows’ black arches burned a
ruby like an eye of fire.

Khalid’s manhood rose to sing her praises. His heart sang
the descant.
It is she. It must be she!

Before his mind could rouse to counsel prudence, Khalid had
flung himself at the sultan’s feet.

The clamor of the court was stilled. Demon eyes burned wide;
demon talons stretched. The Grand Wazir of the Jinn swept out a sword as long
as a man, with an edge of adamant.

“In the Name of Allah!” gasped Khalid. “Sultan of Sultans,
Prince of the Princes of the Air, have mercy upon my humanity!”

There was a mighty silence. Khalid could not still his trembling.
Great as his terror had been, it was nothing to what racked him now.

The sultan spoke. His voice was as deep as thunder in the
mountains of the moon. “In the Name of Allah,” he said, “and of Muhammad His
Prophet, upon whom be prayer and peace. What madness brings you here, O mortal
man, where no mortal may trespass and live?”

“A madness, O sultan,” Khalid replied, “of love and loyalty.”
Khalid’s back tightened, awaiting the rending of talons.

“Love?” The sultan seemed bemused. “What knows your kind of
love?”

“You know it also?” Khalid bit back too late his burst of
insolence. No blade struck off his head; he mustered courage to continue. “O
sultan, love is the creation of Allah; its expression is His creation through
mankind. I have a master whom I love, who is more than a brother to me. He has
a father whom I love, who is more than a father to me. For their sakes I come
to you, O lord of lords of the line of Iblis.”

“Men do not lie within my dominion,” said the sultan.

Khalid stole a glance under his turban. The demon king was inscrutable
in his hideousness. “O sultan, hear my tale, and judge whether your mightiness
may deign to end it.”

“I hear,” said the sultan.

Khalid nearly swooned, so mighty was his relief, so immeasurable
his fear. He bent all his will to the telling of the tale, omitting only the
speculation of the court, that Kehailan had had more than his heart’s desire in
recompense for his banishment of the ifrit.

When he ended, he was weeping; and many of the court wept
with him, moved to deepest compassion by his tale of the wazir’s decline.
Through that storm of wailing and sobbing, he barely heard the voice that spoke
above him. It was not the sultan’s. It was musk and honey; it was as beautiful
as the princess herself. “Rise, O most valiant of servants. Let us look upon
your face. “

Khalid could not do other than obey. He dared not raise his eyes.
Her feet, he perceived, were of enchanting smallness.

“A fair face,” said the princess, “and an honest face, and a
face that cannot choose between the lily and the rose. Surely, O my father, he
should live, if only to complete his choosing.”

“He is much too lovely to die.” It was a demons’ chorus,
woman-shrill. The sounds of grief had faded. They were all about him,
marveling, abandoning sorrow in the beauty of his face. Hands stroked him; some
were soft as sleep, and some were wicked with claws. They searched out his
every secret. They knew nothing of sacred shame.

“Roses!” they cried in high delight. “Roses win the victory!”

Khalid would happily have died. But the mercy of Allah is imponderable.
He lived, and suffered, and could not even swoon.

The princess of the afarit took his burning face in hands as
light and cool as wind. Only she could have done such a thing, and done it
without sacrifice of modesty. He had to look at her; he could not help himself.
Her beauty weakened his knees. Her smile all but slew him.

“O my father,” she said, “such bravery demands its tribute.
For love and loyalty he dared even your wrath that shakes the sky. Surely you
will condescend to give him what he seeks?”

“The spell is not mine to break,” said the sultan.

“But,” she said, “it is mine, and it is his upon whom I laid
it. Together we may end it. If, O my father, you grant me leave to go to him.”

The Grand Wazir of the Jinn whirled his great sword about
his head. “Outrage!” he roared. “Conspiracy! She seeks a mortal lover. She
spurns our mighty prince.”

The princess knelt in supplication at her father’s feet. “O
lord of air and fire, your will has ever been my own. Yet in this I cry you
mercy. I spoke no word against this marriage, for that I dared not; and when I
was abducted by Muammar your enemy, I learned the name of fate, and I saw a new
face of love. He was beautiful, my savior, but of flaws he had sufficient; he
did not sate me with perfection. I took him, O my father. I chose him for my
husband.”

The jinn drew together, snarling in their throats. Afarit
closed in about them.

“Peace!” cried the princess, flinging wide her arms. “Hear
me out, I beg of you. I am a halfling, of mortal woman born. My arts are
potent, but they are not the arts of the afarit. I am a woman and a sorceress;
my substance is mortal substance, partaking but little of the subtlety of air.
Am I a fit mate for the prince of the spirits of the earth? His blood is
unimpeachable in its purity. His form is a terrible beauty. His virility is a
legend among the insatiable jinn. How may I hope to be worthy of him?”

“No mortal man is worthy of you,” said the sultan. “And a
mortal man whose heart’s desire resides in the mounting of mares—”

“He chose the shape, O my father, than which there is no
fairer. Is not the horse blessed of Allah? Did not Suleiman, upon whom be
prayer and peace, forget to pray to Allah, so rapt was he in contemplation of
his horses? Do not the Bedawi of the desert grant their greatest joy to three
things: the birth of a boy, the emergence of a poet among them, and the foaling
of a mare? Did not the Prophet himself, upon whom be prayer and peace, say unto
his mares, ‘Blessed be ye, O daughters of the wind’? What shame therefore need
stain my lover’s name, that he dwells for a space in the body of a stallion?
The spell was a testing, and a teaching, and a waking of his wisdom. If truly
he has learned to be wise, he will stand again upon the feet of a man.”

“And if he does not?” The sultan’s voice was terrible to
hear. “If you go to him, you cannot return. So was it written in the hour of
your birth. Will you accept the full burden of mortality, if your chosen mate
remains a brute beast?”

“Whatever shape he bears,” the princess said, “I love him.”

“And we?” thundered the Grand Wazir of the Jinn. “Are we to
endure this mockery?”

Khalid knew the scent of war as it smolders into flame. “O
sultan!” he called out with reckless daring. “O lords of the jinn. O pearl of
beauty. Is there no recourse? Is there no princess of the afarit, save this one
alone? Surely, had she a sister of the pure blood, that sister would rejoice to
be united with so splendid a husband as the Prince of the Jinn.”

The mamluk stood quivering in an awful silence. If in his ignorance
he had erred, then he had erred unpardonably.

“I have,” said the sultan, “nine hundred daughters.” He stroked
his tusks, pondering.

Only the Princess Subhiyah ventured to disturb his reflection.
“Aisha, O my father, is as beautiful as the moon. She wept when I was chosen
for the prince; she loves the very rumor of him. She would be transported with
joy, were you to summon her now and confirm her betrothal. And,” said the
princess, “her blood is the purest blood of the children of Iblis. She is
altogether worthy of so puissant a prince.”

The jinn had begun to be mollified: the more so when the
maiden herself was brought, and she was wondrous fair. Her wings were silk; her
skin was cream; her talons were finest ivory.

But the sultan did not speak the word that would set the
halfling princess free. He looked at her, and from those terrible eyes, great
tears began to fall.

She wept with him, but she said, “O my father, it is
written. Will you deny the will of Allah?”

“Allahu akbar,”
said the sultan. “He is great; He is ever merciful. I am the slave of His
slaves.” He rose, and he was as tall as the sky. His wings veiled the night. “Go,”
he commanded in the roar of the thunder. “Go in His Name.”

His arms swept up. His hands smote together; lightnings
leaped into the heavens. In a roaring of wings, the afarit rose up.

Khalid lay on the cold earth, with the dawn swelling grey
about him. Painfully he stood. The palace was empty and broken, its walls
vanished with the moon. His own black mare stood by him, and with her a fine
blood bay, and on its back a figure wrapped in veils.

Khalid mounted without a word, with scarcely a glance. He
dared none, or he would break. The bay led the black toward the walls of Cairo.

o0o

The wazir was sinking into the stillness of death. Kehailan
looked fain to die with him, lying prostrate by his bed, given up to grief.

At the coming of the Princess Subhiyah he scarcely stirred.
His sisters bad come and gone; this, surely, was another of them, veiled before
the doctors and the mullahs. He took notice only of her silence, which was a
blessing after so many choruses of lamentation.

She bent over him and laid her hand upon his brow. She gave
him no greeting. Her scent was—almost—intoxicating. “Would you be a man again?”
she asked of him.

He surged up in startlement. He knew that voice. But what he
knew, he could not remember.

“Follow me,” she said.

He heard, and he obeyed.

o0o

In his garden Khalid waited, all white and worn, as if he
had fought a bitter battle and won, as yet, no victory. The Pearl of the East
stood beside him, with her foal dancing about her, and a splendor on her that
comes only to a mare who is ripe for her stallion’s taking.

Kehailan gathered to leap upon her, but a light small hand held
him fast. “Would you be a man?” the stranger asked again.

He turned his head. Even her eyes were hidden in veils. She was
a voice and a perfume, and a hand upon his neck.

“You must choose,” said Khalid. “The mare or the woman. Your
choice is your fate. You have only the one; once it is made, you cannot change
it.”

That was the voice of his conscience, soft and level and implacable.
Kehailan shivered; snorted, stamped, tossed his head.

Khalid said nothing. The veiled woman waited in silence.

The mare called softly. She was his love and his delight,
his queen, the mother of his son. She yearned to bear him another.

The hand left his neck. He was free. The mare beckoned with
all her body.

A flicker of movement caught his eye. He glanced at it, and
held. The veils lay fallen in the grass. The moon had risen in the clear
daylight and overcome it. He knew her, the richness of her, slender where she
must be slender, deep-curved where beauty willed it, and all her secrets open
at last to his memory.

She smiled, shy and bold together. “Yes,” she said, “O my
heart’s delight. It is I. What heretofore I could not give, I have won for you,
if still you wish to take it.”

His nostrils flared. The sight of her would wake desire in a
stone.

Khalid had hidden his face from it. But he said, “Your
father, my lord and my brother. Remember.”

Kehailan bucked, protesting. The Pearl of the East nipped
his flank. Her eyes were pools to drown in. Her body was moonlit madness. She
offered fire and peace, simplicity, the forgetfulness of the beast.

His body knew what it would have. It was a stallion. It took
no delight in human flesh.

The woman stroked his neck. Her hands were silken pleasure.
Her eyes were a gazelle’s; her lips were honeyed roses; her breasts were
goblets brimful of sweetness.

His hooves would batter her flower-softness; his great
stallion maleness would rend her human frailty. He turned from her to the one
who could endure the full and thunderous force of his passion.

She clasped her arms about his neck. Her limbs were serpent-supple.
Her voice whispered in his ear, words of love, tantalizing, promising all
Paradise. “A man,” she said to him. “Be a man, O beautiful, my love and my
lord.”

He stumbled back. He could not. He was bound in this shape;
he could not will to be free of it.

“For me,” said the Princess of the Afarit. “For your father
whom you love. For your brother who dared death and worse than death to win
this choice for you. Be a man.”

He lunged toward the Pearl of the East; he wheeled away.
Khalid huddled on the grass. The lady stood shining in the morning. She held
out her arms.

A shudder racked him. In one eye shone the mare; in the
other, the woman. They blurred and drifted and melded together. They were all
one image of sweetest madness. Man, stallion, both and neither, he flung
himself upon them. He mounted a white mare. He mounted a white woman. He paused
and poised and knew, in that instant of choiceless choosing, that one alone
would walk the long road back with him from the garden of desire. And if it
were the mare, Kehailan the man would die with all his dreads and doubts and
dullnesses. But if it were the woman…