The Stone Lions (27 page)

Ara chewed on her fingernail. “We need to go
to the harem, but first we need to see Tahirah. She’s stronger in
magic then he is. We’ll be safe there. And we still need to learn
the final symmetry.”

“But how do we get in to her? He stands at
the door.”

Ara thought that over, then grinned. “The
same way Suleiman did in eagle form, except we climb.”

A short time later, Layla teetered on her
cousin’s shoulder, stretching for the window ledge of Tahirah’s
sleeping rooms. “Hurry up,” Ara hissed. “You’re heavy.”

“I can touch the sill, but I’m not high
enough to pull myself in,” Layla whispered back, struggling.

Ara’s face was bright red from exertion. “Can
you see Tahirah?”

Layla grunted, “I’m not tall enough, and I
don’t hear her.”

Suleiman looked at the two girls and puzzled
over their difficulty. “Layla, can you bend over a bit?” She ducked
her head and hunched her shoulders. Suleiman delicately leapt onto
Ara, lightly touched Layla shoulders as he bounded into the window.
“That was easy.” Ignoring the girls’ comments about his unexpected
weight, he peered down from the windowsill. “I forgot, goats can
scale anything. I’ll find Tahirah and return soon.”

Layla jumped down, and Ara collapsed in a
heap. “Ugh, you are heavier than I thought.” They dusted themselves
off and clung nervously to the dark corners of the wall.

“Ara, Layla,” came a whispered call. “I’m
sending a long piece of fabric down. Wait while I tie it to a
column.” Layla’s face was pinched and white, sure that the wazir
would stride around the corner.

Tahirah leaned out, scanning the area. She
held her hand to her lips for them to be silent. Then she threw
down a length of cloth that she had knotted and twisted. “Here,
climb up, but be quiet. The wazir and his men are on the south side
of the building.”

Soon both girls were seated on the floor of
Tahirah’s apartments. Ara checked her hands for scrapes and
scratches. Layla sat petting the goat while Tahirah stood by the
window searching the landscape, her usually calm demeanor
strained.

“The wazir dare not force his way into my
quarters, but he made quite a fuss banging at the door. All the
servants were asked if they had seen the two of you. Fortunately,
none of them had. We must complete our lesson immediately and get
you two back safe in the harem.”

Ara leapt up, waving the map. “But Tahirah,
he’s setting a trap for Father. They’re going to ambush him. At
dawn, they said.”

Tahirah took the ripped, crumpled paper and
began examining it. “We heard them,” Ara went on, “when we were
hiding in the stables. They’re planning to capture him.”

“It’s a map of the country south of here,
near Lindejarras. Here is the seal of the Castile king.” Tahirah’s
finger traveled down the paper. “There it is, ‘capture the Alhambra
sultan at…’ then it is ripped.

“It was a trap all along.” She turned it
over. “It does not mention the wazir—at least, the piece we have
here doesn’t.” She sighed and her hands collapsed in her lap. “Too
many urgencies in one day. Well, first things first. We must
complete the last lesson.”

Ara turned white. “But my father, they’ll
take him as ransom, won’t they?”

Tahirah shook her head, “No, not now. With
this paper as proof, I will go to the commander of the guard. We’ll
find the sultan tonight, before this trap is sprung. And without
alerting the wazir.”

Layla grabbed her hand. “But this evening is
the last span of time we have to break the spell.”

Tahirah closed her eyes and breathed deeply,
her lips moving in a quick appeal to Allah. Returning to the
present, she said in a voice that bordered on prayer, “Except to
save the sultan, I would not leave you two alone tonight. But know
I will return to you before Isha’s prayer, if at all possible.”

Ara sat down suddenly. “What about Suleiman?
Where can he stay?” She frowned at her horned friend. “I don’t know
what Zoriah and Su’ah would say.”

Layla released Tahirah’s hand and hid her
worry beneath a hesitant smile. “Actually, you know exactly what
they’d say.”

Looking at the goat, Tahirah shook her head.
“Let us complete the lesson, and then we will worry about how to
hide, um, Suleiman. That is the least of our worries right now.
Thank Allah, the beneficent, the tiles are here, just where we left
them this morning. The last symmetry example.” She carefully sorted
the tiles into a select pile of ten. “Here, I think this will do.
Glide with a vertical mirror,” she said, laying them across the
floor. “The pattern is as follows—”

“No, wait, I see it,” Ara jumped in. “May I
describe it?”

The mathemagician smiled her slow smile. “Of
course, child, go ahead.”

“Well, it starts with a triangle that already
has flipped over a vertical line.” Ara looked at Tahirah, who
nodded encouragement. “And then, well, it glides to a new position
and flips over a horizontal line.”

Suleiman butted her gently with his horn.
“That’s my girl. Glide, flip.” He bobbed his head emphatically.

Layla lay on her stomach to more closely
observe the pattern. “But it also rotates. It’s like the double
reflection in that if you look at it upside down it looks the
same.” She looked up, her eyes bright with confidence.

Everyone turned to the dainty dark-eyed girl.
Suleiman blinked. Tahirah shook her head in amazement. “The girl
who thought she couldn’t do mathematics. Layla, that is very clever
of you. Yes, it could be seen as rotating. In fact that is one of
the differences between the glide reflection symmetry and this one.
Even though there is a rotation, the way we define the movement of
this symmetry is in the glide and flip movements.

“The other difference is that this pattern
always
starts with a symmetrical object,
one that reflects. That object then glides and flips again. The
glide reflection always starts with an
asymmetric
object.”

Bang! bang! The noise echoed all the way from
the front of the palace, through the closed doors and into
Tahirah’s room. Gazes meeting, the girls started to rise.

“You must leave,” Tahirah whispered before
calling, “Yes, who is it?”

The servant’s voice sounded frightened. “It’s
the wazir again. He demands to see you,
Sitti
. What should we do? He’s banging on the front
door, and soldiers are with him.”

Ara and Layla blanched and the goat backed up
toward the window. Tahirah’s lips were white, but she kept her
voice even to her servant while anxiously pushing the children and
Suleiman to the window. “Send a runner to search out the sultan’s
other advisors, and then please invite the wazir in. Inform him
that I will be out as soon as I am presentable.”

Ara grabbed Tahirah’s hand. “We heard the
wazir talking. We think the last broken symmetry may be in the
Court of the Lions.”

Bam! Bam! The noise came again.

Tahirah pulled away. “Right now, you need to
be safe. Get to the harem as soon as possible. It’s the only place
he can’t go.”

“But what about the Court of the Lions? The
last symmetry?”

Tahirah’s body was turned toward her door as
if expecting it to open. “Look in the harem. Possibly the symmetry
is there. If not…” She left it unsaid. The Alhambra would fall.

“I’ll contact you as soon as I return.
Hurry,” Tahirah pressed. “Climb down as quickly and quietly as you
can. The wazir has men checking each door. I’ll distract him as
long as I can. Here.” She handed Ara a shapeless gray hijab. “Take
this. It belongs to one of my handmaidens. Perhaps one of you can
disguise yourself in it.

“Suleiman, you’re going to have to jump. As
soon as you’re safely away, I’ll go to the door to meet the
wazir.”

Ara climbed down first, with Layla right
behind. Suleiman, after a slight pause, closed his eyes and
launched himself from the window ledge, landing with an “ouff” on
the ground. Ara bent over Suleiman, reassuring herself that he was
not hurt before the trio sprinted for the gardens.

All three of them were out of breath. They
stopped for a rest beside a small stream deep in the Alhambra. In
the low light of dusk, the gracefully spreading trees looked
ominous—fingers and limbs reaching out. The one-eyed stare of the
moon, rising up from the horizon, glared at them as if in reproach.
Even the magical sound of the nightingales felt more akin to a
dirge than a ballad.

Suleiman, bruised from his adventures, bent
stiffly to lap water from the stream before collapsing next to Ara.
She listened to him mutter over and over to himself, “But what
lesson could I learn as a goat?”

She wrapped her arms about her chest to ward
off the chill. A pattern on the low wall near the stream had caught
her eye as she stumbled over a hedge. A glide with a vertical
mirror, but not a broken one.

Layla, shivering with fear and cold, tugged
Tahirah’s hijab up around her shoulders. “We’ve got to get into the
harem.”

Ara rubbed her nose in frustration and
exhaustion. “Yes, but how? We can’t just dance in with a goat! If
we reach the entrance, we could get in but for Suleiman…” She
looked at her cousin contemplatively, and then back at Suleiman.
Amusement danced across her face.

Layla looked at her in growing alarm.
“Whatever you’re thinking, I’m against it.”

“Suleiman, can you stand on your hind
legs?”

He barely looked up from his exhausted
sprawl. “Yes, most goats can. That’s how they strip leaves off
trees for food.”

“Could you walk on your hind legs by
yourself?”

Something about her voice caught his
attention. “Why do you ask?” He tracked her glance to the crumpled
hijab. Then he rose to all four feet, quivering. “I won’t! That’s,
well—that’s wrong!”

“You have to! We will hold you up, won’t we,
Layla?”

Layla stared at her cousin in both admiration
and horror. “Ara, if we are caught—”

“If we get caught by the wazir, we are truly
dead,” she said. “We might be able to get into the harem this way.
There’s no way we can walk in with a goat!”

Chapter 39

Tahirah drew herself together. Her power was
contained and focused. Control was the key here, control and
mastery of herself. She needed to buy time for the girls to escape,
and yet it was imperative that she warn the sultan before he was
ambushed. She wrapped herself in her white cloak, opened the door
and walked down the staircase to the room below. The wazir was
there, glaring at her servants. Six of the Alhambra guards were
behind him. “Seize her,” he said. “She is a witch and a traitor.
She hides unnatural things in her room. Even the sultan’s daughter
is under her spells.”

Tahirah sighed as she might with a
particularly difficult child. “This is unnecessary, al-Rahmid. You
overstep yourself. I am under the sultan’s protection. No one, not
even you, can defy that.” She smiled at the guards, who hesitated
to approach a woman and one so well respected at that. “Please, go
forth and search. There is nothing to find. And if two of you would
stay near—” She searched for the right words. “al-Rahmid is not
himself.”

He turned red. “Witch, you will await the
sultan’s return in the dungeons.”

She raised her palm toward the approaching
guards and quietly sat down. Her voice lowered, magic rolling out
to resonate with their sense of honor. “There is no need for you to
accost me, a woman not of your family.” She looked at each of them
in turn. “As I am accused of something that cannot be proved, I
would not put you in jeopardy of our laws. I will not try to escape
or run. Here I am, and I will remain here until the Commander of
the Army comes. He has been summoned and will be here forthwith. If
you wish to wait with me, I will have tea ordered.” She gave them
an expectant look before sending a servant scurrying off for tea.
The guards shifted nervously and glanced back at the wazir.