The Stone Lions (5 page)

There was a gasp from Maryam, and Layla
looked at Ara in surprise.

“You remember, dear?” Rabab added. “You
practically begged the sultan not to betroth you to him. It was
fortunate as you were wed instead to the sultan’s brother. Abn
al-Humam has been a wonderful husband to you, has he not?” There
was a stunned silence before Rabab continued, lowering her voice.
“Besides, I heard the wazir dabbled in the dark mathemagics.”

Zoriah sent her a sharp glance. “We will not
bring up past hurts, and we will not speak evil of anyone. Not
Tahirah, who is an honored guest of the sultan, and not Abd
al-Rahmid, who is the sultan’s appointed wazir and, as you know, a
trusted advisor. The sultan does not take kindly to the slander of
his people.

“Unless you have proof of wrongdoing, we will
speak of this no more. As it is said,” Zoriah went on, “‘the Ways
to God are as numerous as the breaths of humankind.’ In the harem,
it matters not what the wazir thinks—this is our place. Allah,
blessed be His name, and our sultan wish women to learn. And we
shall obey their wishes,” Zoriah finished decisively, her position
as the sultan’s head wife clear in her tone.

Ara and Layla sat stunned until the women
left. “I didn’t know the wazir offered for my mother or that he was
sent home disgraced,” Layla whispered.

“I didn’t either,” Ara whispered back, once
more thinking of the dead frog. “What I want to know is, what are
the dark mathemagics?”

Chapter 7

“I’m sure that I took it off here,” Layla
said as she circled the area for the tenth time, her eyes moist
with welling tears. Suleiman stood talking to two servants on the
far side of the large room. He turned his head toward them
frequently, unwilling to be a target for Su’ah’s sharp tongue
again.

The two girls had retraced Layla’s steps
again and again.
She is so careful
, fretted
Ara.
It’s my fault she forgot her ring. I know how
much she worries. I shouldn’t have told her I was going outside the
palace walls.
Ara moved to her pet stone lion and wrapped
her arms around his neck while Layla sat down to think.

“What if it fell into the channels of water?”
Layla leaned forward onto her elbows scanning a channel. “It would
be lost forever.”

Ara hesitated for a moment, thinking of the
narrow channels that led away from the fountain. “Well, the water
could push a ring downstream. Maybe the water moved it to a
different room, or perhaps it was swept outside into the
drains.”

“But where? The Palace of the Lions is huge,
and the channels lead to many places. If it went outside, we would
never find it.” Layla rubbed her eyes, trying hard not to cry.

“I bet we could follow the water’s flow and
see where the ring might have gone if we put some dye in the
water,” Ara suggested.

“Oh, no.” Layla sat up. “No good would come
from this. Remember what happened with the soap. You had to scrub
floors for a week before anyone would speak to you.”

“That was long ago. I was only eight,” Ara
said. “I’m sure it would work. I’d just use the least little bit of
dye. It would be gone before anyone noticed. It’s springtime—no one
is inside much. They’re either in the Palace of the Myrtles or
outside in the gardens telling stories and reading poems. By the
time they come inside, the dye will have floated out of the palace
and we will have found your ring.” Her favorite of the stone lions
made burping noises as the water bubbled out of his mouth. “Even my
lion agrees.”

“I don’t want to get into trouble,” Layla
said. “I worried so when you were outside the palace gates
alone.”

Ara said nothing.

Towing the bucket alongside, Ara chuckled to
herself. It had been hard getting the dye, what with Suleiman’s
watchfulness. Days had gone by before he was called away from Ara’s
side, and then no one seemed to be dyeing clothes. But now, after
two weeks of searching, she had it.

“This bucket is heavy,” Ara muttered to
herself. She moved it to her other hand. The rope handle kept
digging into her palm, and the dye sloshed around, threatening to
tint her clothes a merry beet-red.
I won’t be
missed until evening

prayer
.
Suleiman’s off teaching Dananir’s eldest—and besides, he
thinks I’m studying in the far garden.

She was pleased with herself because she had
found one more reflection symmetry in the Court of the Myrtles, red
and green flowers arranged across the wall. Sure enough, she could
see that each flower could be halved exactly. And by flipping over
each half, the pattern would repeat across the row.
Find the pattern, you find the motion
, Suleiman had
said. She sat down to rest by the side of the palace.
Soon
,
he would have to keep his
promise to explain another symmetry.
She checked her left
palm for blisters. She picked up the bucket and continued wending
her way through the palace rooms to the Court of the Lions. After
some thought, she followed one channel far upstream past the Hall
of the Two Sisters.

Just a little,
she
told herself, as she carefully held the pail of dye to the edge of
the channel.
Only the least little bit. That’s all
I need to track the water.

Trumpets blared from outside the walls,
announcing visitors. Ara jumped, bumping her knee against the
bucket and spilling masses of beet juice into the water
channel.

“Oh!” She watched in wide-eyed dismay as the
red dye rushed down the waterway. Behind her she heard a roar, and
she spun around but heard nothing more.

The red dye flowed on. Nothing could change
what had happened. Nothing would make it disappear.

“Bread and water for a month,” she moaned,
gritting her teeth.
That’s what will happen to me
if Father or Suleiman finds out.

“Maybe it will disappear before anyone sees,”
she muttered without much hope. Dragging the incriminating bucket
along, she trotted after the crimson water as it wound through the
corridor, into the Hall of Two Sisters, down to the Court of the
Lions. There it flowed out of the lions’ mouths into a basin
surrounding the fountain to head out again in three more
directions. Twelve stone lions surrounded the fountain, just as
always. Nothing moved but the ever-present trickle of water.

Ara hoped it wouldn’t hurt her lion to spit
dye. Ruby water spilled into the four channels, and she decided to
look first in the Hall of the Abencerrajes. The channel ended in
the center of the square room, where the water spilled into a low
round fountain. Above the fountain was a golden eight-pointed star
that filled the ceiling. Sunlight poured though arched windows
along each of the star’s edges and, in that dancing light, the
lions almost seemed to stir behind her. She circled the low
fountain, checking for a small gold ring. Nothing. She shivered,
looking at the red dye that now swirled within the fountain.
It almost looks like blood
.

All the channels ended except one—there, the
red water finally tumbled over a small ledge and into a drain near
the Garden of the Lindaharaja. Ara sat down behind the bushes,
frustrated and discouraged. An insect buzzed her ear, and a small
pebble poked her knee.

The whole morning searching, and no ring
found. Instead, she was certain there would be trouble over the
dye. The water trickled by, and she wriggled uncomfortably as the
small stone bruised her. Where could the ring have gone? As she
leaned forward, the pebble poked into her knee again. Annoyed, she
reached under her leg to throw the pebble as far as she could. A
glint of metal caught her eye. She brushed aside the dirt and grass
to expose a band of gold. Layla’s ring! It must have bounced off
the wall and rolled away as it went over the ledge. She grinned and
placed it on her finger.

The shuffle of soft-soled shoes on the
garden’s cobblestone walk caught her attention. She peeked between
the branches of the bushes. The wazir again! Ara watched closely,
scarcely daring to breathe. His back was to her as he stood in the
entrance of a small room tucked into the side of the palace.
Shadows clung to him like birds of prey, and Ara thought of Rabab’s
words. Was Abd al-Rahmid an evil mathemagician? As he opened the
door, the glint of many tinned mirrors caught her eye from the room
beyond. He turned slightly, and she could see that he again held a
mirror—only this time it was a lizard that flailed in his other
hand.

She couldn’t quite make out his words as he
turned and rotated the mirror.

One lizard became two, both now lying stunned
in his hand. He swiftly dropped one lizard on the ground and
stepped on it, crushing its head. The other he flung into the
bushes. The tiles on the side of the door writhed. Ara rubbed her
eyes. That wasn’t possible. The walls of the Alhambra
couldn’t
change pattern, and yet they were. Her stomach
turned as she watched the tiles move. The sameness was gone. The
four tiles on the wall no longer matched. The fourth tile was
tilted and curved in on itself—as if in pain.

Ara shut her eyes against the impossibility.
A stench of smoke burned her nose as its gray cloud crawled by.
When she opened her eyes again, the wazir was gone. She crept from
behind the hedge and examined the tiled wall. There had been
identical patterns before the wazir chanted—she was positive of
that—and now they were different, the patterns distorted.
This can’t be right
.
I
must not be remembering correctly.

She backed away and stowed the bucket behind
the bushes before racing toward her rooms. With each step, Ara
debated what she had seen. And with each step, she became more
unsure.
If I tell, Zoriah will say I am bearing
tales
. She gnawed a fingernail as she thought about the
problem. “I’ll tell Suleiman. He’ll know what to do.”