That night, the young woman whom Ali had become lay in deep despondency, still masked in a dust veil. Nerves frayed, grief afflicting her, Ali yearned for the slumber which would not come.
Sleep had almost overtaken her when she heard footsteps. Having sent all her other servants away to keep her secret, she supposed it was Aram.
"Aram! I told you to go to bed! Stop moving around!"
Then Ali heard a gasp in the corner. It was like no gasp that the bath slave would have made.
"What --? Who is it? Who hides behind the curtain?"
A slim figure emerged into the lamplight. "Where is my brother, maid?" the intruder demanded. "And why are you wearing a sleeping robe like his?"
"Ayeesha!" the prince gasped.
"Do you know me, slave? Do I also know you under that mask?"
"Ayeesha! Do not shout or call for the guards."
"What are you talking about, girl?"
"I am no girl!" the muffled prince declared despondently. "I -- I am Ali!"
Ayeesha stepped up closer. "Ali? What sort of fool do you take me for? Your voice is a girl's. Your size is also a girl's!"
"Let me explain!"
And explain Ali did. Ayeesha refused to believe it at first, but she plied the masked female with many questions and finally was convinced.
"Oh, Brother, what an incredible story!"
A moment of awkward silence followed, then Ali asked: "Why have you come?"
"I have heard that you were about to depart on a long pilgrimage to the East," she explained. "This made no sense, as everyone knew you were to marry the Princess Badiat a few days hence. And if some sudden religious passion had truly taken hold of you, I knew that you would at least visit me before you departed. Something seemed very wrong."
"Something is very wrong," Ali whispered, barely audible.
She touched her brother's arm. "Do not grieve so."
"Why should I not grieve? If you were suddenly made a male, would you not feel as humiliated as I do?"
Ayeesha shook her head. "No, I would be pleased."
Ali looked up incredulously. "You would jest so at a time like this?!"
"I speak true, Brother! In this world men can do everything and women nothing. If you go to Marshan, as you say you will, I beg you to return with a bottle of the fountain water -- for me. I would rather be your younger brother than any kind of a sister!"
Ali stared off into the shadows. "I do not understand you. I never have."
"Nor do I understand why you must hide your face from even me, dear Ali. Has this magic made you ugly?"
"No, not ugly. But -- my appearance -- it would shock you. You more than any other, perhaps."
"Do not be that way, Ali. I am not squeamish. Now that you have warned me, I expect to see a strange woman's face."
"It will not seem so strange. Councilor Madani explained what has happened. He said that the curse of the fountain does not simply change a man. It makes him over into the image of that one which he --"
"Which he what? "
"Which he holds in his secret heart to be the most beautiful in all the world."
"Oh, no, Ali -- thou hast not taken the shape of one of your own slave girls, or some belly dancer of the marketplace? My poor, poor dear brother!"
Ali shook her head. "No, it is nothing like that. Perhaps it is not so bad as that. Or maybe it is worse. I do not know."
"Then show me. I shall not quail."
Reluctantly, Ali drew down the dust veil.
Ayeesha's eyes started; she reflexively clenched the bedclothes.
"Brother, you -- you look like --"
"Yes," nodded Ali. "I look like -- you. . . ."
Scheherazade says:
"Before many days had passed, Ali and Hassan's caravan set out for the East, replete with many pack camels and thirty loyal warriors on horseback. But as swiftly as the royal party traveled, a small group of its enemies traveled just as swiftly in pursuit -- Yusuf and Mahmood, along with a few trusted hirelings from Achmed's personal guard. All of them began their journey unmindful of the hazards of their undertaking, bedazzled as they were by the vizier's extravagant promises of a rich golden reward.
"Once far out in the desert, the cunning Yusuf hoped to steal into Ali's night-camp and place the cruel bewitchment of Maiden's Ruin upon him. But, alas, by the will of Allah, a great sandstorm swept the wilderness, and the tracks of the larger party were covered up. As they searched for their quarry, Yusuf and Mahmood became hopelessly lost, falling many, many leagues behind their unsuspecting quarry.
Visions of gold.
Visions of gold.
"The journey was a long one, and the strain began to tell. Despondency fell especially hard upon the young man who was a man no longer."
They had crossed the borders of Persia that morning, and the beasts were rambling slowly along rocky, dry runs, grunting as they lurched over the ruts and gullies that scored the parched terrain. Scrub weed dotted the landscape, and this humble growth was the only foliage in an otherwise-barren world. The shadows were waxing large with the sinking sun, though the heat was still oppressive. Only the sounds of the wayfarers' animals broke the forlorn silence of the twilight.
At last Hassan gave the order to pause and set up the manzil, as the desert dwellers called their overnight camping sites, just as he had done many times before. Ali, as had become usual, said nothing, but remained aloof.
Before long, the campfires had bathed the rippled dunes with ruddy light and the men were serving out their rations of rice, camel milk, butter, and a bit of hare-meat taken in the last hunt. Ali ate swiftly, as usual, then rose and withdrew beyond the glow of the firelight. Hassan had noticed her solemn departure and then frowned down into his plate. He had learned the hard way that it did not profit to disturb his friend at such times, but yet Ali's black mood seemed to be unending. This night, concerned beyond the bounds of self-restraint, the warrior got up and followed the heir of Damascus to a remote spot under the white moonlight.
There Hassan espied his comrade sitting alone, forlornly staring at the sky. Hassan quietly sloughed through the deep sand until he stood close behind her. The prince must have heard him, but deigned not to look back, merely shifting uncomfortably, as if to signal that she did not wish to be disturbed.
"Ali, the night is cold. Come back by the fire."
"Leave me, Hassan. I know when to come out of the cold."
It was not the first time he had been so rebuffed, but Hassan persisted: "At least uncover your face, Ali. What is the point in hiding it out here in the desert? I, at least, already know what Ayeesha looks like." He reached out to take her dust veil.
Ali struck at his hand. "I said leave me!"
Hassan stood up tall. "I have been mistaken. I thought that we were following a prince. Now I see that we are escorting a modest girl -- one who veils her face before men, one who humbly demurs from speaking, one who seeks seclusion --"
With a wild cry, Ali sprang at Hassan and threw a punch at his face. The warrior dodged the blow, and the girl's feet slipped in the shifting sand. She would have fallen face-down, except that her swift comrade grabbed her in time.
Held, the prince fought hard to get away. "Jackal!" she yelled. "Release me! If this had happened to you, I would never treat you so!"
"You might not!" he said as he controlled her thrashing as he would have a stripling boy's. "But I hope I would not be acting so foolishly about what could not be helped."
He released her then and she staggered back. Hassan softened his tone: "I see one whom I have loved like a brother becoming a stranger. It is a loss which I cannot bear."
She turned away and faced the dark emptiness. "I wish I were a beast down on four legs rather than a woman!"
"You cannot mean that, Ali."
"I do! It is better to be pitied than laughed at!"
"No one is laughing at you. I am your friend, and these men are your most faithful retainers."
"What are they saying then?" she demanded with balled fists. "That this curse is the judgement of Allah?"
"Nothing of the kind!"
"Why not?"
"What do you mean, 'Why not?'"
Her answer came in a low whisper. "I ask that because I have thought the same myself."
He looked at her with amazement. "Why?"
Ali now settled dejectedly to the ground. "It makes sense, Hassan. -- You of all men know how I used to talk, used to admit that I was reluctant to assume the responsibilities of my birth. This is Allah's vengeance."
He dropped down beside her. "No, my friend, it is only the evil deed of some unknown sorcerer. Allah does not avenge himself for every small shortcoming. He is called 'el Rahman,' the Merciful, remember? If He were as vengeful against me as you believe he has been against you, I would be a donkey by now, not a man."
"So you say, but I cannot help but feel that I've been unworthy."
Hassan shook his head emphatically. "I cannot see it! Anyway, we will soon reach Marshan and restore you. Then no one except us few shall ever know that you were once bewitched."
Ali looked into his face and Hassan saw the uncertainty in her brown eyes. "But what if our quest fails? What will my life be then? Shall I take a room in the women's quarters next to Ayeesha's? Shall my father have two daughters? Should he announce a rich dowry and find me a mate?"
The warrior was saddened that such evil fantasies were going through his friend's head. "Whatever your fate, God alone knows it. But, Allah willing, I shall be forever at your side." He reached again for her veil, this time carefully, respectfully.
Ali caught the wrist in mid-course, but this time not in anger. She instead clasped it in a silent pledge of trust and camaraderie. Then she reached up and dropped the mask herself.
Scheherazade says:
"The friendship of Ali and Hassan, strong before that night upon the dunes, now grew deeper and closer still.
"After hundreds of leagues of taxing travel, the royal caravan reached its long-desired goal -- the city Marshan, which lay below the last mountain obstacle before the vast plains country of Khwarizm.
"Long before the soldiers of Damascus drew near, the sultan of Marshan had been informed by his watchful outriders, and a guard of honor was dispatched to escort Ali and Hassan to the palace."
The palace steward met the Syrian visitors cordially and ushered Prince Ali and Lord Hassan to quarters worthy of their dignity. He also extended the sultan's invitation that they should join him at feast upon sundown of the following day.
"Wait," remarked Ali as the man began to withdraw, keeping her voice low and gruff so that the steward would not suspect her secret.
"Sire?" the little man asked.
"We have heard very strange tales concerning Marshan."
"Ah, yes," nodded the steward suppressing a smile, "no doubt these stories concern the Magic Fountain of Marshan."
"Yes," agreed Ali. "Does such an amazing thing truly exist?"
"I believe it exists," said the jovial steward, "for I have seen it perform its miracle many a time. You may see it for yourselves. As it happens, some men will be transformed tomorrow."
"Transformed? Why would any man wish to subject himself to such a ghastly fate?" Hassan put in.
"Not by any choice of their own! The sultan's nephew and some young bravos gambled themselves into debt and then robbed some outlying villages to pay their moneylenders. They dressed as bandits and hoped that bandits would receive the blame for their evil deeds. But Allah was not deceived, and He caused them to be discovered. The most guilty of them have been condemned to be cast into the Fountain. They then shall be turned over to the royal whip-masters and trained to be slave girls."
Hassan and Ali exchanged perplexed glances.
"You say that the chastisement is public?" asked the Syrian warrior of the Marshanese.
"Of course! What is more edifying than to see those who break Allah's commandments punished by His own miracle? The punishments always draw a large crowd, but because it has been a long time since a high-born one has been condemned, the whole of the city shall doubtless turn out to see it."
Hassan shook his head dubiously. "I do not think --"
"No," broke in Ali. "We must satisfy ourselves that everything they say is true." She touched Hassan's arm. "We must."
The steward swelled with pride at these foreigners' appreciation of his country's uniqueness. "You shall see that it is exactly as I have told you, Great Prince."
The next morning Hassan and Ali saw something of Marshan, a wealthy, well-adorned city, with prosperous-looking people going hither and thither. Slave girls thronged the streets, and Hassan noted that they were not dressed with the same modesty that their Syrian counterparts displayed. Their halters were often sparse, flaunting exuberant cleavage, and their shaven legs sometimes flashed beguilingly through flowing skirts of veils.
They quietly passed by a slave market, which was poorly attended this morning -- probably because the punishment was just then drawing so many people away from the bazaar. There could be no other excuse, in as much as the women on display were young and beautiful, and dressed even more wantonly than the slave maids in the streets.
"Fountain girls," remarked their escort, a captain of Marshan.
"What do you mean?" rumbled Ali.
"These are rebels who were captured last spring," explained the officer. "They were cast into the fountain and then rigorously trained. Because rebellion is a most terrible crime, these wretches are earmarked to be sold only to foreign caravaneers. It is the wish of the magistrates that they live out their lives far from their native city."
"What land would want such accursed creatures?" the prince inquired.
The captain gave a short laugh. "The fountain girls of Marshan are eagerly sought out by connoisseurs of female flesh. Some men find it a rare thrill to wring cries of pain and mortification from a nubile girl who was once, perhaps, as virile and well-endowed as they."
"Is that what the men of Marshan think also?" asked Hassan.
Their guide shrugged. "Some do, I suppose. But most think about the matter little, if at all. Fountain girls are too commonplace hereabout for any serious man to concern himself with them."
Hassan could not believe that 'fountain girls' could ever be considered commonplace, at any time and in any place. Marshan seemed to him a wicked town, like Sodom in the days of old! The warrior looked up into the sky, as if half-expecting the dark clouds of the city's coming destruction to be descending from Allah's abode even at that moment.
This reproving thought seemed quickly validated when he saw a small crowd gathered around a young woman who was chained in front of wall. She was totally nude, except for a slave collar about her throat.
A fountain girl's punishment.
Hassan leaned toward the captain. "Is such a display not a scandal here?"
"Not at all! A public exhibition is one means to punish a displeasing slave."
"It is a harsh punishment!"
"No blood flows, shame leaves no scars. As punishments go, it is merciful," the soldier maintained, not perturbed.
Hassan shuddered.
They passed through the main city port, and before long they reached the precincts of the fountain. Hassan had expected to see a small pool fed by a spring. It was, in fact, a large pond whose edge was trimmed with a coping of stone blocks. On the opposite bank there stood a grand official edifice which, their guide explained, was a law court. Many trials were held there, he assured them.
A fountain girl's punishment.
How intimidating it must be, Hassan reasoned, for the felon to be tried overlooking the magic water which might soon supply his punishment.
A large crowd had massed up near the water's edge, and the captain rode his horse slowly into the midst of it, shouting: "Make way! Make way for the sultan's royal guests!"
The mob parted readily enough. Perhaps, thought Hassan, the sultan's low tolerance for rebels and rioters had something to do with their docility down there next to the pond's edge.
The captain dismounted and Ali and Hassan, doing likewise, slid down from their saddles to stand at either side of him. Hassan espied a group of guards and a smaller group of distinguished-looking elders over by the coping. These latter, wearing fine robes and pure white muslin turbans, seemed to be the presiding magistrates.
Two men stood between the guards, their hands tied in front of them. The captive pair wore good clothes, and these would certainly be a couple of the scoundrels who had raised havoc in the countryside.
"Bring forward Kislar Ibn Aglar," commanded one of the magistrates.
Two of the guards shoved the felon up before the judge. "Have you anything to say before sentence is enacted?" the later queried.
"There is no justice in Marshan!" the young felon declared loudly. "I am an innocent man. I fell in with bad companions, true, but always did I seek to dissuade them from deeds of rascality."
It was the man's apparent sincerity which persuaded more than his weasel words. But Hassan knew that many men, especially the sort common among ambitious politicians, were skilled and shameless liars. He suspected that Vizier Achmed was such a one, in fact.
A magistrate raised his hand to silence the man's pleading. "Our evidence finds you have been the worst of a bad lot, that you were indefatigable in egging on your despicable comrades to horrendous offenses. For that reason, Kislar Ibn Aglar, it is meet that you be punished first." He then gestured to the guards.
The two men obligingly dragged the felon to the edge of the pool, though Kislar dug in his heels and fought them all the way. A third guard came forward with a looped rope, and this he slipped over the head of Ibn Aglar and slid taut about the man's waist.
That being done, the pair seized their charge by the arms and legs, picked him up, rocked him back and forth, and finally hurled him out into the water, well beyond the stone coping.
The felon apparently couldn't swim, or was simply too shocked to try. Instead, he splashed frantically at the surface and yelled bloody murder. Hassan watched for any sign of a physical change, but could see little due to the distance, the victim's clothes, and the amount of water being thrown about. Nonetheless, he very quickly did discern that the manly howl of terror became very quickly a woman's shrill.
Now the guards were drawing the felon back to the stone-faced edge, and dragging him out of the fountain.
"Are the guards not afraid to touch the water?" Ali asked of the captain.
The Marshanese shook his head. "The guards who perform this duty are actually transformed women. They have taken wives, and so cannot be changed by the waters again."
Hassan blenched. This was a mad place, and he dearly wished to be away from it as soon as possible.
The crowd craned its necks to see what sort of woman Kislar had turned into, but for the moment he was left to lie like a great wet mass of laundry on the bank.
Next Lord Dwar was summoned up before the other judge. No doubt he had been unnerved by Kislar's punishment, but Hassan still shook his head at the sight of such cowardice. Dwar was craven, begging, importuning, incoherent. Kislar's unctuous pleading had been the model of manly fortitude by comparison.
The judge stilled him with a shout: "You are a disgrace to your noble family line! They have disowned you, cast you out. All you have to say has been said before. Naught is left, except that the punishment mandated by law is carried out!"
At his signal, the guards carried Dwar along, because he refused to walk. A scant three minutes later a figure babbling in a woman's voice was drawn out of the pool.
"Is Lord Dwar the highest-ranked personage ever to be so punished, Captain?" Hassan asked.
"Not so," the young officer replied. "The fifth sultan of the first dynasty was also so punished."
"A sultan?" exclaimed Hassan. "How can that be?"
"The man was an unworthy cur," the guide explained with knitted brows. "He lied, he cheated, he committed adultery with other men's wives. The Fifth Sultan broke every stricture of the Koran. Never since the days of Nimrod has their been a more evil man upon a throne of grace.
"That is saying much," remarked Hassan.
"It only gives the Fifth Sultan his due. In his youth, instead of training for war, he went away to Isfahan to study law. While there he defamed his own city and espoused the virtue of our foes. When the Fourth Sultan died, the wicked son who succeeded him secretly debauched the daughters of good families, those who had been sent to the palace as royal wards. He despised all that was cleanly and favored all which was debased. Though children are the most beloved of Allah, he declared that children might be killed at the instigation of their mothers, and by those whom their dams paid to the deed, if they deigned not to commit the horrendous murders themselves."
Hassan glanced away. Such evil could never have been performed by a living man. Surely the Fifth Sultan was only a myth, a cautionary tale of how depraved a head of state might become, but yet never had been. But, to the Syrian's surprise, the captain's catalogue of depravity was by no means finished:
"The Fifth Sultan surely did not believe in Allah, though he swore false oaths in the name of the Most High. Indeed, the wicked sultan made war upon all of his people who did not espouse atheism, even forbidding the symbols of Ramadan to be raised during the Holy Month.
"But, strange to say, as fierce and rapacious as the misbegotten sultan was toward the weak and innocent, he was in fact the least of men. He had a First Wife who was harsh and mannish in her manner, oftentimes discoursing in public and using words that made even harlots blush. This harridan witch was permitted by her spineless husband to perform magisterial functions traditionally forbidden to her sex. She even had leave to command the royal ministers and to voice her ignorance and prejudice at all the meetings of the royal council.
"The wicked queen engaged and dismissed servants of the state and, far worse, she was heard to boast that Marshan had two sultans -- and her craven lord accepted this insult." The captain shook his head in disgust. "A true man would have ordered such an unnatural consort to be quartered between running stallions for such an affront!
"Oh, the sins of that man! His father had already raised the taxes greatly, but the first royal act of the son was to raise them much higher still. Great wealth came to the treasury, even more than his extravagance found the means to spend, but the Fifth Sultan would never reduce his onerous assessments upon the people. He made the worst of men mighty in the courts and these rogues followed not Koranic law, but their own capricious whim. At last, tired of the need to buy forgiveness from the people by weeping in public address with quivering lip and red eyes, the Cursed of God imported foreign Turks from inner Khwarizm who knew not Allah, and lewd Indians who daily shed blood at the pagan altars of beast-faced demons. Those who protested the sultan's impiety were callously murdered by these hired assassins, and their bodies left in gardens, sewers, and parks.
"At long last, the people rose in anger and though the sultan's hirelings killed many, they could not fight all the people of the city. Indeed, the hosts of the town were greatly reinforced by hordes of farmers and shepherds who came from the hinterlands bearing scythes and lion-spears.
"The cowardly sultan was at last taken. He, along with his evil minions and his unwomanly wife, was cast into the pool."
"Women are so punished, too?" asked Hassan.
The captain nodded. "Sometimes. The First Wife was sent as a man to the salt quarries, to use her strength to carry heavy baskets from the mines to the wagons -- be it under the broiling sun or the cold wind of the season, and ever she groaned under the threat of the lash."
"What happened to the sultan?" Ali asked, forgetting to modulate her voice. Its pitch brought a sudden look of puzzlement to the captain's eyes. He looked about, as if supposing that another had spoken. Nonetheless, he answered the question:
"There was a foreign king, a cruel man, but one whom the Fifth Sultan had often attacked, not from cause, but merely to dispel the general contention that Marshan's lord was a coward. To this king was the sultan sold as a slave girl. It is said that for many weeks the former sultan was kept naked and chained by the neck under the table in the king's dining hall. She was not permitted to speak, except to whine for food and water like a bitch whines. Further, she was trained to please the men who sat at the king's table by the means of her hands and her mouth, even while they feasted from the table overhead. When she was permitted the relief of copulation, it came with the male assailing her from behind, directly, coldly, without gentling kisses or soothing caresses."
"What happened then?"
The captain shrugged. "It is unclear. With time, most people ceased to inquire after the Fifth Sultan. I think, too, that her kingly captor wearied of the kind of amusement which she had afforded him. There are divers stories of the subsequent fate of the Most Wretched of Allah, but none of them are more than rumor."
Hassan shook his head in disbelief. What sultanate would allow its master, even one of very evil repute, to be treated so by a foreign rival? A clean axe upon the neck of a fallen monarch was to be expected, but the degradation of a sultan degraded his city also.
An agitation in the crowd around them brought Hassan's attention back to the matter at hand. The judges had resumed the punishment of the felons after a brief recess.
"Because you two were the leaders of your despicable band," one addressed the prostrate Dwar and Kislar, "because you are high-born, and your deeds are therefore the more deplorable, your punishment shall come first. By the law of the sultan, I declare each of you slave. Guards, strip the bondmaids!"
The guards commenced to tear the sodden garments from the convicted robbers. Possibly, the Syrian nobleman supposed, the fact that these guards were formerly females made their present duty a particularly satisfying one for them.
When the condemned pair were finally rolled out of their voluminous garments, two new nude women were seen. One of them was yellow-haired, like a Circassian. The other girl was olive-complected, with black, flowing tresses. Both were slimly voluptuous. Had Hassan not known their origin, he would have been impressed and allured.
The onlooking mob huzzahed loudly and Hassan heard some bawdy comments. The guards worked quickly to bind the girls, and in a nonce the punished felons were tied back-to-back. Kislar and Dwar were subsequently carried as a joined pair through the crowd to be placed before a screen of lathes.
The screen was intended to protect their skin from the sun somewhat, but because it was latticed, it allowed the curious to gape at the condemned ones from all four sides, like beasts in a menagerie.
Afterwards, the remainder of the young hellions were punished. These were not stripped and displayed immediately, but the judges did not omit the necessary formality of pronouncing all of them to be chattel. Finally, bound hand and foot and thrown into a donkey cart, they were taken away. The two ringleaders were, last of all, brought from their place of display and slung up into a cart of their own. The ne'er-do-wells of the town and a large number of lewd little boys walked beside the conveyance as it rolled along. These individuals taunted the wagon's occupants raucously while the guards made certain that their boisterousness did not get out of hand.
Hassan had seen more than he had wanted of this matter and wished to be gone. Only then did it cross his mind that Ali might be well-advised to simply go to the edge of the water at that point and jump in. In fact, when he saw his friend gazing in that direction, he half-expected that she was about to do exactly that. But, for whatever reason, the heir of Damascus stirred not a step from where she stood and, when their official escort offered to take them back to the palace, she turned away from the fountain and swung up into her saddle.
