Chapter 8: The Final Minute
I stumbled on. Half-blind with pain, half-dead (or so it felt) with exhaustion, my feet continued to carry my wrecked body onwards, ever onwards, towards that final, intangible goal. I turned a corner as I had learned during my three visits to Sheherazad's chambers, slowed to avoid and then walk through the spikes that I knew would shoot up to impede my progress, and finally looked up to see that elegantly carved doorway, which I knew would be there. And so it was, unguarded and partially opened. Had I been in anything remotely resembling a fit state of mind, this would have caused me alarm, but at the time it seemed only fitting that after all my hurdles I should find this final goal waiting for me.
I broke into not so much a run as a faster shamble, my mind filled with thoughts of my final goal. Sheherazad, in all of her radiant beauty and sparkling wit, her startling green eyes and her confident smirk as if wondering what had kept me so long. She was the only way I could stay alive: my one last hope of salvation. I pushed open the door.
Is it not only natural, that after all my hardships and toils, I found the final, idealistic goal after which I had sought to be other than what I had expected? Is it not indeed a grand metaphor for life itself, that after all of our work and suffering we find that what we thought would be a paradise has the same faults as what we left? Looking back, I find that I can even laugh upon the poetic beauty of such an idea. At the time, laughter was so driven so far from my mind at the sight that it ceased to exist entirely.
Sheherazad was indeed inside, but her back was to me. Behind her bed the wall had slid back to reveal a secret tunnel. Grabbing her by the arms, pinning her biceps to the side, was a large grim-faced man in the apparel and armour of a palace guard, like those I had fought outside, with another standing in front of Sheherazad, his sword raised above his head. The Vizier was nearby, stooped and leaning on his staff of office, a smirk of triumph on his face. Sheherazad was squirming, trying to break free of the grip of the man and indeed making it exceptionally difficult for him to hold her. At the centre of the room was an hourglass, with only a few seconds left.
At my entrance, everything stopped. The only evidence I have that time itself was still moving was the fact that the final grains of sand left the top bulb and floated down to the second.
Sheherazad was the first to move she ducked and managed to break free of the shocked guard's grip as he turned around to see what everyone was looking at. I didn't think: of its own accord, Khaveen's sword shot forwards and found the base of his neck, driving right through it and out the other side. As he fell forwards and the other guard looked at him, aghast, I drew my sword out and struck again at his face. He dropped his blade and fell backwards: I stepped forward and thrust Khaveen's sword for the very last time.
No sooner had I looked up that the Vizier had reached me: he moved far faster then I would expect of someone his age could manage: it seemed all of his impotence was little more then an elaborate sham to catch people off guard. He thrust his staff behind my ankles with the ease of long practice and tripped me to the hard tile floor, then raised the heavy head of it high. Through my rapidly diminishing vision, I could just see a vengeful Sheherazad rise up behind him with the hourglass in her hands, and smash it over the back of his head.
Epilogue: A New Dawn
And it is there, most patient reader, that the hour ended, and with it the tale that is now being recanted and, somehow, exaggerated even further then its already incredible truth across the whole of the world, from Egypt to Assyria, from Macedon to Punjab. The tale of that single hour in which all laws on earth seemed to be revoked, and the impossible made common-place.
Sheherazad's suspicions of the riot were mostly correct: the citizens had seen my entourage slaughtered, had heard the alarm horn sound, and had awoken the various princes competing for the princess' hand who had not yet left the city: though horribly disorganised, they stormed the palace and diverted a substantial proportion of Jaffar's exceedingly small forces to attempt and hold them off. Due to the ingenious design of the palace itself, they achieved this for some time, but there were in the end too few, due to the vast majority being killed off in the two battles to take the palace from the loyal guards, and to capture me and kill my retainers. In addition, such men were working with hope of vast wealth and power that Jaffar had promised them: when word reached them of his death, what was left of them attempted to flee. The majority were caught and later executed for treason.
With concern to the incidents of Sheherazad's bedroom, which I chronicled as I experienced them, there is perhaps need for some clarification. The guards that had been stationed outside the door to her room had been the same that confronted me in the entrance to the royal chamber, possibly while debating whether to continue guarding the doors or to escape. Those stationed in the secret entrance, however, remained loyal to Jaffar (for what reason we will now never know). He came to kill the princess earlier then planned: he had become concerned about me and about the rioting, and knew she was too much of a liability. He hoped to tell the crowd the lie he had planned: my foolhardy storming of the castle, and her suicide. He entered via the secret entrance, bringing the guards in with him. However, as I have chronicled, he was not successful. Though more fit then we had expected him, Sheherazad's blow knocked him unconscious for sufficient time for help to arrive, at which point he was arrested and later publicly executed along with his followers. All of his long scheming and best-laid plans came to naught through, it must be admitted, a series of amazingly fortunate coincidences and in a literal sense incredible events.
As one may expect, my stay in Azad continued a little longer then might be expected, not least because I needed to be attended by the finest physicians in the city. My arm was, as I expected, beyond the aid of any mortal: I had it amputated, as keeping it as a useless appendage would only hamper me. Besides this, Sheherazad was now ruler of Azad and, as was in her power, decided to give herself far more time to choose a suitor. She confided in me, in our many discussions after the event, that she did not wish to simply give away all of her power to her husband and turn to a boring life of bearing heirs. I swore to her in response that I would give away anything on earth if she were to be my life, and power over a city that I did not own anyway would be a very small price indeed. We were married within two months, and I have remained true to my word, thought, sadly, my father grows ever more frustrated because of it.
And now I commit this record to the palace of Azad itself, which I worked so hard to journey through. My only hope is that, when this palace is but a ruin buried beneath the foundations of another, that one day some person may stumble upon this record and know of what it was that happened here at this time, and be heartened on whatever hard journey of their own that they face, knowing that I was successful in my own.