Free Nine White Horses by Judith Tarr Page A

and a splendor. He stamped: the
pavement rang. He shouted his exultation: it was a stallion’s scream.
    He wheeled, tossing his mane. The hunt stood stock-still. He
laughed at them.
    Some of them were wondrous sweet. Mares with languid eyes,
slender necks, rumps rich and full and brimming with blessed madness.
    But freedom was sweeter. He gathered his wonderful new body,
leaped a wall of hounds, drank deep of the wind’s wine. Already he was drunken
with it. He laughed and spun and sprang into flight.
    o0o
    Khalid lay on his face at the wazir’s feet. His garments
were rent and torn; his turban was lost; his head was heaped with the ashes of
his grief, that he must break the heart of the man who had been a father to
him.
    Even before he could gather breath to speak, the wazir knew
what he would say. “My son?” the old man asked, calm with the immensity of
grief.
    “Alive.” Khalid gasped it. “But—”
    The wazir breathed a prayer of thanks, but darkened again all
too swiftly. “But? He is ill? He is hurt?”
    “No,” Khalid said, “O my father. But—”
    “He is taken? He has fled?”
    “My lord!” Khalid’s desperation silenced the litany of
disaster. “Oh, my lord, I cannot speak of it. Come with me and see what you must
see.”
    o0o
    They had lured him with his own Pearl of the East, bridled
him and bound him and compelled him to return to his father’s house. In the
end, for weariness, he had submitted. He stood in the court in a wary circle of
men, sweating and trembling, but snorting defiance.
    The wazir saw him, but only when he saw in none of the
circling faces the lineaments of his son’s. He approached the stallion with
respect but without fear. A more hangdog creature had seldom come to face him.
Its head drooped almost to the ground; its ears flattened. It backed as far as
its bonds would allow, and tried to crouch, as a hound when it is whipped, or a
son when at last he has passed the limits of his father’s forbearance.
    The wazir gentled him, speaking softly. “Peace, be still, O
son of the wind, O dancer in the dawn, O brave in battle, great-eyed, white as
the moon, thy mane a fall of sweet water, O beautiful, be still.” And he was
still, but quivering, as hands learned the shape of him, his strength and his
soundness, and the silk that was its covering. “Al-ashab al-marshoush,” the wazir named the color of him, a
whisper, calming him: the grey that was best beloved of kings, rose-dappled,
flecked with ruddy darkness, mark of the strongest and fairest of horses.
    “A kehailan ,” said
the wazir, “of remarkable perfection. Come out now, my son; have no fear of my
anger. Whatever you have paid, such beauty is well worth the price.”
    The stallion gasped like a man. His body, driven to extremity,
reared up. The wazir caught the bridle. His servants had begun to melt away.
    Khalid prostrated himself again at the old man’s feet. “A kehailan ,” he said to the stones beneath
him, “and al-Kehailan. This is your son, O my lord.”
    His throat closed. The silence was terrible.
    “No,” the wazir said at last, quite calmly. “This is not my
son. This is the fruit of his latest folly. Shame be upon him, that he has
commanded his servant to spin such a tale.”
    “My lord,” said Khalid. “My lord, I spin no tale. It is
Kehailan. By Allah I swear to the truth of it.”
    This silence was more terrible yet. Khalid ventured to raise
his head. The wazir held the bridle still; he stroked the white head with its
great frightened eyes.
    As if Khalid’s stare had waked him to what he did, he
withdrew, moving slowly. His hands trembled, but his face had not changed. Only
in his eyes had the blow left its mark; and that was deep, a mortal wound.
    “My son,” he whispered. “O my son.” His voice rose. “How? Who
has done this to him? In the name of Allah, I command you, speak!”
    Khalid obeyed him. He dared do no other, though his soul quivered
and sank under the weight of the