Free Nine White Horses by Judith Tarr Page B

wazir’s gaze. He told as much of it as he
could know, and more that he could guess; nor was he so very far from the
truth. “And thus after a hard chase we caught him, and we brought him back to
you, my lord; but of the sorcerer who wrought this, we have found no sign. If I
may have your leave, I will go, I will search—”
    “You will do nothing.” Khalid shrank in upon himself. The wazir’s
face, so placid in repose, so noble even in deepest grief, had stilled into a
mask more deadly than any snarl of rage. His voice was terrible in its
gentleness. “You have never loved him. You have always lusted after what is
his. You drove him to this, you, with your serpent’s tongue, your net of truth
that, woven, shaped a lie.”
    Khalid shrank more tightly still. He did not venture to sift
the truth from falsehood wrought of grief. His guilt loomed larger in him than
any threat of death. His intemperate tongue had driven his master away, full
into the sorcerous trap.
    “I am called merciful,” said the wazir, “and I cannot be otherwise.
I do not take your life. Ill as you have served my son, you remain his servant.
If he chooses, he will slay you. It is no matter to me. I have forgotten your
name.”
    Khalid lay down and wept. The wazir went away. They all went
away, taking Kehailan, leaving the mamluk to his sorrow.
    o0o
    Once the first shock of his father’s grief was past,
Kehailan found again his first delight in his ensorcelment. He had all that man
or beast could wish for. A stable of his own, silken-walled, deep in straw; a
manger of marble and gold filled with the golden barley of Yemen, scented with
spices and made rich with a leavening of mutton; a wide garden to run in, and
cool water to drink, and sweet singers to beguile his ears; and the loveliest
of mares in Egypt to be his wives and concubines.
    No one spoke to him of duty. No one vexed him with cares of
state. No one compelled him to any will but his own.
    Not even Khalid. Khalid had learned the virtue of silence.
He served his master with mute obedience, fed him, tended him, made him
beautiful for his mares and for his own pleasure.
    The wazir he seldom saw. He was rather shamefully glad of
it. The old man’s sorrow cut too close to the bone. It made him wish, however
briefly, to be a man again. It made him remember that he had been the most
credulous of fools. Khalid had told no more than the truth; Kehailan had
brought the rest upon himself.
    o0o
    His tale spread as all such tales must. His father’s
guards kept the importunate at bay; when one or two enterprising persons
breached the wall of the garden and began to conduct the curious therein for a
high price, their quartered bodies appeared without, for the education of their
imitators.
    But some, the wazir himself admitted. Imams intoned the Qur’an
over Kehailan, and invoked the Holy Name, and prayed day and night about his
stable. The Khalifah himself sent his personal saint; the emirs of Alexandria
sent a sibyl in a bottle; the syndics of Cairo dispatched three mullahs and
three masters of the art of magic. Kehailan received the prayers with proper
devotion and the incantations with proper awe, but with no slightest alteration
of his enchanted shape.
    The magi cast endless horoscopes. The rabbis droned over
their Kabbalah. Even a Christian exorcist wheedled and groveled his way into
Kehailan’s garden, fouled its sweetness with his unspeakable incense, wailed
his backward prayers and danced his twisted dances and cast out not even the shadow
of an imp. But a demon came at the climax of his rite, and bore him gibbering
away.
    The philosophers fared no better. The Platonists informed
him that his form was a shadow of the true Form, and that he must reconcile the
two through the exercise of his will. The Pythagoreans reminded him that he had
fallen down the ladder of creation; he must restore himself, or he would be
reborn as a creature lower still: a dog or an ape, or worse. He was