The Magic Fountain                   by Christopher Leeson       © 1999

An Untold Tale of Scheherazade
Verses from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

A fountain girl and her master

Part II

 

          "Of threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise!
          One thing at least is certain -- this life flies;
          One thing is certain, and the rest is lies;
          The flower that once has blown forever dies."

Chapter Six

The two slave-maids led the disguised Ali along unfamiliar passages by the light of an oil lamp. Suddenly a powerful striding broke the erstwhile silence.

"A guard!" whispered Danya over her shoulder. "Do as we do, Princess."

A big man advanced out of the shadowy distance, his swagger heavy and confident.

"What are you maids up to?" the guard demanded as the slave girls bent low.

"We are being sent to attend the newcomers from the West, O Master," Danya answered. "The sultan has showered great favor upon them."

His white teeth flashed. "A great favor indeed! The Great One sends the strangers three of the fairest flowers in his royal garden! I do not doubt but that these outlanders shall be well-attended!" He then regarded Ali with a crooked grin. "Ah, but what blossom is this?"

Ali glanced away. "Ay -- Ayeesha," she stammered.

"Ayeesha?" repeated the guard. "It fits you well! Are you new in the palace?"

"Yes -- Master," the Damascene replied, still not looking at him.

The man arched his thick brows. "Are you a new-trained fountain girl?"

"She is," Danya put in.

The guard smiled. "Ah! And what crime did she commit?"

"Do not delay us, Warrior," Danya pleaded. "We may be whipped."

"All beautiful women should be whipped now and then -- and you fountain girls need whipping more than any, Ben Jakhar." He shook his head. "But like you I cannot tarry! Be on your way and serve our noble visitors well!"

The guard sauntered on, pleased to have stolen a moment in the society of three beautiful women. The latter waited until his stride had faded to silence, then continued down the dimly-lit corridor.

"Thank Allah that the guard was so smitten by Ayeesha that he failed to ask why I carried a lamp through halls which are already well-lighted," jabbered Katya.

"You need not call me Ayeesha now that the guard is gone!" the girl in red reminded her sourly.

"You gave yourself that name, O Prince," remarked Danya.

"Like the guard has said, it fits you well."

"It is my sister's name."

"Is she as lovely as you?" asked the singing girl.

"She looks exactly like me."

Katya and Danya exchanged glances.

"Let us not tarry," whispered Ali, sorry for having revealed a secret so personal.

When they reached the slave quarters, Katya set about lighting its lamps while Ali looked about with renewed misgivings. It was a barely-finished series of chambers, their stony starkness intimidating. The simple furnishings -- rough divans, some chairs, and some devices fitted with various restraints, reminded her of a prison.

Danya had picked up a sand-clock which she set down upon a table next to the prince.

"What is this?" Ali asked, her mouth dry.

"We have the gravest doubts that we can teach anything to a free man, especially a prince," said the dancing girl with apparent diffidence.

"Then why did you bring me here at all?"

"We believe that, if we are permitted, we may teach a woman much, particularly if that woman is a slave."

"I don't understand," Ali returned suspiciously.

"These sands take two hours to run out," explained Danya. "That is the span of a normal training session for a fountain girl. It is also all the time we may spare, if you truly wish to meet with the handsome lord Hassan tonight."

Ali was unsure whether that was her true wish at all. In a way, it was exactly what she was trying to prevent herself from doing. "What is your point?"

"We have great reason to fear you."

Ali grimaced. "Fear me?"

"Yes," Danya nodded gravely. "If you should deem yourself insulted tonight, you need only ask our master, the sultan, to have us torn us to pieces between wild horses, or subjected to lingering torture. That is a wicked and undeserved fate for humble servants who only wish to help you."

"I would not do that!" Ali protested truthfully.

"So you say, Master. But free persons may change their mind without penalty. That is the joy of being free. Believe me, Your

Grace, I know the difference."

"You were once a bandit, or so I hear."

Danya nodded. "That is true. And you were once a prince. We must accept the judgements of Allah and go on from there."

"Or the judgment of Shaitan," Ali corrected her.

"If we cleave to Allah's grace, Shaitan has no power over us," the belly dancer assured her. "And what we receive from the Merciful One's hands is only what we have justly deserved. "God is great," she whispered with lowered head.

"Well, God is great, yes," muttered Ali, "but I am not a capricious scoundrel either. If I must, will swear an oath in promise not to seek redress for any indignity done to me this night, short of some outrageous cruelty in defiance of promise, such as permanent scarring or crippling!"

Danya lifted her glance, smiling. "That would be helpful, O Glorious Prince, but perhaps not entirely sufficient."

"Not entirely sufficient?" Ali echoed, exasperated. "What else does a slave require if the word of a prince counts for nothing?"

"Bear with us, Prince Ali. Our life and limb are at stake.

Many who are well-born in Marshan tell lies to slaves. Is it so different in Damascus?" When Ali made no answer, Danya dared to continue: "I have a plan. May I explain it, Heir of Damascus?"

"Yes, do."

Danya took a deep breath and began: "You are empowered to dispense justice in your own land, are you not, Prince Ali?"

"Of course, I must defer to my father the emir in matters of appeal."

"But among your own people in this foreign land, your power is absolute."

"It is absolute," she nodded. "I could order any one of my companions to strike off the head of any other."

"In your land, is a woman ever condemned to slavery?"

Ali frowned. "Oftentimes. For harlotry, thieving, blasphemy, for many reasons. My father has always preferred to spare a woman's life, if possible -- particularly if she is beautiful."

"Your father is wise, O Scion of Damascus. Slavery punishes a beautiful woman far more than death ever could. Tell me, Prince, is a person sometimes sentenced to slavery for only a limited period of time, and then restored to his goods and dignity?"

Ali shrugged. "We have penal servitude for a man to work out his fines or debts, such as in the quarries. He will labor under the lash like a true slave, though he is considered a convict, which is a status of greater honor. But there is no stricture that I know of which prohibits the law from imposing a temporary status of slavery. Nor can I believe that such a sentence would offend either the mighty or the lowly, though the master involved may resent losing his slave."

"All this is good to hear," nodded Danya. "Listen to what this humble servant proposes. For two hours only, hours whose passage will be marked by the shifting sands of this clock, the Great Prince shall place himself into true slavery. Moreover, you shall nominate Katya and myself as your whip-masters. That is, we shall be charged to train you in the deportment of a female slave."

Ali stared with dumbfoundment.

Danya hurriedly went on. "Unless you are a slave, we do not dare use any means of discipline to induce you to learn great lessons swiftly. You may in fact refuse to do any undignified thing asked of you, and we shall not dare to do so much as to speak harshly in rebuke."

The sultan's transformed son grimaced thoughtfully. These could be a very bad two hours, as girls could be cunning and cruel creatures. Worse, one of them had the soul of a mountain bandit. Yet, Ali was a war-leader who had not feared to clash with Greeks, Crusaders, and the wild renegades of the desert, though capture by the latter would certainly have meant being cut to pieces and fed to the ants.

"What sort of discipline do you speak?"

"Commonplace chastisement only, O Prince. Some blows of the girl-whip, probably less than twenty. Some brief chaining must be expected, perhaps even some spanking. You may be held and tickled," she was careful to add, remembering Ali's extreme reaction when she had applied the fleece.

"What plain discipline is that?" Ali scoffed, not supposing it to be nearly enough to compel obedience from a warrior.

"It is not the degree of pain which teaches a slave her place," Danya explained, "but the understanding that pain may be applied because she is truly in another's power. Be assured, nonetheless, that the prince shall leave this room two hours hence, fit, blemishless, and beautiful. Only, we think, he shall be wiser in the ways of the world and more appreciative of his womanhood."

Ali still searched the dancer's face distrustfully.

"Cut off my head two hours from now, Heir of Damascus, if I play thee false with my words -- or ask the sultan to do it in thy stead. I only ask that thou show'st mercy to Katya, even should I be denied the same."

Ali suspicion seemed to quell somewhat.

"That is all I can say to assure you, O Prince," Danya concluded. "Would you return to your bed now, or instead seek knowledge not attainable by you elsewhere?"

"Oh, Your Grace," pleaded Katya, "do not fear for your heart to be opened."

Ali raised her chin proudly. "I can endure two hours of bedevilment, if it is only what a mere girl might expect to endure." She in fact anticipated a bad experience, though hopefully not a fatal one. If she came out of her ordeal hating womanhood and its despicable cravings, all to the good.

Katya kissed the prince delightedly, while Danya pressed her for an oath, suggesting the language to be used.

"I, Ali Ibn Haroon," the prince swore, "for wicked and lewd thoughts, for desires which are unseemly to a prince of lofty birth, am hereby sentenced to forfeit, for two hours time, the status of a free man and be instead recognized as a woman and a slave. As chattel I shall be turned over to those here present, who shall act as whip-mistresses and instruct me in such arts as have hitherto been agreed." She took hold of the sand-clock. "As I turn this clock, may the sentence be carried out."

Ali turned over the clock.

And by that act, she had become a slave girl.

Ali looked up at her companions anxiously, almost as if expecting them to fall upon her with blows and kicks.

Both girls were quiet, though, and Katya looked to Danya, who from the beginning had appeared to be the natural leader of the pair.

Ali shifted uncomfortably. She felt a little smaller, a little more uneasy, than she had just a moment before.

"We shall call you Ayeesha," Danya declared, breaking the silence, "or Pretty Slave, or Stupid Girl, or anything that comes to mind."

Ali pursed her lips, listening quietly.

"When you are given an order," Danya instructed, "you must reply `Yes, Mistress.' In fact, you shall call me `Master' or even `Master Jakhar,' and address Katya as `Mistress' or `Mistress Katya.' Is that understood?"

Ali nodded, then belatedly added, "Yes, Master. Yes, Mistress."

Danya regarded her, satisfied. "Very well, Slave, but guard against all insolence for the term of your slavery, even the insolence of the eyes. You know how a thrall should act before a master. You must assume that attitude."

Ali drew an uneven breath. She did indeed know, in a general way, what was expected of a slave girl, but the whole idea of acting in that guise seemed very undignified.

Danya had gone to a wall-array and without a moment's hesitation, she took down what was known to slave-trainers as a "girl-whip." This, a specialized tool, was fashioned of soft material and felt very supple and elastic to the grasp. The blow of it, she knew from wielding it and experiencing it, would sting a maid like the fires of Shaitan, but would not mar her flesh.

The prince's stare fixated upon the device between the dancing girl's slender fingers. The anxiety she betrayed pleased Danya, for fear and respect were cast from the same ingot.

"If you are obedient, Ayeesha," she said in a strong, even voice, "there need be no reason to switch you. But a wise judge decreed that if you should tax our patience with either hesitancy or insolence, your correction must be swift and memorable."

Ali was quite aware that the girl-whip would hurt somewhat, but it was far from the heavy flagellums that flayed the backs of punished males. The switch, she judged, would probably do more hurt to the pride than to the body, but, even so, the prince had no wish to sample it unnecessarily.

"Yes, Master Jakhar," Ali acknowledged.

"She's so sweet and lovely!" Katya piped. "--Isn't she good, -- uh, Jakhar?"

"Yes," affirmed Danya, "I think our lovely Ayeesha shall train very well."

The dancer touched Ali's arm with the supple lash and the prince blenched despite her determination to be stolid. "First," said Master Jakhar, "you must reorder your thinking. Assumptions suitable for a prince are entirely inappropriate to a slave girl." She pointed to one side, where a glittering gem depended from a fishing line and hung at about waist-level in front of a mirror. "Go and kneel down before that dangling bauble."

Ali and the glittering gem

When Ali had complied, the gem hung at her eye-level. She averted her gaze from the mirror behind it, not liking the image it cast back.

Danya moved a lamp so that the light made the faceted gem scintillate brightly. "Do not look away from the gem or you shall earn a switching," she warned her charge. Ali focused on the jewel then, noticing that her own breathing was causing it to rotate slowly, sending tiny rainbow flashes into her eyes.

Danya moved up behind her. "You are overwrought, Pretty Slave, and so must relax before we go on. When you are reposed, when your thoughts are focused, you shall at last be ripe for instruction. Empty your mind, Lovely One, gaze into your own reflected eyes behind the crystal."

While Ali performed this meditative exercise, Danya took Katya to the other side of the room and whispered so that the girl in red could not hear:

"Katya," asked Danya, "what is the outcome that you desire for Prince Ali this night?"

"I only wish her to be happy," the other girl responded earnestly.

"Can we leave it up to her to decide what is best for the attainment of happiness?"

The singing slave shook her head. "I do not believe so. The yearning to be a man again is very strong in a fountain girl before she receives the magic potion."

Danya couldn't help but wince and Katya gasped, "Oh, I am sorry, dear friend. I sometimes forget --"

"Never mind; you are right," sighed the dancer. "Ali can not see anything beyond her duty to assume her father's throne."

"That is so, but I think it will not make her happy."

"What do you think would give her joy?"

Katya's eyes flashed with excitement. "The handsome Lord Hassan!"

"I agree," nodded Danya. "We shall be blessed of Allah if we serve his will."

"What would you do?"

"Here is my plan," the dancing girl answered. "We will drive Ali to ecstasy and bring her to the point of climax repeatedly, only to deny her the release she craves. After two hours she will have been reduced to a bitch in heat, and then shall be ready at last to go to Lord Hassan's chamber."

"Ohhh," Katya cooed excitedly, "that will surely bring the lovers together, as Allah intends. But let us hope that Halima will not have wasted all Lord Hassan's seed before we are ready."

"Halima is with Hassan now?"

The singing girl nodded. "That is bad?"

Danya strained her pretty brow. "Not necessarily, not as long as Halima does not take the edge off the lord's ardor." Danya gripped Katya's arm urgently. "Listen, you must go to Halima at once and tell her not to encourage the foreign lord. She must in fact use her wiles to distract him from any such thought. Under no circumstances should Lord Hassan be permitted to expend his virile power before Prince Ali has come to him."

Katya shivered. "Oh, this is a dangerous game we are playing, Danya. And who knows if it is truly the will of Allah?"

Danya tweaked her friend's chin encouragingly. "That which is not the will of Allah, blessed be His name, cannot succeed. If that which we do is His will, we cannot fail."

This satisfied Katya's uneasy conscience and she turned swiftly to go, but Danya still held her back, saying, "Not so fast! There are yet a few more items which you must fetch for us."

---

The belly dancer appreciated the trance-like expression the prince had by this time assumed. The slackness of her features, the unblinking stare, told Danya that her charge had entered into a profoundly-altered state.

Danya had not only suffered the cruel arts of the whip-masters, but she had also learned from their ingenuity. The dangling gem induced a receptive state of mind during which any instructions imparted to a subject under its power would remain in his mind for a long while, guiding his actions like an unseen master.

The dancing girl reflected soberly upon the formidable task ahead. What usually took a whip-master weeks to carry out, she must accomplish in a mere two hours. "Maiden's Ruin," she knew, would attain all her ends instantly, but any fool could apply the magic potion effectively. Danya would not have used it even if she had possessed a vial of it. Success or failure at all costs was not her aim. What she hoped to achieve tonight was, in fact, not even about Ali, but about Danya -- and Danya alone. It was about the exhilaration of exercising power long-denied her. The whole purpose of this adventure was nothing less than the vindication of herself to herself. To press on too timidly was to fail; to press on too ruthlessly was to court painful death. How was it best to proceed?

Katya seemed to believe that Ali could be persuaded by mere coaxing to accept a male lover, but Danya doubted that. Katya had never been male and did not understand these things. The transformed prince had been in the company of Hassan for many weeks and so far had not even recognized the meaning of the emotions bedeviling her. If she was to surrender to love, Ali had to undergo an inner transformation as shocking as the passage of a babe from the womb into the light. To achieve it, the Damascene maid must worked as by a skillful smith, purified, heated like raw iron, plunged into icy water for tempering. The end was the transmogrification of crude iron into gleaming Damascus steel.

Danya carefully passed her hand in front of Ali's eyes; the latter did not blink. The former Ben Jakhar now drew a hopeful breath; Ali was perhaps ready for the next step, a crucial one. Upon it, ultimately, the entire outcome of this exercise might hinge.

"I will tell you what you must do, and you shall remember," the dancing girl began, as if about to recite from scripture.

---

Danya had only just finished her task when Katya came back toting another basketful of items under one arm and a pail of water in her free hand. The ex-bandit consulted the sand-clock hastily. More than a half-hour of the two appointed had already passed.

The singing girl set down her load, as happy as a puppy. "Everything went well! I think Allah does indeed favor us!"

"Good," the preoccupied dancer smiled, kneeling over the basket to draw out the britches, boots, blouse, keffiyeh, and dust-veil of a ghazi. She changed clothes quickly and then placed her hands akimbo, her booted feet wide with bravura. "How do I look?" she put to her companion.

"Like a dancing girl in man's clothes," Katya giggled.

Danya raised a warning fist. "A female who giggles is one who will soon be struck." Then she shrugged resignedly and lowered her arm. "At least Ali will have none to compare me with."

"What next?" inquired her excited helpmate.

Danya explained and the cunning of the plan fired the singing girl's already-overwrought imagination. Deeming that it was now time, Danya crossed over to the kneeling Ali.

"Ayeesha!" said Danya sharply. "Wake up!"

The prince snapped wide-awake, blinking uncomprehendingly. It seemed only a moment that she had first regarded the dangling gem. Danya took her by the right arm and Katya by her left.

"As a woman you can oft expect to be bound by your lover," Danya remarked didactically. "You should therefore become accustomed to such treatment." Standing Ali up straight, they guided her to the wall, in which manacles were fixed. Still beset by the daze of a wakened sleeper, she only came to herself as the cold iron clicked around her wrists. She scowled with perplexity, then watched her whip-mistresses' faces warily.

Danya ran her fingertips lightly over Ali's naked belly and upper chest, then touched her breast through the fabric of the halter. The maidenly globe constrained within felt admirably firm and the dancer smiled. "Allah has favored you, sweet Ayeesha," she said. "Or rather, has favored the one who will make you his lover."

Ali turned her face away.

Danya now deftly undid the hooks of Ali's halter, a garment designed to be easily removed from a shackled female, and cast it to one side. The Damascene's cheeks burned to feel the cool cellar draft upon her bare breasts, but she jutted her chin angrily.

Amused, Danya pressed herself up against the prisoner and grasped her derriere in both hands. "Ahh," the woman-once-a-man sighed, "these are firm enough to hold a male high aloft forever. From the front or from the rear, your endowments are every man's dream of Paradise, little dove."

She continued her physical teasing, playing her hungry fingers over Ali's bottom, kneading the solid flesh, pinching it mischievously and, when Ali refused to cry out, pinching it even harder until she won a tight grimace from her victim. Such stoicism as Ali displayed annoyed Danya, but the would-be whip-mistress was patiently resourceful, already planning the vengeance which she would take for the prince's stubborness.

Danya casually took a girl-whip from the tool rack on the wall and combed its many straps between her fingers.

The girl-whip in Danya's fist

Ali watched the whip's swaying motion warily as Danya spoke: "You perhaps have not learned yet how much delight a woman's nipples may afford her. She touched Ali's pubis with the whip. "I know not why, but a touch there is felt as far away as here, in what is called the `zambur.' Or are you different from other women?"

Her baiting won no answer other than a murderous glare. "She has beautiful brown eyes," Danya thought and set aside the whip, commencing instead to stroke Ali's areolae with her thumbs, which attention quickened and stiffened the pink-brown nipples rapidly. The writhing of Ali's facial lips told her tormentor what she was feeling behind her other lips.

"Teats are made for sucking." Danya informed her captive archly. "I have heard of women being unwillingly sent into ecstasy by the mouth of a nursing babe. I know myself, too, that a lover's mouth may turn the proudest of fountain girls into soft clay." Having given fair warning, she bent to take a nipple between her lips.

Ali gasped for air and her breasts palpitated while the dancer teased them with her vigorous suction and fluttering tongue.

"You like it!" Danya exulted, releasing the mammilla. "Why, you were surely born for female pleasure-slavery. What a crime to place you upon a throne instead of into the bed of a brash and virile conqueror!"

Ali did not like these words and arched her neck defiantly. Yet, as Danya resumed the pleasuring, resistance was forgotten in the fever of sensation.

Before long, Danya again paused and this time called her helper: "Katya, assist me!"

The two palace slaves now worked in tandem, playing with the prince's breasts -- kissing them, subjecting them to the ministrations of their tongues, sucking their erect little towers. Sometimes they would nip the latter and though Ali would grimace, she refused to say so much as "Ouch!"

Even so, the Damascene's face took on the aspect of one in torture and she lapsed into semi-consciousness.

Danya read her reaction and feared that Ali was close to climax. For that reason she pushed Katya away and pinched Ali's breasts smartly.

Ali released a little yelp of pain and threw her head up glassy-eyed. Her back arched against the stone wall, like a woman about to spend uncontrollably, but she failed to go into orgasm. Her grimace told them all they needed to know about her craving and discomfort.

"Bring a cup of wine," the dancer instructed the singer and, when it was fetched, Danya put it to the prisoner's lips, hoping that a few glasses of it would make the prince tipsy, but not falling-down drunk. The aim was to reduce her inhibitions, but not deaden the cravings of her flesh. As Danya had told Katya, she intended to place Ali into Hassan's chamber as a woman in desperate need.

While mischief and power-joy drove Danya, Katya was moved instead by sympathy. "Wasn't that wonderful, Ali?" she said, stroking the prince's beaded cheek. It doesn't have to happen just this once. You could enjoy it again and again. Every day, even. It is all up to you."

Ali only shook her head, the exact meaning of which the singer could not interpret.

"You do not cry out," accused Danya, shouldering Katya aside. "This does not please your masters."

Ali faced her boldly and spoke through gritted teeth: "I have no masters!"

Danya slapped the prince; the echo of the smarting blow rebounded between the adamantine walls.

"Ahh!" Ali blurted in astonishment.

"You continue to be such a proud male under the skin," Danya chided her severely. "A woman cries, she struggles, she begs like a coward, but you are too stiff-necked!"

"Go to Shaitan!" came the hissing response.

Danya struck her again -- hard enough to drive home a point, but not to do grave hurt. Driven too far, the dancer knew, the prince might seek for both their lives later on. Danya nonetheless believed that light discipline would only add to Ali's excitement and, ultimately, pleasure. At least that had been the dancer's own experience during her first days as female slave.

"Tell us, what are you so proud of?"

When Ali remained silent, Danya pinched her nipple.

"Shaitan's curse upon you!" Ali shouted. "My pride is my faith, my family, my country."

"How many girls have you slept with, Pretty Slave? Or were you of that degraded sort who preferred small boys instead?"

Stung by the insinuation, Ali replied harshly: "Allah instills a man with a desire for women so why should he not give full vent to it?"

Danya nodded knowingly. The lady protested too much; was it possible that Ali, who must have taken his sport with many slave girls, nursed a secret guilt? If so, careful conditioning might turn that inner unease into a desire for punishment. And any slave who craved punishment became a slave of the truest sort.

"Well then, if your ways were pleasing to Allah, is it not strange that the magic of Marshan should reach all the way to distant Damascus and choose you, of all people, as its victim?"

"It is no judgement on me!" Ali fired back. "It is the doing of a traitor!"

"Oftentimes God uses evil men to do such work as he intends for some good purpose. Why should you not believe that it is the will of Allah that you should be a woman and fulfill your destiny in that shape?"

Ali looked away again.

"Can it be that Allah placed you into a woman's shell because it is appropriate for you?"

When Ali still made no reply, she went on: "Or is it that you have committed the sin of false pride which needs humbling at the hands of the Almighty?"

Ali shifted, but her features exuded defiance.

"Very well, we shall just have to see whether you are by nature a man, or a woman."

Without saying more, Danya undid the tie around Ali's waist, causing the gossamer skirt to slide down her thighs to her knees. The prince, dismayed, widened her stance to arrest its descent, but this only allowed her tormentor to slip her fingers between her thighs. The prince shuddered.

"What is wrong?" Danya asked with feigned innocence while she coiled the Damascene's pubic hair about her slender fingers.

"Nothing!" Ali growled.

Danya began to tickle, which made her captive lurch. "So?" the dancer laughed purringly, "You are ticklish! Surely the All-Wise knows that a ticklish girl is the easiest of all to discipline, yet he has taken care to render you so." Danya looked back at her confederate. "-- Katya! It is the will of Allah that the prince should be prepared for the most severe of tickling experiences."

 

---

 

"And if the wine you drink, the lip you press,
End in the nothing, all things end in -- Yes.
Then fancy while thou art; thou art but what
Thou shalt be nothing -- thou shalt not be less."

 

Chapter Seven

The singing girl fetched a wooden rod a foot in length and an inch in thickness, and which supporting a leg-iron at either end. This device of the whip-masters they fitted just below Ali's knees. When the shackles were in place, Ali's unprotected state increased her feeling of vulnerability three-fold. She apprehensively searched the faces of her captors.

Danya went speedily to a cabinet and came back with a beaker full of small camel-hair brushes, one of which she drew and touched to her own upper lip. She immediately had to rub the spot with her finger to drive the tickle away. Then the dancer drew a second brush and handed it to Katya before confronting Ali once more.

"You have the courage of a prince," she said, "and so you should not need to fear the next test that Allah sets before you. Can you silently endure the touch of the camel hair, proving your claim to manhood, or shall your anguished cries tell us that we have discovered a weak girl?"

Ali did not fear a brush, but the exaggerated warning made her wonder what Danya was leaving unsaid. In answer, the would-be whip-mistress touched the camel hair to the underside of the prince's left breast.

Ali gasped.

Danya was pleased to see the apprehension in her victim. Before, during her own training, the dancing girl had not known what true torment was until the whip-masters had brought the tickling brushes into play. Now, happy to inflict what had once been inflicted upon her, she began to brush Ali's left globe, the gasps evoked growing louder or softer with the variated pressure.

Danya suddenly spoke over her shoulder:

"Katya, now you try it."

Katya stepped up and gave Ali an encouraging smile, as if delighting in the chance to give naughty pleasure to one who had been denied it. The singing-girl therefore proceeded to apply the tip of the brush to Ali's right breast, tickling the prisoner's nipple, which rapidly grew hard. A moan broke from the sufferer's throat, causing Katya to pause, so Danya poked her in the ribs to hurry her on.

Resuming, Katya worked to see how much more she could make Ali's points swell and stiffen, tickling her lightly-pigmented areola and at times swishing the nipple itself. But when she sank to her knees and touched the camel hair to the prince's labia, Danya seized her hand.

"It is too soon for that," the dancer advised sternly. "See the maiden's distraught state? Soothe her distress away with your mouth to show that you are sorry."

Reared to ways of the harem, this suggestion daunted the singer not at all. She pressed her open mouth to Ali's kus and lapped it fondly. When her pupil responded with involuntary murmurs which might have been of pleasure, Danya put her hand on her friend's shoulder and redirected her with an inclination of her head.

Understanding, Katya stood up and once more set about titillating Ali's breasts, kissing them, sucking each excited little tower in turn while lightly fingering the other. It was obvious to both girls that the captive liked this massage better than she had the torture of the brush.

Katya soothes Ali

Danya soon adjudged that it was time for another sip of wine, and so nudged Katya aside in order to offer Ali a quarter-cupful. This the Damascene needed desperately and drank with a loud slurping sound.

The breathless prince was given just a moment to rest before Danya placed her own brush inside the tiny crater of her navel and began to swirl it. How she savored her prisoner's increasingly beet-red and strained expression! The tickling continued until the sanguine flush had suffused the prince's entire body, darkening especially her cheeks and breasts.

"Shout and beg," Danya advised the girl, "writhe your loins, let the tears stream, and I will stop at once. All I seek is to show that you are no more able to endure punishment than a thousand other girls." No more able to endure, in fact, than Ben Jakhar had been herself.

No plea for mercy but only a stubborn rebuke showed in the prince's glare.

Danya desisted reluctantly. "You are too mulish. Why can you not accept Allah's judgement gracefully?" Unanswered, she said: "You shall answer all questions put to you, or we shall apply the brush to even more sensitive parts of your anatomy."

When still no reply came, Danya said ominously, "If that is your attitude, you shall learn what true tickling is!"

"Uhhh," Ali groaned as Danya slowly passed her finger over her furred womanhood, the membranes twitching and fluttering at the touch. At last the would-be-whip-mistress inserted her slim index finger to the last knuckle and felt Ali's subsequent lurch. Giving her prisoner just a moment to appreciate the novelty of having a foreign object lodged between her labia, Danya proceeded to agitate her impudent digit back and forth, until she detected a pronounced quiver in her victim's vaginal muscles.

Now Danya forced her member deeper still, until she had arrived at the inner membrane which preceded the vaginal sheath. Then, unexpectedly, Danya withdrew.

Through watering eyes Ali watched the would-be whip-master transfer the brush into her right hand and place its tip against her belly, commencing to swish it broadly, as if writing an exuberant script in a flowing hand. The dancer insidiously worked the calligraphy ever nearer to Ali's shivering kus.

---

Now the time had come to plunge Ali to the Seventh Circle of Hell. Danya commenced plying the brush back and forth over the moistened gate of Allah's Paradise, causing the bound girl to buck, but she lacked the freedom of movement needed to thwart the dancing girl's whimsical attack.

As Danya cunningly played the evil implement over Ali's vulva, she was taken by surprise by the prisoner's cry:

"Allah's Mercy, I cannot bear more!"

Danya paused a moment to challenge her. "A man could endure a great deal more, but we must suppose that a girl cannot. Cry out as you will, but do not assume a slave's plea shall shorten her punishment."

Danya resumed her pleasant occupation and Ali let out a renewed cry of anguish, twisting wildly, flinging her hips to and fro, gasping and giving out incoherent moans and mews. How the chains rattled to her motions -- the dance to music of the tortured slave!

Ben Jakhar knew that now was the time to draw the coral gates of Ali's vulva apart with the fingers of her left hand and assail the princess in her most private bower. The effect of applying her brush to Ali's clitoris was amazing, causing the Damascene to burst out with a wild shriek, her face flushed as red as a sunset. Danya felt no pity, not even when hot teardrops fell from above and splotched her arms, and thus continued the torment, well able to imagine what the prince was experiencing. It was not long before Ali's labia were contracting into a tight pout, offering easily passage to her trainer's probing brush. Simultaneously, her zambur asserted itself strongly, and Danya obligingly made it, too, one of the special targets of her camel-tufted instrument.

Yet she proceeded with wariness and, anticipating that Ali was again nearing climax, she reluctantly desisted.

"Now?" Katya asked eagerly.

"Yes, by Allah, what do you think?! Now!"

Katya splashed a cup of cold water into Ali's face and the latter cried out, falling forward, held up only by her manacles. Ali did not subsequently resist when her trainers unshackled her. Indeed, she was hardly aware that they were doing so.

---

"Mouth Magic is one if the most humbling disciplines a girl may be put to, as well as that which gives the most pleasure to men," Danya instructed Ali, her tone exaggeratedly pedagogic. "But, of course, you must know this already."

Ali again beheld the object before which she had been instructed to kneel -- a man's cock-stand cast in bronze, its antique surface a green verdigris. A small hole cast into its end simulated a meatus, and below the jutting sculpture hung a small leather bag, this last burdened with two large marbles. The chair upon which Ben Jakhar was now seated something like a saddle and the bronze piece rearing up in front of her could have been part of her own body.

"Touch the marbles, lovely Ayeesha," Master Jakhar instructed her, "but gently."

Ali, though inwardly resistant, did so.

"Now tickle them with your fingertips."

Again, the prince obeyed, if sourly.

Ben Jakhar was remembering how she, as a bandit leader, had once cut off the head of a clumsy maid who had bungled such instruction so much that he had cried out in pain. Danya had since regretted that hasty act -- not from remorse, for her heart was proud, but simply because she had grown more sexually sophisticated. Her trainers had taught her that there were many forms of revenge which might be inflicted upon a beautiful female without bringing about her death or mutilation.

"Place your hands about the shaft, Ayeesha," Danya commanded, "and stroke its length as if it were a treasure of gold. You know what I am talking about. -- Yes, that's right, but squeeze firmly and then release. -- No, not just once, Stupid Girl, repeatedly!

"All right, Pretty Slave," Danya said, noting how much Ali's performance had improved, "hold the stones in your hands and touch the sac with your tongue." She supervised this exercise closely and found it sub-standard. "No, not with a limp tongue; stiffen it, allow the man to feel it! Shaitan! Why does this simple business come so hard to our ignorant little slave? All you need to do is what many a girl has already done to you! You should be already half-trained!"

She kept Ali practicing rigorously for a quarter hour, then gave a new order: "Place your tongue under a jewel and lift it. When you have raised it about an inch, flick your tongue."

Seething, Ali brought her lingua in contact with the marble-laden sac and tried to do as told. Before long, Danya decided it was time to move on to other techniques: "Now, Ayeesha, be a good little slave and suck thy master's zubb."

Ali looked up angrily.

Danya felt peerless and powerful, like she had done when captive girls had knelt before her as a man in her mountain fastness. "You must obey," she said in a rumble, "or you shall be punished. Obedience, you shall find, soon becomes pleasure. You are beginning to appreciate that, my wanton one, are you not?"

Though shivering with indignation, Ali engorged the bronze organ. Watching Ali suck, Danya realized that her pleasure was a detached one. The truth be told, she felt very little animosity toward the prince, and thus, correspondingly, small delight in her degradation. No, it was not Ali whom she would have most liked to see kneeling before the saddle, it was Lord Dwar. The thought of Dwar on her knees, naked, collared, with painted lips and kohled eyes, her cheeks ripe with blush, the air sweet with her florid perfume mingled with hot, flowing body sweat, her blonde head bobbing rhythmically as she licked and sucked perforce, sighing with weariness as she arduously learned how to please a man --

When Ali least expected it, her whip-master pressed a plunger built into the chair, pumping a thick, burning concoction up through the meatus of the bronze zubb. Ali, shocked, spit it out without a thought for the consequences.

Danya laughed. "It is only a paste of salt, Indian pepper, and vinegar. It is supposed to be bad-tasting; when a fountain girl tastes a man's honey it shall seem pleasant by comparison. You are expected to swallow spice-draught, no matter how much it burns your throat."

"You perverted bitch!" the Syrian exploded pushing herself to herself up. "I've had enough!"

"Kneel and resume your practice," Danya ordered her imperiously.

"Go to the Hells!" the transformed prince cursed as she sprang to her feet and went to retrieve her discarded clothing.

Danya had expected this to happen eventually, and in fact was surprised only that the prince's threshold of humiliation had been so high. The crisis had to be met swiftly but calmly she knew, and so the dancer rose at once, exclaiming: "Kat, help me!"

Together they took the collared prisoner in hand, Danya firmly, Katya half-heartedly.

"Do you know what you're doing?" the anxious singer asked her friend, visions of wild horses galloping through her mind.

"If we let her go now, when she is so angry, she may very well call the sultan's guard!"

"By the Almighty, I shall!" Ali growled, too furious to remember the oath she had sworn.

"Let us take her to the table," Danya gasped. Ali was wrestling fiercely and Katya's help was half-hearted, so it was difficult for the lithe dancer to play the part of a jailor. It was also humiliating to one who had been the herculean Ben Jakhar that a supple girl such as Ali could give her such a fight.

Nonetheless, Ali was immediately thrown face-down over the edge of the tile-topped table mounted with manacles, and Danya held her down while Katya shackled her.

Breathless themselves, the palace slaves permitted Ali just a brief respite, then, noting that the prisoner had calmed a little, Danya again picked up the girl-whip. "Ayeesha, for violence against your trainers, for calling a master bad names, you shall receive ten strokes. This is a very light punishment; I have seen girls suffer ten times ten blows for offenses even less than yours."

For a moment her words were drowned out by Ali's cursing.

"You are blessed with a derriere that every slave girl will envy," Danya continued once the Damascene had paused for breath. "A man might seek for such through all the markets of the East and not discover a better. But be warned, needful one; many a men will take pleasure in spanking and switching such a divine work of art. Let us hope that fate sends thee a strong and virile master who will use thy charms exactly as Allah intended."

Ali bound upon the tile-topped table

Ali had stopped blaspheming and gathered her breath, steeling herself for the coming pain. Danya took a comfortable position, then delivered a smack squarely across the girl's buttocks.

This blow won just a tiny lurch from Ali, but Danya knew how much the girl-whip hurt. She administered four more strokes and Ali flinched pronouncedly at each, but steadfastly refused to cry out.

This stubbornness offended Danya. "Whipping you is like beating a camel pack!" she complained. "Shout! Bounce your bottom! Let your master know you are suffering terrible distress. Stubborn pride will make a whip-master very angry, for you are telling him that he is not strong and that you do not hold him in fear. -- And a girl is very unwise to insult those who hold power over her."

In truth, each blow of the switch had stung Ali like a lick of fire, but damn the dancer to Shaitan! she thought, she would never exhibit weakness with slaves looking on.

Danya resumed the chastisement, the last five blows, like the earlier ones, being sharp and swift. Finally, the whip-master tossed the lash aside. Time was so critically short that all she could do was press ahead.

"All you fountain girls are afraid of penetration," the belly dancer told the prince matter-of-factly. "It would be a shame should Lord Hassan desired to enter and you withdrew like a frightened virgin. Therefore, the sooner you have experienced the pleasure of a man's zubb, the better."

Ali looked back in apprehension, her face pale.

Danya tilted her head proudly. "However, we should not want to diminish you in the eyes of your lover, since the maidenhead is all that separates the virgin from the harlot. So we shall initiate you to womanhood's sweet mystery by way of your lesser gate of pleasure." That said, she picked up an item from the table and passed it to Katya.

Ali twisted disconcertedly in her bonds, knowing very well the meaning of her term. Katya stepped near at that point and soothed the prince with soft words: "Now, now, Ali -- I mean Ayeesha -- what we're going to do next isn't any kind of punishment. It shall feel very good, in fact. Once you feel the pleasure that a man's big zubb affords you, you shall worship it and be glad that you shall be a woman in the arms of the mighty beast who owns it."

Katya lubricated the phallic object with olive oil and positioned it relative to Ali's body. Slowly, and with solicitous circumspection, she inserted it. She sighed softly, knowing full well what the prince was experiencing.

Ali's eyes widened. The strange intrusion felt like nothing she knew, except, perhaps, a reverse bowel movement. The dildo felt much wider and longer than it was, and the sensation of its inexorable entry overwhelmed all other thoughts and feelings.

"A girl's backside was not made for this sort of thing," Katya apologized, "but it may suggest the pleasure you shall know when Lord Hassan is filling you with his rampant tower of flesh. Does not the thought of being so used by a man make your woman's lips wet?"

Ali gave a tiny murmur of discomfort.

"It would be hurtful should I move it too vigorously," Katya confided garrulously, "but a little motion shall nonetheless impart the sweetest sort of pain."

Katya jogged the leather phallus very circumspectly, simulating the thoughtful ministrations of a lover. The inanimate object was a poor substitute for flesh, alas, but she thought that its very insufficiency might instill into Ali the yearning to have more and better.

Danya shifted restlessly, but with rapt attention. She had thought from the beginning that Katya's technique as a whip-mistress was insipid, but yet Ali appeared to be responding to it. The dancer noticed that her kus was becoming wet with erotic honey. In fact, her pleasure seemed to be growing so hugely so quickly that Danya thought it prudent to intervene.

"Aragg!" Ali cried as cold water sloshed over her head.

Danya stood back, letting Ali spit and sneeze while Katya wiped the droplets off her own arms.

"What did you do that for?!" Ali complained.

Danya slapped her smartly across her still-sore buttocks. "No questions, slave. One condemned to the chain must simply accept and endure."

The belly dancer undid one manacle at a time and turned Ali over upon her back, causing the prince to fear that her revised position meant that she was about to be tickled again.

"We must move on swiftly," Danya cautioned her companion. "Let us first teach our slave a passive art which, though delightful, shall not overtax her."

She took a seat above Ali and brought her lips down to the prisoner's. "I will be placing my tongue inside your mouth, and you will not permit yourself to gag, nor resist in any way."

Some men, the dancer knew, liked initiative in their women, while still others were affronted by it. Danya desired to impress upon Ali that it is ever the woman who must read her lover's tastes and needs. A man, she must come to understand, was under no obligation to fulfill his partner's desires in any way -- a fact that had oftentimes driven Danya herself to distraction.

As an object lesson, therefore, the male-clad girl urged Ali's teeth apart with her tongue. The intrusion was tentative at first, mere play with her partner's lingua, the tickling of her gums. As Ali settled down to accept it, the keffiyehed woman began thrusting more deeply, teasing Ali's tongue, encouraging it to join in the frolic. Ali shivered and broke out in gooseflesh as Danya's hands went to her pupil's breasts, tickling them with her thumbs, making their quiescent buds reassert themselves and get hard.

The dancer, at length, desisted and drew back, drying her lips on her sleeve. "You kiss well," she complimented the shackled captive. "You could make a man very happy indeed."

Ali's lips pursed, her brows knit.

"Too tame for you?" Danya asked teasingly. "I know that a kiss is nothing new to you, sweet one, but there are other experiences which you may like better -- those which only a woman is privileged to know. -- Katya!"

Ali saw the singer step forward, felt her hands grasp her hips. The girl was kneeling, her head lowering as if in reverence -- but Katya's intention became clear when the prince felt a wet tickle upon her lower abdomen.

The singing girl's impudent lips were soon playing all over the bound maid's thighs. Ali tried to wriggle away, but her bonds made that object impossible.

The Damascene could do no more than moan as Katya's tongue slithered between the folds of her vulva. The captive's back arched involuntarily as her muscles tightened, but strain to defy it though she might, the pleasure of the harem girl's determined cunnilingus waxed ever sharper. She felt like a crumbling wall, trying to stand up to the pitiless grind of the besieger's mole. As it went on she knew she could not endure for long, but must collapse. Once again that peculiar heat was beginning to suffuse her loins, but it swiftly spread to her breasts, her cheeks. . . .

Cold water.

"We have no time to indulge your insatiable need for pleasure, naughty girl," remarked Danya, who was now filling the water cup with more wine to offer her pupil. "There is only time left to dress you for Lord Hassan."

It was all over? As she took the tart beverage into her mouth, Ali could scarcely believe that liberty was at hand; the last two hours had been an ordeal that she feared must stretch into an eternity. But instead of experiencing relief at the prospect of freedom, she felt a tinge of panic instead. The Damascene did not feel the least bit ready to encounter Hassan -- either as a lover or a friend.

Danya unshackled Ali and permitted her a moment to rest. Katya returned from a visit to the basket clutching some midnight-blue garments. These, the singer knew, were similar in fabric and cut to what Halima was wearing this night.

Ali unshackled

Ali now sat up and rubbed herself between the legs. This simple massage comforted her somewhat, but it also induced an even greater sense of erotic urgency. She had hoped that the pain of her ordeal would have stifled her physical needs, but for reasons quite incomprehensible to her, the opposite appeared to be true.

Katya set the garments aside and dipped a cloth into the bucket of water. "Hurry, lovely one, hurry. Your sweating body must be refreshed and scented, so that it shall not offend the nose of Lord Hassan! This shall be a night to remember for as long as you shall live!"

 

---

By the time the sands had run out, Ali had been sponge-bathed, her facial paint refreshened, and clad in the blue halter, veil, wrap, and harem briefs. All this while she had half-disbelieved that the girls were actually willing to relinquish their power over her, even though they were going about their duties with bowed head while their graceful body-language affirmed that the natural order had been restored.

The pair had been harsh with her, but had they broken any of their promises? Ali wondered. Perhaps not, though admittedly she had not understood the true nature of that which she had agreed to subject herself to. Regardless, if the girls had deceived her, she had at least anticipated such a possibility from the beginning and had accepted it with eyes open. It would ill-become a prince to pretend otherwise now.

Ali beheld herself in the mirror. "It is mad to think I could go to Hassan like this!" she exclaimed. "He would think that I have lost my mind."

"Not so, lella," Katya counseled respectfully, addressing Ali as 'lady' in the language of the Prophet. He will think that his dreams have come true."

"You do not understand! He will never disobey my father. He is a man of honor!"

Danya laughed. "Do not worry -- women who have no honor know how to deal with gentlemen who do. This unworthy slave has told you before that he shall be blindfolded." She held up a small bottle. "Here, Princess. It is the very perfume that Halima is wearing tonight. Let us dab it upon your limbs also."

Ali regarded the vial warily. "Why? Is it magic?"

"Not magic, lella, but a ruse. Lord Hassan's eyes shall be stopped, but not his nose." She turned to the singing girl: "Go warn Halima that we are ready. And tell me what she has to say."

---

Halima had been feeding Lord Hassan one grape at a time. The game was a most diverting one, requiring that he should take it from between her breasts without using his hands.

Suddenly there came a tapping at the door -- three raps followed by two, the signal which Halima had been told to expect. The slave girl perked up. "Allow me to see who it is, Master."

"Yes, go," the young warrior sighed, sinking back into his pillow. He had grown confused by Halima's manner, unsure whether the girl wished to lie with him or not. Whenever he settled down to sleep, she had taken it upon herself to stimulate and amuse him. When he began to think it would be pleasant to have her, she distracted him with some snatch of song or a bit of foolery. He might have taken what he wanted at will, since that was his right, but he had been too ambivalent after his last encounter with Ali to know what he really wanted from her.

Halima peered out into the corridor.

"How do you fare?" Katya asked anxiously.

"All is well so far, Kat, but hurry! I do not think I can fend off his eager groping much longer."

"We will be back very soon -- along with the girl who loves him!"

The concubine shook her head. "I am very afraid that we shall get ourselves into trouble playing tricks upon the sultan's honored guest."

"Please, do not give up, Halima! A woman's happiness hangs in the balance."

Halima placed her hands over her ears. "Do not tell me more! The more I know, the harder the beating to come!"

Katya darted away and the pleasure slave returned to the bed. Hassan felt a new surge of excitement and smiled up at her, deigning to run a caressing hand over one naked thigh. Though he was troubled of heart, Halima's poetry, her scent, and her soft touch were yet making his blood warm.

---

The heir of Damascus beheld her own reflection in the training-room mirror. Could Hassan have recognized her dressed this way? He had never seen her limbs bare, or the swell of her cleavage. As for the kohled eyes which showed above the line of her gossamer veil, they might have belonged to any young concubine.

"What do you feel when you see yourself adorned so?" asked Danya, who had by now reexchanged her ill-fitting male garb for the costume of the harem.

Ali answered with a whisper, a lump in her throat. "Wonder, and shame!"

"Why shame? Beauty is the gift of Allah."

Ali shook her head. "This beauty is my sister's, not mine."

Danya frowned. Ali was still too full of doubt. She fell back upon her final subterfuge and clapped her hands three times, pronouncing: "Ayeesha!"

Ali's body stiffened.

"Raise your head and look at yourself in the mirror," Danya commanded.

As Ali obeyed, Danya felt immense relief. The commands which she had placed into the Damascene's entranced mind two hours before still lingered.

"Tell me, Pretty Slave, why did Allah place a houri such as you into this world?"

"To give pleasure to men."

"What variety of pleasure?"

"All varieties. The pleasure of the smile, the pleasure of the voice, the pleasure of the touch, the pleasure of the eye, the pleasure of scent. And most of all the pleasure of the couch."

"You remember, good. Continue to remember my words when you are with Lord Hassan. I shall be with you there, guiding you."

Ali nodded slowly.

"Now you will awaken," pronounced Danya, "and forget that we have just spoken."

Ali relaxed, then looked about puzzled. She thought that Danya had just been speaking to her, but the sense of her words eluded her.

Just then, Katya hurried back into the chamber. "I talked to Halima!" bubbled the singing-girl.

Danya took hold of her and drew her aside. "Tell me in private. Ayeesha has too much on her mind just now." She had said the latter loudly enough for the Damascene to hear.

"All is ready," Katya whispered. "Halima waits for us! But we must hurry -- Lord Hassan has a great and terrible need for a woman!"

"I see," murmured Danya, turning back to Ali, her mien grave. "I don't know if this is good news or bad, my prince," she advised solemnly.

"What?"

"Halima could not restrain the lord's ardor!" Danya lied. "He took her, not once, but four times, compelling her to perform at the very limit of her skill. Alas, she is a gabbadzah, which is a courtesan trained to take all which a man has to offer. Your comrade received much pleasure tonight, but, alas, after four times in the embrace of Halima, it is impossible that he has more seed to give to another."

Ali's face heated with a flush. "No seed?"

"None whatever! At least you shall be safe from the consequences of sweet love, my princess, however passionate it should become. But you dare not be coy, or he will be flaccid throughout your encounter and neither he nor you shall experience joy. I am a courtesan myself, and so I understand these things, dear lella."

Ali shifted uneasily. This was good news, was it not?

"I'm not sure. . ." Ali began.

"Take courage, prince." Danya again explained her plan.

Her carefully-chosen words did not dispel Ali's look of doubt. "If I do not get away undiscovered," she whispered, "it will destroy our friendship."

"The lightning destroys a tree only to permit another to grow in its place," the dancer reminded her. "That is the way of things."

The blue-clad girl only shook her head. Danya, sighing heavily, decided that Ali needed still another mug of the strong wine.

---

"There was a door to which I found no key:
There was a veil past which I could not see.
Some little talk awhile of me and thee
There seemed -- and then no more of thee and me."

Chapter Eight

The tapping sounded anew upon Hassan's door; he irritably propped himself up on one elbow and demanded: "What fool is it who goes about the palace knocking at this hour?"

"An old woman of the chamber pots," Halima explained hastily. "The poor dear can never remember which suites she has already visited." The concubine looked back at the egress and shouted: "Go away old woman! We need no more of you tonight."

The truth was, however, that Halima knew very well that the tapper had been Katya again, the rhythmic tap being the signal that it was time for Halima to begin the deception of Lord Hassan. Taking a deep breath, the concubine remarked: "Such a handsome master must surely have made love to many different women between Damascus and Marshan."

He regarded her with a wan smile and lamented, "Not so. I have traveled many months without once having enjoyed the company of any maid."

"Why, Master?"

The warrior glanced away. "It is hard to explain. When the heart is sick it may hold no pleasure; joy seeps away like rain upon the sand."

"I think I understand," nodded Halima. "The master misses some excellent woman who waits for him at home."

"Home?" Hassan echoed ruefully. "-- Would that I had someone waiting for me in Damascus." Then he shrugged. "It is my own fault; I have placed affection in abeyance while my father seeks for a suitable daughter-in-law."

"I see," said Halima. "But it is not possible that my master does not have a woman whom he loves! Tell me I am right, Lord. You are so plainly sad. Does she whom you love spurn you? Does she belong to another? Are your families divided by feud?"

He shook his head. "No such simple happenstance, lovely Halima. Allah tantalizes me with my lady's succulence, and yet will not let me taste of the fruit."

"Allah works in mysterious ways."

"That is so," Hassan agreed, though he had no real hope.

"I have a plan to lighten your heart! Let me be the girl whom you love!"

Hassan broke into laughter. "You tempt me, sweet one, but the soul needs choose its own mate, and mine, sorry to say, has not chosen you."

Halima's glow was undimmed. "I understand, Master, but we of Marshan have a game which never fails to ease a lovelorn heart such as yours."

He smiled wonderingly. "Marshan has many games, it seems. Well, of what sort of game do you speak, my delight? If this woe might be lightened, it would be a miracle even greater than that of magic fountain."

"It is simple, brave lord. You will wear a blindfold and pretend I am the unique woman of your heart. I will say not a word, no matter how ardently you court me. In this way you shall not lose the illusion that I am your secret lady-love. You may speak boldly, though, and let your doleful heart give vent to all the passion pent up within, so that it will cease to afflict you."

"I have my doubts that anything shall cheer me, dove, but your game sounds intriguing. You are certain you will not feel slighted when I profess love for another?"

"I will feel nothing -- nothing but joy, I mean, Master. My happiness is your happiness."

Halima removed her scarf, a bit of scented silk, and tied it about his eyes. "These are the last words that shall pass my lips tonight, my lord -- until, that is, you discover me curled up beside you in the light of dawn. Before then you must not under any circumstances take off the scarf; it is said to be very unlucky to do so."

"Very well, proceed," Hassan sighed patiently.

Instead of touching him, Halima scurried to the door, behind which stood Ali, Danya, and Katya. Halima noted that the new girl, the mysterious object of all this subterfuge, had come veiled like a harem girl, but her demeanor suggested uneasiness, as if she also feared a whipping. Halima bustled past them out into the hall, whispering, "Quickly!" Danya thanked her with a flashing smile and then nudged Ali into the room, pushing the door shut behind her. Then the cunning minx took a wooden wedge out of her bag, and this she slipped under the door crack so that the portal would not open until it was removed.

---

Ali no sooner found herself in the chamber than the warrior-trained youth felt the cold touch of panic. She turned in retreat, but found the door locked! Those fiendish women! she thought in exasperation. Without pondering their motives, Ali turned anxiously to behold the man lying in bed, whereupon her uncertainty worsened.

Then, out of nowhere, she thought she heard a whisper, though in truth it was only in her mind:

"This is the man you love, Ayeesha -- your brother, your twin, your friend, your strong right arm, your complement, your confidant. Feel again the yearning which you confessed to Katya and to me. Let love be a gentle breeze which carries you lightly into his arms, like a feather into the storm."

Ali gasped and glanced about nervously. Was this her heart speaking? Strange djinn held sway this night, assuredly! But the bracing words did soothe, did encourage. . . .

"Halima," Hassan called bemusedly from the bed, "are you playing some silly joke on me? Where did you go?"

Ali snapped alert, knowing that if she did not immediately take Halima's place Hassan would take off his blindfold and see her -- his friend -- dressed as a harem girl. What a disaster! He would think her a fool, a despicable creature like the eunuchs of the seraglio.

"If you do not go to him, all which you have suffered this night shall be for naught. Approach him, sweet Ayeesha. Excite him with your touch."

Ali lurched forward, placed her knee upon the mattress, and touched Hassan's arm. At once his suspicions were assuaged.

"My beloved, is that you?"

Ali knew that she must keep silent.

"You are beautiful, my houri," Hassan whispered, avoiding saying the name of his beloved, a name which he did not want anyone, not even a concubine of Marshan, to know. "Thy face is the Evening Star, thy voice is song! My heart aches for thee. Let me press thy hand in mine."

Ali tentatively touched Hassan's fingers.

His firm hand clenched hers, held it a moment, and then swept it to his lips. Breathing deeply, he said, "Ahhh, you are wearing perfume."

He ran his hand up along her arm, then lightly over her silk garments, his eager fingers plucking at the midnight fabric, but enjoying even more the feel of her bare midriff and smooth thighs. Ali, experiencing this, could not help but shiver.

"Soul of my soul, thou art nearly naked and come to me in the garments of a slave! This is good. How often I have imagined you dressed so. Thy body was not made for austere dress, but for silk, bangles, and bracelets. Allah has fashioned your feet for satin shoes, and your ripe bosom for straining halters."

Ali in blue

His explorations continued, following the trail of nudity from her cleavage to her throat. "Thou art veiled," Hassan murmured as he pressed the gossamer fabric. "That is how it should be. From this day forward, precious one, let no man other than myself look upon thy lovely face, for from now on you belong to me."

The hand then slid under Ali's hair and came to rest upon her silken nape. "Kiss me, child of the desert," he urged with the urgency of a man coming from the heated waste and beholding a reflective pool.

Kiss Hassan? Ali squirmed at the very thought of it. If she kissed him and he then should discover her, what could she say? How angry he would be, how depraved she would appear.

But Hassan would not wait for the consent of a slave. He boldly swept aside her veil and entrapped her mouth with his own. Ali cringed; the texture of his upper lip and chin, the clove-scent of his breath, his manly cologne, made the experience very different from any which her lips had previously known.

Though daunted, Ali yet dared not struggle; a concubine like Halima, she apprehended, would never have struggled. The slightest mistake in her behavior would surely alert Hassan to the falsity of the game. She glanced up to Heaven, wishing that she had never come; but now that she was here, Ali was desperate to get through the whole night without betraying her identity. Thank Allah that Hassan had utterly spent himself upon Halima, or she never would have dared to stay!

The young man's tongue invaded her mouth and swirled around inside, trying to provoke a "tongue war." So shocked was Ali that she was about to push free, despite her determination to endure, when her inner voice returned:

"How pleasant are a man's kisses, Ayeesha. Open your soul, become the willing receptacle for the love that Hassan would bestow upon you. Love and Pleasure are the food for the starving spirit, sweet maiden. Feel the gnaw of your hunger, your desire to yield to it. Dare to feast. . . ."

Once again the ghostly counsel calmed her, helped her to find interest in the sensation of kissing. If this act was evil, she suddenly found herself avowing, then it was her evil alone. Her comrade, at least, was untainted by like vileness, since, unlike her, he believed that he was kissing the person he loved.

But then, with a sense of strange irony, Ali comprehended that she, too, was doing that. Love Hassan? Yes, but no! Not that way!

Abruptly, the warrior's lips released hers, but only to say, "Let me take off thy halter."

Ali stiffened. Unheedful of her reluctance, her companion skillfully removed the tiny garment and the prince felt the cool of the night air on her bared breasts. But what made for startling contrast was the simultaneous warm they received from Hassan's feverish exhales. The lingering kisses upon her bare bosom made her skin prickle and her breath come in gulps.

"He is touching the mountains of your womanhood, Ali. Savor it. Open your heart to your need for it! Feel the overwhelming craving in your loins."

And, in truth, as Hassan kissed the Damascene's breasts, it was almost as if he were kissing the secret place between her thighs. It caused her to recall Danya's warning that some wonderful connection existed between these distant places in the designs of Allah. Ali uttered tiny sounds of confusion as her comrade's oral worship continued unabated, and these Hassan interpreted as sweet sighs of passion.

At that point the warrior eased himself back, whispering: "Light of my Life, how often I have wanted to kiss thee, to run my hands over thy sublime form. Yet, had I done so, thou wouldst have hated me, reviled me, driven me from thy presence and I would have perished of loneliness. . . ."

Ali's eyes burned. Of whom did he speak? She now understood the intensity with which Hassan's vast heart could love, but it was equally clear that he loved another. Part of her wished she might leap from a mountaintop in despair, and still another part of her wanted to slay the mystery harlot for whom her friend's soul yearned.

"I have not been able to make love for months," whispered Hassan between kisses. "Since I first beheld thy beauty, every woman whom I embrace slowly transforms into thy image. If only I could rid myself of such thoughts that make me a traitor, a monster."

Ali could not understand her friend's intense anguish. What was the object of this terrible, tormenting love? Hassan had never confided in her, though they had been as close as brothers. Why had he feared to speak of his pain? Did he fear derision? The fool! How could one who was as tortured as herself fail to commiserate with another entrapped in love's coils?

"Dearest," sighed Hassan, "I have had a vision, a terrible vision that has afflicted me. I am ashamed to even speak of it."

Ali looked into the handsome face, barely illuminated by the diffuse moonlight, mystified by his avowal.

"In my vision," he continued, "thou comest into my tent garbed very plainly. I suppose then thou only wish to discuss some matter of business, but without a spoken word thou instead divest thyself of thy travel garments, until thou stand naked and perfect before me. I am amazed, for from thy bosom to thy toes thou art the fairest houri of Paradise. I long to see thy face, but thy dust veil is removed last of all. When it falls, I see to my amazement that thou art wearing a collar fit only for the lowliest of caravan chattel, but it sets off thy beauty as if it was created only for thee."

Hassan ran his fingertips over the collar which Ali wore.

"I am unable to rise, unable to speak," he declared in passion's throes, "for thy face and form have transfixed me. Then thou sinkest to thy hands and knees and creep nearer like a wild she-beast. The fire in thy eyes burns so ferally that I would be alarmed, except that by thy collar I know thee for a tame creature.

"You come closer then, ever closer, until thou bendest thy head and thy tongue tickles the toes of my feet. Oh, my love, do that for me now, I beg it of thee!"

His earnest words had very nearly bewitched Ali. A moment later he truthfully declared: "Oh, glorious Allah, the incomparable she-beast is licking my toes as in my dream! Wonderful!

Hardly aware of what she was doing, Ali continued delighting her comrade when he suddenly shifted and declared: "Now, my she-beast, kiss my ankles to my shins, kiss me over my knees, and up along my thighs."

Ali did not know how she might avoid doing this without risking discovery, but to her surprise and for the first time in her life, she discovered that the contact of hair with her tongue did not revolt her.

Hassan spread his knees. "Now my inner thighs, beloved beast."

Ali hesitated, but complied; his thigh-flesh felt hot against her lips and nose. Suddenly she gasped to notice how Hassan's great scepter was rising in stimulation.

"See Man's great minaret, Ayeesha?" Danya's voice whispered. "What verse of poetry, what treasure of the craftsman's art compares? It is for that which all women yearn. It fires thy blood, the conflagration is unbearable. The scepter of Man is the Mystery, the Tree of Life; it is the Forbidden Fruit placed there for the seduction of Eve. It is the Temptation that conquered the First Woman and all the daughters which have come after her."

"Now, Precious," Hassan rasped, "do what my she-beast does. Touch my scrip of jewels with thy magic tongue."

Ali's mind whirled and she looked about frantically for a route of escape. The windows were sealed against thieves with arabesque grates, and the door, of course offered no salvation at all. Knowing that Hassan would unmask himself if she delayed too long, she parted her lips and slowly extended her lingua.

"Ayeee!" Hassan cried delightedly.

"Is it not a joy to be worshipping upon your knees before the scepter of Man?" Danya said. "Man thrives by conquest, and Woman by surrender. You are coming to understand the joy of surrender. . . ."

When Hassan shook with pleasure, his manhood blood-gorged and hard, Ali drew back to behold the display in wonder. What preternatural virility his mighty organ evinced, that it might still rise like a minaret even after so many rounds of unbridled passion with Halima the gabbadzah!

"Oh, now, my sweet, do not delay!" pleaded Hassan. "I cannot endure! Bless me with the magic of thy mouth."

It was well that the warrior could not see Ali's expression just then.

"Do not turn your face away, Ayeesha. Mouth Magic is the Woman's joy. Show Hassan that he is now and forever your lord and master. . . ."

Steeling herself, the prince tentatively touched her pink tongue to the knob that surmounted his cock-stand. Hassan reacted as warmth spread through his jewels and his zubb grew larger with each wild beat of his heart, rearing ever higher and looking more and more formidable. "Take it between thy cheeks, beloved," Hassan moaned, "I cannot bear the delay!"

Almost carried away by what she was doing, Ali opened her mouth wide and took in the noble pole-arm; again the nobleman trembled. The maid commenced to give oral pleasure, though she hardly knew how.

But as her lips and mouth played, memories flooded back, sweet memories of sweet concubines and how wise they were in the arts of the bed chamber. Inspired, she slipped her tongue all around the helmet-like head of his Fruit and then renewed her sucking with ever-increasing vigor. With waxing boldness, she pumped her dilated lips up and down as Hassan's scepter throbbed with urgency. Suddenly she realized that he was moving his hips, pushing himself ever more deeply into her torrid mouth, without even knowing it.

"Remember, my princess, your pleasure is not the reason you are here. A woman's lot is to give pleasure. If she gives unstintingly her lover may deign to give in return. . . ."

Ali's cheeks were hollowed, her fluid tongue playing over his entrapped majesty, her jaws distending as she sucked harder and faster. Hassan, shuddering and groaning, felt his seed straining to come, but he checked himself with a mighty effort, not desiring to end the pleasure so soon. "Stop, my desert beast, stop," he gasped. "Bring me some wine."

Ali did stop immediately, naively supposing that she had not done well, or that his words expressed frustration for having no seed. Reassured though inexplicably disappointed, she rolled from the bed and went to the table, where a tray of refreshments waited.

The Damascene prince dried her lips with a napkin, then hurriedly gulped down a cup of the amber-colored liquor. Only belatedly did she realize that a slave might drink only when bidden -- but, happily, Hassan was blindfolded, and apparently had not heard. Admonishing herself for carelessness, Ali filled her companion's cup and served him as she herself had been served by many a slave girl before.

Refreshed, Hassan set the cup on the floor and reached out to grasp Ali's leg. The warrior played his fingers upon her flesh until they were plucking at the narrowest part of her briefs.

"Thy precious bottom obsesses me," he whispered hoarsely, cupping one of her buttocks. "I have watched it for hours bouncing upon a horse's saddle! Allah has daily shown me Paradise, but has also placed his Angel of the Flaming Sword between me and thee, forbidding me to pass."

"When did my agony begin?" Hassan asked in plaintive sorrow. "Never did I dare to speak of my passion, or reach out to embrace thee. I have ridden out into the desert alone sometimes, to declare the love which I cannot confess to you to the wind-blown dunes instead, until my throat burns like the heated sand of midday!"

A descending tear tickled Ali's nose. Hassan, you fool! she silently accused, no woman alive is worthy of you! Why weep for one who can never be yours? There are --

There are what? she wondered at the meaning of her own unspoken words. That others loved him? Who, exactly, did she mean? Ali hardly yet dared confess the answer even to herself.

The warrior now grasped her waist, massaging it with his strong thumbs. "I've undressed thee with my eyes a thousand times, Perfect One. Let me render thee as Allah made you, and revel in your nakedness pressed against mine."

It was a good thing that Hassan could not see Ali's face as he stripped her of her briefs and she felt her companion's maleness stir against her thigh, felt his hungry hands stroke her now-naked bottom. He pinched it suddenly and she gave a leap, though the prince still did not cry out.

Pleased by her movements, Hassan ran a hand betwixt the girl's warm thighs, advancing it up against her trembling kus. Ali's flesh broke out in fine beads of perspiration, the scent of which mingled with the floridness of her perfume, arousing the warrior all the more.

"He is touching you," Danya whispered. "Your modesty cannot endure. You are becoming like hot, flowing wax. You must have relief, and relief is something that only a man's virility can afford you. . . ."

Her companion was teasing her labia minora, calling forth a rich flow of lubricants. Then the lord, before Ali had reconciled herself to his original assault, united his index and middle fingers into a kind of zubb and fed them fully and deeply into the object of his desire. "Ohhhhhh!" she ejaculated.

It puzzled Hassan to encounter the obstruction. How could the girl be a virgin? he wondered, before realizing the dimensions of the sultan's generosity -- giving him a virgin trained in the practices of love. How appropriate; the woman whom he loved was a virgin also.

"I love thee, deeply, truly, and forever," he sighed. "After tonight, my heart will be as ashes; I cannot bear it any longer to have thee near but yet be unable to seize thee in my embrace. I shall never return to Damascus, dear one. Instead I shall go south, to the Persians and seek service in the shah's army. I wish to forget thy face and form, for they have broken my heart. I would remember thee, Soul of my Soul, only as we have been tonight, a man and woman in the throes of sweet love. Oh, how happy we might have been, had only God been kinder!"

Ali listened in horror. Was Hassan leaving in fact, or was this only a fantasy spun from his passion and heartbreak? They must not part -- not ever! She silently vowed that if her dear friend refused to return home, then she would not do so either. Let her father find a husband for Ayeesha and make him his heir. Hassan must not be left to wander the barren world without a comrade to share his pain. Indeed, his comrade's pain would be even greater than his own.

Ali was so lost in thought that Hassan's next words took her by surprise:

"Yield to me, Dearest," he rasped. "Let my arrow of love reach thy beating heart."

Ali might have leaped from the bed had not Danya's words returned yet again:

"Do not fear the warrior's mighty pole arm, my princess. The wound of this spear is a tender one. The act of surrender is the Supreme Mystery, the open grimoire; it is that secret which no man may know. Taste the Fruit of Eden; the lips which Allah has given you are burning to taste of it."

Hassan, seeking entry between her befurred lips, wondered at the sudden stiffness in his lover's body. Had she inexplicably turned cold. . . ?

"As Eve gained Knowledge from the Fruit, so may you, also, Ayeesha. -- All of Woman's secrets, save one, shall be acquired by you this night -- all secrets, save one alone, and this last mystery, too, can be yours through the miracle of the Fruit."

Gaining courage, Ali lifted herself just enough to make entry possible and as his intrusion deepened, the prince's feverish mind raced back to many previous nights of love, of pleasantly-scented slave girls clutched in her, then his, arms. Instead of stifling her present ardor, it inexplicably excited it.

Now the maid of Damascus, almost automatically, began to push herself forward with little lurches, hardly aware that she was accepting her lover's advance, until, of a sudden, she felt a little tear of pain deep inside.

"I. . ." Hassan mewed beneath her, ". . . I have taken your maidenhead! Praise be to Allah! I am the first."

Ali now knew herself deflowered, but she had no time to contemplate the implications as Hassan's movements were growing bolder. It was as if he had made some mystical transition from petitioner to demanding master. Ali's mind and emotions reeled, wondering if this change on his part was the effect of magic, the Mystery which might only become known at the breaking of the Seal?

Without fully recognizing her experience as a pleasant or a painful one, Ali opened her knees without conscious thought, making their act of union easier and unconsciously acknowledging her submission to male dominion. So engaged were they that neither noticed the door opening and closing behind them, as if animated by a ghost. A couple less oblivious to their surroundings might have wondered whether Shaitan himself had not stepped through that portal to spy upon some evil work of his in progress.

Full entry. Hassan's throaty vocalizations had changed from murmurs to yells. Ali, too, groaned loudly to feel the solidness of his pelvic bones slamming against the soft cushion of her Mons Venus.

"Move, experience, savor," whispered Ali's ghostly advisor. "Eat of the Fruit; take its blessed juices into thy body."

Ali's breath came roughly, her hips by now having fallen into a natural rhythm that evolved rapidly from a simple backward-forward gyration to the present sinuous flow, which was like waves surging upon a beach. The wild copulation swept her mind and soul away, sent shivers of pleasure though every particle of her body.

Ali deceives Hassan

"Move, Ali. Just one more thrust, and one more after that. Your loins are starved and need gorge themselves with pleasure. You have been too long denied. Become one with your lover; let your insatiable need be the whip that drives you. Your craving is your master, you are its surrendered slave. You have found your life's meaning, and it is all that you shall ever want to do, forever."

But because, or in spite of these words of encouragement, Ali suddenly remembered the danger she courted. If Hassan should not be absolutely spent, she thought with alarm, should he have but even one drop of seed remaining, Allah might condemn her to be forever the wild, craving, and submissive creature which she had inexplicably become. Ali did not, could not, doom herself to eternal womanhood -- not while Hassan's heart belonged without reserve to someone else!

But as strong as her fears were, her body's need was equal to them. Ali felt herself close to release, close to that long-denied woman's reward, but she also knew that she must break away -- at once -- whether Hassan removed his blindfold or not. The price of not doing so was much too high, for it was death by broken heart!

Her movements had already become discordant, and Hassan sensed it. But the warrior, refusing to interrupt the building tempo, locked his hands about her derriere, holding her firmly in place while he did his will with her. Ali for the first time was being subjected to his full strength and realized with dismay that her own maidenly power was as nothing compared to it.

Panicking, she was on the verge of shouting, "Stop!" when Hassan cried out in a passion too overwhelming for secrecy:

"I'm fucking you, Ali! Blessed God, I am fucking my sweet Ali! Take my seed and let it fill you, my beloved! Be a maid, not a man! Let live and die as we are!"

Ali could not believe what she had heard and cried out in astonishment: "Allah! I don't know what to do! What is your will?!"

At that instant Allah's will was known. Hassan released a heated surge, touching off a wild orgasmic response in Ali. The maid of Damascus shrieked as her virgin blood mixed faithfully with the virile seed of her lover. . . .

---

 

"Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits -- and then
Re-mould it nearer to the heart's desire!"

Chapter Nine

Falling forward, Ali wrapped her arms around Hassan's neck, but the warrior, half-strangled, pushed her away and tore off his blindfold.

"Let go of me, trollop! Would you choke me to death?!"

"Do not call me that, Hassan. I have done you wrong, but only for love. Please forgive me."

Hassan sat bolt upright and tore off his blindfold. "Ali!?"

The naked girl on the pillow next to him could be no other. She fearfully touched his arm. "I am sorry. Do not hate me."

Incredulous, the warrior rolled out of reach and stood up. "Do you realize what you have done?!" Hassan jabbered. " -- Merciful God, what have I done?!

"You have done nothing;" the princess pleaded, "place the blame upon me, or upon fate, do not think that you have done wrong."

Hassan suddenly looked ill. "Was it you to whom I said all those things?" he demanded.

She cast her glance to the pillow under her cheek. "Your words brought me great joy."

Hassan backed away. "We are accursed -- both of God and --"

Suddenly, a low laugh sounded in the space around them. Hassan spun about, but though he scanned every cranny, saw no one.

"There is an invisible djinn in this room!" he declared fiercely. "Oh, foul spirit, you thing of mischief -- now I understand! It was your wicked magic which beguiled Ali and brought us to grief!"

He seized his scimitar and began waving it about. "I will cleave thy horned head from thy shaggy shoulders, O Djinn, and send thee back to Shaitan's tormenting fires!"

The whirring edge slashed close to Yusuf's nose; in dodging back the old man slipped upon Ali's dropped shawl and fell heavily -- so heavily, in fact, that the Gem of Invisibility jarred from his hand and rolled away under the furniture, quite out of his reach.

Both Hassan and Ali gasped to see the notorious wizard of Damascus congeal out of thin air.

"Foul fiend, so you take a familiar guise, do you?!" shouted the warrior. "Do no think to deceive us with a mortal guise. I shall sever you in twain as the monster I know you for!" He raised the sword for a killing blow.

"Mercy, Lord Hassan!" Yusuf cried out in his native Arabic.

"So, demon, you speak the tongue of Mohammed!" Hassan exclaimed. Then doubt crossed his nimble mind. "Art thou a djinn, truly, or just a man?"

"Would you let a djinn go free?" Yusuf whined.

"Fool! I would cut off a djinn's head!"

"Then I am a man, mortal born and bred; I humbly beg thy clemency, noble lord!"

"Yusuf!" growled Hassan, "I think it is you. Vile old trickster, what are you doing here?!"

The explanation dawned on Hassan's quick mind and he glanced back at Ali. "I believe that we have found thy secret enemy!"

"Yusuf?" Ali said with a confused blink.

"It makes sense! This one was long absent from Damascus, and then he reappeared just before you were enchanted. Oh, why did Allah blind us to the truth?!"

He turned back to the magician in cold fury. "Speak, old dog, why have you done this?"

"I have done nothing," pleaded the conspirator. "-- I mean, not much!"

Hassan seized him by the beard. "Tell that to the Sultan of Marshan, O wind from a donkey! The noble sovereign shall surely cast you into the accursed fountain -- which shall be fair vengeance!"

"Pity, Lord! I do not hate our noble prince. I was but a cat's paw."

Ali sprang out of bed, a sheet clutched about her nakedness. "That makes sense, Hassan! Why should this decrepit old wizard bear me a personal grudge? -- Speak, Yusuf, who sent you?!"

"I dare not say . . ."

"You dare not be silent!" warned Hassan. "Either speak to us now, or to the law-givers of the sultan tomorrow! -- Tell me first, how you render your fat bulk unseeable!" When the old man seemed to waver, the warrior pressed his sword-point to his throat.

Yusuf was soon babbling out the entire story of the accursed bath, the magical gem, and how Achmed had sent him hither with "Maiden's Ruin."

---

"So Achmed was behind this!" exclaimed the princess as she fingered the magical gem. "My father's throne is in danger! -- And what shall befall my sister if the foul conspirator sets his designs upon wedding her?!"

"In truth, only Achmed could be behind this!" Hassan ruminated bitterly. "He has always hated you, Ali, and now we know the reason! You have alone have stood in the way of his traitorous ambitions." Desiring someone to strike, the warrior seized Yusuf and shook him hard, saying, "Sorcerer, name your death!"

Ali restrained her friend. "Be easy, Hassan. I know that this man acted out of greed and spineless servility, but perhaps he has only acted as a tool of fate."

Hassan looked back. "What are you saying?"

Ali's words came tentatively, like a blind man's fingers probing a strange corridor. "I know not what myself, Hassan," she said. "All I know is that I do not hate anyone for what has befallen me. I would not have the blood of this old schemer upon my hands, as long as he faithfully assists us in thwarting Achmed's cruel plot."

"If you give the word, he shall live," Hassan nodded slowly, then glared into Yusuf's face, his jaw set in ire.

"Do you understand us, fool? You are the goldfish we need to catch the larger carp! Swear by whatever demon you hold dear to give Emir Haroon evidence against Achmed, otherwise you shall know the harsh justice of Marshan."

"The Emir shall slay me in torture!" the old conjurer protested.

"You have earned cruel death many times over, schemer, but we shall request the emir's clemency once you have named the traitor -- though I fear that His Majesty's anger will be no hotter against you than against us."

"I will tell the noble emir all, O Wise Youth," the magician yammered, supposing that a probable execution several months down the road was not half so daunting as an immediate dip into the magic pool.

"That is good," Ali said to Hassan. "Let our captain keep him under guard until we set out for home. But, for now, we must talk over other important matters."

"What matters?" he asked concernedly.

Ali looked away. "In the dawn's light, I must go to the fountain."

Hassan's jaw dropped. "I do not understand, Ali. -- What good can the fountain do you now, if the legends be true?"

The princess shrugged. "I must do what my father bade me to do. If the remedy fails, as I expect it will, then the cause shall be from my own folly and the will of Allah, not by willful disobedience."

Worry clouded Hassan's handsome visage. "Ali, forgive me, what you say is true, but -- I mean, I am selfish, I know -- but --"

Ali now understood absolutely that Hassan desired her as a woman. She set him at ease with a smile and touched his stubbly cheek. "Was I in joy when I received thy seed? I do not know. But I stand in joy of its memory. Once this man is taken away, canst thou not receive me into thy embrace again? Surely there is no stricture against a girl of the fountain surrendering to her lover twice before she bathes in the magical waters."

Hassan stood stupefied. "Ali, are you certain? If there remains even the remote possibility that you may yet reverse this strange fate -- ?"

The princess' eyes were brave, if dewy. "I am certain of nothing, Hassan, except that I belong to you and never want to cease belonging. I know not whether joy or sorrow lies beyond the next portal, my love, but happiness to me has never meant becoming the husband of Badiat, nor even the sovereign of a mighty kingdom."

Hassan took Ali about the waist, drew her face close to his, and whispered into her ear: "I do not believe that either of those things would make me happy either. Nor am I any longer content to wait for my father to select a daughter-in-law for himself. If all the women of the earth were lain at my feet, and all the houris of Paradise, too, I would choose you."

A shiver ran through the princess and she pressed her cheek to his chest. "Then we both must have the courage to choose happiness."

Hassan lifted her chin with his finger, then his mouth began to tilt toward hers.

"If she is so happy," Yusuf broke in hopefully, "you have me to credit for it. Why not let me go in fair reward?"

"Be silent, fool," warned Hassan with a backward scowl. "Be content that Ali has deigned to show you mercy!"

Yusuf shook his head. He would have to settle for that, yet these young people seemed to be distressingly ungrateful. . .

---

Scheherazade says:

"Ali bathed in the waters of the magic fountain thereafter as she had vowed to, but by the will of Allah emerged wearing the beguiling shape of her sister Ayeesha. It will not be wrong to say that neither Ali nor Hassan suffered remorse.

"Ali, desiring to purchase serving maids for her homeward journey, sought for Danya and Katya to serve her in this regard, promising that each should be freed upon reaching Damascus and thereafter would be kept in honorable appointments.

"Katya was eager to serve the princess, but Danya demurred, unless she should be appointed a whip-mistress in the royal harem. The Damascene accepted the terms and thereafter went to the sultan.

"The sultan of Marshan was loath to lose the beautiful Danya, but the latter now laid claim to her promised boon, requesting her sale to Princess Ali. So her lord had no honorable recourse other than to let her go, albeit reluctantly.

"Ali and Hassan commenced their homeward trail and by the time the royal train had arrived at glorious Damascus, the two slave girls had made Ali wise in the lascivious ways of the harem. Each night Ali went to Hassan's tent, her eyes dark with kohl, her lips red with paint, her body fragrent with scent, not as a prince, nor even a princess, but as a needful slave girl submitting to a master. Hassan accepted her beautiful gifts graciously, for giving what she gave and asking nothing in return but love, he knew, made her the happiest of all Allah's daughters. Yet a baleful shadow still loomed over the couple's perfect bliss, and that was the certain wrath of Ali's father."

Ali in the garments of passion

---

Fuming, Emir Haroon paced back and forth while Hassan and Ali looked on apprehensively.

"This is a disaster!" wailed the emir. "-- Tell me, Ali, who outraged you?! Not all the wastes of Khwarizm shall hide him from my judgment!"

Hassan stepped forward, like a felon striding manfully to the gallows. "We never intended to deceive you, Sire. No stranger and no enemy did Ali wrong. Your son's fate is solely my responsibility."

The monarch stared uncomprehending. "What are you saying, Hassan? In what way were you responsible?"

Shoulders back showing all the fatalistic courage of his Destiny-ruled race, the warrior confessed: "I have made love to Ali, Sire, and I have done this because I favor her above all other women and desire her for a wife."

For an instant Haroon stared, his eyes the size of moons, then he shouted: "Traitor! You will be castrated and your diced testicles stuffed down your throat!"

Ali swiftly interposed herself between her father and her chosen mate. "No, Father! Spare him! I was much more responsible than he!"

"Why should I spare him?" demanded Haroon, red-faced. "He has taken away my son, my heir --"

"It was the judgment of Allah, Father," the maid pleaded. "If Hassan was Destiny's agent in depriving you of one thing, Great Sovereign, he has also been God's tool in giving you back something even more precious."

"What could be more precious?!" Haroon demanded in sorrow.

She opened her voluminous gown. Haroon stumbled back upon his chair at the sight of her figure.

"-- A grandchild!" Ali smiled abashedly.

Shock silenced the old man, but only momentarily. "This is a curse upon our house," he wailed, clawing his face, "and we are naught but ghosts fluttering away to disgrace and perdition."

---

In the women's quarters not long afterwards, Ali's sister Ayeesha and his betrothed lay resting side by side.
"It has been so many months," lamented Ayeesha. "I fear that Ali must have fallen prey to bandits, or sand storms."

"May he never return," Badiat murmured, pressing her nose to the princess' shoulder.

Ayeesha sat up, aghast.

"How can you say that?"

The Edessan touched her companion's breast soothingly. "If he returns, it means we two must be parted."

"Badiat! I love him!"

"And I love you, Ayeesha. For your sake, I wish no ill upon the brother whom you love. But you are as aware as I that your Ali stands between us."

"He should so stand! It is his right! I never intended for this to happen."

Badiat smiled coaxingly. "We do not do wrong, precious one. It happens all the time. How else can women in harems endure?"

Ayeesha looked up into her face, wounded. "This has been no empty dalliance to pass the time, Badiat -- at least not for me."

Now the bride-to-be also sat up. "It is not for me, either! How can you think otherwise?!

Leaning closer, Ayeesha whispered, "All I think -- all I know -- is that I love you."

Badiat kissed the Damascene's lips, then drew her against herself.

The soft pad of satin slippers alerted the guilty pair.

One of the eunuch attendants entered and, bowing, said: "Princess Ayeesha. A visitor. She claims to have news concerning your brother."

"About Ali?!" the princess exclaimed, glancing nervously at Badiat; each of them bore an expression of dismay, but, in fact, the sources of their dread were very different.

Ayeesha dressed and soon met the visitors in the designated chamber. Two were unveiled strangers whom she took for slaves, but there was also a third -- a young woman in a saltah of embroidered velvet. Ayeesha paused before the three, unsure how to greet them, but already the saltah-clad maid was unfixing her gossamer veil. When Ayeesha recognized the face of Ali unrestored acute pain