Since the hour had grown quite late and was thus not an appropriate time to presume upon the hospitality of strangers, Kamar al-Akmar stole into the palace via a carelessly unbolted door, moving with winged feet along the polished marble floors of the topmost corridor in search of sanctuary. Just when he despaired that he would never locate a place to rest his weary body, he arrived at a small vestibule. A slave stood guard outside, fast asleep on his bare feet. Tiptoeing past so slowly that he did not even disturb the air, Kamar drew aside the heavy velvet drapery concealing the entranceway, discovering a private bedchamber.
Commanding the center of the room stood a round bed constructed from the rarest pink-hued agate and studded throughout with the same precious gemstones that adorned his father’s crown. Flames from a bevy of candles repeated themselves in miniature within the brilliant reds and greens and blues, giving the illusion that the source of light originated from the bed itself. Little else in the manner of furnishments appeared to be present, which only made this solitary specimen for sleep all the more spectacular to its observer. Voile curtains hung in a graceful drape from a canopy of intricately carved rosewood, and they fluttered slightly at Kamar al-Akmar’s approach. They had been tied back in one place with a gleaming silken cord, as if offering to him an invitation.
And he would accept it most gratefully, for just behind these curtains was the most enchanting creature the young Shahzada had ever seen. The one he gazed upon could be none other than the famous Shahzadi of Sana—Shams al-Nahar. Kamar had heard a good deal spoken of her legendary golden hair and tiny white hands; they had been the subject of many a male dream in empires far and wide and in dreamers both young and old. The Shahzada all but dropped to the floor in a faint as he spied the beautiful Shams lying in graceful repose upon her back, her perfect alabaster form untainted by cloth save for a gauzy veil concealing the lower portion of her face. A pair of half-lidded eyes the color of smoke had been caught in a trance-like state as two pretty slave girls knelt over her, dutifully administering to their beloved Shahzadi. They wore scarcely more than their highborn mistress, their own veils having been pulled immodestly down to reveal mouths with lips as lush and red as fine wine and nearly as wet. From what this stealthy encroacher could discern, the duo appeared to be bathing the Shahzadi with their tongues, as Shams al-Nahar possessed skin of a remarkable delicacy that would have been marred by the common crudeness of a sea sponge.
Kamar watched in spellbound silence as the slaves licked slowly up along the silken lengths of each lovely thigh, urging them gently apart to gain access to the innermost potions. The Shahzadi sighed softly as they worked, the sighs turning into low throaty moans as the diligent pink tongues of her two attendants moved toward a dainty little pleat located at the junction of her outspread thighs, at which point the pale swell of her belly began to undulate like waves on a storm-tossed sea. The cleft flesh reminded its captivated beholder of a cowry shell that a visiting ship’s captain had given his childhood self, although this version proved far superior in every respect. Why, one could almost liken the slender seam running through it to a tiny mouth—a mouth that, unless the Shahzada was greatly mistaken, actually smiled at him.
Indeed, the closer the two slave girls got to this special place, the more force with which Kamar al-Akmar’s heart beat. Encouraged by his friendly reception, he placed himself to the farthest end of the bejeweled bed and, with furtive deliberation, raised up the voile curtain to better observe the enchanting Shahzadi’s evening bath. For the first time in his privileged life the Shahzada actually found himself envying those of menial status, for it did not seem so terribly unpleasant to pass one’s days attending a mistress in possession of such beauteous attributes. He started to tremble as the slaves’ feline tongues reached the charming little pleat between the Shahzadi’s thighs, the trembles graduating into violent shudders when each placed a well-acquainted thumb along the polished sides, drawing them tenderly and lovingly asunder.
Out from this artificially widened rift grew the petal of a rose, its pink more vibrant and lustrous than any Kamar al-Akmar had ever come across in his journeys. It bloomed with all the vernal freshness of a new spring, offering up a perfume as subtle as it was sweet. A breeze blew across the silken surface, causing it to flutter and billow and surge forth with vigor, as if straining to declare itself to its captivated onlooker. Although Kamar would have liked to press his yearning nose against it, he did not wish to frighten the Shahzadi. Instead he kept his desires mute, watching with breathless rapture as the two slave girls bowed their heads to lick the richly shaded pinkness surrounding this newly revealed treasure.
Alas, Kamar al-Akmar’s restraint did not last for long. A strange and most disconcerting occurrence had begun to take place inside his garments. He thought that perhaps an adder (for the desert was abundantly populated with them) had slithered its sinuous way in among the linen folds, and he shimmied about to set it free. When this failed to work, he took to slapping and rubbing himself, which only served to exacerbate the problem. In frustration the Shahzada reached up underneath his garment to grab hold of the offending entity, feeling it spasm and jerk in his hand. Suddenly it spat a hot stream of venomous fluid onto his belly, extracting from him a tormented groan. Indeed, Kamar created such a disturbance that Shams al-Nahar and her female attendants leapt up in fright from the bed. “Who are you?” cried the wide-eyed Shahzadi, straightening the veil over her flushed face. “What is your business here?”
Unconcerned for their own modesty, the two slaves fetched the flustered Shahzadi’s nightdress and assisted her back into it. However, it did little to cloak her nakedness. Kamar could scarcely drag his eyes away from the place that had caused him such agitation, so mesmerized was he by the silken whorls that the diaphanous linen failed to conceal. With a regal bow and as much dignity as he could muster, the Shahzada introduced himself as the son of a great and mighty sultan and proceeded to explain the unusual nature of how he had come to be in the palace of the Shahzadi. Of course Shams al-Nahar refused to believe such an impossible tale and demanded to be shown the ebony horse. Apparently, this handsome trespasser took her for a fool if he thought he could coax his way into her bed with such a fantasy. Even her two attendants could only shake their heads and titter behind their veils at hearing the lofty claim that Kamar al-Akmar had put forth.
Although this self-professed son of a sultan who had so rudely interrupted her slaves’ very pleasant laving of her person readily agreed to escort the Shahzadi to the wooden horse, Shams took note of his fatigue and condescended to grant him a few moments in which to rest and refresh himself and perhaps partake of a light meal. Despite this generous offer of hospitality, Kamar dared not tally for too long in her bedchamber. The guard posted in the corridor was bound to awaken in due course, and once it had been discovered that this presumptuous foreigner had spied upon the beautiful Shahzadi during her bath, the dogs would be set on him.
Shortly before daybreak and with the discordant music of the barefooted sentinel’s snores in their ears, Shams al-Nahar and her male intruder stole up to the palace rooftop. At the sight of the ebony horse with its flashing diamond eyes and jewel-encrusted accouterments, the Shahzadi leapt about in girlish delight. “Oh, do let me ride upon it!” she squealed, so excited that she dislodged the veil from her face. Only it would not be what lay behind the veil that tormented Kamar’s thoughts and sent a scimitar arcing through his belly.
Swallowing hard, he pondered the eager Shahzadi’s request with some deliberation. For, like his father and the wicked sage, Kamar al-Akmar, too, could strike bargains. “Your Highness, I shall be both honored and pleased to accommodate your wish. But I have a wish of my own.”
“Oh, yes! Anything!” cried the Shahzadi. “Is it gold you desire? Or land? I can speak to my father—”
“It is neither gold nor land I desire.”
“Well, what then?”
Kamar cleared his throat, for suddenly it felt as though the
pit from a date had gotten lodged inside it. When he could finally speak, his words came out sounding rough and raw and not at all like the mellifluous tones to be expected from one of his position. “I should very much desire to sample the perfume of your rose petal.”
“My rose petal?” echoed Shams al-Nahar in confusion. Indeed, she truly did not understand to what the owner of the ebony horse could possibly be referring. When the red-faced Shahzada indicated with his eyes the area beneath her garment to which he was alluding, the Shahzadi began to giggle. “I am certain that can be arranged,” she replied with a diffident smile, raising up the gauzy hem of her nightdress.
Falling weakly to his knees, Kamar al-Akmar pressed his nose against the velvety-silk softness of Shams’ proffered gift. “Ahh…my desert rose,” sighed the enamored Shahzada. “You have been sent to me from the heavens.”
Such worshipful words could not fail to ignite the Shahzadi’s passions. “Take me with you!” she pleaded, driving Kamar’s flushed face hard against the bisected shell-like promontory beneath her belly.
As the sun squeezed slowly out to fill the eastern horizon, Kamar al-Akmar and Shams al-Nahar together mounted the magic horse. A quick flick of a peg sent the couple soaring high into the early morning sky, the palace of Sana receding to an orange-toned speck of marble beneath the beast’s ebony flanks. It would not be until the following sunrise that they arrived in the sultanate of the Shahzada’s father, for they had stopped many times along the way to rest and for Kamar to once again stimulate his senses with the Shahzadi’s exotic endowment.
Leaving Shams and the ebony horse behind at his summer palace, the Shahzada traveled by foot the remainder of the distance to the palace of his father. Although he had not been gone from his homeland for very long, he discovered the city and its inhabitants greatly altered. People had taken to dressing in the black of mourning and walked with their eyes cast downward in sadness. Even the imperial banner atop the palace roof had been respectfully lowered in a manner indicating that a member of the Sultan’s family had died. As Kamar al-Akmar approached the gates, excited shouts could be heard coming from every corner of the palace. “The Shahzada is alive!”
Seeing the face of his son before him smiling and beaming with health, the Sultan’s tears of sorrow turned to tears of joy. Many hugs came to be exchanged, after which Kamar told his father of the beautiful Shahzadi he had brought back with him. Orders were immediately given to release the old sage from his prison cell, his evil intentions having resulted in good after all. Fully expecting to be put to death at any moment, the sorcerer was quite taken aback by his pardon, although this in no way lessened his searing hatred of the Sultan’s son. On the contrary, many cruel days and nights of bloody whippings had honed and refined it; hence the happy news of the young Shahzada’s return with the enchanting Shahzadi who awaited his hand in marriage did not sit well with the embittered sage, whose taste for revenge had grown ever stronger.
As celebrations were planned for the wedding of Kamar al-Akmar and Shams al-Nahar, the newly freed wizard hastened to the Shahzada’s summer palace, planning to arrive in advance of the official messengers who had been dispatched by the Sultan to collect the bride. He came upon the Shahzadi sitting alongside a gaily tinkling fountain with the ebony horse, whose silken mane she combed lovingly with her slender fingers. Having departed from her own home in such haste, she had not been given an opportunity to change from her nightdress into proper street attire.
“Oh, gracious Shahzadi, allow me to kiss the ground betwixt your imperial toes,” croaked the sorcerer, who could barely conceal his excitement at the sight of his enchanted horse or the alluring young woman who stroked its glossy black mane with her tiny hands. The image of those caressing fingers stirred something raw and primeval within him, and all at once the sage felt a lifetime of need welling up inside him. He knelt to press his withered brown lips against the sun-warmed earth at the Shahzadi’s feet, his tongue slithering boldly and wetly between her dainty toes and eliciting from her an astonished yelp. As he sucked the flavor from her smallest toe, the sage glanced stealthily up to behold her startled face, only to have his attention waylaid by something a good deal more savory than a toe limned beneath the thin cloth of her garment. “The Sultan has sent me to bring you to the place of your wedding,” explained the old wizard in a voice careening high with strain.
Shams al-Nahar arose from the stone bench encircling the fountain, pulling her toe with considerable effort out from the sage’s mouth. “Then I must locate something into which I may change, for I cannot be presented to the Sultan thusly,” she chuckled self-effacingly, indicating the obvious unsuitability of her attire.
“But your Highness, that is entirely unnecessary. A gown of watered silk embroidered with every precious jewel in the sultanate awaits you at the palace. Come,” invited the sage with a courtly bow, mounting with unexpected difficulty the horse’s elegantly outfitted back. An incommodious swelling had begun to make itself known inside the lower portion of his shabby vestments, hampering his every movement and necessitating a need for further furtiveness lest the unsuspecting Shahzadi take heed of it. “We must make haste, as it would not do to be late for the Shahzada and Shahzadi’s wedding!”
Since Shams al-Nahar, indeed, did not desire to miss the day of her own wedding, she allowed the Sultan’s peculiar message-bearer to assist her up onto the saddle in front of him, where he assured her she would be safe from harm. The sage knotted his long belt securely around her waist, thereby linking it to his own. With an expert twist of the peg, the ebony horse bolted high into the endless blue of the desert sky.
Although unfamiliar with the foreign landscape of her future husband, Shams knew with reasonable certainty that the palace of the great Sabur was located to the west, Kamar al-Akmar having earlier set off by foot in that direction. Therefore she grew extremely alarmed when the jackal-faced messenger piloted the magical horse toward the morning sun. “Look here, this is not the way to the Sultan’s palace!” she protested. “Why do you not obey your master’s orders?”
The sorcerer chuckled wickedly, displaying to the anxious Shahzadi a generous assortment of jagged yellow teeth. “I have no master!” he snorted contemptuously, cinching the belt binding them together even more tightly to emphasize his words.
“But the Sultan—”
“I, who command the secret of flight, do not require a master. As for that worthless horse thief Kamar, I heartily advise you to forget him. I shall give you all the kisses you require and more, once I take you as my bride!” For in having been originally promised a bride by the Shahzada’s father—who promptly reneged on the arrangement—the wizard felt entirely justified in acquiring another, especially when this other happened to be betrothed to the son of the one who had cheated him.
With so foul a proposal resounding in her ears, the Shahzadi struggled to free herself, only to discover that the sage’s belt held her like a chain of iron. She tried everything in her ability to thwart the villainous wizard, her threats and entreaties having little impact. It was not so much that she possessed an actual aversion to being restrained; for in the evenings Shams would often presume upon her personal slaves to bind her wrists and ankles as she awaited their devoted ministrations. However, the unsightly visage of the old sage bore no resemblance to those of her pretty slave girls, and despite the increasingly excited shivers that shook her slight frame, the Shahzadi found herself protesting with unexpected vigor, her words seeming to encourage her abductor to commit even greater improprieties upon her person.
Laughing like a madman, the sorcerer grabbed hold of the hem of her garment and tucked it into his belt. With Shams al-Nahar’s pale thighs stretched wide and clinging in trembling desperation to the horse’s wooden flanks, Kamar al-Akmar’s cherished rose petal became fully exposed to the elements. The cold wind lashed cruelly against it, causing it to ripple wildly about as the image of her wedding to the evil sage stung the Shahzadi’s eyes and caused
a corresponding burning in her loins.
By mid-afternoon, warder and prisoner approached a misty landscape of white-capped mountains and rushing blue rivers. The ebony horse finally set down in a rich green meadow. After securing a struggling Shams to its saddle with his belt, the wizard went off in search of food and drink—albeit not without first giving his captive’s windblown petal a vicious tweak, which was followed by a burst of vicious laughter and a suffusion of redness to both the Shahzadi’s cheeks and the object of the sage’s torment. Shams al-Nahar vowed to herself that when she returned to the land of her Kamar, she would see to it that the old wizard’s testicles were skewered and cooked over flame for their wedding supper.
It so happened that the ruler within whose empire the ebony horse had alighted had been out riding with his companions and had stopped to watch the amazing spectacle of the flying horse and its two equestrians, one of whom had gone scurrying off on some mission known only to him. The party of men discovered the beautiful Shahzadi bound to the finely tooled saddle of the beast with her diaphanous garment rolled up to her waist, her sole concession to modesty the gauzy veil covering the lower half of her face. She lay in helpless repose upon her back, her wrists and ankles cinched by a belt, which had been secured beneath the horse’s wooden belly. Left to stare up at the darkening sky, Shams did not see the group of horsemen until they were almost upon her. However, the telltale sound of hooves tramping the earth made her tremble and writhe with a fire that grew ever hotter as the riders drew nearer.
As the riding party galloped determinedly toward her, Shams al-Nahar cried out with what sounded to the men like relief, although the breathless Shahzadi knew different. The ruler of the land had barely managed to rein his steed to a halt before her recumbent figure when Shams was already halfway through the story of her life, unable to temper her outrage as she spoke of the evildoer who had brought her to this place. “You must arrest this shaitan and lock him inside your securest jail!” she implored of the astonished ruler and his equally astonished companions. “For he has stolen me from what should have been the day of my wedding.”
In Sleeping Beauty's Bed Page 11
