Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 6.djvu/186

162 they loved him and wished him power and victory and length of days. But Fekhr Taj’s mother remembered her daughter and raised the voice of mourning for her, and the palace was filled with crying and lamentation. Gherib heard this and entering the harem, asked the women what ailed them, whereupon the princess’s mother came forward and said, ‘O my lord, thy presence put me in mind of my daughter and how she would have joyed in thy coming, had she been alive.’ Gherib wept for her and sitting down on his throne, called for Sabour, and they brought him, stumbling in his shackles. Quoth Gherib to him, ‘O dog of the Persians, what didst thou with thy daughter?’ ‘I gave her to such an one and such an one,’ answered the King, ‘saying, “Drown her in the river Jihon.”’ So Gherib sent for the two men and said to them, ‘Is what he saith true?’ ‘Yes, O King,’ answered they; ‘yet did we not drown her, but took pity on her and left her on the banks of the Jihon, saying, “Save thyself and do not return to the city, lest the King put thee to death and us with thee.” This is all we know of her.’ When Gherib heard this, he summoned the astrologers and said to them, ‘Draw me a geomantic figure and find out what is come of Fekhr Taj and whether she is still in the chains of life or dead.’ So they levelled a table of sand and drawing a geomantic figure, said, ‘O King, the princess is alive and hath borne a male child; but she is with a tribe of the Jinn and will be absent from thee twenty years; look, therefore, how many years thou hast been absent.’ So he reckoned up the years of his absence and found them eight years and said, ‘There is no power and no virtue but in God the Most High, the Supreme!’ Then he sent for all Sabour’s governors of towns and strongholds and they came and did him homage.

One day after this, as he sat in his palace, a cloud of dust appeared in the distance and spread till it covered the whole country and darkened the horizon. So he despatched