Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 6.djvu/205

177 and lord over you?’ Quoth they, ‘King Selsal, son of Dal, is our master; he passes a night here once in every month and departs in the morning to rule over the tribes of the Jinn.’

So Fekhr Taj took up her abode with them and after five days she gave birth to a male child, as he were the moon. They cut the cord of his navel and anointing his eyes with kohl, named him Murad Shah, and he grew up in his mother’s lap. After awhile came Selsal, riding on a paper-white elephant, as he were a tower plastered with gypsum, and attended by the troops of the Jinn. He entered the palace, where the hundred damsels met him and kissed the earth before him, and amongst them Fekhr Taj. When he saw her, he looked at her and said to the others, ‘Who is yonder damsel?’ And they answered, saying, ‘She is the daughter of Sabour, King of the Persians and Turcomans and Medes.’ Quoth he, ‘Who brought her hither?’ And they repeated to him her story; whereat he was moved to pity for her and said to her, ‘Grieve not, but take patience till thy son be grown a man, when I will go to the land of the Persians and strike thy father’s head from his shoulders and seat thy son on the throne in his stead.’ So she rose and kissed his hands and blessed him.

Then she abode in the castle and her son grew up and was reared with the children of the King. They used to ride forth together a-hunting, and he became skilled in the chase of the wild beasts and of the ravening lions and ate of their flesh, till his heart became harder than the rock. When he reached the age of fifteen, his spirit waxed big in him and he said to Fekhr Taj, ‘O my mother, who is my father?’ ‘O my son,’ answered she, ‘Gherib, King of Irak, is thy father and I am the King’s daughter of the Persians,’ and she told him her story. Quoth he, ‘Did my grandfather indeed give orders to slay thee and my father Gherib?’ VOL. VI.