FIC: The Desert Prince 6
Aug. 29th, 2003 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Title: The Desert Prince: A Fable
Part: 6 (Back to Part 5.)
Author: Lobelia; lobelia40@yahoo.com
Other info and cast list: See Prologue.
A/N: To remind you of the cast list so far (with some additions):
Sean ben Bean, cloth merchant: Sean Bean
Orlando, his ward and apprentice: Orlando Bloom
Desert Prince: Karl Urban
Desert Duke, his father: John Noble
Harem slaves: Dominic Monaghan, Elijah Wood
Grand Vizier (current): Jed Brophy
Chanter of the Rite: Marton Csokas
Keepers of the Citadel (guards on the balcony): Sala Baker, Lawrence Makoare
~~~~~
Fascicle the Sixth
It was the hour of the daily rite of obeisance. We passed through the citadel's streets to reach the place where men pay tribute to the Desert Duke.
The sun stood at its zenith in the heavens, the shadows were puddles beneath our feet, the crickets had fallen silent and the birds hid their beaks beneath their plumes. We went in a crowd on our way to the castle's central courtyard. Behind me was my newfound companion, Uncle John ben Rhys. Beside me walked my beloved friend, and I felt no fear because he was by my side.
I should have felt fear. I should have been on my guard. I should have heeded my beloved friend's warning and followed my wise uncle's advice. But I was young. I was innocent in the ways of the world. I trusted to life and to love, and I trusted to the secret strength slumbering within me.
I was a fool.
I smiled at my beloved friend, my Sean ben Bean, and he smiled at me, and all was good.
Soon we came to a part of the castle I had not seen on my wanderings the previous evening. The walls were of honey-coloured stone. The pavement was tiled with broad smooth flagstones. The windows were large and cased in wooden shutters, and the shutters were carved into complicated patterns and wondrous to behold.
Then my heart gave a skip as I heard something at one of the windows, high up in one of the walls. It was a tinkling laugh, the bell-like jingling of a sweet voice -- a woman's? a girl's? It was the first sign I had come across of any feminine presence within the castle walls. I twisted my head upward. Above me, the shutters opened a crack and I glimpsed a flutter of silk, a slim white wrist and then, as my heart jumped yet again, a pale face, a veil quickly drawn.
I stumbled. Confusion tinged my cheeks with blushes. It was often like this with me: whenever I beheld a woman, no matter how veiled her form, or whenever I needed to bargain with a lady, no matter how formal our speech, I would feel a rush of heat. You must remember that I had never been intimate with a woman. I had not known a mother nor a sister nor even a kindly aunt. I had never laid eyes on a girl's naked face nor so much as touched a wench's fingers. I did not know of maidens' silken thighs nor their hidden places. So the sight of the face and the wrist and that veil, waving upon the still noon air, bewildered my senses.
Yet I knew even then that my bewilderment was more than that. It was also the secret in my breast tugging at my heart's strings. It was my fate drawing ever nearer, growing insistent within me.
I said nothing of this to my friend, my beloved Sean. As we came nearer to the entrance of the courtyard, walking among that crowd of men, I touched his elbow, and he touched mine. We both smiled our secret smiles at one another, and I breathed easier.
For he was my beloved, my more-than-brother, the keeper of my love.
We arrived at the gates. A hush descended on the crowd. I gazed upon the gleaming mosaics lining the portal, in green and blue and gold. I saw the likenesses of four huge eagles, the ducal birds, one at each corner of the entranceway. The eagles' eyes were outlined in black, the eagles' pupils shone red, and about each eagle's claws lay coiled a great green snake.
We passed through the gate, and then we were in the Desert Duke's ceremonial courtyard. I looked about me at the sand-coloured stones that made up the lofty walls. I gazed at the marble flagstones shining white and pink in the heat. The court was enclosed on three sides by high walls; the fourth side was fronted by the ducal palace. The sun flashed brightly on its gilded pinnacles. Banners with the eagle and snake hung from the turreted roof. Apart from these few ornaments, the palace was bare. It was splendid in its severity, and I craned my neck in awe.
In the centre of the palace wall, high above the heads of the crowd, there was a simple balcony, no more than a platform with no balustrade or fence nor even a baldachin to lend shade. Two burly guards stood to either side of the high double doors that led from the balcony to the hidden interior of the palace.
There was no other opening in the palace's stern and impenetrable façade.
I turned my head to survey the crowd, and it was true: there was not one woman to be seen amongst all that multitude. The men's faces were strange to look at. It was as if, once in the Duke's courtyard, their fortitude had deserted them. They looked unmanned. Their faces were shrouded in sudden pallor, and many a lip trembled in silent prayer.
Of all those people, I alone felt no fear. I held my head high, and I looked at the platform and the guards with great curiosity and great excitement. I remembered what John ben Rhys had told me about hiding my face, so I drew the ends of my turban out and around my face, leaving only my eyes free to look, as the bedouins do in the sand storms of mid-winter. I did this but I did it in jest and as a favour to my newfound friend. I did not do it from necessity and need.
Fool. Fool that I was.
The deep-voiced gong sounded a second time.
All around us, there was a great rustling of clothes as scores of men sank upon their knees and bent their foreheads to the ground. Some lay prostrate on the earth, others wrapped their heads in their arms. Behind us, Uncle John ben Rhys pressed his brow onto the flagstones. My beloved friend, my Sean ben Bean, took me gently by the elbow, and we both went down, side by side, with our faces against the cool marble.
My Sean lay with his cheek on the ground, his face turned towards me, his clear green eyes resting with love and trepidation on mine. With his eyes, he reminded me not to look up, then he closed his lids and hid his face in his arm.
The gong sounded a third time.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the quarry scent of the marble under my nose, mixed with the stench of terror all about me.
A voice cried out from where the platform was, probably the voice of some page or attendant. It was a harsh and imperious voice but it was also a voice made vicious with fear.
"Lo and behold the Grand Vizier!" cried the voice.
There was a sound as of a door's latch being drawn. Footsteps resounded on stone.
"Lo and behold the Grand Vizier!" echoed the crowd.
It was strange to be chanting 'behold' when none of us was in fact allowed to behold. It would mean certain death. This is what my beloved friend and my newfound 'uncle' had told me. I wondered whether any who looked would be struck down by bow or lance but I also recalled that I had not seen any guards atop the walls, none beside the two bodyguards on the high platform.
"Lo and behold!" the voice cried out again. "Lo and behold the Desert Prince!"
"Lo and behold the Desert Prince!" the crowd repeated, and, "Lo and behold the Desert Prince," I whispered into the unyielding marble.
The door creaked again. There was the sound of a firm footfall.
I knew it must be the Prince. I knew that it must be he whom I had heard spoken of and who had appeared to me in my dream.
The blood ran hot and fast through my veins. My heart beat like a taut-skinned drum. And it was as if the citadel's red-eyed eagle had descended into my soul and were gnawing at my will, and as if the green-scaled snake had coiled itself tightly around my lungs.
'The Prince', I whispered once more.
My beloved friend had implored me and he had begged me not to look up. But I heeded not my beloved friend's words. I did raise my head. I did open my eyes. I did gaze upon the Desert Prince.
I gazed upon him from beneath my turban's folds and through half-closed lashes, but gaze I did.
My heart stopped in my throat.
This is what I saw: Three men stood on the balcony, ranged in front of the bodyguards, two to one side and one to the other side of the door. To the left, there was a slim, hawk-faced man with the twisted beard and close-fitting cap of a Grand Vizier. Next to him, there was another, dense of build and quick of eye; that one I took to be the atendant who had cried out the ritual chants.
And to our right, alone within his space, there he stood: the Desert Prince, my destiny, my doom. I knew at once that it was he and no one else. He was tall and powerful of stature, strong as the desert lion and at the same time lithe and quick as the whippet hound. His black beard was short and gleamed with oil. About his head was wound a turban of brilliant scarlet hue, and its ends hung loose about his shoulders. In his right ear, there flashed a gold hoop, and his left nostril flared with a ruby stud. His white burnous, embroidered with gold thread, flowed about his limbs, and his slender hand rested easily upon the hilt of his weapon. His waist was girt with a plaited leather belt from which hung the curved scimitar of the desert tribes. Its ivory heft gleamed ivory, and its scabbard was encrusted with jewels. The Prince's lips curled under his oiled moustaches. Most striking, though, was his proud gaze which swept over the cowering multitude with a haughty turn.
For many heartbeats, I could not tear my eyes away from the Desert Prince. He was majestic and fearsome, he was terrible and beautiful, he was magnificent and arrogant, and he excited a fire in my loins such as I had never felt.
But then the attendant raised his voice for a third time.
"Lo and behold the Desert Duke!" he cried.
"Lo and behold the Desert Duke!" chanted the crowd.
"He is the moon at night and the sun by day," continued the crier of the rites. "The morning star lives on his right cheek, and the evening star lives on his left cheek."
The incantations went on. No Duke appeared. I grew bolder then. I raised my head higher, I opened my eyes wider, I drank in the sight of the Desert Prince, the Duke's son. His cheeks were alabaster, his wrists were as the fetlocks of the swiftest horse, each finger was a promise. I feasted my eyes upon the sight of the Desert Prince as if there were nothing else to behold in the world, and unquiet entered my heart and made itself a home there.
"Beware beware beware the Duke's Eye!" cried the attendant. "For his Eye is as evil as the desert snake's. Once it has fixed you in its merciless sights, it will fell you as surely as the poisoned arrow pierces the infidel's heart."
At these words, the Desert Prince turned away and drew the loose ends of his turban across his eyes. The attendant, too, the Grand Vizier and also the two bodyguards veiled their faces. I marvelled at the rules of this citadel and at the hold the Duke had even over his closest entourage. Then the door moved, and I lowered my lashes.
But mark my words and tremble: I did not close my lids. I did not hide my gaze. I kept my eyes fixed upon the door. I fell open-eyed toward my ruin.
The leaves of the portal flew open and the Desert Duke strode out. I looked upon his face, and it was not until then that I knew true terror.
For now I beheld the Desert Duke. Now I beheld the Desert Duke's Eyes, and now I knew the truth of his deathly power.
The Desert Duke stood tall, as tall as his son the Prince, and he had the same oiled beard and powerful body. But his true might came from his Eyes for his Eyes could kill.
I knew it at once. And at once I also knew that I was protected from harm. The Desert Duke's Eyes could kill but they could not kill me. I felt their burning chill, their terrible strength, their sinister glint. I saw his gaze sweep over the crowd of bowed backs like a thousand poisoned arrows from a thousand archers' bows.
I had never, in my life nor dreams, seen such a thing.
There was a glimmer in those eyes, a glow, an evil glitter. It lurked behind the black pupils, it coiled in the depths of his aquamarine irises, it lived in the red worms of the bloodshot orbs of his eyeballs. I was many fathoms away from the balcony on the palace wall, yet I could see all this.
I could see this. I could feel this. Because in my depths, too, there slumbered a terrible power. It trembled within me as if it recognised a call, a summoning from the Evil Eye of the Desert Duke. It shivered in fear within my soul but it knew that it had met its doom and my destiny.
And the Desert Duke knew it, too. For all of a sudden, his sweeping gaze stopped, his eyes flickered; he looked back and across. Now he was no longer sweeping, he was searching and seeking.
And then he found.
The Desert Duke's Eyes alighted on me, and the Desert Duke looked deep into my own eyes.
He did not flinch. I did not flinch. Though I quaked, though I quaked with fear down to the innermost core of my body, I did not flinch.
There was but the faintest perceptible change in the Desert Duke's face. The corners of his eyes narrowed, the corners of his mouth twisted -- but that was all.
Nobody saw it. Only I. Only I could look upon him and live.
And suddenly I called to mind why my beloved friend had warned me. Suddenly I realised the folly of my deed. I bowed down again, too late. I pressed my nose into the marble but all too late. Only then did I understand my beloved friend's warnings. Only then did I understand that now I was in mortal danger.
We both were, my beloved friend and I. I knew the Desert Duke would not let us live.
Hot tears would have stained the ground that day had I not been so afraid and so regretful of my rash act, and so anxious. Not for myself. I cared not for myself, I cared only for my beloved.
Oh, beloved friend, dearer to me than my own life. My love, my soul, what have I done to thee?
~~~~~
TBC
Part: 6 (Back to Part 5.)
Author: Lobelia; lobelia40@yahoo.com
Other info and cast list: See Prologue.
A/N: To remind you of the cast list so far (with some additions):
Sean ben Bean, cloth merchant: Sean Bean
Orlando, his ward and apprentice: Orlando Bloom
Desert Prince: Karl Urban
Desert Duke, his father: John Noble
Harem slaves: Dominic Monaghan, Elijah Wood
Grand Vizier (current): Jed Brophy
Chanter of the Rite: Marton Csokas
Keepers of the Citadel (guards on the balcony): Sala Baker, Lawrence Makoare
~~~~~
Fascicle the Sixth
It was the hour of the daily rite of obeisance. We passed through the citadel's streets to reach the place where men pay tribute to the Desert Duke.
The sun stood at its zenith in the heavens, the shadows were puddles beneath our feet, the crickets had fallen silent and the birds hid their beaks beneath their plumes. We went in a crowd on our way to the castle's central courtyard. Behind me was my newfound companion, Uncle John ben Rhys. Beside me walked my beloved friend, and I felt no fear because he was by my side.
I should have felt fear. I should have been on my guard. I should have heeded my beloved friend's warning and followed my wise uncle's advice. But I was young. I was innocent in the ways of the world. I trusted to life and to love, and I trusted to the secret strength slumbering within me.
I was a fool.
I smiled at my beloved friend, my Sean ben Bean, and he smiled at me, and all was good.
Soon we came to a part of the castle I had not seen on my wanderings the previous evening. The walls were of honey-coloured stone. The pavement was tiled with broad smooth flagstones. The windows were large and cased in wooden shutters, and the shutters were carved into complicated patterns and wondrous to behold.
Then my heart gave a skip as I heard something at one of the windows, high up in one of the walls. It was a tinkling laugh, the bell-like jingling of a sweet voice -- a woman's? a girl's? It was the first sign I had come across of any feminine presence within the castle walls. I twisted my head upward. Above me, the shutters opened a crack and I glimpsed a flutter of silk, a slim white wrist and then, as my heart jumped yet again, a pale face, a veil quickly drawn.
I stumbled. Confusion tinged my cheeks with blushes. It was often like this with me: whenever I beheld a woman, no matter how veiled her form, or whenever I needed to bargain with a lady, no matter how formal our speech, I would feel a rush of heat. You must remember that I had never been intimate with a woman. I had not known a mother nor a sister nor even a kindly aunt. I had never laid eyes on a girl's naked face nor so much as touched a wench's fingers. I did not know of maidens' silken thighs nor their hidden places. So the sight of the face and the wrist and that veil, waving upon the still noon air, bewildered my senses.
Yet I knew even then that my bewilderment was more than that. It was also the secret in my breast tugging at my heart's strings. It was my fate drawing ever nearer, growing insistent within me.
I said nothing of this to my friend, my beloved Sean. As we came nearer to the entrance of the courtyard, walking among that crowd of men, I touched his elbow, and he touched mine. We both smiled our secret smiles at one another, and I breathed easier.
For he was my beloved, my more-than-brother, the keeper of my love.
We arrived at the gates. A hush descended on the crowd. I gazed upon the gleaming mosaics lining the portal, in green and blue and gold. I saw the likenesses of four huge eagles, the ducal birds, one at each corner of the entranceway. The eagles' eyes were outlined in black, the eagles' pupils shone red, and about each eagle's claws lay coiled a great green snake.
We passed through the gate, and then we were in the Desert Duke's ceremonial courtyard. I looked about me at the sand-coloured stones that made up the lofty walls. I gazed at the marble flagstones shining white and pink in the heat. The court was enclosed on three sides by high walls; the fourth side was fronted by the ducal palace. The sun flashed brightly on its gilded pinnacles. Banners with the eagle and snake hung from the turreted roof. Apart from these few ornaments, the palace was bare. It was splendid in its severity, and I craned my neck in awe.
In the centre of the palace wall, high above the heads of the crowd, there was a simple balcony, no more than a platform with no balustrade or fence nor even a baldachin to lend shade. Two burly guards stood to either side of the high double doors that led from the balcony to the hidden interior of the palace.
There was no other opening in the palace's stern and impenetrable façade.
I turned my head to survey the crowd, and it was true: there was not one woman to be seen amongst all that multitude. The men's faces were strange to look at. It was as if, once in the Duke's courtyard, their fortitude had deserted them. They looked unmanned. Their faces were shrouded in sudden pallor, and many a lip trembled in silent prayer.
Of all those people, I alone felt no fear. I held my head high, and I looked at the platform and the guards with great curiosity and great excitement. I remembered what John ben Rhys had told me about hiding my face, so I drew the ends of my turban out and around my face, leaving only my eyes free to look, as the bedouins do in the sand storms of mid-winter. I did this but I did it in jest and as a favour to my newfound friend. I did not do it from necessity and need.
Fool. Fool that I was.
The deep-voiced gong sounded a second time.
All around us, there was a great rustling of clothes as scores of men sank upon their knees and bent their foreheads to the ground. Some lay prostrate on the earth, others wrapped their heads in their arms. Behind us, Uncle John ben Rhys pressed his brow onto the flagstones. My beloved friend, my Sean ben Bean, took me gently by the elbow, and we both went down, side by side, with our faces against the cool marble.
My Sean lay with his cheek on the ground, his face turned towards me, his clear green eyes resting with love and trepidation on mine. With his eyes, he reminded me not to look up, then he closed his lids and hid his face in his arm.
The gong sounded a third time.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the quarry scent of the marble under my nose, mixed with the stench of terror all about me.
A voice cried out from where the platform was, probably the voice of some page or attendant. It was a harsh and imperious voice but it was also a voice made vicious with fear.
"Lo and behold the Grand Vizier!" cried the voice.
There was a sound as of a door's latch being drawn. Footsteps resounded on stone.
"Lo and behold the Grand Vizier!" echoed the crowd.
It was strange to be chanting 'behold' when none of us was in fact allowed to behold. It would mean certain death. This is what my beloved friend and my newfound 'uncle' had told me. I wondered whether any who looked would be struck down by bow or lance but I also recalled that I had not seen any guards atop the walls, none beside the two bodyguards on the high platform.
"Lo and behold!" the voice cried out again. "Lo and behold the Desert Prince!"
"Lo and behold the Desert Prince!" the crowd repeated, and, "Lo and behold the Desert Prince," I whispered into the unyielding marble.
The door creaked again. There was the sound of a firm footfall.
I knew it must be the Prince. I knew that it must be he whom I had heard spoken of and who had appeared to me in my dream.
The blood ran hot and fast through my veins. My heart beat like a taut-skinned drum. And it was as if the citadel's red-eyed eagle had descended into my soul and were gnawing at my will, and as if the green-scaled snake had coiled itself tightly around my lungs.
'The Prince', I whispered once more.
My beloved friend had implored me and he had begged me not to look up. But I heeded not my beloved friend's words. I did raise my head. I did open my eyes. I did gaze upon the Desert Prince.
I gazed upon him from beneath my turban's folds and through half-closed lashes, but gaze I did.
My heart stopped in my throat.
This is what I saw: Three men stood on the balcony, ranged in front of the bodyguards, two to one side and one to the other side of the door. To the left, there was a slim, hawk-faced man with the twisted beard and close-fitting cap of a Grand Vizier. Next to him, there was another, dense of build and quick of eye; that one I took to be the atendant who had cried out the ritual chants.
And to our right, alone within his space, there he stood: the Desert Prince, my destiny, my doom. I knew at once that it was he and no one else. He was tall and powerful of stature, strong as the desert lion and at the same time lithe and quick as the whippet hound. His black beard was short and gleamed with oil. About his head was wound a turban of brilliant scarlet hue, and its ends hung loose about his shoulders. In his right ear, there flashed a gold hoop, and his left nostril flared with a ruby stud. His white burnous, embroidered with gold thread, flowed about his limbs, and his slender hand rested easily upon the hilt of his weapon. His waist was girt with a plaited leather belt from which hung the curved scimitar of the desert tribes. Its ivory heft gleamed ivory, and its scabbard was encrusted with jewels. The Prince's lips curled under his oiled moustaches. Most striking, though, was his proud gaze which swept over the cowering multitude with a haughty turn.
For many heartbeats, I could not tear my eyes away from the Desert Prince. He was majestic and fearsome, he was terrible and beautiful, he was magnificent and arrogant, and he excited a fire in my loins such as I had never felt.
But then the attendant raised his voice for a third time.
"Lo and behold the Desert Duke!" he cried.
"Lo and behold the Desert Duke!" chanted the crowd.
"He is the moon at night and the sun by day," continued the crier of the rites. "The morning star lives on his right cheek, and the evening star lives on his left cheek."
The incantations went on. No Duke appeared. I grew bolder then. I raised my head higher, I opened my eyes wider, I drank in the sight of the Desert Prince, the Duke's son. His cheeks were alabaster, his wrists were as the fetlocks of the swiftest horse, each finger was a promise. I feasted my eyes upon the sight of the Desert Prince as if there were nothing else to behold in the world, and unquiet entered my heart and made itself a home there.
"Beware beware beware the Duke's Eye!" cried the attendant. "For his Eye is as evil as the desert snake's. Once it has fixed you in its merciless sights, it will fell you as surely as the poisoned arrow pierces the infidel's heart."
At these words, the Desert Prince turned away and drew the loose ends of his turban across his eyes. The attendant, too, the Grand Vizier and also the two bodyguards veiled their faces. I marvelled at the rules of this citadel and at the hold the Duke had even over his closest entourage. Then the door moved, and I lowered my lashes.
But mark my words and tremble: I did not close my lids. I did not hide my gaze. I kept my eyes fixed upon the door. I fell open-eyed toward my ruin.
The leaves of the portal flew open and the Desert Duke strode out. I looked upon his face, and it was not until then that I knew true terror.
For now I beheld the Desert Duke. Now I beheld the Desert Duke's Eyes, and now I knew the truth of his deathly power.
The Desert Duke stood tall, as tall as his son the Prince, and he had the same oiled beard and powerful body. But his true might came from his Eyes for his Eyes could kill.
I knew it at once. And at once I also knew that I was protected from harm. The Desert Duke's Eyes could kill but they could not kill me. I felt their burning chill, their terrible strength, their sinister glint. I saw his gaze sweep over the crowd of bowed backs like a thousand poisoned arrows from a thousand archers' bows.
I had never, in my life nor dreams, seen such a thing.
There was a glimmer in those eyes, a glow, an evil glitter. It lurked behind the black pupils, it coiled in the depths of his aquamarine irises, it lived in the red worms of the bloodshot orbs of his eyeballs. I was many fathoms away from the balcony on the palace wall, yet I could see all this.
I could see this. I could feel this. Because in my depths, too, there slumbered a terrible power. It trembled within me as if it recognised a call, a summoning from the Evil Eye of the Desert Duke. It shivered in fear within my soul but it knew that it had met its doom and my destiny.
And the Desert Duke knew it, too. For all of a sudden, his sweeping gaze stopped, his eyes flickered; he looked back and across. Now he was no longer sweeping, he was searching and seeking.
And then he found.
The Desert Duke's Eyes alighted on me, and the Desert Duke looked deep into my own eyes.
He did not flinch. I did not flinch. Though I quaked, though I quaked with fear down to the innermost core of my body, I did not flinch.
There was but the faintest perceptible change in the Desert Duke's face. The corners of his eyes narrowed, the corners of his mouth twisted -- but that was all.
Nobody saw it. Only I. Only I could look upon him and live.
And suddenly I called to mind why my beloved friend had warned me. Suddenly I realised the folly of my deed. I bowed down again, too late. I pressed my nose into the marble but all too late. Only then did I understand my beloved friend's warnings. Only then did I understand that now I was in mortal danger.
We both were, my beloved friend and I. I knew the Desert Duke would not let us live.
Hot tears would have stained the ground that day had I not been so afraid and so regretful of my rash act, and so anxious. Not for myself. I cared not for myself, I cared only for my beloved.
Oh, beloved friend, dearer to me than my own life. My love, my soul, what have I done to thee?
~~~~~
TBC