FIC: The Desert Prince 9
Jan. 13th, 2004 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Title: The Desert Prince: A Fable
Part: 9 (Back to Part 8.)
Author: Lobelia; lobelia40@yahoo.com
Other info and (updated) cast list: See Prologue.
A/N: After a rather long absence...! A short appetizer for a longer meal to come.
~~~~~
Fascicle the Ninth
It was not my strangest encounter by far.
The boy Dominic had gone. By my feet lay the discarded skin from the fig he had been eating. For a while yet I could hear the tinkling of the bells suspended from the corners of his litter, then they were swallowed up by the silence of the stones.
My breath was quick within my throat; my heart beat fast. But it was not fear that made my pulse shudder. Or perhaps it was fear but a fear transformed, a fear forged into elation.
I resumed my wanderings but a new mood had befallen me after my encounter with the braided boy. My spirit was growing large within me. My heart took wing, and certainty fortified my steps. I looked up at the battlements and saw that the shadows were long, and I rejoiced because the appointed hour was drawing near. I was filled with glad confidence and felt suddenly sure that my brave and beloved friend had found a way to escape. He had bribed a guard, he had discovered a long-lost egress, he had argued his way past wardens and sentinels. Even now he was loading our mules with blankets and water gourds. And soon, soon, we would be reunited; we would ride side by side, as we had done for so many weeks and years. I would look at his beloved profile, and then I would look straight ahead, and we would reach the horizon by midnight this night.
I was wrong, of course. My confidence lived only in my mind. Yet there it grew strong. There it fed on the power rising within me. I no longer dwelt on the dangers facing us; I thought only of victory and freedom. I even dared call to mind the Desert Duke's terrible visage, as I had seen it that noon. It did not seem so terrible any more: had I not looked and lived? Was I not alone among men in my defiance of the Duke's might? The Duke could not harm me! Or so I thought, in my ignorance and conceit.
I clenched my hands into fists and smiled a fierce smile of triumph.
Then I looked about me with washed eyes. All at once it seemed as if I had known these walls and these stones all my life. I moved through the streets like an ant through a maze, and my step was assured. My meanderings gained purpose. I walked as if drawn by invisible strings.
Before long, I found myself back at a place I recognised. There were the honey-coloured walls, and there were the broad smooth flagstones. But the carved shutters were closed now. No laugh rang out, no woman's hand turned in the window.
Still, somehow I knew. I knew where the entrance lay to the forbidden realm behind these walls. Without hesitation, I turned and wove my route along the ways and the byways, around and about, skirting the selfsame wall all the while, trailing one finger along it much as a child keeps a finger within his mother's robes.
I remembered what Uncle John had told me: 'They lock the women up in their own quarters. They guard them more securely than anywhere else.' But in all that perimeter wall I saw not one lock nor latch; I saw not one guard. And I felt no chink in the masonry. There appeared to be no way in and no way out. Yet my feet continued to carry me as if of their own volition, and presently I reached what I now know to be the other side of that hidden compound, the wall farthest from the city gates.
The lane I was in looked like any other. Some men passed by, a boy with a goose, a servant bearing two buckets of steaming lentil soup slung across his shoulders by a pole. Grit had gathered between the paving stones. My hand still rested on the wall, and the wall still stood, smooth as the flank of a dromedary.
But something stayed my steps. It was a door set into the wall. It was a plain door, low and made of bowed wood. It had once been painted but the colour had long since faded to a bleached grey. I did not know then why this door should intrigue me so. There was no special mark upon it, and nothing distinguished it from countless other doors, save the circumstance that here was a door in a wall that had shown me no doors so far.
I did not know then why this door kept me standing still so long in that alley. It was as if a faint scent arose from it, or a very low, far-distant hum, as from the strum of an instrument played somewhere in the belly of that fortress. I did not know then to what secret place my steps had been bent. My heart beat quietly within my breast but somewhere, deep within me, deep within the recesses of my soul, something stirred and shifted.
Then the door opened and with a jolt of my heart I realised what place I had reached.
Quick as a snake's tongue, a bent figure darted out and towards me. A bony hand curled around my wrist like the grip of an iron shackle. I was pulled across the threshold, into the musty dimness of a passageway. For a second, I stared at the lined face of an old crone, then the door closed and I stood in pitch blackness.
I had discovered the forbidden zenana. I had entered the quarters of the hidden women of the citadel.
~~~~~
On to Part 10.
Part: 9 (Back to Part 8.)
Author: Lobelia; lobelia40@yahoo.com
Other info and (updated) cast list: See Prologue.
A/N: After a rather long absence...! A short appetizer for a longer meal to come.
~~~~~
Fascicle the Ninth
It was not my strangest encounter by far.
The boy Dominic had gone. By my feet lay the discarded skin from the fig he had been eating. For a while yet I could hear the tinkling of the bells suspended from the corners of his litter, then they were swallowed up by the silence of the stones.
My breath was quick within my throat; my heart beat fast. But it was not fear that made my pulse shudder. Or perhaps it was fear but a fear transformed, a fear forged into elation.
I resumed my wanderings but a new mood had befallen me after my encounter with the braided boy. My spirit was growing large within me. My heart took wing, and certainty fortified my steps. I looked up at the battlements and saw that the shadows were long, and I rejoiced because the appointed hour was drawing near. I was filled with glad confidence and felt suddenly sure that my brave and beloved friend had found a way to escape. He had bribed a guard, he had discovered a long-lost egress, he had argued his way past wardens and sentinels. Even now he was loading our mules with blankets and water gourds. And soon, soon, we would be reunited; we would ride side by side, as we had done for so many weeks and years. I would look at his beloved profile, and then I would look straight ahead, and we would reach the horizon by midnight this night.
I was wrong, of course. My confidence lived only in my mind. Yet there it grew strong. There it fed on the power rising within me. I no longer dwelt on the dangers facing us; I thought only of victory and freedom. I even dared call to mind the Desert Duke's terrible visage, as I had seen it that noon. It did not seem so terrible any more: had I not looked and lived? Was I not alone among men in my defiance of the Duke's might? The Duke could not harm me! Or so I thought, in my ignorance and conceit.
I clenched my hands into fists and smiled a fierce smile of triumph.
Then I looked about me with washed eyes. All at once it seemed as if I had known these walls and these stones all my life. I moved through the streets like an ant through a maze, and my step was assured. My meanderings gained purpose. I walked as if drawn by invisible strings.
Before long, I found myself back at a place I recognised. There were the honey-coloured walls, and there were the broad smooth flagstones. But the carved shutters were closed now. No laugh rang out, no woman's hand turned in the window.
Still, somehow I knew. I knew where the entrance lay to the forbidden realm behind these walls. Without hesitation, I turned and wove my route along the ways and the byways, around and about, skirting the selfsame wall all the while, trailing one finger along it much as a child keeps a finger within his mother's robes.
I remembered what Uncle John had told me: 'They lock the women up in their own quarters. They guard them more securely than anywhere else.' But in all that perimeter wall I saw not one lock nor latch; I saw not one guard. And I felt no chink in the masonry. There appeared to be no way in and no way out. Yet my feet continued to carry me as if of their own volition, and presently I reached what I now know to be the other side of that hidden compound, the wall farthest from the city gates.
The lane I was in looked like any other. Some men passed by, a boy with a goose, a servant bearing two buckets of steaming lentil soup slung across his shoulders by a pole. Grit had gathered between the paving stones. My hand still rested on the wall, and the wall still stood, smooth as the flank of a dromedary.
But something stayed my steps. It was a door set into the wall. It was a plain door, low and made of bowed wood. It had once been painted but the colour had long since faded to a bleached grey. I did not know then why this door should intrigue me so. There was no special mark upon it, and nothing distinguished it from countless other doors, save the circumstance that here was a door in a wall that had shown me no doors so far.
I did not know then why this door kept me standing still so long in that alley. It was as if a faint scent arose from it, or a very low, far-distant hum, as from the strum of an instrument played somewhere in the belly of that fortress. I did not know then to what secret place my steps had been bent. My heart beat quietly within my breast but somewhere, deep within me, deep within the recesses of my soul, something stirred and shifted.
Then the door opened and with a jolt of my heart I realised what place I had reached.
Quick as a snake's tongue, a bent figure darted out and towards me. A bony hand curled around my wrist like the grip of an iron shackle. I was pulled across the threshold, into the musty dimness of a passageway. For a second, I stared at the lined face of an old crone, then the door closed and I stood in pitch blackness.
I had discovered the forbidden zenana. I had entered the quarters of the hidden women of the citadel.
~~~~~
On to Part 10.