Prologue The worldly hope men set their hearts upon Turns ashes -- or it prospers; and anon, Like snow upon the desert's dusty face Lighting a little hour or two -- is gone. "I am the maid Scheherazade, teller of tales. Many are the wonders of the East, but in all the lands of the Faithful, what story is more marvelous than that of Prince Ali and the Magic Fountain? "Many years ago, a good emir by the name of Haroon held court in the royal city of Damascus. Allah the Bountiful blessed this noble-hearted monarch with a son and a daughter -- Ali, strong, and honest, and Ayeesha, exquisite of form and possessing eyes which might captivate even the djinn of the desert. "Ali, obedient and dutiful, agreed to marry the beautiful princess Badiat, the daughter of the sultan of Edessa. But his sister Ayeesha, alas, was headstrong and refused many wealthy suitors. Though the emir was kindly and patient, it rended his heart that he had reached his elderly years and as yet had no grandchild to dandle in his arms.

Whip-master confronting fountain girl.

"Upon the day that the caravan of Princess Badiat arrived in Damascus, the common people of Damascus thronged the streets joyously. But, alas, of all the emir's subjects, one of them did not rejoice.

"For many years, the Emir Haroon had been well-advised by Rasheed, his high-minded vizier. Unfortunately, after Rasheed was taken to Paradise, his clever son, Lord Achmed, was elevated to his sire's place in the emir's councils. Though Achmed was a man of wit, accomplishment, and charm, he nursed a wicked heart and a secret ambition. This ambition, sad to say, was to tumble down the ancient dynasty of Haroon and mount the gilded throne in Ali's stead. To take the coveted scepter by means of guile, the crafty vizier realized that he must first eliminate his youthful rival. "To achieve this evil end, Lord Achmed plotted long and hard. Finally, with the help of a devious and unscrupulous magician, Yusuf, he at long last hit upon a cruel scheme. And from this conspiracy of scoundrels comes our tale."

The moving finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

Yusuf the wizard climbed breathlessly to the topmost prison cell in Achmed's palace. If his progress was slow, it may be said that not only his years, but also his weight and his burden were against him. Notwithstanding, he at last reached the highest landing of the tower, at which point he met a bewhiskered jailor who offered a humble greeting:

"Sire, may Allah shower his blessings upon your gray head."

The wizard gave a tired sigh and looked anxiously past the man and at the prison door. "Is the Crusader dog prepared?"

"He has been bound, wise mullah," the man answered with a bow.

"Good. Speak not a word of what you may discover after I depart. This is the business of the lofty lords, and their doings will often result in severed heads for the indiscreet!"

"Yes, Great One!" The man nodded emphatically, for he knew this fact to be true.

"Unlock the door, and then return to the guard room until I call you back."

The jailor did as told and the fleshy wizard waddled wearily into the dimly-lit cell. There, he set his burden, a bucket of water, down upon the straw-strewn floor and straightened himself.

He looked about with frowning, ferret eyes. The cell, he observed, was not the worst that Achmed, the cruel vizier, owned. It possessed a cot, table, stool, basin, and a window letting in the morning light. Many a noble captive of war had been held for ransom in that selfsame tower. These days, as the Crusader armies struggled with the Sons of the Faithful the length and breadth of the Holy Land, it was occasionally used so again.

Chains rattled and Yusuf turned to regard the Frankish knight fettered to the wall. This was a tow-headed young man with light-colored stubble on firm cheeks. The sorcerer judged him to be well-born, but Achmed had eschewed the claim to ransom. Instead, if this morning's experiment was successful, the scion of distant France would simply vanish from the face of the earth.

The noble son muttered an oath against his visitor, though he had no inkling of the stranger's intentions. Yusuf ignored the indecipherable insult while he took a small vial from his scrip. This he unstopped and poured its clear liquid contents into the bucket of well-water. Very carefully then, lest some of the polluted mix slosh upon his legs, the portly conjurer picked up the pail, placed one hand under its bottom rim, and slowly brought it back for a mighty cast. . .

Lord Achmed was a connoisseur of many things, women not least of all. He had taken no wife, for his ambitions required a lady of royal rank and none were to be had. Nonetheless, many an odalisque filled his harem. But by his side this day reclined a blonde girl of great beauty, his most recent acquisition. "You are the most lovely woman I have ever crushed to my chest," he told the concubine. "What is your name? The girl looked up perplexedly. "Sheba, Master. Have you forgotten?" He gave a short, sharp laugh. "Saucy one! I have a hundred slave girls and dancers, so how may I remember every single one of them by name?! Yet, I believe that I shall recollect your name after this, little Sheba. Tell me -- do you dance?"

Achmed's harem.

"No, my lord," Sheba replied with a shake of her head. "I am only a peasant girl."

Achmed touched her cheek. "Nay, be not so humble. You were born to dwell in the homes of the mighty, not ravage your peerless skin toiling under the remorseless sun."

Sheba grimaced in sorrow. "I would gladly give up house and beauty alike, if I might only return home! My old parents need me. The tax collectors seized me when my father could not pay all he owed. Help us, Lord!"

"What am I to do, foolish one? Taxes must be paid or the kingdom will fall. Besides, now that I have seen you, should I deny myself your presence? 'Tis a pity that you cannot dance, but I will have you trained! As long as you please me, sweet Sheba, you shall have a comfortable home here in my harem."

"As master wishes," the girl replied sadly.

The handsome young official ran his manicured fingers through her silken hair. "Your blond coloration beguiles me. You are Circassian?"

"Yes, mighty Lord," she nodded. "My mother was the Circassian concubine of a wealthy merchant. My father, a Circassian also, served in Emir Haroon's army. One day he saw my mother to be drawing water from the public fountain and purchased her for a wife."

Achmed grinned appreciatively. "If your mother was then as lovely as you are today, it is easy to understand how a man might offer her marriage and respectability."

"I do not know, sire," Sheba demurred.

At that moment Achmed's chief steward, Mongi, entered the lord's hall and prostrated himself upon the porcelain tiles.

"What is it, slave? Why do you disturb me at such a time?"

"The magician Yusuf waits without, O Master. Shall I send him away?"

Lines of anticipation drew themselves deeply across the vizier's features. "No; send him before me. But first, take these anemone blossoms away with you. What may be said hereafter is not for such innocent ears."

The steward rose, glanced to the cluster of women, and clapped his hands. The concubines and dancing girls scrambled to their feet and followed after him like so many ducklings. Achmed stood up and straightened his robes. A moment later he heard the pad of heavy feet in satin slippers.

"Achmed, Hawk of the Desert, Keeper of the Sword, Lord of --"

"Spare me, Yusuf," Achmed said. "I have no objection to flattery, except when it is perfunctory and insincere. Give me the man who knows how to flatter from the heart, and I will make him great in this land."

"I have happy news, Mighty One," pressed the wizard.

Achmed arched his eyebrows. "Was your -- experiment -- successful?"

The older man drew an empty flask from his brocade robe. "Very much so. The effect was all that we could have hoped for!"

"You tested it upon the Crusader?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Come! I must see the wretch!"

A quarter-hour later, as they left the Crusader's cell, Achmed was rubbing his hands with glee. "It is incredible! Better far than simple assassination! Unfortunately, it may be impossible for you to get close to Ali. He is well-guarded and he does not trust you -- with good reason, I may add."

Yusuf grinned proudly. "I have traveled far and have acquired many amazing items of magic, Lord. One of my finest is a magic jewel which makes the holder invisible to the human eye. Ali will never know that I am near."

Instead of showing pleasure, Achmed scowled. "You have such a marvel and you have not told me?!"

"I have only lately purchased it in Persia," the old man wheedled.

Achmed shrugged. "Then go swiftly, fool! Do your job well, and I shall make you a wealthy man!"

Yusuf bowed and backed away. "I live to obey, Munificent Patron!"

Left alone, Achmed returned to the cell to take a last look at the prisoner. Then, with cruel satisfaction in the curl of his lips, he closed the heavy door and turned the key in the lock.

On their way to the emir's palace, Ali and his life-long friend Lord Hassan took the shortcut through the gardens. Their conversation was suddenly cut short by a rope of silken sheets dropping down from above. They looked up at the summit of the garden wall.

"A thief!" muttered Hassan, gripping his sword hilt.

But Ali's sharp ears picked out the sound of feminine breathing overhead. "No -- it is a flight from the seraglio! Hush!"

The young men concealed themselves behind the hedge to observe. A moment later, as a girl in harem garments climbed agilely to the ground, they pounced. Her kohled eyes turned wildly upon the prince as he lay hold of her.

"Ayeesha!" Ali shouted in recognition. "What are you doing away from the women's quarters?"

"Unhand me, Brother!" she demanded. "I would see the caravan of Princess Badiat parade through the town. Everyone else is free to do so, except us prisoners of the harem!"

"If you would be so adventurous," Ali admonished, "at least be not so shameless. Cover your face!"

She raised her chin defiantly and met his stern eyes. "Cover your own, Brother! Is my face more shameful than yours?"

Hassan averted his gaze, for no decent man permitted himself to look at a princess' unveiled visage. "Ah, perhaps I should leave you two alone?" he suggested.

Ali answered without looking back. "Yes, it is well that you do, Hassan. Join me at the hawk cages after I make my daily call upon the emir, my father."

When Hassan had vanished around the corner, he felt more at liberty to discuss his sister's misdeed. "Ayeesha, explain yourself!"

She folded her sleek arms peevishly. "I am tired of being cooped up and treated like a child! If you were me, would you not feel the same?" He shook his head in exasperation. "It is your own fault that your life is idle and unfulfilling, Sister. Had you taken a husband, as Father has wanted, you would now be the mistress of your own home." She threw up her hands. "Marriage would change nothing, except the face of my jailer." He took her shoulders and brought her around to face him. "He would be no jailer! He would be thy lover and thy mate. He would treasure thee above all the gold of the earth." "And imprison me, too, just like the gold of the earth. I wish I were a peasant woman. Such as they can at least walk. Better still, I would be a dancing girl out among song and laughter."

Ayeesha and Ali.

"You are blessed to be the daughter of the mightiest ruler in Syria. Why canst thou not be grateful that Allah has blessed thee?"

"Because it's not fair, Ali! You simply do not understand. Being a princess is nothing like being a prince. You have everything and I have nothing."

"You are wrong, little wren," he demurred, stroking his sister's cheek. "Why do you think that I am more free than you?"

"You are! You are father's favorite, and his heir."

He sighed. "Would that I had an older brother to be both! Being heir and favorite means that I must fulfill our father's onerous expectations. And what is my reward? Why should I crave to be emir?"

"Thy fame shall live forever, Ali. You can make all men obey thee!"

He grinned ironically. "Yes, all emirs are remembered. Some are remembered for being sots or fools. Even a good monarch must do many things of which he ought to be ashamed. How would it serve my honor to levy high taxes upon people who already had little enough, or order a thief's hand lopped off? Or send young men to die in battle -- perhaps one of them a son of thine?

Ayeesha laughed in exasperation. "You would have me a mother already? Have you not forgotten to wed me first?"

Ali's glance was full of regret. "I have long-hoped that you would marry my friend Hassan. The two of you got along so well when we were children together."

Her expression hardened. "We are no longer children, Ali, and much has changed. Hassan is your friend, not mine. He is a noble-hearted and comely man, no doubt, but I feel no magic when I look into his face. He is almost as much my brother as you are!"

"I feel the same," confessed Ali. "He is like the brother I have never had. But Hassan is not truly your brother and he would make a fine husband."

"Then marry him yourself!"

He grasped her more firmly. "Ayeesha! Thy tongue is as sharp as the adder's tooth! Wit ill-becomes a woman's hopes for happy matrimony! I pity the man who finally takes thee to wife!"

"Fine, brother! Then let me marry no one at all -- least of all Hassan."

"Why least of all?" Ali asked disappointedly.

"Because Hassan would indeed take me -- but only to please you. He loves me no more than I love him. Think, Ali! He never speaks of me when alone in your company -- does he?"

Ali tried to remember such an occasion, but was stumped. "Not in so many words --"

"Good!"

"What do you mean 'good?' You need a husband and Hassan would be the best man in all Syria. Delay no longer, little quail. People already call a maid a spinster at the age of eighteen!"

"Why put such grief upon me, Ali? Are you my brother or my father?"

"Father and son think alike."

"More the pity!" Ayeesha scoffed as she wriggled out of his grasp.

At that moment two matrons from the harem hurried up to the royal pair and bowed to the prince.

"Praise be, Prince Ali," said the older of the two servants.

"May Allah be with you, grandmothers."

The second matron now turned toward Ayeesha, saying: "Princess, please return with us before you provoke a scandal!"

"Why a scandal? Liberty is no one's scandal. The animals are less than I, or so they say, but yet they are more free."

"The horses, mules, and cattle are not free," Ali reminded her.

She hung her head. "'Tis true. All who are conquered are not free!"

The prince placed his hand upon his sister's shoulder. "You are not conquered, white dove. You are loved more than you know."

She shook him off irritably. "Would that Allah gave me another kind of love, and let you make do with mine -- then you may tell me whether you like it or not!"

"Do not say such wicked things, Princess," the older matron chided. "Sometime Allah hears foolish utterances and makes them come to pass -- to teach us the price of folly. Now, come along, dear one."

Ayeesha looked appealing toward Ali, but he only shook his head.

"There is nothing to do for it. You must go back," he told her.

"The parade --!"

"I will not see it either."

"Why? She is your bride!"

"She is only another burden that I, as prince, must bear. I think that you shall meet the princess Badiat even before I do. She will be housed in the women's quarters."

"Imprisoned, you mean!"

"Your words, not mine," he replied with a patient smile.

Ayeesha returned a doleful glance, then allowed the attendants to guide her away. Ali watched them go with a shake of his head.

Two hours later, Ali released his hawk, which began circling at a great height over its master's head. Below, the prince's party advanced through the brush with dogs to flush the game. As the desert quails whirred from the thickets, the raptor saw the birds and dived in for the kill. Having made a clean strike, the well-trained creature returned to its master bearing its prize.

"'Tis but a pale form of hunting," mused Ali to Hassan as he tugged the game bird from his pet's claws. "It is the hawk which does all the work."

His friend shrugged. "Yet I cannot help but admire these birds."

"Why?"

"Look how your falcon overcomes its own nature, which is to feast upon its own kill. Instead, it leaves it for his master to profit by."

"Training is all," Ali mused absently, not much interested in the subject. "I myself am being rigorously prepared to be my father's successor."

Hassan looked up. "But that is not against your true nature, surely."

"Of course it is not," he replied tonelessly. Then, not wanting to betray his sullen mood, he forced a bit of cheer into his baritone. "Hawks are tame sport! Give me a boar spear and a bit of danger any day."

"As you say, but boars are few and far away," Hassan reminded him.

"That is true," he sighed, and changed the subject. "I hope you took no offense at Ayeesha."

His friend smiled broadly. "How can one be offended by a girl who makes him laugh so hard?"

"Yes, that one delights even as she infuriates," the heir of Damascus nodded.

Hassan slapped his comrade upon the shoulder. "How do you feel, Ali -- you who are soon to be the groom of the most sought-after princess in all Syria? What did the old woman who examined her last year say?"

Ali shrugged. "She said that the princess is beautiful, and that Allah has favored me. She is, however, older than most brides -- already she is Ayeesha's age."

"That is old!" Hassan said with a sympathetic grimace.

"Her sire has been trying to arrange this marriage for over three years, but my father long pretended to be considering other prospects, simply to drive the dowry up."

"Your father was always a practical man."

Ali shook his head. "Once Father's price was met, I would have had to marry her even if she had had the aspect of a crocodile! I will not even be permitted to see her face until after the ceremony."

"That is the way with us of high rank. Nonetheless, it is good to be wed. A man needs sons. If I could only find a highborn lady who is as lovely as that concubine in the tent of Mufti the Bedouin --"

The emir's son laughed. "Now there was a vision of loveliness!" he concurred. "The best of his harem."

"I will have a better seraglio someday," Hassan said with a chuckle. "Then I, master of all I survey, will permit my wives and concubines to ply my naked body with caresses and mount me one after another. She will be the winner who first draws forth my vital juices."

"And what will the winner win?" Ali inquired sardonically.

Undaunted, Hassan replied: "She who wins this contest should receive a precious jewel into her hand, while the losers get nothing but a thwack upon their beautiful behinds with the girl-whip. After that, I think, each of them shall take care to be a little more amorous the next time. It is a privilege to be summoned to their master's pillows, after all."

"I would do even better," Ali averred cheerily.

"How better?"

The prince raised his finger like a pedagogue giving a lesson. "Each member of my harem should be picked for possessing one particular adeptness or charm. One girl should possess the most satiny, delicious calves in all the East. Another should own the most perfect thighs; and still another would have hands which are the softest of all -- and she would use them to induce me to valorous deeds of manhood."

Hassan guffawed, thoroughly enjoying his comrade's fantasy. "I think you speak not of any mortal harem, but the garden of the houris in Paradise."

"Women are like hawks. If trained, they may perform marvels. I have heard of how whip-masters employed by slavers can take the rudest country maid and make her perform like a houri. -- But I have not finished describing my harem."

"Then do go on!"

"Still another slave girl shall be possessed of the most perfect large, firm, and round breasts. She will kneel before me and cup those soft melons of flesh against my zubb and, moving back and forth, create the illusion that I am probing her maidenly kus."

"I am most interested in that thigh-slave you mentioned," Hassan admitted whimsically.

"My thigh-slave will clench my excited scepter between her satiny columns until it is incited to heroic performance. The calf-slave shall, of course, do likewise with her own special charm."

"Breasts, legs, calves. Do you never receive Mouth Magic in this harem of yours?"

"Every day!" Ali said with a grin. "I should naturally appoint a sucking-slave, one whose soft, rosy lips will nibble, lick, and breathe all over me. But best of all, she will engorge the entire head of my rutting ram, exciting it with her tongue, until she draws forth my full venom."

Ali went on, waxing fancifully about a toe-slave skilled in tickling him with her toes alone, and a derriere-slave, who must offer up her satiny globes to his mighty sword-of-pleasure. And this latter maid would be chosen also for her sharpness of speech and defiant temper. It is ever the proud and querulous girl that the man takes the most pleasure in spanking. And a beautiful bottom gives him special delight.

Hassan cocked one eye. "All slaves, I see; will you have no wife?"

Ali shrugged. "Every monarch must have four wives, and so shall I! Badiat will be the first of these, of course, as her father will have purchased her that right. God willing, I would keep them all pregnant all the time. Then I would need to see each of them only twice a year: Once when I plant my seed, and once more when my wife brings the harvest of my sowing to me to admire."

Hassan continued to smile, but he was sensing some sourness under his friend's foolery. Ali was not a sour man by nature, but he had tended to sourness oftentimes in these late days, even in his humor.

"Well," Hassan said with a frown, "I must consult the captain of the horse. Now that I am made bey of the royal troop I can but spare little time for sport."

Ali nodded. "And I need go back to my father's councilors, who will blather at me until evening prayer on the theories of policy."

"I pity you," commiserated his friend.

Ali looked off into the distance. "Each man's fate -- his kismet -- is written upon his forehead at birth, and none may change a letter of the sentence."

Hassan, too, chose to wax philosophical. "If we knew what that sentence read, would we be the happier or the more aggrieved?"

"I know not," Ali sighed resignedly. "But my immediate fate is to the bath to wash off the sweat of the hunt. Shall we meet again at evening prayer?"

"I shall be there," his comrade affirmed.

Ayeesha had spent the afternoon sitting moodily in a corner of the women's quarters. She barely heard the soft footsteps behind her.

"You are Princess Ayeesha, soon to be my sister?" asked someone standing behind her.

The princess turned and espied a slim, dark-complected young woman of about eighteen standing over her. "Princess Badiat?" Ayeesha inquired, rising. "Welcome. It is true, I am the sister of your husband-to-be."

Badiat extended her hand. "I am pleased to meet you. One needs a kindly companion in a strange city; I hope that you shall be mine."

Ayeesha regarded the stranger quizzically. "You seem angry, Princess. A difficult journey?"

"A journey that ends too soon," she replied acridly. "I have never been outside my father's palace before. Now, again, after a brief viewing of fields and towns, I am again caged. Only the palace has changed, nothing else. How do you bear it?

The Damascene looked at her new acquaintance with renewed interest. "I was speaking on just that subject with my brother."

Badiat frowned. "With my betrothed?"

"Why frown so? Ali is a fine man!"

The Edessan shrugged. "I saw him once at my father's court, through a screen. He was a fair enough figure of a youth, I suppose."

Ayeesha touched Badiat's hand. "You will love him, as I do."

"You have a soft touch," remarked the princess suddenly. "Does my touch please you also?"

"Princess, I --"

"We shall have many hours together, I do not doubt. Perhaps we shall become -- good friends."

"I hope we shall, my princess --" murmured Ayeesha with a wondering glance.

'Tis all a chequer-board of nights and days
Where Destiny with Men for pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the closet lays.

The bath-slave Aram had just helped Ali descend into the waist-deep water. Neither he nor the prince detected the stealthy footfalls entering the chamber. The wizard Yusuf swallowed hard as he paused upon the marble coping of the bathing pool, not yet absolutely confident of the Gem of Invisibility's power. In his perspiring fists he clutched his glazed vial, now refilled. He now unstopped it with trembling hands, quailing as Ali suddenly seemed to look up at him. But the young man's eyes shifted away again, at which point the conspirator sucked in a deep sigh of relief.

This sound Ali actually did hear, and he curiously scanned the chamber. Alarmed, the old man froze in place, too frightened even to breathe. To have his scheme exposed would mean a terrible death -- roasting over a small fire, or being torn apart by wild horses.

The prince took a proffered bottle of ointment from Aram and poured a puddle of it into his palm. This he commenced to rub into own muscular arms and chest. With Ali and the servant both distracted, Yusuf slowly regained his courage and, carefully, as to not wet his fingertips with the smallest drop, he unstopped the flask and tipped it. Its clear contents poured into the waters of Ali's bath with only the tiniest tinkling sound.

As the magic substance spread and reached Ali, something like a thousand pin-pricks benumbed the youth's flesh and he let out a gasp of startlement. His knees failing under him, he thrust out his arms to catch the tile coping, lest he go under. He succeeded in this, but the servant above him was crying out in surprise and dismay:

"Master!" cried Aram. "This cannot be!"

Dazed, the son of Haroon looked up at him.

"What?" he murmured, and only belatedly realized that his voice sounded strange.

"You have changed!"

Ali wondered why the man's eyes seemed to be starting from their sockets. Then he looked down at himself.

And screamed.

The Emir Haroon paced back and forth in front of his councilors, feeling much older than he was. The wise men of Damascus themselves appeared perplexed, and, out of politeness, and also a certain squeamishness, refrained from looking at the cloaked figure of Ali. The latter was standing apart from them and next to Hassan, his face hidden by a close-wrapped kaffiyeh. Lord Aziz breached the tense silence with a platitude: "Sorcery is afoot, great Haroon. The culprit must be found and punished!" The emir tore at his grey hair. "Oh, woe! Should the sultan of Edessa discover this catastrophe, Ali's marriage to Badiat shall be doomed! Our whole dynasty is destroyed. I no longer have an heir!" "Majesty!" cried Ali. "It is not so! I am alive!"

Achmed, Haroon, and councilors.

Achmed smiled unctuously at the shrouded figure of the prince, saying: "Of course you understand what the emir is saying, O Royal One. The people will never accept an emir who comes to the throne under an enchantment such as yours. But hopefully, by the grace of Allah, we shall in time find the means to take this degrading spell from your person. But until then, alas, we have more immediate problems."

Achmed was enjoying his own performance, and a yearn to laugh tugged at his pious expression. He turned toward the emir, saying: "Ali's wedding to Badiat is now, as you say, impossible, Great One. We dare not lose the alliance with Edessa and, therefore, another noble suitor must be found for the princess -- and swiftly."

"Do not despair, Mighty Emir," interjected the councilor Madani, "I fear that I know what has befallen Ali -- and there is yet hope for him."

Ali perked up. "What hope? Explain!"

"In the land of Khwarizm is found a spring call the Fountain of Marshan. He or she who bathes in its waters is --"

"Is what?" demanded Emir Haroon.

"Is changed as Prince Ali has been changed." He went on to explain the legend in detail.

Achmed tensed and queried tentatively: "And you suppose that an enemy has cursed Prince Ali with the water of this fountain?"

"I do. Fortunately, a little fresh water from the same spring will instantly remove the curse."

"Then I must go to the spring!" cried Ali.

"I, too, have heard of this evil fountain," put in another councilor, Aziz by name. "It is a long journey from here -- at the city of Marshan, far away, to the north of the mountains of Persia, at the edge of the land of Khwarizm."

"I do not care how far I must go!" the prince exclaimed. "I will not live as -- as --" His words choked off, their taste too bitter to utter.

"Be warned, Ali," said Madani with immense gravity. "The legends say that for the curse to be removed, the sufferer must do no dishonor to his original shape, and therefore must conduct himself accordingly."

Ali stepped determinably forward: "What does that mean? Do not speak in riddles!"

Madani explained his meaning carefully, and Ali's eyes grew wide in anger. "Why do you even make mention of such a thing?! By Allah's Sword, what do you take me for?!"

Councilor Aziz interposed himself between Madani and Ali. "Peace, Your Grace. Our colleague means only to say that no one knows what subtle changes this sorcery may have wrought in your blameless nature."

"My nature is exactly what it has always been!" exclaimed the emir's son. "Or," he demanded through clenched teeth, "have you noticed some change?"

"None at all," the elder replied with a reverential bow.

The emir slammed his fist against the back of his chair. "We shall seek for the culprit! He may have more of the magic water, and thus the curse may be lifted at once. But if our search does not avail us, we must waste no time." He swung toward Hassan.

The young warrior straightened. "Yes, Mighty One?"

"Hassan, you shall prepare an expedition to Khwarizm at once! Accompany Ali to the spring -- and do not return until my son is restored."

"Why do you not let me prepare the expedition myself, Father?" Ali asked in perplexity. "It will help keep my mind off this terrible condition."

"How can you speak to warriors and camel-sellers as you are, my son?" his father answered. "No one would recognize you, and you must not tell a soul who you are, lest the scandal shame our entire house, our ancestors even!"

The prince blinked with startlement. "Am I a thing of shame to you now, Father? Why? I have done no wrong and am responsible in no way for what has befallen me."

"No, of course you are not! But we must be discrete. Besides, you are too distraught to do such exacting work. Let Hassan see to the difficult matters."

"Why should I?" Ali answered defiantly. "Whatever else I may have become, Majesty, I have not become a child nor a fool!"

Achmed spoke up, eager to cast blame away from himself: "That bath servant of the prince's may be a part of the plot. He should be put to the torture at once."

Ali raised his masked head. "No! He is innocent. -- I feel it. It is an evil thing to torture a good servant on mere suspicion, and I will not have it done on my account!"

"Of course, of course," vacillated the emir, "but he must at least be closely questioned. If, in the process, he behaves in a guilty manner --"

He dropped the subject and looked toward the others. "Gentlemen, come, we must sort this matter out carefully."

The emir withdrew and the councilors stepped briskly after him, leaving Ali and Hassan alone in the room. The prince looked askance at the warrior at his side.

Before Hassan could encourage or commiserate, there came a shout from Achmed in the adjacent chamber. "Hassan, you come also. This concerns your journey!"

The prince's comrade looked bemusedly at Ali. "Excuse me, my friend. I will rejoin you as soon as possible."

Now left alone, Ali spun about and stormed away.

Achmed, once more surrounded by a crowd of his women, received Yusuf for the second time that day. On this occasion, the latter was accompanied by a tall, muscular warrior in the garments of a ghazi, his turban decorated with a stiff red feather. The man's scabbard was empty, however, the guards outside not permitting a weapon to be brought into their master's presence.

Achmed pushed a doe-eyed concubine away. "Begone, all of you!" he commanded. As the women scrambled from the suite, Achmed beckoned Yusuf and his bodyguard closer. The latter watched the departing dancers and concubines with avid interest.

"Visions of loveliness, lord," the ghazi remarked in a strong, rumbling voice. His accent betrayed an Egyptian origin.

"Yes, indeed," Achmed nodded distractedly. "You should see them when they dance."

"Aye," nodded the big swordsman, "that is the sort of woman for me -- a dancing girl, like my mother was."

"I take it that you are Mahmood, Yusuf's bodyguard?" Achmed remarked.

"That is so, lord," affirmed Yusuf. "I would have lost my life many a time during my travels, except that the stalwart Mahmood stood at my side."

"You are welcome here, warrior," Achmed said perfunctorily.

Mahmood gave a dignified bow. "Thank you, Mighty Vizier."

Achmed put his beringed hand upon the old wizard's back. "Yusuf, you should have seen Prince Ali! He was wrapped up like a bedouin! It was all I could do to keep from laughing! "

Yusuf grinned. "You forget that I saw him in the bath -- not wrapped, but naked! The spectacle was even more amazing than you can imagine!"

"And if I have my way, he will wear that shape for the rest of his life!" the vizier vowed determinedly. "Tell me, Sorcerer, have you come up with some plan to prevent Ali from ever again regaining his natural shape?"

"Yes indeed, Lord. Have I ever failed you?"

Achmed listened carefully to his learned cohort and then nodded. "I do like what I hear. How should we bring it about? Do you suggest violence?"

"Alas, lord, for the magic to work, Ali must act willingly, enthusiastically, even."

"He will never do that!"

"I agree. For that reason we must resort to magic once more."

"What do you mean?"

"I have a potion which comes from the city of Marshan also." Yusuf summarized the peculiar nature of the cantrip.

"But how do we know that the potion you purchased was true and pure?" Achmed asked edgily.

"I am confident, Esteemed One, but if you would set your mind at ease, I suggest that we test it upon the knight in the tower while you observe."

"And perhaps I shall do more than merely observe," Achmed suggested, his lips drawing into a tight, thin smile.

Yusuf led his master Achmed and his servant Mahmood to the Crusader's cell, whereupon Achmed sent the guards away and unlocked the door. Upon entering, they espied a blonde woman of about nineteen or twenty years of age. She was standing defiantly on the opposite side of a small table and wearing the rood-decorated tabard and hose of the infidel Crusaders.

"Sorcier! Va-t'en!" the blonde snarled. "Je ne suis pas un caprice pour votre amusement!"

Yusuf tilted his head toward Achmed. "The knight, I think, resents being turned into a woman," he grinned. "And yet he makes such a pretty virgin girl!" The magician next spoke over his shoulder to Mahmood. "We must fetter her."

The sorcerer proffered the cup he held to the vizier, saying, "Please hold this cup, my lord."

Achmed received the vessel as his two underlings went after the Frankish maid. She showed spirit, seizing an earthenware pitcher and throwing it at Yusuf's head. The old man ducked, but Mahmood charged after the caster. She eluded his grasp for a moment, but he soon had her locked in his herculean arms. The Egyptian and his master dragged the girl to a wooden pillar where depended a set of manacles. While Mahmood held her, the magician clicked them shut upon her wrists.

"Cochons! Je vous tourai!" shrieked the fettered blonde, the echoes of her cry ringing through the tower.

Achmed now stepped up to inspect her. The girl's red-faced rage, her flashing blue eyes, the disarray of her hair, came across as a feral sort of beauty. "Very good," he said. "Now leave us alone. I will administer the potion myself and observe its effects personally."

Yusuf half-bowed in assent and drew Mahmood after him. Achmed watched the door close, then held the cup of wine up before his captive's nose. The bouquet was heavy and sweet.

"You are thirsty, are not you, Sir Knight? Let it not be said that I do not see to my captives' needs." He nudged the goblet to her lips. "Here, take this. I know how you French like wine. All the world knows you for a race of drunkards."

After a circumspect taste, the French girl drank thirstily. Finally, sated, she sighed throatily and sagged, her arms taking some of her relaxed weight. Achmed watched avidly, and, after just a moment, the Turkish grandee noticed the girl's subtle shiver. This shiver, whatever its cause, seemed to leave her as swiftly as it had come, and she was suddenly blinking at him with bedazzled eyes.

Had the spell worked? Achmed decided that it was time test it. He touched the girl's tabard, in the place where her breasts bulged.

No sooner had he pinched her than she rebuked him: "A bas les mains, abatardi puant que vous etes!"

"You do not like being touched, my lotus?" he mocked. "Why should that be? I have heard that French girls are all whores, though I do not know whether they were speaking figuratively or literally. We must decide the matter for ourselves."

Achmed prodded the girl with insolent fingers. "Conchon!" the transformed knight yelled at the top of her lungs.

After a few minutes, Achmed began to notice a gentling of his victim's attitude. Was it the effect of the potion? Emboldened, the vizier took his victim by the waist and crushed her against himself, forcing hungry kisses upon her mouth. She shook herself away and aimed a knee at his crouch, but he was too quick for her.

"Allez-vous-en, vase Arabe!" she growled, and Achmed surmised that her words had amounted to an insult of the vilest kind.

"Do you impugn me, by proud beauty?" he inquired whimsically. "You will be punished for that."

He drew his father's bejeweled dagger; the girl froze as Achmed poised the keen blade under her chin. But instead of cutting her, he merely severed the tie at her throat.

"I want to see you naked," explained Achmed as he pulled her tunic down over her shoulders. "If your beauty pleases me, you shall be permitted to live as a concubine for the rest of your life."

The chained knight kicked at Achmed's shins futilely while the vizier cut away those parts of her garments which would not yield to the strength of his bare hands. "Ahh, yes," he murmured, "I am impressed, truly. Some fool told me that Western women were small-breasted, but you are as generously-endowed as any Circassian beauty."

He touched her now-bared breasts. The girl tried to shake him off while Achmed laughed at her mortification. The knight was easy prey for the Syrian in her present form, nothing more than a plaything.

Maliciously, Achmed sank to his knees and hooked his thumbs into the knight's waistband. His attempt to drag down her hose incited the knight, who started to kick again. Annoyed, Achmed left her hose bunched at her knees, where it would seriously impede her ability to kick with efficacy.

Now that she was all but naked, vizier placed his hands upon her buttocks and proceeded to knead them vigorously, while his prey, beside herself, twisted right and left. Tiring of the sport, the vizier took hold of her knees and bent to kiss her inner thighs. Oblivious to her, the Turk worked his way up along the blemishless flesh to the golden nest above. This he touched with his tongue, giving her clitoris -- the zambur, as his people called it -- a mischievous flick, which caused the girl to leap and utter a squeak. His continued liberties had soon reduced the the girl to gasping. Finally, Achmed got up and wiped his mouth on his kerchief. Keenly the grandee observed the effects of his attempt to arouse the Crusader. Strands of amber hair were pasted to the maid's moist face and her limbs quivered with emotion. The slick sheen of perspiration upon her trim body was, he supposed, due not to air temperature, but sexual heat. Could Achmed also detect a trace of feminine musk over the usual prison odors? He decided that he did, and so pressed his agenda. He picked up the leather collar which he had brought along and enjoyed the look of horror the Frankish maid showed when she saw the collar yawn open. Instead of thrashing about this time, though, the blonde simply hung there with eyes wide, her lips agape. The prisoner's demeanor made it easy for Achmed to fit the dark leather around her swan-like neck.

The Crusader

Was she stunned only? he wondered. Yusuf had said that the potion had three elements to its makeup. The first induced into a woman who drank it an insatiable sexual need. The second inspired a craving for bondage, for wearing the symbols of subjugation and the domination of a master. The third created a passionate fixation upon the first man which her dazed glance fixed upon. Taken together, the three elements of the potion created a wild and lusty sex-slave who was utterly devoted to a single master. This was the fate which the grandee dearly desired to inflict upon Ali.

Achmed had by now notched the belt in place with these taunting words:

"At this moment, you cease to be a free man or even a woman captive. You are chattel. There shall be no purpose to your life hereafter, except the pleasing of those who hold power over you. You are now, and forever, a female slave!"

Achmed stepped back to feast his eyes upon the circlet she now wore. The collar was not the fashion of Syria, but came from the lands east of Baghdad, but he very much liked the look of it upon the neck of a beautiful thrall. The item was, in fact, the girl's only garment above the knees. Though she didn't understand his words, the French prisoner comprehended the symbolism of his act and her expression transformed from one of anger to dismay.

Achmed surprised her by unlocking the manacles. So taken aback was she that, instead of darting away, or springing for his throat, she collapsed into his arms. Atremble with triumph and desire, the vizier lowered her to the floor. As she lay on the old straw, the Saracen stripped off her over-sized boots, then her hose. Now the collar was all that she wore.

"What an addition you shall make to the seraglio which finally claims you!" prophesied the Turk, his lips drawn back in a grotesque rictus of mirth. Without further taunts, he opened his trousers to liberate his blood-gorged manhood.

The French girl looked up in bewilderment at the rampant cock-stand looming over her.

"Like it, Crusader? It shall be yours -- in a sense."

The vizier stooped to grab a mass of her golden hair, and thereby pulled her up to her knees. Then he took his aroused organ in his other hand.

"Taste my zubb, infidel whore!"

Repulsed, the girl averted her glance.

Angry, Achmed stood up, adjusted his breeches, and yelled: "-- Yusuf, you fool!"

When the old man had shuffled back into the cell, the vizier pointed an accusing finger at him. "The potion has no effect!"

"You are too impatient, Lord," Yusuf counseled plaintively. "I have seen how the Marshanese use the potion. It effectively tames females who begin their slavery in the most defiant state of mind. Its power grows stronger minute by minute. The more she yields to it, the greater the dominance it assumes over her emotions. And this is the royal mix of the cantrip, which is the strongest of all."

Achmed made a scoffing noise. "She doesn't seem to love me in the least."

"Be patient," the magician urged once more.

The Turk was only partially reassured as he made a new assessment of the girl. Her fair eyes were bloodshot and watery, her shoulders trembled, and her breasts were heaving.

The sight might have brought pity to another heart, but not to Achmed's. "You Crusaders invade our land, you rape, you pillage," he inveighed. "Well, you are one who shall pay back all he has taken, and in hard coin! Do you know what the words 'Mouth Magic' mean, you stupid little barbarian?"

The French girl reacted and Achmed laughed. She had actually understood the euphemism. "I see you do understand!" grinned the Syrian. "You must have learned all the words that whores use." He pointed to his formidable scepter. "Mouth Magic. Do it!"

The indignant Frank shook her head and effected to crawl away. The Saracen took the sash from his robe and, in a flash, had his fair prisoner bound by the wrists, belly-down, to an iron floor-ring. Then he took his leather belt from his pantaloons.

"Mouth Magic now, little whore? I am waiting."

She shook her head furiously. "No! Jamais!"

Achmed struck. The Crusader yelled in pain and struggled to free herself, but the Syrian's knots were too clever. Achmed delivered one blow after another, until his victim lay collapsed, gasping, her mouth full of straw. His sadistic impulse momentarily satisfied, Achmed set aside the belt and told Yusuf to fetch a pitcher of water.

From this, the official refreshed himself, and then put his cup to the slave's lips. She coughed as she swallowed. Achmed looked up at Yusuf, saying, "Go now. I resume my private audience with our foreign guest."

When the wizard was gone, Achmed spoke sneeringly to the girl: "Mouth Magic, my little heifer, or --" he showed her the strap, "-- more of this?"

"Oui! Mouth magic!" she gasped.

Pleased, Achmed arranged the girl on her hands and knees, then seated himself upon the prison stool. By means of a handful of her hair, he brought his slave's face close to his loins. The vizier continued to hold her with one hand while he again freed his erection and commenced to rub it against the French girl's tight-clenched lips.

"Open your mouth, whore!" he directed, pantomiming exactly what he wanted. Such gesticulation would not be necessary for long with this one, he knew. Every harem girl soon learned all these sexual commands even when given in Turkish.

The Frank moved to comply, if woefully slow. Impatient, Achmed thrust the corona of his penis between her lips and felt the warm, wet envelopment.

"Suck! Suck, bitch, -- suck!" Achmed commanded. He moaned in pleasure at her efforts to obey, though the fellatio he was receiving was a clumsy one. By pulling her hair and groaning encouragement from time to time, he exacted the performance that he wanted from her.

His swollen scepter and throbbing stones were aching, and he craved release. In fact, he longed to see the girl's face of horror as he released his vital essence into her virgin mouth, but that delight would, unfortunately, have to wait for another day.

Without warning, Achmed pushed the girl away. She fell on her back and lay there, not understanding the cause of his sudden roughness. But she comprehended all when the Saracen got to his feet and kicked the pantaloons from his ankles. Unsure whether to resist or not, she permitted him to position himself between her widely-spread legs. The vizier smiled at the look of apprehension in the French girl's lovely face, noting how her nipples stood straight-out, stiff little pink-brown cones.

Confronted by such beauty and such evidence of female heat, Achmed could control himself no longer. What's more, there was no longer any cause to exercise the slightest control over himself.

He imposed his body upon hers and she cried out in surprise. At first his action was to subject her to a rough, angry foreplay -- pawing and groping -- the sort of treatment that a whore could expect from a conquering soldier. Her beautiful face he covered in big, wet kisses, interspaced with painful love-bites. The girl, pinned to the straw, herself intensely aroused, could do nothing but cry out and struggle ineffectively against the hurt -- a hurt which was increasingly registering in her mind and emotions as pleasure.

Achmed felt about to burst, but he did not want to spend himself upon her thighs. It was time to make this knight of France a woman true.

"Ah, my bitch, you have fucked many daughters of the Faithful, I do not doubt. In so doing, you have incurred a great debt to our people. It is time for restitution. How shall it feel to be a sword no longer, but a scabbard put to the service of other men's weapons?"

The man of Asia shuddered, then took his aching cock-stand into his hand and, rasping, said: "You are as hot as a brazier in wintertide, my European beauty. You want to fuck, I know, and fuck you shall! Do you know that word, my darling little whore -- 'fuck?'"

The French girl nodded, wild-eyed. "Oui, Maitre!" she gasped. "'Fuck!' Jai compris! Penetre-me! Fuck! Fuck moi, Maitre!"

Achmed knew the tones of lust when he heard them, and so he placed his stiff length to the center of her vulva, and, with his partner moaning in near-delirium, he thrust.

He pumped himself into her furiously, assailing her with long, slamming strokes. He continued relentlessly, until the woman shuddered under him, transported by orgasm. With a loud moan, he let himself go at last, pouring himself out in a series of spasmodic bursts. A man of vigor, Achmed kept his hips moving as long as he had anything left to give to the Crusader -- and he gave it all.

Achmed at last rolled away. As a man he was now used up, and the girl herself seemed equally spent. Spent, alas, but not sated.

"Mon Deui!" she gasped. "C'est bon! C'est bon! Plus!"

When her lover proved unresponsive, she groped at him, tried to roll him over on top of herself.

Weary, Achmed pushed the French girl away. To his annoyance, she held on to his leg, yammering: "Maitre! Fuck moi! Mas fuck!"

"No, Crusader, I am not here for your pleasure," he taunted. "But I may tell your jailers that they may do as they please with you. Would you like that, my golden harlot?"

He rose, dressed, and then called his fellow conspirators back into the cell.

"She came like a bitch in heat!" the vizier laughed. "A man only this morning, tonight she climaxes like the hottest whore in Tyre!"

"Now you know that the potion works," said Yusuf proudly. "A man or woman who surrenders himself, or herself, to one of his former sex, so long as he was willing when he did so, is forever trapped in the shape which the waters have imposed."

"For once you have not blundered, old fool. That is, if the legend is true. Douse the slut with some more of the magic water tonight, just to make sure that she cannot be restored. If she cannot be, then it shall be clear that Ali cannot be, either."

"I will do so, my lord. But what about afterwards? The girl knows too much. She cannot speak our language as yet, but in time --?

Achmed frowned. Clearly, the French girl must be sent away, killed, or have her tongue cut out.

"Tell me, wizard, will this whore die of love for me if I send her from the city?"

"No, the love spell will simply fade away in a few days if her beloved rejects her. However, this shall not free her from her craving for sex and bondage. These will remain, I understand, until the end of her childbearing years."

"She is able to conceive?"

"I have been to Marshan and so I know that fact to be true."

Achmed nodded, satisfied. "If all this is so, death would be too kind for a Christian dog -- I mean, a Christian bitch. I promised that I would make her a concubine, and so I shall. I know a slave-trader who is buying women for Zanzibar."

Yusuf inclined his head. "You are wise as well as merciful, Exulted One."

"No time for idle banter, Yusuf! You must follow Ali's and Hassan's expedition. As soon as you are able, you must put the royal potion of Maiden's Ruin into his food or drink."

"Must it be the royal potion, Sire? As I say, the love spell is fragile, unless the sufferer's love is returned."

Achmed gave a toss of his hand. "Ali must lose his maidenhead as quickly as possible. A slut may give up her maidenhead quickly, a slave-slut more quickly still, but a slave-slut in the grip of love-madness will not preserve her virginity as much as an hour. We play for dangerous stakes, Yusuf; we must win with devastating swiftness, or all might be lost."

"It is a vile revenge, Lord," spoke up Mahmood for the first time. "Why not simply use the power of the Gem of Invisibility to bring an assassin to the prince?"

The vizier shook his head. "That is too unimaginative, and it would not satisfy my hate. This way Ali may live and suffer, but forever be denied the throne. And if I become emir, my first act shall be to place him under the tyranny of whip-mistresses. Perhaps when he is trained I will make him one of my concubines, or even a lowly barracks belly dancer, to entertain my soldiers."

Achmed noticed Yusuf's doleful expression. "What ails you now, Wizard?"

"You say I must travel yet again. My bones ache for rest, Lord. I have grown too old for these long journeys."

"I can trust no one else! Do what I ask one final time and then retire with ten chests of gold for your own!"

"Yes, Exulted One," Yusuf capitulated, moved as much by fear as by greed.

Achmed turned to face the bodyguard. "And you, Mahmood? Will you go with your master?"

"A man can always use more gold, Lord, but my happiness requires much more."

The grandee regarded the Egyptian through a cocked eye. "Just how great is your ambition, ghazi?"

"I would give up my wandering forever," replied Mahmood, "if I could but open a simple hostel in my native Egypt and make it prosper."

"That is nothing," exclaimed the official. "I can make you the master of ten taverns."

"I do not need ten, Great One. So much responsibility would leave me no time for wife and family, and therefore for all which makes for a life of contentment. There is only one thing which I lack."

"What?"

"It is too much to ask."

"Ask anyway, dolt! We have little time for false modesty."

Mahmood straightened to all his gigantic height and said, "Lord Achmed is famous for the beauty of his harem."

"That is so. What of it?"

"I have already espied one in it whom I cannot but deem the most beautiful woman in all the world."

Achmed shook his head. "It is impudence, warrior, to aspire to a concubine who has previously graced my own bed! Yet I will not haggle with time so short. To destroy the heir of Haroon, I would gladly lay even my own sister at your feet. Serve your master well, come back successful, and the girl is yours. -- More than that, you shall also have a chest of gold to buy that hostel of yours!"

"Then I am your man," replied the bodyguard gratefully, clutching his scabbard in solemn pledge.

Achmed clasped both their hands, sealing their pact of rogues.

Then to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried,
Asking, "What lamp had Destiny to guide
Her little children stumbling in the dark?"
And -- "A blind understanding!" Heav'n replied.

That night, the young woman whom Ali had become lay in deep despondency, still masked in a dust veil. Nerves frayed, grief afflicting her, Ali yearned for the slumber which would not come.

Sleep had almost overtaken her when she heard footsteps. Having sent all her other servants away to keep her secret, she supposed it was Aram.

"Aram! I told you to go to bed! Stop moving around!"

Then Ali heard a gasp in the corner. It was like no gasp that the bath slave would have made.

"What --? Who is it? Who hides behind the curtain?"

A slim figure emerged into the lamplight. "Where is my brother, maid?" the intruder demanded. "And why are you wearing a sleeping robe like his?"

"Ayeesha!" the prince gasped.

"Do you know me, slave? Do I also know you under that mask?"

"Ayeesha! Do not shout or call for the guards."

"What are you talking about, girl?"

"I am no girl!" the muffled prince declared despondently. "I -- I am Ali!"

Ayeesha stepped up closer. "Ali? What sort of fool do you take me for? Your voice is a girl's. Your size is also a girl's!"

"Let me explain!"

And explain Ali did. Ayeesha refused to believe it at first, but she plied the masked female with many questions and finally was convinced.

"Oh, Brother, what an incredible story!"

A moment of awkward silence followed, then Ali asked: "Why have you come?"

"I have heard that you were about to depart on a long pilgrimage to the East," she explained. "This made no sense, as everyone knew you were to marry the Princess Badiat a few days hence. And if some sudden religious passion had truly taken hold of you, I knew that you would at least visit me before you departed. Something seemed very wrong."

"Something is very wrong," Ali whispered, barely audible.

She touched her brother's arm. "Do not grieve so."

"Why should I not grieve? If you were suddenly made a male, would you not feel as humiliated as I do?"

Ayeesha shook her head. "No, I would be pleased."

Ali looked up incredulously. "You would jest so at a time like this?!"

"I speak true, Brother! In this world men can do everything and women nothing. If you go to Marshan, as you say you will, I beg you to return with a bottle of the fountain water -- for me. I would rather be your younger brother than any kind of a sister!"

Ali stared off into the shadows. "I do not understand you. I never have."

"Nor do I understand why you must hide your face from even me, dear Ali. Has this magic made you ugly?"

"No, not ugly. But -- my appearance -- it would shock you. You more than any other, perhaps."

"Do not be that way, Ali. I am not squeamish. Now that you have warned me, I expect to see a strange woman's face."

"It will not seem so strange. Councilor Madani explained what has happened. He said that the curse of the fountain does not simply change a man. It makes him over into the image of that one which he --"

"Which he what? "

"Which he holds in his secret heart to be the most beautiful in all the world."

"Oh, no, Ali -- thou hast not taken the shape of one of your own slave girls, or some belly dancer of the marketplace? My poor, poor dear brother!"

Ali shook her head. "No, it is nothing like that. Perhaps it is not so bad as that. Or maybe it is worse. I do not know."

"Then show me. I shall not quail."

Reluctantly, Ali drew down the dust veil.

Ayeesha's eyes started; she reflexively clenched the bedclothes.

"Brother, you -- you look like --"

"Yes," nodded Ali. "I look like -- you. . . ."

Scheherazade says: "Before many days had passed, Ali and Hassan's caravan set out for the East, replete with many pack camels and thirty loyal warriors on horseback. But as swiftly as the royal party traveled, a small group of its enemies traveled just as swiftly in pursuit -- Yusuf and Mahmood, along with a few trusted hirelings from Achmed's personal guard. All of them began their journey unmindful of the hazards of their undertaking, bedazzled as they were by the vizier's extravagant promises of a rich golden reward. "Once far out in the desert, the cunning Yusuf hoped to steal into Ali's night-camp and place the cruel bewitchment of Maiden's Ruin upon him. But, alas, by the will of Allah, a great sandstorm swept the wilderness, and the tracks of the larger party were covered up. As they searched for their quarry, Yusuf and Mahmood became hopelessly lost, falling many, many leagues behind their unsuspecting quarry.

Visions of gold.

"The journey was a long one, and the strain began to tell. Despondency fell especially hard upon the young man who was a man no longer."

They had crossed the borders of Persia that morning, and the beasts were rambling slowly along rocky, dry runs, grunting as they lurched over the ruts and gullies that scored the parched terrain. Scrub weed dotted the landscape, and this humble growth was the only foliage in an otherwise-barren world. The shadows were waxing large with the sinking sun, though the heat was still oppressive. Only the sounds of the wayfarers' animals broke the forlorn silence of the twilight.

At last Hassan gave the order to pause and set up the manzil, as the desert dwellers called their overnight camping sites, just as he had done many times before. Ali, as had become usual, said nothing, but remained aloof.

Before long, the campfires had bathed the rippled dunes with ruddy light and the men were serving out their rations of rice, camel milk, butter, and a bit of hare-meat taken in the last hunt. Ali ate swiftly, as usual, then rose and withdrew beyond the glow of the firelight. Hassan had noticed her solemn departure and then frowned down into his plate. He had learned the hard way that it did not profit to disturb his friend at such times, but yet Ali's black mood seemed to be unending. This night, concerned beyond the bounds of self-restraint, the warrior got up and followed the heir of Damascus to a remote spot under the white moonlight.

There Hassan espied his comrade sitting alone, forlornly staring at the sky. Hassan quietly sloughed through the deep sand until he stood close behind her. The prince must have heard him, but deigned not to look back, merely shifting uncomfortably, as if to signal that she did not wish to be disturbed.

"Ali, the night is cold. Come back by the fire."

"Leave me, Hassan. I know when to come out of the cold."

It was not the first time he had been so rebuffed, but Hassan persisted: "At least uncover your face, Ali. What is the point in hiding it out here in the desert? I, at least, already know what Ayeesha looks like." He reached out to take her dust veil.

Ali struck at his hand. "I said leave me!"

Hassan stood up tall. "I have been mistaken. I thought that we were following a prince. Now I see that we are escorting a modest girl -- one who veils her face before men, one who humbly demurs from speaking, one who seeks seclusion --"

With a wild cry, Ali sprang at Hassan and threw a punch at his face. The warrior dodged the blow, and the girl's feet slipped in the shifting sand. She would have fallen face-down, except that her swift comrade grabbed her in time.

Held, the prince fought hard to get away. "Jackal!" she yelled. "Release me! If this had happened to you, I would never treat you so!"

"You might not!" he said as he controlled her thrashing as he would have a stripling boy's. "But I hope I would not be acting so foolishly about what could not be helped."

He released her then and she staggered back. Hassan softened his tone: "I see one whom I have loved like a brother becoming a stranger. It is a loss which I cannot bear."

She turned away and faced the dark emptiness. "I wish I were a beast down on four legs rather than a woman!"

"You cannot mean that, Ali."

"I do! It is better to be pitied than laughed at!"

"No one is laughing at you. I am your friend, and these men are your most faithful retainers."

"What are they saying then?" she demanded with balled fists. "That this curse is the judgement of Allah?"

"Nothing of the kind!"

"Why not?"

"What do you mean, 'Why not?'"

Her answer came in a low whisper. "I ask that because I have thought the same myself."

He looked at her with amazement. "Why?"

Ali now settled dejectedly to the ground. "It makes sense, Hassan. -- You of all men know how I used to talk, used to admit that I was reluctant to assume the responsibilities of my birth. This is Allah's vengeance."

He dropped down beside her. "No, my friend, it is only the evil deed of some unknown sorcerer. Allah does not avenge himself for every small shortcoming. He is called 'el Rahman,' the Merciful, remember? If He were as vengeful against me as you believe he has been against you, I would be a donkey by now, not a man."

"So you say, but I cannot help but feel that I've been unworthy."

Hassan shook his head emphatically. "I cannot see it! Anyway, we will soon reach Marshan and restore you. Then no one except us few shall ever know that you were once bewitched."

Ali looked into his face and Hassan saw the uncertainty in her brown eyes. "But what if our quest fails? What will my life be then? Shall I take a room in the women's quarters next to Ayeesha's? Shall my father have two daughters? Should he announce a rich dowry and find me a mate?"

The warrior was saddened that such evil fantasies were going through his friend's head. "Whatever your fate, God alone knows it. But, Allah willing, I shall be forever at your side." He reached again for her veil, this time carefully, respectfully.

Ali caught the wrist in mid-course, but this time not in anger. She instead clasped it in a silent pledge of trust and camaraderie. Then she reached up and dropped the mask herself.

Scheherazade says:

"The friendship of Ali and Hassan, strong before that night upon the dunes, now grew deeper and closer still.

"After hundreds of leagues of taxing travel, the royal caravan reached its long-desired goal -- the city Marshan, which lay below the last mountain obstacle before the vast plains country of Khwarizm.

"Long before the soldiers of Damascus drew near, the sultan of Marshan had been informed by his watchful outriders, and a guard of honor was dispatched to escort Ali and Hassan to the palace."

The palace steward met the Syrian visitors cordially and ushered Prince Ali and Lord Hassan to quarters worthy of their dignity. He also extended the sultan's invitation that they should join him at feast upon sundown of the following day.

"Wait," remarked Ali as the man began to withdraw, keeping her voice low and gruff so that the steward would not suspect her secret.

"Sire?" the little man asked.

"We have heard very strange tales concerning Marshan."

"Ah, yes," nodded the steward suppressing a smile, "no doubt these stories concern the Magic Fountain of Marshan."

"Yes," agreed Ali. "Does such an amazing thing truly exist?"

"I believe it exists," said the jovial steward, "for I have seen it perform its miracle many a time. You may see it for yourselves. As it happens, some men will be transformed tomorrow."

"Transformed? Why would any man wish to subject himself to such a ghastly fate?" Hassan put in.

"Not by any choice of their own! The sultan's nephew and some young bravos gambled themselves into debt and then robbed some outlying villages to pay their moneylenders. They dressed as bandits and hoped that bandits would receive the blame for their evil deeds. But Allah was not deceived, and He caused them to be discovered. The most guilty of them have been condemned to be cast into the Fountain. They then shall be turned over to the royal whip-masters and trained to be slave girls."

Hassan and Ali exchanged perplexed glances.

"You say that the chastisement is public?" asked the Syrian warrior of the Marshanese.

"Of course! What is more edifying than to see those who break Allah's commandments punished by His own miracle? The punishments always draw a large crowd, but because it has been a long time since a high-born one has been condemned, the whole of the city shall doubtless turn out to see it."

Hassan shook his head dubiously. "I do not think --"

"No," broke in Ali. "We must satisfy ourselves that everything they say is true." She touched Hassan's arm. "We must."

The steward swelled with pride at these foreigners' appreciation of his country's uniqueness. "You shall see that it is exactly as I have told you, Great Prince."

The next morning Hassan and Ali saw something of Marshan, a wealthy, well-adorned city, with prosperous-looking people going hither and thither. Slave girls thronged the streets, and Hassan noted that they were not dressed with the same modesty that their Syrian counterparts displayed. Their halters were often sparse, flaunting exuberant cleavage, and their shaven legs sometimes flashed beguilingly through flowing skirts of veils.

They quietly passed by a slave market, which was poorly attended this morning -- probably because the punishment was just then drawing so many people away from the bazaar. There could be no other excuse, in as much as the women on display were young and beautiful, and dressed even more wantonly than the slave maids in the streets.

"Fountain girls," remarked their escort, a captain of Marshan.

"What do you mean?" rumbled Ali.

"These are rebels who were captured last spring," explained the officer. "They were cast into the fountain and then rigorously trained. Because rebellion is a most terrible crime, these wretches are earmarked to be sold only to foreign caravaneers. It is the wish of the magistrates that they live out their lives far from their native city."

"What land would want such accursed creatures?" the prince inquired.

The captain gave a short laugh. "The fountain girls of Marshan are eagerly sought out by connoisseurs of female flesh. Some men find it a rare thrill to wring cries of pain and mortification from a nubile girl who was once, perhaps, as virile and well-endowed as they."

"Is that what the men of Marshan think also?" asked Hassan.

Their guide shrugged. "Some do, I suppose. But most think about the matter little, if at all. Fountain girls are too commonplace hereabout for any serious man to concern himself with them."

Hassan could not believe that 'fountain girls' could ever be considered commonplace, at any time and in any place. Marshan seemed to him a wicked town, like Sodom in the days of old! The warrior looked up into the sky, as if half-expecting the dark clouds of the city's coming destruction to be descending from Allah's abode even at that moment.

This reproving thought seemed quickly validated when he saw a small crowd gathered around a young woman who was chained in front of wall. She was totally nude, except for a slave collar about her throat.

Hassan leaned toward the captain. "Is such a display not a scandal here?" "Not at all! A public exhibition is one means to punish a displeasing slave." "It is a harsh punishment!" "No blood flows, shame leaves no scars. As punishments go, it is merciful," the soldier maintained, not perturbed. Hassan shuddered. They passed through the main city port, and before long they reached the precincts of the fountain. Hassan had expected to see a small pool fed by a spring. It was, in fact, a large pond whose edge was trimmed with a coping of stone blocks. On the opposite bank there stood a grand official edifice which, their guide explained, was a law court. Many trials were held there, he assured them.

A fountain girl's punishment.

How intimidating it must be, Hassan reasoned, for the felon to be tried overlooking the magic water which might soon supply his punishment.

A large crowd had massed up near the water's edge, and the captain rode his horse slowly into the midst of it, shouting: "Make way! Make way for the sultan's royal guests!"

The mob parted readily enough. Perhaps, thought Hassan, the sultan's low tolerance for rebels and rioters had something to do with their docility down there next to the pond's edge.

The captain dismounted and Ali and Hassan, doing likewise, slid down from their saddles to stand at either side of him. Hassan espied a group of guards and a smaller group of distinguished-looking elders over by the coping. These latter, wearing fine robes and pure white muslin turbans, seemed to be the presiding magistrates.

Two men stood between the guards, their hands tied in front of them. The captive pair wore good clothes, and these would certainly be a couple of the scoundrels who had raised havoc in the countryside.

"Bring forward Kislar Ibn Aglar," commanded one of the magistrates.

Two of the guards shoved the felon up before the judge. "Have you anything to say before sentence is enacted?" the later queried.

"There is no justice in Marshan!" the young felon declared loudly. "I am an innocent man. I fell in with bad companions, true, but always did I seek to dissuade them from deeds of rascality."

It was the man's apparent sincerity which persuaded more than his weasel words. But Hassan knew that many men, especially the sort common among ambitious politicians, were skilled and shameless liars. He suspected that Vizier Achmed was such a one, in fact.

A magistrate raised his hand to silence the man's pleading. "Our evidence finds you have been the worst of a bad lot, that you were indefatigable in egging on your despicable comrades to horrendous offenses. For that reason, Kislar Ibn Aglar, it is meet that you be punished first." He then gestured to the guards.

The two men obligingly dragged the felon to the edge of the pool, though Kislar dug in his heels and fought them all the way. A third guard came forward with a looped rope, and this he slipped over the head of Ibn Aglar and slid taut about the man's waist.

That being done, the pair seized their charge by the arms and legs, picked him up, rocked him back and forth, and finally hurled him out into the water, well beyond the stone coping.

The felon apparently couldn't swim, or was simply too shocked to try. Instead, he splashed frantically at the surface and yelled bloody murder. Hassan watched for any sign of a physical change, but could see little due to the distance, the victim's clothes, and the amount of water being thrown about. Nonetheless, he very quickly did discern that the manly howl of terror became very quickly a woman's shrill.

Now the guards were drawing the felon back to the stone-faced edge, and dragging him out of the fountain.

"Are the guards not afraid to touch the water?" Ali asked of the captain.

The Marshanese shook his head. "The guards who perform this duty are actually transformed women. They have taken wives, and so cannot be changed by the waters again."

Hassan blenched. This was a mad place, and he dearly wished to be away from it as soon as possible.

The crowd craned its necks to see what sort of woman Kislar had turned into, but for the moment he was left to lie like a great wet mass of laundry on the bank.

Next Lord Dwar was summoned up before the other judge. No doubt he had been unnerved by Kislar's punishment, but Hassan still shook his head at the sight of such cowardice. Dwar was craven, begging, importuning, incoherent. Kislar's unctuous pleading had been the model of manly fortitude by comparison.

The judge stilled him with a shout: "You are a disgrace to your noble family line! They have disowned you, cast you out. All you have to say has been said before. Naught is left, except that the punishment mandated by law is carried out!"

At his signal, the guards carried Dwar along, because he refused to walk. A scant three minutes later a figure babbling in a woman's voice was drawn out of the pool.

"Is Lord Dwar the highest-ranked personage ever to be so punished, Captain?" Hassan asked.

"Not so," the young officer replied. "The fifth sultan of the first dynasty was also so punished."

"A sultan?" exclaimed Hassan. "How can that be?"

"The man was an unworthy cur," the guide explained with knitted brows. "He lied, he cheated, he committed adultery with other men's wives. The Fifth Sultan broke every stricture of the Koran. Never since the days of Nimrod has their been a more evil man upon a throne of grace.

"That is saying much," remarked Hassan.

"It only gives the Fifth Sultan his due. In his youth, instead of training for war, he went away to Isfahan to study law. While there he defamed his own city and espoused the virtue of our foes. When the Fourth Sultan died, the wicked son who succeeded him secretly debauched the daughters of good families, those who had been sent to the palace as royal wards. He despised all that was cleanly and favored all which was debased. Though children are the most beloved of Allah, he declared that children might be killed at the instigation of their mothers, and by those whom their dams paid to the deed, if they deigned not to commit the horrendous murders themselves."

Hassan glanced away. Such evil could never have been performed by a living man. Surely the Fifth Sultan was only a myth, a cautionary tale of how depraved a head of state might become, but yet never had been. But, to the Syrian's surprise, the captain's catalogue of depravity was by no means finished:

"The Fifth Sultan surely did not believe in Allah, though he swore false oaths in the name of the Most High. Indeed, the wicked sultan made war upon all of his people who did not espouse atheism, even forbidding the symbols of Ramadan to be raised during the Holy Month.

"But, strange to say, as fierce and rapacious as the misbegotten sultan was toward the weak and innocent, he was in fact the least of men. He had a First Wife who was harsh and mannish in her manner, oftentimes discoursing in public and using words that made even harlots blush. This harridan witch was permitted by her spineless husband to perform magisterial functions traditionally forbidden to her sex. She even had leave to command the royal ministers and to voice her ignorance and prejudice at all the meetings of the royal council.

"The wicked queen engaged and dismissed servants of the state and, far worse, she was heard to boast that Marshan had two sultans -- and her craven lord accepted this insult." The captain shook his head in disgust. "A true man would have ordered such an unnatural consort to be quartered between running stallions for such an affront!

"Oh, the sins of that man! His father had already raised the taxes greatly, but the first royal act of the son was to raise them much higher still. Great wealth came to the treasury, even more than his extravagance found the means to spend, but the Fifth Sultan would never reduce his onerous assessments upon the people. He made the worst of men mighty in the courts and these rogues followed not Koranic law, but their own capricious whim. At last, tired of the need to buy forgiveness from the people by weeping in public address with quivering lip and red eyes, the Cursed of God imported foreign Turks from inner Khwarizm who knew not Allah, and lewd Indians who daily shed blood at the pagan altars of beast-faced demons. Those who protested the sultan's impiety were callously murdered by these hired assassins, and their bodies left in gardens, sewers, and parks.

"At long last, the people rose in anger and though the sultan's hirelings killed many, they could not fight all the people of the city. Indeed, the hosts of the town were greatly reinforced by hordes of farmers and shepherds who came from the hinterlands bearing scythes and lion-spears.

"The cowardly sultan was at last taken. He, along with his evil minions and his unwomanly wife, was cast into the pool."

"Women are so punished, too?" asked Hassan.

The captain nodded. "Sometimes. The First Wife was sent as a man to the salt quarries, to use her strength to carry heavy baskets from the mines to the wagons -- be it under the broiling sun or the cold wind of the season, and ever she groaned under the threat of the lash."

"What happened to the sultan?" Ali asked, forgetting to modulate her voice. Its pitch brought a sudden look of puzzlement to the captain's eyes. He looked about, as if supposing that another had spoken. Nonetheless, he answered the question:

"There was a foreign king, a cruel man, but one whom the Fifth Sultan had often attacked, not from cause, but merely to dispel the general contention that Marshan's lord was a coward. To this king was the sultan sold as a slave girl. It is said that for many weeks the former sultan was kept naked and chained by the neck under the table in the king's dining hall. She was not permitted to speak, except to whine for food and water like a bitch whines. Further, she was trained to please the men who sat at the king's table by the means of her hands and her mouth, even while they feasted from the table overhead. When she was permitted the relief of copulation, it came with the male assailing her from behind, directly, coldly, without gentling kisses or soothing caresses."

"What happened then?"

The captain shrugged. "It is unclear. With time, most people ceased to inquire after the Fifth Sultan. I think, too, that her kingly captor wearied of the kind of amusement which she had afforded him. There are divers stories of the subsequent fate of the Most Wretched of Allah, but none of them are more than rumor."

Hassan shook his head in disbelief. What sultanate would allow its master, even one of very evil repute, to be treated so by a foreign rival? A clean axe upon the neck of a fallen monarch was to be expected, but the degradation of a sultan degraded his city also.

An agitation in the crowd around them brought Hassan's attention back to the matter at hand. The judges had resumed the punishment of the felons after a brief recess.

"Because you two were the leaders of your despicable band," one addressed the prostrate Dwar and Kislar, "because you are high-born, and your deeds are therefore the more deplorable, your punishment shall come first. By the law of the sultan, I declare each of you slave. Guards, strip the bondmaids!"

The guards commenced to tear the sodden garments from the convicted robbers. Possibly, the Syrian nobleman supposed, the fact that these guards were formerly females made their present duty a particularly satisfying one for them.

When the condemned pair were finally rolled out of their voluminous garments, two new nude women were seen. One of them was yellow-haired, like a Circassian. The other girl was olive-complected, with black, flowing tresses. Both were slimly voluptuous. Had Hassan not known their origin, he would have been impressed and allured.

The onlooking mob huzzahed loudly and Hassan heard some bawdy comments. The guards worked quickly to bind the girls, and in a nonce the punished felons were tied back-to-back. Kislar and Dwar were subsequently carried as a joined pair through the crowd to be placed before a screen of lathes.

The screen was intended to protect their skin from the sun somewhat, but because it was latticed, it allowed the curious to gape at the condemned ones from all four sides, like beasts in a menagerie.

Afterwards, the remainder of the young hellions were punished. These were not stripped and displayed immediately, but the judges did not omit the necessary formality of pronouncing all of them to be chattel. Finally, bound hand and foot and thrown into a donkey cart, they were taken away. The two ringleaders were, last of all, brought from their place of display and slung up into a cart of their own. The ne'er-do-wells of the town and a large number of lewd little boys walked beside the conveyance as it rolled along. These individuals taunted the wagon's occupants raucously while the guards made certain that their boisterousness did not get out of hand. Hassan had seen more than he had wanted of this matter and wished to be gone. Only then did it cross his mind that Ali might be well-advised to simply go to the edge of the water at that point and jump in. In fact, when he saw his friend gazing in that direction, he half-expected that she was about to do exactly that. But, for whatever reason, the heir of Damascus stirred not a step from where she stood and, when their official escort offered to take them back to the palace, she turned away from the fountain and swung up into her saddle.

Dwar and Kislar

Think, in this batter'd caravanserai
Whose doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How sultan after sultan with his pomp
Abode his hour or two, and went his way.

Ali and Hassan kept close to their own quarters until twilight and did not speak of the day's events. At long last, having donned raiment suitable for the occasion, the pair united once again to accompany the palace stewards to the sultan's feast. Ali had selected a deeply-cowled robe to help her with her imposture. This strange choice of attire was explained away as being part of a pilgrim's vow. When circumstances forced her to speak, she made an effort, as before, to keep her voice throaty and deep.

The Sultan Moustafa of Marshan was a tall, dark man in his thirties, displaying the graceful demeanor of a cultured and intellectual prince. He was a convivial host attentive to his guests, presenting jugglers, musicians, acrobats, and dancers for his guests' entertainment. Servants bearing flasks and trays wove in and out of the crowd, supplying all their culinary needs, while across from Ali and Hassan a raven-haired young beauty performed a belly dance to the rhythm of zithers and rattles. The bells on her bejeweled girdle jingled loudly as her shivering hips became just a blur.

Both of the Syrian guests noted the lavish wealth thereabouts displayed, and Hassan acknowledged it graciously: "We are amazed by the wealth of your land, Mighty Sultan. It bespeaks an industrious people and a wise stewardship."

The black-bearded sovereign nodded. "Long ago, before a shepherd discovered the magical fountain, there was not even a village here. No one knew of the spring's existence. I say no one, but I exclude the audacious bandit band which hid in the mountains nearby. They preyed upon caravans to kidnap travelers, whom they cast into the fountain and afterwards sold in foreign markets."

"My prince and I have seen the magic fountain today, O Sultan, and we witnessed the terrible thing which it does. We have since wondered why your good people have not destroyed it long ago."

"Destroy our magic fountain?" the sultan replied with a blink of perplexity. "Never! It is the eighth wonder of the world."

"It is an affront before Allah!" admonished Hassan, his effort at politeness strained.

The sultan banished the obvious tension with a broad smile. No doubt he had heard such words from many a newcomer to Marshan. "No work of Allah is an affront, Lord Hassan. It is only how men use God's gifts that makes for good or evil. Let me tell you a story, my friends:

"In the last century a holy man of the Nestorian faith came to our land and did long meditation before our fountain, endeavoring to divine whether it was a gift of God, or an evil tool of Iblis, the prince of demons.

"He returned to our city after a few days with wonder in his eyes and a glorious revelation to reveal. He said that the angel Gabriel had appeared to him and told him the secret of the fountain.

"When Allah created Adam, said the sage, He later made Woman from the Man's body to be his companion. But the first woman was not like the women of today, despite the stories which would make her to be so. No, Eve was another man, junior to Adam because Adam had been created first, but Eve was like him in all his parts -- and, as we know, Adam was made in the image of God.

"When Eve sinned and led her companion into sin, Allah was very wrought and sent the angel Michael to smite the ground of Eden. From that place which he struck, a fountain sprang forth, and the archangel placed into it the power of God. Then he said to the man Eve, 'You shall no longer be complete in yourself, but you shall live in eagerness for your mate's embrace and contribute to his increase, and he shall be called husband and be your master in all things.'

"Then the archangel cast Eve into the fountain, and she came forth from it changed, less perfect in the image of God, perhaps, but more beautiful in the eyes of her husband -- yea, beautiful beyond all his previous dreams of beauty. Only now did Eve possess all the divers parts of the woman as we know Woman today. As God decreed, Adam was smitten with passion for Eve, as Eve was smitten with passion for Adam.

"Then Michael said to the fallen pair, 'As Eve was desirous of eating of the fruit of the tree, the fruit shall be placed upon Adam, and Eve will forever be desirous of consuming it, and the hunger shall be of the loins, and the throat shall be the throat of a second mouth which God has provided for her. Moreover, any who enter the fountain from this day forth shall be changed like Eve, so that her descendants will know the glory of God. Forever after, if he is like Adam, he will become like Eve, and if like Eve, like Adam.'"

"Majesty, are you saying that this land is the old Eden?" inquired Hassan with knitted brows.

"I repeat only what the holy man averred," replied the sultan genially, "as our ancestors have passed it down. This is a fine land, I will not deny. But not so fine, I think, as Eden was. Allah, who is all-wise and all-powerful, may make a fountain that flows in one place flow at another at a different moment. He is Allah."

"A strange gift of God," remarked the Syrian warrior. "Of what possible use is the fountain to man, Majesty? We have seen in it only an object of terror. What can it offer but punishment, and a cruel satisfaction to those who punish?"

The sultan shook his head. "No, warrior, you know little of what you speak. God is good. His fountain is good. It is our fount of increase. It is the flowing source of all our wealth."

"Your wealth? I do not understand."

Moustafa smiled proudly. "Why, have you not seen our abundance?"

"I have seen it," answered the Syrian, "but what does it have to do with the fountain?"

"Why, it is only by the grace of Allah we have ten ewes for every ram, ten cows for every bull, ten hens for every cock. Our flocks grow so swiftly that it taxes the ingenuity of all our people just to tend to them, and of our merchants who must travel far to take such an overflowing surplus to market."

Hassan only now realized that more females inevitably meant more increase, but even yet he would refuse to concede any point. "Think of the misery that the fountain brings to human beings!"

"What misery, young lord? If an accident happens, if a clumsy sot falls into the magical waters by misstep, no harm is done. He can simply re-immerse himself and all shall be as before with him. Instead, think of Allah's blessing upon the parents of Marshan! Chance never need deny a father the son he yearns for. I myself have twenty sons and not one daughter!"

Hassan stared open-mouthed. "No daughters? How does your population grow? Do your people not value daughters at all?"

"They are greatly valued indeed!" the sultan assured him with keen, amused eyes. "The rareness of a free woman makes her especially precious to us of Marshan. Even a free peasant's daughter may have her pick of a dozen wealthy husbands. I think there is no land in all the realm of the Prophet that prizes its girl-children more highly. Alas, few parents desire a girl. Such is the custom of our race, which goes back to the days when we were a poor wandering people who needed many warriors to defend the herds from man and beast."

"A kingdom so poor in womenfolk must soon wither and die, Majesty, even if your flocks of brute beasts increase beyond measure."

"We are not so desperate as all that, Lord Hassan," the sultan replied jovially. "Our wealth allows us to purchase young females from afar -- indeed the fairest in all the world are brought to our door!"

Hassan gestured to the belly dancer. "So I see. From what land does this sultry beauty hail?"

The performer was a striking, slim-hipped girl whose full breasts strained against a halter of metal sequins. Realizing that the men were speaking about her, the slave's eyes flashed with fire and allure.

"She comes from no land but our own," Moustafa assured him, beckoning the girl nearer. When she had draw nigh, he reached out and placed a hand upon a nude thigh.

"This one was Ben Jakhar, a notorious robber --"

Ali gasped; Hassan could scarcely believe his ears. Ben Jakhar was certainly no woman's name. Neither of them could have imagined themselves so beguiled by the sinuous movements of one who had been an outlaw ruffian. "As you already know," the sultan went on, "unworthy men -- thieves, rioters, traitors -- all who are judged guilty of breaking the law of Allah or man, -- are cast into the waters of the fountain. Changed into women, they are set to performing useful tasks, as you can see." "We understand some of your practices, Great One," said Hassan, trying to keep his voice from shaking, "though my mind still revolts a punishment of this sort! Surely there is a better way to deal with wrongdoing than such an unnatural transformation. Bitter wretches of this type must make poor servants." The sultan gave a short laugh. "The wretches, as you call them, are well-trained in giving service and pleasure to the households which purchase them. Moreover, our ancestors discovered a potion, one which inevitably sweetens the most sour disposition. We call it, "Maiden's Ruin."

Ben Jakhar.

The belly dancer cast a wink at Hassan, who looked uncomfortably away. He could not fathom the mind of one who had been through what Ben Jakhar must have been through, and would have shrunk from her touch.

"Enough talk of magic," proclaimed Sultan Moustafa. "Perhaps you will desire more manly sport hereafter. I have desired of late to take my huntsmen up the heights to track and slay the savage mountain lion. Tomorrow would be a fine day for this!"

Hassan endeavored to answer for both himself and Ali. "Thank you Mighty Sultan, but --

"That would be most enjoyable, Great One," broke in the Syrian prince.

Moustafa smiled in pleasure. "Let our servants guide you back to your separate quarters, my welcome guests. Might I send a girl or two to entertain you gentlemen?" He looked with particular interest toward Ali, whose voice seemed to betray a very young man.

To spare his friend embarrassment, Hassan spoke up: "A girl like Ben Jakhar? I think not, Majesty!"

Moustafa shook his head. "Be assured, lords -- only women-born shall be selected for you, since you seem to stipulate it. I myself do not understand the prejudice, but many of our visitors think as you do -- That is, they do until they have dwelt with us for some little while."

"Hassan may do as he pleases, Great Sultan," said Ali, "but I have sworn at the mosque of Damascus to practice celibacy as one of my sacrifices for the success of our pilgrimage."

The sultan gave the speaker an understanding nod. "Then I shall send you a story-telling girl only, young prince. You are under no compulsion to abstain from the diversion of flute, song, and story, are you?"

"No, Majesty, none," responded Ali, somewhat abashed that the monarch was assuming that she was some sort of child.

"Then so it shall be!" pronounced the sultan with a nod of his head.

Hassan and Ali both felt the need to speak privately, and so they excused themselves at the earliest hour that it was seemly to do so and returned to the prince's chamber.

Hassan, more than a little overwhelmed with the events of the day, unburdened himself roughly and without preamble. "Ali -- why would you not end your cruel ordeal when you were at the fountain? And if you would not do so then, why did you not simply inform the sultan exactly why we came? It would have made everything so much easier."

Ali, taking umbrage at the rebuke, squared off with her friend. "And let strangers gossip about my humiliation for the next hundred years, like they still gossip about the Fifth Sultan? For the love of Allah, let me salvage what little pride I have left!"

"All right, then," replied Hassan with strained patience, "just what do you intend to do?"

The Damascene prince paced the floor while her mind raced. "We have found that they allow visitors to take water from the fountain at will. It is free to all who would have it, and they do not even post a guard. One of our guards shall simply draw some magic water at a very early hour when few others are present, and then I shall bathe in private. Once I do, this nightmare will be at an end and no one will be the wiser."

"I hope so, my friend," Hassan murmured, doubting the wisdom of making something so essentially simple so unnecessarily complex.

Ali flopped down on the bed and crossed her black boots. "What I wouldn't give to return to a normal life," with a sigh that was more like a moan. She seemed to reflect on that subject for a moment, but then went off on a tangent. "Ayeesha wants just the opposite. Hassan, can you believe that she actually asked me to bring her back a bottle of the magical water?"

This did surprise Hassan, though knowing Ayeesha for the hoyden she was, the actual degree of his surprise was lessened. "She's a strange girl. I always found her a willful child," was all his reply.

"I -- regard -- you both so well," Ali confessed uncomfortably. "I have never understood why you two never felt any attraction, one for the other."

Hassan looked perplexedly at his comrade. This was certainly a fair question, but one to which Hassan had no good answer. "I don't know. She certainly is beautiful --" He caught himself. To say that Ayeesha was beautiful was also to say that Ali was beautiful.

"Ah, but she is too disputant," he continued edgily. "A woman should be more --" He caught himself again. To say that a woman should be more compliant to those responsible for her was also to imply that Ali should be more of the same. Hassan certainly didn't mean to infer that.

"I mean," he said quickly, "she blames all of life's troubles on males. A women like that always make life a curse for any man who stands close to her."

Ali seemed not to have picked up on any of her friend's verbal titubations. "She hates her confinement, that's all," the prince said with a grimace. "She envies a man's freedom, even though I have tried to explain to her that so much of what seems to be freedom is simply obligations and restrictions of another kind." The male-dressed maid then gave a short, bitter laugh. "I have ceased to believe that any choice makes a human being happy. What happiness does choice impart these people of Marshan?"

"I see no choice exercised here," Hassan scowled. "Girl-children are transformed to suit the needs of their families, men are metamorphosed for punishment for their crimes. As for Ayeesha, she would defy a way of life that a thousand generations of men and women have found fulfilling. What if individuals occasionally resent what society demands of them? There will always be malcontents. The rules were made to help guide people to useful application and happiness. And we who just follow the rules should not be accused of oppressing others who like them not."

Ali sank back, her eyes closed. "One instinctively accepts the way things are," she said, "-- accepts the world which he was born into, but does he ever actually understand it?"

Hassan shrugged. "Other peoples have other ways. I envy the infidels, sometimes, except for their false beliefs concerning God. The Frankish knight may at least pay court to a lady of his choice. We of the Faithful may only marry those whom our parents choose for us. My father will doubtlessly select a daughter-in-law whom I have never seen or spoken to, one whom I know nothing of. The Franks, or so I understand it, may see their beloved's face many times before they decide to wed."

"Is their way so much better than ours?" mused Ali. "Would not a woman who is permitted to communicate daily with men soon become bawdy and impure?"

Hassan smiled. "Is bawdy and impure always bad in a woman? I have heard that Crusader women ride with their men, go hawking with them, try their hand together at archery, or jointly explore the bazaars --" Hassan checked himself, although this time he was unsure exactly why.

"But these are idle fancies," the lord concluded hastily. "We are what we are, and we live as our people have always lived, which is what Allah demands of us. I am more concerned about another matter."

"What other matter?" "This lion hunt. It is too dangerous." Ali sent him a puzzled stare. "Since when have you lacked the valor for hunting lions?" "I mean too dangerous for you!" Hassan clarified. "Ali, please, save the lion-hunting for -- for later. In only one more day you may hunt in perfect safety." The puzzlement in his companion's eyes had become a glare. "Do not try me, Hassan! Today or tomorrow, I am no weakling -- not ever!" Hassan threw up his hands. "And so you demonstrate your supposed strength by getting angry yet again! Why can we not speak like we used to without always that demon of discord sitting upon your shoulder?"

Hassan and Ali.

"It is only because you are always trying to patronize me! Even in this ridiculous body I am still twice the man you ever were, so do not try to impress my limitations upon me!"

"Twice the man?! By Allah -- If your sister spoke the way you speak every day, you would --" He cut off his rebuke. What had he meant to say? That he would have put her over his knee?

Ali sprang up, fists clenched. "I am not my sister!"

This time Hassan did not seek to mollify. "No! She has more sense!"

Ali then leaped with a cry of anger. Hassan shrugged off her blow, spun her about, and then seized her at the waist. Ali began to kick his shins and they both fell down into the pillows. Their tussle went on long enough for Hassan to end the exchange by pinning her under him. When the hot emotion of the moment had subsided, their faces were close enough for each to smell the wine-scented breath of the other.

Embarrassed, Hassan released Ali, who hurriedly rolled away.

"It is folly to quarrel and come to blows," jabbered Hassan, standing. "I am restless tonight, and sharp-tempered, too. I think I actually shall need that girl which the sultan offered me."

Ali looked up at him with strange intensity. "You have not needed a girl since we left Damascus! Why do you need one now?"

"If I want a girl, of what concern is it to you?"

"No concern!" Ali exclaimed with jaw set hard. "Do as you please!" Under her breath she muttered, "Whoremaster!"

Hassan had heard that insult, but chose not to fling back a barb of his own. "We will speak later, when you are -- more yourself!"

Then the warrior stalked off. In exiting, he nearly charged into a pretty slave on the other side of the door. Her muttered apology warned Ali in time enough to raise up her cowl again. The maid stepped into the chamber immediately afterwards and did obeisance.

"You are the girl which the sultan promised to send me?" the prince asked in that low, throaty voice which was the closest she could come to masculine elocution.

"Yes, O Prince. My name is Katya. I sing, recite, and play the zither."

Ali, in a sour mood, answered harshly: "Then sing, damn it!"

The heir of Haroon then pitched herself down on the bed, with her head propped up with pillows, and her arms folded petulantly.

Hassan stared out the window while the slave girl Halima prepared his bed. Although he had asked a steward that a concubine to be sent to him, he had in fact hardly glanced in her direction since her arrival.

"Halima," he suddenly asked, "I have wondered --"

The girl lowered her gaze attentively. "Wondered what, Lord Hassan?"

"Do you feel yourself cursed?"

She looked up, bemused. "For being a slave, lord?"

He turned and regarded her for the first time. "For being a woman."

She answered nonplussed: "Of course not, my lord. Why should one?"

Even Hassan was not certain where his train of thought was leading. "Allah permits the women of Marshan to change their fate. Have you never thought about going to the fountain?"

"No, never," she answered with a blink, "-- not even if the sultan would allow it. And, to be sure, he would never permit any slave girl that privilege."

Because Hassan said nothing more immediately, the girl supposed that he had dropped the subject. "The bed awaits, noble master," she smiled. "How else may Halima please her lord?"

His glance was troubled. "You may advise me, little bird, Tell me -- can a man ever be friends with a woman -- I mean as he may be friends with another man?" Hassan immediately felt foolish to pose such a question.

Yet Halima did not hesitate to reply. "Why should he wish to be friends with a woman, Lord, unless he has lost hope of ever becoming her lover?"

This was not what Hassan had hoped to hear and he turned away again. "A man cannot take to bed every woman whom he cares about."

"Not his mother, not his sisters or his close female relations," the girl agreed, "but regarding all others, what obstacle may there be?" Then she added knowingly, "Does Master speak with some particular lady in mind?"

Hassan retreated behind conventions then, and flashed a false smile her way. "Be quiet, lovely one, and kiss me."

The Sultan reclined upon his pillows smoking a hookah, while slave girls nestled close about him. One, a belly dancer, now performed for him, the zills on her fingers chimed as her lean, exercised torso undulated with the suppleness of a python. The sultan, already having feasted his eyes upon her kinetic beauty for a long while, suddenly stirred.

"The rest of you, away! Dancer, sit down beside me."

The slave girls sprang up and raced from the chamber on lightly-slippered feet. The dancing girl ceased her performance, approached her lord, and settled down on the edge of Moustafa's cushions.

"Fair One," he addressed her, "all I know of thee was that you were once Ben Jakhar the bandit. He, I recollect, plagued our hinterland for some few years before being taken and condemned. In truth, I heard no more of thee, until the Minister of the Accounts dispatched you to me as a gift. By what name did thy former master address thee?"

The girl smiled. "Danya, Great Sultan."

"Yes, that is right, Danya," he nodded, recalling. "A pretty name. I have watched you often since you arrived, tender Danya. You are to the eye what food is to the gullet."

She tilted her head, her expression as sly as the sphinx's. "I have been trained to please, Mighty Master, and not just the eye."

"Haw!" laughed the sultan. "I do like your forwardness! Why do you not bewail your kismet, as other girls from the fountain sometimes do?"

There was whimsy in Danya's fine, dark-cast features. "I am content, Noble King. Banditry was a hard life, and the bandit leader must be cruel to his followers no less than to his victims. I was often hated; no one hates me now. My burden is lightened."

"And your present burden is not heavy? You were free up in the mountains, a commander of men. Now you are a slave, ordered to serve, one who may be switched at the pleasure of her masters."

The belly dancer rested her head back upon a tasseled pillow. "Yet I live in a palace and I sleep on silken sheets. I have food to eat, and my companions are among the most beautiful women in all the world. Is not an occasional switching a small price to pay for all of that?"

The sultan marveled how the light of the brazier danced in his companion's kohled eyes. "Then you do not hate being either a woman or a slave?" he inquired.

"Do you hate being a man and master, Mighty Sovereign?

He was taken aback by the question. "No, why should I?"

"Must it be otherwise with me?"

"Our circumstances are nothing alike!"

The belly dancer, without immediate reply, drew a de-thorned rose from a water-filled bowl on the table and laid it upon the sultan's lap. Then she selected a second blossom and inserted its stem into her ebony hair. "This a wise man taught me, Supreme One. Two lives are like two roses. Which of these roses is better than the other?"

The handsome sultan frowned thoughtfully. "How may I judge? Some roses are better than others, I am sure, but these two appear to be of identical quality."

"Is Allah's gift of life not identical to all, also, my sultan?"

He shrugged. "All lives are different. Some persons are men, some are women. Some are sick, some are fit. Some are young, some are old. Some know grief, some know contentment. You life is not at all like mine."

She gazed wistfully at the roses in the bowl. "Our lives are different, Mighty Master, but our gifts of life are equal."

He regarded her now with added pleasure. "You surely were born a man, for no woman could express a deep thought in words so simple. Is there any wonder that I permit no woman to enter my chambers who was not born a man? -- Save for my wives, of course." He sighed like one under a heavy impost. "That is one of several obligations a sultan must endure for the good of his people."

"I grieve for your sacrifice, my liege," Danya answered with her glance lowered, lest her words sound sarcastic.

The sultan smiled broadly. He had known hundreds of fountain girls, yet they all still fascinated him. He stroked the silken fringe upon Danya's halter. "Tell me, my lovely, when you were a man, how many girls did you make love to?"

She hesitated ever so slightly before replying. "As many as I wanted, Sire. I raided villages. I sold free women as slaves to foreign caravans. Sometimes I sold women even to the magistrates of Marshan, for some of them were corrupt. I was audacious, even reckless, but mendacity in high officials permits recklessness to bandits, and I was for a long time given a free rein in exchange for what I provided."

This confession drew no reaction from Moustafa; he had fought official corruption for his whole reign. Some officeholders were eventually unmasked and punished, but some never were. As he recalled, the testimony of Ben Jakhar had led to the fall of several bribe-taking scoundrels. But, no doubt, some of his present magistrates were playing the same old game with the bandits of the present day. The conflict with evil was never-ending.

He ran the back of his hand over the girl's powdered cheek. That Ben Jakhar had been a genuine villain, he knew well. But he put all that out of mind and simply asked: "Were the women beautiful?"

She looked up into his eyes, as few of his slave girls had the effrontery to do. "Many were not, Great One. His Majesty knows that the gift of beauty is given out all too sparingly. But, alas, the fountain condemned me to take the shape of the most alluring dancing girl whom I ever raped --"

The sultan cocked his head. "You say that so matter-of-factly. Does the memory not bring you regret and shame?"

She shrugged. "I have been raped many times myself since then, Transcendent Lord, so must I still feel guilty for that which I have long-since atoned for? My trainers knew of my crimes, and so were particularly harsh with me."

Moustafa smiled. Somehow he doubted that this sly minx had ever experienced a twinge of guilt in all her life, either as a man or a woman. "How harsh were they?" he asked. "You do not seem scarred by your ordeal. Your saucy compliance does not appear to be that of a brute beast battered into a cowed tameness."

Danya's smile revealed dual rows of perfect blue-white teeth. "Your masters of the whip do not seek to make women dully tame," she explained. "They desire superb and active female slaves."

Moustafa lifted a brow. "Well, I must compliment the whip-masters of Marshan, for you are superb. How is it that you have learned thy lessons so well?"

"A girl under the whip is strongly motivated, Sire."

"I expect so." Then another thought came to him. "How many men have you pleased?"

"Very many. Many of your guests have asked for me since I was brought to the palace. Also, my former master oftentimes loaned me to his guests."

"If that is so, tell me this, my quail -- who has more pleasure in the arms of the other? Man or woman?"

Danya looked into Moustafa's eyes searchingly, wondering if the truth or an artful lie would better serve his pleasure. She decided to tell the truth. "The woman, Mighty Sultan."

This surprised the sovereign. A man, he knew, might take his pick of many women. Even a poor man had the means to sample the charms of countless harlots. The woman, on the other hand, had to submit to him who deigns to exercise power over her, either through marriage or by purchase.

"Why the woman?" he asked earnestly. "When I hold one who is beautiful, clean of limb, fresh of breath, and sweetly-scented, I cannot image that the woman under me enjoys half so much pleasure as I do."

Danya smiled. "So I believed, too, until Allah made me wise. Think, Mighty Master: A man is never free of the worry that a woman wants something of him, but seldom does he know precisely what she craves. A woman, on the contrary, always knows what a man wants, and is fully capable of giving it. For that reason she is at liberty to concentrate upon the sensations of the moment, and full concentration is necessary for plenary pleasure."

"Interesting," remarked the sultan, teasing the pendant depending from her earlobe. "Thou hast answered well. I now wonder what bauble would bring gladness to thy heart. Tell me what would please thee most, lovely Danya? Freedom?"

The belly dancer's lips parted in surprise, but any false sense of opportunity quickly subsided into resignation. "No, not freedom, Master. I can never to a man again, and it is hard for a woman to live free." She gave a rueful laugh. "Should I become a bandit again as I am?! A bigger bandit would simply take me into his powerful hands, strip me, then either make me his rightless mistress, or sell for three copper pieces at the nearest caravansary."

"Far more than three copper pieces, I think," said the sultan with an admiring grin. "But you could become a free dancer."

She shook her head. "Should I leave my home in the palace for the straw tick of a traveling show? Would I not have to submit to being seduced by every man of the troop, and then be beaten by their jealous wives? And what should I do when beauty fades? A free woman of elderly years is not cared for half so well as she of the palace shall be."

"But you must want something, my bright-eyes."

"Truly, Master, I do." The avid gleam in the girl's irises told the monarch not to promise too much. "Do not ask for the world, lovely Danya. You are only a slave, after all."

"Yes, Master," the girl said with bowed head, trying not to show too much disappointment.

"-- And, besides, I think that you have yet suffered little enough as a woman for all the evil you have done as a man."

Danya perked up, undaunted by his frankness. Empty flatteries are soon forgotten, she knew; what her lord was offering, she sensed, was an honest pact in which both parties understood their respective places. "I ask not the world, Master --," she assured him, "-- only the chance to serve you better -- to become a more valuable retainer."

"In what capacity might thou serve me better than I deem thee serving me now?"

"I would become a master of the whip and create from rebellious clay wonderful new slave girls for Marshan," Danya said excitedly.

"A mistress of the whip, you mean."

"Yes, Great One," she sighed. "I still forget myself sometimes. My desire is only this, Great Sultan: Let this unworthy one become one of those who trains those newly-condemned at the fountain. Let me with my own hands strip them of their male attire and reduce them to blushing naked houris with collars of submission locked about their swan-like throats."

Moustafa grinned, intrigued by her vivid fantasy. "You would especially like to train fountain girls""

"Especially," the dancer replied, her smile sly.

"Perhaps then you can advise me," he suggested, "as you seem to be interested in the subject. Did you know that my worthless nephew was brought back from the fountain earlier this day?"

"Yes, my sultan," Danya nodded. "The whole palace was talking about it. I hear that he -- she -- is very blond and beautiful."

"Yes, he -- uh, she -- is. I would take a personal interest in the punishment of Dwar, along with all his -- her -- riotous companions. They brought great shame to their families, one of which is my own, and their punishment should be one which is spoken of for many years to come."

"May this humble slave ask what has been done with the malefactors thus far?" Danya hated the lords Dwar and Kislar. Both had been frequent guests of her old master and, sometimes, they had made riotous sport with her.

The sultan's words intruded in upon the dancing girl's vengeful thoughts. "I have ordered them stripped and collared, and placed in cages in the plaza. The cages are small and they must sleep curled up like dogs; they cannot stand up, except on their hands and knees. They are not permitted to touch their food, but must eat it from the hand of any who proffers it. They have been told that they shall remain as caged beasts on public display until each of them, in her own good time, has begged for the privilege of being placed under whip to be trained as a woman, slave, and whore."

"An excellent beginning, O Worthy One," Danya beamed. "What should we do next, after Dwar has humbly requested to become a slave girl?" "At the smallest rebellion or word of insolence, I would have her lovely bottom caressed by the girl-whip. Not a rag of clothing should she be permitted, other than her collar, until she has first demonstrated perfect obedience to the lusty will of her trainers." "Is that the way you were treated?" asked the sultan. The dancer paused, then replied with a shudder: "Yes." "Was it terrible?"

A punished robber

"It seemed terrible then."

"And later?"

"It became a mix of terror and pleasure -- at least after a cup of Maiden's Ruin was poured down my throat."

"Would you not also give Dwar and her wretched companions Maiden's Ruin?"

Her head-shake made her midnight ringlets jiggle. "Not at first, O Master. I would wish Dwar to remain a technical virgin, tortured by the false hope that she might escape and restore herself in the fountain. In the meantime, without first using the potion, I would make our slave amply familiar with the experience of male penetration. It should first be done by way of the bottom, and not by a male but by an instrument." Then she added: "The slave pens have many tools designed for this purpose.

"For Lord Dwar in particular I would select one of daunting length and girth. I wish to hear her cry out in pain, not merely in shame. But I would also take care that she should not truly be harmed. Instead, let her remain fit to give many years of pleasure to those dedicated Sodomites who fancy her lovely cheeks."

"Ah, but you are wicked djinniya, my sweet one. Tell me more."

"I would save Dwar's and Kislar's true maidenhead for their purchasers to take."

Moustafa frowned. "This I do not favor. The longer one delays placing the seal of perpetual womanhood upon a fountain girl, the greater is the chance she will find a way to regain her former shape and flee justice. Nor would I make Dwar the darlings of some great man in whose eyes she might find tenderness. Better that she becomes the toy of many men, those who will regard her as simply the object of the moment and move on."

"Ah, Cunning One, you would not make the rascals concubines, but public whores," Danya observed with ill-concealed glee.

The sultan nodded. "Until Dwar's womanhood is made permanent, he -- she -- must be kept under close guard. -- But say, we have not by any means finished training my wayward nephew, have we?"

"By no means, Sire," replied Danya. "If I were a whip-mistress, she and her sluttish compatriots would not leave my domain before they were well-versed in all the harlot's arts, most especially the techniques of Mouth Magic. First I would compel them to kneel before 'the saddle' in the training quarters, but then I would chain them in a room with empty chairs which are accessed from the street. There, under the threat of the lash, they will serve oral pleasure to any man, any stranger, be he handsome, ugly, young, old -- any male at all who seats himself in the chair before the girl of his choice."

"For just one day?"

"For many days, except during the Holy Month of course, from dawn to dusk."

"Will not some angry girls bite?"

"Yes, sometimes, Wise One. But they are given men of the street to service at first. If they bite even these lowly ones, they will be terribly punished. Only when they learn not to bite will they be considered ready to learn the finer arts of the harlot's metier."

"I do not know whether to pity or envy any fountain girl who is thrown at your feet. When exactly would you force the magic potion down Dwar's unwilling throat?"

"Only when she has been made grudgingly obedient under discipline. By that time she will have perforce developed skills in gross harlotry, but yet will be sulky about performing them. Once a fountain girl has becomes obedient through attrition, then only is she ready for the first element of Maiden's Ruin."

"Only the first element -- the potion of need?"

Danya nodded. "Let Dwar and Kislar become sluts in body, but remain arrogant males in their mind, experiencing unmanly compulsions which they cannot resist, but yet which they abhor. At last, when they have been driven to commit every degrading act of passion written in the Book of the Houri, only then should they have the second portion of Maiden's Ruin, the potion of the slave."

"There is a certain charm in the way you would go about things," the sultan affirmed.

"The second element will make Dwar desirous of bondage," Danya continued, encouraged. "Only then, when discipline itself becomes a passion for her, should she be trained for the more intricate duties which her masters may select for her. It was only when I reached that point myself that I was taught the dance," she confessed.

"If Dwar became like you, I should believe that he has been well trained," Moustafa commended her. Danya paused and searched her master's comely face. "What exactly shall Dwar's future duties be, my liege?" "I have been thinking about that," he replied. "But what of the draft of love, the third portion of Maiden's Ruin?" She tossed her head. "Perhaps Dwar need never have it. Why make her happy by permitting her to love? Some man may desire her to love him, but if so it should be left to him to bring it about." Moustafa smiled. It was clear that Ben Jakhar cared little about fountain girls once they left the domain of the whip-masters. "I have been thinking of buying a brothel," he revealed, "selling all the girls in it, and staffing it with Dwar and his friends. All the fees placed between their breasts will go to pay back the victims of their crimes."

A fountain girl in training.

Danya murmured in delight. "This is good, Master, but may a slave make an added suggestion?"

"Is that not what I have been urging you to do for the past half hour?" he reminded her benignly.

"Yes, my lord. I only mean to say that I would have them trained not only as whores, but as belly dancers. But let them not entertain in comfortable homes and palaces, or even in a public hostel where they may have the security of sleeping on the same tick every night. Instead put them in Gypsy wagons a