Then said he, turning quickly, ’Yonder is the light from Aklis striking on the city, and I mark Shagpat, even he, illumined by it, singled out, where he sitteth on the roof of the palace by the market-place.’

So they looked, and it was as he had spoken, that Shagpat was singled out in the midst of the city by the wondrous beams of the eye of Aklis, and made prominent in effulgence.

Said Abarak, climbing to the level of observation, ’He hath a redness like the inside of a halved pomegranate.’

Feshnavat stroked his chin, exclaiming, ’He may be likened to a mountain goat in the midst of a forest roaring with conflagration.’

Said Shibli Bagarag, ’Now is he the red-maned lion, the bristling boar, the uncombed buffalo, the plumaged cock, but soon will he be like nothing else save the wrinkled kernel of a shaggy fruit.  Lo, now, the Sword! it leapeth to be at him, and ’twill be as the keen icicle of winter to that perishing foliage, that doomed crop!  So doth the destined minute destroy with a flash the hoarded arrogance of ages; and the destined hand doeth what creation failed to perform; and ’tis by order, destiny, and preordainment, that the works of this world come to pass.  This know I, and I witness thereto that am of a surety ordained to the Shaving of Shagpat!’

Then he stood apart and gazed from Shagpat to the city that now began to move with the morning; elephants and coursers saddled by the gates of the King’s palace were visible, and camels blocking the narrow streets, and the markets bustling.  Surely, though the sun illumined that city, it was as a darkness behind Shagpat singled by the beams of Aklis.

THE PLOT

Now, while Shibli Bagarag gazed on Shagpat kindled by the beams of Aklis, lo, the Genii Karavejis and Veejravoosh circling each other in swift circles like two sapphire rings toward him, and they whirled to a point above his head, and fell and prostrated themselves at his feet:  so he cried, ’O ye slaves of the Sword, my servitors! how of the whereabout of Karaz?’

They answered, ’O Master of the Event, we found him after many circlings far off, and ’twas by the borders of the Putrid Sea.  We came not close on him, for he is stronger than we without the Sword, but it seemed he was distilling drops of an oil from certain substances, large thickened drops that dropped into a phial.’

Then Shibli Bagarag said, ’The season of weakness with me is over, and they that confide in my strength, my cunning, my watchfulness, my wielding of the Sword, have nought to fear for themselves.  Now, this is my plot, O Feshnavat,—­that part of it in which thou art to have a share.  ’Tis that thou depart forthwith to the City yonder, and enter thy palace by a back entrance, and I will see that thou art joined within an hour of thy arrival there by Baba Mustapha, my uncle, the gabbler.  He is there, as I guess by signs; I have had warnings of him.  Discover him speedily.  Thy task is then to induce him to make an attempt on the head of Shagpat in all wiliness, as he and thou think well to devise.  He will fail, as I know, but what is that saying of the poet?