So he listened to the noise of their departing, and knew he had been duped.  Surely his soul cursed him as he sat crowned and throned in that darkness!  He seized the crown to dash it to the earth, but the crown was fixed on his forehead and would not come off; neither had he force to rise from the throne.  Now, the thought of Noorna, his betrothed, where she rested waiting for him to deliver her, filled Shibli Bagarag with the extremes of anguish; and he lifted his right arm and dashed it above his head in the violence of his grief, striking in the motion a hidden gong that gave forth a burst of thunder and a roll of bellowings, and lo! the door opened before him, and the throne as he sat on it moved out of the chamber into the hall where he had seen the damsels that duped him, and on every side of the hall doors opened; and he marvelled to see men, old and young, beardless and venerable, sitting upon thrones and crowned with crowns, motionless, with eyes like stones in the recesses.  He thought, ’These be other dupes!  Wallaby! a drop of the waters of Paravid upon their lips might reveal mysteries, and guide me to the Sword of my seeking.’  So, as he considered how to get at them from the seat of his throne, his gaze fell on a mirror, and he beheld the crown on his forehead what it was, bejewelled asses’ ears stiffened upright, and skulls of monkeys grinning with gems!  The sight of that crowning his head convulsed Shibli Bagarag with laughter, and, as he laughed, his seat upon the throne was loosened, and he pitched from it, but the crown stuck to him and was tenacious of its hold as the lion that pounceth upon a victim.  He bowed to the burden of necessity, and took the phial, and touched the lips of one that sat crowned on a throne with the waters in the phial; and it was a man of exceeding age, whitened with time, and in the long sweep of his beard like a mountain clad with snow from the peak that is in the sky to the base that slopeth to the valley.  Then he addressed the old man on his throne, saying, ’Tell me, O King! how camest thou here? and in search of what?’

The old man’s lips moved, and he muttered in deep tones, ’When cometh he of the ninety-and-ninth door?’

So Shibli Bagarag cried, ‘Surely he is before thee, in Aklis.’

And the old man said, ’Let him ask no secrets; but when he hath reached the Sword forget not to flash it in this hall, for the sake of brotherhood in adventure.’

After that he would answer no word to any questioning.

THE SONS OF AKLIS

Now, Shibli Bagarag thought, ’The poet is right in Aklis as elsewhere, in his words: 

     “The cunning of our oft-neglected wit
     Doth best the keyhole of occasion fit”;

and whoso looketh for help from others looketh the wrong way in an undertaking.  Wah!  I will be bold and batter at the hundredth door, which is the door of the Sword.’  So he advanced straightway to the door, which was one of solid silver, charactered with silver letters, and knocked against it three knocks; and a voice within said, ‘What spells?’