Twenty

 

Anahita refused to allow Philemon to ride in a bucket on the back of her camel, where he would be a terrible temptation for her bird, or so she said, so she and Philemon reached a compromise. He rode in the neck of a half-filled water bag that was strapped in front of her saddle.

"I feel like a wax stopper," he complained.

Veiled against the sand, still she brought her hand to cover her mouth as she giggled. "Most stoppers don't have eyes. Nor are they small enough to slip inside the water bag if Merlin decides she wants to attack you again."

He glanced around, but he could not see the murderous bird. "Where is the creature?"

"She's riding with Asad on the lead camel. Leaving me free to listen to your tales while we travel. So, tell me about your quest, Philemon the frog."

There was little to tell yet, for it had just started. "Have you ever been to Tasnim?" he asked.

She shook her head, sending ripples through the white fabric of her veil. It was too big for her – more suited to one of the men she travelled with than a delicate young woman. No wonder she took it off in camp. "This would have been my first time, but the gates were closed to us."

Her first journey away from her people, Philemon guessed. Then he registered the rest of her words – the gates of the city were closed. He breathed a sigh of relief. No one would loot the place in his absence. Good.

"Until the oasis where you found me formed, Tasnim was the only water source for miles in any direction. An underground citadel in the desert, impregnable and impossible to besiege." He smiled. He was right to be proud of his city. "No one knows who built the first tunnels, but it was used in times of war and the ancients kept a permanent garrison there. Some of the city's present day residents are descended from those soldiers." Even him, for the city's princes had sometimes taken brides from the city people instead of looking further afield, as Philemon had.

"We saw no sign of soldiers. No sign of anyone, actually, no matter how loudly Haidar knocked at the door."

A barbarian girl and her brothers could not afford Tasnim's hospitality, though it was likely there had been no one left in the city to offer it this time.

"They must have fled the curse," Philemon said. "But had they not, they still might not have opened the gates. The price for Tasnim's hospitality is high. Why, I have known men who have sold their daughters to pay the price."

Her eyes – the only part of her face he could see – narrowed. "Perhaps that is why the witch cursed you and your city. Hospitality is one of the sacred laws of the desert."

She was painfully close to the truth, and yet so far from it, too. "We offered her our hospitality, including apartments in my own palace, for a price that should have been a trifle for someone with magic. Yet she refused to cast the spell. She tried to hold us to ransom."

"Did she turn everyone into frogs? Or just you?"

Anahita was observant. Too observant. "Just me. My people...she let them leave, unharmed."

"So you offended the witch somehow. You must have been particularly rude for her to transform you. I've only heard of a few enchantresses who are capable of such complicated magic, and they would need a really good reason to do it. What did you do, Philemon the frog?"

"Why must I be guilty? Perhaps the enchantress envied me the wealth of Tasnim, and wished to take the city for herself!" Philemon said.

Those narrowed eyes did not believe a word of it. "Perhaps. What sort of wealth did Tasnim have? It just looked like a pile of rocks in the desert to me."

"Have you seen the Sultan's palace in the capital?" Philemon didn't wait for her answer. "Tasnim outshines it tenfold. Maybe more. Even the common people's houses have costly mosaics on the walls. In my own palace, no wall or ceiling is unadorned. Every ruler throughout history has commissioned artwork to commemorate their reign, some of which are in the palace, but many are in the city itself. Why, my great grandmother, the Regent Princess Khurshid, had the ceilings of all the public meeting chambers painted to resemble the sky at different times of day. Dusk and dawn, midnight, noon...ah, the work is exquisite. Even now, gazing up at them, one might think they were standing in the open air, instead of beneath a thick layer of stone."

"So you live in a state of perpetual night underground?" she asked.

"On the upper levels of the city, close to the surface, there are air and light wells that let in sunlight during the day. But everywhere there are lamps, so the city is ablaze whenever light is needed. It is not as bright as the desert sun at noon, but only a madman would wish to be out in such heat!"

This did not seem to impress her at all. "So men sell their daughters into slavery so that you might have light?"

"There are no slaves in Tasnim. No...the girls are given as gifts, and I take them into my harem as concubines," Philemon said.

If anything, this only seemed to anger her further, as her eyebrows descended even lower. "Oh, and being forced to warm your bed is better than slavery."

Forced? He'd never forced a woman in his life! His concubines had come willingly to his bed. Had she forgotten what he looked like? He had no need to force women!

"My concubines were always appreciative of my attentions," he snapped.

"I'm sure they had little choice in the matter. A concubine who doesn't have her master's favour has little power in a harem, and he may discard her at will. So of course she will lie through her teeth if she has to, just to keep the place she has."

For a girl so young, she seemed to have excessively strong opinions about life in a harem.

"You know nothing about my concubines!"

Her eyes blazed. "No, YOU know nothing about them. My mother was a concubine, and I grew up in the harem. Saw how they were treated. So don't tell me your concubines were happy, with wives lording it over everyone, knowing you could be cast aside at the merest whim, and there was nothing you could do about it!"

Perhaps in whatever desert sheikh's harem she had grown up in, but not in a civilised city like Tasnim. "I had no wives, and as my concubines, the girls who were given to me were under my protection. Unless they chose to marry men of the city. Then their husband became their protector. But some girls preferred the harem, for it was all they had ever known. Nida had learned to play every musical instrument she could lay her hands on, and her voice soared above them all, like an angel come to Earth. If she had to choose between a husband and her harp, she would pick the harp."

Anahita's eyes widened. "You didn't touch your concubines?"

It would have been easier to say he hadn't, but he refused to lie to her, even to protect her obvious innocence about the real ways of the world.

"I lay with those who wished it. Two in particular, Zareen and Simin, were skilled in the arts of love, and took great pleasure in practicing those arts. Why, they knew things I'd never heard of..." His mind wandered as he remembered nights spent with Zareen or Simin, or, on rare occasions, both girls together. He sobered when he realised he would probably never see them again. They would be welcomed as courtesans in any court, and never return to him or Tasnim. Finally, he said, "But you don't want me to talk about concubines." He didn't want to think of them, now, either. Or all that he had lost.

"You're less amusing than I had hoped, Philemon the frog," she said frostily.

He couldn't disagree, so he racked his brain for something the girls had always liked. "Have you heard about the Gardens of Tasnim?"