The Storyteller's Daughter

"How many stories can you tell," her father interrupted swiftly, "if you die the day after tomorrow?"

He thought his argument was good. But to his amazement, Shahrazad simply smiled and said, "Come now, Father, where is your faith in me?"

"It is not a matter of my faith in you, but in Shahrayar," the vizier replied. "I have searched for that faith for many days now, but, alas, I can find it no longer. I fear that it is gone."

"Then it is fortunate that I look with different eyes than yours," said Shahrazad. "Though they are blind, my eyes see things no other eyes can, for that is the true skill of the drabardi."

"So your mother always told me," admitted the vizier. "But what will you hope to see when you turn your eyes on Shahrayar?"

"That which must be seen, or all is lost—his heart."

At his daughter’s words, the vizier rose abruptly. "Since the queen's betrayal and his sojourn in the tower, Shahrayar's heart is made of such stuff as I can hardly bear to think upon."

"Yet someone must," said Shahrazad."For it is not merely Shahrayar, but also his kingdom which is sick at heart. Who is to say what will befall us all if the king's heart goes unknown?"

"But it is he who should know it, as all men must," protested the vizier.

"That is so," agreed Shahrazad. "But did not you tell me the queen, his betrayer, died claiming he would know no peace until another should see his heart and know it, and have her own heart seen and known?"

“I did," answered her father. "For so Shazaman told me."

"Then think, Father!" urged Shahrazad. "What torment such words must have wrought in Shahrayar's soul! Think what pain he must have endured to have cast from his heart the wise and just teachings of his father, whom he loved and honored above all. If Shahrayar no longer knows himself, then another must come to know him and lead him back to the place where he belongs."

"Perhaps," acknowledged the vizier reluctantly. "But I still don't see why that someone has to be you."

"Because it is for this that I was born," said Shahrazad."At my birth, Maju told my fortune in the way of her people: By my skill as a storyteller, the heart of a great nation will be lost or won. That is why my skill must be greater than any drabardi who has come before me—even that of Maju herself. For of whose heart does the prophecy speak, if not of Shahrayar's?"

The vizier resumed his pacing. The fact that his daughter's words made sense brought no comfort to him. That she had kept the knowledge of her fate to herself for so many years troubled him greatly. She was so young, yet she had borne the burden of her destiny for all these years, alone.

"No!" he burst out. "I'm sorry, Shahrazad. But my heart ca

Why shouldn't I?"

"Because you know it would be wrong. No one can out-travel destiny, Father."

"Maybe not," the vizier snorted. "But to save you from throwing away your life, I can certainly try."

"So you will not grant me the boon I ask," Shahrazad asked after a short silence.

"No," her father said, his voice as full of certainty as he could make it. "I'm sorry, Shahrazad, but I will not."

"Then perhaps you will grant me a different one," suggested Shahrazad. "Will you go to my rooms, to where Maju's chest rests beneath my windows, open it, and bring me the length of cloth that you find?"

The vizier opened his mouth to deny this, too. Then he closed it. Standing perfectly still, he gazed into his daughter's dark and sightless eyes. At what he saw there, the vizier realized that even if he argued with her all night and all through the following day, even if he was still arguing as the words of the marriage ceremony were actually being spoken, Shahrazad would never be turned aside from the course that she had chosen. Her will was set. She had made up her mind.

And the vizier realized too that she was much like her mother in this. And much like Shahrayar, also.

And so the vizier came at last to the place he suddenly suspected his daughter had wished to lead him all along: He saw the truth of the way things were.

If anyone could come to know the heart of the king when even he had ceased to do so, it would be Shahrazad.

The vizier sighed. "Save your breath, my daughter," he told Shahrazad. "Though my heart is filled with misgiving, I will grant this terrible thing that you require. Tomorrow night, just as the moon rises, I will take you to Shahrayar and present you as his bride. And may God have mercy upon us all."

Shahrazad rose and threw her arms around him. "I pray that he may do so. Now, come, my father.

Between now and then there is much I will make clear to you. But first I must speak with Dinarzad."

"Dinarzad!" the vizier exclaimed, surprised. "What can she do? She is just a child."

"Much, if she will do exactly as I ask," Shahrazad answered. "Walk with me, and I will tell you all."

Chapter 5

I N W H I C H T H E V I Z I E R T A K E S A C H A N C E

And so, at last the day came that King Shahrayar had appointed—the day when he would take a wife once more. On that day, he arose early, as was his custom. Though the truth was, there was hardly any purpose in his going to bed at all. Ever since the night his first queen had died by her own hand and, thus dying, had pronounced his doom, Shahrayar had hardly closed his eyes. The images he saw when he did so gave him no rest. No peace. In this, he was like his brother Shazaman had been before him.

For several hours Shahrayar went about his duties, as if this was simply a day like any other, trying to ignore the way his servants looked at him without looking—out of the corners of their eyes. But just as the sun reached its zenith, Shahrayar grew restless. He set his work aside. Gathering his robes around him, he roamed the halls of his great palace, paying no heed to the way courtiers scuttled swiftly out of the way. No attention to where he was going.

He passed through halls of stone as dark as midnight, and halls as white as a scorching noonday sky.

Halls as green as the limbs of cedar trees. As golden as the sand that stretched around the palace for countless miles. But Shahrayar's eyes saw none of these things, for they were focused inward on the landscape he had made within himself on the nights after his wife died.

At length, Shahrayar discovered that his ramblings had made him weary. He gazed about and found his wandering steps had taken him to a small courtyard. In one corner splashed a fountain. Drawing near, Shahrayar saw that the pool was tiled with stones so blue that looking down into the water was the same as looking up into the sky.

At the sight of this place he felt old memories burst into life within him the way flowers will appear at an oasis in springtime. So Shahrayar seated himself at the pool's edge—in the shade of a pomegranate tree that arched out above the water. He leaned back, looking up into the branches, and trailed his fingers in the pool. The water was as clear and bright as the surface of a mirror, but not once did Shahrayar look into it.

For it came to him as he sat that his own face had become a thing he had no wish to look upon.