Now, they sped from the Cave of Chrysolites by another passage than that
by which they entered it, and nothing but the light of the Sword to guide
them. By that light Shibli Bagarag could distinguish glimmering shapes,
silent and statue-like, to the right and the left of them, their visages
hidden in a veil of heavy webs; and he saw what seemed in the dusk broad
halls, halls of council, and again black pools and black groves, and
columns of crowded porticoes,--all signs of an underground kingdom. They
came to some steps and mounted these severally, coming to a platform, in
the middle of which leapt a fountain, the top spray of it touched with a
beam of earth and the air breathed by men. Here he heard the youths
dabble with the dark waters, and he discerned Gulrevaz tossing it in her
two hands, calling, 'Koorookh! Koorookh!' Then they said to him, 'Stir
this fountain with the Sword, O Master of the Event!' So he stirred the
fountain, and the whole body of it took a leap toward the light that was
like the shoot of a long lance of silver in the moon's rays, and lo! in
its place the ruffled feathers of a bird. Then the seven youths and the
Princess and Shibli Bagarag got up under its feathers like a brood of
water-fowl; and the bird winged straight up as doth a blinded bee,
ascending, and passing in the ascent a widening succession of winding
terraces, till he observed the copper sun of Aklis and the red lands
below it. Thrice, in the exuberance of his gladness, he waved the Sword,
and the sun lost that dulness on its disk and took a bright flame, and
threw golden arrows everywhere; and the pastures were green, the streams
clear, the sands sparkling. The bird flew, and circled, and hung poised
a moment, presently descending on the roof of the palace. Now, there was
here a piece of solid glass, propped on two crossed bars of gold, and it
was shaped like an eye, and might have been taken for one of the eyes
inhabiting the head of some monstrous Genie. Shibli Bagarag ran to it
when he was afoot, and peered through it. Surely, it was the first
object of his heart that he beheld--Noorna, his betrothed, pale on the
pillar; she with her head between her hands and her hair scattered by the
storm, as one despairing. Still he looked, and he save swimming round
the pillar that monstrous fish, with its sole baleful eye, which had
gulped them both in the closed shell of magic pearl; and he knew the fish
for Karaz, the Genie, their enemy. Then he turned to the Princess, with
an imploring voice for counsel how to reach her and bring her rescue; but
she said, 'The Sword is in thy hands, none of us dare wield it'; and the
seven youths answered likewise. So, left to himself, he drew the Sword
from his girdle, and hissed on the heads of the serpents, at the same
time holding it so that it might lengthen out inimitably. Then he leaned
it over the eye of the glass, in the direction of the pillar besieged by
the billows, and lo! with one cut, even at that distance, he divided the
fishy monster, and with another severed the chains that had fettered
Noorna; and she arose and smiled blissfully to the sky, and stood
upright, and signalled him to lay the point of the blade on the pillar.
When he had done this, knowing her wisdom, she put a foot boldly upon the
blade and ran up it toward him, and she was half-way up the blade, when
suddenly a kite darted down upon her, pecking at her eyes, to confuse
her. She waxed unsteady and swayed this way and that, balancing with one
arm and defending herself from the attacks of the kite with another. It
seemed to Shibli Bagarag she must fall and be lost; and the sweat started
on his forehead in great drops big as nuts. Seeing that and the
agitation of his limbs, Gulrevaz cried, 'O Master of the Event, let us
hear it!'
But he shrieked, 'The kite! the kite! she is running up the blade, and
the kite is at her eyes! and she swaying, swaying! falling, falling!'