worked, and people immediately began to gravitate to her. Somehow she appeared to be able to make contact with every one of them at the same time.
Until that moment, though I had tried to conceal it, I had been listening to the sorcerer’s story with a constant look of skepticism upon my face. The whole quest appeared too clinical for me. I was a romantic at heart, I suppose, and such an orchestrated union seemed to lack something. But now as we watched the girl I could feel her power and understand a little of what Brengazi’s father had seen in his dreams. “Is she magical as well, then?” I asked.
“She probably is,” Brengazi said quietly. “But like me, I suspect her real gift is in her ability to release the power that is in people to help themselves, by giving them the gift of belief. Though the gods have vested special powers upon her as well,” he mused, watching the girl pour water from her pail over the suppurating wounds of a soldier. “I suppose that’s why my father sent me to find her and marry her.”
We sat and watched a little longer as the girl smiled and talked quietly with the others at the well until at last it was time for her to return to her duties at the castle. “I don’t know why they call her the white princess,” I said as we watched her go. “She is actually more colorless than white – like a beautiful translucent flower.” The sorcerer nodded in agreement. I could see that his heart ached with longing for the girl of his destiny.
* * *
It was several days before Brengazi found the courage to speak to the girl, but I continually urged him on until at last he spoke up. She said little at first, only saying that she had seen him watching her, and that she had wondered why it had taken him so long to speak to her. However, from that moment there seemed at once to be a form of communication between them that was beyond words. They arranged to meet secretly after dark that same day, with me standing guard as they talked for hours into the night.
They met each day after that, and the sorcerer and I gradually became the best of friends. I joined in the daily gatherings with the girl’s loyal supporters who had begun to bring gifts of food and goods. I had little else to do during this time except wait for the return of the supply caravan that would take me out of the desert; but throughout my waiting I could see their love blossoming. I wondered, however, what direction their lives would take under these strange circumstances. I knew that they could never be openly married, for their love would never receive the blessing of the desert chief.
So it was no surprise to me when they became secret lovers. Soon the girl was expecting a child. In time, as the pregnancy advanced, she was no longer able to hide her condition beneath the flowing desert robes; and a treacherous maid betrayed her to her father. I learned later that he had already seen her growing popularity with the desert people as a threat to his power, fearing she would win with kindness the loyalty he had failed to win with ruthlessness and cruelty. Yet he dared not inflame his people by appearing unkind to the girl they loved. When he discovered her union with this seemingly destitute nomad, he determined to use it as an excuse to purge himself of the girl forever.
At the same time, however, he was wary of the strange man she had met. Once he became aware of the affair, he sent agents to distant places to learn all they could of the sorcerer and from whence he had sprung. At last, after two months of searching, the agents returned and told the chief how the man who had stolen the girl’s heart was a sorcerer, one from a long dynasty of ancient mystics. They also warned the chief that the sorcerer was a powerful man who could control the wind and conjure up fire and all kinds of evil to confuse and terrify the tribespeople. The chief knew then that he had to exercise extreme caution, or he risked losing his position as ruler to the girl and her strange lover.
The agents advised the chief that it would be best to seize the sorcerer during the night as he slept with the girl in his tent by the well. They had discovered that if the sorcerer were overpowered quickly and had his eyes covered, he would be unable to use his awesome powers. Now at last the chief had a way of dealing with his unwanted daughter. He would convince his people that the girl was a witch who had betrayed them, that she consorted with evil, and the child she bore would bring suffering and peril to the desert tribes. And so he sent his agents out into the streets of the oasis and into the deep desert to spread stories of the girl’s evil union with a sorcerer from a distant land, warning that a foreign army would invade and pillage their oasis if the girl and the sorcerer were not destroyed. Once the word had spread, the chief decreed that the only hope the people had of escaping this dark invasion was for the girl, the sorcerer, and the child to be burned in a huge fire inside the grounds of his palace.
In hindsight, I wish we had learned more of these evil plans earlier. But we had very little contact outside the small group we had come to know near the well, and my friend and his new love were totally engrossed in one another.
To my shame, I always slept deeply in the desert heat; and so on the night when the chief put his diabolial plan into action, I was completely unaware of the evil that was about to transpire. It was in the dead of night when I finally awoke, too late to do anything but watch as the sorcerer was dragged away. His eyes were covered by a dark cloth to prevent him from using his powers, and his hands were bound firmly behind his back. He and the now very pregnant girl were thrown into the stone jail that stood behind the great castle: there they would remain until the child was born.
Only then did the people tell me what the ruler had decreed. Exactly one week after the child was born, it, along with its father and mother, would be thrown into the fire during a celebration put on especially for the occasion by the desert chief.
As I watched these events unfold around me, I cursed myself for my helplessness. While I excused my behaviour by rationalising that I knew little of the language, I had already been reluctant to leave Brengazi before his objectives were achieved. Now that his troubles had multipled, I knew I had to help him in any way I could.
I began planning at once. I knew the couple would be safe until the birth of the child, because the desert chief believed that the child needed to be born before it could be destroyed along with its parents. First I used all the gold in my possession and the few precious stones left in my care by the sorcerer to put together a caravan of camels and supplies to aid their escape. Despite my problems with the local language, I eventually managed to recruit from the kindly desert folk a hundred willing supporters who were outraged by the plight of their princess. At last my spies told me the child had been born, that it was a boy, and that the date of the execution had been set for one week later, on a night when there would be no moon.
On the night set for the execution I rallied my followers and mingled with the huge crowd until we could get close to the prisoners, who were being held near the towering fire. Even today I can still feel the waves of heat from that blaze and see the great flames leaping towards the dark sky and casting ghostly shadows about the palm trees; and I see anew the terrible bloodlust that had seized the crowd as they chanted and roared and pressed near the great fire.
When we felt the time was right, we attacked, quickly striking down the guards and freeing first the sorcerer. He blinked wildly in the firelight when his eyes were uncovered, the brightness momentarily blinding him, but then he then raised his arms as he stared into the eyes of the soldiers who surged forward to recapture their charges. They yelled and fell back in fear; seeing a violent desert storm sweep through the oasis and hundreds of wriggling snakes falling from the date palms. We seized the opportunity to surge forward again and seize the child.
Alas, we were too late to save the princess, who had been thrown into the fire by one of the guards before my men could reach her. She died quickly and silently in the flames as the sorcerer called out her name in hopeless despair. In the confusion that now filled the castle grounds, we gathered up the heartbroken sorcerer and the child and fled into the night. As planned, we quickly assembled behind some palm trees before breaking up into six small caravans and sneaking off into the desert in
