The of Lassok and Zairbhreena
by Cobalt Jade
6. The Sand Gorgon
For six months the prince searched the desert.
He refused to go back to the city, refused to accept his princess was
buried forever under the dunes.
The Caliph sent advisors, then missives, then direct orders to him, to
no success. The Sultan of Abroum had other daughters, he said: twenty-nine
others, in fact. Surely one of them could replace the missing Zairbhreena?
The princess also had two sisters, one a little older, one a little younger
than herself, with the same blue eyes and peachy-gold hair, the same
delicate white skin. Surely one of them would suit him?
But the prince refused to listen. He asked only for a small tent to
live in and a shovel. In time a small village grew up around the tent,
hosting dozens of laborers and dozens more slaves, whose job it was to go
out each day with him and move mountains of sand from one place to another.
It was a hopeless task, for whenever another sandstorm blew up the
configuration of dunes would change, and all their hard work went for
nothing.
But the prince never complained. He worked steadily and patiently as an
ox, pitching each spadeful of sand into a skin-lined basket for the others
to carry away one by one. The sun burnt him as brown as the slaves, and
his muscles grew as wiry and prominent as theirs. He rarely spoke. He did
not take another woman. He merely worked.
The Caliph despaired that his son would ever regain his wits. He
consulted astrologers, numerologists, diviners of entrails. But
nothing could coax the prince back to the city. Nothing would keep him
from his task, except the monumental hopelessness of it.
A year passed.
The prince's resolution remained strong, but his memories of Zairbhreena
grew dim, a reflection on a pool broken by the ripples of time. He could
no longer recall the pitch of her laugh, the graceful passage of her walk.
Were he eyes as blue as lapis lazuli, or the paler blue of the summer sky?
Or perhaps they had been a blueish-gray, or a grayish-blue. And had her
hair been the peachy-gold of sunrise, or the reddish-gold of sunset?
One particularly hot morning he reflected that he was, in fact, very hot
and uncomfortable. He gazed over the desert. A year he had searched. As
much as he hated to admit it, the sand had won. He admitted his defeat.
"You have beaten me," he whispered to the empty dunes, the sapphire-blue
sky, the swollen orange eye of the sun. "Jaseloris, you're made me
miserable. For one year I've wept and searched and chastised myself, to no
effect. I've put my life on hold; I've become little more than a statue
myself that cannot feel or enjoy life. You've had your revenge, you've had
more than your revenge. You will not have it any longer." He stood and
shouted into the sweltering sky. "Do you hear me? You will not destroy
me! I still have my life!"
He struck his shovel into the sharp-edged curve of a dune, intending to
abandon it there.
The impact started a small avalanche in the side of the dune. A tiny
trickle of sand began to cascade down the slope, the grains skittering over
each other in their skittering rush to the bottom. They fell in a smooth,
unbroken stream that suddenly bisected in two. The point of their division
was the tip of an arched, stony foot, toes pointed coquettishly.
The prince stared as the sand continued to trickle. The flow slowed,
then stopped. But the toes remained--polished gold marble, very fine, with
subtle veins of cream and rose. They glittered with tiny silver specks
like mica in the desert sun.
With a cry the prince tore into the sand, flinging handfuls behind him
as he dug. Within minutes the statue--Zairbhreena--was free after a years'
burial beneath the shifting sand. The prince clasped her to his chest and
wept. The relief he felt so strong he thought he might die from it, as sometimes did after hearing tragic news.
When the relief had abated he examined his petrified love, having not
seen her before in statue form. Her pose was modest and compact--arms at
her sides, her legs close together, head looking forward, toes pointed.
Her eyes were wide and blank, her lips poised on the verge of speech, as if
she wanted to question why he had taken so long. Her hair tumbled over her
shoulders, every stony lock exquisitely rendered. The same went for all
the other details--her eyebrows and eyelashes, the saucily erect nipples on
her breasts, even the fine mass of curls between her stony thighs. She was
a statue, and she was beautiful as she had been in life. He clasped her a
second time, wondering how he could ever let go of her again.
Zairbhreena, too, was filled with a wild joy. She had spent a year
entombed in darkness, wondering if she would be lost forever until the
sands themselves ground her away to nothing. She had wept long and hard,
thinking of her lost life, her lost prince, then finally ceased weeping and
entered a stasis where she neither thought nor remembered she had thought,
becoming as much a statue as her appearance suggested. Only the touch of
the prince had brought her to life again, made her feel there was hope in
the world after all. How she ached to touch him, talk to him! But her
arms remained sealed to her sides, her lips remained sealed to her teeth,
and she could only stare joyfully to her heart's fulfillment.
Others had come up running when they heard the prince shouting, and they
were surprised to see he now clasped the statue which had eluded him for a
year.
"Make ready a cart," the prince said. His arms did not leave the
princess's stony form. "We are going back to the city."
They abandoned the city of tents and shacks to the desert and rode back
to Carsimbad. The prince sat in the rude cart like a monarch, the stony
princess propped up at his side. With them rode the Caliph's guards with
their swords drawn, as the prince was taking no chance of other disasters
happening. The people of the city lined the streets to see the return of
the they had called "The Mad Prince" for a year, who as rumor said
intended to marry a statue!
The prince paid their comments no heed. Guards, cart, and prince rode
into the palace, which sealed its gate shut behind them.
Once inside he gave strict orders to the care of the princess,
installing her in a silk-sheeted bed as if she were suffering some sort of
sickness. He summoned musicians to play for her and vases of fresh flowers
to delight her eyes and nose. He even ordered her food though she could
not eat, supposing the aromas might make her happy.
The princess appreciated all this from beneath the luxurious covers;
while she could not smell things, she could hear the music and the
storytellers he hired. But none of it changed the fact she was statue and
not in invalid.
After cleaning himself up--he had the appearance of a ruffian from a
year in the desert--the prince summoned the advisors of the court together,
the wise and astrologers and sages, and asked them what could be done.
No one had an answer for him, for they knew nothing of petrification
magic. They knew only that it existed, as the prince's loyal captain had
returned to the city with a marble and a report of Jaseloris's wand.
The now decorated the palace pleasure gardens along with a
surprised-looking nomad and a stone cactus, the three arranged in a strange
tableaux at the end of the court.
Herbal tinctures, purifications, and baths by moonlight had no effect.
Neither did any of the city's gods. Nothing could be done for Zairbhreena.
No one knew how to turn her back to flesh.
No one had any encouragement, except for Yezdeesh.
"My Prince," said the youth--for youth he was now, having grown taller
and bolder in a year--"I have heard talk among the superstitious elements
of the city about a powerful witch who lives in the mountains far to the
east of here. They call her the Sand Gorgon, and say she has the power to
change flesh into sand, or whatever material suits her fancy. Perhaps she
can help you."
The prince had been kneeling at the side of Zairbhreena's bed with his
head bowed in despair. The news made him lift it up. "How far, Yezdeesh?"
"A journey of forty days, my Prince, across the Dry sea, across the
Great Erg, across the stony wastes. There she lives in a barren cave, but
she will find you before you find her, if your quest is a true one."
"There is no truer quest than this," the prince, standing. "Make
provisions for our trip."
They set out a day later, going by camel for this was a long trip. The
princess traveled in a covered palanquin as if she was a princess still,
the sides and back of it draped with clear spangly veils. The prince
wrapped her in silk and ropes of jewels, and when night came he slept with
her in his arms, her cold stony pressed against his cheek. In the
morning he would wake with her and talk to her as if she was alive, telling
her the plans they had for that day, and the princess would smile at him to
go on, her serene expression forever encouraging, forever rapt, despite the
stony blankness of her eyes.
They crossed the dry sea, then the waterless expanse of the Great Erg,
then the stony waste, which was haunted by lions that carried off three of
their men. The land grew only stranger as they continued the east. The
rocks themselves began to look bewitched. There were arches of stone and
contorted giants; palisades and fortresses and many-towered castles, all
carved from ruddy sandstone by the incessant howl of the winds. There was
water in this wilderness, sometimes, secretive pools filled with blind fish
locked forever in the shade of the cliffs. There were fantastic stands of
cacti that looked like monsters, when the sun was at the right angle.
Two, three, four days they traveled among the formations, finally
reaching the foothills of a mountain range capped with bright snow. By a
steep-walled cleft in the rocky hills lay a pool. The prince and his dismounted to drink.
A sharp *clack!* warned them. Rising from the rocks was the pool's
guardian: a bony thing formed of the skull of a goat, the arms and ribcage
of a man, and the hips and legs of a dog. It clacked its teeth again,
pointing up the cleft, and fixed them with an eyeless stare.
"What is it?" said the captain of the guard.
"I don't know," the prince replied. "A product of sorcery, no doubt.
But look! It wants us to follow it."
They began to walk forward, but the thing made a sally at them. The ran back, dropping their swords. They were used to fighting human enemies,
not supernatural ones.
But the thing gave no chase, only continued to point: first to the
prince, then to the golden form of the princess in her scarf-draped
palanquin. Then it pointed up the cleft.
"I think it wants you to take up the statue and follow it, My Prince,"
the captain said.
This the prince was loathe to do, but he had no choice, as the thing
would not let them proceed further, and who knew if the blows of mortal
weapons would affect it or not. So they transferred the princess onto the
side of a camel, which the prince took up by the reins. Giving a last
glance to his men, he followed the bony thing up the cleft.
His guide looked back at him from time to time to make sure he followed,
but otherwise paid him no heed. For most of the afternoon they walked.
The cleft turned out to be fertile one. Dates and palms soon came into
site, a startling contrast from the harshness of the land outside. Soon
they came to a wide-mouthed cave, to which the thing waved them entrance.
The prince's hand went to the hilt of his sword, but no enemies awaited
him here, only a shapeless bundle of dusty brown rags which cackled and
lifted its head. "Ah, Prince Lassok! I've been expecting you. My
scrying-pool showed me your journey."
"Who are you?" the prince demanded.
"I am the Sand Gorgon," the crone said, gliding toward him like a
dancer. The prince quickly shielded his eyes.
"Have no fear of *that,*" the crone reassured him. "I lost that power
years ago."
The prince glanced childishly over his forearm at her, but he did not
collapse into a pile of sand. He had never seen such an elderly, ugly
woman. Her face was as brown and seamed as well-worn leather and her
fingers were gnarled as roots. She had only one eye, the other being
closed in a squint, and it had a pupil of blood-red surrounded by an iris
of dull, lusterless gold. Instead of hair hundreds of scaly, desiccated
tails hung from her scalp, the remains of the snakes who had once been
alive and hissing.
The Sand Gorgon noted the princess. "A gift for me, oh Prince?"
"She was to be my wife," the prince said, his jaw clenching as the crone
ran her hands over Zairbhreena's petrified form. "Magic did this to her, a
wand that turned her to stone. I was told you might have a remedy."
"Hmm," she said, one horny-nailed finger tapping on the princess's
forehead. "That wand would have been the work of my sister, the Stone
Gorgon. She died a year ago."
"There is no remedy, then," the prince said in despair.
"Oh, I didn't say that," the crone said. "There are always remedies,
though they might not always be...palatable." She left off her inspection
and faced him. "Do you truly love her?"
"Yes," the Prince said. She continued to grin at him, though but four
blackened teeth remained in her mouth. "What do you drive at, witch? Have
you a cure?"
"Lie with me tonight, my dear Prince, and I will tell you."
The Prince nearly choked on his indignation. He would not whore himself
to this disgusting crone! "No!" he barked without thinking.
"Then your love remains stone," the crone said implacably.
The Prince glanced at Zairbhreena. As always her expression remained
sweet and serene, even as she was hanging off the side of a camel. "There
must be something else you want," he said, aware he was begging. "Gold,
gems..."
"What need have I for those? I live in a cave in the middle of a
desert. It's the pleasures of the flesh I crave." She cackled gleefully at
his disgust. "Oh, so I nauseate you, do I?"
He could not deny it, for his reactions had given him away. He stole a
glance at Zairbhreena again. For her, he must do this; he *must.* He
swallowed, forcing himself to look at the crone's shriveled dugs. "You
have your charms," he said haltingly.
"You lie," the Sand Gorgon said. "I know very well what I look like!
But I do not have to look this way for tonight." She crossed the floor of
the cave and opened a crude wood cabinet, taking out a stone flask. She
sipped from it and shrugged off her rags, which slid down to her ankles.
"Observe, Prince," she said, and before his eyes her limbs unbent, her
wrinkles disappeared. She stood before him as a woman of twenty with
long sandy-brown hair, skin white as bone, and eyes that flashed like two
golden coins. Her now bobbed proudly like two luscious melons,
while the rest of her was slim and graceful as a gazelle. She stretched
her arms. "What do you say now?"
The Prince only stared. He had been without a woman for over a year and
had almost forgotten what they looked like. His celibacy had come about
through devotion; he could not let his carnal inclinations distract from
his search for the princess. But now that he had found her, he no longer
had any reason to maintain it. And the Sand Gorgon had promised him a
cure...if she did not trick him somehow, as members of her race were wont
to do. "You are...most beautiful," he said, aware of a sudden tightness in
his trousers.
The Sand Gorgon laughed softly, an echo of her former cackle. She
arranged herself on a pile of soft skins at the center of the cave
and unstopped a carafe of wine. She poured the ruby liquid into two metal
cups, one of which she offered to him. "Forget about your marble maiden
and lie with me. You will find it most enjoyable."
The Prince was so entranced he did as she said, shedding his clothes in
the process. Did the Sand Gorgon enspell him? Or was it his own desire?
The teller of this cannot say.
Zairbhreena had been left leaning against the wall, a mute witness to
their lovemaking. Naively, being a virgin, she had assumed the Prince was,
too, yet his antics with the witch put the lie to that. He had never
touched or kissed Zairbhreena like so! The princess's unblinking eyes
filled with dry tears; she could not look away, nor could she close her
ears to the gasps and groans and cries of pleasure they gave. Little by
little something died within her. She knew the Prince was trying to save
her, but he did not have to betray her with such skill and enthusiasm for
servicing another girl.
No, she decided, after eighth climax she witnessed. She would rather be
stone than love him again!
Her jealous rage banked, then cooled, her heart becoming as cold and
hard as the stone she was made of.
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