Read Online Princess of Dhagabad, The by Anna Kashina - Free Book Online

the
princess, as if studying her face. The stallion prances playfully,
moving his eyes and blowing out his nostrils. Two huge Veriduan
grooms are barely able to control the mighty horse.
    The princess turns, looking for someone to
share her excitement with, and sees Hasan, three steps behind,
standing still with an expression that she could never imagine to
be possible for an impassive djinn. Or, rather, his face is still
impassive, but his eyes shine with admiration exactly matching the
princess’s own.
    “Princess!” the sultaness shouts. “Don’t get
too close to the horse! Come here!”
    The princess regretfully takes her eyes off
the stallion who, guided by the two grooms, turned around right
before her, and is now being led diagonally across the yard to its
opposite corner. Holding her shawl, the princess starts running
across the yard to share her excitement with her mother.
    Everything happens too quickly. A gust of
wind tears the shawl off the princess’s head at the very moment she
passes the horse. The shawl sweeps up and, clinging for a moment to
the horse’s neck, slides off its black coat like a streak of white
flame and flies away. The frightened horse jumps aside, breaking
free of the grooms, bumping into them with its mighty body to send
them flying helplessly to the walls of the yard. The stallion rears
and starts to rush about the yard.
    Left alone in the middle of the yard with a
raging horse, the princess freezes with fear. She cannot even move.
She doesn’t hear the terrible cries of the sultaness and her slave
women, and the wild neighs of the horse high above her. Hooves
flail by her face as the horse rears again, and she sees its
raven-black underbelly rippling with muscles as the massive body
descends to squash her.
    Strong arms close around her, enfolding her
in their protective ring. Metal glints in front of her eyes, and a
voice by her ear utters a word, or rather, a combination of sounds,
since it doesn’t seem like any human language she has ever heard.
She can still see the shining black belly and the silvery sparkling
horseshoes flailing above her face. The neigh that started on a
high note sinks and dies in the echoes of the word spoken near her
ear by the unknown but somehow familiar voice.
    The silence that follows seems to last
forever. Or maybe it lasts for just a few seconds, allowing the
princess to come to her senses, to feel a slight touch of the quiet
breeze on her cheek, to inhale the faint smell of juniper that
enfolds her in a dizzying cloud. She sees the pale-faced sultaness,
surrounded by slave women, rushing downstairs from the gallery, and
the perfectly calm black stallion quietly letting the badly shaken
Veriduan grooms to get hold of him again. She feels the strain that
encased her body slowly release its grasp, giving way to deadly
fatigue. The unknown arms support her, keeping her from sinking
limply to the stone floor of the yard. She raises her head and sees
Hasan’s face, still calm but not impassive anymore.
    “What did you say to the horse, Hasan?” she
whispers.
    “I ordered it to calm down, princess.”
    “With one word? Why did it listen to
you?”
    “This word belongs to the language of the
highest order, princess.”
    The princess shivers, remembering the strange
sounds of the unknown word, the crazy horse suddenly standing
still, the quieted breeze. She sees the pale face of the sultaness
who finally reaches them and is saying something to Hasan, but the
princess cannot make out the words anymore. She feels Hasan’s arms
release their supporting grasp, letting her fall semiconscious into
the arms of the sobbing sultaness. She feels Nanny Airagad and the
slave women fussing around her, holding her from all sides, helping
her up and guiding her through the first uncertain steps, as if she
has just learned to walk. And, through all this noise and bustle,
she watches the face of Hasan who, pushed away from her by the
crowd, excluded from all this