“They had a sister of beauty, of beauty indeed, beyond imagination. (Soo-eet! soo-eet! chirped the oracular bird.) It smote even the hearts of kings like a reaping hook among grass, and her favour was a ransom from death itself, as I will tell you.”
“Friend,” said he of the stripéd jacket, “tell me of that woman.”
“I will tell you,” answered the other; and he told him, and this was the way of it.
There was once a king of this country, mighty with riches and homage, with tribute from his enemies—for he was a great warrior—and the favour of many excellent queens. His ancestors were numberless as the hairs of his black beard; so ancient was his lineage that he may have sprung from divinity itself, but he had a heart of brass, his bowels were of lead, and at times he was afflicted with madness.
One day he called for his captain of the guard, Tanil, a valiant, debonair man of much courtesy, and delivered to him his commands.
Tanil took a company of the guard and they marched to that green hill on the plain—it is but a league away. At the foot of the hill they crossed a stream; beyond that was a white dwelling and a garden; at the gate of the garden was a stumbling stone; a flock grazed on the hill. The soldiers threw down the stone and, coming into the vineyard, they hacked down the vines until they heard a voice call to them. They saw at the door of the white dwelling a woman so beautiful that the weapons slid from their hands at the wonder of it. “Friends, friends!” said she. Tanil told her the King’s bidding, how they must destroy the vineyard, the dwelling, and the flock, and turn Fax, Mint, and Bombassor, with the foster sister Flaune, out from the kingdom of Cumac.
“You have denied the King tribute,” said he.
“We are wanderers from the eastern world,” Flaune answered. “Is not the mountain a free mountain? Does not this stream divide it from Cumac’s country?”
She took Tanil into the white dwelling and gave a pitcher of wine to his men.