She faced him, regarded him intently, then continued: "But I shall restore you and make you more agile than the fancies of those who eat the plums that grow on the slopes of Mount Kaf."
Whereat she made passes and tapped him as she had done before.
"Now, Schamas ad Din, son of the Old Tiger, enter the presence of the Lord of the World."
"Now, Schamas ad Din, enter the presence of the Lord of the World."
The sultan advanced, marveling that he could not feel the touch of his feet on the floor. The sighing music ceased piping; and as the rose-and-saffron-shot mists thinned and drew back and vanished, he found himself in a circular vault on whose domed ceiling glittered stars arranged in strange constellations; and the floor of the vault was not tiled, but strewn with powdered cinnabar. In the center of the vault was a low couch of grotesquely chiseled green basalt on which sat an old man whose head was bowed in sleep.
"Son of the Old Tiger," said the incredible girl at the sultan's side, "you are before the Lord of the World, he who built this prodigious citadel the day he completed the creation of this and all other worlds. He sleeps, and sleeping, dreams; and all things that seem to be are but the figments of his dream; and those things whereof he ceases to dream at that moment cease to be. For nothing is real, save it be the illusion of him who sits here dreaming."
"Then who are you?" queried the sultan.