A burst of the royal kettledrums in the distance echoed finally over a dense crowd, packing the wide arches of the huge Hall-of-Audience, and stretching beyond them into the paved courtyard.
"If he wear the Luck still, it will be something to go by," muttered a weak-looking courtier, who by his very dress--curiously nondescript--his shaven chin and high green turban showed a desire to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.
There were many such in Akbar's empire; men whose imaginations went so far with the King, yet whose hearts failed them before the strangeness of his dreams.
Another long, loud burst of wild music, and the King showed alone on the high raised dais, canopied and latticed at the sides with fretted marble, which opened at the back into the private passage reserved for Royal use only. By reason of the limited space in which he stood--the central archway rising but a few inches above his head--he looked larger, taller, broader than his wont, and as he glanced keenly over the packed multitude before him, he showed every inch a king. Yet he was conscious that he, alone of all his empire, saw strength, not weakness, in his readiness for reconsideration; that he, only, felt that the revocation of his order would be a greater display of kingly power than the original order itself.
Standing as he did in shadow, it took the crowd a silent second or two before it realised--what to it was a stupendous fact--that in this critical new departure of their King's he was prepared to defy Fate. He had deserted his luck. The tight wound turban of royalty did not show the dull glow of the great diamond.
A sort of shiver ran through the Hall, checked by the King's voice.
"Are the suitors and the witnesses in the case present?" he asked.
Abulfazl, stepping into the wide open square kept clear before the railed dais, replied in the affirmative.
"Then proceed."
The sing-song voice of the court reader filled the hushed air, but from outside, beyond the red-toothed arches, came the morning song of many birds. The sunlight filtered in with the song, making Akbar's attention wander. How trivial these petty questions of rights and wrongs seemed beside the great questions of Life in itself.