"What new horror is this?" asked Shireen, starting back.
"Bah," replied the other, adding in the true style of Afghan cant, "there has been nothing new since God put the sun in the firmament, and touched the stars with his fingers to send them through the sky. Everything that is now, has been before, and shall be again."
"Did not the Shah, according to agreement, leave the Bala Hissar to go to Jellalabad?"
"This morning he did so; but it chanced that last night, the son of Zamon Khan placed in ambush fifty of his juzailchees secretly among some wild tamarind trees, and when about the hour of morning prayer, the king's retinue reached the spot, a cry like that of a jackal was heard. It might have been a signal. I do not say it was; but oddly enough, the juzailchees rose as one man, and fired a volley. One ball, pierced the Shah's brain, and three his breast, while seven of his soldiers fell dead. Then we rushed on him, and took from his litter the crown, the royal girdle, his sword and dagger, his jewelled robe, and as they could be of no use to him now, we rode off, and laid them at the feet of Ackbar Khan."
"May he who planned this deed be stung by a scorpion of Cashan!" exclaimed Shireen, with great emotion, as he wreathed both hands in his venerable beard; "in all these affairs I ever meant that the life of the Shah should be sacred!"
"Whatever you meant, Khan," replied the other with a mocking smile, "the King of kings ordained otherwise, and Azrael, the angel of death, must be obeyed."
And significantly touching the hilt of his sword, the speaker made a low salaam, quitted the garden, and Denzil saw him no more. Shireen remained for some time sunk in thought.
"And this has been your morning's work, son of Zamon Khan, when I thought that you and your fifty juzailchees were on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Lamech, in the vale of Lughmannee!" he muttered, as he walked slowly away, referring to a white temple which covers what is alleged to be the grave of Noah's father, and is a favourite place of pilgrimage among the Afghans.
Denzil felt alike saddened and depressed on hearing of this unforeseen event; but to it, in some respects, he owed his future safety, and the circumstance that Shireen Khan retained him in his own hands, and did not deliver him to the terrible Ackbar, as from the day of the unfortunate Shah's assassination, the Afghan chiefs were split into two factions—the Kuzzilbashes taking part with one, and the tribes of Cabul and the Kohistanees with another.