The sham slave did as she was ordered; and the Vizier, seeing her prostrate, fell upon her, and slew her with his sabre.
"What hast thou done, wretched Vizier?" said the Sultan. "Has envy thus rashly stirred thee up against my faithful slave, that——"
The Sultan would probably have continued his invective against his Vizier much longer, had he not beheld the corpse of the dead enchanter change its appearance, and found that Horam, by the sudden destruction of Tasnar, had but just preserved his own life.
At the sight of this transformation, Misnar descended from his throne, and closely embraced his Vizier Horam.
"O Horam, forgive my impetuous temper!" said the Sultan: "how have I blamed my friend for doing that which alone could have saved my life! But by what means did my faithful Vizier become acquainted with the disguise of this wicked enchanter, or how did he discover himself to thy watchful eye?"
"Lord of my heart," answered Horam, "when I carried my poor female slave through the camp (whose death we have unhappily caused by our fraud), I bade her, when she returned and saw me, first repeat these words in my ear: 'Allah is Lord of heaven, Mahomet is His Prophet, and Misnar is His vicegerent upon earth.' And this precaution I took, fearful less Tasnar, discovering our design, should invent this method of revenge. Wherefore, when the pretended slave was brought before me, and she repeated not the words that I had taught her, I was assured that it was the enchanter in disguise, and waited till, by prostrating himself before my lord, he gave me an opportunity of destroying the life of the chief of thine enemies."
The Sultan of India again embraced his faithful Vizier; and as soon as the eye of morn was opened in the east, the armies of Ahubal beheld the enchanter Tasnar's head fixed on a pole in the front of the Sultan's army.
The Prince Ahubal, rising with the earliest dawn of the morning, went forward to the front of his troops, and there, at a small distance, saw the hideous features of the enchanter Tasnar already blackening in the sun. Fear immediately took possession of his soul; and he ran, with tears in his eyes, and hid himself, till the sun went down, in his pavilion.
The Vizier Horam, perceiving the approach of the sun, would have led on the Sultan's troops to a second attack; but Misnar commanded him to forbear, that his army might rest one day after their fatigues.
The great distress of the enchanters, and their unexpected deaths, alarmed the rest of that wicked race; and Ahaback and Desra, seeing that no one enchanter had succeeded against the Sultan, resolved to join their forces; and while one led a powerful army to Ahubal's assistance from the east, the other raised the storms of war and rebellion on the western confines of the Sultan's empire.