And she admitted how this had been seen as demonic by her compatriots, and how she had fled to the chasm, where the magic of the place had carried her voice to the Khan.
"Surely, O Khan," she concluded, "this is a sign from the heavens. Why would my voice be heard by the lord of all Xanadu, emperor of China and Asia, if not because you alone have the power to make right what is wrong, and rescind the sentence of death my sisters have passed upon me?" Sudden inspiration struck, and she added, "Perhaps this is in some way connected with your grandfather's prophecy. Perhaps my death will bring about this war, and sparing me will avert the catastrophe! I have dealt with strange lords and powerful magicians, and they may have caught me up in their schemes. Why risk angering them by slaying me?"
"Why, indeed?" the Khan mused. "In truth, your story concerns me, and I am inclined to let you live-but how are matters best put right? Perhaps there will be war if you die-or perhaps if you live! And if I allow you to live, can I send you back to the harem without stirring discontent among the women there? Perhaps a squabble among my concubines is the promised conflict, and no more than that."
Dunyazad started to speak, but before she could get a word out the Khan continued, "I do not pretend to omniscience; that is not within the sphere of mortal men. I think we must consult another. I have sent my court magician, my aide de camp, a mighty sorcerer, to find you. Let us ask him what he would suggest."
A new voice spoke, and Dunyazad looked up at the sound to see a trim, white-haired man in a fine robe standing over her. He wore a small triangular beard and an elegant mustache.
"Ah, my pelagic young spark, cast up on a strange shore in this dark valley," he said. "We must choose your destiny wisely, lest darkness fall upon Xanadu, eh?"
"As you say, my lord," Dunyazad replied, though she did not understand all the words he had used. This man was oddly reassuring; his expression seemed kind and full of humor.
"You say your name is… Dunyazad?"
"Yes, O master."
"Whatever is someone named Dunyazad doing in Kubla Khan's Xanadu?"
Dunyazad blinked in surprise. "I am told I was born here. Where else should I be, O lord? Surely not in that strange wooden house…»
"No, of course not. You're clearly more suited for a marble palace-but Xanadu? I would say you would be more at home in perhaps Samarkand-in-Asia, don't you think?"
"I… I do not know, O learned master."
"Well, I know, and I'd like to see things put right. I think we can find a better home for you."
"As my lord desires."
"Are you happy in your role as a dancing girl? You certainly have the figure for it, but you speak well-might you do better in another line of work?"
"I live but to please my master." She prostrated herself again.
"Yet you had the spunk to run out here to the chasm, didn't you?"
"As you say, O moon of wisdom."
"I can see that someone's been flinging people hither and yon through other worlds-the black-bearded magician, these four men, these are clearly not any of the Khan's subjects! Perhaps you belong in another realm entirely. Sending you to one would remove you from Xanadu, so that you could create no more disturbance, but would not require your death-which I'm sure would please you!"
Dunyazad did not dare reply to this.
«Hmmm…» the magician said, clasping his hands. "A beautiful young woman named Dunyazad who can tell a story when the need arises, and who dares to speak even to a king in order to preserve her life-where can we find a place for you?" He closed his eyes thoughtfully, then opened them and smiled. "My dear," he said, "I think I know exactly where you belong."
"At the side of my lord, Walter Bayard?" Dunyazad asked. "Or with my sister in the Khan's harem?"
"I think not. Oh, a lord you shall have, and a sister, but not Walter Bayard, nor a place in the Khan's harem. Now, sit up, child, and let me do this properly."
Dunyazad obeyed, as the magician began to chant. He walked around her on the grassy slope, gesturing, until he had woven a circle around her thrice-a magical circle that glowed golden in the gloom.
"I'll keep an eye on you at first," the magician said, as he completed the final circuit. "Just call out if you think I have it wrong, and I'll fetch you back to Xanadu."
And then there was the now-familiar feeling of dislocation, and she found herself falling.
This time she landed squarely on waiting cushions, and looked around.
At first she did not recognize her surroundings. She was clearly in a palace; the walls were gleaming marble, pierced by dozens of pointed arches adorned with fine filigree, and the furnishings were extravagantly fine and beautiful.
She frowned, puzzled. She was sure she had never been in this place before, yet it somehow seemed familiar.
And then a beautiful dark-haired woman entered through one of the arches, and said, "Sister? Are you well?"
Dunyazad turned and recognized her older sister, Shahrazad. "I am not certain," she said.
"Our husbands await us in the courtyard; shall I tell them you are ill?"
"Husbands?" Dunyazad knew that she had never married in Xanadu-but her life there was already beginning to seem distant and dreamlike, while the world around her grew ever more familiar.
"Of course-my beloved lord King Shahryar, and his brother, your own King Shahzaman. We were to ride to the hills for a holiday; had you forgotten? Has a fever blurred your thoughts?"
A king, her husband? That seemed like a childhood fantasy, but it also somehow seemed right. "Perhaps it has," Dunyazad said as she rose from the cushions. "I dreamed of a stately pleasure dome, with caves of ice… " Then she shook her head. "But that's nonsense."
Her memories of Xanadu were fading, memories of her life in this palace returning. She dimly recalled the magician's final words, offering to snatch her back to Xanadu-but why would she ever want to return there?
This was where she belonged. She knew that beyond any possibility of doubt.
Somewhere else, a magician smiled. "Well, that's put right, finally! Whatever was she doing in Xanadu, I wonder?" He shrugged, and turned his attention to other matters.
In the palace, Dunyazad flung aside the dress Kylliki had given her and accepted the robes a servant held out. "Come, sister," she said, taking Shahrazad's hand. "Let us join our husbands for our ride." She laughed. "And perhaps on the way you can tell me a story!"
The Apotheosis of
Martin Padway, S.M. Stirling
"This is the right vector," the computer insisted.
"If you say so," Maximus Liu-Peng replied. Insolent machine, he added to himself. Still, there's something fishy here. Some sort of temporal loop?
Luckily, the passengers were too occupied oohing and ahing at the screens to notice the interplay. The big holographic displays around the interior of the compartment showed a blinking succession of possible cities, all of them late-sixth-century Florence; cities large, small, burning, thriving, an abandoned one with a clutch of Hunnish yurts…
They wavered, then steadied down to a recognizable shape; recognizable from maps, from preserved relics four hundred years old, and from the general appearance of an Early Industrial city.
Classical-era buildings sprawled across a set of hills with a river winding through it, all columns and marble around the squares and squalid tenements elsewhere; old temples had been converted into churches; city walls torn down and replaced by boulevards and parks; and a spanking-new railway station on the outskirts had spawned a clutch of factories with tall brick chimneys and spreading row housing for the workers.