soldiers of the guard, and dragged beside Feshnavat to
await the final blow; and this would have parted two heads from two
bodies at one stroke, but now Noorna bin Noorka entered the hall, veiled
and in the bright garb of a bride, with veiled attendants about her, and
the people opened to give her passage to the throne of the King. So she
said, 'Delay the stroke yet awhile, O Head of the Magnanimous! I am she
claimed by Shagpat; surely, I am bride of him that is Master of the
Event, and the hour of bridals is the hour of clemency.'

The King looked at Shagpat, perplexed; but the eye of Shagpat gazed as
into the distance of another world. Then said he, 'We shall hear nought
from the mouth of Shagpat till he is avenged, and till then he is silent
with exceeding wrath.' Hearing this, Noorna ran quickly to a window of
the Hall, and let loose a white dove from her bosom.

Then came there that flash which is recorded in old traditions as the
fourth of the flashes of thunderless lightnings, after the passing of
which, hundreds of fakirs that had been awaiting it saw nothing further
on this earth. Down through the Hall it swept; and lo! when the Kings and
the people recovered their sight to regard Shagpat, he was, one side of
him, clean shorn, the shaven side shining as the very moon!

Surely from that moment there was no longer aught mortal in the combat
that ensued. For now, while amazement and horror palsied all present, the
Genie Karaz, uttering a howl of fury, shot down the length of the Hall
like a black storm-bolt, and caught up Shagpat, and whirled off with him
into the air; and they beheld him dive and dodge the lightnings that
beset him from upper heaven, catching Shagpat from them, now by the
heels, now by the hair remaining one side his head. This lasted a full
hour, when the Genie paused a second, and made a sheer descent into the
earth. Then saw they the wings of Koorookh, each a league in length,
overshadow the entire land, and on the neck of the bird sat Shibli
Bagarag cleaving through the earth with his blade, and he sat on Koorookh
as the moon sits on the midnight. There was no light save the light shed
abroad by the flashes of the blade, and in these they beheld the air
suffocated with Afrites and Genii in a red and brown and white heat,
followers of Karaz. Strokes of the blade clove them, and their blood was
fire that flowed over the feathers of Koorookh, lighting him in a
conflagration; but the bird flew