The Sultan practically snarled at him. “If I have learned one thing,” he said, “from this sorry business, it is that even I, Sultan of Zanzib though I am, cannot cheat Fate. That prophecy will get itself fulfilled somehow, I know that. Therefore, if I wish my daughter to marry the Prince of Ochinstan, I must first go along with the prophecy.”

Abdullah relaxed almost completely. He had naturally seen this straightaway, but he had been anxious to make sure that the Sultan had worked it out, too. And he had. Clearly Flower-in-the-Night inherited her logical mind from her father.

“So where is my daughter?” asked the Sultan.

“I have told you, O sun shining upon Zanzib,” said Abdullah. “The djinn—”

“I do not for a moment believe in the djinn,” said the Sultan. “It is far too convenient. You must have hidden the girl somewhere. Take him away,” he said to the soldiers, “and shut him in the safest dungeon we have. Leave the chains on him. He must have used some form of enchantment to get into the garden, and he can probably use it to escape unless we are careful.” Abdullah was unable to avoid flinching at this. The Sultan noticed. He smiled nastily. “Then,” he said, “I want a house-to-house search made for my daughter. She is to be brought to the dungeon for the wedding as soon as she is found.” His eyes turned musingly back to Abdullah. “Until then,” he said, “I shall entertain myself by inventing new ways to kill you. At the moment I favor impaling you upon a forty-foot stake and then loosing vultures to eat bits off you. But I could change my mind if I think of something worse.”

As the soldiers dragged him away, Abdullah nearly despaired again. He thought of the prophecy made at his own birth. A forty-foot stake would raise him above all others in the land very nicely.

Chapter Six

WHICH SHOWS HOW ABDULLAH WENT FROM THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE

They put Abdullah in a deep and smelly dungeon where the only light came through a tiny grating high up in the ceiling—and that light was not daylight. It probably came from a distant window at the end of a passage on the floor above, where the grating was part of the floor.