"Craig Shaw Gardner - Arabian 3 - The Last Arabian Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner Craig Shaw)

"Enough! Someone must pierce me quickly, or I shall wake the djinni,
and you shall both experience a death too horrible to describe!"

Well, there was nothing for the kings to do but obey her command.
And once they had both done her bidding, and were well weary,
Sulima shouted a final "Whoopie!" and further stated, "You are indeed
experienced riders!" Then did she tell the two kings that once she had
been a mortal woman, but had been stolen away and ravished by the
djinni on her wedding night. Since then, she had learned the ways of
djinn and had made good use of them.

"Pardon me," she said as she reached beneath her silken gown and
pulled forth a necklace.

"What is that?" Shahzaman croaked, for his voice was much strained
from his recent endeavors.

''It is a necklace of seal rings, five hundred and seventy rings long," she
replied, "for I demand the seal ring of every man whom I enjoy. Come,
quickly give me yours, or I shall dance again, and lull you into such a
slumber that you shall still be asleep when the djinni awakes, and
terrible will be his vengeance!"

With an argument like that, what could the kings do but hand over
those rings with which they placed their seals of office upon important
documents. And she laughed mightily as the two kings crawled away
with what energy they could muster, until they at last found a place
hidden from that meadow and fell into an exhausted sleep.

But when they had at last awoken, Shahzaman remarked unto his
brother:

"If my fate is like a diarrheic bird, and yours the leavings of a herd of
oxen, the djinni, for all his power, must contend with a fate the likes of
all the offal in greater Baghdad."

"It is time to go home," Shahzaman agreed.

These were the events that led to my introduction into the tale.

These, and three-hundred-odd beheadings.
 Chapter the Second,
in which certain brides have a tendency to lose their heads.

So it was that each of the kings went his separate way, and Shahzaman
returned to Samarkand, and thus left our story for a time. And
Shahryar returned to Baghdad, that great and fabled city that is the
envy of all the world, but he was still greatly troubled by what he had
seen.