Aliya

chapter four

I wondered why they seemed so pleased to be deemed so incapable.

"Fair point," Darij said, his scowl now turned into a smirk, "but that doesn't mean I'm suddenly not hungry anymore; breakfast will come in an hour or two."

"Will we be dining with the princes?" one girl piped up, her eyes eager.

Ismal turned to her, still smiling. "You won't be dining at all if you talk out of turn," he said. "Don't join conversations you're not invited into, or you can go home, unescorted."

The implication was clear, and so the rest of the trip was silent, save for the quiet murmurs between two small, mousy fifteen-year-olds.

"Do you think it's going to be big?" I heard one whisper, a petite girl with a whisper that might as well have been a shriek.

"It's the palace; what do you think?"

"Well I've never seen the palace! You said you've seen paintings of it."

The other girl sighed, tilting her head back. Under the sunlight, her earrings twinkled gold. "Well it's gigantic, but would you really expect anything less from the King? I heard it can fit three of Babylon's markets into its dining room alone."

I furrowed my eyebrows. Somehow, that didn't sound right.

Not even a palace could be that big.

"Oh my," the mousy brunette said, apparently believing every word. "What else? What else do they say?"

"They say it's built with gold," she continued, enjoying the other girl's lavish attentions, "that the walls are laden with bars of gold, and that almost all of the world's treasures were used to build the palace. They also say they have a garden filled with the most exotic flowers and animals you can ever find; there's apparently one with feathers so beautiful, the First Queen ordered a dress made with a pattern specifically from that one animal, and she wore it to her wedding.

"Not only that," her voice was rising now, sparing the other girls who were now also listening in. "Not only that, but they say it's spires are so high, the tip of it reaches Heaven, and it's dungeons are built so deep into the ground, it's right on the gateway to Hell. It's-"

"Look! Is that it? Is that the palace? Look how golden!" someone cried out, pointing ahead.

Oh my.

The first thought I had was that, Allah, it looked like it was made of the sun.

"Ladies, welcome to the Heart of the Persian Empire, home to the Great King Syahir," Abdul said, beaming with pride.

It was no surprise why.

Tall, winding spirals curved around marbled columns, each either shooting up into a spire or curling down into high, golden steps -- steps that I was sure had never been rotted or dirtied, and had to have greeted thousands of guests, at least. There had to be hundreds of those stairs leading up to a pair of massive doors, so big I could barely see the top of them, and the only thing I could really spot was knobs shaped in the head of a gilded horse.

In school, they taught us of an old, Persian myth, of a woman who'd been cursed with eleven eyes. Legend said that she'd angered the Gods so much, they bestowed the curse down to her in a flash of lightning.

I've always felt pity for her, but right now, how I wish I was her.

How I wish I could see everything, knew all the words of the stars to describe everything, but in the daytime the palace was blinding, and it was all I could do not to close my eyes.