A wave of sorrow swept me when I recalled the days I mingled my words with the laughter of young al Haddad, as he quizzed me about ancient kings whose names lie half erased on forgotten tablets. Now his daughter faces forces draped in law and lineage. She will not endure unless her will soars high, drawing strength from her father's own spirit. If that will exist, it will die only if the conspiracies succeed in sowing doubt.
As for me, Nimran, perhaps long seclusion has robbed me of the townsman's easy tongue, yet I have not lost the insight the stars bestow upon those who befriend silence. The very stars that whispered his death, the sands that told of plots woven beneath a golden dome here in Sheba, assure me the tale did not end with a great king's passing. The tree al Haddad planted now thrusts a new branch it may green and flourish, or wither and fade if left alone in the wind's mercy.
Spreading my camel hair cloak and leaning on my battered staff, I heard again the words al Haddad once spoke, etched in my deepest memory: "Master, should I one day feel weak, remind me of the desert, for in its stillness lies a strength that cannot be overcome." I told him: "The desert is a mirror showing you your true self: if you are strong, it deepens your strength; if you are weak, your soul collapses." That lesson may serve his daughter now; should she grasp it; she could steer Sheba toward a future whose map is drawn not in darkness.
Night fell across the capital; only the palace lights quivered like shy torches, and distant voices of guards trading watch drifted on the air. I lay upon the sand outside the walls and pressed my face into my cloak to hide a tear shed for al Haddad's memory. I whispered that had he lived to see some of his men turn against his child, he would have fought to shield the sapling he planted. But death is an unchanging law; the living must walk on, each by the measure of his strength. In the morning, I would stride to that palace to raise my voice, reminding all that one who knows the stars' secrets does not fear the conspirators' night. Before sleep claimed me I saw again the star that announced al Haddad's death, shining above like a sleepless eye, saying: Go, Nimran… the king's story is not finished; tonight, it writes itself in moonlight.
At sunrise, as Sheba's sun climbed the sky, I moved warily toward the gate. The guards, strangers to me yet awed by my bearing, let me pass. I crossed the inner court behind a servant until I stood in a vast stone courtyard, its columns carved, its golden banners catching the light. They're sat Queen Balqis upon a lofty dais, and behind her the Grand Counsellor Khazabla, who, upon seeing me, widened his face in astonishment and let a scroll slip from his hand. He hesitated, then inclined in a brief, reverent bow and spoke in a tone that surprised me: "My first master, sage of the desert am I waking or dreaming?"
I saw confusion in the queen's eyes as she turned a silent question on Khazabla: Who is this ascetic whom my greatest adviser reveres so deeply? Rising, he stepped toward the dais and explained that I was Nimran, the teacher who had poured into al Haddad, in childhood, the lore of stars and sands, and that he held for me an undying veneration. I felt Balqis's eyes gleam with respect and wonder.
When I drew near, I heard her say, "Sage of the desert, my father told me tales of you when I was a child, yet I never dreamed you still lived." I let a faint smile drift upward, borne on the palace air, and answered in a voice steeped in stillness, as though I spoke first to myself.
Daughter of al Haddad, life amid the city's throng is measured in steps and words; in the desert it is closer to a single breath that stretches from the beginning to the end. I withdrew from the courts on purpose not fleeing mankind, but searching for the man within me. What others call loneliness I found to be a silent meeting with numberless grains of sand, each bearing a memory of those before us and a whisper of those yet to come.
Long ago, teaching your father the secrets of the stars, I learned that meaning is lost when we tally our days by deeds and breaths alone. In a tent the wind may pitch where it will, a day can stretch to ages or pass in the blink of an eye, for we do not count the clock's ticks there we trace the universe's pulse as it inhales with every dawn and exhales with every dusk. There, my queen, a new meaning is born: we are not prisoners of form and fetter but children of a thought too vast for body or time.
One may wonder how a man can live so long in the open and yet remain alive; but survival itself is not the aim, only a passage in the labyrinth of knowledge. I have come to see with two eyes: one peers into the details and speech of the passing crowd, the other beholds the silence of stars whispering overhead. With that double gaze I learned that death and birth are but two veils upon one essence, and that between heartbeats lie realms brighter than the sun itself.
When a man slips into solitude beyond walls and uproar, he coaxes speech from the void around him, and the void replies in a tongue unknown to most, yet familiar to one who has befriended the sands. Life is harsh to him who tries to grip it within his palms, but it smiles upon him who yields to it as a journey that bears him where it will. Thus, do years become an expanse bounded not by numbers but by tales and murmurs.
How then could I be severed from life while in its core? In every grain of sand glints a small mirror of my spirit; in every far star a spark rekindles my hope. And you, Daughter of the Sun, will one day need this secret to behold your own essence, to slip the forms that bind you now. Death does not come inevitably to the heart kept alive in truth; absence is no death when resolve stirs the soul and memory. I am here because my journey with your father never broke, and because I see in you the dawn of a new sun that needs the depth flowering only in the mazes of silence.