When my father's reply reached King Afridoun, he
rose and sat down and roared and foamed at the mouth, exclaiming,
'What! shall he make prize of my daughter and she become a
slave-girl and be passed from hand to hand and sent for a gift to
kings, and they lie with her without a contract? By the virtue of
the Messiah and the true faith, I will not desist till I have
taken my revenge for this and wiped out my disgrace, and indeed I
will do a deed that the chroniclers shall chronicle after me.' So
he took patience till he had devised a plot and laid great
snares, when he sent an embassy to thy father King Omar, to tell
him that which thou hast heard so that thy father equipped thee
and an army with thee and sent thee to him, Afridoun's object
being to lay hold of thee and thine army with thee. As for the
three jewels of which he told thy father, he spoke not the truth
of them; for they were with Sufiyeh and my father took them from
her, when she fell into his hands, she and her maidens, and gave
them to me, and they are now with me. So go thou to thy troops
and turn them back, ere they fare farther into the land of the
Franks and the country of the Greeks; for as soon as you are come
far enough into the inward of the country, they will stop the
roads upon you, and there will be no escape for you from their
hands till the day of rewards and punishments.
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