The Third Tale of the Moon of Saba
Yes, dear listener, I do apologize. For it is time to puncture the final myth about the Moon of Saba. There was no grand romance,
no great star-crossed love. Al-Dabaran, the mighty, the fearsome, he who rides upon a black stallion with his snake staff
striking discord and strife into the hearts of men and djinn alike...
Well, he was a bit of a lecher.
Now, in what defense I can muster, he apparently was truly smitten with Bilqis. She was an impressive woman! There are whispers
that al-Dabaran did approach Bilqis on a beam of celestial light in hopes of seducing her, but the queen was decidedly not
impressed. She rejected him.
Ah, dear sisters, I can see from the looks in your eyes that some of you know where this is going. There are certain men,
even lunar aspects, who do not handle rejection with grace. So in a fit of stung male feelings, al-Dabaran decided to bewitch
Bilqis’s washbasin, hoping to spy upon her bathing.
It did not go according to plan.
The lusty lunar fool had no sooner manifested in the glimmering water than Bilqis trapped him. This woman had been the companion
of a great prophet, a queen who ruled with djinn servants over a splendid and blessed land. Al-Dabaran thought he could sneak
into her bathroom unawares? Hardly. He had barely caught a glimpse before he was snapped up.
Which I suppose worked out well for the queen.
Bilqis kept al-Dabaran in her washbasin, drawing on his aspects when she needed them.
A rival dynasty was conspiring against her?
She’d set al-Dabaran on them, causing her enemies to fall into inner turmoil.
People were going hungry? Then here was al-Dabaran to make the fields and terraces grow lush and fertile.
He was indeed the “jewel” in her crown. But not the way storytellers spin it.
Now, of course, what is it they say about great power? Bilqis may have been wise, but not all her descendants inherited such
prudence. The Moon soon fell into chaotic hands, the stories growing convoluted. If Bilqis set down her thoughts on what to
do with the Moon, we have never discovered a record in her own hand. Instead, we have half-baked tales of would-be despots
trying to lay claim to the Moon and going mad when they gazed upon their reflection. Or worse—some who held their sanity long
enough to use the Moon of Saba to enact great violence across the land, causing bloodshed and discord beyond even the manzil’s
wildest dreams.
It was pandemonium. So eventually a group of people—a family trained for this very purpose—stepped in.
They tracked down the Moon of Saba, stealing it from the smoking wreckage of a kingdom it had brought to ruin. They scried
for ways to dispose of it, places to bind its power and hide it away when destroying the artifact was deemed too dangerous
to attempt. A place where the boundary between the realms was narrow and porous. Where one would have to be a member of the
family who knew the rituals or a suicidal fool to enter. In a cave whose innermost depths humans rarely delved on an isolated
island.
There, indeed, al-Dabaran slept beneath a ceiling of stone hands, separated from his lunar kin by a veil of water, for untold
centuries.
Until a violent man from a foreign land heard whispers of his potential by a desperate scholar. Until they crossed paths with
a female nakhudha whose legend would dwarf them all.
But I am getting ahead of myself.