Moreover, the
latter used to go down with him to the tilting-ground and
assemble horsemen and teach the lad warlike exercises and the use
of arms, so that, by the time he was fourteen years old, he
became a valiant and accomplished cavalier and gained the rank of
Amir.[FN#115]
It chanced one day that he fell in with Ahmed Kemakim and
clapping up an acquaintance with him, accompanied him to the
tavern, where Ahmed took out the lantern he had stolen from the
Khalif and fell to plying the wine-cup by its light, till he
became drunken. Presently Aslan said to him, 'O Captain, give me
yonder lantern;' but he replied, 'I cannot give it thee.' 'Why
not?' asked Aslan. 'Because,' answered Ahmed, 'lives have been
lost for it.' 'Whose life?' asked Aslan; and Ahmed said, 'There
came hither a man named Alaeddin Abou est Shamat, who was made
Captain of the Sixty and lost his life through this lantern.'
Quoth Aslan, 'And how was that?' 'Know,' replied Ahmed Kemakim,
'that thou hadst an elder brother by name Hebezlem Bezazeh, for
whom, when he became apt for marriage, thy father would have
bought a slave-girl named Jessamine.' And he went on to tell him
the whole story of Hebezlem's illness and what befell Alaeddin,
undeserved.
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