“Ask what thou wilt;” and quoth he, “Is King Bahluwan well?” They derided him and replied, “What a fool art thou, O youth!  Thou art a stranger and a beggar, and whence art thou that thou should’st question concerning the king?"[FN#241] Cried he, “In very sooth, he is my uncle;” whereat they marvelled and said, “’Twas one catch-question[FN#242] and now ’tis become two.”  Then said they to him, “O youth, it is as if thou wert Jinn-mad.  Whence comest thou to claim kinship with the king?  Indeed, we know not that he hath any kith and kin save a nephew, a brother’s son, who was prisoned with him, and he despatched him to wage war upon the infidels, so that they slew him.”  Said Malik Shah, “I am he and they slew me not, but there befel me this and that.”  They knew him forthwith and rising to him, kissed his hands and rejoiced in him and said to him, “O our lord, thou art indeed a king and the son of a king, and we desire thee naught but good and we pray for thy continuance.  Look how Allah hath rescued thee from this wicked uncle, who sent thee to a place whence none ever came off safe and sound, purposing not in this but thy destruction; and indeed thou fellest upon death from which Allah delivered thee.  How, then, wilt thou return and cast thyself again into thine foeman’s hand?  By Allah, save thyself and return not to him this second time.  Haply thou shalt abide upon the face of the earth till it please Almighty Allah to receive thee; but, an thou fall again into his hand, he will not suffer thee to live a single hour.”  The Prince thanked them and said to them, “Allah reward you with all weal, for indeed ye give me loyal counsel; but whither would ye have me wend?” Quoth they, “To the land of the Roum, the abiding place of thy mother.”  “But,” quoth he, “My grandfather Sulayman Shah, when the king of the Roum wrote to him demanding my mother in marriage, hid my affair and secreted my secret; and she hath done the same, and I cannot make her a liar.”  Rejoined they, “Thou sayst sooth, but we desire thine advantage, and even wert thou to take service with the folk, ’twere a means of thy continuance.”  Then each and every of them brought out to him money and gave him a modicum and clad him and fed him and fared on with him the length of a parasang, till they brought him far from the city, and letting him know that he was safe, departed from him, whilst he journeyed till he came forth of his uncle’s reign and entered the dominion of the Roum.  Then he made a village and taking up his abode therein, applied himself to serving one there in earing and seeding and the like.  As for his mother, Shah Khatun, great was her longing for her child and she thought of him ever and news of him was cut off from her, so her life was troubled and she foresware sleep and could not make mention of him before King Caesar her spouse.  Now she had a Castrato who had come with her from the court of her uncle King Sulayman Shah, and he was intelligent, quick-witted, right-reded.  So she took him apart