That night's meal was a feast, set sumptuously in a long hall opening onto the central courtyard. As it proceeded, Bistami understood that it was simply the ordinary evening meal in the palace. He ate roast quail, cucumber yoghurts, shredded pork in curry, and tastes of many dishes he didn't recognize.

That began a dreamlike period for him, in which he felt like Manjushri in the tale, fallen upwards into the land of milk and honey. Food dominated his days and his thoughts. One day he was visited in his rooms by a team of black slaves dressed better than he was, who quickly brought him up to their level of raiment and beyond, outfitting him in a fine white gown that looked well but hung heavily on him. After that he was given another audience with the Emperor.

This meeting, surrounded by sharp eyed counsellors, generals and imperial retainers of all kinds, felt very different from the dawn meeting at the tomb, when two young men out to smell the morning air and see the sunrise, and sing the glory of Allah's world, had spoken to each other chest to chest. And yet in all these trappings, it was the same face looking at him – curious, serious, interested in what he had to say. Focusing on that face allowed Bistami to relax.

The Emperor said, 'We invite you to join us and share your knowledge of the law. In return for your wisdom, and the rendering of judg ments on certain cases and questions that will be brought before you, you will be made zamindar of the late Shah Muzaffar's estates, may Allah honour his name.'

'Praise be to God,' Bistami murmured, looking down. 'I will ask God's help in fulfilling this great task to your satisfaction.'

Even with his gaze steadfast to the ground, or returned to the Emperor's face, Bistami could sense that some of the imperial retinue were less than pleased by this decision. But afterwards, some who had seemed least pleased came up to him and introduced themselves, spoke kindly, led him around the palace, probed in a most gentle way concerning his background and history, and told him more about the estate he was to administer. This, it appeared, would mostly be overseen by local assistants on site, and was mainly his title and source of income. And in return he was to outfit and provide one hundred soldiers to the Emperor's armies, when required, and teach all he knew of the Quran, and judge various civil disputes given to his charge.

'There are disputes that only the ulama are fit to judge,' the Emperor's adviser Raja Todor Mai told him. 'The Emperor has great responsibilities. The empire itself is not yet secure from its enemies. Akbar's grandfather Babur came here from the Punjab, and established a Muslim kingdom only forty years ago, and the infidels still attack us from the south and the east. Every year some campaigns are necessary to drive them back. All the faithful in his empire are under his care, in theory, but the burden of his responsibilities means in practice he simp y oesn't have time.'

'Of course not.'

'Meanwhile, there is no other system of justice for disputes among people. As the law is based on the Quran, the qadis, the ulama and other holy men such as yourself are the logical choice to take on this burden.'

'Of course.'

In the weeks following, Bistami did indeed find himself sitting in judgment in disputes brought before him by some of the Emperor's slave assistants. Two men claimed the same land; Bistami asked where their fathers had lived, and their fathers' fathers, and determined that one's family had lived in the region longer than the other's. In ways like this he made his judgments.

More new clothes came from the tailors; a new house and complete retinue of servants and slaves were provided; he was given a trunk of gold and silver coins numbering one hundred thousand. And for all this he merely had to consult the Quran and recall the hadith he had learned (really very few, and even fewer relevant), and render judgments that were usually obvious to all. When they were not obvious, he made them as best he could and retired to the mosque and prayed uneasily, then attended the Emperor and the evening meal. He went on his own at dawn every day to the tomb of Chishti, and so saw the Emperor again in the same informal circumstances as their first meeting, perhaps once or twice a month enough to keep the very busy Emperor aware of his existence. He always had prepared the story he would relate to Akbar that day, when asked what he had been doing; each story was chosen for what it might teach the Emperor, about himself, or Bistami, or the empire or the world. Surely a decent and thoughtful lesson was the least he could do for the incredible bounty that Akbar had bestowed on him.

One morning he told him the story from Sura Eighteen, about the men who lived in a city that had forsaken God, and God took them apart to a cave, and made them to sleep as it were a single night, to them; and when they went out they found that three hundred and nine years had passed. 'Thus with your work, mighty Akbar, you shoot us into the future.'

Another morning he told him the story of El Khadir, the reputed vizier of Dhoulkarnain, who was said to have drunk of the fountain of life, by virtue of which he still lives, and will live till the day of judgment; who appeared, clad in green robes, to Muslims in distress, to help them. 'Thus your work here, great Akbar, will continue deathless through the years to help Muslims in distress.'

The Emperor appeared to appreciate these cool dewy conversations. He invited Bistami to join him in several hunts, and Bistami and his retinue occupied a big white tent, and spent the hot days riding horses as they crashed through the jungle after the howling dogs or beaters; or, more to Bistami's taste, sat on the howdah of an elephant, and watched the great falcons leave Akbar's wrist and soar high above, thence to dive in terrific stoops onto hare or fowl. Akbar fixed his attention on you in just the same way the falcons did.

Akbar loved his falcons, in fact, as kin, and always spent the days of the hunt in excellent spirits. He would call Bistami to his side to speak a blessing over the great birds, who looked off to the horizon, unimpressed. Then they were cast into the air, and flapped hard as they made their way quickly up to their hunting height, splaying wide their big wing feathers. When they were settled in their gyres overhead, a few doves were released. These birds flew as fast as they could for cover in trees or bush, but they were not usually fast enough to escape the attack of the hawks. Their broken bodies were returned by the great raptors to the feet of the Emperor's retainers, and then the falcons flew back to Akbar's wrist, where they were greeted with a stare as fixed as their own, and bits of raw mutton.

It was just such a happy day that was interrupted by bad news from the south. A messenger arrived saying that Adharn Khan's campaign against the Sultan of Malwa, Baz Bahadur, had succeeded, but that the Khan's army had gone on to slaughter all of the captured men, women and children of the town of Malwa, including many Muslim theologians, and even some Sayyids, that is to say direct descendants of the Prophet.

Akbar's fair complexion turned red all over his neck and face, leaving only the mole on the left side of his face untouched, like a white raisin embedded in his skin. 'No more,' he declared to his falcon, and then he began to give orders, the bird thrown to its falconer and the hunt forgotten. 'He thinks I am still under age.'

He rode off hard, leaving all his retinue behind except for Pir Muhammed Khan, his most trusted general. Bistami heard later that Akbar had personally relieved Adharn Khan of his command.

Bistami had the Chishti tomb to himself for a month. Then he found the Emperor there one morning, with a dark look. Adharn Khan had been replaced as vakil, the chief minister, by Zein. 'It will enrage him but it must be done,' Akbar said. 'We will have to put him under house arrest.'