Haftvad and the worm

In Kajaran, a crowded town on the Persian sea, the poor girls went out together every day to a nearby mountain with their spindle cases and their cotton, shared their food at noon and came home at night with the cotton spun. One of them was the only daughter of Haftvad, a poor, cheerful man named for his seven sons (haft means seven). One day she found a windfall apple on the path, bit into it and saw a worm inside. She lifted it out with her finger and laid it gently in her spindle case. "In the name of God," she told the laughing girls, "by the luck of this apple-worm I will show you some spinning today." She spun twice her usual amount.

She fed the worm apple every day and spun more and more. When her parents learned the secret, Haftvad took it for a sign, gave up his work and talked of nothing but the worm's luck, and the family grew rich. When the town's governor tried to seize their money, Haftvad and his seven sons killed him and took the town. He built a fortress on the mountain with an iron gate, a spring inside the walls and a wall too high to see the top. The worm outgrew its box, so they built it a stone tank, fed it rice, milk and honey, and gave it a minister and a scribe. In five years it was the size of an elephant. Haftvad named the place Kerman after it (kerm means worm), and his armies spread across the land.

The arrow in the lamb

Ardashir sent an army, and Haftvad destroyed it from ambush. Ardashir came himself, but Haftvad's eldest son, Shahui, crossed the water to join his father, and the royal army was pinned against the sea and starving. Then news came that Mehrak, son of Nushzad, of Jahrom, had sacked Ardashir's palace. As the king sat down to eat, an arrow from the fortress, two farsangs (leagues) away, buried itself in a roast lamb. On it was written in Pahlavi that had they aimed at the king himself, he would be dead: no king of this age could bring down the worm.

Ardashir fell back, harried all the way. In a town on the road two young men took him in without knowing who he was. They spoke of Zahhak, Afrasiab and Eskandar, all gone and remembered only for evil, and said Haftvad would go the same way. Ardashir told them who he was, and they gave him advice: this was no worm but a div (demon) that only cunning could beat. He killed Mehrak, then marched back with twelve thousand riders, left them between two mountains under his general Shahrgir, and told him to watch for smoke by day or fire by night.

The merchant from Khorasan

With seven picked men and the two young friends, Ardashir climbed to the fortress dressed as a merchant from Khorasan, with ten donkeys carrying gold, brocade, two chests of lead and arziz (tin) and a brass cauldron. He told the worm's sixty servants that he owed his wealth to the worm's luck and wished to serve it, and they let him in. He opened wine for them and offered to feed the worm himself for three days. When the servants were drunk he heated the metal, and at feeding time, as the worm put out its brass-coloured tongue for rice, he and the young men poured the boiling metal down its throat. A crack came from its throat that shook the tank and the ground, and the worm was finished. They killed the drunken servants, and smoke rose from the roof.

Shahrgir's army came up. Haftvad and Shahui were caught, hanged alive on two gibbets by the sea and shot with arrows. Ardashir gave the plunder to his troops, sent the best of the treasure to Khorreh-ye Ardashir, built a fire temple there and revived the feasts of Mehregan and Sadeh.