The crown between two lions

King Yazdegerd had been told he would die at the spring of Su, near Tus, and swore never to go there. When his nose began to bleed and would not stop, a priest advised him to go to that very spring and pray. The bleeding stopped and he grew proud. Then a white horse came out of the water, stood quietly while he saddled it, and kicked him dead before vanishing back into the spring.

The nobles gathered in Pars and swore never again to have one of his line on the throne, for his son Bahram, they said, was just like him and talked of nothing but Monzer. They crowned an old nobleman named Khosrow. In Yaman, Bahram mourned his father for a month. Then Monzer gathered his Arab horsemen and No'man raided as far as Tisfun.

The Iranians sent a wise envoy, Javanui, to Monzer. Monzer told him to put his message to Bahram himself, and when Javanui saw the prince he was so dazzled that he forgot what he had come to say. Back with Monzer, he suggested that Bahram come to Iran and let people see him. So Monzer marched thirty thousand spearmen to the waterless plain of Jahrom, where Bahram sat on an ivory throne and received the Iranian nobles.

A hundred names

"The kingship is mine by descent," said Bahram. "We will not have you," they answered. "Your army is strong, but the land is ours." They spent three days drawing up a list of a hundred men fit to rule, cut it to fifty, then thirty, then four. Bahram's name led every list, and still the elders refused him as too headstrong. To show Monzer why, they brought out men whom Yazdegerd had maimed: one without hands and feet, one without ears and tongue, one whose eyes had been gouged out.

Bahram did not defend his father. He had suffered from him too, he said: the palace had been his prison. He promised justice, mercy, fair taxes and a hearing for every complaint. Then he made an offer. Let the ivory throne be set out with the crown upon it, and two savage lions chained on either side. Whoever could take the crown from between them would be king. If they rejected that, he and Monzer would decide the matter with the sword. The nobles agreed: if the lions killed him, the blood was on his own head, and if he took the crown, he would outshine Fereydun.

The ordeal

Gostaham brought two lions on chains, and the high priest set the crown on the throne between them. At the place of trial Khosrow stepped back: the prince had asked for this, and besides, he said, he was old and Bahram was young. Bahram took up an ox-headed mace. The priest asked who was making him fight lions, and Bahram answered that he was the lions' match. Told to make his peace with God, he repented of his sins. One lion snapped its chain and sprang. Bahram struck it on the head until the light left its eyes, then smashed the head of the other. He sat down on the ivory throne and put on the crown. Khosrow was the first to bow to him.

It was the day of Sorush in the month of Azar. Ferdowsi ends the tale with a glimpse of his own winter: black clouds, the land white as ivory with snow, and in the house no salted meat, no firewood and no barley left until harvest.