“All right… we’ll try this one more time,” Zahir sighed.
The gardener nodded obediently.
Zahir closed his eyes, and his horn glowed. He gently tapped his horn to the gardener’s forehead.
“Remember anything?” Zahir asked.
The gardener closed his eyes, and thought hard. He opened his eyes slowly and shook his head sadly.
Zahir rested his head on the table with a sigh. Then, an idea came to him.
“Wait, let’s try again,” Zahir said, sitting up.
The gardener nodded patiently.
Zahir thought about Heydar and Afzal in the garden, talking. Then his horn glowed again and he gently touched his horn to the gardener’s forehead.
The gardener’s eyes glowed, and suddenly, he said, “Wait, wait!”
Qadir and Alem straightened up and watched as the gardener blinked a few times, and said, “I DO REMEMBER!”
“I do! Sire, I do!” The gardener declared, nodding his head quickly, “Heydar and Afzal were arguing over Prince Daud-- Heydar failed to kill him, and banished him instead!”
“Say that again, quick!” Qadir said, picking up a quill in his wing and preparing to write.
While the servant gave his testimony, Zahir immediately wrote down what he did for the spell. It seemed so simple that he was shocked nobeast had made it before! All this time he had tried to awaken memories in the patients without any direction. Until he had a direction and tapped into THOSE SPECIFIC memories, nothing came out.
Now, at last, the lost memories returned!
Zahir used the same spell with the other servants, thinking about the days he wanted them to remember, and they all shared what they knew--a piece of information here, an argument there, and all of it was Heydar and Afzal revealing that they were indeed the traitors.
At last, proof.
Centuries later, the spell would be passed down through teachers and books, and one day a Unicorn Pony named Twilight Sparkle would use her own twist on the spell to jog the memories of her friends, enabling them to restore harmony to Equestria once more.