Wizard's Castle: Omnibus - Jones Diana Wynne. Страница 73

It was indeed glorious. Clouds had come up from the south and had spread like a ruby landscape across the sky. Abdullah saw ranges of purple mountains flushed wine red in one part; a smoking orange rift like the heart of a volcano; a calm rosy lake. Out beyond, laid against an infinity of gold-blue sky-sea, were islands, reefs, bays, and promontories. It was as if they were looking at the seacoast of heaven or the land that looks westward to Paradise.

“And that cloud there,” the soldier said, pointing. “Doesn’t that one look just like a castle?”

It did. It stood on a high headland above a sky-lagoon, a marvel of slender gold, ruby, and indigo turrets. A glimpse of golden sky through the tallest tower was like a window. It reminded Abdullah poignantly of the cloud he had seen above the Sultan’s palace while he was being dragged off to the dungeon. Though it was not in the least the same shape, it brought back his sorrows to him so forcefully that he cried out.

“O Flower-in-the-Night, where are you?”

Chapter 11: In which a wild animal causes Abdullah to waste a wish

The soldier turned on his elbow and stared at Abdullah.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” said Abdullah, “except that my life has been full of disappointments.”

“Tell,” said the soldier. “Unburden. I told you about me, after all.”

“You would never believe me,” said Abdullah. “My sorrows surpass even yours, most murderous musketeer.”

“Try me,” said the soldier.

Somehow it was not hard to tell, what with the sunset and the misery that sunset brought surging up in Abdullah. So, as the castle slowly spread and dissolved into sandbars in the sky-lagoon and the whole sunset faded gently to purple, to brown, and finally to three dark red streaks like the healing claw marks on the soldier’s face, Abdullah told the soldier his story. Or at any rate, he told the gist of it. He did not, of course, tell anything so personal as his own daydreams or the uncomfortable way they had of coming true lately, and he was very careful to say nothing at all about the genie. He did not trust the soldier not to take the bottle and vanish with it during the night, and he was helped in this editing of the facts by a strong suspicion that the soldier had not told his whole story, either. The end of the story was quite difficult to tell with the genie left out, but Abdullah thought he managed rather well. He gave the impression he had escaped from his chains and from the bandits more or less by willpower alone, and then that he had walked all the way north to Ingary.

“Hmm,” said the soldier when Abdullah had done. Musingly he put more spicy bushes on the fire, which was now the only light left. “Quite a life. But I must say it makes up for a good deal, being fated to marry a princess. It’s something I always had a fancy to do myself—marry a nice quiet princess with a bit of a kingdom and a kindly nature. Bit of a daydream of mine, really.”

Abdullah found he had a splendid idea. “It is quite possible you can,” he said quietly. “The day I met you I was granted a dream—a vision—in which a smoky angel the color of lavender came to me and pointed you out to me, O cleverest of crusaders, as you slept on a bench outside an inn. He said that you could aid me powerfully in finding Flower-in-the-Night. And if you did, said the angel, your reward would be that you would marry another princess yourself.” This was—or would be—almost perfectly true, Abdullah told himself. He had only to make the correct wish to the genie tomorrow. Or rather, the day after tomorrow, he reminded himself, since the genie had forced him to use tomorrow’s wish today. “Will you help me?” he asked, watching the soldier’s firelit face rather anxiously. “For this great reward.”

The soldier seemed neither eager nor dismayed. He considered. “Not sure quite what I could do to help,” he said at last. “I’m not an expert on djinns, for a start. We don’t seem to get them this far north. You’d need to ask some of these damn Ingary wizards what djinns do with princesses when they steal them. The wizards would know. I could help you squeeze the facts out of one, if you like. It would be a pleasure. But as for a princess, they don’t grow on trees, you know. The nearest one must be the King of Ingary’s daughter, way off in Kingsbury. If she’s what your smoky angel friend had in mind, then I guess you and me’d better walk down that way and see. The king’s tame wizards mostly live down that way, too, so they tell me, so it seems to fit in. That idea suit you?”

“Excellently well, military friend of my bosom!” said Abdullah.

“Then that’s settled, but I don’t promise anything, mind,” said the soldier. He fetched two blankets out of his pack and suggested that they build up the fire and settle down to sleep.

Abdullah unhitched the genie bottle from his belt and put it carefully on the smooth rock beside him on the other side from the soldier. Then he wrapped himself in the blanket and settled down for what proved to be rather a disturbed night. The rock was hard. And though he was nothing like as cold as he had been yesterday night in the desert, the damper air of Ingary made him shiver just as much. In addition, the moment he closed his eyes he found he became obsessed with the wild beast in the cave up the ravine. He kept imagining he could hear it prowling around the camp. Once or twice he opened his eyes and even thought he saw something moving just beyond the light from the fire. He sat up each time and threw more wood on the fire, whereupon the flames flared up and showed him that nothing was there. It was a long time before he fell properly asleep. When he did, he had a hellish dream.

He dreamed that around dawn a djinn came and sat on his chest. He opened his eyes to tell it to go away and found it was not a djinn at all, but the beast from the cave. It stood with its two vast front paws planted on his chest, glaring down at him with eyes that were like bluish lamps in the velvety blackness of its coat. As far as Abdullah could tell, it was a demon in the form of a huge black panther.

He sat up with a yell.

Naturally nothing was there. Dawn was just breaking. The fire was a cherry smudge in the grayness of everything, and the soldier was a darker gray hump, snoring gently on the other side of the fire. Behind him the lower lands were white with mist. Wearily Abdullah put another bush on the fire and fell asleep again.

He was woken by the windy roaring of the genie.

“Stop this thing! Get it OFF me!”

Abdullah leaped up. The soldier leaped up. It was broad daylight. There was no mistaking what they both saw. A small black cat was crouching by the genie bottle, just beside the place where Abdullah’s head had been. The cat was either very curious or convinced there was food in the bottle, for it had its nose delicately but firmly in the neck of the flask. Around its neat black head the genie was gushing out in ten or twelve distorted blue wisps, and the wisps kept turning into hands or faces and then turning back to smoke again.

“Help me!” he yelled in chorus. “It’s trying to eat me or something!”

The cat ignored the genie entirely. It just went on behaving as if there were a most enticing smell in the bottle.

In Zanzib everyone hated cats. People thought of them as very little better than the rats and mice they ate. If a cat came near you, you kicked it, and you drowned any kittens you could lay hands on. Accordingly Abdullah ran at the cat, aiming a flying kick at it as he ran. “Shoo!” he yelled. “Scat!”

The cat jumped. Somehow it avoided Abdullah’s lashing foot and fled to the top of the overhanging rock, where it spat at him and glared. It was not deaf then, Abdullah thought, staring up into its eyes. They were bluish. So that was what had sat on him in the night! He picked up a stone and drew back his arm to throw it.