Wizard's Castle: Omnibus - Jones Diana Wynne. Страница 81

Chapter 15: In which the travelers arrive at Kingsbury

“If you ask me,” said the soldier, moodily dumping his pack on the magic carpet, “that creature is as bad as his brother—if he has a brother, that is.”

“Oh, he has a brother. Djinns do not lie,” said Abdullah. “But they are always prone to see themselves as superior to mortals, even the good djinns. And Hasruel’s name is on the Lists of the Good.”

“You could have fooled me!” said the soldier. “Where’s Midnight got to? She must have been frightened to death.” He made such a pother over hunting for Midnight in the bushes that Abdullah did not try to explain any more of the lore concerning djinns, which every child in Zanzib learned at school. Besides, he feared the soldier was right. Hasruel might have taken the Seven Vows that made him one of the Host of the Good, but his brother had given him the perfect excuse to break all seven of them. Good or not. Hasruel was clearly enjoying himself hugely.

Abdullah picked up the genie bottle and put it on the carpet. It promptly fell on its side and rolled off. “No, no!” the genie cried out from inside. “I’m not going on that! Why do you think I fell off it before? I hate heights!”

“Oh, don’t you start!” said the soldier. He had Midnight wrapped around one arm, kicking and scratching and biting, and demonstrating in every way she could that cats and flying carpets do not mix. This in itself was enough to make anyone irritable, but Abdullah suspected that most of the soldier’s ill humor had to do with the fact that Princess Valeria was only four years old. The soldier had been thinking of himself as engaged to Princess Valeria. Now, not unnaturally, he was feeling a fool.

Abdullah seized the genie bottle, very firmly, and settled himself on the carpet. Tactfully he said nothing about their bet although it was fairly clear to him that he had won it hands down. True, they had the carpet back, but since it was forbidden to follow the djinn, it was no use at all for rescuing Flower-in-the-Night.

After a prolonged struggle the soldier got himself and his hat and Midnight and Whippersnapper more or less securely on the carpet, too. “Give your orders,” he said. His brown face was flushed.

Abdullah snored. The carpet rose a gentle foot in the air, whereupon Midnight howled and struggled and the genie bottle shook in his hands. “O elegant tapestry of enchantment,” Abdullah said, “O carpet compiled of most complex cantrips, I pray you to move at a sedate speed toward Kingsbury, but to exercise the great wisdom woven into your fabric to make sure that we are not seen by anyone on the way.”

Obediently the carpet climbed through the mist, upward and south. The soldier clamped Midnight in his arms. A hoarse and trembling voice said from the bottle, “Do you have to flatter it so disgustingly?”

“This carpet,” said Abdullah, “unlike you, is of an ensorcellment so pure and excellent that it will listen only to the finest of language. It is at heart a poet among carpets.”

A certain smugness spread through the pile of the carpet. It held its tattered edges proudly straight and sailed sweetly forward into the golden sunlight above the mist. A small blue jet came out of the bottle and disappeared again with a yip of panic. “Well, I wouldn’t do it!” said the genie.

At first it was easy for the carpet not to be seen. It simply flew above the mist, which lay below them white and solid as milk. But as the sun climbed, golden-green fields began to appear shimmeringly through it, then white roads and occasional houses. Whippersnapper was frankly fascinated. He stood at the edge staring downward and looked so likely to tip off headfirst that the soldier kept one hand strongly around his small, bushy tail.

This was just as well. The carpet banked away toward a line of trees that followed a river. Midnight dug all her claws in, and Abdullah only just saved the soldier’s pack.

The soldier looked a little seasick. “Do we have to be this careful not to be seen?” he asked as they went gliding beside the trees like a tramp lurking in a hedge.

“I think so,” said Abdullah. “In my experience, to see this eagle among carpets is to wish to steal it.” And he told the soldier about the person on the camel.

The soldier agreed that Abdullah had a point. “It’s just that it’s going to slow us down,” he said. “My feeling is that we ought to get to Kingsbury and warn the King that there’s a djinn after his daughter. Kings give big rewards for that kind of information.” Clearly, now he had been forced to give up the idea of marrying Princess Valeria, the soldier was thinking of other ways of making his fortune.

“We shall do that, never fear,” said Abdullah, and once again did not mention their bet.

It took most of that day to reach Kingsbury. The carpet followed rivers, slid from wood to forest, and only put on speed where the land below was empty. When, in the late afternoon, they reached the city, a wide cluster of towers inside high walls that was easily three times the size of Zanzib, if not larger, Abdullah directed the carpet to find a good inn near the King’s palace and to set them down somewhere where no one would suspect how they had traveled.

The carpet obeyed by sliding over the great walls like a snake. After that it kept to the roofs, following the shape of each roof the way a flounder follows the sea bottom. Abdullah and the soldier and the cats, too, stared down and around in wonder. The streets, wide or narrow, were choked with richly dressed people and expensive carriages. Every house seemed to Abdullah like a palace. He saw towers, domes, rich carvings, golden cupolas, and marble courts the Sultan of Zanzib would have been glad to call his own. The poorer houses—if you could call such richness poor—were decorated with painted patterns quite exquisitely. As for the shops, the wealth and quantity of the wares they had for sale made Abdullah realize that the Bazaar at Zanzib was really shabby and second-rate. No wonder the Sultan had been so anxious for an alliance with the Prince of Ingary!

The inn the carpet found for them, near the great marble buildings at the center of Kingsbury, had been plastered by a master in raised designs of fruit, which had then been painted in the most glowing colors with much gold leaf. The carpet landed gently on the sloping roof of the inn stables, hiding them cunningly beside a gold spire with a gilded weathercock on the top. They sat and looked around at all this magnificence while they waited for the yard below to be empty. There were two servants down there, cleaning a gilded carriage, gossiping as they worked.

Most of what they said was about the landlord of this inn, who was clearly a man who loved money. But when they had finished complaining how little they were paid, one man said, “Any news of that Strangian soldier who robbed all those people up north? Someone told me he was heading this way.”

To this the other replied, “He’s sure to make for Kingsbury. They all do. But they’re watching for him at the city gates. He won’t get far.”

The soldier’s eyes met Abdullah’s.

Abdullah murmured, “Do you have a change of clothes?”

The soldier nodded and dug furiously in his pack. Shortly he produced two peasant-style shirts with smocked embroidery on the chests and backs, Abdullah wondered how he had come by those.

“Clothesline,” murmured the soldier, bringing out a clothes brush and his razor. There, on the roof, he changed into one of the shirts and did his best to brush his trousers without making a noise. The noisiest part was when he was trying to shave without anything but the razor. The two servants kept glancing toward the dry scratching from the roof.

“Must be a bird,” said one.

Abdullah put the second shirt on over his jacket, which was by now looking like anything but his best one. He was rather hot like that, but there was no way he could remove the money hidden in his jacket without letting the soldier see how much he had. He brushed his hair with the clothes brush, smoothed his mustache—it now felt as if there were at least twelve hairs there—and then brushed his trousers with the clothes brush, too. When he was done, the soldier passed Abdullah the razor and silently stretched out his pigtail.