Wizard's Castle: Omnibus - Jones Diana Wynne. Страница 98

The fire demon spoke, with a purple, flickering mouth. “Thank goodness!” it said. “Why didn’t someone call my name before? I hurt.”

“Oh, poor Calcifer!” said Sophie. “I didn’t know!”

“I’m not speaking to you,” retorted the strange flame-shaped being. “You stuck your claws into me. Nor,” it said as it floated past Howl, “to you, either. You let me in for this. It wasn’t me that wanted to help the King’s army. I’m only speaking to him,” it said, bobbing up beside Abdullah’s shoulder. He heard his hair frizzle gently. The flame was hot. “He’s the only person who ever tried to flatter me.”

“Since when,” Howl asked acidly, “have you needed flattery?”

“Since I discovered how nice it is to be told I’m nice,” said Calcifer.

“But I don’t think you are nice,” said Howl. “Be like that, then!” He turned his back on Calcifer with a fling of mauve satin sleeves.

“Do you want to be a toad?” Calcifer asked. “You’re not the only one who can do toads, you know!”

Howl tapped angrily with one mauve-booted foot. “Perhaps,” he said, “your new friend might ask you to get this castle down where it belongs then.”

Abdullah felt a little sad. Howl seemed to be making it plain that he and Abdullah did not know each other. But he took the hint. He bowed. “O sapphire among sorcerous beings,” he said, “flame of festivity and candle among carpets, magnificent more by a hundred times in your true form than ever you were as treasured tapestry—”

“Get on with it!” muttered Howl.

“—would you graciously consent to re-place this castle on earth?” Abdullah finished.

“With pleasure,” said Calcifer.

They all felt the castle going down. It went so fast at first that Sophie clutched Howl’s arm and a number of princesses cried out. For as Valeria loudly said, a person’s stomach got left behind in the sky. It was possible that Calcifer was out of practice after being in the wrong shape for so long. Whatever the reason was, the descent slowed after a minute and became so gentle that everyone hardly noticed it. This was just as well, because as it descended, the castle became noticeably smaller. Everyone was jostled toward everyone else and had to fight for room in which to balance. The walls moved inward, turning from cloudy porphyry to plain plaster as they came. The ceiling moved down, and its vaulting turned to large black beams, and a window appeared behind the place where the throne had been. It was shadowy at first. Abdullah turned toward it eagerly, hoping for one more glimpse of the transparent sea with its sunset islands, but by the time the window was a real solid window, there was only sky outside, flooding the cottage-sized room with clear yellow dawn. By this time princess was crowded against princess, Sophie was squashed in a corner, grasping Howl in one arm and Morgan with the other, and Abdullah found himself squeezed between Flower-in-the-Night and the soldier.

The soldier, Abdullah realized, had not said a word in a very long time. In fact, he was behaving decidedly oddly. He had pulled his borrowed veils back over his head and was sitting bowed over on a small stool which had appeared beside the hearth as the castle shrank.

“Are you quite well?” Abdullah asked him.

“Perfectly,” said the soldier. Even his voice sounded odd.

Princess Beatrice pushed her way through to him. “Oh, there you are!” she said. “Whatever is the matter with you? Afraid I’m going to go back on my promise now we’re getting back to normal? Is that it?”

“No,” said the soldier. “Or rather, yes. It’ll bother you.”

“It will bother me not at all!” snapped Princess Beatrice. “When I make a promise, I keep it. Prince Justin can just go to… whistle.”

“But I am Prince Justin,” said the soldier.

“What?” said Princess Beatrice.

Very slowly and sheepishly the soldier put away his veils and looked up. It was still the same face, with the same blue eyes that were either utterly innocent or deeply dishonest, or both, but it was a smoother and more educated face. A different sort of soldierliness looked out of it. “That damned djinn enchanted me, too,” he said. “I remember it now. I was waiting in a wood for the search parties to report back.” He looked rather apologetic. “We were hunting for Princess Beatrice—er, you, you know—without much luck, and suddenly my tent blew away and there was the djinn, squeezing himself in among the trees. ‘I’m taking the Princess,’ he said. ‘And since you defeated her country by unfair use of magic, you can be one of the defeated soldiers and see how you like it.’ And next thing I knew, I was wandering about on the battlefield, thinking I was a Strangian soldier.”

“And did you hate it?” asked Princess Beatrice.

“Well,” said the Prince, “it was hard. But I sort of got on with it and picked up everything useful I could and made a few plans. I see I shall have to do something for all those defeated soldiers. But”— a grin that was purely that of the old soldier spread across his face— “to tell the truth, I enjoyed myself rather a lot, wandering through Ingary. I had fun being wicked. I’m like that djinn, really. It’s getting back to ruling again that’s depressing me.”

“Well, I can help you there,” said Princess Beatrice. “I know the ropes, after all.”

“Really?” said the Prince, and he looked up at her in the same way that as the soldier he had looked at the kitten in his hat.

Flower-in-the-Night nudged Abdullah, softly and delightedly. “The Prince of Ochinstan!” she whispered. “No need to fear him!”

Shortly after that the castle came to earth as lightly as a feather. Calcifer, floating against the low beams of the ceiling, announced that he had set it down in the fields outside Kingsbury. “And I sent a message to one of Suliman’s mirrors,” he said smugly.

This seemed to exasperate Howl. “So did I,” he said angrily. “Take a lot on yourself, don’t you?”

“Then he got two messages,” said Sophie. “What of it?”

“How stupid!” said Howl, and began to laugh. At that Calcifer sizzled with laughter, too, and they seemed to be friends again. Thinking about it, Abdullah could see how Howl felt. He had been bursting with anger all the time he was a genie, and he was still bursting with anger now, with no one except Calcifer to take it out on. Probably Calcifer felt the same. Both of them had magic that was too powerful to risk being angry with ordinary people.

Clearly both messages had arrived. Someone beside the window shouted, “Look!” and everyone crowded to it to watch the gates of Kingsbury opening to let the King’s coach hasten out behind a squad of soldiers. In fact, it was a procession. The coaches of numerous ambassadors followed the King’s, emblazoned with the arms of most of the countries where Hasruel had collected princesses.

Howl turned toward Abdullah. “I feel I got to know you rather well,” he said. They looked at each other awkwardly. “Do you know me?” Howl asked.

Abdullah bowed. “At least as well as you know me.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Howl said ruefully. “Well, then, I know I can rely on you to do some good fast talking when it’s needed. When all those coaches get here, it may be necessary.”

It was. It was a most confusing time, during the course of which Abdullah grew rather hoarse. But the most confusing part, as far as Abdullah was concerned, was that every single princess, not to speak of Sophie, Howl, and Prince Justin, insisted on telling the King how brave and intelligent Abdullah had been. Abdullah kept wanting to put them right. He had not been brave—just walking on air because Flower-in-the-Night loved him.

Prince Justin took Abdullah aside, into one of the many antechambers of the palace. “Accept it,” he said. “Nobody ever gets praised for the right reasons. Look at me. The Strangians here are all over me because I’m giving money to their old soldiers, and my royal brother is delighted because I’ve stopped making difficulties about marrying Princess Beatrice. Everyone thinks I’m a model prince.”