Wizard's Castle: Omnibus - Jones Diana Wynne (читать книги онлайн полные версии .TXT) 📗
Chapter 17: In which Abdullah at last reaches the castle in the air
There was a cushion in a basket among the remains of supper on the table. There was a rumpled dent in one of the beds and a cloud of tobacco smoke above it, as if the soldier had been lying there smoking until very recently. The window was closed. Abdullah rushed toward it, intending to fling it open and look out—for no real reason except that it was all he could think of—and found himself tripping over a saucer full of cream. The saucer overturned, slewing thick yellow-white cream in a long streak across the magic carpet.
Abdullah stood staring down at it. At least the carpet was still there. What did that mean? There was no sign of the soldier and certainly no sign of a noisy baby anywhere in the room. Nor, he realized, turning his eyes rapidly toward every place he could think of, was there any sign of the genie bottle.
“Oh, no!” Sophie said, arriving at the door. “Where is he? He can’t have gone far if the carpet’s still here.”
Abdullah wished he could be so certain of that. “Without desiring to alarm you, mother of a most mobile baby,” he said, “I have to observe that the genie appears to be missing also.”
A small vague frown creased the skin of Sophie’s forehead. “What genie?”
While Abdullah was remembering that as Midnight, Sophie had always seemed quite unaware that the genie existed, Lettie arrived in the room, too, panting, with one hand pressed to her side. “What’s the matter?” she gasped.
“They’re not here,” said Sophie. “I suppose the soldier must have taken Morgan to the landlady. She must know about babies.”
With a feeling of grasping at straws, Abdullah said, “I will go and see.” It was always just possible that Sophie was right, he thought as he sped down the first flight of stairs. It was what most men would do faced with a screaming baby suddenly—always supposing that man did not have a genie bottle in his hand.
The lower flight of stairs was full of people coming up, men wearing tramping boots and some kind of uniform. The landlord was leading them upward, saying, “On the second floor, gentlemen. Your description fits the Strangian if he had cut off his pigtail, and the younger fellow is obviously the accomplice you speak of.”
Abdullah turned and ran back upstairs on tiptoe, two stairs at a time.
“There is general disaster, most bewitching pair of women!” he gasped to Sophie and Lettie. “The landlord—a perfidious publican—is bringing constables to arrest myself and the soldier. Now what can we do?”
It was time for a strong-minded woman to take charge. Abdullah was quite glad that Sophie was one. She acted at once. She shut the door and shot its bolt. “Lend me your handkerchief,” she said to Lettie, and when Lettie passed it over, Sophie knelt and mopped the cream off the magic carpet with it. “You come over here,” she told Abdullah. “Get on this carpet with me, and tell it to take us to wherever Morgan is. You stay here, Lettie, and hold the constables up. I don’t think the carpet would carry you.”
“Fine,” said Lettie. “I want to get back to Ben before the King starts blaming him, anyway. But I’ll give that landlord a piece of my mind first. It’ll be good practice for the King.” As strong-minded as her sister, she squared her shoulders and stuck out her elbows in a way that promised a bad time for the landlord and the constables as well.
Abdullah was glad about Lettie, too. He crouched on the carpet and snored gently. The carpet quivered. It was a reluctant quiver. “O fabulous fabric, carbuncle and chrysolite among carpets,” Abdullah said, “this miserable clumsy churl apologizes profoundly for spilling cream upon your priceless surface—”
Heavy knocking came at the door. “Open, in the King’s name!” bellowed someone outside.
There was no time to flatter the carpet any further. “Carpet, I implore you,” Abdullah whispered, “transport myself and this lady to the place where the soldier has taken the baby.”
The carpet shook itself irritably, but it obeyed. It shot forward in its usual way, straight through the closed window. Abdullah was alert enough this time actually to see the glass and the dark frame of the window for an instant, like the surface of water, as they passed through it and then soared above the silver globes that lit the street. But he doubted if Sophie was. She clutched Abdullah’s arm with both hands, and he rather thought her eyes were shut.
“I hate heights!” she said. “It had better not be far.”
“This excellent carpet will carry us with all possible speed, worshipful witch,” Abdullah said, trying to reassure her and the carpet together. He was not sure it worked with either of them. Sophie continued to cling painfully to his arm, uttering little, short gasps of panic, while the carpet, having made one brisk, giddy sweep just above the towers and lights of Kingsbury, swung dizzily around what seemed to be the domes of the palace and began on another circuit of the city.
“What is it doing?” gasped Sophie. Evidently her eyes were not quite shut.
“Peace, most serene sorceress,” Abdullah reassured her. “It does but circle to gain height as birds do.” Privately he was sure the carpet had lost the trail. But as the lights and domes of Kingsbury went by underneath for the third time, he saw he had accidentally guessed right. They were now several hundred feet higher. On the fourth circuit, which was wider than the third—though quite as giddy—Kingsbury was a little jeweled cluster of lights far, far below.
Sophie’s head bobbed as she took a downward peep. Her grip on Abdullah became even tighter, if that was possible. “Oh, goodness and awfulness!” she said. “We’re still going up! I do believe that wretched soldier has taken Morgan after the djinn!”
They were now so high that Abdullah feared she was right. “He no doubt wished to rescue the Princess,” he said, “in hope of a large reward.”
“He had no business to take my baby along, too!” Sophie declared. “Just wait till I see him! But how did he do it without the carpet?”
“He must have ordered the genie to follow the djinn, O moon of motherhood,” Abdullah explained.
To that Sophie said again, “What genie?”
“I assure you, sharpest of sorcerous minds, that I owned a genie as well as this carpet, though you never appeared to see it,” Abdullah said.
“Then I take your word for it,” said Sophie. “Keep talking. Talk— or I shall look down, and if I look down, I know I’ll fall off!”
Since she was still clinging mightily to Abdullah’s arm, he knew that if she fell, then so would he. Kingsbury was now a bright, hazy dot, appearing on this side and then on that, as the carpet continued to spiral upward. The rest of Ingary was laid out around it like a huge dark blue dish. The thought of plunging all that way down made Abdullah almost as frightened as Sophie. He began hastily to tell her all his adventures, how he had met Flower-in-the-Night, how the Sultan had put him in prison, how the genie had been fished out of the oasis pool by Kabul Aqba’s men—who were really angels—and how hard it was to make a wish that the genie’s malice did not spoil.
By this time he could see the desert as a pale sea south of Ingary, though they were so high that it was quite hard to make out anything below. “I see now that the soldier agreed I had won that bet in order to convince me of his honesty,” Abdullah said ruefully. “I think he always meant to steal the genie and probably the carpet, too.”
Sophie was interested. Her grip on his arm relaxed slightly, to Abdullah’s great relief. “You can’t blame that genie for hating everyone,” she said. “Think how you felt shut in that dungeon.”
“But the soldier—” said Abdullah.
“Is another matter!” Sophie declared. “Just wait till I get my hands on him! I can’t abide people who go soft over animals and then cheat every human they come across! But to get back to this genie you say you had, it looks as if the djinn meant you to have it. Do you think it was part of his scheme to have disappointed lovers help him get the better of his brother?”
