Castle In The Air Part 17

"Hasruel means that he enjoyed his wickedness and does not regret it."

"It is true," said Hasruel. "I had more fun these last months than I had in many hundreds of years before that. Dalzel taught me this. Now I must go away for fear I start having the same fun among the Good Djinns. If I only knew where to go."

A thought seemed to strike Howl. He coughed. "Why not go to another world?" he suggested. "There are many hundreds of other worlds, you know."

Hasruel's wings rose and beat with excitement, whirling the hair and dresses of every princess in the hall. "There are? Where? Show me how I may get to another world."

Howl put Morgan into Sophie's awkward arms and bounded up the steps of the throne. What he showed Hasruel was a matter of a few strange gestures and a nod or so. Hasruel seemed to understand perfectly. He nodded in return. Then he rose from the throne and simply walked away, without another word, across the hall and through the wall as if it were so much mist. The huge hall suddenly felt empty.

"Good riddance!" said Howl.

"Did you send him to your world?" Sophie asked.

"No way!" said Howl. "They've got enough to worry about there. I sent him in the opposite direction. I took a risk that the castle wouldn't just disappear." He turned around slowly, staring out at the cloudy reaches of the hall. "It's all still here," he said. "That means Calcifer must be here somewhere. He's the one who keeps it going." He gave out a ringing shout. "Calcifer! Where areyou?"

193.

The Paragon's petticoat once more seemed to take on a life of its own.

This time it bowled away sideways on its hoops to let the magic carpet float free of it. The carpet shook itself, in rather the same way as Jamal's dog was now doing. Then, to everyone's surprise, it flopped tothe floor and began to unravel. Abdullah nearly cried out at the waste.

The long thread whirling free was blue and curiously bright, as if the carpet were not made of the usual wool at all. The free thread, darting back and forth across the carpet, rose higher and higher as it grew longer, until it was stretched between the high cloudy ceiling and the almost bare canvas it had been woven into. At last, with an impatient flip, the other end tore free from the canvas and shrank upward into the rest, where it spread in a flickering sort of way, and shrank again, and finally spread into a new shape like an upside-down teardrop or maybe a flame. This shape came drifting downward, steadily and purposefully.

When it was near, Abdullah could see a face on the front of it composed of little purple or green or orange flames. Abdullah shrugged fatalistically. It seemed that he had parted with all those gold pieces to buy a fire demon and not a magic carpet at all.

The fire demon spoke, with a purple, flickering mouth. "Thank goodness!"

it said. "Why didn't someone call my name before? Ihurt."

"Oh, poor Calcifer!" said Sophie. "I didn't knowl"

"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.

194.

"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 onearth?"

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 wrongshape 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 195.

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 d.a.m.ned 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 thatwas purely that of the old soldier spread across his face- "to tell the truth, I enjoyed myself rather a lot, wandering through 196.

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 amba.s.sadors 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."

197.

It was. It was a most confusing time, during the course of which Abdullah grew rather hoa.r.s.e. 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. "n.o.body 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."

"Did you object to marrying her?" asked Abdullah.

"Oh, yes," said the Prince. "I hadn't met her then, of course. The King and I had one of our quarrels about it, and I threatened to throw him over the palace roof. When I disappeared, he thought I'd just gone off in a huff for a while. He hadn't even started to worry."

The King was so pleased with his brother, and with Abdullah for bringing Valeria and his other Royal Wizard back, that he ordered a magnificent double wedding for the next day. This added a great deal of urgency to the confusion. Howl hurriedly made a strange simulacrum-constructed mostly of parchment-of a King's Messenger, which was sent by magic to the Sultan of Zanzib, to offer him transport to his daughter's wedding.

This simulacrum came back half an hour later, looking decidedly tattered, with the news that the Sultan had a fifty-foot stake ready for Abdullah if he ever showed his face in Zanzib again. This being so, Sophie and Howl went and talked to the King. The King created two new posts called Amba.s.sadors Extraordinary for the Realm of Ingary and gave those posts to Abdullah and Flower-in-the-Night that same evening.

The wedding of the Prince and the Amba.s.sador made history, for Princess Beatrice and Flower-in-the-Night had fourteen princesses each as bridesmaids and the King himself gave the brides away. Jamal was Abdullah's best man. As he pa.s.sed Abdullah the 198.

wedding ring, he reported in a whisper that the angels had departed earlier that morning, taking Hasruel's life with them.

"And a good thing, too!" Jamal said. "Now my poor dog will stop scratching."

Almost the only persons of note who did not attend the wedding were Wizard Suliman and his wife. This had only indirectly to do with the King's anger. It seemed that Lettie had spoken so strong-mindedly to the King, when the King wished to arrest Wizard Suliman, that she had gone into labor rather earlier than her time. Wizard Suliman was afraid to leave her side. But on the very day of the wedding Lettie gave birth to a daughter with no ill effects at all.

"Oh, good!" said Sophie. "I knew I was cut out to be an aunt."

The first task of the two new amba.s.sadors was to conduct numbers of the kidnapped princesses to their homes. Some of them, like the tiny Princess of Tsapfan, lived so far away that their countries had barely been heard of. The amba.s.sadors had instructions to make trading alliances and also to note all other strange places on the way, with a view to later exploration. Howl had talked to the King. Now, for some reason, all Ingary was talking about mapping the globe. Exploring parties were being chosen and trained.What with journeying, and pampering princesses, and arguing with foreign kings, Abdullah was somehow always too busy to make his confession to Flower-in-the-Night. It always seemed that there would be a more promising moment the next day. But at last, when they were about to arrive in far-distant Tsapfan, he realized that he could delay no longer.

He took a deep breath. He felt the color leave his face. "I am not really a prince," he blurted out. There. It was said.

Flower-in-the-Night looked up from the map she was drawing. The shaded lamp in the tent made her face almost more beautiful than usual. "Oh, I know that," she said.

"What?" whispered Abdullah.

"Well, naturally, while I was in the castle in the air, I had plenty of time to think about you," she said. "And I soon realized you were romancing, because it was so like my daydream, only the 199.

other way around. I used to dream that I was just an ordinary girl, you see, and that my father was a carpet merchant in the Bazaar. I used to imagine that I managed the business for him."

"You are a marvel!" said Abdullah.

"Then so are you," she said, and went back to her map.

They returned to Ingary in due time with an extra packhorse loaded with the boxes of sweets the princesses had promised Valeria. There were chocolates and candied oranges and coconut ices and honeyed nuts, but the most wonderful of all were the sweets from the tiny princess-layer upon layer of paper-thin candy that the tiny princess called Summer Leaves. These came in a box so beautiful that Valeria used it for jewelry when she grew older. Strangely enough, she had almost given up screaming. The King could not understand it, but as Valeria explained to Sophie, when thirty people all tell you you've got to scream, it rather puts you off the whole idea.

Sophie and Howl were living-somewhat quarrelsomely, it must be confessed, although they were said to be happiest that way-in the moving castle again. One of its aspects was a fine mansion in the Chipping Valley. When Abdullah and Flower-in-the- Night returned, the King gave them land in the Chipping Valley, too, and permission to build a palace there. The house they had built was quite modest-it even had a thatched roof-but their gardens soon became one of the wonders of the land. It was said that Abdullah had help in their design from at least one of the Royal Wizards, for how else could even an Amba.s.sador have a bluebell wood that grew bluebells all the year around?

200.

Abdullah was a young and not very prosperous carpet dealer. His father, who had been disappointed in him, had left him only enough money to open a modest booth in the Bazaar. When he was not selling carpets, Abdullah spent his time daydreaming. In his dreams he was not the son of his father, but the long-lost son of a prince. There was also a princess who had been betrothed to him at birth. He was content with his life and his daydreams until, one day, a stranger sold him a magic carpet.In this stunning sequel to Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones has again created a large-scale, fast-paced fantasy in which nothing and no one are quite what they seem. There are good and bad djinns, a genie in a bottle, wizards, witches, cats and dogs (but are they cats and dogs?), and a mysterious floating castle filled with kidnapped princesses, as well as two puzzling prophecies. The story speeds along with tantalizing twists and turns until the prophecies are fulfilled, Abdullah gets his princess, and all is resolved in a totally satisfying, breathtaking, surprise-filled ending.

GREENWILLOW BOOKS 105 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 JACKET PAINTING 1991 BY JOS. A. SMITH.

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DIANA WYNNE JONES was raised inthe village of Thaxted in Ess.e.x, England.

She has been a compulsive storyteller for as long as she can remember, enjoying most ardently those tales dealing with vintenes,1 noDgouiins aricrtneiiKe. Ms. Jones lives in Bristol, England with her husband, a professor of English at Bristol University. They have three sons. In addition to her outstanding books for young readers, she is the author of three plays for children and the editor of Hidden Turnings: A Collection of Stories Through Time and s.p.a.ce.

BOOKS BY DIANA WYNNE JONES.

The Ogre Downstairs Dogsbody Eight Days of Luke The Lives of Christopher Chant A Tale of Time City Howl's Moving Castle Archer's Goon Warlock at the Wheel Fire and Hemlock Witch Week The Homeward Bounders Charmed Life REINFORCED TRADE EDITION.