Castle In The Air Part 8

"We'll have to find somewhere to shelter," said the soldier.

Luckily there was an inn around the next corner but one. They squelched thankfully into its taproom, where Abdullah was pleased to discover that its gra.s.s roof was keeping the rain out very well.

Here the soldier, in the way Abdullah was getting used to, demanded a private parlor with a fire, so that the cats could be comfortable, and lunch for all four of the party. Abdullah, in the way that he was also getting used to, wondered how much the bill would be this time, although he had to admit the fire was very welcome. He stood in front of it and dripped, with a gla.s.s of beer-in this particular inn the beer tasted as if it had come from a camel that was rather unwell-while they waited for lunch. Midnight washed the kitten dry, then herself. The soldier stretched his boots to the fire and let them steam, while the genie bottle stood in the hearth and also steamed faintly. Even the genie did not complain.

They heard horses outside. This was not unusual. Most people in Ingary traveled on horseback if they could. Nor was it surprising 100.that the riders seemed to be stopping at the inn. They must be wet, too.

Abdullah was just thinking that he should firmly have asked the genie to provide horses instead of milk and salmon yesterday when he heard the hors.e.m.e.n shouting at the innkeeper outside the parlor window."Two men-a Strangian soldier and a dark chap in a fancy suit-wanted for a.s.sault and robbery-have you seen them?"

Before the riders had finished shouting, the soldier was over by the parlor window, with his back to the wall so that he could look sideways through the window without being seen, and somehow he had his pack in one hand and his hat in the other.

"Four of them," he said. "They're constables, by the uniform."

All Abdullah could think to do was stand gaping in dismay, thinking that this was what came of fussing for cat baskets and bathwater and giving innkeepers reason to remember you. And demanding private parlors, he thought, as he heard the voice of this innkeeper in the distance saying smarmily that yes, indeed, both fellows were here, in the small parlor.

The soldier held out his hat to Abdullah. "Put Whippersnapper in here.

Then pick up Midnight and be ready to get out of the window as soon as they come into the inn."

Whippersnapper had chosen that moment to go exploring under an oak settle. Abdullah dived after him. As he backed out on his knees with the kitten squirming in his hand, he could hear distant boots clumping into the taproom. The soldier was undoing the latch on the window. Abdullah dropped Whippersnapper into his outstretched hat and turned around for Midnight. And saw the genie bottle warming on the hearth. Midnight was up on a high shelf across the room. This was hopeless. The boots were now much nearer, tramping toward the parlor door. The soldier was banging at the window, which seemed to be stuck.

Abdullah s.n.a.t.c.hed up the genie bottle. "Come here, Midnight!" he said, and ran toward the window, where he collided with the soldier backing away.

"Stand clear," said the soldier. "Thing's stuck. Have to kick it."

As Abdullah staggered aside, the parlor door was flung open 101.

and three large men in uniform plunged into the room. At the same instant the soldier's boot met the window frame with a bang. The cas.e.m.e.nt burst open, and the soldier went scrambling out over the sill.

The three men shouted. Two made for the window, and one dived for Abdullah. Abdullah overturned the oak settle in front of all of them and then sprinted for the window, where he hurdled the sill out into the drenching rain without pausing to think.

Then he remembered Midnight. He turned back.

She was huge again, larger than he had ever seen her, looming like a great black shadow in the s.p.a.ce below the window, with her immense white fangs bared at the three men. They were falling over one another to get away backward through the door. Abdullah turned and ran after the soldier, gratefully. He was pelting toward the far corner of the inn.

The fourth constable, who was outside holding the horses, started to run after them, then realized that this was stupid and ran back to the horses, which scattered away from him as he ran at them. As Abdullah bounded after the soldier through a sopping kitchen garden, he could hear the shouting of all four constables as they tried to catch their horses.The soldier was an expert at escapes. He found a way from the vegetable garden into an orchard and from there a gate into a wide field, all without wasting an instant. A wood stood across the field in the distance like a promise of safety, veiled in rain.

"Did you get Midnight?" gasped the soldier as they trotted through the soaking gra.s.s of the field.

"No," said Abdullah. He had no breath to explain.

"What?" exclaimed the soldier. He stopped and swung around.

At that moment the four horses, each with a constable in the saddle, came jumping over the orchard hedge into the field. The soldier swore violently. He and Abdullah both sprinted for the wood. By the time they reached its bushy outskirts, the hors.e.m.e.n were well over halfway across the field. Abdullah and the soldier crashed through the bushes and leaped onward into open woodland, where, to Abdullah's amazement, the ground was thick with thousands upon thousands of bright blue flowers, growing like a carpet into far blue distance.

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"What . . . these flowers?" he panted.

"Bluebells," said the soldier. "If you've lost Midnight, I'll kill you."

"I haven't. She'll find us. She grew. Told you. Magic," Abdullah gasped.

The soldier had never seen this trick of Midnight's. He did not believe Abdullah. "Run faster," he said. "We'll have to circle back and collect her."

They rushed forward, crunching bluebells, suffused with the strange wild scent of them. Abdullah could have believed, but for the gray, pouring rain and the shouts of the constables, that he was running over the floor of heaven. He was rapidly back in his daydream. When he made his garden for the cottage he would share with Flower-in-the-Night, he would have bluebells in it by the thousand, like these. But this did not blind him to the fact that they were leaving a trampled trail of broken white stems and snapped-off flowers as they ran. Nor did it deafen him to the cracking of twigs as the constables shoved their horses into the wood behind them.

"This is hopeless!" said the soldier. "Get that genie of yours to make the constables lose us."

"Point out . . . sapphire of soldiers ... no wish . . . day after tomorrow," Abdullah panted.

"He can give you one in advance again," said the soldier.

Blue steam fluttered angrily from the bottle in Abdullah's hand. "I gave you your last wish only on condition you left me alone," said the genie.

"All I ask is to be left to sorrow alone in my bottle. And do you let me? No. At the first sign of trouble, you start wailing for extra wishes. Doesn't anyone consider me around here?"

"Emergency ... O hyacinth . . . bluebell among bottled spirits,"Abdullah puffed. "Transport us ... far off-"

"Oh, no, you don't!" said the soldier. "You don't wish us far off without Midnight. Have him make us invisible until we find her."

"Blue jade of genies-" gasped Abdullah.

"If there's one thing I hate," interrupted the genie, bellying forth in a lavender cloud, "more than this rain and being pestered 103.

for wishes in advance all the time, it's being coaxed for wishes in flowery language. If you want a wish, talk straight."

"Take us to Kingsbury," puffed Abdullah.

"Make those fellows lose us," the soldier said at the same moment.

They glared at each other as they ran.

"Make up your minds," said the genie. He folded his arms and streamed contemptuously out behind them. "It's all one to me what you choose to waste another wish on. Just let me remind you that it will be your last one for two days."

"I'm not leaving Midnight," said the soldier.

"If we are ... waste a wish," panted Abdullah, "then should . . .

usefully . . . foolish fortune hunter . . . forward our . . . quest . .

. Kingsbury."

"Then you can go without me," said the soldier.

"The hors.e.m.e.n are only fifty feet away," remarked the genie.

They looked over their shoulders and discovered this was quite true.

Abdullah hurriedly gave in. "Then make them unable to see us," he panted.

"Have us unseen until Midnight finds us," added the soldier. "I know she will. She's that clever."

Abdullah had a glimpse of an evil grin spreading on the genie's smoky face and of smoky arms making certain gestures.

There followed a wet and gluey strangeness. The world suddenly distorted around Abdullah and grew vast and blue and green and out of focus. He crawled, in a slow and toilsome crouch, among what seemed to be giant bluebells, placing each huge and warty hand with extreme care because, for some reason, he could not look downward-only up and across. It was such hard work that he wanted to stop and crouch where he was, but the ground was shaking most terribly. He could feel some gigantic creatures galloping toward him, so he crawled on frantically. Even so, he barely got out of their way in time. A huge hoof, as big as a round tower, with metal underneath it, came smas.h.i.+ng down just beside him as he crawled.

Abdullah was so frightened by it that he froze and could 104.

not move. He could tell that the enormous creatures had stopped, too,quite close. There were loud, annoyed sounds that he could not hear properly. These went on for some time. Then the smas.h.i.+ng of hooves began again, and went on for some time, too, trampling this way and that, always rather near, until, after what seemed most of the day, the creatures seemed to give up looking for him and went cras.h.i.+ng and squelching away.

105.

In which Abdullah challenges Fate Abdullah crouched for a while longer, but when the creatures did not come back, he began crawling again, in a vague, vain way, hoping to discover what had happened to him. He knew something had happened, but he did not seem to have much of a brain to think with.

While he crawled, the rain stopped. He was rather sad about that, since it was wonderfully refres.h.i.+ng to the skin. On the other hand- A fly circled in a shaft of sunlight and came to sit on a bluebell leaf nearby. Abdullah promptly shot out a long tongue, whipped up that fly, and swallowed it. Very nice! he thought. Then he thought: But flies are unclean! More troubled than ever, he crawled around another bluebell clump.

And there was another one just like himself.

It was brown and squat and warty, and its yellow eyes were at the top of its head. As soon as it saw him, it opened its wide, lipless mouth in a bray of horror and began to swell up. Abdullah did not wait to see more.

He turned and crawled off as fast as his distorted legs could take him.

He knew what he was now. He was a toad. The malicious genie had fixed things so that he would be a toad 106.

until Midnight found him. When she did, he was fairly sure she would eat him.

He crawled under the nearest overarching bluebell leaves and hid About an hour later the bluebell leaves parted to let through a monster black paw. It seemed interested in Abdullah. It kept its claws sheathed and patted at him. Abdullah was so horrified that he tried to hop away backward.

Whereupon he found himself lying on his back among the bluebells.

He blinked up at the trees first, trying to adjust to the way he suddenly had thoughts in his head again. Some of those thoughts were unpleasant ones, about two bandits crawling beside an oasis pool in the shape of toads and about eating a fly and being nearly trodden on by a horse. Then he looked around and found the soldier crouching nearby, looking as bewildered as Abdullah felt. His pack was beside him, and beyond that, Whippersnapper was making determined efforts to climb out of the soldier's hat. The genie bottle stood smugly beside the hat.

The genie was outside the bottle in a small wisp like the flame of aspirit lamp, with his smoky arms propped on the neck of the bottle.

"Enjoy yourselves?" he asked jeeringly. "I got you there, didn't I?

That'll teach you to pester me for extra wishes!"

Midnight had been extremely alarmed by their sudden transformation. She was in a small angry arch, spitting at both of them.

The soldier stretched out his hand to her and made soothing noises. "You frighten Midnight again like that," he told the genie, "and I'll break your bottle!"

"You said that before," retorted the genie, "and you couldn't, worse luck. The bottle's enchanted."

"Then I'll make sure his next wish is that you turn into a toad," the soldier said, jerking his thumb at Abdullah.

The genie shot Abdullah a wary look at this. Abdullah said nothing, but he saw it was a good idea and might keep the genie in order. He sighed.

One way and another, he just could not seem to stop wasting wishes.

107.

They picked themselves and their belongings up and resumed their journey. But they went much more cautiously. They kept to the smallest lanes and footpaths they could find, and that night, instead of going to an inn, they camped in an old empty barn. Here Midnight suddenly looked alert and interested and shortly slipped away into the shadowy corners.

After a while she came trotting back with a dead mouse, which she laid carefully in the soldier's hat for Whippersnapper. Whippersnapper was not very sure what to do with it. In the end he decided it was the kind of toy you leaped on fiercely and killed. Midnight prowled off again.

Abdullah heard the small sounds of her hunting most of the night.

In spite of this, the soldier worried about feeding the cats. Next morning he wanted Abdullah to go to the nearest farm and buy milk.

"You do it if you want it," Abdullah said curtly.

And somehow he found himself on the way to the farm with a can from the soldier's pack on one side of his belt and the genie bottle b.u.mping at the other.

Exactly the same thing happened the next two mornings, too, with the small difference that they slept under haystacks both those nights and Abdullah bought a beautiful fresh loaf one morning and some eggs on the next. On the way back to the haystack that third morning he tried to work out just why he was feeling increasingly bad-tempered and put-upon.

It was not just that he was stiff and tired and damp all the time. It was not just that he seemed to spend such a lot of time running errands for the soldier's cats, though that had something to do with it. Some of it was Midnight's fault. Abdullah knew he ought to be grateful to her for defending them from the constables. He was grateful, but he still did not get on with Midnight. She rode his shoulder disdainfully every day and contrived to make it quite clear that as far as she was concerned, Abdullah was only a sort of horse. It was a bit hard to take from a mere animal.

Abdullah brooded on this and other matters all that day, while hetramped country lanes with Midnight draped elegantly around his neck and the soldier trudging cheerfully ahead. It was not that 108.

he did not like cats. He was used to them now. Sometimes he foundWhippersnapper almost as sweet as the soldier did. No, his bad humor had much more to do with the way the soldier and the genie between them kept contriving to postpone his search for Flower-in-the-Night. If he was not careful, Abdullah could see himself tramping country lanes for the rest of his life, without ever getting to Kingsbury at all. And when he did get there, he still had to locate a wizard. No, it would not do.

That night they found the remains of a stone tower to camp in. This was much better than a haystack. They could light a fire and eat hot food from the soldier's packets and Abdullah could get warm and dry at last.

His spirits rose.

The soldier was cheerful, too. He sat leaning against the stone wall with Whippersnapper asleep in his hat beside him and gazed out at the sunset. "I've been thinking," he said. "You get a wish from your misty blue friend tomorrow, don't you? You know the most practical wish you could make? You should wish for that magic carpet back. Then we could really get on."

"It would be just as easy to wish ourselves straight to Kingsbury, intelligent infantryman," Abdullah pointed out-a little sullenly, if the truth be told.

"Ah, yes, but I've got that genie's measure now, and I know he'd mess that wish up if he possibly could," the soldier said. "My point is, you know how to work that carpet, and you could get us there with much less trouble and a wish in hand for emergencies."

This was sound sense. Nevertheless, Abdullah only grunted. This was because the way the soldier put his advice had made Abdullah suddenly see things a whole new way. Of course, the soldier had got the genie's measure. The soldier was like that. He was an expert in getting other people to do what he wanted. The only creature that could make the soldier do something he did not want was Midnight, and Midnight did things she did not want only when Whippersnapper wanted something. That put the kitten right at the top of the pecking order. A kitten! thought Abdullah. And since the soldier had the genie's measure, and the genie was very definitely on top of Abdullah, that put Abdullah right down at the bottom. No 109.

wonder he had been feeling so put-upon! It did not make him feel any better to realize that things had been exactly the same way with his father's first wife's relations.

So Abdullah only grunted, which in Zanzib would have counted as shocking rudeness, but the soldier was quite unaware of it. He pointed cheerfully at the sky. "Lovely sunset again. Look, there's another castle."

The soldier was right. There was a glory of yellow lakes in the sky, and islands and promontories, and one long indigo headland of cloud with a frowning square cloud like a fortress on it. "It is not the same as theother castle," Abdullah said. He felt it was time he a.s.serted himself.

"Of course not. You never get the same cloud twice," said the soldier.

Abdullah contrived to be the first one awake the next morning. Dawn was still flaring across the sky when he sprang up, seized the genie bottle, and took it some distance away from the ruins where their camp was.

"Genie," he said. "Appear."

A flutter of steam appeared at the mouth of the bottle, grudging and ghostly. "What's this?" it said. "Where's all the talk about jewels and flowers and so forth?"