Castle in the Air

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “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.

  “A great sacrifice, but a wise one, I think, my friend,” Abdullah murmured. He sawed the pigtail off and hid it in the golden weathercock. This made quite a transformation. The soldier now looked like a bushy-headed prosperous farmer. Abdullah hoped he would pass for the farmer’s young brother himself.

  While they were doing this, the two servants finished cleaning the carriage and began pushing it into the coach house. As they passed under the roof where the carpet was, one of them asked, “And what do you think of this story that someone’s trying to steal the Princess?”

  “Well, I think it’s true,” the other one said, “if that’s what you’re asking. They say the Royal Wizard risked a lot to send a warning, poor fellow, and he’s not the kind to take a risk for nothing.”

  The soldier’s eyes met Abdullah’s again. His mouth formed a hearty curse.

  “Never mind,” Abdullah murmured. “There are other ways to earn a reward.”

  They waited until the servants had gone back across the yard and into the inn. Then Abdullah requested the carpet to land in the yard. It glided obediently down. Abdullah picked the carpet up and wrapped the genie bottle inside it, while the soldier carried his pack and both cats. They went in
to the inn trying hard to look dull and respectable.

  The landlord met them there. Warned by what the servants had said, Abdullah met the landlord with a gold piece casually between his finger and thumb. The landlord looked at that. His flinty eyes stared at the gold piece so fixedly that Abdullah doubted if he even saw their faces. Abdullah was extremely polite. So was the landlord. He showed them to a nice spacious room on the second floor. He agreed to send up supper and provide baths.

  “And the cats will need—” the soldier began.

  Abdullah kicked the soldier’s ankle, hard. “And that will be all, O lion among landlords,” he said. “Although, most helpful of hosts, if your active and vigilant staff could provide a basket, a cushion, and a dish of salmon, the powerful witch to whom we are to deliver tomorrow this pair of exceptionally gifted cats will undoubtedly reward whoever brings these things most bountifully.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, sir,” the landlord said. Abdullah carelessly tossed him the gold piece. The man bowed deeply and backed out of the room, leaving Abdullah feeling decidedly pleased with himself.

  “There’s no need to look so smug!” the soldier said angrily. “What are we supposed to do now? I’m a wanted man here, and the King seems to know all about the djinn.”

  It was a pleasant feeling to Abdullah to find that he was in command of events instead of the soldier. “Ah, but does the King know that there is a castle full of stolen princesses hovering overhead to receive his daughter?” he said. “You are forgetting, my friend, that the King cannot have had the advantage of speaking personally to the djinn. We might make use of this fact.”

  “How?” demanded the soldier. “Can you think of a way to stop that djinn stealing the child? Or a way to get to the castle, for that matter!”

  “No, but it seems to me that a wizard might know these things,” said Abdullah. “I think we should modify the idea you had earlier. Instead of finding one of this King’s wizards and strangling him, we might inquire which wizard is the best and pay him a fee for his help.”

  “All right, but you’ll have to do that,” said the soldier. “Any wizard worth his salt would spot me for a Strangian at once and call the constables before I could move.”

  The landlord brought the food for the cats himself. He hurried in with a bowl of cream, a carefully boned salmon, and a dish of whitebait. He was followed by his wife, a woman as flinty-eyed as himself, carrying a soft rush basket and an embroidered cushion. Abdullah tried not to look smug again. “Generous thanks, most illustrious of innkeepers,” he said. “I will tell the witch of your great care.”

  “That’s all right, sir,” the landlady said. “We know how to respect those that use magic, here in Kingsbury.”

  Abdullah went from smug to mortified. He saw he should have pretended to be a wizard himself. He relieved his feelings by saying, “That cushion is stuffed only with peacock feathers, I hope? The witch is most particular.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the landlady. “I know all about that.”

  The soldier coughed. Abdullah gave up. He said grandly, “As well as the cats, my friend and I have been entrusted with a message for a wizard. We would prefer to deliver it to the Royal Wizard, but we heard rumors on the way that he has met with some sort of misfortune.”

  “That’s right,” said the landlord, pushing his wife aside. “One of the Royal Wizards has disappeared, sir, but fortunately there are two. I can direct you to the other one—Royal Wizard Suliman—if you want, sir.” He looked meaningly at Abdullah’s hands.

  Abdullah sighed and fetched out his largest silver piece. That seemed to be the right amount. The landlord gave him very careful directions and took the silver piece, promising baths and supper shortly. The baths, when they came, were hot, and the supper was good. Abdullah was glad. While the soldier was bathing himself and Whippersnapper, Abdullah transferred his wealth from his jacket to his money belt, which made him feel much better. The soldier must have felt better, too. He sat after supper with his feet up on a table, smoking that long clay pipe of his. Cheerfully he untied the bootlace from the neck of the genie bottle and dangled it for Whippersnapper to play with.

  “There’s no doubt about it,” he said. “Money talks in this town. Are you going to talk to the Royal Wizard this evening? The sooner, the better, to my mind.”

  Abdullah agreed. “I wonder what his fee will be,” he said.

  “Big,” said the soldier. “Unless you can work it that you’re doing him a favor by telling him what the djinn said. All the same,” he went on thoughtfully, whisking the bootlace out of Whippersnapper’s pouncing paws, “I reckon you shouldn’t tell him about the genie or the carpet if you can help it. These magical gentlemen love magical items the way this innkeeper loves gold. You don’t want him asking for those for his fee. Why don’t you leave them here when you go? I’ll look after them for you.”

  Abdullah hesitated. It seemed sound sense. Yet he did not trust the soldier.

  “By the way,” said the soldier, “I owe you a gold piece.”

  “You do?” said Abdullah. “Then this is the most surprising news I have had since Flower-in-the-Night told me I was a woman!”

  “That bet of ours,” said the soldier. “The carpet brought the djinn, and he’s even bigger trouble than the genie usually manages. You win. Here.” He tossed a gold piece across the room at Abdullah.

  Abdullah caught it, pocketed it, and laughed. The soldier was honest, after his own fashion. Full of thoughts of being soon on the trail of Flower-in-the-Night, Abdullah went cheerfully downstairs, where the landlady caught him and told him all over again how to get to Wizard Suliman’s house. Abdullah was so cheerful that he parted with another silver piece almost without a pang.

  The house was not far from the inn, but it was in the Old Quarter, which meant that the way was mostly through confusing small alleys and hidden courts. It was twilight now, with one or two large liquid stars already in the dark blue sky above the domes and towers, but Kingsbury was well lit by big silver globes of light, floating overhead like moons.

  Abdullah was looking up at them, wondering if they were magical devices, when he happened to notice a black four-legged shadow stealing along the roofs beside him. It could have been any black cat out for a hunt on the tiles, but Abdullah knew it was Midnight. There was no mistaking the way she moved. At first, when she vanished into the deep black shadow of a gable, he supposed she was after a roosting pigeon to make another unsuitable meal for Whippersnapper. But she reappeared again when he was halfway down the next alley, creeping along a parapet above him, and he began to think she was following him. When he went through a narrow court with trees in tubs down the center and he saw her jump across the sky, from one gutter to another, in order to get into that court, too, he knew she was certainly following him. He had no idea why. He kept an eye out for her as he went down the next two alleys, but he saw her only once, on an arch over a doorway. When he turned into the cobbled court where the Royal Wizard’s house was, there was no sign of her. Abdullah shrugged and went to the door of the house.

  It was a handsome narrow house with diamond-paned windows and interwoven magic signs painted on its old irregular walls. There were tall spires of yellow flame burning in brass stands on either side of the front door. Abdullah seized the knocker, which was a leering face with a ring in its mouth, and boldly knocked.

  The door was opened by a manservant with a long, dour face. “I’m afraid the wizard is extremely busy, sir,” he said. “He is receiving no clients until further notice.” And he started to shut the door.

  “No wait, faithful footman and loveliest of lackeys!” Abdullah protested. “What I have to say concerns no less than a threat to the King’s daughter!”

  “The wizard knows all about that, sir,” said the man, and went on shutting the door.

  Abdullah deftly put his foot in the space. “You must hear me, most sapient servant,” he began. “I come—”

  Behind the manservant a yo
ung woman’s voice said, “Just a moment, Manfred, I know this is important.” The door swung open again.

  Abdullah gaped as the servant vanished from the doorway and reappeared some way back in the hall inside. His place at the door was taken by an extremely lovely young woman with dark curls and a vivid face. Abdullah saw enough of her in one glance to realize that in her foreign northern way, she was as beautiful as Flower-in-the-Night, but after that he felt bound to look modestly away from her. She was very obviously going to have a baby. Ladies in Zanzib did not show themselves in this interesting condition. Abdullah scarcely knew where to look.

  “I’m the wizard’s wife, Lettie Suliman,” this young woman said. “What did you come about?”

  Abdullah bowed. It helped to keep his eyes on the doorstep. “O fruitful moon of lovely Kingsbury,” he said, “know that I am Abdullah, son of Abdullah, carpet merchant from distant Zanzib, with news that your husband will wish to hear. Tell him, O splendor of a sorcerous house, that this morning I spoke with the mighty djinn Hasruel concerning the King’s most precious daughter.”