Castle in the Air

by Diana Wynne Jones

  There was another huge red sunset. While they ate supper, the soldier pointed it out to Abdullah and drew his attention to a large red castle-shaped cloud. “Isn’t that beautiful?” he said.

  “It is only a cloud,” said Abdullah. “It has no artistic merit.”

  “Friend,” said the soldier, “I think you are letting that genie get to you.”

  “How so?” said Abdullah.

  The soldier pointed with his spoon to the distant dark hummock against the sunset. “See there?” he said. “Kingsbury. Now, I have a hunch, and I think you do, too, that things are going to start moving when we get there. But we don’t seem to get there. Don’t think I can’t see your point of view: You’re a young fellow, disappointed in love, impatient; naturally you think Fate’s against you. Take it from me, Fate doesn’t care either way most of the time. The genie’s not on anyone’s side any more than Fate is.”

  “How do you make that out?” asked Abdullah.

  “Because he hates everyone,” said the soldier. “Maybe it’s his nature—though I daresay being shut in a bottle doesn’t help any. But don’t forget that whatever his feelings, he’s always got to grant you a wish. Why make it hard for yourself just to spite the genie? Why not make the most useful wish you can, get what you want out of it, and put up with whatever he does to send it wrong? I’ve been thinking this through, and it seems to me that whatever that genie does to send it wrong, your best wish is still to ask for that magic carpet back.”

  While the soldier was speaking, Midnight—to Abdullah’s great surprise—climbed to Abdullah’s knees and rubbed herself against his face, purring. Abdullah had to admit he was flattered. He had been letting Midnight get to him as well as the genie and the soldier—not to speak of Fate. “If I wish for the carpet,” he said, “I am prepared to bet that the misfortunes the genie sends with it will far outweigh its usefulness.”

  “You bet, do you?” said the soldier, “I never resist a bet. Bet you a gold piece the carpet will be more use than trouble.”

  “Done,” said Abdullah. “And now you have your own way again. It perplexes me, my friend, that you never rose to command that army of yours.”

  “Me, too,” said the soldier. “I’d have made a good general.”

  Next morning they woke into a thick mist. Everywhere was white and wet, and it was impossible to see beyond the nearest bushes. Midnight coiled against Abdullah, shivering. The genie’s bottle, when Abdullah put it down in front of them, had a distinctly sulky look.

  “Come out,” said Abdullah. “I need to make a wish.”

  “I can grant it quite as well from in here,” the genie retorted hollowly. “I don’t like this damp.”

  “Very well,” said Abdullah. “I wish for my magic carpet back again.”

  “Done,” said the genie. “And let that teach you to make silly bets!”

  For a while Abdullah looked up and around expectantly, but nothing seemed to happen. Then Midnight sprang to her feet. Whippersnapper’s face came out of the soldier’s pack, ears cocked sideways to the south. When Abdullah gazed that way, he thought he could just hear a slight whispering, which could have been the wind or something moving through the mist. Shortly the mist swirled—and swirled harder. The gray oblong of the carpet slid into sight overhead and glided to the ground beside Abdullah.

  It had a passenger. Curled up on the carpet, peacefully asleep, was a villainous man with a large mustache. His beak of a nose was pressed into the carpet, but Abdullah could just see the gold ring in it, half hidden by the mustache and a dirty drape of headcloth. One of the man’s hands clutched a silver-mounted pistol. There was no question that this was Kabul Aqba again.

  “I think I win the bet,” Abdullah murmured.

  Even that murmur—or maybe the chilliness of the mist—set the bandit stirring and muttering fretfully. The soldier put his finger to his lips and shook his head. Abdullah nodded. If he had been on his own, he would have been wondering what on earth to do now, but with the soldier there he felt almost equal to Kabul Aqba. As quietly as he could, he made a gentle snoring noise and whispered to the carpet, “Come out from underneath that man and hover in front of me.”

  Ripples ran down the edge of the carpet. Abdullah could see it was trying to obey. It gave a strong wriggle, but Kabul Aqba’s weight was evidently just too much to allow it to slide out from under him. So it tried another way. It rose an inch into the air, and before Abdullah realized what it intended to do, it had darted out from under the sleeping bandit.

  “No!”said Abdullah, but he said it too late. Kabul Aqba thumped down on to the ground and woke. He sat up, waving his pistol and howling in a strange language.

  In an alert, leisurely sort of way, the soldier picked up the hovering carpet and wrapped it around Kabul Aqba’s head. “Get his pistol,” he said, holding the struggling bandit in both brawny arms.

  Abdullah plunged to one knee and grasped the strong hand waving the pistol. It was a very strong hand. Abdullah could do nothing about taking the pistol away. He could only hang on and go crashing to and fro as the hand tried to shake him off. Beside him the soldier was also crashing to and fro. Kabul Aqba seemed quite amazingly strong. Abdullah, as he was battered about, tried to take hold of one of the bandit’s fingers and uncurl it from around the pistol. But at this Kabul Aqba roared and rose upward, and Abdullah was flung off backward with the carpet somehow wrapped around him instead of around Kabul Aqba. The soldier hung on. He hung on even though Kabul Aqba went on rising upward, roaring now like the sky falling, and the soldier from gripping him around the arms went to gripping him around the waist and then around the top of the legs. Kabul Aqba shouted as if his voice were the thunder itself and rose up bigger yet, until both his legs were too big to hold at once, and the soldier slid down until he was grimly clutching one of them, just below its vast knee. That leg tried to kick the soldier loose and failed. Whereupon Kabul Aqba spread enormous leathery wings and tried to fly away. But the soldier, though he slid downward again, hung on still.

  Abdullah saw all this while he was struggling out from under the carpet. He also caught a glimpse of Midnight standing protectively over Whippersnapper, larger even than she had been when she faced the constables. But not large enough. What stood there now was one of the mightiest of mighty djinns. Half of him was lost upward in the mist, which he was beating into swirling smoke with his wings, unable to fly because the soldier was anchoring one of his enormous taloned feet to the ground.

  “Explain yourself, mightiest of mighty ones!” Abdullah shouted up into the mist. “By the Seven Great Seals, I conjure you to cease your struggling and explain!”

  The djinn stopped roaring and halted the violent fanning of his wings. “You conjure me, do you, mortal?” the great sullen voice came down.

  “I do indeed,” said Abdullah. “Say what you were doing with my carpet and in the form of that most ignoble of nomads. You have wronged me at least twice!”

  “Very well,” said the djinn. He began ponderously to kneel down.

  “You can let go now,” Abdullah said to the soldier, who, not knowing the laws that governed djinns, was still hanging on to the vast foot. “He has to stay and answer me now.”

  Warily the soldier let go and mopped sweat from his face. He did not seem reassured when the djinn simply folded his wings and knelt. This was not surprising, because the djinn was high as a house even kneeling, and the face coming into view through the mist was hideous. Abdullah had another glimpse of Midnight, now normal size again, scurrying for the bushes with Whippersnapper dangling from her mouth. But the face of the djinn took up most of his attention. He had seen that blank brown glare and the gold ring through that hooked nose—albeit briefly—before, when Flower-in-the-Night was carried off from the garden.

  “Correction,” Abdullah said. “You have wronged me three times.”

  “Oh, more than that,” the djinn rumbled blandly. “So many times that I have lost count.”

  At
this Abdullah found himself angrily folding his arms. “Explain.”

  “Willingly,” said the djinn. “I was indeed hoping to be asked by someone, although I had supposed the questions most likely to come from the Duke of Farqtan or the three rival princes of Thayack, rather than from you. But none of the rest has proved determined enough— which surprises me somewhat, because you were certainly never my main irons in the fire, either of you. Know then that I am one of the greatest of the host of Good Djinns, and my name is Hasruel.”

  “I didn’t know there were any good djinns,” said the soldier.

  “Oh, there are, innocent northerner,” Abdullah told him. “I have heard this one’s name spoken in terms that place him nearly as high as the angels.”

  The djinn frowned—an unpleasant sight. “Misinformed merchant,” he rumbled. “I am higher than some angels. Know that some two hundred angels of the lesser air are mine to command. They serve as guards to the entrance of my castle.”

  Abdullah kept his arms folded and tapped with his foot. “This being the case,” he said, “explain why you have seen fit to behave toward me in a manner so far from angelic.”

  “The blame is not mine, mortal,” said the djinn. “Need spurred me on. Understand all, and forgive. Know that my mother, the Great Spirit Dazrah, in a moment of oversight allowed herself to be ravished by a djinn of the Host of Evil some twenty years ago. She then gave birth to my brother Dalzel, who—since Good and Evil do not breed well together—proved weak and white and undersized. My mother could not tolerate Dalzel and gave him to me to bring up. I lavished every care upon him as he grew. So you can imagine my horror and sorrow when he proved to inherit the nature of his Evil sire. His first act, when he came of age, was to steal my life and hide it, thereby making me his slave.”

  “Come again?” said the soldier. “You mean you’re dead?”

  “Not at all,” said Hasruel. “We djinns are not as you mortals, ignorant man. We can die only if one small portion of us is destroyed. For this reason all djinns prudently remove that small part from our persons and hide it. As I did. But when I instructed Dalzel how to hide his own life, I lovingly and rashly told him where my life was hidden. And he instantly took my life into his power, forcing me to do his bidding or die.”

  “Now we come to it,” said Abdullah. “His bidding was to steal Flower-in-the-Night.”

  “Correction,” said Hasruel. “My brother inherits a grandeur of mind from his mother, Great Dazrah. He ordered me to steal every princess in the world. A moment’s thought will show you the sense in this. My brother is of an age to marry, but he is of a birth so mixed that no female among djinns will countenance him. He is forced to resort to mortal women. But since he is a djinn, naturally only those females of the highest blood will serve.”

  “My heart bleeds for your brother,” remarked Abdullah. “Could he not be satisfied with less than all?”

  “Why should he be?” asked Hasruel. “He commands my power now. He gave the matter careful thought. And seeing clearly that his princesses would not be able to walk on air as we djinns do, he first ordered me to steal a certain moving castle belonging to a wizard in this land of Ingary in which to house his brides, and then he ordered me to commence stealing princesses. This I am now engaged in doing. But naturally at the same time I am laying plans of my own. For each princess that I take, I arrange to leave behind at least one injured lover or disappointed prince, who might be persuaded to attempt to rescue her. In order to do this, the lover will have to challenge my brother and wrest from him the secret hiding place of my life.”

  “And is this where I come in, mighty machinator?” Abdullah asked coldly. “I am part of your plans to regain your life, am I?”

  “Just barely,” answered the djinn. “My hopes were more upon the heirs of Alberia or the Prince of Peichstan, but both these young men have thrown themselves into hunting instead. Indeed, all of them have shown remarkable lack of spirit, including the King of High Norland, who is merely attempting to catalog his books on his own, without his daughter’s help, and even he was a likelier chance than you. You were, you might say, an outside bet of mine. The prophecy at your birth was highly ambiguous, after all, I confess to selling you that magic carpet almost purely out of amusement—”

  “You did!” Abdullah exclaimed.

  “Yes—amusement at the number and nature of the daydreams proceeding from your booth,” said Hasruel. Abdullah, despite the cold of the mist, found his face was heating up. “Then,” continued Hasruel, “when you surprised me by escaping from the Sultan of Zanzib, it amused me to take on your character of Kabul Aqba and to force you to live out some of your daydreams. I usually try to make appropriate adventures befall each suitor.”

  Despite his embarrassment, Abdullah could have sworn that the djinn’s great gold-brown eyes slanted toward the soldier here. “And how many disappointed princes have you so far put in motion, O subtle and jesting djinn?” he asked.

  “Very nearly thirty,” Hasruel said, “but as I said, most of them are not in motion at all. This strikes me as strange, for their birth and qualifications are all far better than yours. However, I console myself with the thought that there are still one hundred and thirty-two princesses left to steal.”

  “I think you might have to be satisfied with me,” Abdullah said. “Low as my birth is, Fate seems to want it so. I am in a position to assure you of this, since I have recently challenged Fate on this very point.”

  The djinn smiled—a sight as unpleasant as his frown—and nodded. “This I know,” he said. “This is the reason I have stooped to appear before you. Two of my servant angels returned to me yesterday, having just been hanged in the shape of men. Neither was wholly pleased by this, and both claimed it was your doing.”

  Abdullah bowed. “Doubtless when they consider, they will find it preferable to being immortal toads,” he said. “Now tell me one last thing, O thoughtful thief of princesses. Say where Flower-in-the-Night, not to speak of your brother Dalzel, may be found.”

  The djinn’s smile broadened, making it even more unpleasant, for this revealed a number of extremely long fangs. He pointed upward with a vast spiked thumb. “Why, earthbound adventurer, they are, naturally, in the castle you have been seeing in the sunset these last few days,” he said. “It used, as I said, to belong to a wizard of this land. You will not find it easy to get there, and if you do, you will do well to remember that I am my brother’s slave and forced to act against you.”

  “Understood,” said Abdullah.

  The djinn planted his enormous taloned hands on the ground and began to lever himself up. “I must also observe,” he said, “that the carpet is under orders not to follow me. May I depart now?”

  “No, wait!” cried the soldier. Abdullah, at the same moment, remembered one thing he had forgotten and asked, “And what of the genie?” but the soldier’s voice was louder and drowned Abdullah’s. “WAIT, you monster! Is that castle hanging around in the sky here for any particular reason, monster?”

  Hasruel smiled again and paused, balanced on one huge knee. “How perceptive of you, soldier. Indeed, yes. The castle is here because I am preparing to steal the daughter of the King of Ingary, Princess Valeria.”

  “My princess!” said the soldier.

  Hasruel’s smile became a laugh. He threw back his head and bellowed into the mist. “I doubt it, soldier! Oh, I doubt it! This princess is only four years old. But though she is of little use to you, I trust that you are going to be of great use to me. I regard both you and your friend from Zanzib as well-placed pawns on my chessboard.”

  “How do you mean?” the soldier asked indignantly.

  “Because the two of you are going to help me steal her!” said the djinn, and sprang away upward into the mist in a whirl of wings, laughing hugely.

  Chapter 15

  In which the travelers arrive at Kingsbury.

  “If you ask me,” said the soldier, moodily dumping his pack on the magic carpet,
“that creature is as bad as his brother—if he has a brother, that is.”

  “Oh, he has a brother. Djinns do not lie,” said Abdullah. “But they are always prone to see themselves as superior to mortals, even the good djinns. And Hasruel’s name is on the Lists of the Good.”

  “You could have fooled me!” said the soldier. “Where’s Midnight got to? She must have been frightened to death.” He made such a pother over hunting for Midnight in the bushes that Abdullah did not try to explain any more of the lore concerning djinns, which every child in Zanzib learned at school. Besides, he feared the soldier was right. Hasruel might have taken the Seven Vows that made him one of the Host of the Good, but his brother had given him the perfect excuse to break all seven of them. Good or not. Hasruel was clearly enjoying himself hugely.

  Abdullah picked up the genie bottle and put it on the carpet. It promptly fell on its side and rolled off. “No, no!” the genie cried out from inside. “I’m not going on that! Why do you think I fell off it before? I hate heights!”