Howl's Moving Castle (58 page)

“By the way,” Hasruel murmured to Abdullah, “your father’s first wife’s relatives made a pact with the mercenaries,
which
allowed them to flee from Zanzib to escape the Sultan’s wrath, but they left the two nieces behind. The Sultan has locked the unfortunate girls up, they being the nearest of your family he could find.”

“Most shocking,” Abdullah said. He saw what Hasruel was driving at. “Perhaps, mighty djinn, you might celebrate your return to goodness by fetching the two damsels here?”

Hasruel’s hideous face brightened. He raised his great clawed hand. There was a clap of thunder, followed by some girlish squealing, and the two fat nieces stood before the throne. It was as simple as that. Abdullah saw that Hasruel had indeed been holding back his strength before. Looking into the djinn’s great slanting eyes—which still had tears in the corners from the dog’s attack—he saw that Hasruel knew he knew.

“Not
more
princesses!” Princess Beatrice said. She was kneeling by Valeria, looking rather harassed.

“Nothing of the sort, I assure you,” said Abdullah.

The two nieces could hardly have looked less like princesses. They were in their oldest clothes, practical pink and workaday yellow, torn and stained from their experiences, and the hair of both had come unfrizzed. They took one look at Dalzel stamping and weeping above them on the throne, another look at the huge shape of Hasruel, and then a third look at Abdullah wearing nothing but a loincloth, and they screamed. Then each tried to hide her face in the other’s plump shoulder.

“Poor girls,” stated the Princess of High Norland.
“Hardly royal behavior.”

“Dalzel!”
Abdullah shouted up at the sobbing djinn. “Beauteous Dalzel, poacher of princesses, be peaceful a moment and look upon the gift I have given you to take with you into exile.”

Dalzel stopped in mid-sob.
“Gift?”

Abdullah pointed. “Behold two brides, young and succulent and sorely in need of a bridegroom.”

Dalzel wiped luminous tears from his cheeks and surveyed the nieces in much the same way that Abdullah’s cannier customers used to inspect his carpets. “A matching pair!” he said. “And wonderfully fat! Where’s the catch? Are they perhaps not yours to give away?”

“No catch, shining djinn,” said Abdullah. It seemed to him that, now the girls’ other relatives had deserted
them,
they were surely his to dispose of. But to be on the safe side, he added, “They are yours for the stealing, mighty Dalzel.” He went up to the nieces and patted each on her plump arm. “Ladies,” he said. “Fullest moons of Zanzib, pray forgive me that unfortunate vow which prevents me forever from enjoying your largeness. Look up instead and behold the husband I have found you in my place.”

The heads of both nieces came up as soon as they heard the word
husband
. They gazed at Dalzel. “He’s ever so handsome,” said the pink one.

“I like them with wings,” said the yellow one. “It’s different.”

“Fangs are rather sexy,”
mused
the pink one. “So are claws, provided he’s careful with them on the carpets.”

Dalzel beamed wider with each remark. “I shall steal these at once,” he said. “I like them better than princesses. Why didn’t I collect fat ladies instead, Hasruel?”

A fond smile bared Hasruel’s fangs. “It was your decision, brother.” His smile faded. “If you are quite ready, it is my duty to send you into exile now.”

“I don’t mind so much now,” Dalzel said, with his eyes still on the two nieces.

Hasruel stretched out his hand again, slowly, regretfully, and slowly, in three long rolls of thunder, Dalzel and the two nieces faded out of sight. There was a slight smell of the sea and a faint noise of sea gulls. Both Morgan and Valeria started crying again. Everyone else sighed, Hasruel deepest of all. Abdullah realized with some surprise that Hasruel truly loved his brother. Although it was hard to understand how anyone could love Dalzel, Abdullah could hardly blame him. Who am I to criticize?
he
thought, as Flower-in-the-Night came up and put her arm through his.

Hasruel heaved up an even heavier sigh and sat down on the throne, which fitted his size far better than Dalzel’s, with his great wings drooping sadly to either side. “There is other business,” he said, touching his nose gingerly. It seemed to be healing already.

“Yes, there certainly
is
!” said Sophie. She had been waiting on the throne steps for her chance to speak. “When you stole our moving castle, you
disappeared
my husband, Howl. Where is he? I want him back.”

Hasruel raised his head sadly, but before he could reply, there were alarmed noises from the princesses. Everyone at the bottom of the steps retreated from the Paragon’s petticoat. It was bulging and bellying up and down on its hoops like a concertina. “Help!” cried the genie inside. “Let me out! You promised!”

Flower-in-the-Night’s hand leaped to her mouth. “Oh! I clean forgot!” she said, and darted away from Abdullah, down the steps. She threw aside the petticoat in a roll of purple smoke. “I wish,” she cried out, “that you be released from your bottle, genie, and be free forevermore!”

As usual the genie did not waste time in thanks. The bottle burst with a resounding smack. Inside the rolls of smoke a decidedly more solid figure climbed to its feet. Sophie gave a scream at the sight. “Oh, bless the girl! Thank you,
thank you
!” She arrived in the vanishing smoke so fast that she nearly knocked the solid man there over. He did not seem to mind. He picked Sophie up and swung her around and around. “Oh, why didn’t I
know
? Why didn’t I
realize
?” Sophie panted, staggering about on broken glass.

“Because that was the enchantment,” Hasruel said gloomily. “If he was known to be Wizard Howl, someone would have released him. You could not know who he was, nor could he tell anyone.”

The Royal Wizard Howl was a younger man than Wizard Suliman, and a good deal more elegant. He was richly dressed in a suit of mauve satin, against which his hair showed a rather improbable shade of yellow. Abdullah stared at the wizard’s light eyes in the wizard’s bony face. He had seen those eyes clearly, one early morning. He felt he should have guessed. He felt himself altogether in an awkward position. He had used the genie. He felt he knew the genie very well. Did that mean he also knew the wizard?
Or not?

For this reason, Abdullah did not join in when everyone, including the soldier, gathered around Wizard Howl, exclaiming and congratulating him. He watched the tiny Princess of Tsapfan walk quietly among the exclaiming crowd and gravely put Morgan into Howl’s arms.

“Thanks,” said Howl. “I thought I’d better bring him along where I could keep an eye on him,” he explained to Sophie. “Sorry if I gave you a fright.” Howl seemed more used to holding babies than Sophie was. He rocked Morgan soothingly and stared at him. Morgan stared, rather balefully, back. “My word, he’s ugly!” Howl said. “Chip off the old block.”

“
Howl
!” said Sophie. But she did not sound angry.

“One moment,” said Howl. He advanced to the steps of the throne and looked up at Hasruel. “Look here, djinn,” he said, “I’ve a bone to pick with you. What do you mean by pinching my castle and shutting me up in a bottle?”

Hasruel’s eyes lit to an angry orange. “Wizard, do you imagine your power is equal to mine?”

“No,” said Howl. “I just want an explanation.” Abdullah found himself admiring the man. Knowing what a coward the genie had been, he had no doubt that
Howl
was a jelly of terror inside. But he showed no sign of it. He hoisted Morgan over his mauve silk shoulder and glared back at Hasruel.

“Very well,” said Hasruel. “My brother ordered me to steal the castle. In this I had no choice. But Dalzel gave no orders concerning you, except that I ensure you could not steal the castle back again. Had you been a blameless man, I would simply have transported you to the island where my brother is now. But I knew you had been using your wizardry to conquer a neighboring country—”

“That’s not fair!” said Howl. “The King
ordered
me!” He sounded for a moment just like Dalzel, and he must have realized that he did. He stopped. He thought. Then he said ruefully, “I daresay I could have redirected His Majesty’s mind if it had occurred to me. You’re right. But don’t ever let me catch you where I can put
you
in a bottle, that’s all.”

“That I might deserve,” Hasruel agreed. “And I deserve it the more as I took pains to let everyone involved meet with the most fitting fate I could devise.” His eyes slanted toward Abdullah. “Did I not?”

“Most painfully, great djinn,” Abdullah agreed. “
All
my dreams came true, not only the pleasant ones.”

Hasruel nodded. “And now,” he said, “I must leave you when I have performed one
more small
, needful act.” His wings rose, and his hands gestured. Instantly he was in the midst of a swarm of strange winged shapes. They hovered over his head and around the throne like transparent sea horses, completely silent except for the faint whisper of their whirling wings.

“His angels,” Princess Beatrice explained to Princess Valeria.

Hasruel whispered to the winged shapes, and they departed from him as suddenly as they had appeared, to reappear in the same swarm, whispering around Jamal’s head. Jamal backed away from them, horrified, but it did no good. The swarm followed him. One after another, the winged shapes went to perch on different parts of Jamal’s dog. As each landed, it shrank and disappeared among the hairs of the dog’s coat, until only two were left.

Abdullah suddenly found these two shapes hovering level with his eyes. He ducked, but the shapes followed. Two small, cold voices spoke, in a way that seemed for his ears alone. “After long thought,”
they
said, “we find we prefer this shape to that of toads. We think in the light of eternity, and we therefore thank you.” So saying, the two shapes darted away to perch on Jamal’s dog, where they, too, shrank and disappeared into the gnarled skin of its ears.

Jamal stared at the dog in his arms. “Why am I holding a dog full of angels?” he asked Hasruel.

“They will not harm you or your beast,” said Hasruel. “They will simply wait for the gold ring to reappear. Tomorrow, I believe you said? You must see that I am naturally anxious to keep track of my life. When my angels find it, they will bring it to me wherever I am.” He sighed, heavily enough to stir everyone’s hair. “And I do not know where I shall be,” he said. “I shall have to find some place of exile in the far deeps. I have been wicked. I cannot again join the ranks of the Good Djinns.”

“Oh, come now, great djinn!” said Flower-in-the-Night. “It was taught to me that goodness is forgiveness. Surely the Good Djinns will welcome you back?”

Hasruel shook his great head. “Intelligent Princess, you do not understand.”

Abdullah found that he understood Hasruel very well. Perhaps his understanding had something to do with the way he had been less than polite to his father’s first wife’s relatives. “Hush, love,” he said. “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 are you
?”

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 to the 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.