Castle in the Air Read online

  Up till then he had thought he had imagined his escape from the villainous Kabul Aqba in masterly detail, but now he knew he had never even conceived of how horrible it was to stagger in blaring heat, with sweat running into his eyes. He had not imagined the way the sand somehow got into everything, including his mouth. Nor had his daydream allowed for the difficulty of steering by the sun when the sun was right overhead. The tiny puddle of shadow around his feet gave him no guide to direction. He had to keep looking behind to check that his line of footprints was straight. This worried him because it wasted time.

  In the end, wasted time or not, he was forced to stop and rest, squatting in a dip in the sands where there was a small piece of shade. He still felt like a piece of meat laid out on Jamal’s charcoal grill. He soaked the napkin in wine and spread it over his head and then watched it drip red blobs on his best clothes. The only thing that convinced him he was not going to die was that prophecy about Flower-in-the-Night. If Fate had decreed that she was to marry him, then he had to survive because he had not yet married her. After that he thought of the prophecy about himself, written down by his father.

  It could have more than one meaning. In fact, it could already have come true, for had he not risen above everyone in the land by flying on the magic carpet? Or perhaps it did refer to a forty-foot stake.

  This notion forced Abdullah to get up and walk again.

  The afternoon was worse still. Abdullah was young and fit, but the life of a carpet merchant does not include long walks. He ached from his heels to the top of his head—not forgetting his toes, which seemed to have worn raw. In addition, one of his boots turned out to rub where the money pocket was. His legs were so tired he could hardly move them. But he knew he had to put the horizon between himself and the oasis before the bandits started looking for him or the line of fleet camels appeared. Since he was not sure how far it was to the horizon, he slogged on.

  By evening all that kept him going was the knowledge that he would be seeing Flower-in-the-Night tomorrow. That was to be his next wish to the genie. Apart from that, he vowed to give up drinking wine and swore never to look at a grain of sand again.

  When night fell, he toppled into a sandbank and slept.

  At dawn his teeth were chattering and he was anxiously wondering about frostbite. The desert was as cold by night as it was hot by day. Still, Abdullah knew his troubles were almost over. He sat on the warmer side of the sandbank, looking east into the golden flush of dawn, and refreshed himself with the last of his food and a final swig of the hateful wine. His teeth stopped chattering, though his mouth tasted as if it belonged to Jamal’s dog.

  Now. Smiling in anticipation, Abdullah eased the cork out of the genie’s bottle.

  Out gushed the mauve smoke and rolled upward into the genie’s unfriendly form. “What are you grinning about?” asked the windy voice.

  “My wish, O amethyst among genies, of color more beautiful than pansies…” Abdullah replied. “May violets scent your breath. I wish you to transport me to the side of my bride-to-be, Flower-in-the-Night.”

  “Oh, do you?” The genie folded his smoky arms and turned himself to look in all directions. This, to Abdullah’s fascination, turned the part of him that was joined to the bottle into a neat corkscrew shape. “Where is this young woman?” the genie said irritably when he was facing Abdullah again. “I can’t seem to locate her.”

  “She was carried off by a djinn from her night garden in the Sultan’s palace in Zanzib,” Abdullah explained.

  “That accounts for it,” said the genie. “I can’t grant your wish. She’s nowhere on earth.”

  “Then she must be in the realm of the djinns,” Abdullah said anxiously. “Surely you, O purple prince among genies, must know that realm like the back of your hand.”

  “That shows how little you know,” the genie said. “A genie confined to a bottle is debarred from any of the spirit realms. If that’s where your girl is, I can’t take you there. I advise you to put the cork back in my bottle and be on your way. There’s quite a large troop of camels coming up from the south.”

  Abdullah sprang to the top of the sandbank. Sure enough, there was the line of fleet camels he had been dreading, speeding toward him with smooth waltzing strides. Though distance made them visible only as indigo shadows just then, he could tell from the outlines that the riders were armed to the teeth.

  “See?” said the genie, bellying upward to the same height as Abdullah. “They might miss finding you, but I doubt it.” The idea clearly gave him pleasure.

  “You must grant me a different wish, quickly,” said Abdullah. “Oh, no,” said the genie. “One wish a day. You’ve already made one.”

  “Certainly I did, O splendor of lilac vapors,” Abdullah agreed with the speed of desperation, “but that was a wish you were unable to grant. And the terms, as I clearly heard when you first stated them, were that you were forced to grant your owner one wish a day. This you have not yet done.”

  “Heaven preserve me!” the genie said disgustedly. “The young man is a coffee shop lawyer.”

  “Naturally I am!” said Abdullah with some heat. “I am a citizen of Zanzib, where every child learns to guard its rights, for it is certain that no one else will guard them. And I claim you have not yet granted me a wish today.”

  “A quibble,” the genie said, swaying gracefully opposite him with folded arms. “One wish has been made.”

  “But not granted,” said Abdullah.

  “It is not my fault if you choose to ask for things which are impossible,” said the genie. “There are a million beautiful girls I can take you to, instead. You can have a mermaid if you fancy green hair. Or can’t you swim?”

  The speeding line of camels was now a good deal nearer. Abdullah said hurriedly, “Think, O puce pearl of magic, and soften your heart. Those soldiers approaching us will certainly seize your bottle from me when they reach us. If they take you back to the Sultan, he will force you to do mighty deeds daily, bringing him armies and weapons and conquering his enemies for him, most exhaustingly. If they keep you for themselves—and they might, for not all soldiers are quite honest— you will be passed from hand to hand and be made to grant many wishes each day, one for each of the squad. In either case, you will be working far harder than you will work for me, who want only one small thing.”

  “What eloquence!” said the genie. “Though you have a point. But have you thought, on the other hand, what opportunities the Sultan or his soldiers will give me to work havoc?”

  “Havoc?” asked Abdullah, with his eyes anxiously on the speeding camels.

  “I never said my wishes were supposed to do anyone any good,” said the genie. “In fact, I swore that they would always do as much harm as possible. Those bandits, for instance, are now all on their way to prison or worse, for stealing the Sultan’s feast. The soldiers found them late last night.”

  “You are causing worse havoc with me for not granting me a wish!” said Abdullah. “And unlike the bandits, I do not deserve it.”

  “Regard yourself as unlucky,” said the genie. “This will make two of us. I don’t deserve to be shut in this bottle, either.”

  The riders were now near enough to see Abdullah. He could hear shouts in the distance and see weapons being unslung. “Give me tomorrow’s wish, then,” he said urgently.

  “That might be the solution,” the genie agreed, rather to Abdullah’s surprise. “What wish then?”

  “Transport me to the nearest person who can help me find Flower-in-the-Night,” said Abdullah, and he bounded down the sandbank and picked the bottle up. “Quickly,” he added to the genie, now billowing above him.

  The genie seemed a little puzzled. “This is odd,” he said. “My powers of divination are usually excellent, but I can’t make head or tail of this.”

  A bullet plowed into the sand not too far away. Abdullah ran, carrying the genie like a vast streaming mauve candle flame. “Just take me to that person!” he screamed.


  “I suppose I’d better,” said the genie. “Maybe you can make some sense out of it.”

  The earth seemed to spin past under Abdullah’s running feet. Shortly he seemed to be taking vast loping strides across lands that were whirling forward to meet him. Though the combined speed of his own feet and the turning world made everything into a blur, except for the genie streaming placidly out of the bottle in his hand, Abdullah knew that the speeding camels were left behind in instants. He smiled and loped on, almost as placid as the genie, rejoicing in the cool wind. He seemed to lope for a long time. Then it all stopped.

  Abdullah stood in the middle of a country road, getting his breath. This new place took a certain amount of getting used to. It was cool, only as warm as Zanzib in springtime, and the light was different. Though the sun was shining brightly from a blue sky, it put out a light that was lower and bluer than Abdullah was used to. This may have been because there were so many very leafy trees lining the road and casting shifting green shade over everything. Or it may have been due to the green, green grass growing on the verges. Abdullah let his eyes adjust and then looked around for the person who was supposed to help him find Flower-in-the-Night.

  All he could see was what seemed to be an inn on a bend in the road, set back among the trees. It struck Abdullah as a wretched place. It was made of wood and white-painted plaster, like the poorest of poor dwellings in Zanzib, and its owners only seemed able to afford a roof made of tightly packed grass. Someone had tried to beautify the place by planting red and yellow flowers by the road. The inn sign, which was swinging on a post planted among the flowers, was a bad artist’s effort to paint a lion.

  Abdullah looked down at the genie’s bottle, intending to put the cork back into it now he had arrived. He was annoyed to find he seemed to have dropped the cork, either in the desert or on the journey. Oh, well, he thought. He held the bottle up to his face. “Where is the person who can help me find Flower-in-the-Night?” he asked.

  A wisp of steam smoked from the bottle, looking much bluer in the light of this strange land. “Asleep on a bench in front of the Red Lion,” the wisp said irritably, and withdrew back into the bottle. The genie’s hollow voice came from inside it. “He appeals to me. He shines with dishonesty.”

  Chapter 9

  In which Abdullah encounters an old soldier.

  Abdullah walked toward the inn. When he got closer, he saw that there was indeed a man dozing on one of the wooden settles that had been placed outside the inn. There were tables there, too, suggesting that the place also served food. Abdullah slid into a settle behind one of the tables and looked dubiously across at the sleeping man.

  He looked like an outright ruffian. Even in Zanzib, or among the bandits, Abdullah had never seen such dishonest lines as there were on this man’s tanned face. A big pack on the ground beside him made Abdullah think at first that he might be a tinker—except that he was clean-shaven. The only other men Abdullah had seen without beards or mustaches were the Sultan’s northern mercenaries. It was possible this man was a mercenary soldier. His clothes did look like the broken-down remains of some kind of uniform, and he wore his hair in a single pigtail down his back in the way the Sultan’s men did. This was a fashion the men of Zanzib found quite disgusting, for it was rumored that the pigtail was never undone or washed. Looking at this man’s pigtail, draped over the back of the settle where he slept, Abdullah could believe this. Neither it nor anything else about the man was clean. All the same, he looked strong and healthy, although he was not young. His hair under its dirt seemed to be iron gray.

  Abdullah hesitated to wake the fellow. He did not look trustworthy. And the genie had openly admitted that he granted wishes in a way that would cause havoc. This man may lead me to Flower-in-the-Night, Abdullah mused, but he will certainly rob me on the way.

  While he hesitated, a woman in an apron came to the inn doorway, perhaps to see if there were customers outside. Her clothes made her into a plump hourglass shape which Abdullah found very foreign and displeasing. “Oh!” she said, when she saw Abdullah. “Were you waiting to be served, sir? You should have banged on the table. That’s what they all do around here. What’ll you have?”

  She spoke in the same barbarous accent as the northern mercenaries. From it Abdullah concluded that he was now in whatever country those men came from. He smiled at her. “What are you offering, O jewel of the wayside?” he asked her.

  Evidently no one had ever called the woman a jewel before. She blushed and simpered and twisted her apron. “Well, there’s bread and cheese now,” she said. “But dinner’s doing. If you care to wait half an hour, sir, you can have a good game pie with vegetables from our kitchen garden.”

  Abdullah thought this sounded perfect, far better than he would have expected from any inn with a grass roof. “Then I would most gladly wait half an hour, O flower among hostesses,” he said.

  She gave him another simper. “And perhaps a drink while you wait, sir?”

  “Certainly,” said Abdullah, who was still very thirsty from the desert. “Could I trouble you for a glass of sherbet—or, failing that, the juice of any fruit?”

  She looked worried. “Oh, sir, I—we don’t go in much for fruit juice, and I never heard of the other stuff. How about a nice mug of beer?”

  “What is beer?” Abdullah asked cautiously.

  This flummoxed the woman. “I—well, I—it’s, er—”

  The man on the other bench roused himself and yawned. “Beer is the only proper drink for a man,” he said. “Wonderful stuff.” Abdullah turned to look at him again. He found himself staring into a pair of round limpid blue eyes, as honest as the day is long. There was not a trace of dishonesty in the brown face now it was awake. “Brewed from barley and hops,” added the man. “While you’re here, landlady, I’ll have a pint of it myself.”

  The landlady’s expression changed completely. “I’ve told you already,” she said, “that I want to see the color of your money before I serve you with anything.”

  The man was not offended. His blue eyes met Abdullah’s ruefully. Then he sighed and picked up a long white clay pipe from the settle beside him, which he proceeded to fill and light.

  “Shall it be beer then, sir?” the landlady said, returning to her simper for Abdullah.

  “If you would, lady of lavish hospitality,” he said. “Bring me some, and also bring a fitting quantity for this gentleman here.”

  “Very well, sir,” she said, and with a strongly disapproving look at the pigtailed man, she went back indoors.

  “I call that very kind of you,” the man said to Abdullah. “Come far, have you?”

  “A fair way from the south, worshipful wanderer,” Abdullah answered cautiously. He had not forgotten how dishonest the fellow had looked in his sleep.

  “From foreign parts, eh? I thought you must be, to get a sunburn like that,” the man observed. Abdullah was fairly sure the fellow was fishing for information, to see if he was worth robbing. He was therefore quite surprised when the man seemed to give up asking questions. “I’m not from these parts either, you know,” he said, puffing large clouds of smoke from his barbarous pipe. “I’m from Strangia myself. Old soldier. Turned loose on the world with a bounty after Ingary beat us in the war. As you saw, there’s still a lot of prejudice here in Ingary about this uniform of mine.”

  He said this into the face of the landlady as she came back with two glasses of frothing brownish liquid. She did not speak to him. She just banged one glass down in front of him before she put the other carefully and politely in front of Abdullah. “Dinner in half an hour, sir,” she said as she went away.

  “Cheers,” said the soldier, lifting his glass. He drank deeply.

  Abdullah was grateful to this old soldier. Thanks to him, he now knew he was in a country called Ingary. So he said, “Cheers,” in return as he dubiously lifted his own glass. It seemed to him likely that the stuff in it had come from the bladder of a camel. When he sniffe
d it, the smell did nothing to dispel that impression. Only the fact that he was still horribly thirsty led him to try it at all. He took a careful mouthful. Well, it was wet.

  “Wonderful, isn’t it?” said the old soldier.

  “It is most interesting, O captain of warriors,” Abdullah said, trying not to shudder.

  “Funny you should call me captain,” said the soldier. “I wasn’t, of course. Never made it higher than corporal. Saw a lot of fighting, though, and I did have hopes of promotion, but the enemy were all over us before I got my chance. Terrible battle it was, you know. We were still on the march. No one expected the enemy to get there so soon. I mean, it’s all over now, and there’s no point in crying over spilled milk; but I’ll tell you straight the Ingarians didn’t fight fair. Had a couple of wizards making sure they won. I mean, what can an ordinary soldier like me do against magic? Nothing. Like me to show you a plan of how the battle went?”