Wizard's Castle: Omnibus - Jones Diana Wynne - Страница 64

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They put Abdullah in a deep and smelly dungeon where the only light came through a tiny grating high up in the ceiling—and that light was not daylight. It probably came from a distant window at the end of a passage on the floor above, where the grating was part of the floor.

Knowing that this was what he had to look forward to, Abdullah tried, as the soldiers dragged him away, to fill his eyes and mind with images of light. In the pause while the soldiers were unlocking the outside door to the dungeons, he looked up and around. They were in a dark little courtyard with blank walls of stone standing like cliffs all about it. But if he tipped his head tight back, Abdullah could just see a slender spire in the mid-distance, outlined against the rising gold of morning. It amazed him to see that it was only an hour after dawn. Above the spire the sky was deep blue with just one cloud standing peacefully in it. Morning was still flushing the cloud red and gold, giving it the look of a high-piled castle with golden windows. Golden light caught the wings of a white bird circling the spire. Abdullah was sure this was the last beauty he would ever see in his life. He stared backward at it as the soldiers lugged him inside.

He tried to treasure this image when he was locked in the cold gray dungeon, but it was impossible. The dungeon was another world.

For a long time he was too miserable even to notice how cramped he was in his chains. When he did notice, he shifted and clanked about on the cold floor, but it did not help very much.

“I have to look forward to a lifetime of this,” he told himself. “Unless someone rescues Flower-in-the-Night, of course.” That did not seem likely, since the Sultan refused to believe in the djinn.

After this he tried to stave off despair with his daydream. But somehow, thinking of himself as a prince who had been kidnapped helped not at all. He knew it was untrue, and he kept thinking guiltily that Flower-in-the-Night had believed him when he told her. She must have decided to marry him because she thought he was a prince—being a princess herself, as he now knew. He simply could not imagine himself ever daring to tell her the truth. For a while it seemed to him that he deserved the worst fate the Sultan could invent for him.

Then he began thinking of Flower-in-the-Night herself. Wherever she was, she was certainly at least as scared and miserable as he was himself. Abdullah yearned to comfort her. He wanted to rescue her so much that he spent some time wrenching uselessly at his chains.

“For certainly nobody else is likely to try,” he muttered. “I must get out of here!”

Then, although he was sure it was another notion as silly as his daydream, he tried to summon the magic carpet. He visualized it lying on the floor of his booth, and he called to it, out loud, over and over again. He said all the magic-sounding words he could think of, hoping one of them would be the command word.

Nothing happened. And how silly to think that it would! Abdullah thought. Even if the carpet could hear him from the dungeon, supposing he got the command word right at last, how could even a magic carpet wriggle its way in here through that tiny grating? And suppose it did wriggle in, how would that help Abdullah to get out?

Abdullah gave up and leaned against the wall, half dozing, half despairing. It must now be the heat of the day, when most folk in Zanzib took at least a short rest. Abdullah himself, when he was not visiting one of the public parks, usually sat on a pile of his less good carpets in the shade in front of his stall, drinking fruit juice, or wine if he could afford it, and chatting lazily with Jamal. No longer. And this is just my first day! he thought morbidly. I’m keeping track of the hours now. How long before I lose track even of days?

He shut his eyes. One good thing. A house-to-house search for the Sultan’s daughter would cause at least some annoyance to Fatima, Hakim, and Assif simply because they were known to be the only family Abdullah had. He hoped soldiers turned the purple emporium upside down. He hoped they slit the walls and unrolled all the carpets. He hoped they arrested—

Something landed on the floor beyond Abdullah’s feet.

So they throw me some food, Abdullah thought, and I would rather starve. He opened his eyes lazily. They shot wide of their own accord.

There, on the dungeon floor, lay the magic carpet. Upon it, peacefully sleeping, lay Jamal’s bad-tempered dog.

Abdullah stared at both of them. He could imagine how, in the heat of midday, the dog might lie down in the shade of Abdullah’s booth. He could see that it would lie on the carpet because it was comfortable. But how a dog—a dog! — could chance to say the command word was beyond him to understand entirely. As he stared, the dog began dreaming. Its paws worked. Its snout wrinkled, and it snuffled, as if it had caught the most delicious possible scent, and it uttered a faint whimper, as if whatever it smelled in the dream were escaping from it.

“Is it possible, my friend,” Abdullah said to it, “that you were dreaming of me and of the time I gave you most of my breakfast?”

The dog, in its sleep, heard him. It uttered a loud snore and woke up. Doglike, it wasted no time wondering how it came to be in this strange dungeon. It sniffed and smelled Abdullah. It sprang up with a delighted squeak, planted its paws among the chains on Abdullah’s chest, and enthusiastically licked his face.

Abdullah laughed and rolled his head to keep his nose out of the dog’s squiddy breath. He was quite as delighted as the dog was. “So you were dreaming of me!” he said. “My friend, I shall arrange for you to have a bowl of squid daily. You have saved my life and possibly Flower-in-the-Night’s, too!”

As soon as the dog’s rapture had abated a little, Abdullah began rolling and working himself along the floor in his chains, until he was lying, propped on one elbow, on top of the carpet. He gave a great sigh. Now he was safe. “Come along,” he said to the dog. “Get on the carpet, too.”

But the dog had found the scent of what was certainly a rat in the corner of the dungeon. It was pursuing the smell with excited snorts. At each snort Abdullah felt the carpet quiver beneath him. It gave him the answer he needed.

“Come along,” he said to the dog. “If I leave you here, they will find you when they come to feed me or question me, and they will assume I have turned myself into a dog. Then my fate will be yours. You have brought me the carpet and revealed me its secret, and I cannot see you stuck on a forty-foot stake.”

The dog had its nose rammed into the corner. It was not attending. Abdullah heard, unmistakable even through the thick walls of the dungeon, the tramp of feet and the rattle of keys. Someone was coming. He gave up persuading the dog. He lay flat on the carpet.

“Here, boy!” he said. “Come and lick my face!”

The dog understood that. It left the corner, jumped on Abdullah’s chest, and proceeded to obey him.

“Carpet,” Abdullah whispered from under the busy tongue. “To the Bazaar, but do not land. Hover beside Jamal’s stall.”

The carpet rose and rushed sideways—which was just as well. Keys were unlocking the dungeon door. Abdullah was not any too sure how the carpet left the dungeon because the dog was still licking his face and he was forced to keep his eyes shut. He felt a dank shadow pass across him—perhaps that was when they melted through the wall—and then bright sunlight. The dog lifted its head into the sunlight, puzzled. Abdullah squinted sideways across his chains and saw a high wall rear in front of them and then fall below as the carpet rose smoothly over it. Then came a succession of towers and roofs, quite familiar to Abdullah though he had only seen them by night before. And after that the carpet went planing down toward the outer edge of the Bazaar. For the palace of the Sultan was indeed only five minutes’ walk from Abdullah’s booth.

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