Диана Джонс - Wizard's Castle - Omnibus

And she landed on crumbly yellow sand. She dug her stick in and looked carefully round. Behind her right shoulder, some miles off, a white, steamy mist almost hid the mountains she had just zipped through. Below the mist was a band of dark green. Sophie nodded. Though she could not see the moving castle this far away, she was sure the mist marked the place of flowers. She took another careful stride. Zip. It was fearsomely hot. The clay-yellow sand stretched in all directions now, shimmering in the heat. Rocks lay about in a messy way. The only growing things were occasional dismal gray bushes. The mountains looked like clouds coming up on the horizon.

“If this is the Waste,” Sophie said, with sweat running in all her wrinkles, “then I feel sorry for the Witch having to live here.”

She took another stride. The wind of it did not cool her down at all. The rocks and bushes were the same, but the sand was grayer, and the mountains seemed to have sunk down the sky. Sophie peered into the quivering gray glare ahead, where she thought she could see something rather higher than rock. She took one more stride.

Now it was like an oven. But there was a peculiar-shaped pile about a quarter of a mile off, standing on a slight rise in the rock-littered land. It was a fantastical shape of twisted little towers, rising to one main tower that pointed slightly askew, like a knotty old finger. Sophie climbed out of the boots. It was too hot to carry anything so heavy, so she trudged off to investigate with only her stick.

The thing seemed to be made of the yellow-gray grit of the Waste. At first Sophie wondered if it might be some strange kind of ants’ nest. But as she got nearer, she could see that it was as if something had fused together thousands of grainy yellow flowerpots into a tapering heap. She grinned. The moving castle had often struck her as being remarkably like the inside of a chimney. This building was really a collection of chimney pots. It had to be a fire demon’s work.

As Sophie panted up the rise, there was suddenly no doubt that this was the Witch’s fortress. Two small orange figures came out of a dark space at the bottom and stood waiting for her. She recognized the Witch’s two page boys. Hot and breathless as she was, she tried to speak to them politely, to show she had no quarrel with them. “Good afternoon,” she said.

They just gave her sulky looks. One bowed and held out his hand, pointing toward the misshapen dark archway between the bent columns of chimney pots. Sophie shrugged and followed him inside. The other page walked after her. And of course the entrance vanished as soon as she was through. Sophie shrugged again. She would have to deal with that problem when she came back.

She rearranged her lace shawl, straightened her draggled skirts, and walked forward. It was a little like going through the castle door with the knob black-down. There was a moment of nothingness, followed by murky light. The light came from greenish yellow flames that burned and flickered all round, but in a shadowy way which gave no heat and very little light either. When Sophie looked at them, the flames were never where she was looking, but always to the side. But that was the way of magic. Sophie shrugged again and followed the page this way and that among skinny pillars of the same chimney-pot kind as the rest of the building.

At length the pages led her to a sort of central den. Or maybe it was just a space between pillars. Sophie was confused by then. The fortress seemed enormous, though she suspected that it was deceptive, just as the castle was. The Witch was standing there waiting. Again, it was hard to tell how Sophie knew—except that it could be no one else. The Witch was hugely tall and skinny now and her hair was fair, in a ropelike pigtail over one bony shoulder. She wore a white dress. When Sophie walked straight up to her, brandishing her stick, the Witch backed away.

“I am not to be threatened!” the Witch said, sounding tired and frail.

“Then give me Miss Angorian and you won’t be,” said Sophie. “I’ll take her and go away.”

The Witch backed away further, gesturing with both hands. And the page boys both melted into sticky orange blobs which rose into the air and flew toward Sophie. “Yucky! Get off!” Sophie cried, beating at them with her stick. The orange blobs did not seem to care for her stick. They dodged it, and wove about, and then darted behind Sophie. She was just thinking she had got the better of them when she found herself glued to a chimney-pot pillar by them. Orange sticky stuff stranded between her ankles when she tried to move and plucked at her hair quite painfully.

“I’d almost rather have green slime!” Sophie said. “I hope those weren’t real boys.”

“Only emanations,” said the Witch.

“Let me go,” said Sophie.

“No,” said the Witch. She turned away and seemed to lose interest in Sophie entirely.

Sophie began to fear that, as usual, she had made a mess of things. The sticky stuff seemed to be getting harder and more elastic every second. When she tried to move, it snapped her back against the pottery pillar. “Where’s Miss Angorian?” she said.

“You will not find her,” said the Witch. “We will wait until Howl comes.”

“He’s not coming,” said Sophie. “He’s got more sense. And your curse hasn’t all worked anyway.”

“It will,” said the Witch, smiling slightly. “Now that you have fallen for our deception and come here. Howl will have to be honest for once.” She made another gesture, toward the murky flames this time, and a sort of throne trundled out from between two pillars and stopped in front of the Witch. There was a man sitting in it, wearing a green uniform and long, shiny boots. Sophie thought he was asleep at first, with his head out of sight sideways. But the Witch gestured again. The man sat up straight. And he had no head on his shoulders at all. Sophie realized she was looking at all that was left of Prince Justin.

“If I was Fanny,” Sophie said, “I’d threaten to faint. Put his head back on at once! He looks terrible like that!”

“I disposed of both heads months ago,” said the Witch. “I sold Wizard Suliman’s skull when I sold his guitar. Prince Justin’s head is walking around somewhere with the other leftover parts. This body is a perfect mixture of Prince Justin and Wizard Suliman. It is waiting for Howl’s head, to make it our perfect human. When we have Howl’s head, we shall have the new King of Ingary, and I shall rule as Queen.”

“You’re mad!” Sophie said. “You’ve no right to make jigsaws of people! And I shouldn’t think Howl’s head will do a thing you want. It’ll slither out somehow.”

“Howl will do exactly as we say,” the Witch said with a sly, secretive smile. “We shall control his fire demon.”

Sophie realized she was very scared indeed. She knew she had made a mess of things now. “Where is Miss Angorian?” she said, waving her stick.

The Witch did not like Sophie to wave her stick. She stepped backward. “I am very tired,” she said. “You people keep spoiling my plans. First Wizard Suliman would not come near the Waste, so that I had to threaten Princess Valeria in order to make the King order him out here. Then, when he came, he grew trees. Then the King would not let Prince Justin follow Suliman for months, and when he did follow, the silly fool went up north somewhere for some reason, and I had to use all my arts to get him here. Howl has caused me even more trouble. He got away once. I’ve had to use a curse to bring him in, and while I was finding out enough about him to lay the curse, you got into what was left of Suliman’s brain and caused me more trouble. And now when I bring you here, you wave your stick and argue. I have worked very hard for this moment, and I am not to be argued with.” She turned away and wandered off into the murk.