Диана Джонс - Wizard's Castle - Omnibus

Jamal obediently stretched out a brawny arm and, very gingerly, touched the embroidery. “Is it a spell?” he asked nervously.

“No,” said Abdullah. “It’s a hidden purse. Put your hand in and take the money out of it.”

Jamal was puzzled, but his fingers groped, found the way into the purse, and came out as a fistful of gold. “There’s a fortune here,” he said. “Will this buy your freedom?”

“No,” said Abdullah. “Yours. They’ll be after you and your dog for helping me. Take the gold and the dog and get out. Leave Zanzib. Go north to the barbarous places, where you can hide.”

“North!” said Jamal. “But whatever can I do in the north?”

“Buy everything you need and set up a Rashpuhti restaurant,” said Abdullah. “There’s enough gold to do it, and you’re an excellent cook. You could make your fortune there.”

“Really?” said Jamal, staring from Abdullah to his handful of money. “You really think I could?”

Abdullah had been keeping a wary eye on the walkway. Now he saw the space fill, not with the Watch but with northern mercenaries, and they were running. “Only if you go now,” he said.

Jamal caught the clank-clank of running soldiers. He leaned out to look and make sure. Then he whistled to his dog and was gone, so swiftly and quietly that Abdullah could only admire. Jamal had even spared time to move the meat off the grill so that it would not burn. All the soldiers were going to find here was a caldron of half-boiled squid.

Abdullah whispered to the carpet. “To the desert. Fast!”

The carpet was off at once, with its usual sideways rush. Abdullah thought he certainly would have been thrown off it but for the weight of his chains, which caused the carpet to bulge downward in the center, rather like a hammock. And speed was necessary. The soldiers shouted behind him. There were some loud bangs. For a few instants two bullets and a crossbow bolt carved the blue sky beside the carpet and then fell behind. The carpet hurtled on, across roofs, over walls, beside towers, and then skimming palm trees and market gardens. Finally it shot forth into hot gray emptiness, shimmering white and yellow under a huge bowl of sky, where Abdullah’s chains began to grow uncomfortably warm.

The rushing of air stopped. Abdullah raised his head and saw Zanzib as a surprisingly small clump of towers on the horizon. The carpet sailed slowly past a person riding a camel, who turned his well-veiled face to watch. It began to sink toward the sand. At this the person on the camel turned his camel, too, and urged it into a trot after the carpet. Abdullah could almost see him thinking gleefully that here was his chance to get his hands on a genuine, working magic carpet, and its owner in chains and in no position to resist him.

“Up, up!” he almost shrieked at the carpet. “Fly north!”

The carpet lumbered up into the air again. Annoyance and reluctance breathed from every thread of it. It turned in a heavy half circle and sailed gently northward at walking pace. The person on the camel cut across the middle of the half circle and came on at a gallop. Since the carpet was only about nine feet in the air, it was a sitting target for someone on a galloping camel.

Abdullah saw it was time for some quick talking. “Beware!” he shouted at the camel rider. “Zanzib has cast me out in chains for fear I spread this plague I have!” The rider was not quite fooled. He reined in his camel and followed at a more cautious pace, while he wrestled a tent pole out of his baggage. Clearly he intended to tip Abdullah off the carpet with it. Abdullah turned his attention hastily to the carpet. “O most excellent of carpets,” he said, “O brightest-colored and most delicately woven, whose lovely textile is so cunningly enhanced with magic, I fear I have not treated you hitherto with proper respect. I have snapped commands and even shouted at you, where I now see that your gentle nature requires only the mildest of requests. Forgive, oh, forgive!”

The carpet appreciated this. It stretched tighter in the air and put on a bit of speed.

“And dog that I am,” continued Abdullah, “I have caused you to labor in the heat of the desert, weighted most dreadfully with my chains. O best and most elegant of carpets, I think now only of you and how best I might rid you of this great weight. If you were to fly at a gentle speed—say, only a little faster than a camel might gallop— to the nearest spot in the desert northward where I can find someone to remove these chains, would this be agreeable to your amiable and aristocratic nature?”

He seemed to have struck the right note. A sort of smug pridefulness exuded from the carpet now. It rose a foot or so, changed direction slightly, and moved forward at a purposeful seventy miles an hour. Abdullah clung to its edge and peered backward at the frustrated camel rider, who was soon dwindling to a dot in the desert behind.

“O most noble of artifacts, you are a sultan among carpets, and I am your miserable slave!” he said shamelessly.

The carpet liked this so much that it went even faster.

Ten minutes later it surged over a sand dune and came to an abrupt stop just below the summit on the other side. Slanting. Abdullah was rolled helplessly off in a cloud of sand. And he went on rolling, clattering, jingling, bounding, raising more sand, and then—after desperate efforts—tobogganing feetfirst in a groove of sand, down to the very edge of a small muddy pool in an oasis. A number of ragged people who were crouching over something at the edge of this pool sprang up and scattered as Abdullah plowed in among them. Abdullah’s feet caught the thing they were crouching over and shot it back into the pool. One man shouted indignantly and went splashing into the water to rescue it. The rest drew sabers and knives—and in one case a long pistol—and surrounded Abdullah threateningly.

“Cut his throat,” said one.

Abdullah blinked sand out of his eyes and thought he had seldom seen a more villainous crew of men. They all had scarred faces, shifty eyes, bad teeth, and unpleasant expressions. The man with the pistol was the most unpleasant of the lot. He wore a sort of earring through one side of his large hooked nose and a very bushy mustache. His head-cloth was pinned up at one side with a flashy red stone in a gold brooch.

“Where have you sprung from?” this man said. He kicked Abdullah. “Explain yourself.”

All of them, including the man who was wading out of the pool with some kind of bottle, looked at Abdullah with expressions that said his explanation had better be good. Or else.

Abdullah blinked more sand out of his eyes and stared earnestly at the man with the pistol. The man really was the absolute image of the villainous bandit of his daydream. It must be one of those coincidences.

“I beg your pardon a hundred times, gentlemen of the desert,” he said with great politeness, “for intruding on you in this manner, but am I addressing the most noble and world-famous bandit, the matchless Kabul Aqba?”

The other villainous men around him seemed astonished. Abdullah distinctly heard one say, “How did he know that?” But the man with the pistol simply sneered. It was something his face was particularly well designed to do. “I am indeed he,” he said. “Famous, am I?”

It was one of those coincidences, Abdullah thought. Well, at least he knew where he was now. “Alas, wanderers in the wilderness,” he said, “I am, like your noble selves, one who is outcast and oppressed. I have sworn revenge on all Rashpuht. I came here expressly to join with you and add the strength of my mind and my arm to yours.”