Diana Jones - The Land of Ingary Trilogy

The one thing Sophie had left in her head was that she was here to blacken Howl’s name, so she said, “He lied about that. He didn’t want to annoy you. He’s a slitherer-outer, if you know what I mean, Your Majesty.”

“And he hopes to slither out of finding my brother Justin,” said the King. “I see. Won’t you sit down, since I see you are not young, and tell me the Wizard’s reasons?”

There was another plain chair rather a long way from the King. Sophie creaked herself down into it and sat with her hands propped on her stick like Mrs Pentstemmon, hoping that would make her feel better. But her mind was still simply a roaring white blank of stagefright. All she could think of to say was, “Only a coward would send his old mother along to plead for him. You can see what he’s like just from that, Your Majesty.”

“It is an unusual step,” the King said gravely. “But I told him that I’d make it worth his while if he agreed.”

“Oh, he doesn’t care about money,” Sophie said. “But he’s scared stiff of the Witch of the Waste, you see. She put a curse on him and it’s just caught up with him.”

“Then he has every reason to be scared,” the King said with a slight shiver. “But tell me more, please, about the Wizard.”

More about Howl? Sophie thought desperately. I have to blacken his name! Her mind was such a blank that for a second it actually seemed to her that Howl had no faults at all. How stupid! “Well, he’s fickle, careless, selfish, and hysterical,” she said. “Half the time I think he doesn’t care what happens to anyone as long as he’s all right – but then I find out how awfully kind he’s been to someone. Then I think he’s kind just when it suits him – only then I find out he undercharges poor people. I don’t know, Your Majesty. He’s a mess.”

“My impression,” said the King, “was that Howl is an unprincipled, slippery rogue with a glib tongue and a clever mind. Would you agree?”

“How well you put it!” Sophie said heartily. “But you left out how vain he is and—”

She looked suspiciously at the King across the yards of carpet. He seemed so surprisingly ready to help her blacken Howl’s name.

The King was smiling. It was the slightly uncertain smile that went with the person he was, rather than the king he ought to be. “Thank you, Mrs Pendragon,” he said. “Your outspokenness has taken a weight off my mind. The Wizard agreed to look for my brother so readily that I thought I had picked the wrong man after all. I feared he was someone who was either unable to resist showing off or would do anything for money. But you have shown me he is just the man I need.”

“Oh, confound it!” Sophie cried out. “He sent me to tell you he wasn’t!”

“And so you did.” The King hitched his chair an inch towards Sophie’s. “Let me be equally outspoken now,” he said. “Mrs Pendragon, I need my brother back badly. It is not just that I am fond of him and regret the quarrel we had. It is not even that certain people are whispering that I did away with him myself – which anyone who knows us both knows to be perfect nonsense. No, Mrs Pendragon. The fact is, my brother Justin is a brilliant general and, with High Norland and Strangia about to declare war on us, I can’t do without him. The Witch has threatened me too, you know. Now that all reports agree that Justin did indeed go into the Waste, I am certain that the Witch meant me to be without him when I needed him most. I think she took Wizard Suliman as bait to fetch Justin. And it follows that I need a fairly clever and unscrupulous wizard to get him back.”

“Howl will just run away,” Sophie warned the King.

“No,” said the King. “I don’t think he will. The fact that he sent you tells me that. He did it to show me he was too much of a coward to care what I thought of him, isn’t that right, Mrs Pendragon?”

Sophie nodded. She wished she could have remembered all Howl’s delicate remarks. The King would have understood them even if she did not.

“Not the act of a vain man,” the King said. “But no one would do that except as a last resort, which shows me that Wizard Howl will do what I want if I make it clear to him that his last resort has failed.”

“I think you may be – er – taking delicate hints that aren’t there, Your Majesty,” Sophie said.

“I think not.” The King smiled. His slightly vague features had all firmed up. He was sure he was right. “Tell Wizard Howl, Mrs Pendragon, that I am appointing him Royal Wizard as from now, with our Royal Command to find Prince Justin, alive or dead, before the year is out. You have our leave to go now.”

He held out his hand to Sophie, just like Mrs Pentstemmon, but a little less royally. Sophie levered herself up, wondering if she was meant to kiss this hand or not. But since she felt more like raising her stick and beating the King over the head with it, she shook the King’s hand and gave a creaking little curtsy. It seemed to be the right thing to do. The King gave her a friendly smile as she hobbled away to the double doors.

“Oh, curses!” she muttered to herself. It was not only exactly what Howl did not want. Howl would now move the castle a thousand miles away. Lettie, Martha and Michael would all be miserable, and no doubt there would be torrents of green slime into the bargain as well. “It comes of being the eldest,” she muttered while she was shoving the heavy doors open. “You just can’t win!”

And here was another thing which had gone wrong. In her annoyance and disappointment, Sophie had somehow come out through the wrong set of double doors. This anteroom had mirrors all round it. In them she could see her own little bent, hobbling shape in its fine grey dress, a great many people in blue Court dress, others in suits as fine as Howl’s, but no Michael. Michael of course was hanging about in the anteroom panelled in a hundred kinds of wood.

“Oh, drat!” said Sophie.

One of the courtiers hastened up to her and bowed. “Madam Sorceress! Can I be of assistance?”

He was an undersized young man, rather red-eyed. Sophie stared at him. “Oh, good gracious!” she said. “So the spell worked!”

“It did indeed,” said the small courtier a little ruefully. “I disarmed him while he was sneezing and he is now suing me. But the important thing—” his face spread into a happy smile “—is that my dear Jane has come back to me! Now, what can I do for you? I feel responsible for your happiness.”

“I’m not sure that it mightn’t be the other way round,” Sophie said. “Are you by any chance the Count of Catterack?”

“At your service,” said the small courtier, bowing.

Jane Farrier must be a good foot taller than he is! Sophie thought. It is all definitely my fault. “Yes, you can help me,” she said, and explained about Michael.

The Count of Catterack assured her that Michael would be fetched and brought down to the entrance hall to meet her. It was no trouble at all. He took Sophie to a gloved attendant himself and handed her over with much bowing and smiling. Sophie was handed to another attendant, then another, just as before, and eventually hobbled her way down to the stairs guarded by the soldiers.

Michael was not there. Nor was Howl, but that was small relief to Sophie. She thought she might have guessed it would be like this! The Count of Catterack was obviously a person who never got a thing right, and she was another herself. It was probably lucky she had even found the way out. By now she was so tired and hot and dejected that she decided not to wait for Michael. She wanted to sit down in the fireside chair and tell Calcifer the mess she had made of things.

She hobbled down the grand staircase. She hobbled down a grand avenue. She stumped along another, where spires and towers and gilded roofs circled around in giddy profusion. And she realised it was worse than she had thought. She was lost. She had absolutely no idea how to find the disguised stable where the castle entrance was. She turned up another handsome thoroughfare at random, but she did not recognise that either.