Wizard's Castle: Omnibus - Jones Diana Wynne - Страница 58
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“I don’t know what has got into you,” Jamal said. “I used to think you were normal. But mad or not, you must eat.”
“There is no question of madness,” Abdullah said. “I have simply decided to go into a new line of business.” But he ate the meat.
At last he was able to pile his 189 pictures onto the carpet and lie down among them.
“Now listen to this,” he told the carpet. “If by some lucky chance I happen to say your command word in my sleep, you must instantly fly with me to the night garden of Flower-in-the-Night.” That seemed the best he could do. It took him a long time to get to sleep.
He woke to the dreamy fragrance of night flowers and a hand gently prodding him. Flower-in-the-Night was leaning over him. Abdullah saw she was far lovelier than he had been remembering her.
“You really did bring the pictures!” she said. “You are very kind.”
I did it! Abdullah thought triumphantly. “Yes,” he said. “I have one hundred and eighty-nine kinds of men here. I think this ought to give you at least a general idea.”
He helped her unhook a number of the golden lamps and put them in a ring beside the bank. Then Abdullah showed her the pictures, holding them under a lamp first and then leaning them up against the bank. He began to feel like a pavement artist.
Flower-in-the-Night inspected each man as Abdullah showed him, absolutely impartially and with great concentration. Then she picked up a lamp and inspected the artist’s drawings all over again. This pleased Abdullah. The artist was a true professional. He had drawn men exactly as Abdullah asked, from a heroic and kingly person evidently taken from a statue, to the hunchback who cleaned shoes in the Bazaar, and had even included a self-portrait halfway through.
“Yes, I see,” Flower-in-the-Night said at last. “Men do vary a lot, just as you said. My father is not at all typical, and neither are you, of course.”
“So you admit I am not a woman?” said Abdullah.
“I am forced to do so,” she said. “I apologize for my error.” Then she carried the lamp along the bank, inspecting certain of the pictures a third time.
Abdullah noticed, rather nervously, that the ones she had singled out were the handsomest. He watched her leaning over them with a small frown on her forehead and a curly tendril of dark hair straying over the frown, looking thoroughly intent. He began to wonder what he had started.
Flower-in-the-Night collected the pictures together and stacked them neatly in a pile beside the bank. “It is just as I thought,” she said. “I prefer you to every single one of these. Some of these look far too proud of themselves, and some look selfish and cruel. You are unassuming and kind. I intend to ask my father to marry me to you, instead of to the Prince in Ochinstan. Would you mind?”
The garden seemed to swirl around Abdullah in a blur of gold and silver and dusky green. “I–I think that might not work,” he managed to say at last.
“Why not?” she asked. “Are you married already?”
“No, no,” he said. “It is not that. The law allows a man to have as many wives as he can afford, but—”
The frown came back to Flower-in-the-Night’s forehead. “How many husbands are women allowed?” she asked.
“Only one!” Abdullah said, rather shocked.
“That is extremely unfair,” Flower-in-the-Night observed musingly. She sat on the bank and thought. “Would you say it is possible that the Prince in Ochinstan has some wives already?”
Abdullah watched the frown grow on her forehead and the slender fingers of her right hand tapping almost irritably on the turf. He knew he had indeed started something. Flower-in-the-Night was discovering that her father had kept her ignorant of a number of important facts. “If he is a prince,” Abdullah said rather nervously, “I think it entirely possible that he has quite a number of wives. Yes.”
“Then he is being greedy,” Flower-in-the-Night stated. “This takes a weight off my mind. Why did you say that my marrying you might not work? You mentioned yesterday that you are a prince as well.”
Abdullah felt his face heating up, and he cursed himself for babbling out his daydream to her. Though he told himself that he had had every reason to believe he was dreaming when he told her, this did not make him feel any better. “True. But I also told you I was lost and far from my kingdom,” he said. “As you might conjecture, I am now forced to make my living by humble means. I sell carpets in the Bazaar of Zanzib. Your father is clearly a very rich man. This will not strike him as a fitting alliance.”
Flower-in-the-Night’s fingers drummed quite angrily. “You speak as if it is my father who intends to marry you!” she said. “What is the matter? I love you. Do you not love me?”
She looked into Abdullah’s face as she said this. He looked back into hers, into what seemed an eternity of big dark eyes. He found himself saying, “Yes.” Flower-in-the-Night smiled. Abdullah smiled. Several more moonlit eternities went by.
“I shall come with you when you leave here,” Flower-in-the-Night said. “Since what you say about my father’s attitude to you could well be true, we must get married first and tell my father afterward. Then there is nothing he can say.”
Abdullah, who had had some experience of rich men, wished he could be sure of that. “It may not be quite that simple,” he said. “In fact, now I think about it, I am certain our only prudent course is to leave Zanzib. This ought to be easy, because I do happen to own a magic carpet. There it is, up on the bank. It brought me here. Unfortunately it needs to be activated by a magic word which I seem only able to say in my sleep.”
Flower-in-the-Night picked up a lamp and held it high so that she could inspect the carpet. Abdullah watched, admiring the grace with which she bent toward it. “It seems very old,” she said. “I have read about such carpets. The command word will probably be a fairly common word pronounced in an old way. My reading suggests these carpets were meant to be used quickly in an emergency, so the word will not be anything too out of the way. Why do you not tell me carefully everything you know about it? Between us we ought to be able to work it out.”
From this Abdullah realized that Flower-in-the-Night—if you discounted the gaps in her knowledge—was both intelligent and very well educated. He admired her even more. He told her, as far as he knew them, every fact about the carpet, including the uproar at Jamal’s stall which had prevented him hearing the command word.
Flower-in-the-Night listened and nodded at each new fact. “So,” she said, “let us leave aside the reason why someone should sell you a proven magic carpet and yet make sure you could not use it. That is such an odd thing to do that I feel sure we should think about it later. But let us first think about what the carpet does. You say it came down when you ordered it to. Did the stranger speak then?”
She had a shrewd and logical mind. Truly he had found a pearl among women, Abdullah thought. “I am quite sure he said nothing,” he said.
“Then,” said Flower-in-the-Night, “the command word is only needed to start the carpet flying. After that I see two possibilities: first, that the carpet will do as you say until it touches ground anywhere or, second, that it will in fact obey your command until it is back at the place where it first started—”
“That is easily proved,” Abdullah said. He was dizzy with admiration for her logic. “I think the first possibility is the correct one.” He jumped on the carpet and cried experimentally, “Up, and back to my booth!”
“No, no! Don’t! Wait!” Flower-in-the-Night cried out at the same instant.
But it was too late. The carpet whipped up into the air and then away sideways with such speed and suddenness that Abdullah was first thrown over on his back, with all the breath knocked out of him, and then found himself hanging half off over its frayed edge at what seemed a terrifying height in the air. The wind of its movement took his breath away as soon as he did manage to breathe. All he could do was to claw frantically for a better grip on the fringe at one end. And before he could work his way back on top of it, let alone speak, the carpet plunged downward—leaving Abdullah’s newly gained breath high in the air above—barged its way through the curtains of the booth—half smothering Abdullah in the process—and landed smoothly—and very finally—on the floor inside.
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