A fond smile bared Hasruel’s fangs. “It was your decision, brother.” His smile faded. “If you are quite ready, it is my duty to send you into exile now.”
“I don’t mind so much now,” Dalzel said, with his eyes still on the two nieces.
Hasruel stretched out his hand again, slowly, regretfully, and slowly, in three long rolls of thunder, Dalzel and the two nieces faded out of sight. There was a slight smell of the sea and a faint noise of sea gulls. Both Morgan and Valeria started crying again. Everyone else sighed, Hasruel deepest of all. Abdullah realized with some surprise that Hasruel truly loved his brother. Although it was hard to understand how anyone could love Dalzel, Abdullah could hardly blame him. Who am I to criticize? he thought, as Flower-in-the-Night came up and put her arm through his.
Hasruel heaved up an even heavier sigh and sat down on the throne, which fitted his size far better than Dalzel’s, with his great wings drooping sadly to either side. “There is other business,” he said, touching his nose gingerly. It seemed to be healing already.
“Yes, there certainly is!” said Sophie. She had been waiting on the throne steps for her chance to speak. “When you stole our moving castle, you disappeared my husband, Howl. Where is he? I want him back.”
Hasruel raised his head sadly, but before he could reply, there were alarmed noises from the princesses. Everyone at the bottom of the steps retreated from the Paragon’s petticoat. It was bulging and bellying up and down on its hoops like a concertina. “Help!” cried the genie inside. “Let me out! You promised!”
Flower-in-the-Night’s hand leaped to her mouth. “Oh! I clean forgot!” she said, and darted away from Abdullah, down the steps. She threw aside the petticoat in a roll of purple smoke. “I wish,” she cried out, “that you be released from your bottle, genie, and be free forevermore!”
As usual the genie did not waste time in thanks. The bottle burst with a resounding smack. Inside the rolls of smoke a decidedly more solid figure climbed to its feet. Sophie gave a scream at the sight. “Oh, bless the girl! Thank you, thank you!” She arrived in the vanishing smoke so fast that she nearly knocked the solid man there over. He did not seem to mind. He picked Sophie up and swung her around and around. “Oh, why didn’t I know? Why didn’t I realize?” Sophie panted, staggering about on broken glass.
“Because that was the enchantment,” Hasruel said gloomily. “If he was known to be Wizard Howl, someone would have released him. You could not know who he was, nor could he tell anyone.”
The Royal Wizard Howl was a younger man than Wizard Suliman, and a good deal more elegant. He was richly dressed in a suit of mauve satin, against which his hair showed a rather improbable shade of yellow. Abdullah stared at the wizard’s light eyes in the wizard’s bony face. He had seen those eyes clearly, one early morning. He felt he should have guessed. He felt himself altogether in an awkward position. He had used the genie. He felt he knew the genie very well. Did that mean he also knew the wizard? Or not?
For this reason, Abdullah did not join in when everyone, including the soldier, gathered around Wizard Howl, exclaiming and congratulating him. He watched the tiny Princess of Tsapfan walk quietly among the exclaiming crowd and gravely put Morgan into Howl’s arms.
“Thanks,” said Howl. “I thought I’d better bring him along where I could keep an eye on him,” he explained to Sophie. “Sorry if I gave you a fright.” Howl seemed more used to holding babies than Sophie was. He rocked Morgan soothingly and stared at him. Morgan stared, rather balefully, back. “My word, he’s ugly!” Howl said. “Chip off the old block.”
“Howl!” said Sophie. But she did not sound angry.
“One moment,” said Howl. He advanced to the steps of the throne and looked up at Hasruel. “Look here, djinn,” he said, “I’ve a bone to pick with you. What do you mean by pinching my castle and shutting me up in a bottle?”
Hasruel’s eyes lit to an angry orange. “Wizard, do you imagine your power is equal to mine?”
“No,” said Howl. “I just want an explanation.” Abdullah found himself admiring the man. Knowing what a coward the genie had been, he had no doubt that Howl was a jelly of terror inside. But he showed no sign of it. He hoisted Morgan over his mauve silk shoulder and glared back at Hasruel.
“Very well,” said Hasruel. “My brother ordered me to steal the castle. In this I had no choice. But Dalzel gave no orders concerning you, except that I ensure you could not steal the castle back again. Had you been a blameless man, I would simply have transported you to the island where my brother is now. But I knew you had been using your wizardry to conquer a neighboring country—”
“That’s not fair!” said Howl. “The King ordered me!” He sounded for a moment just like Dalzel, and he must have realized that he did. He stopped. He thought. Then he said ruefully, “I daresay I could have redirected His Majesty’s mind if it had occurred to me. You’re right. But don’t ever let me catch you where I can put you in a bottle, that’s all.”
“That I might deserve,” Hasruel agreed. “And I deserve it the more as I took pains to let everyone involved meet with the most fitting fate I could devise.” His eyes slanted toward Abdullah. “Did I not?”
“Most painfully, great djinn,” Abdullah agreed. “All my dreams came true, not only the pleasant ones.”
Hasruel nodded. “And now,” he said, “I must leave you when I have performed one more small, needful act.” His wings rose, and his hands gestured. Instantly he was in the midst of a swarm of strange winged shapes. They hovered over his head and around the throne like transparent sea horses, completely silent except for the faint whisper of their whirling wings.
“His angels,” Princess Beatrice explained to Princess Valeria.
Hasruel whispered to the winged shapes, and they departed from him as suddenly as they had appeared, to reappear in the same swarm, whispering around Jamal’s head. Jamal backed away from them, horrified, but it did no good. The swarm followed him. One after another, the winged shapes went to perch on different parts of Jamal’s dog. As each landed, it shrank and disappeared among the hairs of the dog’s coat, until only two were left.
Abdullah suddenly found these two shapes hovering level with his eyes. He ducked, but the shapes followed. Two small, cold voices spoke, in a way that seemed for his ears alone. “After long thought,” they said, “we find we prefer this shape to that of toads. We think in the light of eternity, and we therefore thank you.” So saying, the two shapes darted away to perch on Jamal’s dog, where they, too, shrank and disappeared into the gnarled skin of its ears.
Jamal stared at the dog in his arms. “Why am I holding a dog full of angels?” he asked Hasruel.
“They will not harm you or your beast,” said Hasruel. “They will simply wait for the gold ring to reappear. Tomorrow, I believe you said? You must see that I am naturally anxious to keep track of my life. When my angels find it, they will bring it to me wherever I am.” He sighed, heavily enough to stir everyone’s hair. “And I do not know where I shall be,” he said. “I shall have to find some place of exile in the far deeps. I have been wicked. I cannot again join the ranks of the Good Djinns.”
“Oh, come now, great djinn!” said Flower-in-the-Night. “It was taught to me that goodness is forgiveness. Surely the Good Djinns will welcome you back?”
Hasruel shook his great head. “Intelligent Princess, you do not understand.”
Abdullah found that he understood Hasruel very well. Perhaps his understanding had something to do with the way he had been less than polite to his father’s first wife’s relatives. “Hush, love,” he said. “Hasruel means that he enjoyed his wickedness and does not regret it.”
“It is true,” said Hasruel. “I had more fun these last months than I had in many hundreds of years before that. Dalzel taught me this. Now I must go away for fear I start having the same fun among the Good Djinns. If I only knew where to go.”