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“Er…” Abdullah said. “Um…”
The tendril of smoke crept noiselessly back inside the Paragon’s petticoat and bellied up inside, where it must have tickled the nose of Jamal’s dog. The dog sneezed.
“Atishoo!” cried Abdullah, and almost drowned the thread of the genie’s voice whispering, “It’s the ring in Hasruel’s nose!”
“Atishoo!” said Abdullah, and pretended to guess wrong. This was where his plan was distinctly risky. “Your brother’s life is one of your teeth, great Dalzel.”
“Wrong!” trumpeted Dalzel. “Hasruel, roast him!”
“Spare him!” wailed Flower-in-the-Night as Hasruel, with disgust and disappointment written all over him, began to get up.
The princesses were ready for this moment. Ten royal hands instantly pushed Princess Valeria out of the crowd to the steps of the throne.
“I want my doggy!” Valeria a
At the same moment the tiny yellow Princess of Tsapfan gave Morgan a shrewd nip, just in the right place. Morgan had been asleep in her tiny arms, dreaming he was a kitten again. He woke with a jump and found he was still a helpless baby. His fury knew no bounds. He opened his mouth, and he roared. His feet pedaled with anger. His hands pumped. And his roars were so lusty that had it been a competition between himself and Valeria, Morgan might have won. As it was, the noise was unspeakable. The echoes in the hall picked it up, doubled the screams, and rolled it all back at the throne.
“Echo at those dji
The hall was a madhouse. Both dji
To which Hasruel howled, “Women have babies, fool of a dji
“I WANT MY DOGGY BACK!” stated Valeria, beating the seat of the throne with her fists.
Dalzel’s trumpet voice fought to be heard. “Give her a doggy. Hasruel, or I’ll kill you!”
At this stage in Abdullah’s plans he had confidently expected—if he had not been killed by then—to be turned into a dog. It was what he had been leading up to. This, he had calculated, would also have released Jamal’s dog. He had counted on the sight of not one dog but two, dashing from beneath the Paragon’s petticoat, to add to the confusion. But Hasruel was as distracted by the screams, and the triple echoes of screams, as his brother was. He turned this way and that, clutching his ears and yelling with pain, the picture of a dji
He was a very huge dog, something between a donkey and a bulldog, brown and gray in patches, with a golden ring in his snub nose. This huge dog put its gigantic forepaws on the arm of the throne and stretched an enormous slavering tongue out toward Valeria’s face. Hasruel was trying to seem friendly. But at the sight of something so big and so ugly, Valeria, not u
Abdullah had a moment when he was quite at a loss what to do, and then another moment when he was sure no one would hear him shout. “Soldier!”he roared. “Hold Hasruel! Someone hold Dalzel!”
Luckily the soldier was alert. He was good at that. The Jharine of Jham vanished in a flurry of old clothes, and the soldier leaped up the steps of the throne. Sophie rushed after him, beckoning to the princesses. She threw her arms around Dalzel’s slender white knees, while the soldier wrapped his brawny arms around the neck of the dog. The princesses stampeded up the steps behind them, and most of them threw themselves on Dalzel, too, with the air of princesses badly in need of revenge—all except Princess Beatrice, who dragged Valeria out of the brawl and began the difficult task of shutting her up. The tiny Princess of Tsapfan meanwhile sat calmly on the porphyry floor, rocking Morgan back to sleep.
Abdullah tried to run toward Hasruel. But no sooner did he move than Jamal’s dog seized its chance and got away. It burst out from under the Paragon’s petticoat to see a fight in progress. It loved fights. It also saw another dog. If anything, it hated dogs even more than dji
This was too much for Hasruel, already beset by the soldier. He became a dji
“Hold your head down, Hasruel, I conjure you!” Abdullah shouted, kicking free of the Paragon’s petticoat at last. He leaped up the steps, wearing nothing but his loincloth, and seized hold of Hasruel’s great left ear. At this Flower-in-the-Night understood where Hasruel’s life was, and to Abdullah’s great joy, she jumped up and hung on to Hasruel’s right ear. And there they hung, raised in the air from time to time when Hasruel got the better of the soldier, and slammed to the floor when the soldier got the better of Hasruel, with the soldier’s straining arms wrapped around the dji
Dalzel’s trumpet shouts seemed to inspire Hasruel. He began to get the better of the soldier. Abdullah tried to get a hand loose so that he could reach out to the golden ring, dangling just by his shoulder, under Hasruel’s hooked nose. Abdullah freed his left hand. But his right hand was sweating and slipping off Hasruel’s ear. He grabbed— desperately—before he slipped off.
He had reckoned without Jamal’s dog. After lying dazed for most of a minute, it stood up, angrier than ever and full of hatred for dji
Snap ! went the dog’s teeth. Gulp went the dog’s throat. After that, a puzzled look crossed the dog’s face, and it dropped to the floor, hiccuping uneasily. Hasruel howled with pain and sprang upright with both hands clapped to his nose. The soldier was hurled to the floor. Abdullah and Flower-in-the-Night were flung off to either side. Abdullah dived for the hiccuping dog, but Jamal got there first and picked it up tenderly.
“Poor dog, my poor dog! Better soon!” he crooned to it, and carried it carefully away down the steps.