But the djinn king had not dropped his gadget. Tony hunted anxiously all around. He didn’t believe it could work, but still—
He worried about it as he walked gloomily back toward the mud cottage where the Queen and Ghail were quartered.
It shouldn’t work. It positively was too old to work! But if it did—
Chapter 17
They started back for Barkut in a state wholly unlike the fashion of their arrival at the djinn palace. Abdul arranged the march. He seemed to delight in devising elaborate ceremonies. The parade began with dragons, sixty feet long and breathing fire. After them marched a troop of giants carrying very knobbly maces seemingly of iron, which should have weighed tons. Then a vast, long column of djinn camels, each camel the customary twenty feet tall and with an impressive pack load of unstable djinn riches, the whole draped with cloth-of-gold and similar stuff. Then djinn soldiers, looking remarkably ferocious. Tony and Ghail and the Queen rode in a colossal litter carried between two elephants. It was extremely luxurious, and the only incongruous note was that the Queen had packed a picnic lunch for the journey in crude earthen pots. They were covered over with seed-pearl brocades, however, and did not show.
Such ostentation had not been Tony’s own idea. Abdul had presented himself fearfully at the Queen’s cottage, almost half an hour after the use of lasf in the audience chamber.
“Majesty!” said Abdul reproachfully. “If you detonate me, who am the most abject of your subjects, how will the government go on?”
“Government?” Tony stared. “What government?”
“Of the djinn,” said Abdul, more reproachfully still. “You are my king, Majesty. You are also king of these others who wait to swear allegiance. And there must be government!”
“Hold on!” Tony cried. “What’s this? What have I got to do with government? How’d I get to be a king?”