“And you had the nerve to send assassins!” Felim was screaming.

“Do you think we should try to put it on again?” Elda asked as the Emir screamed back.

“What do you take me for?” the Emir howled. “If I make a threat, my honor demands I keep it! You had the nerve to disobey me! I told you I had no objection to your sitting in your study all day. I told you you could learn to be a hundred wizards! But I told you to stay at home!”

“And I told you never to try to bully me!” Felim yelled. “Son of a she-camel!”

“I told you I wish you to be Emir after me!” bawled the Emir. “Son of a mangy nanny goat!”

“This shall never be!” Felim screamed. “The she-camel had mange, too!”

The two of them then embarked on a shouted description of the nature of one another’s grandmothers, all of whom seemed to have been several different animals, each with a number of startling diseases. Claudia and Elda stared. They had not realized that the polite and clever Felim could be like this. Claudia watched the two dark-browed faces, roaring insults at one another, and realized that they were surprisingly alike. The noses were the same, as well as the brows, although Felim’s nose was smooth and young.

“Is he perhaps the Emir’s son?” she said to Elda. The Emir, red-blotched and haggard, certainly looked old enough to be Felim’s father.

A slight, tired smile came to the ends of Elda’s beak. She knew this kind of scene rather well. Scenes like it happened at Derkholm whenever Kit and Shona happened to be at home together. “No,” she said. “Brothers.”

Here Felim returned to the thread of the discourse, just as Shona always did, and yelled, rather hoarsely, “Besides, you have twenty-two sons to become Emir after you! Choose among them!”

“Not I!” bawled the Emir. “I dislike every one of them! I have told you this a hundred times!”

At this Felim calmed down suddenly and stated, “It is not a question of liking but of suitability. I have told you this many hundred times.”

This seemed to end the argument. The Emir, equally suddenly, became calm, too. He reached out and gripped Felim by his upper arms. “Oh, my brother, I have missed you so badly,” he said. “No one shouts at me as you do. No one dares. Will you not come home?”

“No,” said Felim with utter finality.

The Emir accepted this. He nodded, and sighed, just as Kit always did when Shona had the last word. “In that case,” he said, “please step into the shelter of this gateway while my army slaughters everyone here. I do not wish you to be hurt.”

Flury leaned down and tapped the Emir on his shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said. “I can’t let you do that.”

Everyone except Elda jumped violently. Flury, at that moment, towered twelve feet above the Emir, who was a tall man, and no one but Elda had seen him before this. The Emir started backward, and his face became a strange leaden gray color. Felim said quickly, “Please abate your height and step back, Flury. My brother’s heart has been giving us concern for three years now.”

“But I can’t let him kill everyone!” Flury protested.

Simultaneously the Emir protested, “There is nothing wrong with my heart!”

“Nevertheless”—Felim smiled lovingly and took the Emir by one arm—“you will not give the signal to attack, my brother, until you have been with me to Healers Hall. It is only a step away. Come with me.”

“Why should I?” demanded the Emir.

“Because,” said Felim, beginning to lead him gently away, “I need you to live for another three years, until I am a qualified wizard. I do not wish to be snatched home because you have named me your heir. At the end of those three years I promise I will come to you with a spell of potent divination and choose which of my nephews is most suitable to be emir. Meanwhile there are here the best healers in the world. Come.”

Flury dropped to all fours and stared.

“Of twenty-two sons,” the Emir said sadly as he walked, “none is satisfactory.”

“Hassan,” Felim replied, “has qualities, and it is a pity that Assif and Abdul are twins, for one cannot choose between them. Sayeed is firm.”

“But cruel,” said the Emir. “And Imram is indolent.”

“Not where his racing camels are concerned,” said Felim. “And Hamid or Noureddin would proceed with justice. All my nephews have something to recommend them.”

This had the air of an absorbing discussion that the brothers had often had—so much so, that when cracking and creaking, followed by crashing and loud cries, proclaimed that the roof had given way under the Emir’s soldiery, just above Felim’s room, neither brother even glanced that way. The Emir said, “True, but they are always balanced by an undesirable trait.” And they walked on, discussing other names.

“Well, I’ll be …!” said Flury. He looked suspiciously at Elda and Claudia, who were leaning together, both in fits of laughter.

Claudia took her head out of Elda’s wing and looked around for Titus, to tell him about all this, and found him, much to her surprise, on the other side of the courtyard beside King Luther. Hoping that this did not mean more trouble, she hurried over to him.

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Derkholm Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net