“Not in the library!” the King and the Princess shouted with one voice.
They meant it so much and were so commanding that the colorless gentleman actually stopped, turned, and led the Prince off in another direction. This gave Twinkle just time to catch up with Prince Ludovic and hang on to the prince’s trailing silken sleeve. Morgan gave a yell of delight and threw the wig down on Twinkle’s face, more or less blinding him. Twinkle was towed helplessly along to the next nearest door, with the colorless gentleman sprinting ahead and Waif chasing, barking up a shrill tempest, and Sophie behind Waif, shouting, “Put him DOWN or I’ll KILL you!” Behind her, the King and the Princess gave chase too.
“I say, this is a bit much!” the King called out. The Princess simply ordered them to “Stop!”
The Prince and the colorless gentleman tried to fling themselves and the children through the door and slam it in the faces of Sophie and the King. But the moment it slammed, Waif somehow burst the door open again and the rest of them came chasing through.
Charmain was last, with Sim. By this time her arms were aching. “Can you hold this?” she said to Sim. “It’s evidence.”
She passed Sim the gold brick while he was saying, “Certainly, miss.” His hands and arms went right down with the weight of it. Charmain left him juggling with it and scuttled into what turned out to be the big room with the rocking horses lining the walls. Prince Ludovic was standing in the middle of it, looking very strange with his bald purple head. He was now holding Morgan with one arm across Morgan’s neck and Waif was jumping and dancing round his feet, trying to reach Morgan. The wig was lying on the carpet like a dead animal.
“You’ll do what I say,” the Prince was saying, “or this child suffers.”
Charmain’s eye was caught by a sudden plunging blue flash from the fireplace. She looked and saw it was Calcifer, who must have come down the chimney in search of logs. He settled in among the unlighted wood there with a sigh of pleasure. When he saw Charmain looking at him, he winked one orange eye at her.
“Suffers, I say!” Prince Ludovic said dramatically.
Sophie looked at Morgan wriggling about in the Prince’s arms and then down at Twinkle, who was just standing there, staring at his fingers as if he had never seen them before. She glanced across at Calcifer and seemed to be trying not to laugh. Her voice came out wobbly as she said, “Your Highness, I warn you, you are making a big mistake.”
“You certainly are,” the King agreed, panting and red in the face from the chase. “We in High Norland do not as a rule go in for treason trials, but we shall take pleasure in trying you.”
“How can you?” the prince demanded. “I’m not one of your subjects. I’m a lubbockin.”
“Then you cannot, by law, be King after my father,” Princess Hilda stated. Unlike the King, she was quite cool again and very royal.
“Oh, can’t I?” said the Prince. “My parent, the lubbock, says I am to be King. It intends to rule the country though me. It got rid of the wizard so that nothing can stand in our way. You must crown me King at once, or this child suffers. I’m keeping him as a hostage. Apart from that, what wrong have I done?”
“You’ve taken all their money!” Charmain called out. “I saw you—both you lubbockins—making the kobolds carry all their tax money to Castel Joie! And you’re to let that little boy go before he strangles!” Morgan’s face was bright red by then, and he was struggling frantically. I don’t think lubbockins have any real feelings, she thought. And I don’t understand why Sophie thinks it’s so funny!
“My goodness!” said the King. “So that’s where it all went, Hilda! There’s one puzzle solved at any rate. Thank you, my dear.”
Prince Ludovic said disgustedly, “Why are you so pleased? Didn’t you listen to me?” He turned to the colorless gentleman. “He’ll be offering us all crumpets next! Get on and work your spell. Get me out of here.”
The colorless gentleman nodded and spread his faintly purple hands out in front of him. But that was the moment when Sim shuffled in with the gold brick in his arms. He shuffled swiftly across to the colorless gentleman and dropped the gold brick on the gentleman’s toe.
After that, a lot of things happened very quickly.
As the gentleman, now purple with agony, hopped about yelling, Morgan seemed to arrive at his last gasp. His arms waved in a strange, convulsive pattern. And Prince Ludovic found himself trying to carry a tall, full-grown man in an elegant blue satin suit. He dropped the man, who promptly turned round and hit the Prince in the face.
“How dare you do that!” the Prince screamed. “I’m not used to it!”
“Bad luck,” said Wizard Howl, and hit him again. This time Prince Ludovic caught his foot in the wig and sat down with a thump. “Only language a lubbockin understands,” the wizard remarked over his shoulder to the King. “Had enough, Ludy old boy?”
At the same time, Morgan, who seemed to be wearing Twinkle’s blue velvet suit, very crumpled and much too big for him, rushed at the wizard, booming, “Dad—Dad—DAD!”
Oh, I see! Charmain thought. They changed places somehow. That’s pretty good magic. I’d like to learn how you do that. She wondered, while she watched the wizard carefully keeping Morgan away from the Prince, why Howl had wanted to be prettier than he was. He was most people’s idea of a very handsome man, although, she thought, his hair was perhaps a little unreal. It fell over his blue satin shoulders in improbably beautiful flaxen curls.
But, also at the same time, Sim stood back—while the colorless gentleman hopped about in front of him—and seemed to be trying to make a formal announcement of some kind. But Morgan was raising such a clamor and Waif was barking so hard that all anyone could hear was “Your Majesty” and “Royal Highness.”
While Sim was speaking, Wizard Howl looked across at the fireplace and nodded. There was something that happened then, between the wizard and Calcifer, that was not exactly a flash of light and not exactly a flash of invisible light either. While Charmain was still trying to describe it to herself, Prince Ludovic humped into himself and vanished downward. So did the colorless gentleman. In their places were two rabbits.
Wizard Howl looked at them and then at Calcifer. “Why rabbits?” he asked, swinging Morgan up into his arms. Morgan at once stopped yelling and there was a moment of silence.
“All that hopping about,” Calcifer said. “It put me in mind of rabbits.”
The colorless gentleman was still hopping about, but he was now hopping as a large white rabbit with bulging purple eyes. Prince Ludovic, who was a pale fawn color with even bigger purple eyes, seemed too astonished to move. He twitched his ears and wobbled his nose—
This was when Waif attacked.