And no one seemed to notice the gibbon. Twigleg nestled deep into TerTaWa’s thick coat while he looked around. It wasn’t difficult to distinguish between the nests of the griffins and the monkeys because of their different size. Two were surrounded by flocks of tiny birds working on the mud walls. They were all adorned with pictures, though none of the other nests could compete with the main nest in beauty. Kraa’s palace would have put many castles built by human beings to shame. The reliefs on the walls showed griffins hunting, griffins at war with men and monsters – and perching triumphantly on the dead body of a dragon.
‘Did lorises really create those pictures?’ whispered Twigleg incredulously.
TerTaWa swung himself up on a branch growing out of the huge tree trunk right beside the throne platform. ‘Yes. The most talented of them are sitting behind the throne. They can portray any of this world’s creatures as accurately as if it would begin breathing next moment. Some of them have been serving the griffins for several generations.’
The six lorises crouching on the skilfully carved bench behind the throne kept their eyes down.
‘We call them The Hands,’ whispered TerTaWa. ‘Don’t be deceived by their bowed heads. They pride themselves a great deal on their art. But the best of them all, Kupo, followed Shrii, because she was tired of praising Kraa’s cruelty in her pictures.’
‘Who’s the proboscis monkey beside the throne?’ whispered Twigleg.
He wore a cloak of parrot feathers over his brown pelt, and held a staff in his long-fingered hand, making him look like a master of ceremonies at the court of a medieval prince.
‘Nakal,’ whispered TerTaWa. ‘May the jackal scorpions tear him limb from limb! May the jenglots drink his blood – I’m sure it’s even more poisonous than theirs! He is Kraa’s personal servant. And his best spy. Anyone who crosses Nakal doesn’t live long.’
Nakal gave the crowd a haughty look. His staff was made of carved bones. Twigleg looked at the platform on which the throne stood. Of course. He had been wondering if it was made of ivory, but no; it too consisted of bones, arranged in an artistic pattern by The Hands.
Nakal struck the platform with his staff.
Immediately there was silence. Even the parrots, sitting among the branches in their dozens, stopped squawking. Twigleg wondered what they thought about Nakal’s cloak of feathers. There were some lories with red plumage among the parrots, but Twigleg had to admit that they all looked to him much the same, and he couldn’t have said whether Me-Rah was among them.
TerTaWa swung himself lower until he was standing on the platform. Of course, Lola was intent on looking around at her leisure in the crowd, and in the end Twigleg too gave way to the temptation to poke his head a little way out of TerTaWa’s fur. Unfortunately, however, two of the black macaques were blocking his view of the cages. The only things that Twigleg could see – all too clearly – were the griffins perched high above them. The venomous snakes that were their tails were wound around the branches they were sitting on.
‘Do you see the contempt in their eyes when they look at us?’ whispered TerTaWa. ‘To them, all other living things are as unimportant and worthless as the beetles and butterflies that their monkeys kill to use their wings for colouring the pictures on their nests. Only Shrii is different. He was our hope! He risked his life for us, and now he’s going to lose it on our account!’
TerTaWa’s eyes were fixed, full of pain, on the large basket-work cage where Shrii was held captive. But finally he made his way on through the throng of hairy bodies, and at last Twigleg had a clear view of the other cages of prisoners. When he saw the outline of a boy in one of them, Ben’s name almost passed his lips. But it wasn’t Ben. The boy pressing his face to the bent twigs of the cage was younger, and came from this part of the world. Where was his master? Had the griffins already eaten him and the others?
No – there! The lenses of a pair of glasses glinted inside the twigs of the cage. Lola had seen them too. Twigleg heard her suppress a curse. Barnabas! Oh, what a relief. For a moment Twigleg even forgot the cage and the griffins. Beside Barnabas, the green fingers clutching the bars of the cage unmistakably belonged to Hothbrodd. And yes, there was his master!
Ben called something to the other boy, but Twigleg couldn’t understand the words. The silence that fell when the proboscis monkey struck his staff on the platform hadn’t lasted long. Kraa’s followers were squawking, chattering, and growling in the crown of the gigantic tree. It was like a vast wasps’ nest. Monkeys and apes were the great majority: macaques, gibbons, lorises, langurs, surilis and proboscis monkeys! In addition there were countless Indian flying squirrels, pine martens and snakes climbing or crawling on the platform or in the branches above it.
The proboscis monkey struck the platform with his staff again, but on this occasion three times, and with greater emphasis.
The huge canopy of the tree was full of anxious silence.
It was so still that you could hear the scraping of Kraa’s terrible claws as he stepped out of his palace entrance. It was surrounded by flight ramps that enclosed the nest like a wreath of gilded thorns. One of them cast its shadow on the throne platform. Kraa’s claws, the claws of a bird of prey, made his gait rather stiff-legged as he walked along, but his lion’s body and snake-tail more than made up for that. The snake wound its way along after Kraa, like a threat traced in the sultry jungle air.
The griffin stopped at the end of the ramp and looked down at his subjects. The great beak was slightly open, as if he were drinking in the fear that rose to him, and the cruelty in his yellow eyes made Twigleg bury his face in TerTaWa’s soft fur for a moment.
Then Kraa spread his wings. The rushing sound was like a gathering storm above them. Oh, he was gigantic! For a few moments Kraa’s shadow made day into night. The crowd drew back even before he came down on the platform, and like all the others, TerTaWa threw himself on his knees so quickly that Twigleg almost slid off his shoulder.
‘Kraaaaaa!’
Hundreds of voices murmured, growled, and squawked the name of their feathered king. Twigleg felt TerTaWa shuddering at the sound. The voices also murmured another word: Tuanka. Lord…
While Kraa strode to his throne, six creatures crawled out of his plumage. They had already troubled Twigleg when he found them beside a griffin in a book illustration. Jackal scorpions. No, oh no. He had really hoped they were just a medieval invention, like people with faces beneath their shoulders, or two-headed camels. The jackal scorpions jumped down on the platform and surrounded the throne, with the stings at the end of their tails raised to attack. With bitter satisfaction, Twigleg saw that even Lola’s whiskers quivered at the sight. Curse that Pegasus! Curse the eggs as well! Curse the day when Guinevere and Vita found them!
The leap with which Kraa settled on his throne made the platform shake, and Nakal struck the floor with his staff again.
‘Bow down before Kraa the Terrible, invincible and older than the world,’ cried the proboscis monkey in a shrill voice, ‘bow down before the Winged Tempest, the Feathered Lion of the Air, the Snake King…’
Kraa’s viper tail bared its venomous fangs, while the griffin listened with obvious pleasure to the enumeration of his titles.
All eyes were turned on Kraa. Lola took her chance to scurry around to Twigleg from TerTaWa’s other shoulder. That crazy rat!
‘I’m going to climb up to Barnabas. Humpelkluss,’ she whispered to Twigleg. ‘You stay here.’
And before Twigleg could protest, she was already jumping down to the bone tiles of the platform, and had disappeared into the milling crowd.
Nakal was still reciting the many unpleasant titles of Kraa.
Twigleg looked up at the cage where Barnabas’s glasses were glinting behind the twigs – and climbed down TerTaWa to follow Lola.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Kraa
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I
hold Creation in my foot.
Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads –
The allotment of death.
Ted Hughes, ‘Hawk Roosting’
Kraa…
Ben looked down through the twigs enclosing him at the enormous griffin, and didn’t know whether he felt fear or amazement more strongly. Perhaps you always felt like that when you saw a king. And Kraa was a king, there was no doubt about it. The terrible beak, the pitiless eyes, the huge tawny lion’s body merging with dull brown plumage at the neck… the sight of Kraa filled the heart with horror, with the wish to escape his hungry gaze. Yet at the same time Ben couldn’t see enough of the glorious griffin – for all the cruelty of his aura by comparison with the kindness that you sensed in Shrii and Firedrake. Kraa was the embodiment of everything in the world that hunted and killed. He was hunger and fury, the intoxication of the attack and of his own frenzied strength.
Was the griffin larger than Firedrake? No, they were probably about the same size. When the griffins had carried them out into the open in the basketwork cages, Ben had felt terribly small and vulnerable. Since then he had been able to imagine what Twigleg felt like most of the time a good deal better. The eagle claws of the griffins, seen at close quarters, were as unsettling a sight as their lions’ paws, and the snake’s tail seemed to have a life of its own. Kraa’s tail looked like a Persian horned viper, and caught a bird that was careless enough to fly past his throne as the griffin was making himself comfortable on it. And in the tawny feathers at his throat, three shone as if they were made of pure gold. Those must be the sun-feathers that they had come to find! So close, and yet to Ben they seemed even further out of reach than on the day when he had first heard of them in MÍMAMEIĐR.
It was the same for Barnabas.
He looked down at Kraa, and felt as ridiculous as a mouse who had gone up to a lion to ask for a strand of his mane. And the worst of it was that he had taken his son into the lion’s den with him.
Kraa preened his wings with his beak, and laid the snake-tail around his paws and claws. Then he looked up at the baskets where his prisoners were waiting for sentence to be passed on them. He inspected them all as fleetingly as a king who had already sent thousands to their death. But then his amber gaze fixed on the basket containing Shrii.
The young griffin could hardly move in his prison. His green plumage made it look as if the jungle was held captive in the basket with him.
A menacing growl came from Kraa’s curved beak.
‘In all my centuries of experience…’ Kraa’s voice was not loud. It was a rough, hoarse croak, but Ben thought he could feel it right to the marrow of his bones. ‘In all the battles I have fought…’ and the griffin reared up so that he could show the scars on his breast, ‘… I have never, never…’ here the croak became a shrill scream, ‘… never seen such treachery!’
He spread his wings, like a king throwing back his cloak in anger. Except that Kraa’s wings were a good deal more impressive. He held them outstretched, as if to remind everyone present of his strength and his size – and of how fast he could swoop down and bring death to every one of them with his beak and claws.
‘My own sister’s son!’ Kraa snapped at the air as if striking Shrii with his beak. ‘Did you really think you could steal this island from me in my lifetime? You and the fools who followed you. They will all pay dearly for it!’
Muted wailing rose from the cages containing Shrii’s monkeys, and Ben let his eyes wander over the crowd around Kraa’s throne. He saw many indignant faces, and fingers pointing accusingly at Shrii, but also monkeys looking up at the young griffin with eyes full of sadness. Maybe Shrii had more supporters than Kraa liked.
‘Hothbrodd,’ Barnabas whispered to the troll. ‘Maybe you ought to have another word with the twigs holding this basket together. I admit I still had some slight hope of being able to negotiate with this griffin. But he’s never going to believe that we’re not in league with Shrii, and I’m afraid he won’t forgive us for that!’
Kraa looked up at them as if he had heard what Barnabas said.
‘And what kind of human beings are these that you’ve been mingling with?’ he called up to Shrii. ‘Are they as scatter-brained as the boy with the brownie-maki? My spies tell me that he’s visited many islands and has often cheated our friends the poachers of their prey. I’m sure they’ll pay well for him. And your furry friend will fetch a good price too!’ Kraa called up to Winston. ‘So far as I can see he’s much the same as a rat, but I hear that makis sell in human markets for more than the largest parrots!’
Winston put a protective arm around Berulu, but Kraa was already turning to the cage with Barnabas, Ben and Hothbrodd in it.
‘No, these three aren’t here to rescue monkeys and parrot,’ he growled. ‘You were going to send them to me to buy my trust with humans’ gold! Shrii the kind-hearted! Shrii the monkeys’ friend! Lies, all lies! You’re as hungry for blood and gold as I am! This trio were to have helped you to steal my treasures, that was the plan!’
Shrii protested, but one of the other griffins silenced him by pecking at the basketwork cage containing the monkeys who followed him.
‘Nakal,’ Kraa commanded the proboscis monkey, ‘show my loyal servants what Shrii’s spies were going to use to win the favour of Kraa the Great!’
Reaching under his cloak of feathers, Nakal held up the bangle that Bağdagül had given Barnabas.
There was excited whispering among the assembled monkeys, and the snake that was Kraa’s tail writhed and bared its venom fangs.
‘A bangle! Couldn’t you at least have sent them to me with a chest full of gold?’ Kraa shouted up to Shrii. ‘And just look at your robbers! Did you want to insult me and not just steal from me? A child and a man with glass eyes! They weren’t even armed! Or is that green tree-man their weapon? Well, he at least will fetch a decent price from the poachers,’ he added, with a disparaging glance at Ben and Barnabas.
‘I’m going to pluck your feathers out one by one, you sandy crow!’ roared Hothbrodd down to him. ‘I’ll make myself a belt from your snake-tail and a pair of leggings from your coat!’
The troll threw himself against the basketwork of the cage so furiously that it swung back and forth like the clapper of a bell, and Ben and Barnabas thought they would end up lying in front of Kraa’s paws with their necks broken. But the griffins’ basket cages had already held many angry captives securely. Crocodiles and marbled cats fought for their freedom just as fiercely as a troll.
‘Hmm,’ purred Kraa, casting Hothbrodd a glance of amusement. ‘You remind me of a demon whose flesh I tore apart and sent to all four quarters of the compass six hundred years ago. It was much the same unappetising colour as your skin.’
Hothbrodd favoured him with his entire repertory of Viking curses. But Kraa had turned to Shrii again.
‘I’ll tell you what, sister’s son, I think I’ll leave you alive until all who helped you are sold or dead!’ he called to him. ‘Nothing I can do to you will hurt you more. Your mother too suffered every time she swallowed a beetle by mistake in flight. Pity… why should we feel what others feel? The only heartbeat we have to understand is our own. No other creature is the equal of a griffin.’
‘Yet you have served human kings for gold. You were nothing but their winged servant.’
Shrii’s voice was so different from Kraa’s. You could hear the song of gibbons in it, and the wind blowing through a thousand leaves and colourful feathers. Shrii had not been born in a desert far away. He was a child of this island.
‘All your strength, wasted on nothing but enriching yourself. Yet you can’t even eat gold! Every crocodile is better than you. Every beetle on the island is more useful, every fish in the ocean. You’re a parasite, Kraa, and I challenge you to a duel. I challenge you on behalf of all t
hose you have sold, although they trusted you and served you.’
A murmuring rose among the assembled monkeys, and the birds in the branches beat their wings uneasily. But Nakal struck the platform with his staff, and silenced them all with a shrill whistle.
‘Ah, yes, the old rumour that you and your followers like to spread.’ Kraa plucked a flying squirrel that had come too close to his beak out of the air and swallowed it whole. ‘How did it go again? Kraa even sells his subjects. Kraa sells his most faithful servants. Lies. I sell only traitors and thieves. And the usual creatures born to be the prey of hunters.’
‘Really?’ replied Shrii. The eagle and the lion could be heard in his own voice now. ‘What became of your last personal servant? Has Nakal ever asked about him? And where are the lorises who worked on your portrait in a way you didn’t like? Where are the birds of paradise who were heard in the evening? Where’s the albino macaque who had his nest right under your palace? Nothing and no one on this island is safe from you! All that counts to you is the glittering plunder that the poachers pay you, and the shells that sharpen your beak and the beaks of others!’
Once again, Kraa spread his wings menacingly. He beat them so strongly that the basketwork cages swayed, knocking against each other, and Hothbrodd almost crushed Barnabas and Ben with his weight. Even the monkeys and flying squirrels hanging in the branches above Kraa could hardly hold on, and something fell, with a shrill scream, and landed right in front of Kraa’s throne.
Nakal picked the Something up, and held it high in the air in his fingertips.
‘Twigleg!’ cried Ben. ‘Let go of him!’
But no one paid any attention.
Kraa was bending curiously down to the homunculus as a second figure jumped down from the branches above him, and landed beside Nakal.