‘Wait!’ cried Ben. ‘There’s one more condition. If Firedrake wins, you give us one of your sun-feathers!’
Kraa growled with amusement again. ‘I’m going to dip all my feathers in the blood of your dragon friend, little human, but yes, if he wins you will get one of my sun-feathers. Kraa’s word on it!’
‘I wouldn’t give a button mushroom for his word,’ whispered Sorrel as she tightened the belt holding her on Firedrake’s back.
Ben did the same. The belts revived memories: of a golden dragon and a cave full of dragon-fire. At the time they had had to fight. There had been no alternative. But this time fighting seemed so useless. Only a feather, that was all they had wanted to ask for. Would they have set out at all if they had known how high the price would be? Ben saw the same question on Barnabas’s face. He was standing high up beside Kraa’s nest, and he looked desperate. No, they probably would not have come here at all. But perhaps it was better that they hadn’t known how the whole story would end. Maybe some things just had to happen.
Nakal climbed on Kraa’s back. A few wingbeats that brought a stormy wind into the tree, and the griffin landed on the back of his throne. He was a fearsome sight.
‘Firedrake, let me fight him,’ Tattoo whispered. ‘There’s no one waiting for me. It won’t even interest the others if I don’t come back. But you are their leader.’
Firedrake bent his head, so that neither Kraa nor Nakal could read his answer from his lips. ‘The griffin will break his word!’ he whispered to Tattoo. ‘As soon as he thinks I can defeat him he will call on the other griffins to come to his aid. That’s when I’ll need you, so be ready for that moment. And tell Shrii.’
Kraa was watching them furtively.
‘I want that feather, Sorrel,’ Firedrake whispered. ‘Try to pluck it out.’
Kraa leaped down to the seat of his throne, and from there to the platform.
‘What are you waiting for, lindworm?’ he croaked. ‘Do your friends have to encourage you? Or are you getting them to tell you how to fight a griffin? Look at the pictures adorning my palace. They’ll show you how a fight like that ends.’
‘Oh yes? Any fool can see that your pictures tell lies, you boastful great beaked show-off!’ Sorrel called back. ‘I mean, do you see a brownie on the dragon’s back?’
By way of answering, Nakal drew a machete out of the sheath that he wore on his belt, and swung it threateningly through the air.
‘The pictures don’t show our riders either!’ growled Kraa. ‘They show only the main point: the griffin always wins.’
Then, with a hoarse attacking cry, he beat his wings and made for the dragon.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Griffin and Dragon
We all have to meet our match sometime or other.
Richard Adams, Watership Down
Feathers and scales. Claws and paws. Tawny yellow and silver-grey wings, Kraa’s dreadful beak, Firedrake’s bared teeth… Barnabas had seen many fights between fabulous creatures before, but this time he soon took off his glasses, with shaking fingers, because he simply couldn’t bear to watch. Even sharp eyes could scarcely make out where the dragon ended and the griffin began. But the sounds, if anything, were even worse. The dragon’s roar, the griffin’s screech, Nakal’s screams of hatred… Ben’s voice mingled with the noise of battle, and so did Sorrel’s curses as she called on all kinds of poisonous fungi…
Who would be victorious? Sometimes the dragon seemed to be stronger, sometimes the griffin. Barnabas couldn’t have said whether he was more worried about Ben or Firedrake. Or rather, he could say: he was more worried about the boy, of course. Nothing about being a father is harder than giving your own children the freedom to do dangerous things now and then.
Of course, Ben didn’t know anything about such anxieties yet. He hadn’t even had time to think about the danger. He and Sorrel were at the heart of a storm. The breastplates that Hothbrodd had made them saved them more than once from the thrusts of Kraa’s beak and his terrible eagle’s claws. Whenever Nakal’s machete glanced harmlessly off the wood, Nakal gave vent to a screech of frustration. Firedrake’s scales protected him, but all the same Kraa’s claws inflicted minor wounds on him. Again and again, Ben managed to warn the dragon just in time for him to avoid the griffin, or he fended Kraa off with the club that Hothbrodd had given him. But the griffin was fighting to kill. Every blow of his claws, every thrust of his beak wanted Firedrake’s blood, and Ben soon began to fear that the griffin’s unbridled bloodlust would make him stronger in the long run. But the less control Kraa showed, the more restraint Firedrake displayed in fighting back. With Ben’s help, he avoided the griffin’s attack as smoothly as if he had turned into the fire that he could breathe, although he did not use that ultimate weapon, even when Kraa’s beak finally opened up a more serious wound. The griffin stared at the blood running over the dragon’s injured shoulder like someone dying of thirst who sees water. Firedrake’s next attack, however, made Kraa stumble, and Sorrel took her chance to reach into his tawny plumage. She had her fingers already closed around one of the sun-feathers when the griffin realised what she meant to do. Kraa almost pecked her hand off, and now it was Firedrake who lost his self-control at the sound of Sorrel’s scream of pain. His attack drove Kraa back until the griffin was standing on the edge of the platform with his wings quivering, his feathers and coat wet with sweat, and his beak open as he struggled for breath.
Firedrake was also breathing heavily, but Ben felt that he still had enough strength left to go on fighting.
‘Surrender, Kraa!’ the dragon cried. ‘Surrender, and honour your promise.’
The griffin was staring at the wound he had inflicted on Firedrake.
‘Do you know what we tell our young about the origin of the dragons?’ he croaked. ‘It’s said that they crawled out of the flesh of a dying demon like maggots. And that they were created only to make griffins immortal.’
Kraa was trembling with exhaustion as he spread his huge wings again, but he was still a very menacing sight.
‘There’s only one king on this island!’ he screeched, striking out at Firedrake with the last of his strength. ‘And you will curse the wind that brought you here, lindworm!’
Then, with a shrill scream, he gave the other griffins the order to attack.
With wings threateningly spread, Shrii leaped to Firedrake’s side. Tattoo did the same. But the five griffins who had come to Pulau Bulu so long ago, and from so far away, stayed motionless on the branch where they were perching.
‘You’re defeated, Kraa!’ called Roargh down to his leader. ‘Give the lindworm what you promised him, as our honour demands.’
Kraa stretched his neck, and looked up with hatred at his fellow griffins.
‘Honour?’ he screeched. ‘This island is mine, and I decide what its laws are!’
He fluffed up his feathers until they adorned his head like a crown, and then turned back to the dragon.
‘You’ve defeated the eagle and the lion, lindworm! But you forgot the one who has scales, like you!’
His snake-tail rose as the griffin swung around, and the viper dug its poison fangs into Sorrel’s arm.
Firedrake bit its head off, but the venom was already working. Ben was just in time to catch Sorrel before she fell off Firedrake’s back, and the dragon felt his own anger like lava in his veins. This time it was so wild and dark that Firedrake couldn’t control it.
That was exactly what Kraa had hoped for. Only the silver dragon could burn away the shame of his defeat. After all, there was no more honourable end for a griffin than death by fire.
Maybe Firedrake would indeed have given Kraa what he wanted. But Tattoo beat him to it. He soared into the air and breathed fire down on Kraa. Flames licked around the griffin’s coat and feathers, the ghostly grey fire that decades of petrified sleep had given Tattoo. And when it went out, Kraa and Nakal had turned into the same stone that had held Tattoo captive for so many years.
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The other griffins stared at their leader in motionless dismay, looking as if Tattoo’s dragon-fire had turned them to stone as well.
‘Firedrake!’ Barnabas called down to the dragon from Kraa’s palace. ‘Quick – get Sorrel to Hothbrodd!’
The dragon obeyed, without asking for an explanation. He shot down through the air, past the nests where the captured monkeys were calling for their feathered master, down and down through leaves and branches, with his heart hurting worse than the wound that Kraa had given him. It seemed as if the trunk of the griffins’ tree would never end! But at last they saw Hothbrodd sitting down among its roots.
Ben was still holding Sorrel in his arms as Firedrake landed beside the startled troll. She wasn’t moving. Ben couldn’t even make out any heartbeat!
Hothbrodd dropped the branch that he had been carving with the knife he had made from a seashell.
‘The griffin… his snake’s tail!’ That was all Ben needed to say.
The troll shaved the fur off her skin with his knife where the snake had bitten her. Then he made deep cuts in his own green thumbs and rubbed his pale, troll’s blood into the snakebite.
Even though Sorrel had closed her eyes, she was muttering mushroom curses. Of course. Ben didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘Don’t worry, she’ll recover!’ Hothbrodd clapped him on the back so hard that he fell on his knees. Then he gave Firedrake his most confident troll smile. ‘Have you lot finished up there?’
Ben looked at Firedrake in dismay.
The sun-feather! He saw Kraa’s plumage before him, all of it turned to stone. No! Had it all been for nothing after all?
‘Shriiii!’
Above them, the griffins were calling the name of their new king, but Firedrake had forgotten both them and the Pegasus eggs. He had eyes only for Sorrel. An eternity seemed to pass before she finally opened her eyes.
Firedrake sighed with such relief that his breath struck sparks.
‘Why do I stink of fish?’ murmured Sorrel, sitting up unsteadily.
‘Herring!’ grunted Hothbrodd. ‘Troll blood smells of herring. Would you rather smell of dead brownie?’
Sorrel touched the bald patch on her arm. The pain brought back the memory of the viper’s fangs, dripping poison, and Kraa’s triumphant glance as they dug into her furry arm…
‘What happened to the griffin?’ she asked.
‘We’ll tell you later,’ said Ben. ‘Twigleg, Barnabas, and Lola are still up above us. We must bring them down, but you’d better stay here.’
Naturally Sorrel didn’t like that at all. ‘Great stinking crested newt, what the…’
‘Ben is right. Don’t you move from the spot!’ Firedrake interrupted her sternly. ‘And be nice to Hothbrodd!’ he added before he spread his wings.
‘Nice?’ Sorrel called after him.
She already sounded more like herself. Troll blood was a strong antidote to poison.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Too Late?
Fear tastes quite different when
you’re not just reading about it.
Cornelia Funke, Inkheart
They would be back too late! If they ever came back at all! By now Ouranos had grown so much that he could hardly move. Chara was kicking the shell that surrounded him in increasing panic, and even Synnefo was trying in vain to turn around in the egg, or even lift her wings. When Guinevere saw them, she found it hard to breathe, as if she were with them in the prison that their eggshells had become. Ànemos was circling in the air above the fjord and the surrounding forests all the time, in the desperate hope of seeing Hothbrodd’s plane appear in the distance. But for all the inhabitants of MÍMAMEIĐR, that hope was dwindling with every hour that passed. It was so hard to believe that all was not lost. The foals, Ànemos, Ben, her father, Hothbrodd, Twigleg, Lola… Guinevere repeated their names as if she could protect them all like that, but she was so frightened that she could hardly think straight.
Professor Spotiswode was already carrying out tests on diamonds for possible ways to open the eggs without hurting the foals after all. And Vita was frantically getting in touch with friends and members of FREEFAB all over the world to see if they could think of anything.
Two days left, said Guinevere’s calendar. Forty-eight hours. But Guinevere wasn’t even sure whether they had as long as that. And there was no sign of life from Ben and her father. Her mother had asked every conservationist in Indonesia to look out for them, but they seemed to have vanished without trace, like the griffins they had set out to find.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
A Royal Price
Today I have so much to do: I must kill memory
once and for all. I must turn my soul to stone.
Anna Akhmatova, ‘The Sentence’
When Firedrake came down on the throne platform again, Tattoo was standing beside Kraa’s petrified form with his head bent. Winston and Berulu were with him, and so was Barnabas, who with the aid of several lianas had actually managed to climb from Kraa’s palace down to the platform on his own. With Twigleg in his pocket. After all the experiences of the last few hours, the climb had seemed almost easy. They were all still alive, which seemed a miracle. But none of them felt anything like joy, let alone a sense of victory.
It had all been for nothing. The long journey, running all those risks… for nothing.
Ben picked up one of the many feathers lying on the platform. Most of them were Kraa’s, but there was no sun-feather among them. The sun-feathers now turned to stone, were around Kraa’s petrified neck. Telling Vita and Guinevere about their failure was going to be an ordeal. And the Pegasus… Ben could hardly bear to think of Ànemos.
Even the fact that they had rescued Shrii couldn’t really console Ben. He had only to think of the photograph of the motherless nest in his pocket, and his heart was heavy with grief and disappointment.
They were the only ones still standing by the stone figure of Kraa. All the others had followed Shrii when he and the other griffins flew up to Kraa’s palace nest.
Shrii… no, it had not all been for nothing. Pulau Bulu would be a happier island when they left it again. Who knew what would have become of Shrii, TerTaWa and all the others but for their arrival? Twigleg was telling himself the same thing as he stood between Barnabas and Ben, looking up at the sun-feathers on Kraa’s stone neck.
‘Maybe they’ll work even now they’ve been turned to stone,’ said Twigleg, with faint hope in his voice.
‘I can’t really imagine it,’ murmured Ben. ‘I think we’d better fly home.’
Tattoo groaned, and lowered his head so far that he almost bumped his nose on Kraa’s claws.
‘It’s my fault! All my fault!’
But although it was obvious how disappointed Barnabas was, he shook his head vigorously. ‘Nonsense! Kraa didn’t make it easy for any of us to think clearly. You were only trying to protect the others.’
‘Exactly. What else could you have done?’ Winston stroked Tattoo’s patterned scales comfortingly, while Berulu uttered a sympathetic squeak. Sometimes the maki sounded almost like a…
… rat!
Twigleg looked around. ‘Has anyone seen Lola?’
The others shook their heads.
Oh no!
‘But she must be here! She got away when Nakal grabbed hold of me!’ cried Twigleg. ‘I thought she ran to Barnabas!’
Oh, that confounded rat! Even if Twigleg still thought poorly of the way she had abandoned him to Nakal and Kraa on his own, he was genuinely worried! Suppose the stupid rodent had let something or other eat her? After all, she wasn’t half as big as she thought she was!
Lola had not let anything eat her, but she was in a fix. Rats can squeal quite loudly, and their shrill voices carry considerably further than their body size might suggest, but even a rat has trouble making herself heard above the noise of dragons and griffins locked in battle. And when the agitated chattering and squawking of monkeys and parro
ts is added to the racket, the prospect is hopeless!
Lola had tried shouting until her throat would produce nothing but a hoarse squeak, but no one had heard her. Of course she had left the humklupuss only to fetch help! But in doing so she had crossed the path of one of Kraa’s jackal scorpions, those infuriating nuisances. Wasn’t it bad enough for the brutes to have pincers? Did they have to snap at her with jackal’s jaws into the bargain? The anaesthetic in Barnabas’s fountain pens had already made her pursuer sleepy. But it could still have hunted rats, and Lola’s life would probably have come to a sudden end there on the island of Pulau Bulu if she hadn’t spotted a hole in the mud wall of Kraa’s nest just in time to save herself. It was a ridiculously tight fit, since after all, she wasn’t the most slender of rats, and her hideout stank of monkey and bird droppings. But the worst of it was having to crouch there while her friends could be heard fighting for their lives outside. And to make the situation even sillier, Barnabas’s anaesthetic had sent the jackal scorpion to sleep just outside the hole, barring her way of escape with its horrible pincers.
When cries of jubilation suddenly rang out, and the griffins were screeching Shrii’s name, Lola began shouting again. But her hoarse squeals were still not much louder than the squeak of a frightened mouse, and it seemed ages before Twigleg peered over her sleeping pursuer and looked into the hole.
‘And about time too, humpelklumpus!’ Lola snapped at him, while Barnabas moved the scorpion aside in what seemed to her an exaggeratedly considerate way.
‘Not a word!’ she said as she squeezed herself out into the open. ‘I don’t want to hear a word about it! I’ve missed it all, right? All the fun! But no, Barnabas didn’t want to put anything stronger in those fountain pen cases. Huh!’ She kicked the sleeping scorpion in the side with her tiny boot. ‘That dose wouldn’t even have knocked me out!’
This was too much for Twigleg.
‘All the fun?’ he repeated, outraged. ‘I’d just have loved to change places with you, Lola Greytail! Do you think it was more fun being held in a proboscis monkey’s perfumed paw, waiting to be fed to a griffin as a snack?’