“Huh, it’s you he’ll be eating!” Sorrel snapped back furiously. “Always supposing you really did lie to him.”
“I did, I did!” cried Twigleg, his voice trembling. “I sent him off to the Great Desert, far, far away, because … because …”he added, clearing his throat and glancing shyly at Ben, “because he was going to eat the little human here, too. And the young master was kind to me. For no reason at all. He was kind and friendly, just like that. No one was ever friendly to me before.” Twigleg sniffed, rubbed his nose, and looked down at his sharp, bony knees. Very quietly, he said, “So I decided he can be my master from now on. If he likes.” The homunculus looked anxiously at the boy.
“Your master! Oh, orange birch boletus!” Sorrel gave a scornful laugh. “What an honor! And when are you planning to betray him?”
Ben sat down on the stone dragon and put Twigleg on his knee.
“Never mind all this nonsense about masters,” he said. “And don’t keep calling me young master, either! We can be friends, can’t we? Just ordinary friends, okay?”
Twigleg smiled. A tear ran down his nose again, but this time it was a tear of joy. “Friends,” he repeated. “Oh, yes, friends!”
Barnabas Greenbloom cleared his throat and leaned over the pair of them.
“Twigleg,” he said, “what did you mean just now about sending Nettlebrand into the desert? What desert?”
“The biggest desert I could find on the map,” replied the homunculus. “Only a desert can hold Nettlebrand prisoner for a while, you see. Because” — Twigleg lowered his voice, as if his old master were lurking in the dark shadows cast by the stone dome — “he speaks and sees through water. Only water gives him the power to move instantly from one place to another. So I sent him where there’s less of it than anywhere else.”
“He is lord of the water,” said Firedrake softly.
“What did you say?” Barnabas Greenbloom looked at him in surprise.
“It’s something we were told by a sea serpent we met on the way here,” explained the dragon. “She said Nettlebrand has more power over water than she does herself.”
“But how does he do it?” asked Guinevere, looking inquiringly at the homunculus. “Do you know, Twigleg?”
Twigleg shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know all the secrets the alchemist told him. When one of his servants spits or throws a stone into water, the image of Nettlebrand appears. He talks to us as if he were actually there, even if he’s at the other end of the earth. But no, I don’t know how it’s done.”
“Oh, so that’s what you were up to beside that water cistern,” said Sorrel, “when you tried to make me think you were talking to your reflection. You treacherous little locust! You—”
“Stop it, Sorrel!” Firedrake interrupted her. He looked at the homunculus.
Ashamed, Twigleg bent his head. “She’s right,” he murmured. “I was talking to my master.”
“And I think you’d better carry on doing just that,” said Zubeida.
Twigleg turned to look at her in surprise.
“You may yet be able to make amends for your treachery,” said the dracologist.
“Exactly the same thing occurred to me, Zubeida!” Barnabas Greenbloom struck the palm of one hand with his fist. “Twigleg could be a kind of double agent. What do you think, Vita?”
His wife nodded. “Not a bad idea.”
“What exactly does a trouble agent do?” asked Sorrel.
“Simple! Twigleg just has to act as if he were still spying for Nettlebrand,” Ben explained. “But he’ll really be spying for us. Get it?”
Sorrel wrinkled her nose.
“Yes, of course! Twigleg could go on fooling him!” cried Guinevere. She looked intently at the homunculus. “Would you do it? I mean, wouldn’t it be too dangerous?”
Twigleg shook his head. “I wouldn’t mind that,” he replied. “But I’m afraid Nettlebrand will have found out by now that I betrayed him. You’re forgetting the ravens.”
“Oh, they turned back into crabs,” said Sorrel airily.
“He has more than just those two ravens, fur-face,” snapped Twigleg. “For instance, there was the one out at sea when you played that trick on him with the stone. He was the bird I used to ride on, and he was already suspicious. Your stone will have annoyed him to no end.”
“So?” growled Sorrel.
“Don’t you have anything but fur inside your head as well as on it?” cried Twigleg. “Doesn’t it strike you that he may have been so furious that he rushed off to see my old master? Don’t you think Nettlebrand will suspect something if the raven tells him we were crossing the Arabian Sea on the back of a sea serpent? Although I told him the dragons were hiding in a desert thousands of kilometers farther west?”
“Oh. I see,” muttered Sorrel, scratching herself behind the ears.
“No.” Twigleg shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s such a good idea for me to report back to him. You mustn’t underestimate Nettlebrand!” The homunculus shuddered and looked at Firedrake, who was gazing down at him anxiously. “I don’t know why you’re looking for the Rim of Heaven, but I think you ought to turn back for fear of leading your worst enemy exactly where he wants to go in his wicked dreams.”
Firedrake returned Twigleg’s gaze in silence. Then he said, “I set out on this long journey to find a new home for me and the other dragons who flew north long, long ago to escape Nettlebrand and the human race. We had a place in the north, a remote valley — it was damp and cold, but we could live there in peace. Now that human beings want that valley, the Rim of Heaven is our only hope. Where else shall we find a refuge that doesn’t belong to humankind?”
“So that’s why you’re here,” said Zubeida quietly. “That, as Barnabas has told me, is why you’re looking for the Rim of Heaven.” She nodded. “It’s true that the Himalayas, where that mysterious place is believed to lie hidden, are no place for human beings. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never discovered the Rim of Heaven myself—because I’m human. I think you might well find it, Firedrake. But how can we keep Nettlebrand from following you?”
Barnabas Greenbloom shook his head, at a loss. “Firedrake can’t go back home, either,” he murmured, “or he’ll lead Nettlebrand straight to the dragons in the north. We’re in a real fix, my friend.”
“Yes, no doubt about it!” Zubeida sighed. “But I think some such thing was bound to happen. You haven’t yet heard the end of the old story of the dragon rider. Follow me, all of you. I want to show you something — particularly you, dragon rider.”
So saying, she took Ben’s hand and led him into the ruins of the tomb.
30. All Is Revealed to Nettlebrand
“Spit!” snapped Nettlebrand. “Go on, spit, you useless dwarf.” Tail twitching, he was sitting among the dunes, surrounded by the mountains of sand from which Gravelbeard had finally freed him. It was lucky for Nettlebrand that mountain dwarves are good at digging.
With difficulty, Gravelbeard collected a little saliva in his dry mouth, pursed his lips, and spat into the bowl he had carved from the cactus that Nettlebrand had incautiously tried to eat.
“It’s not going to work, Your Goldness!” he said fretfully. “Look, the sun’s going to roast us alive before we have enough liquid in this.”
“Spit!” Nettlebrand growled and contributed a pool of bright green saliva himself.
“Wow!” Gravelbeard leaned over the bowl with such enthusiasm that his hat almost fell in. “That was amazing, Your Goldness! A whole pondful, no, a lakeful of spit! It works! Amazing! Look, the sun’s reflected in it. Let’s hope it doesn’t all evaporate.”
“Then stand where your shadow falls on it, fool!” snapped Nettlebrand. He spat again. Splish! A puddle of green hit the hollowed-out cactus flesh. Splat, splosh! Gravelbeard added his bit. They kept spitting until even Nettlebrand’s mouth was dry.
“Stand aside!” he hissed, pushing the dwarf down in the hot sand and peering with one red eye into
the little pool they had made. For a moment, the green goo remained clouded, but then it suddenly shone like a mirror, and the dark figure of a raven appeared in the cactus-flesh bowl.
“At last!” cawed the raven, dropping the stone he had been holding in his beak. “Where were you, master? I’ve thrown more stones into this sea than there are stars in the sky. You’ve got to get that brownie and eat her. At once! Look at this!” Indignantly he raised his left wing, where the stone Sorrel had thrown at him still clung. Brownie saliva lasts a long time.
“Don’t make such a fuss!” growled Nettlebrand. “And forget the brownie. Where’s Twigleg? What was he doing when he eavesdropped on the djinn? Had his ears plugged with raisins, did he? I haven’t seen so much as the tip of a dragon’s tail in this ghastly desert where he sent me.”
The raven opened his beak, shut it, and then opened it again.
“Desert? What desert?” he cawed in surprise. “What are you talking about, master? The silver dragon flew over the sea ages ago, taking Twigleg with him. I last saw them riding a sea serpent. Didn’t he tell you about that?” The raven shook his wing again accusingly. “And then the brownie cast her magic spell with the stone. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Twigleg didn’t lift a finger to stop that little fur-faced brute.”
Nettlebrand frowned. “Flew over the sea?” he grunted.
The raven leaned forward a little way. “Master?” he said. “Master, I don’t have a very clear view of you.”
Nettlebrand spat impatiently into the cactus bowl.
“Yes!” cried the raven. “I can see you better now.”
“Over what sea?” Nettlebrand shouted at him.
“You know the sea, master!” cried the raven. “You know the serpent, too. Remember the night of the full moon when you hunted the dragons as they swam? I’m sure it was one of the same serpents that thwarted you then.”
“Shut up!” bellowed Nettlebrand. He was so angry, he could have smashed the cactus bowl with one blow of his paw. Snorting, he dug his claws into the sand. “No, I don’t remember, and you’d better not, either. Go away now. I have to think.”
The startled raven retreated. “Yes, but that brownie,” he squawked in a small voice. “What about that brownie?”
“Get out, I said!” Nettlebrand roared.
Straightening up and growling, he lashed the sand with his tail. “That stinking flea! That spidery monstrosity! That sharp-nosed birdbrain! He actually dared to lie to me! Me!” Nettlebrand’s eyes were blazing. “I’ll trample him to death!” he snarled at the desert sands. “I’ll crack him like a nut. I’ll eat him alive the way I ate his brothers! Aaaargh!” Opening his jaws, he roared so loud that Gravelbeard threw himself onto the sand, trembling, and pulled his hat down over his ears.
“Up on my back, armor-cleaner!” snapped Nettlebrand.
“Yes, Your Goldness!” stammered the dwarf. Weak at the knees, he ran to his master’s tail and ran up it so fast that he almost lost his hat. “Are we going home at last, Your Goldness?” he asked.
“Going home?” Nettlebrand gave a hoarse laugh. “We’re going hunting. But first you’ll tell that treacherous spindly homunculus how I perished miserably in the desert.”
“You what?” asked Gravelbeard, bewildered.
“I rusted up, you fool,” Nettlebrand snapped. “I rusted, I got sand caught everywhere, I was buried alive, all blocked up — oh, invent any story you like. Only make it sound good, make it sound so convincing that the little traitor, suspecting nothing, will jump for joy and lead us to our prey.”
“But,” said Gravelbeard, gasping for breath as he hauled himself up on his master’s gigantic head, “how are you going to find him?”
“Leave that to me,” replied Nettlebrand. “I have a very good idea where the silver dragon was going. But now we need a nice big stretch of water for you to deliver your made-up story. And if you don’t manage to make him believe every word of it,” said Nettlebrand, his muzzle distorting into a terrible smile, “then I shall eat you alive, dwarf.”
Gravelbeard trembled nervously.
Nettlebrand dipped a black claw in the puddle of spit and disappeared like one of the ghostly apparitions of the Great Desert. Only the prints of his mighty paws, together with Gravelbeard’s feather duster, were left in the sand, but the desert wind soon covered them up forever.
31. Return of the Dragon Rider
It was dark inside the tomb of the dragon rider, although the noonday sun was blazing down on the land outside. Only a few dusty sunbeams made their way through the crumbling walls and fell on the strange carved patterns adorning the walls of the tomb. There was enough space under the stone dome for even Firedrake to turn around easily. A strange, heavy fragrance rose from some faded flowers lying on the floor around a stone sarcophagus.
“Look,” said Zubeida Ghalib, taking Ben over to it. The dry petals crackled under their feet. “Do you see this writing?” The dracologist put her hand on the stone slab covering the sarcophagus.
Ben nodded.
“It took me a long time to decipher it,” Zubeida went on. “Many of the characters had been eroded by the salty wind blowing in from the sea, and no one down in the village knew what they said. None of them remembered the old stories clearly. Only with the help of two very old women, whose grandmothers had told them tales of the dragon rider, did I manage to decipher the forgotten words — and, this morning, when I saw you and Sorrel riding into the village on Firedrake’s back, it was as if they had come to life.”
“Why, what do they say?” asked Ben. His heart had been thudding when Dr. Ghalib led him into the burial chamber. He didn’t like cemeteries. They frightened him, and now here he was inside a tomb. But the fragrance rising from the dry petals was reassuring.
“It says here,” replied Zubeida, passing her ringed fingers over the weather-worn characters, “that the dragon rider will return in the shape of a boy with skin as pale as the full moon, coming to save his friends the dragons from a terrible enemy.”
Incredulous, Ben examined the sarcophagus. “Is that really what it says? But …” Baffled, he looked at the professor.
“Did some soothsayer say so at the time, Zubeida?” asked Barnabas Greenbloom.
Zubeida Ghalib nodded. “Yes, a woman who was present at the dragon rider’s deathbed. Some even say now that those were his own words.”
“He said he’d return? But he was a human being, right?” asked Sorrel. She laughed. “Oh, come on! You humans don’t return from the World Beyond. You lose yourselves there. Either you lose yourselves or you forget the world you came from.”
“How do you know if that’s true of all human beings?” asked Zubeida Ghalib. “I know you can enter the other world whenever you like, Sorrel. All fabulous creatures can, except for those who die a violent death. But there are some humans beings who believe we, too, have only to become a little better acquainted with death to be able to return, if we want to. So who knows, perhaps there really is something of the old dragon rider in Ben.”
The boy looked down at his feet uncomfortably.
“Oh, come on!” Sorrel chuckled skeptically. “We found him in a pile of old packing cases. A stack of crates and cardboard cartons on the other side of the world, and he didn’t know a thing about dragons and brownies, not a single thing.”
“That’s true,” said Firedrake. He bent his neck over Ben’s shoulder. “But he has become a dragon rider now, Sorrel, a true dragon rider. There aren’t many of those in the world. There never were many, even when dragons could still roam freely and didn’t have to hide. In my view,” he said, raising his head and looking around, “whether or not there’s something of the old dragon rider in him, here he is, and perhaps he really can help us defeat Nettlebrand. One thing fits, anyway.” Firedrake nudged Ben and gently blew the hair back from his face. “He’s as pale as the moon. In fact, rather paler at the moment, I’d say.”
Feeling rather embarrassed, Ben grinned at the d
ragon.
“Huh!” Sorrel picked up one of the fragrant petals and held it under her nose. “I’m a dragon rider, too, you know! I’ve been a dragon rider ever since I can remember. But no one’s making a big fuss about me.”
“You’re not exactly as pale as the moon, are you?” said Twigleg, scrutinizing her furry face. “More the color of storm clouds, if you ask me.”
Sorrel stuck out her tongue at him. “No one did ask you,” she snapped.
Professor Greenbloom cleared his throat and leaned against the old sarcophagus, evidently thinking hard.
“My dear Zubeida,” he said, “I assume you showed us this old inscription because you think Firedrake should not turn back, despite his sinister pursuer. Right?”
The dracologist nodded. “Right. Firedrake has come so far, and so many people have helped him along the way — I just can’t believe all that was for nothing. And I think it’s time for the dragons to fight back and banish Nettlebrand forever, instead of hiding away from him. Could there be a better opportunity?” She looked around at them. “We have a dragon with nothing more to lose, a brownie girl who can make enchanted ravens fall from the sky, a human boy who’s a true dragon rider and is even mentioned in an old prophecy, a homunculus who knows almost all his master’s secrets” — her bangles jingled as she raised her arms — “and a great many people who long to see dragons flying in the sky again. Oh, yes, I think Firedrake should continue his quest, but first I must tell him how to fly at the dark time of the moon.”
It was very quiet in the tomb of the dragon rider. They were all gazing intently at the dragon. Thoughtfully Firedrake looked down at the ground. At last he raised his head, looked steadily at them all, and nodded.
“I’ll fly on,” he said. “Perhaps what the writing on the stone says is true. Perhaps the prophecy really does mean us. But before we go on, I’d like Twigleg to see if he can find out where his master is now.” He looked at the homunculus, a question in his eyes. “Will you do that, Twigleg?”