Dragon Rider Read online

  “Hey, why didn’t you wake me up?” asked Sorrel grumpily from Firedrake’s back.

  Twigleg, still asleep in the crook of Ben’s arm, gave a sudden start and looked around, feeling dazed.

  “You can stay up here if you’d like, Sorrel,” said Firedrake. “We’re flying down, though landing in all that undergrowth won’t be easy.”

  The dragon swooped down through the air like a shadow. Palm fronds brushed Ben’s face as Firedrake broke through the green canopy of the trees. Beating his wings powerfully a couple of times, the dragon made a soft landing on the bank of a river that flowed sluggishly along the bottom of the ravine. Stray rays of sun fell on the water, and Ben looked up. The sky seemed infinitely far away. They were surrounded by hissing, chirping, grunting, and creaking sounds as hundreds of living creatures moved through thousands of leaves. The air was hot and humid, and swarms of midges hovered above the river.

  “Merciful morels!” Sorrel climbed off Firedrake’s back and sank up to her chest in creepers. “How are we ever supposed to find anything in this jungle?” She looked around uneasily.

  “By starting to look for it,” said Firedrake, making his way through the thick undergrowth.

  “Hang on, wait a minute!” Sorrel clutched his tail. “It’s all very well for you! You’re not up to your chin in all these leaves. Although,” she said, taking an experimental bite out of one, “they taste delicious. Absolutely yummy.”

  “Want to get on my back again?” asked Firedrake, turning around.

  “No, no,” said Sorrel dismissively. “It’s all right. I’ll manage on my own. Yum. Honest I will.” She was pulling leaf after leaf off the plants and stuffing them into her backpack. “These leaves are very, very tasty.”

  Ben put Twigleg on his shoulder and grinned.

  “Come along, Sorrel,” said Firedrake, impatiently swishing his tail back and forth. “You can stock up on provisions once we’ve found the djinn.”

  He turned and went on. Ben followed, and the two of them had soon disappeared among the trees.

  “I call that really mean of him!” said Sorrel crossly, trudging along behind them. “As if that djinn couldn’t wait another five minutes. It’s not as if I lived on nothing but moonlight. Does he want me to get so faint with hunger that I fall off his back?”

  Firedrake was making his way along the river. The farther they went, the narrower the ravine became. At last a huge, fallen palm tree barred the dragon’s way. An untidy tangle of roots stuck up in the air, but its tall trunk rested on a couple of large boulders in the riverbed, so that it was lying like a bridge across the water.

  “Wait a moment!” Ben put Twigleg down on Firedrake’s tail, climbed up on the trunk of the fallen tree, and clambered a little way along it.

  “Look!” he called, pointing to the opposite bank. “There, among the red flowers!”

  Firedrake took a step into the water and stretched his neck.

  Yes, there it was. A large gray car overgrown with creepers and covered with fallen flower petals. Lizards basked on its hood in the sun.

  Ben made his precarious way along the tree trunk and jumped down on the opposite bank. The dragon waded through the shallow water with Sorrel and Twigleg and then waited on the bank with them. Ben pushed the creepers aside and peered cautiously into the car. A large lizard sitting on the front seat hissed at him when he looked through the side window. Ben jumped back in alarm. The lizard rapidly disappeared between the seats.

  “No glass in the windows,” said Ben quietly. “Just as the professor told us.”

  Cautiously he put his head in through the car window again. There was no trace of the lizard now, although two snakes were coiled up on the backseat. Ben tightened his lips, put his hand through the window, and pressed the horn. Then he rapidly moved back.

  Flocks of birds flew up, squawking. The lizards shot off the hot metal of the car and disappeared into the twining undergrowth.

  All was silent again.

  Warily Ben stepped back. The professor had told them to wait seventeen paces away from the car. Ben counted his footsteps. One … two … three … four … Seventeen paces were a lot. On purpose, he did not make his steps too large. After the seventeenth, he sat down on a rock and waited while Firedrake lay down behind him among the flowers and leaves. Sorrel and Twigleg sat on the dragon’s paws. They all stared at the car as if spellbound.

  Asif didn’t keep them waiting long.

  Blue-tinged smoke billowed out of the car and streamed higher and higher. Ben had to crane his neck to look up at the vast spiral. The drifting wisps merged together among the treetops, whirling around one another faster and faster until the gigantic pillar of smoke formed into a body, a body as blue as the night sky and so large that its shadow darkened the entire ravine. Asif’s thousand eyes, small and bright as jewels, sparkled all over his skin, his shoulders, his arms, and his fat belly.

  Ben retreated until he felt Firedrake’s scales behind him. Sorrel and Twigleg huddled on the dragon’s back. Only Firedrake did not move but raised his head and gazed up at the djinn.

  “Well, well! Look at this, then!” The djinn bent over them. A thousand eyes with a thousand images in them shone above their heads, and as he spoke Asif’s breath blew like the hot desert wind from one end of the ravine to the other.

  “So what have we here?” boomed the djinn. “A dragon, a genuine dragon. Well, well, well!” His voice was as hollow as an echo, resounding from wall to wall of the rocky ravine. “So it was you making my skin itch so much that a thousand servants had to scratch it for me.”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose, djinn!” Firedrake called. “We’ve come to ask you a question.”

  “Aaaaah!” The djinn’s mouth stretched into a smile. “I answer only human questions.”

  “We know!” Ben jumped up, pushed the hair back from his forehead, and looked up at the huge djinn. “I’m going to ask you the question, Asif.”

  “Oooooh!” breathed the djinn. “So this little fellow knows our name! What kind of a question is it? You know the rules?”

  “Yes,” replied Ben.

  “Good.” The djinn leaned a little farther down, his breath as hot as the steam rising from a saucepan. Perspiration was dripping off the end of Ben’s nose.

  “Ask away!” breathed Asif. “I could just do with another servant! Someone small to clean my ears, for instance. Now you would be the ideal size for that.”

  Ben gulped. Asif’s face was now directly above his head. Blue hairs as thick as saplings grew in his nostrils, and his pointed ears, rising high above his bald skull, were larger than Firedrake’s wings. Two huge eyes, green as the eyes of a giant cat, looked down mockingly on Ben. He saw his own reflection in them, tiny and forlorn. Asif’s many, many other eyes showed other scenes: snow fell on strange cities, ships capsized at sea.

  Ben mopped the sweat off his nose and said in a loud voice, “Where does the Rim of Heaven lie?”

  Sorrel narrowed her eyes. Firedrake held his breath, and Twigleg began shaking all over. But Ben, heart thumping, waited for the djinn’s answer.

  “The Rim of Heaven!” repeated Asif.

  He rose a few more meters into the air and then laughed so loud that stones broke away from the walls of the ravine and crashed into the depths. His fat belly wobbled above Ben’s head as if it might drop on him at any moment.

  “Oh, little one, little one!” boomed the djinn, bending over the boy again.

  Firedrake placed himself protectively in front of Ben, but Asif gently pushed the dragon aside with his huge hand.

  “The Rim of Heaven!” he repeated. “You’re not putting that question for yourself, are you?”

  Ben shook his head. “No,” he said. “My friends need to know. Why ask me that?”

  “Why?” boomed Asif, so loud that Twigleg put his hands over his ears. “Because you are the first! The first not to ask for himself, my beetle-sized little human. The first in so many thousands of years that ev
en I can’t count them. So I am doubly glad to answer your question. Although I really could have used you as a servant.”

  “You — you — do you know the answer?” Ben’s tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth.

  “Do I know the answer?” The djinn laughed again. He kneeled down and held his blue thumb in front of Ben’s face. “Look at that!” he breathed. “Look into my two hundred and twenty-third eye. What do you see?”

  Ben bent over Asif’s thumb.

  “I see a river!” he whispered, so quietly that Firedrake had to prick up his ears to hear him. “It’s flowing through green mountains. On and on. Now the mountains are higher. Everything’s bare and empty. There are mountains very oddly shaped, like, like …” But the picture was changing.

  “The river’s flowing past a building,” murmured Ben. “Not an ordinary building. A palace or something like that.”

  The djinn nodded. “Look at it—look at it hard,” he breathed. “Look at it closely.”

  Ben looked until the picture blurred again. Then Asif held out his forefinger. “And here is my two hundred and fifty-fifth eye,” he said. “What do you see there?”

  “I see a valley,” said Ben. “A valley surrounded by nine high mountains with snowcapped peaks. They’re almost all the same height. The valley is full of mist.”

  “Good!” Asif blinked. The picture blurred again, like the images in all his other nine hundred and ninety-nine eyes, and a new one appeared.

  Ben’s eyes opened wide. “There, oh, look!” He bent excitedly over Asif’s gigantic finger. “Firedrake, there’s a dragon there. A dragon like you! In a cave. A gigantic cave!”

  Firedrake took a deep breath and stepped forward uneasily. But Asif blinked again, and the picture in his two hundred and fifty-fifth eye blurred, along with all the rest. Disappointed, Ben straightened up. The djinn withdrew his hand, placed it on his mighty knee, and stroked his long mustache with his other hand.

  “Did you notice what you saw?” he asked the boy. “Did you memorize it carefully?”

  Ben nodded. “Yes,” he stammered. “Yes, but —”

  “Beware!” Asif crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the boy sternly. “You have asked your question. But now watch your tongue, or you may yet be my servant.”

  Confused, Ben bowed his head. The djinn rose and floated a little way up in the air, as light as a balloon.

  “Follow the river Indus and seek the images you saw in my eyes!” boomed Asif. “Seek the images. Enter the palace on the mountainside and break the moonlight on the stone dragon’s head. When that day comes, twenty fingers will point the way to the Rim of Heaven, and silver will be worth more than gold.”

  Speechless, Ben looked up at the vast djinn. Asif smiled.

  “You, you were the first!” he called again.

  Then he inflated like a sail in the wind, and his arms and legs turned to blue smoke again. Asif whirled around and around until leaves and flowers were dancing in his wake and he was nothing but a pillar of blue smoke. It dissolved in a gust of wind and disappeared.

  “‘Seek the images,’” murmured Ben and closed his eyes.

  21. Twigleg’s Decision

  Firedrake wanted to fly on at once, but the sun was still high in the sky. Although it had soon grown dark in the djinn’s ravine, there were still many hours to go before night would fall outside. So they found a place far from the djinn’s lair, down by the river among the leaves that tasted so good to Sorrel, and waited there for the moon to rise. However, the dragon could not sleep. He paced restlessly up and down the riverbank.

  “Firedrake, you really ought to get some sleep,” said Ben, spreading out the map on a sea of white flowers. “There’s still a long way to go before we reach the coast.”

  Firedrake craned his neck over Ben’s shoulder, his eyes following the boy’s finger as it traced their way over mountains, gorges, and deserts.

  “This is where we ought to reach the sea,” Ben told him. “See the mark the rat made? I don’t think that part of the route looks difficult. But this,” and he indicated the vast expanse of sea between the Arabian peninsula and the delta of the Indus, “this bothers me. I’ve no idea where you’ll be able to land. Not an island in sight. And it will take us at least two nights to get across.” He shook his head. “I can’t see how we’re going to do it without coming down on the water.”

  Thoughtfully Firedrake looked first at the map and then at the boy. “Where’s the village where the woman who knows about dragons lives?”

  Ben tapped the map. “Here. Right at the mouth of the river Indus. So it wouldn’t take us far out of our way to visit her. And do you know where the Indus rises?”

  The dragon shook his head.

  “In the Himalayas!” cried Ben. “That fits, doesn’t it? We only have to find the palace I saw in Asif’s eye and then —”

  “Then what?” Sorrel sat down beside them in the fragrant flowers. “Then you break moonlight on the stone dragon’s head. Can you tell me what that’s supposed to mean?”

  “Not yet,” said Ben. “But I’ll know when it happens.”

  “And how about the twenty fingers?” The brownie lowered her voice. “Always supposing that blue person wasn’t just putting us on.”

  “Oh, no.” Twigleg climbed onto Ben’s lap. “That’s only the way a djinn talks. The young master’s right. The words will explain themselves, you wait and see.”

  “I hope you’re right,” muttered Sorrel, rolling up in a ball underneath a huge fern frond.

  Firedrake lay down beside her and lowered his head to his paws. “Break the moonlight,” he murmured. “Sounds like a riddle to me.” He yawned and closed his eyes.

  It was dark and cold under the palms now. Ben and Sorrel pressed close to Firedrake’s warm scales, and soon all three of them were asleep.

  Only Twigleg remained awake, sitting beside them among the white blossoms. The scent of the flowers made him feel dizzy. He listened to Ben’s peaceful breathing, looked at Firedrake’s silver scales and his friendly face, so different from the face of Nettlebrand, and sighed. A single question was buzzing around in his head like a captive bumblebee.

  Should he tell his master what the djinn had said and, by doing so, betray the silver dragon?

  Twigleg’s little head was aching so hard as he pondered this question that he pressed his hands to his throbbing temples. He hadn’t stolen Nettlebrand’s scale back from the boy yet, either. He leaned against Ben’s back and closed his eyes. Perhaps his brain would calm down in his sleep. But just as he thought the peaceful breathing of the other three was making him drowsy, something plucked at his sleeve. The homunculus started and sat up. Was one of those nasty giant lizards that lurked among the creepers trying to take a bite out of him?

  But it was the raven sitting in the tangled leaves in front of Twigleg, plucking at his sleeve with his beak.

  “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?” whispered the homunculus, annoyed.

  He rose quietly and beckoned the raven to follow him away from his sleeping companions. The big bird stalked after him.

  “You’ve forgotten your report,” he croaked. “How much longer are you going to leave it?”

  “What business is that of yours?” Twigleg stopped on the other side of a tall bush. “I — I’m going to wait until we’re over the sea.”

  “Why?” The raven pecked a caterpillar off the branches of the bush and looked at the manikin suspiciously. “There’s no reason to wait,” he cawed. “You’ll only make our master angry. What did the djinn say?”

  “I’ll be telling our master,” replied Twigleg evasively. “You ought to have listened more carefully.”

  “Huh!” croaked the raven. “That blue creature wouldn’t stop growing. I thought I’d better keep out of the way.”

  “That’s your bad luck.” Scratching his ear, Twigleg peered at Firedrake through the branches. But the dragon and his friends were fast asleep, while the shadows in the ravi
ne grew ever darker.

  The raven preened his feathers and gave the homunculus a black look.

  “You’re getting too uppity, manikin,” he cawed. “I don’t like it. Maybe I ought to tell the master.”

  “Go on, then, do! Goodness knows that won’t be news to him,” said Twigleg, but his heart beat faster. “Anyway, I can set your mind at rest.” He assumed a grave expression. “I’m going to report to him today. Word of honor. I just have to take another look at the map first. The boy’s map, I mean.”

  The raven put his head on one side. “The map? Why?”

  Twigleg made a face. “You wouldn’t understand, beaky. Now get out. If that brownie girl sees you, she won’t believe it if I say we have nothing to do with each other.”

  “All right.” The raven caught another caterpillar and flapped his wings. “But I’m following you. I’ll be keeping an eye on you. So you be sure to make that report.”

  Twigleg watched the raven until he disappeared among the tops of the palm trees. Then he quickly went over to Ben’s backpack, took out the map, and opened it. Oh, yes, he’d make his report. At once. But it would be a special kind of report, a very special kind indeed. His eyes scanned the seas and mountains until he spotted a large, pale brown area. He knew what brown meant. Ben had explained exactly how to read the wonderful map. Brown meant no water. Not a drop of water far and wide. And that was exactly what Twigleg was looking for.

  “I’m sick and tired of it!” he muttered. “I’m sick and tired of being his spy. I’m going to send him off to the desert. The biggest desert I can find!”

  Only a desert could keep Nettlebrand away from the small human being and the silver dragon a little while longer. He couldn’t have cared less if his master had only wanted to eat the unfriendly brownie! But not the small human. No — he, Twigleg, wasn’t going to help him do that. He’d seen Nettlebrand crunch up his brothers. He’d seen him devour their maker. But Nettlebrand wasn’t going to get the little human into his greedy jaws. Ever.