Dragon Rider Read online

  Broad and massive, the bridge spanned the river. Traffic noises drifted down from it, but the shadow it cast was as dark as the mud on the bottom of the canal and offered the dragon shelter from prying eyes. Firedrake raised his head from the water and looked around. There was no one in sight on either the water or the bank. The dragon crawled up on land, shook the dirty water off his scales, and settled among the blackberry bushes growing in the shade of the bridge.

  He licked his scales clean and waited.

  Before long he was half-deafened by the noise overhead, but even worse was his anxiety for Sorrel and the boy. Sighing, Firedrake laid his head on his paws and looked at the water, which reflected the gray clouds overhead. He felt lonely. It was an unfamiliar feeling. Firedrake had not been alone often and never in such a strange, gray place. Suppose Sorrel didn’t come? The dragon raised his head and looked back along the canal.

  Where could they be?

  It was odd. Firedrake let his head drop to his paws again. He was missing the boy, too. Were there many human beings like Ben? Firedrake thought of the two men who had grabbed the boy, and the tip of his tail twitched with anger.

  Then he saw the boat.

  It came drifting down the canal toward him like a nutshell. The dragon quickly stretched his long neck out of the shadow of the bridge and breathed a shower of blue sparks on the water.

  When Sorrel saw him she hopped about in such excitement that the boat swayed perilously, but Ben paddled it safely to the bank. Sorrel jumped out onto the slope and ran to Firedrake.

  “Hey!” she cried. “Hey, there you are!” Flinging her arms around his neck, she nipped his nose affectionately. Then she dropped to the grass beside the dragon with a sigh. “You’ve no idea how awful I feel!” she groaned. “All that rocking about! My tummy’s churning as if I’d eaten a death cap mushroom.”

  Ben tied the boat to a tree and shyly came closer. “Thank you,” he said to the dragon. “Thank you very much for chasing those men away.”

  Firedrake bent his neck and gently nuzzled the boy. “What are you going to do now?” he asked. “You can’t go back there, can you?”

  “No.” Ben sat down on his backpack, sighing. “That factory won’t be left standing much longer. They’re going to blow it up.”

  “Oh, you’ll find somewhere else to hide!” Sorrel looked around, snuffling, and picked a few leaves from the bramble bushes. “I know! Why not move in with Rat’s cousin? He’s got plenty of room.”

  “Rat’s cousin!” cried Firedrake. “With all the excitement, I’d entirely forgotten about him. What did he say? Does he know where we must look?”

  “Well, sort of!” Sorrel stuffed the leaves into her mouth and picked herself another handful. “But we’d have found that out for ourselves, anyway. One thing’s for sure, we have a long journey ahead of us. Are you certain you don’t want to change your mind?”

  But Firedrake only shook his head. “I’m not turning back, Sorrel. Exactly what did the rat say?”

  “He gave us a map,” said Ben. “The map shows it all. Where to fly, what to watch out for, everything. It’s great!”

  Excited, the dragon turned to Sorrel. “A map? What kind of a map?”

  “Well, just a map.” Sorrel took it out of her backpack. “There you are.” She spread it out in front of the dragon.

  “What does all that mean?” Firedrake looked at the tangle of lines and marks, baffled. “Can you read it?”

  “Of course,” said Sorrel, looking important. “My granddad was always drawing things like that, to help him find his way back to his mushroom stores.”

  The dragon nodded. “Good.” He put his head to one side and looked up at the sky. “Which way do I fly first? Straight east?”

  “Um, east? Wait a minute.” Sorrel scratched behind her ears and bent over the map. Her furry finger traced Gilbert’s golden line. “No, I think we go south. First south, then east, he said. Yes, that’s exactly what he said.” She nodded. “I’m certain he did.”

  “Sorrel,” said Firedrake, “are you quite sure you understand what these scribbles mean?”

  “Of course I do!” Sorrel looked offended. “Oh, bother these human clothes!” Crossly, she pulled Ben’s sweatshirt over her head and slipped out of the trousers. “I can’t think properly with this stuff on.”

  The dragon looked at her thoughtfully. Then he stretched his neck and looked at the sky. “The sun’s setting,” he said. “We can start soon.”

  “Thank goodness!” Sorrel folded up the map and put it in her backpack. “About time we left this city. It’s no place for a dragon and a brownie.”

  Ben picked up a couple of stones and chucked them into the dark water. “I don’t suppose you’ll be coming back, will you?”

  “Why on earth would we want to?” Sorrel stuffed a few extra bramble leaves into her backpack. “I certainly don’t want to see that conceited white rat again.”

  Ben nodded. “Then I’ll wish you both luck,” he said, throwing a final stone into the water. “I hope you find this Rim of Heaven place.”

  Firedrake looked at him. Ben returned the dragon’s glance.

  “You’d like to come, too, wouldn’t you?” asked Firedrake.

  Ben bit his lip. “Of course,” he muttered, hardly knowing where to look.

  Raising her head, Sorrel pricked up her ears uneasily. “What?” she said. “Come with us? What are you two going on about?”

  Firedrake took no notice of her but just looked at the boy. “It will be a dangerous journey,” he said. “Very long and very dangerous. You may never come back. Wouldn’t anyone here miss you?”

  Ben shook his head. “I’m on my own. I always have been.” His heart beat faster. Hardly daring to believe it, he looked at the dragon. “Would you … would you really let me come, too?”

  “If you like,” replied Firedrake. “But think about it carefully. Sorrel often gets very bad-tempered, you know.”

  Ben felt weak at the knees. “Oh, I do know!” he said, grinning. He was feeling quite dizzy with delight.

  “Hey, hang on half a sec!” Sorrel pushed her way in between them. “What’s got into you, Firedrake? He can’t possibly come.”

  “Why not?” Firedrake playfully nuzzled her furry stomach. “He’s been very helpful. We can use all the help we can get, don’t you think?”

  “Helpful?” Sorrel was so indignant she almost fell over. “He’s a human! A human being! Only pint-sized, but still a human being. And it’s the humans’ fault we’re not at home in our nice warm cave. It’s their fault we’re off on this crazy quest! And now you want to take one of them along?”

  “Yes, I do.” Firedrake rose, shook himself, and bent his neck so low that the brownie girl had to look him in the eye. “He’s helped us, Sorrel. He’s a friend. So I don’t mind whether he’s a human being, a brownie, or a rat. What’s more,” he added, looking at Ben, who was standing there hardly daring to breathe, “what’s more, he doesn’t have a home now any more than we do. Isn’t that true?” He looked inquiringly at the boy.

  “I never did have a home,” muttered Ben, looking at Sorrel.

  The brownie bit her lip and dug the claws of her toes into the muddy bank. “Oh, all right, all right,” she murmured gruffly at last. “I’ll say no more. But he sits behind me. I insist on that.”

  Firedrake nudged her so firmly with his nose that she fell backward into the dirty grass. “He sits behind you,” Firedrake agreed. “But he’s coming with us.”

  8. Flying Off Course

  When the moon had risen above the city rooftops, and a few lone stars began to appear in the sky, Firedrake came out from under the bridge. Sorrel was up on his back in an instant, but Ben didn’t find it quite so easy. Sorrel watched with a scornful grin as he laboriously clambered up Firedrake’s tail. When he finally reached the dragon’s back he looked as proud as if he had climbed the highest mountain on earth. Sorrel took his backpack, buckled it to her own, and hung them like saddleba
gs over Firedrake’s back.

  “Hang onto the spines of his crest,” she told Ben. “And tie yourself to them with this strap, or the first gust of wind will blow you off.”

  Ben nodded. Firedrake craned his neck around to look at the two of them. “Ready?”

  “Ready!” said Sorrel. “Here we go. Fly south!”

  “South?” asked Firedrake.

  “Yes, first south, then after a while turn east. When I tell you.”

  The dragon spread his shimmering wings and took off. Holding his breath, Ben clung tight to the spines of Firedrake’s crest. The dragon rose higher and higher. They left the noise of the city behind. Night enfolded them in darkness and silence, and soon the human world was no more than a glitter of lights far below.

  “Well, how do you like it?” Sorrel called to Ben when they had been flying for some time. “Do you feel sick?”

  “Sick?” Ben looked down to where roads wound through the darkness like gleaming snail trails. “It’s wonderful! It’s — oh, I can’t describe it!”

  “Personally I always feel sick to start with,” said Sorrel. “The only thing that helps is eating. Take a look in my backpack and hand me a mushroom, will you? One of the little black ones.”

  Ben did as she asked. Then he looked down again. The wind was roaring in his ears.

  “Wonderful!” said Sorrel, smacking her lips. “A following wind. This way we’ll be in the mountains before daybreak. Firedrake!”

  The dragon turned his head to her.

  “Time to turn east!” Sorrel called. “Eastward, ho!”

  “What, already?” Ben looked over her shoulder. Sorrel had the rat’s map on her lap and was tracing the golden line with her finger.

  “But we haven’t reached the right place yet!” cried Ben. “We can’t have.”

  Putting his hand in his jacket pocket, he brought out a little compass. His flashlight, his penknife, and his compass were his chief treasures. “We have to go farther south first, Sorrel!” he called. “It’s too soon to change course.”

  “No, it’s not.” The brownie patted her stomach happily and leaned back against the spines of Firedrake’s crest. “Here, see for yourself, cleverclogs.”

  She handed Ben the map. It fluttered so much in the wind that he could hardly hold it. Anxiously he scrutinized the lines the rat had drawn. “We really do have to go farther south!” he called. “If we turn east now we’ll end up in that patch of yellow!”

  “So?” Sorrel closed her eyes. “Good thing if we do. That’s where Gilbert said we should stop and rest.”

  “No, he didn’t!” cried Ben. “You mean gray. It’s in the gray parts he told us to rest. He warned us against yellow. Look.” Ben switched on his flashlight and shone it on the words at the bottom of the map. “Gilbert wrote it down here. Yellow = danger, bad luck”

  Sorrel swung around crossly. “I knew it all along!” she spat. “You humans always think you know best. Honestly, you’ll be the end of me! We’re flying in exactly the right direction. My nose tells me so. Understand?”

  Ben could feel Firedrake slowing down.

  “What’s the matter?” the dragon called back to them. “What are you arguing about?”

  “Oh, nothing,” muttered Ben, folding up the map and putting it in Sorrel’s backpack. Then he peered anxiously out into the night.

  Day dawned very slowly, and in the gray twilight Ben saw mountains for the first time in his life. Their dark shapes emerged through the morning mist, with their rocky summits outlined against the sky. The sun made its way between the peaks, dispelling the twilight and painting the gray rock in a thousand bright hues. Firedrake sank lower, circled among the steep slopes in search of a landing site, and then headed for a small patch of green that lay just below the tree line, surrounded by stunted firs. The dragon glided toward it like a huge bird, beat his wings powerfully once or twice until he was almost stationary in the air, and then came down gently among the trees.

  Their legs stiff, Ben and Sorrel climbed off Firedrake’s back and looked around. A mountain towered high into the sky above them. The dragon yawned and looked around for a sheltered place among the rocks, while his riders made their way cautiously to the rim of the plateau.

  The sight of cows looking no bigger than beetles on the green slopes below made Ben feel quite dizzy, and he quickly took a step backward.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Sorrel sarcastically, venturing so close to the edge of the chasm that her furry toes were over empty space. “Don’t you like mountains?”

  “I’ll get used to them,” replied Ben. “You’ve had to get used to flying, right?” He turned to look back at Firedrake, who had found a good place and was coiled up in the shadow of a projecting rock, muzzle on his paws, tail tucked around him.

  “Flying is terribly tiring for dragons,” Sorrel whispered to Ben. “If they don’t sleep it off they get melancholy. So melancholy you can’t do a thing with them. And if it rains as well,” she added, rolling her eyes, “oh, my word! But luckily,” she decided, looking up at the sky, “luckily it doesn’t look at all like rain. Or do you want to argue about that, too?”

  Ben shook his head and looked around.

  “The way you gape at everything I guess you’ve never been in the mountains before, have you?” asked Sorrel.

  “I once went tobogganing downhill on a trash can lid,” said Ben, “but it was no higher than that tree over there.” He sat on his backpack in the grass, which was wet with dew. He felt extremely small among the tall peaks — as small as an insect — but all the same he could hardly stare his fill at all the rounded and craggy summits rising against the horizon. On one peak far, far away Ben saw the ruins of a castle. It towered black into the morning sky, and although it seemed not much bigger than a matchbox it still looked menacing.

  “Look.” Ben nudged Sorrel. “See that castle over there?”

  The brownie yawned. “Where? Oh, that.” She yawned again. “What about it? There are lots of those where Firedrake and I come from. Old human dwellings. You ought to know about them.” Opening her backpack, she stuffed some of the leaves she had picked under the bridge into her mouth. “There we are!” She threw her pack down on the short grass. “One of us can have a snooze now while the other keeps watch. Shall we toss for it?”

  “No, that’s okay.” Ben shook his head. “You lie down. I couldn’t sleep at the moment, anyway.”

  “Whatever you say.” Sorrel marched over to the place where Firedrake was sleeping. “But don’t go falling off anything, will you?” she called back over her shoulder. Then she curled up beside the dragon, and the next moment, she, too, was asleep.

  Ben took a spoon and a can of ravioli out of his backpack, opened the can with his penknife, and sat down with it on the grass at a safe distance from the precipice. As he ate the cold pasta he looked around him, remembering that he was on watch. He glanced at the castle. There were tiny specks circling in the clear sky above it. Ben couldn’t help thinking of the ravens Gilbert Graytail had mentioned. Oh, come off it, he thought. I’ll be seeing ghosts next.

  The sun rose higher and higher, driving the mist out of the valleys and making Ben feel drowsy, so he rose to his feet and walked up and down for a while. When Sorrel began snoring loudly he went over to her, looked in her backpack, and found Gilbert Graytail’s map.

  He opened it carefully and took the compass out of his pocket. Then he pulled one of the dangling ribbons and had a closer look at the mountains where they must have landed. Next he anxiously examined the entries made by the rat. “Oh, wow!” he murmured. “I thought so! We’ve landed in one of those nasty yellow patches. We’re too far east. I don’t like this at all.”

  Suddenly there was a rustling sound behind him.

  Ben raised his head. There. There it was again. Perfectly clear. He turned around. Firedrake and Sorrel were still asleep; only the tip of the dragon’s tail twitched in his dreams. Ben looked around, feeling uneasy. Were there snakes in
these mountains? Snakes were about the only thing he was really frightened of. Oh, come on, he thought, probably just a rabbit. He folded the map, returned it to Sorrel’s backpack, and —

  Ben could hardly believe his eyes.

  A small, fat man had emerged from behind a large mossy rock scarcely a pace away from him. This apparition, hardly bigger than a chicken, wore a huge hat on his head, which was as gray as the surrounding rocks. He was also holding a pickax.

  “No, it’s not him,” said the little man, looking Ben up and down.

  “How do you know, Stonebeard?” Three more stout little fellows came out from behind the rock. They were inspecting Ben as if he were some strange animal, which, to their astonishment, had landed on their mountain.

  “Because our scalps wouldn’t be prickling if he was, that’s how I know,” replied Stonebeard. “This is a human being, can’t you see that? Only a small one, though.” The dwarf glanced in all directions, evidently worried. He even glanced up at the sky. Then, looking determined, he headed for Ben, who was still crouching on the ground, bewildered. Stonebeard stood right in front of him, clutching the pickax in his little hands as if it would help him to face a giant human. His three companions stayed near the rock, watching their fearless leader with bated breath.

  “You, human!” whispered Stonebeard, tapping Ben on the knee. “Who else is here with you?”

  “Wh-wh-what?” stammered Ben.

  The fat little man turned to his friends and tapped his forehead. “A few teacups short of the full set!” he informed them. “But I’ll have another try.” He turned back to Ben. “Who — else — is — here — with — you?” he asked. “An elf? A fairy? A brownie? A will-o’-the-wisp, or what?”