Dragon Rider
The Red Sea was always on their right. Below them, the endless road wound its way south along the foot of an equally endless mountain range. Beyond it, dry and stony land stretched to the horizon, with towns and villages scattered like islands, and deep ravines gaping like vast cracks in the wilderness.
The air was heavy with strange aromas. On the second night, black clouds came sailing over the mountains, enveloping Firedrake and his riders in a stinking smog before drifting out to sea. Barnabas Greenbloom had warned Ben of this, too. The dark clouds were the sooty discharge from oil wells in the east, burning like torches after a war between humans. Just before the sun rose to blaze down on the land, Firedrake dived into the waters of the Red Sea to wash off the black filth, but some of it stuck firmly to his scales. Sorrel spent almost all the next morning cleaning the dragon’s wings and her own thick fur, and muttering crossly to herself. It was easier for Ben with his smooth skin.
As he was taking a clean T-shirt out of his backpack, he almost touched Twigleg’s head.
The manikin was only just in time to duck. Since they had set out, Twigleg had left the backpack only when he was sure the others were all asleep. Then he would stretch his aching limbs, catch flies and midges to eat — luckily there were plenty of them in this hot country — and creep back into hiding as soon as one of the other three stirred.
He wanted to put off the moment of discovery for as long as possible. Sorrel distrusted him, and that scared him. He did once steal a look at the golden scale the professor had given Ben. The boy kept it in a bag that he wore around his neck, and Twigleg had looked inside while Ben was asleep. It also contained a small photograph, a stone, a shell, and some of the silvery dust from the basilisk’s cave. The scale undoubtedly came from Nettlebrand’s armor. Nothing else in the world felt so cold or so hard. When Ben turned over in his sleep the homunculus put it back in the bag with a shudder and sat down beside the boy — as he did whenever the other three were asleep — and leaning very, very carefully against the small human being’s shoulder he read the book that the boy always left open at his side. It was the book Barnabas Greenbloom had given Ben. Every day, the boy read it until his eyes closed, for it was full of marvels. It contained everything that humans knew about unicorns and water sprites, Pegasus the winged horse and the giant roc bird that feeds sheep to its young, about fairies, will-o’-the-wisps, sea serpents, and trolls.
Twigleg skipped several chapters. For instance, the one about mountain dwarves — he knew quite enough about them already. But on the third day, while the others were asleep and the light of the afternoon sun was bathing everything in a yellow haze, Twigleg finally came to the chapter about homunculi, artificial man-made creatures of flesh and blood.
His first impulse was to close the book.
He looked around. Ben was murmuring in his dreams, but Sorrel was snoring peacefully, as usual, and Firedrake was sleeping like a log.
Twigleg began reading, his heart beating fast. Oh, yes, he knew he had a heart all right, but there was more information on the yellowing pages. A homunculus usually lives longer than its creator, he read. He knew that, too. But he had never heard what came next. So far as it is known, a homunculus can live almost indefinitely unless it develops a strong affection for a human being. In such cases, the homunculus dies on the same day as the human to whom it has given its heart.
“Uh-oh! Just think of that! Watch out, Twigleg!” the manikin whispered to himself. “Keep your heart to yourself if you want to live. You’ve already survived all your brothers and even your maker. So don’t turn foolish in your old age and give your heart to a human being.”
He jumped up and turned back to the page at which Ben had left the book open. Then he looked up at the sun. Yes, it was time he reported to his master. He hadn’t done so for two days now, not that there was anything to report.
Twigleg turned and looked at the small human being. Tomorrow. Tomorrow night they’d reach the ravine where the djinn lived. And if the djinn really knew the answer to the question, the answer his master had been seeking for more than a hundred years, then Nettlebrand would set off for the Rim of Heaven and go hunting again at last.
Twigleg shivered. No, he didn’t want to think about that. What business was it of his, anyway? He was only his master’s armor-cleaner. He had been doing what Nettlebrand told him to do ever since he, Twigleg, first slipped out of a small colored-glass test tube like a chick hatching from an egg. What difference did it make that he hated his master? The crucial point was that Nettlebrand would make a single mouthful of him if he didn’t come up with what his master had been waiting for so long.
Just before Firedrake landed that morning, Twigleg had seen light flashing on water somewhere close, in an old cistern that, although disused, still collected precious rainwater. The homunculus was about to set off for the cistern when he felt Ben beginning to stir. He quickly hid behind the nearest rock.
The boy sat up sleepily, yawned, and stretched. Then he rose to his feet and climbed the high wall behind which they had camped. This time Firedrake had had to fly some way inland before they found this ruined castle among incense trees growing on a sandy hill. The trees looked half dead. The walls of the castle courtyard still stood, but the buildings behind them had fallen in and were almost buried in drifts of sand. Only lizards and a few snakes lived here, but Sorrel had driven off the snakes by throwing stones at them as soon as they arrived.
Ben sat on the wall, dangling his legs and looking to the south, where high mountains rose into the hot sky, breaking up the line of the horizon.
“It can’t be much farther now,” Twigleg heard him murmuring. “If the professor was right, we’ll reach the ravine tomorrow.”
Twigleg peered out from behind his rock. For a moment he felt like revealing himself to the boy as Ben sat staring into the distance, lost in thought. Then he thought better of it. He cast a quick glance at the sleeping Sorrel, then crept over to the backpack without a sound and wriggled in like a lizard among Ben’s things. The report to his master would have to wait.
Ben stayed up on the wall for some time, but at last he sighed and jumped down onto the sand. He went over to Sorrel.
“Hey, Sorrel,” he said quietly, shaking the brownie’s shoulder. “Wake up.”
Sorrel stretched and blinked at the sunlight. “It’s still broad daylight!” she hissed, looking at Firedrake, who was sleeping peacefully in the shade of the old castle wall.
“Yes, but you promised me we’d talk about the question to ask the djinn, remember?”
“Oh, yes, the question.” Sorrel rubbed her eyes. “Right, but only if we have something to eat first. This heat makes a person hungry.” She made her way over to her backpack, the sand hot on the furry soles of her paws.
Ben followed, grinning. “It’s the heat now, is it?” he teased her. “We’ve had rain and thunderstorms and all kinds of weather since we started out, and you’re hungry all the time.”
“So what?” Sorrel took the bag of mushrooms out of her backpack, sniffed it appreciatively, and licked her lips. Then she placed two large leaves on the sand and tipped the mushrooms out on them. “Hmm … which shall I eat first?”