Dragon Rider
“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?”
“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.”
“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?”
“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?”
“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.