Dragon Rider (23 page)

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

 

 

“S
pit!” 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

 

 

I
t 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 dragon.

“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?”

 

Twigleg felt his legs beginning to tremble, but he nodded. “I’ll try,” he whispered. “As true as my name’s Twigleg and I was born in a test tube.”

When they returned to the village, it was deserted. The midday heat beat down, and the air seemed too thick to breathe. Even the children were out of sight. But the villagers were busy in their huts, cooking and baking, and their excited voices could be heard behind the colorful curtains.

“The whole village is expecting you to bring us luck,” Zubeida told Firedrake on the way to her hut. “They believe that dragon scales shed good luck like gold dust; they think it will settle on our rooftops and in the nets of our fishermen and stay with us long after you and your friends have flown away.”

“We must leave tonight,” said Firedrake. “The sooner we start, the harder it will be for Nettlebrand to follow us.”

Zubeida nodded. “Yes, you’re right. But if I am to help you outwit the moon when it is dark, you must wait until it is high in the sky tonight. Come with me.”

She led Firedrake and the others around behind her hut, where she had fenced in a plot of land. She had been growing flowers there, flowers with prickly leaves and tightly closed buds.

“As you all know, most plants need sunlight to live and grow,” explained Zubeida, leaning on the fence. “This flower is different. It lives on the light of the moon.”

“Extraordinary,” murmured Barnabas Greenbloom.

Vita leaned over the fence for a closer view of the strange plants. “I’ve never seen a flower like that before, Zubeida,” she said. “Where did you find it?”

The dracologist smiled. “I found the seeds up there in the dragon rider’s tomb. The plants that must once have lain there fell to dust long ago, but the seeds were still scattered around the sarcophagus. So I collected them, soaked them in water for a few days, and then sowed them here. You see the results before you. The petals we walked on in the tomb are the remains of my last harvest. I dry the flowers up there to get new seed. I’ve called them dragon-flowers — what else?” Zubeida Ghalib smiled and stroked one of the tightly closed buds. “They open only in moonlight, and then the blue flowers are so fragrant that moths come flying around them as if they were lamps. But most wonderful of all: The longer the moon shines down on them the brighter they glow, until the moonlight collects on their petals and leaves like dewdrops.”

“Amazing!” Barnabas Greenbloom looked at the dragon-flowers, fascinated. “Did you discover that by chance, or did someone tell you about these plants?”

“Can you say exactly what chance means, Barnabas?”
replied Zubeida. “I remembered the age-old stories in which dragons once flew through the sky even by day. But only the oldest stories of all tell that tale.
Why?
I asked myself.
How was it that a time came when dragons could fly only by moonlight?
I looked for an answer in the inscriptions up at the tomb, and it was there — call it by chance if you like — that I found the seeds. I believe the dragon rider was on the track of the secret himself. After all, the dragon who cured him with dragon-fire came on a moonless night, didn’t he?” She looked into Firedrake’s golden eyes. “I believe these flowers gave that dragon the strength to fly, and the dew that collects on them has the power of the moon in it.”

“You
think
so?” Sorrel scrambled under the fence and sniffed the prickly leaves. “But you’ve never tried it out, have you?”

The dracologist shook her head. “How could I? Firedrake is the first live dragon I’ve ever met. And there’s no other creature that can rise in the air only with the aid of moonlight.”

“Hear that?” Sorrel turned to Firedrake. “You might just as easily fall out of the sky like a stone if you put your faith in these prickly things.”

Firedrake shook his wings. “Perhaps we won’t need their help, Sorrel. Perhaps we will have reached the Rim of Heaven long before the next dark time of the moon. But
suppose there’s another eclipse, like the one over the sea? Suppose the moon disappears while we’re above mountains?”

Sorrel shook herself. “Oh, all right. You have a point.” She plucked a leaf from a flower and nibbled the tip of it suspiciously. “Doesn’t taste bad. More like catmint than moonlight, though, if you ask me.”

“Do I have to eat them?” Firedrake asked the dracologist.

Zubeida shook her head. “No, you just have to lick the dew off their leaves and petals. But as I can’t give you the flowers to take with you, I’ve been collecting moon-dew from them ever since Barnabas told me about you. I’ll collect more tonight, and then I can give you a full bottle to take on your flight. If the moon deserts you, one of your friends must put a few drops on your tongue. I think you’ll be able to tell how much you need. The dew will stay clear as water until the next full moon, when it will turn cloudy. So if you need any more for your flight home to the north, you must visit me again on the way.”

Firedrake nodded. He looked at the horizon thoughtfully. “I can hardly wait,” he said quietly. “I long to see the Rim of Heaven at last.”