Dragon Rider (15 page)

“Firedrake!” called Ben quietly. “Are you sure you’re not tired?”

“Not a bit,” the dragon called back. “Who knows, perhaps elf-dust keeps dragons awake.”

“Not humans, though,” murmured Ben as he, too, fell asleep.

Firedrake flew steadily on through the night, following the road that would lead him to the blue djinn.

20. The Djinn’s Ravine

 

 

W
hen Firedrake landed, Ben woke up and looked around him in alarm. The sky was bright, and the mountains were shrouded in morning mist as white as milk. The road stopped dead just beyond a sharp bend, and a cliff fell away as steeply as if the world had snapped in two. There was no bridge over to the other side of the gorge.

This must be it,
thought Ben.
The blue djinn’s ravine.

Firedrake stood on the edge of the precipice and looked down. A rushing sound rose from the depths below.

Ben turned. Sorrel was still snoring peacefully. Carefully Ben picked up the sleeping Twigleg and climbed down from Firedrake’s back.

“Slept off your elfin hangover?” inquired the dragon when Ben was standing beside him. He nuzzled the boy with gentle mockery. “Look at that. I do believe we’ve reached the djinn’s home.”

Cautiously Ben looked over the edge of the ravine.

It was not very wide, hardly twice the breadth of the
road they had been following. The sheer drop of the cliffs was bare rock at the top, but only a few meters down dense vegetation grew. Flowers scrambled over the stone, and huge palm trees reached toward the light from the bottom of the ravine. It was dark down there, and the rushing sound came to Ben’s ears clearly now. It must be the river the professor had mentioned. But Ben heard other noises, too. Animal cries drifted up and the hoarse calls of strange birds.

“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 even 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.