“Oh, yes?” he snarled. “Talk away! I’ll eat you any moment now. You can’t hang on down there forever. Armor-cleaner!” He raised his ugly muzzle and looked around. “Where are you, Gravelbeard?”
Reluctantly Gravelbeard stuck his head out of his hiding place. “Yes, Your Goldness?”
“Go and tickle that human with your feather duster!” growled Nettlebrand. “Perhaps that’ll make him fall off.”
The professor gulped. He was still holding on, but his fingers were beginning to hurt and unfortunately he was very ticklish. And there was no hope that any help would come. If the vast dragon’s roaring hadn’t already brought someone out of a tent to investigate, then it obviously wasn’t going to do so in the immediate future. No, he’d have to save himself. But how? Hard as he racked his brains, he just couldn’t think of a single good idea.
The mountain dwarf appeared between Nettlebrand’s forelegs wearing a sullen expression and a sandy hat and carrying a peacock-feather duster. He walked unsteadily over the sand toward Barnabas Greenbloom.
Get on with it, think of something, old chap, thought the professor, or your dear wife won’t be seeing you again.
And then he did get an idea.
“Here, dwarf!” he whispered to Gravelbeard, who was standing beside his master’s paw in his oversized hat, already reaching the peacock feathers toward the ticklish professor.
Using his teeth, Barnabas Greenbloom took his gold wedding ring off his finger and spat it out at the dwarf’s feet. Gravelbeard instantly dropped the duster, picked up the ring, and felt the shining metal with an expert touch.
“Nice piece!” he muttered. “Solid gold.”
At that moment the professor dropped to the ground, landing in the sand beside the startled dwarf.
“What’s going on, Gravelbeard?” boomed Nettlebrand’s voice in the darkness. “Has he let go yet?”
The dwarf was about to reply, but the professor quickly put a hand over its mouth.
“Listen, Gravelbeard,” he whispered into the little creature’s ear. “You can keep this ring if you tell your master I’ve disappeared, all right?”
The dwarf bit the professor’s fingers. “I’ll be getting it, anyway,” he said in muffled tones from behind Barnabas Greenbloom’s hand.
“Oh, no, you won’t!” whispered the professor, taking the ring away again. “If you don’t cooperate, he’ll eat me, ring and all. Well, is it a deal?”
The dwarf hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
“Armor-cleaner!” roared Nettlebrand. “What’s going on?”
He lowered his head again, peering through his front legs with his teeth bared. But by now it was so dark he couldn’t make out what was happening back there by his hind legs.
Barnabas Greenbloom threw down the ring in front of the dwarf. “And don’t even think of double-crossing me!” he whispered. “Because if you do, I’ll let your master know how easy you are to bribe, understand?”
The dwarf bent to pick up the ring, while the professor, moving as fast as he could, crawled across the sand to Nettlebrand’s tail. Gasping for breath, he clambered up onto it and clung to its spines. Gravelbeard watched him, wide-eyed. Then he hid the ring under his stout vest.
“Arrrrmor-cleanerrrr! What’s happening?” Nettlebrand roared.
The dwarf picked up his feather duster, looked around one last time, and came out between the dragon’s gigantic forepaws, looking crestfallen.
“He’s gone, Your Goldness!” he said, shrugging his shoulders as if baffled. “Vanished. As if the sand had swallowed him up.”
“What?” Nettlebrand put his broad muzzle so close to his armor-cleaner that the dwarf flinched back in alarm. “Then where is he, dwarf?” bellowed Nettlebrand, lashing his tail so violently that sand flew up around Barnabas Greenbloom’s ears, and it was all he could do to hold on.
The dwarf went pale around the nostrils and pressed his hands to his vest. “I don’t know,” he babbled. “I really don’t know, Your Goldness! He’d gone by the time I went in underneath your golden belly!”
Nettlebrand began to burrow in the sand.
He dug and dug, but however thoroughly he plowed up the desert sand there was no sign of Barnabas Greenbloom. Standing on a boulder, Gravelbeard kept putting his hand under his vest to stroke the professor’s gold ring.
All this time Barnabas Greenbloom was clinging to the spines on Nettlebrand’s tail, waiting for an opportunity to drop off into the sand and crawl away. At first he feared the monster would attack the tents in the camp and devour a couple of his colleagues as substitutes for the professor himself. But Nettlebrand seemed uneasy about facing human beings. When he still didn’t find the professor — despite digging up half the desert and uncovering more ruins than all the archaeologists put together — he just stood there in the sand breathing heavily, tail lashing, teeth bared, and looked eastward.
“Armor-cleaner!” he bellowed. “Get aboard! We’re going back. I want to find out what that djinn said.”
Barnabas Greenbloom jumped. He was so startled that he almost pinched Nettlebrand’s tail. Had the monster said djinn? He leaned a little farther forward to hear better.
“Just coming, Your Goldness!” called the dwarf. Grumpily he trudged toward his master and climbed on the dragon’s back.
“And it’ll be too bad if that fool of a spy still has nothing to report,” growled Nettlebrand as Gravelbeard settled himself between the dragon’s horns. “If I don’t find out where the Rim of Heaven is soon, I’m going to eat that silver dragon along with his small human and the shaggy brownie. Yuck! Brownies have a nasty mushroom flavor, and they’re far too hairy.”
Professor Greenbloom held his breath. He could hardly believe what he had just heard.
Growling angrily, Nettlebrand turned and marched back toward the well out of which he had clambered. Just before the dragon reached it, the professor dropped to the sand and crawled away as fast as his knees would carry him, to take shelter among the ruins of the wall around the well shaft. At the rim of the shaft, Nettlebrand stopped to look back at the tents, his red eyes surveying the sand he had churned up.
“I’ll find you, Greenbloom-human!” the professor heard him growl. “I’ll find you, and next time you won’t escape me. But now for the silver dragon.”
With these words he forced his body back into the well, his spiny tail slipping down the dark hole after him. A splash and a snort rose from the depths — and Nettlebrand was gone.
Barnabas Greenbloom sat there by the ruins of the wall, thunderstruck.
“I must warn them!” he murmured. “I must warn Firedrake and the others about that monster. But how? And who, for heaven’s sake, told Nettlebrand, the Golden One, about the djinn?”
19. The Signpost
On the fourth night the country over which Firedrake was flying became more mountainous, just as the professor had said it would. Below the travelers lay a wild and rocky landscape bathed in moonlight. The ground looked like a crumpled gray cloth. The cliffs rose higher and higher, some of them piercing the sky like thorns. Ben watched in amazement as they passed over towns that clung to the steep slopes, their pale mud-brick fortifications rising toward the moon.
