“Where’s Sorrel?” asked Firedrake, looking around for her.
“In bed,” replied Guinevere. “Full of breakfast and snoring.”
“You astonish me!” Her father grinned. “And what has our friend the rat to report?”
“Not a sign of Nettlebrand,” replied Ben, looking at the moonstone, which he thought seemed darker in the sunlight.
“Well, that’s a relief.” Barnabas Greenbloom looked at his daughter. “Don’t you think so, Guinevere?”
Guinevere frowned. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, come on,” he said, taking his daughter and Ben by their arms. “Let’s go find Sorrel and Vita, and then our dragon rider can see about solving the puzzle the djinn gave him. I haven’t been in such suspense for ages. I wonder what sort of creature will appear when Ben breaks that stone?”
40. Work for Gravelbeard
But Lola Graytail was wrong. Nettlebrand was lurking on the bed of the river Indus, sunk deep in the mud, just where the shadow of the monastery buildings fell on the water. The river ran so deep there that not the faintest reflection of Nettlebrand’s golden scales could reach the surface. He lay waiting patiently for his armor-cleaner to return.
Before Nettlebrand had dived deep into the river, Gravelbeard had jumped to the bank and hidden among some tufts of grass. And when, after a long day and half a night, Firedrake came flying out of the mountains to land behind the white walls of the monastery, the mountain dwarf set off. He trudged on, through fields and past huts, until at last he reached the mountain with the monastery on its slope.
Then Gravelbeard climbed.
The mountain was high, very high, but Gravelbeard was a mountain dwarf. He loved climbing almost as much as he loved gold. The solid rock of the mountain whispered and spoke under Gravelbeard’s fingers as if it had been waiting for him, and him alone, all this time. It told him tales of vast caverns with columns made of precious stones and veins of gold ore, and caves where strange creatures lived. Gravelbeard chuckled with delight as he scaled the rocky slope. He could have climbed forever, but by the time day slowly dawned above the peaks, he was hauling himself over the top of the low wall surrounding the monastery. Cautiously he peered down into the courtyard.
Gravelbeard had arrived just in time to see Firedrake and his friends disappear into the Dhu-Khang. The dwarf even followed them up the steps, but the heavy door of the hall was already closed before he reached the top, and hard as he tried to open it just a crack with his short, strong fingers, it wouldn’t budge.
“Too bad,” muttered the dwarf, looking around, “but they’ll have to come out again sometime.” He looked around the courtyard for a hiding place where he could keep watch on the steps and the courtyard unobserved. It wasn’t difficult to find a suitable gap in the old walls.
“Just the place,” whispered Gravelbeard as he pushed in among the stones. “Could have been made for me.” And then he waited.
He had chosen his hiding place well. Admittedly, when Firedrake and the others came out of the prayer hall again, Gravelbeard couldn’t see much apart from the feet of countless monks in their well-worn sandals. But when all the monks were up in the Dhu-Khang praying, Ben and Guinevere came and sat down on the wall only a stone’s throw away from him.
So now Gravelbeard learned that a flying rat had been out looking for his master but had failed to find him; and he discovered that the boy really did believe Nettlebrand had been buried in the desert sand. The dwarf saw the stone in the lama’s hand and heard about the djinn’s riddle. He saw Ben take the stone, and when Firedrake and his dragon riders went with the monk to try solving the riddle, Gravelbeard stole after them.
41. Burr-Burr-Chan
The lama led his guests to the other side of the monastery grounds and the place where the Gon-Khang and the Lha-Khang stood, one the Temple of the Angry Gods and the other the Temple of the Kindly Gods. And scurrying from wall to wall Gravelbeard, Nettlebrand’s spy, came after them.
As they were passing the red temple, the lama stopped. Vita Greenbloom had joined her husband.
“This,” she said, translating what the lama said, “is the Temple of the Angry Gods, who are said to keep all evil from the monastery and the village.”
“What sort of evil?” asked Sorrel, looking around uneasily.
“Evil spirits,” replied the lama, “and snowstorms, avalanches, rockfalls, disease —”
“Starvation?” added Sorrel.
The lama smiled. “Starvation, too.”
A strange shivery feeling came over Gravelbeard. Weak at the knees, he stole past the dark red walls. His breath was coming faster, and he felt as if hands were reaching out to him from the temple, hands ready to seize him and drag him into the darkness.
Involuntarily he leaped forward with a little shriek and almost collided with Barnabas Greenbloom’s heels.
“What was that?” asked the professor, turning around. “Did you hear it, Vita?”
His wife nodded. “Sounded as if you stepped on some poor cat’s tail, Barnabas.”
The professor shook his head and looked around again, but by now Gravelbeard had hidden in a crevice in the wall.
“Perhaps it was the evil spirits,” said Guinevere.
“Very likely,” said her father. “Come on, I think the lama’s reached our destination.”
The old monk had stopped where the slope of the mountain met the monastery walls. The rock here was full of holes like Swiss cheese. Ben and Sorrel tilted their heads back. Yes, there were gaps everywhere in the rock, all of them large enough for either the boy or the brownie to fit into comfortably.
“What’s that?” asked Ben, looking inquiringly at the lama. Twigleg interpreted for him.
“These are dwellings,” replied the lama, “the dwellings of those from whom you are about to seek help. They do not often show themselves. Very few of us have ever seen them face-to-face, but they are said to be friendly beings, and they were here long, long before we came.”
The lama went up to the rock wall, taking Ben with him. Ben hadn’t noticed them earlier, but he now saw the heads of two stone dragons jutting out from the rock.
“They look like Firedrake,” whispered Ben. “Just like Firedrake.” He felt the dragon’s warm breath on his back.
“They are the Dragon of the Beginning and the Dragon of the End,” the lama explained. “For what you have in mind, you should choose the Dragon of the Beginning.”
Ben nodded.
“Go on, dragon rider, hit it,” whispered Sorrel.
Raising the moonstone, Ben brought it down with all his might on the horns of the stone dragon.
The moonstone smashed into myriad splinters, and it seemed to them all that they heard a deep rumble slowly dying away in the heart of the mountain. Then all was still. Very still. They waited.
As the sun slowly rose behind the mountains, they cast their shadows on the monastery. A cold wind was blowing from the snowy peaks as a figure suddenly appeared in one of the holes in the rock, high above the heads of those waiting below.
It was a brownie. He looked almost like Sorrel, except that his coat was paler and thicker. And he had four arms. He was resting his paws on the rock where he stood.
“Twenty fingers, Twigleg,” whispered Ben. “He has twenty fingers, just as the djinn said.”
