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.”