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.”
o;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.