‘He’s a jungle demon!’ stammered Winston. ‘Of course! My mother keeps warning me against those demons, but I’ve always laughed at her!’
Hothbrodd would much rather be called a jungle demon than an ape. Trolls love to be thought of as monsters, although in Ben’s experience very few of them lived up to their bad reputation.
‘He’s a fjord troll,’ he called over to Winston. ‘And he’s really nice. If he’s your friend,’ he added, when Hothbrodd cast him a glance of annoyance. It was to be hoped that the griffins were prepared for prisoners of his weight. Once again the basketwork creaked alarmingly as the troll sat down on the floor of the cage.
‘Nice? I hope the lion-birds will feed you all to their young!’ a shrill voice was suddenly heard from a basket on their right. ‘Curses on you! Shrii will die because of you, and they’ll sell us or throw us to their scorpions!’
Ben thought he saw Patah’s face behind the twigs.
‘You’re a thief, Patah!’ he called to him.
‘Are you talking about your locket?’ Patah called back. ‘But it looked so much better around my neck. That thing you were carrying about in it… was it some kind of human magic? Didn’t do you much good, if you ask me.’
‘Was.’ Patah used the past tense. So he no longer had the scale.
‘What have you done with it?’ Ben was glad that Patah wasn’t right in front of him. He would have been sorely tempted to hit the macaque. ‘Have you thrown it away?’
‘No. Lost it along with the locket.’ Patah bared his teeth. ‘When your friends dragged us off.’
Lost. Ben exchanged a glance with Barnabas. He was feeling so many emotions all at once. Anger, pain, disappointment – and relief. Ben saw the same contradictory emotions on Barnabas’s face. Firedrake’s gift was lost, and with it maybe their only chance of rescue. But the griffins wouldn’t find a dragon’s scale on them. Ben wondered whether they would have realised that the scale came from one of their oldest enemies. Beside him, Barnabas lowered his head with a sigh. You didn’t very often see that. Yes, the dragons were safe, but unless some miracle happened there was no chance for the Pegasus foals.
‘Kraa will clip Shrii’s wings and claws!’ Kupo’s plaintive voice came from a basket lower down. ‘And then he’ll let the crocodiles have him! Or the marbled cats!’
‘Nonsense. Kraa will watch as his scorpions tear him apart.’ Patah made a poor pretence of hiding his despair behind mockery. ‘Feather by feather, flesh and hide, and then he’ll eat his heart so that Shrii’s strength and youth will pass into him.’
‘No!’ cried another macaque. ‘Never! Shrii will escape. He’ll set us all free, and then found his own kingdom on this island!’
‘Yes, of course, Tabuhan. Dream on.’ Patah just sounded weary now, and hopeless. ‘Shrii is as good as dead. We all are. Kraa won’t sell us. He’ll eat us, just as he’ll devour Shrii. And line his nest with our skins.’
Kraa.
All was still inside the basketwork cages. His mere name seemed to echo back from the mud walls. Kraa…
He would certainly be more like Tchraee than Shrii. Ben, too, was worried about the young griffin. He’d have liked to see him again.
‘We certainly turned up at the ideal moment,’ growled Hothbrodd. ‘As if those winged brutes weren’t horrible enough anyway. But no, they’re also going to war with each other, and where have we landed? On the loser’s side, of course!’
‘Since when do you give up so quickly, Hothbrodd?’ said Barnabas in a low voice. ‘A griffin who thinks nothing of gold and silver! What an ally Shrii could be! We must save him!’
Hothbrodd groaned.
Even Ben thought his adopted father’s optimism was rather far-fetched this time.
‘We must save Shrii?’ he whispered. ‘Someone will have to save us first! And the only rescuers we can hope for are a rat and a homunculus!’
‘So?’ Barnabas whispered back. ‘Surely you’re not judging the usefulness of our friends by their size? I’m disappointed in you, Ben. You didn’t learn that from me.’
No. Barnabas was right there. Had he forgotten the important part played by Twigleg in the fight against his old master Nettlebrand? And how often had Lola warned them of danger and protected them from it?
‘Hey!’ Winston called to them. ‘How come I can understand what the monkeys are saying? Is it some kind of magic? And what do you people need a griffin’s feather for?’
‘It’s a long story,’ Ben replied.
‘Good,’ said Winston. ‘Tell it. Or have you something better to do?’
The brownie-maki made himself comfortable on Winston’s arm and looked expectantly at Ben.
Right. Where to begin? Ben was about to start with the day when he first met Firedrake, but Barnabas put his hand over his mouth.