Dragon Rider (Dragon Rider 1)

“Well, we weren’t really supposed to land here at all, you see,” Ben explained. “Last night’s storm drove us westward and off our course. See that?” He pointed to the golden line that Gilbert Graytail had drawn. “This is the route we were meant to take. I don’t suppose it passes near your friend’s village, does it?”

Barnabas Greenbloom shook his head thoughtfully. “No, but stopping off there wouldn’t take you too far out of your way. You’d just have to set a course a few hundred kilometers farther south, which wouldn’t make much difference to the vast distances you still have to go. Although,” added the professor, frowning, “as I was saying earlier, Zubeida won’t be able to help you in your search for the Rim of Heaven. She’s already tried to find it herself, and she got nowhere. No, as for that quest of yours,” said Barnabas Greenbloom, shaking his head, “I doubt if anyone can help you. The location of the Rim of Heaven is one of the world’s great mysteries.”

“We’ll just have to look everywhere then,” said Ben, folding up the map again. “Even if we have to fly all over the Himalayas.”

“The Himalayas are vast, my boy,” said Barnabas Greenbloom. “Unimaginably vast.”

He ran his fingers through his gray hair and then drew some hieroglyphs in the dust with a little stick. One of them looked like a narrow eye.

“What do those signs mean?” asked Ben curiously.

“These? Ah, well …” The professor suddenly straightened up and looked at the dragon.

Firedrake returned his gaze in surprise.

“What is it?” asked Ben.

“The djinn!” cried the professor. “The djinn with the thousand eyes!”

“A thousand eyes?” murmured Sorrel, licking her bowl clean. “I don’t even know anyone with three eyes.”

“Listen!” The professor leaned forward in excitement. “So far the fact that you attract other fabulous creatures has done you more harm than good, right? Or, at least, you haven’t reaped any benefits from it?”

The dragon shook his head.

“But suppose,” continued the professor, “suppose you were to attract a fabulous being who could help you in your quest?”

“Meaning this djinn?” asked Ben. “The kind that comes out of a bottle?”

The professor laughed. “Asif is unlikely to let anyone put him in a bottle, my boy. He’s a rather important djinn. They say he can be as large as the moon or as small as a grain of sand. His skin is blue as the evening sky and covered with a thousand eyes that reflect a thousand parts of the world. And every time Asif blinks, a thousand different places appear in the pupils of those eyes.”

“Doesn’t sound like someone I’d fancy meeting,” growled Sorrel. “Why would we want to attract his attention?”

The professor lowered his voice. “Because this djinn knows the answer to every question in the world.”

“Every question?” asked Ben skeptically.

Barnabas Greenbloom nodded. “Why not fly to see him? Ask him where the Rim of Heaven lies.”

The three companions looked at one another. Twigleg shifted uneasily on Ben’s shoulder.

“Where can we find him?” asked Firedrake.

“The way there will take you off your direct route, but I think it could be worth it.” The professor unfolded another section of Gilbert Graytail’s map. “Here. You must go to the very end of the Arabian peninsula,” he said, putting his finger on the map. “If you follow the coastal road south along the Red Sea until it turns east here,” he added, pointing, “then sooner or later you’ll come to a gorge called the Wadi Jum A’Ah. It’s so steep and narrow that sunlight reaches the bottom of the ravine for only four hours a day. All the same, huge palm trees grow down there, and a river flows between the rocky walls, even when water has long since evaporated in the hot sun everywhere else in the region. That is the home of Asif, the djinn with the thousand eyes.”

“Have you ever seen him?” asked Ben.

Barnabas Greenbloom shook his head, smiling. “No, he’d never show himself to me. I’m not nearly interesting enough. But a dragon,” he said, looking at Firedrake, “a dragon would be a different matter. Firedrake must lure Asif to come out and show himself, and then you must ask the question, Ben.”

“Me?” asked Ben, surprised.

The professor nodded. “Yes, you. Asif answers questions only if three conditions are met. First, a human being has to ask the question. Second, the djinn must never have been asked that question before. If Asif has had the same question put to him before, then the questioner must serve the djinn for the rest of his life.” Ben and Firedrake exchanged glances of alarm. “And third,” the professor continued, “the question must be asked in exactly seven words, no more and no less.”

“Then it’s no!” Sorrel jumped up, scratching her furry coat. “No, no, and no again! This doesn’t sound good, not good in the least. My own coat itches at the mere idea of meeting this thousand-eyed djinn. I think we’d do better to follow the route that conceited rat recommended.”

Firedrake and Ben said nothing.

“Your rat, yes,” remarked the professor, collecting his bowls and cooking utensils and stowing them in his basket. “He knew about the djinn, too. He shaded in the Wadi Jum A’Ah Gorge with yellow as bright as a quince. I tell you what,” he said in the silence that followed. “Sorrel is probably right. Forget the djinn. He’s too dangerous.”