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“Sure.” Lola shrugged her shoulders. “But my plane will never keep up with the dragon.”
“I daresay it won’t!” Firedrake reached his long neck out of the cave, yawned, and looked down at the fat rat curiously.
He gave Lola such a shock that she suddenly sat down. “He … he’s bigger than I expected,” she stammered.
“Actually he’s about average for a dragon,” Sorrel told her. “Some come bigger, and some come smaller.”
“Firedrake, this is Lola,” explained Ben, “Gilbert Graytail’s niece. Isn’t that a wonderful coincidence? Lola can show us the way to the monastery.”
“Coincidence! That’s a good one!” muttered Lola, still unable to take her eyes off the dragon. “It’s all your fault that I’m in these mountains at all.”
“You’re right,” said Twigleg. “It’s not a coincidence at all. It’s a disposition of providence.”
“A what?” asked Sorrel.
“A preordained meeting,” said Twigleg. “Something that was bound to happen. I can only call it a good omen. A very good omen.”
“Oh.” Sorrel shrugged her shoulders. “Call it what you like, as long as Lola can get us out of here.” She looked up at the sky. “We ought to set off as soon as possible, and we should keep the moon-dew for emergencies. So we’ll fly at moonrise, right?”
Firedrake nodded. “Do you know Rosa Graytail?” he asked Lola. “She’d be your aunt.”
“Of course I know her.” Lola hopped off her uncle’s map so that Ben could fold it up again. “Met her once at a family party. First time I ever heard of dragons.”
“And what about here?” asked Ben, leaning forward in suspense. “Have you seen any dragons in these mountains?”
“Here?” Lola Graytail shook her head. “Not so much as the tip of a dragon’s tail. Though I’ve flown all over these mountains, believe you me. I know why you ask. Gilbert told me. You’re looking for the Rim of Heaven. I can only say I’ve never seen any such place. No end of white peaks, of course. But no dragons, no sign of them at all.”
“Tha-that must be wrong!” Ben stammered. “I saw the valley. And a dragon in a huge cave.”
Lola Graytail looked at him incredulously. “Saw it! Where?” she asked. “In your djinn’s eye? No, take my word for it, there are no dragons here. Monasteries, shaggy cattle, a few human beings, that’s it. Nothing else at all.”
“There was a misty valley enclosed by a rim of white peaks and a wonderful cave!” said Ben.
But Lola only shook her head again. “There are hundreds of valleys here and so many white peaks you’d go crazy trying to count them. But dragons, no. Sorry. I’ll be telling Uncle Gilbert so, too. The Rim of Heaven doesn’t exist, and there’s no hidden valley of the dragons. It’s nothing but a pretty fairy tale.”
38. The Monastery
It was just about midnight when Firedrake reached the river Indus again. Its waters glittered in the starlight. The river valley here was wide and fertile, and even in the dark Ben could make out fields and huts. High above them stood the monastery, clinging to the steep slope of a mountain on the other side of the river. In the light of the waning moon, its pale walls shone like white paper.
“That’s it!” whispered Ben. “That’s what it looked like. Exactly like that.”
Lola Graytail’s plane was humming along beside him. The rat opened the cockpit and leaned out.
“Hey!” she shouted over the noise of the propeller. “Is that the place?”
Ben nodded.
Satisfied, Lola closed the cockpit and flew on ahead. Her plane made much better speed than the others had expected, but for the dragon, this was the easiest flight of the whole journey. He soared silently over the wide valley, left the river behind, and rose toward the high monastery walls.
There were several buildings, both large and small, clustered together on the cliff. Ben saw tall, windowless stone turrets rising upward, dark and narrow windows, shallow roofs, high walls, and pathways winding like ribbons of rock down the mountainside.
“Where should I land?” Firedrake called to the rat.
“In the courtyard in front of the main building,” Lola called back. “You’ll have nothing to fear from these people. Anyway, they’ll all be asleep at this time of night. I’ll go first.”
With a loud humming noise, the little plane swooped down.
“Look, look!” cried Sorrel as Firedrake circled above the courtyard in front of the largest building. “There’s the professor!”
