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‘We had a wonderful nest, O terrible Tchraee!’ he said. ‘And if I remember correctly, you destroyed it yourself. So much for Kraa’s appreciation of Kupo’s art! You also killed Manis, who was just as talented herself. You—’
Tchraee silenced him by raising one front claw menacingly.
‘What do we do with the humans, O terrible Tchraee?’ asked one of his monkeys. They were as mixed a bunch as Shrii’s followers.
As Tchraee’s pale yellow eyes inspected him, Ben felt he was nothing but a tasty piece of meat.
‘Take them with us,’ ordered the griffin. ‘Maybe we can sell them as slaves. There are many mines on the surrounding islands. The humans there don’t ask where workers come from. And they pay well.’
‘So Kraa sells his own spies?’ Shrii’s beak snapped at a macaque thrusting its stick into TerTaWa’s stomach. ‘I thought he still had a remnant of honour left. But I suppose not even that remnant is safe from his greed for gold.’
‘Spies?’ Tchraee uttered a disparaging croak. ‘We don’t need human spies to find traitors! I’ve never seen these two-legged beings before. And how about that green-skinned Something? Did a tree give birth to it?’
Hothbrodd was calling the griffin a cowardly moorhen as Tchraee’s monkeys dragged him outside. Five more griffins were waiting there in the branches of the nearby trees, three of them sandy brown or grey like Tchraee, two almost as colourful as Shrii. Ben had to admit that all of them together were a magnificent sight. Their wing-beats were like the wind rushing in the trees, and the jungle echoed to the sound of their triumphant cries as they took Shrii into their midst. In spite of the enormous span of their wings, they glided through the trees as easily as if the branches were respectfully making way for them. Ben wondered how long it had been since the oldest of them left the wide desert landscapes of their youth and moved to this moist jungle. How many of them had they been when they came here? Were Shrii and the other two griffins with brightly coloured feathers the only younger ones? Perhaps Tchra
ee’s monkeys, carrying Barnabas, Hothbrodd and Ben through the treetops after their feathered masters, knew the answer as little as he did. They threw the prisoners to one another, or seemed to drop them only to catch them again high above the ground. Sometimes they acted so wildly that Ben forgot not only to think but also to breathe. They were rather more cautious with Hothbrodd. The troll was too heavy for their games, but Ben was the perfect victim, and he had never before wanted more to be on Firedrake’s back.
Lola and Twigleg will find us, he thought as the furry kidnappers took them further and further into the mountains that they had seen from the beach. But how? Both Lola and Twigleg were excellent scouts when it came to following a trail, but their abductors left no trail, apart from a few broken branches.
‘Griffin against griffin! Seems to me that we’ve arrived on this island at a very bad moment,’ Barnabas whispered to Ben as the kidnappers put them down side by side in the fork of a tree in order to pick some temptingly ripe fruit. ‘Maybe I should have persuaded you not to come after all!’
‘You wouldn’t have been able to,’ Ben whispered back.
The monkeys carrying Patah and Kupo had not stopped to rest. Had they taken the locket away from Patah? Would they keep the shiny thing inside it, or throw Firedrake’s scale away, not knowing what it was? Ben felt despair and relief at the same time. Despair because he had lost his only link with Firedrake, relief because he wasn’t sure whether, in view of the terrible danger they were all in, he might not have called the dragon to his aid after all.
Their kidnappers blindfolded them before going on. The dirty strips of cloth came from a T-shirt. Ben tried not to wonder what had become of its owner. But at least it was a good sign that the abductors didn’t want to let them see where they were being taken. Why go to that kind of trouble if their winged masters were going to eat the prisoners? Yes, thought Ben, as damp leaves brushed his face, and he felt the furry fingers of the monkeys at the back of his neck. It was a good thing that the scale was gone.
But it wasn’t.
Patah had managed to open the locket. He had just taken the scale out when Tchraee’s screech was heard outside the tree – and he hastily put it back in the locket. He even snapped it shut, intending to keep the treasure anyway. But when Tchraee’s monkeys dragged him out of the hollow tree, he naturally tried to defend himself, and the locket slipped out of his hand. It fell and fell – down and down, through leaves and twigs, with the scale inside it, sticky with Patah’s sweat of fear. A flying squirrel tried in vain to catch the shiny thing. A treasure-hunting snake almost dug its fangs into the silver, and a jenglot reached its clawed hands out so greedily that it fell head first off its branch. But the locket went on falling. Until at last it landed in the warm waters of a river that carried it past the muzzle of a sleepy crocodile, and on towards the sea.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Linked Together
The world is so empty if we think only of the mountains,
rivers, and cities in it; but knowing that now and then
someone agrees with us, and although distant is close to us
in spirit, is what makes this earth our inhabited garden.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and Travels
Firedrake was just bringing Maia some of the flowers that were her substitute for moonlight in the cave, when he felt a sharp pain where his scale was missing – as sharp as if a knife were stabbing him in the breast. His heart began to race; he felt fear, great fear. It was not Ben’s fear, however, but Patah’s. Maybe that was why the feeling seemed to Firedrake so strange. As if Ben had lost his way! And there was all the anger mingled with the fear. Where did that come from?
‘Firedrake?’
His heart was beating so loudly that he could hardly hear Maia’s voice. The pale blue eggs that she was tending were still smaller than ostrich eggs, and would stay that way. Young dragons are not much bigger than their parents’ eyes when they hatch. Firedrake felt that they were spending a long time hidden away in eggshells before emerging.
‘I think Ben needs help!’ he said. ‘I can sense fear! And anger!’
‘Then off you go to find him! What are you waiting for?’ said Maia.
She was so fearless. Firedrake loved her for that. Fearless and strong. She could so easily have said, ‘Please stay here,’ but Maia knew how fond of the boy he was. And she hadn’t forgotten that without Ben he would never have found his way to the Rim of Heaven – and would never have met her.
