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Kraa stared at the hatch on which he slept. Its outline was just visible in the middle of the platform.
‘Nonsense! Tchraee would never betray me!’
‘Tchraee? Tchraee is the ringleader!’ cried Twigleg. He hadn’t the faintest idea where his lies would lead him, but maybe the others would turn up after all and rescue him. No! No, he wanted his master to stay where he was. Safe on a dragon’s back! Far away from that beak and those terrible claws!
Kraa was listening for sounds from outside again. A shudder ran through his wings, and every muscle in his lion’s body was taut under the tawny coat.
The screams were getting louder.
‘Treachery!’ bellowed the griffin. ‘Treachery everywhere!’
He spread his wings, and his beak uttered a scream of aggression that Twigleg felt to the marrow of his bones. Even Nakal flinched in terror, so that his fingers closed even more tightly on Twigleg. Crushed by a proboscis monkey! No, even being swallowed by a griffin sounded better than that.
Kraa swung around and bent down to Twigleg. His beak looked as if it were smiling all the time – in a very cruel way.
‘It’s true that I lost a lot of feathers when I ate that other jenglot,’ he growled, ‘but as you may remember, Nakal, it also made me much stronger. And it was deliciously juicy and crunchy at the same time!’
‘Unlike me! Jenglots of my kind aren’t at all crunchy and juicy, O sharp-clawed Kraa!’ Twigleg tried desperately to free himself from Nakal’s grasp. ‘We really aren’t. We taste like… like…’
He hesitated. Who could say what a griffin would find tasty?
Kraa opened his beak.
‘Get in here and bring it down to me, Nakal!’
The proboscis monkey raised the hand holding Twigleg – and froze rigid when a sound came in from outside that made even Kraa stand as motionless as the pictures of griffins on his walls.
It was a roar that he had heard only once before in his long, long life. On a starless night hundreds of years ago.
‘Do you hear that?’ his father had asked him and his brothers. ‘That’s the voice of a dragon. If you drink its blood, it will make you immortal, and as powerful as the griffins whose statues adorn the palaces of the ancient kings.’ And in reply another roar had come from the sky, as if the dragon had heard the challenge. But their father hadn’t let them fly after it. At the time Kraa had wondered why. ‘Maybe because he’s frightened of the dragon!’ his youngest brother had whispered. Kraa had pecked his brother’s wings until they bled for saying that.
‘What’s that, Tanunda?’ whispered Nakal. ‘I’ve never heard a roar like it.’
Kraa was still standing motionless, with his feathers bristling.
A dragon.
He had always wanted to be immortal.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The Challenge
There is one fairly good reason for fighting –
and that is, if the other man starts it.
T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Barnabas Greenbloom had known many dark hours in his life. But it was unusual for anything to weigh on his mind so heavily as knowing that his actions had brought two dragons within reach of a fearsome enemy.
He was kneeling beside one of Kraa’s jackal scorpions to check that the anaesthetic was still working when Firedrake and Tattoo, with their dragon riders, broke through the branches above him.
No! Barnabas wanted to call to them. Fly away – please!
But then he saw Shrii, landing on the throne platform along with Firedrake. A griffin beside two dragons! That was a sight that perhaps had never been seen in the world before. For a moment it made Barnabas forget his fears – but only for a moment.
Then Kraa stepped out of his palace nest. With the proboscis monkey at his side. And the monkey had Twigleg in his grasp.
