“I have a stone,” said Ben. “In my backpack, in the bag with the scale. The mountain dwarves gave it to me. But it’s only a little one.”

“Never mind.” Sorrel jumped up and made her way along the serpent’s back to Firedrake.

“But how are you going to throw a stone so high?” asked Ben when she returned with his backpack.

Sorrel only chuckled. She rummaged around in Ben’s backpack until she found the bag. It really was a small stone, not much bigger than a bird’s egg.

“Here!” Alarmed, Twigleg put his sharp nose over the top of the backpack. “What are you going to do with that stone, fur-face?”

“Get rid of a raven.” Sorrel spat on it a couple of times, rubbed her saliva off it, and then spat again. Ben looked at her, baffled.

“Better not,” whispered Twigleg from the backpack. “Ravens don’t take kindly to that sort of thing.”

“Don’t they indeed?” Sorrel shrugged her shoulders and tossed the stone playfully from paw to paw.

“No, honestly they don’t!” Twigleg’s voice was so shrill that Firedrake raised his head and Ben looked at the homunculus in surprise. Even the sea serpent turned her head to them.

“Ravens,” faltered Twigleg, “ravens bear a grudge. They’re vengeful birds — the ones I know, anyway.”

Sorrel looked at him suspiciously. “You know a lot of ravens, do you?”

Twigleg jumped nervously.

“N-n-not really,” he stammered. “But … I’ve heard people say that.”

Sorrel just shook her head scornfully and glanced up at the sky. The raven had come closer and was circling lower and lower. Ben could see its small eyes quite clearly.

“Look, Sorrel!” he said in surprise. “That raven has red eyes.”

“Red eyes? Well, well.” Sorrel weighed up the little stone in her paw one last time. “I really don’t like this at all. No. That bird must go.”

Like lightning, she took aim and hurled the stone into the sky.

It flew straight as an arrow to the raven, struck his right wing, and remained stuck to his feathers like a burr. Cawing angrily, the black bird fluttered about, beating his wings violently and lurching around in the sky as if he had lost all sense of direction.

“There!” said Sorrel, pleased. “That’ll keep him occupied for a while.”

Ben watched incredulously as the raven pecked more and more frantically at his wing and finally flew unsteadily away. Before long, he was a mere speck in the distance.

Sorrel chuckled.

“Brownie spit — nothing like it,” she said, going back to have a nap in the shade of the dragon.

The sea serpent lowered her neck into the cool water again, and Ben settled down close to her crest to listen to more of her stories. But Twigleg crouched low in Ben’s backpack, his face as white as chalk as he thought despairingly that the raven, too, knew exactly how to summon their master.

24. The Anger of Nettlebrand

Nettlebrand was furious. His spiny tail lashed the desert sand until he was shrouded in clouds of yellow dust, and Gravelbeard, kneeling between the dragon’s horns, had a coughing fit.

“Aaargh!” bellowed Nettlebrand as his huge claws stamped over the dunes of the Great Desert. “What did that stupid spider-legged creature tell me? Said they were hiding a day’s journey away from the oasis, did he? Oh, yes? Then how come I’ve been searching for more than two days, running my claws off in this hot sand?”

Snorting, he stopped on the crest of a dune and scrutinized the desert. His red eyes were streaming in the heat, but even as the sun blazed down pitilessly from the sky his armor remained as cold as ice.

“Perhaps the djinn was lying,” suggested Gravelbeard. He kept brushing the sand off Nettlebrand’s golden scales, but he couldn’t keep up with the work of the desert wind. Nettlebrand’s joints were creaking and groaning as if they hadn’t been oiled for weeks.

“Perhaps, perhaps!” growled Nettlebrand. “Or perhaps that fool of a homunculus got the wrong end of the stick.”

He stared up at the burning sun. Vultures wheeled in the sky above them. Nettlebrand opened his jaws and belched his stinking breath up at the great birds. They fell as if struck by lightning and landed in his open mouth. “Nothing but camels and vultures!” he said, munching noisily. “When am I going to find something tasty to eat around here?”

“Your Goldness?” Gravelbeard picked a couple of vulture feathers out of Nettlebrand’s teeth. “I know you trust the spider-legged creature,” he added, wiping the sweat off his nose, “but just suppose …”

“Just suppose what?” asked Nettlebrand.

The dwarf straightened his hat. “I think that whey-faced creature’s been lying to you,” he announced solemnly. “Yes, that’s what I think.”

Nettlebrand stopped as if thunderstruck. “What?”

“I bet you anything he’s been lying.” Gravelbeard spat on his cloth. “He sounded peculiar last time he reported back.”

“Nonsense!” Nettlebrand shook the sand off his scales and marched on. “Old spider-legs wouldn’t dare. He’s a coward. He’s been doing as I tell him ever since he came into the world. No, his fly-sized brain misunderstood something, that’s what it is.”

“Just as you say, Your Goldness!” muttered the dwarf into his beard. Grimly he began polishing again. “You’re always right, Your Goldness. If you say he wouldn’t dare, right, then he wouldn’t dare. And we’ll go on sweating it out in this desert.”

“Shut up.” Nettlebrand ground his teeth and looked around. “He was a better armor-cleaner than you, anyway. You keep forgetting to cut my claws. And you don’t get the stories of my heroic deeds right, either.”

He slid down the dune, raising a huge cloud of dust. Tiny will-o’-the-wisps swirled around him like midges, chirping in their little voices, telling Nettlebrand a thousand ways to get out of the desert. Gravelbeard had his work cut out for him, shooing them away from his master’s golden head.

“Don’t keep brushing stuff in my eyes, armor-cleaner,” growled Nettlebrand, swallowing a dozen will-o’-the-wisps who had foolishly flown into his jaws. “How am I supposed to look for water in this pesky desert with you flapping about all the time?”

He stopped again, blinking, and stared across the sand that extended like a yellow sea to the horizon. “Grrr, I’m so angry I could shed my armored skin! Not a drop of water for kilometers around. I’ll never get away from here! I never saw such a hopelessly drought-ridden place in my life.”

In his rage Nettlebrand stamped his foot, but the sound it made in the sand wasn’t particularly impressive. “I must devour something this minute!” he bellowed. “I must devour, destroy, dismantle, and despoil something!”

Gravelbeard scanned the desert in alarm. There was nothing to eat for kilometers around — except Gravelbeard himself. But Nettlebrand seemed to want something larger than him. Eyes streaming, the dragon glared all around him until his gaze fell on a cactus growing out of the desert sand like a column. Growling furiously, he marched toward it.