Luka And The Fire Of Life Part 6

'Wonderful. Thanks a lot,' said Luka.

'You're welcome,' said n.o.bodaddy in a cold, hard voice. 'I seem to recall that this was your idea. I distinctly recall your saying, "Let's go." Was I perhaps mistaken?' That wasn't Luka's father talking at all. That was a creature who was trying to suck his father's life away. Luka suspected even more strongly than before that this whole adventure had just been n.o.bodaddy's way of pa.s.sing the time until his real work was done. It has just been something to do something to do.

'No,' said Luka. 'No, there was no mistake.'

Just then he heard a loud noise.

A loud, loud loud, LOUD noise.

In fact, to call this noise 'loud' was like saying that a tsunami was just a big wave. To describe how loud this loudness was, Luka thought, he would have to say, for example, that if the Himalayas were made of sound instead of stone and ice then this noise would have been Mount Everest; or maybe not Everest, but definitely one of the Eight Thousand Metre Peaks. Luka had learned from Rashid Khalifa, the least mountaineering of men, but a man who liked a good list, that there were fourteen Eight Thousand Metre Peaks on Earth: in descending order, Everest, K2, Kanchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri, Manaslu, Nanga Parbat, Annapurna, Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum II and the beautiful Xixabangma Feng. It wasn't so easy to list his Fourteen Loudest Sounds, Luka thought, but he was quite sure this one was in the top three. So it was at the Kanchenjunga level, at the very least.

The sound went on, and on, and on, and Luka covered his ears. All around them pandemonium had broken out in the Heart of Magic. Crowds were running in all directions, flying creatures were taking to the air, swimming things to the water, riders to their horses. It was a general mobilisation, Luka thought, and then in a flash he understood what the sound was. It was a call to arms.

The game just changed, muchacho, Coyote trotted over to shout in Luka's ear. muchacho, Coyote trotted over to shout in Luka's ear. You need help now, big time. Aint n.o.body heard that noise round here in hunnerds of years. That's the Big Noise. That's the Fire Alarm You need help now, big time. Aint n.o.body heard that noise round here in hunnerds of years. That's the Big Noise. That's the Fire Alarm.

'It must have been that Fire Bug who raised the Alarm,' Luka realised at once, disgusted with himself for having forgotten about that little tale-telling flame, the World of Magic's tiniest Security operative, but, it seemed, one of the most dangerous. 'It was hovering by Captain Aag's shoulder and then it disappeared. We didn't pay attention to it, and now we're paying the price for our carelessness.'

At long last the siren of the Fire Alarm died down, but the hysterical activity all around them became, if anything, even more frenzied. Soraya dragged Luka behind the rhododendron bushes. 'When the Fire Alarm sounds it means two things,' she said. 'It means that the Aalim know that someone is trying to steal the Fire of Life. And it means that all the residents of the Heart of Magic are rendered capable of seeing intruders until the All-Clear, which doesn't sound until the thief is caught.'

'You mean everyone can see me now?' Luka said in horror. 'And Bear and Dog as well?' When they heard that, the dog and the bear ran and hid behind the rhododendrons as well. Soraya nodded. 'Yes,' she said. 'There's only one course of action. You must abandon your plan, and climb aboard Resham Resham, and I will fly as high as I can rise and as fast as I can ride and I will try to get you back to the Starting Point before they find you, because if they catch you they may Perminate all three of you on the spot, without asking for an explanation of your presence or giving a reason for their drastic measures. Or else they'll put you on trial and Perminate you after that. The adventure is over, Luka Khalifa. It's time to go home.'

Luka was silent for a long moment. Then he said simply, 'No.'

Soraya smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand. 'Backchat he's giving me now. "No," he says. Tell me your grand plan, hero boy. No, no! Let me guess! You're going to take on all the G.o.ds and monsters of the Heart of Magic, with a dog, a bear and four dragons as the sum total of your attack force; and you're going to steal what has never been stolen, what n.o.body has tried to steal for hundreds of years, and then you're going to get home? How? I'm supposed to wait around and give you a ride, is that it? Well, by all means. Go right ahead. That masterly scheme sounds like it will definitely work.'

'You're almost right,' Luka said. 'But you forgot I'll have Coyote's decoy run helping me as well.'

Hold it, chico, said Coyote, looking alarmed. Hold it there one minute. Didn I say the game jus changed? That offer aint no longer on the table. Hold it there one minute. Didn I say the game jus changed? That offer aint no longer on the table.

'Listen,' said Luka. 'What do thieves do when the Fire Alarm sounds?'

They run for their life. Aint n.o.body done it for hunnerds of years but that's what they done then. Warnt no use. Even the old t.i.tan back in the day, he got taken an tied to a rock and an old vulture started chewin 'Eagle,' said Luka. 'You said it was an eagle.'

'Pinions differ as to the species of bird. Aint no doubt about the chewin.

'So,' said Luka determinedly, 'running isn't any use, unless you run in an unexpected direction. And, now that the Fire Alarm has sounded, which is the one direction in which n.o.body will expect us to flee?'

n.o.bodaddy was the one who answered Luka's question. 'Towards the Fire of Life,' he said. 'Into the Heart of the Heart. Towards the danger. You're right.'

'Then,' said Luka, 'that's the way we're going.'

7.

The Fire of Life.

The whole World of Magic was on Red Alert. Jackal-headed Egyptian deities, fierce scorpion- and jaguar-men, giant one-eyed, man-eating Cyclopes, flute-playing centaurs, whose pipes could entice strangers into cracks in rocks where they would be imprisoned for all time, a.s.syrian treasure-nymphs made of gold and jewels, whose precious bodies could tempt thieves into their poisoned whipcord nets, flying griffins with lethal claws, flightless basilisks glaring in all directions with their deadly eyes, Valkyries on cloud-horses in the sky, bull-headed minotaurs, slithering snake-women; and huge rocs larger than the one that bore Sinbad the Sailor to its nest charged wildly across the land and through the air, answering the Fire Alarm, hunting, hunting. In the Circular Sea, after the Alarm sounded, mermaids rose from the waters singing siren songs to lure the foul intruders to their doom. Enormous island-sized creatures krakens, zaratans and monstrous rays hung motionless on the Sea's surface; if an intruder were to pause on the back of one of the beasts for a rest, it would dive and drown him, or flip over to reveal its giant mouth and its sharp triangular teeth, and swallow the trespa.s.ser down in bite-sized chunks. And most terrible of all was the gigantic Worm Bottomfeeder, who rose blind and roaring from the Sea's usually silent depths, in a rage to consume the scoundrels who had triggered the Fire Alarm and disturbed its two-thousand-year sleep.

Amid the chaos of that World the Fire G.o.ds rose in all their majesty to defend Vibgyor, the One Bridge to the Heart of the Heart, the rainbow arch that crossed the sundering Sea and enabled the favoured few to enter the Aalim's lands. Amaterasu, the j.a.panese sun G.o.ddess, emerged from the cave where she had sulked for two millennia after quarrelling with her brother, the storm G.o.d, with the magic sword Kusanagi in her hand, and rays of sunlight flying outwards from her head like spears. Beside her was the flaming child Kagutsuchi, whose burning birth had killed his mother, Izanami the Divine. And Surtr with his fiery sword and at his elbow his female companion, Sinmara, also bearing a lethal sword of fire. And Irish Bel. And Polynesian Mahuika with her fingernails of flame. And lame Hephaestus, the smith of Olympus, with his pale Roman echo Vulcan at his side. And Inti of the Incas, the Sun with the Human Face, and the Aztec Tonatiuh, thirsty for blood, Tonatiuh the former Lord of the Fifth World, to please whom twenty thousand people used to be sacrificed each year. And towering above them all like a giant pillar in the sky was falcon-headed Ra of Egypt, his piercingly sharp bird-eyes searching for the would-be thieves, with the Bennu bird sitting on his shoulder, the grey heron that was the Egyptian phoenix, and his mighty weapons, the wadjets, the disks of the sun, held urgently in his hands. These great colossi guarded the Bridge and waited with clouds at their foreheads and murder in their eyes.

Inhabitants of the Heart of Magic rushed freely across the Bridge in both directions, hunting, hunting; but for the hunted intruders, Luka thought, there appeared to be no way past the falcon eyes of Ra. Luka, hiding with his companions behind the rhododendron bushes, had the feeling that the thicket was shrinking, dwindling away and becoming a less and less adequate shelter. His heart was beating too rapidly. Things were definitely getting scary.

'The good thing about all these ex-G.o.ds,' said Soraya comfortingly, 'is that they're all stuck in their old stories. I'm sure the Fire Bug will have reported accurately to the Aalim a boy, a dog, a bear a boy, a dog, a bear, he will have said but when the Fire Alarm goes off, everyone here inevitably starts hunting for the Usual Suspects.'

'Who are the Usual Suspects?' Luka wanted to know. He realised he was whispering, and that he wished Soraya would lower her voice as well.

'Oh, the ones who were Fire Thieves in the times and places in which these G.o.ds were the G.o.ds,' Soraya said, waving an arm airily. 'You know. Or,' she added, reverting to her old Insultana habits, 'maybe you're too ignorant. Maybe your father didn't teach you as much as he should have. Maybe he didn't know himself.' Then, seeing the expression on Luka's face, she softened her voice and relented. 'The Algonquin Indians got Rabbit to steal Fire for them,' she said, 'and you know about Coyote already. Beaver and Nanabozho the Shape-Shifter did the same for other tribes. Possum tried and failed, but then Grandmother Spider stole Fire for the Cherokee in a clay urn, which reminds me' Soraya paused for a moment 'that you will need this.' know. Or,' she added, reverting to her old Insultana habits, 'maybe you're too ignorant. Maybe your father didn't teach you as much as he should have. Maybe he didn't know himself.' Then, seeing the expression on Luka's face, she softened her voice and relented. 'The Algonquin Indians got Rabbit to steal Fire for them,' she said, 'and you know about Coyote already. Beaver and Nanabozho the Shape-Shifter did the same for other tribes. Possum tried and failed, but then Grandmother Spider stole Fire for the Cherokee in a clay urn, which reminds me' Soraya paused for a moment 'that you will need this.'

She was holding a little clay pot in her hands. Luka looked inside it. A small group of what looked like half a dozen black potatoes nestled on a bed of twigs. 'This,' said Soraya, 'is one of the famous Ott Pots, and there inside it are a few of the famous Ott Potatoes. Once the Fire of Life touches them, they'll burn brightly, and they won't easily be put out.' She hung the pot around his neck by its leather strap. 'Where was I?' She thought for a minute, then resumed. 'Oh yes. Maui that's Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranga to you stole Fire from the fingernails of the fire G.o.ddess Mahuika and gave it to the Polynesians. She'll She'll definitely be on the lookout for definitely be on the lookout for him him. And so on.'

You neglected to include the First Thief, Coyote said. Oldest and greatest. King of the Hill. Inspiration to us all. Stole it for all mankind Oldest and greatest. King of the Hill. Inspiration to us all. Stole it for all mankind.

'The t.i.tan Prometheus,' Soraya said, 'was the brother, oddly enough, of your friend, the late, unlamented Captain Aag. Not that they ever got on. Couldn't stand each other, in fact. Anyhow: three million four hundred thousand years ago the Old Boy was indeed the first of the Fire Thieves. But after what happened to him back then, the searchers will probably not be on the lookout for another Fire Run by the old fellow.'

'He lost his nerve,' Luka remembered.

That warnt right of me to mention, Coyote said. Taint proper to dishonour the great. But since Hercules shot the eagle the Old Boy lives pretty quiet Taint proper to dishonour the great. But since Hercules shot the eagle the Old Boy lives pretty quiet.

'Or the vulture,' Luka said.

Or the vulture. Warnt none of us there at the time to verify, and the Old Boy, he dont talk so much no more.

'And another good thing about all this rushing about,' Soraya murmured in Luka's ear, 'is that it will allow you to get close to the Bridge, if you rush about too and look like you're searching for yourselves.'

Theyll be looking for me an my a.s.sociates, Coyote said. Best we part ways. It's fixin to get kindly heated in my vicinity. But look for me to make my run and then you put your best foot forward an make yours Best we part ways. It's fixin to get kindly heated in my vicinity. But look for me to make my run and then you put your best foot forward an make yours. He loped away without another word.

All at once Luka realised that n.o.bodaddy had disappeared. One minute he had been there, listening, fidgeting with his panama hat, and then without so much as a poof poof, he was nowhere to be seen. 'What's he up to, I'd very much like to know?' Luka thought. 'I don't feel good about him vanishing like this.' Soraya put a hand on his shoulder. 'You're better off without him,' she said. Then Nuthog the red dragon had her idea, and Luka put n.o.bodaddy out of his mind.

'Once upon a time our sister Gyara-Jinn helped the King of the Horses escape from Sniffelheim,' said the red dragon, nodding at her golden sibling. 'Yes! The mighty Slippy, that gigantic, white, eight-legged steed with two legs at each corner, so to speak had been arbitrarily, unfairly imprisoned there by the Aalim, just as my sisters were until Queen Soraya here set them free by her own powerful magic. The Three Jos had decided there was no place in all of Time for an eight-legged wonder-horse. Just like that decided it, without any discussion, like tyrants; with no consideration for anyone's feelings, Slippy's feelings included. They can be cruel and wanton and wilful when they want to be, even though they pridefully call themselves the Three Inevitable Truths! Anyhow, it was Jinn here who freed Slippy with her dragon-fire her breath is hotter than mine or Badlo's or Sara's, and proved hot enough to melt the Eternal Ice, which ours did not. In return, the King of the Horses gave her a magnificent gift: the power to Change, just once, whenever the need might be very great, into an exact replica of Slippy himself. No G.o.d will dare to search Slippy the King of the Horses as he pa.s.ses over Vibgyor. We'll strap in each of you you, Luka, and your dog and bear between one of the pairs of legs, which leaves one pair of legs for you, Queen Soraya, if you would like ...'

'No,' Soraya said sadly. 'Even with the Flying Carpet of King Solomon folded away, I'm afraid the presence of the Insultana of Ott will not help you, Luka. I have been too offensive about those cold, stuffy, punishing, implacable, destructive old Jos for too long, and they have no Time for me. It will go worse for you if I'm at your side. I will not enter the Heart of the Heart ever again, that's the truth. I have no wish to end up in Sniffelheim, imprisoned in an Ice Sheet. But I will wait for you and speed you to safety if, that is to say when, you return with blazing Ott Potatoes in that little Ott Pot.'

'You'd do this for me?' Luka said to the golden dragon. 'You'd use up this one-time Change just to help me win through? I don't know how to thank you enough.'

'We owe everything to Queen Soraya,' said Gyara-Jinn. 'That is the person whom you need to thank.'

'Who could have imagined,' Luka told himself ruefully, 'that I, Luka Khalifa, aged only twelve, would be crossing the great bridge Vibgyor, the most beautiful bridge in the entire Magical World, a bridge built entirely of rainbows and brushed by the west wind, gentlest of all the winds, blown softly from the lips of the G.o.d Zephyr himself; and yet the only thing I can see and feel is the bristly hair on a giant horse's inner thighs. Who would have thought that out there are some of the greatest names in the history of the Unseen World, the names of the once-worshipped, once-omnipotent Divinities with whom I grew up, about whom I heard each night in my father's endless supply of bedtime stories, the sword Kusanagi, the ex-G.o.ds Tonatiuh, Vulcan, Surtr and Bel; and the Bennu bird, and Ra the Supreme; and yet I can't catch even a glimpse of them, or allow them to get the tiniest glimpse of me. Who would have believed that I, Luka, would be entering the Garden of Perfect Perfumes which circles the Lake of Wisdom and is the sweetest-smelling place in all of Existence, and yet the only thing I can smell is horse.'

He could hear noises such as he had never heard in his life: the shriek of a falcon, the hiss of a snake, the roar of a lion, the burning of the sun, all magnified beyond imagining and almost beyond endurance, the war cries of the G.o.ds. The Changer Gyara-Jinn in the form of the King of Horses whinnied, neighed, stamped her (or, for the moment, his) eight feet in response, and the intruders concealed between her (or, for the moment, his) legs shook and cringed. Luka didn't like to imagine how Bear and Dog were feeling. Underneath a horse, wedged in between its legs, was no place for a dog, or a bear. There must be a certain loss of pride involved, and he was upset to be the reason for their feelings of shame. He was leading them into great danger, too, he knew that, but he had to close his mind to that thought if he was to stand any chance of doing what needed to be done. 'I am exploiting their love and loyalty,' he thought. 'It seems there is no such thing as a purely good deed, a completely right action. Even this task, which I took on for the very best of reasons, involves making choices that are not that "good", choices that might even be "wrong".'

In his mind's eye he saw again the faces of Queen Soraya and the Memory Birds, as they had looked when he said his farewells. Their eyes were moist with tears, and he knew it was because they feared they would never see him again. To this thought, too, he needed to close his mind. He was going to prove them all wrong. If a thing had never been done before, that only meant it was still waiting for the one who could pull it off. 'See how narrow I have become,' he thought. 'I have turned myself into a single, inevitable thing. I am an arrow speeding towards a target. Nothing must deflect me from my chosen course.'

Somewhere in the sky up above him were Nuthog, Badlo and Sara, flying in formation in their dragon incarnations. There was no turning back now. The seven of them had entered the inner sanctum of the Aalim with crime in their hearts. The country below them was filled with wonders, but there was no time for sightseeing. All his life, ever since Rashid Khalifa started telling him stories, Luka had wondered about the Torrent of Words that fell to Earth from the Sea of Stories, which was up above the world on its invisible second moon. What would that look like, that waterfall tumbling from s.p.a.ce? It must be wonderful to behold. Surely it would splash like an explosion into the Lake of Wisdom? Yet Rashid had always said that the Lake of Wisdom was calm and still, because Wisdom could absorb even the largest Rush of Words without being disturbed. There at the Lake it was always dawn. The long, pale fingers of the First Light rested quietly on the surface of the waters, and the silver sun peeped over the horizon but did not rise. The Aalim who controlled Time had chosen to live at the Beginning of it for ever. Luka could close his eyes and see it all, he could listen and hear his father's voice describing the scene, but now that he was actually there it was very frustrating not to be able to take a look.

And where was n.o.bodaddy? 'Still Noplace to be seen,' thought Luka, who was surer with every pa.s.sing minute that the missing phantom was up to no good, wherever he was. 'I will have to face him before the end, I'm sure of that,' he thought, 'and it isn't going to be easy, but if he thinks I'll give up my dad to him without a fight, he's going to be very much surprised.' Then he was struck, as if by a powerful fist, by the worst thought in the world. 'Had n.o.bodaddy gone because Rashid Khalifa had already ... already ... had finally ... before Luka could save him ... gone, too? Had the phantom who was absorbing his father vanished because its purpose had been achieved? Was all of this in vain?' Luka began to tremble at the thought and his eyes grew wet and p.r.i.c.kly and grief began to flood over him in great shuddering waves.

But then something happened. Luka became aware of a change within himself. He felt as if something more powerful than his own nature had taken control of him, some will stronger than his own that was refusing to accept the worst. No, Rashid's life was not over. It could not be, therefore it was not. The will-stronger-than-Luka's-own rejected that possibility. Nor would it allow Luka to give up, to flinch in the face of danger or cower in the face of terror. This new force that had gripped him was giving him the strength and courage he would need if he was going to do what needed to be done. It felt like something not-himself, something from outside outside, and yet he also knew that it was coming from within him, that it was his own strength, his own determination, his own refusal of defeat, his own strong will. For this, too, Rashid Khalifa's storytelling, the Shah of Blah's many tales of young heroes finding extra resources within themselves in the face of horrible adversity, had prepared him. 'We don't know the answers to the great questions of who we are and what we are capable of,' Rashid liked to say, 'until the questions are asked. Then and only then do we know if we can answer them, or not.'

And above and beyond Rashid's stories lay the example of Luka's brother Haroun, who had found such an answer in himself, afloat on the Sea of Stories, once upon a time. 'I wish my brother was here to help me,' Luka thought, 'but he isn't, not really, even though Dog the bear is speaking in his voice and trying to take care of me. So I'm going to do what he would have done. I'm not going to lose.'

'The Aalim are set in their ways and dislike people who try to rock the boat,' Rashid Khalifa had told the sleepy Luka one night. 'Their view of Time is strict and inflexible: yesterday, then today, then tomorrow, tick, tock, tick. They are like robots marching along to the beat of the disappearing seconds. What Was, Jo-Hua, lives in the Past; What Is, Jo-Hai, simply is right now; and What Will Come, Jo-Aiga, belongs to a place we cannot go. Their Time is a prison, they are the jailers, and the seconds and minutes are its walls.

'Dreams are the Aalim's enemies, because in dreams the Laws of Time disappear. We know don't we know, Luka? that the Aalim's Laws do not tell the truth about Time. The time of our feelings is not the same as the time of the clocks. We know that when we are excited by what we are doing, Time speeds up, and when we are bored, it slows down. We know that at moments of great excitement or antic.i.p.ation, at wonderful moments, Time can stand still.

'Our dreams are the real truths our fancies, the knowledge of our hearts. We know that Time is a River, not a clock, and that it can flow the wrong way, so that the world becomes more backward instead of less, and that it can jump sideways, so that everything changes in an instant. We know that the River of Time can loop and twist and carry us back to yesterday or forwards to the day after tomorrow.

'There are places in the world where nothing ever happens, and Time stops moving altogether. There are those of us who go on being seventeen years old all our life, and never grow up. There are others who are miserable old wretches, maybe sixty or seventy years old, from the day they are born.

'We know that when we fall in love, Time ceases to exist, and we also know that Time can repeat itself, so that you can be stuck in one day for the whole of your life.

'We know that Time is not only Itself, but is an aspect of Movement and s.p.a.ce. Imagine two boys, let's say you and young Rats.h.i.t, who both wear wrist.w.a.tches that are perfectly synchronised, and that both keep perfect Time. Now imagine that that lazy rascal Rats.h.i.t sits in the same place, let's say right here, for one hundred years, while you run, never resting, all the way to school and back here again, over and over, also for one hundred years. At the end of that century, both your watches would have kept perfect Time, but your watch would be six or seven seconds slower than his.

'There are those of us who learn to live completely in the moment. For such people the Past vanishes and the Future loses meaning. There is only the Present, which means that two of the three Aalim are surplus to requirements. And then there are those of us who are trapped in yesterdays, in the memory of a lost love, or a childhood home, or a dreadful crime. And some people live only for a better tomorrow; for them the Past ceases to exist.

'I've spent my life telling people that this is the truth about Time, and that the Aalim's clocks tell lies. So naturally the Aalim are my mortal enemies, which is just fine, because as a matter of fact I am their deadly foe.'

The Changer Gyara-Jinn stopped galloping, slowed down to a walk, then stopped completely and began to change. The giant eight-legged horse started becoming smaller; its hairy skin vanished and was replaced by a smooth shiny surface; the smell of horse faded away and Luka's nostrils were filled, instead, by the far less palatable odour of the pigpen. Finally the eight legs became four, so that Luka, Bear and Dog slipped out of their bindings and tumbled what was now only a short distance to the admittedly stony ground. Gyara-Jinn's once-in-a-lifetime transformation into the King of Horses had come to an end, and she was a tin sow once again. But Luka wasn't paying any attention to that dramatic Change, because he was staring open-mouthed at the heart-stopping sight he had come so far to see. He was standing at the foot of the vast ma.s.sif of the Mountain of Knowledge, and just a few feet away, lapping at the Mountain's feet, was the Lake of Wisdom itself, its water clear, pure and transparent in the pale, silvery light of the Dawn of Days, which never brightened into morning. Cool shadows stretched across the water, as always, caressing and smoothing it. It was a ghostly scene, at once haunted and haunting, and it was easy to imagine music in the air, a tinkling crystal melody: the legendary Music of the Spheres that had played when the World was born.

The Shah of Blah's description of the Lake and its inhabitants, which Luka had heard so often that he knew it by heart, proved to be startlingly accurate. Shining schools of little canny-fish could be seen below the surface, as well as the brightly coloured smartipans, and the duller, deep-water shrewds. Flying low over the water's surface were the hunter birds, the large pelican-billed scholarias and the bald, bearded, long-beaked guroos. Long tendrils of the lake-floor plant called sagacity were visible waving in the depths, and Luka recognised the Lake's little groups of islands, too, the Theories with their wild, improbable growths, the tangled forests and ivory towers of the Philosophisles, and the bare Facts. In the distance was what Luka had longed to behold, the Torrent of Words, the miracle of miracles, the grand waterfall that tumbled down from the clouds and linked the World of Magic to the Moon of the Great Story Sea up above.

They had given the hunters the slip and arrived at the notorious South Face of Knowledge without being caught, but looming above Luka was an obstacle far more forbidding than he had imagined, the sheer cliff of the Mountain, a rugged wall of black stone upon which no plant had managed to find a foothold. 'If a plant can't do it, how can I?' Luka wondered in dismay. 'What sort of mountain is this, anyway?'

He knew the answer. It was the Magic Mountain, and it knew how to protect itself. 'Knowledge is both a delight and an explosive minefield; both a liberation and a trap,' Rashid used to say. 'The way to Knowledge shifts and changes as the world changes and shifts. One day it is open and available to all, the next it is closed and guarded. Some people skip up that Mountain as if it were a gra.s.sy slope in a park. For others it is an impa.s.sable Wall.' Luka scratched the top of his head, just the way his father liked to do. 'I guess I'm one of the others,' he thought, 'because that doesn't look like any gra.s.sy slope I've ever seen.' To be blunt, the Mountain looked impossible to climb without serious mountaineering equipment, to say nothing of the proper training, and Luka lacked both. Somewhere above him, at the top of that world of stone, the Fire of Life burned in a temple, and there was no way of knowing where that cave might be, or how to go about finding it. Luka's princ.i.p.al advisers were no longer at his side. Queen Soraya of Ott had not crossed the Rainbow Bridge, and the much less trustworthy (but formidably well informed) n.o.bodaddy had evidently decided for whatever reason, and no not that one! for whatever reason, and no not that one! to withdraw his support. to withdraw his support.

'Might I remind you,' said the voice of Nuthog, in gentle tones, 'that you do still have help available, and that that help possesses may I point out? wings wings.'

Nuthog, Badlo and Sara were still in dragon-mode, and Jinn quickly dragonised herself as well. 'With four fast dragons at your service you should be able to reach the Fire Temple quickly enough,' Nuthog said. 'Particularly if those four fast dragons happen to know where on the summit the Temple actually is.'

'To know approximately,' said Badlo, rather more modestly.

'We think, anyway,' said Sara, and that didn't sound convincing at all.

'At any rate,' added Jinn, more helpfully, 'before we get going, it would probably be a good idea if you punched ... that that.'

That was a silver k.n.o.b embedded in the stone wall of the South Face. 'It looks like a saving point,' Luka said, 'but why is it silver, not gold?' was a silver k.n.o.b embedded in the stone wall of the South Face. 'It looks like a saving point,' Luka said, 'but why is it silver, not gold?'

'The gold b.u.t.ton is in the Temple,' said Nuthog. 'But at least you can save the progress you've made so far. And be careful. From now on, every mistake you make could cost you a hundred lives.'

That was alarming, Luka thought as he punched the silver b.u.t.ton. It left almost no room for mistakes. Four hundred and sixty-five lives allowed him four slip-ups, maximum. Besides, while Nuthog's offer of flying him up to his goal was certainly generous, and practical, too, Luka clearly remembered his father's words about the Mountain of Knowledge: 'If you want to reach the summit of the Mountain and discover the Fire of Life, you must make the final ascent alone. The Heights of Knowledge are reached only if you earn the right to do so. You have to put in the hard work. You can't cheat your way to the Top.' He had said something else after that, and Luka remembered thinking that that last bit was the really important part, but he couldn't call it to mind. 'That's the trouble,' he thought, 'with being told all this stuff at night, when you're always dead tired and falling asleep.'

'Thank you very much,' said Luka to Nuthog, 'but I think I'm supposed to solve this riddle and get there by myself. To fly up on your back ... well, it just wouldn't be right.'

For some reason that idea, not right not right, stuck in his head. The words kept replaying, again and again, as if his thoughts had become stuck like a scratched record, or caught in some sort of loop. Not right. Not right Not right. Not right. What was a thing if it was not right? Well, yes, wrong wrong, that was what most people would say, but it could also be 'Left,' he said aloud. 'That's the answer. I went right, and fell into the World of Magic. Now maybe if I somehow go left go left, I'll find my way through it.'

Luka remembered his big brother Haroun's many teasing warnings, back home in Kahani, which felt, just at that moment, very far away indeed. Just be careful not to go down the Left-hand Path Just be careful not to go down the Left-hand Path. That's what Haroun had said. 'But I don't like to be teased,' Luka reminded himself, 'and so maybe I should do the opposite of what he said. Yes! Just this once, I'm not going to listen to my brother's advice, because Right-thinking people can never really understand what it is to be on the Left, and that hidden Path is exactly the Path that will get me where I need to go.'

After all, his mother Soraya would be on his side. Maybe you are correct to believe that the left way round is the right way, and that the rest of us are not right, but wrong Maybe you are correct to believe that the left way round is the right way, and that the rest of us are not right, but wrong. That's what she had said, and that was more than enough for him.

'I'll go with you,' said Bear the dog loyally.

'I'll go too,' said Dog the bear, not quite as enthusiastically.

And then Luka recalled the really important part of what Rashid Khalifa had told him about the Mountain: 'To climb Mount Knowledge, you have to know who you are.' Luka, sleepy, bedtime Luka at home far away and long ago, hadn't really understood. 'Doesn't everyone know that?' he had asked. 'I mean, I'm just me, right? And you're you?' Rashid had caressed his hair, which always soothed Luka and made him drowsy. 'People think they're all sorts of things they aren't,' he had said. 'They think they're talented when they're not; they think they're powerful when they're actually just bullies; they think they're good when they're bad. People fool themselves all the time, and they don't know that they're fools.'

'Well, I'm me, anyway; that's all there is to it,' Luka had said, just as he had fallen asleep.

'There he is! There's the Fire Thief! There he goes!'

'It's Coyote! He has a burning brand between his teeth!'

'Look at him go! See him dodge and swerve!'

'Stop him! Oh, they'll never catch him! Stop that Coyote! Oh, he's like hairy lightning! Stop, thief! Stop the Fire Thief!'

Luka snapped out of his reverie and saw Coyote emerging from the shadows at the foot of Mount Knowledge with fire blazing from his mouth, and streaking round the Mountain towards its far side, running faster than Luka would have believed it was possible for a coyote to run. He was heading across stony ground in the opposite direction from the Rainbow Bridge, leading his pursuers deliberately away from Luka's probable escape route and into the Wild Waste that lay beyond the Lake. This was an area of semi-desert, more properly known as the Waste of Time, a large expanse of arid land which had been overrun, long ago, by a virulent outbreak of Slackerweed. This rapidly spreading weed, previously unknown in the Magic World, had first choked and destroyed all other plant life except for a few of the hardiest cacti and then bizarrely self-destructed, as if it had no idea what to do with itself, and no real desire to find out. It just lay apathetically on the ground until it withered away, leaving behind this yellow wilderness dotted with the skulls of long-dead creatures. Snakes slithered out from under rocks and buzzards wheeled overhead, and it was well known that the G.o.ds, accustomed as they were to luxury and opulence, were not fond of entering this zone, where, Rashid Khalifa had told Luka, the air moved slowly, the breeze blew without any real sense of direction, and there was something in that wind that induced carelessness, laziness and sleep. Only a few of the guardian deities who had answered the Fire Alarm had been willing to follow Coyote into the Waste, and their pursuit of the fleeing animal seemed slower, groggier and less purposeful than it should have been. Coyote, however, seemed immune to the infectious lethargy in the air. 'The Wild Waste is his natural habitat,' Luka thought. 'He'll give those G.o.ds a good run for their money there.' And positioned at intervals along the route Coyote had chosen were the Lion, the Big Bear, the Little Bear, the Wolf, the Squirrel and the Frog. Would the Waste of Time affect them, Luka wondered, or had Coyote discovered an antidote? It wasn't important. The decoy relay had begun.

He heard Coyote's voice in his head, saying, Put your best foot forward an make your glory run Put your best foot forward an make your glory run. And all around him were excited dragons and a barking dog and a roaring bear, and Nuthog was saying, 'It's now or never, young Luka, and if you can't find the way Left, as you say, then you'd best let us fly you up there and take your chances. Move! This is the moment of Truth!'

'Who are those monsters chasing Coyote?' Luka needed to know. 'If you don't act fast,' Nuthog harrumphed, panicked, 'they'll be chasing you instead, soon enough. Saturn's out there, as savage and violent as any immortal. He eats children, by the way. He's done it before, with his own. And the bearded fellow with the snake wound around him is Zurvan, the Persian time G.o.d you don't want that snake to get within snapping distance, let me tell you! There goes the Dagda, look, that wild Irish fellow with the enormous club! And Xiuhtecuhtli too, though he usually only roams about at night. And even Ling-pao T'ien-tsun they got him out of the Gossamer Library for once! Looks like they really want to stop the Fire Thief, and when they find out that the fire in Coyote's mouth is a fake that it's just fire, and not the Fire of Life then they'll know he was only a decoy, and they'll come after the real Fire Thief in all their fury. So if you know how to climb up this Mountain under your own steam, it would be a good idea to get on with it.'

To decide to do a thing was decidedly not the same thing as actually doing the thing, Luka quickly understood. He really had no idea of exactly how he was supposed to take the little tumble to the left that would shift him into the Widdershins Dimension in which the whole world, including the World of Magic, would morph into Planet Wrongway, the left-handers' home, the southpaw variation of Planet Earth. He tried falling, jumping and rolling to the left; he attempted to trip over his own feet; he asked Bear and Dog to knock him over; and finally, closing his eyes, he tried to feel the Left World pushing at his left shoulder, so that, by pushing back, he could fall through the invisible frontier and get to where he needed to be. None of it worked. His many falls left him considerably the worse for wear, bruised of shoulder and of hip, and with a battered and scratched left leg.

'It beats me,' he admitted, almost in despair.

'The thing about the Left-Hand Path,' said Nuthog gently, 'is that you have to believe it's going to be there.'

Just then a triumphant blast of the Fire Alarm announced the capture of the Fire Thief, followed by two blasts of renewed anguish that announced the hunt was still on. Nuthog whizzed off to investigate as soon as she heard the first blast, and returned to report that after the decoy fire had been pa.s.sed from Coyote to Lion, and then all the way down the old relay team until it reached Frog, that doughty amphibian had swallowed it and dived into the Circular Sea; whereupon the enraged Worm Bottomfeeder had ended the carrera de distraccion carrera de distraccion by swallowing Frog in a single greedy gulp. Four seconds later, Bottomfeeder spat the saliva-covered Frog out again, and roared with all its might to announce to the entire Magical World that this particular Fire Thief was a Common Fraud. by swallowing Frog in a single greedy gulp. Four seconds later, Bottomfeeder spat the saliva-covered Frog out again, and roared with all its might to announce to the entire Magical World that this particular Fire Thief was a Common Fraud.

'They're all coming this way now,' Nuthog panted, 'and, to be frank, they're mad as h.e.l.l, so if you won't let us fly you away from here, then at least run. Run for your life.'

'Yes, I probably should start running,' Luka thought. 'After all, I was running before, when I stumbled the first time and took that magical step to the right.' It was hard to be certain of the laws of Magical Physics; ordinary physics was difficult enough. But what was it Rashid had said? 'Time is not only Itself, but is an aspect of Movement and s.p.a.ce.' That was the point, wasn't it? 'So, umm, errr,' Luka thought, 'if T is affected by M and S, then, ahhh, therefore, it follows doesn't it? that S, which is to say s.p.a.ce, including the s.p.a.ce between the Right-Handed and the Left-Handed Dimensions, must probably, right? be an aspect of T and M, i.e. Time and Movement. Or, urrgghh, to put it in English, it makes a difference how long it takes you to make your move, or, in other words, how fast you run.'

The ground began to tremble. 'Is it an earthquake?' Luka cried. 'No,' said Nuthog sadly. 'It's much worse than that. It's the sound of several hundred angry G.o.ds moving at speed. It will take a lot more than four dragons to stop that crowd.'

Dog the bear stepped forward with sudden resolution. 'You go,' he said to Luka. 'Go this minute. Take off, bhag jao bhag jao, amscray, vamoose. Go and do the deed. Bear and I can hold them up for quite a while.'

'How?' asked Nuthog sceptically.

'By doing what we do best,' said Dog the bear. 'Are you ready, Bear?'

'Ready,' said Bear the dog.

Luka knew there was no time to discuss the matter. He turned to his left, tilted his left shoulder down a bit, put his left foot forward, and set off at a gallop, as if his life depended upon it. Which, in point of fact, it did.