guides, he asked them to punch the ball, and the Elephant Duck jumped into the River and butted the golden orb with her head. The number in the top right-hand corner of Luka’s field of vision changed rapidly from 3 to 4, 5 and then 6; but he wasn’t paying attention, because the moment the Elephant Duck hit the saving point, the whole world changed, too.
Everything went dark, but night had not fallen. This was some sort of artificial, black, magic darkness, intended to frighten. Then, right in front of them, there arose out of the darkness an immense fireball, billowing up into the sky with a mighty roar, to form a giant flaming wall. ‘It goes all the way round the Heart of Magic,’ Soraya whispered. ‘You’re just seeing the front of it from here. That’s the first Ring.’ Then there was a second and a third roar, each louder than the one before, and two more gigantic rings of flame appeared, the second ring larger than the first and the third larger than the second, so that they could move up and down around the first one, the three forming an impassable triple barrier, like three immense fiery doughnuts in the sky. The colour of the fire, reddish-orange at first, paled quickly until the rings were almost white. ‘The hottest fire in existence,’ Soraya told Luka. ‘White heat. Now do you understand what I’ve been trying to say?’
Luka understood. If these burning doughnuts encircled the Heart of Magic – the Torrent of Words, the Lake of Wisdom, the Mountain of Knowledge, all of that – then the quest was hopeless. ‘This fire,’ he said, without much hope, ‘the fire the Rings are made of, that isn’t the same fire as the Fire of Life – or is it?’ Nobodaddy shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘This is the ordinary sort of fire, that turns whatever it touches to ash. The Fire of Life is the only flame that creates – that restores instead of destroying.’
Luka was at a loss for words. He stood on the deck of the Argo in the darkness and stared at the sheets of flame. Bear the dog and Dog the bear came to stand in silence on either side of him. And then, without warning, they both began to laugh.
‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’ barked Bear the dog, and fell down and rolled onto his back and waggled his legs in the air. ‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!’ And Dog the bear began to dance a jig on the deck, which made the Argo lurch alarmingly from side to side. ‘Ho! Ho!’ he roared. ‘If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. After all that fuss … it’s just this?’
Soraya was bemused, and even Nobodaddy looked perplexed. ‘What on earth are you doing, you foolish beasts?’ demanded the Insultana of Ott.
Bear the dog struggled upright, out of breath on account of having laughed so hard. ‘But look,’ he cried. ‘It’s Fifi, that’s all it is. It’s only a great big supersized Fifi, after all this fuss.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Soraya asked. ‘There’s no woman out there!’
‘Fifi,’ giggled Dog the bear. ‘The Famous Incredible Fire Illusion of Grandmaster Flame. F-I-F-I, Fifi! That was our name for it in the circus. So Captain Aag is behind all this! We should have known.’
‘You know the Grandmaster?’ Soraya actually gasped.
‘Grandmaster, bah!’ answered Bear the dog. ‘He was a phoney in the Real World, and he’s still a phoney here. These fantastic defences you’re so afraid of, they’re no defences at all.’
‘Fifi is an illusion,’ explained Dog the bear. ‘Smoke and mirrors! She’s a magic trick. She isn’t really there at all.’
‘We’ll show you,’ said Bear the dog. ‘We know how she works. Put us ashore and we’ll put a stop to this silliness once and for all.’
Nobodaddy held up a warning hand. ‘Are you sure,’ he asked, ‘that the Captain Aag of your circus days is the same as the Grandmaster Flame of the Magic World? How can you be certain that these Great Rings of Fire aren’t the real thing, even if the circus illusion was a fake?’
‘Look up there,’ Luka said sharply. ‘Where did they appear from?’
Circling in the sky above their heads, horribly illuminated by the giant flames, were seven vultures wearing ruffs around their necks, like European noblemen in old paintings, and also like circus clowns.
That set Bear the dog and Dog the bear off again. ‘Ha! Ha!’ Dog the bear laughed,