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 grassy slope in a park. For others it is an impassable 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 grassy 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 principal 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) Nobodaddy had evidently decided – for whatever reason, and no not that one! – 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.’
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 was a silver knob 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 button 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 button. 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, stuck in his head. The words kept replaying, again and