The Neverending Story (33 page)

At last Bastian understood.

“Listen to me, Hero Hynreck,” he said. “When I suggested giving your heart to another lady, I was only putting your love to the test. The truth is that Princess Oglamar needs your help right now, and that no one else can save her.”

Hero Hynreck pricked up his ears.

“Is that true, Sir Bastian?”

“It’s true, as you will soon see. Only a few minutes ago Princess Oglamar was seized and kidnapped.”

“By whom?”

“By one of the most terrible monsters that have ever existed in Fantastica. The dragon Smerg. She was riding across a clearing in the woods when the monster saw her from the air, swooped down, lifted her off her palfrey’s back, and carried her away.”

Hynreck jumped up. His eyes flashed, his cheeks were aglow. He clapped his hands for joy. But then the light went out of his eyes and he sat down.

“That’s not possible,” he said. “There are no more dragons anywhere.”

“You forget, Hero Hynreck, that I come from far away. From much farther than you have ever been.”

“That’s true,” said Atreyu, joining in for the first time.

“And this monster really carried her away?” Hero Hynreck cried. Then he pressed both hands to his heart and sighed: “Oh, my adored Oglamar! How you must be suffering! But never fear, your knight is coming, he is on his way. Tell me, what must I do? Where must I go?”

“Far, far from here,” Bastian began, “there’s a country called Morgul, or the Land of the Cold Fire, because flames there are colder than ice. How you are to reach that country, I can’t tell you, you must find out for yourself. In the center of Morgul there is a petrified forest called Wodgabay. And in the center of that petrified forest stands the leaden castle of Ragar. It is surrounded by three moats. The first is full of arsenic, the second of steaming nitric acid, and the third is swarming with scorpions as big as your feet. There are no bridges across them, for the lord of the leaden castle is Smerg, the winged monster. His wings are made of slimy skin and their spread is a hundred feet. When he isn’t flying, he stands on his hind legs like a gigantic kangaroo. He has the body of a mangy rat and the tail of a scorpion, with a sting at the end of it. The merest touch of that sting is fatal. He has the hind legs of a giant grasshopper. His forelegs, however, which look small and shriveled, resemble the hands of a small child. But don’t let them fool you, there’s a deadly power in those hands. He can pull in his long neck as a snail does its feelers. There are three heads on it. One is large and looks like the head of a crocodile. From its mouth he can spit icy fire. But where a crocodile has its eyes, it has two protuberances. These are extra heads. One resembles the head of an old man. With it he can see and hear. But he talks with the second head, which has the wrinkled face of an old woman.”

While listening to this description, Hero Hynreck went pale.

“What was this monster’s name?” he asked.

“Smerg,” Bastian repeated. “He has been wreaking his mischief for a thousand years. Because that’s how old he is. It’s always a beautiful maiden that he kidnaps, and she has to keep house for him until the end of her days. When she dies, he kidnaps another.”

“Why haven’t I ever heard of this dragon?”

“Smerg flies incredibly far and fast. Up to now he has always chosen other parts of Fantastica for his raids. Besides, they only happen once in every fifty years or so.”

“Hasn’t any of these maidens ever been rescued?”

“No, that would take a very special sort of hero.”

These words brought the color back to Hero Hynreck’s cheeks. And remembering what he had learned about dragons, he asked: “Has this Smerg a vulnerable spot?”

“Oh,” said Bastian, “I almost forgot. In the bottommost cellar of Ragar Castle there’s a lead ax. It’s the only weapon Smerg can be killed with, so naturally he guards it well. You have to cut off the two smaller heads with it.”

“How do you know all this?” asked Hero Hynreck.

Bastian didn’t have to answer, for at that moment cries of terror were heard in the

street.

“A dragon!” — “A monster!” — “Up there in the sky!” — “Horrible!” — “He’s coming this way!” — “Run for your lives!” — “No, he’s already got somebody!”

Hero Hynreck rushed out into the street, and all the others followed.

Up in the sky something that looked like a giant bat was flapping its enormous wings. For a moment, as it came closer, he looked exactly as Bastian had just made him up. And in his two shriveled, but oh so dangerous little arms, he was clutching a young lady, who was screaming and struggling with all her might.

“Hynreck!” she screamed. “Hynreck! Hynreck, my hero! Help!”

And then they were gone.

Hynreck had already brought his black stallion from the stable and boarded one of the silver ferries that crossed to the mainland.

“Faster! Faster!” he could be heard shouting at the ferryman. “I’ll give you anything you ask! But hurry!”

Bastian looked after him and muttered: “I only hope I haven’t made it too hard for him.”

Atreyu cast a sidelong glance at Bastian. Then he said softly: “Maybe we should get going too.”

“Going where?”

“I brought you to Fantastica,” said Atreyu. “I think I ought to help you find the way back to your own world. You mean to go back sooner or later, don’t you?”

“Oh,” said Bastian. “I hadn’t thought about it. But you’re right, Atreyu. Yes, of course you are.”

“You saved Fantastica,” Atreyu went on. “And it seems to me you’ve received quite a lot in return. I have a hunch that you’re aching to go home and make your own world well again. Or is there something that keeps you here?”

Bastian, who had forgotten that he hadn’t always been strong, handsome, and brave, replied: “No, I can’t think of anything.”

Atreyu gave his friend a thoughtful look, and said: “It may be a long, hard journey. Who knows?”

“Yes,” Bastian agreed. “Who knows? We can start right now if you like.”

Then the three knights had a short friendly argument, because each claimed the privilege of giving Bastian his horse. Bastian soon settled the matter by asking them for Yikka, their pack mule. Of course, they thought her unworthy of Bastian, but he insisted, and in the end they gave in.

While the knights were making ready for the journey, Bastian and Atreyu went to Querquobad’s palace to thank the Silver Sage for his hospitality and bid him goodbye. Falkor the luckdragon, who was waiting for Atreyu outside the palace, was delighted to hear they were leaving. Cities just didn’t appeal to him—even if they were as beautiful as Amarganth.

Silver Sage Querquobad was deep in a book he had borrowed from the Bastian Balthazar Bux Library.

“I’m sorry you can’t stay longer,” he said rather absently. “It’s not every day that a great author like you comes to see us. But at least we have your works to console us.”

Whereupon they took their leave.

After seating himself on Falkor’s back Atreyu asked Bastian: “Didn’t you want to ride Falkor?”

“Later,” said Bastian. “Now Yikka is waiting for me. And I’ve given her my promise.”

“Then we’ll wait for you on the mainland,” cried Atreyu. The luckdragon rose into the air and was soon out of sight.

When Bastian returned to the inn, the three knights were ready. They had taken the pack saddle off Yikka and replaced it with a richly ornamented riding saddle. Yikka didn’t learn why until Bastian came over and whispered in her ear: “You belong to me now, Yikka.”

As the ferry carried them away from the silver city, the old pack mule’s cries of joy resounded over the bitter waters of Moru, the Lake of Tears.

As for Hero Hynreck he actually succeeded in reaching Morgul, the Land of the Cold Fire. He ventured into the petrified forest of Wodgabay, crossed the three moats of Ragar Castle, found the lead ax, and slew the dragon Smerg. Then he brought Oglamar back to her father. At that point she would gladly have married him. But by then he didn’t want her anymore. That, however, is another story and shall be told another time.

  ain was coming down in buckets. The black, wet clouds hung so low they seemed almost to graze the heads of the riders. Then big, sticky snowflakes began to fall, and in the end it was snowing and raining in one. The wind was so strong that even the horses had to brace themselves against it. The riders’ cloaks were soaked through and flapped heavily against the backs of the beasts.

For the last three days they had been riding over a desolate high plateau. The weather had been getting steadily worse, and the ground was a mixture of mud and sharp stones that made for hard going. Here and there the monotony of the landscape was broken by clumps of bushes or of stunted wind-bowed trees.

Bastian, who rode in the lead on his mule Yikka, was fairly well off with his glittering silver mantle, which, though light and thin, proved to be remarkably warm and shed water like a duck. The low-slung body of Hykrion the Strong almost vanished in his thick blue woolen coat. The delicately built Hysbald had pulled his great loden hood over his red hair. And Hydorn’s gray canvas cloak clung to his gaunt frame.

Yet in their rather crude way the three knights were of good cheer. They hadn’t expected their adventure with Sir Bastian to be a Sunday stroll. Now and then, with more spirit than art, they sang into the storm, sometimes singly and sometimes in chorus. Their favorite song seemed to be one that began with the words:

“When that I was a little tiny boy,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain . . .”

As they explained, this had been sung by a human who had visited Fantastica long years before, name of Shexper, or something of the sort.

The only one in the group who didn’t seem to mind the cold and the rain was Atreyu. On Falkor’s back he rode high above the clouds, flying far ahead to reconnoiter and rejoining the company from time to time to report on what he had seen.

They all, even the luckdragon, believed they were looking for the road that would take Bastian back to his world. Bastian thought so too. He himself didn’t realize that he had agreed to Atreyu’s suggestion only to oblige his friend and that wasn’t what he really wanted. But the geography of Fantastica is determined by wishes, which may or may not be conscious. And since it was Bastian who led the way, they were actually going deeper and deeper into Fantastica, heading for the Ivory Tower at its very center. What the consequences for him would be, he wouldn’t learn until much later. For the present, neither he nor his companions had any idea where they were going.

Bastian’s thoughts were busy with a different problem.

On the second day of their journey, in the forests surrounding the Lake of Tears, he had seen unmistakable traces of the dragon Smerg. Some of the trees had been turned to stone, no doubt by contact with the monster’s ice-cold fire. And the prints of the giant grasshopper feet were clearly discernible. Atreyu, who was skilled in woodcraft, had seen other tracks as well, those of Hero Hynreck’s horse. Which meant that Hynreck was close on the dragon’s heels.

“That doesn’t really thrill me,” said Falkor, rolling his ruby-red eyes. “Monster or not, this Smerg is a relative of mine—a distant one, to be sure, but a relative all the same.” He was only half in jest.

They had not followed Hero Hynreck’s track but had taken a different direction, since their supposed aim was to find Bastian’s way home.