Then there was enormous excitement. One of the girls found a small advertisement in a paper. The Sage was to deliver another lecture, in the huge Kingdom of Splendor Hall. He had gone up in the world again. Thasper and his friends dressed in their best and went there in a body. But it seemed as if the time for the lecture had been printed wrong. The lecture was just over. People were streaming away from the hall, looking disappointed.
Thasper and his friends were still in the street when the hall blew up. They were lucky not to be hurt. The police said it was a bomb. Thasper and his friends helped drag injured people clear of the blazing hall. It was exciting, but it was not the Sage.
By now, Thasper knew he would never be happy until he had found the Sage. He told himself that he had to know if the reason behind the Sage’s questions was the one he thought, but it was more than that. Thasper was convinced that his fate was linked to the Sage’s. He was certain the Sage wanted Thasper to find him.
But there was now a strong rumor in school and around town that the Sage had had enough of lectures and bomb attacks. He had retired to write a book. It was to be called Questions of Dissolution. Rumor also had it that the Sage was in lodgings somewhere near the Road of the Four Lions.
Thasper went to the Road of the Four Lions. There he was shameless. He knocked on doors and questioned passersby. He was told several times to go and ask an invisible dragon, but he took no notice. He went on asking until someone told him that Mrs. Tunap at 403 might know. Thasper knocked at 403, with his heart thumping.
Mrs. Tunap was a rather prim lady in a green turban. “I’m afraid not, dear,” she said. “I’m new here.” But before Thasper’s heart could sink too far, she added, “But the people before me had a lodger. A very quiet gentleman. He left just before I came.”
“Did he leave an address?” Thasper asked, holding his breath.
Mrs. Tunap consulted an old envelope pinned to the wall in her hall. “It says here, ‘Lodger gone to Golden Heart Square,’ dear.”
But in Golden Heart Square, a young gentleman who might have been the Sage had only looked at a room and gone. After that, Thasper had to go home. The Altuns were not used to teenagers and they worried about Thasper suddenly wanting to be out every evening.
Oddly enough, No. 403 Road of the Four Lions burnt down that night.
Thasper saw clearly that assassins were after the Sage as well as he was. He became more obsessed with finding him than ever. He knew he could rescue the Sage if he caught him before the assassins did. He did not blame the Sage for moving about all the time.
Move about the Sage certainly did. Rumor had him next in Partridge Pleasaunce Street. When Thasper tracked him there, he found the Sage had moved to Fauntel Square. From Fauntel Square, the Sage seemed to move to Strong Wind Boulevard, and then to a poorer house in Station Street. There were many places after that. By this time, Thasper had developed a nose, a sixth sense, for where the Sage might be. A word, a mere hint about a quiet lodger, and Thasper was off, knocking on doors, questioning people, being told to ask an invisible dragon, and bewildering his parents by the way he kept rushing off every evening. But, no matter how quickly Thasper acted on the latest hint, the Sage had always just left. And Thasper, in most cases, was only just ahead of the assassins. Houses caught fire or blew up sometimes when he was still in the same street.
At last he was down to a very poor hint, which might or might not lead to New Unicorn Street. Thasper went there, wishing he did not have to spend all day at school. The Sage could move about as he pleased, and Thasper was tied down all day. No wonder he kept missing him. But he had high hopes of New Unicorn Street. It was the poor kind of place that the Sage had been favoring lately.
Alas for his hopes. The fat woman who opened the door laughed rudely in Thasper’s face. “Don’t bother me, son! Go and ask an invisible dragon!” And she slammed the door.
Thasper stood in the street, keenly humiliated. And not even a hint of where to look next. Awful suspicions rose in his mind: he was making a fool of himself; he had set himself a wild goose chase; the Sage did not exist. In order not to think of these things, he gave way to anger. “All right!” he shouted at the shut door. “I will ask an invisible dragon! So there!” And, carried by his anger, he ran down to the river and out across the nearest bridge.
He stopped in the middle of the bridge, leaning on the parapet, and knew he was making an utter fool of himself. There were no such things as invisible dragons. He was sure of that. But he was still in the grip of his obsession, and this was something he had set himself to do now. Even so, if there had been anyone about near the bridge, Thasper would have gone away. But it was deserted. Feeling an utter fool, he made the prayer-sign to Ock, Ruler of Oceans—for Ock was the god in charge of all things to do with water—but he made the sign secretly, down under the parapet, so there was no chance of anyone seeing. Then he said, almost in a whisper, “Is there an invisible dragon here? I’ve got something to ask you.”
Drops of water whirled over him. Something wetly fanned his face. He heard the something whirring. He turned his face that way and saw three blots of wet in a line along the parapet, each about two feet apart and each the size of two of his hands spread out together. Odder still, water was dripping out of nowhere all along the parapet, for a distance about twice as long as Thasper was tall.
Thasper laughed uneasily. “I’m imagining a dragon,” he said. “If there was a dragon, those splotches would be the places where its body rests. Water dragons have no feet. And the length of the wetness suggests I must be imagining it about eleven feet long.”
“I am fourteen feet long,” said a voice out of nowhere. It was rather too near Thasper’s face for comfort and blew fog at him. He drew back. “Make haste, child-of-a-god,” said the voice. “What did you want to ask me?”
“I—I—I—” stammered Thasper. It was not just that he was scared. This was a body blow. It messed up utterly his notions about gods needing men to believe in them. But he pulled himself together. His voice only cracked a little as he said, “I’m looking for the Sage of Dissolution. Do you know where he is?”
The dragon laughed. It was a peculiar noise, like one of those water-warblers people make bird noises with. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you precisely where the Sage is,” the voice out of nowhere said. “You have to find him for yourself. Think about it, child-of-a-god. You must have noticed there’s a pattern.”