The Last Dragonslayer (15 page)

‘Jennifer, darling!’ she gushed. ‘I’ve just heard the news and we are
so
proud! Just think, a daughter of the Great Lobster becoming a Dragonslayer!’

I was slightly suspicious.

‘How did you hear, Mother?’

‘We’ve had some charming people around here asking all kinds of questions about you!’

‘You didn’t tell them anything, did you?’

I had no real desire to have my rather dull childhood splashed all over the tabloids. There was a pause on the other end of the phone, which answered my question.

‘Was that wrong?’ asked Mother Zenobia at length.

I sighed. Mother Zenobia had taken over the role of my real mother almost perfectly, even that unique motherly quality of being able to acutely embarrass me.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I replied with a trace of annoyance in my voice, a trace that she obviously didn’t pick up.

‘Jolly good!’ she said brightly. ‘If you get the offer to appear on the
Yogi Baird Radio Show
don’t turn it down, and if I may say so, I think Fizzi-Pop is a fine product. I have a jolly pleasant young man who is very keen to talk to you.’

I thanked her and rang off. The doors to the garage opened and the small man in the brown suit expertly reversed in the Rolls-Royce. He hopped down from the armoured car, put the sword and lance away – he could without being vaporised, since I had employed him – and offered me a small hand to shake.

‘Gordon’s the name,’ he said brightly, pumping my arm vigorously. ‘Gordon van Gordon.’

‘That means “Son of Gordon”, doesn’t it?’

He nodded enthusiastically.

‘I come from a long line of Gordons. My full name is: Gordon van Gordon Gordon-son ap Gordon-Gordon the IV.’

‘I’ll stick to “Gordon”,’ I said.

‘It may save some time.’

‘Jennifer Strange,’ I announced, ‘pleased to meet you.’

‘And you.’

He didn’t stop shaking my hand. He seemed so happy to be here he wanted everything he did to last as long as possible so he could savour it to the full.

‘I don’t know who put the ad in the paper but it wasn’t me,’ I told him.

‘That’s easily explained,’ he said with a grin. ‘It was me!’

‘You? Why?’

‘I wanted to be first in the queue. Dragonslayers
always
need an apprentice so I thought I would save you the trouble of advertising.’

‘Very enterprising,’ I said slowly.

He raised his hat again. ‘Thank you. A Dragonslayer’s apprentice has to be discreet, valiant, trustworthy
and
enterprising.’

‘Gordon?’

‘Yes?’

‘Can I have my hand back?’

He apologised and let go.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what’s our first move, chief?’

‘Nothing yet. I’ll be living over at Zambini Towers as usual but it might help to have some food in the house. The Quarkbeast likes to rest in a dustbin; you’ll have to buy one from the hardware store but make sure it’s painted and not galvanished as he will chew it. He eats dog food but isn’t particular as to the brand. He needs a link of heavy anchor chain to gnaw on a week and a spoonful of fish oil in his water dish every day – it keeps his scales from chipping. Do you cook?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m vegetarian but not particularly militant – you can eat what you want.’

He had been scribbling down notes on his cuff. I swore him to secrecy and told him about the prophecy regarding next Sunday. This filled him with greater enthusiasm than cooking, dustbins or the Quarkbeast’s peculiar eating habits.

‘Great!’ he enthused. ‘I’ll change the oil on the Slayermobile so when you come to do some slaying we’ll be ready and—’

‘Wait a minute!’ I interrupted hurriedly, grabbing his lapel between finger and thumb as he tried to hurry off. ‘I want to make this
very
clear. I don’t ever intend to actually kill a Dragon.’

‘So why are you a Dragonslayer?’ he asked with blinding directness.

‘Because . . . because . . . well, that’s the way Old Magic made it happen.’

‘Old Magic?’ he said uneasily. ‘Wait a minute. You never mentioned anything about Old Magic in the advertisement.’

‘Didn’t I?’

‘No. We’re going to have to discuss new terms if Old Magic is involved.’

I thought for a second.

‘Hang on. Gordon,
you
wrote the advertisement!’

He paused for thought.

‘I did, didn’t I?’ he said at length. ‘Well, I’d better let it go this once, then.’

He looked crestfallen, but soon perked up when I told him he could be my press officer, and he dashed off to get some paper and crayons from the dresser to draft a quick press release.

I needed to get back to Zambini Towers but hadn’t got more than one pace from the door before a scrum of people quickly ran towards me.

The first to talk to me was a businessman wearing a very large hat and an expensive suit.

‘Jethro Ballscombe,’ he said, passing me a business card the size of a roofing slate. ‘I want to make YOU a very rich young woman.’

He grinned at me, showing a ridiculously large gold tooth that must have made metal detectors in airports throw an electronic fit. He thought that my silence indicated assent rather than a curious interest in his dentition, so he continued:

‘Do you know how much people will pay to come and see a real live Dragon?’

He grinned wildly, expecting me to leap up and down or something.

‘You want to put Maltcassion in a zoo?’

He put an arm around my shoulder and hugged me as though I were a long-lost niece.

‘Not so much a zoo but his own special one-species family-entertainment exclusive themed adventure park.’

He waved a hand in the air and stared into the middle distance to make his point.

‘DragonWorld(
^TM
),’ he gasped, hardly daring to say the word owing to the size and breathtaking audacity of the project. ‘You and me, partners, fifty-fifty. What do you say?’

He smirked at me expectantly, moolah signs in his eyes, waiting for my reply.

‘I’ll mention it to him,’ I said coldly, ‘but he’ll probably say no.’

‘Mention it to who?’ he asked, genuinely confused.

‘Why, Maltcassion, of course!’

He slapped me on the back and laughed so loudly I thought he would surely choke.

‘I like a girl with a sense of humour! Well, that’s agreed, then. You won’t regret it!’

He shook my hand heartily and bade me goodbye, climbed into a waiting limousine and was gone, convinced that his project was a certainty.

Another man tried to collar me about licensing a range of collectible ornamental plates entitled
The World of the Dragonslayer
and there was even another offer from Fizzi-Pop, this time for forty thousand moolah. I told them I wasn’t interested and then, with the press clamouring for a further statement, I nipped back inside. I found Gordon van Gordon vacuuming up the grey ash that had once been Brian Spalding.

‘I know, I know,’ he said when I remonstrated with him. ‘I’m going to put him in this empty syrup tin. You can take him up to the Dragonlands next time you go.’

It was fair enough. I looked for a back door to the building and opened it on to an alleyway that was thankfully empty. I made my way quickly to the Dog and Ferret, where I had left my Volkswagen, and drove from there back to Zambini Towers.

‘Hello,’ I said to Tiger as I walked into the Kazam offices, ‘how are things?’

‘Lady Mawgon’s on the warpath,’ he said, handing me a stack of messages that didn’t relate to Kazam at all, but to me.

‘The
Mollusc on Sunday
want to do a feature on me,’ I said, flicking through the messages, ‘and this one’s an offer of marriage.’

‘There are another five of those. Did you see Lady Mawgon on your way in?’

I looked up.

‘No.’

‘She’s been looking at me in a funny way. I think she’s scheming.’

‘She’s
always
scheming,’ I replied, dropping the messages in the wastepaper bin. ‘I’m not sure she can get through the day without upsetting someone or other.’

I walked across to the Quarkbeast’s snack cupboard and tossed him a tin of sardines which he crunched up gratefully. I spent the next hour explaining what had happened that morning. About Brian Spalding, the accelerated Dragonslaying course, the Dragonlands, Maltcassion and talking to the press on the way out.

‘I was going to bring Exhorbitus to show you,’ I concluded, ‘but I didn’t want to arouse any suspicion.’

‘I think it’s a bit late for that. Have you seen the TV recently?’

He switched on the set. UKBC were now covering the drama unfolding on our doorsteps with almost constant coverage. The screen showed Sophie Trotter again, this time up by the marker stones.

‘. . . there are an estimated eight hundred thousand people gathered around the Dragonlands,’ she said, looking behind her at the chaotic scrum that seemed to be developing. ‘There have been reports of jostling that sent one man through the boundary where he was vaporised in a bright blue flash. The police are worried that there might be a bigger disaster, so are attempting to move the crowds back from the marker stones.’

There was a bright flash behind her.

‘Whoops, there goes another one. I must just see if we can ask a grieving relative how they feel . . .’

I switched off the television and looked at my watch.

‘It’s time for you to go home.’

‘I am home.’

‘Me too,’ I replied. ‘I mean it’s time to stop work.’

‘I knew what you meant, it’s just that even with everyone in the building except you hating me—’

‘Quark.’

‘Sorry, everyone except you
and
the Quarkbeast hating me, I just wanted you to know that I’ve never been happier. But can I ask you something?’

‘Sure.’

‘What
did
happen to Mr Zambini?’

I looked across at him. If I couldn’t trust him now, I couldn’t trust him ever.

‘Okay, here it is, but you must promise not to tell any of the others. You should know that the Great Zambini was once one of the best. I use his redundant accolade out of respect. When he was young and powerful he held the magicians’ world teleport record of eighty-five miles, although unofficially he had managed well over a hundred. He could conjure up showers of fish, and manipulate matter to a level that would make Moobin’s lead-into-gold escapade seem like kitchen chemistry. He paid for the Towers personally, and gathered together the sorcerers within to try to keep the
spirit
of the Mystical Arts alive, even when he knew that wizidrical powers were fading. He gave everything he had to Kazam. He would work every hour of the day and night, and I with him. He was like a father to me. Kind, generous, hard working, and utterly committed not just to his calling, but to protecting and supporting those within it.’

‘It sounds like he was an honourable man.’

‘He was. But
still
money was short, and he was forced to do the one thing that sorcerers should never do. An act of such gross betrayal of his art that if it was made common knowledge his reputation would be destroyed for ever and he would die a broken man, humiliated and shunned by his peers.’

‘You mean—?’

‘Right. He did children’s parties.’

Tiger put his hand over his mouth.

‘He lowered himself, for
them
? For Lady Mawgon and Moobin and those batty sisters whose name I can’t remember?’

‘All of them. He used to do the events out of town, of course, and in disguise. Simple stuff: rabbits out of hats, card tricks, minor levitation. But one afternoon he must have had a surge. He vanished in a puff of green smoke during his finale. Hasn’t come back.’

‘So when you said he’d disappeared, you really meant it.’

‘Totally. He’ll spontaneously reappear eventually, but I have no idea where, or when. I can’t get the others to help because I’d have to reveal what he’d been up to, and I can’t see the old man humiliated. On the plus side, the kids thought he was great, and a standing ovation from five-year-olds is not to be sniffed at.’

‘But that’s not the whole story, is it?’ said Tiger, holding up a battered copy of
Simpkin’s Foundling Law
.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘Until he comes back or is declared dead or lost, he can’t sign us out of our indentured servitude. Technically speaking, we’re here until we die.’

Tiger closed the book.

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘He’ll come back,’ I assured him, ‘or failing that, I’ll confess everything and we’ll have him declared lost. In any event, I’ve still got four years to run, and you’ve got nine. Lots can happen.’

I smiled at him and he smiled back. It was my way of telling him not to worry, and his way of agreeing that he shouldn’t.

‘I’m going to go and see Moobin,’ I told him. ‘I need to know how the wizards are feeling. Keep well away from Lady Mawgon and I’ll see you later.’

I found Wizard Moobin in his room. He had repaired the door, but was still busy tidying up his room after the explosion. There was almost nothing unbroken. The power of magic can be devastating when uncontrolled. He was there with Half Price, Full Price’s very similar little brother. They were so similar, in fact, that I often wondered about the fact that you never saw them together. There was someone else in the room, too, someone I didn’t recognise.

‘Ah,’ said Moobin when he saw me, ‘it’s you. This is Mr Stamford, a lapsed sorcerer from Mercia. He’ll be staying with me for a few days. Mr Stamford, this is Jennifer Strange.’