The Last Dragonslayer (2 page)

I sat in my Volkswagen to be near the car phone. Any calls to the office would be directed through to here. I wasn’t just Kazam’s manager, I was also the receptionist, bookings clerk and accountant. I had to look after the fifty-two sorcerers in my charge, deal with the shabby building that housed them all, and fill out the numerous forms that the Magical Powers (amended 1966) Act required when even the
tiniest
spell was undertaken. The reasons why I was doing all this were twofold: first, I’d been part of Kazam since I was ten, and knew the business inside out. Second, no one else wanted to.

The phone rang.

‘The Kazam Agency,’ I said in my jolliest tone, ‘can I help you?’

‘I hope so,’ said a timid teenager’s voice on the other end. ‘Do you have something to make Patty Simcox fall in love with me?’

‘How about flowers?’ I asked.

‘Flowers?’

‘Sure. Cinema, a few jokes. Dinner, dance, Bodmin aftershave?’

‘Bodmin aftershave?’

‘Sure. You do shave?’

‘Once a week now,’ replied the teenager. ‘It’s becoming something of a drag. But listen, I was thinking it would be easier—’

‘We
could
do something, but it wouldn’t be Patty Simcox. Just a bit of her, the most pliable part. It would be like having a date with a tailor’s dummy. Love is something that it’s really better not to mess with. If you want my advice, you’d do better to try the more traditional approach.’

The phone seemed to go dead but he was just digesting my thoughts.

‘What sort of flowers?’

I gave him some tips and the addresses of a few good restaurants. He thanked me and hung up. I looked across to where Wizard Moobin, Lady Mawgon and Full Price were sizing up the house. Sorcery wasn’t about mumbling a spell and letting fly – it was more a case of appraising the problem, planning the various incantations to greatest effect,
then
mumbling a spell and letting fly. The three of them were still in the ‘appraising’ stage, which generally meant a good deal of staring, tea, discussion, argument, more discussion, tea, then more staring.

The phone rang again.

‘Jenny? It’s Perkins.’

The Youthful Perkins was the youngest sorcerer at Kazam. He’d been inducted during a rare moment of financial stability and was serving a loose apprenticeship. His particular talent was shifting, although he wasn’t very good at it. He’d once morphed himself into something vaguely resembling a raccoon but then got stuck and had to stay that way for a week until it wore off. It had been very amusing, but not to him. Because we were of a similar age, we got on fairly well, but not in a boyfriend–girlfriend kind of way.

‘Hey, Perkins,’ I said, ‘did you get Patrick off to work in time?’

‘Just about. But I think he’s back on the marzipan again.’

This was worrying. Patrick of Ludlow was a Mover. Although not possessed of the sharpest mind, he was kind and gentle and exceptionally gifted at levitation, and earned a regular wage for Kazam by removing illegally parked cars for the city’s clamping unit. It took a lot of effort – he would sleep fourteen hours in twenty-four – and the marzipan echoed back to a darker time in his life that he didn’t care to speak of.

‘So what’s up?’

‘The Sisterhood sent round your replacement. What do you want me to do with him?’

I’d forgotten all about him. The Sisterhood traditionally supplied Kazam with a foundling every five years. Sharon Zoiks had been the fourth, I had been the sixth, and this new one would be the seventh. We didn’t talk about the fifth.

‘Pop him in a taxi and send him up. No, cancel that. It’ll be too expensive. Ask Nasil to carpet him up. Usual precautions. Cardboard box, yes?’

‘Usual precautions,’ replied Perkins, and hung up.

I watched the three sorcerers stare at the house from every direction, apparently doing nothing. I knew better than to ask them what was going on or how they were doing. A moment’s distraction could unravel a spell in a twinkling. Moobin and Price were dressed casually and without any metal for fear of burns, but Lady Mawgon was in traditional garb. She wore long black crinolines that rustled like leaves when she walked, and sparkled like distant fireworks in the darkness. During the Kingdom’s frequent power cuts, I could always tell when it was she gliding down one of Zambini Tower’s endless corridors. Once, in a daring moment, someone had pinned some stars and a moon cut from silver foil to her black dress, something that sent her incandescent with rage. She ranted on at Mr Zambini for almost twenty minutes about how ‘no one was taking their calling seriously’ and how could she ‘be expected to work with such infantile nincompoops’. Zambini spoke to everyone in turn, but he probably found it as funny as the rest of us. We never discovered who did it, but I reckoned it was Full Price’s smaller twin, Half. He once turned the local cats blue for a joke, which backfired badly when the cops got involved.

With little else to do except keep an eye on the three sorcerers, I sat down in the car and read Wizard Moobin’s newspaper. The text that he had moved around the paper was still fixed, and I frowned. Tuning spells like these were usually temporary and I would have expected the text to drift back to its original position. It takes almost twice as much energy to fix something as it does to change it, so most wizards saved their energy and the spell would unravel in time, like an unsecured plait. Sorcery was like running a marathon – you needed to pace yourself. Sprint too early and you could find yourself in trouble near the finishing line. Moobin must have been feeling confident to tie off the end of the spell. I leaned over and tapped the fuel gauge of the Volkswagen, which stayed resolutely at ‘full’. Looked like Lady Mawgon was having a good day too.

‘Quark.’

‘Where?’

The Quarkbeast pointed one of his razor-sharp claws towards the east as Prince Nasil streaked past a good deal faster than he should have. He banked steeply, circled the house twice and came in for a perfect landing just next to me. He like to carpet standing up, a little like a surfer, much to the disdain of our only other carpeteer, Owen of Rhayder, who sat in the more traditional cross-legged position at the rear. Nasil wore baggy shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, too, which didn’t go down with Lady Mawgon.

‘Hi, Jenny,’ said Nasil with a grin as he handed me a flight log to sign, ‘delivery for you.’

On the front of the carpet was a large Yummy-Flakes cardboard box, and it opened to reveal an eleven-year-old boy who seemed tall and gangly for his age. He had close-curled sandy-coloured hair and freckles that danced around a snub nose. He was wearing what were very obviously hand-me-down clothes and stared at me with the air of someone recently displaced, and still confused over how they should feel about it.

‘Hello,’ I said, holding out a hand, ‘I’m Jennifer Strange.’

‘Hello,’ he replied cautiously, shaking my hand as he climbed from the box, ‘I’m Tiger Prawns. Mother Zenobia told me to give this to the Great Zambini.’

He held up an envelope.

‘I’m the acting manager,’ I told him, ‘you’d better give it to me.’

But Tiger wasn’t so easily swung.

‘Mother Zenobia told me to hand it
only
to the Great Zambini.’

‘He disappeared,’ I replied, ‘and I don’t know when he’s coming back.’

‘Then I’ll wait.’

‘You’ll give the envelope to me.’

‘No, I’m—’

We tussled over the envelope for a while until I plucked it from his fingers, tore it open and looked at the contents. It was his declaration of servitude, which was essentially little more than a receipt. I didn’t read it, didn’t need to. Tiger Prawns belonged to Kazam until he was twenty years old, same as me.

‘Welcome to the gang,’ I said, stuffing the envelope into my bag. ‘How is Mother Zenobia these days?’

‘Still bonkers,’ replied Tiger.

I had also been a foundling and brought up by the Sisterhood or, to give them their official title, ‘The Blessed Ladies of the Lobster’. They had a convent at Clifford Castle, not far from the Dragonlands. I had no complaints against the Sisterhood; they fed and clothed me and gave me an education. The principal was a craggy old ex-enchantress named Mother Zenobia who was as wrinkled as a walnut, and as resilient.

I didn’t ask Tiger what might have become of his parents. Foundlings stuck together like glue from a sense of shared loss, but we had an unspoken code – when you trust, you tell.

Tiger was staring thoughtfully at Prince Nasil, the carpet and the Yummy-Flakes box. Mystical Arts was a strange industry to work in and was much like a string of bizarre occurrences occasionally interspersed with moments of great triumph and numbing terror. There was boredom, too. Watching wizards build up to a spell is like watching paint dry. It can take some getting used to.

‘Listen,’ said the Prince, ‘if you don’t need me, I’ve got a kidney to deliver to Aberystwyth.’

‘Yours?’ asked Tiger.

I thanked Nasil for bringing Tiger over, and he gave us a cheery wave, lifted into the hover and then sped off to the west. I had yet to break the news to both our carpeteers that the live organ delivery contract would be shortly coming to an end.

‘I was also brought up by the Sisterhood,’ I said, eager to help Tiger settle in. My first few weeks at Kazam had been smoothed over by the fifth foundling – the one we didn’t talk about – and I hoped to show the same kindness she had shown me, although to be honest, being brought up by the Sisterhood made you pretty tough. They weren’t cruel, but they were strict. I didn’t know that you could talk without first being talked to until I was eight.

‘Mother Zenobia speaks very highly of you,’ said Tiger.

‘And I of her.’

‘Miss Strange?’

‘Call me Jenny.’

‘Miss Jenny, why did I have to stay hidden in a cardboard box for the trip?’

‘Carpets aren’t permitted to take passengers. Nasil and Owen transport organs for transplant these days – and deliver takeaways.’

‘I hope they don’t get them mixed up.’

I smiled.

‘Not usually. How did you get allocated to Kazam?’

‘I took a test with five other boys,’ replied Tiger.

‘How did you do?’

‘I failed.’

This wasn’t unusual. A half-century ago Mystical Arts Management was considered a sound career choice and citizens fought for a place. These days, it was servitude only, as with agricultural labour, hotels and fast-food joints. Of the twenty or so Houses of Enchantment that had existed fifty years ago, only Kazam in the Kingdom of Hereford and Industrial Magic over in Stroud were still going. It was an industry in terminal decline. The power of magic had been ebbing for centuries and, with it, the relevance of sorcerers. Once a wizard would have the ear of a king; today we rewire houses and unblock drains.

‘The sorcery business grows on you.’

‘Like mould?’

‘You can give me lip,’ I told him, ‘but not the others. They were once mighty. You have to respect that if you’re going to work here, and you are, for the next nine years. Don’t start off on the wrong foot. They can be annoying, but they can be quite sweet, too.’

‘Is that the speech?’

I stared at him for a moment. His lips were pursed and he was staring up at me indignantly. I’d been angry my first day, too. But probably not this cheeky.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s the speech.’

He took a deep breath, and looked around. I think he
wanted
me to yell at him so he could yell back. The phone rang again.

‘It’s Kevin.’

‘Hello, Kevin,’ I replied cautiously, ‘what’s up?’

‘Can you get back to the Towers?’

I glanced up at the three sorcerers, who were concentrating hard on doing nothing.

‘Not really. Why?’

‘I’ve had a premonition.’

I was about to say it was about time too, as a soothsayer who can’t see the future is about as useless as a Buzonji with only four legs, but I didn’t.

‘What kind of premonition?’

‘A biggie. Full colour, stereo
and
3D. I’ve not had one of those for years. I need to tell you about it.’

And the phone went dead.

‘So, listen—’

I stopped because Tiger had tears running down his cheeks. He didn’t look the weepy sort, but looks can be deceptive. I had cried when I arrived at Kazam, but never in front of anyone, not even the fifth foundling, the one we don’t talk about.

‘Hey,’ I said, ‘don’t worry. Everything will be fine. The enchanters are a quirky bunch but you’ll get to love them like family – as I do.’

‘It’s not that,’ he said, holding up a trembling finger. ‘I’ve just seen something so terrifyingly hideous that I am inclined to start crying, quite against my will.’

I followed his trembling finger.

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘that’s the Quarkbeast. He may look like an open knife drawer on legs and just one step away from tearing you to shreds, but he’s actually a sweetie and rarely, if ever, eats cats. Isn’t that so, Quarkbeast?’

‘Quark,’ said the Quarkbeast.

‘He’ll not harm a hair on your head,’ I said, and the Quarkbeast, to show friendly intent, elected to perform his second-best trick: he picked up a concrete garden gnome in his teeth and ground it with his powerful jaws until it was powder. He then blew it into the air as a dust-ring which he then jumped through. Tiger gave a half-smile and the Quarkbeast wagged his weighted tail, which was sadly a little too close to the Volkswagen, and added one more dent to the already badly dented front wing.

Tiger wiped his eyes with my handkerchief and patted the Quarkbeast, who kept his mouth closed in order not to frighten him further.

‘I hate it here already,’ said Tiger, ‘so I already like it twice as much as the Sisterhood. Did Sister Assumpta beat you when you were there?’