The Song of the Quarkbeast: Last Dragonslayer: Book Two (2 page)

No one knew why some people could do magic and others couldn’t. I’m not good on the theory behind magic, other than knowing it’s a fusion between science and faith, but the practical way of looking at it is this: magic swirls about us like an invisible fog of energy which can be tapped by those gifted enough using a variety of techniques that centre around layered spelling, mumbled incantations and a channelled burst of concentrated thought from the index fingers. The technical name for this energy was ‘the variable electro-gravitational mutable subatomic force,’ which doesn’t mean anything at all – confused scientists just gave it an important-sounding name so as not to lose face. The more usual term was ‘wizidrical energy’, or, more simply, ‘the crackle’.

‘By the way,’ said Perkins in a breezy manner, ‘I’ve got two tickets to see Jimmy ‘Daredevil’ Nuttjob have himself fired from a cannon through a brick wall.’

Jimmy Nuttjob was the Ununited Kingdom’s most celebrated travelling daredevil, and tickets to see his madcap stunts were much in demand. He had eaten a car tyre to live orchestral accompaniment the year before; it had been a great show until he nearly choked on the valve.

‘Who are you taking?’ I asked, glancing at Tiger. The ‘will Perkins gather up the courage to ask me out?’ issue had been going on for a while.

Perkins cleared his throat as he built up the courage.

‘You, if you want to come.’

I stared at the road for a moment, then said: ‘Who, me?’

‘Yes, of course you,’ said Perkins.

‘You might have been talking to Tiger.’

‘Why would I ask Tiger to watch a lunatic fire himself through a brick wall?’

‘Why
wouldn’t
you ask me?’ asked Tiger in a mock-aggrieved tone. ‘Watching some idiot damage themselves might be just my thing.’

‘That’s entirely possible,’ agreed Perkins, ‘but while there’s a prettier alternative, you’ll always remain ninth or tenth on my list.’

We all fell silent.

‘Pretty?’ I said, swivelling in the driver’s seat to face him, ‘you want to ask me out because I’m pretty?’

‘Is there a problem with asking you out because you’re pretty?’

‘I think you blew it,’ said Tiger with a grin. ‘You should be asking her out because she’s smart, witty, mature beyond her years and every moment in her company makes you want to be a better person – pretty of face should be at the
bottom
of the list.’

‘Oh, blast,’ said Perkins despondently. ‘It should, shouldn’t it?’

‘At last!’ I muttered as we heard the distinctive
dugadugadugaduga
of Lady Mawgon’s motorcycle, and we climbed out of the car as she came to a stop. I caught her eye almost immediately, but wished I hadn’t as she was wearing her ‘I’m about to harangue Jennifer’ sort of look. Of course, being harangued by Lady Mawgon was nothing new; in fact, I was often harangued by her at lunch, dinner and teatime – and at random times in between. She was our most powerful sorcerer, and also the crabbiest. She was so crabby, in fact, that even really crabby people put their crabbiness aside for a few minutes to write gushing yet mildly sarcastic fan letters.

‘Lady Mawgon,’ I said in a bright voice, bowing low as protocol dictated, ‘I trust the day finds you well?’

‘An idiotic expression made acceptable only because it is adrift in a sea of equally idiotic expressions,’ she muttered grumpily, stepping from the motorcycle that she rode side-saddle. ‘Is that little twerp attempting to hide behind what you jokingly refer to as a car?’

‘Good morning,’ said Tiger in his best ‘gosh, didn’t see you there, I wasn’t really hiding’ voice, ‘you are looking
most
well this morning.’

Tiger was lying. Lady Mawgon looked terrible, with lank hair, a complexion like dented bells and a sour, pinched face. Her lips had never seen a smile, and rarely passed an intentional friendly word. She was dressed in a long black bell-shaped crinoline dress that was buttoned up to her throat in one direction, and swept the floor in the other. When she moved it was as if on roller skates; she didn’t so much walk as
glide
across the ground in a very disturbing manner. Tiger had bet me half a moolah that she actually did wear roller skates. Trouble was, neither of us could think of a good, safe or respectful method of finding out.

She greeted Perkins more politely as he was, like her, of the wizidrical calling, and talked briefly about his Magic Test and how important it was he passed. She didn’t waste a salutation on either of us as Tiger and I were foundlings and thus of little social rank or regard. Despite our low status, our presence aggravated Lady Mawgon badly as Tiger and I were crucial to the smooth running of the company. It was how Kazam’s founder the Great Zambini liked it. He always felt that foundlings were better equipped to deal with the somewhat bizarre world of Mystical Arts Management. ‘Pampered civilians,’ as he put it, ‘would panic at the weirdness or think they knew better, or try to improve things, or get greedy and try to cash in.’ He was probably right.

‘While you’re here,’ announced Lady Mawgon, breaking into my thoughts, ‘I need to run a test spell later this morning.’

‘How many Shandars, ma’am?’

The ‘Shandar’ was the unit of wizidrical power, named after the Mighty Shandar himself, a mage so powerful his footsteps spontaneously caught fire when he walked. The practical use of flaming footprints was questionable and most likely just for dramatic effect – the Mighty Shandar was not only the most powerful wizard who had ever lived, but also something of a showman.

‘About ten MegaShandars,’
⁴
said Lady Mawgon sullenly, annoyed at having to suffer the ignominy of having to run her test spells past me first.

‘That’s a considerable amount of crackle,’ I said as I wondered what she was up to, and hoped she wouldn’t attempt to bring her pet cat Pusskins back to some sort of semi-life, an act not only
seriously
creepy, but highly frowned upon. ‘May I enquire as to what you are planning to do?’

‘I’m going to try and hack into the Dibble Storage Coils. It may help us with the bridge job.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. This changed matters considerably, and she was right. We had agreed to rebuild Hereford’s medieval bridge on Friday, and we needed all the help we could get, which was why Perkins was taking his Magic Test today rather than next week. He’d still be a novice, but six sorcerers would be better than five – magic always worked better with the wizards in use divisible by three.
⁵

‘Let me see,’ I said, consulting my pocketbook to check we had no clashes. Two sorcerers spelling at the same time could deplete the crackle, and there is nothing worse than running out of steam when only two-thirds of the way through the spell – a bit like having a power cut just when you get to the good bit in a book.

‘At eleven the Price Brothers are moving Snamoo,
⁶
so any time after eleven fifteen would be good – but I’ll double-check with Industrial Magic just in case.’

‘Eleven fifteen it is,’ replied Lady Mawgon stonily. ‘You may observe, if you so choose.’

‘I’ll be there,’ I replied, then added cautiously: ‘Lady Mawgon, please don’t think me insensitive, but any attempt to reanimate Mr Pusskins on the back of the Dibble Storage Coils hacking enchantment might be looked on disfavourably by the other wizards.’

Her eyes narrowed and she gave me one of those stares that seem to hit the back of my skull like a dozen hot needles.

‘None of you have any idea what Mr Pusskins meant to me. Now, what are we doing here?’

‘Waiting for the Amazing Dennis Price.’

‘How I deplore poor timekeeping,’ she said, despite being almost half an hour late herself. ‘Got any money? I’m starving.’

Perkins gave her a one-moolah coin.

‘Most kind. Walk with me, Perkins.’

And she glided silently off towards a roadside snack bar at the other end of the lay-by.

‘Do you want anything?’ asked Perkins as he made to follow Lady Mawgon.

‘Eating out gives foundlings ideas above their station,’ came Lady Mawgon’s decisive voice, quickly followed by an admonishment to the owner of the snack bar: ‘How much for a bacon roll? Scandalous!’

‘A running sore has more charm,’ said Tiger, leaning against the car, ‘and since when was a roadside snack bar eating out? That’s like saying listening to the radio out of doors is like going to a live show.’

‘She is an astonishing sorceress of considerable power and commitment, so don’t be impertinent. Or at least,’ I added, ‘not within earshot.’

‘Speaking of live shows,’ said Tiger in a lowered voice, ‘will you go to Jimmy ‘Daredevil’ Nuttjob’s stunt show with Perkins?’

‘Probably not,’ I said with a sigh, ‘it’s not a good idea to date someone you work with. If he and I are meant to be, it’ll certainly wait the two years until I leave.’

‘Good,’ said Tiger.

‘Why is that good?’

‘Because he may give away your ticket, and I’d like to watch someone with more bravery than sense being fired from a cannon into a brick wall.’

‘Is there a support act?’

‘A brass band, cheerleaders and someone who can juggle with bobcats.’

We turned to see a taxi approaching. It was the Amazing Dennis ‘Full’ Price, and after I had paid for the taxi, he climbed out and looked around.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, demonstrating the difference between him and Lady Mawgon almost immediately. ‘I got delayed talking to Wizard Moobin. He wants you to witness an experiment he’s got cooking.’

‘A dangerous one?’ I asked with some concern. Wizard Moobin had destroyed more laboratories than I’d had cold and inedible dinners.

‘Does he know any other?’ he replied. ‘Where’s Mawgon?’

I nodded in the direction of the roadside snack bar.

‘Not with her own money, I’ll be bound,’ he said, and after giving us a wink, strode off to talk to her.

‘Full’ Price was another of our licensed operatives. He and his brother David – known as ‘Half’ – were famous as the most
unidentical
identical twins on record. David was tall and thin and lofty and prone to swaying in a high wind, while Dennis was short and squat like a giant pink pumpkin, only with arms and legs. They hailed from the ramshackle collection of warlord-controlled regions in mid-Wales that were loosely referred to as the ‘Cambrian Empire’. Details were sparse, but it seemed the Prices had refused to work with the well-named Cambrian potentate ‘Tharv the Insane’, and then made their way to the Kingdom of Hereford to escape. They joined up with the Great Zambini soon after, and had been at Kazam for over twenty years.

As Tiger and I stood there smelling the faint aroma of frying bacon on the breeze, a Rolls-Royce whispered to a halt next to us.

¹
It’s a sort of rekindling of magic that happened two months before the time of this story, and in which Jennifer played a large part.

²
After a well-argued plea for gender equality at the World Magic Expo of 1962, ‘sorcerers’ refers to male or female practitioners. The feminine ‘sorceress’ is no longer used, except by some of the old duffers who think that a female sorcerer’s place is in the home, conjuring up food and cleaning the house by thought power alone.

³
The so-called ‘Book of Magic’, which, while full of useful stuff, also has a lot in it that is nonsense. The skill is deciding which is which.

⁴
One thousand Shandars = one MegaShandar, more usu-ally referred to as a ‘Meg’ after ‘Old Meg McMeddoes’, an early proponent of Magical Field Theory.

⁵
No one knows why. The ‘Rule of Three’ crops up often and is often referred to as ‘Mandrake’s 3rd Dictum’ after the sorcerer who first wrote about it.

⁶
Snamoo is the Snodd Seaworld’s performing walrus. He can play
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
on a xylophone, among other tricks. He only liked being moved by the Prices, and it’s tricky to argue with 1.4 tons of recalcitrant sea-mammal.

In pursuit of lost stuff

The Rolls-Royce was one of the top-of-the-range six-wheeled Phantom Twelves. It was as big as a yacht, twice as luxurious and had paintwork so perfect it looked like a pool of black paint sitting in the air. The chauffeur opened the rear passenger door and a well-dressed girl climbed out. She was not much older than myself, but from a world far removed from the upbringing of a foundling – a world of privilege, cash and a sense of entitlement. I should have hated her, but I didn’t.

I envied her.

‘Miss Strange?’ she said, striding confidently forward, hand outstretched. ‘Miss Shard is glad to make your acquaintance.’

‘Who’s she talking about?’ asked Tiger under his breath, looking around.

‘Herself, I think,’ I said, smiling broadly to welcome her. ‘Good morning, Miss Shard, thank you for coming. I’m Jennifer Strange.’

This was our client. She didn’t look old enough to have lost something badly enough to call us, but you never knew.

‘You must call one Ann,’ she said kindly. ‘Your recent exploits of a magical variety filled one with a sense of thrilling trepidation.’

She was talking in Longspeak, the formal language of the upper classes, and it seemed that she was not fluent in Shortspeak, the everyday language of the Ununited Kingdoms.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘It was a singular display of inspired audaciousness,’ she replied.

‘Is that good?’ I asked, still unsure of her meaning.

‘Most certainly,’ she replied. ‘We followed your adventures with great interest.’

‘We?’

‘Myself and my client. A gentleman of some knowledge, position and bearing.’

She was undoubtedly referring to someone of nobility. By long tradition royals in the Ununited Kingdoms employed others to do almost everything for them; only the very poorest did anything for themselves. It was said that when King Wozzle of Snowdonia tired of eating he employed someone to do it for him. After the inevitable weight loss and death, he was succeeded by his brother.