‘A what?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ continued the King, ‘we should have a contest to decide the matter. Magical contests are always enjoyed by the unwashed and the destitute – and especially by the unwashed destitute. I understand it is a traditional way to resolve matters between those versed in the Mystical Arts. Is that not so, Court Mystician?’
‘Most definitely,’ said Blix, turning to me. ‘From the head of one House of Enchantment to another, I challenge Kazam to a contest. Winner takes control of the other’s company.’
I couldn’t really back out even if I’d wanted to. The Sorcerer’s Protocol was obscure, ancient, mostly illogical and cemented into law by long implementation. To refuse a challenge was unthinkable, but then to issue a challenge was also unthinkable – it was something only ill-mannered dopes without any manners would do. Wizards like Blix, in fact.
‘I reluctantly accept,’ I replied, annoyed by the inflexibility of the Protocol, but not too worried. We could easily outconjure iMagic in any test they chose. ‘What shall the contest be?’
‘Why not Hereford’s old bridge?’ suggested Tenbury. ‘Kazam were planning on rebuilding it on Friday, and we can instead have a contest. Kazam can build from the north bank, and iMagic from the south. First one to get their keystones fitted in the centre of the middle arch wins the contest. Royal Magic Adjudicator, is that fair?’
‘As fair as you’ll see in this kingdom,’ said the Once Magnificent Boo, which I think meant she agreed.
‘I agree the terms,’ said Blix with a smile I didn’t much care for. ‘Jennifer?’
‘I too agree,’ I said, ‘with the proviso that if Kazam wins, the position of Court Mystician is taken up by someone of our choosing.’
‘Very well,’ said the King. ‘Blix, you agree to this?’
‘I agree.’
‘What’s a keystone?’[25] asked the King’s Useless Brother.
‘Well, there it is, then,’ said the King, ignoring him entirely, ‘carry on,’ and he swept from the roof with his entourage. A contest was always stressful, but we weren’t in much trouble. Even with Lady Mawgon as alabaster we still had five sorcerers to their three. Besides, dealing with Blix and the rest of the rabble over at iMagic once and for all might actually help matters.
‘Well,’ said Blix, ‘may the best side win.’
‘We plan to,’ I replied.
‘Can we finish the application?’ asked the Useless Brother. ‘I’m keen to use that stamp.’
‘A bull terrier,’ I said after a brief pause, ‘from Dorstonville.’
Unfazed, Perkins gesticulated with his fingers and, far away, a bull terrier barked.
‘The test is complete to my satisfaction,’ announced Boo. She signed the form awkwardly with her gloved hands and left without a word to any of us.
The form was duly countersigned by the Useless Brother and the heavy rubber stamp descended.
We stayed for a few minutes in the outer office while the paperwork was processed, and twenty minutes later we were back outside, where Tiger was waiting for us in the Volkswagen.
‘How did it go?’ he asked.
Perkins showed him the certificate, and Tiger congratulated him. We all talked about the contest on the journey back to Zambini Towers.
‘I’ve never seen a wizidrical contest before,’ said Tiger.
‘Few have,’ I replied, ‘and although an unwelcome distraction, they never cease to be anything but dramatic.’
‘The most spectacular contest was chronicled in the seventeenth century by Dude the Obscure,’ said Perkins, who was more up on this sort of stuff, ‘and was between the Mighty Shandar and the Truly Awesome Spontini. Shandar won three forests to a seven-headed dog in the first round, but lost nine castles to a geyser of lemonade in the second. It has been calculated that the deciding round used in excess of half a GigaShandar an hour, and involved some deft transformations, several vanishings, an exciting and wholly unrepeatable global teleport chase and an ice storm in summer. It was said the crackle was depleted so completely that no useful magic was done anywhere in the world for over six months.’
‘Who won?’ asked Tiger.
‘The Mighty Shandar,’ replied Perkins, ‘who else?’
‘Spectacular perhaps,’ I said, ‘but the most nail-biting was reputedly a low-level contest between two spell-managers of middle ranking who simply had an armchair hover-off in 1911. First one to touch the ground in their armchair lost. The tension had been considerable, apparently, and the contest was won after seventy-six hours of eye-popping concentration by Lady Chumpkin of Spode, who apparently lost three stone in weight with the effort.’
‘Will we win the bridge contest?’ asked Tiger.
‘Without a doubt,’ I said, with not quite as much certainty as I could have wished.
Zambini Towers
We’d had lunch, congratulated Perkins and were now gathered in the Palm Court. The only member of the ‘inner sanctum’ of licensed sorcerers absent was Patrick of Ludlow, who was busy moving an oak for a wealthy client eager to alphabetise his arboretum.[26]
Lady Mawgon and Monty Vanguard were still there, exactly the same as when we left. It would take ten or twenty years before a thin coating of lichen would make them look any different, although they might need a dusting by Tuesday week.
‘Goodness,’ said Perkins, who’d not seen a spell gone so badly wrong before. ‘Have we attempted a Magnaflux Reversal?’
‘Several times.’
‘Has anyone asked the Mysterious X?’ suggested Half Price. ‘Since he’s less of a who and more a what, he might have a different take on the problem.’
This was entirely true. Because of Mysterious X’s nebulous state of semi-existence, we often gave him small jobs to do, such as retrieving cats stuck up trees, and it could persuade pianos into tune by glaring at them. The fact that he didn’t have a licence didn’t bother us, as there was little tangible evidence to say X even existed at all.
‘I could speak to it,’ volunteered Tiger. ‘I think it quite likes me – I’m the only one who can give X its weekly degauss[27] without it causing trouble.’
‘Go on, then,’ said Wizard Moobin, and as Tiger hurried off, he passed the Transient Moose, who had just reappeared in the doorway, and watched us all in his usual laconic manner.
‘Let’s talk about the bridge contest,’ I announced. ‘Let’s suppose we can’t get Lady Mawgon back or use the Dibbles to help us – what problems do you think we might have?’
‘We’re still five to their three,’ said Moobin. ‘Blix is about on a par with me and a powerful levitator, but both Tchango and Dame Corby are less powerful than the Price brothers. Patrick is a solid plodder and can be trusted to get any heavy stone into position. We can keep Perkins in reserve and still beat them comfortably.’
They then talked about crackle allocations and technical stuff like that, and although half my attention was on the meeting, my mind always tends to wander a bit during technical discussions, which are, to be frank, boring. Wizards in general don’t make good conversation. They are always reluctant to talk about how fantastic the conjured thunderstorm actually was – the size of the tempest and the bright flashes of lightning, the fearsome and towering storm-clouds and suchlike – but go into almost excruciating detail about the strands of spell that went into it. It would be like meeting Rembrandt only for him to talk about nothing but the wood of his brush handles.
As I looked around the room in a bored manner my gaze fell upon the Transient Moose. I narrowed my eyes. For as long as anyone could remember the Moose had simply stood around doing not very much at all. As I watched he faded from view, but not to another part of the hotel as he usually did, but to where Lady Mawgon was rooted to the spot in her calcite splendour. The Moose stared at the alabaster, shook his antlers and then vanished.
‘Did you see that?’
‘See what?’ asked Moobin, who had just launched into a long and tedious discussion about Z
orff’s 6th Axiom.
‘The Moose. He was examining Lady Mawgon as though he were . . . aware.’
‘The Moose was written with Mandrake Sentience Emulation Protocols,’[28] said Full Price, ‘and like a Quarkbeast it shows considerable evidence of consciousness. But as to whether they are really alive or designed to make us think they are, we’ll never really know.’
I opened my mouth to answer, but then noticed Tiger waving at me from the door of the Palm Court. I excused myself and hurried over, glad of a distraction.
‘Problems?’
‘Could be,’ he said. ‘Patrick of Ludlow just phoned. He said he’s run into oversurge issues moving the oak in the arboretum and wanted a wizard to go down and help sort things out.’
‘If it’s an oversurge issue why not take Perkins?’ said Moobin when I asked him whether he could help. ‘He should know what it’s like to absorb crackle rather than use it.’
Perkins agreed wholeheartedly as he was keen to begin his new career as a sorcerer, so a few minutes later myself, Perkins and Tiger were walking out the door towards my parked car. Tiger was carrying a partially inflated bin-liner as this was the way Mysterious X travelled when outside Zambini Towers. When you are nothing more than an inexplicable energy field of unknown origin, even a light breeze has a dispersing effect which can be quite unsettling.
‘Can you drop us off at the zoo?’ asked Tiger. ‘I kind of get the idea that Mysterious X might be able to help with the whole RUNIX deal, but wants to see the new Buzonji cub first.’
That was how the Mysterious X communicated. Not by words, but by ideas that popped into your head. Perkins had spent many hours consulting with him on the powers of suggestion – or, if you didn’t believe in Mysterious X, Perkins had been sitting in a room, mumbling to himself.
‘I never thought X was big on zoos,’ I said as we climbed into my car, ‘but then again, the Buzonji cub is very cute. All gangly legs and a pink nose.’
Shifting oaks
I dropped Tiger and the Mysterious X at Hereford Zoo. While disappointingly having neither elephants nor penguins, it was saved from ignominy by possessing several animals that were not created by evolution, but by magic. Back in the days of almost unbridled power, Super Grand Master Sorcerers would attempt to outdo one another in their creation of weird and wonderful beasts. Of the seventeen known ‘non-evolutionary’ creatures, only eight were still represented by live specimens. Of those, Hereford Zoo had an unprecedented four. They had the only captive breeding pair of Buzonji, which is a sort of six-legged okapi; two species of Shridloo, a desert and dessert – one being the edible variety. The only captive Tralfamosaur also had its home here, and was now in a more secure compound after it ate the last Beastcatcher. A Frazzle named Devlin completed the small collection – it was not just the only specimen living outside its natural habitat in the wetlands of Norfolk, but also the only one glad to be doing so. They used to have a Quarkbeast, but it kept on frightening people, so was removed from display.
‘Here’s some money for a taxi home,’ I said, ‘and remember to get a receipt – and don’t let the cabby charge you extra for X.’
Tiger assured me that he wouldn’t and asked for a sixpence for an ice cream. I bid him goodbye and then took the main road towards Colonel Bloch-Draine’s country estate at Holme Lacy.
‘So what’s an oversurge?’ asked Perkins as we drove out of Hereford.
‘The art of magic is all about channelling the wizidrical energy that swirls invisibly around us. It usually takes skill and concentration to gather and focus the required power, but in some instances the opposite can happen, and the wizidrical energy comes in too thick and fast to be used safely.’
‘Like an overflowing bath where you can’t switch off the taps or take the plug out?’
‘Something like that. It’s unpredictable so pretty useless, like the wasted heat in a steam engine, so what you have to do is redirect the crackle elsewhere, like a safety valve. It can be quite fun, apparently – spelling anything just to use up the power. Showers of toads, levitation – whatever takes your fancy.’
‘A sort of magic free lunch?’
‘Kind of, except you still have to fill out Form B1–7G. If the paperwork isn’t in order, the penalties are severe. The rules against illegal sorcery are quite fourteenth-century.’
‘They don’t think much of us, do they? Civilians, I mean.’
‘Let’s just say the relationship between the public and sorcerers has been strained ever since the whole Blix the Hideously Barbarous “world domination” episode. It was over two hundred years ago but memories are long when it comes to having one’s will drained away and made into an empty husk, suited only to mindlessly follow the bidding of your new master.’
‘I can see how that might not go down too well,’ he conceded, ‘but don’t worry: I won’t let you or Kazam down.’
There was quiet for a moment as we motored down the road.
‘Jenny?’
‘Yes?’
‘Have you considered my offer to go and see the Jimmy Nuttjob Stunt Show?’
I looked across at him.
‘Is this a date?’
‘Might be,’ he said, staring at his feet.
I said the first thing that came into my head.
‘I’m only sixteen. I’m too young for you.’
‘There’s only two years between us. And let’s be honest, you don’t act much like a sixteen-year-old, what with the responsibility and dealing with Blix and matters of ethics and whatnot.’
‘It’s a foundling thing,’ I told him. ‘You grow up quick when you have to fight every night with forty other girls for the only handkerchief in the orphanage.’
‘To blow your nose?’
‘To use as a pillow. I’m sorry to have to mention this but you’re going to have to be careful with . . . personal relationships. Rejected partners can sometimes get sniffy and wonder what they saw in you, and this can lead to accusations of beguiling. It’s not a custodial offence as it’s not provable, but the negative publicity is harmful, and there always remains the faint possibility of being hunted down by a crowd of angry and ignorant villagers, all holding torches aloft and eventually imprisoning you in a disused windmill which they set on fire.’
‘Worst-case scenario?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think I’m beguiling you?’
I looked across at him and smiled.
‘If you are, you’re not that good at it.’
‘Ah,’ he said, and lapsed into silence.
Holme Lacy was less than ten miles away, and we pulled into the imposing front entrance of the colonel’s residence a quarter of an hour later. Perkins looked nervously out of the window. It was his first gig. Up until now it had just been practice spells at Zambini Towers and a lot of classroom theory, and none of it to deal with surges.
I parked the car outside the colonel’s imposing eighteen-room mansionette. Lieutenant Colonel Sir Reginald George Stamford Bloch-Draine had been one of King Snodd’s most faithful military leaders, and had personally led a squadron of landships during the Fourth Troll Wars twelve years before.
The point of the Fourth War had been pretty much the same as in the first three: to push the Trolls back into the far north and teach them a lesson ‘once and for all’. To this end, the Ununited Kingdoms had put aside their differences and assembled one hundred and forty-seven landships and sent them on a frontal assault to ‘soften up’ the Trolls before the infantry invaded the following week. The landships had breached the first Troll wall at Stirling and arrived at the second Troll wall eighteen hours later. They reportedly opened the Troll gates, and then – nothing. All the radios went dead. Faced with uncertainty and the possible loss of the landships, the generals decided to instigate the ever popular ‘let’s panic’ plan and ordered the infantry to attack.
Of the quarter of a million men and women who were lost or eaten during the twenty-six-minute war that followed, t
here had been only nine survivors. Colonel Bloch-Draine was one of them, saved by an unavoidable dentists’ appointment that had him away from his landship at the crucial moment of advance. He retired soon after to devote his time to killing and mounting rare creatures before they went extinct. He had recently started collecting trees and saw no reason why it shouldn’t be exactly the same as collecting stuffed animals: lots of swapping and putting them in alphabetical groups. Clearly, moving trees around his estate was not something he could do on his own, and that was the reason Kazam had been employed.
Patrick of Ludlow was waiting for us outside the colonel’s mansionette.
‘Apologies for calling you out, Miss Strange,’ he said, wringing his hands nervously as we got out of the car, ‘but things aren’t as they should be.’
‘No problem,’ I said soothingly, ‘you and me and Perkins will sort it out.’
Patrick was our Heavy Lifter. He could levitate up to seven tons when humidity was low and he was feeling good, which was more often these days as his six-ounce-a-day marzipan habit was now well behind him. He was a simple soul, but kindly and gentle despite his large size and misshapen appearance. Like most Heavy Lifters he had muscles where he shouldn’t – grouped around his ankles, wrists, toes, fingers and the back of his head. His hand looked like a boiled ham with fingertips stuck on randomly, and the muscles on the back of his head gave him a fearful apearance. He generally stayed hidden when not working in case he was mistaken for an infant Troll.
‘So, what’s the problem, Pat?’ I asked.
‘Problem?’ came a voice behind us. ‘Problem? I expect no problems, only solutions!’
We turned to find the colonel, who, despite being retired, still wore a military uniform, with his chest an impressive array of brightly coloured ribbons, each representing a military campaign he had somehow missed owing to some unforeseen prior engagement.
‘Gadzooks!’ he said when he saw me. ‘A girlie. Bit young for this sort of work eh?’
The Song of the Quarkbeast tld-2 Page 9
