The Song of the Quarkbeast tld-2

by Jasper Fforde

  ‘You two are it.’

  Team Kazam were going be severely underpowered. I told them what had happened since they had been imprisoned. That Mawgon was still stone, her passthought unbroken; that Perkins had been captured during an attempt to uncover a missing vision; that the Moose had turned out to be semi-self-aware and was the agent behind the ‘infinite thinness’ spell, and that Zambini hadn’t really been much help – although it had been good to see him.

  ‘The Moose drawing power from a ring?’ said Moobin incredulously. ‘From a band of gold, the single most boringly non-reactive metal on the planet?’

  ‘Zambini was surprised too.’

  ‘Well, it’s not important right now,’ he said as the taxi dropped us as close as it could to the south bridge abutment. ‘We’re going to have to wing it a bit and break a few rules. The future of Kazam is in the balance and we have to work together if we’re to have any chance of survival. Now listen carefully . . .’

  As Tiger took the cab back to Zambini Towers to put the plan in motion, Moobin, myself and Patrick surveyed the wreckage of what had once been a stone bridge with five arches supported by four piers. iMagic had already had an hour’s start, and the bridge piers on their side were already cleared of old rubble and three feet above the level of the river. The stones were moving about the site steadily, to many ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the onlookers. It took a moment for us to be seen by the audience, but when they did there was a sudden hush and then a cheer. Blix’s past history of hasty, substandard wizidrical building work had spread about the town, and severely dented his popularity. As the cheer echoed around the area, Patrick lifted ten pieces of cut stone from the river bed simultaneously, then moved them in a long procession to be stacked for later insertion in the bridge.

  The crowd went wild at this, and the scoreboard, which was offering up-to-the-second live betting odds, had us up from ‘1000: 1’ against to ‘500:1’ against. Not great, but an improvement. I saw Patrick hold on to a crowd barrier for support after his exertions. He would not have attempted such a feat without Moobin requesting it – the purpose was to make the iMagic team nervous. It worked. Two stones that were about to be placed dropped with a heavy splash into the river as the iMagic team momentarily lost concentration.

  ‘Patrick will need continuous food if he does most of the heavy lifting,’ said Moobin, exercising each of his index fingers in readiness, ‘and check to see how Tiger is getting on.’

  I needed no second bidding. I called a street urchin out of the crowd and deputised him on to the Kazam team in order to keep Patrick and Moobin supplied with constant water and food, and told him to find a seamstress to repair their clothes ‘on the fly’ as continuous heavy spelling unravels stitching.[40]

  ‘To battle,’ said Moobin as he walked across the scaffolding footbridge that ran parallel to the stone bridge. He lifted stones from the rubble with a relaxed movement of his hands, and sorted them into categories of dressed, rubble and ornate, ready to be put back into the bridge. It was mostly bravado. As with Patrick, it took a lot more power then he made out. If they tried to keep it up like this they’d be exhausted long before our half of the bridge was finished.

  ‘Surprised to see me, Blix?’ said Moobin as they met in the middle.

  ‘It won’t make any difference,’ Blix sneered back, ‘the team are on a roll.’

  It certainly appeared that way. iMagic were now starting on their first arch.

  ‘We’ll see.’

  They parted to continue their work while I hurried off to see how Tiger was doing.

  Zambini Towers is located in the tight network of streets near the cathedral, and was no more than a three-minute jog from the bridge. By the time I got there Tiger was already organising the retired sorcerers, wizards and enchanters into teams to transfer the wizidrical power from the housebound Transient Moose all the way down to the bridge.

  To accomplish this we placed two sorcerers at each street corner from the Towers to the bridge. One index finger of a sorcerer would pick up the crackle, and the other would send it on to the next. It was what was known as a daisy-chain, and the residents were all fully aware of how it worked – and were in teams of two only so that they could relieve one another when they got tired, and have someone to remind them what they were meant to be doing.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

  ‘Almost done,’ replied Tiger, ‘but you need to speak to the Moose yourself – he just stares blankly at me.’

  I found the Moose in the lobby, gazing at the spreading boughs of the oak tree that was growing there.

  ‘Was this here yesterday?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s been there for almost twenty years,’ I replied.

  ‘Well I never. What can I do for you?’

  The thinness enchantment was no longer required as the contest had begun, and it didn’t take long to convince the Moose to channel the power from the small terracotta pot towards the bridge – or to be more precise, to Edgar Znorpp at the front entrance, who would then pass it across to Roger Limpet waiting on the street outside – and from him to Julian Shedmaker on the corner.

  ‘Just say when,’ replied the Moose with a carefree toss of its antlers, ‘and Moobin and Patrick will be able to draw as much power as I can extract from that pot.’

  ‘Will you be all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Never better,’ he replied, ‘and thanks for asking.’

  I told Tiger to stand by for my signal, then visited all our retired sorcerers on the way to the bridge to check they were set and ready. It would take only a minor lapse in concentration on the part of one to break the chain. Margaret O’Leary was last in line, and chosen specifically because she was the least bonkers and the best liar in case anyone asked what she was up to.

  ‘Don’t let it flow to the iMagic team by accident,’ I said, and she assured me she would not. I signalled to Moobin and Patrick, who were watching me, then spoke to Tiger through the conch to instruct the Moose to start channelling.

  I saw Margaret stiffen slightly as the power started to flow through her. Her plait unravelled, and both earrings fell from her ears. She didn’t even notice.

  ‘Wow,’ she said with a smile, ‘that’s good crackle. Can I pinch some to deal with a few grey hairs?’

  ‘At the end, if all goes well.’

  I watched Moobin and Patrick as the power flowed through to them, and the effect was almost instantaneous. Moobin lifted two stones from one of the piles in unison and clicked them into place on the far side of the bridge as easily as if it were Lego. There was a gasp from the crowd, a resounding cheer and our odds on the scoreboard rose from 500:1 to 50:1 against. I breathed a small sigh of relief. At least we were now actually in the game, even if far behind. The iMagic team completed their first arch within half an hour and then moved on to the next.

  I spent the next hour moving up and down the daisy-chain to ensure all was well and that the areas between the sorcerers remained relatively clear and no one lingered too long within the streams – passive spelling was a very real risk, and it sapped power. There was a minor hiccup when a van parked in the way and we had to interrupt the stream while we moved the sorcerers across to the other side of the road, but it all worked, and within that hour we accelerated to being only one arch behind iMagic.

  ‘Impressive,’ said Blix as I walked past him with some chocolate for Patrick, ‘but you can’t keep up that rate of sustained spelling for ever.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Tiger and I spent our time making sure that the sorcerers were kept cool by drinking gallons – and I mean gallons – of iced water, as simply being a conduit for wizidrical energy without actually using it made one grow hot, as a wire does with an electrical current passing through. We also had to ensure that the changeovers went smoothly when, predictably enough, they needed a visit to the bathroom. And all this subtly, without alerting Blix as to what we were up to. Within another twenty minutes we had drawn level with
iMagic, and half an hour after that we had passed them. We were now in the lead, something reflected by the odds on the leader board and much to the delight of the crowd, but not the King, who sat in the royal box, tapping his fingers impatiently on his second-best throne.

  Blix paused for a moment and walked over. He looked at us both in turn, then gave a rare smile.

  ‘Where are you getting all this power?’

  ‘Skill, hard work and efficient use of resources,’ replied Moobin. ‘You should try it some day.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  He thought for a moment, then abruptly changed his manner.

  ‘Okay, here it is, with me eating humble pie: congratulations. You’ve bested me.’

  Moobin and I looked at one another.

  ‘A trick of some sort, Blix?’ asked Moobin, not pausing for one second in placing a carved piece of stone in place. ‘We’re barely half an arch ahead.’

  ‘We’re almost worn out,’ Blix replied. ‘Corby and Muttney have been . . . disappointing. Perhaps we can negotiate my defeat so I am not utterly humiliated?’

  It seemed an astonishing request, given his own deceitful conduct. In answer, Moobin was firm, but clear.

  ‘We will give you the same courtesy and kindness you gave us, Blix.’

  ‘How unpleasant of you,’ Blix said after a pause. ‘What happened to all the “brother wizard” stuff?’

  ‘It evaporated when you had us all thrown into jail.’

  ‘Really?’ Blix asked, as though it had only just occurred to him that we might be annoyed. ‘Yes, I suppose it might have. Never mind. I will go and draft a letter conceding my position. But irrespective, we should finish the bridge, yes? A good show for the King and the citizenry?’

  ‘I agree,’ said Wizard Moobin suspiciously.

  Blix gave us another smile and moved off to speak to the colonel, who had been hovering close at hand.

  ‘I strongly suggest that we don’t relax for a moment,’ I said as soon as Blix and the colonel had departed, seemingly in some haste. ‘I smell a very large Blix-shaped rat that is up to something.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Moobin. ‘But what?’

  I didn’t answer, and left them to carry on while the iMagic team, now without their leader, began to fall farther and farther behind. By the time we had the second arch more or less finished, the odds on the scoreboard made us the clear favourites and iMagic merely washed up old has-beens. But just as we were about to start on our final arch, something happened.

  The surge

  It was a surge. A burst of almost unprecedented violence, but oddly, only through Patrick and Moobin – the iMagic sorcerers were unaffected. With the two of them caught unawares, the heavy blocks of masonry that Patrick and Moobin were moving suddenly flew high in the air. One fell on the road bridge two hundred yards away, where we could hear the sound of cars braking and colliding, and another fell into the river. Two others, each a quarter of a ton, were thrown so high in the air that they disappeared from sight.[41]

  Moobin swore as he tried to control the surge. He described it later as like being in a car with no brakes and the throttle jammed full on while trying to negotiate the St Nigel’s Day parade without hitting anyone. To absorb the raw energy that was now entering his body, he pointed his fingers at the river and in an instant the water had changed to a cheap German white wine and receded in both directions, revealing a lot of mud and more shopping trolleys than I thought existed in the world.

  I looked across at Patrick. He, too, was struggling to do something with the massive surge, and had switched his attention to what he usually did – lifting cars for the city’s clamping unit. All cars within a 250-yard radius were violently lifted three feet into the air and then, when this wasn’t enough to absorb the power, he began moving them all to the car pound[42] two miles away.

  I bit my lip. An oversurge of this power generally ended only in one way – when the power overcame the sorcerer completely and caused them to physically burst. It would be painful, and very messy.[43] I watched them with growing concern as random spells began to bubble up from Patrick and Moobin’s subconscious as the increased power started to invade their thoughts. There was a brief shower of toads, dogs started barking and everyone in the crowd who had curly hair found it had straightened. The river turned from cheap wine to an expensive 1928 Château La Tour, every watch in the local postal district reset itself to midday and the clouds above the city started to form into farmyard-animal shapes.

  Just when I thought our sorcerers could take no more, the surge stopped. The wine river washed back, the cloud shapes and toads vanished, and in the distance we could hear Patrick’s cars fall with expensive-sounding crunches. Moobin and Patrick fell to their knees, their index fingers purple with bruises that had spread across their hands to their forearms. It would be painful to spell for weeks.

  I ran up to Moobin as the crowd started to murmur in an excited fashion. Blix’s team – minus Blix himself, who was nowhere to be seen – were staring at us, open mouthed. They’d never seen anything like it either.

  ‘Check the chain,’ muttered Moobin, ‘make sure everyone’s okay.’

  Tiger and I dashed back down the daisy-chain to see whether anyone had burst. The first link was Margaret O’Leary, who was standing on the corner by a sideshow tent, where the Two-Headed Boy had popped his heads out of the tent flap to witness the event.

  ‘What in Shandar’s name was that?’ she said. ‘I just channelled more power in thirty seconds than I’ve expended in a lifetime.’

  ‘Has Blix been past you?’

  ‘No.’

  We moved on to the next in the chain, who was Bartleby the Bald. He was in much the same state as O’Leary – in shock, but okay. We worked our way back to Zambini Towers and were relieved to find that although the sorcerers were hot and sweaty and bruised with the effort, none had dared break the chain, and for good reason. If they’d tried, they would have borne the full brunt of the power themselves – the only safe option was to hope those at the end could safely expel the extra power.

  ‘You check the Moose,’ I said to Tiger. ‘I’ll look in on Lady Mawgon.’

  I put my head round the door of the Palm Court, but Mawgon was unchanged. Wherever the power was coming from, it wasn’t the power stored in the Dibble Coils – they remained as resolutely full and unhacked as before.

  ‘Jenny!’ came Tiger’s voice. ‘In here!’

  I dashed through to the lobby, where Tiger was kneeling next to a blackened moose-shaped hole burnt into the carpet. There were similar burned shapes on each of the four walls, too – of neat moosian front, back and side elevations, and a perfect moose-shaped plan view hole burned through the ceiling and three storeys up. It was so neat you could see the delicate splay of his antlers.

  ‘He said it was the only way to stop the surge,’ said Ex-Weathermonger Taylor Woodruff IV, who was standing close by, ‘by taking the full force internally. He said he was sorry if it messed up your bridge building.’

  Tiger and I stood in silence in the empty corridor, musing on the once Transient Moose’s passing. He had frazzled every single line of the spell that made up his existence and vanished in a brief blast of energy. I picked up the small pot with the ring in it. It still didn’t make any sense. Not to me, not to anyone – certainly not to Tiger, who hated unanswered questions more than anyone.

  ‘Look,’ he said, showing me the readout from the Shandargraph. There were multiple peaks from what we had just seen outside, but also another drain, sustained over thirty-seven seconds, and peaking at 1.2 GigaShandars. The range and direction were the same as Moobin and Patrick’s; up around the old bridge somewhere.

  ‘Was that Blix?’ asked Tiger.

  ‘If it was he didn’t use it on the bridge,’ I said, looking at my watch. It had been reset to midday in the surge, and now read five minutes past.

  ‘1.2 GigaShandars?’ queried Tiger. ‘Isn’t that the power drain requirement of a—’<
br />
  ‘It is,’ I replied, not far behind him. ‘Call 999 and mutter “Quarkbeast” in a panicky voice. I need Once Magnificent Boo at the bridge as soon as possible.’

  ‘You think—?’

  ‘I do. The Quarkbeast has just divided.’

  Risk of confluence

  I ran back to the bridge to find Moobin and Patrick sucking on ice cubes and trying to get their breath back. The iMagic team were still working, but without Blix they were a good four hours behind, if they could finish at all.

  ‘The Moose is gone,’ I said to Moobin, ‘so you’re on your own. The surge you felt was a power drain as something latched on to the ambient wizidrical energy and drew what it needed through you. Blix had a plan B in case we were to defeat him. A plan he has hatched with the help of the colonel. This is no longer a magic contest – it’s an assassination attempt!’

  ‘To what end?’

  ‘To put Blix on the throne. Legally the Court Mystician is eighth in line after the Royal Family and the Lord Chief Adviser. Everyone that stands between him and the Crown is here today, gathered conveniently in one place to suffer . . . death by Quarkbeast!’

  ‘A bit of a long shot,’ responded Moobin doubtfully. ‘The last incidence of a person savaged by a Quarkbeast was over a decade ago – and he did attack it first with a garden fork. I can’t see the King attacking anything with a garden fork.’

  ‘He’d have a footman do it for him,’ said Margaret O’Leary, who had joined us, ‘but I’m not sure a Quarkbeast would be able to make the distinction between the attacker and the person who ordered it.’

  ‘Not that way,’ I replied, still out of breath from the run, ‘I mean with a confluence. Place a captured Quarkbeast next to a source of heavy spelling and it will draw the vast quantity of power needed to divide. It tried earlier with Patrick when he was moving the oak, but couldn’t draw enough. The Moose gave it as much as it needed – and more.’

  ‘But if it is not separated after division,’ said Moobin, who knew a bit about Quarkbeasts as well, ‘then—’