‘There’s mangy for you.’
He waved a table light under the carpet and the light gleamed through the threadbare old rug.
‘As soon as a hole opens up I’m going to retire. I don’t want to go the way of Brother Velobius.’
Brother Velobius had run a magic carpet taxi service about thirty years ago, in the days before all sorts of regulations seriously hampered the carpet business. On a high-speed trip to Norwich Brother Velobius and both his passengers died when his Turkmen Mk18-C ‘Bukhara’ carpet broke up in mid-air. The Air Accident Investigation Department painstakingly rebuilt the carpet, and eventually concluded that the break-up was caused by rug fatigue. All carpets were vigorously tested after that and none passed the stringent safety rules for passenger carrying, and they were relegated to solo operation and delivery duties. But that wasn’t all: operators were told to carry licences, a registration number, navigation lights for night flying and a mandatory upper speed limit of 100 knots. It was like selling someone a Ferrari and telling the new owner not to change out of first gear.
‘It looks like we’re going to lose the live organ transportation contract,’ I told him.
His face fell and he lowered the carpet to the floor, where it rolled itself automatically and hopped into the corner, startling the Quarkbeast, who dived under the table in fright.
‘So it’s pizza and curry deliveries, then?’ he asked bitterly.
‘We’re in negotiations with FedEx to make up the shortfall.’
‘Deliveries aren’t the spirit of carpeting, Jenny, bach,’ he said sadly. ‘Organ delivery made us relevant.’
‘I’m really doing my best, Owen.’
‘Well, perhaps your best is not good enough.’
He glared at me, unfurled his carpet and was off out of the window, streaking back towards Benny’s Pizzas to do some deliveries.
Mutiny
* * *
‘I’m not paying,’ announced Mr Digby angrily, waving the bill I had hurriedly written out for the rewiring and replumbing job. ‘I specifically said plastic piping.’
It was the following morning, and Mr Digby had turned up as soon as we had opened the office.
‘We don’t work in plastic,’ announced Full Price.
‘We don’t work in plastic,’ I repeated.
‘Listen,’ said the man, whose patience was deserting him rapidly, ‘if I ask a plumber to replumb the house and I specify plastic, then that’s what you’ll use. I pay the bills, I call the shots.’
‘If you understood how sorcery works, you would know that long-chain polymers do not react as well—’
‘Don’t try to blind me with your voodoo science!’
‘Very well,’ I said with a sigh, ‘I’ll instruct my people to remove all the plumbing immediately.’
‘No you won’t!’ said Mr Digby angrily. ‘If I catch you on my property I’ll call the police!’
I stared up at the red-faced individual and wondered whether the sorcerer’s code of ethics couldn’t be relaxed for just a moment; I thought our irate customer would make a fine warthog.
‘I’ll meet you halfway.’
He grumbled for a bit as Price rose in disgust and walked out of the door.
‘The more you do this,’ I said, altering the total on the bill and recalculating the VAT, ‘the fewer sorcerers there will be to do this sort of work. The next time you want any plumbing done you’ll have to get a builder in and tear all the plaster off the wall.’
‘What do I care?’ sneered the man selfishly. ‘The job is done.’
He stormed out and Price came back in. He wasn’t very happy.
‘It took us only half a day to do his house, Jennifer. An army of plumbers couldn’t do it that fast and I got a splitting headache to boot. We should have taken him to court.’
I got up and placed the cheque he had written in the cash tin.
‘You know as well as I do the courts rarely side with the Mystical Arts. All he has to do is invoke the 1739 Bewitching Act and you could end up on a ducking stool – or something worse. Is that what you want?’
Full Price sighed.
‘I’m sorry, Jennifer. It just makes me so mad.’
The phone rang and Tiger picked it up.
‘Hello,’ he said, ‘Kazam Mystical Arts Management, can I help you?’
There was a pause.
‘No, I’m sorry, madam, we can’t turn people into toads. It’s usually permanent and highly unethical . . . no, not even for cash. Thank you.’
At that moment, Lady Mawgon strode in with Moobin close behind. She didn’t look too happy – furious, actually.
‘I’ve explained about Mr Digby to Full Price,’ I said, feeling mildly nervous. Mr Zambini had been gone six months, and although I had so far avoided any arguments, they would eventually happen, I knew it – and, as likely as not, they would come from Mawgon.
‘We’re not here about that,’ said Lady Mawgon, and I noticed several other Zambini Tower residents at the door. Some were on the active list, like Kevin Zipp, and others not, like the Sisters Karamazov. There were also ones I hadn’t seen for a while, such as Monty Vanguard the Sound Manipulator, and an old and very craggy sorceress who looked as though she were half tortoise – long-retired eleventh-floorers, the pair of them.
‘What can I help you with, then?’
‘Am I to understand,’ began Lady Mawgon, trembling with indignation, ‘that Mr Trimble of the ConStuff Land Development Agency offered Kazam two million moolah for the precise time of the Dragondeath?’
‘He did, and I said I’d think about it.’
‘Isn’t that the sort of decision that we should all make in the absence of Mr Zambini?’ asked Lady Mawgon.
‘Two million moolah is a lot of moolah,’ added Price.
‘And could pay for all our retirements,’ put in Monty Vanguard.
‘I’m not sure the deal is still on the table,’ I said, trying to stall for time.
‘Mr Trimble just called me,’ said Lady Mawgon. ‘The deal is definitely still on.’
‘Listen,’ I said, suddenly feeling hot all over, ‘we don’t know for sure the Dragondeath is going to happen. The link between magic and Dragons is not proven, but there’s not a sorcerer in the building who doesn’t believe it’s there. There’s a whiff of Big Magic in the air, and I don’t think we should be cashing in on the Dragondeath – it’s just not what we do.’
‘Who are you to decide what it is we do?’ demanded Lady Mawgon imperiously. ‘Try as you might, you cannot be Mr Zambini, and never will be – you are simply a foundling who got lucky.’
Several of the other sorcerers winced. None of them would have gone that far. Lady Mawgon was making it personal, which it wasn’t.
‘If he’s going to die anyway it’s free cash,’ remarked Full Price, trying to calm the situation down, ‘and if the Big Magic goes the wrong way we’ll have lost out completely.’
‘The way through is clear,’ announced Lady Mawgon, even though it wasn’t. ‘We want the cheque and the time and date.’
But I wasn’t yet done.
‘We all know how premonitions work,’ I said, swallowing down my anger at the ‘foundling got lucky’ jibe, ‘and they’ll sometimes come true only by the burden of our expectation. If we sell the time and date, then the Dragon may die whether he was meant to or not. If Big Magic goes the wrong way, as Price suggests, then we may have exchanged magic for cash. I’m not sold on that, and I think many will agree. Everyone is here at Zambini Towers because of what they are or what they have been. And I think that counts for something.’
There was a pause. Sorcerers liked cash as much as the next person, but they liked honour and their calling better.
‘This is all conjecture,’ remarked Monty Vanguard.
‘What in sorcery isn’t?’ added Full Price.
‘There’s no conjecture in a cosy retirement guaranteed,’ said the half-tortoise from the eleventh floor, speaking for the first
time.
We all stood there in silence for a moment, so I thought I should act. I took Trimble’s unsigned cheque from the cash tin and laid it on the desk.
‘Randolph, fourteenth Earl of Pembridge, told me Dragondeath Sunday at noon,’ I said, feeling a thumping pulse in my temples. ‘As Lady Mawgon has so graphically pointed out, you don’t need me to make the decision for you, and no, I’m not Mr Zambini and we don’t know when or if he’s coming back. But as long as my name is Jennifer Strange I won’t help ConStuff profit by Maltcassion’s death. And what’s more,’ I went on, my anger suddenly making me impetuous, ‘you can find a new acting head of Kazam if you do. I’ll work out the rest of my servitude helping Unstable Mabel and mucking out the Mysterious X when he has another one of his episodes.’
There was silence when I’d finished, and they all looked at one another uneasily. Powerful they might be, but when things get bad, even sorcerers need leadership.
‘I think we should put it to a vote,’ said Moobin.
‘There won’t be a vote,’ said Lady Mawgon, reaching for the cheque. ‘Our path has never been so clear.’
‘Touch that cheque without a vote and I’ll newt you,’ said Moobin.
It was quite a threat. Being changed into a newt was a spell a wizard would only use as a last resort. It was irreversible and technically murder. But Lady Mawgon thought he was bluffing. After all, it took a lot of power to newt someone.
‘Your days of newting were over long ago,’ she said.
‘Lead into gold, Lady Mawgon, lead into gold.’
Wizard Moobin and Lady Mawgon stared at each other, not wanting to make the first move. Spells were never instantaneous, and required a modicum of hand movements. The thing was, whoever made the first move was the aggressor. If you moved first and newted someone, you were a murderer. Move last and it was self-defence. There was silence in the room as the two of them continued to stare at one another, hardly daring to blink. A week ago this would have been a hollow threat, and even though neither of them had newted anyone for decades, the increased background wizidrical energy and the fact that it was early morning meant that such a thing was possible.
The Remarkable Kevin Zipp broke the stand-off.
‘No one’s going to newt anyone.’
Mawgon and Moobin looked mildly relieved at Zipp’s pronouncement. After all, neither of them wanted to be a murderer – the punishment is particularly nasty.
‘How strong was the premonition?’ I asked.
‘Oh, it wasn’t a premonition,’ he confessed with a grin. ‘I was just listening in to Master Prawn’s phone conversation.’
We all turned to look at Tiger as he placed the handset back on its cradle.
‘That was the news desk at the UKBC,’ he said. ‘I just told them the time and date of the Dragondeath.’
‘You did what?’
He repeated himself to a shocked silence in the room, and then added: ‘The information is out in the public domain, so ConStuff have no advantage. The deal is dead.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ remarked Wizard Moobin.
‘Well, I did,’ he said, taking a deep breath. ‘You can newt me if you like, but Dragons are noble creatures – my conscience is clear.’
‘I’ll make you wish you’d never been born!’ screeched Lady Mawgon, and pointed a long bony finger in his direction. Tiger didn’t even blink.
‘I’m a foundling,’ he said simply, ‘I often wish I’d never been born.’
Lady Mawgon paused, lowered her finger and then strode from the room with a loud cry of ‘Foundlings, bah!’
The others filed out soon after as there was nothing more to be done, and they all glared daggers at Tiger as they went, until only he and I were left.
‘That was a stupid thing to do,’ I said, ‘stupid, but brave.’
‘You and me both, Miss Strange. You were going to resign over it, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.’
He stared up at me with a look of hot indignation, and a clear sense of right and wrong. Mother Zenobia had been right. This one was special. But I couldn’t be angry with him, and couldn’t go without punishing him either – it should have been put to a vote, despite my personal viewpoint.
‘I’ll deal with you when I get back,’ I said, picking up my car keys and whistling for the Quarkbeast. ‘Keep an eye on the phones and stay away from Lady Mawgon.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To find out what we’re dealing with here.’
‘ConStuff?’
‘No – Dragons.’
William of Anorak
* * *
I headed for the local library to try to find something that might tie Dragons and magic together in some sort of Grand Unified Wizidrical Field Theory. I had a strong feeling that the loss of one might mean the loss of the other, and I wasn’t going to sit back and let matters unfold unhindered. I read as much about Dragons as I could find, which wasn’t much. No one had ever done a study, and apart from one blurred photograph of a Dragon in flight taken in 1922, no one had any idea what one looked like. I thumbed through a book of zoology and discovered that they weren’t a protected species; indeed, no one had even bothered to classify them at all. According to naturalists the Dragon belonged to the animal kingdom for certain, almost definitely to the vertebrates, and was as likely as not a reptile. Other than that – nothing. In many ways the dragon was a non-creature. There seemed to be more information on Shridloos, Bworks, Buzonjis and Quarkbeasts, and only the Shridloo had been studied at length.
But from my reading I also learned that I was correct. Since there was a Last Dragon, there had to be a last Dragonslayer; only he or she could mete out punishment as only he or she could pass the marker stones unharmed. The question was: where was the last Dragonslayer? Since I knew he had to be somewhere close to the Dragonlands he administered, it stood to reason he would be either here in the Kingdom of Hereford, or in the neighbouring Duchy of Brecon on the other side of the Dragonlands. I began my search in the telephone directory. There was nothing listed between Dragon Pagoda Chinese takeaway and Dragon tyre services, so I looked under Slayers but had no luck there either. I called directory enquiries, who were of little use, then the police station. Sergeant Pozner was friendly as usual, but explained that most officers were on duty policing the crowds that were getting restless up at the marker stones, and those that were off duty were the ones getting restless at the marker stones. When pressed on the subject of how to contact the resident Dragonslayer if Maltcassion breached the Dragonpact, he told me to go away and knew nothing about Dragonslayers, pacts or even Maltcassion by the sound of it.
I called Mother Zenobia to see whether she had any ideas – and my luck changed.
‘The person with whom you need to speak is William of Anorak,’ she said, ‘who was, at one time, a foundling like yourself. He is a remarkable man of high intellect who has wasted his brain by absorbing millions of facts and figures and never assimilating them into anything useful. He is a walking encyclopedia of facts that you would never need to know, like the train timetables of ten years ago, or the acreage of Norway, or the person who didn’t win the 1923 presidential elections in Mausoleum. He is a fountain of useless facts and figures that bore to death all who come near, but if anyone can answer your questions, it is he.’
William of Anorak was not difficult to find. He was at Hereford’s main railway station on Platform 6, staring at the rolling stock. He was about fifty and dressed in a hooded cloak of a rough material, tied at the waist with baling twine. He was nearly bald and peered out at me through thick pebble spectacles. I noticed that he wore sandals carved from old car tyres and a duffel coat that was so worn and threadbare that only the buttons remained.
I hailed him and he looked up, gave a wan smile and replied to my greeting:
‘The Audio chameleon changes sound to fit in with its surroundings. On a busy street it sounds like a road drill, but in the front room it makes a no
ise like a ticking clock. Good day!’
‘My name is Jennifer Strange,’ I said, ‘I have need of your services.’
‘William of Anorak,’ said William of Anorak, offering a grubby hand and adding quickly: ‘The Magna Carta was signed in 1215 at the bottom, just below where it says: “all who agree, sign here”.’
He turned back to a coal truck and started to scribble a number in a dirty notebook held open by an elastic band.
‘I need to know where to find the last Dragonslayer,’ I said following him down the row of coal trucks.
‘I was last asked that question twenty-three years, two months and six hours ago. The only fish that begins and ends with a “K” other than the Killer Shark is the King-sized portion of haddock.’
‘And what was your answer?’
‘The record number of pockets in a single pair of trousers is nine hundred and seventy-two. Only three had zippers, and the combined loose change was enough to buy a goat at 1766 prices. Four hundred moolah, please.’
‘Four hundred?’ I repeated incredulously. My only possession was my Volkswagen Beetle, and it was barely worth a tenth of what he was asking.
‘Four hundred moolah,’ replied William of Anorak firmly, ‘in cash. The secretions of the ultra-rare Desert Shridloo are said to have remarkable properties. The other remarkable thing about a Desert Shridloo is that it doesn’t live in the desert.’
‘Do you have to keep on reeling off useless facts?’
‘Unfortunately so,’ replied William of Anorak, adjusting his glasses, ‘I have over seven million facts in my head and if I don’t repeat them to myself in order I run the risk of forgetting them completely. Milton wrote Samson Agonistes. Would you like to hear it?’
‘No thanks,’ I said hurriedly. ‘Who was it who said: “Never commit anything to memory you can’t look up?”’
‘It was Albert Einstein and I see your point, yet I am as much a victim of my own powers as those who have the misfortune to stay in my company. You have been here over five minutes; that is better than most. Most people prefer carpooling when other people do it, and the average number of pips in a tangerine is 5.368.’