The Song of the Quarkbeast

  We sat in silence in the empty lobby, the only sounds the clock, the rustling of oak leaves and the occasional ‘pop’ as the Transient Moose moved in and out.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said at last.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For agreeing to this contest.’

  ‘You didn’t have any option,’ said Moobin, placing his hand on my arm. ‘A challenge is a challenge. The real fault lies with Blix. How long do you think it will be before they arrest the next one of us?’

  ‘Any minute now, I should imagine.’

  Just as I spoke Detective Norton and Sergeant Villiers walked into the lobby. If there was work to be done of a dubious nature that needed a veneer of legality, these two would be doing it.

  ‘Miss Strange,’ said Detective Norton. ‘How delightful to meet you again.’

  I didn’t have time for this.

  ‘Where are the Prices?’ I demanded.

  Norton and Villiers gave me their well-practised triumphant grins.

  ‘Under lock and key until the hearing on Monday,’ said Sergeant Villiers, who was the physical opposite of Norton – heavily built in body and face compared to Villiers’ almost painful thinness. We often joked that they were the ‘Before and After’ in a weight-gain advert. I’d crossed swords with them in the past, and didn’t like them.

  ‘Monday? Conveniently two days after the bridge gig?’

  ‘These are serious charges, Miss Strange. But we’re not here for idle chit-chat.’

  ‘No?’

  I thought they had come about my refusing to help hunt the Quarkbeast, but they hadn’t. Maybe the colonel wanted to keep me sweet for the Tarquin option.

  ‘Wizard Gareth Archibald Moobin?’ asked Norton in that way police do when they already know the answer is ‘yes’.

  ‘You know I am.’

  ‘You’re under arrest for committing an illegal act of magic; for failing to declare said act of magic; for not submitting the relevant paperwork; for plotting to hide said act of magic from the authorities.’

  I noticed Villiers take Moobin’s arm. They knew he could teleport and weren’t going to risk losing him.

  ‘And what act was this?’ I asked, knowing full well that in the four years I had been at Kazam not a single act of sorcery had gone unrecorded.

  ‘It’s about a bunch of roses produced “from thin air” as a gift for a certain Miss Bancroft,’ said Villiers, ‘on or around 23 October 1988.’

  ‘Jessica,’ said Moobin in a quiet voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Norton, ‘Jessica.’

  He looked at me and shrugged while they slipped on the lead-lined index finger cuffs to stop him spelling.

  ‘Bet you regret trying to impress her now, eh?’ sneered Norton.

  ‘Oddly, no,’ he admitted with a fond smile. ‘She was quite something. What we call a “refuzic” – possessed of magical powers, but convinced she had none. Get this: she could lick a man’s bald head and tell what he had for breakfast. Don’t tell me that’s not magic. What’s she doing these days?’

  ‘She’s Mrs Norton,’ said Norton, ‘and if you go spreading the bald head thing about it won’t be just the King and Blix playing “jail the wizard”.’

  ‘Hey, plod,’ said Tiger, who had just walked in, ‘I can make a bacon roll vanish – and then make it reappear the following morning in a completely different form. You going to arrest me for illegal wizardry too?’

  Norton and Villiers glared at Tiger, appalled at his gross impertinence. If they’d not been busy they would have arrested him too.

  ‘Bloody foundlings,’ said Norton, ‘a waste of space the lot of you. One more thing: if you’re looking for Patrick of Ludlow, don’t. We just picked him up, too – on charges relating to marzipan abuse. So long, Jenny.’

  And a moment later the doors were swinging shut behind them.

  ‘This is all my fault,’ I said, sitting down and putting my face in my hands. It was now Perkins up against the powers of Blix and his cronies. One of ours against three of theirs.

  ‘It’s not your fault and it could be worse,’ said Tiger in a soothing voice.

  ‘How could it possibly be worse?’

  ‘It could be Friday. It isn’t. It’s only Thursday morning. Lots can happen. So we’re down to only one sorcerer. Big deal. There must be others we can use.’

  ‘No one else has a licence.’

  ‘What about sorcerers who had licences from the old days? Ones who never had them taken away?’

  ‘If they were sane enough to work, they would be.’

  Tiger nodded his head towards the front door.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of in here. I was thinking of . . . out there.’

  I sat up. Hope had not yet fully departed.

  ‘You’re right. There are two I could try. I’ll start with Mother Zenobia.’

  ‘Would she help us?’

  ‘Almost certainly not – but it’s worth a shot. And listen, if Blix wants to play dirty, so should we.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning we should find out something about him. Something we can use against him. Past misdemeanours, dirt, unpaid parking tickets – I don’t know. You do some snooping, and I’ll try and rustle up some sorcerers.’

  I walked out of the front entrance, suddenly remembered I’d forgotten my keys, pushed open the door to Zambini Towers, stepped inside – only to find myself stepping out of the back entrance of the hotel. I held the door wide open and, impossibly, the front entrance led straight to the back. It was as if the old hotel wasn’t there at all. I closed the door again and pressed the doorbell.

  The door was answered by Perkins, and, oddly, he was in the hotel – behind him I could see the lobby.

  ‘Forget your keys?’

  ‘Look at this.’

  He stepped out and I closed the door, then told him to reopen it. He did so, and stared not at the lobby, but at the alleyway on the far side of the building.

  ‘Where’s the hotel gone?’

  ‘I was hoping you’d tell me.’

  ‘You think I did this? No way. I have trouble making dogs bark at a distance.’

  ‘Then who?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know. Listen, you must have a word with Tiger. He was trying to fool me into thinking that Patrick, Moobin and the Prices have all been arrested, and he really shouldn’t joke about such things.’

  I raised an eyebrow and stared at him.

  ‘Crumbs. You mean he wasn’t kidding?’

  ‘I wish he was.’

  I pressed the doorbell again and a few minutes later Tiger answered. I explained what had happened, and after checking the other entrances and the windows – but with one of us keeping the door open so we could get back in – we found that all access points led to an instant exit on the other side of the building. We couldn’t agree who might have done it, but did agree that it was an excellent defence – something that was tested twenty minutes later when Norton and Villiers returned to ‘interview’ Lady Mawgon. I shouted through the door that she would be surrendering herself to the authorities on Monday, and after a brief exchange of discourtesies, they left.

  ‘Right,’ I said once I’d found my car keys, ‘I’m off to get help.’

  ‘What can I do?’ asked Perkins.

  ‘Help Tiger find out what you can about Blix. There must be something we can use to our advantage. Oh, and congratulations. You’re doing the bridge gig on your own tomorrow.’

  He stared at me with a look of horror.

  ‘If I’m going to fail I guess I should do it in a spectacular fashion.’

  I told him it wasn’t over until it was over, picked up my car and was soon heading out of town.

  * * *

  1 Despite the grand title, the mid-Wales-located Cambrian Empire is a ramshackle collection of warlords nominally controlled by the Cambrian potentate Tharv the Bountiful. The empire has almost no economy or government, but despite its lawless nature, visitors are
shockingly well-treated, and the crime figures of the nation are the lowest in the unUK.

  Mother Zenobia

  * * *

  As I drove to Clifford to see Mother Zenobia, I wasn’t very hopeful that I would have much luck recruiting her to our cause. She was old, tired and for almost 75 per cent of the day a form of limestone. What wizidrical powers she had available to her were most likely limited, and I knew for a fact that she hadn’t been out of the convent for years. But I wasn’t the only person who wanted to see Mother Zenobia that afternoon, and their presence was neither welcome, nor, as I considered it later, surprising.

  It was none other than Conrad Blix, and I met him walking out of the Sisterhood of the Blessed Lady of the Lobster as I was walking in.

  ‘Jennifer!’ he said with a mockingly pleasant demeanour. ‘How is the team bearing up?’

  ‘You know well enough,’ I replied coldly. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He leaned closer.

  ‘Dealing with a few flies in this particular ointment, Miss Strange. This morning Norton and Villiers were merely assuring our victory. Just now I was guaranteeing it.’

  I didn’t like the sound of this.

  ‘What have you done to her?’

  He smiled.

  ‘I will get so much satisfaction watching you work for me as a parlourmaid for the next two years. And for your complete and utter humiliation, I will insist you wear the uniform.’

  ‘You’re a coward to use such underhand means to win the most noble of contests, Blix.’

  He narrowed his eyes.

  ‘And you’re very impertinent considering you’re nothing but a foundling who lucked out in your work allocation.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ I replied evenly, ‘foundlings are always impertinent – it’s because we’ve nothing to lose. I’m actually one of the politer ones.’

  ‘You’ll regret your words, Jennifer.’

  ‘And you your actions,’ I replied, ‘and even if you do win, none of us will ever work for you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to,’ he said. ‘All I need is control of Kazam and with it a monopoly on magic – surely that’s obvious?’

  ‘To reanimate the mobile phone network?’

  He grinned.

  ‘That’s just for starters. You have no idea how much a wise investor can make by exploiting the crackle. The licensing deals on electromagical devices will make a fortune – millions alone for something as simple as a pocket calculator. And all that work you’re doing to reanimate medical scanners for free – deluded. How much do you think people will pay to detect an early tumour?’

  I clenched and unclenched my fists.

  ‘Magic is not for the one,’ I said through gritted teeth, ‘it’s for the many.’

  ‘I agree wholeheartedly. But in this particular instance, “many” means only myself, Lord Tenbury, the King and his Useless Brother. Oh, and good move with Zambini Towers and the “infinite thinness” enchantment. Lady Mawgon, was it?’

  He didn’t know she was stone, which was a small plus in our favour.

  ‘She’s very talented, if a little severe. We’ll defeat you tomorrow, have no fear of that.’

  He laughed.

  ‘With who? A cranky washed-up old has-been and a winsome newbie who can barely levitate a brick? No. You’ll be thrashed. Why don’t you concede now and save the magic industry a lot of embarrassment?’

  ‘The future of magic is not negotiable.’

  ‘You’re wrong, and what’s more, it’s not your decision to make. Here’s the deal for you to take back to Kazam: concede before midnight tonight, and I will ensure that all those hopeless ex-sorcerers at Zambini – I mean, “all those venerable past masters” – are looked after in a five-star nursing home until they croak. I will offer every licensed practitioner a job under my leadership or, failing that, two million moolah cash in return for surrendering their magic licences. What’s more, you and Tiger will be paid to do nothing until your indentured servitude is finished, at which point you will be granted full citizenship. Do we have a deal?’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ he replied with a smile, ‘but I’ll go there wealthy. I’ll expect an answer by midnight, yes?’

  He smiled at me in a smug and triumphant manner, but something didn’t quite ring true.

  ‘That’s a very generous offer,’ I said, ‘for someone so utterly sure they will win. If you can thrash us as you claim, you can take what you want from the wreckage without spending a bean. Do we worry you, Blix?’

  He smiled again, but not with quite so much confidence. He was scared of us.

  ‘Let’s just say,’ he added, recovering his composure, ‘that the magic industry has enough bad PR at present without petty infighting. If we’re to start selling magic as a benevolent force for good – as essential to daily life as the water in the tap and electricity in the plug – then we need to show we are responsible and upright citizens. Take the offer, Strange.’

  I had no intention of accepting his offer.

  ‘We’ll see you at the bridge site tomorrow morning for the contest. Nine on the dot, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Nine it is. Sandop kale n’baaa, Miss Strange.’

  ‘Sandop kale n’baaa, Amazing Blix.’

  And after staring at me for a moment, he turned on his heel and left. I walked into the convent and soon found what Blix had been up to. Mother Zenobia was sitting in her chair, stony features looking straight ahead. She had changed to stone for her afternoon nap, and Blix, presumably, had blocked her return. I was too late. Blix had won this round, too. I took a deep breath and prepared to leave.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ asked a tearful Sister Agrippa, who was Mother Zenobia’s attendant.

  ‘Put a sheet over her and give her the once-over with a feather duster every fortnight. Don’t use a vacuum cleaner in case you knock something off – she’d never forgive you when we get her back.’

  I walked out of the convent with the saddening realisation that we were pretty much stuffed. With one potential sorcerer crossed from my list, my last hope was a woman who won an unprecedented six golds in the sorcery events at the 1974 Olympics. She was a sorcerer of undisputed skills, but also secretive, obstinate and prickly beyond measure. She was the Once Magnificent Boo.

  Boo and the Quarkbeasts

  * * *

  You couldn’t work in the magic industry without knowing something about the Once Magnificent Boo. Indeed, when one considers the strange practitioners associated with the industry, it is often hard not to talk about anything else. Miss Boolean Champernowne Waseed Mitford Smith, to give her her full name, was an infant magic prodigy. At the age of five she was writing her own spells, was deemed ‘amazing’ by her tenth birthday, ‘incredible’ by her fifteenth, and ‘magnificent’ by the time she turned twenty. Her theory on ‘spell entanglement’ for multitasking was one of her most brilliant contributions, allowing for several enchantments to be done at the same time, a problem unsolved since the twelfth century. In short, she was doing stuff in her teens that the Mighty Shandar couldn’t perform until he was in his thirties, and she was tipped to become the Next Great Thing – a sorcerer of astonishing powers of the sort that crops up only every half millennia or so, and change the craft in new and exciting ways.

  She never fulfilled that early promise, and not through her own fault. She was kidnapped in 1974 by anti-magic extremists and hadn’t done any magic since her release, and rarely socialised with those who did. No one knew quite why, nor were ever greeted with anything but a damp stony silence when asked. But she hadn’t totally forgotten her roots, and by way of the respect accorded to her, still carried the ‘Once Magnificent’ accolade.

  Thirty-three years after her kidnapping she was still in Hereford, working as a magic licence adjudicator, and Beastmaster to the Crown. More importantly to me, she was also running the only rescue centre for Quarkbeasts in the northern hemisphere. This was in Yarsop,
a small village just off the Great West Road that led to the border with the Duchy of Brecon, and that’s where I ended up a short drive later.

  Once Magnificent Boo’s house was unremarkable, and indeed, I had to recheck the address as past experience with sorcerers suggested that they usually lived in eccentrically built thatched hovels, full of junk and with owls and stuff hanging around outside. Not this house, which was one of a pair sitting at the end of a gravel drive with weeping willows and flower beds all neatly laid out in a way that was a picture of unmystical normality. I opened the gate and crunched down the drive.

  I pressed the doorbell and Once Magnificent Boo answered. Her white hair was tied back and more neat, but her eyes were still as dark as pitch, and I shivered as a cold rush of air escaped from the house. She took one look at me, snorted, and shut the door in my face.

  I didn’t leave. She knew I was there so it didn’t make any sense to ring again, so I simply waited. Eight minutes ticked past and eventually the door reopened.

  ‘There’s no business for you here, Miss Strange.’

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘A Quarkbeast once chose me for companionship.’

  ‘Yes; and your reckless custodianship led to its death.’

  This was true, and something that had preyed on my conscience these past two months. It had been a risky time in my life, and I’d made no effort to stop the Quarkbeast following me into danger.

  ‘For which I will never cease to be ashamed,’ I said softly. ‘I miss him greatly. Did you hear that a wild Quarkbeast was wandering around Hereford at present?’

  ‘The colonel was here,’ she said shortly, ‘asking questions on how to trap one.’

  I told her about his plans for Quarkbeast-hunting holiday breaks for people with a lot more money than sense – and Blix’s involvement.

  ‘They have no idea what they’re meddling with,’ said Boo.

  ‘Is there a way to stop him?’ I asked.

  She narrowed her eyes, thought for a moment and then opened the door wide.