I lifted my arm and the Helping Hand™ – as its name would suggest – did as it was meant to do – help. The hand moved with my arm, and with the join hidden by my sleeve, the hand looked eerily as though it were attached to me.
‘I lost my own in a car accident,’ I said, thinking quickly. ‘This one belonged to a landship engineer who was accidentally dragged into the number-three engine. All they could salvage of him was an ear, this hand and a left leg, which is currently doing useful service attached to a bus conductor somewhere in Sheffield. I’ve not heard where the ear is these days.’
‘And the tattoo about pies?’ he asked, referring to the ‘No More Pies’ tattoo on the back of the hand.
‘You know, we never did find out.’
‘Okay,’ said the guard, who seemed to have fallen for my capacity for invention, ‘papers?’
I handed him our IDs and personal injury waivers, something that is mandatory for all visitors to the risk-desirable nation. He stared at them for a moment.
‘Purpose of visit?’
‘Negotiation for the safe release of a friend,’ I said, showing him the letter from the Cambrian Empire’s Kidnap Clearance House, ‘but before that, a day or two of holiday in the Empty Quarter – who knows, we might even indulge in some mid-level jeopardy.’
He looked at us all and then saluted smartly.
‘Welcome to the Cambrian Empire. There’s a Tourist Information Office down the road where you can decide which particularly perilous pursuit you’d like to attempt first.’
I thanked him and drove the half-mile down the road to where the small border town of Whitney was doing a brisk trade preparing tourists for their excursions. The shops sold supplies, maps, guidebooks and ‘Get Me Out of Here’ emergency escape package deals at grossly inflated prices, and parked on the street were a parade of armoured four-wheel-drive trucks, ready to take visitors off into the interior. I parked the Bugatti and turned off the engine.
‘Keep an eye on the car, one of you,’ I said. ‘I’m going to find a guide.’
I climbed out of the car and headed for the Tourist Information Office. I hadn’t gone five paces when I was accosted by young backpacker carrying a guitar. He was wearing a baggy shirt open to the chest, flip-flops, fashionably ripped jeans, and beads woven into his blond hair.
‘Hey, Dragonslayer babe.’
‘I’m on holiday,’ I said, well used to being recognised in public.
‘The name’s Curtis,’ said Curtis. ‘Want to hang out, play some guitar, talk about the latest fashions, the best places to be seen, and just generally chill?’
‘You must be mistaking me for someone who is shallow and indifferent,’ I said. ‘Goodbye.’
‘Wait, wait,’ said Curtis, who clearly did not take no for an answer. ‘The full name is Rupert Curtis Osbert Chippenworth III. From the Nation of Financia. Chippenworth, yes?’
He said it in a way that suggested I was expected to know who he was, and yes, I had heard of the Chippenworths – a family of huge wealth and privilege from the financial centre of the Kingdoms.
‘Let me guess,’ I said, ‘you’re here to have a few dangerous scrapes so once you have been shoehorned into your cushy and undemanding job you’ll have something interesting in your past to brighten an otherwise unremarkable life?’
‘Pretty much,’ he said, completely unfazed by my assessment. ‘So listen, I know you run Kazam, so got any “S”? Y’know, something to while away the dull evenings between bouts of excitement and terror?’
‘S?’
‘Spells,’ he said in a low voice, ‘the weirder the better, but none of that “changing into animals” stuff because it can totally do your head.’
He laughed in a clumsy attempt to charm me. The use of magic for recreational purposes was stupid, dangerous and irresponsible. Supplying mind-altering spells to idiots like Curtis would also have you drummed out of the magic industry quicker than you could say Zork.
‘No,’ I said, ‘and here’s why: you’ll start with something simple like a Pollyanna Stone that tells you what you want to hear. Pretty soon you’ll be moving on to stronger and heavier spells that promote unrealistic levels of optimism and self-delusion. After that you’ll be dependent on them, always looking for the next spell, and then, when the spells lose their power, you’ll be lost, frightened and bewildered, and your life will tip into a downward spiral of recrimination and despair.’
‘Okay, okay,’ he said, backing away from my icy stare, ‘I only asked. Boy, some people are so square.’
He returned to where his friends were waiting and they went into a huddle, throwing the occasional dirty look in my direction. I ignored them, and entered the Tourist Information Office.
The woman behind the desk was middle aged and dressed in the traditional badger skins. She had a tattoo on the left side of her face to denote her clan and status, and wore the ‘ABTA Silver Star’ medal on her left breast, denoting Tour Guide valour, probably something to do with her missing left arm.
‘Welcome, noble traveller and adventurer,’ said the woman in a long-rehearsed patter, ‘to the land that Health and Safety forgot. In these risk-averse times, the Cambrian Empire is one of the few places where danger is actually dangerous. The possibility of actual death brings fear and excitement to even the most mundane of pastimes; the adrenalin surge in knowing you have cheated death by a whisker is a wild ride to which you will wish to return time and time again. Now, what do you fancy?’
She indicated a board behind her, with each activity outlined next to a price, and how dangerous it was by way of a Calculated Fatality Index. The most dangerous was a six-day ‘wrestling with flesh-eating slugs’ holiday at 58 per cent, which I took to mean that for every hundred tourists willing to risk the dangers, fifty-eight would end up as a sort of semi-digested gloop. Below that was Tralfamosaur hunting with a Fatality Index of 42 per cent, and the list went down in danger from there, past ‘prodding a Hotax with a stick’ to ‘searching for the source of the River Wye’ and then to ‘watching Tralfamosaur from a distance’ before the least dangerous activity of all, a shopping trip to Cambrianopolis. This, while relatively risk-free by Cambrian standards, could still lose one visitor out of a hundred.
‘Mostly to crush injury, hold-ups and food poisoning,’ explained the tourist officer when I asked, ‘and the Fatality Index does rise to 2.2 per cent during the January sales. Now, what are you after?’
I had to think carefully. If I just said we were going to Llangurig, I wouldn’t even need a guide. But if Quizzler was right and the Eye of Zoltar was with Sky Pirate Wolff, I’d need the best guide there was. I decided to opt for the most adventurous scenario.
‘Party of three to discover the legendary Leviathans’ Graveyard, please,’ I replied, ‘and when there to meet up with Sky Pirate Wolff – by way of Llangurig to visit a friend.’
The woman looked more amused than shocked.
‘Yes, yes, very funny,’ she said. ‘Seriously, what would you like to do?’
‘As I said.’
‘Listen,’ she said, lowering her voice and beckoning me closer, ‘the reason we don’t list excursions to search for the not-very-likely Leviathans’ Graveyard is because of Sky Pirate Wolff. The last two expeditions both suffered an 86 per cent Fatality Index. Risk of death is our selling point; almost certain death is not. Dead tourists don’t come back and spend more money.’
‘I’ll be okay,’ I said, ‘I’m big into peril.’
‘Oh yeah?’ she said, unconvinced. ‘How big?’
‘I … sleep in the same room as a Quarkbeast.’
The tourist woman blinked twice. The Quarkbeast’s fearsome reputation was known all over the Kingdoms.
‘Leviathans’ Graveyard and Captain Wolff, eh?’
‘If it’s not too much trouble.’
‘Okay, then,’ said the tourist office woman, ‘there is one guide I can think of who might be willing to help you search for the Leviathans’ Graveyard,
but they won’t be cheap and this didn’t come through me. Wait outside and I’ll let them know.’
I thanked her and walked back out into the autumn sunshine and noticed the Bugatti had gone. Our luggage was sitting in the dust by the roadside, and sitting on top of our luggage was Perkins.
‘Where’s the car?’
‘Requisitioned by agents acting for Emperor Tharv,’ said Perkins meekly. ‘I tried to stop them but there were eight of them, and they all had very sharp swords.’
‘Couldn’t you have using a simple occluding spell or something?’
‘Yes, well, I could have done but it all happened so fast. But they did say thank you very politely and issued a receipt.’
Crime in the Cambrian Empire was always business, never personal. You’d not be a victim of crime here without an apology, an explanation of why you were being robbed and then a receipt to facilitate an insurance claim. Perkins passed me the receipt, which conveyed, in very official-looking language, that the car had been claimed by the Emperor as anything in the nation could be, but the note said that I would be compensated – to the value of one Bugatti Royale.
‘That’s a blow,’ I said, looking around, ‘what about the Princess? Don’t tell me they requisitioned her as well?’
‘No, she went shopping.’
The Princess returned a few moments later.
‘I had ID tags made for us so our bodies can be identified just in case,’ she said cheerfully, handing us the discs. ‘The man in the shop said they were Tralfamosaur gastric juice and flesh-eating slug ooze resilient. Where’s the Bugatti?’
I showed her the receipt.
‘Oh,’ she said, studying the piece of paper, ‘how interesting. Since it’s issued on Emperor Tharv’s order, technically it’s a one Bugatti banknote.’
‘And how would we redeem it?’ asked Perkins. ‘Go and ask Tharv for the equivalent in sports cars and take the change in motorcycles and hood ornaments?’
The Princess shrugged.
‘I don’t know. Shall I go and see if I can find a hire car?’
‘Make sure it’s good on all terrain,’ I replied, ‘and armoured.’
The Princess trotted off, enjoying her new-found freedom. It must have been quite a change for her, not being harassed by the press on her choice of boyfriends, her weight or who she would be voting for on The Kingdom of Snodd’s Got Talent.
While we waited, Perkins and I checked our budget as I hadn’t thought we’d be needing to hire a car, and a specialist guide was going to cost. We had enough, I figured, so long as we didn’t eat out too often.
‘Almost like a holiday, isn’t it?’ said Perkins, looking at the tourists moving here and there, organising their jeopardy gleefully.
‘If you say so,’ I replied absently, since I’d never been on a holiday, and wouldn’t know what to do if one chanced along.
‘Sort of peaceful,’ said Perkins, ‘tranquil even.’
At that precise moment there was a tremendous concussion from somewhere close at hand. Before I could even begin to gauge from where the explosion had come, there was another crack, then another, and within a short time the air was filled with a sound like constant rolling thunder, so loud and heavy as to be almost directionless. I looked up and noticed that the anti-aircraft guns less than a hundred yards away were firing into the sky. I had once been on the receiving end of anti-aircraft fire while attempting to escape on a flying carpet, and I can tell you that it is most unpleasant. I looked up to see what they were shooting at, and my heart froze as a distinctive silhouette jinked and twisted as the anti-aircraft shells exploded all around it.
‘Oh dear,’ said Perkins, ‘that’s Colin.’
Colin’s fall
And so it was. Colin, obviously finished with his supermarket opening, had dropped in to see how things were going and had been mistaken, we supposed, for a trespassing aircraft. We could do little but watch anxiously as Colin attempted to turn around and head back the way he had come. Unluckily, he was disoriented by the smoke, noise and hot shrapnel, and wandered farther into the Cambrian Empire’s airspace. Eventually there was a black puff of smoke, and Colin rolled on to his back and began to fall towards the earth. We could see that one wing was tattered and frayed where the skin covering had been torn, and the other beat the air ferociously in a vain attempt to control his descent.
I looked at Perkins; his index fingers were already pointing at the Dragon. He thought quickly and mumbled a few words under his breath.
‘Looking good,’ I said. The Dragon had stopped struggling as Perkins transformed him into something else. I then noticed a green glint as the sun caught the figure, and I realised that the Dragon had not changed into anything usefully energy-absorbing, but glass. The impact upon hitting the ground would be catastrophic.
‘Try again,’ I said, as quietly and casually as I could, given the circumstances.
Perkins did try again, and the Dragon was immediately no longer glass, but an ornate decorative Dragon carved from marble. The resultant impact with the earth would have the same fatal effect, and possibly leave a large hole, too.
‘Okay, okay, I’ve got it,’ said Perkins, and let fly again.
Colin was now less than a thousand feet from the earth and still whirling about as the air rushed past his now rigid wings. Gravity, never a close friend to Dragons, would doubtless raise the historical score to Dragons: nil, Gravity: sixty-three.
Perkins tried again and Colin changed to bronze, then a shiny metallic lucky Chinese Dragon with a waving front leg, then to alabaster. All of these feats, while powerful and complex in themselves, really helped us not one jot, and as Colin passed the three-hundred-foot mark and was changed by Perkins into a delicate ice sculpture, I did the last thing available to me. I punched Perkins hard on the arm. It was a risky undertaking and could have gone either way – to him getting the spell correct, or failing utterly.
‘What the—?’
‘Get it together,’ I snapped, ‘or you and me are done.’
Actually, him and me were not yet an item so we couldn’t be done, but I had to think that it might be something he valued, and give him an emotional boost to get the spell right. With only two hundred feet and a second or two to a nasty, shattered end, Perkins tried again and Colin changed abruptly to a dark matt-black substance.
I held my breath.
Colin hit the road with what I can only describe as probably the loudest, deepest and most dense-sounding thud I had ever heard. He narrowly missed two backpackers and a car as he momentarily spread out across the road to a flat disc about six inches thick. In an instant the rubber molecules that now made up his body sprang back into shape and Colin was catapulted high into the air. So high in fact, that the anti-aircraft guns opened up again, but this time with less accuracy, and none of the shell bursts came close. Pretty soon Colin was on his way back down but this time he landed five hundred yards or so farther away, and a second later was catapulted back into the air. We watched with growing despondency as Rubber Colin bounced off into the distance until he vanished below a low hill to the north.
‘Blast,’ said Perkins, lowering his now steaming finger in case anyone noticed he was responsible. They hadn’t, and Perkins suddenly looked tired and sat on our luggage, head in hands.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘I’ve not spelled that strongly before. Do I look okay?’
He looked tired and drained and somehow … different. More world-weary. I told him he probably needed an early night and he nodded in agreement.
‘Was that Colin?’ asked the Princess, walking back toward us.
I told her it was but to keep it under her hat. Magic was strictly forbidden in the Empire, and Perkins certainly didn’t want to be outed as a sorcerer.
‘How far do you think he went?’ she asked, staring at the horizon.
Perkins looked at his watch.
‘He’ll be bouncing for the next ten minutes or so.
Best guess – thirty or forty miles.’
‘How much wizidrical energy to change him back?’ I asked.
‘Bucketloads if you want it done immediately,’ replied Perkins thoughtfully, ‘but the spell will wear off on its own within a few days. Either way, he’s not flying out of here on his own – not with a wing like that.’
‘But he’s safe as a rubber dragon until he turns back?’
‘Sure – so long as no one tries to make car tyres or doorstops or gumboots out of him. But it’s not all bad,’ he added. ‘At least he’ll be waterproof if it rains.’
I sighed. This was a bad start to our search. I pulled my compass out of my bag and took a bearing on the hill behind which Colin had bounced, then drew a line on my map. It was, luckily enough, pretty much in the same direction we were to travel. If our calculations were correct, Colin would be running out of bounce not far from Llangurig.
‘They had run out of armoured cars,’ said the Princess ‘so I persuaded them to upgrade us to a military half-track at the same rate.’
She looked at Perkins, who was still sitting, head in hands.
‘Do you think we should upgrade this to a quest?’ she asked.
‘It is not a quest,’ I said emphatically. ‘If it was we’d need to register with the International Questing Federation, adhere to their “Code of Conduct” and pay them two thousand moolah into the bargain.’
This was true. The Questing Federation were powerful, and would insist on a minimum staffing requirement: at least one strong-and-silent warrior, a sage-like old man, and either a giant or a dwarf – and all of them cost bundles, not just in salary but in hotel bills too. To go on a quest these days you needed serious financial backing.
‘No,’ I said more emphatically, ‘this is a search, plain and simple.’
‘Jenny?’ said Perkins, still with his eyes closed.
‘Yes?’
‘Why were they shooting at Colin? At barely the size of a pony and with fiery breath no more powerful than a blowlamp, he’s not exactly dangerous.’
A voice chirped up behind us.