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  The Song of the Quarkbeast

  ( The Last Dragonslayer - 2 )

  Jasper Fforde

  A long time ago magic faded away, leaving behind only yo-yos, the extremely useful compass-pointing-to-North enchantment and the spell that keep bicycles from falling over. Things are about to change. Magical power is on the rise and King Snodd IV of Hereford has realised that he who controls magic controls almost anything. One person stands between Snodd and his plans for power and riches beyond the wildest dreams of avarice. Meet Jennifer Strange, sixteen-year-old acting manager of Kazam, the employment agency for sorcerers and soothsayers. With only one functioning wizard and her faithful assistant 'Tiger' Prawns, Jennifer must use every ounce of ingenuity to derail King Snodd's plans. It may involve a trip on a magic carpet at the speed of sound to the Troll Wall, the mysterious Transient Moose, and a powerless sorceress named Once Magnificent Boo. But one thing is certain: Jennifer Strange will not relinquish the noble powers of magic to big business and commerce without a fight.

  THE SONG OF THE QUARKBEAST

  Book Two of The Last Dragonslayer Series

  Jasper Fforde

  ‘In an instant Owen’s carpet was gone in a burst of tattered wool and cotton.’

  For Maggie and Stu

  With grateful thanks

  for kindnesses too numerous to mention

  ‘For every Quarkbeast there is an equal and opposite Quarkbeast’

  Miss Boolean Smith, Sorcerer (Rtd)

  Where we are right now

  I work in the magic industry. I think you’ll agree it’s pretty glamorous: a life full of spells, potions and whispered enchantments; of levitation, vanishings and alchemy. Of titanic fights to the death with the powers of darkness, of conjuring up blizzards and quelling storms at sea; of casting lightning bolts from mountains, and bringing statues to life in order to vanquish troublesome foes.

  If only.

  No, magic these days was simply useful. Useful in the same way that cars and dishwashers and can-openers are useful. The days of wild, crowd-pleasing stuff like commanding the oceans, levitating elephants and turning herring into taxi drivers were long gone, and despite the advent of a Big Magic[1] two months before, the return of unlimited magical powers had not yet happened. After a brief surge that generated weird cloud shapes and rain that tasted of elderflower cordial, the wizidrical power had dropped to nothing before rising again almost painfully slowly. No one would be doing any ocean-commanding for a while, elephants would remain unlevitated and a herring wouldn’t be losing anyone wanting to get to the airport. We had no foes to vanquish except the taxman, and the only time we got to fight the powers of darkness was during one of the Kingdom’s frequent power cuts.

  So while we at Kazam waited for magic to re-establish itself, it was very much business as usual: hiring out sorcerers to conduct low-level, mundane and very practical magic. You know the sort of thing: plumbing and rewiring, wallpapering and loft conversions. We also lifted cars for the city’s clamping unit, conducted Flying Carpet pizza deliveries and could predict weather with 23 per cent more accuracy than SNODD-TV’s favourite weather girl, Daisy Fairchild.

  But I don’t do any of that. I can’t do any of that. I organise those who can. The job I do is ‘Mystical Arts Management’, or more simply put, I’m an agent. The person who does the deals, takes the bookings and then gets all the flak when things go wrong – and little of the credit when it goes right. The place I do all this is a company called Kazam, the biggest House of Enchantment in the world. To be honest that’s not saying much – there are only two: Kazam and Industrial Magic, over in Stroud. Between us we have the only eight licensed sorcerers on the planet. And if you think that’s a responsible job for a sixteen-year-old, you’re right – I’m really only acting manager until the Great Zambini gets back.

  If he does.

  So as I said, it was very much business as usual at Kazam, and this morning we were going to try to find something that was lost. Not just ‘mislaid-it-whoops’ lost, which is easy, but ‘never-to-be-found’ lost, which is a good deal harder. We didn’t much like finding lost stuff as in general lost stuff doesn’t like to be found, but when work was slack, we’d do pretty much anything within the law. And that’s why Perkins, Tiger and myself were sitting in my parked Volkswagen one damp autumn morning in a roadside rest area not six miles from our home town of Hereford, the capital city of the Kingdom of Snodd.

  ‘Do you think a wizard even knows what a clock is for?’ I asked, somewhat exasperated, as I had promised our client that we’d start at 9.30 a.m. sharp, and it was twenty past already. I’d told the sorcerers to get here at nine for a briefing, but I might as well have been talking to the flowers.

  ‘If you have all the time in the world,’ replied Tiger, referring to a sorcerer’s often greatly increased life expectancy, ‘then I suppose a few minutes either way doesn’t matter so much.’

  Horton or ‘Tiger’ Prawns was my assistant and had been with us only for the past two months. He was tall for his twelve years and had close-curled sandy-coloured hair and freckles that danced around a snub nose. Like most foundlings of that age, he wore his oversized hand-me-downs with a certain pride. He was here this morning to learn the peculiar problems associated with a finding – and with good reason. He was to take over from me in two years’ time. Once I was eighteen, I was out.

  Perkins nodded an agreement.

  ‘Some wizards do seem to live a long time,’ he observed. This was undoubtedly true, but they were always cagey about how they did it, and changed the subject to mice or onions or something when asked.

  The Youthful Perkins was our best and only trainee all wrapped up in one. He had been at Kazam just over a year and was the only person in the company roughly my own age. He was good looking, too, and aside from suffering bouts of overconfidence that sometimes got him into trouble when he spelled more quickly than he thought, he would be good for the company and good for magic in general. I liked him, too, but since his particular field of interest was remote suggestion – the skill of projecting thoughts into people’s heads at a distance – I didn’t know whether I actually liked him or he was suggesting I like him, which was creepy and unethical all at the same time. In fact, the whole remote suggestion or ‘seeding’ idea was banned once it was discovered to be the key ingredient behind advertising and promoting talentless boy bands, something that had until then been something of a mystery.

  I looked at my watch again. The sorcerers[2] we were waiting for were the Amazing Dennis ‘Full’ Price and Lady Mawgon. Despite their magical ability, Mystical Arts Practitioners – to give them their official title – could barely get their clothes on in the right order, and often needed to be reminded to have a bath and attend regular mealtimes. Wizards are like that – erratic, petulant, forgetful, passionate, and hugely frustrating. But the one thing they weren’t was boring, and after a difficult start when I first came to work here, I now regarded them all with a great deal of fondness – even the really insane ones.

  ‘I should really be back at the Towers revising,’ fretted the Youthful Perkins, who had his Magic Licence hearing that afternoon and was understandably a bit jumpy.

  ‘Full Price suggested you come along to observe,’ I explained. ‘Finding lost stuff is all about teamwork.’

  ‘Do sorcerers like teamwork?’ asked Tiger, who, after ice cream and waffles, enjoyed questions more than anything else.

  ‘The old days of lone wizards mixing weird potions in the top of the North Tower are over,’ I said. ‘They’ve got to learn to work together, and it’s not just me who says it – the Great Zambini was very keen on rewriting the rulebook.’ I looked at my
watch. ‘I hope they actually do turn up,’ I added, for as Kazam’s acting manager in the Great Zambini’s absence, I was the one who did the grovelling apologies to any disgruntled clients – something I did more than I would have liked.

  ‘Even so,’ said Perkins, ‘I’ve passed my Finding Module IV, and always found the practice hiding slipper, even when it was hidden under Mysterious X’s bed.’

  This was true, and while finding something random like a slipper was good practice if you wanted to learn to find stuff, there was more to it than that. In the Mystical Arts, there always is. The only thing you really get to figure out after a lifetime of study is that there’s more stuff to figure out. Frustrating and enlightening, all in one.

  ‘The slipper had no issues with being found,’ I said in an attempt to explain the unexplainable. ‘If something doesn’t want to be found, then it’s harder. The Mighty Shandar could hide things in plain sight by simply occluding them from view. He demonstrated the technique most famously with an unseen elephant in the room during the 1826 World Magic Expo.’

  ‘Is that where the “elephant in the room” expression comes from?’

  ‘Yes; his name was Daniel.’

  ‘You should be taking the Magic Test on my behalf,’ remarked Perkins gloomily. ‘You know a lot more than I do; there are whole tracts of the Codex Magicalis[3] I haven’t even read.’

  ‘I’ve been here three years longer than you,’ I pointed out, ‘so I’m bound to know more. But having me take your test would be like asking a person with no hands to sit your piano exam.’

  No one knew why some people could do magic and others couldn’t. I’m not good on the theory behind magic, other than knowing it’s a fusion between science and faith, but the practical way of looking at it is this: magic swirls about us like an invisible fog of energy which can be tapped by those gifted enough using a variety of techniques that centre around layered spelling, mumbled incantations and a channelled burst of concentrated thought from the index fingers. The technical name for this energy was ‘the variable electro-gravitational mutable subatomic force,’ which doesn’t mean anything at all – confused scientists just gave it an important-sounding name so as not to lose face. The more usual term was ‘wizidrical energy’, or, more simply, ‘the crackle’.

  ‘By the way,’ said Perkins in a breezy manner, ‘I’ve got two tickets to see Jimmy ‘Daredevil’ Nuttjob have himself fired from a cannon through a brick wall.’

  Jimmy Nuttjob was the Ununited Kingdom’s most celebrated travelling daredevil, and tickets to see his madcap stunts were much in demand. He had eaten a car tyre to live orchestral accompaniment the year before; it had been a great show until he nearly choked on the valve.

  ‘Who are you taking?’ I asked, glancing at Tiger. The ‘will Perkins gather up the courage to ask me out?’ issue had been going on for a while.

  Perkins cleared his throat as he built up the courage.

  ‘You, if you want to come.’

  I stared at the road for a moment, then said: ‘Who, me?’

  ‘Yes, of course you,’ said Perkins.

  ‘You might have been talking to Tiger.’

  ‘Why would I ask Tiger to watch a lunatic fire himself through a brick wall?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you ask me?’ asked Tiger in a mock-aggrieved tone. ‘Watching some idiot damage themselves might be just my thing.’

  ‘That’s entirely possible,’ agreed Perkins, ‘but while there’s a prettier alternative, you’ll always remain ninth or tenth on my list.’

  We all fell silent.

  ‘Pretty?’ I said, swivelling in the driver’s seat to face him, ‘you want to ask me out because I’m pretty?’

  ‘Is there a problem with asking you out because you’re pretty?’

  ‘I think you blew it,’ said Tiger with a grin. ‘You should be asking her out because she’s smart, witty, mature beyond her years and every moment in her company makes you want to be a better person – pretty of face should be at the bottom of the list.’

  ‘Oh, blast,’ said Perkins despondently. ‘It should, shouldn’t it?’

  ‘At last!’ I muttered as we heard the distinctive dugadugadugaduga of Lady Mawgon’s motorcycle, and we climbed out of the car as she came to a stop. I caught her eye almost immediately, but wished I hadn’t as she was wearing her ‘I’m about to harangue Jennifer’ sort of look. Of course, being harangued by Lady Mawgon was nothing new; in fact, I was often harangued by her at lunch, dinner and teatime – and at random times in between. She was our most powerful sorcerer, and also the crabbiest. She was so crabby, in fact, that even really crabby people put their crabbiness aside for a few minutes to write gushing yet mildly sarcastic fan letters.

  ‘Lady Mawgon,’ I said in a bright voice, bowing low as protocol dictated, ‘I trust the day finds you well?’

  ‘An idiotic expression made acceptable only because it is adrift in a sea of equally idiotic expressions,’ she muttered grumpily, stepping from the motorcycle that she rode side-saddle. ‘Is that little twerp attempting to hide behind what you jokingly refer to as a car?’

  ‘Good morning,’ said Tiger in his best ‘gosh, didn’t see you there, I wasn’t really hiding’ voice, ‘you are looking most well this morning.’

  Tiger was lying. Lady Mawgon looked terrible, with lank hair, a complexion like dented bells and a sour, pinched face. Her lips had never seen a smile, and rarely passed an intentional friendly word. She was dressed in a long black bell-shaped crinoline dress that was buttoned up to her throat in one direction, and swept the floor in the other. When she moved it was as if on roller skates; she didn’t so much walk as glide across the ground in a very disturbing manner. Tiger had bet me half a moolah that she actually did wear roller skates. Trouble was, neither of us could think of a good, safe or respectful method of finding out.

  She greeted Perkins more politely as he was, like her, of the wizidrical calling, and talked briefly about his Magic Test and how important it was he passed. She didn’t waste a salutation on either of us as Tiger and I were foundlings and thus of little social rank or regard. Despite our low status, our presence aggravated Lady Mawgon badly as Tiger and I were crucial to the smooth running of the company. It was how Kazam’s founder the Great Zambini liked it. He always felt that foundlings were better equipped to deal with the somewhat bizarre world of Mystical Arts Management. ‘Pampered civilians,’ as he put it, ‘would panic at the weirdness or think they knew better, or try to improve things, or get greedy and try to cash in.’ He was probably right.

  ‘While you’re here,’ announced Lady Mawgon, breaking into my thoughts, ‘I need to run a test spell later this morning.’

  ‘How many Shandars, ma’am?’

  The ‘Shandar’ was the unit of wizidrical power, named after the Mighty Shandar himself, a mage so powerful his footsteps spontaneously caught fire when he walked. The practical use of flaming footprints was questionable and most likely just for dramatic effect – the Mighty Shandar was not only the most powerful wizard who had ever lived, but also something of a showman.

  ‘About ten MegaShandars,’[4] said Lady Mawgon sullenly, annoyed at having to suffer the ignominy of having to run her test spells past me first.

  ‘That’s a considerable amount of crackle,’ I said as I wondered what she was up to, and hoped she wouldn’t attempt to bring her pet cat Pusskins back to some sort of semi-life, an act not only seriously creepy, but highly frowned upon. ‘May I enquire as to what you are planning to do?’

  ‘I’m going to try and hack into the Dibble Storage Coils. It may help us with the bridge job.’

  I breathed a sigh of relief. This changed matters considerably, and she was right. We had agreed to rebuild Hereford’s medieval bridge on Friday, and we needed all the help we could get, which was why Perkins was taking his Magic Test today rather than next week. He’d still be a novice, but six sorcerers would be better than five – magic always worked better with the wizards in use divisibl
e by three.[5]

  ‘Let me see,’ I said, consulting my pocketbook to check we had no clashes. Two sorcerers spelling at the same time could deplete the crackle, and there is nothing worse than running out of steam when only two-thirds of the way through the spell – a bit like having a power cut just when you get to the good bit in a book.

  ‘At eleven the Price Brothers are moving Snamoo,[6] so any time after eleven fifteen would be good – but I’ll double-check with Industrial Magic just in case.’

  ‘Eleven fifteen it is,’ replied Lady Mawgon stonily. ‘You may observe, if you so choose.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I replied, then added cautiously: ‘Lady Mawgon, please don’t think me insensitive, but any attempt to reanimate Mr Pusskins on the back of the Dibble Storage Coils hacking enchantment might be looked on disfavourably by the other wizards.’

  Her eyes narrowed and she gave me one of those stares that seem to hit the back of my skull like a dozen hot needles.

  ‘None of you have any idea what Mr Pusskins meant to me. Now, what are we doing here?’

  ‘Waiting for the Amazing Dennis Price.’

  ‘How I deplore poor timekeeping,’ she said, despite being almost half an hour late herself. ‘Got any money? I’m starving.’

  Perkins gave her a one-moolah coin.

  ‘Most kind. Walk with me, Perkins.’

  And she glided silently off towards a roadside snack bar at the other end of the lay-by.

  ‘Do you want anything?’ asked Perkins as he made to follow Lady Mawgon.

  ‘Eating out gives foundlings ideas above their station,’ came Lady Mawgon’s decisive voice, quickly followed by an admonishment to the owner of the snack bar: ‘How much for a bacon roll? Scandalous!’

  ‘A running sore has more charm,’ said Tiger, leaning against the car, ‘and since when was a roadside snack bar eating out? That’s like saying listening to the radio out of doors is like going to a live show.’