The Last Dragonslayer (10 page)

‘They’re fantastic!’ I muttered, adding: ‘Don’t think me rude, but . . . ?’

‘I’m as surprised as you are,’ he confessed, pulling a small device from his pocket. It was a portable Shandarmeter – a device for measuring wizidrical power. He turned the gadget on and handed it to me. I pointed the meter at him as he levitated the vase.

‘What did I get?’

‘3000 Shandars.’

‘Last week I could barely manage 1500,’ said Moobin excitedly. ‘Even if we discount the lead/gold switcheroo as a surge, I’m still twice as powerful as I was two days ago.’

‘You think it’s connected with the Dragondeath?’

‘A definite link between Dragons and magic was never proved, but the nearer I am to the Dragonlands, the stronger my powers. The same jobs I might try in London take a lot more effort.’

‘You’re not the only one,’ I replied drily. ‘I can’t send Mrs Croft to do anything worthwhile farther than Oxford, and Roger Kierkegaard failed utterly when he was on that geological survey in the Sinai.’

The wizard sighed.

‘I rarely like to work much farther than Yorkshire, yet my father was powerful as far away as the Great Troll Wall.’

‘There were more Dragons then,’ I answered. ‘More dragons, more magic, fewer dragons, less magic. The thing is,’ I added, ‘when Maltcassion dies, does magic go with him? All this might be the last knockings – the brief surge an engine will give before it runs out of petrol.’

Moobin went quiet.

‘There could be something in what you say. Sister Karamazov mentioned a Big Magic, but I have my doubts.’

‘Big Magic?’

Moobin shrugged.

‘It’s an old wizard’s legend – of a massive burst of wizidrical power that changes everything.’

‘Good or bad?’

‘No one knows.’

We stood in silence for a moment.

‘Perhaps if I were to talk to the Dragonslayer?’ I ventured.

‘Is there one?’

‘There
has
to be, doesn’t there? It was part of the Dragonpact.’

‘You could try. It’s possible that the Dragon may not die. After all, seers and pre-cogs only see a
version
of the future. There are few premonitions – if any – that can’t be altered.’

Wizard Moobin left soon after and I gazed at the roses as they twinkled and faded as the magic wore off. Then Owen of Rhayder knocked on my door. He was our second carpeteer. Owen had defected to Hereford from the ramshackle Cambrian Potentate in Mid Wales about ten years previously, which wasn’t hard to do if your particular skill was carpet.

‘Look at this, Jennifer, girl,’ he said crossly, unfurling the carpet and letting it hover in the middle of the room.

‘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.

‘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.