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I didn’t sleep well that night. It wasn’t my fault; there was something in the air. Sorcerers tend to transmit their emotions when excited, upset, anxious or confused, and it permeates through the building like smelly drains. I’d taken to sleeping under an aluminised eiderdown, but it hadn’t helped – and was quite possibly a practical joke played by Wizard Moobin, who thought giving duff advice to juniors funny. For years he’d maintained that the Three Degrees were a triumvirate of sorceresses who specialised in reducing the temperature to just above absolute zero.

Tiger had gone by the time I awoke. The Quarkbeast too, so I imagined it had shown him the usual route for its morning prowl – in unused back alleys and the wasteground behind the papermill, where its fearsome appearance wouldn’t send anyone into traumatic shock. I knew the Quarkbeast well, and it sometimes frightened even me. It is said that the only thing a Quarkbeast looks good to is another Quarkbeast, but they never gather in pairs, for obvious reasons.

I had a quick bath, dressed, and stepped out of my room. I was on the third floor, sandwiched between the room shared by the Sisters Karamazov and Mr Zambini’s suite. I walked down the corridor and noted a sharp sensation in the air, very similar to the tingling that precedes a spell. The lights flickered in the corridor and my bedroom door, which I had closed, slowly swung open. I felt the building shimmer and the tingling sensation grew stronger and then, one by one, the light bulbs fell from their fittings, bounced on the carpet and then rolled to the far end of the corridor. Beneath my feet I could feel the floorboards start to bend and one of the many cats we have in the building shot across the floor and leaped out of the open window. I needed no further warnings. Zambini had briefed me about a Magiclysm, although I had never witnessed one. Without hesitation I ran to the alarm positioned next to the lift, broke the glass and pressed the large red button.

The klaxon sounded in the building, warning all those within to use whatever countermeasures they could, and almost immediately the misters filled the entire hotel with the fine dampness of water, which felt like stepping inside a cloud. Water is an ideal moderator and is about the only thing that can naturally quench a spell that is about to go critical. I paused and a few seconds later there was a tremendous detonation from somewhere on the fifth floor. The tingling and vibrations abruptly stopped and I turned to see a cloud of plaster and dust descend the stairwell. I switched off the alarm and ran up the stairs – lifts, even enchanted ones, should never be used in an emergency. I found Wizard Moobin lying in a heap on the fifth-floor landing.

‘Moobin!’ I exclaimed as the dust began to settle. ‘What on earth happened to you?’

He didn’t answer. Instead, he clambered unsteadily to his feet and returned to his apartment, the door of which had been blown clean off its hinges and was now embedded in the wall opposite. I put my head around the door and stared at the devastation. A wizard’s room is also their laboratory, as all sorcerers are inveterate tinkerers by nature, and entire lifetimes are spent in pursuit of a specific spell to do a specific job. Even something as inconsequential as the charm for finding a lost hammer had taken Grendell of Cleethorpes an entire lifetime to weave in the twelfth century. A destroyed workshop often indicated several decades of important work lost in one short blast of uncontrolled wizardry. Magic can be strong stuff and bite the unwary.

I followed Wizard Moobin into his room and trod carefully through the jumbled wreckage. Most of his books had been destroyed and all the carefully laid-out glassware, retorts and flasks had been reduced to shards. But about this, Moobin seemed curiously unconcerned, nor was he worried that his clothes had been blown off him, and he was now dressed only in a pair of underpants and a sock.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked, but the wizard was far too busy searching for something to answer. I exchanged glances with Half Price, who had arrived at the door. He looked very similar to his elder brother, only smaller by a factor of two.

‘Wow!’ said the Youthful Perkins, who had also just arrived. ‘I’ve never seen a spell go critical before. What were you doing?’

‘I’m fine,’ Moobin muttered, turning over a broken tabletop. I picked up a fire extinguisher and put out a small fire in one corner of the room.

‘What happened?’ I asked again, and Moobin suddenly stood up from where he had been searching in a pile of smouldering papers and with shaking hand passed me a small toy soldier. It had only one leg, carried a musket and was very heavy. It was made of pure gold.

‘Yes?’ I asked, still in the dark.

‘Lead, used to be, was, like, at least. Then, well—’ exclaimed the Wizard excitedly, trying to find a chair undamaged enough to sit on.

‘You’re babbling,’ I told him.

‘Lead – now . . . gold!’ he said at last.

‘Way to go!’ said the Youthful Perkins enthusiastically. He had been joined by the Sisters Karamazov, who were jostling each other for the best view.

‘Lead into gold!?’ I repeated incredulously, knowing full well that such a spell requires a subatomic meddling that is almost unheard of below the status of Grand Master Sorcerer.

‘How did you manage to do that?’

‘That’s the interesting thing,’ replied Moobin, ‘I have no idea. Every morning I concentrate my mind on that lead soldier, summon up every Shandar in my body and let fly. For twenty-eight years nothing has happened; not a flicker. But this morning—’

‘Big Magic!’ yelled the younger Karamazov sister.

Wizard Moobin looked up abruptly.

‘Do you think so?’

‘Rubbish,’ returned her sister, ‘don’t listen to her – she’s one spell short of a curse.’

‘I was more powerful in the rewiring job yesterday,’ Moobin said thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps the surge has sustained for a bit longer.’

This, I mused, was possible. The background wizidrical power was subject to periodical fluctuations. There were, however, more practical matters to consider.

‘I hate to be a stickler for regulations,’ I said, ‘but you’re going to have to fill out a form B2-5C for this. I know we’re in the Towers, but we should stay on the safe side. We’d better do a P3-8F as well, just in case.’

‘P3-8F?’ queried Moobin. ‘I haven’t heard of that one before.’

‘Experimental spells resulting in accidental damage of a physical nature,’ put in the younger Karamazov sister, who, despite the repeated lightning strikes, could still have moments of lucidity.

‘I see,’ replied Moobin, turning to me. ‘If you fill them in, I’ll sign them.’

I left him to tidy up and walked downstairs to the ground floor, where I met Tiger and the Quarkbeast as they returned. Tiger had a graze on his nose, his clothes were scuffed and he had some twigs in his hair.

‘If he starts to run you have to drop his leash as soon as possible.’

‘I know that now.’

‘Did he drag you far?’

‘It wasn’t the distance,’ replied Tiger, ‘it was the terrain. What’s going on?’

‘Wizard Moobin experienced a surge,’ I said as we entered the offices in the Avon Suite. I sat down at my desk and pulled the Codex Magicalis towards me to make sure I didn’t need to fill out any more paperwork. ‘Something’s going on. Yesterday they finished the rewiring in record time, and this morning Moobin turned lead into gold.’

‘I thought the power of magic was diminishing?’

‘It is, in general. But every now and again it surges upwards and they can all do things they haven’t been able to do for years. The problem is that surges usually herald a slump, and if you couple this with what Kevin Zipp told us yesterday, we could find ourselves unemployed pretty soon.’

‘The death of a Dragon? You think that might actually happen?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied, ‘but there’s a reason Kazam is based in the Kingdom of Hereford. We’re twenty miles away from the Dragonlands, and while a link between Dragons and magic has never been fully proved, there’s more than enough anecdotal evidence to connect the two. In any event,’ I added, ‘I think we need to find out more.’

‘By the way,’ said Tiger, ‘is the Quarkbeast allowed to chew corrugated iron before breakfast?’

‘Only galvanised,’ I replied without looking up, ‘the zinc keeps his scales shiny.’

There was an excited buzz in the breakfast room that morning, and not just because Unstable Mabel had agreed to cook waffles. The talk was about Moobin’s accomplishment and how everyone’s power seemed to have increased. Although they had all gone off to try the ‘lead into gold’ gag for themselves, no-one else had succeeded, leading me to believe that Moobin had managed it only because he was the sole person up that morning, and the battery of wizidrical power that was Zambini Towers had been available to him and him alone.

Aside from the brief excitement, there seemed to be little going on that morning. I had a job for Full Price to divine the position of a wedding ring that had been flushed accidentally down the loo, and another tree-moving job that the Green Man and Patrick of Ludlow could handle. I sorted through the mail. There were a few cheques so at least I could speak to the bank manager again. There was also a letter that carried the official seal of the Hereford City Council, and it informed me that our contract to clean the city’s drains would not be renewed. I called my contact at the council to try to find out why.

‘The fact is,’ said Tim Brody, who was acting assistant deputy head of drains, ‘that Blok-U-Gon, the well-known and TV-advertised industrial drain unblockers, have undercut your price, and we have a budget to think of.’

‘I’m sure we can come to some arrangement,’ I said, trying to act how Mr Zambini might. Some work we did at a loss, either simply to keep the sorcerers busy, or to give us a presence in the marketplace. We needed the public to see us working in order to gain their trust and promote wizardry as simply a way of life. The last thing we needed was for the fifteenth-century view of sorcerers to spring to the fore, and for the citizenry to regard those at Kazam with loathing and mistrust.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘a drain cleared by magic is the best way. It doesn’t smell, no fuss, you don’t have to be embarrassed by what you blocked it up with, and besides, I offer a good guarantee. If it blocks again within twenty-four hours we redo the job for free and charm the moles from your garden – or your face: the choice is yours. I even do the form B1-7Gs for you. Besides, it’s traditional.’

‘It’s not just the cost, Jennifer. My mother used to be a sorceress so I’ve always tried to use you guys. The problem is that King Snodd’s useless brother has recently bought a five per cent share in Blok-U-Gon, and, well, you see?’

‘Oh,’ I said, realising that this was bigger than both of us, ‘right. Thanks for your time, Tim. I’m sure you did your best.’

I hung up. Although King Snodd IV was in general a fair and just ruler who seldom put people to death without good reason, he was not averse to making edicts that were of financial benefit to him and his immediate family. There was nothing I could do. He was the King, after all, and, indentured servitude or not, I and all those who held Hereford nationality were loyal subjects of the Crown.

‘We just lost the drain unblocking contract to King Snodd’s useless brother,’ I said.

‘I don’t know about his useless brother, but Mother Zenobia took us all to see King Snodd on Military Hardware Parade Day,’ remarked Tiger thoughtfully.

‘What did you think?’

‘The landships were impressive.’

‘I meant about the King.’

He thought for a moment.

‘Shorter than he looks during the weekly TV address.’

‘He does the address sitting down.’

‘Even so.’

But Tiger was right.

‘The six-foot-tall Queen Mimosa doesn’t help him,’ I observed. ‘She used to work here thirty years ago when she was plain Miss Mimosa Jones. Mr Zambini said she could pollinate plants over seven times more efficiently than bees. A good little earner, he said, given Hereford’s fruit exports. But then Prince Snodd took an interest, proclaimed his undying love and she renounced her calling to be the princess, later Queen. Mr Zambini was sad to lose her, but the bees were relieved to be back to full employment.’

‘She’s very beautiful,’ said Tiger.

‘And witty and wise,’ I added, ‘what with all the stand-up comedy she does, and the Troll Wars Widows charity.’

‘Quark.’

The door to the office cracked open and a large man with a sharp suit and a fedora put his head round the door. He soon noticed the Quarkbeast. Hard not to, really.

‘Does he, er . . . bite?’

‘Never deeper than the bone.’

He jumped.

‘My joke, Mr . . . ?’

The large man looked relieved and entered. He removed his hat and sat in the chair I offered him while Tiger was dispatched to fetch a cup of tea.

‘My name is Mr Trimble,’ announced the man, ‘of Trimble, Trimble, Trimble, Trimble and Trimble, attorneys-at-law.’

He handed me a card.

‘That’s me there,’ he said, helpfully pointing to the third Trimble from the left.

‘Jennifer Strange,’ I replied, handing him a brochure and rate-card.

There was a pause.

‘Can I speak to someone in charge?’

‘That’s me.’

‘Oh!’ he said apologetically. ‘You seemed a little young.’

‘I’m sixteen in two weeks – I think,’ I said. ‘And I’ve had a driver’s licence since I was thirteen. You can talk to me.’

The Kingdom of Hereford was unique in the Ununited Kingdoms for having driving tests based on maturity, not age, much to the chagrin of a lot of males, some of whom were still failing to make the grade at thirty-two.

‘Commendable, Miss Strange, but I usually speak to Mr Zambini.’

‘Mr Zambini is regrettably . . . unavailable right now.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Indisposed,’ I replied firmly. ‘How can I help?’

‘Very well,’ said Mr Trimble, once he could see I would not be moved. ‘I represent the Consolidated Useful Stuff Land Development Corporation.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I replied. ‘But unless you really want to change, there’s not a lot we can do.’

‘I don’t regard it as a problem, Miss Strange,’ he replied testily.

‘Oh,’ I said, having got the wrong end of the stick, ‘sorry.’

‘Never mind. Do you have any reliable pre-cogs on your books?’

‘I have two,’ I answered happily, glad that this morning wouldn’t be all bad news. The Consolidated Useful Stuff Land Development Corporation was the property arm of Consolidated Useful Stuff, and there wasn’t much that ConStuff didn’t do and own. They even had their own kingdom in the chain of islands to the east of Trollvania, which managed to make cheap and shabby goods far more cheaply and shabbily than anyone else – a clear advantage that allowed them to dominate the Ununited Kingdoms’ cheap and shabby goods market. It was said that of every pound, spondoolip, dollop, acker or moolah spent, one in six went into ConStuff’s pocket. No one much liked them, but few didn’t shop there. ConWearStuff had recently introduced an ‘all you can wear for five moolah’ section, and on my miserable allowance, I couldn’t afford to shop anywhere else. To my credit, I felt guilty afterwards.

‘Two pre-cogs?’ said Trimble, taking a chequebook from his pocket. ‘That’s excellent news. I wonder if any of them have predicted the death of the loathsome Maltcassion recently?’

I hope he didn’t see me flinch.

‘Why?’

‘Well,’ continued Mr Trimble genially, ‘it’s just that my aunt had a vision last night of the Dragon’s death.’

‘Did she say when?’

‘No; this year, tomorrow, who knows? She’s only rated a 629.8, so her predictions are a bit wild. But I can’t ignore it. All that land ripe for claiming. The precise time of the Dragon’s death would be invaluable to a property developer, if you get my meaning. Land is so much better managed when there is only one company administering it. Having the general public own dribs and drabs here and there and everywhere can be highly irksome, wouldn’t you agree?’

He smiled and handed me a cheque. I gasped. It was for two million Herefordian moolah. I’d never seen so many zeros in one place without ‘overdrawn’ written next to them.

‘If you can tell me the precise time and date I will return and sign that cheque. But only for the correct time and date. Do you understand?’

‘You . . . want to cash in on the death of the last Dragon?’

‘Precisely what I mean,’ he said happily, mistaking my sense of annoyance for one of agreement, ‘I’m so glad we understand one another.’

Before I could say another word he had shaken my hand and walked out of the door, leaving me staring at the cheque. His offer would clear our overdraft and quite possibly see all of the wizards into a cosy retirement – always a possibility, given the diminishing power of magic.

‘By the way,’ he said, popping his head round the door again, ‘there seems to be a moose in the corridor.’

‘That would be Hector,’ said Tiger, ‘he’s transient.’

‘Perhaps so,’ replied Trimble, ‘but he’s blocking the way.’

‘Just walk through him,’ I said, still deep in thought, ‘and if you’ve ever wanted to know how a moose works, stop halfway and have a good look round.’

‘Right,’ said Mr Trimble, and left.

I leaned back in my chair. The apparent word of Maltcassion’s demise was getting about. The death of a Dragon was a matter of some consequence, and such things are not to be treated lightly. And when I’m in need of advice, there is only one place to go: Mother Zenobia.