The Song of the Quarkbeast tld-2

by Jasper Fforde

  I had my eyes tight shut as soon as the vibrations began again, and I had just resigned myself to my second free-fall that day when I realised that we weren’t breaking up, but decelerating, and a few minutes later we were flying slowly along the First Troll Wall. The relief was extraordinary and I wanted to hug the Prince, but royal protocol disallowed it, so I simply smiled and congratulated him.

  ‘Do you think Owen’s okay?’ I asked.

  ‘I saw his parachute open.’

  ‘Me too. What about your carpet?’

  He looked around at the even shabbier rug. Large sections had peeled off and were flapping in the breeze.[32] He shook his head sadly.

  ‘We’ll take longer to get home, Jennifer, my friend, and she’ll not be flying until a rebuild.’

  ‘Then let’s hope Zambini’s close by.’

  The Troll Wall was a vast stone-built edifice over three hundred feet high and topped with rusty spikes. A second Troll wall was located about ten miles farther north, the result of a foolish misunderstanding three centuries previously over which particular wizard was allocated the building contract. It hadn’t made much difference. One wall or two, the Trolls still made meat patties of anyone who crossed over. The two walls stretched from the Clyde to Loch Lomond in the west, used the loch as defence, then rose once more and curved off in a westerly direction towards Stirling in the east.

  We approached and then circled the City of Stirling, where the Troll Gates were located – a pair of oak doors seventy feet high strengthened with steel bands. The last Troll War had been twelve years before, and after repairs and a change of lock on the Troll Gates just in case, everything had pretty much returned to normal, except that human settlers in the zone between the first and second walls had been moved out ‘just in case’.

  ‘Jennifer?’ came Tiger’s voice over the conch.

  I told Tiger we were at Stirling, and looked at my watch. We had three minutes before Zambini was due to reappear.

  ‘Okay,’ said Tiger, ‘Kevin’s not sure, but he thinks you’re to head to an abandoned village called Kippen, about eight miles west of the main gates and four miles north of the First Troll Wall.’

  I relayed the information to the Prince, who whirled his carpet round, and we shot off in that direction, skimming along the top of the wall as fast as the tattered state of the carpet would allow.

  ‘See any Trolls?’ asked the Prince as we crossed the First Troll Wall and went into what was now termed ‘unfriendly’ territory.

  ‘What does one look like?’ I asked, as few had seen one and survived.

  ‘Large, and usually covered in tattoos and warpaint. Clubs and axes are optional.’

  ‘We’ll know when we see one, I guess,’ I said, but even looking hard I could see no sign of life – just an empty landscape that, while devoid of recent human habitation, showed much evidence that people had once lived here. We saw a few abandoned landships encrusted with ivy as we headed west, their rusty flanks suggesting they’d burned first.

  After another few minutes the remains of a long-abandoned town hove into sight, and a quick look at the road sign on the outskirts told us we were indeed at Kippen. The Prince started to orbit slowly as I checked my watch. It was 16.02 and fourteen seconds. We had made it with a minute to spare.

  Trollvania

  ‘That will be my LZ,’[33] said the Prince, pointing at an open area of scrubby land behind the church. ‘I’ll drop you off and then orbit until you signal me in for EVAC.’

  ‘Don’t come and get me until I call you,’ I said, ‘no matter what. If I’m longer than half an hour, I’m not returning, and tell Tiger he can have my Matt Grifflon record collection and the Volkswagen. Understand?’

  ‘I understand. Good luck.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I looked around nervously as we approached low across a heavily overgrown housing estate, half expecting a Troll to jump out at any moment, as they are noted for two things: their ability to hide motionless and undetected in a damp river bed or pile of dead wood for months if necessary, and a lack of any sense of moderation when it came to the use of violence. An arm pulled from the socket was generally for starters, and it got more unpleasant from there on in.

  The Prince stopped the carpet a few feet from the ground and I jumped off. In an instant he was off again and I was suddenly quite alone. I stood there for a moment, looking around. After the noisy rush of air that had accompanied our journey north, all was now deathly quiet. Around me were the remains of houses partially reclaimed by a healthy growth of trees, brambles and moss. I could see a church near by with a damaged tower, the clock stuck permanently at ten to four. To my right there was a rusty landship, apparently now a home only to ravens. There was no sign of Zambini, Trolls or indeed any life at all, so I released my parachute, pulled off my flying helmet and bulky jacket and dumped them on the grass. I put a Fireball[34] in my pocket and placed the conch close to my lips.

  ‘Tiger?’ I whispered as I climbed over the wall at the back of the church. ‘Are you there?’

  ‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘Kevin’s gone into a trance and mumbling. Is that good news?’

  ‘Usually.’

  ‘Good. Hang on, he’s saying something.’ There was a pause. ‘Okay, here it is: The monument at Four Roads. Make any sense?’

  ‘Not yet,’ I replied, ‘but knowing Kevin, it soon will.’

  As my ears gradually stopped ringing from the flight I could hear rustles and creaks from the abandoned village, which made me more apprehensive, not less. I walked up the road, which now had weeds growing out of large cracks, and passed a rusty bicycle and scattered bricks and broken tiles. There was evidence of fierce fighting, too. Lying in among the dirt was the occasional corroded weapon, sections of body armour and human bones, some of which looked as if they had been cracked to extract the marrow.

  ‘Okay,’ I said to Tiger, ‘I’m at the top of Fore Street where there is a crossroads and the remains of a stone monument.’

  ‘I think you’re there,’ he replied over the conch.

  I looked around at the empty, shattered town. Towering above the crossroads was the abandoned landship I had seen from behind the church. It had halted atop the rubble of some houses opposite the monument, its twenty-foot-wide tracks sitting atop a rusty ice-cream van. It was 16.03 and fourteen seconds precisely and the Great Zambini was nowhere to be seen. I yelled his name as loud as I could and regretted it almost immediately. The sound echoed around the still village, and from somewhere in the distance I heard the breaking of roof tiles. Something had moved. Something big.

  ‘I need some more help,’ I said into the conch, ‘anything at all.’

  I hid behind the heavy tracks of the landship and then peered cautiously out. Farther up the road I saw a large tree sway as it was pushed aside. There was another distant crash and the sound of breaking glass, and I caught a glimpse of something move between two houses. Then, from the direction of the church, I heard a low guttural cry of interest and I froze. There were two of them, and one had just found my flying jacket and parachute.

  I felt myself break out into a sweat and pressed myself harder against the rusty tracks of the landship. I dug the Fireball out of my pocket in readiness. If I broke it on the ground a small burst of energy would fly to a hundred feet before exploding like a flare, and the Prince would come in and pick me up – but it would also give my position away to the Trolls. I’d have to hope he could move faster than they.

  I heard another crash and looked up the road to where I could see a cloud of dust roll into the street. A few seconds later a Troll stepped into the roadway. I like to think not much frightened me, but Trolls certainly did. It was a muscular male of perhaps twenty-five feet in height and it carried a large club fashioned from the bough of an oak. It was dressed in a leather loincloth made of cowhides stitched together, and aside from a pair of sandals and a small leather skullcap into which was stuck a juniper bush and a dried goat, it was otherwis
e naked. It seemed to have no body hair, and its face was smooth with just two holes for nostrils, no chin to speak of, a large mouth with two tusks jutting up against its cheeks and small eyes set deep into the skull. But what was wholly remarkable about the Troll was the adornment of its body, which was covered in a swirling pattern of fine tattoos that made it look both utterly fearsome and somehow curiously elegant.

  The Troll sniffed the air and then called to its partner in a voice that sounded like the deepest of organ pipes. Its partner answered and soon joined the first, absently removing a brick chimney on its way past and scrunching the bricks to powder in its massive fist.

  ‘Is this from a human?’ asked the second Troll, holding out my flying jacket between finger and thumb in the same way you might hold a week-old dead mouse. The jacket, while big and bulky on me, looked like an article of doll’s clothing in the Troll’s massive hand.

  ‘Regretfully so,’ replied the first as he unclipped a bugle he wore at his waist. ‘I’ll call pest control.’

  ‘Do we have to?’ said the second Troll, laying his hand on the first Troll’s forearm. ‘I know vermin have to be kept down, but one’s not going to cause any trouble, surely?’

  The first Troll looked at his colleague reproachfully.

  ‘Don’t get all sentimental, Hadridd. They’re dirty, spread diseases and breed endlessly. Did you know that a colony can outgrow the capacity of its environment in as little as twelve centuries? I know they look cute and can do tricks and make that funny squeaking noise when you stare at them close up, but honestly, culling is really for their own good.’

  ‘We could keep it as a pet,’ said the second Troll in a hopeful sort of voice. ‘Hagridd has two and says they’re delightful.’

  ‘I’ve always thought keeping humans as pets a bit disgusting,’ said the first with a shudder, ‘and if you let the children play with them they inevitably get thrown around the garden, and that’s just cruel. No, better to just snap their necks and be done with it.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said the second Troll, then added: ‘Shouldn’t we make sure there’s an infestation before we call pest control? You know what a strop they get into over false alarms.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said the first, and they sniffed at my jacket again, and began to walk in my direction.

  ‘Not what you expect, are they?’ came a familiar voice. I turned, and there was the Great Zambini. He was tall and handsome and was smiling in that fatherly manner that I had found so calming when I was new at Kazam. It was all I could do to stop myself crying and flinging my arms around him.

  ‘Thank heavens,’ I managed to say, swallowing down my emotions. ‘We haven’t much time—’

  ‘Then we won’t waste it here, young lady,’ he said, ushering me through a rusty ground-level escape hatch in the landship, just as the Trolls rounded the corner.

  ‘This way,’ he said, leading me past some machinery and up a steel staircase in the semi-gloom. As we reached the lower storage deck of the fighting vehicle, we heard the Trolls talking outside.

  ‘We’ll never get it now,’ said one of them.

  ‘I’ve an idea,’ said the other.

  We heard them walk off, then some low murmurs as they talked to one another.

  ‘We’re safe for the moment,’ said Zambini, leading me past the main engine room and up towards ‘B’ Deck, where the crew quarters were located. ‘Their knowledge of humans is fairly rudimentary.’

  This particular landship had not been set on fire, and all the crew’s provisions and equipment were still where they had been abandoned – food, water and racks of weapons – all with the Snodd Heavy Industries logo on them. Zambini sat on a crew couch and stared at me.

  ‘How long have I been gone?’ he asked.

  ‘Eight months.’

  He opened his eyes wide and shook his head sadly.

  ‘That long? This is my sixteenth return, and each runs into the next – it’s like casting oneself into stone but without the splitting headaches on waking. We’ve got about six minutes, by the way – I can’t stop myself vanishing again, but I can delay it. However did you find me, and what’s been going on?’

  I told him about Kevin, and how we had to trash both the carpets to get up here in time, then about the Big Magic, how we have two more Dragons, the wizidrical power on the rise, then how King Snodd made Blix the Court Mystician.

  ‘Theoretically that makes Conrad eighth in line to the throne,’ said Zambini incredulously.

  ‘It sounds as if the King and Tenbury are hell-bent on commercialising magic,’ I told him, ‘and they want to take control of Kazam. We’ve got a contest to decide the matter tomorrow.’

  ‘Kazam will win hands down,’ observed Zambini. ‘Blix and his cronies are useless.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. Lady Mawgon got changed to stone while trying to hack the Dibble Storage Coils and all the others are in prison on trumped-up charges – which leaves only Perkins. We haven’t a chance, unless you can tell us how to unlock the Dibbles. We’ve got four GigaShandars of power sitting there doing nothing.’

  ‘Without a passthought, you can’t, and the only people who know RUNIX well enough to crack it are myself, Mawgon, Monty Vanguard and Blix.’

  ‘Monty is stone too, and I’m not keen on asking Blix for help.’

  Zambini smiled.

  ‘Conrad as stone might solve a lot of problems.’

  ‘But what if he succeeds? I’m not sure handing him four Gig of raw crackle is a good idea.’

  ‘I think I agree with you on that score.’

  And that was when we heard the Trolls again.

  ‘Here, person person person,’ came a deep voice from near the rear cargo door, ‘I’ve got some lovely yummy honey for you. Here, person person person.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Do you think it’s gone?’ said the same Troll.

  ‘No. Leave the honey there and we’ll S-Q-U-A-S-H it when it comes to get it.’

  ‘Right,’ said the other Troll, and it all went quiet again.

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Zambini, getting to his feet and pacing around the crew quarters.

  ‘Anything else?’ I echoed. ‘Does there need to be anything else? The future of magic is in the balance!’

  ‘The thing about magic,’ said Zambini in a soft voice, ‘is that it often seems to have an intelligence. It moves in the direction it wants to. It may decide to let iMagic win as part of some big mysterious plan to which we are not yet party. Or, if it thinks Kazam should win tomorrow, it will find a way to ensure that we do.’

  ‘I’m not sure how,’ I replied somewhat dubiously. ‘I even asked Once Magnificent Boo to help us.’

  Zambini looked up at me, genuine concern on his face.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She lives alone with a lot of Quarkbeasts. A bit batty, if you ask me, and horribly selfish – she refused to help us.’

  ‘Do you know why?’ asked Zambini.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why she hasn’t undertaken a single spell since her kidnapping?’

  I shook my head. Zambini thought for a moment and took a deep breath.

  ‘Ever wondered why she never shakes hands? Why she always wears gloves?’

  I stared at him, and an awful realisation welled up inside me.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, holding up his own index fingers – the conduit of a sorcerer’s power, without which they would be powerless, ‘she wasn’t returned unharmed. The kidnappers removed her index fingers.’

  I didn’t speak for several moments. She could have been one of the all-time greats, and now she was studying Quarkbeasts and going slowly nuts. She had lived with her loss every day, knowing that a life of wonder and fulfilment in the Mystical Arts had been cruelly taken from her. I couldn’t imagine what it might be like. Greatness had slipped from her grasp.

  ‘Who did it?’

  ‘Two of the gang were found dead a week later, apparently over a squabble. There m
ight have been others, but no trace was ever found. I was away in Italy talking to Fabio Spontini about his work on Magical Field Theory, and by the time I got back they’d already taken her fingers. She blamed me for not being there, and Blix for messing up the negotiations.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I don’t think he would have. We both loved her dearly and the three of us could have done great things together – stuff that would have made the Mighty Shandar look like a Saturday afternoon hobbyist. But then Boo lost her fingers, Blix and I fell out over the direction of magic, and that was it. She’s not talked to either of us since.’

  He sighed and looked at his watch.

  ‘Two minutes left. I need to give you something.’

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope covered with tiny writing.

  ‘This is a list of notes I’ve been making while I’ve been jumping around. I thought it was an accident for a while – that I’d mispelled while vanishing – but now you’ve told me about the failure of Shandar to destroy the Dragons, I’m beginning to think it might have been the Mighty Shandar himself who wanted me out of the picture during the Big Magic, and now he has unfinished business he’ll keep me trapped out here for as long as he wants, rattling around the here and now like a pea in a whistle.’

  ‘What sort of unfinished business?’

  ‘This: he was paid eighteen dray-weights of gold to rid the Ununited Kingdoms of Dragons. He failed, and the Mighty Shandar doesn’t do refunds. He’ll want to return and deal with the Dragons once and for all. He’ll also want to take his revenge on the person who helped the Dragons foil his plan in the first place. Who was that, by the way?’