The Song of the Quarkbeast

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 otherwise 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.