13
The first slogan they used was: ‘Boss-eyed? You need Vision Boss!’ but it was not well received, and hastily withdrawn.
14
Sister Yolanda’s strike rate was the best ever at an astonishing 92 per cent. But then she only made two hundred and twenty-five in her sixty-seven years, which may explain it. Most precogs spew them out by the dozen, daily.
15
Constuff is a contraction of ‘Consolidated Useful Stuff PLC’, the Ununited Kingdom’s leading purveyor of cheap and shoddy goods. They are so large they actually own a country – Constuffia – which is full of factories where poorly paid labourers toil ceaselessly in order to make the unUK the leading exporter of cheap and shoddy goods. A recent initiative to throw the goods straight into landfill and avoid costly transportation costs has been enthusiastically embraced.
16
Despite being of royal stock, the prince insisted he be treated as a civilian. We liked him a lot for it.
17
A Mandrake Sentience Emulation Protocol is a clever piece of spelling that gives the appearance of life without something actually being alive – ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties all use Mandrake, and if woven well, they are very lifelike.
18
A thousand MegaShandars is equal to one GigaShandar, and a thousand GigaShandars is one TeraShandar; 28.2 TeraShandars is the estimated total wizidrical power discharged throughout the history of magic – the equivalent of taking Hereford’s cathedral to the moon and back, and still having enough left over to take it around the earth ten times.
19
Very like a password, but infinitely more complex. To share a passthought you really need to have witnessed the event or emotion the passthought was based on.
20
An armoured Rolls-Royce covered in copper spikes that was used by Jennifer when she was the Last Dragonslayer.
21
Without the Quarkbeast there to save Jenny’s life with the sacrifice of his own, it is unlikely there would be any magic at all.
22
A form of plastic explosive whose principal ingredient is heavily nitrated marzipan mixed with cayenne pepper. Easily shaped, it is manufactured by the Kingdom of Cumbria, which has the largest deposits of natural marzipan in the world.
23
A mixture of levitation and juggling. Although not of any huge practical use, it is a measure of a practitioner’s skill. To levitate one or ten objects is easy; to make them all do different things when in the air takes considerable power and concentration. The Mighty Shandar could reputedly also do Blix’s trick but with bison. Remarkable to behold, but what the bison thought about it was not recorded. Owing to constraints within the ARAMAIC-128 notation required in the enchantment, thirty-two objects is the maximum anyone can work with.
24
Colin is the smaller of the two if you ever meet. At the time of the events surrounding the bridge gig they were spending a fortnight in Washington, DC, reading the entire literary output of mankind at the Library of Congress, in order to better understand the species. They thought it ‘in general a charming read, but tending towards monotony’. This is the principal reason they do not feature in this story.
25
