The Eye of Zoltar

Audience with the King

The castle at Snodd Hill was outside the Kingdom’s capital, not far from where the nation shared a long border with the Duchy of Brecon, and a short one with the Cambrian Empire. The sun had enveloped the castle with its warm embrace, which was fortunate, as it made the dark, stone-built structure less dreary than was usual. The ‘Medieval Chic’ fashion was still very much the rage, which is okay if you don’t mind lots of weather-beaten stone, mud, funny smells, poor sanitation and lots of beggars dressed in blankets.

I left the car in the reserved Court Mystician parking place with Tiger and the Quarkbeast settling down to a game of chess, then trotted past an ornate front entrance guarded by two sentries who were holding halberds that were polished to a high sheen. I gave my name to a nearby footman, who looked at me disparagingly, consulted a large ledger, sniffed, and then led me down a corridor to a pair of large double doors. He rapped twice, the doors opened and he indicated I should enter.

The doors closed behind me and I looked around. Log fires crackled in hearths the size of beds at both ends of the room, and instead of courtiers, military men and advisers milling about, there were maids, servants and other domestic staff. This wasn’t so much Business at Court, but home life. The King’s spectacularly beautiful wife Mimosa was present, as were their Royal Spoiltnesses, Prince Steve and Princess Shazine. The Princess was engaged in studies but because she was so utterly spoilt, she had a university lecturer to do her schoolwork for her.

The whole scene looked suspiciously relaxed and informal. The King, I think, wanted me to see his softer side.

‘Ah!’ said the King as he spotted me. ‘Approach, subject!’

King Snodd was neither tall nor good looking nor had any obvious attributes that might make him even the tiniest bit likable. Of the many awards he’d won at the annual unUnited Kingdom Despot Awards, the high points were: ‘Most Hated Tyrant’ (twice), ‘Most Corrupt King of a medium-sized Kingdom’ (once), ‘Best original act of despotism adapted from an otherwise fair law’ (three times), ‘Worst Teeth’ (once) and ‘Despot most likely to be killed by an enraged mob with agricultural tools’. He was, in short, an ill-tempered, conniving little weasel with a mind obsessed only with military conquests and cash. But weasel notwithstanding, he was the King, and today seemed to be in a good mood.

I approached and bowed low, and he permitted me to kiss his large gold signet ring.

‘Your Majesty,’ I said with all due solemnity.

‘Greetings, Miss Strange,’ he said cheerfully, spreading an arm wide to indicate the hall. ‘Welcome to our little oasis of domestic normality.’

Normality was not a word I’d choose. I didn’t know anyone whose food taster had a food taster, nor anyone who had made mice illegal, taxed nose hairs or changed their curtains hourly ‘so as not to afford good hiding places for assassins’.

‘And an apology may be due for that regrettable incident two weeks ago,’ he added, ‘when it might have appeared that I used the power of the state to attempt to win the magic contest.’

‘Water under the bridge,’ I said diplomatically.

‘Your forgiving air does you credit,’ came a melodious voice close at hand. It was Queen Mimosa, who was as elegant a figure as I had seen anywhere. She held herself with poise and quiet dignity, and whenever she moved it was as though she were walking on silk.

‘Your Majesty,’ I said, bowing again.

The King and the Queen could not have been more different. The sole reason the Kingdom of Snodd enjoyed a better-than-normal reputation these days was Queen Mimosa’s guiding hand. Popular rumour said she agreed to marry the King and bear his children in order to give a better life to his subjects, and if true, this would be a very noble sacrifice indeed. Before marriage she had been just plain Mimosa Jones, a medium-ranked sorceress in her own right, and it was rumoured that the Queen was a Troll War orphan herself, which might explain the large amount of charity work she did on their behalf.

‘Now then,’ said the King, eager to get down to business as he had, apparently, an execution to witness at midday, and didn’t want them to start without him, ‘since you and the rest of those irritatingly disobedient enchanters have the odd notion that magic should be for the good of many, I am having to come to terms with the fact that my relationship with sorcerers cannot be as one-sided as I might wish. Wife? Translate.’

‘He means,’ said Queen Mimosa, ‘that he knows he can’t boss you around.’

‘Exactly,’ said the King, ‘but there is a matter of extreme delicacy that we need to speak about.’

He turned to where his daughter the Princess was waiting for her homework to be done for her.

‘Peaches, would you come over here, please?’

‘What, now?’ she asked, rolling her eyes.

‘If it’s not too much trouble, sweetness.’

The Princess walked over in a sultry manner. I was the same age as her, but we could not have had more different upbringings. While I spent my first twelve years eating gruel and sharing a dormitory with sixty other girls, Princess Shazine had been indulged in every possible way. She wore clothes cut from the very finest cloth, bathed in rainwater imported at huge expense from Bali, and had her food prepared by Michelin-starred chefs. In short, her every whim satisfied in the most expensive way possible. But while extremely obnoxious she was undeniably very pretty with glossy raven-black hair, fine features and large, inquisitive eyes. Although I’d never met her, she was very familiar. She could barely catch a cold or be seen with an inappropriate prince without it becoming front-page news.

‘Yes?’ said the Princess in a pouty kind of voice, arms folded.

‘This is Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess Shazine Blossom Hadridd Snodd,’ announced the King, ‘heiress to the Kingdom of Snodd.’

The Princess looked me up and down as though I were something considerably less important than garbage, but made quite certain she did not make eye contact.

‘I hope this interruption to my valuable time has a purpose.’

‘Pay attention, Princess,’ said the Queen in the sort of voice that makes you take notice, ‘This young lady is Jennifer Strange. The Last Dragonslayer.’

‘Like totally big yawn,’ replied the Princess, looking around her in a bored fashion. ‘Magic is so last week.’

‘She is also manager of Kazam Mystical Arts Management and a young lady of considerable daring, moral worth and resourcefulness. Everything, in fact, you are not.’

The Princess looked shocked, not believing what she had heard.

‘What?’

‘You heard me,’ replied the Queen. ‘Soft living has rendered you spoilt and obnoxious beyond measure – a state of affairs for which I admit I am partly responsible.’

‘Nonsense, Mother!’ said the Princess haughtily, ‘everyone loves me because I am so beautiful and charming and witty. You there.’

She pointed to one of the King’s servants whose job it was to clean up after the royal poodles, who were numerous, unruly and not at all house-trained.

‘Yes, My Lady?’ said the servant, who was a young girl no older than myself. She was pale, had plain mousy hair and was dressed in the neat, starched dress of the lowest-ranked house servant. She also looked tired, worn and old before her time. But she somehow held herself upright, with the last vestiges of human dignity.

‘Do you love your Princess, girl?’

‘Begging your pardon yes I do, My Lady,’ she said with a small curtsy, ‘and am surely grateful for the career opportunities your family’s benevolence has brung to me.’

‘Well said,’ said the Princess happily. ‘There will be an extra shiny penny in your retirement fund; it will await you on your seventy-fifth birthday.’

‘Her Ladyship is most generous,’ replied the girl and, knowing when an audience has ended, went back to cleaning up after the royal poodles.

‘You see?’ said the Princess.

‘A character reference from a Royal Dog Mess Removal Operative Third Class is hardly compelling, Princess. Our minds are made up. If Miss Strange agrees, you shall take counsel from her, and try to improve yourself.’

The Princess’s mouth dropped open and she gaped inelegantly like a fish for some moments.

‘Take counsel from an orphan?’ said the Princess in an incredulous tone.

I could have taken offence, I suppose, but I didn’t. You kind of get used to it. In fact, truth to tell I was getting a bit bored, and was instead wondering whether Once Magnificent Boo was safe in the Cambrian Empire, and if my Volkswagen had ended up in a tree or something.

‘You may shake hands with Miss Strange,’ continued the Queen, ‘and then we will discuss your education. Is this acceptable with you, Miss Strange?’

‘Only too happy to help,’ I said, not believing for one second that the Princess would agree to such a thing.

‘Good,’ said Queen Mimosa. ‘Shake her hand and say “good afternoon”, Princess.’

‘I’d rather not,’ retorted the Princess, looking me in the eye for the first time. ‘I might catch something.’

‘It won’t be humility,’ I replied, staring at her evenly, and figuring that this was probably what they thought the Princess needed. If my head was off my shoulders in under ten minutes, I was wrong. The Princess went almost purple with rage.

‘I have been impertinenced,’ she said finally. ‘I insist that this orphan be executed!’

‘I’m not sure “impertinenced” is a word,’ I said.

‘It is if I say it is,’ said the Princess, ‘and Daddy, you did say for my sixteenth birthday I could order someone executed. Well, I choose her.’

She pointed a finger at me. The King looked at Queen Mimosa.

‘I did sort of promise her she could do that, my dear. What sort of lesson is it if I don’t keep my word?’

‘What sort of lesson is it to a child that she can have someone executed?’ retorted the Queen, and glared at him. Not an ordinary glare, but one of those fiery, hard stares that leave your neck hot, cause you to fluff your words and make you prickly inside your clothes.

‘You’re right, my dear,’ replied the King in a small voice.

Updating his style of medieval violent monarchy to Queen Mimosa’s benevolent dictatorship was a bitter pill to swallow, but the King, to his credit, was at least trying.

‘I will not be talked to like this—’ began the Princess, but the Queen cut her short.

‘—You will shake Miss Strange’s hand, my daughter,’ she said, ‘or you will regret it.’

‘Come, come, my dear,’ said the King, attempting to defuse the situation, ‘she is only a child.’

‘A child who is vain, spoilt and unworthy to rule,’ said the Queen. ‘We will not leave this kingdom in safe hands if the Princess is allowed to continue her ways. So,’ concluded the Queen, ‘are you prepared to greet Miss Strange, Princess?’

The Princess looked at her parents in turn.

‘I would sooner eat dog’s vomit than—’

‘ENOUGH!’ yelled the Queen in a voice so loud that everyone jumped.

‘Leave us,’ she said to the people in the room, and the royal retinue, well used to being able to make themselves scarce at a moment’s notice, all made for the door.

‘Not you,’ she said to the royal poodle cleaner-upper who had been quizzed earlier.

‘My dear …’ began the King when the servants had left, but his entreaties fell upon deaf ears. The Queen’s fury was up, and instead of holding his ground he cowered in front of her.

And that was when I felt a buzzing in the air. It was subtle, like a bee in fog at forty paces, but it meant only one thing – a spell was cooking. And if that was so, it could only be from the ex-sorcerer, Queen Mimosa.

The Princess crossed her arms and stared at her mother.

‘You will do as you are told, young lady,’ said the Queen in a measured tone, ‘or you will not be in a position to do anything at all.’

‘Do your very worst!’ spat the Princess, her face curled up into an ugly sneer. ‘I will not be ordered about like a handmaiden!’

The Queen, very slowly and deliberately, pointed her index fingers at the Princess. These were the conduits of a sorcerer’s power, and when brought out or pointed anywhere near you, it was time to run, or beg, or duck for cover. The King must have seen this before, for he winced as a powerful surge of wizidrical energy coursed from Queen Mimosa’s fingers. There was a thunderclap, several drapes fell from the walls, and all the window glass suddenly decreased in size by a tenth and fell out of the frames with an angry clatter.

This wasn’t the spell, of course, just the secondary effect. When the peal of thunder had receded into the distance, I tried to figure out what spell had been cast, but nothing seemed to have changed.