The Last Dragonslayer

Zambini Towers

‘So what are my duties?’ asked Tiger as soon as we were on our way.

‘Did you do any laundry at the Sisterhood?’

He groaned audibly.

‘There’s that, and answering phones and general running around, but not any cooking. We have Unstable Mabel to do that for us. Stay out of her kitchen, by the way, she has a nasty temper and is a demon shot with a soup ladle.’

‘Can’t the sorcerers do their own laundry?’

‘They could, but they won’t. Their power has to be conserved to be useful.’

‘I’m not sure I want to be called F7 by the grumpy one.’

‘You’ll get used to it. She called me F6 until only a month ago.’

‘I’m not you. And besides, you still haven’t told me what happened to Mr Zambini.’

‘Ooh,’ I said, turning up the radio to listen to the Yogi Baird Radio Show. I liked the show but didn’t really need to listen to it. I just didn’t want to talk about Mr Zambini’s disappearance. At least, not yet.

Twenty minutes later we pulled up outside Zambini Towers, a large property that had once been the luxurious Majestic hotel. It was the second-highest building in Hereford after King Snodd’s Parliament, but was not so well maintained. The guttering hung loose, the windows were grimy and cracked, and small tufts of grass were poking out from the gaps between the bricks.

‘What a dump,’ breathed Tiger as we trotted into the entrance lobby.

‘We can’t really afford to bring it back to a decent state. Mr Zambini bought it when he was still Great and could conjure up an oak tree from an acorn in under a fortnight.’

‘That one there?’ asked Tiger, pointing at a sprawling oak that had grown in the centre of the lobby, its gnarled roots and boughs elegantly wrapped around the old reception desk and partially obscuring the entrance to the abandoned Palm Court.

‘No, that was Half Price’s third-year dissertation.’

‘Will he get rid of it?’

‘Fourth-year dissertation.’

‘Can’t you just wizard the building back into shape or something?’

‘It’s too big, and they’re saving themselves.’

‘For what?’

I shrugged.

‘To earn a crust. And what’s more, I think they prefer it this way.’

We walked through the lobby, which was decorated with trophies, paintings and certificates of achievements long past.

‘The shabbiness adds a sense of faded grandeur to the proceedings. And besides, when you don’t want to draw attention to yourself, it’s better to look a bit down at heel. Good morning, ladies.’

Two elderly women were on their way to the breakfast rooms. They were dressed in matching shell suits and cackled quietly to themselves.

‘This is the new foundling, Tiger Prawns,’ I said. ‘Tiger, these are the Sisters Karamazov—Deirdre and Deirdre.’

‘Why do they have the same name?’

‘They had an unimaginative father.’

They looked very carefully at Tiger, and even prodded him several times with long bony fingers.

‘Ha-ho,’ said the least ugly of the two, ‘will you scream when I stick you with a pin, you little piglet you?’

I caught Tiger’s eye and shook my head, to convey they didn’t mean anything.

‘Prawns?’ said Deirdre. ‘Is that a Mother Zenobia name?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ replied Tiger politely. ‘The Blessed Ladies of the Lobster often use crustacean names for the foundlings.’

The sisters looked at me.

‘You’ll educate him well, Jennifer?’

‘To the best of my ability.’

‘We don’t want another... incident.’

‘No, indeed.’

And they hobbled off, grumbling to one another about the problem with spaghetti.

‘They used to earn good money on weather prediction,’ I told Tiger as soon as they were out of earshot, ‘a skill now relegated to little more than a hobby after the introduction of computerised weather mapping. Don’t stand next to them out of doors. A lifetime’s work in weather manipulation has made them very attractive to lightning. In fact, Deirdre has been struck by lightning so many times it has addled her brain and I fear she might be irredeemably insane.’

‘Winsumpoop bibble bibble,’ said Deirdre as they vanished into the dining room.

‘This place is mad,’ remarked Tiger, ‘even when compared to the Sisterhood. I’m stuck for nine years with a bunch of lunatics.’

‘You’ll get used to it.’

‘I won’t.’

I was confident that he would. For all the shortage of funds, bad plumbing, peeling wallpaper, erratic incantations and dodgy spells, Kazam was fun. The sorcerers spent much of their time talking fondly about the good old days, and telling tales of past triumphs and disasters with equal enthusiasm. Of the days when magic was powerful, unregulated by government, and even the largest spell could be woven without filling out the spell release form B1-7G. When they weren’t reminiscing they spent their time in silent contemplation or practising weird experimental stuff that I was happier not knowing about.

‘I’ll show you to your room.’

We walked down the corridor to where the elevators had once been. They had not worked for as long as anyone could remember, and the ornate bronze doors were wedged open, revealing a long drop to the sub-basements below.

‘Shouldn’t we take the stairs?’ asked Tiger.

‘You can if you want. It’s quicker to just shout out loud the floor you want, and hop into the lift shaft.’

Tiger looked doubtful so I said ‘TEN’ and stepped into the void. I fell upwards to the tenth floor and stepped out as soon as the fall was over. I waited for a moment, then peered down the shaft. Far below I could see a small face staring up at me.

‘Remember to shout “TEN”,’ I called down, ‘it’s a lot quicker than the stairs.’

There was a terrified yell as he fell towards me, and this turned into a laugh as he stopped outside the elevator entrance. He struggled for a moment to get out, missed his moment and fell back to the ground floor again with a yell. He didn’t get out there either, and fell back up to the tenth floor, where I grabbed his hand and pulled him in before he spent the afternoon falling backwards and forwards—as I had done when I first got here.

‘That was fun,’ he said, trembling with a mixture of fear and excitement. ‘What if I change my mind halfway?’

‘Then you go to whatever floor you want. It’s falling fast today. Must be the dry air.’

‘How does it work?’

‘It’s a standard Ambiguity enchantment—in this instance, the difference between “up” and “down”. Carpathian Bob left it to us in his will. The last spell of a dying wizard. Powerful stuff. You’ll be in Room 1039. It’s got an echo but, on the plus side, it is self-cleaning.’

I opened the door to his room and we walked in. The room was large and light and, like most of Zambini Towers, shabby. The wallpaper was stained and torn, the woodwork warped and unsightly damp patches had appeared on the ceiling. I watched as Tiger’s face relaxed into a smile, and he blinked away the tears. At the convent, he would have been used to sharing a dormitory with fifty other boys. To anyone else, Room 1039 would have been a hovel—to the foundlings of the Sisterhood, it was luxury. I walked across to the window and removed the cardboard covering a broken pane to let in some fresh air.

‘The tenth floor is fully teenager compliant,’ I said, ‘nothing will ever be out of place.’

To demonstrate, I moved the blotter on the desk slightly off kilter, and a second or two later it realigned itself. I then dug a handkerchief from my pocket and threw it on the carpet. As soon as it hit the floor it fluttered off to the top drawer of the bureau like a butterfly, folding itself as it went.

‘Don’t ask me how it works or who cast it, but be warned: enchantments have no intelligence. They follow spell sub-routines without any form of discretion. If you were to fall over in here you’d find yourself tidied away into the wardrobe, as likely as not on a coat hanger.’

‘I’ll be careful.’

‘Wise words. You can use the self-tidying feature, but don’t overuse it. Every spell is a drain on the power that runs through the building. If everyone were untidy, the speed of magic would slow dramatically. A handkerchief would self-fold in an hour, and the perpetual teapot would run dry. The same is true of the elevator. Play with it for too long and it’ll slow down and stop. I was stuck between floors once when Wizard Moobin was trying out one of his alchemy spells. Think of Zambini Towers as a giant battery of wizidrical power, constantly on trickle charge. If used a lot, it will soon run out. Used sparingly, it can go on all day. Is this room okay?’

‘Do people knock when they want to use the bath?’ he asked, staring into the marble-and-faded-gilt bathroom.

‘Every room has its own bathroom,’ I told him.

He looked at me, astonished that such extravagance not only existed, but would be offered to him.

‘A bed, a window, a bedside light and a bathroom?’ he said with a grin, ‘It’s the best room I’ll ever have!’

‘Then I’ll leave you to settle in. Come down to the Avon Suite on the ground floor when you’re ready and I’ll tell you what’s what. Don’t worry if you hear odd noises at night, the floor may be covered with toads from time to time, stay out of the second sub-basement and never, never, ask to go to the thirteenth floor. Oh, and you mustn’t look back if ever you pass the Limping Man. See you later.’

I was barely out of the door when I heard a cry from Tiger. I put my head back into the room.

‘I saw a figure over there,’ he said, pointing a trembling finger in the direction of the bathroom. ‘I think it was a ghost.’

‘Phantasms are confined to the third floor. You’ve just seen the echo I told you about.’

‘How can you see an echo?’

‘It’s not sound, it’s visual.’

To demonstrate I walked to the other side of the room, paused for ten seconds and then walked back. Sure enough, a pale outline of myself appeared a few seconds later.

‘The longer you stay in one place, the more powerful the echo. I don’t know why the tenth floor does it, but the self-tidying makes up for it. Unless you want to change?’

‘Are the other rooms any less weird?’

‘Not really.’

‘Then this is fine.’

‘Good. I’ll see you downstairs when you’re ready.’

Tiger looked around the room nervously.

‘Wait a moment while I unpack.’

He took from his pocket a folded tie and placed it in one of the drawers.

‘I’m done.’

And he followed me down the lift shaft, but this time with a little more confidence, and with a little less shouting.

‘Can you do any magic?’ he asked as we walked past the shuttered ballroom on our way to the Avon Suite.

‘Everyone can do a bit,’ I said, wondering where Kevin Zipp had got to. ‘If you are thinking of somebody and the phone rings and it’s them, that’s magic. If you get a curious feeling that you’ve been or done something before, then that’s magic too. It’s everywhere. It seeps into the fabric of the world and oozes out as coincidence, fate, chance, luck or what have you. The big problem is making it work for you in some useful manner.’

‘Mother Zenobia used to say that magic was like the gold that is mingled in sand,’ observed Tiger, ‘worth a lot of money but useless since you can’t extract it.’

‘She’s right. But if you have magic within you, were properly trained and the sort of person who could channel their mind, then it is possible a career in sorcery might be the thing for you. Were you tested?’

‘Yes, I was a 162.8.’

‘I’m a 159.3,’ I told him, ‘so pretty useless the pair of us.’

You have to have 350 or more before anyone gets interested. You’ve either got it or you haven’t—a bit like being able to play a piano or go backwards on a unicycle while juggling seven clubs.

‘You and me and Unstable Mabel are the only sane ones in the building, and I have my doubts about Mable. Don’t feel left out or anything by being normal.’

‘I’ll try not to.’

I opened the door to the Kazam offices and flicked on the light. The Avon Suite was large but seemed considerably smaller owing to a huge amount of clutter. There were filing cabinets, desks where once sat now-long-redundant agents, tables, piles of paperwork, back issues of Spells magazine, several worn-out sofas and, in the corner, a moose. It chewed softly on some grass and stared at us laconically.

‘That’s the Transient Moose,’ I said, looking through the mail, ‘an illusion that was left as a practical joke long before I got here. He moves randomly about the building appearing now and then, here and there to this one and that one. We’re hoping he’ll wear out soon.’

Tiger went up to the moose and placed a hand on its nose. His hand went through the creature as though it were smoke. I took the papers off a nearby desk and placed them on a third, pushed up a swivel chair and showed Tiger how to use the phone system.

‘You can answer from anywhere in the hotel. If I don’t pick up, then you should. Take a message and I’ll call them back.’

‘I’ve never had a desk,’ said Tiger, looking at the desk fondly.

‘You’ve got one now. See that teapot on the sideboard over there?’

He nodded.

‘That’s the perpetual teapot I mentioned earlier. It’s always full of tea. The same goes for the biscuit tin. You can help yourself.’

Tiger got the subtle hint. I told him I liked my tea with half a sugar, and he trotted off to the steaming teapot to fetch some.

‘There’re only two biscuits left,’ said Tiger in dismay, staring into the biscuit tin.

‘We’re on an economy drive. Instead of an enchanted biscuit tin that’s always full, we’ve got an enchanted biscuit tin with always only two left. You’d be amazed at how much wizidrical energy we save.’

‘Right,’ said Tiger, taking out the two biscuits, closing the lid and then finding two new biscuits when he opened it again.

‘The economy drive explains why they’re plain and not sweet, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Quark.’

‘What is it?’

The Quarkbeast pointed one of its sharpened claws at a bundle of old clothes on one of the sofas. I went and had a closer look. It was the Remarkable Kevin Zipp. He was fast asleep and snoring quietly to himself.

‘Good morning, Kevin,’ I said cheerily. He blinked, stared at me, then sat up. ‘How is the job in Leominster going?’

I was referring to some work I had found him in a flower nursery, predicting the colours of blooms in ungerminated bulbs. He was one of our better pre-cognitives, usually managing a strike rate of 72 per cent or more.

‘Well, thank you,’ muttered the small man. His clothes were shabby to the point of being little more than rags, but he was exceptionally well presented in spite of it. He was clean shaven, washed and his hair was fastidiously tidy. He looked like an accountant on his way to a fancy-dress party as a vagrant.

I could see that ungerminated bulbs were not the cause of his visit, and whenever a pre-cog gets nervous, I get nervous.

‘This is Tiger Prawns,’ I said, ‘the seventh foundling.’

Kevin took Tiger’s hand in his and stared into his eyes.

‘Don’t get in a blue car on a Thursday.’

‘Which Thursday?’

‘Any Thursday.’

‘What kind of car?’

‘A blue one. On a Thursday.’

‘Okay,’ said Tiger.

‘So what’s this about a vision?’ I asked, sorting through the mail.

‘It was a biggie,’ Kevin began nervously.

‘Oh yes?’ I returned pleasantly, having heard a lot of predictions that never came to anything, but also having heard some chilling ones that did.

‘You know Maltcassion, the Dragon?’ he asked.

‘Not personally.’

‘Of him, then.’

I knew of him, of course. Everybody did. The last of his kind, he lived up in the Dragonlands not far from here, although you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who could say they had caught a glimpse of the reclusive beast. I took the tea that Tiger handed me and placed it on my desk.

‘What about him?’

Kevin took a deep breath.

‘I saw him die. Die by the sword of a Dragonslayer.’

‘When?’

He narrowed his eyes.

‘Certainly within the next week.’

I stopped opening the mail—mostly junk anyway, or bills—and looked over to where Kevin Zipp was staring at me intently. The importance of the information wasn’t lost on him, and it wasn’t lost on me either. By ancient decree the Dragon’s land belonged to whoever claimed it as soon as the Dragon died, so there was always an unseemly rush for real estate which eclipsed a Dragon’s death. Within a day every square inch of land would be claimed. In the following months there would be legal wranglings, then the construction would begin. New roads, housing and power, retail parks and industrial units. All would cover the unspoilt lands in a smear of tarmac and concrete. A four-hundred-year-old wilderness gone for ever.

‘I heard that when Dragon Dunwoody died twenty-seven years ago,’ said Tiger, who was fairly up on Dragons, as you would be, growing up so close to the Dragonlands, ‘the crowd surge resulted in sixty-eight people dead in the stampede.’

Kevin and I exchanged glances. The death of the last Dragon would be a matter of some consequence.

‘How strong was this?’ I asked.

‘On a scale of one to ten,’ replied Zipp, ‘it was a twelve. Most powerful premonition I’ve ever felt. It was as though the Mighty Shandar himself had called me up person-to-person and reversed the charges. I can detect it on low-alpha as well as the wider brain wavelengths. I doubt I’m the only person picking this up.’

I doubted it too. I phoned Randolph, 14th Earl of Pembridge, the only other pre-cog on our books. Randolph, or EP-14 as he was sometimes known, was not only minor Hereford aristocracy, but an industrial prophet who worked for Consolidated Useful Stuff (Steel) PLC, predicting failure rates on industrial welding.

‘Randolph, it’s Jennifer.’

‘Jenny, D’girl! I thought you’d call.’

‘I’ve got the Remarkable Kevin Zipp with me and I wondered if—’

He didn’t need any prompting. He had picked up the same thing but had also furnished a time and date. Next Sunday at noon. I thanked him and replaced the phone.

‘Anything else?’

‘Yes,’ replied Kevin. ‘Two words.’

‘And they are?’

‘Big Magic.’

‘What does that mean?’

He told me he didn’t know, and I understood. He only saw the visions; it was up to others to interpret them. In the absence of any good interpretation, they could generally be explained by events or, failing that, hindsight.

‘Before I go,’ he said, pulling a rumpled piece of paper from his pocket, ‘these are for you.’

He handed the grubby piece of paper not to me, but to Tiger.

He scanned the note. It didn’t seem to mean anything at all.

Smith

7, 11, and 13

Ulan Bator

He read the note, then lowered the piece of paper.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Me neither.’ Zipp shrugged. ‘Isn’t seeing the future a hoot?’

Tiger looked at me and I nodded to him that he should take it seriously.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Tiger with a bow.

‘Well, there you have it,’ said Kevin, and he left in a hurry as he had felt a good tip on Baron, a six-year-old mare running in the Hereford Gold Stakes Handicap.

The phone rang and I picked it up, listened for a few moments and scribbled a note on a standard form.

‘This is a form B2-5C,’ I told Tiger, ‘for a minor spell of less than a thousand Shandars. I need you to take it up to the Mysterious X in Room 245 and tell them that I sent you and we need this job done as soon as possible.’

He took the form and stared at me nervously.

‘Who, exactly, is the Mysterious X?’

‘They’re more of a what than a who. It won’t be in a form you’ll recognise, and there is something other about X that defies easy explanation. It’s more of a sense than a person. A shroud, if you like, that confuses their true form. It also smells of unwashed socks and peanut butter. You’ll be fine.’

Tiger looked at the note, then at the Quarkbeast, then at where the moose had been but suddenly wasn’t, then back at me.

‘This is a test, isn’t it?’

He was smart, this one. I nodded.

‘You can be back with the Sisterhood by teatime, and no one will have thought any the worse of you. I’ll let you in on a secret. You weren’t sent to me as a punishment, nor by chance. Mother Zenobia is an ex-sorceress herself, and only sends those she deems truly exceptional. Aside from the fifth foundling—the one we don’t talk about—she’s never been wrong.’

‘So was all that stuff about the Limping Man, the thirteenth floor, the second sub-basement and being flown in a cardboard box also part of the test?’

‘No, that was for real. And that’s just the weird stuff I can remember right now. We haven’t even got started on emergency procedures yet.’

‘Right,’ he said and, after taking a deep breath, he left the room. He was back again a few moments later.

‘This job,’ he said, waving the form B2-5C nervously, ‘is it something to do with Dark Forces?’

‘There’s no such thing as the “Forces of Darkness”, despite what you read in the storybooks. There are no “Dark Arts” or “wizards pulled to the dark side”. There is only the Good or Bad that lurks in the heart of Man. And in answer to your question, X’s job is a cat stuck up a tree. He’ll grumble, but he’ll do it.’