That was how the Mysterious X communicated. Not by words, but by ideas that popped into your head. Perkins had spent many hours consulting with him on the powers of suggestion – or, if you didn’t believe in Mysterious X, Perkins had been sitting in a room, mumbling to himself.
‘I never thought X was big on zoos,’ I said as we climbed into my car, ‘but then again, the Buzonji cub is very cute. All gangly legs and a pink nose.’
Shifting oaks
I dropped Tiger and the Mysterious X at Hereford Zoo. While disappointingly having neither elephants nor penguins, it was saved from ignominy by possessing several animals that were not created by evolution, but by magic. Back in the days of almost unbridled power, Super Grand Master Sorcerers would attempt to outdo one another in their creation of weird and wonderful beasts. Of the seventeen known ‘non-evolutionary’ creatures, only eight were still represented by live specimens. Of those, Hereford Zoo had an unprecedented four. They had the only captive breeding pair of Buzonji, which is a sort of six-legged okapi; two species of Shridloo, a desert and dessert – one being the edible variety. The only captive Tralfamosaur also had its home here, and was now in a more secure compound after it ate the last Beastcatcher. A Frazzle named Devlin completed the small collection – it was not just the only specimen living outside its natural habitat in the wetlands of Norfolk, but also the only one glad to be doing so. They used to have a Quarkbeast, but it kept on frightening people, so was removed from display.
‘Here’s some money for a taxi home,’ I said, ‘and remember to get a receipt – and don’t let the cabby charge you extra for X.’
Tiger assured me that he wouldn’t and asked for a sixpence for an ice cream. I bid him goodbye and then took the main road towards Colonel Bloch-Draine’s country estate at Holme Lacy.
‘So what’s an oversurge?’ asked Perkins as we drove out of Hereford.
‘The art of magic is all about channelling the wizidrical energy that swirls invisibly around us. It usually takes skill and concentration to gather and focus the required power, but in some instances the opposite can happen, and the wizidrical energy comes in too thick and fast to be used safely.’
‘Like an overflowing bath where you can’t switch off the taps or take the plug out?’
‘Something like that. It’s unpredictable so pretty useless, like the wasted heat in a steam engine, so what you have to do is redirect the crackle elsewhere, like a safety valve. It can be quite fun, apparently – spelling anything just to use up the power. Showers of toads, levitation – whatever takes your fancy.’
‘A sort of magic free lunch?’
‘Kind of, except you still have to fill out Form B1–7G. If the paperwork isn’t in order, the penalties are severe. The rules against illegal sorcery are quite fourteenth-century.’
‘They don’t think much of us, do they? Civilians, I mean.’
‘Let’s just say the relationship between the public and sorcerers has been strained ever since the whole Blix the Hideously Barbarous “world domination” episode. It was over two hundred years ago but memories are long when it comes to having one’s will drained away and made into an empty husk, suited only to mindlessly follow the bidding of your new master.’
‘I can see how that might not go down too well,’ he conceded, ‘but don’t worry: I won’t let you or Kazam down.’
There was quiet for a moment as we motored down the road.
‘Jenny?’
‘Yes?’
‘Have you considered my offer to go and see the Jimmy Nuttjob Stunt Show?’
I looked across at him.
‘Is this a date?’
‘Might be,’ he said, staring at his feet.
I said the first thing that came into my head.
‘I’m only sixteen. I’m too young for you.’
‘There’s only two years between us. And let’s be honest, you don’t act much like a sixteen-year-old, what with the responsibility and dealing with Blix and matters of ethics and whatnot.’
‘It’s a foundling thing,’ I told him. ‘You grow up quick when you have to fight every night with forty other girls for the only handkerchief in the orphanage.’
‘To blow your nose?’
‘To use as a pillow. I’m sorry to have to mention this but you’re going to have to be careful with . . . personal relationships. Rejected partners can sometimes get sniffy and wonder what they saw in you, and this can lead to accusations of beguiling. It’s not a custodial offence as it’s not provable, but the negative publicity is harmful, and there always remains the faint possibility of being hunted down by a crowd of angry and ignorant villagers, all holding torches aloft and eventually imprisoning you in a disused windmill which they set on fire.’
‘Worst-case scenario?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think I’m beguiling you?’
I looked across at him and smiled.
‘If you are, you’re not that good at it.’
‘Ah,’ he said, and lapsed into silence.
Holme Lacy was less than ten miles away, and we pulled into the imposing front entrance of the colonel’s residence a quarter of an hour later. Perkins looked nervously out of the window. It was his first gig. Up until now it had just been practice spells at Zambini Towers and a lot of classroom theory, and none of it to deal with surges.
I parked the car outside the colonel’s imposing eighteen-room mansionette. Lieutenant Colonel Sir Reginald George Stamford Bloch-Draine had been one of King Snodd’s most faithful military leaders, and had personally led a squadron of landships during the Fourth Troll Wars twelve years before.
The point of the Fourth War had been pretty much the same as in the first three: to push the Trolls back into the far north and teach them a lesson ‘once and for all’. To this end, the Ununited Kingdoms had put aside their differences and assembled one hundred and forty-seven landships and sent them on a frontal assault to ‘soften up’ the Trolls before the infantry invaded the following week. The landships had breached the first Troll wall at Stirling and arrived at the second Troll wall eighteen hours later. They reportedly opened the Troll gates, and then – nothing. All the radios went dead. Faced with uncertainty and the possible loss of the landships, the generals decided to instigate the ever popular ‘let’s panic’ plan and ordered the infantry to attack.
Of the quarter of a million men and women who were lost or eaten during the twenty-six-minute war that followed, there had been only nine survivors. Colonel Bloch-Draine was one of them, saved by an unavoidable dentists’ appointment that had him away from his landship at the crucial moment of advance. He retired soon after to devote his time to killing and mounting rare creatures before they went extinct. He had recently started collecting trees and saw no reason why it shouldn’t be exactly the same as collecting stuffed animals: lots of swapping and putting them in alphabetical groups. Clearly, moving trees around his estate was not something he could do on his own, and that was the reason Kazam had been employed.
Patrick of Ludlow was waiting for us outside the colonel’s mansionette.
‘Apologies for calling you out, Miss Strange,’ he said, wringing his hands nervously as we got out of the car, ‘but things aren’t as they should be.’
‘No problem,’ I said soothingly, ‘you and me and Perkins will sort it out.’
Patrick was our Heavy Lifter. He could levitate up to seven tons when humidity was low and he was feeling good, which was more often these days as his six-ounce-a-day marzipan habit was now well behind him. He was a simple soul, but kindly and gentle despite his large size and misshapen appearance. Like most Heavy Lifters he had muscles where he shouldn’t – grouped around his ankles, wrists, toes, fingers and the back of his head. His hand looked like a boiled ham with fingertips stuck on randomly, and the muscles on the back of his head gave him a fearful apearance. He generally stayed hidden when not working in case he was mistaken for an infant Troll.