I covered my face with my hands. The young lady in the Phantom Twelve. I was a fool not to have realised.
‘Someone named “Ann Shard”?’ I asked.
‘Yes, exactly like that. You must remain—’
He stopped talking as he saw my look of consternation.
‘You’ve met her?’
‘Two days ago. She wanted us to find a gold ring. She had some story about her client’s mother or something. I didn’t give her the ring because it didn’t want to be found and was sticky with negative emotional energy. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.’
He frowned and paced some more.
‘I don’t get it. A ring? No ring ever had any power, least of all a curse. It’s just one of those dumb stories that get around, like pointy hats and wands and broomsticks and stuff. Hang on a minute. Yes, I’ve got it. If Shandar was going to get rid of me then he must have been worried about—’
He didn’t get to finish his sentence. Zambini’s six minutes were up; he had melted into non-existence until the next time – if there was a next time.
I sniffed the air and noticed that there was smoke coming up through the hatch from ‘C’ Deck. The Trolls were trying to smoke me out. Without wasting any time I ran up the stairs that led to the command deck at the top of the landship. I didn’t stop here, and instead pulled the lever to blow the emergency roof-access hatch. The door vanished with a explosive concussion and I climbed out on to the riveted top of the landship. The Trolls were nowhere in sight, so I took the Fireball from my pocket and threw it on to the steel plates. There was a sharp crack and in an instant the marker flare burst high above my head.
‘Ha, smoked you out!’ came a rumbling voice from behind me, and I found myself staring into the small green eyes of one of the Trolls, who had climbed up the outside of the landship. I picked up a branch to defend myself, and rather than waiting for the Troll to make the first move, I ran towards him and swung the branch as hard as I could at his head. It was a futile gesture, of course. The Troll merely smiled cruelly and thrust out a hand to grab me. He would have done so, too, had the emergency hatch I had blown out not returned to earth at that precise moment and landed right on the Troll’s head. He yelled in pain, lost his footing and fell off the landship.
I looked over the edge to where he was being helped by his comrade.
‘What happened?’ asked the second Troll.
‘That one may look small,’ said the first, rubbing his head tenderly, ‘but she can sure pack a punch.’
‘Jenny!’
It was the Prince. He had come in for my EVAC as promised. I needed no second bidding, jumped on the carpet and we were soon flying back across the Troll Wall to safety.
‘That was cutting it a bit fine,’ said Nasil as he expertly held the carpet together on the short journey to Stirling railway station. ‘Did you see him?’
‘And how.’
Back at Zambini Towers
We took the train back to the Kingdom of Hereford. After the afternoon’s action, the carpet was in no fit state to be used for anything – not even as a carpet. The Prince had no money, so swapped two first-class travel permits for a minor dukedom back in his home kingdom of Portland, and we caught the first train out of Stirling station. As a foundling I was not permitted to sit anywhere but third class, but when the ticket inspector questioned my presence in first, the Prince said that I was his personal organ donor, and travelled everywhere with him, just in case. The inspector congratulated the Prince on such a novel usage for a foundling and told me I was lucky to have such a kind benefactor.
We made Hereford by 10.30 that evening and we walked to Kazam by a back route to avoid being seen. Tiger and Perkins were waiting at a window on the ground floor just next to the rubbish bins to let us in, as the ‘infinite thinness’ spell was still very much in force. We dropped in to the Palm Court, where Mawgon and Monty Vanguard were much as I had seen them last – stone.
‘No change here, then.’
‘None at all.’
‘Moobin and the others?’
‘Still in jail,’ replied Perkins as we walked across the lobby. ‘I tried to contact Judge Bunty Patel to overturn the King’s illegal edict and got as far as the judge’s secretary’s secretary’s secretary. She laughed and asked if I was insane, then hung up. How did it go up north?’
We sat on the sofa in the Kazam offices next to the sleeping form of Kevin Zipp and I related pretty much everything that Zambini had told me – from the so-called ‘Ann Shard’ being the Mighty Shandar’s agent, to the worthlessness of rings as a conduit of power, to Blix being one of the few people able to work in RUNIX, to Once Magnificent Boo’s disfigurement.
‘Ouch,’ said Perkins, looking at his own fingers.
I then told them that Zambini thought magic might have an intelligence and would ‘find a way’ to let us win if it had a mind to.
‘That’s like saying electricity has free will,’ said Perkins, ‘or gravity.’
‘Gravy has free will?’ said Tiger, who hadn’t been listening properly. ‘That explains a lot. I knew it didn’t like me.’
‘Not gravy, gravity.’
‘I’m not sure I buy that.’
‘Me neither,’ I replied, ‘but he’s the Great Zambini, so we can’t reject the idea totally out of hand. He wasn’t out of ideas about his own predicament, either. Here.’
I handed him the old envelope covered in Zambini’s handwritten notes.
‘He thinks these observations may help us crack the spell.’
‘And he said the Mighty Shandar cast it?’
I nodded.
‘Not good,’ said Perkins after studying the notes for a while. ‘It seems Zambini is locked into a spell with a passthought on auto-evolve: one that changes randomly every two minutes. One moment it’s all about swans on a lake at sunset, the next about spoonbills in the Orinoco delta, and the very act of entering the passthought changes the passthought. We can’t crack Mawgon’s and it’s static, so what hope with one that changes?’
We were all silent for a while.
‘Did you see any Trolls?’ asked Tiger.
‘Two of them. They think we’re vermin.’
‘We don’t like them much, either.’
‘No, they really think we’re vermin – a pest that needs eradicating. They’re entirely indifferent to humans. We’re to them as rabbits are to us – only more destructive and less cuddly.’
‘Oh,’ said Tiger, who, being a Troll War orphan, had an interest in Trolls. ‘Then the invasions are even more of a waste of life, cash, time and resources then we had suspected?’
‘It looks that way.’
I took a deep breath and looked at my watch. It was quarter past eleven. Blix’s concession offer ran out at midnight.
‘Did you talk to the residents about taking Blix’s offer?’
Perkins reached into his top pocket and pulled out a notebook.
‘They may be a bit odd, but they’re quite forthright in their views.’
He consulted his notes.
‘I could only speak to twenty-eight of them. Monty Vanguard is stone, Mysterious X and the Funny Smell in Room 632 are nebulous at best, the Thing in 346 made a nasty noise when I knocked on the door, and the Lizard Wizard just stared at me and ate insects.’
‘He does that,’ I said.
‘I’m not totally convinced the Thing in Room 346 is a sorcerer at all,’ remarked Tiger, ‘nor the Funny Smell.’
‘Who’s going to go and find out? You?’
‘On reflection,’ mused Tiger, ‘let’s just assume they are, for argument’s sake.’
‘So anyway,’ continued Perkins, ‘the residents have without exception poured scorn on Blix’s offer and announced they would sooner descend into confused old age and die in their beds while subsisting on a diet of rotten cabbage, weak custard and dripping.’