Jasper Fforde - The Song of the Quarkbeast

In an instant Owens carpet was gone in a burst of tattered wool and cotton.

THE SONG OF THE QUARKBEAST

Book Two of The Last Dragonslayer Series

Jasper Fforde

www.hodder.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright 2011 Jasper Fforde

The right of Jasper Fforde to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781444707243

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

338 Euston Road

London NW1 3BH

www.hodder.co.uk

For Maggie and Stu

With grateful thanks

for kindnesses too numerous to mention

Also by Jasper Fforde

The Thursday Next Series

The Eyre Affair

Lost in a Good Book

The Well of Lost Plots

Something Rotten

First Among Sequels

One of Our Thursdays is Missing

The Nursery Crime Series

The Big Over Easy

The Fourth Bear

Shades of Grey

The Last Dragonslayer

For every Quarkbeast there is an equal and opposite Quarkbeast

Miss Boolean Smith, Sorcerer (Rtd)

Where we are right now

I work in the magic industry. I think youll agree its pretty glamorous: a life full of spells, potions and whispered enchantments; of levitation, vanishings and alchemy. Of titanic fights to the death with the powers of darkness, of conjuring up blizzards and quelling storms at sea; of casting lightning bolts from mountains, and bringing statues to life in order to vanquish troublesome foes.

If only.

No, magic these days was simply useful . Useful in the same way that cars and dishwashers and can-openers are useful. The days of wild, crowd-pleasing stuff like commanding the oceans, levitating elephants and turning herring into taxi drivers were long gone, and despite the advent of a Big Magic two months before, the return of unlimited magical powers had not yet happened. After a brief surge that generated weird cloud shapes and rain that tasted of elderflower cordial, the wizidrical power had dropped to nothing before rising again almost painfully slowly. No one would be doing any ocean-commanding for a while, elephants would remain unlevitated and a herring wouldnt be losing anyone wanting to get to the airport. We had no foes to vanquish except the taxman, and the only time we got to fight the powers of darkness was during one of the Kingdoms frequent power cuts.

So while we at Kazam waited for magic to re-establish itself, it was very much business as usual: hiring out sorcerers to conduct low-level, mundane and very practical magic. You know the sort of thing: plumbing and rewiring, wallpapering and loft conversions. We also lifted cars for the citys clamping unit, conducted Flying Carpet pizza deliveries and could predict weather with 23 per cent more accuracy than SNODD-TVs favourite weather girl, Daisy Fairchild.

But I dont do any of that. I cant do any of that. I organise those who can. The job I do is Mystical Arts Management, or more simply put, Im an agent. The person who does the deals, takes the bookings and then gets all the flak when things go wrong and little of the credit when it goes right. The place I do all this is a company called Kazam, the biggest House of Enchantment in the world. To be honest thats not saying much there are only two: Kazam and Industrial Magic, over in Stroud. Between us we have the only eight licensed sorcerers on the planet. And if you think thats a responsible job for a sixteen-year-old, youre right Im really only acting manager until the Great Zambini gets back.

If he does.

So as I said, it was very much business as usual at Kazam, and this morning we were going to try to find something that was lost. Not just mislaid-it-whoops lost, which is easy, but never-to-be-found lost, which is a good deal harder. We didnt much like finding lost stuff as in general lost stuff doesnt like to be found, but when work was slack, wed do pretty much anything within the law. And thats why Perkins, Tiger and myself were sitting in my parked Volkswagen one damp autumn morning in a roadside rest area not six miles from our home town of Hereford, the capital city of the Kingdom of Snodd.

Do you think a wizard even knows what a clock is for ? I asked, somewhat exasperated, as I had promised our client that wed start at 9.30 a.m. sharp , and it was twenty past already. Id told the sorcerers to get here at nine for a briefing, but I might as well have been talking to the flowers.

If you have all the time in the world, replied Tiger, referring to a sorcerers often greatly increased life expectancy, then I suppose a few minutes either way doesnt matter so much.

Horton or Tiger Prawns was my assistant and had been with us only for the past two months. He was tall for his twelve years and had close-curled sandy-coloured hair and freckles that danced around a snub nose. Like most foundlings of that age, he wore his oversized hand-me-downs with a certain pride. He was here this morning to learn the peculiar problems associated with a finding and with good reason. He was to take over from me in two years time. Once I was eighteen, I was out.

Perkins nodded an agreement.

Some wizards do seem to live a long time, he observed. This was undoubtedly true, but they were always cagey about how they did it, and changed the subject to mice or onions or something when asked.

The Youthful Perkins was our best and only trainee all wrapped up in one. He had been at Kazam just over a year and was the only person in the company roughly my own age. He was good looking, too, and aside from suffering bouts of overconfidence that sometimes got him into trouble when he spelled more quickly than he thought, he would be good for the company and good for magic in general. I liked him, too, but since his particular field of interest was remote suggestion the skill of projecting thoughts into peoples heads at a distance I didnt know whether I actually liked him or he was suggesting I like him, which was creepy and unethical all at the same time. In fact, the whole remote suggestion or seeding idea was banned once it was discovered to be the key ingredient behind advertising and promoting talentless boy bands, something that had until then been something of a mystery.

I looked at my watch again. The sorcerers we were waiting for were the Amazing Dennis Full Price and Lady Mawgon. Despite their magical ability, Mystical Arts Practitioners to give them their official title could barely get their clothes on in the right order, and often needed to be reminded to have a bath and attend regular mealtimes. Wizards are like that erratic, petulant, forgetful, passionate, and hugely frustrating. But the one thing they werent was boring, and after a difficult start when I first came to work here, I now regarded them all with a great deal of fondness even the really insane ones.