The Eye of Zoltar (8 page)

‘I did my own sleeping,’ she said after a moment’s thought, ‘usually.’

I gathered up her tatty clothes as she took them off, then chucked them in the recycling. As I left to alert everyone to the Sorcerers’ Conclave I heard her scream as she mishandled the mixer on the shower.

The sorcerers were all convened in the Kazam main offices an hour later. Wizard Moobin was there, as was Lady Mawgon, Full and Half Price, Perkins, Prince Nasil, Dame Corby ‘She whom the ants obey’ and Kevin Zipp, who was busy scribbling notes on the back of an envelope.

They all listened to what I had to say, from D’argento’s appearance to Shandar’s offer of a deal. Find the Eye of Zoltar, or he’d kill the Dragons, and us too if we tried to stop him. I didn’t tell them about the Princess as they’d all guess soon enough.

‘Zoltar?’ said Perkins when I mentioned it. ‘Anyone we know?’

‘Zoltar was the sorcerer to His Tyrannical Majesty Amenemhat V,’ said Moobin, ‘and was ranked about third most powerful on the planet at the time. He turned to the dark Mystical Arts for cash, as we understand it, and was killed in an unspeakably unpleasant way not long after Amenemhat V himself.’

‘And the Eye?’ I asked. ‘I’m thinking it wasn’t a real one.’

‘It was a jewel,’ said Dame Corby, reading from the
Codex Magicalis
. ‘It says that Zoltar liked to use a staff, the top of which was adorned “with a mighty ruby the size of a goose egg”. Cut with over a thousand facets and said to dance with inner fire, the ruby was always warm to the touch, even on the coldest night. It is said that the Eye worked as a
lens
to magnify Zoltar’s huge power. After Zoltar’s death the Eye changed hands many time but not without mishap – lesser wizards “were changed into lead” when they attempted to harness its huge power.’

‘Changed to
what
?’ said Perkins.

‘Lead,’ said Dame Corby. ‘You know, the heavy metal?’

‘Oh,’ said Perkins.

‘Does it say what happened to the Eye?’ I asked.

Dame Corby turned over the page.

‘Changed hands many times – traditional reports of a curse, death to all who beheld it, ba-da-boom-ba-da-bing, usual stuff. It was definitely known to be in the possession of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1552, and was said to be instrumental in maintaining the might and power of the Ottoman Empire. It was thought to have been on one of the trains that T. E. Lawrence derailed on the Hejaz railway in 1916. It was suggested Lawrence may have owned the Eye until he died in a motorcycle accident in 1935 but nothing was found in his effects. No one’s heard of the Eye after that.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Kevin Zipp, ‘and I’ll relate to you a conversation I had with an ex-sorcerer named Able Quizzler a few years back.’

Everyone leaned closer.

‘Quizzler was part of the team that did the early spelling work for levitating railways,’ said Kevin, ‘but when I met him he was scratching a living doing voiceover work for I-speak-your-weight machines. He told me how he had spent the last forty years attempting to find the Eye of Zoltar, and with it restart his sorcery career. He had almost given up when he heard stories of a vast, multifaceted ruby that seemed to dance with inner fire, was warm to the touch and gave inexplicable powers to those skilled enough to tame it – and changed the unworthy to lead.’

‘The metal lead?’ said Perkins, who was having trouble grasping this.

‘Yes, the metal lead.’

‘And where was this?’ asked Lady Mawgon, who suddenly seemed interested.

‘The Eye of Zoltar was apparently seen around … the neck of Sky Pirate Wolff.’

Up until now everyone had been hanging on Kevin’s every word, but as soon as he mentioned Wolff, everyone sighed and threw up their arms in exasperation.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ said Moobin sceptically, ‘if there is a tall story kicking around, then fourteen pence to a pound Captain Wolff will be at the bottom of it.’

I knew of Captain Wolff, of course – everyone did. She was a mythical figure, also of Grade III ‘really not very likely at all’ status, who had more wild stories attached to her than almost anyone on the planet. She was blamed for many acts of aerial piracy but never caught, and sightings of her were sporadic, sketchy and prone to exaggeration. It was said that she had tamed a Cloud Leviathan personally, which is a bit like saying you rode a Zebricorn into battle after catching one. The Leviathan, an aircraft-sized flying creature of obscure origins, was seen only rarely, and photographed just once, about eight years before. The photograph was front-page news in the world’s newspapers and downgraded the Leviathan’s legendary status from Grade IV, ‘not very likely, to be honest’, to a Grade V: ‘okay, some basis in fact, but still partly unexplained’.

It was also speculated that Sky Pirate Wolff’s hideout was in the legendary Leviathans’ Graveyard, the place where Cloud Leviathans go to die, reputedly located somewhere on the misty heights of the mountain known as Cadair Idris. The facts were all a bit hazy, but if Wolff were somehow real, this is how she’d want it – and Wolff’s skill at taming a Leviathan would explain the ease with which she could apparently capture entire jetliners on the wing, the loss of the liner
Tyrannic
and even the capture and destruction of Cloud City Nimbus III, where every man and woman was made to walk the plank – it rained Cloud City citizens for weeks, some say.

‘Sky Pirate Wolff doesn’t exist,’ said Moobin. ‘It’s more likely the
Tyrannic
was lost at sea, no one knows what happened to Nimbus III, and as for pirates boarding jetliners, it’s more probable the scallywags stowed themselves aboard inside the wheel-wells.’

There then started an argument about whether the legendary pirate existed or not, whether it was safe or even possible to hide oneself in wheel-wells, and the wisdom of chasing after Grade IV legends and half-truths told by Able Quizzler, an old man driven insane by a quest that had dominated his life.

‘Okay, okay,’ I yelled above the arguing, ‘let’s all just calm down. Kevin, finish your story, please.’

‘Last time we spoke, Able Quizzler told me that the Eye of Zoltar was within his grasp. I think it’s a lead worth pursuing.’

‘When and where was this?’ asked Lady Mawgon.

‘Six years ago, in a place called Llangurig. But I trust Able. We go back a while.’

Everyone went quiet.

‘Llangurig is well inside the Cambrian Empire,’ observed Moobin, ‘in a region notorious for bandits, wild beasts, emulating slime mould and other perils. It’s too dangerous.’

‘So is fighting Shandar,’ I said. ‘Where’s the harm in travelling to Llangurig to see if I can find Quizzler? After all, the refund isn’t due for another month – and I could negotiate for Boo’s release at the same time.’

This had an effect on the gathering, but before we could discuss it further there was a whooshing of wings and some brief bickering, and two dark shapes flew by the window.

‘That’s just what we need,’ said Lady Mawgon, ‘a couple of infants.’

And with a clattering at the window, two Dragons attempted to get in at the same time. They elbowed each other petulantly, breaking the window frame and panes of glass as they did so.

‘Hey!’ I said in my loudest voice, and they suddenly went silent. I was about the only one who could control them.

‘Cut it out, you two – what happened to that bit where Dragons were creatures of great dignity, learning and wisdom?’

‘Sorry, what did you say?’ said Colin, removing one of his iPod earbuds. ‘I was listening to the Doobie Brothers.’

The two Dragons I found myself vaguely responsible for were called Feldspar Axiom Firebreath IV, and Colin. They were each the size of a pony, and were decidedly reptilian in appearance, manner and gait. They had long jaws with serrated teeth, ornate head frills, a long barbed tail and explosively flammable breath. Their wings were a triumph of design in that when they were unfolded they took up the entire room and were as translucent as tissue paper, but when folded fitted neatly into dimples on their backs. They had muscular arms and legs, both of which carried sharp talons that needed to be clipped often as they would otherwise damage the hotel’s parquet flooring.

But despite their appearance, which was both elegant and terrifying in equal measure, they acted like particularly dumb teenage brothers, only with an IQ immeasurably higher, and better taste in clothes and friends.

‘Welcome home,’ I said. ‘Were you impressed by all that learning?’

‘Good in parts,’ said Colin thoughtfully, ‘but generally inclined to repetition.’

‘That’s it?’ said Wizard Moobin. ‘Our entire intellectual output dismissed in a sentence?’

‘We can discuss human literary output further if you’d like,’ said Feldspar, ‘but we’d only get as far as Aristotle before you’d do that thing where you stop working and fall apart. What’s it called again?’

‘Dying?’

‘That’s it. But your output isn’t
all
boring. We thought that a few humans were actually
really
smart, but they were too rare to be of any real use, and rarely became leaders where they could actually change things.’

‘And,’ added Colin, ‘I was a little disappointed over all that killing.’

Colin was a strict pacifist, and as much a vegan as any Dragon ever could be.

‘There
is
quite a lot of it in our history,’ I conceded.

‘I knew how
much
before I went,’ said Colin, ‘I was just unprepared for the range of ridiculous excuses you lot use in its justification. It’s somewhat bizarre to learn that many of you think that other humans are somehow different enough to be hated and killed, when in reality you’re all tiresomely similar in outlook, needs and motivation, and differ only by peculiar habits, generally shaped by geographical circumstance.’

‘We’re not
all
bad,’ I said, suddenly finding myself defending my own species.

‘No,’ agreed Colin, ‘some of you are hardly rubbish at all, and a few – there are always a few – are quite exceptional. Mind you,’ he added, ‘you can always take solace in the fact that humans are generally better than Trolls.’

‘Better than Trolls?’ said Lady Mawgon scornfully. ‘Praise indeed.’

‘
Generally
better,’ repeated Colin, in case she had misunderstood.

We all fell silent, and Feldspar looked around the room carefully.

‘Is this a Sorcerers’ Conclave?’ he asked, and I nodded.

‘It’s about the Mighty Shandar,’ said Moobin, and he outlined the refund issue, and how finding the Eye of Zoltar might help.

‘I thought he might want to kill us,’ said Colin in a matter-of-fact manner, ‘most do. We’ll defend ourselves as well as we can, but it won’t be much of a fight – neither of us will be full-grown and at Peak Magic for at least another century, perhaps two.’

‘… which is why we need to find the Eye,’ I said, ‘heard of it?’

‘Nope,’ said Colin, ‘but then our Dragon trans-death memory is weak at present. If you want to give us thirty years or so for our forefathers’ memories to settle and coalesce, we’d be happy to help then.’

‘That might be too long,’ said Moobin.

‘Humans!’ said Feldspar. ‘Always in such a hurry. Well, must be off. I’m on a princess-guarding gig, and the venue needs my approval for suitability. Tall tower, abandoned castle, island, that sort of thing.’

‘You never mentioned this,’ said Colin, mildly annoyed.

‘I don’t have to tell you
everything
. Besides, it’s only for thirty years or until successful abduction of said princess by said brave knight.’

‘You wouldn’t catch me doing any princess-guarding,’ said Colin grumpily. ‘It’s so depressingly
medieval
, and besides, guarding princesses and vaporising knights with a white-hot ball of fire is not the publicity we Dragons need right now.’

‘How about guarding but without doing the ball of fire thing?’ asked Moobin.

‘It’s an idea,’ replied Feldspar thoughtfully, ‘although I’m not sure you
can
guard princesses without roasting a few knights. It’ll be fine. I get to meet the princess and if we don’t hit it off I can always turn them down.’

And so saying he flew out of the window.

‘Okay,’ I said, using my authoritative voice, the one I usually used when I had to make some sort of wise or portentous pronouncement, ‘it looks like I’m going into the Cambrian Empire on a dual mission. Firstly, I’ll head for Llangurig to find Able Quizzler and see if there is any truth in his claim that the Eye of Zoltar is in Pirate Wolff’s possession.’

‘And secondly?’ asked Lady Mawgon.

‘I’ll drop in and see if I can negotiate for Once Magnificent Boo’s release. I’ll be gone for two days, three at most.’

There was a mild grumbling of discomfort. Whenever I went away or had a day off, things generally went a bit chaotic at Kazam, but they understood this was important.

‘Okay, then,’ I said, eager to move on, ‘who’s coming with me? Not you, Tiger, you’re staying here to look after things in my absence.’

‘I can be tactical air support,’ said Colin. ‘I might not be large enough to carry anyone, but I can manage reconnaissance duties.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Anyone else?’

There was silence, and for a good reason.

‘I’m not sure
any
of us can come with you,’ said Moobin apologetically. ‘The transportation of licensed sorcerers across borders has been strictly controlled for some time. We could get travel permits, but it would take six months or more.’

‘If we sneaked across the border and were caught we’d end up no better off than Once Magnificent Boo,’ added Lady Mawgon.

‘My carpet and I aren’t going anywhere until I get some more angel feathers,’ said the Prince gloomily, ‘but if you shout I’ll come running and do what I can.’

‘I’m too lazy,’ admitted Kevin Zipp, ‘and can foresee more terrors than I think it will be helpful to tell you about.’

This was worrying. I didn’t mind going on my own, but I’d prefer company.

‘I’m in,’ said Perkins. ‘Officialdom moves slowly both in the Kingdom of Snodd and the Cambrian Empire. It’s doubtful if my licensed-sorcerer status has even left the Ministry of Infernal Affairs out-tray. The worst they can do is refuse me entry.’