Jasper Fforde - The Song of the Quarkbeast

‘Impressive,’ said Blix as I walked past him with some chocolate for Patrick, ‘but you can’t keep up that rate of sustained spelling for ever.’

‘We’ll see.’

Tiger and I spent our time making sure that the sorcerers were kept cool by drinking gallons – and I mean gallons – of iced water, as simply being a conduit for wizidrical energy without actually using it made one grow hot, as a wire does with an electrical current passing through. We also had to ensure that the changeovers went smoothly when, predictably enough, they needed a visit to the bathroom. And all this subtly, without alerting Blix as to what we were up to. Within another twenty minutes we had drawn level with iMagic, and half an hour after that we had passed them. We were now in the lead, something reflected by the odds on the leader board and much to the delight of the crowd, but not the King, who sat in the royal box, tapping his fingers impatiently on his second-best throne.

Blix paused for a moment and walked over. He looked at us both in turn, then gave a rare smile.

‘Where are you getting all this power?’

‘Skill, hard work and efficient use of resources,’ replied Moobin. ‘You should try it some day.’

‘Very funny.’

He thought for a moment, then abruptly changed his manner.

‘Okay, here it is, with me eating humble pie: congratulations. You’ve bested me.’

Moobin and I looked at one another.

‘A trick of some sort, Blix?’ asked Moobin, not pausing for one second in placing a carved piece of stone in place. ‘We’re barely half an arch ahead.’

‘We’re almost worn out,’ Blix replied. ‘Corby and Muttney have been . . . disappointing . Perhaps we can negotiate my defeat so I am not utterly humiliated?’

It seemed an astonishing request, given his own deceitful conduct. In answer, Moobin was firm, but clear.

‘We will give you the same courtesy and kindness you gave us, Blix.’

‘How unpleasant of you,’ Blix said after a pause. ‘What happened to all the “brother wizard” stuff?’

‘It evaporated when you had us all thrown into jail.’

‘Really?’ Blix asked, as though it had only just occurred to him that we might be annoyed. ‘Yes, I suppose it might have. Never mind. I will go and draft a letter conceding my position. But irrespective, we should finish the bridge, yes? A good show for the King and the citizenry?’

‘I agree,’ said Wizard Moobin suspiciously.

Blix gave us another smile and moved off to speak to the colonel, who had been hovering close at hand.

‘I strongly suggest that we don’t relax for a moment,’ I said as soon as Blix and the colonel had departed, seemingly in some haste. ‘I smell a very large Blix-shaped rat that is up to something.’

‘I agree,’ said Moobin. ‘But what?’

I didn’t answer, and left them to carry on while the iMagic team, now without their leader, began to fall farther and farther behind. By the time we had the second arch more or less finished, the odds on the scoreboard made us the clear favourites and iMagic merely washed up old has-beens. But just as we were about to start on our final arch, something happened .

It was a surge. A burst of almost unprecedented violence, but oddly, only through Patrick and Moobin – the iMagic sorcerers were unaffected. With the two of them caught unawares, the heavy blocks of masonry that Patrick and Moobin were moving suddenly flew high in the air. One fell on the road bridge two hundred yards away, where we could hear the sound of cars braking and colliding, and another fell into the river. Two others, each a quarter of a ton, were thrown so high in the air that they disappeared from sight. [41] It was found out later that one fell harmlessly to earth in an orchard at Belmont a few miles to the south, while the other landed on the Ross-to-Hereford branch line, derailing a train transporting Hereford Zoo’s Tralfamosaur, which was on an exchange trip to Woburn Safari Park. It took three weeks to recapture, with considerable difficulty. For more details see DS3: The Return of Shandar .

Moobin swore as he tried to control the surge. He described it later as like being in a car with no brakes and the throttle jammed full on while trying to negotiate the St Nigel’s Day parade without hitting anyone. To absorb the raw energy that was now entering his body, he pointed his fingers at the river and in an instant the water had changed to a cheap German white wine and receded in both directions, revealing a lot of mud and more shopping trolleys than I thought existed in the world.

I looked across at Patrick. He, too, was struggling to do something with the massive surge, and had switched his attention to what he usually did – lifting cars for the city’s clamping unit. All cars within a 250-yard radius were violently lifted three feet into the air and then, when this wasn’t enough to absorb the power, he began moving them all to the car pound [42] Later investigations found that he had moved eighty-six cars a combined total of nineteen miles in under twenty-two seconds – a record that would never be surpassed. two miles away.

I bit my lip. An oversurge of this power generally ended only in one way – when the power overcame the sorcerer completely and caused them to physically burst. It would be painful, and very messy. [43] The technical term is an ‘Accelerated Feedback Oversurge Blowout’, when the power you are using is less than the power coming in. The last documented occurrence was fourteen years previously when an unlicensed cadet attempted to direct six MegaShandars of power towards lifting a Buick. He absorbed more than he could safely expel and the resulting imbalance caused him to literally explode. The largest bit of him they found was a small section of bone later identified as a kneecap. I watched them with growing concern as random spells began to bubble up from Patrick and Moobin’s subconscious as the increased power started to invade their thoughts. There was a brief shower of toads, dogs started barking and everyone in the crowd who had curly hair found it had straightened. The river turned from cheap wine to an expensive 1928 Château La Tour, every watch in the local postal district reset itself to midday and the clouds above the city started to form into farmyard-animal shapes.

Just when I thought our sorcerers could take no more, the surge stopped. The wine river washed back, the cloud shapes and toads vanished, and in the distance we could hear Patrick’s cars fall with expensive-sounding crunches. Moobin and Patrick fell to their knees, their index fingers purple with bruises that had spread across their hands to their forearms. It would be painful to spell for weeks.

I ran up to Moobin as the crowd started to murmur in an excited fashion. Blix’s team – minus Blix himself, who was nowhere to be seen – were staring at us, open mouthed. They’d never seen anything like it either.

‘Check the chain,’ muttered Moobin, ‘make sure everyone’s okay.’

Tiger and I dashed back down the daisy-chain to see whether anyone had burst. The first link was Margaret O’Leary, who was standing on the corner by a sideshow tent, where the Two-Headed Boy had popped his heads out of the tent flap to witness the event.

‘What in Shandar’s name was that ?’ she said. ‘I just channelled more power in thirty seconds than I’ve expended in a lifetime.’

‘Has Blix been past you?’

‘No.’

We moved on to the next in the chain, who was Bartleby the Bald. He was in much the same state as O’Leary – in shock, but okay. We worked our way back to Zambini Towers and were relieved to find that although the sorcerers were hot and sweaty and bruised with the effort, none had dared break the chain, and for good reason. If they’d tried, they would have borne the full brunt of the power themselves – the only safe option was to hope those at the end could safely expel the extra power.