Jasper Fforde - The Song of the Quarkbeast

‘You check the Moose,’ I said to Tiger. ‘I’ll look in on Lady Mawgon.’

I put my head round the door of the Palm Court, but Mawgon was unchanged. Wherever the power was coming from, it wasn’t the power stored in the Dibble Coils – they remained as resolutely full and unhacked as before.

‘Jenny!’ came Tiger’s voice. ‘In here!’

I dashed through to the lobby, where Tiger was kneeling next to a blackened moose-shaped hole burnt into the carpet. There were similar burned shapes on each of the four walls, too – of neat moosian front, back and side elevations, and a perfect moose-shaped plan view hole burned through the ceiling and three storeys up. It was so neat you could see the delicate splay of his antlers.

‘He said it was the only way to stop the surge,’ said Ex-Weathermonger Taylor Woodruff IV, who was standing close by, ‘by taking the full force internally. He said he was sorry if it messed up your bridge building.’

Tiger and I stood in silence in the empty corridor, musing on the once Transient Moose’s passing. He had frazzled every single line of the spell that made up his existence and vanished in a brief blast of energy. I picked up the small pot with the ring in it. It still didn’t make any sense. Not to me, not to anyone – certainly not to Tiger, who hated unanswered questions more than anyone.

‘Look,’ he said, showing me the readout from the Shandargraph. There were multiple peaks from what we had just seen outside, but also another drain, sustained over thirty-seven seconds, and peaking at 1.2 GigaShandars. The range and direction were the same as Moobin and Patrick’s; up around the old bridge somewhere.

‘Was that Blix?’ asked Tiger.

‘If it was he didn’t use it on the bridge,’ I said, looking at my watch. It had been reset to midday in the surge, and now read five minutes past.

‘1.2 GigaShandars?’ queried Tiger. ‘Isn’t that the power drain requirement of a—’

‘It is,’ I replied, not far behind him. ‘Call 999 and mutter “Quarkbeast” in a panicky voice. I need Once Magnificent Boo at the bridge as soon as possible.’

‘You think—?’

‘I do. The Quarkbeast has just divided.’

I ran back to the bridge to find Moobin and Patrick sucking on ice cubes and trying to get their breath back. The iMagic team were still working, but without Blix they were a good four hours behind, if they could finish at all.

‘The Moose is gone,’ I said to Moobin, ‘so you’re on your own. The surge you felt was a power drain as something latched on to the ambient wizidrical energy and drew what it needed through you. Blix had a plan B in case we were to defeat him. A plan he has hatched with the help of the colonel. This is no longer a magic contest – it’s an assassination attempt! ’

‘To what end?’

‘To put Blix on the throne. Legally the Court Mystician is eighth in line after the Royal Family and the Lord Chief Adviser. Everyone that stands between him and the Crown is here today, gathered conveniently in one place to suffer . . . death by Quarkbeast!’

‘A bit of a long shot,’ responded Moobin doubtfully. ‘The last incidence of a person savaged by a Quarkbeast was over a decade ago – and he did attack it first with a garden fork. I can’t see the King attacking anything with a garden fork.’

‘He’d have a footman do it for him,’ said Margaret O’Leary, who had joined us, ‘but I’m not sure a Quarkbeast would be able to make the distinction between the attacker and the person who ordered it.’

‘Not that way,’ I replied, still out of breath from the run, ‘I mean with a confluence . Place a captured Quarkbeast next to a source of heavy spelling and it will draw the vast quantity of power needed to divide. It tried earlier with Patrick when he was moving the oak, but couldn’t draw enough. The Moose gave it as much as it needed – and more.’

‘But if it is not separated after division,’ said Moobin, who knew a bit about Quarkbeasts as well, ‘then—’

‘Right,’ I said, ‘if unable to escape itself in a thousand seconds, it will recombine with enough energy to take out a third of the city.’

They stared at me, horrified at the suggestion.

‘How long is a thousand seconds?’

‘Sixteen minutes and forty seconds.’

I looked at my watch. It was eleven minutes past. If the Quarkbeast divided when the surge ended, we had less than five minutes. We looked around. Most of the south of the city would be taken out and, with it, King Snodd and all his family, half the police, most of the Imperial Guard, all the spectators – and us. Blix would be taking cover somewhere out of the blast radius.

‘No witnesses,’ said Moobin, ‘and no one to refute whatever version of events King Blix decided on – he could blame it on anything he chose.’

‘We need to find a locked room within fifty metres of the royal box,’ I muttered. ‘Wait here.’

I ran across to where Lord Tenbury was standing, presumably wondering whether the King was serious about stuffing him and Blix with sawdust if they lost. I explained as briefly as I could what was up, and Tenbury, eager to regain the King’s trust, immediately ordered the Royal Family’s evacuation, then returned to us to see how he could help. He may have been corrupt, but he was no coward.

‘Where do we start?’ asked Moobin. ‘There must be hundreds of rooms big enough to hide two equal but identically opposite Quarkbeasts.’

As we looked about, wasting time, word was getting about that something was up – the hurried way in which the Royal Family were removed most probably, and then the Imperial Guard themselves, who had a reputation for running from danger wherever it presented itself. In any event, the crowd began to grow restless, and when those in the expensive seats started to move away with their jewellery rattling in a panicked fashion, those in the cheaper seats also decided to make a run for it.

I looked around to see where a Quarkbeast might be hidden, but then a notion drifted into my head. I told Moobin straight away.

‘Perkins is imprisoned with the Quarkbeast!’

‘You know this or you think this? We don’t have time to make a mistake.’

I had to make a swift judgement call. Half of Hereford and thousands of lives depended upon it.

‘I know this,’ I said, taking a deep breath, ‘because it’s an odd notion that popped uninvited into my head. And if Perkins has any particular skill, it’s that of seeding ideas. I think he might be trying to communicate with me.’

I closed my eyes and tried to empty my mind, which was difficult as the mass exit of spectators made something of a noise as the panic increased.

‘Moobin,’ I said, ‘I need you to take out all my senses.’

He pointed his finger at me and in an instant everything went empty. It was as though I had fallen into an empty space within myself that had nothing in it but time, thoughts, smells and the deep red of the sky at dawn. It was extraordinarily peaceful, and without the distraction of overwhelming sensory input I felt unusually clear headed. At first I could sense nothing except the jumble of my own thoughts firing across my mind and the smell of bacon and Irish stew, but after a moment or two I forced these to one side and, all of a sudden, there was a small voice on the very edge of my conscious mind, where the froth of random thoughts meets free will. It was Perkins, and he was sending me ideas. But he wasn’t that good at it, and seemed to be coming across like a greetings telegram, and what’s more, one that was badly spelled.

. . . WEST OF SNOOD BLVD SELLAR ++ KWARKBEAST DIVIDED ++