Jasper Fforde - The Great Troll War

‘Sixty-four feet,’ said Tiger. ‘You’ll be travelling at about forty-three miles per hour when you hit the ground.’

‘That will sting a bit,’ said the Princess. ‘Well, toddle off, then. Let us know when you’ll be jumping so we can come and watch.’

Sir Matt Grifflon muttered something, then left the room. There was a pause and then Tiger started giggling, followed closely by Colin.

‘Do you think he’ll actually do it?’ said the Princess to me.

‘He’ll find any excuse not to. Besides—’

I didn’t get to finish as a pillar of fire opened up in the middle of room, accompanied by a clap of thunder. It was not hot, just dramatic, and in an instant the fire was replaced by two people.

I’d met them both before. One was Miss D’Argento, a woman only a few years older than myself. She was Shandar’s agent, had short bobbed dark hair, was dressed elegantly and carried a clipboard. The other person was tall, good looking and wore a dark suit with mauve pinstripes – which went, oddly, horizontally instead of vertically. He had a youthful bounce to his stride, carried a long cane and had bright green eyes.

It was the Mighty Shandar.

‘This is it!’ said Kevin Zip, suddenly becoming all animated and excited. ‘This is the Something that was about to Happen!’

‘All those present,’ said Miss D’Argento, ‘take heed and listen: you are now in the presence of Super Ultra Grand Master Sorcerer, mover of mountains, he-who-the-storms-obey, commander of oceans, speaker of tongues, keeper of the sacred spells, creator of beasts, wiser than the ancient ones and purveyor of fine enchantments, no reasonable terms refused, his most powerful, bountiful worshipfulness: the Mighty Shandar.’

She gave a dramatic flourish and a low bow, but if she had thought we would all follow suit, she was to be disappointed. The honorific was long winded, but correct. Technically speaking, all practitioners should be introduced this way, but it just soaked up useful time that might be otherwise spent drinking tea, or chatting. The only one of our bunch who liked this sort of nonsense was Lady Mawgon.

Nonetheless, at least one of us needed to offer the official reply, and since I was Court Mystician, it fell to me.

‘This house welcomes you, O Mighty Shandar, Super Ultra Grand Master Sorcerer, mover of mountains, he-who-the-storms-obey, commander of oceans and keeper of the sacred spells, creator of beasts and wiser than the ancient ones.’

To a sorcerer of Shandar’s power, the correct honorific was all-important. You didn’t get to this level with just skill and hard study. No, you needed ambition, a massive personal ego, a keen sense of entitlement and a streak of vanity a mile wide.

And he had all of them.

In spades.

‘We return your salutations, noble Court Mystician,’ said Miss D’Argento, going into the second line of the official salutation. I think there were four calls and returns in total. ‘Our pledge is peace, our reason here a parler, 22 22 ‘Parler’ meaning a talk, from the French ‘parler’, meaning to speak. our fingers are bent, there shall be no subterfuge.’

She waited me to return the salutation.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I don’t know the rest. I’ve never got this far before.’

‘I think you just repeat it back,’ said Colin.

‘You do not ,’ said D’Argento indignantly, ‘but if you so require, this person can write it down if you wish.’

Miss D’Argento usually referred to herself in the third person. Out of all her affectations – jet-black suit, constant reference to her clipboard, fashionable indifference – it was the one I liked least. Shandar, however, merely glanced at D’Argento and waved away any objections, so she fell silent while he looked around carefully. His gaze paused briefly on Colin and Feldspar, then on Once Magnificent Boo, Monty Vanguard, the Princess, and finally me. He proffered me a faint glimmer of respect and stepped forward, his footprints remaining aflame for some seconds after he had moved on. That he was the most powerful sorcerer alive today was beyond doubt.

Shane James Alexandar was a child magical prodigy. By the time he was six he could levitate pianos and charm badgers from their burrows in broad daylight. He’d conjured up his first house by the time he was ten, and by his fifteenth birthday had demonstrated an eighty-foot free teleport, then a world record. By the time he was eighteen he had mastered arboreal transformation, weather manipulation and the transmutation of matter. He passed out First in Class from Sorcerer College and was awarded the ‘Mighty’ honorific eight years later when he spelled up the Quarkbeast, winner of the coveted ‘Most Terrifying Beast’ prize at the 1592 ‘Wizard of the Year’ awards.

His dazzling career encompassed almost every aspect of the mystical arts, finally culminating in dealing with the Dragon Question, 23 23 See The Last Dragonslayer for a full explanation. for which he was paid enough 24 24 Twenty-eight dray-weights of gold, a dray being a very large horse. It was about a third of all the gold in the world at that point. Today it would be worth about 1.2 trillion moolah. to retire twenty times over. He was so key to the industry that the unit of wizidrical energy had been named after him, and there were few who considered him anything but the finest exponent of the wizidrical arts. After the Dragons were dealt with his reputation began to tarnish as he became known as a sorcerer who would do pretty much anything if the price was right, ethical or not. By the time he was middle aged he was more of a loner, and rarely sought the companionship or counsel of his peers.

‘Miss Strange,’ he said cordially, ‘you are looking well.’

‘And yourself, sire,’ I returned, ‘you look barely a day over ninety.’

‘You will treat His Mightiness with the proper respect,’ growled Miss D’Argento.

‘It’s okay,’ said Shandar, ‘I think Miss Strange intended it as compliment.’

He was right. It was. Shandar was actually somewhere in his mid-four-hundreds and this was highly unusual. The magical holy grail of Eternal Life had remained stubbornly beyond the reach of sorcerers. The oldest wizard to ever live in a continuously human form had finally clocked out at an impressive 173 years and nine days. Others had achieved greater longevity by spending their weekends as tortoises or lobsters but Shandar had achieved his old age by simply turning himself to stone, a spell that had been invented to avoid income tax by outliving the current tax regime or waiting for the paperwork to be lost, as it inevitably was.

‘So,’ I said, ‘how may we serve you?’

‘Straight to the point?’ he replied. ‘I admire that. So here it is: no doubt you have seen that the Trolls are currently in complete possession of these islands. You may already have surmised that I had something to do with it.’

We all knew it was him, but the confirmation made my temper rise, and I could feel I was not alone – the tension in the room rose markedly.

‘You murdered my friends,’ I said in a quiet voice, ‘innocents, sorcerers, your own. Everything that the Sorcerer’s Charter holds to be true and just – you rejected.’

‘The Charter does not recognise forward thinking; it is rooted in the old ways. And they were not friends of mine, Miss Strange – but I will meditate upon their loss, in time. To business: you will have seen that I have shortened Zip’s predictive powers, set up a HENRY Spellsucker and interfered with Price and Mawgon’s telepathic shout-out. As things currently stand you have only two sorcerers, no wizidrical power for them to use, and less than forty people militarily trained, eighteen swords and four firearms.’