Jasper Fforde - The Great Troll War

‘Powerful enough to start a chain reaction?’ I asked.

‘No – it would just have taken a sizeable chunk out of the tower and enough to topple it. Your friends just tried to kill you,’ he continued with a smirk. ‘Funny how people turn on their chums when they get desperate, isn’t it?’

‘I would only be collateral damage in the assassination of a tyrant,’ I replied. ‘They would have happily accepted the same fate, even if engineered by me. And I would have,’ I added, fixing him with my best steely gaze.

‘You pompously self-righteous people are all the same,’ he said, ‘horribly—’

‘Pompous and self-righteous?’ I suggested.

‘I was going to say “disgustingly smug”. And I’m not a tyrant. In fact, I’m probably the least tyrannical person you know.’

He didn’t go on to explain why he thought this, or even why he thought I should believe it. He then crushed the explosive device in his hands, and the stored wizidrical energy flooded into his body.

‘Happy now?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said, continuing his search in and around my Beetle, ‘for if I wanted to assassinate someone, I would place two weapons – one hard to find, and the other almost impossible.’

He was right, and eventually found the second, which had been suspended inside a glass jar filled with water – always a good way to cloak wizidrical energy. It was well concealed, too – Shandar had to actually reach through the metal to retrieve it.

‘ Much more impressive,’ he said, showing me the jar, which was glowing a soft shade of emerald green in his hands.

‘Now this might have kicked off a chain reaction,’ he said, almost admiringly. ‘D’you know, I almost respect your wizardy chums. There was only a 4% chance I wouldn’t find it, but at least they tried .’

He absorbed the power from this one, too.

‘We’re clear,’ he said finally. ‘One of the Hollow maids will show you to your quarters.’

‘When do we leave?’ I asked.

‘Leave? My dear girl, we’ve already left. We’re currently 20,000 feet above the Earth, travelling at roughly fifty times the speed of horse. We’ll pick up more speed once the Quarkbeast conjoinment occurs, but we won’t be leaving the solar system straight away – as chance would have it, Jupiter and Saturn are in conjunction, so we can drop off for a look-see on the way out. After that, I’ll ramp up the speed and we’ll head off across interstellar space to Proxima Centauri, allowing me to refuel myself, then jump into a more richly inhabited part of the galaxy – somewhere that will give me greater scope for the crushing of worthless peons who dare to oppose my might.’

I stared at him.

‘Or,’ he added quickly, ‘to a place where you can advise me how best to temper my worst excesses to maximise the size and reach of the Shandarian Empire. Now say goodbye to the Beast and I shall elevate myself to immortality.’

The Quarkbeast had been sitting there, quite happily, and wagged its tail as I knelt down to say goodbye. I’d never hugged it before as its sharpened scales didn’t lend themselves easily to cuddling unless there is a large tin of plasters and a bottle of iodine to hand, but as I approached his spines folded flat into his back and he closed his mouth tight so his fangs wouldn’t show. I placed my hand on his back and he purred at me.

‘Sure you’re okay with this?’

He wagged his tail and licked my face, which felt raspy and smelled of rusty hammers.

‘You’ve been a good friend,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Goodbye, Jennifer. The best view of Jupiter is from the orbit of Ganymede.’

‘What did you say?’ asked Shandar.

‘I didn’t say anything.’

I hugged the Quarkbeast tightly. I’d had to trust Maltcassion the moment before I slayed him, and the Quarkbeast had told me that death brings about opportunity. I’d also learned that death is sometimes not the worst thing that can happen: it can be a gateway, whereby old things pass away and new and better things arrive in their place.

I relaxed my grip on the Quarkbeast, and he wagged his tail again, gave me a wink, laid his paw on my hand and then trotted off towards the central stairway and the Quarkbeast Deck.

‘Quark,’ he said as an afterthought once in the stairwell. ‘Quark-Quark-Quark.’

‘Why do you shed tears for something that isn’t real?’ asked Shandar, staring at me.

‘You couldn’t possibly understand,’ I replied.

He smiled.

‘But you will teach me. Now: I’m going to give you free rein to move around the tower, but if I suspect you’re getting up to any monkey business, I will have you bricked up in your quarters. The one thing I’ve learned about Jennifer Strange is that she’s very resourceful, but since you have no plans or magical gadgets to help you out, I have little to fear from you. But the threat of bricking you up in your quarters remains. Understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘Good. The Hollow maid will show you to your rooms.’

And so saying, Shandar vanished.

The Hollow maid was dressed the same as the other Hollow Women, but with the addition of a white apron with pockets. She, like the rest of the Hollow people, was just empty clothes hanging in the air.

‘Lead on,’ I said, and she walked me towards the elevators.

‘Mind the step,’ she said in a weirdly empty voice.

‘You can talk?’ I asked.

‘The Glorious Leader has great plans for make good benevolent domination of galaxy,’ she said mechanically. ‘We are earmarked for Mandrake Sentience Emulation Protocol upgrades. His Mightiness believes eons better spent more comfortably with servants who have personality. Is this good?’

‘Yes. You’ll enjoy the protocols.’

‘I do not feel real today. Will I, in time?’

I thought about the Quarkbeast and the Transient Moose, both of whom had a personality, despite being little more than a spell.

‘Whether biologically or wizidrically based, it makes no difference. Once you care for others, and understand kindness, empathy and the value of friendship and selflessness, you’ve got what it takes to be human. Nothing else matters.’

‘Your word I will take for this.’

‘Do you have a name?’

‘I would like you to name me. I think you will be good at that.’

‘Blousie.’

‘I like that,’ said Blousie, ‘it is a good name. Do you want to hear a joke? I tell jokes well. It is about a family of balloons during a thunderstorm. I think you will laugh.’

‘Maybe later. For now just show me to my quarters.’

My quarters were modelled on Zambini Towers with all the shabbiness included – water stains, peeling wallpaper and rickety furniture, I think to make me feel more at home. I had an entire floor to myself – the fifty-third storey – comprising sixteen rooms including library, gym, sitting room, reading room, den, workshop, two laboratories and six more empty rooms ‘to expand into’. I also had a walk-in observation chamber that was built on the outside of the tower, with a large semicircular viewing port the size of my car. There was a comfy armchair in the centre from where to sit and watch the heavens, something that even in my sullen and dejected mood rarely failed to entertain.

We’d been travelling for two weeks now, and the Quarkbeast conjoinment had taken place on the second day. I stayed in my quarters when it happened, as there was no pleasure in witnessing the Mighty Shandar elevate himself to the status of an immortal: ridiculously overblown acts of self-aggrandisement he could do on his own. The song of the Quarkbeast had echoed through the building when they recombined to liberate the 263 TeraShandars of pure wizidrical energy, and even with my pillow held tight to my ears, it still got inside me, and I wept, not for my Quarkbeast, but for all of them, and what this meant for Shandar, and his ambitions, and his unbridled, misused power. The Eye of Zoltar had done exactly what it was supposed to do: absorbed and then focused the raw wizidrical energy directly into Shandar’s body. Every cell of his being now coursed with energy, elevating him to a level of unheard-of power.