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The Convent of the Sacred Order of the Blessed Lady of the Lobster was once a dank and dark medieval castle but was now, after a lick of paint and the introduction of a few scatter cushions, a dank and dark convent. The building overlooked the Wye, which was pleasant, and was right on the edge of the demilitarised zone, which wasn’t. Successive King Snodds had looked upon the Duke of Brecon’s neighbouring duchy with envious eyes, and a garrison from each had faced each other across the ten-mile strip of land which was their only shared border. The upshot of this was that King Snodd’s artillery was behind the convent, and used to fire a daily shell across the building to fall harmlessly into the demilitarised zone beyond. The Duke of Brecon, whose sabre-rattling was more frugal given his poorer status, had his artillerymen yell ‘bang’ in unison by way of a returned salvo, and reserved live shells for special occasions, such as birthdays.

Despite the stand-off on their doorstep, the Sisterhood grew and supplied vegetables, fruit, honey and wisdom to the city in exchange for cash, which allowed them to continue to bring up foundlings like myself and Tiger. To us, the artillery camped out in the orchard was a matter of singular unimportance, except that you could tell the time by the single shot, which was always at 8.04 precisely.

I parked my car outside the convent and walked silently through the old gatehouse in an attempt to surprise Mother Zenobia, who was dozing in a large chair on the lawn. She was well over one hundred and fifty, but still remarkably active. She was a Troll War widow herself and had taken to the Lobsterhood soon after the loss of her husband. There were hushed rumours of a former riotous life, but all I knew for certain was that she had held the 1927 air-racing record in a Napier-engined Percival Plover at 208.72 m.p.h. I can be specific because the trophy commemorating the feat was kept in her small room – even Ladies of the Lobster are permitted one small vanity.

‘Jennifer?’ she asked, reaching out a hand for me to touch. ‘I saw you drive up. Was your car orange?’

‘It was, Mother,’ I replied.

‘And you are wearing blue, I think?’

‘Right again,’ I replied, amazed at her observations. She had been totally blind for nearly half a century.

She clapped her hands twice and bade me sit next to her. A novice ran up and Mother Zenobia ordered some tea and cake. She tickled the Quarkbeast under the chin and gave it a tin of dog food to crunch, which is a bit like waving your hand near an open food blender with your eyes closed. The Quarkbeast had never given me any trouble, but the sight of his knife-like fangs still unnerved me.

‘How is young Prawns settling in?’

‘Very well. He’s answering the phones as we speak.’

‘A special one, that,’ remarked Mother Zenobia, ‘and destined for great things, even if a bit troublesome. He managed to pick the lock of the food cupboard no matter how many times we improved security.’

‘I didn’t see him as a thief.’

‘Oh, he never stole anything – he just did it to demonstrate that he could. He’d read the entire library by the time he was nine.’

She thought for a moment.

‘Tiger’s father was Third Engineer on a landship in the Fourth Troll Wars. Vanished during the Stirling Offensive. Only tell him when he asks.’

‘I’ll be sure to.’

‘Is this a social visit?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I confessed, having learned long ago that you never lie to Mother Zenobia.

‘Then it’s about the Dragondeath.’

‘You can feel it too?’

‘Given the power of the transmission, there won’t be anyone who hasn’t by the end of the week.’

‘Tell me about Dragons, Mother Zenobia.’

Mother Zenobia took a sip of her tea, and began:

‘Dragons, like four o’clock tea, crumpets, marmalade and zip-up cardigans, are a peculiarity of the Ununited Kingdoms. They were fierce fire-breathing creatures of great intelligence, dignity and sensitivity who could and did converse on matters of great importance. It was said that a Dragon named Janus was the first to suggest that the Earth went round the sun, and that the pinpoints of light to be seen at night were not holes in a velvet blanket, but stars like our sun. It was also rumoured – although man’s deceit prevents it from being anything more than a legend – that it was Dimwiddy, a small Dragon from the island of what is now ConStuffia, who first discovered the mathematical law of differential calculus. It is also said that “Bubbles” Beezley, the fabled pink Dragon of Trollvania, was a very good comedian who would capture victims and bombard them with jokes until their hair was turned snowy white by the experience. But for all their intelligence, wit and social graces, Dragons still had one habit that made them impossible to ignore.’

‘And that is . . . ?’

‘They liked to eat people.’

‘I thought that was just to frighten children?’

‘Oh no, it’s true all right,’ replied Mother Zenobia sadly, ‘and don’t interrupt. For centuries the population of these islands maintained an uneasy peace with the Dragons. Since Dragons didn’t like crowds and favoured feeding at night, it was best to stay indoors and avoid going for long walks on your own. If you did then it was a wise precaution to wear a large spiked helmet of copper, something Dragons find highly unpalatable. But for all these precautions, Dragons did still eat people, and the country lived in fear. Before the Dragonpact, knights were the only method of Dragonslaying, and many a fearless young knight, driven by the promise of a king’s daughter’s hand in marriage, would boldly sally forth to attempt to kill a Dragon, returning – he hoped – with the jewel that a Dragon had in its forehead as proof of the conquest.’

‘And?’ I asked, as Mother Zenobia seemed to have fallen asleep. She hadn’t, of course; she was just gathering her thoughts.

‘The problem was, not many managed to kill a Dragon. Indeed, out of a recorded 8,128 attempts by knights, only twelve managed to succeed, mostly due to a lucky charge with a brave horse and a providential jab in the unarmoured section just beneath the throat. After two hundred years of this, the interest in becoming a knight and marrying a princess started to wane, and following the time when five knights tried a multi-pronged attack and were all returned impaled on a lance like a giant kebab, knights were forbidden to Dragonslay, which caused a great deal of relief, but generally only among the knights.’

‘What happened then?’

‘For two hundred years, not very much. Even the discovery of gunpowder failed to make a dent on the Dragon population. Cannonballs just bounced off a Dragon’s hide, giving it nothing more than indigestion and a sore temper. Many a thatched village was set on fire in the middle of the night by a Dragon who had been much annoyed at being shelled when he was sunning himself quietly in the afternoon. The only solution to the Dragon Question seemed to be in the use of magic. But since Dragons are fine practitioners of the sacred arts themselves, it required the arrival of a magician so utterly powerful that it was said his footprints spontaneously caught fire as he walked—’

‘The Mighty Shandar?’

‘Have I told you this story before?’

Mother Zenobia was suspicious that I was humouring an old person with a flaky memory; she would have narrowed her eyes if she had any.

‘Not at all. It’s just that the sorcerers back at Zambini Towers often speak of him.’

‘He is the yardstick for magicians everywhere,’ replied Mother Zenobia solemnly. ‘That is why we measure magical power in Shandars.’

Making a toad burp requires about two hundred Shandars; boiling an egg can use over a thousand. My own power had been rated at 159.3, which is not far from the national average of 150, which gives you a good idea of how bad I was at it.

‘Where were we?’ asked Mother Zenobia, who had lost track of the conversation.

‘You were telling me about the Mighty Shandar.’

‘Oh yes. No one knew where he came from, nobody knew where he went, and few people even know what he looked like or what he liked to eat. But in one respect everyone was agreed: the Mighty Shandar was the most powerful mage the planet had ever known. Greater than Mu’shad Waseed, the Persian wizard who could command the winds, more powerful than Garance de Povoire, the French wizard of Bayeux, or even Angus McFerguson, the Scottish sorcerer who made the Isle of Wight a floating isle, which could be towed by tugs to the Azores for the winter, and to the best of my knowledge, still is.’

‘I think they have engines attached to it now,’ I mentioned, as Mother Zenobia rarely kept up with the times. ‘Did . . . did the Mighty Shandar have an agent?’

‘History does not record one. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason. What happened next?’

She paused for thought and took another sip of tea.

‘It was in June 1591. As soon as the Mighty Shandar arrived in England, he decided to demonstrate his awesome powers and promptly built the Great Castle at Snodhill, which has housed the ruling Kings of Hereford ever since. He sat in his castle and waited for the word to spread. And spread it did. Within a week ambassadors from the then seventy-eight different kingdoms of Britain descended on the Great Palace, all to offer him employment. The point was this: the most powerful kingdom in those days before the invention of modern weapons was the kingdom with the most powerful wizard. But the Mighty Shandar was not a man to side with the most wealthy or help the bullies overcome the cissies. No, he told the assembled ambassadors that he would work for none of them, but all of them. So the seventy-eight ambassadors went away and had consultations with their leaders and one another and reported back to the Mighty Shandar that the greatest thing he could do would be to deal with the Dragon Question. Shandar put his great fingers to his great forehead and thought great thoughts; he agreed to the great task but because of the great difficulty and the great amount of time it would take, he would require a great deal of money; eighteen dray-weights (a common system of measurement at that time) of gold.

‘“Eighteen dray-weights of gold?” the ambassadors said to one another, shocked at so high a price. “Are you nuts? Mu’shad Waseed offered to rid us of the Dragons for only seven dray-weights!”’

‘The Mighty Shandar definitely had an agent,’ I said with a smile, forgetting I wasn’t to interrupt, ‘and better than Mu’shad Waseed’s.’

‘Didn’t I tell you not to interrupt?’

‘Sorry.’

Mother Zenobia continued.

‘“But Mu’shad Waseed,” replied Shandar in answer to the ambassadors, “fine magician as he is, does not have in his entire body one hundredth the power I have in my smallest toe.”

‘“I heard that!” said Mu’shad Waseed, throwing off his disguise and stepping forward. He had secretly arrived at Shandar’s palace the day before, having heard of Shandar’s demands. “Let’s see this mighty toe of yours!”

‘But instead of showing Mu’shad Waseed his toe, the Mighty Shandar bowed low, so low in fact that his forehead touched the ground, and he said, in a voice toned deep with respect and reverence:

‘“Welcome to my humble palace, most noble Wizard of the Persian Empire, controller of the winds and tides and known locally as He who can quell the Tamsin.”’

‘Don’t you mean Khamsin?’ I asked. ‘The hot and dusty wind that blows through the Arabian peninsula?’

‘If I meant Khamsin I would have said Khamsin,’ replied Mother Zenobia, beginning to get annoyed. ‘Tamsin was Mu’shad Waseed’s second wife. Frightful, frightful woman. Her love of glittery things, fine robes and bathing in rabbit’s milk set feminism back four centuries. And since you interrupted again, I’m going to ask Sister Assumpta to finish the story.’

‘Please don’t.’

Personally, I liked Sister Assumpta, but she had an annoying habit of telling stories using cricket as a metaphor. I’d be hearing the story in the context of a match, with the knights using the Mighty Shandar as their last man in, and fifty to make in failing light.

‘Very well,’ said Mother Zenobia, who didn’t like cricket metaphors either. ‘Last chance.’

‘“Great Mu’shad Waseed,” continued Shandar, “I read of your work in Sorcerers Monthly. Your control of the thunderstorm and the winds is quite awe-inspiring.”

‘But Mu’shad Waseed, who was the combustible product of a Persian father and a Welsh mother, was too angry to return Shandar’s politeness and instead caused a massive rainstorm to move in from the west, and as all the ambassadors of the seventy-eight kingdoms of the Ununited Kingdoms ran for cover, Mu’shad Waseed and Shandar faced each other. Their eyes narrowed and a Super Grand Master Sorcerers’ contest seemed ready to begin. But Shandar, whose turn it was by the sorcerer’s code to begin the contest, did nothing.

‘“Very well,” said Shandar slowly, a smile gathering on his lips, “you may deal with the Dragon Question. I shall return when you fail.” And so saying, he vanished.

‘Mu’shad Waseed gulped. In reality he knew that he did not have the power of the Mighty Shandar; when he had built a castle in Alexandria it had taken him not one night, but a month, and although he had, on occasion, built palaces in a lunch break, none of them had included – as Shandar’s had – a four-acre heated swimming pool, a library containing every book ever published and a zoo that apart from most of the world’s animals, also included a few that the Mighty Shandar had made up himself.

‘Whoops, thought Mu’shad Waseed, as the seventy-eight ambassadors of the Ununited Kingdoms emerged from their carriages wearing raincoats and galoshes, eager to know how Mu’shad Waseed was going to deal with the Dragon Question.’