---

I walked back to Zambini Towers. There seemed to be a buzz in the city. The influx of people eager to stake a claim had been huge, and all the shopkeepers had been doing a roaring trade, keeping those in constant vigil up by the Dragonlands well supplied with food, bedding and drink. Stocks of string had long ago run out, and a consignment of ten thousand claim forms had sold out in thirteen minutes.

Lady Mawgon was sitting in the lobby and looked as though she had been waiting to see me.

‘Miss Strange,’ she said, rising to meet me, ‘don’t think that becoming a Dragonslayer has in any way altered the low opinion that I hold of you and Master Prawns. Despite that frightful hag Zenobia refusing to supply us with any alternative foundlings, I have negotiated with the King of Pembroke to send us replacements. They arrive on Monday, so I will expect you to be packed and back at the Blessed Ladies of the Lobster by Monday lunchtime.’

She glared at me with a triumphant grin.

‘With the greatest of respect, my Lady,’ I replied, ‘I believe only Mr Zambini can sign our release papers.’

‘On the contrary,’ sneered Lady Mawgon, who had obviously been doing her homework, ‘the Minister for Foundling Affairs is King Snodd’s useless brother, and he owes me a favour. He will sign your papers.’

She smiled.

‘There. Until Monday, then. And don’t try to steal any cutlery – I’ll be searching you both as you leave.’

I stared at her hotly. There didn’t seem to be much I could say. Luckily, I didn’t need to.

‘Jennifer?’

It was Tiger with a message.

‘Yes?’

‘There’s been a news flash. The Duke of Brecon has raised an army to advance upon the Dragonlands as soon as the Dragon is dead. They aim to claim most of the land for themselves. Every able-bodied man or woman in the Kingdom of Brecon is to be mobilised.’

A cold hand fell on my heart. I hadn’t thought that it would come to this so quickly. The Kingdom of Hereford and the Duchy of Brecon had been itching for a scrap for years, and the size of their armies made it potentially the biggest land battle fought in the Kingdoms since the Third Troll War. Worse, I knew for a fact that King Snodd was dying to try out his super-dreadnought landships, vast tracked vehicles of riveted steel seven storeys high that crushed and destroyed all in their path.

‘We haven’t had a good war for years,’ said Lady Mawgon, ‘and never one on live TV. Colourful costumes, the clank of machinery, rousing songs. It will be most enjoyable.’

‘If your idea of enjoyment is watching people killed in an unspeakably unpleasant way,’ replied Tiger sarcastically, ‘then I guess so.’

‘Your impertinence knows no bounds,’ remarked Lady Mawgon scornfully, ‘but since you will not be here for long, I shall ignore it. There won’t be any death – it’ll be a walkover. Brecon won’t be able to muster anything more than five thousand troops. Hereford has a lot of seriously good military hardware, at least eighty thousand men – and that doesn’t include the Berserkers.’

‘King Snodd would use Berserkers?’ I asked.

‘He would,’ replied Lady Mawgon. ‘Nothing like the sight of a Berserker in a crazed frenzy to get the enemy to beg for peace.’

I was shocked. Berserkers were highly unstable individuals possessed of such grossly volatile temperaments that it allowed them to fight with extraordinary powers – in every civilised nation they were defined under the Geneva Convention as ‘illegal weapons of war that could cause unnecessary suffering and injury’.

‘Would you excuse me, Lady Mawgon? I have to make a telephone call.’

She inclined her head to dismiss us, and we hurried off towards the offices.

‘Here,’ I said, handing Tiger a signed photo of Yogi Baird, ‘I was going to tear this up into small pieces but thought you might like to instead.’

‘That’s very thoughtful of you,’ said Tiger, ‘thank you. Did Lady Mawgon tell you about us being replaced?’

‘That’s not until Monday,’ I said. ‘Lots can happen.’

‘I don’t want to go back to the Sisterhood.’

‘It won’t come to that, I promise.’

I wished I could believe it. The rights that foundlings possessed could be written on an ant in quite large letters. I was in no doubt that Mawgon could do precisely as she said, and there was nothing we could do to stop her.

‘Think that’s small enough?’ asked Tiger, showing me the torn-up picture of Yogi Baird.

‘That bit there,’ I said, pointing out a piece that still might be smaller. I dialled the number Lord Tenbury had given me and was soon through to the switchboard at Snodd Hill Castle.

‘I’d like to speak to the King, please.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said a snotty telephonist with a plummy voice, ‘the King doesn’t take person-to-person calls.’

‘Tell him it’s Jennifer Strange.’

There was protracted silence and a few minutes later the King came on the line.

‘I don’t make a habit of using the phone, Miss Strange,’ he announced loftily, ‘but since it is you I am willing to make an exception. You wish to tell me you will lay claim to the lands for me?’

‘You cannot go to war over the Dragonlands,’ I said, all royal protocol now vanished. There was silence for a few moments.

‘Cannot?’ questioned the King. ‘Cannot? It is your behaviour that tempers me to this extremity, my dear. If you had made claim to the lands as we requested, then none of this would be necessary. Brecon amasses his troops at the border, so we must meet force with force.’

‘But the Dragon is not going to die. He has done nothing wrong!’

‘The court soothsayer Sage O’Neons is rarely mistaken, my dear. Are you willing to lay claim to the Dragonlands for the Crown?’

‘Will it stop the battle?’

‘Sadly, no. It will merely give us the benefit of international law being on our side.’

‘Then I gain nothing; I refuse.’

Royal politics was not something I was good at. But the King had other ideas.

‘There is something you can do to avert serious loss of life even now.’

‘What?’

‘You can kill the Dragon earlier than is expected. Our spies tell us Brecon is unprepared; we can sweep across the lands before he even realises it. Dead Dragon now, dead Dragon later, what’s the difference? How about Saturday at teatime? Do we have a deal?’

‘No.’

But the King had not yet given up.

‘I will make you a rich woman, Miss Strange. Richer than you can imagine. I will also pledge fifty thousand moolah to the Troll Wars Widows fund. In addition, I was talking just recently to my useless brother. He tells me that you have . . . foundling problems over at Kazam. Do what I ask and I shall release you and your assistant from your indentured servitude. You will both be free citizens, my dear.’

I fell silent. I had only four years to run, but Tiger had nine. I looked across at him, but he was busy doing the filing.

‘I’m waiting for your answer, Miss Strange,’ said the King. ‘I am a generous man, but also an impatient one. Cash, freedom, and a title. What will it be?’

‘No,’ I said at last.

‘What?’

‘The life of a Dragon is not for sale at any price – not even for freedom. It is due to your intransigence that Troll Wars widows are reduced to begging at all. I reject your offer and will never compromise my position as Dragonslayer to assist your military conquests. Not now, not ever.’

There was renewed silence for a moment.

‘You disappoint me, my dear. I hope you will not regret your decision.’

The line went dead. I looked up. Tiger was staring at me.

‘Did you just turn down an offer from him to lift your servitude?’

‘No,’ I said, feeling a bit stupid, ‘I turned it down for both of us.’

‘Hmm,’ he said after a moment’s thought. ‘I hope this Dragon friend of yours is worth it.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘The Mighty Shandar’s recorded message told me not to trust men or Dragons. I know I can’t trust Snodd and the Earl of Tenbury. Brian Spalding is dead and Zambini indisposed. The only thing to trust is my own gut feeling, and that tells me Maltcassion is the one to follow. If I’m wrong, I apologise now.’

‘No apology necessary,’ replied Tiger cheerfully. ‘Sister Assumpta bet me a moolah I wouldn’t last the week, but aside from that, I’ll only be back where I started.’

He was taking it quite well, all things considered.

‘I need to somehow level the playing fields,’ I said, mostly to myself. ‘War can always be averted – you just have to find out how.’

‘You know what you should do?’

‘Strike Lady Mawgon on the back of the head with a cabbage?’

‘A fine idea – but I was thinking you should speak to the Duke of Brecon and tell him his army is seriously outnumbered and outgunned.’

‘Tricky,’ I said, ‘not to mention treasonous. I preferred the cabbage idea. But you’re right,’ I added, ‘the problem is, how? All the phone lines between the two states were cut years ago and the border is closed.’

‘Jenny,’ said Tiger, ‘what does a Dragonslayer care about borders?’

I waited until the evening and then drove up to the Dragonlands. I left my car in one of the improvised car parks, then walked past the droning generators that were running the large floodlights that illuminated the edge of the Dragonlands. The landships had been brought to the front and stood silent against the night sky, giant tracked machines of iron and steel that could plough their way through a town and ford the widest river without so much as pausing, each one capable of carrying two hundred soldiers and enough firepower to attack even the most robustly held defences. But despite appearances, they weren’t invincible. Many lives had been lost in these towers of iron during the disastrous campaign that became known as the Fourth Troll War.

It had simply been one more campaign against the Trolls in order to push them back into the far north. For this, the Ununited Kingdoms had put aside their differences and assembled eighty-seven landships, and sent them to ‘soften up’ the Trolls before a planned invasion by infantry the following week. The landships had breached the first Troll wall at Stirling and arrived at the second Troll wall eighteen hours later. The last radio contact was shortly after they had opened the Troll Gates, and then – nothing. The generals ordered the infantry to advance rapidly to the front to ‘assist where possible’, and not one of them was ever seen again.

The final toll of those ‘lost or eaten in action’ was close to a quarter of a million men and women. The invasion was called off, the first Troll wall rebuilt, and plans for the invasion of the Trolls’ territory postponed.

I threaded my way through the crowds who were all ready and waiting in case the Dragon died early and the force-field fell. They were all holding stakes, mallets and lengths of string. All that was required was to enclose a section of land and peg a claim form to the grass with your name and signature. It was part of the Dragonpact. I had to push as I neared the boundary; I was sworn at several times. I eventually popped out in the fifty feet or so of empty space between the crowds and the marker stones. I looked to left and right; the area was being patrolled by members of the elite Imperial Guard.

‘Jennifer!’ hissed a voice. I turned to see Wizard Moobin, who was standing with Brother Stamford next to the massive tracks of a landship.

‘Hello, Wizard Moobin,’ I said, glad to see a friendly face. ‘Don’t tell the crowds who I am, there’ll be a riot.’

‘Don’t worry. Look at this.’

He showed me the Shandarmeter. The needle was almost off the scale.

‘More magic?’

‘And how. Every hour that passes the meter jumps another five hundred Shandars.’

‘Where is it coming from?’

‘Here, there, everywhere. I don’t know.’

I had a thought.

‘How much power do you need to start a Big Magic?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Make a guess.’

‘At least ten million Shandars.’

‘And at this rate, when would you expect the combined wizidrical energy to exceed that?’

‘Yes,’ he said, getting my drift, ‘Sunday around noon.’

‘The time of the predicted Dragondeath. Don’t tell me it’s all a coincidence.’

‘I think not,’ replied Moobin. ‘But all that energy has to come from somewhere. There aren’t ten million Shandars of power on the planet. The most generous estimate of the world’s power is barely five, and that includes the power locked up in those marker stones. Even with every magician on the planet we’d still be at least three mega-Shandars short. I think the rate of increase will level out and leave us short by a long way. And even if we do get ten million Shandars of power around the Dragonlands, no one’s sure how we might be able to channel it.’

‘We’ve still got a couple of days,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you later.’

I walked rapidly across the empty grass area, ignoring the guard who yelled at me to halt. There was a gasp from the crowd as I passed through the boundary. I ran through the soft turf and was soon in the relative quiet of the Dragonlands. It was dark but a full moon had risen. I didn’t suppose I would have much trouble finding my way to the other side of the Dragonlands, to where the lands bordered those of the sworn enemy of the King of Hereford: the Duke of Brecon.