The Song of the Quarkbeast: Last Dragonslayer: Book Two by Jasper Fforde Page A

one’s taking you back. We’re owned by Kazam now. Everything’s fine.’
    We walked across the quad, where open-air lessons were held in the summer, and from where we used to watch the shells as they were lobbed across the border from King Snodd’s artillery battery in the orchard to the Duke of Brecon’s small duchy across the river. Although an uneasy peace had once more descended between Brecon and Snodd and the guns were now silent, we had driven past a squadron of landships on our way in. The six-storey-high tracked vehicles had no special significance to me, but they did to Tiger, although he didn’t know it – Mother Zenobia had told me Tiger’s parents had been a husband-and-wife engineering team on a landship that vanished during the Fourth Troll Wars. Tiger would have been lost, too, had creche facilities not been removed from the landships in order to make room for extra munitions, so when his parents never returned he ended up on the steps of the orphanage. Mothers and fathers were a tetchy subject to foundlings, which was why he’d not yet been told what happened. The whole abandonment deal could devour you, so we usually left it until we felt we had the maturity to deal with it. My own parents would doubtless be traceable through my Volkswagen as I had been left on the front seat when abandoned, and although I was arguably mature enough to handle it, life was complicated enough.
    ‘Is that Jennifer?’ said Mother Zenobia as we were shown into her office. ‘I can smell early Volkswagen upon you. A mix of burned oil, hot mud and six-volt electrics.’
    ‘It is, ma’am.’
    ‘And those footsteps behind you. Guarded and impertinent – yet full of inner strength to be fully realised. Master Prawns?’
    ‘Your servant, ma’am,’ said Tiger.
    Mother Zenobia was not only old but completely blind, and had been since before most people on the planet had been born. She was sitting in an armchair in front of a fire, her gnarled fingers resting on the top of her cane, and her face so suffused with wrinkles that lost infant tortoises often followed her home. She clapped her hands and a novice entered, took orders for tea or cocoa, bobbed politely and then left again.
    ‘So,’ said Mother Zenobia after offering us a seat each, ‘is this a social visit, or business?’
    ‘Both,’ I said, ‘and please excuse my impertinence, Mother Zenobia, but our conversation must be strictly in confidence.’
    ‘May my ears be infested by the floon beetle if I murmur so much as a word, Jennifer. Now, what’s up?’
    ‘Lady Mawgon got herself changed to stone.’
    A smile crossed Mother Zenobia’s features.
    ‘Silly Daphne. What was she trying to do?’
    I explained about the storage coils, and what had transpired.
    ‘Not like Mawgon to get caught out by a gatekeeper,’ murmured Mother Zenobia when I had finished. ‘How is this to do with me? My sorcery days are long over.’
    She held up her hands as if we needed proof. They were twisted with arthritis, her valuable index fingers bent and, for a sorcerer, almost useless.
    I chose my words carefully. Moobin had said earlier that getting changed to stone was effectively suspended animation.
    ‘I thought perhaps great age in sorcerers might be less to do with spelling away old age than simply pressing the pause button.’
    ‘You are a highly perceptive young lady,’ replied Zenobia at length. ‘I do indeed change to stone every night in order to delay death’s cold embrace. Eight hours’ sleep over an eight-year lifetime is about twenty-six years,’ She continued. ‘Wasted time if you ask me, except for dreaming, which I miss. I’ve been rock during the winter months for the past seventy-six years as well, and when my last fortnight beckons I will be with you for an hour a year. I may last another century at this rate.’
    She thought for moment.
    ‘Self-induced petrification has its drawbacks, though. Changing to limestone at night is no problem, but