The Chronicles of Kazam Collection by Jasper Fforde

Author:Jasper Fforde [Fforde, Jasper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

TWENTY

Back at Zambini Towers

We took the train back to the Kingdom of Hereford. After the afternoon’s action, the carpet was in no state to be used for anything—not even a carpet. The prince had no cash, so he swapped a minor dukedom back in his home Kingdom of Portland for two first-class tickets and we caught the first train out of Stirling station. As a foundling I was not permitted to sit anywhere but third class, but when the conductor questioned my presence in first, the prince said that I was his personal organ donor and traveled everywhere with him, just in case. The conductor congratulated the prince on such a novel use of a foundling and told me I was lucky to have such a kind benefactor.

We made Hereford by ten thirty that night and walked to Kazam by a back route to avoid being seen. Tiger and Perkins were waiting at a window on the ground floor next to the trash cans to let us in, as the Infinite Thinness spell was still very much in force. We dropped into the Palm Court, where Mawgon and Monty Vanguard were just as I had seen them last—stone.

“No change here, then.”

“None at all,” Tiger said.

“Moobin and the others?”

“Still in jail,” replied Perkins as we went back out into the lobby. “I tried to contact Judge Bunty Patel to overturn the king’s illegal edict and got as far as the judge’s secretary’s secretary’s secretary. She laughed and asked if I was insane, then hung up. How did it go up north?”

We sat on the sofa in the Kazam offices next to the sleeping form of Kevin Zipp, and I related pretty much everything that Zambini had told me—from the so-called Ann Shard being the Mighty Shandar’s agent, to the worthlessness of rings as a conduit of power, to Blix being one of the few people able to work in RUNIX, to Once Magnificent Boo’s disfigurement.

“Ouch,” said Perkins, looking at his own fingers.

I then told them that Zambini thought magic might have intelligence and would “find a way” to let us win if it had a mind to.

“That’s like saying electricity has free will,” said Perkins, “or gravity.”

“Gravy has free will?” said Tiger. “That explains a lot. I knew it didn’t like me.”

“Not gravy, gravity.”

“I’m not sure I buy that.”

“Me neither,” I replied, “but he’s the Great Zambini, so we can’t reject the idea totally. He wasn’t out of ideas about his own predicament, either. Here.”

I handed Perkins the old envelope covered with Zambini’s handwritten notes. “He thinks these observations may help us crack the spell that keeps him from returning to us.”

“And he said the Mighty Shandar cast it?”

I nodded.

“Not good,” Perkins said after studying the notes for a while. “It seems Zambini is locked into a spell with a passthought on auto-evolve; it changes randomly every two minutes. One moment it’s all about swans on a lake at sunset, the next, spoonbills in the Orinoco delta. And the very act of entering the passthought changes the passthought.

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