The Great Troll War

Jupiter and Beyond

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.

It didn’t stop him being a massive twat, though. I’d avoided him for a week afterwards. But even in the seventy-seven storeys of the tower this was tricky as he would often teleport in to where I happened to be, as if by accident, and want to talk about how terrific he was and how fantastic were his plans.

I’d be hard pressed to find a fortnight I enjoyed less.

I was in the observation room staring out of the port, still in my pyjamas even though it was past ten. I hate to admit it, but I was thinking about myself. I was feeling self-pity, and that was worrying, because I’d always viewed it as a wasteful, destructive emotion. I had been surrendered by my parents to be brought up as a countermeasure, my personality inextricably bound to a rejected group of emotions. My lot, my destiny, my purpose, was to simply dilute the more violent impulses of a megalomaniacal idiot.

How successful I would be in controlling Shandar’s worst excesses was yet to be seen, but was also something of an ethical dilemma: do you give tacit support to a tyrant to ensure he murders less than he would have? And could you ever justify that position?

So here I was, stuck on a replica New York skyscraper with a sorcerer of almost infinite powers heading off to who-knows-where. Shandar had to be stopped, yet I had nothing in the plans chest. What could someone who had zero magic do against someone who had enough power to achieve immortality, travel to the stars and even rewrite the laws of physics?

There was a knock at the door.

‘Good morning, Miss Strange,’ said Blousie, who was now my official maid. She’d been matching herself to my personality over the past few weeks to make our social engagement easier, and oddly, she was turning out to be like Tiger – mildly sarcastic with an odd sense of humour.

‘Hello,’ I replied. ‘What news?’

‘His Supreme Mightiness would like to have a chat,’ she said. ‘He’s on the control deck.’

‘What does he want to talk about?’ I asked.

‘His favourite subject, I imagine,’ said Blousie, ‘himself.’

Shandar fancied himself as a living god, but I disagreed. There were six basic qualities to being a deity: omniscience, omnipresence, empathy, humility, guidance and forgiveness. The only one he had on the list was the second – and only a bit of that. Which gave him about a ten per cent pass rate. Not even an ‘E minus’ – I’d got a higher grade for baking back at the orphanage. But I think he was after another god-like attribute, which wasn’t on the list at all: the unswerving adulation of a large group of zealously committed followers.

‘Will you go?’ asked Blousie. ‘I’m meant to convey your message back to Miss D’Argento.’

‘Tell her I’ll be ten minutes.’

I always told them that but often took half an hour – or didn’t turn up at all. I went back to the observation port, where Jupiter was looming large and dominant. When the planet first hove into view, Shandar had summoned me to the control deck and asked me to describe what I felt about the gas giant, as the rejected Better Angels of his Nature had included his sense of natural beauty and aesthetics. A successful Tyrant, he argued, must be able to destroy beautiful things without hesitation if it furthers their cause. I described Jupiter as best as I could, but no words could do it justice. From here we could easily see the colourful gaseous clouds that swathed the planet and the Great Red Spot, a perpetually raging storm the size of Earth. We couldn’t actually see the clouds moving, but occasionally an aurora would crackle around the poles, shimmer for a while and then die down. It was spectacularly beautiful.

The Earth and Moon had shrunk rapidly in size as we’d pulled away, until they were distant, then small, then dots, then almost impossible to differentiate from anything else on the velvety backdrop of stars. There were eight days of apparent emptiness – Mars was on the other side of the sun, and couldn’t be seen – then Jupiter began to loom larger and larger until it dominated our view. But there was no enjoyment to be had in any of it. My friends, although safe, were now far behind, and our task, to vanquish Shandar, had failed. He would travel to the stars, he would do all that he set out to do. His centuries of planning and preparation had been time extremely well spent.

I watched as the largest of Jupiter’s moons moved into the periphery of my vision: Ganymede. It looked a little like our moon, grey and pocked with craters, but with a grooved surface and polar caps. Why, precisely, the Quarkbeast had suggested that the view from Ganymede was something to behold, I wasn’t sure. But then I had a thought. Maybe the message wasn’t in the message. Maybe the message was the fact that I had received a message at all.

I had a quick shower, dressed and made my way to the control deck, the nerve centre of Shandar’s ambitions. The steel-clad spire with serried ranks of triangular windows had been replaced by a large transparent dome which gave a better view than from my observation deck, and the lack of any reflections on the polished crystal gave a seamless ringside seat to view the cosmos. The sun was a quarter of the size I had been used to, but still too bright to look at with the naked eye. As we watched, it set behind the planet and the thin corona around Jupiter’s edge became a lively myriad of colours. The lights on the control deck dimmed and as our eyes became accustomed to the dark, the billions of stars in the Milky Way became clearly visible.

‘It’s quite something, isn’t it?’ said D’Argento, who had been trying very hard to make friends. She’d told me all about her time with Shandar since the age of sixteen, one of the dynastic family agents who had looked after the sorcerer for centuries. I had not been interested.

‘The sun seen through the plumes of the marzoleum plant back home used to wobble and shimmer quite beautifully,’ I said, ‘and the views I saw in the Cambrian Empire were something really quite special.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning you don’t need to come four hundred million miles to find something of beauty.’

Shandar teleported in next to me. Too close, in fact, and I took a step back so he wasn’t in my personal space.

‘The stars are our destiny,’ he said, sounding terribly grand. He did this a lot now, and reminded me a little of Grifflon’s ornamental hermit – full of faux wisdom.

‘They’re your destiny,’ I said, ‘not mine.’

‘I spared six billion souls on your account, Jenny,’ he said. ‘I delayed my plans thirty-seven years to accommodate your feelings, so a little bit of gratitude might be in order. Brunch?’

I looked at the dinner table. It was the only place to eat in the tower, and he insisted that D’Argento and I always dined with him. It was Shandar who chose the topics of conversation, and for the most part dominated it. Things he had done, spells he had cast, the beasts he had created. He spoke of the Dragonpact from his viewpoint, as it seemed it was less about ‘freeing mankind from the loathsome worm’ but ridding himself of a dangerous adversary – and how it would have worked perfectly, if not for my tiresome meddling. He talked about his future plans, too, in more detail. They were quite ruthless, and as he talked I often felt my concentration lapse, then wander to happier times. Hide and seek in the orchard back at the orphanage, in a place free of the Sisterhood’s attention; my early times at Zambini Towers under Zambini’s wise counsel; the search for the Eye of Zoltar. Tiger, the Princess, Perkins. Boo, Mawgon, Wizard Moobin. All fine people.

‘I want you to both have a look at these ideas for my Emperor of Everything costume,’ said Shandar once we were seated, pointing to a pile of notebooks on a sideboard. ‘It’s either long robes in crimson or something more like leathery armour – both have their advantages.’

‘What if there’s no one there?’ I asked.

‘No one where?’ asked Shandar.

‘Out there,’ I said, pointing towards the heavens. ‘What if all the advanced intelligence in the galaxy was living on a pale blue dot orbiting a medium-sized sun on an outer spiral arm of a none-too-unusual galaxy? What if the best you get to rule over is something jelly-like that has only just dragged itself out of a shallow sea?’

‘It’s a good point,’ said Shandar, ‘and one which I have considered. If life has not yet emerged, then I will create my own, and populate worlds with creatures made in my image. I will truly then be a god. Not one that assumes or has assumed their power – but a real one. A Creator. A Controller. A Grand Architect. The One Who Is All Things To All Creatures.’

‘You can’t create things just so you can control them,’ I said. ‘That’s not being a god – that’s just being a massive bully led by a galactic-class ego – a child building sandcastles on the beach so he can knock them down.’

I saw Shandar clench and unclench his fists.

‘You test me daily, Miss Strange.’

‘You said you wanted to learn about your Better Angels: this is called humility.’

‘I disagree with your approach,’ he replied. ‘You are to bring my Better Natures forward as a conductor brings up the bassoons – only when required, and in moderation.’

There was silence for a few moments.

‘You must have some of this kedgeree,’ said D’Argento nervously, ‘it’s really very good.’

‘I have some toast,’ I said, nibbling on a corner. Shandar’s power and ambitions weren’t the only thing worrying me right now. My goading of him had another purpose: to remind myself how much I despised him. He had decided during his self-spelled immortality to de-age himself back to about thirty-five and to make himself more handsome. To Shandar, there was no point becoming a god if you were walking around in a body not fit for purpose. In this I had little interest except that, worryingly, and despite everything, I found myself thinking that he was not unpleasing to the eye. Worse, on another occasion I thought one of his jokes hardly rubbish at all. There could only be one explanation for this: he was beguiling me with his new-found power. If this were to run to its logical conclusion, my resolve would be removed entirely and with it any chance to potentially save the lives of the trillions of sentient lives which currently had no idea at all of their possible annihilation.

It would be preventive tyranny at its very finest.

So long as I could act.

‘How are your quarters?’ Shandar asked.

‘A gilded cage is still a cage,’ I replied.

‘Your humour is very surly at present,’ said Shandar, helping himself to more kedgeree. ‘Something wrong?’

‘Where do you want me to start? I am here because I was coerced. You have kidnapped me and expect me to do your bidding.’

‘You came of your own free will,’ said Shandar. ‘You could have refused my deal and died with your species and planet. That option was always open to you.’

‘It was no option and you know it.’

‘There you go with that ingratitude of yours again,’ said Shandar. ‘I am about to elevate you to the status of a god. What can you possibly have against me?’

‘The Better Angels of our nature are there to prompt us to a better place,’ I said, ‘and to offer virtuous judgement to guide us all to honourable conduct. You want to manipulate mercy only to feed your personal ambitions. Besides, I am mortal, and to be honest, what is stopping me from taking a one-way trip out of the airlock? You need the better side of yourself to achieve lasting domination; you said so yourself – evil alone is not enough; a stick is valueless without the carrot, criticism worthless unless tempered by praise.’

He stared thoughtfully at me for a moment.

‘Agreed,’ he said finally. ‘You are too valuable during this early re-educational phase to be lost.’

He pointed a finger at me. I experienced a brief shudder and suddenly felt stronger and lighter and more buoyant. I moved my hands and they seemed to work with greater precision and speed.

‘There,’ he said, ‘I have given you immortality and invulnerability.’ He paused to let this sink in. ‘You are now like me, a superhuman whose destiny is to lead. You may not see it straight away, but you’ll come round to it. And you will admire and respect your master for what I am doing, given time.’

‘I’m immortal?’

‘You’re welcome. You will age naturally until you are twenty-two and perfect in every way, then stay that way for ever. Our wedding party will be delayed until our first planetary conquest: no point in making a star go nova57 without any witnesses, eh?’

‘You should really say thank you,’ said D’Argento. ‘This is an honour not yet even bestowed upon me, and I am the Mighty Shandar’s most loyal subject.’

‘Everything comes to those who wait, my dear,’ said Shandar, laying his hand affectionately on D’Argento’s. She moved slightly as he did, and for a fleeting moment I thought I could sense disgust on her face – but then it was gone and she pressed her other hand on his and smiled sweetly.

I’d never thought of what it would be like to be immortal – one doesn’t, really, but I could muse on it now. It seemed only a mere flash since I left the orphanage. If that’s what the passage of time felt like, the inevitable end of the universe would doubtless come cantering up with annoying rapidity. I thought again of how the view from the orbit of Ganymede was something to behold.

‘What did you say?’ said Shandar, his tone sharper than normal. He’d heard it when the Quarkbeast communicated it to me the first time, and the suspicion I’d had earlier about the message suddenly made more sense. I had a daring thought. But if I was right, I didn’t want to raise his suspicions.

‘I was just thinking,’ I said, ‘why don’t we drop into orbit around Ganymede? We could use the time to acclimatise in a place closer to home – and study Jupiter, or at the very least collect some data to analyse at our leisure.’

He looked at me, eyes narrowed.

‘Are you up to something, Jennifer?’

‘I just think a moment of reflection before departing our home solar system would be time well spent, that’s all.’

‘I disagree. My decision is made, I need no time for reflection.’

‘Since Jennifer is your empathy consultant,’ said D’Argento in a rare moment of support, ‘I think it might be a good idea.’

Shandar stared at D’Argento, then back at me.

‘Very well,’ he said finally. ‘Ganymede, eh? It will be a good opportunity to see how well I can manoeuvre the tower at close quarters. A useful skill I should hone now, before we head over to Proxima Centauri. Besides, you are still not fully understanding the brilliance of my mission. Perhaps you need a couple of weeks so we can straighten it out in your head. Who knows? By the end of that fortnight you could have completely changed your mind about me.’

He smiled as he said it. My suspicions about a beguiling were correct.

‘That might indeed help,’ I said. ‘Would you pass the Waldorf salad?58 I seem to have developed something of an appetite.’

‘That’s good,’ said Shandar. ‘I do so hate girls who pick at their food.’

So we ate, and chatted, and Shandar, now more relaxed, was saying that if he couldn’t get enough power from sucking the energy out of Proxima Centauri, we’d pop on over to Barnard’s Star and harvest that one too. He made it sound like nipping down to the corner store for another packet of crisps. But while he was talking, it suddenly made a lot more sense that Monty had left those crude and easily discovered thermowizidrical devices in my car. They were never going to detonate; they were always going to be found. They were simply diversions in case Shandar was suspicious about the lack of an attack. If he found those, he would look no further. And it worked. He didn’t. The real plan was much subtler – and given Monty, Boo and Mawgon knew Shandar would search my mind for any clues, anything they cooked up I couldn’t know anything about. They would have to trust me to figure out what they were up to.

And I’m quite good at figuring stuff out.

But they knew that, too.

‘What are you smiling about?’ asked Shandar.

‘Because I’m lucky.’

‘To be here with me now on this adventure?’

‘No, I’m thinking that even out here, I have friends. The sort that have your back and give you the tools to do the job you need to do. They understand you, they trust you, they take care of you, and they never give up, no matter how bad things appear.’

‘That’s a heart-warming little story,’ said Shandar, plopping his napkin on his plate as a Hollow waiter moved his chair so he could stand up, ‘but I have work to do. The tower is the size of six cathedrals, so manoeuvring it into Ganymede’s orbit will be a little like trying to reverse an ocean liner into the Panama Canal at top speed blindfolded – not for the faint hearted, and requiring skill, dexterity and a sound understanding of mass, gravity and converging velocities. Why not watch? You might learn something.’

‘I’ll watch from here while I finish my breakfast.’

Shandar nodded, then walked to the elegant wooden pulpit in the middle of the room, which looked as though it had been swiped from a cathedral somewhere. He raised his hands and I felt the tower move as he warped the space beneath us to shift the mass of the skyscraper towards the Jovian moon. I looked up to see D’Argento staring at me in an odd manner.

‘Something on your mind, Jenny?’ she asked.

‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘I will answer as honestly as I can,’ she replied.

‘What do you get out of this?’

‘I get an opportunity,’ replied D’Argento thoughtfully, ‘to be in the right place at the right time, to assist a truly great person in their moment of triumph.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

She looked me straight in the eye.

‘I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.’

‘I think I’ll have some of the kedgeree after all,’ I said, and walked to the sideboard, where a Hollow waiter handed me a plate. I took a good spoonful – it smelled delicious – then walked off to a seat by the fire.

While Shandar and D’Argento were distracted – he placing the Chrysler Building into orbit around Ganymede, she flicking through the designs of suitable Evil Emperor costumes – I placed my hands on the brooch that Lady Mawgon had given me. When she had, she’d made up some stuff about how she wished she’d been more pleasant – probably also a diversion – but then crucially had given me the order that ‘I was to carry it with me always’. Not unusual, you might think, but it became more relevant when added to other events: when Once Magnificent Boo said goodbye she had added that ‘with eternal life must come limitless power’; and, crucially, the Quarkbeast communicated with me when I first came into the tower, even though he can only do that one way: through Mysterious X. I think it meant two things. Firstly, that the Mysterious X had snuck on board hidden among the atoms in Mawgon’s brooch, and secondly, that there was nothing particular about Ganymede that was important. The real message was this: We have your back – and whatever you do, don’t let him leave the solar system. There was something else, too. Zambini’s second message, the one I got through Molly: Help will come from an unexpected quarter.

If all this was true, the time of action was right now.

I got up from the table, and with Shandar amusing himself by manoeuvring the tower, I walked down the stairwell from the control deck, out of sight of him, D’Argento and any of the Hollow staff. Colin had told me how he had spoken to the Mysterious X, so I closed my eyes and imagined myself back in the lobby of Zambini Towers, standing at reception, the old oak growing to the ceiling, the delightful shabbiness. I then imagined myself shouting as loudly as possible the following words: ‘If you can hear this, answer by sending a single charged particle through one of the light receptors on my retina, because when you speak to me, Shandar hears. Everything you’ve put in my head so far he’s picked up.’

In an instant there was a small white flash in the periphery of my vision. The Mysterious X was listening. I imagined myself shouting again, but this time, it was my plan. It was simple and audacious, was in two parts, and required the Mysterious X to tap into my life-force to harvest the energy he needed. I had to hope he could, because I now contained a lot of power: I knew from both Perkins and Wizard Moobin’s early passing that if a sorcerer runs out of wizidrical energy there is always somewhere else to go: your own life-force. Because essentially, all magic was life-force, the power of human emotion – love, anger, sadness, jealousy, grief. Perkins could tap into a lot of power because he was young, Moobin less so because his time on Earth was already up. I had more in reserve than either of them. I had life immortal, and I could trade that for potentially limitless amounts of wizidrical energy.

Annoyingly, so could Shandar. But unlike me, he wouldn’t actually want to. He needed his immortality to live for ever: I only needed mine to defeat him. Which kind of gave me the edge – so long as the Mysterious X could spell strongly enough and the unexpected help was both real, and actually helpful.

There were two flashes in my eye to show X understood my plan, and my heart began to beat faster as I felt the Nebulous Entity go to work weaving and spelling inside me. I felt stronger, more powerful, more confident. A buzz started at my shoulder and then worked its way down my arm until I could feel my fingertips start to tingle. I pointed at the nearest Hollow Man and he turned to brown paper in an instant and fluttered to the floor. I smiled to myself, and walked back upstairs to the control deck.

‘What do you think?’ asked the Mighty Shandar. The Chrysler Building was now moving slowly around Ganymede, sixty miles out. The view was spectacular, but that wasn’t foremost on my mind right now.

‘Impressive,’ I said.

‘Indeed,’ replied Shandar, staring at me with a look of surprise on his face, ‘and so are you. How did you smuggle a sorcerer on board?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I can feel you radiating wizidrical energy like a hot stove,’ he said. ‘Who gave you that power?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I replied. ‘The stars are not your destiny and you will not spread your tyranny into the galaxy. This all ends right now.’

He seemed unimpressed by my threat.

‘Better Angels are an overrated commodity,’ he murmured. ‘I shall take them back and bestow them upon someone more willing to embrace my will.’

He pointed a finger towards me and I instinctively put out the flat of my open palm to stop him. I felt pressure on my hand, holding back his power, and then in an instant he had overcome me and I was hanging upside down about eight feet up, my arms tightly behind my back, a soft sphere of sparkling blue light around me. I was trapped.

‘Well, well,’ said Shandar, moving towards me. ‘Looks like we may have to bring our once cosy relationship to a premature close. That’s a shame, Jennifer, dear, because once I had properly assimilated your heart and mind to me and my cause, you would have been a dazzlingly good ambassador and a delightfully compliant wife. It wasn’t just my Better Angels I needed to use – it was yours. A righteous person utterly corrupted would have been an awesome diplomatic weapon, but it is of no matter – I will simply retrieve what is mine, take what is yours and abandon you on Ganymede. A Jennifer Strange but with all the very best bits taken out. You will live life eternal in isolation as an embittered angry wretch, a twisted knot of hate, anger and jealously.’

His pretence of charm had all but vanished. I was a threat, this was business, and in business he was ruthless. He pointed a finger at me and I felt my insides begin to move and shift, along with a curious draining feeling as he began to draw out the Better Angels – his, and mine. I started to feel not anger and fear but petty jealousies in that D’Argento was better looking than me, had better clothes and more money, and I wanted that stuff too, and would steal it from her when I got the chance. I stopped breathing and felt myself collapse inwards as my vision began to fade. I think I saw Shandar laughing, and then, quite abruptly, the pain stopped, and all jealousies vanished as the Better Angels snapped back inside me, the blue sphere vanished and I fell out of the air to land, fortuitously, on an armchair, but in an untidy heap. By the time I had got up, Shandar had dropped to his knees and his mouth was wide open, face contorted in pain. Behind him, Miss D’Argento was holding the Eye of Zoltar in a pair of blacksmith’s tongs and pressed hard on the small of his back. The Eye, suitably reversed, was doing what it did best: absorbing and then focusing wizidrical energy. Only this time it was taking it out of Shandar, and the energy was streaming in a narrow beam out of the window and to the surface of Ganymede.

‘I’ve waited so long for this moment,’ said D’Argento, lips pressed together in a single line. I looked at her, then at Shandar, whose arms were now stretching out in length to more easily dislodge the jewel from D’Argento’s hold.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

D’Argento looked at me and smiled. But it wasn’t the smile of Shandar’s agent, it was the smile of someone closer. A friend perhaps, or even a family member.

‘You asked what I was to get out of this,’ she said. ‘I told you “an opportunity to assist a truly great person in their moment of triumph”.’

‘So?’

She smiled.

‘I wasn’t talking about Shandar. Now: that plan of yours, whatever it is – I know you have one – make it happen.’

The sorcerer’s arms were plucking uselessly at the jewel, trying to dislodge it from the tongs held tightly by D’Argento. He was still on his knees, head down, greatly weakened by the effort and the power that was flowing out of him. I stepped forward, but then hesitated as Shandar’s creepily long arms plucked the Eye of Zoltar from D’Argento’s grasp.

‘That really hurt,’ he said, panting with the exertion. He was still kneeling on the floor, sweating profusely. His arms cracked and squeaked as they returned to their normal size, and the Eye vanished from his grasp – teleported, I presumed, to a safe place.

‘Winning the bout is not winning the fight,’ he gasped, trying to stand but falling back to his knees, ‘but I am the Mighty and most magnificent Shandar, more powerful and fabulous than you can possibly imagine. You took some of my power, but not enough to make a difference – harvesting your sun will easily replace the shortfall. You cannot defeat me.’

In this, I think, he was correct. While X could channel a huge amount of power through my life-force, X or I would never have the skills to defeat him on a wizard’s field of battle. I was the rowboat, and he the battlecruiser. But I knew what I had to do. I knelt down in front of him and wrapped my arms tightly around him.

‘I don’t need to defeat you,’ I whispered in his ear, ‘all I need to do is what you asked: help you understand the lost opportunity to have done something truly useful with your life.’

The Mysterious X then spelled the first part of my plan: to give Shandar back the Better Angels of his Nature. All of them, every last little bit. And in that moment of self-realisation, the true understanding of his heinous crimes and the depth of his malevolent intent, his face crumpled.

‘Oh my good God,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘What have I become?’

He started to sob, as the many burdens of his inflicted sorrows flooded his mind, as if all the people he had crushed and defeated and murdered were crowded inside his head, questioning him, condemning him, and finding him wanting.

But I knew this would not last for long. The evil that was Shandar was greater than the man, and would reject the Better Angels as he had before. No, I needed him weakened by the burden of his guilt so I could make my last and only play, the second part of my instructions to the Mysterious X: a thermowizidrical detonation large enough to achieve criticality. Shandar, myself, D’Argento and the tower and the Hollow Men and all the spells herein, utterly annihilated in an uncontrolled explosion of epic proportions. I held on to him and yelled: ‘Now, X, now!’

I closed my eyes tightly, ready to welcome the nothingness that would announce my success.

‘Was something meant to happen?’ said D’Argento, and I opened my eyes. I looked down at Shandar, whose evil personality was beginning to re-form as he once more expelled the Better Angels. Worse, even in his weakened state, he was still more powerful than me.

‘You little fool,’ he said in a weak voice. ‘You do not have the emotional energy needed to focus your powers to initiate a criticality. You are weak, as you have always been. But never fear, I shall give you the end that you so desire – only it will be on your own: sad, unremembered and unmourned, abandoned on Ganymede to watch as I suck the sun dry of its power.’

He paused, weakened by the speech. But already I could feel his power returning; it would not be long. He would succeed. He was all-powerful.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and D’Argento’s voice close to my ear. It was soft, and warm, and caring.

‘Our parents live in a village outside Leominster,’ she began, ‘in a small house with a wisteria on the gable. There is a swing in the garden under an apple tree and the paddock leads down to a brook. In the springtime, the blossom drifts around the house like snow, and in the summer the hedgerows are alive with the creamy scent of meadowsweet. Our father James looks after the house and our mother Lynda is head nurse at the local hospital. She is good at her job, and much admired. Zambini came to them and explained what was needed, what we, and they, had to do. You at Kazam and me embedded with Shandar. They followed our progress, and love us, miss us, and will be proud. But they knew that we had a function to play in the Great Scheme of Things, they understood that, and put aside their sorrows, and love us just the same.’

I felt my eyes fill with tears. I thought of the photograph I’d found in the glovebox, and the unseen child in the back of the VW Beetle. I also remembered the misspelling of the writing on the back. Only it wasn’t a misspelling.

‘Assett is our surname, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I am Belinda, and you are Catrina. You are my little sister by four years.’

‘Catrina Assett,’ I said whispering my birth name for the first time.

Belinda hugged me tightly, as a big sister might do.

‘Thank you,’ I whispered, and she told me I needed to act while there was still time.

Because I could, now.

Magic is an invisible energy field that flows about us, powered by the force of human emotion: anger, sadness, greed, hope, love – and joy. The joy of knowing who you are, who your sister is, and that she, and your parents, love you.

‘You lose,’ I said, holding Shandar even tighter, ‘as you were always going to.’

‘Wait, what?’ he said, struggling to get out of my grasp. I think in that brief moment he felt real terror, and the anger and ignominy of defeat.

I didn’t. I imagined myself back in the lobby of Zambini Towers, but I was not alone. Moobin was there, and Zambini, and Feldspar, and the Quarkbeast, and Perkins, and Captain Lutumba and her crew and all the others who had not made it this far. And they were all smiling, because I had done what I had set out to do. The right thing, for them, for everyone.

I felt Shandar struggle ever more violently to get out of my embrace, but Belinda added her arms to mine to hold him close, to ensure that the wizidrical detonation went critical.

‘No, wait,’ he said, ‘you can’t—’

‘Now,’ I said, but I wasn’t speaking to Shandar, I was speaking to the Mysterious X.

And there was light.

And there was heat.

And then … there was opportunity.

…