The Eye of Zoltar

I pulled forward and wound down the window as the border guard moved towards us. It was only then that I noticed that the Helping Hand^™ was still firmly attached to the steering wheel. This was illegal magical contraband, and likely to be confiscated. Without time to remove it, I hid my own hand high in my cuff and pretended the Helping Hand™ was my own. The border guard stopped by the driver’s-side window and looked at me suspiciously.

‘Hello!’ I said brightly.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said, looking at me again, then at the car. ‘Is this … a Bugatti Royale?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s the chassis number?’

‘41.151,’ I replied, since it was what everyone asked me, along with the body type, offering a stiff admonishment for using it as a daily driver. Apparently the Bugatti Royale is quite rare but, well, we need a car, and it is a car first and foremost.

‘I see,’ said the guard, ‘and why is one of your hands really hairy and like a man’s?’

I lifted my arm and the Helping Hand^™ – as its name would suggest – did as it was meant to do – help. The hand moved with my arm, and with the join hidden by my sleeve, the hand looked eerily as though it were attached to me.

‘I lost my own in a car accident,’ I said, thinking quickly. ‘This one belonged to a landship engineer who was accidentally dragged into the number-three engine. All they could salvage of him was an ear, this hand and a left leg, which is currently doing useful service attached to a bus conductor somewhere in Sheffield. I’ve not heard where the ear is these days.’

‘And the tattoo about pies?’ he asked, referring to the ‘No More Pies’ tattoo on the back of the hand.

‘You know, we never did find out.’

‘Okay,’ said the guard, who seemed to have fallen for my capacity for invention, ‘papers?’

I handed him our IDs and personal injury waivers, something that is mandatory for all visitors to the risk-desirable nation. He stared at them for a moment.

‘Purpose of visit?’

‘Negotiation for the safe release of a friend,’ I said, showing him the letter from the Cambrian Empire’s Kidnap Clearance House, ‘but before that, a day or two of holiday in the Empty Quarter – who knows, we might even indulge in some mid-level jeopardy.’

He looked at us all and then saluted smartly.

‘Welcome to the Cambrian Empire. There’s a Tourist Information Office down the road where you can decide which particularly perilous pursuit you’d like to attempt first.’

I thanked him and drove the half-mile down the road to where the small border town of Whitney was doing a brisk trade preparing tourists for their excursions. The shops sold supplies, maps, guidebooks and ‘Get Me Out of Here’ emergency escape package deals at grossly inflated prices, and parked on the street were a parade of armoured four-wheel-drive trucks, ready to take visitors off into the interior. I parked the Bugatti and turned off the engine.

‘Keep an eye on the car, one of you,’ I said. ‘I’m going to find a guide.’

I climbed out of the car and headed for the Tourist Information Office. I hadn’t gone five paces when I was accosted by young backpacker carrying a guitar. He was wearing a baggy shirt open to the chest, flip-flops, fashionably ripped jeans, and beads woven into his blond hair.

‘Hey, Dragonslayer babe.’

‘I’m on holiday,’ I said, well used to being recognised in public.

‘The name’s Curtis,’ said Curtis. ‘Want to hang out, play some guitar, talk about the latest fashions, the best places to be seen, and just generally chill?’

‘You must be mistaking me for someone who is shallow and indifferent,’ I said. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Wait, wait,’ said Curtis, who clearly did not take no for an answer. ‘The full name is Rupert Curtis Osbert Chippenworth III. From the Nation of Financia. Chippenworth, yes?’

He said it in a way that suggested I was expected to know who he was, and yes, I had heard of the Chippenworths – a family of huge wealth and privilege from the financial centre of the Kingdoms.

‘Let me guess,’ I said, ‘you’re here to have a few dangerous scrapes so once you have been shoehorned into your cushy and undemanding job you’ll have something interesting in your past to brighten an otherwise unremarkable life?’

‘Pretty much,’ he said, completely unfazed by my assessment. ‘So listen, I know you run Kazam, so got any “S”? Y’know, something to while away the dull evenings between bouts of excitement and terror?’

‘S?’

‘Spells,’ he said in a low voice, ‘the weirder the better, but none of that “changing into animals” stuff because it can totally do your head.’

He laughed in a clumsy attempt to charm me. The use of magic for recreational purposes was stupid, dangerous and irresponsible. Supplying mind-altering spells to idiots like Curtis would also have you drummed out of the magic industry quicker than you could say Zork.