The Eye of Zoltar by Jasper Fforde Page A

none of the shell bursts came close. Pretty soon Colin was on his way back down but this time he landed five hundred yards or so farther away, and a second later was catapulted back into the air. We watched with growing despondency as Rubber Colin bounced off into the distance until he vanished below a low hill to the north.
    ‘Blast,’ said Perkins, lowering his now steaming finger in case anyone noticed he was responsible. They hadn’t, and Perkins suddenly looked tired and sat on our luggage, head in hands.
    ‘You okay?’ I asked.
    ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘I’ve not spelled that strongly before. Do I look okay?’
    He looked tired and drained and somehow … different. More world-weary. I told him he probably needed an early night and he nodded in agreement.
    ‘Was that Colin?’ asked the Princess, walking back toward us.
    I told her it was but to keep it under her hat. Magic was
strictly forbidden
in the Empire, and Perkins certainly didn’t want to be outed as a sorcerer.
    ‘How far do you think he went?’ she asked, staring at the horizon.
    Perkins looked at his watch.
    ‘He’ll be bouncing for the next ten minutes or so. Best guess – thirty or forty miles.’
    ‘How much wizidrical energy to change him back?’ I asked.
    ‘Bucketloads if you want it done immediately,’ replied Perkins thoughtfully, ‘but the spell will wear off on its own within a few days. Either way, he’s not flying out of here on his own – not with a wing like that.’
    ‘But he’s safe as a rubber dragon until he turns back?’
    ‘Sure – so long as no one tries to make car tyres or doorstops or gumboots out of him. But it’s not all bad,’ he added. ‘At least he’ll be waterproof if it rains.’
    I sighed. This was a bad start to our search. I pulled my compass out of my bag and took a bearing on the hill behind which Colin had bounced, then drew a line on my map. It was, luckily enough, pretty much in the same direction we were to travel. If our calculations were correct, Colin would be running out of bounce not far from Llangurig.
    ‘They had run out of armoured cars,’ said the Princess ‘so I persuaded them to upgrade us to a military half-track at the same rate.’
    She looked at Perkins, who was still sitting, head in hands.
    ‘Do you think we should upgrade this to a quest?’ she asked.
    ‘It is
not
a quest,’ I said emphatically. ‘If it was we’d need to register with the International Questing Federation, adhere to their “Code of Conduct” and pay them two thousand moolah into the bargain.’
    This was true. The Questing Federation were powerful, and would insist on a minimum staffing requirement: at least one strong-and-silent warrior, a sage-like old man, and either a giant or a dwarf – and all of them cost bundles, not just in salary but in hotel bills too. To go on a quest these days you needed serious financial backing.
    ‘No,’ I said more emphatically, ‘this is a search, plain and simple.’
    ‘Jenny?’ said Perkins, still with his eyes closed.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Why
were
they shooting at Colin? At barely the size of a pony and with fiery breath no more powerful than a blowlamp, he’s not exactly dangerous.’
    A voice chirped up behind us.
    ‘They shot him down because all aerial traffic in the Cambrian Empire is banned.’
    I turned to see who was speaking, and that was when we first met Addie Powell.

Addie Powell
    Her face was dirty, she had no shoes, and she was dressed in a loose, poncho-style jacket that was tied at the waist by a leather belt upon which hung a dagger. It was the costume favoured by the Silurians, a tribe who lived on the lower slopes of the Cambrian Mountains. She had three small stars tattooed on the left side of her face that told me she was a daughter of middle rank, a braid in the left side of her hair denoting no parents, and a ring on the third toe of her left foot – she held financial responsibility for someone, likely a younger sibling, or a