‘I saw him die. Die by the sword of a Dragonslayer.’

‘When?’

He narrowed his eyes.

‘Certainly within the next week.’

I stopped opening the mail – mostly junk anyway, or bills – and looked over to where Kevin Zipp was staring at me intently. The importance of the information wasn’t lost on him, and it wasn’t lost on me either. By ancient decree the Dragon’s land belonged to whoever claimed it as soon as the Dragon died, so there was always an unseemly rush for real estate which eclipsed a Dragon’s death. Within a day every square inch of land would be claimed. In the following months there would be legal wranglings, then the construction would begin. New roads, housing and power, retail parks and industrial units. All would cover the unspoilt lands in a smear of tarmac and concrete. A four-hundred-year-old wilderness gone for ever.

‘I heard that when Dragon Dunwoody died twenty-seven years ago,’ said Tiger, who was fairly up on Dragons, as you would be, growing up so close to the Dragonlands, ‘the crowd surge resulted in sixty-eight people dead in the stampede.’

Kevin and I exchanged glances. The death of the last Dragon would be a matter of some consequence.

‘How strong was this?’ I asked.

‘On a scale of one to ten,’ replied Zipp, ‘it was a twelve. Most powerful premonition I’ve ever felt. It was as though the Mighty Shandar himself had called me up person-to-person and reversed the charges. I can detect it on low-alpha as well as the wider brain wavelengths. I doubt I’m the only person picking this up.’

I doubted it too. I phoned Randolph, 14th Earl of Pembridge, the only other pre-cog on our books. Randolph, or EP-14 as he was sometimes known, was not only minor Hereford aristocracy, but an industrial prophet who worked for Consolidated Useful Stuff (Steel) PLC, predicting failure rates on industrial welding.

‘Randolph, it’s Jennifer.’

‘Jenny, D’girl! I thought you’d call.’

‘I’ve got the Remarkable Kevin Zipp with me and I wondered if—’

He didn’t need any prompting. He had picked up the same thing but had also furnished a time and date. Next Sunday at noon. I thanked him and replaced the phone.

‘Anything else?’

‘Yes,’ replied Kevin. ‘Two words.’

‘And they are?’

‘Big Magic.’

‘What does that mean?’

He told me he didn’t know, and I understood. He only saw the visions; it was up to others to interpret them. In the absence of any good interpretation, they could generally be explained by events or, failing that, hindsight.

‘Before I go,’ he said, pulling a rumpled piece of paper from his pocket, ‘these are for you.’

He handed the grubby piece of paper not to me, but to Tiger.

He scanned the note. It didn’t seem to mean anything at all.

Smith

7, 11, and 13

Ulan Bator

He read the note, then lowered the piece of paper.

‘I don’t understand.’