‘I’m as surprised as you are,’ he confessed, pulling a small device from his pocket. It was a portable Shandarmeter – a device for measuring wizidrical power. He turned the gadget on and handed it to me. I pointed the meter at him as he levitated the vase.

‘What did I get?’

‘3000 Shandars.’

‘Last week I could barely manage 1500,’ said Moobin excitedly. ‘Even if we discount the lead/gold switcheroo as a surge, I’m still twice as powerful as I was two days ago.’

‘You think it’s connected with the Dragondeath?’

‘A definite link between Dragons and magic was never proved, but the nearer I am to the Dragonlands, the stronger my powers. The same jobs I might try in London take a lot more effort.’

‘You’re not the only one,’ I replied drily. ‘I can’t send Mrs Croft to do anything worthwhile farther than Oxford, and Roger Kierkegaard failed utterly when he was on that geological survey in the Sinai.’

The wizard sighed.

‘I rarely like to work much farther than Yorkshire, yet my father was powerful as far away as the Great Troll Wall.’

‘There were more Dragons then,’ I answered. ‘More dragons, more magic, fewer dragons, less magic. The thing is,’ I added, ‘when Maltcassion dies, does magic go with him? All this might be the last knockings – the brief surge an engine will give before it runs out of petrol.’

Moobin went quiet.

‘There could be something in what you say. Sister Karamazov mentioned a Big Magic, but I have my doubts.’

‘Big Magic?’

Moobin shrugged.

‘It’s an old wizard’s legend – of a massive burst of wizidrical power that changes everything.’

‘Good or bad?’

‘No one knows.’

We stood in silence for a moment.

‘Perhaps if I were to talk to the Dragonslayer?’ I ventured.

‘Is there one?’

‘There has to be, doesn’t there? It was part of the Dragonpact.’

‘You could try. It’s possible that the Dragon may not die. After all, seers and pre-cogs only see a version of the future. There are few premonitions – if any – that can’t be altered.’

Wizard Moobin left soon after and I gazed at the roses as they twinkled and faded as the magic wore off. Then Owen of Rhayder knocked on my door. He was our second carpeteer. Owen had defected to Hereford from the ramshackle Cambrian Potentate in Mid Wales about ten years previously, which wasn’t hard to do if your particular skill was carpet.

‘Look at this, Jennifer, girl,’ he said crossly, unfurling the carpet and letting it hover in the middle of the room.

‘There’s mangy for you.’

He waved a table light under the carpet and the light gleamed through the threadbare old rug.

‘As soon as a hole opens up I’m going to retire. I don’t want to go the way of Brother Velobius.’