'You'll hear them soon enough,' he said. 'You've made a beacon. You'll all hear them. But you won't hear them for long.' He pushed aside the younger wizards who were holding his arms and advanced on Coin.
'You're pouring sourcery into the world and other things are coming with it,' he said. 'Others have given them a pathway but you've given them an avenue!'
He sprang forward and snatched the black staff out of Coin's hands and swung it up in the air to smash it against the wall.
Carding went rigid as the staff struck back. Then his skin began to blister ...
Most of the wizards managed to turn their heads away. A few -and there are always a few like that watched in obscene fascination.
Coin watched, too. His eyes widened in wonder. One hand went to his mouth. He tried to back away. He couldn't.
'They're cumulus.'
'Marvellous,' said Nijel weakly.
WEIGHT DOESN'T COME INTO IT. MY STEED HAS CARRIED ARMIES. MY STEED HAS CARRIED CITIES. YEA, HE HATH CARRIED ALL THINGS IN THEIR DUE TIME, said Death. BUT HE'S NOT GOING TO CARRY YOU THREE.
'Why not?'
IT'S A MATTER OF THE LOOK OF THE THING.
'It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it,' said War testily, 'the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse.'
'Perhaps you could ask them to wait for us?' said Pestilence, his voice sounding like something dripping out of the bottom of a coffin.
I HAVE THINGS TO ATTEND TO, said Death. He made a little clicking noise with his teeth. I'M SURE YOU'LL MANAGE. YOU NORMALLY DO.
War watched the retreating horse.
'Sometimes he really gets on my nerves. Why is he always so keen to have the last word?' he said.
'Force of habit, l suppose.'
They turned back to the tavern. Neither spoke for some time, and then War said, 'Where's Famine?'
'Went to find the kitchen.'
'Oh.' War scuffed one armoured foot in the dust, and thought about the distance to Ankh. It was a very hot afternoon. The Apocralypse could jolly well wait.
'One for the road?' he suggested.
'Should we?' said Pestilence, doubtfully. 'I thought we were expected. l mean, l wouldn't like to disappoint people.'
'We've got time for a quick one, I'm sure,' War insisted. 'Pub clocks are never right. We've got bags of time. All the time in the world.'
Carding slumped forward and thudded on the shining white floor. The staff rolled out of his hands and upended itself.
Coin prodded the limp body with his foot.
'I did warn him,' he said. 'I told him what would happen if he touched it again. What did he mean, them?'
There was an outbreak of coughing and a considerable inspection of fingernails.
'What did he mean?' Coin demanded.
Ovin Hakardly, lecturer in Lore, once again found that the wizards around him were parting like morning mist. Without moving he appeared to have stepped forward. His eyes swivelled backwards and forwards like trapped animals.
'Er,' he said. He waved his thin hands vaguely. 'The world, you see, that is, the reality in which we live, in fact, it can be thought of as, in a manner of speaking, a rubber sheet.' He hesitated, aware that the sentence was not going to appear in anyone's book of quotable quotes.
'In that,' he added hurriedly, 'it is distorted, uh, distended by the presence of magic in any degree and, if I may make a point here, too much magical potentiality, if foregathered in one spot, forces our reality, um, downwards, although of course one should not take the term literally (because in no sense do I seek to suggest a physical dimension) and it has been postulated that a sufficient exercise of magic can, shall we say, um, break through the actuality at its lowest point and offer, perhaps, a pathway to the inhabitants or, if I may use a more correct term, denizens of the lower plane (which is called by the loose-tongued the Dungeon Dimensions) who, because perhaps of the difference in energy levels, are naturally attracted to the brightness of this world. Our world.'
There was the typical long pause which usually followed Hakardly's speeches, while everybody mentally inserted commas and stitched the fractured clauses together.
Coin's lips moved silently for a while. 'Do you mean magic attracts these creatures?' he said eventually.
His voice was quite different now. It lacked its former edge. The staff hung in the air above the prone body of Carding, rotating slowly. The eyes of every wizard in the place were on it.
'So it appears,' said Hakardly. 'Students of such things say their presence is heralded by a coarse susurration.'
Coin looked uncertain.
'They buzz,' said one of the other wizards helpfully.
The boy knelt down and peered closely at Carding.
'He's very still,' he said cautiously. 'Is anything bad happening to him?'
'It may be,' said Hakardly, guardedly. 'He's dead.'
'I wish he wasn't.'
'It is a view, I suspect, which he shares.'
'But I can help him,' said Coin. He held out his hands and the staff glided into them. If it had a face, it would have smirked.
When he spoke next his voice once again had the cold distant tones of someone speaking in a steel room.
'If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize,' he said.
'Sorry?' said Hakardly. 'You've lost me there.'
Coin turned on his heel and strode back to his chair.
'We can fear nothing,' he said, and it sounded more like a command. 'What of these Dungeon Dimensions? If they should trouble us, away with them! A true wizard will fear nothing! Nothing!'
He jerked to his feet again and strode to the simulacrum of the world. The image was perfect in every detail, down to a ghost of Great A'Tuin paddling slowly through the interstellar deeps a few inches above the floor.
Coin waved his hand through it disdainfully.
'Ours is a world of magic,' he said. 'And what can be found in it that can stand against us?'
Hakardly thought that something was expected of him.
'Absolutely no-one,' he said. 'Except for the gods, of course.'
There was a dead silence.
'The gods?' said Coin quietly.
'Well, yes. Certainly. We don't challenge the gods. They do their job, we do ours. No sense in-’
'Who rules the Disc? Wizards or gods?'
Hakardly thought quickly.
'Oh, wizards. Of course. But, as it were, under the gods.'
When one accidentally puts one boot in a swamp it is quite unpleasant. But not as unpleasant as pushing down with the other boot and hearing that, too, disappear with a soft sucking noise. Hakardly pressed on.
'You see, wizardry is more-’
'Are we not more powerful than the gods, then?' said Coin.
Some of the wizards at the back of the crowd began to shuffle their feet.
'Well. Yes and no,' said Hakardly, up to his knees in it now.
The truth was that wizards tended to be somewhat nervous about the gods. The beings who dwelt on Cori Celesti had never made their feelings plain on the subject of ceremonial magic, which after all had a certain godness about it, and wizards tended to avoid the whole subject. The trouble with gods was that if they didn't like something they didn't just drop hints, so common sense suggested that it was unwise to put the gods in a position where they had to decide.
'There seems to be some uncertainty?' said Coin.
'If I may counsel-’ Hakardly began.
Coin waved a hand. The walls vanished. The wizards stood at the top of the tower of sourcery, and as one man their eyes turned to the distant pinnacle of Cori Celesti, home of the gods.
'When you've beaten everyone else, there's only the gods left to fight,' said Coin. 'Have any of you seen the gods?'
There was a chorus of hesitant denials.
'I will show them to you.'
'You've got room for another one in there, old son,' said War.
Pestilence swayed unsteadily. 'I'm sure we should be gett
ing along,' he muttered, without much conviction.
'Oh, go on.'
'Just a half, then. And then we really must be going.'
War slapped him on the back, and glared at Famine.
'And wed better have another fifteen bags of peanuts,' he added.
'Oook,' the Librarian concluded.
'Oh,' said Rincewind. 'It's the staff that's the problem, then.'
'Oook.'
'Hasn't anyone tried to take it away from him?'
'Oook.'
'What happened to them, then?'
'Eeek.'
Rincewind groaned.
The Librarian had put his candle out because the presence of the naked flame was unsettling the books, but now that Rincewind had grown accustomed to the dark, he realised it wasn't dark at all. The soft octarine glow from the books filled the inside of the tower with something that, while it wasn't exactly light, was a blackness you could see by. Now and again the ruffle of stiff pages floated down from the gloom.
'So, basically, there's no way our magic could defeat him, isn't that right?'
The Librarian cooked disconsolate agreement and continued to spin around gently on his bottom.
'Pretty pointless, then. It may have struck you that I am not exactly gifted in the magical department? I mean, any duel is going to go on the lines of "Hallo, I'm Rincewind" closely followed by bazaam!'
'Oook.'
'Basically, what you're saying is that I'm on my own.'
'Oook.'
'Thanks.'
By their own faint glow Rincewind regarded the books that had stacked themselves around the inner walls of the ancient tower.
He sighed, and marched briskly to the door, but slowed down noticeably as he reached it.
'I'll be off, then,' he said.
'Oook.'
'To face who knows what dreadful perils,' Rincewind added. 'To lay down my life in the service of mankind-’
'Eeek.'
'All right, bipeds-’
'Woof.'
'- and quadrapeds, all right.' He glanced at the Patrician's jamjar, a beaten man.
'And lizards,' he added. 'Can I go now?'
A gale was howling down out of a clear sky as Rincewind toiled towards the tower of sourcery. Its high white doors were shut so tightly it was barely possible to see their outline in the milky surface of the stone.
He hammered on it for a bit, but nothing much happened. The doors seemed to absorb the sound.
'Fine thing,' he muttered to himself, and remembered the carpet. It was lying where he had left it, which was another sign that Ankh had changed. In the thieving days before the sourcerer nothing stayed for long where you left it. Nothing printable, anyway.
He rolled it out on the cobbles so that the golden dragons writhed against the blue ground, unless of course the blue dragons were flying against a golden sky.
He sat down.
He stood up.
He sat down again and hitched up his robe and, with some effort, unrolled one of his socks. Then he replaced his boot and wandered around for a bit until he found, among the rubble, a half-brick. He inserted the half-brick into the sock and gave the sock a few thoughtful swings.
Rincewind had grown up in Morpork. What a Morpork citizen liked to have on his side in a fight was odds of about twenty to one, but failing that a sockful of half-brick and a dark alley to lurk in was generally considered a better bet than any two magic swords you cared to name.
He sat down again.
'Up,' he commanded.
The carpet did not respond. Rincewind peered at the pattern, then lifted a corner of the carpet and tried to make out if the underside was any better.
'All right,' he conceded, 'down. Very, very carefully. Down.'
'Sheep,' slurred War. 'It was sheep.' His helmeted head hit the bar with a clang. He raised it again. 'Sheep.'
'Nonono,' said Famine, raising a thin finger unsteadily. 'Some other domess ... dummist ... tame animal. Like pig. Heifer. Kitten? Like that. Not sheep.'
'Bees,' said Pestilence, and slid gently out of his seat.
'O-kay,' said War, ignoring him, 'right. Once again, then. From the top.' He rapped the side of his glass for the note.
'We are poor little ... unidentified domesticated animals ... that have lost our way ...' he quavered.
'Baabaabaa,' muttered Pestilence, from the floor.
War shook his head. 'It isn't the same, you know,' he said. 'Not without him. He used to come in beautifully on the bass.'
'Baabaabaa,' Pestilence repeated.
'Oh, shut up,' said War, and reached uncertainly for a bottle.
The gale buffeted the top of the tower, a hot, unpleasant wind that whispered with strange voices and rubbed the skin like fine sandpaper.
In the centre of it Coin stood with the staff over his head. As dust filled the air the wizards saw the lines of magic force pouring from it.
They curved up to form a vast bubble that expanded until it must have been larger than the city. And shapes appeared in it. They were shifting and indistinct, wavering horribly like visions in a distorting mirror, no more substantial than smoke rings or pictures in the clouds, but they were dreadfully familiar.
There, for a moment, was the fanged snout of Offler. There, clear for an instant in the writhing storm, was Blind lo, chief of the gods, with his orbiting eyes.
Coin muttered soundlessly and the bubble began to contract. It bulged and jerked obscenely as the things inside fought to get out, but they could not stop the contraction.
Now it was bigger than the University grounds.
Now it was taller than the tower.
Now it was twice the height of a man, and smoke grey.
Now it was an iridescent pearl, the size of ... well, the size of a large pearl.
The gale had gone, replaced by a heavy, silent calm. The very air groaned with the strain. Most of the wizards were flat on the floor, pressed there by the unleashed forces that thickened the air and deadened sound like a universe of feathers, but every one of them could hear his own heart beating loud enough to smash the tower.
'Look at me,' Coin commanded.
They turned their eyes upwards. There was no way they could disobey.
He held the glistening thing in one hand. The other held the staff, which had smoke pouring from its ends.
'The gods,' he said. 'Imprisoned in a thought. And perhaps they were never more than a dream.'
His voice become older, deeper. 'Wizards of Unseen University,' it said, 'have I not given you absolute dominion?'
Behind. them the carpet rose slowly over the side of the tower, with Rincewind trying hard to keep his balance. His eyes were wide with the sort of terror that comes naturally to anyone standing on a few threads and several hundred feet of empty air.
He lurched off the hovering thing and on to the tower, swinging the loaded sock around his head in wide, dangerous sweeps.
Coin saw him reflected in the astonished stares of the assembled wizards. He turned carefully and watched the wizard stagger erratically towards him.
'Who are you?' he said.
'I have come,' said Rincewind thickly, 'to challenge the sourcerer. Which one is he?'
He surveyed the prostrate wizardry, hefting the half-brick in one hand.
Hakardly risked a glance upwards and made frantic eyebrow movements at Rincewind who, even at the best of times, wasn't much good at interpreting non-verbal communication. This wasn't the best of times.
'With a sock?' said Coin. 'What good is a sock?'
The arm holding the staff rose. Coin looked down at it in mild astonishment.
'No, stop,' he said. 'I want to talk to this man.' He stared at Rincewind, who was swaying back and forth under the influence of sleeplessness, horror and the after-effects of an adrenaline overdose.
'Is it magical?' he said, curiously. 'Perhaps it is the sock of an Archchancellor? A sock of force?'
Rincewind focused on it.
'I don't t
hink so,' he said. 'I think I bought it in a shop or something. Um. I've got another one somewhere.'
'But in the end it has something heavy?'
'Um. Yes,' said Rincewind. He added, 'It's a half-brick.'
'But it has great power.'
'Er. You can hold things up with it. If you had another one, you’d have a brick.' Rincewind spoke slowly. He was assimilating the situation by a kind of awful osmosis, and watching the staff turn ominously in the boy's hand.
'So. It is a brick of ordinariness, within a sock. The whole becoming a weapon.'
'Um. Yes.'
'How does it work?'
'Um. You swing it, and then you. Hit something with it. Or sometimes the back of your hand, sometimes.'
'And then perhaps it destroys a whole city?’ said Coin.
Rincewind stared into Coin's golden eyes, and then at his sock. He had pulled it on and off several times a year for years. It had darns he'd grown to know and lo-well, know. Some of them had whole families of darns of their own. There were a number of descriptions that could be applied to the sock, but slayer-of-cities wasn't among them.
'Not really,' he said at last. 'It sort of kills people but leaves buildings standing.'
Rincewind's mind was operating at the speed of continental drift. Parts of it were telling him that he was confronting the sourcerer, but they were in direct conflict with other parts. Rincewind had heard quite a lot about the power of the sourcerer, the staff of the sourcerer, the wickedness of the sourcerer and so on. The only thing no-one had mentioned was the age of the sourcerer.
He glanced towards the staff.
'And what does that do?' he said slowly.
And the staff said, You must kill this man.
The wizards, who had been cautiously struggling upright, flung themselves flat again.
The voice of the hat had been bad enough, but the voice of the staff was metallic and precise; it didn't sound as though it was offering advice but simply stating the way the future had to be. It sounded quite impossible to ignore.
Coin half-raised his arm, and hesitated.
'Why?' he said.
You do not disobey me.
'You don't have to,' said Rincewind hurriedly. 'It's only a thing.'
'I do not see why I should hurt him,' said Coin. 'He looks so harmless. Like an angry rabbit.'
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