Discworld 05 - Sourcery

by Terry Pratchett

  After a while the Library began to settle down, and Rincewind felt his shoulder muscles relax.

  It was a fragile peace, though. Here and there a page rustled. From distant shelves came the ominous creak of a spine. After its initial panic the Library was now as alert and jittery as a long-tailed cat in a rocking-chair factory.

  The Librarian ambled back down the aisles. He had a face that only a lorry tire could love and it was permanently locked in a faint smile, but Rincewind could tell by the way the ape crept into his cubbyhole under the desk and hid his head under a blanket that he was deeply worried.

  Examine Rincewind, as he peers around the sullen shelves. There are eight levels of wizardry on the Disc; after sixteen years Rincewind has failed to achieve even level one. In fact it is the considered opinion of some of his tutors that he is incapable even of achieving level zero, which most normal people are born at; to put it another way, it has been suggested that when Rincewind dies the average occult ability of the human race will actually go up by a fraction.

  He is tall and thin and has the scrubby kind of beard that looks like the kind of beard worn by people who weren’t cut out by nature to be beard wearers. He is dressed in a dark red robe that has seen better days, possibly better decades. But you can tell he’s a wizard, because he’s got a pointy hat with a floppy brim. It’s got the word “Wizzard” embroidered on it in big silver letters, by someone whose needlework is even worse than their spelling. There’s a star on top. It has lost most of its sequins.

  Clamping his hat on his head, Rincewind pushed his way through the Library’s ancient doors and stepped out into the golden light of the afternoon. It was calm and quiet, broken only by the hysterical croaking of the ravens as they circled the Tower of Art.

  Rincewind watched them for a while. The University’s ravens were a tough bunch of birds. It took a lot to unsettle them.

  On the other hand—

  —the sky was pale blue tinted with gold, with a few high wisps of fluffy cloud glowing pinkly in the lengthening light. The ancient chestnut trees in the quadrangle were in full bloom. From an open window came the sound of a student wizard practicing the violin, rather badly. It was not what you would call ominous.

  Rincewind leaned against the warm stonework. And screamed.

  The building was shuddering. He could feel it come up through his hand and along his arms, a faint rhythmic sensation at just the right frequency to suggest uncontrollable terror. The stones themselves were frightened.

  He looked down in horror at a faint clinking noise. An ornamental drain cover fell backwards and one of the University’s rats poked its whiskers out. It gave Rincewind a desperate look as it scrambled up and fled past him, followed by dozens of its tribe. Some of them were wearing clothes but that wasn’t unusual for the University, where the high level of background magic does strange things to genes.

  As he stared around him Rincewind could see other streams of gray bodies leaving the University by every drainpipe and flowing toward the outside wall. The ivy by his ear rustled and a group of rats made a series of death-defying leaps onto his shoulders and slid down his robe. They otherwise ignored him totally but, again, this wasn’t particularly unusual. Most creatures ignored Rincewind.

  He turned and fled into the University, skirts flapping around his knees, until he reached the bursar’s study. He hammered on the door, which creaked open.

  “Ah. It’s, um, Rincewind, isn’t it?” said the bursar, without much enthusiasm. “What’s the matter?”

  “We’re sinking!”

  The bursar stared at him for a few moments. His name was Spelter. He was tall and wiry and looked as though he had been a horse in previous lives and had only just avoided it in this one. He always gave people the impression that he was looking at them with his teeth.

  “Sinking?”

  “Yes. All the rats are leaving!”

  The bursar gave him another stare.

  “Come inside, Rincewind,” he said, kindly. Rincewind followed him into the low, dark room and across to the window. It looked out over the gardens to the river, oozing peacefully toward the sea.

  “You haven’t been, um, overdoing it?” said the bursar.

  “Overdoing what?” said Rincewind, guiltily.

  “This is a building, you see,” said the bursar. Like most wizards when faced with a puzzle, he started to roll himself a cigarette. “It’s not a ship. There are ways of telling, you know. Absence of porpoises frolicking around the bows, a shortage of bilges, that sort of thing. The chances of foundering are remote. Otherwise, um, we’d have to man the sheds and row for shore. Um?”

  “But the rats—”

  “Grain ship in harbor, I expect. Some, um, springtime ritual.”

  “I’m sure I felt the building shaking, too,” said Rincewind, a shade uncertainly. Here in this quiet room, with the fire crackling in the grate, it didn’t seem quite so real.

  “A passing tremor. Great A’Tuin hiccuping, um, possibly. A grip on yourself, um, is what you should get. You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

  “No!”

  “Um. Would you like to?”

  Spelter padded over to a dark oak cabinet and pulled out a couple of glasses, which he filled from the water jug.

  “I tend to be best at sherry this time of day,” he said, and spread his hands over the glasses. “Say, um, the word—sweet or dry?”

  “Um, no,” said Rincewind. “Perhaps you’re right. I think I’ll go and have a bit of rest.”

  “Good idea.”

  Rincewind wandered down the chilly stone passages. Occasionally he’d touch the wall and appear to be listening, and then he’d shake his head.

  As he crossed the quadrangle again he saw a herd of mice swarm over a balcony and scamper toward the river. The ground they were running over seemed to be moving, too. When Rincewind looked closer he could see that it was because it was covered with ants.

  These weren’t ordinary ants. Centuries of magical leakage into the walls of the University had done strange things to them. Some of them were pulling very small carts, some of them were riding beetles, but all of them were leaving the University as quickly as possible. The grass on the lawn rippled as they passed.

  He looked up as an elderly striped mattress was extruded from an upper window and flopped down onto the flagstones below. After a pause, apparently to catch its breath, it rose a little from the ground. Then it started to float purposefully across the lawn and bore down on Rincewind, who managed to jump out of its way just in time. He heard a high-pitched chittering and caught a glimpse of thousands of determined little legs under the bulging fabric before it hurtled onward. Even the bedbugs were on the move, and in case they didn’t find such comfortable quarters elsewhere they were leaving nothing to chance. One of them waved at him and squeaked a greeting.

  Rincewind backed away until something touched the back of his legs and froze his spine. It turned out to be a stone seat. He watched it for some time. It didn’t seem in any hurry to run away. He sat down gratefully.

  There’s probably a natural explanation, he thought. Or a perfectly normal unnatural one, anyway.

  A gritty noise made him look across the lawn.

  There was no natural explanation of this. With incredible slowness, easing themselves down parapets and drainpipes in total silence except for the occasional scrape of stone on stone, the gargoyles were leaving the roof.

  It’s a shame that Rincewind had never seen poor quality stop-motion photography, because then he would have known exactly how to describe what he was seeing. The creatures didn’t exactly move, but they managed to progress in a series of high speed tableaux, and lurched past him in a spindly procession of beaks, manes, wings, claws and pigeon droppings.

  “What’s happening?” he squeaked.

  A thing with a goblin’s face, harpy’s body and hen’s legs turned its head in a series of little jerks and spoke in a voice like the peristalsis of mountains (although
the deep resonant effect was rather spoiled because, of course, it couldn’t close its mouth).

  It said: “A Ourcerer is umming! Eee orr ife!”

  Rincewind said “Pardon?” But the thing had gone past and was lurching awkwardly across the ancient lawn.*

  So Rincewind sat and stared blankly at nothing much for fully ten seconds before giving a little scream and running as fast as he could.

  He didn’t stop until he’d reached his own room in the Library building. It wasn’t much of a room, being mainly used to store old furniture, but it was home.

  Against one shadowy wall was a wardrobe. It wasn’t one of your modern wardrobes, fit only for nervous adulterers to jump into when the husband returned home early, but an ancient oak affair, dark as night, in whose dusty depths coat-hangers lurked and bred; herds of flaking shoes roamed its floor. It was quite possible that it was a secret doorway to fabulous worlds, but no one had ever tried to find out because of the distressing smell of mothballs.

  And on top of the wardrobe, wrapped in scraps of yellowing paper and old dust sheets, was a large brass-bound chest. It went by the name of the Luggage. Why it consented to be owned by Rincewind was something only the Luggage knew, and it wasn’t telling, but probably no other item in the entire chronicle of travel accessories had quite such a history of mystery and grievous bodily harm. It had been described as half suitcase, half homicidal maniac. It had many unusual qualities which may or may not become apparent soon, but currently there was only one that set it apart from any other brass-bound chest. It was snoring, with a sound like someone very slowly sawing a log.

  The Luggage might be magical. It might be terrible. But in its enigmatic soul it was kin to every other piece of luggage throughout the multiverse, and preferred to spend its winters hibernating on top of a wardrobe.

  Rincewind hit it with a broom until the sawing stopped, filled his pockets with odds and ends from the banana crate he used as a dressing table, and made for the door. He couldn’t help noticing that his mattress had gone but that didn’t matter because he was pretty clear that he was never going to sleep on a mattress again, ever.

  The Luggage landed on the floor with a solid thump. After a few seconds, and with extreme care, it rose up on hundreds of little pink legs. It tilted backwards and forward a bit, stretching every leg, and then it opened its lid and yawned.

  “Are you coming or not?”

  The lid shut with a snap. The Luggage maneuverd its feet into a complicated shuffle until it was facing the doorway, and headed after its master.

  The Library was still in a state of tension, with the occasional clinking* of a chain or muffled crackle of a page. Rincewind reached under the desk and grabbed the Librarian who was still hunched under his blanket.

  “Come on, I said!”

  “Oook.”

  “I’ll buy you a drink,” said Rincewind desperately.

  The Librarian unfolded like a four-legged spider. “Oook?”

  Rincewind half-dragged the ape from his nest and out through the door. He didn’t head for the main gates but for an otherwise undistinguished area of wall where a few loose stones had, for two thousand years, offered students an unobtrusive way in after lights-out. Then he stopped so suddenly that the Librarian cannoned into him and the Luggage ran into both of them.

  “Oook!”

  “Oh, gods,” he said. “Look at that!”

  “Oook?”

  There was a shiny black tide flowing out of a grating near the kitchens. Early evening starlight glinted off millions of little black backs.

  But it wasn’t the sight of the cockroaches that was so upsetting. It was the fact that they were marching in step, a hundred abreast. Of course, like all the informal inhabitants of the University the roaches were a little unusual, but there was something particularly unpleasant about the sound of billions of very small feet hitting the stones in perfect time.

  Rincewind stepped gingerly over the marching column. The Librarian jumped it.

  The Luggage, of course, followed them with a noise like someone tapdancing over a bag of potato chips.

  And so, forcing the Luggage to go all the way around to the gates anyway, because otherwise it’d only batter a hole in the wall, Rincewind quit the University with all the other insects and small frightened rodents and decided that if a few quiet beers wouldn’t allow him to see things in a different light, then a few more probably would. It was certainly worth a try.

  That was why he wasn’t present in the Great Hall for dinner. It would turn out to be the most important missed meal of his life.

  Further along the University wall there was a faint clink as a grapnel caught the spikes that lined its top. A moment later a slim, black-clad figure dropped lightly into the University grounds and ran soundlessly toward the Great Hall, where it was soon lost in the shadows.

  No-one would have noticed it anyway. On the other side of the campus the Sourcerer was walking toward the gates of the University. Where his feet touched the cobbles blue sparks crackled and evaporated the early evening dew.

  It was very hot. The big fireplace at the turnwise end of the Great Hall was practically incandescent. Wizards feel the cold easily, so the sheer blast of heat from the roaring logs was melting candles twenty feet away and bubbling the varnish on the long tables. The air over the feast was blue with tobacco smoke, which writhed into curious shapes as it was bent by random drifts of magic. On the center table the complete carcass of a whole roast pig looked extremely annoyed at the fact that someone had killed it without waiting for it to finish its apple, and the model University made of butter was sinking gently into a pool of grease.

  There was a lot of beer about. Here and there red-faced wizards were happily singing ancient drinking songs which involved a lot of knee-slapping and cries of “Ho!” The only possible excuse for this sort of thing is that wizards are celibate, and have to find their amusement where they can.

  Another reason for the general conviviality was the fact that no one was trying to kill anyone else. This is an unusual state of affairs in magical circles.

  The higher levels of wizardry are a perilous place. Every wizard is trying to dislodge the wizards above him while stamping on the fingers of those below; to say that wizards are healthily competitive by nature is like saying that piranhas are naturally a little peckish. However, ever since the great Mage Wars left whole areas of the Disc uninhabitable*, wizards have been forbidden to settle their differences by magical means, because it caused a lot of trouble for the population at large and in any case it was often difficult to tell which of the resultant patches of smoking fat had been the winner. So they traditionally resort to knives, subtle poisons, scorpions in shoes and hilarious booby traps involving razor-sharp pendulums.

  On Small Gods’ Eve, however, it was considered extremely bad form to kill a brother wizard, and wizards felt able to let their hair down without fear of being strangled with it.

  The Archchancellor’s chair was empty. Wayzygoose was dining alone in his study, as befits a man chosen by the gods after their serious discussion with sensible senior wizards earlier in the day. Despite his eighty years, he was feeling a little bit nervous and hardly touched his second chicken.

  In a few minutes he would have to make a speech. Wayzygoose had, in his younger days, sought power in strange places; he’d wrestled with demons in blazing octagrams, stared into dimensions that men were not meant to know of, and even outfaced the Unseen University grants committee, but nothing in the eight circles of nothingness was quite so bad as a couple of hundred expectant faces staring up at him through the cigar smoke.

  The heralds would soon be coming by to collect him. He sighed and pushed his pudding away untasted, crossed the room, stood in front of the big mirror, and fumbled in the pocket of the robe for his notes.

  After a while he managed to get them in some sort of order and cleared his throat.

  “My brothers in art,” he began, “I cannot tell you how much I—er,
how much…fine traditions of this ancient university…er…as I look around me and see the pictures of Archchancellors gone before…” He paused, sorted through his notes again, and plunged on rather more certainly. “Standing here tonight I am reminded of the story about the three-legged pedlar and the, er, merchant’s daughters. It seems that this merchant…”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Enter,” Wayzygoose barked, and peered at the notes carefully.

  “This merchant,” he muttered, “this merchant, yes, this merchant had three daughters. I think it was. Yes. It was three. It would appear…”

  He looked into the mirror, and turned round.

  He started to say, “Who are y—”

  And found that there are things worse than making speeches, after all.

  The small dark figure creeping along the deserted corridors heard the noise, and didn’t take too much notice. Unpleasant noises were not uncommon in areas where magic was commonly practiced. The figure was looking for something. It wasn’t sure what it was, only that it would know it when it found it.

  After some minutes its search led it to Wayzygoose’s room. The air was full of greasy coils. Little particles of soot drifted gently on the air currents, and there were several foot-shaped burn marks on the floor.

  The figure shrugged. There was no accounting for the sort of things you found in wizard’s rooms. It caught sight of its multi-faceted reflection in the shattered mirror, adjusted the set of its hood, and got on with the search.

  Moving like one listening to inner directions, it padded noiselessly across the room until it reached the table whereon stood a tall, round and battered leather box. It crept closer and gently raised the lid.

  The voice from inside sounded as though it was talking through several layers of carpet when it said, At last. What kept you?