Discworld 05 - Sourcery

by Terry Pratchett

  Ardrothy Longstaff, Purveyor of Pies Full of Personality, peered over the top of the wreckage of his stall in time to see the wizards emerge.

  He knew wizards, or up until now he’d always thought he did. They were vague old boys, harmless enough in their way, dressed like ancient sofas, always ready customers for any of his merchandise that happened to be marked down on account of age and rather more personality than a prudent housewife would be prepared to put up with.

  But these wizards were something new to Ardrothy. They walked out into Sator Square as if they owned it. Little blue sparks flashed around their feet. They seemed a little taller, somehow.

  Or perhaps it was just the way they carried themselves.

  Yes, that was it…

  Ardrothy had a touch of magic in his genetic makeup, and as he watched the wizards sweep across the square it told him that the very best thing he could do for his health would be to pack his knives, and mincers in his little pack and have it away out of the city at any time in the next ten minutes.

  The last wizard in the group lagged behind his colleagues and looked around the square with disdain.

  “There used to be fountains out here,” he said. “You people—be off.”

  The traders stared at one another. Wizards normally spoke imperiously, that was to be expected. But there was an edge to the voice that no one had heard before. It had knuckles in it.

  Ardrothy’s eyes swivelled sideways. Arising out of the ruins of his jellied starfish and clam stall like an avenging angel, dislodging various molluscs from his beard and spitting vinegar, was Miskin Koble, who was said to be able to open oysters with one hand. Years of pulling limpets off rocks and wrestling the giant cockles in Ankh Bay had given him the kind of physical development normally associated with tectonic plates. He didn’t so much stand up as unfold.

  Then he thudded his way toward the wizard and pointed a trembling finger at the ruins of his stall, from which half a dozen enterprising lobsters were making a determined bid for freedom. Muscles moved around the edges of his mouth like angry eels.

  “Did you do that?” he demanded.

  “Stand aside, oaf,” said the wizard, three words which in the opinion of Ardrothy gave him the ongoing life expectancy of a glass cymbal.

  “I hates wizards,” said Koble. “I really hates wizards. So I am going to hit you, all right?”

  He brought his fist back and let fly.

  The wizard raised an eyebrow, yellow fire sprang up around the shellfish salesman, there was a noise like tearing silk, and Koble had vanished. All that was left was his boots, standing forlornly on the cobbles with little wisps of smoke coming out of them.

  No one knows why smoking boots always remain, no matter how big the explosion. It seems to be just one of those things.

  It seemed to the watchful eyes of Ardrothy that the wizard himself was nearly as shocked as the crowd, but he rallied magnificently and gave his staff a flourish.

  “You people had better jolly well learn from this,” he said. “No one raises their hand to a wizard, do you understand? There are going to be a lot of changes around here. Yes, what do you want?”

  This last comment was to Ardrothy, who was trying to sneak past unnoticed. He scrabbled quickly in his pie tray.

  “I was just wondering if your honorship would care to purchase one of these finest pies,” he said hurriedly. “Full of nourish—”

  “Watch closely, pie-selling person,” said the wizard. He stretched out his hand, made a strange gesture with his fingers, and produced a pie out of the air.

  It was fat, golden-brown and beautifully glazed. Just by looking at it Ardrothy knew it was packed edge to edge with prime lean pork, with none of those spacious areas of good fresh air under the lid that represented his own profit margin. It was the kind of pie piglets hope to be when they grew up.

  His heart sank. His ruin was floating in front of him with short-crust pastry on it.

  “Want a taste?” said the wizard. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  “Wherever it came from,” said Ardrothy.

  He looked past the shiny pastry to the face of the wizard, and in the manic gleam of those eyes he saw the world turning upside down.

  He turned away, a broken man, and set out for the nearest city gate.

  As if it wasn’t bad enough that wizards were killing people, he thought bitterly, they were taking away their livelihood as well.

  A bucket of water splashed into Rincewind’s face, jerking him out of a dreadful dream in which a hundred masked women were attempting to trim his hair with broadswords and cutting it very fine indeed. Some people, having a nightmare like that, would dismiss it as castration anxiety, but Rincewind’s subconscious knew being-cut-to-tiny-bits-mortal-dread when it saw it. It saw it most of the time.

  He sat up.

  “Are you all right?” said Conina, anxiously.

  Rincewind swivelled his eyes around the cluttered deck.

  “Not necessarily,” he said cautiously. There didn’t seem to be any black-clad slavers around, at least vertically. There were a good many crew members, all of them maintaining a respectful distance from Conina. Only the captain stood reasonably close, an inane grin on his face.

  “They left,” said Conina. “Took what they could and left.”

  “They bastards,” said the captain, “but they paddle pretty fast!” Conina winced as he gave her a ringing slap on the back. “She fight real good for a lady,” he added. “Yes!”

  Rincewind got unsteadily to his feet. The boat was scudding along cheerfully toward a distant smear on the horizon that had to be hubward Klatch. He was totally unharmed. He began to cheer up a bit.

  The captain gave them both a hearty nod and hurried off to shout orders connected with sails and ropes and things. Conina sat down on the Luggage, which didn’t seem to object.

  “He said he’s so grateful he’ll take us all the way to Al Khali,” she said.

  “I thought that’s what we arranged anyway,” said Rincewind. “I saw you give him money, and everything.”

  “Yes, but he was planning to overpower us and sell me as a slave when he got there.”

  “What, not sell me?” said Rincewind, and then snorted, “Of course, it’s the wizard’s robes, he wouldn’t dare—”

  “Um. Actually, he said he’d have to give you away,” said Conina, picking intently at an imaginary splinter on the Luggage’s lid.

  “Give me away?”

  “Yes. Um. Sort of like, one free wizard with every concubine sold? Um.”

  “I don’t see what vegetables have got to do with it.”

  Conina gave him a long, hard stare, and when he didn’t break into a smile she sighed and said, “Why are you wizards always nervous around women?”

  Rincewind bridled at this slur. “I like that!” he said, “I’ll have you know that—look, anyway, the point is, I get along very well with women in general, it’s just women with swords that upset me.” He considered this for a while, and added, “Everyone with swords upset me, if it comes to that.”

  Conina picked industriously at the splinter. The Luggage gave a contented creak.

  “I know something else that’ll upset you,” she muttered.

  “Hmmm?”

  “The hat’s gone.”

  “What?”

  “I couldn’t help it, they just grabbed whatever they could—”

  “The slavers have made off with the hat?”

  “Don’t you take that tone with me! I wasn’t having a quiet sleep at the time—”

  Rincewind waved his hands frantically. “Nonono, don’t get excited, I wasn’t taking any tone—I want to think about this…”

  “The captain says they’ll probably go back to Al Khali,” he heard Conina say. “There’s a place where the criminal element hang out, and we can soon—”

  “I don’t see why we have to do anything,” said Rincewind. “The hat wanted to keep out the way of the University, an
d I shouldn’t think those slavers ever drop in there for a quick sherry.”

  “You’ll let them run off with it?” said Conina, in genuine astonishment.

  “Well, someone’s got to do it. The way I see it, why me?”

  “But you said it’s the symbol of wizardry! What wizards all aspire to! You can’t just let it go like that!”

  “You watch me.” Rincewind sat back. He felt oddly surprised. He was making a decision. It was his. It belonged to him. No-one was forcing him to make it. Sometimes it seemed that his entire life consisted of getting into trouble because of what other people wanted, but this time he’d made a decision and that was that. He’d get off the boat at Al Khali and find some way of going home. Someone else could save the world, and he wished them luck. He’d made a decision.

  His brow furrowed. Why didn’t he feel happy about it?

  Because it’s the wrong bloody decision, you idiot.

  Right, he thought, I’ve had enough voices in my head. Out.

  But I belong here.

  You mean you’re me?

  Your conscience.

  Oh.

  You can’t let the hat be destroyed. It’s the symbol…

  …all right, I know…

  …the symbol of magic under the Lore. Magic under the control of mankind. You don’t want to go back to those dark Ians…

  …What?…

  Ians…

  Do I mean aeons?

  Right. Aeons. Go back aeons to the time when raw magic ruled. The whole framework of reality trembled daily. It was pretty terrible, I can tell me.

  How do I know?

  Racial memory.

  Gosh. Have I got one of those?

  Well. A part of one.

  Yes, all right, but why me?

  In your soul you know you are a true wizard. The word “Wizard” is engraved on your heart.

  “Yes, but the trouble is I keep meeting people who might try to find out,” said Rincewind miserably.

  “What did you say?” said Conina.

  Rincewind stared at the smudge on the horizon and sighed.

  “Just talking to myself,” he said.

  Carding surveyed the hat critically. He walked around the table and stared at it from a new angle. At last he said: “It’s pretty good. Where did you get the octarines?”

  “They’re just very good Ankhstones,” said Spelter. “They fooled you, did they?”

  It was a magnificent hat. In fact, Spelter had to admit, it looked a lot better than the real thing. The old Archchancellor’s hat had looked rather battered, its gold thread tarnished and unravelling. The replica was a considerable improvement. It had style.

  “I especially like the lace,” said Carding.

  “It took ages.”

  “Why didn’t you try magic?” Carding waggled his fingers, and grasped the tall cool glass that appeared in mid-air. Under its paper umbrella and fruit salad it contained some sticky and expensive alcohol.

  “Didn’t work,” said Spelter. “Just couldn’t seem, um, to get it right. I had to sew every sequin on by hand.” He picked up the hatbox.

  Carding coughed into his drink. “Don’t put it away just yet,” he said, and took it out of the bursar’s hands. “I’ve always wanted to try this—”

  He turned to the big mirror on the bursar’s wall and reverently lowered the hat on his rather grubby locks.

  It was the ending of the first day of the sourcery, and the wizards had managed to change everything except themselves.

  They had all tried, on the quiet and when they thought no one else was looking. Even Spelter had a go, in the privacy of his study. He had managed to become twenty years younger with a torso you could crack rocks on, but as soon as he stopped concentrating he sagged, very unpleasantly, back into his old familiar shape and age. There was something elastic about the way you were. The harder you threw it, the faster it came back. The worse it was when it hit, too. Spiked iron balls, broadswords and large heavy sticks with nails in were generally considered pretty fearsome weapons, but they were nothing at all compared to twenty years suddenly applied with considerable force to the back of the head.

  This was because sourcery didn’t seem to work on things that were instrinsically magical. Nevertheless, the wizards had made a few important improvements. Carding’s robe, for example, had become a silk and lace confection of overpoweringly expensive tastelessness, and gave him the appearance of a big red jelly draped with antimacassars.

  “It suits me, don’t you think?” said Carding. He adjusted the hat brim, giving it an inappropriately rakish air.

  Spelter said nothing. He was looking out of the window.

  There had been a few improvements all right. It had been a busy day.

  The old stone walls had vanished. There were some rather nice railings now. Beyond them, the city fairly sparkled, a poem in white marble and red tiles. The river Ankh was no longer the silt-laden sewer he’d grown up knowing, but a glittering glass-clear ribbon in which—a nice touch—fat carp mouthed and swam in water pure as snowmelt.*

  From the air Ankh-Morpork must have been blinding. It gleamed. The detritus of millennia had been swept away.

  It made Spelter strangely uneasy. He felt out of place, as though he was wearing new clothes that itched. Of course, he was wearing new clothes and they did itch, but that wasn’t the problem. The new world was all very nice, it was exactly how it should be, and yet, and yet—had he wanted to change, he thought, or had he only wanted things rearranged more suitably?

  “I said, don’t you think it was made for me?” said Carding.

  Spelter turned back, his face blank.

  “Um?”

  “The hat, man.”

  “Oh. Um. Very—suitable.”

  With a sigh Carding removed the baroque headpiece and carefully replaced it in its box. “We’d better take it to him,” he said. “He’s starting to ask about it.”

  “I’m still bothered about where the real hat is,” said Spelter.

  “It’s in here,” said Carding firmly, tapping the lid.

  “I mean the, um, real one.”

  “This is the real one.”

  “I meant—”

  “This is the Archchancellor’s Hat,” said Carding carefully. “You should know, you made it.”

  “Yes, but—” began the bursar wretchedly.

  “After all, you wouldn’t make a forgery, would you?”

  “Not as, um, such—”

  “It’s just a hat. It’s whatever people think it is. People see the Archchancellor wearing it, they think it’s the original hat. In a certain sense, it is. Things are defined by what they do. And people, of course. Fundamental basis of wizardry, is that.” Carding paused dramatically, and plonked the hatbox into Spelter’s arms. “Cogitum ergot hatto, you might say.”

  Spelter had made a special study of old languages, and did his best.

  “‘I think, therefore I am a hat?’” he hazarded.

  “What?” said Carding, as they set off down the stairs to the new incarnation of the Great Hall.

  “‘I considered I’m a mad hat?’” Spelter suggested.

  “Just shut up, all right?”

  The haze still hung over the city, its curtains of silver and gold turned to blood by the light of the setting sun which streamed in through the windows of the hall.

  Coin was sitting on a stool with his staff across his knees. It occurred to Spelter that he had never seen the boy without it, which was odd. Most wizards kept their staves under the bed, or hooked up over the fireplace.

  He didn’t like this staff. It was black, but not because that was its color, more because it seemed to be a moveable hole into some other, more unpleasant set of dimensions. It didn’t have eyes but, nevertheless, it seemed to stare at Spelter as if it knew his innermost thoughts, which at the moment was more than he did.

  His skin prickled as the two wizards crossed the floor and felt the blast of a raw magic flowing outward from the seate
d figure.

  Several dozen of the most senior wizards were clustered around the stool, staring in awe at the floor.

  Spelter craned to see, and saw—

  The world.

  It floated in a puddle of black night somehow set into the floor itself, and Spelter knew with a terrible certainty that it was the world, not some image or simple projection. There were cloud patterns and everything. There were the frosty wastes of the Hublands, the Counterweight Continent, the Circle Sea, the Rimfall, all tiny and pastel-colored but nevertheless real…

  Someone was speaking to him.

  “Um?” he said, and the sudden drop in metaphorical temperature jerked him back into reality. He realized with horror that Coin had just directed a remark at him.

  “I’m sorry?” he corrected himself. “It was just that the world…so beautiful…”

  “Our Spelter is an aesthete,” said Coin, and there was a brief chuckle from one or two wizards who knew what the word meant, “but as to the world, it could be improved. I had said, Spelter, that everywhere we look we can see cruelty and inhumanity and greed, which tell us that the world is indeed governed badly, does it not?”

  Spelter was aware of two dozen pairs of eyes turning to him.

  “Um,” he said. “Well, you can’t change human nature.”

  There was dead silence.

  Spelter hesitated. “Can you?” he said.

  “That remains to be seen,” said Carding. “But if we change the world, then human nature also will change. Is that not so, brothers?”

  “We have the city,” said one of the wizards. “I myself have created a castle—”

  “We rule the city, but who rules the world?” said Carding. “There must be a thousand petty kings and emperors and chieftains down there.”

  “Not one of whom can read without moving his lips,” said a wizard.

  “The Patrician could read,” said Spelter.

  “Not if you cut off his index finger,” said Carding. “What happened to the lizard, anyway? Never mind. The point is, the world should surely be run by men of wisdom and philosophy. It must be guided. We’ve spent centuries fighting amongst ourselves, but together…who knows what we could do?”