Discworld 05 - Sourcery

by Terry Pratchett

  “Erm,” he said, “excuse me…”

  “It seems a shame,” said a small wizard.

  The others didn’t speak. It was a shame, and there wasn’t a man among them who couldn’t hear the hot whine of guilt all down their backbones. But, as so often happens by that strange alchemy of the soul, the guilt made them arrogant and reckless.

  “Just shut up, will you?” said the temporary leader. He was called Benado Sconner, but there is something in the air tonight that suggests that it is not worth committing his name to memory. The air is dark and heavy and full of ghosts.

  The Unseen University isn’t empty, there just aren’t any people there.

  But of course the six wizards sent to burn down the Library aren’t afraid of ghosts, because they’re so charged with magic that they practically buzz as they walk, they’re wearing robes more splendid than any Archchancellor has worn, their pointy hats are more pointed than any hats have hitherto been, and the reason they’re standing so close together is entirely coincidental.

  “It’s awfully dark in here,” said the smallest of the wizards.

  “It’s midnight,” said Sconner sharply, “and the only dangerous things in here are us. Isn’t that right, boys?”

  There was a chorus of vague murmurs. They were all in awe of Sconner, who was rumored to do positive-thinking exercises.

  “And we’re not scared of a few old books, are we, lads?” He glowered at the smallest wizard. “You’re not, are you?” he added sharply.

  “Me? Oh. No. Of course not. They’re just paper, like he said,” said the wizard quickly.

  “Well, then.”

  “There’s ninety thousand of them, mind,” said another wizard.

  “I always heard there was no end to ’em,” said another. “It’s all down to dimensions, I heard, like what we see is only the tip of the whatever, you know, the thing that is mostly underwater—”

  “Hippopotamus?”

  “Alligator?”

  “Ocean?”

  “Look, just shut up, all of you!” shouted Sconner. He hesitated. The darkness seemed to suck at the sound of his voice. It packed the air like feathers.

  He pulled himself together a bit.

  “Right, then,” he said, and turned toward the forbidding doors of the Library.

  He raised his hands, made a few complicated gestures in which his fingers, in some eye-watering way, appeared to pass through each other, and shattered the doors into sawdust.

  The waves of silence poured back again, strangling the sound of falling woodchips.

  There was no doubt that the doors were smashed. Four forlorn hinges hung trembling from the frame, and a litter of broken benches and shelves lay in the wreckage. Even Sconner was a little surprised.

  “There,” he said. “It’s as easy as that. You see? Nothing happened to me. Right?”

  There was a shuffling of curly-toed boots. The darkness beyond the doorway was limned with the indistinct, eye-aching glow of thaumaturgic radiation as possibility particles exceeded the speed of reality in a strong magical field.

  “Now then,” said Sconner, brightly, “who would like the honor of setting the fire?”

  Ten silent seconds later he said, “In that case I will do it myself. Honestly, I might as well be talking to the wall.”

  He strode through the doorway and hurried across the floor to the little patch of starlight that lanced down from the glass dome high above the center of the Library (although, of course, there has always been considerable debate about the precise geography of the place; heavy concentrations of magic distort time and space, and it is possible that the Library doesn’t even have an edge, never mind a center).

  He stretched out his arms.

  “There. See? Absolutely nothing has happened. Now come on in.”

  The other wizards did so, with great reluctance and a tendency to duck as they passed through the ravished arch.

  “Okay,” said Sconner, with some satisfaction. “Now, has everyone got their matches as instructed? Magical fire won’t work, not on these books, so I want everyone to—”

  “Something moved up there,” said the smallest wizard.

  Sconner blinked.

  “What?”

  “Something moved up by the dome,” said the wizard, adding by way of explanation, “I saw it.”

  Sconner squinted upwards into the bewildering shadows, and decided to exert a bit of authority.

  “Nonsense,” he said briskly. He pulled out a bundle of foul-smelling yellow matches, and said, “Now, I want you all to pile—”

  “I did see it, you know,” said the small wizard, sulkily.

  “All right, what did you see?”

  “Well, I’m not exactly—”

  “You don’t know, do you?” snapped Sconner.

  “I saw someth—”

  “You don’t know!” repeated Sconner, “You’re just seeing shadows, just trying to undermine my authority, isn’t that it?” Sconner hesitated, and his eyes glazed momentarily. “I am calm,” he intoned, “I am totally in control. I will not let—”

  “It was—”

  “Listen, shortarse, you can just jolly well shut up, all right?”

  One of the other wizards, who had been staring upwards to conceal his embarrassment, gave a strangled little cough.

  “Er, Sconner—”

  “And that goes for you too!” Sconner pulled himself to his full, bristling height and flourished the matches.

  “As I was saying,” he said, “I want you to light the matches and—I suppose I’ll have to show you how to light matches, for the benefit of shortarse there—and I’m not out of the window, you know. Good grief. Look at me. You take a match—”

  He lit a match, the darkness blossomed into a ball of sulphurous white light, and the Librarian dropped on him like the descent of Man.

  They all knew the Librarian, in the same definite but diffused way that people know walls and floors and all the other minor but necessary scenery on the stage of life. If they recall him at all, it was as a sort of gentle mobile sigh, sitting under his desk repairing books, or knuckling his way among the shelves in search of secret smokers. Any wizard unwise enough to hazard a clandestine rollup wouldn’t know anything about it until a soft leathery hand reached up and removed the offending homemade, but the Librarian never made a fuss, he just looked extremely hurt and sorrowful about the whole sad business and then ate it.

  Whereas what was now attempting with considerable effort to unscrew Sconner’s head by the ears was a screaming nightmare with its lips curled back to reveal long yellow fangs.

  The terrified wizards turned to run and found themselves bumping into bookshelves that had unaccountably blocked the aisles. The smallest wizard yelped and rolled under a table laden with atlases, and lay with his hands over his ears to block out the dreadful sounds as the remaining wizards tried to escape.

  Eventually there was nothing but silence, but it was that particularly massive silence created by something moving very stealthily, as it might be, in search of something else. The smallest wizard ate the tip of his hat out of sheer terror.

  The silent mover grabbed him by the leg and pulled him gently but firmly out into the open, where he gibbered a bit with his eyes shut and then, when ghastly teeth failed to meet in his throat, ventured a quick glance.

  The Librarian picked him up by the scruff of his neck and dangled him reflectively a foot off the ground, just out of reach of a small and elderly wire-haired terrier who was trying to remember how to bite people’s ankles.

  “Er—” said the wizard, and was then thrown in an almost flat trajectory through the broken doorway, where his fall was broken by the floor.

  After a while a shadow next to him said, “Well, that’s it, then. Anyone seen that daft bastard Sconner?”

  And a shadow on the other side of him said, “I think my neck’s broken.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “That daft bastard,” said the shado
w, nastily.

  “Oh. Sorry, Sconner.”

  Sconner stood up, his whole body now outlined in magical aura. He was trembling with rage as he raised his hands.

  “I’ll show that wretched throwback to respect his evolutionary superiors—” he snarled.

  “Get him, lads!”

  And Sconner was borne to the flagstones again under the weight of all five wizards.

  “Sorry, but—”

  “—you know that if you use—”

  “—magic near the Library, with all the magic that’s in there—”

  “—get one thing wrong and it’s a critical Mass and then—”

  “BANG! Goodnight, world!”

  Sconner growled. The wizards sitting on him decided that getting up was not the wisest thing they could do at this point.

  Eventually he said, “Right. You’re right. Thank you. It was wrong of me to lose my temper like that. Clouded my judgment. Essential to be dispassionate. You’re absolutely right. Thank you. Get off.”

  They risked it. Sconner stood up.

  “That monkey,” he said, “has eaten its last banana. Fetch—”

  “Er. Ape, Sconner,” said the smallest wizard, unable to stop himself. “It’s an ape, you see. Not a monkey…”

  He wilted under the stare.

  “Who cares? Ape, monkey, what’s the difference?” said Sconner. “What’s the difference, Mr. Zoologist?”

  “I don’t know, Sconner,” said the wizard meekly. “I think it’s a class thing.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Yes, Sconner.”

  “You ghastly little man,” said Sconner.

  He turned and added, in a voice as level as a sawblade: “I am perfectly controlled. My mind is as cool as a bald mammoth. My intellect is absolutely in charge. Which one of you sat on my head? No, I must not get angry. I am not angry. I am thinking positively. My faculties are fully engaged—do any of you wish to argue?”

  “No, Sconner,” they chorused.

  “Then get me a dozen barrels of oil and all the kindling you can find! That ape’s gonna fry!”

  From high in the Library roof, home of owls and bats and other things, there was a clink of chain and the sound of glass being broken as respectfully as possible.

  “They don’t look very worried,” said Nijel, slightly affronted.

  “How can I put this?” said Rincewind. “When they come to write the list of Great Battle Cries of the World, ‘Erm, excuse me’ won’t be one of them.”

  He stepped to one side. “I’m not with him,” he said earnestly to a grinning guard. “I just met him, somewhere. In a pit.” He gave a little laugh. “This sort of thing happens to me all the time,” he said.

  The guards stared through him.

  “Erm,” he said.

  “Okay,” he said.

  He sidled back to Nijel.

  “Are you any good with that sword?”

  Without taking his eyes off the guards, Nijel fumbled in his pack and handed Rincewind the book.

  “I’ve read the whole of chapter three,” he said. “It’s got illustrations.”

  Rincewind turned over the crumpled pages. The book had been used so hard you could have shuffled it, but what was probably once the front cover showed a rather poor woodcut of a muscular man. He had arms like two bags full of footballs, and he was standing knee-deep in languorous women and slaughtered victims with a smug expression on his face.

  About him was the legend: Inne Juste 7 Dayes I wille make You a Barbearian Hero! Below it, in a slightly smaller type, was the name: Cohen the Barbarean. Rincewind rather doubted it. He had met Cohen and, while he could read after a fashion, the old boy had never really mastered the pen and still signed his name with an “X,” which he usually spelled wrong. On the other hand, he gravitated rapidly to anything with money in it.

  Rincewind looked again at the illustration, and then at Nijel.

  “Seven days?”

  “Well, I’m a slow reader.”

  “Ah,” said Rincewind.

  “And I didn’t bother with chapter six, because I promised my mother I’d stick with just the looting and pillaging, until I find the right girl.”

  “And this book teaches you how to be a hero?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s very good.” Nijel gave him a worried glance. “That’s all right, isn’t it? It cost a lot of money.”

  “Well, er. I suppose you’d better get on with it, then.”

  Nijel squared his, for want of a better word, shoulders, and waved his sword again.

  “You four had better just jolly well watch out,” he said, “or…hold on a moment.” He took the book from Rincewind and riffled through the pages until he found what he was looking for, and continued, “Yes, or ‘the chill winds of fate will blow through your bleached skeletons/the legions of Hell will drown your living soul in acid.’ There. How d’you like them…excuse me a moment…apples?”

  There was a metallic chord as four men drew their swords in perfect harmony.

  Nijel’s sword became a blur. It made a complicated figure eight in the air in front of him, spun over his arm, flicked from hand to hand behind his back, seemed to orbit his chest twice, and leapt like a salmon.

  One or two of the harem ladies broke into spontaneous applause. Even the guards looked impressed. “That’s a Triple Orcthrust with Extra Flip,” said Nijel proudly. “I broke a lot of mirrors learning that. Look, they’re stopping.”

  “They’ve never seen anything like it, I imagine,” said Rincewind weakly, judging the distance to the doorway.

  “I should think not.”

  “Especially the last bit, where it stuck in the ceiling.”

  Nijel looked upwards.

  “Funny,” he said, “it always did that at home, too. I wonder what I’m doing wrong.”

  “Search me.”

  “Gosh, I’m sorry,” said Nijel, as the guards seemed to realize that the entertainment was over and closed in for the kill.

  “Don’t blame yourself—” said Rincewind, as Nijel reached up and tried unsuccessfully to free the blade.

  “Thank you.”

  “—I’ll do it for you.”

  Rincewind considered his next step. In fact, he considered several steps. But the door was too far away and anyway, by the sound of it, things were not a lot healthier out there.

  There was only one thing for it. He’d have to try magic.

  He raised his hand and two of the men fell over. He raised his other hand and the other two fell over.

  Just as he was beginning to wonder about this, Conina stepped daintily over the prone bodies, idly rubbing the sides of her hands.

  “I thought you’d never turn up,” she said. “Who’s your friend?”

  As has already been indicated, the Luggage seldom shows any sign of emotion, or at least any emotion less extreme than blind rage and hatred, and therefore it is hard to gauge its feelings when it woke up, a few miles outside Al Khali, on its lid in a dried-up wadi with its legs in the air.

  Even a few minutes after dawn the air was like the breath of a furnace. After a certain amount of rocking the Luggage managed to get most of its feet pointing the right way, and stood doing a complicated slow-motion jig to keep as few of them on the burning sand as possible.

  It wasn’t lost. It always knew exactly where it was. It was always here.

  It was just that everywhere else seemed to have been temporarily mislaid.

  After some deliberation the Luggage turned and walked very slowly, into a boulder.

  It backed away and sat down, rather puzzled. It felt as though it had been stuffed with hot feathers, and it was dimly aware of the benefits of shade and a nice cool drink.

  After a few false starts it walked to the top of a nearby sand dune, which gave it an unrivalled view of hundreds of other dunes.

  Deep in its heartwood the Luggage was troubled. It had been spurned. It had been told to go away. It had been rejected. It had also drunk enough orakh to
poison a small country.

  If there is one thing a travel accessory needs more than anything else, it is someone to belong to. The Luggage set off unsteadily across the scorching sand, full of hope.

  “I don’t think we’ve got time for introductions,” said Rincewind, as a distant part of the palace collapsed with a thump that vibrated the floor. “It’s time we were—”

  He realized he was talking to himself.

  Nijel let go of the sword.

  Conina stepped forward.

  “Oh, no,” said Rincewind, but it was far too late. The world had suddenly separated into two parts—the bit which contained Nijel and Conina, and the bit which contained everything else. The air between them crackled. Probably, in their half, a distant orchestra was playing, bluebirds were tweeting, little pink clouds were barrelling through the sky, and all the other things that happen at times like this. When that sort of thing is going on, mere collapsing palaces in the next world don’t stand a chance.

  “Look, perhaps we can just get the introductions over with,” said Rincewind desperately. “Nijel—”

  “—the Destroyer—” said Nijel dreamily.

  “All right, Nijel the Destroyer,” said Rincewind, and added, “Son of Harebut the—”

  “Mighty,” said Nijel. Rincewind gaped a bit, and then shrugged.

  “Well, whoever,” he conceded. “Anyway, this is Conina. Which is rather a coincidence, because you’ll be interested to know that her father was mmph.”

  Conina, without turning her gaze, had extended a hand and held Rincewind’s face in a gentle grip which, with only a slight increase in finger pressure, could have turned his head into a bowling ball.

  “Although I could be mistaken,” he added, when she took her hand away. “Who knows? Who cares? What does it matter?”

  They didn’t take any notice.

  “I’ll just go and see if I can find the hat, shall I?” he said.

  “Good idea,” murmured Conina.

  “I expect I shall get murdered, but I don’t mind,” said Rincewind.

  “Jolly good,” said Nijel.

  “I don’t expect anyone will even notice I’m gone,” said Rincewind.

  “Fine, fine,” said Conina.