Discworld 05 - Sourcery

by Terry Pratchett

  “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 getting 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 we’d 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 realized 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 oooked 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 toward 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.

  “Okay,” 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 center 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 Io, 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 gray.

  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 onto 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 toward 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 think 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 toward 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.”

  He defies us.

  “Not me,” said Rincewind, thrusting the arm with the sock behind his back and trying to ignore the bit about the rabbit.

  “Why should I do everything you tell me?” said Coin to the staff. “I always do everything you tell me, and it doesn’t help people at all.”

  People must fear you. Have I taught you nothing?

  “But he looks so funny. He’s got a sock,” said Coin.

  He screamed, and his arm jerked oddly. Rincewind’s hair stood on end.

  You will do as you are commanded.

  “I won’t.”

  You know what happens to boys who are bad.

  There was a crackle and a smell of scorched flesh. Coin dropped to his knees.

  “Here, hang on a minute—” Rincewind began.

  Coin opened his eyes. They were gold still, but flecked with brown.

  Rincewind swung his sock around in a wide humming arc that connected with the staff halfway along its length. There was a brief explosion of brick dust and burnt wool and the staff spun out of the boy’s hand. Wizards scattered as it tumbled end over end across the floor.

  It reached the parapet, bounced upwards and shot over the edge.

  But, instead of falling, it steadied itself in the air, spun in its own length and sped back again trailing octarine sparks and making a noise like a buzzsaw.

  Rincewind pushed the stunned boy behind him, threw away the ravaged sock and whipped his hat off, flailing wildly as the staff bored toward him. It caught him on the side of the head, delivering a shock that almost welded his teeth together and toppled him like a thin and ragged tree.

  The staff turned again in mid-air, glowing red-hot now, and swept back for another and quite definitely final run.

  Rincewind struggled up on his elbows and watched in horrified fascination as it swooped through the chilly air which, for some reason he didn’t understand, seemed to be full of snowflakes.

  And became tinged with purple, blotched with blue. Time slowed and ground to a halt like an underwound phonograph.

  Rincewind looked up at the tall black figure that had appeared a few feet away.

  It was, of course, Death.

  He turned his glowing eyesockets toward Rincewind and said, in a voice like the collapse of undersea chasms, GOOD AFTERNOON.

  He turned away as if he had completed all necessary business for the time being, stared at the horizon for a while, and started to tap one foot idly. It sounded like a bagful of maracas.

  “Er,” said Rincewind.

  Death appeared to remember him. I’M SORRY? he said politely.

  “I always wondered how it was going to be,” said Rincewind.

  Death took an hourglass out from the mysterious folds of his ebon robes and peered at it.

  DID YOU? he said, vaguely.

  “I suppose I can’t complain,” said Rincewind virtuously. “I’ve had a good life. Well, quite good.” He hesitated. “Well, not all that good. I suppose most people would call it pretty awful.” He considered it further. “I would,” he added, half to himself.

  WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, MAN?

  Rincewind was nonplussed. “Don’t you make an appearance when a wizard is about to die?”

  OF COURSE. AND I MUST SAY YOU PEOPLE ARE GIVING ME A BUSY DAY.

  “How do you manage to be in so many places at the same time?”

  GOOD ORGANIZATION.

  Time returned. The staff, which had been hanging in the air a few feet away from Rincewind, started to scream forward again.

  And there was a metallic thud as Coin caught it one-handedly in mid-flight.

  The staff uttered a noise like a thousand fingernails dragging across glass. It thrashed wildly up and down, flailing at the arm that held it, and bloomed into evil green flame along its entire length.

  So. At the last, you fail me.

  Coin groaned but held on as the metal under his fingertips went red, then white.

  He thrust the arm out in front of him, and the force streaming from the staff roared past him and drew sparks from his hair and whipped his robe up into weird and unpleasant shapes. He screamed and whirled the staff around and smashed it on the parapet, leaving a long bubbling line in the stone.

  Then he threw it away. It clattered against the stones and rolled to a halt, wizards scattering out of its path.

  Coin sagged to his knees, shaking.

  “I don’t like killing people,” he said. “I’m sure it can’t be right.”

  “Hold onto that thought,” said Rincewind fervently.

  “What happens to people after they’re dead?” said Coin.

  Rincew
ind glanced up at Death.

  “I think this one’s for you,” he said.

  HE CANNOT SEE OR HEAR ME, said Death, UNTIL HE WANTS TO.

  There was a little clinking noise. The staff was rolling back toward Coin, who looked down at it in horror.

  Pick me up.

  “You don’t have to,” said Rincewind again.

  You cannot resist me. You cannot defeat yourself, said the staff.

  Coin reached out very slowly, and picked it up.

  Rincewind glanced at his sock. It was a stub of burnt wool, its brief career as a weapon of war having sent it beyond the help of any darning needle.

  Now kill him.

  Rincewind held his breath. The watching wizards held their breath. Even Death, who had nothing to hold but his scythe, held it tensely.

  “No,” said Coin.

  You know what happens to boys who are bad.

  Rincewind saw the sourcerer’s face go pale.

  The staff’s voice changed. Now it wheedled.

  Without me, who would there be to tell you what to do?

  “That is true,” said Coin slowly.

  See what you have achieved.

  Coin stared slowly around at the frightened faces.

  “I am seeing,” he said.

  I taught you everything I know.

  “I am thinking,” said Coin, “that you do not know enough.”

  Ingrate! Who gave you your destiny?

  “You did,” said the boy. He raised his head.

  “I realize that I was wrong,” he added, quietly.

  Good—

  “I did not throw you far enough!”

  Coin got to his feet in one movement and swung the staff over his head. He stood still as a statue, his hand lost in a ball of light that was the color of molten copper. It turned green, ascended through shades of blue, hovered in the violet and then seared into pure octarine.

  Rincewind shaded his eyes against the glare and saw Coin’s hand, still whole, still gripping tight, with beads of molten metal glittering between his fingers.

  He slithered away, and bumped into Hakardly. The old wizard was standing like a statue, with his mouth open.

  “What’ll happen?” said Rincewind.

  “He’ll never beat it,” said Hakardly hoarsely. “It’s his. It’s as strong as him. He’s got the power, but it knows how to channel it.”