Esk kicked him smartly on the ankle.
The cold desert vanished. The real world rushed back. Simon opened his eyes, smiled faintly, and gently fell backward into Esk’s arms.
A buzz went up from the wizards, and several of them started to clap. No one seemed to have noticed anything odd, apart from the silver lights.
Cutangle shook himself, and raised a hand to quell the crowd.
“Quite—astonishing,” he said to Treatle. “You say he worked it out all by himself?”
“Indeed, lord.”
“No one helped him at all?”
“There was no one to help him,” said Treatle. “He was just wandering from village to village, doing small spells. But only if people paid him in books or paper.”
Cutangle nodded. “It was no illusion,” he said, “yet he didn’t use his hands. What was he saying to himself? Do you know?”
“He says it’s just words to make his mind work properly,” said Treatle, and shrugged. “I can’t understand half of what he says and that’s a fact. He says he’s having to invent words because there aren’t any for the things he’s doing.”
Cutangle glanced sideways at his fellow mages. They nodded.
“It will be an honor to admit him to the University,” he said. “Perhaps you would tell him so when he wakes up.”
He felt a tugging at his robe, and looked down.
“Excuse me,” said Esk.
“Hallo, young lady,” said Cutangle, in a sugarmouse voice. “Have you come to see your brother enter the University?”
“He’s not my brother,” said Esk. There were times when the world had seemed to be full of brothers, but this wasn’t one of them.
“Are you important?” she said.
Cutangle looked at his colleagues, and beamed. There were fashions in wizardry, just like anything else; sometimes wizards were thin and gaunt and talked to animals (the animals didn’t listen, but it’s the thought that counts) while at other times they tended toward the dark and saturnine, with little black pointed beards. Currently Aldermanic was In. Cutangle swelled with modesty.
“Quite important,” he said. “One does one’s best in the service of one’s fellow man. Yes. Quite important, I would say.”
“I want to be a wizard,” said Esk.
The lesser wizards behind Cutangle stared at her as if she was a new and interesting kind of beetle. Cutangle’s face went red and his eyes bulged. He looked down at Esk and seemed to be holding his breath. Then he started to laugh. It started somewhere down in his extensive stomach regions and worked its way up, echoing from rib to rib and causing minor wizard-quakes across his chest until it burst forth in a series of strangled snorts. It was quite fascinating to watch, that laugh. It had a personality all of its own.
But he stopped when he saw Esk’s stare. If the laugh was a music-hall clown then Esk’s determined squint was a white-wash bucket on a fast trajectory.
“A wizard?” he said; “You want to be a wizard?”
“Yes,” said Esk, pushing the dazed Simon into Treatle’s reluctant arms. “I’m the eighth son of an eighth son. I mean daughter.”
The wizards around her were looking at one another and whispering. Esk tried to ignore them.
“What did she say?”
“Is she serious?”
“I always think children are so delightful at that age, don’t you?”
“You’re the eighth son of an eighth daughter?” said Cutangle. “Really?”
“The other way around, only not exactly,” said Esk, defiantly.
Cutangle dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief.
“This is quite fascinating,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of something quite like this before. Eh?”
He looked around at his growing audience. The people at the back couldn’t see Esk and were craning to check if some interesting magic was going on. Cutangle was at a loss.
“Well, now,” he said. “You want to be a wizard?”
“I keep telling everyone but no one seems to listen,” said Esk.
“How old are you, little girl?”
“Nearly nine.”
“And you want to be a wizard when you grow up.”
“I want to be a wizard now,” said Esk firmly. “This is the right place, isn’t it?”
Cutangle looked at Treatle and winked.
“I saw that,” said Esk.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a lady wizard before,” said Cutangle. “I rather think it might be against the lore. Wouldn’t you rather be a witch? I understand it’s a fine career for girls.”
A minor wizard behind him started to laugh. Esk gave him a look.
“Being a witch is quite good,” she conceded. “But I think wizards have more fun. What do you think?”
“I think you are a very singular little girl,” said Cutangle.
“What does that mean?”
“It means there’s only one of you,” said Treatle.
“That’s right,” said Esk, “and I still want to be a wizard.”
Words failed Cutangle. “Well, you can’t,” he said. “The very idea!”
He drew himself up to his full width and turned away. Something tugged at his robe.
“Why not?” said a voice.
He turned.
“Because,” he said, slowly and deliberately, “because…the whole idea is completely laughable, that’s why. And it’s absolutely against the lore!”
“But I can do wizard magic!” said Esk, the faintest suggestion of a tremble in her voice.
Cutangle bent down until his face was level with hers.
“No you can’t,” he hissed. “Because you are not a wizard. Women aren’t wizards, do I make myself clear?”
“Watch,” said Esk.
She extended her right hand with the fingers spread and sighted along it until she spotted the statue of Malich the Wise, the founder of the University. Instinctively the wizards between her and it edged out of the way, and then felt rather silly.
“I mean it,” she said.
“Go away, little girl,” said Cutangle.
“Right,” said Esk. She squinted hard at the statue and concentrated…
The great doors of Unseen University are made of octiron, a metal so unstable that it can only exist in a universe saturated with raw magic. They are impregnable to all force save magic: no fire, no battering ram, no army can breach them.
Which is why most ordinary visitors to the University use the back door, which is made of perfectly normal wood and doesn’t go around terrorizing people, or even stand still terrorizing people. It had a proper knocker and everything.
Granny examined the doorposts carefully and gave a grunt of satisfaction when she spotted what she was looking for. She hadn’t doubted that it would be there, cunningly concealed by the natural grain of the wood.
She grasped the knocker, which was shaped like a dragon’s head, and rapped smartly, three times. After a while the door was opened by a young woman with her mouth full of clothes-pegs.
“Ot oo oo ont?” she inquired.
Granny bowed, giving the girl a chance to take in the pointy black hat with the batwing hatpins. It had an impressive effect: she blushed and, peering out into the quiet alleyway, hurriedly motioned Granny inside.
There was a big mossy courtyard on the other side of the wall, crisscrossed with washing lines. Granny had the chance to become one of the very few women to learn what it really is that wizards wear under their robes, but modestly averted her eyes and followed the girl across the flagstones and down a wide flight of steps.
They led into a long, high tunnel lined with archways and, currently, full of steam. Granny caught sight of long lines of washtubs in the big rooms off to the sides; the air had the warm fat smell of ironing. A gaggle of girls carrying wash-baskets pushed past her and hurried up the steps—then stopped, halfway up, and turned slowly to look at her.
Granny set her shoulders back and tried to look
as mysterious as possible.
Her guide, who still hadn’t got rid of her clothes-pegs, led her down a side-passage into a room that was a maze of shelves piled with laundry. In the very center of the maze, sitting at a table, was a very fat woman with a ginger wig. She had been writing in a very large laundry book—it was still open in front of her—but was currently inspecting a large stained vest.
“Have you tried bleaching?” she asked.
“Yes, m’m,” said the maid beside her.
“What about tincture of myrryt?”
“Yes, m’m. It just turned it blue, m’m.”
“Well, it’s a new one on me,” said the laundry woman. “And Ay’ve seen brimstone and soot and dragon blood and demon blood and Aye don’t know what else.” She turned the vest over and read the nametape carefully sewn inside. “Hmm. Granpone the White. He’s going to be Granpone the Gray if he doesn’t take better care of his laundry. Aye tell you, girl, a white magician is just a black magician with a good housekeeper. Take it—”
She caught sight of Granny, and stopped.
“Ee ocked hat hee oor,” said Granny’s guide, dropping a hurried curtsy. “Oo ed hat—”
“Yes, yes, thank you, Ksandra, you may go,” said the fat woman. She stood up and beamed at Granny, and with an almost perceptible click wound her voice up several social classes.
“Pray hexcuse us,” she said. “You find us hall at sixes and sevens, it being washing day and heverything. His this a courtesy call or may I make so bold as to ask—” she lowered her voice—“his there a message from the Hother Sade?”
Granny looked blank, but only a fraction of a second. The witchmarks on the doorpost had said that the housekeeper welcomed witches and was particularly anxious for news of her four husbands; she was also in random pursuit of a fifth, hence the ginger wig and, if Granny’s ears weren’t deceiving her, the creak of enough whalebone to infuriate an entire ecology movement. Gullible and foolish, the signs had said. Granny withheld judgment, because city witches didn’t seem that bright themselves.
The housekeeper must have mistaken her expression.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “May staff have distinct instructions to welcome witches, although of course they upstairs don’t approve. No doubt you would like a cup of tea and something to eat?”
Granny bowed solemnly.
“And Aye will see if we can’t find a nice bundle of old clothes for you, too,” the housekeeper beamed.
“Old clothes? Oh. Yes. Thank you, m’m.”
The housekeeper swept forward with a sound like an elderly tea clipper in a gale, and beckoned Granny to follow her.
“Aye’ll have the tea brought to my flat. Tea with a lot of tea-leaves.”
Granny stumped along after her. Old clothes? Did this fat woman really mean it? The nerve! Of course, if they were good quality…
There seemed to be a whole world under the University. It was a maze of cellars, coldrooms, stillrooms, kitchens and sculleries, and every inhabitant was either carrying something, pumping something, pushing something or just standing around and shouting. Granny caught glimpses of rooms full of ice, and others glowing with the heat from red-hot cooking stoves, wall-sized. Bakeries smelled of new bread and taprooms smelled of old beer. Everything smelled of sweat and wood-smoke.
The housekeeper led her up an old spiral staircase and unlocked the door with one of the large number of keys that hung from her belt.
The room inside was pink and frilly. There were frills on things that no one in their right mind would frill. It was like being inside candyfloss.
“Very nice,” said Granny. And, because she felt it was expected of her, “Tasteful.” She looked around for something unfrilly to sit on, and gave up.
“Whatever am Aye thinking of?” the housekeeper trilled. “Aye’m Mrs. Whitlow but I expect you know, of course. And Aye have the honor to be addressing—?”
“Eh? Oh, Granny Weatherwax,” said Granny. The frills were getting to her. They gave pink a bad name.
“Ay’m psychic myself, of course,” said Mrs. Whitlow.
Granny had nothing against fortune-telling provided it was done badly by people with no talent for it. It was a different matter if people who ought to know better did it, though. She considered that the future was a frail enough thing at best, and if people looked at it hard they changed it. Granny had some quite complex theories about space and time and why they shouldn’t be tinkered with, but fortunately good fortune-tellers were rare and anyway people preferred bad fortune-tellers, who could be relied upon for the correct dose of uplift and optimism.
Granny knew all about bad fortune-telling. It was harder than the real thing. You needed a good imagination.
She couldn’t help wondering if Mrs. Whitlow was a born witch who somehow missed her training. She was certainly laying siege to the future. There was a crystal ball under a sort of pink frilly tea cozy, and several sets of divinatory cards, and a pink velvet bag of rune stones, and one of those little tables on wheels that no prudent witch would touch with a ten-foot broomstick, and—Granny wasn’t sure on this point—either some special dried monkey turds from a llamassary or some dried llama turds from a monastery, which apparently could be thrown in such a way as to reveal the sum total of knowledge and wisdom in the universe. It was all rather sad.
“Or there’s the tea-leaves, of course,” said Mrs. Whitlow, indicating the big brown pot on the table between them. “Aye know witches often prefer them, but they always seem so, well, common to me. No offense meant.”
There probably wasn’t any offense meant, at that, thought Granny. Mrs. Whitlow was giving her the sort of look generally used by puppies when they’re not sure what to expect next, and are beginning to worry that it may be the rolled-up newspaper.
She picked up Mrs. Whitlow’s cup and had started to peer into it when she caught the disappointed expression that floated across the housekeeper’s face like a shadow across a snowfield. Then she remembered what she was doing, and turned the cup widdershins three times, made a few vague passes over it and mumbled a charm (which she normally used to cure mastitis in elderly goats, but never mind). This display of obvious magical talent seemed to cheer up Mrs. Whitlow no end.
Granny wasn’t normally very good at tea-leaves, but she squinted at the sugar-encrusted mess at the bottom of the cup and let her mind wander. What she really needed now was a handy rat or even a cockroach that happened to be somewhere near Esk, so that she could Borrow its mind.
What Granny actually found was that the University had a mind of its own.
It is well known that stone can think, because the whole of electronics is based on that fact, but in some universes men spend ages looking for other intelligences in the sky without once looking under their feet. That is because they’ve got the time-span all wrong. From stone’s point of view the universe is hardly created and mountain ranges are bouncing up and down like organ-stops while continents zip backward and forward in general high spirits, crashing into each other from the sheer joy of momentum and getting their rocks off. It is going to be quite some time before stone notices its disfiguring little skin disease and starts to scratch, which is just as well.
The rocks from which Unseen University was built, however, have been absorbing magic for several thousand years and all that random power has had to go somewhere.
The University has, in fact, developed a personality.
Granny could sense it like a big and quite friendly animal, just waiting to roll over on its roof and have its floor scratched. It was paying no attention to her, however. It was watching Esk.
Granny found the child by following the threads of the University’s attention and watched in fascination as the scenes unfolded in the Great Hall…
“—in there?”
The voice came from a long way away.
“Mmph?”
“Aye said, what do you see in there?” repeated Mrs. Whitlow.
“Eh?”
&
nbsp; “Aye said, what do—”
“Oh.” Granny reeled her mind in, quite confused. The trouble with Borrowing another mind was, you always felt out of place when you got back to your own body, and Granny was the first person ever to read the mind of a building. Now she was feeling big and gritty and full of passages.
“Are you all right?”
Granny nodded, and opened her windows. She extended her east and west wings and tried to concentrate on the tiny cup held in her pillars.
Fortunately Mrs. Whitlow put her plaster complexion and stony silence down to occult powers at work, while Granny found that a brief exposure to the vast silicon memory of the University had quite stimulated her imagination.
In a voice like a draughty corridor, which made the housekeeper very impressed, she wove a future full of keen young men fighting for Mrs. Whitlow’s ample favors. She also spoke very quickly, because what she had seen in the Great Hall made her anxious to go around to the main gates again.
“There is another thing,” she added.
“Yes? Yes?”
“I see you hiring a new servant—you do hire the servants here, don’t you? Right—and this one is a young girl, very economical, very good worker, can turn her hand to anything.”
“What about her, then?” said Mrs. Whitlow, already savoring Granny’s surprisingly graphic descriptions of her future and drunk with curiosity.
“The spirits are a little unclear on this point,” said Granny, “But it is very important that you hire her.”
“No problem there,” said Mrs. Whitlow, “can’t keep servants here, you know, not for long. It’s all the magic. It leaks down here, you know. Especially from the library, where they keep all them magical books. Two of the top floor maids walked out yesterday, actually, they said they were fed up going to bed not knowing what shape they would wake up in the morning. The senior wizards turn them back, you know. But it’s not the same.”
“Yes, well, the spirits say this young lady won’t be any trouble as far as that is concerned,” said Granny grimly.
Discworld 03 - Equal Rites Page 14
