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2Discworld 05 - Sourcery
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5Discworld 05 - Sourcery
6By Pratchett, Terry
7DEDICATION
8Many years ago I saw, in Bath, a very large American lady towing a huge tartan suitcase very fast on little rattly wheels which caught in the pavement cracks and generally gave it a life of its own. At that moment the Luggage was born. Many thanks to that lady and everyone else in places like Power Cable, Neb., who don’t get nearly enough encouragement.
9This book does not contain a map. Please feel free to draw your own.
10There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It’s sad, but that’s all you can say about some people.
11But the eighth son grew up and married and had eight sons, and because there is only one suitable profession for the eighth son of an eighth son, he became a wizard. And he became wise and powerful, or at any rate powerful, and wore a pointed hat and there it would have ended …
12Should have ended …
13But against the Lore of Magic and certainly against all reason-except the reasons of the heart, which are warm and messy and, well, unreasonable - he fled the halls of magic and fell in love and got married, not necessarily in that order.
14And he had seven sons, each one from the cradle at least as powerful as any wizard in the world.
15And then he had an eighth son …
16A wizard squared. A source of magic.
17A sourcerer.
18Summer thunder rolled around the sandy cliffs. Far below, the sea sucked on the shingle as noisily as an old man with one tooth who had been given a gobstopper. A few seagulls hung lazily in the updraughts, waiting for something to happen.
19And the father of wizards sat among the thrift and rattling sea grasses at the edge of the cliff, cradling the child in his arms, staring out to sea.
20There was a roil of black cloud out there, heading inland, and the light it pushed before it had that deep syrup quality it gets before a really serious thunderstorm.
21He turned at a sudden silence behind him, and looked up through tear-reddened eyes at a tall hooded figure in a black robe.
22IPSLORE THE RED? it said. The voice was as hollow as a cave, as dense as a neutron star.
23Ipslore grinned the terrible grin of the suddenly mad, and held up the child for Death’s inspection.
24‘My son,’ he said. ‘I shall call him Coin.’
25A NAME AS GOOD AS ANY OTHER, said Death politely. His empty sockets stared down at a small round face wrapped in sleep. Despite rumour, Death isn’t cruel-merely terribly, terribly good at his job.
26‘You took his mother,’ said Ipslore. It was a flat statement, without apparent rancour. In the valley behind the cliffs Ipslore’s homestead was a smoking ruin, the rising wind already spreading the fragile ashes across the hissing dunes.
27IT WAS A HEART ATTACK AT THE END, said Death. THERE ARE WORSE WAYS TO DIE. TAKE IT FROM ME.
28Ipslore looked out to sea. ‘All my magic could not save her,’ he said.
29THERE ARE PLACES WHERE EVEN MAGIC MAY NOT GO.
30‘And now you have come for the child?’
31NO. THE CHILD HAS HIS OWN DESTINY I HAVE COME FOR YOU.
32‘Ah.’ The wizard stood up, carefully laid the sleeping baby down on the thin grass, and picked up a long staff that had been lying there. It was made of a black metal, with a meshwork of silver and gold carvings that gave it a rich and sinister tastelessness; the metal was octiron, intrinsically magical.
33‘I made this, you know,’ he said. ‘They all said you couldn’t make a staff out of metal, they said they should only be of wood, but they were wrong. I put a lot of myself into it. I shall give it to him.’
34He ran his hands lovingly along the staff, which gave off a faint tone.
35He repeated, almost to himself, ‘I put a lot of myself into it.’
36IT IS A GOOD STAFF, said Death.
37Ipslore held it in the air and looked down at his eighth son, who gave a gurgle.
38‘She wanted a daughter,’ he said.
39Death shrugged. Ipslore gave him a look compounded of bewilderment and rage.
40‘What is he?’
41THE EIGHTH SON OF AN EIGHTH SON OF AN EIGHTH SON, said Death, unhelpfully. The wind whipped at his robe, driving the black clouds overhead.
42‘What does that make him?’
43A SOURCERER, AS YOU ARE WELL AWARE.
44Thunder rolled, on cue.
45‘What is his destiny?’ shouted Ipslore, above the rising gale.
46Death shrugged again. He was good at it.
47SOURCERERS MAKE THEIR OWN DESTINY. THEY TOUCH THE EARTH LIGHTLY.
48Ipslore leaned on the staff, drumming on it with his fingers, apparently lost in the maze of his own thoughts. His left eyebrow twitched.
49‘No,’ he said, softly, ‘no. I will make his destiny for him.’
50I ADVISE AGAINST IT.
51‘Be quiet! And listen when I tell you that they drove me out, with their books and their rituals and their Lore! They called themselves wizards, and they had less magic in their whole fat bodies than I have in my little finger! Banished! Me! For showing that I was human! And what would humans be without love?’
52RARE, said Death. NEVERTHELESS
53‘Listen! They drove us here, to the ends of the world, and that killed her! They tried to take my staff away!’ Ipslore was screaming above the noise of the wind.
54‘Well, I still have some power left,’ he snarled. ‘And I say that my son shall go to Unseen University and wear the Archchancellor’s hat and the wizards of the world shall bow to him! And he shall show them what lies in their deepest hearts. Their craven, greedy hearts. He’ll show the world its true destiny, and there will be no magic greater than his.’
55NO. And the strange thing about the quiet way Death spoke the word was this: it was louder than the roaring of the storm. It jerked Ipslore back to momentary sanity.
56Ipslore rocked back and forth uncertainly. ‘What?’ he said.
57I SAID NO. NOTHING IS FINAL. NOTHING IS ABSOLUTE. EXCEPT ME, OF COURSE. SUCH TINKERING WITH DESTINY COULD MEAN THE DOWNFALL OF THE WORLD. THERE MUST BE A CHANCE, HOWEVER SMALL. THE LAWYERS OF FATE DEMAND A LOOPHOLE IN EVERY PROPHECY.
58Ipslore stared at Death’s implacable face.
59‘I must give them a chance?’
60YES.
61Tap, tap, tap went Ipslore’s fingers on the metal of the staff.
62‘Then they shall have their chance,’ he said, ‘when hell freezes over.’
63NO. I AM NOT ALLOWED TO ENLIGHTEN YOU, EVEN BY DEFAULT, ABOUT CURRENT TEMPERATURES IN THE NEXT WORLD.
64‘Then,’ Ipslore hesitated, ‘then they shall have their chance when my son throws his staff away.’
65NO WIZARD WOULD EVER THROW HIS STAFF AWAY, said Death. THE BOND IS TOO GREAT.
66‘Yet it is possible, you must agree.’
67Death appeared to consider this. Must was not a word he was accustomed to hearing, but he seemed to concede the point.
68AGREED, he said.
69‘Is that a small enough chance for you?’
70SUFFICIENTLY MOLECULAR.
71Ipslore relaxed a little. In a voice that was nearly normal, he said: ‘I don’t regret it, you know. I would do it all again. Children are our hope for the future.’
72THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, said Death.
73‘What does it contain, then?’
74ME.
75‘Besides you I mean!’
76Death gave him a puzzled look. I’M SORRY?
77The storm reached its howling peak overhead. A seagull went past backwards.
78‘I meant,’ said Ipslore, bitterly, ‘what is there in this world that makes living worth while?’
79Death thought about it.
80CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE.
81‘Curse you!’
82MANY HAVE, said Death, evenly.
83‘How much longer do I have?’
84Death pulled a large hourglass from the secret recesses of his robe. The two bulbs were enclosed in bars of black and gold, and the sand was nearly all in the bottom one.
85OH, ABOUT NINE SECONDS.
86Ipslore pulled himself up to his full and still impressive height, and extended the gleaming metal staff towards the child. A hand like a little pink crab reached out from the blanket and grasped it.
87‘Then let me be the first and last wizard in the history of the world to pass on his staff to his eighth son,’ he said slowly and sonorously. ‘And I charge him to use it to-’
88I SHOULD HURRY UP, IF I WERE YOU . . .
89‘-the full,’ said Ipslore, ‘becoming the mightiest-’
90The lightning screamed from the heart of the cloud, hit Ipslore on the point of his hat, crackled down his arm, flashed along the staff and struck the child.
91The wizard vanished in a wisp of smoke. The staff glowed green, then white, then merely red-hot. The child smiled in his sleep.
92When the thunder had died away Death reached down slowly and picked up the boy, who opened his eyes.
93They glowed golden, from the inside. For the first time in what, for want of any better word, must be called his life, Death found himself looking at a stare that he found hard to return. The eyes seemed to be focused on a point several inches inside his skull.
94I did not mean for that to happen, said the voice of Ipslore, from out of the empty air. Is he harmed?
95No. Death tore his gaze away from that fresh, knowing smile. HE CONTAINED THE POWER. HE IS A SOURCERER: NO DOUBT HE WILL SURVIVE MUCH WORSE. AND NOW -YOU WILL COME WITH ME.
96No.
97YES. YOU ARE DEAD, YOU SEE. Death looked around for Ipslore’s wavering shade, and failed to find it. WHERE ARE YOU?
98In the staff.
99Death leaned on his scythe and sighed.
100FOOLISH. HOW EASILY COULD I CUT YOU LOOSE.
101Not without destroying the staff, said the voice of Ipslore, and it seemed to Death that there was a new, thick, exultant quality to it. And now the child has accepted the staff you cannot destroy it without destroying him. And that you cannot do without upsetting destiny. My last magic. Rather neat, l feel.
102Death prodded the staff. It crackled, and sparks crawled obscenely along its length.
103Strangely enough, he wasn’t particularly angry. Anger is an emotion, and for emotion you need glands, and Death didn’t have much truck with glands and needed a good run at it to get angry. But he was mildly annoyed. He sighed again. People were always trying this sort of thing. On the other hand, it was quite interesting to watch, and at least this was a bit more original than the usual symbolic chess game, which Death always dreaded because he could never remember how the knight was supposed to move.
104YOU’RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said.
105That’s what being alive is all about.
106BUT WHAT PRECISELY DO YOU EXPECT TO GAIN?
107I shall be by my son’s side. l shall teach him, even though he won’t know it. I shall guide his understanding. And, when he is ready, l shall guide his steps.
108TELL ME, said Death, HOW DID YOU GUIDE THE STEPS OF YOUR OTHER SONS?
109I drove them out. They dared to argue with me, they would not listen to what I could teach them. But this one will.
110IS THIS WISE?
111The staff was silent. Beside it, the boy chuckled at the sound of a voice only he could hear.
112There was no analogy for the way in which Great A’Tuin the world turtle moved against the galactic night. When you are ten thousand miles long, your shell pocked with meteor craters and frosted with comet ice, there is absolutely nothing you can realistically be like except yourself.
113So Great A’Tuin swam slowly through the interstellar deeps like the largest turtle there has ever been, carrying on its carapace the four huge elephants that bore on their backs the vast, glittering waterfall-fringed circle of the Discworld, which exists either because of some impossible blip on the curve of probability or because the gods enjoy a joke as much as anyone.
114More than most people, in fact.
115Near the shores of the Circle Sea, in the ancient, sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork, on a velvet cushion on a ledge high up in the Unseen University, was a hat.
116It was a good hat. It was a magnificent hat.
117It was pointy, of course, with a wide floppy brim, but after disposing of these basic details the designer had really got down to business. There was gold lace on there, and pearls, and bands of purest vermine, and sparkling Ankhstones[1], and some incredibly tasteless sequins, and - a dead giveaway, of course - a circle of octarines.
118Since they weren’t in a strong magical field at the moment they weren’t glowing, and looked like rather inferior diamonds.
119Spring had come to Ankh-Morpork. It wasn’t immediately apparent, but there were signs that were obvious to the cognoscenti. For example, the scum on the river Ankh, that great wide slow waterway that served the double city as reservoir, sewer and frequent morgue, had turned a particularly iridescent green. The city’s drunken rooftops sprouted mattresses and bolsters as the winter bedding was put out to air in the weak sunshine, and in the depths of musty cellars the beams twisted and groaned when their dry sap responded to the ancient call of root and forest. Birds nested among the gutters and eaves of Unseen University, although it was noticeable that however great the pressure on the nesting sites they never, ever, made nests in the invitingly open mouths of the gargoyles that lined the rooftops, much to the gargoyles’ disappointment.
120A kind of spring had even come to the ancient University itself. Tonight would be the Eve of Small Gods, and a new Archchancellor would be elected.
121Well, not exactly elected, because wizards didn’t have any truck with all this undignified voting business, and it was well known that Archchancellors were selected by the will of the gods, and this year it was a pretty good bet that the gods would see their way clear to selecting old Virrid Wayzygoose, who was a decent old boy and had been patiently waiting his turn for years.
122The Archchancellor of Unseen University was the official leader of all the wizards on the Disc. Once upon a time it had meant that he would be the most powerful in the handling of magic, but times were a lot quieter now and, to be honest, senior wizards tended to look upon actual magic as a bit beneath them. They tended to prefer administration, which was safer and nearly as much fun, and also big dinners.
123And so the long afternoon wore on. The hat squatted on its faded cushion in Wayzygoose’s chambers, while he sat in his tub in front of the fire and soaped his beard. Other wizards dozed in their studies, or took a gentle stroll around the gardens in order to work up an appetite for the evening’s feast; about a dozen steps was usually considered quite sufficient.
124In the Great Hall, under the carved or painted stares of two hundred earlier Archchancellors, the butler’s staff set out the long tables and benches. In the vaulted maze of the kitchens -well, the imagination should need no assistance. It should include lots of grease and heat and shouting, vats of caviar, whole roast oxen, strings of sausages like paperchains strung from wall to wall, the head chef himself at work in one of the cold rooms putting the finishing touches to a model of the University carved for some inexplicable reason out of butter. He kept doing this every time there was a feast - butter swans, butter buildings, whole rancid greasy yellow menageries - and he enjoyed it so much no-one had the heart to tell him to stop.
125In his own labyrinth of cellars the butler prowled among his casks, decanting and tasting.
126The air of expectation had even spread to the ravens who inhabited the Tower of Art, eight hundred feet high and reputedly the oldest building in the world. Its crumbling stones supported thriving miniature forests high above the city’s rooftops. Entire species of beetles and small mammals had evolved up there and, since people rarely climbed it these days owing to the tower’s distressing tendency to sway in the breeze, the ravens had it all to themselves. Now they were flying around it in a state of some agitation, like gnats before a thunderstorm. If anyone below is going to take any notice of them it might be a good idea.
127Something horrible was about to happen.
128You can tell, can’t you?
129You’re not the only one.
130‘What’s got into them?’ shouted Rincewind above the din.
131The Librarian ducked as a leather-bound grimoire shot out from its shelf and jerked to a mid-air halt on the end of its chain. Then he dived, rolled and landed on a copy of Maleficio’s Discouverie of Demonologie that was industriously bashing at its lectern.
132‘Oook!’ he said.
133Rincewind put his shoulder against a trembling bookshelf and forced its rustling volumes back into place with his knees. The noise was terrible.
134Books of magic have a sort of life of their own. Some have altogether too much; for example, the first edition of the Necrotelicomicon has to be kept between iron plates, the True Arte of Levitatione has spent the last one hundred and fifty years up in the rafters, and Ge Fordge’s Compenydyum of Sex Majick is kept in a vat of ice in a room all by itself and there’s a strict rule that it can only be read by wizards who are over eighty and, if possible, dead.
135But even the everyday grimoires and incunabula on the main shelves were as restless and nervy as the inmates of a chickenhouse with something rank scrabbling under the door. From their shut covers came a muffled scratching, like claws.
136‘What did you say?’ screamed Rincewind.
137‘Oook!’[2]
138‘Right!’
139Rincewind, as honorary assistant librarian, hadn’t progressed much beyond basic indexing and bananafetching, and he had to admire the way the Librarian ambled among the quivering shelves, here running a black-leather hand over a trembling binding, here comforting a frightened thesaurus with a few soothing simian murmurings.
140After a while the Library began to settle down, and Rincewind felt his shoulder muscles relax.
141It 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.
142The Librarian ambled back down the aisles. He had a face that only a lorry tyre 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.
143Examine 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.
144He 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.
145Clamping 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.
146Rincewind watched them for a while. The University’s ravens were a tough bunch of birds. It took a lot to unsettle them.
147On the other hand-
148-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 practising the violin, rather badly. It was not what you would call ominous.
149Rincewind leaned against the warm stonework. And screamed.
150The 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.
151He 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.
152As he stared around him Rincewind could see other streams of grey bodies leaving the University by every drainpipe and flowing towards the outside wall. The ivy by his ear rustled and a group of rats made a series of death-defying leaps on to his shoulders and slid down his robe. They otherwise ignored him totally but, again, this wasn’t particularly unusual. Most creatures ignored Rincewind.
153He 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.
154‘Ah. It’s, um, Rincewind, isn’t it?’ said the bursar, without much enthusiasm. ‘What’s the matter?’
155‘We’re sinking!’
156The 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.
157‘Sinking?’
158‘Yes. All the rats are leaving!’
159The bursar gave him another stare.
160‘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 towards the sea.
161‘You haven’t been, um, overdoing it?’ said the bursar.
162‘Overdoing what?’ said Rincewind, guiltily.
163‘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?’
164‘But the rats-’
165‘Grain ship in harbour, I expect. Some, um, springtime ritual.’
166‘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.
167‘A passing tremor. Great A’Tuin hiccuping, um, possibly. A grip on youself, um, is what you should get. You haven’t been drinking, have you?’
168‘No!’
169‘Um. Would you like to?’
170Spelter padded over to a dark oak cabinet and pulled out a couple of glasses, which he filled from the water jug.
171‘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?’
172‘Um, no,’ said Rincewind. ‘Perhaps you’re right. I think I’ll go and have a bit of rest.’
173‘Good idea.’
174Rincewind wandered down the chilly stone passages. Occasionally he’d touch the wall and appear to be listening, and then he’d shake his head.
175As he crossed the quadrangle again he saw a herd of mice swarm over a balcony and scamper towards 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.
176These 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.
177He looked up as an elderly striped mattress was extruded from an upper window and flopped down on to 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.
178Rincewind 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.
179There’s probably a natural explanation, he thought. Or a perfectly normal unnatural one, anyway.
180A gritty noise made him look across the lawn.
181There 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.
182It’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.
183What’s happening?’ he squeaked.
184A 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).
185It said: ‘A Ourcerer is umming! Eee orr ife!’
186Rincewind said ‘Pardon?’ But the thing had gone past and was lurching awkwardly across the ancient lawn.[3]
187So Rincewind sat and stared blankly at nothing much for fully ten seconds before giving a little scream and running as fast as he could.
188He 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.
189Against 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.
190And on top of the wardrobe, wrapped in scraps of yellowing paper and old dust sheets, was a large brassbound 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 brassbound chest. It was snoring, with a sound like someone very slowly sawing a log.
191The 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.
192Rincewind 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.
193The 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 forwards a bit, stretching every leg, and then it opened its lid and yawned.
194‘Are you coming or not?’
195The lid shut with a snap. The Luggage manoeuvred its feet into a complicated shuffle until it was facing the doorway, and headed after its master.
196The Library was still in a state of tension, with the occasional clinking[4] 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.
197‘Come on, I said!’
198‘Oook.’
199‘I’ll buy you a drink,’ said Rincewind desperately.
200The Librarian unfolded like a four-legged spider. ‘Oook?’
201Rincewind 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.
202‘Oook!’
203‘Oh, gods,’ he said. ‘Look at that!’
204‘Oook?’
205There was a shiny black tide flowing out of a grating near the kitchens. Early evening starlight glinted off millions of little black backs.
206But 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.
207Rincewind stepped gingerly over the marching column. The Librarian jumped it.
208The Luggage, of course, followed them with a noise like someone tapdancing over a bag of crisps.
209And 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.
210That 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.
211Further 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 towards the Great Hall, where it was soon lost in the shadows.
212No-one would have noticed it anyway. On the other side of the campus the Sourcerer was walking towards the gates of the University. Where his feet touched the cobbles blue sparks crackled and evaporated the early evening dew.
213It 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 centre 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.
214There 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.
215Another 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.
216The 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[5], 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.
217On 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.
218The 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.
219In 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 wot 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.
220The 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.
221After a while he managed to get them in some sort of order and cleared his throat.
222‘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 …’
223There was a knock at the door.
224‘Enter,’ Wayzygoose barked, and peered at the notes carefully.
225‘This merchant,’ he muttered, ‘this merchant, yes, this merchant had three daughters. I think it was. Yes. It was three. It would appear…’
226He looked into the mirror, and turned round.
227He started to say, ‘Who are y-’
228And found that there are things worse than making speeches, after all.
229The 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 practised. The figure was looking for something. It wasn’t sure what it was, only that it would know it when it found, it.
230After 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.
231The figure shrugged. There was no accounting for the sort of things you found in wizard’s rooms. It caught sight of its multifaceted reflection in the shattered mirror, adjusted the set of its hood, and got on with the search.
232Moving 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.
233The voice from inside sounded as though it was talking through several layers of carpet when it said, At last. What kept you?
234‘I mean, how did they all get started? I mean, back in the old times, there were real wizards, there was none of this levels business. They just went out and - did it. POW!,
235One or two of the other customers in the darkened bar of the Mended Drum tavern looked around hastily at the noise. They were new in town. Regular customers never took any notice of surprising noises like groans or unpleasantly gristly sounds. It was a lot healthier. In some parts of the city curiosity didn’t just kill the cat, it threw it in the river with lead weights tied to its feet.
236Rincewind’s hands weaved unsteadily over the array of empty glasses on the table in front of him. He’d almost been able to forget about the cockroaches. After another drink he might manage to forget about the mattress, too.
237‘Whee! A fireball! Fizz! Vanishing like smoke! Whee!- Sorry.’
238The Librarian carefully pulled what remained of his beer out of the reach of Rincewind’s flailing arms.
239‘Proper magic.’ Rincewind stifled a belch.
240‘Oook.’
241Rincewind stared into the frothy remnants of his last beer, and then, with extreme care in case the top of his head fell off, leaned down and poured some into a saucer for the Luggage. It was lurking under the table, which was a relief. It usually embarrassed him in bars by sidling up to drinkers and terrorising them into feeding it crisps.
242He wondered fuzzily where his train of thought had been derailed.
243‘Where was I?’
244‘Oook,’ the Librarian hinted.
245‘Yeah.’ Rincewind brightened. ‘They didn’t have all this levels and grades business, you know. They had sourcerers in those days. They went out in the world and found new spells and had adventures-’
246He dipped a finger in a puddle of beer and doodled a design on the stained, scratched timber of the table.
247One of Rincewind’s tutors had said of him that ‘to call his understanding of magical theory abysmal is to leave no suitable word to describe his grasp of its practice.’ This had always puzzled him. He objected to the fact that you had to be good at magic to be a wizard. He knew he was a wizard, deep in his head. Being good at magic didn’t have anything to do with it. That was just an extra, it didn’t actually define somebody.
248‘When I was a little boy,’ he said wistfully, ‘I saw this picture of a sourcerer in a book. He was standing on a mountain top waving his arms and the waves were coming right up, you know, like they do down in Ankh Bay in a gale, and there were flashes of lightning all round him-’
249‘Oook?’
250‘I don’t know why they didn’t, perhaps he had rubber boots on,’ Rincewind snapped, and went on dreamily,
251‘And he had this staff and a hat on, just like mine, and his eyes were sort of glowing and there was all this sort of like glitter coming out of his fingertips, and I thought one day I’ll do that, and-’
252‘Oook?’
253‘Just a half, then.’
254‘Oook.’
255‘How do you pay for this stuff? Every time anyone gives you any money you eat it.’
256‘Oook.’
257Amazing.’
258Rincewind completed his sketch in the beer. There was a stick figure on a cliff. It didn’t look much like him - drawing in stale beer is not a precise art - but it was meant to.
259‘That’s what I wanted to be,’ he said. ‘Pow! Not all this messing around. All this books and stuff, that isn’t what it should all be about. What we need is real wizardry.’
260That last remark would have earned the prize for the day’s most erroneous statement if Rincewind hadn’t then said:
261‘It’s a pity there aren’t any of them around any more.’
262Spelter rapped on the table with his spoon.
263He was an impressive figure, in his ceremonial robe with the purple-and-vermine[6] hood of the Venerable Council of Seers and the yellow sash of a fifth level wizard; he’d been fifth level for three years, waiting for one of the sixty-four sixth level wizards to create a vacancy by dropping dead. He was in an amiable mood, however. Not only had he just finished a good dinner, he also had in his quarters a small phial of a guaranteed untastable poison which, used correctly, should guarantee him promotion within a few months. Life looked good.
264The big clock at the end of the hall trembled on the verge of nine o’clock.
265The tattoo with the spoon hadn’t had much effect. Spelter picked up a pewter tankard and brought it down hard.
266‘Brothers!’ he shouted, and nodded as the hubbub died away. ‘Thank you. Be upstanding, please, for the ceremony of the, um, keys.’
267There was a ripple of laughter and a general buzz of expectancy as the wizards pushed back their benches and got unsteadily to their feet.
268The double doors to the hall were locked and triple barred. An incoming Archchancellor had to request entry three times before they would be unlocked, signifying that he was appointed with the consent of wizardry in general. Or some such thing. The origins were lost in the depths of time, which was as good a reason as any for retaining the custom.
269The conversation died away. The assembled wizardry stared at the doors.
270There was a soft knocking.
271‘Go away!’ shouted the wizards, some of them collapsing at the sheer subtlety of the humour.
272Spelter picked up the great iron ring that contained the keys to the University. They weren’t all metal. They weren’t all visible. Some of them looked very strange indeed.
273‘Who is that who knocketh without?’ he intoned.
274‘I do.’
275What was strange about the voice was this: it seemed to every wizard that the speaker was standing right behind him. Most of them found themselves looking over their shoulders.
276In that moment of shocked silence there was the sharp little snick of the lock. They watched in fascinated horror as the iron bolts travelled back of their own accord; the great oak balks of timber, turned by Time into something tougher than rock, slid out of their sockets; the hinges flared from red through yellow to white and then exploded. Slowly, with a terrible inevitability, the doors fell into the hall.
277There was an indistinct figure standing in the smoke from the burning hinges.
278‘Bloody hell, Virrid,’ said one of the wizards nearby, ‘that was a good one.’
279As the figure strode into the light they could all see that it was not, after all, Virrid Wayzygoose.
280He was at least a head shorter than any other wizard, and wore a simple white robe. He was also several decades younger; he looked about ten years old, and in one hand he held a staff considerably taller than he was.
281‘Here, he’s no wizard-’
282‘Where’s his hood, then?’
283‘Where’s his hat?’
284The stranger walked up the line of astonished wizards until he was standing in front of the top table. Spelter looked down at a thin young face framed by a mass of blond hair, and most of all he looked into two golden eyes that glowed from within. But he felt they weren’t looking at him. They seemed to be looking at a point six inches beyond the back of his head. Spelter got the impression that he was in the way, and considerably surplus to immediate requirements.
285He rallied his dignity and pulled himself up to his full height.
286‘What is the meaning of, um, this?’ he said. It was pretty weak, he had to admit, but the steadiness of that incandescent glare appeared to be stripping all the words out of his memory.
287‘I have come,’ said the stranger.
288‘Come? Come for what?’
289‘To take my place. Where is the seat for me?’
290‘Are you a student?’ demanded Spelter, white with anger. ‘What is your name, young man?’
291The boy ignored him and looked around at the assembled wizards.
292‘Who is the most powerful wizard here?’ he said. ‘I wish to meet him.’
293Spelter nodded his head. Two of the college porters, who had been sidling towards the newcomer for the last few minutes, appeared at either elbow.
294‘Take him out and throw him in the street,’ said Spelter. The porters, big solid serious men, nodded. They gripped the boy’s pipestem arms with hands like banana bunches.
295‘Your father will hear of this,’ said Spelter severely.
296‘He already has,’ said the boy. He glanced up at the two men and shrugged.
297‘What’s going on here?’
298Spelter turned to see Skarmer Billias, head of the Order of the Silver Star. Whereas Spelter tended towards the wiry, Billias was expansive, looking rather like a small captive balloon that had for some reason been draped in blue velvet and vermine; between them, the wizards averaged out as two normal-sized men.
299Unfortunately, Billias was the type of person who prided himself on being good with children. He bent down as far as his dinner would allow and thrust a whiskery red face towards the boy.
300‘What’s the matter, lad?’ he said.
301‘This child had forced his way into here because, he says, he wants to meet a powerful wizard,’ said Spelter, disapprovingly. Spelter disliked children intensely, which was perhaps why they found him so fascinating. At the moment he was successfully preventing himself from wondering about the door.
302‘Nothing wrong with that,’ said Billias. ‘Any lad worth his salt wants to be a wizard. I wanted to be a wizard when I was a lad. Isn’t that right lad?’
303‘Are you puissant?’ said the boy.
304‘Hmm?’
305‘I said, are you puissant? How powerful are you?’
306‘Powerful?’ said Billias. He stood up, fingered his eighth-level sash, and winked at Spelter. ‘Oh, pretty powerful. Quite powerful as wizards go.’
307‘Good. I challenge you. Show me your strongest magic. And when I have beaten you, why, then I shall be Archchancellor.’
308‘Why, you impudent-’ began Spelter, but his protest was lost in the roar of laughter from the rest of the wizards. Billias slapped his knees, or as near to them as he could reach.
309‘A duel, eh?’ he said. ‘Pretty good, eh?’
310‘Duelling is forbidden, as well you know,’ said Spelter. ‘Anyway, it’s totally ridiculous! I don’t know who did the doors for him, but I will not stand here and see you waste all our time-’
311‘Now, now,’ said Billias. ‘What’s your name, lad?’
312‘Coin.’
313‘Coin sir,’ snapped Spelter.
314‘Well, now, Coin,’ said Billias. ‘You want to see the best I can do, eh?’
315‘Yes.’
316‘Yes sir,’ snapped Spelter. Coin gave him an unblinking stare, a stare as old as time, the kind of stare that basks on rocks on volcanic islands and never gets tired. Spelter felt his mouth go dry.
317Billias held out his hands for silence. Then, with a theatrical flourish, he rolled up the sleeve of his left arm and extended his hand.
318The assembled wizards watched with interest. Eighth-levels were above magic, as a rule, spending most of their time in contemplation -normally of the next menu - and, of course, avoiding the attentions of ambitious wizards of the seventh-level. This should be worth seeing.
319Billias grinned at the boy, who returned it with a stare that focused on a point a few inches beyond the back of the old wizard’s head.
320Somewhat disconcerted, Billias flexed his fingers. Suddenly this wasn’t quite the game he had intended, and he felt an overpowering urge to impress. It was swiftly overtaken by a surge of annoyance at his own stupidity in being unnerved.
321‘I shall show you,’ he said, and took a deep breath, ‘Maligree’s Wonderful Garden.’
322There was a susurration from the diners. Only four wizards in the entire history of the University had ever succeeded in achieving the complete Garden. Most wizards could create the trees and flowers, and a few had managed the birds. It wasn’t the most powerful spell, it couldn’t move mountains, but achieving the fine detail built into Maligree’s complex syllables took a finely tuned skill.
323‘You will observe,’ Billias added, ‘nothing up my sleeve.’
324His lips began to move. His hands flickered through the air. A pool of golden sparks sizzled in the palm of his hand, curved up, formed a faint sphere, began to fill in the detail …
325Legend had it that Maligree, one of the last of the true sourcerers, created the Garden as a small, timeless, private self-locking universe where he could have a quiet smoke and a bit of a think while avoiding the cares of the world. Which was itself a puzzle, because no wizard could possibly understand how any being as powerful as a sourcerer could have a care in the world. Whatever the reason, Maligree retreated further and further into a world of his own and then, one day, closed the entrance after him.
326The garden was a glittering ball in Billias’s hands. The nearest wizards craned admiringly over his shoulders, and looked down into a two-foot sphere that showed a delicate, flower-strewn landscape; there was a lake in the middle distance, complete in every ripple, and purple mountains behind an interesting-looking forest. Tiny birds the size of bees flew from tree to tree, and a couple of deer no larger than mice glanced up from their grazing and stared out at Coin.
327Who said critically: ‘It’s quite good. Give it to me.’
328He took the intangible globe out of the wizard’s hands and held it up.
329‘Why isn’t it bigger?’ he said.
330Billias mopped his brow with a lace-edged handkerchief.
331‘Well,’ he said weakly, so stunned by Coin’s tone that he was quite unable to be affronted, ’since the old days, the efficacity of the spell has rather-’
332Coin stood with his head on one side for a moment, as though listening to something. Then he whispered a few syllables and stroked the surface of the sphere.
333It expanded. One moment it was a toy in the boy’s hands, and the next …
334… the wizards were standing on cool grass, in a shady meadow rolling down to the lake. There was a gentle breeze blowing from the mountains; it was scented with thyme and hay. The sky was deep blue shading to purple at the zenith.
335The deer watched the newcomers suspiciously from their grazing ground under the trees.
336Spelter looked down in shock. A peacock was pecking at his bootlaces.
337‘-’ he began, and stopped. Coin was still holding a sphere, a sphere of air. Inside it, distorted as though seen through a fisheye lens or the bottom of a bottle, was the Great Hall of Unseen University.
338The boy looked around at the trees, squinted thoughtfully at the distant, snow-capped mountains, and nodded at the astonished men.
339‘It’s not bad,’ he said. ‘I should like to come here again.’ He moved his hands in a complicated motion that seemed, in some unexplained way, to turn them inside out.
340Now the wizards were back in the hall, and the boy was holding the shrinking Garden in his palm. In the heavy, shocked silence he put it back into Billias’s hands, and said: ‘That was quite interesting. Now I will do some magic.’
341He raised his hands, stared at Billias, and vanished him.
342Pandemonium broke out, as it tends to on these occasions. In the centre of it stood Coin, totally composed, in a spreading cloud of greasy smoke.
343Ignoring the tumult, Spelter bent down slowly and, with extreme care, picked a peacock feather off the floor. He rubbed it thoughtfully back and forth across his lips as he looked from the doorway to the boy to the vacant Archchancellor’s chair, and his thin mouth narrowed, and he began to smile.
344An hour later, as thunder began to roll in the clear skies above the city, and Rincewind was beginning to sing gently and forget all about cockroaches, and a lone mattress was wandering the streets, Spelter shut the door of the Archchancellor’s study and turned to face his fellow mages.
345There were six of them, and they were very worried.
346They were so worried, Spelter noted, that they were listening to him, a mere fifth level wizard.
347‘He’s gone to bed,’ he said, ‘with a hot milk drink.’
348‘Milk?’ said one of the wizards, with tired horror in his voice.
349‘He’s too young for alcohol’, explained the bursar.
350‘Oh, yes. Silly of me.’
351The hollow-eyed wizard opposite said: ‘Did you see what he did to the door?’
352‘I know what he did to Billias!’
353‘What did he do?’
354‘I don’t want to know!’
355‘Brothers, brothers,’ said Spelter soothingly. He looked down at their worried faces and thought: too many dinners. Too many afternoons waiting for the servants to bring in the tea. Too much time spent in stuffy rooms reading old books written by dead men. Too much gold brocade and ridiculous ceremony. Too much fat. The whole University is ripe for one good push …
356Or one good pull …
357‘I wonder if we really have, um, a problem here,’ he said.
358Gravie Derment of the Sages of the Unknown Shadow hit the table with his fist.
359‘Good grief, man!’ he snapped. ‘Some child wanders in out of the night, beats two of the University’s finest, sits down in the Archchancellor’s chair and you wonder if we have a problem? The boy’s a natural! From what we’ve seen tonight, there isn’t a wizard on the Disc who could stand against him!’
360‘Why should we stand against him?’ said Spelter, in a reasonable tone of voice.
361‘Because he’s more powerful than we are!’