Equal Rites Part 13

"Then no wizard he," said Gander. "I know the rules, and you're not a wizard unless you've got a staff. And he hasn't."

"Even now he travels to the Unseen University for that small detail," said Treatle loftily. Wizards parted with money slightly less readily than tigers parted with their teeth.

Gander looked at the lad in question. He had met a good many wizards in his time and considered himself a good judge and he had to admit that this boy looked like good wizard material. In other words, he was thin, gangling, pale from reading disturbing books in unhealthy rooms, and had watery eyes like two lightly poached eggs. It crossed Gander's mind that one must speculate in order to acc.u.mulate.

All he needs to get right to the top, he thought, is a bit of a handicap. Wizards are martyrs to things like asthma and flat feet, it somehow seems to give them their drive.

"What's your name, lad?" he said, as kindly as possible.

"Sssssssssssssss" said the boy. His Adam's apple bobbed like a captive balloon. He turned to his companion, full of mute appeal.

"Simon," said Treatle.

"-imon," agreed Simon, thankfully.

"Can you cast fireb.a.l.l.s or whirling spells, such as might be hurled against an enemy?"

Simon looked sideways at Treatle.

"Nnnnnnnnnn," he ventured.

"My young friend follows higher magic than the mere hurling of sorceries," said the wizard.

"-o," said Simon.

Gander nodded.

"Well," he said, "maybe you will indeed be a wizard, lad. Maybe when you have your fine staff you'll consent to travel with me one time, yes? I will make an investment in you, yes?"

"Y-"

"Just nod," said Gander, who was not naturally a cruel man.

Simon nodded gratefully. Treatle and Gander exchanged nods and then the wizard strode off, with his apprentice trailing behind under a weight of baggage.

Gander looked down at the list in front of him and carefully crossed out "wizard."

A small shadow fell across the page. He glanced up and gave an involuntary start.

"Well?" he said coldly.

"I want to go to Ankh-Morpork," said Esk, "please. I've got some money."

"Go home to your mother, child."

"No, really. I want to seek my fortune."

Gander sighed. "Why are you holding that broomstick?" he said.

Esk looked at it as though she had never seen it before.

"Everything's got to be somewhere," she said.

"Just go home, my girl," said Gander. "I'm not taking any runaways to Ankh-Morpork. Strange things can happen to little girls in big cities."

Esk brightened. "What sort of strange things?"

"Look, I said go home, right? Now!"

He picked up his chalk and went on ticking off items on his slate, trying to ignore the steady gaze that seemed to be boring through the top of his head.

"I can be helpful," said Esk, quietly.

Gander threw down the chalk and scratched his chin irritably.

"How old are you?" he said.

"Nine."

"Well, Miss nine-years-old, I've got two hundred animals and a hundred people that want to go to Ankh, and half of them hate the other half, and I've not got enough people who can fight, and they say the roads are pretty bad and the bandits are getting really cheeky up in the Paps and the trolls are demanding a bigger bridge toll this year and there's weevils in the supplies and I keep getting these headaches and where, in all this, do I need you?"

"Oh," said Esk. She looked around the crowded square. "Which one of these roads goes to Ankh, then?"

"The one over there, with the gate."

"Thank you," she said gravely. "Goodbye. I hope you don't have any more trouble and your head gets better."

"Right," said Gander uncertainly. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop as he watched Esk walk away in the direction of the Ankh road. A long, winding road. A road haunted by thieves and gnolls. A road that wheezed through high mountain pa.s.ses and crawled, panting, over deserts.

"Oh, b.u.g.g.e.r," he said, under his breath. "Hey! You!"

Granny Weatherwax was in trouble.

First of all, she decided, she should never have allowed Hilta to talk her into borrowing her broomstick. It was elderly, erratic, would fly only at night and even then couldn't manage a speed much above a trot.

Its lifting spells had worn so thin that it wouldn't even begin to operate until it was already moving at a fair lick. It was, in fact, the only broomstick ever to need b.u.mp-starting.

And it was while Granny Weatherwax, sweating and cursing, was running along a forest path holding the d.a.m.n thing at shoulder height for the tenth time that she had found the bear trap.

The second problem was that a bear had found it first. In fact this hadn't been too much of a problem because Granny, already in a bad temper, hit it right between the eyes with the broomstick and it was now sitting as far away from her as it was possible to get in a pit, and trying to think happy thoughts.

It was not a very comfortable night and the morning wasn't much better for the party of hunters who, around dawn, peered over the edge of the pit.

"About time, too," said Granny. "Get me out."

The startled heads withdrew and Granny could hear a hasty whispered conversation. They had seen the hat and broomstick.

Finally a bearded head reappeared, rather reluctantly, as if the body it was attached to was being pushed forward.

"Um," it began, "look, mother-"

"I'm not a mother," snapped Granny. "I'm certainly not your mother, if you ever had mothers, which I doubt. If I was your mother I'd have run away before you were born."

"It's only a figure of speech," said the head reproachfully.

"It's a d.a.m.ned insult is what it is!"

There was another whispered conversation.

"If I don't get out," said Granny in ringing tones, "there will be Trouble. Do you see my hat, eh? Do you see it?"

The head reappeared.

"That's the whole point, isn't it?" it said. "I mean, what will there be if we let you out? It seems less risky all around if we just sort of fill the pit in. Nothing personal, you understand."

Granny realized what it was that was bothering her about the head.

"Are you kneeling down?" she said accusingly. "You're not, are you! You're dwarves!"

Whisper, whisper.

"Well, what about it?" asked the head defiantly. "Nothing wrong with that, is there? What have you got against dwarves?"

"Do you know how to repair broomsticks?"

"Magic broomsticks?"

"Yes!"

Whisper, whisper.

"What if we do?"

"Well, we could come to some arrangement..."

The dwarf halls rang to the sound of hammers, although mainly for effect. Dwarves found it hard to think without the sound of hammers, which they found soothing, so well-off dwarves in the clerical professions paid goblins to hit small ceremonial anvils, just to maintain the correct dwarvish image.

The broomstick lay between two trestles. Granny Weatherwax sat on a rock outcrop while a dwarf half her height, wearing an ap.r.o.n that was a ma.s.s of pockets, walked around the broom and occasionally poked it.

Eventually he kicked the bristles and gave a long intake of breath, a sort of reverse whistle, which is the secret sign of craftsmen across the universe and means that something expensive is about to happen.

"Weellll," he said. "I could get the apprentices in to look at this, I could. It's an education in itself. And you say it actually managed to get airborne?"

"It flew like a bird," said Granny.

The dwarf lit a pipe. "I should very much like to see that bird," he said reflectively. "I should imagine it's quite something to watch, a bird like that."

"Yes, but can you repair it?" said Granny. "I'm in a hurry."

The dwarf sat down, slowly and deliberately.

"As for repair repair," he said, "well, I don't know about repair repair. Rebuild, maybe. Of course, it's hard to get the bristles these days even if you can find people to do the proper binding, and the spells need-"

"I don't want it rebuilt, I just want it to work properly," said Granny.

"It's an early model, you see," the dwarf plugged on. "Very tricky, those early models. You can't get the wood-"

He was picked up bodily until his eyes were level with Granny's. Dwarves, being magical in themselves as it were, are quite resistant to magic but her expression looked as though she was trying to weld his eyeb.a.l.l.s to the back of his skull.

"Just repair it," she hissed. "Please?"

"What, make a bodge job?" said the dwarf, his pipe clattering to the floor.

"Yes."

"Patch it up, you mean? Betray my training by doing half a job?"

"Yes," said Granny. Her pupils were two little black holes.

"Oh," said the dwarf. "Right, then."

Gander the trail boss was a worried man.

They were three mornings out from Zemphis, making good time, and were climbing now toward the rocky pa.s.s through the mountains known as the Paps of Scilla (there were eight of them; Gander often wondered who Scilla had been, and whether he would have liked her).

A party of gnolls had crept up on them during the night. The nasty creatures, a variety of stone goblin, had slit the throat of a guard and must have been poised to slaughter the entire party. Only...

Only no one knew quite what had happened next. The screams had woken them up, and by the time people had puffed up the fires and Treatle the wizard had cast a blue radiance over the campsite the surviving gnolls were distant, spidery shadows, running as if all the legions of h.e.l.l were after them.

Judging by what had happened to their colleagues, they were probably right. Bits of gnolls hung from the nearby rocks, giving them a sort of jolly, festive air. Gander wasn't particularly sorry about that-gnolls liked to capture travelers and practice hospitality of the red-hot-knife-and-bludgeon kind-but he was nervous of being in the same area as Something that went through a dozen wiry and wickedly armed gnolls like a spoon through a lightly boiled egg but left no tracks.

In fact the ground was swept clean.

It had been a very long night, and the morning didn't seem to be an improvement. The only person more than half-awake was Esk, who had slept through the whole thing under one of the wagons and had complained only of odd dreams.

Still, it was a relief to get away from that macabre sight. Gander considered that gnolls didn't look any better inside than out. He hated their guts.