Equal Rites Part 15

Bel-Shamharoth, C'hulagen, the Insider-the hideous old dark G.o.ds of the Necrotelicomnicon, the book known to certain mad adepts by its true name of Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, are always ready to steal into a slumbering mind. The nightmares are often colorful and always unpleasant. are always ready to steal into a slumbering mind. The nightmares are often colorful and always unpleasant.

Esk had got used to them ever since that first dream after her first Borrowing, and familiarity had almost replaced terror. When she found herself sitting on a glittering, dusty plain under unexplained stars she knew it was time for another one.

"Drat," she said. "All right, come on then. Bring on the monsters. I just hope it isn't the one with his winkle on his face."

But this time it seemed that the nightmare had changed. Esk looked around and saw, rearing up behind her, a tall black castle. Its turrets disappeared among the stars. Lights and fireworks and interesting music cascaded from its upper battlements. The huge double doors stood invitingly open. There seemed to be quite an amusing party going on in there.

She stood up, brushed the silver sand off her dress, and set off for the gates.

She had almost reached them when they slammed. They didn't appear to move; it was simply that in one instant they were lounging ajar, and the next they were tight shut with a clang that shook the horizons.

Esk reached out and touched them. They were black, and so cold that ice was beginning to form on them.

There was a movement behind her. She turned around and saw the staff, without its broomstick disguise, standing upright in the sand. Little worms of light crept around its polished wood and crept around the carvings no one could ever quite identify.

She picked it up and smashed it against the doors. There was a shower of octarine sparks, but the black metal was unscathed.

Esk's eyes narrowed. She held the staff at arm's length and concentrated until a thin line of fire leapt from the wood and burst against the gate. The ice flashed into steam but the darkness-she was sure now that it wasn't metal-absorbed the power without so much as glowing. She doubled the energy, letting the staff put all its stored magic into a beam that was now so bright that she had to shut her eyes (and could still see it as a brilliant line in her mind).

Then it winked out.

After a few seconds Esk ran forward and touched the doors gingerly. The coldness nearly froze her fingers off.

And from the battlements above she could hear the sound of sn.i.g.g.e.ring. Laughter wouldn't have been so bad, especially an impressive demonic laugh with lots of echo, but this was just-sn.i.g.g.e.ring.

It went on for a long time. It was one of the most unpleasant sounds Esk had ever heard.

She woke up s.h.i.+vering. It was long after midnight and the stars looked damp and chilly; the air was full of the busy silence of the night, which is created by hundreds of small furry things treading very carefully in the hope of finding dinner while avoiding being the main course.

A crescent moon was setting and a thin gray glow toward the rim of the world suggested that, against all probability, another day was on the cards.

Someone had wrapped Esk in a blanket.

"I know you're awake," said the voice of Granny Weatherwax. "You could make yourself useful and light a fire. There's d.a.m.n all wood in these parts."

Esk sat up, and clutched at the juniper bush. She felt light enough to float away.

"Fire?" she muttered.

"Yes. You know. Pointing the finger and whoosh," said Granny sourly. She was sitting on a rock, trying to find a position that didn't upset her arthritis.

"I-I don't think I can."

"You tell me?" said Granny cryptically.

The old witch leaned forward and put her hand on Esk's forehead; it was like being caressed by a sock full of warm dice.

"You're running a bit of a temperature," she added. "Too much hot sun and cold ground. That's forn parts for you."

Esk let herself slump forward until her head lay in Granny's lap, with its familiar smells of camphor, mixed herbs and a trace of goat. Granny patted her in what she hoped was a soothing way.

After a while Esk said, in a low voice, "They're not going to allow me into the University. A wizard told me, and I dreamed about it, and it was one of those true dreams. You know, like you told me, a maty-thing."

"Metterfor," said Granny calmly.

"One of them."

"Did you think it would be easy?" asked Granny. "Did you think you'd walk into their gates waving your staff? Here I am, I want to be a wizard, thank you very much?"

"He told me there's no women allowed in the University!"

"He's wrong."

"No, I could tell he was telling the truth. You know, Granny, you can tell how-"

"Foolish child. All you could tell was that he thought he was telling the truth. The world isn't always as people see it."

"I don't understand," said Esk.

"You'll learn," said Granny. "Now tell me. This dream. They wouldn't let you into their university, right?"

"Yes, and they laughed!"

"And then you tried to burn down the doors?"

Esk turned her head in Granny's lap and opened a suspicious eye.

"How did you know?"

Granny smiled, but as a lizard would smile.

"I was miles away," she said. "I was bending my mind toward you, and suddenly you seemed to be everywhere. You shone out like a beacon, so you did. As for the fire-look around."

In the halflight of dawn the plateau was a ma.s.s of baked clay. In front of Esk the cliff was gla.s.sy and must have flowed like tar under the onslaught; there were great gashes across it which had dripped molten rock and slag. When Esk listened she could hear the faint "pink, pink" of cooling rock.

"Oh," she said, "did I do that?"

"So it would appear," said Granny.

"But I was asleep! I was only dreaming!"

"It's the magic," said Granny. "It's trying to find a way out. The witch magic and the wizard magic are, I don't know, sort of feeding off each other. I think."

Esk bit her lip.

"What can I do?" she asked. "I dream of all sorts of things!"

"Well, for a start we're going straight to the University," decided Granny. "They must be used to apprentices not being able to control magic and having hot dreams, else the place would have burned down years ago."

She glanced toward the Rim, and then down at the broomstick beside her.

We will pa.s.s over the running up and down, the tightening of the broomstick's bindings, the muttered curses against dwarves, the brief moments of hope as the magic flickered fitfully, the horrible black feelings as it died, the tightening of the bindings again, the running again, the sudden catching of the spell, the scrambling aboard, the yelling, the takeoff...

Esk clung to Granny with one hand and held her staff in the other as they, frankly, pottered along a few hundred feet above the ground. A few birds flew alongside them, interested in this new flying tree.

"b.u.g.g.e.r off!" screamed Granny, taking off her hat and flapping it.

"We're not going very fast, Granny," said Esk meekly.

"We're going quite fast enough for me!"

Esk looked around. Behind them the Rim was a blaze of gold, barred with cloud.

"I think we ought to go lower, Granny," she said urgently. "You said the broomstick won't fly in sunlight." She glanced down at the landscape below them. It looked sharp and inhospitable. It also looked expectant.

"I know what I'm doing, Miss," snapped Granny, gripping the broomstick hard and trying to make herself as light as possible.

It has already been revealed that light on the Discworld travels slowly, the result of its pa.s.sage through the Disc's vast and ancient magical field.

So dawn isn't the sudden affair that it is on other worlds. The new day doesn't erupt, it sort of sloshes gently across the sleeping landscape in the same way that the tide sneaks in across the beach, melting the sandcastles of the night. It tends to flow around mountains. If the trees are close together it comes out of woods cut to ribbons and sliced with shadows.

An observer on some suitable high point, let's say for the sake of argument a wisp of cirro-stratus on the edge of s.p.a.ce, would remark on how lovingly the light spreads across the land, how it leaps forward on the plains and slows down when it encounters high ground, how beautifully it...

Actually, there are some kinds of observers who, faced with all this beauty, will whine that you can't have heavy light and certainly wouldn't be able to see it, even if you could. To which one can only reply, so how come you're standing on a cloud?

So much for cynicism. But down on the Disc itself the broomstick barreled forward on the cusp of dawn, dropping ever backward in the shadow of night.

"Granny!"

Day burst upon them. Ahead of the broomstick the rocks seemed to flash into flame as the light washed over them. Granny felt the stick lurch and stared with horrified fascination at the little scudding shadow below them. It was getting closer.

"What will happen when we hit the ground?"

"That depends if I can find some soft rocks," said Granny in a preoccupied voice.

"The broomstick's going to cras.h.!.+ Can't we do anything?"

"Well, I suppose we could get off."

"Granny," said Esk, in the exasperated and remarkably adult voice children use to berate their wayward elders. "I don't think you quite understand. I don't want to hit the ground. It's never done anything to me."

Granny was trying to think of a suitable spell and regretting that headology didn't work on rocks, and had she detected the diamond edge to Esk's tone perhaps she wouldn't have said: "Tell the broomstick that, then."

And they would indeed have crashed. But she remembered in time to grab her hat and brace herself. The broomstick gave a shudder, tilted- -and the landscape blurred.

It was really quite a short trip but one that Granny knew she would always remember, generally around three o'clock in the morning after eating rich food. She would remember the rainbow colors that hummed in the rus.h.i.+ng air, the horrible heavy feeling, the impression that something very big and heavy was sitting on the universe.

She would remember Esk's laughter. She would remember, despite her best efforts, the way the ground sped below them, whole mountain ranges flas.h.i.+ng past with nasty zipping noises.

Most of all, she would remember catching up catching up with the night. with the night.

It appeared ahead of her, a ragged line of darkness running ahead of the remorseless morning. She stared in horrified fascination as the line became a blot, a stain, a whole continent of blackness that raced toward them.

For an instant they were poised on the crest of the dawn as it broke in silent thunder on the land. No surfer ever rode such a wave, but the broomstick broke through the broil of light and shot smoothly through into the coolness beyond.

Granny let herself breathe out.

Darkness took some of the terror out of the flight. It also meant that if Esk lost interest the broomstick ought to be able to fly under its own rather rusty magic.

"." Granny said, and cleared her bone-dry throat for a second try. "Esk?"

"This is fun, isn't it? I wonder how I make it happen?"

"Yes, fun," said Granny weakly. "But can I fly the stick, please? I don't want us to go over the Edge. Please?"

"Is it true that there's a giant waterfall all around the edge of the world, and you can look down and see stars?" said Esk.

"Yes. Can we slow down now?"

"I'd like to see it."

"No! I mean, no, not now."

The broomstick slowed. The rainbow bubble around it vanished with an audible pop. Without a jolt, without so much as a shudder, Granny found herself flying at a respectable speed again.

Granny had built a solid reputation on always knowing the answer to everything. Getting her to admit ignorance, even to herself, was an astonis.h.i.+ng achievement. But the worm of curiosity was chewing at the apple of her mind.

"How," she said at last, "did you do that?"

There was a thoughtful silence behind her. Then Esk said: "I don't know. I just needed it, and it was in my head. Like when you remember something you've forgotten."

"Yes, but how how?"

"I-I don't know. I just had a picture of how I wanted things to be, and, and I, sort of-went into the picture."

Granny stared into the night. She had never heard of magic like that, but it sounded awfully powerful and probably lethal. Went into the picture! Of course, all magic changed the world in some way, wizards thought there was no other use for it-they didn't truck with the idea of leaving the world as it was and changing the people-but this sounded more literal. It needed thinking about. On the ground.