Sourcery - A Novel Of Discworld Part 13

"Is something the matter, Spelter?" said Coin.

Spelter hopped on one leg, suddenly released, his body flooding with relief as his toes flooded with agony, more grateful than anyone in the entire history of the world that seventeen stones of wizardry had chosen his instep to come down heavily on.

His scream seemed to have broken the spell. Coin sighed, and stood up.

"It has been a good day," he said.

It was two o'clock in the morning. River mists coiled like snakes through the streets of Ankh-Morpork, but they coiled alone. Wizards did not hold with other people staying up after midnight, and so no one did. They slept the troubled sleep of the enchanted, instead.

In the Plaza of Broken Moons, once the boutique of mysterious pleasures from whose flare-lit and curtain-hung stalls the late-night reveller could obtain anything from a plate of jellied eels to the venereal disease of his choice, the mists coiled and dripped into chilly emptiness.

The stalls had gone, replaced by gleaming marble and a statue depicting the spirit of something or other, surrounded by illuminated fountains. Their dull splas.h.i.+ng was the only sound that broke the cholesterol of silence that had the heart of the city in its grip.

Silence reigned too in the dark bulk of Unseen University. Except- Spelter crept along the shadowy corridors like a two-legged spider, darting-or at least limping quickly-from pillar to archway, until he reached the forbidding doors of the Library. He peered nervously at the darkness around him and, after some hesitation, tapped very, very lightly.

Silence poured from the heavy woodwork. But, unlike the silence that had the rest of the city under its thrall, this was a watchful, alert silence; it was the silence of a sleeping cat that had just opened one eye.

When he could bear it no longer Spelter dropped to his hands and knees and tried to peer under the doors. Finally he put his mouth as close as he could to the drafty, dusty gap under the bottommost hinge and whispered: "I say! Um. Can you hear me?"

He felt sure that something moved, far back in the darkness.

He tried again, his mood swinging between terror and hope with every erratic thump of his heart.

"I say? It's me, um, Spelter. You know? Could you speak to me, please?"

Perhaps large leathery feet were creeping gently across the floor in there, or maybe it was only the creaking of Spelter's nerves. He tried to swallow away the dryness in his throat, and had another go.

"Look, all right, but, look, they're talking about shutting the Library!"

The silence grew louder. The sleeping cat had c.o.c.ked an ear.

"What is happening is all wrong!" the bursar confided, and clapped his hand over his mouth at the enormity of what he had said.

"Oook?"

It was the faintest of noises, like the eructation of c.o.c.kroaches.

Suddenly emboldened, Spelter pressed his lips closer to the crack.

"Have you got the, um, Patrician in there?"

"Oook."

"What about the little doggie?"

"Oook."

"Oh. Good."

Spelter lay full length in the comfort of the night, and drummed his fingers on the chilly floor.

"You wouldn't care to, um, let me in too?" he ventured.

"Oook!"

Spelter made a face in the gloom.

"Well, would you, um, let me come in for a few minutes? We need to discuss something urgently, man to man."

"Eeek."

"I meant ape."

"Oook."

"Look, won't you come out, then?"

"Oook."

Spelter sighed. "This show of loyalty is all very well, but you'll starve in there."

"Oook oook."

"What other way in?" other way in?"

"Oook."

"Oh, have it your way," Spelter sighed. But, somehow, he felt better for the conversation. Everyone else in the University seemed to be living in a dream, whereas the Librarian wanted nothing more in the whole world than soft fruit, a regular supply of index cards and the opportunity, every month or so, to hop over the wall of the Patrician's private menagerie.* It was strangely rea.s.suring. It was strangely rea.s.suring.

"So you're all right for bananas and so forth?" he inquired, after another pause.

"Oook."

"Don't let anyone in, will you? Um. I think that's frightfully important."

"Oook."

"Good." Spelter stood up and dusted off his knees. Then he put his mouth to the keyhole and added, "Don't trust anyone."

"Oook."

It was not completely dark in the Library, because the serried rows of magical books gave off a faint octarine glow, caused by thaumaturgical leakage into a strong occult field. It was just bright enough to illuminate the pile of shelves wedged against the door.

The former Patrician had been carefully decanted into a jar on the Librarian's desk. The Librarian himself sat under it, wrapped in his blanket and holding Wuffles on his lap.

Occasionally he would eat a banana.

Spelter, meanwhile, limped back along the echoing pa.s.sages of the University, heading for the security of his bedroom. It was because his ears were nervously straining the tiniest of sounds out of the air that he heard, right on the cusp of audibility, the sobbing.

It wasn't a normal noise up here. In the carpeted corridors of the senior wizards' quarters there were a number of sounds you might hear late at night, such as snoring, the gentle clinking of gla.s.ses, tuneless singing and, once in a while, the zip and sizzle of a spell gone wrong. But the sound of someone quietly crying was such a novelty that Spelter found himself edging down the pa.s.sage that led to the Archchancellor's suite.

The door was ajar. Telling himself that he really shouldn't, tensing himself for a hurried dash, Spelter peered inside.

Rincewind stared.

"What is is it?" he whispered. it?" he whispered.

"I think it's a temple of some sort," said Conina.

Rincewind stood and gazed upwards, the crowds of Al Khali bouncing off and around him in a kind of human Brownian motion. A temple, he thought. Well, it was big, and it was impressive, and the architect had used every trick in the book to make it look even bigger and even more impressive than it was, and to impress upon everyone looking at it that they, on the other hand, were very small and ordinary and didn't have as many domes. It was the kind of place that looked exactly as you were always going to remember it.

But Rincewind felt he knew holy architecture when he saw it, and the frescoes on the big and, of course, impressive walls above him didn't look at all religious. For one thing, the partic.i.p.ants were enjoying themselves. Almost certainly, they were enjoying themselves. Yes, they must be. It would be pretty astonis.h.i.+ng if they weren't.

"They're not dancing, are they?" he said, in a desperate attempt not to believe the evidence of his own eyes. "Or maybe it's some sort of acrobatics?"

Conina squinted upwards in the hard, white sunlight.

"I shouldn't think so," she said, thoughtfully.

Rincewind remembered himself. "I don't think a young woman like you should be looking at this sort of thing," he said sternly.

Conina gave him a smile. "I think wizards are expressly forbidden to," she said sweetly. "It's supposed to turn you blind."

Rincewind turned his face upwards again, prepared to risk maybe one eye. This sort of thing is only to be expected, he told himself. They don't know any better. Foreign countries are, well, foreign countries. They do things differently there.

Although some things, he decided, were done in very much the same way, only with rather more inventiveness and, by the look of it, far more often.

"The temple frescoes of Al Khali are famous far and wide," said Conina, as they walked through crowds of children who kept trying to sell Rincewind things and introduce him to nice relatives.

"Well, I can see they would be," Rincewind agreed. "Look, push off, will you? No, I don't want to buy whatever it is. No, I don't want to meet her. Or him, either. Or Or it, you nasty little boy. Get it, you nasty little boy. Get off off, will you?"

The last scream was to the group of children riding sedately on the Luggage, which was plodding along patiently behind Rincewind and making no attempt to shake them off. Perhaps it was sickening for something, he thought, and brightened up a bit.

"How many people are there on this continent, do you think?" he said.

"I don't know," said Conina, without turning round. "Millions, I expect?"

"If I were wise, I wouldn't be here," said Rincewind, with feeling.

They had been in Al Khali, gateway to the whole mysterious continent of Klatch, for several hours. He was beginning to suffer.

A decent city should have a bit of fog about it, he considered, and people should live indoors, not spend all their time out on the streets. There shouldn't be all this sand and heat. As for the wind...

Ankh-Morpork had its famous smell, so full of personality that it could reduce a strong man to tears. But Al Khali had its wind, blowing from the vastness of the deserts and continents nearer the rim. It was a gentle breeze, but it didn't stop and eventually it had the same effect on visitors that a cheese-grater achieves on a tomato. After a while it seemed to have worn away your skin and was rasping directly across the nerves.

To Conina's sensitive nostrils it carried aromatic messages from the heart of the continent, compounded of the chill of deserts, the stink of lions, the compost of jungles and the flatulence of wildebeest.

Rincewind, of course, couldn't smell any of this. Adaptation is a wonderful thing, and most Morporkians would be hard put to smell a burning feather mattress at five feet.

"Where to next?" he said. "Somewhere out of the wind?"

"My father spent some time in Khali when he was hunting for the Lost City of Ee," said Conina. "And I seem to remember he spoke very highly of the soak soak. It's a kind of bazaar."

"I suppose we just go and look for the second-hand hat stalls," said Rincewind. "Because the whole idea is totally-"

"What I was hoping was that maybe we could be attacked. That seems the most sensible idea. My father said that very few strangers who entered the soak soak ever came out again. Some very murderous types hang out there, he said." ever came out again. Some very murderous types hang out there, he said."

Rincewind gave this due consideration.

"Just run that by me again, will you?" he said. "After you said we should be attacked I seemed to hear a ringing in my ears."

"Well, we want to meet the criminal element, don't we?"

"Not exactly want want," said Rincewind. "That wasn't the phrase I would have chosen."

"How would you put it, then?"

"Er. I think the phrase 'not want' sums it up pretty well."

"But you agreed that we should get the hat!"

"But not die in the process," said Rincewind, wretchedly. "That won't do anyone any good. Not me, anyway."

"My father always said that death is but a sleep," said Conina.

"Yes, the hat told me that," said Rincewind, as they turned down a narrow, crowded street between white adobe walls. "But the way I see it, it's a lot harder to get up in the morning."

"Look," said Conina, "there's not much risk. You're with me."

"Yes, and you're looking forward to it, aren't you," said Rincewind accusingly, as Conina piloted them along a shady alley, with their retinue of p.u.b.escent entrepreneurs at their heels. "It's the old herrydeterry at work."

"Just shut up and try to look like a victim, will you?"

"I can do that all right," said Rincewind, beating off a particularly stubborn member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce, "I've had a lot of practice. For the last time, I don't want to buy anyone anyone, you wretched child!"

He looked gloomily at the walls around them. At least there weren't any of those disturbing pictures here, but the hot breeze still blew the dust around him and he was sick and tired of looking at sand. What he wanted was a couple of cool beers, a cold bath and a change of clothing; it probably wouldn't make him feel better, but it would at least make feeling awful more enjoyable. Not that there was any beer here, probably. It was a funny thing, but in chilly cities like Ankh-Morpork the big drink was beer, which cooled you down, but in places like this, where the whole sky was an over with the door left open, people drank tiny little sticky drinks which set fire to the back of your throat. And the architecture was all wrong. And they had statues in their temples that, well, just weren't suitable. This wasn't the right kind of place for wizards. Of course, they had some local grown alternative, enchanters or some such, but not what you'd call decent decent magic... magic...

Conina strolled ahead of him, humming to herself.

You rather like her, don't you? I can tell, said a voice in his head.