Conina said nothing. She was staring out across the plains to the broiling storm of magic. Occasionally some of it would detach and soar away to some distant tower. She shivered, despite the growing heat of the day.
'We ought to get down there as soon as possible,' she said. 'It's very important.'
'Why?' said Creosote. One glass of wine hadn't really restored him to his former easygoing nature.
Conina opened her mouth, and — quite unusually for her — shut it again. There was no way to explain that every gene in her body was dragging her onwards, telling her that she should get involved; visions of swords and spiky balls on chains kept invading the hairdressing salons of her consciousness.
Nijel, on the other hand, felt no such pounding. All he had to drive him onwards was imagination, but he did have enough of that to float a medium-sized war galley. He looked towards the city with what would have been, but for his lack of chin, an expression of setjawed determination.
Creosote realised that he was outnumbered.
'Do they have any drink down there?' he said.
'Lots,' said Nijel.
'That might do for a start,' the Seriph conceded. 'All right, lead on, O peach-breasted daughter of-’
And no poetry.'
They untangled themselves from the thicket and walked down the hillside until they reached the road which, before very long, went past the aforementioned tavern or, as Creosote persisted in calling it, caravanserai.
They hesitated about going in. It didn't seem to welcome visitors. But Conina, who by breeding and upbringing tended to skulk around the back of buildings, found four horses tethered in the yard.
They considered them carefully.
'It would be stealing,' said Nijel, slowly.
Conina opened her mouth to agree and the words 'Why not?' slid past her lips. She shrugged.
'Perhaps we should leave some money-’ Nijel suggested.
'Don't look at me,' said Creosote.
'— or maybe write a note and leave it under the bridle. Or something. Don't you think?'
By way of an answer Conina vaulted up on to the largest horse, which by the look of it belonged to a soldier. Weaponry was slung all over it.
Creosote hoisted himself uneasily on to the second horse, a rather skittish bay, and sighed.
'She's got that letter-box look,' he said. 'I should do what she says.'
Nijel regarded the other two horses suspiciously. One of them was very large and extremely white, not the off-white which was all that most horses could manage, but a translucent, ivory white tone which Nijel felt an unconscious urge to describe as 'shroud'. It also gave him a distinct impression that it was more intelligent than he was.
He selected the other one. It was a bit thin, but docile, and he managed to get on after only two tries.
They set off.
The sound of their hoofbeats barely penetrated the gloom inside the tavern. The innkeeper moved like someone in a dream. He knew he had customers, he'd even spoken to them, he could even see them sitting round a table by the fire, but if asked to describe who he'd talked to and what he had seen he'd have been at a loss. This is because the human brain is remarkably good at shutting out things it doesn't want to know. His could currently have shielded a bank vault.
And the drinks! Most of them he'd never heard of, but strange bottles kept appearing on the shelves above the beer barrels. The trouble was that whenever he tried to think about it, his thoughts just slid away ...
The figures around the table looked up from their cards.
One of them raised a hand. It's stuck on the end of his arm and it's got five fingers, the innkeeper's mind said. It must be a hand.
One thing the innkeeper's brain couldn't shut out was the sound of the voices. This one sounded as though someone was hitting a rock with a roll of sheet lead.
BAR PERSON.
The innkeeper groaned faintly. The thermic lances of horror were melting their way steadily through the steel door of his mind.
LET ME SEE, NOW. THAT'S A — WHAT WAS IT AGAIN
'A Bloody Mary.' This voice made a simple drinks order sound like the opening of hostilities.
OH, YES. AND
'Mine was a small egg none,' said Pestilence.
AN EGG NOW.
'With a cherry in it.'
GOOD, lied the heavy voice. AND THAT'LL BE A SMALL PORT WINE FOR ME AND, the speaker glanced across the table at the fourth member of the quartet and sighed, YOU'D BETTER BRING ANOTHER BOWL OF PEANUTS.
About three hundred yards down the road the horse thieves were trying to come to terms with a new experience.
'Certainly a smooth ride,' Nijel managed eventually.
'And a lovely — a lovely view,' said Creosote, his voice lost in the slipstream.
'But I wonder,' said Nijel, 'if we have done exactly the right thing.'
'We're moving, aren't we?' demanded Conina. 'Don't be petty.'
'It's just that, well, looking at cumulus clouds from above is-’
'Shut up.'
'Sorry.'
'Anyway, they're stratus. Cumulus at most.'
'Right,' said Nijel miserably.
'Does it make any difference?’ said Creosote, who was lying flat on his horse's neck with his eyes shut.
'About a thousand feet.'
'Oh.'
'Could be seven hundred and fifty,' conceded Conina.
'Ah.'
The tower of sourcery trembled. Coloured smoke rolled through its vaulted rooms and shining corridors. In the big room at the very tip, where the air was thick and greasy and tasted of burning tin, many wizards had passed out with the sheer mental effort of the battle. But enough remained. They sat in a wide circle, locked in concentration.
It was just possible to see the shimmering in the air as the raw sourcery swirled out of the staff in Coin's hand and into the centre of the octogram.
Outlandish shapes appeared for a brief instant and vanished. The very fabric of reality was being put through the wringer in there.
Carding shuddered, and turned away in case he saw anything he really couldn't ignore.
The surviving senior wizards had a simulacrum of the Disc hovering in front of them. As Carding looked at it again the little red glow over the city of Quirm flared and went out.
The air creaked.
'There goes Quirm,' murmured Carding.
'That just leaves Al Khali,' said one of the others.
'There's some clever power there.'
Carding nodded glumly. He'd quite liked Quirm, which was a -had been a pleasant little city overlooking the Rim Ocean.
He dimly recalled being taken there, once, when he was small. For a moment he gazed sadly into the past. It had wild geraniums, he recalled, filling the sloping cobbled streets with their musky fragrance.
'Growing out of the walls,' he said out loud. 'Pink. They were pink.'
The other wizards looked at him oddly. One or two, of a particularly paranoid frame of mind even for wizards, glanced suspiciously at the walls.
'Are you all right?' said one of them.
'Um?' said Carding, 'Oh. Yes, Sorry. Miles away.'
He turned back to look at Coin, who was sitting off to one side of the circle with the staff across his knees. The boy appeared to be asleep. Perhaps he was. But Carding knew in the tormented pit of his soul that the staff didn't sleep. It was watching him, testing his mind.
It knew. It even knew about the pink geraniums.
'I never wanted it to be like this,' he said softly. 'All we really wanted was a bit of respect.'
'Are you sure you’re all right?'
Carding nodded vaguely. As his colleagues resumed their concentration he glanced sideways at them.
Somehow, all his old friends had gone. Well, not friends. A wizard never had friends, at least not friends who were wizards. It needed a different word. Ah yes, that was it. Enemies. But a very decent class of enemies. Gentlemen. The cream of their profession. Not like these people, for all that they seemed to have risen in the craft since the sourcerer had arrived.
Other things besides the cream floated to the top, he reflected sourly.
He turned his attention to Al Khali, probing with his mind, knowing that the wizards there were almost certainly doing the same, seeking constantly for a point of weakness.
He thought: am I a point of weakness? Spelter tried to tell me something. It was about the staff. A man should lean on his staff, not the other way around ... it's steering him, leading him ... I wish I'd listened to Spelter ... this is wrong, I'm a point of weakness ...
He tried again, riding the surges of power, letting them carry his mind into the enemy tower. Even Abrim was making use of sourcery, and Carding let himself modulate the wave, insinuating himself past the defences erected against him.
The image of the interior of the Al Khali tower appeared, focused ...
... the Luggage trundled along the glowing corridors. It was exceedingly angry now. It had been awoken from hibernation, it had been scorned, it had been briefly attacked by a variety of mythological and now extinct lifeforms, it had a headache and now, as it entered the Great Hall, it detected the hat. The horrible hat, the cause of everything it was currently suffering. It advanced purposefully ...
Carding, testing the resistance of Abrim's mind, felt the man's attention waver. For a moment he saw through the enemy's eyes, saw the squat oblong cantering across the stone. For a moment Abrim attempted to shift his concentration and then, no more able to help himself than is a cat when it sees something small and squeaky run across the floor, Carding struck.
Not much. It didn't need much. Abrim's mind was attempting to balance and channel huge forces, and it needed hardly any pressure to topple it from its position.
Abrim extended his hands to blast the Luggage, gave the merest beginnings of a scream, and imploded.
The wizards around him thought they saw him grow impossibly small in a fraction of a second and vanish, leaving a black after-image ...
The more intelligent of them started to run ...
And the magic he had been controlling surged back out and flooded free in one great, randomised burst that blew the hat to bits, took out the entire lower levels of the tower and quite a large part of what remained of the city.
So many wizards in Ankh had been concentrating on the hall that the sympathetic resonance blew them across the room. Carding ended up on his back, his hat over his eyes.
They hauled him out and dusted him off and carried him to Coin and the staff, amid cheers — although some of the older wizards forbore to cheer. But he didn't seem to pay any attention.
He stared sightlessly down at the boy, and then slowly raised his hands to his ears.
'Can't you hear them?' he said.
The wizards fell silent. Carding still had power, and the tone of his voice would have quelled a thunderstorm.
Coin's eyes glowed.
'I hear nothing,' he said.
Carding turned to the rest of the wizards.
'Can't you hear them?'
They shook their heads. One of them said, 'Hear what, brother?'
Carding smiled, and it was a wide, mad smile. Even Coin took a step backwards.
'You'll hear them soon enough,' he said. 'You've made a beacon. You'll all hear them. But you won't hear them for long.' He pushed aside the younger wizards who were holding his arms and advanced on Coin.
'You're pouring sourcery into the world and other things are coming with it,' he said. 'Others have given them a pathway but you've given them an avenue!'
He sprang forward and snatched the black staff out of Coin's hands and swung it up in the air to smash it against the wall.
Carding went rigid as the staff struck back. Then his skin began to blister ...
Most of the wizards managed to turn their heads away. A few -and there are always a few like that watched in obscene fascination.
Coin watched, too. His eyes widened in wonder. One hand went to his mouth. He tried to back away. He couldn't.
'They're cumulus.'
'Marvellous,' said Nijel weakly.
WEIGHT DOESN'T COME INTO IT. MY STEED HAS CARRIED ARMIES. MY STEED HAS CARRIED CITIES. YEA, HE HATH CARRIED ALL THINGS IN THEIR DUE TIME, said Death. BUT HE'S NOT GOING TO CARRY YOU THREE.
'Why not?'
IT'S A MATTER OF THE LOOK OF THE THING.
'It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it,' said War testily, 'the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse.'
'Perhaps you could ask them to wait for us?' said Pestilence, his voice sounding like something dripping out of the bottom of a coffin.
I HAVE THINGS TO ATTEND TO, said Death. He made a little clicking noise with his teeth. I'M SURE YOU'LL MANAGE. YOU NORMALLY DO.
War watched the retreating horse.
'Sometimes he really gets on my nerves. Why is he always so keen to have the last word?' he said.
'Force of habit, l suppose.'
They turned back to the tavern. Neither spoke for some time, and then War said, 'Where's Famine?'
'Went to find the kitchen.'
'Oh.' War scuffed one armoured foot in the dust, and thought about the distance to Ankh. It was a very hot afternoon. The Apocralypse could jolly well wait.
'One for the road?' he suggested.
'Should we?' said Pestilence, doubtfully. 'I thought we were expected. l mean, l wouldn't like to disappoint people.'
'We've got time for a quick one, I'm sure,' War insisted. 'Pub clocks are never right. We've got bags of time. All the time in the world.'
Carding slumped forward and thudded on the shining white floor. The staff rolled out of his hands and upended itself.
Coin prodded the limp body with his foot.
'I did warn him,' he said. 'I told him what would happen if he touched it again. What did he mean, them?'
There was an outbreak of coughing and a considerable inspection of fingernails.
'What did he mean?' Coin demanded.
Ovin Hakardly, lecturer in Lore, once again found that the wizards around him were parting like morning mist. Without moving he appeared to have stepped forward. His eyes swivelled backwards and forwards like trapped animals.
'Er,' he said. He waved his thin hands vaguely. 'The world, you see, that is, the reality in which we live, in fact, it can be thought of as, in a manner of speaking, a rubber sheet.' He hesitated, aware that the sentence was not going to appear in anyone's book of quotable quotes.
'In that,' he added hurriedly, 'it is distorted, uh, distended by the presence of magic in any degree and, if I may make a point here, too much magical potentiality, if foregathered in one spot, forces our reality, um, downwards, although of course one should not take the term literally (because in no sense do I seek to suggest a physical dimension) and it has been postulated that a sufficient exercise of magic can, shall we say, um, break through the actuality at its lowest point and offer, perhaps, a pathway to the inhabitants or, if I may use a more correct term, denizens of the lower plane (which is called by the loose-tongued the Dungeon Dimensions) who, because perhaps of the difference in energy levels, are naturally attracted to the brightness of this world. Our world.'
There was the typical long pause which usually followed Hakardly's speeches, while everybody mentally inserted commas and stitched the fractured clauses together.
Coin's lips moved silently for a while. 'Do you mean magic attracts these creatures?' he said eventually.
His voice was quite different now. It lacked its former edge. The staff hung in the air above the prone body of Carding, rotating slowly. The eyes of every wizard in the place were on it.
'So it appears,' said Hakardly. 'Students of such things say their presence is heralded by a coarse susurration.'
Coin looked uncertain.
'They buzz,' said one of the other wizards helpfully.
The boy knelt down and peered closely at Carding.
'He's very still,' he said cautiously. 'Is anything bad happening to him?'
'It may be,' said Hakardly, guardedly. 'He's dead.'
'I wish he wasn't.'
'It is a view, I suspect, which he shares.'
'But I can help him,' said Coin. He held out his hands and the staff glided into them. If it had a face, it would have smirked.
When he spoke next his voice once again had the cold distant tones of someone speaking in a steel room.
'If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize,' he said.
'Sorry?' said Hakardly. 'You've lost me there.'
Coin turned on his heel and strode back to his chair.
'We can fear nothing,' he said, and it sounded more like a command. 'What of these Dungeon Dimensions? If they should trouble us, away with them! A true wizard will fear nothing! Nothing!'
He jerked to his feet again and strode to the simulacrum of the world. The image was perfect in every detail, down to a ghost of Great A'Tuin paddling slowly through the interstellar deeps a few inches above the floor.
Coin waved his hand through it disdainfully.
'Ours is a world of magic,' he said. 'And what can be found in it that can stand against us?'
Hakardly thought that something was expected of him.
'Absolutely no-one,' he said. 'Except for the gods, of course.'
There was a dead silence.
'The gods?' said Coin quietly.
'Well, yes. Certainly. We don't challenge the gods. They do their job, we do ours. No sense in-’
'Who rules the Disc? Wizards or gods?'
Hakardly thought quickly.
'Oh, wizards. Of course. But, as it were, under the gods.'
When one accidentally puts one boot in a swamp it is quite unpleasant. But not as unpleasant as pushing down with the other boot and hearing that, too, disappear with a soft sucking noise. Hakardly pressed on.
'You see, wizardry is more-’
'Are we not more powerful than the gods, then?' said Coin.
Some of the wizards at the back of the crowd began to shuffle their feet.
'Well. Yes and no,' said Hakardly, up to his knees in it now.
The truth was that wizards tended to be somewhat nervous about the gods. The beings who dwelt on Cori Celesti had never made their feelings plain on the subject of ceremonial magic, which after all had a certain godness about it, and wizards tended to avoid the whole subject. The trouble with gods was that if they didn't like something they didn't just drop hints, so common sense suggested that it was unwise to put the gods in a position where they had to decide.
'There seems to be some uncertainty?' said Coin.
'If I may counsel-’ Hakardly began.
Coin waved a hand. The walls vanished. The wizards stood at the top of the tower of sourcery, and as one man their eyes turned to the distant pinnacle of Cori Celesti, home of the gods.
'When you've beaten everyone else, there's only the gods left to fight,' said Coin. 'Have any of you seen the gods?'
There was a chorus of hesitant denials.
'I will show them to you.'
'You've got room for another one in there, old son,' said War.
Pestilence swayed unsteadily. 'I'm sure we should be getting along,' he muttered, without much conviction.
'Oh, go on.'
'Just a half, then. And then we really must be going.'
War slapped him on the back, and glared at Famine.
'And wed better have another fifteen bags of peanuts,' he added.
'Oook,' the Librarian concluded.
'Oh,' said Rincewind. 'It's the staff that's the problem, then.'
'Oook.'
'Hasn't anyone tried to take it away from him?'
'Oook.'
'What happened to them, then?'
'Eeek.'
Rincewind groaned.
The Librarian had put his candle out because the presence of the naked flame was unsettling the books, but now that Rincewind had grown accustomed to the dark, he realised it wasn't dark at all. The soft octarine glow from the books filled the inside of the tower with something that, while it wasn't exactly light, was a blackness you could see by. Now and again the ruffle of stiff pages floated down from the gloom.
'So, basically, there's no way our magic could defeat him, isn't that right?'
The Librarian cooked disconsolate agreement and continued to spin around gently on his bottom.
'Pretty pointless, then. It may have struck you that I am not exactly gifted in the magical department? I mean, any duel is going to go on the lines of "Hallo, I'm Rincewind" closely followed by bazaam!'
'Oook.'
'Basically, what you're saying is that I'm on my own.'
'Oook.'
'Thanks.'
By their own faint glow Rincewind regarded the books that had stacked themselves around the inner walls of the ancient tower.
He sighed, and marched briskly to the door, but slowed down noticeably as he reached it.
'I'll be off, then,' he said.
'Oook.'
'To face who knows what dreadful perils,' Rincewind added. 'To lay down my life in the service of mankind-’
'Eeek.'
'All right, bipeds-’
'Woof.'
'— and quadrapeds, all right.' He glanced at the Patrician's jamjar, a beaten man.
'And lizards,' he added. 'Can I go now?'
A gale was howling down out of a clear sky as Rincewind toiled towards the tower of sourcery. Its high white doors were shut so tightly it was barely possible to see their outline in the milky surface of the stone.
He hammered on it for a bit, but nothing much happened. The doors seemed to absorb the sound.
'Fine thing,' he muttered to himself, and remembered the carpet. It was lying where he had left it, which was another sign that Ankh had changed. In the thieving days before the sourcerer nothing stayed for long where you left it. Nothing printable, anyway.
He rolled it out on the cobbles so that the golden dragons writhed against the blue ground, unless of course the blue dragons were flying against a golden sky.
He sat down.
He stood up.
He sat down again and hitched up his robe and, with some effort, unrolled one of his socks. Then he replaced his boot and wandered around for a bit until he found, among the rubble, a half-brick. He inserted the half-brick into the sock and gave the sock a few thoughtful swings.
Rincewind had grown up in Morpork. What a Morpork citizen liked to have on his side in a fight was odds of about twenty to one, but failing that a sockful of half-brick and a dark alley to lurk in was generally considered a better bet than any two magic swords you cared to name.
He sat down again.
'Up,' he commanded.
The carpet did not respond. Rincewind peered at the pattern, then lifted a corner of the carpet and tried to make out if the underside was any better.
'All right,' he conceded, 'down. Very, very carefully. Down.'
'Sheep,' slurred War. 'It was sheep.' His helmeted head hit the bar with a clang. He raised it again. 'Sheep.'
'Nonono,' said Famine, raising a thin finger unsteadily. 'Some other domess ... dummist ... tame animal. Like pig. Heifer. Kitten? Like that. Not sheep.'
'Bees,' said Pestilence, and slid gently out of his seat.
'O-kay,' said War, ignoring him, 'right. Once again, then. From the top.' He rapped the side of his glass for the note.
'We are poor little ... unidentified domesticated animals ... that have lost our way ...' he quavered.
'Baabaabaa,' muttered Pestilence, from the floor.
War shook his head. 'It isn't the same, you know,' he said. 'Not without him. He used to come in beautifully on the bass.'
'Baabaabaa,' Pestilence repeated.
'Oh, shut up,' said War, and reached uncertainly for a bottle.
The gale buffeted the top of the tower, a hot, unpleasant wind that whispered with strange voices and rubbed the skin like fine sandpaper.
In the centre of it Coin stood with the staff over his head. As dust filled the air the wizards saw the lines of magic force pouring from it.
They curved up to form a vast bubble that expanded until it must have been larger than the city. And shapes appeared in it. They were shifting and indistinct, wavering horribly like visions in a distorting mirror, no more substantial than smoke rings or pictures in the clouds, but they were dreadfully familiar.
There, for a moment, was the fanged snout of Offler. There, clear for an instant in the writhing storm, was Blind lo, chief of the gods, with his orbiting eyes.
Coin muttered soundlessly and the bubble began to contract. It bulged and jerked obscenely as the things inside fought to get out, but they could not stop the contraction.
Now it was bigger than the University grounds.
Now it was taller than the tower.
Now it was twice the height of a man, and smoke grey.
Now it was an iridescent pearl, the size of ... well, the size of a large pearl.
The gale had gone, replaced by a heavy, silent calm. The very air groaned with the strain. Most of the wizards were flat on the floor, pressed there by the unleashed forces that thickened the air and deadened sound like a universe of feathers, but every one of them could hear his own heart beating loud enough to smash the tower.
'Look at me,' Coin commanded.
They turned their eyes upwards. There was no way they could disobey.
He held the glistening thing in one hand. The other held the staff, which had smoke pouring from its ends.
'The gods,' he said. 'Imprisoned in a thought. And perhaps they were never more than a dream.'
His voice become older, deeper. 'Wizards of Unseen University,' it said, 'have I not given you absolute dominion?'
Behind. them the carpet rose slowly over the side of the tower, with Rincewind trying hard to keep his balance. His eyes were wide with the sort of terror that comes naturally to anyone standing on a few threads and several hundred feet of empty air.
He lurched off the hovering thing and on to the tower, swinging the loaded sock around his head in wide, dangerous sweeps.
Coin saw him reflected in the astonished stares of the assembled wizards. He turned carefully and watched the wizard stagger erratically towards him.
'Who are you?' he said.
'I have come,' said Rincewind thickly, 'to challenge the sourcerer. Which one is he?'
He surveyed the prostrate wizardry, hefting the half-brick in one hand.
Hakardly risked a glance upwards and made frantic eyebrow movements at Rincewind who, even at the best of times, wasn't much good at interpreting non-verbal communication. This wasn't the best of times.
'With a sock?' said Coin. 'What good is a sock?'
The arm holding the staff rose. Coin looked down at it in mild astonishment.
'No, stop,' he said. 'I want to talk to this man.' He stared at Rincewind, who was swaying back and forth under the influence of sleeplessness, horror and the after-effects of an adrenaline overdose.
'Is it magical?' he said, curiously. 'Perhaps it is the sock of an Archchancellor? A sock of force?'
Rincewind focused on it.
'I don't think so,' he said. 'I think I bought it in a shop or something. Um. I've got another one somewhere.'
'But in the end it has something heavy?'
'Um. Yes,' said Rincewind. He added, 'It's a half-brick.'
'But it has great power.'
'Er. You can hold things up with it. If you had another one, you’d have a brick.' Rincewind spoke slowly. He was assimilating the situation by a kind of awful osmosis, and watching the staff turn ominously in the boy's hand.
'So. It is a brick of ordinariness, within a sock. The whole becoming a weapon.'
'Um. Yes.'
'How does it work?'
'Um. You swing it, and then you. Hit something with it. Or sometimes the back of your hand, sometimes.'
'And then perhaps it destroys a whole city?’ said Coin.
Rincewind stared into Coin's golden eyes, and then at his sock. He had pulled it on and off several times a year for years. It had darns he'd grown to know and lo-well, know. Some of them had whole families of darns of their own. There were a number of descriptions that could be applied to the sock, but slayer-of-cities wasn't among them.
'Not really,' he said at last. 'It sort of kills people but leaves buildings standing.'
Rincewind's mind was operating at the speed of continental drift. Parts of it were telling him that he was confronting the sourcerer, but they were in direct conflict with other parts. Rincewind had heard quite a lot about the power of the sourcerer, the staff of the sourcerer, the wickedness of the sourcerer and so on. The only thing no-one had mentioned was the age of the sourcerer.
He glanced towards the staff.
'And what does that do?' he said slowly.
And the staff said, You must kill this man.
The wizards, who had been cautiously struggling upright, flung themselves flat again.
The voice of the hat had been bad enough, but the voice of the staff was metallic and precise; it didn't sound as though it was offering advice but simply stating the way the future had to be. It sounded quite impossible to ignore.
Coin half-raised his arm, and hesitated.
'Why?' he said.
You do not disobey me.
'You don't have to,' said Rincewind hurriedly. 'It's only a thing.'
'I do not see why I should hurt him,' said Coin. 'He looks so harmless. Like an angry rabbit.'
He defies us.
'Not me,' said Rincewind, thrusting the arm with the sock behind his back and trying to ignore the bit about the rabbit.
'Why should I do everything you tell me?' said Coin to the staff. 'I always do everything you tell me, and it doesn't help people at all.'
People must fear you. Have I taught you nothing?
'But he looks so funny, He's got a sock,' said Coin.
He screamed, and his arm jerked oddly. Rincewind's hair stood on end.
You will do as you are commanded.
'I won't'.
You know what happens to boys who are bad.
There was a crackle and a smell of scorched flesh. Coin dropped to his knees.
'Here, hang on a minute-’ Rincewind began.
Coin opened his eyes. They were gold still, but flecked with brown.
Rincewind swung his sock around in a wide humming arc that connected with the staff halfway along its length. There was a brief explosion of brick dust and burnt wool and the staff spun out of the boy's hand. Wizards scattered as it tumbled end over end across the floor.
It reached the parapet, bounced upwards and shot over the edge.
But, instead of falling, it steadied itself in the air, spun in its own length and sped back again trailing octarine sparks and making a noise like a buzzsaw.
Rincewind pushed the stunned boy behind him, threw away the ravaged sock and whipped his hat off, flailing wildly as the staff bored towards him. It caught him on the side of the head, delivering a shock that almost welded his teeth together and toppled him like a thin and ragged tree.
The staff turned again in mid-air, glowing red-hot now, and swept back for another and quite definitely final run.
Rincewind struggled up on his elbows and watched in horrified fascination as it swooped through the chilly air which, for some reason he didn't understand, seemed to be full of snowflakes.
And became tinged with purple, blotched with blue. Time slowed and ground to a halt like an underwound phonograph.
Rincewind looked up at the tall black figure that had appeared a few feet away.
It was, of course, Death.
He turned his glowing eyesockets towards Rincewind and said, in a voice like the collapse of undersea chasms, GOOD AFTERNOON.
He turned away as if he had completed all necessary business for the time being, stared at the horizon for a while, and started to tap one foot idly. It sounded like a bagful of maracas.
'Er,' said Rincewind.
Death appeared to remember him. I'M SORRY? he said politely.
'I always wondered how it was going to be,' said Rincewind.
Death took an hourglass out from the mysterious folds of his ebon robes and peered at it.
DID YOU? he said, vaguely.
'I suppose I can't complain,' said Rincewind virtuously. 'I've had a good life. Well, quite good.' He hesitated. 'Well, not all that good. I suppose most people would call it pretty awful.' He considered it further. 'I would,' he added, half to himself.
WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, MAN?
Rincewind was nonplussed. 'Don't you make an appearance when a wizard is about to die?'
OF COURSE. AND I MUST SAY YOU PEOPLE ARE GIVING ME A BUSY DAY
'How do you manage to be in so many places at the same time?'
GOOD ORGANISATION.
Time returned. The staff, which had been hanging in the air a few feet away from Rincewind, started to scream forward again.
And there was a metallic thud as Coin caught it onehandedly in mid-flight.
The staff uttered a noise like a thousand fingernails dragging across glass. It thrashed wildly up and down, flailing at the arm that held it, and bloomed into evil green flame along its entire length.
So. At the last, you fail me.
Coin groaned but held on as the metal under his fingertips went red, then white.
He thrust the arm out in front of him, and the force streaming from the staff roared past him and drew sparks from his hair and whipped his robe up into weird and unpleasant shapes. He screamed and whirled the staff round and smashed it on the parapet, leaving a long bubbling line in the stone.
Then he threw it away. It clattered against the stones and rolled to a halt, wizards scattering out of its path.
Coin sagged to his knees, shaking.
'I don't like killing people,' he said. 'I'm sure it can't be right.'
'Hold on to that thought,' said Rincewind fervently.
'What happens to people after they're dead?' said Coin.
Rincewind glanced up at Death.
'I think this one's for you,' he said.
HE CANNOT SEE OR HEAR ME, said Death, UNTIL HE WANTS TO. There was a little clinking noise. The staff was rolling back towards Coin, who looked down at it in horror.
Pick me up.
'You don't have to,' said Rincewind again.
You cannot resist me. You cannot defeat yourself, said the staff.
Coin reached out very slowly, and picked it up.
Rincewind glanced at his sock. It was a stub of burnt wool, its brief career as a weapon of war having sent it beyond the help of any darning needle.
Now kill him.
Rincewind held his breath. The watching wizards held their breath. Even Death, who had nothing to hold but his scythe, held it tensely.
'No,' said Coin.
You know what happens to boys who are bad.
Rincewind saw the sourcerer's face go pale.
The staff's voice changed. Now it wheedled.
Without me, who would there be to tell you what to do?
'That is true,' said Coin slowly.
See what you have achieved.
Coin stared slowly around at the frightened faces.
'I am seeing,' he said.
I taught you everything I know.
'I am thinking,' said Coin, 'that you do not know enough.'
Ingrate! Who gave you your destiny?
'You did,' said the boy. He raised his head.
'I realise that I was wrong,' he added, quietly.
Good -
'I did not throw you far enough!'
Coin got to his feet in one movement and swung the staff over his head. He stood still as a statue, his hand lost in a ball of light that was the colour of molten copper. It turned green, ascended through shades of blue, hovered in the violet and then seared into pure octarine.
Rincewind shaded his eyes against the glare and saw Coin's hand, still whole, still gripping tight, with beads of molten metal glittering between his fingers.
He slithered away, and bumped into Hakardly. The old wizard was standing like a statue, with his mouth open.
'What'll happen?' said Rincewind.
'He'll never beat it,' said Hakardly hoarsely. 'It's his. It's as strong as him. He's got the power, but it knows how to channel it.'
'You mean they'll cancel each other out?'
'Hopefully.'
The battle was hidden in its own infernal glow. Then the floor began to tremble.
'They're drawing on everything magical,' said Hakardly. 'We'd better leave the tower.'
'Why?'
'I imagine it will vanish soon enough.'
And, indeed, the white flagstones around the glow looked as though they were unravelling and disappearing into it.
Rincewind hesitated.
'Aren't we going to help him?' he said.
Hakardly stared at him, and then at the iridescent tableau. His mouth opened and shut once or twice.
'We ought to get down there as soon as possible,' she said. 'It's very important.'
'Why?' said Creosote. One glass of wine hadn't really restored him to his former easygoing nature.
Conina opened her mouth, and — quite unusually for her — shut it again. There was no way to explain that every gene in her body was dragging her onwards, telling her that she should get involved; visions of swords and spiky balls on chains kept invading the hairdressing salons of her consciousness.
Nijel, on the other hand, felt no such pounding. All he had to drive him onwards was imagination, but he did have enough of that to float a medium-sized war galley. He looked towards the city with what would have been, but for his lack of chin, an expression of setjawed determination.
Creosote realised that he was outnumbered.
'Do they have any drink down there?' he said.
'Lots,' said Nijel.
'That might do for a start,' the Seriph conceded. 'All right, lead on, O peach-breasted daughter of-’
And no poetry.'
They untangled themselves from the thicket and walked down the hillside until they reached the road which, before very long, went past the aforementioned tavern or, as Creosote persisted in calling it, caravanserai.
They hesitated about going in. It didn't seem to welcome visitors. But Conina, who by breeding and upbringing tended to skulk around the back of buildings, found four horses tethered in the yard.
They considered them carefully.
'It would be stealing,' said Nijel, slowly.
Conina opened her mouth to agree and the words 'Why not?' slid past her lips. She shrugged.
'Perhaps we should leave some money-’ Nijel suggested.
'Don't look at me,' said Creosote.
'— or maybe write a note and leave it under the bridle. Or something. Don't you think?'
By way of an answer Conina vaulted up on to the largest horse, which by the look of it belonged to a soldier. Weaponry was slung all over it.
Creosote hoisted himself uneasily on to the second horse, a rather skittish bay, and sighed.
'She's got that letter-box look,' he said. 'I should do what she says.'
Nijel regarded the other two horses suspiciously. One of them was very large and extremely white, not the off-white which was all that most horses could manage, but a translucent, ivory white tone which Nijel felt an unconscious urge to describe as 'shroud'. It also gave him a distinct impression that it was more intelligent than he was.
He selected the other one. It was a bit thin, but docile, and he managed to get on after only two tries.
They set off.
The sound of their hoofbeats barely penetrated the gloom inside the tavern. The innkeeper moved like someone in a dream. He knew he had customers, he'd even spoken to them, he could even see them sitting round a table by the fire, but if asked to describe who he'd talked to and what he had seen he'd have been at a loss. This is because the human brain is remarkably good at shutting out things it doesn't want to know. His could currently have shielded a bank vault.
And the drinks! Most of them he'd never heard of, but strange bottles kept appearing on the shelves above the beer barrels. The trouble was that whenever he tried to think about it, his thoughts just slid away ...
The figures around the table looked up from their cards.
One of them raised a hand. It's stuck on the end of his arm and it's got five fingers, the innkeeper's mind said. It must be a hand.
One thing the innkeeper's brain couldn't shut out was the sound of the voices. This one sounded as though someone was hitting a rock with a roll of sheet lead.
BAR PERSON.
The innkeeper groaned faintly. The thermic lances of horror were melting their way steadily through the steel door of his mind.
LET ME SEE, NOW. THAT'S A — WHAT WAS IT AGAIN
'A Bloody Mary.' This voice made a simple drinks order sound like the opening of hostilities.
OH, YES. AND
'Mine was a small egg none,' said Pestilence.
AN EGG NOW.
'With a cherry in it.'
GOOD, lied the heavy voice. AND THAT'LL BE A SMALL PORT WINE FOR ME AND, the speaker glanced across the table at the fourth member of the quartet and sighed, YOU'D BETTER BRING ANOTHER BOWL OF PEANUTS.
About three hundred yards down the road the horse thieves were trying to come to terms with a new experience.
'Certainly a smooth ride,' Nijel managed eventually.
'And a lovely — a lovely view,' said Creosote, his voice lost in the slipstream.
'But I wonder,' said Nijel, 'if we have done exactly the right thing.'
'We're moving, aren't we?' demanded Conina. 'Don't be petty.'
'It's just that, well, looking at cumulus clouds from above is-’
'Shut up.'
'Sorry.'
'Anyway, they're stratus. Cumulus at most.'
'Right,' said Nijel miserably.
'Does it make any difference?’ said Creosote, who was lying flat on his horse's neck with his eyes shut.
'About a thousand feet.'
'Oh.'
'Could be seven hundred and fifty,' conceded Conina.
'Ah.'
The tower of sourcery trembled. Coloured smoke rolled through its vaulted rooms and shining corridors. In the big room at the very tip, where the air was thick and greasy and tasted of burning tin, many wizards had passed out with the sheer mental effort of the battle. But enough remained. They sat in a wide circle, locked in concentration.
It was just possible to see the shimmering in the air as the raw sourcery swirled out of the staff in Coin's hand and into the centre of the octogram.
Outlandish shapes appeared for a brief instant and vanished. The very fabric of reality was being put through the wringer in there.
Carding shuddered, and turned away in case he saw anything he really couldn't ignore.
The surviving senior wizards had a simulacrum of the Disc hovering in front of them. As Carding looked at it again the little red glow over the city of Quirm flared and went out.
The air creaked.
'There goes Quirm,' murmured Carding.
'That just leaves Al Khali,' said one of the others.
'There's some clever power there.'
Carding nodded glumly. He'd quite liked Quirm, which was a -had been a pleasant little city overlooking the Rim Ocean.
He dimly recalled being taken there, once, when he was small. For a moment he gazed sadly into the past. It had wild geraniums, he recalled, filling the sloping cobbled streets with their musky fragrance.
'Growing out of the walls,' he said out loud. 'Pink. They were pink.'
The other wizards looked at him oddly. One or two, of a particularly paranoid frame of mind even for wizards, glanced suspiciously at the walls.
'Are you all right?' said one of them.
'Um?' said Carding, 'Oh. Yes, Sorry. Miles away.'
He turned back to look at Coin, who was sitting off to one side of the circle with the staff across his knees. The boy appeared to be asleep. Perhaps he was. But Carding knew in the tormented pit of his soul that the staff didn't sleep. It was watching him, testing his mind.
It knew. It even knew about the pink geraniums.
'I never wanted it to be like this,' he said softly. 'All we really wanted was a bit of respect.'
'Are you sure you’re all right?'
Carding nodded vaguely. As his colleagues resumed their concentration he glanced sideways at them.
Somehow, all his old friends had gone. Well, not friends. A wizard never had friends, at least not friends who were wizards. It needed a different word. Ah yes, that was it. Enemies. But a very decent class of enemies. Gentlemen. The cream of their profession. Not like these people, for all that they seemed to have risen in the craft since the sourcerer had arrived.
Other things besides the cream floated to the top, he reflected sourly.
He turned his attention to Al Khali, probing with his mind, knowing that the wizards there were almost certainly doing the same, seeking constantly for a point of weakness.
He thought: am I a point of weakness? Spelter tried to tell me something. It was about the staff. A man should lean on his staff, not the other way around ... it's steering him, leading him ... I wish I'd listened to Spelter ... this is wrong, I'm a point of weakness ...
He tried again, riding the surges of power, letting them carry his mind into the enemy tower. Even Abrim was making use of sourcery, and Carding let himself modulate the wave, insinuating himself past the defences erected against him.
The image of the interior of the Al Khali tower appeared, focused ...
... the Luggage trundled along the glowing corridors. It was exceedingly angry now. It had been awoken from hibernation, it had been scorned, it had been briefly attacked by a variety of mythological and now extinct lifeforms, it had a headache and now, as it entered the Great Hall, it detected the hat. The horrible hat, the cause of everything it was currently suffering. It advanced purposefully ...
Carding, testing the resistance of Abrim's mind, felt the man's attention waver. For a moment he saw through the enemy's eyes, saw the squat oblong cantering across the stone. For a moment Abrim attempted to shift his concentration and then, no more able to help himself than is a cat when it sees something small and squeaky run across the floor, Carding struck.
Not much. It didn't need much. Abrim's mind was attempting to balance and channel huge forces, and it needed hardly any pressure to topple it from its position.
Abrim extended his hands to blast the Luggage, gave the merest beginnings of a scream, and imploded.
The wizards around him thought they saw him grow impossibly small in a fraction of a second and vanish, leaving a black after-image ...
The more intelligent of them started to run ...
And the magic he had been controlling surged back out and flooded free in one great, randomised burst that blew the hat to bits, took out the entire lower levels of the tower and quite a large part of what remained of the city.
So many wizards in Ankh had been concentrating on the hall that the sympathetic resonance blew them across the room. Carding ended up on his back, his hat over his eyes.
They hauled him out and dusted him off and carried him to Coin and the staff, amid cheers — although some of the older wizards forbore to cheer. But he didn't seem to pay any attention.
He stared sightlessly down at the boy, and then slowly raised his hands to his ears.
'Can't you hear them?' he said.
The wizards fell silent. Carding still had power, and the tone of his voice would have quelled a thunderstorm.
Coin's eyes glowed.
'I hear nothing,' he said.
Carding turned to the rest of the wizards.
'Can't you hear them?'
They shook their heads. One of them said, 'Hear what, brother?'
Carding smiled, and it was a wide, mad smile. Even Coin took a step backwards.
'You'll hear them soon enough,' he said. 'You've made a beacon. You'll all hear them. But you won't hear them for long.' He pushed aside the younger wizards who were holding his arms and advanced on Coin.
'You're pouring sourcery into the world and other things are coming with it,' he said. 'Others have given them a pathway but you've given them an avenue!'
He sprang forward and snatched the black staff out of Coin's hands and swung it up in the air to smash it against the wall.
Carding went rigid as the staff struck back. Then his skin began to blister ...
Most of the wizards managed to turn their heads away. A few -and there are always a few like that watched in obscene fascination.
Coin watched, too. His eyes widened in wonder. One hand went to his mouth. He tried to back away. He couldn't.
'They're cumulus.'
'Marvellous,' said Nijel weakly.
WEIGHT DOESN'T COME INTO IT. MY STEED HAS CARRIED ARMIES. MY STEED HAS CARRIED CITIES. YEA, HE HATH CARRIED ALL THINGS IN THEIR DUE TIME, said Death. BUT HE'S NOT GOING TO CARRY YOU THREE.
'Why not?'
IT'S A MATTER OF THE LOOK OF THE THING.
'It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it,' said War testily, 'the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse.'
'Perhaps you could ask them to wait for us?' said Pestilence, his voice sounding like something dripping out of the bottom of a coffin.
I HAVE THINGS TO ATTEND TO, said Death. He made a little clicking noise with his teeth. I'M SURE YOU'LL MANAGE. YOU NORMALLY DO.
War watched the retreating horse.
'Sometimes he really gets on my nerves. Why is he always so keen to have the last word?' he said.
'Force of habit, l suppose.'
They turned back to the tavern. Neither spoke for some time, and then War said, 'Where's Famine?'
'Went to find the kitchen.'
'Oh.' War scuffed one armoured foot in the dust, and thought about the distance to Ankh. It was a very hot afternoon. The Apocralypse could jolly well wait.
'One for the road?' he suggested.
'Should we?' said Pestilence, doubtfully. 'I thought we were expected. l mean, l wouldn't like to disappoint people.'
'We've got time for a quick one, I'm sure,' War insisted. 'Pub clocks are never right. We've got bags of time. All the time in the world.'
Carding slumped forward and thudded on the shining white floor. The staff rolled out of his hands and upended itself.
Coin prodded the limp body with his foot.
'I did warn him,' he said. 'I told him what would happen if he touched it again. What did he mean, them?'
There was an outbreak of coughing and a considerable inspection of fingernails.
'What did he mean?' Coin demanded.
Ovin Hakardly, lecturer in Lore, once again found that the wizards around him were parting like morning mist. Without moving he appeared to have stepped forward. His eyes swivelled backwards and forwards like trapped animals.
'Er,' he said. He waved his thin hands vaguely. 'The world, you see, that is, the reality in which we live, in fact, it can be thought of as, in a manner of speaking, a rubber sheet.' He hesitated, aware that the sentence was not going to appear in anyone's book of quotable quotes.
'In that,' he added hurriedly, 'it is distorted, uh, distended by the presence of magic in any degree and, if I may make a point here, too much magical potentiality, if foregathered in one spot, forces our reality, um, downwards, although of course one should not take the term literally (because in no sense do I seek to suggest a physical dimension) and it has been postulated that a sufficient exercise of magic can, shall we say, um, break through the actuality at its lowest point and offer, perhaps, a pathway to the inhabitants or, if I may use a more correct term, denizens of the lower plane (which is called by the loose-tongued the Dungeon Dimensions) who, because perhaps of the difference in energy levels, are naturally attracted to the brightness of this world. Our world.'
There was the typical long pause which usually followed Hakardly's speeches, while everybody mentally inserted commas and stitched the fractured clauses together.
Coin's lips moved silently for a while. 'Do you mean magic attracts these creatures?' he said eventually.
His voice was quite different now. It lacked its former edge. The staff hung in the air above the prone body of Carding, rotating slowly. The eyes of every wizard in the place were on it.
'So it appears,' said Hakardly. 'Students of such things say their presence is heralded by a coarse susurration.'
Coin looked uncertain.
'They buzz,' said one of the other wizards helpfully.
The boy knelt down and peered closely at Carding.
'He's very still,' he said cautiously. 'Is anything bad happening to him?'
'It may be,' said Hakardly, guardedly. 'He's dead.'
'I wish he wasn't.'
'It is a view, I suspect, which he shares.'
'But I can help him,' said Coin. He held out his hands and the staff glided into them. If it had a face, it would have smirked.
When he spoke next his voice once again had the cold distant tones of someone speaking in a steel room.
'If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize,' he said.
'Sorry?' said Hakardly. 'You've lost me there.'
Coin turned on his heel and strode back to his chair.
'We can fear nothing,' he said, and it sounded more like a command. 'What of these Dungeon Dimensions? If they should trouble us, away with them! A true wizard will fear nothing! Nothing!'
He jerked to his feet again and strode to the simulacrum of the world. The image was perfect in every detail, down to a ghost of Great A'Tuin paddling slowly through the interstellar deeps a few inches above the floor.
Coin waved his hand through it disdainfully.
'Ours is a world of magic,' he said. 'And what can be found in it that can stand against us?'
Hakardly thought that something was expected of him.
'Absolutely no-one,' he said. 'Except for the gods, of course.'
There was a dead silence.
'The gods?' said Coin quietly.
'Well, yes. Certainly. We don't challenge the gods. They do their job, we do ours. No sense in-’
'Who rules the Disc? Wizards or gods?'
Hakardly thought quickly.
'Oh, wizards. Of course. But, as it were, under the gods.'
When one accidentally puts one boot in a swamp it is quite unpleasant. But not as unpleasant as pushing down with the other boot and hearing that, too, disappear with a soft sucking noise. Hakardly pressed on.
'You see, wizardry is more-’
'Are we not more powerful than the gods, then?' said Coin.
Some of the wizards at the back of the crowd began to shuffle their feet.
'Well. Yes and no,' said Hakardly, up to his knees in it now.
The truth was that wizards tended to be somewhat nervous about the gods. The beings who dwelt on Cori Celesti had never made their feelings plain on the subject of ceremonial magic, which after all had a certain godness about it, and wizards tended to avoid the whole subject. The trouble with gods was that if they didn't like something they didn't just drop hints, so common sense suggested that it was unwise to put the gods in a position where they had to decide.
'There seems to be some uncertainty?' said Coin.
'If I may counsel-’ Hakardly began.
Coin waved a hand. The walls vanished. The wizards stood at the top of the tower of sourcery, and as one man their eyes turned to the distant pinnacle of Cori Celesti, home of the gods.
'When you've beaten everyone else, there's only the gods left to fight,' said Coin. 'Have any of you seen the gods?'
There was a chorus of hesitant denials.
'I will show them to you.'
'You've got room for another one in there, old son,' said War.
Pestilence swayed unsteadily. 'I'm sure we should be getting along,' he muttered, without much conviction.
'Oh, go on.'
'Just a half, then. And then we really must be going.'
War slapped him on the back, and glared at Famine.
'And wed better have another fifteen bags of peanuts,' he added.
'Oook,' the Librarian concluded.
'Oh,' said Rincewind. 'It's the staff that's the problem, then.'
'Oook.'
'Hasn't anyone tried to take it away from him?'
'Oook.'
'What happened to them, then?'
'Eeek.'
Rincewind groaned.
The Librarian had put his candle out because the presence of the naked flame was unsettling the books, but now that Rincewind had grown accustomed to the dark, he realised it wasn't dark at all. The soft octarine glow from the books filled the inside of the tower with something that, while it wasn't exactly light, was a blackness you could see by. Now and again the ruffle of stiff pages floated down from the gloom.
'So, basically, there's no way our magic could defeat him, isn't that right?'
The Librarian cooked disconsolate agreement and continued to spin around gently on his bottom.
'Pretty pointless, then. It may have struck you that I am not exactly gifted in the magical department? I mean, any duel is going to go on the lines of "Hallo, I'm Rincewind" closely followed by bazaam!'
'Oook.'
'Basically, what you're saying is that I'm on my own.'
'Oook.'
'Thanks.'
By their own faint glow Rincewind regarded the books that had stacked themselves around the inner walls of the ancient tower.
He sighed, and marched briskly to the door, but slowed down noticeably as he reached it.
'I'll be off, then,' he said.
'Oook.'
'To face who knows what dreadful perils,' Rincewind added. 'To lay down my life in the service of mankind-’
'Eeek.'
'All right, bipeds-’
'Woof.'
'— and quadrapeds, all right.' He glanced at the Patrician's jamjar, a beaten man.
'And lizards,' he added. 'Can I go now?'
A gale was howling down out of a clear sky as Rincewind toiled towards the tower of sourcery. Its high white doors were shut so tightly it was barely possible to see their outline in the milky surface of the stone.
He hammered on it for a bit, but nothing much happened. The doors seemed to absorb the sound.
'Fine thing,' he muttered to himself, and remembered the carpet. It was lying where he had left it, which was another sign that Ankh had changed. In the thieving days before the sourcerer nothing stayed for long where you left it. Nothing printable, anyway.
He rolled it out on the cobbles so that the golden dragons writhed against the blue ground, unless of course the blue dragons were flying against a golden sky.
He sat down.
He stood up.
He sat down again and hitched up his robe and, with some effort, unrolled one of his socks. Then he replaced his boot and wandered around for a bit until he found, among the rubble, a half-brick. He inserted the half-brick into the sock and gave the sock a few thoughtful swings.
Rincewind had grown up in Morpork. What a Morpork citizen liked to have on his side in a fight was odds of about twenty to one, but failing that a sockful of half-brick and a dark alley to lurk in was generally considered a better bet than any two magic swords you cared to name.
He sat down again.
'Up,' he commanded.
The carpet did not respond. Rincewind peered at the pattern, then lifted a corner of the carpet and tried to make out if the underside was any better.
'All right,' he conceded, 'down. Very, very carefully. Down.'
'Sheep,' slurred War. 'It was sheep.' His helmeted head hit the bar with a clang. He raised it again. 'Sheep.'
'Nonono,' said Famine, raising a thin finger unsteadily. 'Some other domess ... dummist ... tame animal. Like pig. Heifer. Kitten? Like that. Not sheep.'
'Bees,' said Pestilence, and slid gently out of his seat.
'O-kay,' said War, ignoring him, 'right. Once again, then. From the top.' He rapped the side of his glass for the note.
'We are poor little ... unidentified domesticated animals ... that have lost our way ...' he quavered.
'Baabaabaa,' muttered Pestilence, from the floor.
War shook his head. 'It isn't the same, you know,' he said. 'Not without him. He used to come in beautifully on the bass.'
'Baabaabaa,' Pestilence repeated.
'Oh, shut up,' said War, and reached uncertainly for a bottle.
The gale buffeted the top of the tower, a hot, unpleasant wind that whispered with strange voices and rubbed the skin like fine sandpaper.
In the centre of it Coin stood with the staff over his head. As dust filled the air the wizards saw the lines of magic force pouring from it.
They curved up to form a vast bubble that expanded until it must have been larger than the city. And shapes appeared in it. They were shifting and indistinct, wavering horribly like visions in a distorting mirror, no more substantial than smoke rings or pictures in the clouds, but they were dreadfully familiar.
There, for a moment, was the fanged snout of Offler. There, clear for an instant in the writhing storm, was Blind lo, chief of the gods, with his orbiting eyes.
Coin muttered soundlessly and the bubble began to contract. It bulged and jerked obscenely as the things inside fought to get out, but they could not stop the contraction.
Now it was bigger than the University grounds.
Now it was taller than the tower.
Now it was twice the height of a man, and smoke grey.
Now it was an iridescent pearl, the size of ... well, the size of a large pearl.
The gale had gone, replaced by a heavy, silent calm. The very air groaned with the strain. Most of the wizards were flat on the floor, pressed there by the unleashed forces that thickened the air and deadened sound like a universe of feathers, but every one of them could hear his own heart beating loud enough to smash the tower.
'Look at me,' Coin commanded.
They turned their eyes upwards. There was no way they could disobey.
He held the glistening thing in one hand. The other held the staff, which had smoke pouring from its ends.
'The gods,' he said. 'Imprisoned in a thought. And perhaps they were never more than a dream.'
His voice become older, deeper. 'Wizards of Unseen University,' it said, 'have I not given you absolute dominion?'
Behind. them the carpet rose slowly over the side of the tower, with Rincewind trying hard to keep his balance. His eyes were wide with the sort of terror that comes naturally to anyone standing on a few threads and several hundred feet of empty air.
He lurched off the hovering thing and on to the tower, swinging the loaded sock around his head in wide, dangerous sweeps.
Coin saw him reflected in the astonished stares of the assembled wizards. He turned carefully and watched the wizard stagger erratically towards him.
'Who are you?' he said.
'I have come,' said Rincewind thickly, 'to challenge the sourcerer. Which one is he?'
He surveyed the prostrate wizardry, hefting the half-brick in one hand.
Hakardly risked a glance upwards and made frantic eyebrow movements at Rincewind who, even at the best of times, wasn't much good at interpreting non-verbal communication. This wasn't the best of times.
'With a sock?' said Coin. 'What good is a sock?'
The arm holding the staff rose. Coin looked down at it in mild astonishment.
'No, stop,' he said. 'I want to talk to this man.' He stared at Rincewind, who was swaying back and forth under the influence of sleeplessness, horror and the after-effects of an adrenaline overdose.
'Is it magical?' he said, curiously. 'Perhaps it is the sock of an Archchancellor? A sock of force?'
Rincewind focused on it.
'I don't think so,' he said. 'I think I bought it in a shop or something. Um. I've got another one somewhere.'
'But in the end it has something heavy?'
'Um. Yes,' said Rincewind. He added, 'It's a half-brick.'
'But it has great power.'
'Er. You can hold things up with it. If you had another one, you’d have a brick.' Rincewind spoke slowly. He was assimilating the situation by a kind of awful osmosis, and watching the staff turn ominously in the boy's hand.
'So. It is a brick of ordinariness, within a sock. The whole becoming a weapon.'
'Um. Yes.'
'How does it work?'
'Um. You swing it, and then you. Hit something with it. Or sometimes the back of your hand, sometimes.'
'And then perhaps it destroys a whole city?’ said Coin.
Rincewind stared into Coin's golden eyes, and then at his sock. He had pulled it on and off several times a year for years. It had darns he'd grown to know and lo-well, know. Some of them had whole families of darns of their own. There were a number of descriptions that could be applied to the sock, but slayer-of-cities wasn't among them.
'Not really,' he said at last. 'It sort of kills people but leaves buildings standing.'
Rincewind's mind was operating at the speed of continental drift. Parts of it were telling him that he was confronting the sourcerer, but they were in direct conflict with other parts. Rincewind had heard quite a lot about the power of the sourcerer, the staff of the sourcerer, the wickedness of the sourcerer and so on. The only thing no-one had mentioned was the age of the sourcerer.
He glanced towards the staff.
'And what does that do?' he said slowly.
And the staff said, You must kill this man.
The wizards, who had been cautiously struggling upright, flung themselves flat again.
The voice of the hat had been bad enough, but the voice of the staff was metallic and precise; it didn't sound as though it was offering advice but simply stating the way the future had to be. It sounded quite impossible to ignore.
Coin half-raised his arm, and hesitated.
'Why?' he said.
You do not disobey me.
'You don't have to,' said Rincewind hurriedly. 'It's only a thing.'
'I do not see why I should hurt him,' said Coin. 'He looks so harmless. Like an angry rabbit.'
He defies us.
'Not me,' said Rincewind, thrusting the arm with the sock behind his back and trying to ignore the bit about the rabbit.
'Why should I do everything you tell me?' said Coin to the staff. 'I always do everything you tell me, and it doesn't help people at all.'
People must fear you. Have I taught you nothing?
'But he looks so funny, He's got a sock,' said Coin.
He screamed, and his arm jerked oddly. Rincewind's hair stood on end.
You will do as you are commanded.
'I won't'.
You know what happens to boys who are bad.
There was a crackle and a smell of scorched flesh. Coin dropped to his knees.
'Here, hang on a minute-’ Rincewind began.
Coin opened his eyes. They were gold still, but flecked with brown.
Rincewind swung his sock around in a wide humming arc that connected with the staff halfway along its length. There was a brief explosion of brick dust and burnt wool and the staff spun out of the boy's hand. Wizards scattered as it tumbled end over end across the floor.
It reached the parapet, bounced upwards and shot over the edge.
But, instead of falling, it steadied itself in the air, spun in its own length and sped back again trailing octarine sparks and making a noise like a buzzsaw.
Rincewind pushed the stunned boy behind him, threw away the ravaged sock and whipped his hat off, flailing wildly as the staff bored towards him. It caught him on the side of the head, delivering a shock that almost welded his teeth together and toppled him like a thin and ragged tree.
The staff turned again in mid-air, glowing red-hot now, and swept back for another and quite definitely final run.
Rincewind struggled up on his elbows and watched in horrified fascination as it swooped through the chilly air which, for some reason he didn't understand, seemed to be full of snowflakes.
And became tinged with purple, blotched with blue. Time slowed and ground to a halt like an underwound phonograph.
Rincewind looked up at the tall black figure that had appeared a few feet away.
It was, of course, Death.
He turned his glowing eyesockets towards Rincewind and said, in a voice like the collapse of undersea chasms, GOOD AFTERNOON.
He turned away as if he had completed all necessary business for the time being, stared at the horizon for a while, and started to tap one foot idly. It sounded like a bagful of maracas.
'Er,' said Rincewind.
Death appeared to remember him. I'M SORRY? he said politely.
'I always wondered how it was going to be,' said Rincewind.
Death took an hourglass out from the mysterious folds of his ebon robes and peered at it.
DID YOU? he said, vaguely.
'I suppose I can't complain,' said Rincewind virtuously. 'I've had a good life. Well, quite good.' He hesitated. 'Well, not all that good. I suppose most people would call it pretty awful.' He considered it further. 'I would,' he added, half to himself.
WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, MAN?
Rincewind was nonplussed. 'Don't you make an appearance when a wizard is about to die?'
OF COURSE. AND I MUST SAY YOU PEOPLE ARE GIVING ME A BUSY DAY
'How do you manage to be in so many places at the same time?'
GOOD ORGANISATION.
Time returned. The staff, which had been hanging in the air a few feet away from Rincewind, started to scream forward again.
And there was a metallic thud as Coin caught it onehandedly in mid-flight.
The staff uttered a noise like a thousand fingernails dragging across glass. It thrashed wildly up and down, flailing at the arm that held it, and bloomed into evil green flame along its entire length.
So. At the last, you fail me.
Coin groaned but held on as the metal under his fingertips went red, then white.
He thrust the arm out in front of him, and the force streaming from the staff roared past him and drew sparks from his hair and whipped his robe up into weird and unpleasant shapes. He screamed and whirled the staff round and smashed it on the parapet, leaving a long bubbling line in the stone.
Then he threw it away. It clattered against the stones and rolled to a halt, wizards scattering out of its path.
Coin sagged to his knees, shaking.
'I don't like killing people,' he said. 'I'm sure it can't be right.'
'Hold on to that thought,' said Rincewind fervently.
'What happens to people after they're dead?' said Coin.
Rincewind glanced up at Death.
'I think this one's for you,' he said.
HE CANNOT SEE OR HEAR ME, said Death, UNTIL HE WANTS TO. There was a little clinking noise. The staff was rolling back towards Coin, who looked down at it in horror.
Pick me up.
'You don't have to,' said Rincewind again.
You cannot resist me. You cannot defeat yourself, said the staff.
Coin reached out very slowly, and picked it up.
Rincewind glanced at his sock. It was a stub of burnt wool, its brief career as a weapon of war having sent it beyond the help of any darning needle.
Now kill him.
Rincewind held his breath. The watching wizards held their breath. Even Death, who had nothing to hold but his scythe, held it tensely.
'No,' said Coin.
You know what happens to boys who are bad.
Rincewind saw the sourcerer's face go pale.
The staff's voice changed. Now it wheedled.
Without me, who would there be to tell you what to do?
'That is true,' said Coin slowly.
See what you have achieved.
Coin stared slowly around at the frightened faces.
'I am seeing,' he said.
I taught you everything I know.
'I am thinking,' said Coin, 'that you do not know enough.'
Ingrate! Who gave you your destiny?
'You did,' said the boy. He raised his head.
'I realise that I was wrong,' he added, quietly.
Good -
'I did not throw you far enough!'
Coin got to his feet in one movement and swung the staff over his head. He stood still as a statue, his hand lost in a ball of light that was the colour of molten copper. It turned green, ascended through shades of blue, hovered in the violet and then seared into pure octarine.
Rincewind shaded his eyes against the glare and saw Coin's hand, still whole, still gripping tight, with beads of molten metal glittering between his fingers.
He slithered away, and bumped into Hakardly. The old wizard was standing like a statue, with his mouth open.
'What'll happen?' said Rincewind.
'He'll never beat it,' said Hakardly hoarsely. 'It's his. It's as strong as him. He's got the power, but it knows how to channel it.'
'You mean they'll cancel each other out?'
'Hopefully.'
The battle was hidden in its own infernal glow. Then the floor began to tremble.
'They're drawing on everything magical,' said Hakardly. 'We'd better leave the tower.'
'Why?'
'I imagine it will vanish soon enough.'
And, indeed, the white flagstones around the glow looked as though they were unravelling and disappearing into it.
Rincewind hesitated.
'Aren't we going to help him?' he said.
Hakardly stared at him, and then at the iridescent tableau. His mouth opened and shut once or twice.