Sourcery

Speltershuddered. In his heart of hearts an i

Terror seized him as he felt his vocal chords twang to attention and prepare, despite all his efforts, to disagree.

The staff was trying to find him. He could feel it searching for him. It would vanish him, just like poor old Billias. He clamped his jaws together, but it wouldn't work. He felt his chest heave. His jaw creaked.

Carding, shifting uneasily, stood on his foot. Spelter yelped.

'Sorry', said Carding.

'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 splashing 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 draughty, 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 cocked 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 cock­roaches.

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?'

'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.[13] It was strangely reassuring.

'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 passages 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 glasses, 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 passage 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 it?' he whispered.

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

Rincewind stood and gazed upwards, the crowds of AI 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.

13

No-one ever had the courage to ask him what he did there.