Sourcery

Without hesitation,Rincewind took a stepbackwards.

'Over to you, friend,' he said.

'Right!'

Nijel drew his sword and held it out in front of him, his arms trembling at the effort.

There were a few seconds of total silence as everyone waited to see what would happen next. And then Nijel uttered the battle cry that Rincewind would never quite forget to the end of his life.

'Erm,’ he said, 'excuse me...'

'It seems a shame,' said a small wizard.

The others didn't speak. It was a shame, and there wasn't a man among them who couldn't hear the hot whine of guilt all down their backbones. But, as so often happens by that strange alchemy of the soul, the guilt made them arrogant and reckless.

'Just shut up, will you?' said the temporary leader. He was called Benado Sco

The Unseen University isn't empty, there just aren't any people there.

But of course the six wizards sent to burn down the Library aren't afraid of ghosts, because they're so charged with magic that they practically buzz as they walk, they're wearing robes more splendid than any Archchancellor has worn, their pointy hats are more pointed than any hats have hitherto been, and the reason they're standing so close together is entirely coin­cidental.

'It's awfully dark in here,' said the smallest of the wizards.

'It's midnight,' said Sco

There was a chorus of vague murmurs. They were all in awe of Sco

'And we're not scared of a few old books, are we, lads?' He glowered at the smallest wizard. 'You're not, are you?' he added sharply.

'Me? Oh. No. Of course not. They're just paper, like he said,' said the wizard quickly.

'Well, then.'

'There's ninety thousand of them, mind,' said another wizard.

'I always heard there was no end to 'em,' said another. 'It's all down to dimensions, I heard, like what we see is only the tip of the whatever, you know, the thing that is mostly underwater-’

'Hippopotamus?'

Alligator?'

'Ocean?'

'Look, just shut up, all of you!' shouted Sco

He pulled himself together a bit.

'Right then,' he said, and turned towards the forbidding doors of the Library.

He raised his hands, made a few complicated gestures in which his fingers, in some eye-watering way, appeared to pass through each other, and shattered the doors into sawdust.

The waves of silence poured back again, strangling the sound of falling woodchips.

There was no doubt that the doors were smashed. Four forlorn hinges hung trembling from the frame, and a litter of broken benches and shelves lay in the wreckage. Even Sco

'There,' he said. 'It's as easy as that. You see? Nothing happened to me. Right?'

There was a shuffling of curly-toed boots. The darkness beyond the doorway was limned with the indistinct, eye-­aching glow of thaumaturgic radiation as possibility particles exceeded the speed of reality in a strong magical field.

'Now then,' said Sco

Ten silent seconds later he said, 'In that case I will do it myself. Honestly, I might as well be talking to the wall.'

He strode through the doorway and hurried across the floor to the little patch of starlight that lanced down from the glass dome high above the centre of the Library (although, of course, there has always been considerable debate about the precise geography of the place; heavy concentrations of magic distort time and space, and it is possible that the Library doesn't even have an edge, never mind a centre).

He stretched out his arms.

'There. See? Absolutely nothing has happened. Now come on in.'

The other wizards did so, with great reluctance and a tendency to duck as they passed through the ravished arch.

'Okay,' said Sco

'Something moved up there,' said the smallest wizard.

Sco

'What?'

'Something moved up by the dome,' said the wizard, adding by way of explanation, 'I saw it.'

Sco

'Nonsense,' he said briskly. He pulled out a bundle of foul­-smelling yellow matches, and said, 'Now, I want you all to pile

'I did see it, you know,' said the small wizard, sulkily.

'All right, what did you see?'

'Well, I'm not exactly-’

'You don't know, do you?' snapped Sco

'I saw someth-’

'You don't know!' repeated Sco

'It was-’

'Listen, shortarse, you can just jolly well shut up, all right?'

One of the other wizards, who had been staring upwards to conceal his embarrassment, gave a strangled little cough.

'Er, Sco

'And that goes for you too!' Sco

'As I was saying,' he said, 'I want you to light the matches and -I suppose I'll have to show you how to light matches, for the benefit of shortarse there-and I'm not out of the window, you know. Good grief. Look at me. You take a match-’

He lit a match, the darkness blossomed into a ball of sulphurous white light, and the Librarian dropped on him like the descent of Man.

They all knew the Librarian, in the same definite but diffused way that people know walls and floors and all the other minor but necessary scenery on the stage of life. If they recall him at all, it was as a sort of gentle mobile sigh, sitting under his desk repairing books, or knuckling his way among the shelves in search of secret smokers. Any wizard unwise enough to hazard a clandestine rollup wouldn't know anything about it until a soft leathery hand reached up and removed the offending homemade, but the Librarian never made a fuss, he just looked extremely hurt and sorrowful about the whole sad business and then ate it.

Whereas what was now attempting with considerable effort to unscrew Sco

The terrified wizards turned to run and found themselves bumping into bookshelves that had unaccountably blocked the aisles. The smallest wizard yelped and rolled under a table laden with atlases, and lay with his hands over his ears to block out the dreadful sounds as the remaining wizards tried to escape.