Book 5 - Page 37 (1/2)

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 gla.s.s 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 ba.s.s.’

‘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 s.h.i.+fting 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 G.o.ds, with his...o...b..ting 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 G.o.ds,’ 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 a.s.sembled 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 a.s.similating 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.