The Festival was due to start at noon. Dibbler had planned to put on a lot of the small, bad groups first that is to say, all of them – and finish with The Band. So there was no reason to worry if they weren’t here right now.
But they weren’t here right now. Dibbler was worried.
A tiny dark figure quartered the shores of the Ankh, moving so fast as to be a blur. It zigzagged desperately back and forth, snuffling.
People didn’t see it. But they saw the rats. Black, brown and grey, they were leaving the godowns and wharfs by the river, running over one another’s backs in a determined attempt to get as far away as possible.
A haystack heaved, and gave birth to a Glod.
He rolled out on to the ground, and groaned. Fine rain was drifting over the landscape. Then he staggered upright, looked around at the rolling fields, and disappeared behind a hedge for the moment.
He trotted back a few seconds later, explored the haystack for a while until he found a part that was lumpier than normal, and kicked it repeatedly with his metal-topped boot.
‘Ow!’
‘C flat,’ said Glod. ‘Good morning, Cliff. Hello, world! I don’t think I can stand life in the fast leyline, you know – the cabbages, the bad beer, all those rats pestering you all the time-‘
Cliff crawled out.
‘I must have had some bad ammonium chloride last night,’ he said. ‘Is the top of my head still on?’
‘Yes.’
‘Pity.’
They hauled Asphalt out by his boots and brought him round by pounding him repeatedly.
‘You’re our road manager,’ said Glod. ‘You’re supposed to see no harm comes to us.’
‘Well, I’m doing that, ain’t I?’ Asphalt muttered. ‘I’m not hitting you, Mr Glod. Where’s Buddy?’
The three circled the haystack, prodding at bulges which turned out to be damp hay.
They found him on a small rise in the ground, not very far away. A few holly bushes grew there, carved into curves by the wind. He was sitting under one, guitar on his knees, rain plastering his hair to his face.
He was asleep, and soaking wet.
On his lap, the guitar played raindrops.
‘He’s weird,’ said Asphalt.
‘No,’ said Glod. ‘He’s wound up by some strange compulsion which leads him through dark pathways.’
‘Yeah. Weird.’
The rain was slackening off. Cliff glanced at the sky.
‘Sun’s high,’ he said.
‘Oh, no!’ said Asphalt. ‘How long were you asleep?’
‘Same as I am awake,’ said Cliff.
‘It’s almost noon. Where did I leave the horses? Has anyone seen the cart? Someone wake him up!’
A few minutes later they were back on the road.
‘An’ you know what?’ said Cliff. ‘We left so quick last night I never did know if she turned up.’
‘What was her name?’ said Glod.
‘Dunno,’ said the troll.
‘Oh, that’s real love, that is,’ said Glod.
‘Ain’t you got any romance in your soul?’ said Cliff.
‘Eyes crossed in a crowded room?’ said Glod. ‘No, not really-‘
They were pushed aside as Buddy leaned forward.
‘Shut up,’ he said. The voice was low and contained no trace whatsoever of humour.
‘We were only joking,’ said Glod.
‘Don’t.’
Asphalt concentrated on the road, aware of the general lack of amiability.
‘I expect you’re looking forward to the Festival, eh?’ he said, after a while.
No-one replied.
‘I expect there’ll be big crowds,’ he said.
There was silence, except for the clatter of the hoofs and the rattle of the cart. They were in the hills now, where the road wound alongside a gorge. There wasn’t even a river down there, except in the wettest season. It was a gloomy area. Asphalt felt that it was getting gloomier.
‘I expect you’ll really have fun,’ he said, eventually.
‘Asphalt?’ said Glod.
‘Yes, Mr Glod?’
‘Watch the road, will you?’
The Archchancellor polished his staff as he walked along. It was a particularly good one, six feet long and quite magical. Not that he used magic very much. In his experience, anything that couldn’t be disposed of with a couple of whacks from six feet of oak was probably immune to magic as well.
‘Don’t you think we should have brought the senior wizards, sir?’ said Ponder, struggling to keep
up.
‘I’m afraid that taking them along in their present frame of mind would only make whatever happens-‘ Ridcully sought for a useful phrase, and settled for ‘happen worse. I’ve insisted they stay in college.’
‘How about Drongo and the others?’ said Ponder hopefully.
‘Would they be any good in the event of a thaumaturgical dimension rip of enormous proportions?’ said Ridcully. ‘I remember poor old Mr Hong. One minute he was dishing up an order of double cod and mushy peas, the next . . .’
‘Kaboom?’ said Ponder.
‘”Kaboom”?’ said Ridcully, forcing his way up the crowded street. ‘Not that I heard tell. More like “Aaaaerrrrscream-gristlegristle-gristle-crack” and a shower of fried food. Big Mad Adrian and his friends any good when the chips are down?’
‘Um. Probably not, Archchancellor.’
‘Correct. People shout and run about. That never did any good. A pocket full of decent spells and a well-charged staff will get you out of trouble nine times out of ten.’
‘Nine times out of ten?’
‘Correct.’
‘How many times have you had to rely on them, sir?’
‘Well . . . there was Mr Hong . . . that business with the Thing in the Bursar’s wardrobe . . . that dragon, you remember . . .’ Ridcully’s lips moved silently as he counted on his fingers. ‘Nine times, so far.’
‘It worked every time, sir?’
‘Absolutely! So there’s no need to worry. Gangway! Wizard comin’ through.’
The city gates were open. Glod leaned forward as the cart rumbled in.
‘Don’t go straight to the park,’ he said.
‘But we’re late,’ said Asphalt.
‘This won’t take long. Go to the Street of Cunning Artificers first.’
‘That’s right on the other side of the river!’
‘It’s important. We’ve got to pick up something.’
People flocked the streets. This wasn’t unusual, except that this time most of them were moving the same way.
‘And you get down in the back of the cart,’ said Glod to Buddy. ‘We don’t want young women trying to rip your clothes off, eh, Buddy . . . ?’
He turned. Buddy had gone to sleep again.
‘Speaking for myself-‘ Cliff began.
‘You’ve only got a loincloth,’ said Glod.
‘Well, they could grab it, couldn’t they?’
The cart threaded its way through the streets until it turned into Cunning Artificers.
It was a street of tiny shops. In this street you could have anything made, repaired, crafted, rebuilt, copied or forged. Furnaces glowed in every doorway; smelters smoked in every backyard. Makers of intricate clockwork eggs worked alongside armourers. Carpenters worked next door to men who carved ivory into tiny shapes so delicate that they used grasshoppers’ legs, cast in bronze, for saws. At least one in every four craftsmen was making tools to be used by the other three. Shops didn’t just abut, they overlapped; if a carpenter had a big table to make he relied on the goodwill of his neighbours to make space, so that he’d be working at one end of it while two jewellers and a potter were using the other end as a wench. There were shops where you could drop in to be measured in the morning and pick up a complete suit of chain mail with an extra pair of pants in the afternoon.
The cart stopped outside one small shop and Glod leapt down and went inside.
Asphalt heard the conversation:
‘Have you done it?’
‘Here you are, mister. Right as rain.’
‘Will it play? You know I said where you have to have spent a fortnight wrapped in a bullock hide behind a waterfall before you should touch one of these things.’
‘Listen, mister, for this kind of money it had me in the shower for five minutes with a chamois leather on me head. Don’t tell me that’s not good enough for folk music.’
There was a pleasant sound, which hung in the air for a moment before being lost in the busy din of the street.
‘We said twenty dollars, right?’
‘No, you said twenty dollars. I said twenty-five dollars.’
‘Just a minute, then.’
Glod came out, and nodded at Cliff.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Cough up.’
Cliff growled, but fumbled for a moment somewhere at the back of his mouth.
They heard the cunning artificer say, ‘What the hell’s that?’
‘A molar. Got to be worth at least-‘
‘It’ll do.’
Glod came out again with a sack, which he tucked under the seat.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Head for the park.’
They went in through one of the back gates. Or, at least, tried to. Two trolls barred their way. They had the glossy marble patina of Chrysoprase’s basic gang thugs. He didn’t have henchmen. Most trolls weren’t clever enough to hench.