Someone pounded across it and disappeared through the doorway of the library.
Modo looked at the marks and said, ‘Oh, dear.’
The wizards started breathing again.
‘Oh, my,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
‘Rave In . . .’ said the Senior Wrangler.
‘Now that’s what I call Music With Rocks In,’ sighed the Dean. He stepped forward with the rapt expression of a miser in a goldmine.
The candlelight glittered off black and silver. There was a lot of both.
‘Oh, my,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. It was like some kind of incantation.
‘I say, isn’t that my nose-hair mirror?’ said the Bursar, breaking the spell. ‘That’s my nose-hair mirror, I’m sure-‘
Except that while the black was black the silver wasn’t really silver. It was whatever mirrors and bits of shiny tin and tinsel and wire the Librarian had been able to scrounge and bend into shape . . .
‘-it’s got the little silver frame . . . why’s it on that two-wheeled cart? Two wheels, one after the other? Ridiculous. It’ll fall over, depend upon it. And where’s the horse going to go, may I ask?’
The Senior Wrangler tapped him gently on the shoulder.
‘Bursar? Word to the wizard, old chap.’
‘Yes? What is it?’
‘I think if you don’t stop talking this minute the Dean will kill you.’
There were two small cart-wheels, one behind the other, with a saddle in between them. In front of the saddle was a pipe with a complicated double curve in it, so that someone sitting in the saddle would be able to get a grip.
The rest was junk. Bones and tree branches and a jackdaw’s banquet of gewgaws. A horse’s skull was strapped over the front wheel, and feathers and beads hung from every point.
It was junk, but as it stood in the flickering glow it had a dark, organic quality – not exactly life, but something dynamic and disquieting and coiled and potent that was making the Dean vibrate on his feet. It radiated something that suggested that, just by existing and looking like it did, it was breaking at least nine laws and twenty-three guidelines.
‘Is he in love?’ said the Bursar.
‘Make it go!’ said the Dean. ‘It’s got to go! It’s meant to go!’
‘Yes, but what is it?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
‘It’s a masterpiece,’ said the Dean. ‘A triumph!’
‘Oook?’
‘Perhaps you have to push it along with your feet?’ whispered the Senior Wrangler.
The Dean shook his head in a preoccupied way.
‘We’re wizards, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘I expect we could make it go.’
He walked around the circle. The draught from his studded leather robe made the candle-flames waver and the shadows of the thing danced on the wall.
The Senior Wrangler bit his lip. ‘Not too certain about that,’ he said. ‘Looks like it’s got more than enough magic in it as it is. Is it . . . er. . . is it breathing or is that just my imagination?’
The Senior Wrangler spun around and waved a finger at the Librarian.
‘You built it?’ he barked.
The orang-utan shook his head.
‘Oook.’
‘What’d he say?’
‘He said he didn’t build it, he just put it together,’ said the Dean, without turning his head.
‘Ook.’
‘I’m going to sit on it,’ said the Dean.
The other wizards felt something draining out of their souls and sudden uncertainty sloshing into its place.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, old chap,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘You don’t know where it might take you.’
‘Don’t care,’ said the Dean. He still didn’t take his eyes off the thing.
‘I mean, it’s not of this world,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
‘I’ve been of this world for more than seventy years; said the Dean, ‘and it is extremely boring.’
He stepped into the circle and put his hand on the thing’s saddle.
It trembled.
EXCUSE ME.
The tall dark figure was suddenly there, in the doorway, and then in a few strides was in the circle.
A skeletal hand dropped on to the Dean’s shoulder and propelled him gently but unstoppably aside.
THANK YOU.
The figure vaulted into the saddle and reached out for the handlebars. It looked down at the thing it bestrode.
Some situations you had to get exactly right . . .
A finger pointed at the Dean.
I NEED YOUR CLOTHES.
The Dean backed away.
‘What?’
GIVE ME YOUR COAT.
The Dean, with great reluctance, shrugged off his leather robe and handed it over.
Death put it on. That was better . . .
NOW, LET ME SEE . . .
A blue glow flickered under his fingers and spread in jagged blue lines, forming a corona at the tip of every feather and bead.
‘We’re in a cellar!’ said the Dean. ‘Doesn’t that matter?’
Death gave him a look.
NO.
Modo straightened up, and paused to admire his rosebed, which contained the finest display of pure black roses he’d ever managed to produce. A high magical environment could be useful, sometimes. Their scent hung on the evening air like an encouraging word.
The flower-bed erupted.
Modo had a brief vision of flames and something
arcing into the sky before his vision was blotted out by a rain of beads, feathers and soft black petals.
He shook his head, and ambled off to fetch his shovel.
‘Sarge?’
‘Yes, Nobby?’
‘You know your teeth . . .’
‘What teeth?’
‘The teeth like in your mouth?’
‘Oh, right. Yep. What about ’em?’
‘How come they fit together at the back?’
There was a pause while Sergeant Colon prodded the recesses of his mouth with his tongue.
‘It uh ah-‘ he began, and untangled himself. ‘Interesting observation, Nobby.’
Nobby finished rolling a cigarette.
‘Reckon we should shut the gates, sarge?’
‘Might as well.’
With the exact minimum amount of effort they swung the huge gates together. It wasn’t much of a precaution. The keys had been lost a long time ago. Even the sign ‘Thank you for Nott Invading Our City’ was barely readable now.
‘I reckon we should-‘ Colon began, and then peered down the street.
‘What’s that light?’ he said. ‘And what’s making that noise?’
Blue light glittered on the buildings at the end of the long street.
‘Sounds like some kind of wild animal,’ said Corporal Nobbs.
The light resolved itself into two actinic blue lances.
Colon shaded his eyes.
‘Looks like some kind of . . . horse or something.’
‘It’s coming straight for the gates!’
The tortured roar bounced off the houses.
‘Nobby, I don’t think it’s gonna stop!’
Corporal Nobbs threw himself flat against the wall. Colon, slightly more aware of the responsibilities of rank, waved his hands vaguely at the approaching light.
‘Don’t do it! Don’t do it!’
And then picked himself up out of the mud.
Rose-petals, feathers and sparks fell softly around him.
In front of him, a hole in the gates sparkled blue around the edges.
‘That’s old oak, that is,’ he said vaguely. ‘I just hope they don’t make us pay for it out of our own money. Did you see who it was, Nobby? Nobby?’
Nobby edged carefully along the wall.
‘He . . . he had a rose in his teeth, sarge.’
‘Yes, but would you recognize him if you saw him again?’
Nobby swallowed.
‘If I didn’t, sarge,’ he said, ‘it’d have to be one hell of an identity parade.’
‘I don’t like this, Mr Glod! I don’t like this!’
‘Shut up and steer!’
‘But this isn’t the kind of road you’re supposed to go fast on!’
‘That’s all right! You can’t see where you’re going anyway!’
The cart went around a corner on two wheels. It was starting to snow, a weak, wet snow that melted as soon as it hit the ground.
‘But we’re back in the hills! That’s a drop down there! We’ll go over the side!’
‘You want Chrysoprase to catch us?’
‘Giddyup, yah!’
Buddy and Cliff clung to the sides of the cart as it rocked from side to side into the darkness.
‘Are they still behind us?’ Glod yelled.
‘Can’t see anything!’ shouted Cliff. ‘If you stopped the cart, maybe we could hear something?’
‘Yeah, but suppose we heard something really up close?’
‘Giddyup hiyah!’
‘OK, so how about if we throw the money out?’
‘FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS?’
Buddy looked over the edge of the cart. Darkness with a certain gulch-like quality, a certain suggestion of depth, was a few feet from the side of the road.
The guitar twanged gently to the rhythm of the wheels. He picked it up in one hand. Strange how it was never silent. You couldn’t silence it even by pressing on the strings heavily with both hands; he’d tried.
There was the harp beside it. The strings were absolutely silent.
‘This is daft!’ shouted Glod, from the front. ‘Slow down! You nearly had us over the side that time!’