Without hesitation, Rincewind took a step backwards.
‘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 Sconner, but there is something in the air tonight that suggests that it is not worth committing his name to memory. The air is dark and heavy and full of ghosts.
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 Sconner sharply, ‘and the only dangerous things in here are us. Isn’t that right, boys?’
There was a chorus of vague murmurs. They were all in awe of Sconner, who was rumoured to do positive-thinking exercises.
‘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 Sconner. He hesitated. The darkness seemed to suck at the sound of his voice. It packed the air like feathers.
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 Sconner was a little surprised.
‘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 Sconner, brightly, ‘who would like the honour of setting the fire?’
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 Sconner, with some satisfaction. ‘Now, has everyone got their matches as instructed? Magical fire won’t work, not on these books, so I want everyone to
‘Something moved up there,’ said the smallest wizard.
Sconner blinked.
‘What?’
‘Something moved up by the dome,’ said the wizard, adding by way of explanation, ‘I saw it.’
Sconner squinted upwards into the bewildering shadows, and decided to exert a bit of authority.
‘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 Sconner.
‘I saw someth-’
‘You don’t know!’ repeated Sconner, ‘You’re just seeing shadows, just trying to undermine my authority, isn’t that it?’ Sconner hesitated, and his eyes glazed momentarily. ‘I am calm,’ he intoned, ‘I am totally in control. I will not let ‘
‘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, Sconner-’
‘And that goes for you too!’ Sconner pulled himself to his full, bristling height and flourished the matches.
‘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 Sconner’s head by the ears was a screaming nightmare with its lips curled back to reveal long yellow fangs.
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.
Eventually there was nothing but silence, but it was that particularly massive silence created by something moving very stealthily, as it might be, in search of something else. The smallest wizard ate the tip of his hat out of sheer terror.
The silent mover grabbed him by the leg and pulled him gently but firmly out into the open, where he gibbered a bit with his eyes shut and then, when ghastly teeth failed to meet in his throat, ventured a quick glance.
The Librarian picked him up by the scruff of his neck and dangled him reflectively a foot off the ground, just out of reach of a small and elderly wire-haired terrier who was trying to remember how to bite people’s ankles.
‘Er-! said the wizard, and was then thrown in an almost flat trajectory through the broken doorway, where his fall was broken by the floor.
After a while a shadow next to him said, ‘Well, that’s it, then. Anyone seen that daft bastard Sconner?’
And a shadow on the other side of him said, ‘I think my neck’s broken.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘That daft bastard,’ said the shadow, nastily.
‘Oh. Sorry, Sconner.’
Sconner stood up, his whole body now outlined in magical aura. He was trembling with rage as he raised his hands.
‘I’ll show that wretched throwback to respect his evolutionary superiors-’ he snarled.
‘Get him, lads!’
And Sconner was borne to the flagstones again under the weight of all five wizards.
‘Sorry, but-’
‘- you know that if you use-’
`- magic near the Library, with all the magic that’s in there-’
‘- get one thing wrong and it’s a critical Mass and then -‘
‘BANG! Goodnight, world!’
Sconner growled. The wizards sitting on him decided that getting up was not the wisest thing they could do at this point.
Eventually he said, ‘Right. You’re right. Thank you. It was wrong of me to lose my temper like that. Clouded my judgement. Essential to be dispassionate. You’re absolutely right. Thank you. Get off.