Not much. It didn’t need much. Abrim’s mind was attempting to balance and channel huge forces, and it needed hardly any pressure to topple it from its position.
Abrim extended his hands to blast the Luggage, gave the merest beginnings of a scream, and imploded.
The wizards around him thought they saw him grow impossibly small in a fraction of a second and vanish, leaving a black after-image …
The more intelligent of them started to run …
And the magic he had been controlling surged back out and flooded free in one great, randomised burst that blew the hat to bits, took out the entire lower levels of the tower and quite a large part of what remained of the city.
So many wizards in Ankh had been concentrating on the hall that the sympathetic resonance blew them across the room. Carding ended up on his back, his hat over his eyes.
They hauled him out and dusted him off and carried him to Coin and the staff, amid cheers – although some of the older wizards forbore to cheer. But he didn’t seem to pay any attention.
He stared sightlessly down at the boy, and then slowly raised his hands to his ears.
‘Can’t you hear them?’ he said.
The wizards fell silent. Carding still had power, and the tone of his voice would have quelled a thunderstorm.
Coin’s eyes glowed.
‘I hear nothing,’ he said.
Carding turned to the rest of the wizards.
‘Can’t you hear them?’
They shook their heads. One of them said, ‘Hear what, brother?’
Carding smiled, and it was a wide, mad smile. Even Coin took a step backwards.
‘You’ll hear them soon enough,’ he said. ‘You’ve made a beacon. You’ll all hear them. But you won’t hear them for long.’ He pushed aside the younger wizards who were holding his arms and advanced on Coin.
‘You’re pouring sourcery into the world and other things are coming with it,’ he said. ‘Others have given them a pathway but you’ve given them an avenue!’
He sprang forward and snatched the black staff out of Coin’s hands and swung it up in the air to smash it against the wall.
Carding went rigid as the staff struck back. Then his skin began to blister …
Most of the wizards managed to turn their heads away. A few -and there are always a few like that watched in obscene fascination.
Coin watched, too. His eyes widened in wonder. One hand went to his mouth. He tried to back away. He couldn’t.
‘They’re cumulus.’
‘Marvellous,’ said Nijel weakly.
WEIGHT DOESN’T COME INTO IT. MY STEED HAS CARRIED ARMIES. MY STEED HAS CARRIED CITIES. YEA, HE HATH CARRIED ALL THINGS IN THEIR DUE TIME, said Death. BUT HE’S NOT GOING TO CARRY YOU THREE.
‘Why not?’
IT’S A MATTER OF THE LOOK OF THE THING.
‘It’s going to look pretty good, then, isn’t it,’ said War testily, ‘the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse.’
‘Perhaps you could ask them to wait for us?’ said Pestilence, his voice sounding like something dripping out of the bottom of a coffin.
I HAVE THINGS TO ATTEND TO, said Death. He made a little clicking noise with his teeth. I’M SURE YOU’LL MANAGE. YOU NORMALLY DO.
War watched the retreating horse.
‘Sometimes he really gets on my nerves. Why is he always so keen to have the last word?’ he said.
‘Force of habit, l suppose.’
They turned back to the tavern. Neither spoke for some time, and then War said, ‘Where’s Famine?’
‘Went to find the kitchen.’
‘Oh.’ War scuffed one armoured foot in the dust, and thought about the distance to Ankh. It was a very hot afternoon. The Apocralypse could jolly well wait.
‘One for the road?’ he suggested.
‘Should we?’ said Pestilence, doubtfully. ‘I thought we were expected. l mean, l wouldn’t like to disappoint people.’
‘We’ve got time for a quick one, I’m sure,’ War insisted. ‘Pub clocks are never right. We’ve got bags of time. All the time in the world.’
Carding slumped forward and thudded on the shining white floor. The staff rolled out of his hands and upended itself.
Coin prodded the limp body with his foot.
‘I did warn him,’ he said. ‘I told him what would happen if he touched it again. What did he mean, them?’
There was an outbreak of coughing and a considerable inspection of fingernails.
‘What did he mean?’ Coin demanded.
Ovin Hakardly, lecturer in Lore, once again found that the wizards around him were parting like morning mist. Without moving he appeared to have stepped forward. His eyes swivelled backwards and forwards like trapped animals.
‘Er,’ he said. He waved his thin hands vaguely. ‘The world, you see, that is, the reality in which we live, in fact, it can be thought of as, in a manner of speaking, a rubber sheet.’ He hesitated, aware that the sentence was not going to appear in anyone’s book of quotable quotes.
‘In that,’ he added hurriedly, ‘it is distorted, uh, distended by the presence of magic in any degree and, if I may make a point here, too much magical potentiality, if foregathered in one spot, forces our reality, um, downwards, although of course one should not take the term literally (because in no sense do I seek to suggest a physical dimension) and it has been postulated that a sufficient exercise of magic can, shall we say, um, break through the actuality at its lowest point and offer, perhaps, a pathway to the inhabitants or, if I may use a more correct term, denizens of the lower plane (which is called by the loose-tongued the Dungeon Dimensions) who, because perhaps of the difference in energy levels, are naturally attracted to the brightness of this world. Our world.’
There was the typical long pause which usually followed Hakardly’s speeches, while everybody mentally inserted commas and stitched the fractured clauses together.
Coin’s lips moved silently for a while. ‘Do you mean magic attracts these creatures?’ he said eventually.
His voice was quite different now. It lacked its former edge. The staff hung in the air above the prone body of Carding, rotating slowly. The eyes of every wizard in the place were on it.
‘So it appears,’ said Hakardly. ‘Students of such things say their presence is heralded by a coarse susurration.’
Coin looked uncertain.
‘They buzz,’ said one of the other wizards helpfully.
The boy knelt down and peered closely at Carding.
‘He’s very still,’ he said cautiously. ‘Is anything bad happening to him?’
‘It may be,’ said Hakardly, guardedly. ‘He’s dead.’
‘I wish he wasn’t.’
‘It is a view, I suspect, which he shares.’
‘But I can help him,’ said Coin. He held out his hands and the staff glided into them. If it had a face, it would have smirked.
When he spoke next his voice once again had the cold distant tones of someone speaking in a steel room.
‘If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’ said Hakardly. ‘You’ve lost me there.’
Coin turned on his heel and strode back to his chair.
‘We can fear nothing,’ he said, and it sounded more like a command. ‘What of these Dungeon Dimensions? If they should trouble us, away with them! A true wizard will fear nothing! Nothing!’
He jerked to his feet again and strode to the simulacrum of the world. The image was perfect in every detail, down to a ghost of Great A’Tuin paddling slowly through the interstellar deeps a few inches above the floor.
Coin waved his hand through it disdainfully.
‘Ours is a world of magic,’ he said. ‘And what can be found in it that can stand against us?’
Hakardly thought that something was expected of him.
‘Absolutely no-one,’ he said. ‘Except for the gods, of course.’
There was a dead silence.
‘The gods?’ said Coin quietly.
‘Well, yes. Certainly. We don’t challenge the gods. They do their job, we do ours. No sense in-’
‘Who rules the Disc? Wizards or gods?’
Hakardly thought quickly.
‘Oh, wizards. Of course. But, as it were, under the gods.’
When one accidentally puts one boot in a swamp it is quite unpleasant. But not as unpleasant as pushing down with the other boot and hearing that, too, disappear with a soft sucking noise. Hakardly pressed on.
‘You see, wizardry is more-’
‘Are we not more powerful than the gods, then?’ said Coin.
Some of the wizards at the back of the crowd began to shuffle their feet.
‘Well. Yes and no,’ said Hakardly, up to his knees in it now.
The truth was that wizards tended to be somewhat nervous about the gods. The beings who dwelt on Cori Celesti had never made their feelings plain on the subject of ceremonial magic, which after all had a certain godness about it, and wizards tended to avoid the whole subject. The trouble with gods was that if they didn’t like something they didn’t just drop hints, so common sense suggested that it was unwise to put the gods in a position where they had to decide.