The eight spells imprisoned in its pages led a secret and complex life of their own, and it was generally believed that —
Galder’s brow furrowed as he stared into the troubled room. Of course, there were only seven spells now. Some young idiot of a student wizard had stolen a look at the book one day and one of the spells had escaped and lodged in his mind. No-one had ever managed to get to the bottom of how it had happened. What was his name, now? Winswand?
Octarine and purple sparks glittered on the spine of the book. A thin curl of smoke was beginning to rise from the lectern, and the heavy metal clasps that held the book shut were definitely beginning to look strained.
‘Why are the spells so restless?’ said one of the younger wizards.
Galder shrugged. He couldn’t show it, of course, but he was beginning to be really worried. As a skilled eighth-level wizard he could see the half-imaginary shapes that appeared momentarily in the vibrating air, wheedling arid beckoning. In much the same way that gnats appear before a thunderstorm, really heavy build-ups of magic always attracted things from the chaotic Dungeon Dimensions – nasty Things, all misplaced organs and spittle, forever searching for any gap through which they might sidle into the world of men. [1]
This had to be stopped.
‘I shall need a volunteer,’ he said firmly.
There was a sudden silence. The only sound came from behind the door. It was the nasty little noise of metal parting under stress.
‘Very well, then,’ he said. ‘In that case I shall need some silver tweezers, about two pints of cat’s blood, a small whip and a chair —’
It is said that the opposite of noise is silence. This isn’t true. Silence is only the absence of noise. Silence would have been a terrible din compared to the sudden soft implosion of noiselessness that hit the wizards with the force of an exploding dandelion clock.
A thick column of spitting light sprang up from the book, hit the ceiling in a splash of flame, and disappeared.
Galder stared up at the hole, ignoring the smouldering patches in his beard. He pointed dramatically.
To the upper cellars!’ he cried, and bounded up the stone stairs. Slippers flapping and nightshirts billowing he other wizards followed him, falling over one another in their eagerness to be last.
Nevertheless, they were all in time to see the fireball of occult potentiality disappear into the ceiling of the room above.
‘Urgh,’ said the youngest wizard, and pointed to the floor.
The room had been part of the library until the magic had drifted through, violently reassembling the possibility particles of everything in its path. So it was reasonable to assume that the small purple newts had been part of the floor and the pineapple custard may once have been some books. And several of the wizards later swore that the small sad orang outang sitting in the middle of it all looked very much like the head librarian.
Galder stared upwards. ‘To the kitchen!’ he bellowed, wading through the custard to the next flight of stairs.
No-one ever found out what the great cast-iron cooking range had been turned into, because it had broken down a wall and made good its escape before the dishevelled party of wild-eyed mages burst into the room. The vegetable chef was found much later hiding in the soup cauldron, gibbering unhelpful things like The knuckles! The horrible knuckles!’
The last wisps of magic, now somewhat slowed, were disappearing into the ceiling.
‘To the Great Hall!’
The stairs were much wider here, and better lit. Panting and pineapple-flavoured, the fitter wizards got to the top by the time the fireball had reached the middle of the huge draughty chamber that was the University’s main hall. It hung motionless, except for the occasional small prominence that arched and spluttered across its surface.
Wizards smoke, as everyone knows. That probably explained the chorus of coffin coughs and sawtooth wheezes that erupted behind Galder as he stood appraising the situation and wondering if he dare look for somewhere to hide. He grabbed a frightened student.
‘Get me seers, farseers, scryers and withinlookmen!’ he barked. ‘I want this studied!’
Something was taking shape inside the fireball. Galder shielded his eyes and peered at the shape forming in front of him. There was no mistaking it. It was the universe.
He was quite sure of this, because he had a model of it in his study and it was generally agreed to be far more impressive than the real thing. Faced with the possibilities offered by seed pearls and silver filigree, the Creator had been at a complete loss.
But the tiny universe inside the fireball was uncannily – well, real. The only thing missing was colour. It was all in translucent misty white.
There was Great A’Tuin, and the four elephants, and the Disc itself. From this angle Galder couldn’t see the surface very well, but he knew with cold certainty that it would be absolutely accurately modelled. He could, though, just make out a miniature replica of Cori Celesti, upon whose utter peak the world’s quarrelsome and somewhat bourgeois gods lived in a palace of marble, alabaster and uncut moquette three-piece suites they had chosen to call Dunmanifestin. It was always a considerable annoyance to any Disc citizen with pretensions to culture that they were ruled by gods whose idea of an uplifting artistic experience was a musical doorbell.
The little embryo universe began to move slowly, tilting . . .
Galder tried to shout, but his voice refused to come out.
Gently, but with the unstoppable force of an explosion, the shape expanded.
He watched in horror, and then in astonishment, as it passed through him as lightly as a thought. He held out a hand and watched the pale ghosts of rock strata stream through his fingers in busy silence.
Great A’Tuin had already sunk peacefully below floor level, larger than a house.
The wizards behind Galder were waist deep in seas. A boat smaller than a thimble caught Galder’s eye for a oment before the rush carried it through the walls and away.
To the roof!’ he managed, pointing a shaking finger skywards.
Those wizards with enough marbles left to think with and enough breath to run followed him, running through continents that sleeted smoothly through the solid stone.
It was a still night, tinted with the promise of dawn. A crescent moon was just setting. Ankh-Morpork, largest city in the lands around the Circle Sea, slept.
That statement is not really true.
On the one hand, those parts of the city which normally concerned themselves with, for example, selling vegetables, shoeing horses, carving exquisite small jade ornaments, changing money and making tables, on the whole, slept. Unless they had insomnia. Or had got up in the night. as it might be, to go to the lavatory. On the other hand, many of the less law-abiding citizens were wide awake and, for instance, climbing through windows that didn’t, t belong to them, slitting throats, mugging one another, listening to loud music in smoky cellars and gener,erally having a lot more fun. But most of the animals were asleep, except for the rats. And the bats, too, of course. As far as the insects were concerned . . .
The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entireliy accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II is Patrician of Ankh some legislation was passed in a determined attempt to put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty into reporting. Thus, if a legend said of a notable hero that ‘all men spoke of his prowess’ any bard who valued his life would add hastily ‘except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a liar, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him.’ Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like ‘his mighty steed was as fleet as the wind n a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,’ and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.
Quimby was eventually killed by a disgruntled poet during an experiment conducted in the palace grounds to prove the disputed accuracy of the proverb The pen is mightier than the sword,’ and in his memory it was amended to include the phrase ‘only if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp.’
So. Approximately sixty-seven, maybe sixty-eight per cent, of the city slept. Not that the other citizens creeping about on their generally unlawful occasions noticed the pale tide streaming through the streets. Only the wizards, used to seeing the invisible, watched it foam across the distant fields.