Terry David John Pratchett. Equal Rites
страница №5
...ush at the foot of a steep,sheer cliff, her mind seething with plans and anger. She could sense doors
being slammed before she had barely begun to open them. Treatle was right;
they wouldn't let her inside the University. Having a staff wasn't enough to
be a wizard, there had to be training too, and no one was going to train
her.
The midday sun beat down off the cliff and the air around Esk began to
smell of bees and gin. She lay back, looking at the nearpurple dome of the
sky through the leaves and, eventually, she fell asleep.
One side-effect of using magic is that one tends to have realistic and
disturbing dreams. There is a reason for this, but even thinking about it is
enough to give a wizard nightmares.
The fact is that the minds of wizards can give thoughts a shape.
Witches normally work with what actually exists in the world, but a wizard
can, if he's good enough, put flesh on his imagination. This wouldn't cause
any trouble if it wasn't for the fact that the little circle of candlelight
loosely called "the universe of time and space" is adrift in something much
more unpleasant and unpredictable. Strange Things circle and grunt outside
the flimsy stockades of normality; there are weird hootings and howlings in
the deep crevices at the edge of Time. There are things so horrible that
even the dark is afraid of them.
Most people don't know this and this is just as well because the world
could not really operate if everyone stayed in bed with the blankets over
their head, which is what would happen if people knew what horrors lay a
shadow's width away.
The problem is people interested in magic and mysticism spend a lot of
time loitering on the very edge of the light, as it were, which gets them
noticed by the creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions who then try to use
them in their indefatigable efforts to break into this particular Reality.
Most people can resist this, but the relentless probing by the Things
is never stronger than when the subject is asleep.
Bel-Shamharoth, C'hulagen, the Insider-the hideous old dark gods of the
Necrotelicomnicon, the book known to certain mad adepts by its true name of
Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, are always ready to steal into a slumbering mind.
The nightmares are often colourful and always unpleasant.
Esk had got used to them ever since that first dream after her first
Borrowing, and familiarity had almost replaced terror. When she found
herself sitting on a glittering, dusty plain under unexplained stars she
knew it was time for another one.
"Drat," she said. "All right, come on then. Bring on the monsters. I
just hope it isn't the one with his winkle on his face."
But this time it seemed that the nightmare had changed. Esk looked
around and saw, rearing up behind her, a tall black castle. Its turrets
disappeared among the stars. Lights and fireworks and interesting music
cascaded from its upper battlements. The huge double doors stood invitingly
open. There seemed to be quite an amusing party going on in there.
She stood up, brushed the silver sand off her dress, and set off for
the gates.
She had almost reached them when they slammed. They didn't appear to
move; it was simply that in one instant they were lounging ajar, and the
next they were tight shut with a clang that shook the horizons.
Esk reached out and touched them. They were black, and so cold that ice
was beginning to form on them.
There was a movement behind her. She turned around and saw the staff,
without its broomstick disguise, standing upright in the sand. Little worms
of light crept around its polished wood and crept around the carvings no one
could ever quite identify.
She picked it up and smashed it against the doors. There was a shower
of octarine sparks, but the black metal was unscathed.
Esk's eyes narrowed. She held the staff at arm's length and
concentrated until a thin line of fire leapt from the wood and burst against
the gate. The ice flashed into steam but the darkness-she was sure now that
it wasn't metal-absorbed the power without so much as glowing. She doubled
the energy, letting the staff put all its stored magic into a beam that was
now so bright that she had to shut her eyes) and could still see it as a
brilliant line in her mind).
Then it winked out.
After a few seconds Esk ran forward and touched the doors gingerly. The
coldness nearly froze her fingers off.
And from the battlements above she could hear the sound of sniggering.
Laughter wouldn't have been so bad, especially an impressive demonic laugh
with lots of echo, but this was just -sniggering.
It went on for a long time. It was one of the most unpleasant sounds
Esk had ever heard.
She woke up shivering. It was long after midnight and the stars looked
damp and chilly; the air was full of the busy silence of the night, which is
created by hundreds of small furry things treading very carefully in the
hope of finding dinner while avoiding being the main course.
A crescent moon was setting and a thin grey glow towards the rim of the
world suggested that, against all probability, another day was on the cards.
Someone had wrapped Esk in a blanket.
"I know you're awake," said the voice of Granny Weatherwax. "You could
make yourself useful and light a fire. There's damn all wood in these
parts."
Esk sat up, and clutched at the juniper bush. She felt light enough to
float away.
"Fire?" she muttered.
"Yes. You know. Pointing the finger and whoosh," said Granny sourly.
She was sitting on a rock, trying to find a position that didn't upset her
arthritis.
"I-I don't think I can."
"You tell me?" said Granny cryptically.
The old witch leaned forward and put her hand on Esk's forehead; it was
like being caressed by a sock full of warm dice.
"You're running a bit of a temperature," she added. "Too much hot sun
and cold ground. That's forn parts for you."
Esk let herself slump forward until her head lay in Granny's lap, with
its familiar smells of camphor, mixed herbs and a trace of goat. Granny
patted her in what she hoped was a soothing way.
After a while Esk said, in a low voice, "They're not going to allow me
into the University. A wizard told me, and I dreamed about it, and it was
one of those true dreams. You know, like you told me, a maty-thing."
"Metterfor," said Granny calmly.
"One of them."
"Did you think it would be easy?" asked Granny. "Did you think you'd
walk into their gates waving your staff? Here I am, I want to be a wizard,
thank you very much?"
"He told me there's no women allowed in the University!"
"He's wrong."
"No, I could tell he was telling the truth. You know, Granny, you can
tell how-"
"Foolish child. All you could tell was that he thought he was telling
the truth. The world isn't always as people see it."
"I don't understand," said Esk.
"You'll learn," said Granny. "Now tell me. This dream. They wouldn't
let you into their university, right?"
"Yes, and they laughed!"
"And then you tried to burn down the doors?"
Esk turned her head in Granny's lap and opened a suspicious eye.
"How did you know?"
Granny smiled, but as a lizard would smile.
"I was miles away," she said. "I was bending my mind towards you, and
suddenly you seemed to be everywhere. You shone out like a beacon, so you
did. As for the fire-look around."
In the halflight of dawn the plateau was a mass of baked clay. In front
of Esk the cliff was glassy and must have flowed like tar under the
onslaught; there were great gashes across it which had dripped molten rock
and slag. When Esk listened she could hear the faint "pink, pink" of cooling
rock.
"Oh," she said, "did I do that?"
"So it would appear," said Granny.
"But I was asleep! I was only dreaming!"
"It's the magic," said Granny. "It's trying to find a way out. The
witch magic and the wizard magic are, I don't know, sort of feeding off each
other. I think."
Esk bit her lip.
"What can I do?" she asked. "I dream of all sorts of things!"
"Well, for a start we're going straight to the University," decided
Granny. "They must be used to apprentices not being able to control magic
and having hot dreams, else the place would have burned down years ago."
She glanced towards the Rim, and then down at the broomstick beside
her.
We will pass over the running up and down, the tightening of the
broomstick's bindings, the muttered curses against dwarves, the brief
moments of hope as the magic flickered fitfully, the horrible black feelings
as it died, the tightening of the bindings again, the running again, the
sudden catching of the spell, the scrambling aboard, the yelling, the
takeoff ?.
Esk clung to Granny with one hand and held her staff in the other as
they, frankly, pottered along a few hundred feet above the ground. A few
birds flew alongside them, interested in this new flying tree.
"Bugger off!" screamed Granny, taking off her hat and flapping it.
"We're not going very fast, Granny," said Esk meekly.
"We're going quite fast enough for me!"
Esk looked around. Behind them the Rim was a blaze of gold, barred with
cloud.
"I think we ought to go lower, Granny," she said urgently. "You said
the broomstick won't fly in sunlight." She glanced down at the landscape
below them. It looked sharp and inhospitable. It also looked expectant.
"I know what I'm doing, Miss," snapped Granny, gripping the broomstick
hard and trying to make herself as light as possible.
It has already been revealed that light on the Discworld travels
slowly, the result of its passage through the Disc's vast and ancient
magical field.
So dawn isn't the sudden affair that it is on other worlds. The new day
doesn't erupt, it sort of sloshes gently across the sleeping landscape in
the same way that the tide sneaks in across the beach, melting the
sandcastles of the night. It tends to flow around mountains. If the trees
are close together it comes out of woods cut to ribbons and sliced with
shadows.
An observer on some suitable high point, let's say for the sake of
argument a wisp of cirro-stratus on the edge of space, would remark on how
lovingly the light spreads across the land, how it leaps forward on the
plains and slows down when it encounters high ground, how beautifully it ?.
Actually, there are some kinds of observers who, faced with all this
beauty, will whine that you can't have heavy light and certainly wouldn't be
able to see it, even if you could. To which one can only reply, so how come
you're standing on a cloud?
So much for cynicism. But down on the Disc itself the broomstick
barrelled forward on the cusp of dawn, dropping ever backward in the shadow
of night.
"Granny!"
Day burst upon them. Ahead of the broomstick the rocks seemed to flash
into flame as the light washed over them. Granny felt the stick lurch and
stared with horrified fascination at the little scudding shadow below them.
It was getting closer.
"What will happen when we hit the ground?"
"That depends if I can find some soft rocks," said Granny in a
preoccupied voice.
"The broomstick's going to crash! Can't we do anything?"
"Well, I suppose we could get off."
"Granny," said Esk, in the exasperated and remarkably adult voice
children use to berate their wayward elders. "I don't think you quite
understand. I don't want to hit the ground. It's never done anything to me."
Granny was trying to think of a suitable spell and regretting that
headology didn't work on rocks, and had she detected the diamond edge to
Esk's tone perhaps she wouldn't have said: "Tell the broomstick that, then."
And they would indeed have crashed. But she remembered in time to grab
her hat and brace herself. The broomstick gave a shudder, tilted
- and the landscape blurred.
It was really quite a short trip but one that Granny knew she would
always remember, generally around three o'clock in the morning after eating
rich food. She would remember the rainbow colours that hummed in the rushing
air, the horrible heavy feeling, the impression that something very big and
heavy was sitting on the universe.
She would remember Esk's laughter. She would remember, despite her best
efforts, the way the ground sped below them, whole mountain ranges flashing
past with nasty zipping noises.
Most of all, she would remember catching up with the night.
It appeared ahead of her, a ragged line of darkness running ahead of
the remorseless morning. She stared in horrified fascination as the line
became a blot, a stain, a whole continent of blackness that raced towards
them.
For an instant they were poised on the crest of the dawn as it broke in
silent thunder on the land. No surfer ever rode such a wave, but the
broomstick broke through the broil of light and shot smoothly through into
the coolness beyond.
Granny let herself breathe out.
Darkness took some of the terror out of the flight. It also meant that
if Esk lost interest the broomstick ought to be able to fly under its own
rather rusty magic.
"." Granny said, and cleared her bone-dry throat for a second try.
"Esk?"
"This is fun, isn't it? I wonder how I make it happen?"
"Yes, fun," said Granny weakly. "But can I fly the stick, please? I
don't want us to go over the Edge. Please?"
"Is it true that there's a giant waterfall all around the edge of the
world, and you can look down and see stars?" said Esk.
"Yes. Can we slow down now?"
"I'd like to see it."
"No! I mean, no, not now."
The broomstick slowed. The rainbow bubble around it vanished with an
audible pop. Without a jolt, without so much as a shudder, Granny found
herself flying at a respectable speed again.
Granny had built a solid reputation on always knowing the answer to
everything. Getting her to admit ignorance, even to herself, was an
astonishing achievement. But the worm of curiosity was chewing at the apple
of her mind.
"How," she said at last, "did you do that?"
There was a thoughtful silence behind her. Then Esk said: "I don't
know. I just needed it, and it was in my head. Like when you remember
something you've forgotten."
"Yes, but how?"
"I-I don't know. I just had a picture of how I wanted things to be,
and, and I, sort of-went into the picture."
Granny stared into the night. She had never heard of magic like that,
but it sounded awfully powerful and probably lethal. Went into the picture!
Of course, all magic changed the world in some way, wizards thought there
was no other use for it-they didn't truck with the idea of leaving the world
as it was and changing the people -but this sounded more literal. It needed
thinking about. On the ground.
For the first time in her life Granny wondered whether there might be
something important in all these books people were setting such store by
these days, although she was opposed to books on strict moral grounds, since
she had heard that many of them were written by dead people and therefore it
stood to reason reading them would be as bad as necromancy. Among the many
things in the infinitely varied universe with which Granny did not hold was
talking to dead people, who by all accounts had enough troubles of their
own.
But not, she was inclined to feel, as many as her. She looked down
bemusedly at the dark ground and wondered vaguely why the stars were below
her.
For a cardiac moment she wondered if they had indeed flown over the
edge, and then she realised that the thousands of little pinpoints below her
were too yellow, and flickered. Besides, whoever heard of stars arranged in
such a neat pattern?
"It's very pretty," said Esk. "Is it a city?"
Granny scanned the ground wildly. If it was a city, then it was too
big. But now she had time to think about it, it certainly smelled like a lot
of people.
The air around them reeked of incense and grain and spices and beer,
but mainly of the sort of smell that was caused by a high water table,
thousands of people, and a robust approach to drainage.
She mentally shook herself. The day was hard on their heels. She looked
for an area where the torches were dim and widely spaced, reasoning that
this would mean a poor district and poor people did not object to witches,
and gently pointed the broom handle downwards.
She managed to get within five feet of the ground before dawn arrived
for the second time.
The gates were indeed big and black and looked as if they were made out
of solid darkness.
Granny and Esk stood among the crowds that thronged the square outside
the University and stared up at them. Finally Esk said: "I can't see how
people get in."
"Magic, I expect," said Granny sourly. "That's wizards for you. Anyone
else would have bought a doorknocker."
She waved her broomstick in the direction of the tall doors.
"You've got to say some hocuspocus word to get in, I shouldn't wonder,"
she added.
They had been in Ankh-Morpork for three days and Granny was beginning
to enjoy herself, much to her surprise. She had found them lodgings in The
Shades, an ancient part of the city whose inhabitants were largely nocturnal
and never enquired about one another's business because curiosity not only
killed the cat but threw it in the river with weights tied to its feet. The
lodgings were on the top floor next to the well-guarded premises of a
respectable dealer in stolen property because, as Granny had heard, good
fences make good neighbors.
The Shades, in brief, were an abode of discredited gods and unlicensed
thieves, ladies of the night and peddlers in exotic goods, alchemists of the
mind and strolling mummers; in short, all the grease on civilization's axle.
And yet, despite the fact that these people tend to appreciate the soft
magics, there was a remarkable shortage of witches. Within hours the news of
Granny's arrival had seeped through the quarter and a stream of people
crept, sidled or strutted towards her door, seeking potions and charms and
news of the future and various personal and specialised services that
witches traditionally provide for those whose lives are a little clouded or
full of stormy weather.
She was at first annoyed, and then embarrassed, and then flattered; her
clients had money, which was useful, but they also paid in respect, and that
was a rock-hard currency.
In short, Granny was even wondering about the possibility of acquiring
slightly larger premises with a bit of garden and sending for her goats. The
smell might be a problem, but the goats would just have to put up with it.
They had visited the sights of Ankh-Morpork, its crowded docks, its
many bridges, its souks, its casbahs, its streets lined with nothing but
temples. Granny had counted the temples with a thoughtful look in her eyes;
gods were always demanding that their followers acted other than according
to their true natures, and the human fallout this caused made plenty of work
for witches.
The terrors of civilisation had so far failed to materialise, although
a cutpurse had tried to make off with Granny's handbag. To the amazement of
passers-by Granny called him back, and back he came, fighting his feet which
had totally ceased to obey him. No one quite saw what happened to her eyes
when she stared into his face or heard the words she whispered in his
cowering ear, but he gave her back all her money plus quite a lot of money
belonging to other people, and before she let him go had promised to have a
shave, stand up straight, and be a better person for the rest of his life.
By nightfall Granny's description was circulated to all the chapter houses
of the Guild of Thieves, Cutpurses, Housebreakers and Allied Trades*, with
strict instructions to avoid her at all costs. Thieves, being largely
creatures of the night themselves, know trouble when it stares them in the
face.
* A very respectable body which in fact represented the major law
enforcement agency in the city. The reason for this is as follows: the Guild
was given to an annual quota which represented a socially acceptable level
of thefts, muggings and assassinations, an in return saw to it in very
definite and final ways that unofficial crime was not only rapidly stamped
out but knifed, garrotted, dismembered and left around the city in an
assortment of paper bags as well. This was held to be a cheap and
enlightened arrangedment, except by thos malcontents who were actually
mugged or assassinated and refused to see it as their social duty, and it
enabled the city's thieves to plan a decent career structure, entrace
examinations and codes of conduct similar to those adopted by the city's
other professions - which, the cap not being very wide in any case, they
rabidly came to resemble.
Granny had also written two more letters to the University. There had
been no reply.
"I liked the forest best," said Esk.
"I dunno," said Granny. "This is a bit like the forest, really. Anyway,
people certainly appreciate a witch here."
"They're very friendly," Esk conceded. "You know the house down the
street, where that fat lady lives with all those young ladies you said were
her relatives?"
A very respectable body which in fact represented the major law
enforcement agency in the city. The reason for this is as follows: the Guild
was given an annual quota which represented a socially acceptable level of
thefts, muggings and assassinations, and in return saw to it in very
definite and final ways that unofficial crime was not only rapidly stamped
out but knifed, garrotted, dismembered and left around the city in an
assortment of paper bags as well. This was held to be a cheap and
enlightened arrangement, except by those malcontents who were actually
mugged or assassinated and refused to see it as their social duty, and it
enabled the city's thieves to plan a decent career structure, entrance
examinations and codes of conduct similar to those adopted by the city's
other professions- which, the gap not being very wide in any case, they
rapidly came to resemble.
"Mrs Palm," said Granny cautiously. "Very respectable lady."
"People come to visit them all night long. I watched. I'm surprised
they get any sleep."
"Um," said Granny.
"It must be a trial for the poor woman with all those daughters to
feed, too. I think people could be more considerate."
"Well now," said Granny, "I'm not sure that-"
She was rescued by the arrival at the gates of the University of a
large, brightly painted wagon. Its driver reined in the oxen a few feet from
Granny and said: "Excuse me, my good woman, but would you be so kind as to
move, please?"
Granny stepped aside, affronted by this display of downright politeness
and particularly upset at being thought of as anyone's good woman, and the
driver saw Esk.
It was Treatle. He grinned like a worried snake.
"I say. It's the young lady who thinks women should be wizards, isn't
it?"
"Yes," said Esk, ignoring a sharp kick on the ankle from Granny.
"What fun. Come to join us, have you?"
"Yes," said Esk, and then because something about Treatle's manner
seemed to demand it, she added, "sir. Only we can't get in."
"We?" said Treatle, and then glanced at Granny, "Oh, yes, of course.
This would be your aunt?"
"My granny. Only not really my granny, just sort of everyone's granny."
Granny gave a stiff nod.
"Well, we cannot have this," said Treatle, in a voice as hearty as a
plum pudding. "My word, no. Our first lady wizard left on the doorstep? That
would be a disgrace. May I accompany you?"
Granny grasped Esk firmly by the shoulder.
"If it's all the same to you-"she began. But Esk twisted out of her
grip and ran towards the cart.
"You can really take me in?" she said, her eyes shining.
"Of course. I am sure the heads of the Orders will be most gratified to
meet you. Most astonished and astounded," he said, and gave a little laugh.
"Eskarina Smith-" said Granny, and then stopped. She looked at Treatle.
"I don't know what is in your mind, Mr Wizard, but I don't like it,"
she said. "Esk, you know where we live. Be a fool if you must, but you might
at least be your own fool."
She turned on her heel and strode off across the square.
"What a remarkable woman," said Treatle, vaguely. "I see you still have
your broomstick. Capital."
He let go of the reins for a moment and made a complicated sign in the
air with both hands.
The big doors swung back, revealing a wide courtyard surrounded by
lawns. Behind them was a great rambling building, or buildings: it was hard
to tell, because it didn't look so much as if it had been designed as that a
lot of buttresses, arches, towers, bridges, domes, cupolas and so forth had
huddled together for warmth.
"Is that it?" said Esk. "It looks sort of-melted."
"Yes, that's it," said Trestle. "Alma mater, gaudy armours eagle tour
and so on. Of course, it's a lot bigger inside than out, like an iceberg or
so I'm given to understand, I've never seen the things. Unseen University,
only of course a lot of it is unseen. Just go in the back and fetch Simon,
will you?"
Esk pushed aside the heavy curtains and peered into the back of the
wagon. Simon was lying on a pile of rugs, reading a very large book and
making notes on scraps of paper.
He looked up, and gave her a worried smile.
"Is that you?" he said.
"Yes," said Esk, with conviction.
"We thought you'd left us. Everyone thought you were riding with
everyone else and then wwwwhen we stopped?"
"I sort of caught up. I think Mr Trestle wants you to come and look at
the University."
"We're here?" he said, and gave her an odd look: "You're here?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Mr Treatle invited me in, he said everyone would be astounded to meet
me." Uncertainty flashed a fin in the depths of her eyes. "Was he right?"
Simon looked down at his book, and dabbed at his running eyes with a
red handkerchief.
"He has t-these little f-fancies", he muttered, "bbbut he's not a bad
person."
Bewildered, Esk looked down at the yellowed pages open in front of the
boy. They were full of complicated red and black symbols which in some
inexplicable way were as potent and unpleasant as a ticking parcel, but
which nevertheless drew the eye in the same way that a really bad accident
does. One felt that one would like to know their purpose, while at the same
time suspecting that if you found out you would really prefer not to have
done.
Simon saw her expression and hastily shut the book.
"Just some magic," he mumbled. "Something I'm wwwww-"
"-working-"said Esk, automatically.
"Thank you. On."
"It must be quite interesting, reading books," said Esk.
"Sort of. Can't you read, Esk?"
The astonishment in his voice stung her.
"I expect so," she said defiantly. "I've never tried."
Esk wouldn't have known what a collective noun was if it had spat in
her eye, but she knew there was a herd of goats and a coven of witches. She
didn't know what you called a lot of wizards. An order of wizards? A
conspiracy? A circle?
Whatever it was, it filled the University. Wizards strolled among the
cloisters and sat on benches under the trees. Young wizards scuttled along
pathways as bells rang, with their arms full of books or-in the case of
senior students-with their books flapping through the air after them. The
air had the greasy feel of magic and tasted of tin.
Esk walked along between Trestle and Simon and drank it all in. It
wasn't just that there was magic in the air, but it was tamed and working,
like a millrace. It was power, but it was harnessed.
Simon was as excited as she was, but it showed only because his eyes
watered more and his stutter got worse. He kept stopping to point out the
various colleges and research buildings.
One was quite low and brooding, with high narrow windows.
"T-that's the l-l-library," said Simon, his voice bursting with wonder
and respect. "Can I have a l-l-look?"
"Plenty of time for that later," said Treatle. Simon gave the building
a wistful look.
"All the b-books of magic ever written," he whispered.
"Why are the windows barred?" said Esk.
Simon swallowed. "Um, b-because b-books of m-magic aren't like other
b-books, they lead a-"
"That's enough," snapped Treatle. He looked down at Esk as if he had
just noticed her, and frowned.
"Why are you here?"
"You invited me in," said Esk.
"Me? Oh, yes. Of course. Sorry, mind wandering. The young lady who
wants to be a wizard. Let us see, shall we?"
He led the way up a broad flight of steps to an impressive pair of
doors. At least, they were designed to be impressive. The designer had
invested deeply in heavy locks, curly hinges, brass studs and an
intricately-carved archway to make it absolutely clear to anyone entering
that they were not very important people at all.
He was a wizard. He had forgotten the doorknocker.
Treatle rapped on the door with his staff. It hesitated for a while,
and then slowly slid back its bolts and swung open.
The hall was full of wizards and boys. And boys' parents.
There are two ways of getting into Unseen University (in fact there are
three, but at this time wizards hadn't realised it.
The first is to achieve some great work of magic, such as the recovery
of an ancient and powerful relic or the invention of a totally new spell,
but in these times it was seldom done. In the past there had been great
wizards capable of forming whole new spells from the chaotic raw magic of
the world, wizards from whom as it were all the spells of wizardry had
flowed, but those days had gone; there were no more sourcerers.
So the more typical method was to be sponsored by a senior and
respected wizard, after a suitable period of apprenticeship.
Competition was stiff for a University place and the honour and
privileges an Unseen degree could bring. Many of the boys milling around the
hall, and launching minor spells at each other, would fail and have to spend
their lives as lowly magicians, mere magical technologists with defiant
beards and leather patches on their elbows who congregated in small jealous
groups at parties.
Not for them the coveted pointy hat with optional astrological symbols,
or the impressive robes, or the staff of authority. But at least they could
look down on conjurers, who tended to be jolly and fat and inclined to drop
their aitches and drink beer and go around with sad thin women in spangly
tights and really infuriate magicians by not realising how lowly they were
and kept telling them jokes. Lowliest of all-apart from witches, of
course-were thaumaturgists, who never got any schooling at all. A
thaumaturgist could just about be trusted to wash out an alembic. Many
spells required things like mould from a corpse dead of crushing, or the
semen of a living tiger, or the root of a plant that gave an ultrasonic
scream when it was uprooted. Who was sent to get them? Right.
It is a common error to refer to the lower magical ranks as hedge
wizards. In fact hedge wizardry is a very honoured and specialised form of
magic that attracts silent, thoughtful men of the druidical persuasion and
topiaric inclinations. If you invited a hedge wizard to a party he would
spend half the evening talking to your potted plant. And he would spend the
other half listening.
Esk noticed that there were some women in the hall, because even young
wizards had mothers and sisters. Whole families had turned up to bid the
favoured sons farewell. There was a considerable blowing of noses, wiping of
tears and the clink of coins as proud fathers tucked a little spending money
into their offspring's hands.
Very senior wizards were perambulating among the crowds, talking to the
sponsoring wizards and examining the prospective students.
Several of them pushed through the throng to meet Treatle, moving like
gold-trimmed galleons under full sail. They bowed gravely to him and looked
approvingly at Simon.
"This is young Simon, is it?" said the fattest of them, beaming at the
boy. "We've heard great reports of you, young man. Eh? What?"
"Simon, bow to Archchancellor Cutangle, Archmage of the Wizards of the
Silver Star," said Treatle. Simon bowed apprehensively.
Cutangle looked at him benevolently. "We've heard great things about
you, my boy," he said. "All this mountain air must be good for the brain,
eh?"
He laughed. The wizards around him laughed. Treatle laughed. Which Esk
thought was rather funny, because there wasn't anything particularly amusing
happening.
"I ddddon't know, ssss-"
"From what we hear it must be the only thing you don't know, lad!" said
Cutangle, his jowls waggling. There was another carefully timed bout of
laughter.
Cutangle patted Simon on the shoulder.
"This is the scholarship boy," he said. "Quite astounding results,
never seen better. Self-taught, too. Astonishing, what? Isn't that so,
Treatle?"
"Superb, Archchancellor."
Cutangle looked around at the watching wizards.
"Perhaps you could give us a sample," he said. "A little demonstration,
perhaps?"
Simon looked at him in animal panic.
"A-actually I'm not very g-g-g-"
"Now, now," said Cutangle, in what he probably really did think was an
encouraging tone of voice. "Do not be afraid. Take your time. When you are
ready."
Simon licked his dry lips and gave Treatle a look of mute appeal.
"Um," he said, "y-you s-s-s-s-." He stopped and swallowed hard. "The
f-f-f-f-"
His eyes bulged. The tears streamed from his eyes, and his shoulders
heaved.
Treatle patted him reassuringly on the back.
"Hayfever," he explained. "Don't seem to be able to cure it. Tried
everything."
Simon swallowed, and nodded. He waved Treatle away with his long white
hands and closed his eyes.
For a few seconds nothing happened. He stood with his lips moving
soundlessly, and then silence spread out from him like candlelight. Ripples
of noiselessness washed across the crowds in the hall, striking the walls
with all the force of a blown kiss and then curling back in waves. People
watched their companions mouthing silently and then went red with effort
when their own laughter was as audible as a gnat's squeak.
Tiny motes of light winked into existence around his head. They whirled
and spiralled in a complex three-dimensional dance, and then formed a shape.
In fact it seemed to Esk that the shape had been there all the time,
waiting for her eyes to see it, in the same way that a perfectly innocent
cloud can suddenly become, without changing in any way, a whale or a ship or
a face.
The shape around Simon's head was the world.
That was quite clear, although the glitter and rush of the little
lights blurred some of the detail. But there was Great A'Tuin the sky
turtle, with the four Elephants on its back, and on them the Disc itself.
There was the sparkle of the great waterfall around the edge of the world,
and there at the very hub a tiny needle of rock that was the great mountain
Cori Celesti, where the gods lived.
The image expanded and homed in on the Circle Sea and then on Ankh
itself, the little lights flowing away from Simon and winking out of
existence a few feet from his head. Now they showed the city from the air,
rushing towards the watchers. There was the University itself, growing
larger. There was the Great Hall
- there were the people, watching silent and open-mouthed, and Simon
himself, outlined in specks of silver light. And a tiny sparkling image in
the air around him, and that image contained an image and another and
another
There was a feeling that the universe had been turned inside out in all
dimensions at once. It was a bloated, swollen sensation. It sounded as
though the whole world had said "gloop".
The walls faded. So did the floor. The paintings of former great mages,
all scrolls and beards and slightly constipated frowns, vanished. The tiles
underfoot, a rather nice black and white pattern, evaporated-to be replaced
by fine sand, grey as moonlight and cold as ice. Strange and unexpected
stars glittered overhead; on the horizon were low hills, eroded not by wind
or rain in this weatherless place but by the soft sandpaper of Time itself.
No one else seemed to have noticed. No one else, in fact, seemed alive.
Esk was surrounded by people as still and silent as statues.
And they weren't alone. There were other-Things-behind them, and more
were appearing all the time. They had no shape, or rather they seemed to be
taking their shapes at random from a variety of creatures; they gave the
impression that they had heard about arms and legs and jaws and claws and
organs but didn't really know how they all fitted together. Or didn't care.
Or were so hungry they hadn't bothered to find out.
They made a sound like a swarm of flies.
They were the creatures out of her dreams, come to feed on magic. She
knew they weren't interested in her now, except in the nature of an
after-dinner mint. Their whole concentration was focused on Simon, who was
totally unaware of their presence.
Esk kicked him smartly on the ankle.
The cold desert vanished. The real world rushed back. Simon opened his
eyes, smiled faintly, and gently fell backwards into Esk's arms.
A buzz went up from the wizards, and several of them started to clap.
No one seemed to have noticed anything odd, apart from the silver lights.
Cutangle shook himself, and raised a hand to quell the crowd.
"Quite-astonishing," he said to Treatle. "You say he worked it out all
by himself?"
"Indeed, lord."
"No one helped him at all?"
"There was no one to help him," said Treatle. "He was just wandering
from village to village, doing small spells. But only if people paid him in
books or paper."
Cutangle nodded. "It was no illusion," he said, "yet he didn't use his
hands. What was he saying to himself? Do you know?"
"He says it's just words to make his mind work properly," said Treatle,
and shrugged. "I can't understand half of what he says and that's a fact. He
says he's having to invent words because there aren't any for the things
he's doing."
Cutangle glanced sideways at his fellow mages. They nodded.
"It will be an honour to admit him to the University," he said.
"Perhaps you would tell him so when he wakes up."
He felt a tugging at his robe, and looked down.
"Excuse me," said Esk.
"Hallo, young lady," said Cutangle, in a sugarmouse voice. "Have you
come to see your brother enter the University?"
"He's not my brother," said Esk. There were times when the world had
seemed to be full of brothers, but this wasn't one of them.
"Are you important?" she said.
Cutangle looked at his colleagues, and beamed. There were fashions in
wizardry, just like anything else; sometimes wizards were thin and gaunt and
talked to animals (the animals didn't listen, but it's the thought that
counts) while at other times they tended towards the dark and saturnine,
with little black pointed beards. Currently Aldermanic was in. Cutangle
swelled with modesty.
"Quite important," he said. "One does one's best in the service of
one's fellow man. Yes. Quite important, I would say."
"I want to be a wizard," said Esk.
The lesser wizards behind Cutangle stared at her as if she was a new
and interesting kind of beetle. Cutangle's face went red and his eyes
bulged. He looked down at Esk and seemed to be holding his breath. Then he
started to laugh. It started somewhere down in his extensive stomach regions
and worked its way up, echoing from rib to rib and causing minor
wizardquakes across his chest until it burst forth in a series of strangled
snorts. It was quite fascinating to watch, that laugh. It had a personality
all of its own.
But he stopped when he saw Esk's stare. If the laugh was a music hall
clown then Esk's determined squint was a whitewash bucket on a fast
trajectory.
"A wizard?" he said; "You want to be a wizard?"
"Yes," said Esk, pushing the dazed Simon into Trestle's reluctant arms.
"I'm the eighth son of an eighth son. I mean daughter."
The wizards around her were looking at one another and whispering. Esk
tried to ignore them.
"What did she say?"
"Is she serious?"
"I always think children are so delightful at that age, don't you?"
"You're the eighth son of an eighth daughter?" said Cutangle. "Really?"
"The other way around, only not exactly," said Esk, defiantly.
Cutangle dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief.
"This is quite fascinating," he said. "I don't think I've ever heard of
something quite like this before. Eh?"
He looked around at his growing audience. The people at the back
couldn't see Esk and were craning to check if some interesting magic was
going on. Cutangle was at a loss.
"Well, now," he said. "You want to be a wizard?"
"I keep telling everyone but no one seems to listen," said Esk.
"How old are you, little girl?"
"Nearly nine."
"And you want to be a wizard when you grow up."
"I want to be a wizard now," said Esk firmly. "This is the right place,
isn't it?"
Cutangle looked at Trestle and winked.
"I saw that," said Esk.
"I don't think there's ever been a lady wizard before," said Cutangle.
"I rather think it might be against the lore. Wouldn't you rather be a
witch? I understand it's a fine career for girls."
A minor wizard behind him started to laugh. Esk gave him a look.
"Being a witch is quite good," she conceded. "But I think wizards have
more fun. What do you think?"
"I think you are a very singular little girl," said Cutangle.
"What does that mean?"
"It means there's only one of you," said Trestle.
"That's right," said Esk, "and I still want to be a wizard."
Words failed Cutangle. "Well, you can't," he said. "The very idea!"
He drew himself up to his full width and turned away. Something tugged
at his robe.
"Why not?" said a voice.
He turned.
"Because", he said, slowly and deliberately, "because . . . the whole
idea is completely laughable, that's why. And it's absolutely against the
lore!"
"But I can do wizard magic!" said Esk, the faintest suggestion of a
tremble in her voice.
Cutangle bent down until his face was level with hers.
"No you can't," he hissed. "Because you are not a wizard. Women aren't
wizards, do I make myself clear?"
"Watch," said Esk.
She extended her right hand with the fingers spread and sighted along
it until she spotted the statue of Malich the Wise, the founder of the
University. Instinctively the wizards between her and it edged out of the
way, and then felt rather silly.
"I mean it," she said.
"Go away, little girl," said Cutangle.
"Right," said Esk. She squinted hard at the statue and concentrated ?.
The great doors of Unseen University are made of octiron, a metal so
unstable that it can only exist in a universe saturated with raw magic. They
are impregnable to all force save magic: no fire, no battering ram, no army
can breach them.
Which is why most ordinary visitors to the University use the back
door, which is made of perfectly normal wood and doesn't go around
terrorising people, or even stand still terrorising people. It had a proper
knocker and everything.
Granny examined the doorposts carefully and gave a grunt of
satisfaction when she spotted what she was looking for. She hadn't doubted
that it would be there, cunningly concealed by the natural grain of the
wood.
She grasped the knocker, which was shaped like a dragon's head, and
rapped smartly, three times. After a while the door was opened by a young
woman with her mouth full of clothespegs.
"Ot oo oo ont?" she enquired.
Granny bowed, giving the girl a chance to take in the pointy black hat
with the batwing hatpins. It had an impressive effect: she blushed and,
peering out into the quiet alley-way, hurriedly motioned Granny inside.
There was a big mossy courtyard on the other side of the wall, crisscrossed
with washing lines. Granny had the chance to become one of the very few
women to learn what it really is that wizards wear under their robes, but
modestly averted her eyes and followed the girl across the flagstones and
down a wide flight of steps.
They led into a long, high tunnel lined with archways and, currently,
full of steam. Granny caught sight of long lines of washtubs in the big
rooms off to the sides; the air had the warm fat smell of ironing. A gaggle
of girls carrying washbaskets pushed past her and hurried up the steps-then
stopped, halfway up, and turned slowly to look at her.
Granny set her shoulders back and tried to look as mysterious as
possible.
Her guide, who still hadn't got rid of her clothes-pegs, led her down a
side-passage into a room that was a maze of shelves piled with laundry. In
the very centre of the maze, sitting at a table, was a very fat woman with a
ginger wig. She had been writing in a very large laundry book-it was still
open in front of her-but was currently inspecting a large stained vest.
"Have you tried bleaching?" she asked.
"Yes, m'm," said the maid beside her.
"What about tincture of myrryt?"
"Yes, m'm. It just turned it blue, m'm."
"Well, it's a new one on me," said the laundry woman. "And Ay've seen
brimstone and soot and dragon blood and demon blood and Aye don't know what
else." She turned the vest over and read the nametape carefully sewn inside.
"Hmm. Granpone the White. He's going to be Granpone the Grey if he doesn't
take better care of his laundry. Aye tell you, girl, a white magician is
just a black magician with a good housekeeper. Take it-"
She caught sight of Granny, and stopped.
"Ee ocked hat hee oor," said Granny's guide, dropping a hurried
curtsey. "Oo ed hat-"
"Yes, yes, thank you, Ksandra, you may go," said the fat woman. She
stood up and beamed at Granny, and with an almost perceptible click wound
her voice up several social classes.
"Pray hexcuse us," she said. "You find us hall at sixes and sevens, it
being washing day and heverything. His this a courtesy call or may I make so
bold as to ask-"she lowered her voice-" his there a message from the Hother
Sade?"
Granny looked blank, but only a fraction of a second. The witchmarks on
the doorpost had said that the housekeeper welcomed witches and was
particularly anxious for news of her four husbands; she was also in random
pursuit of a fifth, hence the ginger wig and, if Granny's ears weren't
deceiving her, the creak of enough whalebone to infuriate an entire ecology
movement. Gullible and foolish, the signs had said. Granny withheld
judgment, because city witches didn't seem that bright themselves.
The housekeeper must have mistaken her expression.
"Don't be afraid," she said. "May staff have distinct instructions to
welcome witches, although of course they upstairs don't approve. No doubt
you would like a cup of tea and something to eat?"
Granny bowed solemnly.
"And Aye will see if we can't find a nice bundle of old clothes for
you, too," the housekeeper beamed.
"Old clothes? Oh. Yes. Thank you, m'm."
The housekeeper swept forward with a sound like an elderly tea clipper
in a gale, and beckoned Granny to follow her.
"Aye'll have the tea brought to my flat. Tea with a lot of tealeaves."
Granny stumped along after her. Old clothes? Did this fat woman really
mean it? The nerve! Of course, if they were good quality ?.
There seemed to be a whole world under the University. It was a maze of
cellars, coldrooms, stillrooms, kitchens and sculleries, and every
inhabitant was either carrying something, pumping something, pushing
something or just standing around and shouting. Granny caught glimpses of
rooms full of ice, and others glowing with the heat from red-hot cooking
stoves, wall-sized. Bakeries smelled of new bread and taprooms smelled of
old beer. Everything smelled of sweat and woodsmoke:
The housekeeper led her up an old spiral staircase and unlocked the
door with one of the large number of keys that hung from her belt.
The room inside was pink and frilly. There were frills on things that
no one in their right mind would frill. It was like being inside candyfloss.
"Very nice," said Granny. And, because she felt it was expected of her,
"Tasteful." She looked around for something unfrilly to sit on, and gave up.
"Whatever am Aye thinking of?" the housekeeper trilled. "Aye'm Mrs
Whitlow but I expect you know, of course. And Aye have the honour to be
addressing-?"
"Eh? Oh, Granny Weatherwax," said Granny. The frills were getting to
her. They gave pink a bad name.
"Ay'm psychic myself, of course," said Mrs Whitlow.
Granny had nothing against fortune-telling provided it was done badly
by people with no talent for it. It was a different matter if people who
ought to know better did it, though. She considered that the future was a
frail enough thing at best, and if people looked at it hard they changed it.
Granny had some quite complex theories about space and time and why they
sho...
