Sourcery (Discworld 5)

It was the ending of the first day of the sourcery, and the wizards had managed to change everything except themselves.

They had all tried, on the quiet and when they thought no-one else was looking. Even Spelter had a go, in the privacy of his study. He had managed to become twenty years younger with a torso you could crack rocks on, but as soon as he stopped concentrating he sagged, very unpleasantly, back into his old familiar shape and age. There was something elastic about the way you were. The harder you threw it, the faster it came back. The worse it was when it hit, too. Spiked iron balls, broadswords and large heavy sticks with nails in were generally considered pretty fearsome weapons, but they were nothing at all compared to twenty years suddenly applied with considerable force to the back of the head.

This was because sourcery didn’t seem to work on things that were instrinsically magical. Nevertheless, the wizards had made a few important improvements. Carding’s robe, for example, had become a silk and lace confection of overpoweringly expensive tastelessness, and gave him the appearance of a big red jelly draped with antimacassars.

‘It suits me, don’t you think?’ said Carding. He adjusted the hat brim, giving it an inappropriately rakish air.

Spelter said nothing. He was looking out of the window.

There had been a few improvements all right. It had been a busy day.

The old stone walls had vanished. There were some rather nice railings now. Beyond them, the city fairly sparkled, a poem in white marble and red tiles. The river Ankh was no longer the silt-laden sewer he’d grown up knowing, but a glittering glassclear ribbon in which - a nice touch - fat carp mouthed and swam in water pure as snowmelt.[12]

From the air Ankh-Morpork must have been blinding. It gleamed. The detritus of millennia had been swept away.

It made Spelter strangely uneasy. He felt out of place, as though he was wearing new clothes that itched. Of course, he was wearing new clothes and they did itch, but that wasn’t the problem. The new world was all very nice, it was exactly how it should be, and yet, and yet - had he wanted to change, he thought, or had he only wanted things rearranged more suitably? >‘Did you do that?’ he demanded.

‘Stand aside, oaf,’ said the wizard, three words which in the opinion of Ardrothy gave him the ongoing life expectancy of a glass cymbal.

‘I hates wizards,’ said Koble. ‘I really hates wizards. So I am going to hit you, all right?’

He brought his fist back and let fly.

The wizard raised an eyebrow, yellow fire sprang up around the shellfish salesman, there was a noise like tearing silk, and Koble had vanished. All that was left was his boots, standing forlornly on the cobbles with little wisps of smoke coming out of them.

No-one knows why smoking boots always remain, no matter how big the explosion. It seems to be just one of those things.

It seemed to the watchful eyes of Ardrothy that the wizard himself was nearly as socked as the crowd, but he rallied magnificently and gave his staff a flourish.

‘You people had better jolly well learn from this,’ he said. ‘No-one raises their hand to a wizard, do you understand? There are going to be a lot of changes around here. Yes, what do you want?’

This last comment was to Ardrothy, who was trying to sneak past unnoticed. He scrabbled quickly in his pie tray.

‘I was just wondering if your honourship would care to purchase one of these finest pies,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Full of nourish-’

‘Watch closely, pie-selling person,’ said the wizard. He stretched out his hand, made a strange gesture with his fingers, and produced a pie out of the air.

It was fat, golden-brown and beautifully glazed. just by looking at it Ardrothy knew it was packed edge to edge with prime lean pork, with none oft hose spacious areas of good fresh air under the lid that represented his own profit margin. It was the kind of pie piglets hope to be when they grew up.

His heart sank. His ruin was floating in front of him with short-crust pastry on it.

‘Want a taste?’ said the wizard. ‘There’s plenty more where that came from.’

‘Wherever it came from,’ said Ardrothy.

He looked past the shiny pastry to the face of the wizard, and in the manic gleam of those eyes he saw the world turning upside down.

He turned away, a broken man, and set out for the nearest city gate.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that wizards were killing people, he thought bitterly, they were taking away their livelihood as well.

A bucket of water splashed into Rincewind’s face, jerking him out of a dreadful dream in which a hundred masked women were attempting to trim his hair with broadswords and cutting it very fine indeed. Some people, having a nightmare like that, would dismiss it as castration anxiety, but Rincewind’s subconscious knew being-cut-to-tiny-bits-mortal dread when it saw it. It saw it most of the time.

He sat up.

‘Are you all right?’ said Conina, anxiously.

Rincewind swivelled his eyes around the cluttered deck.