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.