Sourcery (Discworld 5)

One of Rincewind’s tutors had said of him that ‘to call his understanding of magical theory abysmal is to leave no suitable word to describe his grasp of its practice.’ This had always puzzled him. He objected to the fact that you had to be good at magic to be a wizard. He knew he was a wizard, deep in his head. Being good at magic didn’t have anything to do with it. That was just an extra, it didn’t actually define somebody.

‘When I was a little boy,’ he said wistfully, ‘I saw this picture of a sourcerer in a book. He was standing on a mountain top waving his arms and the waves were coming right up, you know, like they do down in Ankh Bay in a gale, and there were flashes of lightning all round him-’

‘Oook?’

‘I don’t know why they didn’t, perhaps he had rubber boots on,’ Rincewind snapped, and went on dreamily,

‘And he had this staff and a hat on, just like mine, and his eyes were sort of glowing and there was all this sort of like glitter coming out of his fingertips, and I thought one day I’ll do that, and-’

‘Oook?’

‘Just a half, then.’

‘Oook.’

‘How do you pay for this stuff? Every time anyone gives you any money you eat it.’

‘Oook.’

Amazing.’

Rincewind completed his sketch in the beer. There was a stick figure on a cliff. It didn’t look much like him - drawing in stale beer is not a precise art - but it was meant to.

‘That’s what I wanted to be,’ he said. ‘Pow! Not all this messing around. All this books and stuff, that isn’t what it should all be about. What we need is real wizardry.’

That last remark would have earned the prize for the day’s most erroneous statement if Rincewind hadn’t then said:

‘It’s a pity there aren’t any of them around any more.’

Spelter rapped on the table with his spoon.

He was an impressive figure, in his ceremonial robe with the purple-and-vermine[6] hood of the Venerable Council of Seers and the yellow sash of a fifth level wizard; he’d been fifth level for three years, waiting for one of the sixty-four sixth level wizards to create a vacancy by dropping dead. He was in an amiable mood, however. Not only had he just finished a good dinner, he also had in his quarters a small phial of a guaranteed untastable poison which, used correctly, should guarantee him promotion within a few months. Life looked good.

The big clock at the end of the hall trembled on the verge of nine o’clock.

The tattoo with the spoon hadn’t had much effect. Spelter picked up a pewter tankard and brought it down hard.

‘Brothers!’ he shouted, and nodded as the hubbub died away. ‘Thank you. Be upstanding, please, for the ceremony of the, um, keys.’

There was a ripple of laughter and a general buzz of expectancy as the wizards pushed back their benches and got unsteadily to their feet.

The double doors to the hall were locked and triple barred. An incoming Archchancellor had to request entry three times before they would be unlocked, signifying that he was appointed with the consent of wizardry in general. Or some such thing. The origins were lost in the depths of time, which was as good a reason as any for retaining the custom.

The conversation died away. The assembled wizardry stared at the doors.

There was a soft knocking.

‘Go away!’ shouted the wizards, some of them collapsing at the sheer subtlety of the humour.

Spelter picked up the great iron ring that contained the keys to the University. They weren’t all metal. They weren’t all visible. Some of them looked very strange indeed.

‘Who is that who knocketh without?’ he intoned.

‘I do.’

What was strange about the voice was this: it seemed to every wizard that the speaker was standing right behind him. Most of them found themselves looking over their shoulders.

In that moment of shocked silence there was the sharp little snick of the lock. They watched in fascinated horror as the iron bolts travelled back of their own accord; the great oak balks of timber, turned by Time into something tougher than rock, slid out of their sockets; the hinges flared from red through yellow to white and then exploded. Slowly, with a terrible inevitability, the doors fell into the hall.