Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

“I wonder what's the difference between ordinary councillors and privy councillors?” wondered the merchant aloud.

The assassin scowled at him. “I think,” he said, “it is because you're expected to eat shit.”

He turned the glare back on his feet again. What kept going through his mind were Wonse's last words, as he shook the secretary's limp hand. He wondered if anyone else had heard them. Unlikely . . . they'd been a shape rather than a sound. Wonse had simply moved his lips around them while staring fixedly at the assassin's moon-tanned face.

Help. Me.

The assassin shivered. Why him? As far as he could see there was only one kind of help he was qualified to give, and very few people ever asked for it for themselves. In fact, they usually paid large sums for it to be given as a surprise present to other people. He wondered what was happening to Wonse that made any alternative seem better . . .

...

Wonse sat alone in the dark, ruined hall. Waiting.

He could try running. But it'd find him again. It'd always be able to find him. It could smell his mind.

Or it would flame him. That was worse. Just like the Brethren. Perhaps it was an instantaneous death, it looked an instantaneous death, but Wonse lay awake at night wondering whether those last micro-seconds somehow stretched to a subjective, white-hot eternity, every tiny part of your body a mere smear of plasma and you, there, alive in the middle of it all ...

Not you. I would not flame you.

It wasn't telepathy. As far as Wonse had always understood it, telepathy was like hearing a voice in your head.

This was like hearing a voice in your body. His whole nervous system twanged to it, like a bow.

Rise.

Wonse jerked to his feet, overturning the chair and banging his legs on the table. When that voice spoke, he had as much control over his body as water had over gravity.

Come.

Wonse lurched across the floor.

The wings unfolded slowly, with the occasional creak, until they filled the hall from side to side. The tip of one smashed a window, and stuck out into the afternoon air.

The dragon slowly, sensuously, stretched out its neck and yawned. When it had finished, it brought its head around until it was a few inches in front of Wonse's face.

What does voluntary mean ?

“It, er, it means doing something of your own free will,” said Wonse.

But they have no free will! They will increase my hoard, or I will flame them!

Wonse gulped. “Yes,” he said, “but you mustn't-”

The silent roar of fury spun him around.

There is nothing I mustn 't!

“No, no, no!” squeaked Wonse, clutching his head. “I didn't mean that! Believe me! This way is better, that's all! Better and safer!”

None can defeat me!

“This is certainly the case-”

None can control me!

Wonse flung up his finger-spread hands in a conciliatory fashion. “Of course, of course,” he said. “But there are ways and ways, you know. Ways and ways. All the roaring and flaming, you see, you don't need it . . .”

Foolish ape! How else can I make them do my bidding ?