Thud! (Discworld 34)

Dwarfs didn"t go mad. They stayed thoughtful and sombre and keen on their job. But they scrawled mine-sign.

It was like an unofficial ballot, voting by graffiti, showing your views on what was going on. In the confines of a mine any problem was everyone"s problem, stress leapt from dwarf to dwarf like lightning. The signs earthed it. They were an outlet, a release, a way of showing what you felt without challenging anyone (because of all the pointy weapons).

The Following Dark: We await what follows with dread. Another translation might mean, in effect: Repent, ye sinners!

"There are hundreds of runes for darkness," said Carrot. "Some of them are part of ordinary dwarfish, of course, like the Long Dark. There"s plenty like that. But some are ..."

"Mystical?" Vimes suggested.

"Unbelievably mystical, sir. There"s books and books about them. And the way dwarfs think about books and words and runes ... well, you wouldn"t believe it, sir. W- They think the world was written, sir. All words have enormous power. Destroying a book is worse than murder to a deep-downer."

"I"ve rather gathered that," said Blackboard Monitor Vimes. "Some deep-downers believe that the dark signs are real," Carrot went on.

"Well, if you can see the writing on the wall-" Vimes began.

"Real like alive, sir," said Carrot. "Like they exist somewhere down in the dark under the world, and they cause themselves to be written. There"s the Waiting Dark ... that"s the dark that fills a new hole. The Closing Dark ... I don"t know about that one, but there"s an Opening Dark, too. The Breathing Dark, that"s rare. The Calling Dark, very dangerous. The Speaking Dark, the Catching Dark. The Secret Dark, I"ve seen that. They"re all fine. But the Following Dark is a very bad sign. I used to hear the older dwarfs talking about that. They said it could make lamps go out, and much worse things. When people start drawing that sign, things have got very bad."

"This is all very interesting, but-"

"Everyone in the mine is as nervous as heck, sir. Stressed like wires. Angua said she could smell it, but so could I, sir. I grew up in a mine. When something is wrong, everyone catches it. On days like that, sir, my father used to stop all mining operations. You get too many accidents. Frankly, sir, the dwarfs are mad with worry. The Following Dark signs are everywhere. It"s probably the miners they"ve hired since they came here. They feel that something is very wrong, but the only thing they can do about it is sign."

"Well, their top grag has been killed-"

"I can feel the atmosphere in a mine, sir. Any dwarf can. And that one is rancid with fear and dread and horrible confusion. And there"s worse things in the Deeps than the Following Dark."

Vimes had a momentary vision of vengeful darkness rising through caves like a tide, faster than a man could run ...

... which was stupid. You couldn"t see dark.

Hold on, though ... sometimes you could. Back in the old days, when he was on nights all the time, he"d known all the shades of darkness. And sometimes you got darkness so thick that you almost felt you had to push your way through it. Those were nights when horses were skittish and dogs whined and down in the slaughterhouse district the animals broke out of their pens. They were inexplicable, just like those nights that were quite light and silvery even though there was no moon in the sky. He"d learned, then, not to use his little watchman"s lantern. Light only ruined your vision, it blinded you. You stared into the dark until it blinked. You stared it down.

"Captain, I"m getting a bit lost here," said Vimes. "I didn"t grow up in a mine. Are these signs drawn because dwarfs think bad things are going to happen and want to ward them off, or think the mine deserves the bad things happening, or because they want the bad things to happen?"

"Can be all three at once," said Carrot, wincing. "It can get really intense when a mine goes bad."

"Oh, good grief!

"Oh, it can be awful, sir. Believe me. But no one would ever draw the worst of the signs and want it to happen. Just the drawing wouldn"t be enough, anyway. You have to want it to happen with your very last breath."

"And what one is that?

"Oh, you don"t want to know, sir."

"No, I did ask," said Vimes.

"No. You really don"t want to know, sir. Really."

Vimes was about to start yelling, but he stopped to think for a moment.

"Actually, no, I don"t think I do," he agreed. "This is all about hysteria and mysticism. It"s just weird folklore. Dwarfs believe it. I don"t. So ... how did you get the vurms to form that sign?"

"Easy, sir. You just smear the wall with a piece of meat. That"s a feast for vurms. I wanted to shake Ardent up a bit. Make him nervous, like you taught me. I wanted to show him I knew about signs. I am a dwarf, after all."

"Captain, this is probably not the time to break it to you, but-"

"Oh, I know people laugh, sir. A six-foot dwarf! But being a human just means being born to human parents. That"s easy. Being a dwarf doesn"t mean being born to dwarfs, though it"s a good start. It"s about certain things you do. Certain ceremonies. I"ve done them. So I"m a human and a dwarf. The deep-downers find it a bit hard to deal with that."

"It"s mystic again, is it?" said Vimes wearily.