The Fifth Elephant

by Terry Pratchett

Sybil, panting with the effort, turned to her husband. She gleamed in the torchlight.

  “Do you think that was all right?” she said.

  “By the sound of it, you’re an honorary dwarf,” said Vimes. He held out his arm. “Shall we go?”

  News was going on ahead. Dwarfs were pouring out of the entrance to Downtown when the duke and duchess arrived.

  There were dwarfs behind them now. They were being swept along. And all the time, hands would reach out to touch the Scone as it passed.

  Dwarfs crowded into the elevator with them. Down below the roar of conversation stopped abruptly as Vimes stepped out and raised the Scone above his head. Then the rock echoed and re-echoed to one enormous cheer.

  They can’t even see it, said Vimes. To most of them, it’s a tiny white dot. And that was what the plotters had known, wasn’t it? You don’t have to steal something to hold it hostage…

  “They are to be arrested!”

  Dee was hurrying forward, with more guards behind him.

  “Again?” said Vimes. He kept the stone aloft.

  “You attempted to kill the king! You escaped from your cell!”

  “That’s something about which we could hear more evidence,” said Vimes, as calmly as he could. The Scone was getting heavier. “You can’t keep people in the dark all the time, Dee.”

  “You shall certainly not see the king!”

  “Then I will drop the Scone!”

  “Do so! It won’t—”

  Vimes heard the gasp of the dwarfs behind him.

  “It won’t what?” he said, quietly. “It won’t matter? But this is the Scone!”

  One of the dwarfs that had accompanied them from the embassy shouted something, and several others took it up.

  “Precedent is on your side,” Cheery translated. “They say they can always kill you after you’ve seen the king.”

  “Well, not exactly what I was hoping but it’ll have to do.” Vimes looked at Dee again. “You said you wanted me to find the thing, didn’t you? And now, how fitting that I return it to its rightful owner…”

  “You…the king is…you may give it to me,” said Dee, pulling himself up to the height of Vimes’s chest.

  “Absolutely not!” snapped Lady Sybil. “When Ironhammer returned the Scone to Bloodaxe, would he have given it to Slogram?”

  There was a general chorus of dissent.

  “Of course not,” said Dee, “Slogram was a trait—”

  He stopped.

  “I think,” said Vimes, “that we had better see the king, don’t you think?”

  “You can’t demand that!”

  Vimes indicated the press of dwarfs behind them.

  “You’re going to be amazed at how difficult it’s going to be for you, explaining that to them,” he said.

  It took half an hour to see the king. He had to be roused. He had to dress. Kings don’t hurry.

  In the meantime, Vimes and Sybil sat in an anteroom on chairs too small for them, surrounded by dwarfs who weren’t themselves sure if they were a prisoner escort or an honor guard. Other dwarfs were peering around the doorway; Vimes could hear the buzz of excited conversation.

  They weren’t wasting much time looking at him. Their gaze always fell on the Scone that he held in his lap. It was clear that most of them hadn’t even seen it before.

  You poor little sods, he thought. This is what you all believe in, and before the day’s out you’re going to be told it’s just a bad fake. You’ll see it’s a forgery. And that about wraps it up for your little world, doesn’t it? I set out to solve a crime and I’m going to end up committing a bigger one.

  I’m going to be lucky to get out of here alive, aren’t I?

  A door was rolled open. A couple of what Vimes thought of as the heavy dwarfs stepped through and gave everyone the official, professional look which said that for your comfort and convenience we have decided not to kill you right at this very moment.

  The king entered, rubbing his hands.

  “Ah, Your Excellency,” he said, pronouncing the word as a statement of fact rather than a welcome. “I see you have something that belongs to us.”

  Dee detached himself from the crowd at the door.

  “I must make a serious accusation, sire!” he said.

  “Really? Bring these people into the law room. Under guard, of course.”

  He swept away. Vimes looked at Sybil, and shrugged. They followed the king, leaving the hubbub of the main cavern behind.

  Once again, Vimes was in the room with too many shelves and too few candles. The king sat down.

  “Is the Scone heavy, Your Excellency?”

  “Yes!”

  “It is weighted with history, see? Put it down on the table with extreme care, please. And…Dee?”

  “That…thing,” said Dee, pointing a finger, “that thing is…a fake, a copy. A forgery! Made in Ankh-Morpork! Part of a plot which, I am sure can be proven, involves milord Vimes! It is not the Scone!”

  The king lifted a candle a little closer to the Scone and gave it a critical look from several angles.

  “I have seen the Scone many times before,” he said at last, “and I would say that this appears to be the true thing and the whole of the thing.”

  “Sire, I demand—that is, I advise you to demand a closer inspection, sire.”

  “Really?” said the king mildly. “Well, I am not an expert, see? But we are fortunate, are we not, that Albrecht Albrechtson is here for the coronation? All of dwarfdom knows, I think, that he is the authority on the Scone and its history. Have him summoned. I daresay he is close at hand. I should say just about everyone is on the other side of that door now.”

  “Indeed, sire.” The look of triumph on Dee’s face as he swept past Vimes was almost obscene.

  “I think we’re going to need another song to get us out of this one, dear,” murmured Vimes.

  “I’m afraid I can only remember that one, Sam. The others were mainly about gold.”

  Dee returned, with Albrecht and a following of other senior and somewhat magisterial dwarfs.

  “Ah, Albrecht,” said the king. “Do you see this on the table? It is claimed that this is not the true thing and the whole of the thing. Your opinion is sought, please.” The king nodded at Vimes. “My friend understands Morporkian, Your Excellency. He just chooses not to pollute the air by speaking it. Just his way, see?”

  Albrecht glared at Vimes and then stepped up to the table.

  He looked at the Scone from several angles. He moved the candles, and leaned down so that he could inspect the crust closely.

  He took a knife from his belt, tapped the Scone with it, and listened with ferocious care to the note produced. He turned the Scone over. He sniffed at it.

  He stood back, his face screwed up in a scowl, and then said “H’gradz?”

  The dwarfs muttered among themselves, and then, one by one, nodded.

  To Vimes’s horror, Albrecht chipped a tiny piece from the Scone and put it in his mouth.

  Plaster, thought Vimes. Fresh plaster from Ankh-Morpork. And Dee will talk his way out of it—

  Albrecht spat the piece out into his hand, and looked up at the ceiling for a moment, while he chewed.

  Then he and the king exchanged a long, thoughtful stare.

  “P’akga,” said Albrecht, at last, “a p’akaga-ad…”

  Behind the outbreak of murmuring, Vimes heard Cheery translate: “‘It is the thing, and the whole of—’”

  “Yes, yes,” said Vimes. And he thought: By gods, we’re good. Ankh-Morpork, I’m proud of you. When we make a forgery, it’s better than the real damn thing.

  Unless…unless I’ve missed something…

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” said the king. He waved a hand. The dwarfs filed out, reluctantly, with many backward glances at Vimes.

  “Dee? Please fetch my ax from my chamber, will you?” the king said. “Yourself, please. I don’t want anyone else to handle it. Your Excellency, you and your la
dy will remain here. Your…dwarf must leave, however. The guards are to be posted on the door. Dee?”

  The Ideas-taster hadn’t moved.

  “Dee?”

  “Wh’…yes, sire?”

  “You do what I tell you!”

  “Sire, this man’s ancestor once killed a king!”

  “I daresay the family have got it out of their system! Now do as I say!”

  The dwarf hurried away, turning to stare at Vimes for a moment as he left the cave.

  The king sat back.

  “Sit down, Your Monitorship. And your lady, too.” He put one elbow on the arm of the chair and cupped his chin on his hand. “And now, Mister Vimes, tell me the truth. Tell me everything. Tell me the truth that is more valuable than small amounts of gold.”

  “I’m not sure I know it anymore,” said Vimes.

  “Ah. A good start,” said the king. “Tell me what you suspect, then.”

  “Sire, I’d swear that thing is as fake as a tin shilling.”

  “Oh. Really?”

  “The real Scone wasn’t stolen, it was destroyed. I reckon it was smashed and ground up and mixed with the sand in its cave. You see, sire, if people see that something’s gone, and then you turn up with something that looks like it, they’ll think ‘this must be it, it must be, because it isn’t where we thought it was.’ People are like that. Something disappears and something very much like it turns up somewhere else and they think it must somehow have got from one place to the other…” Vimes pinched his nose. “I’m sorry, I haven’t had much sleep…”

  “You are doing very well for a sleepwalking man.”

  “The…thief was working with the werewolves, I think. They were behind the ‘Sons of Agi Hammerthief’ business. They were going to blackmail you off the throne…well, you know that. To keep Uberwald in the dark. If you didn’t step down there’d be a war, and if you did Albrecht would get the fake Scone.”

  “What else do you think you know?”

  “Well, the fake was made in Ankh-Morpork. We’re good at making things. I think someone had the maker killed, but I can’t find out more until I get back. I will find out.”

  “You make things very well in your city, then, to fool Albrecht. How do you think that was done?”

  “You want the truth, sire?”

  “By all means.”

  “Is it possible that Albrecht was involved? Find out where the money is, my old sergeant used to say.”

  “Hah. Who was it said ‘Where there are policemen, you find crimes’?”

  “Er…me, sir, but—”

  “Let us find out. Dee should have had time to think. Ah…”

  The door opened. The Ideas-taster stepped through, carrying a dwarfish ax. It was a mining ax, with a pick point on one side, in order to go prospecting, and a real ax blade on the other, in case anyone tried to stop you.

  “Call the guards in, Dee,” said the king. “And His Excellency’s young dwarf. These things should be seen, see.”

  Oh, good grief, thought Vimes, watching Dee’s face as the others shuffled in, there must be a manual. Every copper knows how this goes. You let ’em know you know they’ve done something wrong, but you don’t tell ’em what it is and you certainly don’t tell ’em how much you know, and you keep ’em off balance, and you just talk quietly and—

  “Place your hands upon the Scone, Dee.”

  Dee spun around. “Sire?”

  “Place your hands upon the Scone. Do as I say. Do it now.”

  —you keep the threat in view but you never refer to it, oh no. Because there’s nothing you can do to them that their imagination isn’t already doing to themselves. And you keep it up until they break, or in the case of my old dame school, until they feel their boots get damp.

  And it doesn’t even leave a mark.

  “Tell me about the death of Longfinger, the candle captain,” said the king, after Dee, with a look of hollow apprehension, had touched the Scone.

  The words rushed out. “Oh, as I told you, sire, he—”

  “If you do not keep your hands pressed upon the Scone, Dee, I will see to it that they are fixed there. Tell me again.”

  “I…he…took his own life, sire. Out of shame.”

  The king picked up his ax and turned it so that the long point faced outward.

  “Tell me again.”

  Now Vimes could hear Dee’s breathing, short and fast.

  “He took his own life, sire!”

  The king smiled at Vimes. “There’s an old superstition, Your Excellency, that since the Scone contains a grain of Truth it will glow red-hot if a lie is told by anyone touching it. Of course, in these more modern times, I shouldn’t think anyone believes it.” He turned to Dee.

  “Tell me again,” he whispered.

  As the ax moved slightly, the reflected light of the candles flashed along the blade.

  “He took his own life! He did!”

  “Oh yes. You said. Thank you,” said the king. “And do you recall, Dee, when Slogram sent false word of Bloodaxe’s death in battle to Ironhammer, causing Ironhammer to take his own life in grief, where was the guilt?”

  “It was Slogram’s, sir,” said Dee promptly. Vimes suspected the answer had come straight from some rote-remembered teaching.

  “Yes.”

  The king let the word hang in the air for a while, and then went on: “And who gave the order to kill the craftsman in Ankh-Morpork?”

  “Sire?” said Dee.

  “Who gave the order to kill the craftsman in Ankh-Morpork?” The king’s tone did not change. It was the same comfortable, singsong voice. He sounded as though he would carry on asking the question forever.

  “I know nothing about—”

  “Guards, press his hands firmly against the Scone.”

  They stepped forward. Each one took an arm.

  “Again, Dee. Who gave the order?”

  Dee writhed as if his hands were burning.

  “I…I…”

  Vimes could see the skin whiten on the dwarf’s hands as he strained to lift them from the stone.

  But it’s a fake. I’d swear he destroyed the real one, so he knows it’s a fake, surely? It’s just a lump of plaster, probably still damp in the middle! Vimes tried to think. The original Scone had been in the cave, hadn’t it? Was it? If it wasn’t, where had it been? The werewolves thought they had a fake, and it certainly hadn’t left his sight since. He tried to think through the fog of fatigue.

  He’d half-wondered, once, whether the original Scone had been the one in the Dwarf Bread Museum. That would have been the way to keep it safe. No one would try to steal something that everyone knew was a fake…The whole thing was the Fifth Elephant, nothing was what it seemed, it was all a fog…

  Which one was real?

  “Who gave the order, Dee?” said the king.

  “Not me! I said they must take all necessary steps to preserve secrecy!”

  “To whom did you say this?”

  “I can give you names!”

  “Later, you will. I promise you, boyo,” said the king. “And the werewolves?”

  “The baroness suggested it! That is true!”

  “Uberwald for the werewolves. Ah, yes…‘joy through strength.’ I expect they promised you all sorts of things…You may take your hands off the Scone. I do not wish to distress you further. But…why? My predecessors spoke highly of you, you are a dwarf of power and influence…and then you let yourself become a pawn of the werewolves. Why?”

  “Why should they be allowed to get away with it?” Dee snapped, his voice breaking with the strain.

  The king looked across at Vimes.

  “Oh, I suspect the werewolves will regret that they—” he began.

  “Not them! The…ones in Ankh-Morpork! Wearing…makeup and dresses and…and abominable things!” Dee pointed a finger at Cheery. “Ha’ak! How can you even look at it! You let her,” and Vimes had seldom heard a word sprayed with so much venom, “her flaunt herself, h
ere! And it’s happening everywhere because people have not been firm, not obeyed, have let the old ways slide! Everywhere there are reports…they’re eating away at everything dwarfish with their…their soft clothes and paint and beastly ways. How can you be king and allow this? Everywhere they are doing it and you do nothing! Why should they be allowed to do this?” Now Dee was sobbing. “I can’t! And I work so hard…so hard…”

  Vimes saw that Cheery, to his amazement, was blinking back tears.

  “I see,” said the king. “Well, I suppose that is an explanation.”

  He nodded to the guards. “Take…her away. Some things must wait a day or two.”

  Cheery saluted, suddenly.

  “Permission to go with her, sire?”

  “What on earth for, young…young dwarf?”

  “I expect she’d like someone to talk to, sir. I know I would.”

  “Indeed? Well, if your commander has no objection…Off you go, then.”

  The king leaned back when the guards had left with their prisoner and the prisoner’s new counselor.

  “Well, Your Excellency?”

  “This is the real Scone?”

  “You are not certain?”

  “Dee was!”

  “Dee…is in a difficult state of mind.” The king looked at the ceiling. “I think I will tell you this because, Your Excellency, I really do not want you going through the rest of your time here asking silly questions. Yes, this is the true Scone.”

  “But how could—”

  “Wait! So was the one that is, yes, ground to dust in the cave by Dee in her…madness,” the king went on. “So were the…let me see…five before that. Still untouched by time after fifteen hundred years? What romantics we dwarfs are! Even the very best dwarf bread crumbles after a few hundred.”

  “Fakes?” said Vimes. “They were all fakes?”

  Suddenly the king was holding his mining ax again. “This, milord, is my family’s ax. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation…but is this not the nine-hundred-year-old ax of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good ax, y’know. Pretty good. Will you tell me if this is a fake, too?”