Discworld 03 - Equal Rites

by Terry Pratchett

  The Shades, in brief, were an abode of discredited gods and unlicensed thieves, ladies of the night and peddlers in exotic goods, alchemists of the mind and strolling mummers; in short, all the grease on civilization’s axle.

  And yet, despite the fact that these people tend to appreciate the soft magics, there was a remarkable shortage of witches. Within hours the news of Granny’s arrival had seeped through the quarter and a stream of people crept, sidled or strutted toward her door, seeking potions and charms and news of the future and various personal and specialized services that witches traditionally provide for those whose lives are a little clouded or full of stormy weather.

  She was at first annoyed, and then embarrassed, and then flattered; her clients had money, which was useful, but they also paid in respect, and that was a rock-hard currency.

  In short, Granny was even wondering about the possibility of acquiring slightly larger premises with a bit of garden and sending for her goats. The smell might be a problem, but the goats would just have to put up with it.

  They had visited the sights of Ankh-Morpork, its crowded docks, its many bridges, its souks, its casbahs, its streets lined with nothing but temples. Granny had counted the temples with a thoughtful look in her eyes; gods were always demanding that their followers acted other than according to their true natures, and the human fallout this caused made plenty of work for witches.

  The terrors of civilization had so far failed to materialize, although a cutpurse had tried to make off with Granny’s handbag. To the amazement of passersby Granny called him back, and back he came, fighting his feet which had totally ceased to obey him. No one quite saw what happened to her eyes when she stared into his face or heard the words she whispered in his cowering ear, but he gave her back all her money plus quite a lot of money belonging to other people, and before she let him go had promised to have a shave, stand up straight, and be a better person for the rest of his life. By nightfall Granny’s description was circulated to all the chapter houses of the Guild of Thieves, Cutpurses, Housebreakers and Allied Trades*, with strict instructions to avoid her at all costs. Thieves, being largely creatures of the night themselves, know trouble when it stares them in the face.

  Granny had also written two more letters to the University. There had been no reply.

  “I liked the forest best,” said Esk.

  “I dunno,” said Granny. “This is a bit like the forest, really. Anyway, people certainly appreciate a witch here.”

  “They’re very friendly,” Esk conceded. “You know the house down the street, where that fat lady lives with all those young ladies you said were her relatives?”

  “Mrs. Palm,” said Granny cautiously. “Very respectable lady.”

  “People come to visit them all night long. I watched. I’m surprised they get any sleep.”

  “Um,” said Granny.

  “It must be a trial for the poor woman with all those daughters to feed, too. I think people could be more considerate.”

  “Well now,” said Granny, “I’m not sure that—”

  She was rescued by the arrival at the gates of the University of a large, brightly painted wagon. Its driver reined in the oxen a few feet from Granny and said: “Excuse me, my good woman, but would you be so kind as to move, please?”

  Granny stepped aside, affronted by this display of down-right politeness and particularly upset at being thought of as anyone’s good woman, and the driver saw Esk.

  It was Treatle. He grinned like a worried snake.

  “I say. It’s the young lady who thinks women should be wizards, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Esk, ignoring a sharp kick on the ankle from Granny.

  “What fun. Come to join us, have you?”

  “Yes,” said Esk, and then because something about Treatle’s manner seemed to demand it, she added, “sir. Only we can’t get in.”

  “We?” said Treatle, and then glanced at Granny, “Oh, yes, of course. This would be your aunt?”

  “My granny. Only not really my granny, just sort of everyone’s granny.”

  Granny gave a stiff nod.

  “Well, we cannot have this,” said Treatle, in a voice as hearty as a plum pudding. “My word, no. Our first lady wizard left on the doorstep? That would be a disgrace. May I accompany you?”

  Granny grasped Esk firmly by the shoulder.

  “If it’s all the same to you—” she began. But Esk twisted out of her grip and ran toward the cart.

  “You can really take me in?” she said, her eyes shining.

  “Of course. I am sure the heads of the Orders will be most gratified to meet you. Most astonished and astounded,” he said, and gave a little laugh.

  “Eskarina Smith—” said Granny, and then stopped. She looked at Treatle.

  “I don’t know what is in your mind, Mr. Wizard, but I don’t like it,” she said. “Esk, you know where we live. Be a fool if you must, but you might at least be your own fool.”

  She turned on her heel and strode off across the square.

  “What a remarkable woman,” said Treatle, vaguely. “I see you still have your broomstick. Capital.”

  He let go of the reins for a moment and made a complicated sign in the air with both hands.

  The big doors swung back, revealing a wide courtyard surrounded by lawns. Behind them was a great rambling building, or buildings: it was hard to tell, because it didn’t look so much as if it had been designed as that a lot of buttresses, arches, towers, bridges, domes, cupolas and so forth had huddled together for warmth.

  “Is that it?” said Esk. “It looks sort of—melted.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” said Treatle. “Alma mater, gaudy armors eagle tour and so on. Of course, it’s a lot bigger inside than out, like an iceberg or so I’m given to understand, I’ve never seen the things. Unseen University, only of course a lot of it is unseen. Just go in the back and fetch Simon, will you?”

  Esk pushed aside the heavy curtains and peered into the back of the wagon. Simon was lying on a pile of rugs, reading a very large book and making notes on scraps of paper.

  He looked up, and gave her a worried smile.

  “Is that you?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Esk, with conviction.

  “We thought you’d left us. Everyone thought you were riding with everyone else and then wwwwhen we stopped—”

  “I sort of caught up. I think Mr. Treatle wants you to come and look at the University.”

  “We’re here?” he said, and gave her an odd look: “You’re here?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Mr. Treatle invited me in, he said everyone would be astounded to meet me.” Uncertainty flashed a fin in the depths of her eyes. “Was he right?”

  Simon looked down at his book, and dabbed at his running eyes with a red handkerchief.

  “He has t-these little f-fancies,” he muttered, “bbbut he’s not a bad person.”

  Bewildered, Esk looked down at the yellowed pages open in front of the boy. They were full of complicated red and black symbols which in some inexplicable way were as potent and unpleasant as a ticking parcel, but which nevertheless drew the eye in the same way that a really bad accident does. One felt that one would like to know their purpose, while at the same time suspecting that if you found out you would really prefer not to have done.

  Simon saw her expression and hastily shut the book.

  “Just some magic,” he mumbled. “Something I’m wwwww—”

  “—working—” said Esk, automatically.

  “Thank you. On.”

  “It must be quite interesting, reading books,” said Esk.

  “Sort of. Can’t you read, Esk?”

  The astonishment in his voice stung her.

  “I expect so,” she said defiantly. “I’ve never tried.”

  Esk wouldn’t have known what a collective noun was if it had spat in her eye, but she knew there was a herd of goats and a coven of witches. She didn’t k
now what you called a lot of wizards. An order of wizards? A conspiracy? A circle?

  Whatever it was, it filled the University. Wizards strolled among the cloisters and sat on benches under the trees. Young wizards scuttled along pathways as bells rang, with their arms full of books or—in the case of senior students—with their books flapping through the air after them. The air had the greasy feel of magic and tasted of tin.

  Esk walked along between Treatle and Simon and drank it all in. It wasn’t just that there was magic in the air, but it was tamed and working, like a millrace. It was power, but it was harnessed.

  Simon was as excited as she was, but it showed only because his eyes watered more and his stutter got worse. He kept stopping to point out the various colleges and research buildings.

  One was quite low and brooding, with high narrow windows.

  “T-that’s the l-l-library,” said Simon, his voice bursting with wonder and respect. “Can I have a l-l-look?”

  “Plenty of time for that later,” said Treatle. Simon gave the building a wistful look.

  “All the b-books of magic ever written,” he whispered.

  “Why are the windows barred?” said Esk.

  Simon swallowed. “Um, b-because b-books of m-magic aren’t like other b-books, they lead a—”

  “That’s enough,” snapped Treatle. He looked down at Esk as if he had just noticed her, and frowned.

  “Why are you here?”

  “You invited me in,” said Esk.

  “Me? Oh yes. Of course. Sorry, mind wandering. The young lady who wants to be a wizard. Let us see, shall we?”

  He led the way up a broad flight of steps to an impressive pair of doors. At least, they were designed to be impressive. The designer had invested deeply in heavy locks, curly hinges, brass studs and an intricately carved archway to make it absolutely clear to anyone entering that they were not very important people at all.

  He was a wizard. He had forgotten the doorknocker.

  Treatle rapped on the door with his staff. It hesitated for a while, and then slowly slid back its bolts and swung open.

  The hall was full of wizards and boys. And boys’ parents.

  There are two ways of getting into Unseen University (in fact there are three, but at this time wizards hadn’t realized it).

  The first is to achieve some great work of magic, such as the recovery of an ancient and powerful relic or the invention of a totally new spell, but in these times it was seldom done. In the past there had been great wizards capable of forming whole new spells from the chaotic raw magic of the world, wizards from whom as it were all the spells of wizardry had flowed, but those days had gone; there were no more sorcerers.

  So the more typical method was to be sponsored by a senior and respected wizard, after a suitable period of apprenticeship.

  Competition was stiff for a University place and the honor and privileges an Unseen degree could bring. Many of the boys milling around the hall, and launching minor spells at each other, would fail and have to spend their lives as lowly magicians, mere magical technologists with defiant beards and leather patches on their elbows who congregated in small jealous groups at parties.

  Not for them the coveted pointy hat with optional astrological symbols, or the impressive robes, or the staff of authority. But at least they could look down on conjurers, who tended to be jolly and fat and inclined to drop their aitches and drink beer and go around with sad thin women in spangly tights and really infuriate magicians by not realizing how lowly they were and kept telling them jokes. Lowliest of all—apart from witches, of course—were thaumaturgists, who never got any schooling at all. A thaumaturgist could just about be trusted to wash out an alembic. Many spells required things like mold from a corpse dead of crushing, or the semen of a living tiger, or the root of a plant that gave an ultrasonic scream when it was uprooted. Who was sent to get them? Right.

  It is a common error to refer to the lower magical ranks as hedge wizards. In fact hedge wizardry is a very honored and specialized form of magic that attracts silent, thoughtful men of the druidical persuasion and topiaric inclinations. If you invited a hedge wizard to a party he would spend half the evening talking to your potted plant. And he would spend the other half listening.

  Esk noticed that there were some women in the hall, because even young wizards had mothers and sisters. Whole families had turned up to bid the favored sons farewell. There was a considerable blowing of noses, wiping of tears and the clink of coins as proud fathers tucked a little spending money into their offspring’s hands.

  Very senior wizards were perambulating among the crowds, talking to the sponsoring wizards and examining the prospective students.

  Several of them pushed through the throng to meet Treatle, moving like gold-trimmed galleons under full sail. They bowed gravely to him and looked approvingly at Simon.

  “This is young Simon, is it?” said the fattest of them, beaming at the boy. “We’ve heard great reports of you, young man. Eh? What?”

  “Simon, bow to Archchancellor Cutangle, Archmage of the Wizards of the Silver Star,” said Treatle. Simon bowed apprehensively.

  Cutangle looked at him benevolently. “We’ve heard great things about you, my boy,” he said. “All this mountain air must be good for the brain, eh?”

  He laughed. The wizards around him laughed. Treatle laughed. Which Esk thought was rather funny, because there wasn’t anything particularly amusing happening.

  “I ddddon’t know, ssss—”

  “From what we hear it must be the only thing you don’t know, lad!” said Cutangle, his jowls waggling. There was another carefully timed bout of laughter.

  Cutangle patted Simon on the shoulder.

  “This is the scholarship boy,” he said. “Quite astounding results, never seen better. Self-taught, too. Astonishing, what? Isn’t that so, Treatle?”

  “Superb, Archchancellor.”

  Cutangle looked around at the watching wizards.

  “Perhaps you could give us a sample,” he said. “A little demonstration, perhaps?”

  Simon looked at him in animal panic.

  “A-actually I’m not very g-g-g—”

  “Now, now,” said Cutangle, in what he probably really did think was an encouraging tone of voice. “Do not be afraid. Take your time. When you are ready.”

  Simon licked his dry lips and gave Treatle a look of mute appeal.

  “Um,” he said, “y-you s-s-s-s-.” He stopped and swallowed hard. “The f-f-f-f—”

  His eyes bulged. The tears streamed from his eyes, and his shoulders heaved.

  Treatle patted him reassuringly on the back.

  “Hay fever,” he explained. “Don’t seem to be able to cure it. Tried everything.”

  Simon swallowed, and nodded. He waved Treatle away with his long white hands and closed his eyes.

  For a few seconds nothing happened. He stood with his lips moving soundlessly, and then silence spread out from him like candlelight. Ripples of noiselessness washed across the crowds in the hall, striking the walls with all the force of a blown kiss and then curling back in waves. People watched their companions mouthing silently and then went red with effort when their own laughter was as audible as a gnat’s squeak.

  Tiny motes of light winked into existence around his head. They whirled and spiraled in a complex three-dimensional dance, and then formed a shape.

  In fact it seemed to Esk that the shape had been there all the time, waiting for her eyes to see it, in the same way that a perfectly innocent cloud can suddenly become, without changing in any way, a whale or a ship or a face.

  The shape around Simon’s head was the world.

  That was quite clear, although the glitter and rush of the little lights blurred some of the detail. But there was Great A’Tuin the sky turtle, with the four Elephants on its back, and on them the Disc itself. There was the sparkle of the great waterfall around the edge of the world, and there at the very hub a tiny needle of rock that
was the great mountain Cori Celesti, where the gods lived.

  The image expanded and homed in on the Circle Sea and then on Ankh itself, the little lights flowing away from Simon and winking out of existence a few feet from his head. Now they showed the city from the air, rushing toward the watchers. There was the University itself, growing larger. There was the Great Hall—

  —there were the people, watching silent and open-mouthed, and Simon himself, outlined in specks of silver light. And a tiny sparkling image in the air around him, and that image contained an image and another and another—

  There was a feeling that the universe had been turned inside out in all dimensions at once. It was a bloated, swollen sensation. It sounded as though the whole world had said “gloop.”

  The walls faded. So did the floor. The paintings of former great mages, all scrolls and beards and slightly constipated frowns, vanished. The tiles underfoot, a rather nice black and white pattern, evaporated—to be replaced by fine sand, gray as moonlight and cold as ice. Strange and unexpected stars glittered overhead; on the horizon were low hills, eroded not by wind or rain in this weatherless place but by the soft sandpaper of Time itself.

  No one else seemed to have noticed. No one else, in fact, seemed alive. Esk was surrounded by people as still and silent as statues.

  And they weren’t alone. There were other—Things—behind them, and more were appearing all the time. They had no shape, or rather they seemed to be taking their shapes at random from a variety of creatures; they gave the impression that they had heard about arms and legs and jaws and claws and organs but didn’t really know how they all fitted together. Or didn’t care. Or were so hungry they hadn’t bothered to find out.

  They made a sound like a swarm of flies.

  They were the creatures out of her dreams, come to feed on magic. She knew they weren’t interested in her now, except in the nature of an after-dinner mint. Their whole concentration was focused on Simon, who was totally unaware of their presence.