Discworld 03 - Equal Rites

by Terry Pratchett

  One of the wizards coughed nervously.

  Nothing continued to happen.

  The carvings on the staff appeared to be grinning.

  “It’s not working,” said Cutangle, “is it?”

  “Ook.”

  “Give it time,” said Granny.

  They gave it time. Outside the storm strode around the sky, trying to lift the lids off houses.

  Granny sat down on a pile of books and rubbed her eyes. Cutangle’s hands strayed toward his tobacco pocket. The wizard with the nervous cough was helped out of the room by a colleague.

  “Ook,” said the librarian.

  “I know!” said Granny, so that Cutangle’s half-rolled homemade shot out of his nerveless fingers in a shower of tobacco.

  “What?”

  “It’s not finished!”

  “What?”

  “She can’t use the staff, of course,” said Granny, standing up.

  “But you said she swept the floors with it and it protects her and—” Cutangle began.

  “Nonono,” said Granny. “That means the staff uses itself or it uses her, but she’s never been able to use it, d’you see?”

  Cutangle stared at the two quiet bodies. “She should be able to use it. It’s a proper wizard’s staff.”

  “Oh,” said Granny. “So she’s a proper wizard, is she?”

  Cutangle hesitated.

  “Well, of course not. You can’t ask us to declare her a wizard. Where’s the precedent?”

  “The what?” asked Granny, sharply.

  “It’s never happened before.”

  “Lots of things have never happened before. We’re only born once.”

  Cutangle gave her a look of mute appeal. “But it’s against the l—”

  He began to say “lore,” but the word mumbled into silence.

  “Where does it say it?” said Granny triumphantly. “Where does it say women can’t be wizards?”

  The following thoughts sped through Cutangle’s mind:

  …It doesn’t say it anywhere, it says it everywhere.

  …But young Simon seemed to say that everywhere is much like nowhere that you can’t really tell the difference.

  …Do I want to be remembered as the first Archchancellor to allow women into the University? Still…I’d be remembered that’s for sure.

  …She really is a rather impressive woman when she stands in that sort of way.

  …That staff has got ideas of its own.

  …There’s a sort of sense to it.

  …I would be laughed at.

  …It might not work.

  …It might work.

  She couldn’t trust them. But she had no choice.

  Esk stared at the terrible faces peering down at her, and the lanky bodies, mercifully cloaked.

  Her hands tingled.

  In the shadow-world, ideas are real. The thought seemed to travel up her arms.

  It was a buoyant sort of thought, a thought full of fizz. She laughed, and moved her hands apart, and the staff sparkled in her hands like solid electricity.

  The Things started to chitter nervously and one or two at the back started to lurch away. Simon fell forward as his captor hastily let go, and he landed on his hands and knees in the sand.

  “Use it!” he shouted. “That’s it! They’re frightened!”

  Esk gave him a smile, and continued to examine the staff. For the first time she could see what the carvings actually were.

  Simon snatched up the pyramid of the world and ran toward her.

  “Come on!” he said. “They hate it!”

  “Pardon?” said Esk.

  “Use the staff,” said Simon urgently, and reached out for it. “Hey! It bit me!”

  “Sorry,” said Esk. “What were we talking about?” She looked up and regarded the keening Things as it were for the first time. “Oh, those. They only exist inside our heads. If we didn’t believe in them, they wouldn’t exist at all.”

  Simon looked around at them.

  “I can’t honestly say I believe you,” he said.

  “I think we should go home now,” said Esk. “People will be worrying.”

  She moved her hands together and the staff vanished, although for a moment her hands glowed as though they were cupped around a candle.

  The Things howled. A few of them fell over.

  “The important thing about magic is how you don’t use it,” said Esk, taking Simon’s arm.

  He stared at the crumbling figures around him, and grinned foolishly.

  “You don’t use it?” he queried.

  “Oh yes,” said Esk, as they walked toward the Things. “Try it yourself.”

  She extended her hands, brought the staff out of the air, and offered it to him. He went to take it, then drew back his hand.

  “Uh, no,” he said, “I don’t think it likes me much.”

  “I think it’s all right if I give it to you. It can’t really argue with that,” said Esk.

  “Where does it go?”

  “It just becomes an idea of itself, I think.”

  He reached out his hand again and closed his fingers around the shining wood.

  “Right,” he said, and raised it in the classical revengeful wizard’s pose. “I’ll show them!”

  “No, wrong.”

  “What do you mean, wrong? I’ve got the power!”

  “They’re sort of—reflections of us,” said Esk. “You can’t beat your reflections, they’ll always be as strong as you are. That’s why they draw nearer to you when you start using magic. And they don’t get tired. They feed off magic, so you can’t beat them with magic. No, the thing is…well, not using magic because you can’t, that’s no use at all. But not using magic because you can, that really upsets them. They hate the idea. If people stopped using magic they’d die.”

  The Things ahead of them fell over each other in their haste to back away.

  Simon looked at the staff, then at Esk, then at the Things then back at the staff.

  “This needs a lot of thinking about,” he said uncertainly “I’d really like to work this out.”

  “I expect you’ll do it very well.”

  “Because you’re saying that the real power is when you go right through magic and out the other side.”

  “It works, though, doesn’t it?”

  They were alone on the cold plain now. The Things were distant stick-figures.

  “I wonder if this is what they mean by sorcery?” said Simon.

  “I don’t know. It might be.”

  “I’d really like to work this out,” said Simon again, turning the staff over and over in his hands. “We could set up some experiments, you know, into deliberately not using magic. We could carefully not draw an octogram on the floor, and we could deliberately not call up all sorts of things, and—it makes me sweat just to think about it!”

  “I’d like to think about how to get home,” said Esk, looking down at the pyramid.

  “Well, that is supposed to be my idea of the world. I should be able to find a way. How do you do this thing with the hands?”

  He moved his hands together. The staff slid between them, the light glowing through his fingers for a moment, and then vanished. He grinned. “Right. Now all we have to do is look for the University…”

  Cutangle lit his third rollup from the stub of the second. This last cigarette owed a lot to the creative powers of nervous energy, and looked like a camel with the legs cut off.

  He had already watched the staff lift itself gently from Esk and land on Simon.

  Now it had floated up into the air again.

  Other wizards had crowded into the room. The librarian was sitting under the table.

  “If only we had some idea what is going on,” said Cutangle. “It’s the suspense I can’t stand.”

  “Think positively, man,” snapped Granny. “And put out that bloody cigarette, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to come back to a room that smells like a fireplace.”

&nbs
p; As one man the assembled college of wizards turned their faces toward Cutangle, expectantly.

  He took the smoldering mess out of his mouth and, with a glare that none of the assembled wizards cared to meet, trod it underfoot.

  “Probably time I gave it up anyway,” he said. “That goes for the rest of you, too. Worse than an ashpit in this place, sometimes.”

  Then he saw the staff. It was—

  The only way Cutangle could describe the effect was that it seemed to be going very fast while staying in exactly the same place.

  Streamers of gas flared away from it and vanished, if they were gas. It blazed like a comet designed by an inept special effects man. Colored sparks leapt out and disappeared somewhere.

  It was also changing color, starting with a dull red and then climbing through the spectrum until it was a painful violet. Snakes of white fire coruscated along its length.

  (There should be a word for words that sound like things would sound like if they made a noise, he thought. The word “glisten” does indeed gleam oilily, and if there was ever a word that sounded exactly the way sparks look as they creep across burned paper, or the way the lights of cities would creep across the world if the whole of human civilization was crammed into one night, then you couldn’t do better than “coruscate.”)

  He knew what would happen next.

  “Look out,” he whispered. “It’s going to go—”

  In total silence, in the kind of silence in fact that sucks in sounds and stifles them, the staff flashed into pure octarine along the whole of its length.

  The eighth color, produced by light falling through a strong magical field, blazed out through bodies and bookshelves and walls. Other colors blurred and ran together, as though the light was a glass of gin poured over the watercolor painting of the world. The clouds over the University glowed, twisted into fascinating and unexpected shapes, and streamed upward.

  An observer above the Disc would have seen a little patch of land near the Circle Sea sparkle like a jewel for several seconds, then wink out.

  The silence of the room was broken by a wooden clatter as the staff dropped out of the air and bounced on the table.

  Someone said “Ook,” very faintly.

  Cutangle eventually remembered how to use his hands and raised them to where he hoped his eyes would be. Everything had gone black.

  “Is—anyone else there?” he said.

  “Gods, you don’t know how glad I am to hear you say that,” said another voice. The silence was suddenly full of babble.

  “Are we still where we were?”

  “I don’t know. Where were we?”

  “Here, I think.”

  “Can you reach out?”

  “Not unless I am quite certain about what I’m going to touch, my good man,” said the unmistakable voice of Granny Weatherwax.

  “Everyone try and reach out,” said Cutangle, and choked down a scream as a hand like a warm leather glove closed around his ankle. There was a satisfied little “ook,” which managed to convey relief, comfort and the sheer joy of touching a fellow human being or, in this case, anthropoid.

  There was a scratch and then a blessed flare of red light as a wizard on the far side of the room lit a cigarette.

  “Who did that?”

  “Sorry, Archchancellor, force of habit.”

  “Smoke all you like, that man.”

  “Thank you, Archchancellor.”

  “I think I can see the outline of the door now,” said another voice.

  “Granny?”

  “Yes, I can definitely see—”

  “Esk?”

  “I’m here, Granny.”

  “Can I smoke too, sir?”

  “Is the boy with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ook.”

  “I’m here.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Everyone stop talking!”

  Ordinary light, slow and easy on the eye, sidled back into the library.

  Esk sat up, dislodging the staff. It rolled under the table. She felt something slip over her eyes, and reached up for it.

  “Just a moment,” said Granny, darting forward. She gripped the girl’s shoulders and peered into her eyes.

  “Welcome back,” she said, and kissed her.

  Esk reached up and patted something hard on her head. She lifted it down to examine it.

  It was a pointed hat, slightly smaller than Granny’s, but bright blue with a couple of silver stars painted on it.

  “A wizard hat?” she said.

  Cutangle stepped forward.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, and cleared his throat: “You see, we thought—it seemed—anyway, when we considered it—”

  “You’re a wizard,” said Granny, simply. “The Archchancellor changed the lore. Quite a simple ceremony, really.”

  “There’s the staff somewhere about here,” said Cutangle. “I saw it fall down—oh.”

  He stood up with the staff in his hand, and showed it to Granny.

  “I thought it had carvings on,” he said. “This looks just like a stick.” And that was a fact. The staff looked as menacing and potent as a piece of kindling.

  Esk turned the hat around in her hands, in the manner of one who, opening the proverbial brightly wrapped package, finds bath salts.

  “It’s very nice,” she said uncertainly.

  “Is that all you can say?” said Granny.

  “It’s pointed, too.” Somehow being a wizard didn’t feel any different from not being a wizard.

  Simon leaned over.

  “Remember,” he said, “you’ve got to have been a wizard. Then you can start looking on the other side. Like you said.”

  Their eyes met, and they grinned.

  Granny stared at Cutangle. He shrugged.

  “Search me,” he said. “What’s happened to your stutter, boy?”

  “Seems to have gone, sir,” said Simon brightly. “Must have left it behind, somewhere.”

  The river was still brown and swollen but at least it resembled a river again.

  It was unnaturally hot for late autumn, and across the whole of the lower part of Ankh-Morpork the steam rose from thousands of carpets and blankets put out to dry. The streets were filled with silt, which on the whole was an improvement—Ankh-Morpork’s impressive civic collection of dead dogs had been washed out to sea.

  The steam also rose from the flagstones of the Archchancellor’s personal verandah, and from the teapot on the table.

  Granny lay back in an ancient cane chair and let the unseasonal warmth creep around her ankles. She idly watched a team of city ants, who had lived under the flagstones of the University for so long that the high levels of background magic had permanently altered their genes, anthandling a damp sugar lump down from the bowl on to a tiny trolley. Another group was erecting a matchstick gantry at the edge of the table.

  Granny may or may not have been interested to learn that one of the ants was Drum Billet, who had finally decided to give Life another chance.

  “They say,” she said, “that if you can find an ant on Hogswatch Day it will be very mild for the rest of the winter.”

  “Who says that?” said Cutangle.

  “Generally people who are wrong,” said Granny. “I makes a note in my Almanack, see. I checks. Most things most people believe are wrong.”

  “Like ‘red sky at night, the city’s alight,’” said Cutangle. “And you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

  “I don’t think that’s what old dogs are for,” said Granny. The sugar lump had reached the gantry now, and a couple of ants were attaching it to a microscopic block and tackle.

  “I can’t understand half the things Simon says,” said Cutangle, “although some of the students get very excited about it.”

  “I understand what Esk says all right, I just don’t believe it,” said Granny. “Except the bit about wizards needing a heart.”

  “She said that witches need a head, too,” said C
utangle. “Would you like a scone? A bit damp, I’m afraid.”

  “She told me that if magic gives people what they want, then not using magic can give them what they need,” said Granny, her hand hovering over the plate.

  “So Simon tells me. I don’t understand it myself, magic’s for using, not storing up. Go on, spoil yourself.”

  “Magic beyond magic,” snorted Granny. She took the scone and spread jam on it. After a pause she spread cream on it too.

  The sugar lump crashed to the flagstones and was immediately surrounded by another team of ants, ready to harness it to a long line of red ants enslaved from the kitchen garden.

  Cutangle shifted uneasily in his seat, which creaked.

  “Esmerelda,” he began, “I’ve been meaning to ask—”

  “No,” said Granny.

  “Actually I was going to say that we think we might allow a few more girls into the University. On an experimental basis. Once we get the plumbing sorted out,” said Cutangle.

  “That’s up to you, of course.”

  “And, and, it seemed to me that since we seem destined to become a coeducational establishment, as it were, it seemed to me, that is—”

  “Well?”

  “If you might see your way clear to becoming, that is, whether you would accept a Chair.”

  He sat back. The sugar lump passed under his chair on matchstick rollers, the squeaking of the slavedriver ants just at the edge of hearing.

  “Hmm,” said Granny, “I don’t see why not. I’ve always wanted one of those big wicker ones, you know, with the sort of sunshade bit on the top. If that’s not too much trouble.”

  “That isn’t exactly what I meant,” said Cutangle, adding quickly, “although I’m sure that could be arranged. No, I mean, would you come and lecture the students? Once in a while?”

  “What on?”

  Cutangle groped for a subject.

  “Herbs?” he hazarded. “We’re not very good on herbs here. And headology. Esk told me a lot about headology. It sounds fascinating.”

  The sugar lump disappeared through a crack in a nearby wall with a final jerk. Cutangle nodded toward it.

  “They’re very heavy on the sugar,” he said, “but we haven’t got the heart to do anything about it.”

  Granny frowned, and then nodded across the haze over the city to the distant glitter of the snow on the Ramtops.