“The strings listen,” said Glod, flatly. “That is not an ordinary instrument.”
Cliff shrugged. “Dere’s one way we could find out,” he said.
Early morning fog filled the streets. Around the University it was sculpted into curious forms by the slight magical background radiation. Strangely shaped things moved across the damp cobbles.
Two of them were Glod and Cliff.
“Right,” said the dwarf. “Here we are.”
He looked up at a blank wall.
“I knew it!” he said. “Didn’t I say? Magic! How many times have we heard this story? There’s a mysterious shop no one’s ever seen before, and someone goes in and buys some rusty old curio, and it turns out to—”
“Glod—”
“—some kind of talisman or a bottle full of genie, and then when there’s trouble they go back and the shop—”
“Glod—?”
“—has mysteriously disappeared and gone back to whatever dimension it came from—yes, what is it?”
“You’re on der wrong side of der road. It’s over here.”
Glod glared at the blank wall, and then turned and stomped across the road.
“It was a mistake anyone could have made.”
“Yep.”
“It doesn’t invalidate anything I said.”
Glod rattled the door and, to his surprise, found it was unlocked.
“It’s gone two in the morning! What kind of music shop is open at two in the morning?” Glod struck a match.
The dusty graveyard of old instruments loomed around them. It looked as though a number of prehistoric animals had been caught in a flash flood and then fossilized.
“What’s dat one dat looks like a serpent?” whispered Cliff.
“It’s called a Serpent.”
Glod was uneasy. He’d spent most of his life as a musician. He hated the sight of dead instruments, and these were dead. They didn’t belong to anyone. No one played them. They were like bodies without life, people without souls. Something they had contained had gone. Every one of them represented a musician down on his luck.
There was a pool of light in a grove of bassoons. The old lady was deeply asleep in a rocking chair, with a tangle of knitting on her lap and a shawl around her shoulders.
“Glod?”
Glod jumped. “Yes? What?”
“Why are we here? We know the place exists now—”
“Grab some ceiling, hooligans!”
Glod blinked at the crossbow bolt pricking the end of his nose, and raised his hands. The old lady had gone from asleep to firing stance apparently without passing through any intermediate stage.
“This is the best I can do,” he said. “Er…the door wasn’t locked, you see, and…”
“So you thought you could rob a poor defenseless old lady?”
“Not at all, not at all, in fact we—”
“I belongs to the Neighborhood Witch scheme, I do! One word from me and you’ll be hopping around looking for some princess with an amphibian fixation—”
“I think dis has gone far enough,” said Cliff. He reached down and his huge hand closed over the bow. He squeezed. Bits of wood oozed between his fingers.
“We’re quite harmless,” he said. “We’ve come about der instrument you sold our friend last week.”
“Are you the Watch?”
Glod bowed.
“No, ma’am. We’re musicians.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better, is it? What instrument are you talking about?”
“A kind of guitar.”
The old woman put her head on one side. Her eyes narrowed.
“I won’t take it back, you know,” she said. “It was sold fair’n square. Good working condition, too.”
“We just want to know where you got it from.”
“Never got it from nowhere,” said the old lady. “It’s always been here. Don’t blow that!”
Glod nearly dropped the flute he’d nervously picked up from the debris.
“…or we’ll be knee-deep in rats,” said the old lady. She turned back to Cliff. “It’s always been here,” she repeated.
“It’s got a one chalked on it,” said Glod.
“It’s always been here,” said the woman. “Ever since I’ve had the shop.”
“Who brought it in?”
“How should I know? I never asks them their name. People don’t like that. They just gets the number.”
Glod looked at the flute. There was a yellowing tag attached to it, on which the number 431 had been scrawled.
He stared along the shelves behind the makeshift counter. There was a pink conch shell. That had a number on it, too. He moistened his lips and reached out…
“If you blow that, you’d just better have a sacrificial virgin and a big cauldron of breadfruit and turtle meat standing by,” said the old lady.
There was a trumpet next to it. It looked amazingly untarnished.
“And this one?” he said. “It’ll make the world end and the sky fall on me if I give it a tootle, will it?”
“Interesting you should say that,” said the old lady.
Glod lowered his hand, and then something else caught his eye.
“Good grief,” he said, “Is that still here? I’d forgotten about that…”
“What’s it?” said Cliff, and then looked where Glod was pointing.
“That?”
“We’ve got some money. Why not?”
“Yeah. It might help. But you know what Buddy said. We’d never be able to find—”
“It’s a big city. If you can’t find it in Ankh-Morpork, you can’t find it anywhere.”
Glod picked up half a drumstick and looked thoughtfully at a gong half-buried in a pile of music stands.
“I shouldn’t,” said the old lady. “Not if you don’t want 777 skeletal warriors springing out of the earth.”
Glod pointed.
“We’ll take this.”
“Two dollars.”
“Hey, why should we pay anything? It’s not as though it’s yours—”
“Pay up,” said Cliff, with a sigh. “Don’t negotiate.”
Glod handed over the money with bad grace, snatched the bag the old lady gave him, and strutted out of the shop.
“Fascinating stock you have here,” said Cliff, staring at the gong.
The old lady shrugged.
“My friend’s a bit annoyed because he thought you one of dose mysterious shops you hear about in folk tales,” Cliff went on. “You know, here today and gone tomorrow. He was looking for you on der other side of der road, haha!”
“Sounds daft to me,” said the old lady, in a voice to discourage any further unseemly levity.
Cliff glanced at the gong again, shrugged, and followed Glod.
The woman waited until their footsteps had died away in the fog.
Then she opened the door and peered up and down the street. Apparently satisfied by its abundance of emptiness, she went back to her counter and reached for a curious lever underneath. Her eyes glowed green for a moment.
“Forget my own head next,” she said, and pulled.
There was a grinding of hidden machinery.
The shop vanished. A moment later, it reappeared on the other side of the road.
Buddy lay looking at the ceiling.
How did food taste? It was hard to remember. He’d eaten meals over the last few days, he must have done, but he couldn’t remember the taste. He couldn’t remember much of anything, except the playing. Glod and the rest of them sounded as if they were talking through a thick gauze.
Asphalt had wandered off somewhere.
He swung himself off the hard bed and padded over to the window.
The Shades of Ankh-Morpork were just visible in the grey, cheap-rate light before dawn. A breeze blew in through the open window.
When he turned around, there was a young woman standing in the middle of the floor.
She put her finger to he
r lips.
“Don’t go shouting to the little troll,” she said. “He’s downstairs having some supper. Anyway, he wouldn’t be able to see me.”
“Are you my Muse?”
Susan frowned.
“I think I know what you mean,” she said. “I’ve seen pictures. There were eight of them, led by…um…Cantaloupe. They’re supposed to inspire artists. The Ephebians believe they inspire musicians and artists, but of course they don’t exi—” She paused, and made a conscientious correction. “At least, I’ve never met them. My name’s Susan. I’m here because…”
Her voice trailed away.
“Cantaloupe?” said Buddy. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Cantaloupe.”
“Whatever.”
“How did you get in here?”
“I’m…Look, sit down. Right. Well…you know how some things…like the Muses, as you said…people think that some things are represented by people?”
A look of temporary understanding informed Buddy’s perplexed features.
“Like the Hogfather representing the spirit of the midwinter festival?” he said.
“Right. Well…I’m sort of in that business,” said Susan. “It doesn’t exactly matter what I do.”
“You mean you’re not human?”
“Oh, yes. But I’m…doing a job. I suppose thinking of me as a Muse is probably as good as anything. And I’m here to warn you.”
“A Muse for Music With Rocks In?”
“Not really, but listen…hey, are you all right?”
“Don’t know.”
“You looked all washed out. Listen. The music is dangerous—”
Buddy shrugged. “Oh, you mean the Guild of Musicians. Mr. Dibbler says not to worry about that. We’re leaving the city for—”
Susan stamped forward and picked up the guitar.
“I mean this!”
The strings moved and whined under her hand.
“Don’t touch that!”
“It’s taken you over,” said Susan, throwing it onto the bed. Buddy grabbed it and played a chord.
“I know what you’re going to say,” he said. “Everyone says it. The other two think it’s evil. But it’s not!”
“It might not be evil but it’s not right! Not here, not now.”
“Yes, but I can handle it.”
“You can’t handle it. It handles you.”
“Anyway, who are you to tell me all this? I don’t have to take lessons from a Tooth Fairy!”
“Listen, it’ll kill you! I’m sure of it!”
“So I’m supposed to stop playing, then?”
Susan hesitated.
“Well, not exactly…because then—”
“Well, I don’t have to listen to mysterious occult women! You probably don’t even exist! So you can just fly back to your magic castle, okay?”
Susan was temporarily speechless. She was reconciled to the irredeemable dumbness of most of mankind, particularly the section of it that stood upright and shaved in the mornings, but she was also affronted. No one had ever talked to Death like this. At least, not for long.
“All right,” she said, reaching out and touching his arm. “But you’ll see me again, and…and you won’t like it much! Because, let me tell you, I happen to be—”
Her expression changed. She felt the sensation of falling backward while standing still; the room drifted past her and away into darkness, pinwheeling around Buddy’s horrified face.
The darkness exploded, and there was light.
Dribbly-candle light.
Buddy waved his hand through the empty space where Susan had been.
“Are you still here? Where did you go? Who are you?”
Cliff looked around.
“Thought I heard something,” he muttered. “Here, you do know, don’t you, dat some of dose instruments weren’t just ordin—”
“I know,” said Glod. “I wish I’d had a go on the rat pipe. I’m hungry again.”
“I mean dey were mythi—”
“Yes.”
“So how come dey end up in a secondhand music shop?”
“Ain’t you ever hocked your stones?”
“Oh, sure,” said Cliff. “Everyone does some time or other, you know dat. Sometimes it’s all you’ve got if you want to see another meal.”
“There you are, then. You said it. It’s something every working musician’s going to do sooner or later.”
“Yeah, but der thing dat Buddy…I mean, it’s got der number one on it…”
“Yes.”
Glod peered up at a street sign.
“‘Cunning Artificers,’” he said. “Here we are. Look, half the workshops are still open even at this time of night.” He shifted the sack. Something cracked inside it. “You knock that side, I’ll knock this.”
“Yeah, all right…but I mean, number one. Even der conch shell was number fifty-two. Who used to own der guitar?”
“Don’t know,” said Glod, knocking on the first door, “but I hope they never come back for it.”
“And that,” said Ridcully, “is the Rite of AshkEnte. Quite easily done. You have to use a fresh egg, though.”
Susan blinked.
There was a circle drawn on the floor. Strange unearthly shapes surrounded it, although when she adjusted her mind-set she realized that these were perfectly ordinary students.
“Who are you?” she said. “What’s this place? Let me go this instant!”
She strode across the circle and rebounded from an invisible wall.
The students were staring at her in the manner of those who had heard of the species “female” but had never expected to get this close to one.
“I demand that you let me go!” She glared at Ridcully. “Aren’t you the wizard I saw last night?”
“That’s right,” said Ridcully. “And this is the Rite of AshkEnte. It calls Death into the circle and he—or as it may be, in this case, she—can’t leave until we say so. There’s a lot of stuff in this book here spelled with funny long esses and it goes on about abjuring and conjuration but it’s all show, really. Once you’re in, you’re in. I must say your predecessor—hah, bit of a pun there—was a lot more gracious about it.”
Susan glared. The circle played tricks with her ideas of space. It seemed most unfair.
“Why have you summoned me, then?” she said.
“That’s better. That’s more according to the script,” said Ridcully. “We are allowed to ask you questions, you see. And you have to answer them. Truthfully.”
“Well?”
“Would you like to sit down? A glass of something?”
“No.”
“Just as you like. This new music…tell us about it.”
“You summoned Death to ask that?”
“I’m not sure who we’ve summoned,” said Ridcully. “It is really alive?”
“I…think so.”
“Does it live anywhere?”
“It seems to have lived in one instrument but I think it’s moving around now. Can I go?”
“No. Can it be killed?”
“I don’t know.”
“Should it be here?”
“What?”
“Should it be here?” Ridcully repeated patiently. “Is it something that’s supposed to be happening?”
Susan suddenly felt important. Wizards were rumored to be wise—in fact, that’s where the word came from.* But they were asking her things. They were listening to her. Pride sparkled in her eyes.
“I…don’t think so. It’s turned up here by some kind of accident. This isn’t the right world for it.”
Ridcully looked smug. “That’s what I thought. This isn’t right, I said. It’s making people try and be things they aren’t. How can we stop it?”
“I don’t think you can. It’s not susceptible to magic.”
“Right. Music’s not. Any music. But something must be able to make it stop. Show her your box, Ponder.”
“Er…yes. Here.”
; He lifted the lid. Music, slightly tinny but still recognizable, drifted out into the room.
“Sounds like a spider trapped in a matchbox, don’t it?” said Ridcully.
“You can’t reproduce music like that on a piece of wire in a box,” said Susan. “It’s against nature.”
Ponder looked relieved.
“That’s what I said,” he said. “But it does it anyway. It wants to.”
Susan stared at the box.
She began to smile. There was no humor in it.
“It’s unsettling people,” said Ridcully. “And…look at this.” He pulled a roll of paper out of his robe and unfolded it. “Caught some lad trying to paste this onto our gates. Blooming cheek! So I took it off him and told him to hop it, which was,” Ridcully looked smugly at his fingertips, “quite appropriate as it turned out. It’s going on about some festival of Music With Rocks In. It’ll all end with monsters from another dimension breaking through, you can rely on that. That’s the sort of thing that happens a lot in these parts.”
“Excuse me,” said Big Mad Adrian, his voice cargoed with suspicion. “I don’t want to cause any trouble, right, but is this Death or not? I’ve seen pictures, and they didn’t look like her.”
“We did the Rite stuff,” said Ridcully. “And this is what we got.”
“Yes, but my father’s a herring fisherman and he doesn’t just find herring in his herring nets,” said Skazz.
“Yeah. She could be anyone,” said Tez the Terrible. “I thought Death was taller and bonier.”
“She’s just some girl messing about,” said Skazz.
Susan stared at them.
“She hasn’t even got a scythe,” said Tez.
Susan concentrated. The scythe appeared in her hands, its blue-edged blade making a noise like a finger dragged around the rim of a glass.
The students straightened up.
“But I’ve always thought it was time for a change,” said Tez.
“Right. It’s about time girls got a chance in the professions,” said Skazz.
“Don’t you dare patronize me!”
“That’s right,” said Ponder. “There’s no reason why Death has to be male. A woman could be almost as good as a man in the job.”
“You’re doing it very well,” said Ridcully.
He gave Susan an encouraging smile.
She rounded on him. I’m Death, she thought—technically, anyway—and this is a fat old man who has no right to give me any kind of orders. I’ll glare at him, and he’ll soon realize the gravity of his situation. She glared.
Discworld 16 - Soul Music Page 21