The Discworld Series (№3) - Equal Rites

All he needs to get right to the top, he thought, is a bit of a handicap. Wizards are martyrs to things like asthma and flat feet, it somehow seems to give them their drive.

“What’s your name, lad?” he said, as kindly as possible.

“Sssssssssssssss” said the boy. His Adam’s apple bobbed like a captive balloon. He turned to his companion, full of mute appeal.

“Simon,” said Trestle.

“—imon,” agreed Simon, thankfully.

“Can you cast fireballs or whirling spells, such as might be hurled against an enemy?”

Simon looked sideways at Trestle.

“Nnnnnnnnnn” he ventured.

“My young friend follows higher magic than the mere hurling of sorceries,” said the wizard.

“—o,” said Simon.

Gander nodded.

“Well,” he said, “maybe you will indeed be a wizard, lad. Maybe when you have your fine staff you’ll consent to travel with me one time, yes? I will make an investment in you, yes?”

“Just nod,” said Gander, who was not naturally a cruel man.

Simon nodded gratefully. Treatle and Gander exchanged nods and then the wizard strode off, with his apprentice trailing behind under a weight of baggage.

Gander looked down at the list in front of him and carefully crossed out “wizard".

A small shadow fell across the page. He glanced up and gave an involuntary start.

“Well?” he said coldly.

“I want to go to Ankh-Morpork,” said Esk, “please. I’ve got some money.”

“Go home to your mother, child.”

“No, really. I want to seek my fortune.”

Gander sighed. “Why are you holding that broomstick?” he said.

Esk looked at it as though she had never seen it before.

“Everything’s got to be somewhere,” she said.

“Just go home, my girl,” said Gander. “I’m not taking any runaways to Ankh-Morpork. Strange things can happen to little girls in big cities.”

Esk brightened. “What sort of strange things?”

“Look, I said go home, right? Now!”

He picked up his chalk and went on ticking off items on his slate, trying to ignore the steady gaze that seemed to be boring through the top of his head.

“I can be helpful,” said Esk, quietly.

Gander threw down the chalk and scratched his chin irritably.

“How old are you?” he said.

“Nine.”

“Well, Miss nine-years-old, I’ve got two hundred animals and a hundred people that want to go to Ankh, and half of them hate the other half, and I’ve not got enough people who can fight, and they say the roads are pretty bad and the bandits are getting really cheeky up in the Paps and the trolls are demanding a bigger bridge toll this year and there’s weevils in the supplies and I keep getting these headaches and where, in all this, do I need you?”

“Oh,” said Esk. She looked around the crowded square. “Which one of these roads goes to Ankh, then?”

“The one over there, with the gate.”

“Thank you,” she said gravely. “Goodbye. I hope you don’t have any more trouble and your head gets better.”

“Right,” said Gander uncertainly. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop as he watched Esk walk away in the direction of the Ankh road. A long, winding road. A road haunted by thieves and gnolls. A road that wheezed through high mountain passes and crawled, panting, over deserts.

“Oh bugger,” he said, under his breath. “Hey! You!”

Granny Weatherwax was in trouble.

First of all, she decided, she should never have allowed Hilta to talk her into borrowing her broomstick. It was elderly, erratic, would fly only at night and even then couldn’t manage a speed much above a trot.

Its lifting spells had worn so thin that it wouldn’t even begin to operate until it was already moving at a fair lick. It was, in fact, the only broomstick ever to need bump-starting.

And it was while Granny Weatherwax, sweating and cursing, was running along a forest path holding the damn thing at shoulder height for the tenth time that she had found the bear trap.

The second problem was that a bear had found it first. In fact this hadn’t been too much of a problem because Granny, already in a bad temper, hit it right between the eyes with the broomstick and it was now sitting as far away from her as it was possible to get in a pit, and trying to think happy thoughts.

It was not a very comfortable night and the morning wasn’t much better for the party of hunters who, around dawn, peered over the edge of the pit.

“About time, too,” said Granny. “Get me out.”

The startled heads withdrew and Granny could hear a hasty whispered conversation. They had seen the hat and broomstick.

Finally a bearded head reappeared, rather reluctantly, as if the body it was attached to was being pushed forward.

“Um,” it began, “look, mother—”

“Im not a mother,” snapped Granny. “I’m certainly not your mother, if you ever had mothers, which I doubt. If I was your mother I’d have run away before you were born.”

“It’s only a figure of speech,” said the head reproachfully.

“It’s a damned insult is what it is!”

There was another whispered conversation.

“If I don’t get out,” said Granny in ringing tones, “there will be Trouble. Do you see my hat, eh? Do you see it?”

The head reappeared.

“That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” it said. “I mean, what will there be if we let you out? It seems less risky all round if we just sort of fill the pit in. Nothing personal, you understand.”

Granny realized what it was that was bothering her about the head.

“Are you kneeling down?” she said accusingly. “You’re not, are you! You’re dwarves!”

Whisper, whisper.

“Well, what about it?” asked the head defiantly. “Nothing wrong with that, is there? What have you got against dwarves?”

“Do you know how to repair broomsticks?”

“Magic broomsticks?”

“Yes!”

Whisper, whisper.

“What if we do?”

“Well, we could come to some arrangement …”

The dwarf halls rang to the sound of hammers, although mainly for effect. Dwarves found it hard to think without the sound of hammers, which they found soothing, so well-off dwarves in the clerical professions paid goblins to hit small ceremonial anvils, just to maintain the correct dwarvish image.

The broomstick lay between two trestles. Granny Weatherwax sat on a rock outcrop while a dwarf half her height, wearing an apron that was a mass of pockets, walked around the broom and occasionally poked it.

Eventually he kicked the bristles and gave a long intake of breath, a sort of reverse whistle, which is the secret sign of craftsmen across the universe and means that something expensive is about to happen.

“Weellll,” he said. “I could get the apprentices in to look at this, I could. It’s an education in itself. And you say it actually managed to get airborne?”

“It flew like a bird,” said Granny.

The dwarf lit a pipe. “I should very much like to see that bird,” he said reflectively. “I should imagine it’s quite something to watch, a bird like that.”

“Yes, but can you repair it?” said Granny. “I’m in a hurry.”

The dwarf sat down, slowly and deliberately.

“As for repair,” he said, “well, I don’t know about repair. Rebuild, maybe. Of course, it’s hard to get the bristles these days even if you can find people to do the proper binding, and the spells need—”

“I don’t want it rebuilt, I just want it to work properly,” said Granny.

“It’s an early model, you see,” the dwarf plugged on. “Very tricky, those early models. You can’t get the wood—”

He was picked up bodily until his eyes were level with Granny’s. Dwarves, being magical in themselves as it were, are quite resistant to magic but her expression looked as though she was trying to weld his eyeballs to the back of his skull.

“Just repair it,” she hissed. “Please?”

“What, make a bodge job?” said the dwarf, his pipe clattering to the floor.

“Yes.”

“Patch it up, you mean? Betray my training by doing half a job?”

“Yes,” said Granny. Her pupils were two little black holes.

“Oh,” said the dwarf. “Right, then.”

Gander the trail boss was a worried man.

They were three mornings out from Zemphis, making good time, and were climbing now towards the rocky pass through the mountains known as the Paps of Scilla (there were eight of them; Gander often wondered who Scilla had been, and whether he would have liked her/.

A party of gnolls had crept up on them during the night. The nasty creatures, a variety of stone goblin, had slit the throat of a guard and must have been poised to slaughter the entire party. Only….

Only no one knew quite what had happened next. The screams had woken them up, and by the time people had puffed up the fires and Treatle the wizard had cast a blue radiance over the campsite the surviving gnolls were distant, spidery shadows, running as if all the legions of Hell were after them.

Judging by what had happened to their colleagues, they were probably right. Bits of gnolls hung from the nearby rocks, giving them a sort of jolly, festive air. Gander wasn’t particularly sorry about that—gnolls liked to capture travellers and practise hospitality of the red-hot-knife-and-bludgeon kind—but he was nervous of being in the same area as Something that went through a dozen wiry and wickedly armed gnolls like a spoon through a lightly-boiled egg but left no tracks.

In fact the ground was swept clean.

It had been a very long night, and the morning didn’t seem to be an improvement. The only person more than half-awake was Esk, who had slept through the whole thing under one of the wagons and had complained only of odd dreams.

Still, it was a relief to get away from that macabre sight. Gander considered that gnolls didn’t look any better inside than out. He hated their guts.

Esk sat on Treatle’s wagon, talking to Simon who was steering inexpertly while the wizard caught up with some sleep behind them.

Simon did everything inexpertly. He was really good at it. He was one of those tall lads apparently made out of knees, thumbs and elbows. Watching him walk was a strain, you kept waiting for the strings to snap, and when he talked the spasm of agony on his face if he spotted an S or W looming ahead in the sentence made people instinctively say them for him. It was worth it for the grateful look which spread across his acned face like sunrise on the moon.

At the moment his eyes were streaming with hayfever.

“Did you want to be a wizard when you were a little boy?”

Simon shook his head. “I just www—”

“—wanted—”

“—tto find out how things www—”

“—worked?—”

“Yes. Then someone in my village told the University and Mmaster T-Treatle was sent to bring me. I shall be a www—”

“—wizard—”

“—one day. Master Treatle says I have an exceptional grasp of ththeory.” Simon’s damp eyes misted over and an expression almost of bliss drifted across his ravaged face.

“He t-tells me they’ve got thousands of b-books in the library at Unseen University,” he said, in the voice of a man in love. “More bbooks than anyone could read in a lifetime.”

“I’m not sure I like books,” said Esk conversationally. “How can paper know things? My granny says books are only good if the paper is thin.”

“No, that’s not right,” said Simon urgently. “Books are full of www” he gulped air and gave her a pleading look.

“—words?—”said Esk, after a moment’s thought.

“—yes, and they can change th-things. Th-that’s wuwuw, that wuwuwwhha-whha—”

“—what—”

“—I must f-find. I know it’s th-there, somewhere in all the old books. They ssss—”

“—say

“there’s no new spells but I know that it’s there somewhere, hiding, the wwwwwuwu—”

“—words—”

“yes, that no wiwiwi—”

“—Wizard?—”said Esk, her face a frown of concentration.

“Yes, has ever found.” His eyes closed and he smiled a beatific smile and added, “The Words that Will change the World.”

“What?”

“Eh?” said Simon, opening his eyes in time to stop the oxen wandering off the track.

“You said all those wubbleyous!”

“Idid?”

“I heard you! Try again.”

Simon took a deep breath. “The worworwor—the wuwuw—” he said. “The wowowoo—” he continued.

“It’s no good, it’s gone,” he said. “It happens sometimes, if I don’t think about it. Master Treatle says I’m allergic to something.”

“Allergic to double-yous?”

“No, sisssisi—”

“—silly—” said Esk, generously.

“—there’s sososo—”

“—something—”

“—in the air, p-pollen maybe, or g-grass dust. Master Treatle has tried to find the cause of it but no magic seems to h-help it.”

They were passing through a narrow pass of orange rock. Simon looked at it disconsolately.

“My granny taught me some hayfever cures,” Esk said. “We could try those.”

Simon shook his head. It looked touch and go whether it would fall off.

“Tried everything,” he said. “Fine wwiwwi-magician I’d make, eh, can’t even sss-utter the wowo-name.”

“I could see where that would be a problem,” said Esk. She watched the scenery for a while, marshalling a train of thought.

“Is it, er, possible for a woman to be, you know, a wizard? " she said eventually.

Simon stared at her. She gave him a defiant look.

His throat strained. He was trying to find a sentence that didn’t start with a W. In the end he was forced to make concessions.

“A curious idea,” he said. He thought some more, and started to laugh until Esk’s expression warned him.

“Rather funny, really,” he added, but the laughter in his face faded and was replaced by a puzzled look. “Never really tthought about it, before.”

“Well? Can they?” You could have shaved with Esk’s voice.

“Of course they can’t. It is self-evident, child. Simon, return to your studies.”

Treatle pushed aside the curtain that led into the back of the wagon and climbed out on to the seat board.

The look of mild panic took up its familiar place on Simon’s face. He gave Esk a pleading glance as Treatle took the reins from his hands, but she ignored him.

“Why not? What’s so self-evident?”

Treatle turned and looked down at her. He hadn’t really paid much attention before, she was simply just another figure around the campfires.

He was the Vice-Chancellor of Unseen University, and quite used to seeing vague scurrying figures getting on with essential but unimportant jobs like serving his meals and dusting his rooms. He was stupid, yes, in the particular way that very clever people can be stupid, and maybe he had all the tact of an avalanche and was as selfcentred as a tornado, but it would never have occurred to him that children were important enough to be unkind to.

From long white hair to curly boots, Treatle was a wizard’s wizard. He had the appropriate long bushy eyebrows, spangled robe and patriarchal beard that was only slightly spoiled by the yellow nicotine stains (wizards are celibate but, nevertheless, enjoy a good cigar.

“It will all become clear to you when you grow up,” he said. “It’s an amusing idea, of course, a nice play on words. A female wizard! You might as well invent a male witch!”

“Warlocks,” said Esk.

“Pardon me?”

“My granny says men can’t be witches,” said Esk. “She says if men tried to be witches they’d be wizards.”

“She sounds a very wise woman,” said Treatle.

“She says women should stick to what they’re good at,” Esk went on.

“Very sensible of her.”

“She says if women were as good as men they’d be a lot better!”

Treatle laughed.

“She’s a witch,” said Esk, and added in her mind: there, what do you think of that, Mr so-called cleverwizard?

“My dear good young lady, am I supposed to be shocked? I happen to have a great respect for witches.”

Esk frowned. He wasn’t supposed to say that.

“You have?”

“Yes indeed. I happen to believe that witchcraft is a fine career, for a woman. A very noble calling.”

“You do? I mean, it is?”

“Oh yes. Very useful in rural districts for, for people who are -having babies, and so forth. However, witches are not wizards. Witchcraft is Nature’s way of allowing women access to the magical fluxes, but you must remember it is not high magic.”

“I see. Not high magic,” said Esk grimly.

“Oh, no. Witchcraft is very suitable for helping people through life, of course, but—”

“I expect women aren’t really sensible enough to be wizards,” said Esk. “I expect that’s it, really.”

“I have nothing but the highest respect for women,” said Treatle, who hadn’t noticed the fresh edge to Esk’s tone. “They are without parallel when, when—”

“For having babies and so forth?”

“There is that, yes,” the wizard conceded generously. “But they can be a little unsettling at times. A little too excitable. High magic requires great clarity of thought, you see, and women’s talents do not lie in that direction. Their brains tend to overheat. I am sorry to say there is only one door into wizardry and that is the main gate at Unseen University and no woman has ever passed through it.”

“Tell me,” said Esk, “what good is high magic, exactly?”

Treatle smiled at her.

“High magic, my child,” he said, “can give us everything we want.”

“Oh.”

“So put all this wizard nonsense out of your head, all right?” Treatle gave her a benevolent smile. “What is your name, child?”

“Eskarina.”

“And why do you go to Ankh, my dear?”

“I thought I might seek my fortune,” muttered Esk, “but I think perhaps girls don’t have fortunes to seek. Are you sure wizards give people what they want?”

“Of course. That is what high magic is for.”

“I see.”

The whole caravan was travelling only a little faster than walking pace. Esk jumped down, pulled the staff from its temporary hiding place among the bags and pails on the side of the wagon, and ran back along the line of carts and animals. Through her tears she caught a glimpse of Simon peering from the back of the wagon, an open book in his hands. He gave her a puzzled smile and started to say something, but she ran on and veered off the track.

Scrubby whinbushes scratched her legs as she scrambled up a clay bank and then she was running free across a barren plateau, hemmed in by the orange cliffs.

She didn’t stop until she was good and lost but the anger still burned brightly. She had been angry before, but never like this; normally anger was like the red flame you got when the forge was first lit, all glow and sparks, but this anger was different-it had the bellows behind it, and had narrowed to the tiny bluewhite flame that cuts iron.

It made her body tingle. She had to do something about it or burst.

Why was it that, when she heard Granny ramble on about witchcraft she longed for the cutting magic of wizardry, but whenever she heard Treatle speak in his high-pitched voice she would fight to the death for witchcraft? She’d be both, or none at all. And the more they intended to stop her, the more she wanted it.

She’d be a witch and a wizard too. And she would show them.

Esk sat down under a low-spreading juniper bush at the foot of a steep, sheer cliff, her mind seething with plans and anger. She could sense doors being slammed before she had barely begun to open them. Treatle was right; they wouldn’t let her inside the University. Having a staff wasn’t enough to be a wizard, there had to be training too, and no one was going to train her.

The midday sun beat down off the cliff and the air around Esk began to smell of bees and gin. She lay back, looking at the nearpurple dome of the sky through the leaves and, eventually, she fell asleep.

One side-effect of using magic is that one tends to have realistic and disturbing dreams. There is a reason for this, but even thinking about it is enough to give a wizard nightmares.

The fact is that the minds of wizards can give thoughts a shape. Witches normally work with what actually exists in the world, but a wizard can, if he’s good enough, put flesh on his imagination. This wouldn’t cause any trouble if it wasn’t for the fact that the little circle of candlelight loosely called “the universe of time and space” is adrift in something much more unpleasant and unpredictable. Strange Things circle and grunt outside the flimsy stockades of normality; there are weird hootings and howlings in the deep crevices at the edge of Time. There are things so horrible that even the dark is afraid of them.

Most people don’t know this and this is just as well because the world could not really operate if everyone stayed in bed with the blankets over their head, which is what would happen if people knew what horrors lay a shadow’s width away.

The problem is people interested in magic and mysticism spend a lot of time loitering on the very edge of the light, as it were, which gets them noticed by the creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions who then try to use them in their indefatigable efforts to break into this particular Reality.

Most people can resist this, but the relentless probing by the Things is never stronger than when the subject is asleep.

Bel-Shamharoth, C’hulagen, the Insider—the hideous old dark gods of the Necrotelicomnicon, the book known to certain mad adepts by its true name of Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, are always ready to steal into a slumbering mind. The nightmares are often colourful and always unpleasant.

Esk had got used to them ever since that first dream after her first Borrowing, and familiarity had almost replaced terror. When she found herself sitting on a glittering, dusty plain under unexplained stars she knew it was time for another one.

“Drat,” she said. “All right, come on then. Bring on the monsters. I just hope it isn’t the one with his winkle on his face.”

But this time it seemed that the nightmare had changed. Esk looked around and saw, rearing up behind her, a tall black castle. Its turrets disappeared among the stars. Lights and fireworks and interesting music cascaded from its upper battlements. The huge double doors stood invitingly open. There seemed to be quite an amusing party going on in there.

She stood up, brushed the silver sand off her dress, and set off for the gates.

She had almost reached them when they slammed. They didn’t appear to move; it was simply that in one instant they were lounging ajar, and the next they were tight shut with a clang that shook the horizons.

Esk reached out and touched them. They were black, and so cold that ice was beginning to form on them.

There was a movement behind her. She turned around and saw the staff, without its broomstick disguise, standing upright in the sand. Little worms of light crept around its polished wood and crept around the carvings no one could ever quite identify.

She picked it up and smashed it against the doors. There was a shower of octarine sparks, but the black metal was unscathed.

Esk’s eyes narrowed. She held the staff at arm’s length and concentrated until a thin line of fire leapt from the wood and burst against the gate. The ice flashed into steam but the darkness—she was sure now that it wasn’t metal—absorbed the power without so much as glowing. She doubled the energy, letting the staff put all its stored magic into a beam that was now so bright that she had to shut her eyes) and could still see it as a brilliant line in her mind).

Then it winked out.

After a few seconds Esk ran forward and touched the doors gingerly. The coldness nearly froze her fingers off.

And from the battlements above she could hear the sound of sniggering. Laughter wouldn’t have been so bad, especially an impressive demonic laugh with lots of echo, but this was just -sniggering.

It went on for a long time. It was one of the most unpleasant sounds Esk had ever heard.

She woke up shivering. It was long after midnight and the stars looked damp and chilly; the air was full of the busy silence of the night, which is created by hundreds of small furry things treading very carefully in the hope of finding dinner while avoiding being the main course.

A crescent moon was setting and a thin grey glow towards the rim of the world suggested that, against all probability, another day was on the cards.

Someone had wrapped Esk in a blanket.

“I know you’re awake,” said the voice of Granny Weatherwax. “You could make yourself useful and light a fire. There’s damn all wood in these parts.”

Esk sat up, and clutched at the juniper bush. She felt light enough to float away.

“Fire?” she muttered.

“Yes. You know. Pointing the finger and whoosh,” said Granny sourly. She was sitting on a rock, trying to find a position that didn’t upset her arthritis.

“I—I don’t think I can.”

“You tell me?” said Granny cryptically.

The old witch leaned forward and put her hand on Esk’s forehead; it was like being caressed by a sock full of warm dice.

“You’re running a bit of a temperature,” she added. “Too much hot sun and cold ground. That’s forn parts for you.”

Esk let herself slump forward until her head lay in Granny’s lap, with its familiar smells of camphor, mixed herbs and a trace of goat. Granny patted her in what she hoped was a soothing way.

After a while Esk said, in a low voice, “They’re not going to allow me into the University. A wizard told me, and I dreamed about it, and it was one of those true dreams. You know, like you told me, a maty-thing.”

“Metterfor,” said Granny calmly.

“One of them.”

“Did you think it would be easy?” asked Granny. “Did you think you’d walk into their gates waving your staff? Here I am, I want to be a wizard, thank you very much?”

“He told me there’s no women allowed in the University!”

“He’s wrong.”

“No, I could tell he was telling the truth. You know, Granny, you can tell how—”

“Foolish child. All you could tell was that he thought he was telling the truth. The world isn’t always as people see it.”

“I don’t understand,” said Esk.

“You’ll learn,” said Granny. “Now tell me. This dream. They wouldn’t let you into their university, right?”

“Yes, and they laughed!”

“And then you tried to burn down the doors?”

Esk turned her head in Granny’s lap and opened a suspicious eye.

“How did you know?”

Granny smiled, but as a lizard would smile.

“I was miles away,” she said. “I was bending my mind towards you, and suddenly you seemed to be everywhere. You shone out like a beacon, so you did. As for the fire—look around.”

In the halflight of dawn the plateau was a mass of baked clay. In front of Esk the cliff was glassy and must have flowed like tar under the onslaught; there were great gashes across it which had dripped molten rock and slag. When Esk listened she could hear the faint “pink, pink” of cooling rock.

“Oh,” she said, “did I do that?”

“So it would appear,” said Granny.

“But I was asleep! I was only dreaming!”

“It’s the magic,” said Granny. “It’s trying to find a way out. The witch magic and the wizard magic are, I don’t know, sort of feeding off each other. I think.”

Esk bit her lip.

“What can I do?” she asked. “I dream of all sorts of things!”

“Well, for a start we’re going straight to the University,” decided Granny. “They must be used to apprentices not being able to control magic and having hot dreams, else the place would have burned down years ago.”

She glanced towards the Rim, and then down at the broomstick beside her.

We will pass over the running up and down, the tightening of the broomstick’s bindings, the muttered curses against dwarves, the brief moments of hope as the magic flickered fitfully, the horrible black feelings as it died, the tightening of the bindings again, the running again, the sudden catching of the spell, the scrambling aboard, the yelling, the takeoff ….

Esk clung to Granny with one hand and held her staff in the other as they, frankly, pottered along a few hundred feet above the ground. A few birds flew alongside them, interested in this new flying tree.

“Bugger off!” screamed Granny, taking off her hat and flapping it.

“We’re not going very fast, Granny,” said Esk meekly.

“We’re going quite fast enough for me!”

Esk looked around. Behind them the Rim was a blaze of gold, barred with cloud.

“I think we ought to go lower, Granny,” she said urgently. “You said the broomstick won’t fly in sunlight.” She glanced down at the landscape below them. It looked sharp and inhospitable. It also looked expectant.

“I know what I’m doing, Miss,” snapped Granny, gripping the broomstick hard and trying to make herself as light as possible.

It has already been revealed that light on the Discworld travels slowly, the result of its passage through the Disc’s vast and ancient magical field.

So dawn isn’t the sudden affair that it is on other worlds. The new day doesn’t erupt, it sort of sloshes gently across the sleeping landscape in the same way that the tide sneaks in across the beach, melting the sandcastles of the night. It tends to flow around mountains. If the trees are close together it comes out of woods cut to ribbons and sliced with shadows.

An observer on some suitable high point, let’s say for the sake of argument a wisp of cirro-stratus on the edge of space, would remark on how lovingly the light spreads across the land, how it leaps forward on the plains and slows down when it encounters high ground, how beautifully it ….