Discworld and Member Articles
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2001: A Board Odyssey - Chapter 5
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Written by Buzzfloyd
Thursday, 25 August 2005 |
Chapter 5
A tower can be a lonely place. Living alone in a high, round room, looking down on the people below you, never part of the scenes you see played out every day; staying where you have to, doing your job. It’s not a bad life if you’re that way inclined; but, sooner or later, everyone needs a holiday.
Athar the lighthouse-keeper, stood in his tower, looking inland. The domed roofs and curved windows of the observatory were dark at night, the astronomers inside keeping vigil with the stars. Their lights were the twinkling eyes of heaven, looking down upon them from above, watching the watchers.
There was one light, though, small and clear, burning in the window of the Chief Astronomer’s office. As Athar looked on, it winked out; then relit, then darkened again. The lighthouse-keeper made notes on a small pad of paper held in his hand.
It was lonely in the lighthouse, but the lighthouse itself was not alone. The people who inhabited the high places built bridges of communication above the hurly burly of the streets below. Messages flitted back and forth between the turrets and steeples that rose towards the sky. Amid them all, the watching eye of the Great God stayed ever constant, a sentinel, standing tall, strong and eternal in the centre of the citadel.
Athar (‘the ancient’, as the children called him) and Maljonic, the Chief Astronomer, had been watching the temple tower these last few weeks. And now they were discussing what they had seen – and, more importantly, what they hadn’t seen.
It was drawing near the time for Athar’s annual vacation. One of his favourite holiday activities was to go to Speaker’s Corner in Palomino Park and listen to the sound of so many human voices. This time, though, he wouldn’t be among the audience. This time, he had a message of his own to proclaim.
***
There was a coin on the edge of the table. It was large and silver with a milled edge. The sign of the Holy Tripod was inscribed on its face, along with the number 25 and the year of minting. The familiar obverse would show a woman, dressed in billowing robes, holding a large knife in one hand and an oversized fork in the other. A thousand of these coins passed through Boardanian hands every day, rough edges cool against smooth skin. A priestess would buy you a loaf of bread, a copy of the Garnian or a cup of tea at the Om Kranti Eatery. But there were plenty of people who kept one of the large, round coins in a pocket or a purse as a kind of talisman or charm. It's lucky to touch a priestess, they said.
Plaid wondered if touching the coin would bring her any luck. Garner only knew how long her own would last.
Il Gobb left the circle, having amassed six sticks before dislodging the pile. The hush had lifted slightly as people began to whisper to each other about the possible outcomes of the game. Someone was still running a book at the back of the room as the next contender, Lady Emma, was called forward. Plaid watched with a disinterested stare as the lady took her stance, heard the familiar words, "Jack straws"; she never bet on the games, although she normally followed them avidly.
There was big money to be made in it, and the winners were treated like local heroes. Whenever Jinxted – the reigning champion – came to the bar, there would always be a crowd around him, and Plaid would be kept busy all night, serving them drinks and clearing away their empty glasses. Women wanted to be with him, and men wanted to be like him. Il Gobb and Kid Sybil received similar amounts of attention. Tonight, though, Plaid’s thoughts were elsewhere.
They were with the man who had arrived worn and weary on a night ship from Utha; who had befriended her, showing his gratitude for the small errands she ran for him by treating her to an occasional drink, or asking the singer to play her favourite songs; who had been seen by Dragonmama, standing too close to the stash for tonight’s game after getting the sentry drunk as a Doorman; and who had then turned and fled, running away from the Crescent of Fools to who knows where?
Dragonmama had carefully checked her little trove before declaring nothing missing, and then sacked the sentry. But Plaid had noted the presence of Captain Eu tonight. That meant the ships had not yet left the docks, and that meant that Tempus was still in Boardania. And if Tempus was still in Boardania, she was going to find him.
Dragonmama didn’t like letting Plaid away from the cave without supervision; the girl saw too much, too often. So tonight Plaid had packed a small bag and hidden it behind the bar. If her luck held out, she could get away from the Crescent of Fools without Dragonmama ever noticing, and go looking for Tempus.
She would find him, and find out what in Ba’s kitchen he thought he was playing at.
***
Corporal Carrot’s feet were going dead. He shifted uneasily.
“Hold fast, men,” came Commander Vimes’ grim voice.
Carrot hefted his truncheon and glanced at Mike, who was starting to shiver. “Any moment,” he muttered. Mike nodded.
***
The sand was white. The sea was a deep blue. Above them, whoever had created the sand and the sea had had a temper tantrum and flung his paints all over the shop, leaving a cobalt sky littered with a thousand white stars.
Where sand and sea met, a line of footprints emerged from the wash and marked a lonely path across the beach. They led to the cool shade of a mango tree. Peering between the dark, rubbery leaves of some nearby shrub, bright eyes watched the newcomer whose bare, sandy-toed feet had made the prints.
He was sitting under the tree, slurping. Scattered around him were the discarded skins and seeds of many mangos. The watcher in the bush had lost count now of how many this stranger had eaten. Picking his teeth with a nail, he cast aside the remains of yet another succulent fruit.
“Nice,” he said.
***
Tempus was lost. There was no denying it. After his meeting with Ba Witda, he had run back down the stairs for two flights, following some vague notion that the kitchen was located on the ground floor. The stairs had ended in a narrow corridor that had got progressively narrower as he followed it, until he had to turn sideways to keep going. In doing so, he failed to notice a door in the wall he had his back to, until he hit his hip against the doorknob. After giving vent to some good Garnerite curses, he squeezed his way round to face the door.
The old, oak timber of the door was laced with cobwebs. It was studded with iron bolts that had stained the wood with rust. The hinges and door handle looked like they had been sitting still since the Temple was built. All told, it was the door to a neo-Goth’s paradise.
Clearly, Tempus was the first person to come down this corridor for some considerable length of time. Webs and dust had settled on his shoulders and in his hair, and he sneezed, twice. More masonry dust fell in a fine cloud from the ceiling.
Tempus reached out a hand and brought it down on the doorknob. It didn’t budge. With a wrench that almost dislocated his shoulder, he heaved on the thing. Emitting a grinding sound, it turned, and some inner mechanism clanged. Tempus pushed at the door; again, there was no result. He pushed with his other shoulder, feeling the iron bolts dig in to his flesh. Groaning and protesting, the old door juddered open, leaving a tidemark of dust and grime.
He stepped through the doorway into a wider corridor. It was cleaner than the one he had just come from, but was evidently still little used. There had been no torches since the bottom of the stairs, but up until now there had been windows, albeit covered in soot and dirt. This corridor had no light source, and Tempus had to stretch out his hands and feel his way along the walls in the dark.
It seemed like he had been creeping along forever, and he was just considering turning back, when the surface under his left hand suddenly changed. It was another door. Feeling bold, Tempus brought his right hand up to the doorknob and turned it. There was a crunching sound and the door swung away from him. Catching it before it could swing too far and hit the wall, Tempus stepped through. Something crunched again under his feet. The dim amount of light on this side of the threshold showed him that the door had been locked; but the frame was rotten and he had pushed his way right through. The door now refused to close, so he allowed it to open fully and rest against the wall. Then he turned to take stock of where he was.
In front of him was a curtain, which he gently twitched aside. Apparently he was in another curtained alcove like the one in which he had received his divine geas. It opened onto a brightly lit corridor that was far better kept than the ones he had just travelled. Blinking in the light, he gazed around owlishly. He was just about to step out when he heard voices; swiftly, he hid himself in the alcove, pulling the curtain closed. He held his breath and listened to see who was coming.
“Be careful with that wheelbarrow, Mynona.”
“I am being careful.”
“Then be more careful!”
It was Buzzfloyd and Mynona. What in Garner’s name were they doing walking along out-of-the-way corridors in the middle of the night with a wheelbarrow? Tempus pressed his face up against the wall, trying to see through the crack at the edge of the curtain. Buzzfloyd strode past, so close he stopped breathing. Next came Mynona, scowling as usual. She was, indeed, pushing a wheelbarrow; but that in itself did not catch Tempus’s eye. What interested him was its contents; a shimmering pile of luminescent opals, glittering like stars where they lay.
He heard the odd little caravan come to a halt. There was a metallic clunking sound. Tempus desperately wanted to see what was going on. He risked a quick look around the corner. The priestesses had stopped in front of a giant, heavily-bolted door. Buzzfloyd was drawing back the bolts; in her free hand she held a massive, golden key. Tempus drew a sharp intake of breath.
Mynona turned her head, and Tempus whipped back into the alcove, heart thudding. Had she seen him? But there was no outcry, no hurrying footsteps; he had not been noticed. A grin began to spread across his face, and he slipped his fingers inside his shirt to feel the chain that hung round his neck, and the large key that dangled from it, identical in every particular to the one in Buzzfloyd’s hand.
***
How do you create a perfect replica of something that you can only ever view from a distance? Patience, Chris Jordan felt, was the key (he chuckled to himself over the pun – a sure sign of the darkness of his soul). As Grand Spatula of Ba Witda, he was often able to watch the other clergy going about their duties; and, for some time now, he had taken a keen interest in the heavy key that Buzzfloyd carried about with her, knowing it to be the one that would unlock the manifold riches of the Garnerite treasury.
After many hours of careful watching and note taking, Chris had drawn up some plans and gone in search of a craftsman. The local newsvendor, Marcia, had put him in touch with a rather absent-minded young man called Hermes, who had happily made up a key to his specifications, without thinking anything of it. Up until this point, things had been going so well, that it did not surprise Chris (who was somewhat cynical by nature) to have his well-laid plans disrupted by an unexpected turn of events. On his way to their pre-arranged meeting point, where he was to deliver the key, Hermes was mugged.
It didn’t take Chris long to find out where the key had got to; Dragonmama was soon announcing that there would be an extra special prize at the next illegal game of Jack Straws. Kid Sybil was easily able to get enough big contenders to front the money for Dragonmama’s fee. The rumour spread quickly that a key, exactly the same as the one Buzzfloyd carried, would be up for grabs at the next match.
At first, the Grand Spatula worried over how he would regain possession of his secretly made duplicate. But it wasn’t long before he realised that there was no need. Whoever won the game would soon come to the Temple with their prize, hoping to steal further treasures. Then, Chris Jordan would exert all his influence as an acolyte of Ba to gain as many riches as he could, before turning the thief loose; and no one would ever suspect his part in the whole thing.
It was a beautiful plan.
***
Tempus was a poor man. But he was a poor man with a rich imagination. Inside a richly engraved and inlaid box at the Welcome Stranger sat a key that was, in many respects, very similar to the one that hung from the chain around his neck. It was a key that had gone missing from the Observatory only days ago, causing much puzzlement to Maljonic and the other astronomers and meteorologists. They were forced to leave the stationery store cupboard open until a locksmith could come to fashion a new key for the two hundred-year-old mechanism.
The key had been a stroke of luck for Tempus. Until the moment he saw it, he had not been able to work out a plan for obtaining the more important key that sat in safety in Dragonmama’s lair. But security at the Observatory was the lax kind kept by honest people, and it had only been a moment’s work to snatch the large, old, golden key and make his escape.
When Dragonmama caught him in the act of exchanging the keys, he had been terrified that she would cotton on to his plot, and hunt him down in the Temple. But his trick had worked; if it had not, he would certainly have heard about it by now. Tempus grinned.
When Commander Vimes chased the fugitive across the citadel, he was not simply a man running away from something; he was a man running towards an intended target. It was not only sanctuary that Tempus sought in the Temple, but an illicit reward.
And now, unwittingly, his nocturnal wanderings had led him straight to the place he had thought would take him days to find. Tempus was a poor man; but he did not intend to remain that way for long.
***
Somewhere in the Secret Quarters, a high-backed winged armchair faced a roaring fire. Fingers drummed on the scrolled wooden arms. The occupant was muttering to himself. “The Ba is confident that his soon-to-be-forthcoming midnight snack will be the most delicious he has had for many days. He can find no other reason for the extraordinary length of time it is taking to prepare it.” Divine fire blazed in the hearth.
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