Guards! Guards!

Dedication: They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No-one ever asks them if they wanted to. This book is dedicated to those fine men. And also to Mike Harrison, Mary Gentle, Neil Gaiman and all the others who assisted with and laughed at the idea of L-space; too bad we never used Schrodinger's Paperback. . .

This is where the dragons went. They lie... Not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies expectation. Possibly the word we're looking for here is... . . .dormant.

And although the space they occupy isn't like normal space, nevertheless they are packed in tightly. Not a cubic inch there but is filled by a claw, a talon, a scale, the tip of a tail, so the effect is like one of those trick drawings and your eyeballs eventually realise that the space between each dragon is, in fact, another dragon. They could put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought sardines were huge and scaly and proud and arrogant. And presumably, somewhere, there's the key.

In another space entirely, it was early morning in Ankh-Morpork, oldest and greatest and grubbiest of cities. A thin drizzle dripped from the grey sky and punctuated the river mist that coiled among the streets. Rats of various species went about their nocturnal occasions. Under night's damp cloak assassins assassinated, thieves thieved, hussies hustled. And so on. And drunken Captain Vimes of the Night Watch staggered slowly down the street, folded gently into the gutter outside the Watch House and lay there while, above him, strange letters made of light sizzled in the damp and changed colour. . .

The city wasa, wasa, wasa wossname. Thing. Woman. Thass what it was. Woman. Roaring, ancient, centuries old. Strung you along, let you fall in thingy, love, with her, then kicked you inna, inna, thingy. Thingy, in your mouth. Tongue. Tonsils. Teeth. That's what it, she, did. She wasa . . . thing, you know, lady dog. Puppy. Hen. *****. And then you hated her and, and just when you thought you'd got her, it, out of your, your, whatever, then she opened her great booming rotten heart to you, caught you off bal, bal, bal, thing. Ance. Yeah. Thassit. Never knew where where you stood. Lay. Only thing you were sure of, you couldn't let her go. Because, because she was yours, all you had, even in her gutters...

"Back in the mountains," said Carrot, "if a thief was caught, he was hung up by the - " He paused, idly rattling a doorknob. Nobby froze.

"By the what?" he said, in horrified fascination.

"Can't remember now," said Carrot. "My mother said it was too good for them, anyway. Stealing is Wrong."

Nobby had survived any number of famous massacres by not being there. He let go of the doorknob, and gave it a friendly pat.

"Got it!" said Carrot. Nobby jumped.

"Got what?" he shouted.

"I remember what we hang them up by," said Carrot.

"Oh," said Nobby weakly.

"Where?"

"We hang them up by the town hall," said Carrot. "Sometimes for days. They don't do it again, I can tell you. And Bjorn Stronginthearm's your uncle."

Nobby leaned his pike against the wall and fumbled a fag-end from the recesses of his ear. One or two things, he decided, needed to be sorted out.

"Why did you have to become a guard, lad?" he said.

"Everyone keeps on asking me that," said Carrot. "I didn't have to. I wanted to. It will make a Man of me."

Nobby never looked anyone directly in the eye. He stared at Carrot's right ear in amazement.

"You mean you ain't running away from anything?" he said.

"What would I want to run away from anything for?"

Nobby floundered a bit.

"Ah. There's always something. Maybe - maybe you was wrongly accused of something. Like, maybe," he grinned, "maybe the stores was mysteriously short on certain items and you was unjustly blamed. Or certain items was found in your kit and you never knew how they got there. That sort of thing. You can tell old Nobby. Or," he nudged Carrot, "p'raps it was something else, eh? Shershay la fern, eh? Got a girl into trouble?"

"I - " Carrot began, and then remembered that, yes, one should tell the truth, even to odd people like Nobby who didn't seem to know what it was. And the truth was that he was always getting Minty in trouble, although exactly how and why was a bit of a mystery. Just about every time he left after paying calls on her at the Rocksmacker cave, he could hear her father and mother shouting at her. They were always very polite to him, but somehow merely being seen with him was enough to get Minty into trouble. "Yes," he said.

"Ah. Often the case," said Nobby wisely.

"All the time," said Carrot. "Just about every night, really."

"Blimey," said Nobby, impressed. He looked down at the Protective.

"Is that why they make you wear that, then?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, don't worry about it," said Nobby. "Everyone's got their little secret. Or big secret, as it might be. Even the captain. He's only with us because he was Brung Low by a Woman. That's what the sergeant says. Brung low."

"Goodness," said Carrot. It sounded painful.

"But I reckon it's 'cos he speaks his mind. Spoke it once too often to the Patrician, I heard. Said the Thieves' Guild was nothing but a pack of thieves, or something. That's why he's with us. Dunno, really." He looked speculatively at the pavement and then said: "So where're you staying, lad?"

"There's a lady called Mrs. Palm - " Carrot began.

Nobby choked on some smoke that went the wrong way.

"In the Shades?" he wheezed. "You're staying there?"

"Oh, yes."

"Every night?"

"Well, every day, really. Yes."

"And you've come here to have a man made of you?"

"Yes!"

"I don't think I should like to live where you come from," said Nobby.

Someone else in the city was also ill at ease. He was the Librarian. Sergeant Colon had given him a badge. The Librarian turned it round and round in his big gentle hands, nibbling at it. It wasn't that the city suddenly had a king. Orangs are traditionalists, and you couldn't get more traditional than a king. But they also liked things neat, and things weren't neat. Or, rather, they were too neat. Truth and reality were never as neat as this. Sudden heirs to ancient thrones didn't grow on trees, and he should know. Besides, no-one was looking for his book. That was human priorities for you. The book was the key to it. He was sure of that. Well, there was one way to find out what was in the book. It was a perilous way, but the Librarian ambled along perilous ways all day.

In the silence of the sleeping library he opened his desk and removed from its deepest recesses a small lantern carefully built to prevent any naked flame being exposed. You couldn't be too careful with all this paper around. . . He also took a bag of peanuts and, after some thought, a large ball of string. He bit off a short length of the string and used it to tie the badge around his neck, like a talisman. Then he tied one end of the ball to the desk and, after a moment's contemplation, knuckled off between the bookshelves, paying out the string behind him. Knowledge equals power. . . The string was important. After a while the Librarian stopped. He concentrated all his powers of librarianship. Power equals energy. . . People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library. Energy equals matter. . . . He swung into an avenue of shelving that was apparently a few feet long and walked along it briskly for half an hour. Matter equals mass. And mass distorts space. It distorts it into polyfractal L-space. So, while the Dewey system has its fine points, when you're setting out to look something up in the multidimensional folds of L-space what you really need is a ball of string.

The High Priest of Blind Io was stumbling over his words. There had never been an official coronation service in Ankh-Morpork, as far as he could find out. The old kings had managed quite well with something on the lines of: "We hath got the crown, i'faith, and we will kill any whoreson who tries to take it away, by the Lord Harry." Apart from anything else, this was rather short. He'd spent a long time drafting something longer and more in keeping with the spirit of the times, and was having some trouble remembering it. He was also being put off by the goat, which was watching him with loyal interest.

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