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"What was his name, now? Winswand?" (...lets just skip the classical intro, which of course in this book gives some hints that Great A`Tuin is not just the setting of the story, so to say, and head for another scene right at the beginning of the novel... note the small, but important last paragraph of this snippet, where a favourite character of many readers gains his appearance as we know it.)
The air was greasy with the distinctive feel of magic, and acrid with the smoke of candles made of a black wax whose precise origin a wise man wouldn't inquire about. There was something very strange about this room deep in the cellars of Unseen University, the Disc's premier college of magic. For one thing it seemed to have too many dimensions, not exactly visible, just hovering out of eyeshot. The walls were covered with occult symbols, and most of the floor was taken up by the Eightfold Seal of Stasis, generally agreed in magical circles to have all the stopping power of a well-aimed half brick. The only furnishing in the room was a lectern dark wood, carved into the shape of a bird - well, to be frank, into the shape of a winged thing it is probably best not to examine too closely - and on the lectern, fastened to it by a heavy chain covered in padlocks, was a book. A large, but not particularly impressive, book. Other books in the University's libraries had covers inlaid with rare jewels and fascinating wood, or bound with dragon skin. This one was just a rather tatty leather. It looked the sort of book described in library catalogues as 'slightly foxed', although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well. Metal clasps held it shut. They weren't decorated, they were just very heavy - like the chain, which didn't so much attach the book to the lectern as tether it. They looked like the work of someone who had a pretty definite aim in mind, and who had spent most of his life making training harness for elephants.
The air thickened and swirled. The pages of the book began to crinkle in a quite horrible, deliberate way, and blue light spilled out from between them. The silence of the room crowded in like a fist, slowly being clenched. Half a dozen wizards in their nightshirts were taking turns to peer in through the little grille in the door. No wizard could sleep with this sort of thing going on - the build-up of raw magic was rising through the university like a tide.
'Right,' said a voice. What's going on? And why wasn't I summoned?'
Galder Weatherwax, Supreme Grand Conjuror of the Order of the Silver Star, Lord Imperial of the Sacred Staff, Eighth Level Ipsissimus and 304th Chancellor of Unseen University, wasn't simply an impressive sight even in his red nightshirt with the hand-embroidered mystic runes, even in his long cap with the bobble on, even with the Wee Willie Winkie candlestick in his hand. He even managed to very nearly pull it off in fluffy pompom slippers as well. Six frightened faces turned towards him.
'Um, you were summoned, lord,' said one of the under-wizards. 'That's why you're here,' he added helpfully.
'I mean why wasn't I summoned before?' snapped Galder, pushing his way to the grille.
'Um, before who, lord?' said the wizard.
Galder glared at him, and ventured a quick glance through the grille. The air in the room was now sparkling with tiny flashes as dust motes incinerated in the flow of raw magic. The Seal of Stasis was beginning to blister and curl up at the edges. The book in question was called the Octavo and, quite obviously, it was no ordinary book. There are of course many famous books of magic. Some may talk of the Necrotelicomnicon, with its pages made of ancient lizard skin; some may point to the Book of Going Forth Around Elevenish, written by a mysterious and rather lazy Llamaic sect; some may recall that the Bumper Fun Grimoire reputedly contains the one original joke left in the universe. But they are all mere pamphlets when compared with the Octavo, which the Creator of the Universe reputedly left behind - with characteristic absent-mindedness - shortly after completing his major work. The eight spells imprisoned in its pages led a secret and complex life of their own, and it was generally believed that - Galder's brow furrowed as he stared into the troubled room. Of course, there were only seven spells now. Some young idiot of a student wizard had stolen a look at the book one day and one of the spells had escaped and lodged in his mind. No-one had ever managed to get to the bottom of how it had happened. What was his name, now? Winswand?
Octarine and purple sparks glittered on the spine of the book. A thin curl of smoke was beginning to rise from the lectern, and the heavy metal clasps that held the book shut were definitely beginning to look strained. 'Why are the spells so restless?' said one of the younger wizards. Galder shrugged. He couldn't show it, of course, but he was beginning to be really worried. As a skilled eighth-level wizard he could see the half-imaginary shapes that appeared momentarily in the vibrating air, wheedling arid beckoning. In much the same way that gnats appear before a thunderstorm, really heavy build-ups of magic always attracted things from the chaotic Dungeon Dimensions - nasty Things, all misplaced organs and spittle, forever searching for any gap through which they might sidle into the world of men. This had to be stopped.
'I shall need a volunteer,' he said firmly.
There was a sudden silence. The only sound came from behind the door. It was the nasty little noise of metal parting under stress.
'Very well, then,' he said. 'In that case I shall need some silver tweezers, about two pints of cat's blood, a small whip and a chair -'
It is said that the opposite of noise is silence. This isn't true. Silence is only the absence of noise. Silence would have been a terrible din compared to the sudden soft implosion of noiselessness that hit the wizards with the force of an exploding dandelion clock. A thick column of spitting light sprang up from the book, hit the ceiling in a splash of flame, and disappeared. Galder stared up at the hole, ignoring the smouldering patches in his beard. He pointed dramatically.
'To the upper cellars!' he cried, and bounded up the stone stairs.
Slippers flapping and nightshirts billowing he other wizards followed him, falling over one another in their eagerness to be last. Nevertheless, they were all in time to see the fireball of occult potentiality disappear into the ceiling of the room above.
'Urgh,' said the youngest wizard, and pointed to the floor.
The room had been part of the library until the magic had drifted through, violently reassembling the possibility particles of everything in its path. So it was reasonable to assume that the small purple newts had been part of the floor and the pineapple custard may once have been some books. And several of the wizards later swore that the small sad orang outang sitting in the middle of it all looked very much like the head librarian.
The Discworld approach at Druids
The druids of the Disc prided themselves on their forward-looking approach to the discovery of the mysteries of the Universe. Of course, like druids everywhere they believed in the essential unity of all life, the healing ower of plants, the natural rhythm of the seasons and the burning alive of anyone who didn't approach all this in the right frame of mind, but they had also thought long and hard about the very basis of creation and had formulated the following theory: The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness. Thus it was that the sun and moon orbited the disc because they were persuaded not to fall down, but didn't actually fly away because of uncertainty. Charm allowed trees to grow and bloody-mindedness kept them up, and so on. Some druids suggested that there were certain flaws in this theory, but senior druids explained very pointedly that there was indeed room for informed argument, the cut and thrust of exciting scientific debate, and basically it lay on top of the next solstice bonfire.
'Ah, so you're an astronomer?' said Twoflower.
'Oh no,' said Belafon, as the rock drifted gently around the curve of a mountain, 'I'm a computer hardware consultant.'
'What's a computer hardware?'
'Well, this is,' said the druid, tapping the rock with a sandalled foot. 'Part of one, anyway. It's a replacement. I'm delivering it. They're having trouble with the big circles up on the Vortex Plains. So they say, anyway; I wished I had a bronze tore for every user who didn't read the manual.' He shrugged.
'What use is it, then, exactly?' asked Rincewind. Anything to keep his mind off the drop below.
'You can use it to - to tell you what time of year it is,' said Belafon.
'Ah. You mean if it's covered in snow then it must be winter?'
'Yes. I mean no. I mean, supposing you wanted to know when a particular star is going to rise -'
'Why?' said Twoflower, radiating polite interest.
'Well, maybe you want to know when to plant your crops,' said Belafon, sweating a little, 'or maybe-'
'I'll lend you my almanac, if you like,' said Twoflower.
'Almanac?'
'It's a book that tells you what day it is,' said Rincewind wearily. 'It'd be right up your leyline.'
Belafon stiffened.
'Book?' he said. 'Like, with paper?'
'Yes.'
'That doesn't sound very reliable to me,' said the druid nastily. 'How can a book know what day it is? Paper can't count.' He stamped off to the front of the rock, causing it to wallow alarmingly.
Rincewind swallowed hard and beckoned Twoflower closer.
'Have you ever heard of culture shock?' he hissed.
'What's that?'
'It's what happens when people spend five hundred years trying to get a stone circle to work properly and then someone comes up with a little book with a page for every day and little chatty bits saying things like "Now is a good time to plant broad beans" and "Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead," and do you know what the most important thing to remember about culture shock.' Rincewind paused for breath, and moved his lips silently trying to remember where the sentence had got to, 'is?' he concluded.
'What?'
'Don't give it to a man flying a thousand ton rock.'
Cohan appears
Rincewind looked around desperately for a way of escape. There wasn't one. Twoflower was standing by the altar stone with one finger in the air and an attitude of polite determination. Rincewind remembered one day when Twoflower had thought a passing drover was beating his cattle too hard, and the case he had made for decency towards animals had left Rincewind severely trampled and lightly gored. The druids were looking at Twoflower with the kind of expression normally reserved for mad sheep or the sudden appearance of a rain of frogs. Rincewind couldn't quite hear what Twoflower was saying, but a few phrases like 'ethnic folkways' and 'nuts and flowers' floated across the hushed circle. Then fingers like a bunch of cheese straws clamped over the wizard's mouth and an extremely sharp cutting edge pinked his adams apple and a damp voice right by his ear said, 'Not a shound, or you ish a dead man.'
Rincewind's eyes swivelled in their sockets as if trying to find a way out.
'If you don't want me to say anything, how will you know I understand what you just said?' he hissed.
'Shut up and tell me what that other idiot ish doing!'
'No, but look, if I've got to shut up, how can I-' The knife at his throat became a hot streak of pain and Rincewind decided to give logic a miss. 'His name's Twoflower. He isn't from these parts.'
'Doeshn't look like it. Friend of yoursh?'
'We've got this sort of hate-hate relationship, yes.' Rincewind couldn't see his captor, but by the feel of it he had a body made of coathangers. He also smelt strongly of peppermints.
'He hash got guts, I'll give him that. Do exshactly what I shay and it ish just poshible he won't end up with them wrapped around a shtone.'
'Urrr.'
'They're not very ecumenical around here, you shee.'
It was at that moment that the moon, in due obedience to the laws of persuasion, rose, although in deference to he laws of computing it wasn't anywhere near where the stones said it should be. But what was there, peeking through ragged clouds, was a glaring red star. It hung exactly over the circle's holiest stone, glittering away like the sparkle in the eyesocket of Death. It was sullen and awful and, Rincewind couldn't help noticing, just a little bit bigger than it was last night. A cry of horror went up from the assembled priests. The crowd on the surrounding banks pressed forward; this looked quite promising. Rincewind felt a knife handle slip into his hand, and the squelchy voice behind him said, 'You ever done this short of thing before?'
'What sort of thing?'
'Rushed into a temple, killed the prieshts, shtolen the gold and reshcued the girl.'
'No, not in so many words.'
'You do it like thish.'
Two inches from Rincewind's left ear a voice broke into a sound like a baboon with its foot trapped in an echo canyon, and a small but wiry shape rushed past him. By the light of the torches he saw that it was a very old man, the skinny variety that generally gets called 'spry', with a totally bald head, a beard almost down to his knees, and a pair of matchstick legs on which varicose veins had traced the street map of quite a large city. Despite the snow he wore nothing more than a studded leather holdall and a pair of boots that could have easily accommodated a second pair of feet. The two druids closest to him exchanged glances and hefted their sickles. There was a brief blur and they collapsed into tight balls of agony, making rattling noises. In the excitement that followed Rincewind sidled along towards the altar stone, holding his knife gingerly so as not to attract any unwelcome comment. In fact no-one was paying a great deal of attention to him; the druids that hadn't fled the circle, generally the younger and more muscular ones, had congregated around the old man n order to discuss the whole subject of sacrilege as it pertained to stone circles, but judging by the cackling and sounds of gristle he was carrying the debate. Twoflower was watching the fight with interest. Rincewind grabbed him by the shoulder.
'Let's go,' he said.
'Shouldn't we help?'
'I'm sure we'd only get in the way,' said Rincewind hurriedly. 'You know what it's like to have people looking over your shoulder when you're busy.'
'At least we must rescue the young lady,' said Twoflower firmly. 'All right, but get a move on!'
Twoflower took the knife and hurried up to the altar stone. After several inept slashes he managed to cut the ropes that bound the girl, who sat up and burst into tears.
'It's all right-' he began.
'It bloody well isn't!' she snapped, glaring at him through two red-rimmed eyes. 'Why do people always go and spoil things?' She blew her nose resentfully on the edge of her robe.
Twoflower looked up at Rincewind in embarrassment.
'Um,' I don't think you quite understand,' he said. 'I mean, we just saved you from absolutely certain death.'
'It's not easy around here,' she said. 'I mean, keeping yourself-' she blushed, and twisted the hem of her robe wretchedly. 'I mean, staying . . . not letting yourself be . . . not losing your qualifications . . .'
'Qualifications? said Twoflower, earning the Rincewind Cup for the slowest person on the uptake in the entire multiverse.
The girl's eyes narrowed.
'I could have been up there with the Moon Goddess by now, drinking mead out of a silver bowl,' she said petulantly. 'Eight years of staying home on Saturday nights right down the drain!' She looked up at Rincewind and scowled.
Herrena...
[We're still deep into fantasy parody in the second DW novel! :-)]
It is a well known fact that warriors and wizards do not get along, because one side considers the other side to be a collection of bloodthirsty idiots who can't walk and think at the same time, while the other side is naturally suspicious of a body of men who mumble a lot and wear long dresses. Oh, say the wizards, if we're going to be like that, then, what about all those studded collars and oiled muscles down at the Young Men's Pagan Association? To which the heroes reply, that's a pretty good allegation coming from a bunch of wimpsoes who won't go near a woman on account, can you believe it, of their mystical power being sort of drained out. Right, say the wizards, that just about does it, you and your leather posing pouches. Oh yeah, say the heroes, why don't you . . . And so on.
This sort of thing has been going on for centuries, and caused a number of major battles which have left large tracts of land uninhabitable because of magical harmonics. In fact, the hero even at this moment galloping towards the Vortex Plains didn't get involved in this kind of argument, because they didn't take it seriously W mainly because this particular hero was a heroine. A redheaded one. Now, there is a tendency at a point like this to look over one's shoulder at the cover artist and start going on at length about leather, thighboots and naked blades. Words like 'full', 'round' and even 'pert' creep into the narrative, until the writer has to go and have a cold hower and a lie down. Which is all rather silly, because any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn't about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialised buyer. Oh well, all right. The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hun Ling's Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a short sword. All right, maybe the boots were leather. But not black. Riding with her were a number of swarthy men that will certainly be killed before too long anyway, so a description is probably not essential. There was absolutely nothing pert about any of them. Look, they can wear leather if you like.
The "tabernae vagantes"
There have been three general theories put forward to explain the phenomenon of the wandering shops or, as they are generically known, tabernae vagantes. The first postulates that many thousands of years ago there evolved somewhere in the multiverse a race whose single talent was to buy cheap and sell dear. Soon they controlled a vast galactic empire or, as they put it, Emporium, and the more advanced members of the species found a way to equip their very shops with unique propulsion units that could break the dark walls of space itself and open up vast new markets. And long after the orlds of the Emporium perished in the heat death of their particular universe, after one last defiant fire sale, the wandering starshops still ply their trade, eating their way through the pages of spacetime like a worm through a three-volume novel. The second is that they are the creation of a sympathetic Fate, charged with the role of supplying exactly the right thing at the right time. The third is that they are simply a very clever way of getting around the various Sunday Closing acts. All these theories, diverse as they are, have two things in common. They explain the observed facts, and they are completely and utterly wrong.
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