Pratchett - Guards! guards!

Terry Pratchett

Guards! Guards!

A Novel of Discworld

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 Schrdingers Paperback

This is where the dragons went.

They lie

Not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies expectation. Possibly the word were looking for here is

dormant.

And although the space they occupy isnt 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 realize 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, theres 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 gray sky and punctuated the river mist that coiled among the streets. Rats of various species went about their nocturnal occasions. Under nights 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 color

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 . Thats what it, she, did. She wasathing, you know, lady dog. Puppy. Hen. Bitch . And then you hated her and, and just when you thought youd 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 couldnt let her go. Because, because she was yours, all you had, even in her gutters

Damp darkness shrouded the venerable buildings of Unseen University, premier college of wizardry. The only light was a faint octarine flicker from the tiny windows of the new High Energy Magic building, where keen-edged minds were probing the very fabric of the universe, whether it liked it or not.

And there was light, of course, in the Library.

The Library was the greatest assemblage of magical texts anywhere in the multiverse. Thousands of volumes of occult lore weighted its shelves.

It was said that, since vast amounts of magic can seriously distort the mundane world, the Library did not obey the normal rules of space and time. It was said that it went on forever . It was said that you could wander for days among the distant shelves, that there were lost tribes of research students somewhere in there, that strange things lurked in forgotten alcoves and were preyed on by other things that were even stranger.

Wise students in search of more distant volumes took care to leave chalk marks on the shelves as they roamed deeper into the fusty darkness, and told friends to come looking for them if they werent back by supper.

And, because magic can only loosely be bound, the Library books themselves were more than mere pulped wood and paper.

Raw magic crackled from their spines, earthing itself harmlessly in the copper rails nailed to every shelf for that very purpose. Faint traceries of blue fire crawled across the bookcases and there was a sound, a papery whispering, such as might come from a colony of roosting starlings. In the silence of the night the books talked to one another.

There was also the sound of someone snoring.

The light from the shelves didnt so much illuminate as highlight the darkness, but by its violet flicker a watcher might just have identified an ancient and battered desk right under the central dome.

The snoring was coming from underneath it, where a piece of tattered blanket barely covered what looked like a heap of sandbags but was in fact an adult male orangutan.

It was the Librarian.

Not many people these days remarked upon the fact that he was an ape. The change had been brought about by a magical accident, always a possibility where so many powerful books are kept together, and he was considered to have got off lightly. After all, he was still basically the same shape. And he had been allowed to keep his job, which he was rather good at, although allowed is not really the right word. It was the way he could roll his upper lip back to reveal more incredibly yellow teeth than any other mouth the University Council had ever seen before that somehow made sure the matter was never really raised.

But now there was another sound, the alien sound of a door creaking open. Footsteps padded across the floor and disappeared among the clustering shelves. The books rustled indignantly, and some of the larger grimoires rattled their chains.

The Librarian slept on, lulled by the whispering of the rain.

In the embrace of his gutter, half a mile away, Captain Vimes of the Night Watch opened his mouth and started to sing.

Now a black-robed figure scurried through the midnight streets, ducking from doorway to doorway, and reached a grim and forbidding portal. No mere doorway got that grim without effort, one felt. It looked as though the architect had been called in and given specific instructions. We want something eldritch in dark oak, hed been told. So put an unpleasant gargoyle thing over the archway, give it a slam like the footfall of a giant and make it clear to everyone, in fact, that this isnt the kind of door that goes ding-dong when you press the bell.

The figure rapped a complex code on the dark woodwork. A tiny barred hatch opened and one suspicious eye peered out.

The significant owl hoots in the night, said the visitor, trying to wring the rainwater out of its robe.

Yet many gray lords go sadly to the masterless men, intoned a voice on the other side of the grille.

Hooray, hooray for the spinsters sisters daughter, countered the dripping figure.

To the axeman, all supplicants are the same height.

Yet verily, the rose is within the thorn.

The good mother makes bean soup for the errant boy, said the voice behind the door.

There was a pause, broken only by the sound of the rain. Then the visitor said, What?

The good mother makes bean soup for the errant boy.

There was another, longer pause. Then the damp figure said, Are you sure the ill-built tower doesnt tremble mightily at a butterflys passage?

Nope. Bean soup it is. Im sorry.

The rain hissed down relentlessly in the embarrassed silence.

What about the cagd whale? said the soaking visitor, trying to squeeze into what little shelter the dread portal offered.

What about it?

It should know nothing of the mighty deeps, if you must know.

Oh , the cagd whale . You want the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night. Three doors down.

Whore you, then?

Were the Illuminated and Ancient Brethren of Ee.

I thought you met over in Treacle Street, said the damp man, after a while.