Soul Music - Terry Pratchett [42]
“A piano move about, does it?” he said.
“It’s…we’ve got legs,” said the piano.
Detritus conceded the point.
“But it are the middle of the night,” he said.
“Even pianos have to have time off,” said the piano.
Detritus scratched his head. This seemed to cover it.
“Well…all right,” he said.
He watched the piano jerk and wobble down the marble steps and around the corner.
It carried on talking to itself:
“How long have we got, d’you think?”
“We ought to make it to the bridge. He not clever enough to be a drummer.”
“But he’s a policeman.”
“So?”
“Cliff?”
“Yup?”
“We might get caught.”
“He can’t stop us. We’re on a mission from Glod.”
“Right.”
The piano tottered onward through the puddles for a little while, and then asked itself:
“Buddy?”
“Yup?”
“Why did I just say dat?”
“Say what?”
“About us being on a mission…you know…from Glod?”
“Weeell…the dwarf said to us, go and get the piano, and his name is Glod, so—”
“Yeah. Yeah. Right…but…he could’ve stopped us, I mean, dere’s nothing special about some mission from some dwarf—”
“Maybe you were just a bit tired.”
“Maybe dat’s it,” said the piano, gratefully.
“Anyway, we are on a mission from Glod.”
“Yup.”
Glod sat in his lodgings, watching the guitar.
It had stopped playing when Buddy had gone out, although if he put his ear very close to the strings, he was sure that they were still humming very gently.
Now he very carefully reached out and touched the—
To call the sudden snapping sound discordant would be too mild. The sound had a snarl, it had talons.
Glod sat back. Right. Right. It was Buddy’s instrument. An instrument played by the same person over the years could become very adapted to them, although not in Glod’s experience to the point of biting someone else. Buddy hadn’t had it a day, yet, but the principle maybe was the same.
There was an old dwarf legend about the famous Horn of Furgle, which sounded itself when danger was near and also in the presence, for some reason, of horseradish.
And there was even an Ankh-Morpork legend, wasn’t there, about some old drum in the Palace or somewhere that was supposed to bang itself if an enemy fleet was seen sailing up the Ankh? The legend had died out in recent centuries, partly because this was the Age of Reason and also because no enemy fleet could sail up the Ankh without a gang of men with shovels going in front.
And there was a troll story about some stones that, on frosty nights…
The point was that magical instruments turned up every so often.
Glod reached out again.
JUD-Adud-adud-duh.
“All right, all right…”
The old music shop was right up against the University, after all, and magic did leak out despite what the wizards always said about the talking rats and walking trees just being statistical flukes. But this didn’t feel like magic. It felt a lot older than that. It felt like music.
Glod wondered whether he should persuade Im—Buddy to take it back to the shop, get a proper guitar…
On the other hand, six dollars was six dollars. At least.
Something hammered on the door.
“Who’s that?” said Glod, looking up.
The pause outside was long enough to let him guess. He decided to help out.
“Cliff?” he said.
“Yup. Got a piano here.”
“Bring it on in.”
“Had to break off der legs and der lid and a few other bits but it’s basically okay.”
“Bring it on in, then.”
“Door’s too narrow.”
Buddy, coming up the stairs behind the troll, heard the crunch of woodwork.
“Try it again.”
“Fit’s perfectly.”
There was a piano-shaped hole around the doorway. Glod was standing next to it, holding his ax. Buddy looked at the wreckage all over the landing.
“What the hell are you doing?” he said. “That’s someone else’s wall!”
“Well? It’s someone else’s piano.”
“Yes, but…you can’t just hack holes in the wall—”
“What’s more important? Some wall or getting the sound right?” said Glod.
Buddy hesitated. Part of him thought: that’s ridiculous, it’s only music. Another part of him thought, rather more sharply: that’s ridiculous, it’s only a wall. All of him said: “Oh. Since you put it like that