Sourcery - Terry Pratchett [2]
When the thunder had died away Death reached down slowly and picked up the boy, who opened his eyes.
They glowed golden, from the inside. For the first time in what, for want of any better word, must be called his life, Death found himself looking at a stare that he found hard to return. The eyes seemed to be focused on a point several inches inside his skull.
I did not mean for that to happen, said the voice of Ipslore, from out of the empty air. Is he harmed?
No. Death tore his gaze away from that fresh, knowing smile. HE CONTAINED THE POWER. HE IS A SOURCERER: NO DOUBT HE WILL SURVIVE MUCH WORSE. AND NOW—YOU WILL COME WITH ME.
No.
YES. YOU ARE DEAD, YOU SEE. Death looked around for Ipslore’s wavering shade, and failed to find it. WHERE ARE YOU?
In the staff.
Death leaned on his scythe and sighed.
FOOLISH. HOW EASILY COULD I CUT YOU LOOSE.
Not without destroying the staff, said the voice of Ipslore, and it seemed to Death that there was a new, thick, exultant quality to it. And now the child has accepted the staff you cannot destroy it without destroying him. And that you cannot do without upsetting destiny. My last magic. Rather neat, I feel.
Death prodded the staff. It crackled, and sparks crawled obscenely along its length.
Strangely enough, he wasn’t particularly angry. Anger is an emotion, and for emotion you need glands, and Death didn’t have much truck with glands and needed a good run at it to get angry. But he was mildly annoyed. He sighed again. People were always trying this sort of thing. On the other hand, it was quite interesting to watch, and at least this was a bit more original than the usual symbolic chess game, which Death always dreaded because he could never remember how the knight was supposed to move.
YOU’RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said.
That’s what being alive is all about.
BUT WHAT PRECISELY DO YOU EXPECT TO GAIN?
I shall be by my son’s side. I shall teach him, even though he won’t know it. I shall guide his understanding. And, when he is ready, I shall guide his steps.
TELL ME, said Death, HOW DID YOU GUIDE THE STEPS OF YOUR OTHER SONS?
I drove them out. They dared to argue with me, they would not listen to what I could teach them. But this one will.
IS THIS WISE?
The staff was silent. Beside it, the boy chuckled at the sound of a voice only he could hear.
There was no analogy for the way in which Great A’Tuin the world turtle moved against the galactic night. When you are ten thousand miles long, your shell pocked with meteor craters and frosted with comet ice, there is absolutely nothing you can realistically be like except yourself.
So Great A’Tuin swam slowly through the interstellar deeps like the largest turtle there has ever been, carrying on its carapace the four huge elephants that bore on their backs the vast, glittering waterfall-fringed circle of the Discworld, which exists either because of some impossible blip on the curve of probability or because the gods enjoy a joke as much as anyone.
More than most people, in fact.
Near the shores of the Circle Sea, in the ancient, sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork, on a velvet cushion on a ledge high up in the Unseen University, was a hat.
It was a good hat. It was a magnificent hat.
It was pointy, of course, with a wide floppy brim, but after disposing of these basic details the designer had really got down to business. There was gold lace on there, and pearls, and bands of purest vermine, and sparkling Ankhstones* , and some incredibly tasteless sequins, and—a dead giveaway, of course—a circle of octarines.
Since they weren’t in a strong magical field at the moment they weren’t glowing, and looked like rather inferior diamonds.
Spring had come to Ankh-Morpork. It wasn’t immediately apparent, but there were signs that were obvious to the cognoscenti. For example, the scum on the river Ankh, that great wide slow waterway that served the double city as reservoir, sewer and frequent morgue, had turned a particularly iridescent green. The city’s drunken rooftops sprouted