Sourcery - Terry Pratchett [26]
Carding’s fingers curled around the black staff.
There was a noise that Spelter felt rather than heard, and Carding bounced across the gallery and struck the opposite wall with a sound like a sack of lard hitting a pavement.
“Don’t do that,” said Coin. He turned and looked through Spelter, who had gone pale, and added: “Help him up. He is probably not badly hurt.”
The bursar scuttled hurriedly across the floor and bent over Carding, who was breathing heavily and had gone an odd color. He patted the wizard’s hand until Carding opened one eye.
“Did you see what happened?” he whispered.
“I’m not sure. Um. What did happen?” hissed Spelter.
“It bit me.”
“The next time you touch the staff,” said Coin, matter-of-factly, “you will die. Do you understand?”
Carding raised his head gently, in case bits of it fell off.
“Absolutely,” he said.
“And now I would like to see the University,” the boy continued. “I have heard a great deal about it…”
Spelter helped Carding to his unsteady feet and supported him as they trotted obediently after the boy.
“Don’t touch his staff,” muttered Carding.
“I’ll remember, um, not to,” said Spelter firmly. “What did it feel like?”
“Have you ever been bitten by a viper?”
“No.”
“In that case you’ll understand exactly what it felt like.”
“Hmmm?”
“It wasn’t like a snake bite at all.”
They hurried after the determined figure as Coin marched down the stairs and through the ravished doorway of the Great Hall.
Spelter dodged in front, anxious to make a good impression.
“This is the Great Hall,” he said. Coin turned his golden gaze toward him, and the wizard felt his mouth dry up. “It’s called that because it’s a hall, d’you see. And big.”
He swallowed. “It’s a big hall,” he said, fighting to stop the last of his coherence being burned away by the searchlight of that stare. “A great big hall, which is why it’s called—”
“Who are those people?” said Coin. He pointed with his staff. The assembled wizards, who had turned to watch him enter, backed out of the way as though the staff was a flamethrower.
Spelter followed the sourcerer’s stare. Coin was pointing to the portraits and statues of former Archchancellors, which decorated the walls. Full-bearded and point-hatted, clutching ornamental scrolls or holding mysterious symbolic bits of astrological equipment, they stared down with ferocious self-importance or, possibly, chronic constipation.
“From these walls,” said Carding, “two hundred supreme mages look down upon you.”
“I don’t care for them,” said Coin, and the staff streamed octarine fire. The Archchancellors vanished.
“And the windows are too small—”
“The ceiling is too high—”
“Everything is too old—”
The wizards threw themselves flat as the staff flared and spat. Spelter pulled his hat over his eyes and rolled under a table when the very fabric of the University flowed around him. Wood creaked, stone groaned.
Something tapped him on the head. He screamed.
“Stop that!” shouted Carding above the din. “And pull your hat up! Show a little dignity!”
“Why are you under the table, then?” said Spelter sourly.
“We must seize our opportunity!”
“What, like the staff?”
“Follow me!”
Spelter emerged into a bright, a horrible bright new world.
Gone were the rough stone walls. Gone were the dark, owl-haunted rafters. Gone was the tiled floor, with its eye-boggling pattern of black and white tiles.
Gone, too, were the high small windows, with their gentle patina of antique grease. Raw sunlight streamed into the hall for the first time.
The wizards stared at one another, mouths open, and what they saw was not what they had always thought they’d seen. The unforgiving rays transmuted rich gold embroidery into dusty gilt, exposed opulent fabric as rather stained and threadbare velvet, turned fine flowing beards into nicotine-stained tangles, betrayed splendid diamonds as rather inferior Ankhstones. The fresh light probed