Sourcery - Terry Pratchett [39]
Carding, shifting uneasily, stood on his foot. Spelter yelped.
“Sorry,” said Carding.
“Is something the matter, Spelter?” said Coin.
Spelter hopped on one leg, suddenly released, his body flooding with relief as his toes flooded with agony, more grateful than anyone in the entire history of the world that seventeen stones of wizardry had chosen his instep to come down heavily on.
His scream seemed to have broken the spell. Coin sighed, and stood up.
“It has been a good day,” he said.
It was two o’clock in the morning. River mists coiled like snakes through the streets of Ankh-Morpork, but they coiled alone. Wizards did not hold with other people staying up after midnight, and so no one did. They slept the troubled sleep of the enchanted, instead.
In the Plaza of Broken Moons, once the boutique of mysterious pleasures from whose flare-lit and curtain-hung stalls the late-night reveller could obtain anything from a plate of jellied eels to the venereal disease of his choice, the mists coiled and dripped into chilly emptiness.
The stalls had gone, replaced by gleaming marble and a statue depicting the spirit of something or other, surrounded by illuminated fountains. Their dull splashing was the only sound that broke the cholesterol of silence that had the heart of the city in its grip.
Silence reigned too in the dark bulk of Unseen University. Except—
Spelter crept along the shadowy corridors like a two-legged spider, darting—or at least limping quickly—from pillar to archway, until he reached the forbidding doors of the Library. He peered nervously at the darkness around him and, after some hesitation, tapped very, very lightly.
Silence poured from the heavy woodwork. But, unlike the silence that had the rest of the city under its thrall, this was a watchful, alert silence; it was the silence of a sleeping cat that had just opened one eye.
When he could bear it no longer Spelter dropped to his hands and knees and tried to peer under the doors. Finally he put his mouth as close as he could to the drafty, dusty gap under the bottommost hinge and whispered: “I say! Um. Can you hear me?”
He felt sure that something moved, far back in the darkness.
He tried again, his mood swinging between terror and hope with every erratic thump of his heart.
“I say? It’s me, um, Spelter. You know? Could you speak to me, please?”
Perhaps large leathery feet were creeping gently across the floor in there, or maybe it was only the creaking of Spelter’s nerves. He tried to swallow away the dryness in his throat, and had another go.
“Look, all right, but, look, they’re talking about shutting the Library!”
The silence grew louder. The sleeping cat had cocked an ear.
“What is happening is all wrong!” the bursar confided, and clapped his hand over his mouth at the enormity of what he had said.
“Oook?”
It was the faintest of noises, like the eructation of cockroaches.
Suddenly emboldened, Spelter pressed his lips closer to the crack.
“Have you got the, um, Patrician in there?”
“Oook.”
“What about the little doggie?”
“Oook.”
“Oh. Good.”
Spelter lay full length in the comfort of the night, and drummed his fingers on the chilly floor.
“You wouldn’t care to, um, let me in too?” he ventured.
“Oook!”
Spelter made a face in the gloom.
“Well, would you, um, let me come in for a few minutes? We need to discuss something urgently, man to man.”
“Eeek.”
“I meant ape.”
“Oook.”
“Look, won’t you come out, then?”
“Oook.”
Spelter sighed. “This show of loyalty is all very well, but you’ll starve in there.”
“Oook oook.”
“What other way in?”
“Oook.”
“Oh, have it your way,” Spelter sighed. But, somehow, he felt better for the conversation. Everyone else in the University seemed to be living in a dream, whereas the Librarian wanted nothing more in the whole world than soft fruit, a regular supply of index cards and the opportunity, every month or so, to hop over the wall of the Patrician’s private menagerie.*