Sourcery - Terry Pratchett [94]
Coin muttered soundlessly and the bubble began to contract. It bulged and jerked obscenely as the things inside fought to get out, but they could not stop the contraction.
Now it was bigger than the University grounds.
Now it was taller than the tower.
Now it was twice the height of a man, and smoke gray.
Now it was an iridescent pearl, the size of…well, the size of a large pearl.
The gale had gone, replaced by a heavy, silent calm. The very air groaned with the strain. Most of the wizards were flat on the floor, pressed there by the unleashed forces that thickened the air and deadened sound like a universe of feathers, but every one of them could hear his own heart beating loud enough to smash the tower.
“Look at me,” Coin commanded.
They turned their eyes upwards. There was no way they could disobey.
He held the glistening thing in one hand. The other held the staff, which had smoke pouring from its ends.
“The gods,” he said. “Imprisoned in a thought. And perhaps they were never more than a dream.”
His voice become older, deeper. “Wizards of Unseen University,” it said, “have I not given you absolute dominion?”
Behind them the carpet rose slowly over the side of the tower, with Rincewind trying hard to keep his balance. His eyes were wide with the sort of terror that comes naturally to anyone standing on a few threads and several hundred feet of empty air.
He lurched off the hovering thing and onto the tower, swinging the loaded sock around his head in wide, dangerous sweeps.
Coin saw him reflected in the astonished stares of the assembled wizards. He turned carefully and watched the wizard stagger erratically toward him.
“Who are you?” he said.
“I have come,” said Rincewind thickly, “to challenge the sourcerer. Which one is he?”
He surveyed the prostrate wizardry, hefting the half-brick in one hand.
Hakardly risked a glance upwards and made frantic eyebrow movements at Rincewind who, even at the best of times, wasn’t much good at interpreting non-verbal communication. This wasn’t the best of times.
“With a sock?” said Coin. “What good is a sock?”
The arm holding the staff rose. Coin looked down at it in mild astonishment.
“No, stop,” he said. “I want to talk to this man.” He stared at Rincewind, who was swaying back and forth under the influence of sleeplessness, horror and the after-effects of an adrenaline overdose.
“Is it magical?” he said, curiously. “Perhaps it is the sock of an Archchancellor? A sock of force?”
Rincewind focused on it.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I think I bought it in a shop or something. Um. I’ve got another one somewhere.”
“But in the end it has something heavy?”
“Um. Yes,” said Rincewind. He added, “It’s a half-brick.”
“But it has great power.”
“Er. You can hold things up with it. If you had another one, you’d have a brick.” Rincewind spoke slowly. He was assimilating the situation by a kind of awful osmosis, and watching the staff turn ominously in the boy’s hand.
“So. It is a brick of ordinariness, within a sock. The whole becoming a weapon.”
“Um. Yes.”
“How does it work?”
“Um. You swing it, and then you. Hit something with it. Or sometimes the back of your hand, sometimes.”
“And then perhaps it destroys a whole city?” said Coin.
Rincewind stared into Coin’s golden eyes, and then at his sock. He had pulled it on and off several times a year for years. It had darns he’d grown to know and lo—well, know. Some of them had whole families of darns of their own. There were a number of descriptions that could be applied to the sock, but slayer-of-cities wasn’t among them.
“Not really,” he said at last. “It sort of kills people but leaves buildings standing.”
Rincewind’s mind was operating at the speed of continental drift. Parts of it were telling him that he was confronting the sourcerer, but they were in direct conflict with other parts. Rincewind had heard quite a lot about the power of the sourcerer, the staff of the sourcerer, the wickedness of the sourcerer and so on. The only thing no one had mentioned was the age of the sourcerer.
He glanced toward