Canon Excerpt #6: They Buzz
"There goes Quirm," murmured Carding.
"That just leaves Al Khali," said one of the others.
"There's some clever power there."
Carding nodded glumly. He'd quite liked Quirm, which was a- had been a pleasant little city overlooking the Rim Ocean.
He dimly recalled being taken there, once, when he was small. For a moment he gazed sadly into the past. It had wild geraniums, he recalled, filling the sloping cobbled streets with their musky fragrance.
"Growing out of the walls," he said out loud. "Pink. They were pink."
The other wizards looked at him oddly. One or two, of a particularly paranoid frame of mind even for wizards, glanced suspiciously at the walls.
"Are you all right?" said one of them.
"Um?" said Carding, "Oh. Yes, Sorry. Miles away."
He turned back to look at Coin, who was sitting off to one side of the circle with the staff across his knees. The boy appeared to be asleep. Perhaps he was. But Carding knew in the tormented pit of his soul that the staff didn't sleep. It was watching him, testing his mind.
It knew. It even knew about the pink geraniums.
"I never wanted it to be like this," he said softly. "All we really wanted was a bit of respect."
"Are you sure you're all right?"
Carding nodded vaguely. As his colleagues resumed their concentration he glanced sideways at them.
Somehow, all his old friends had gone. Well, not friends. A wizard never had friends, at least not friends who were wizards. It needed a different word. Ah yes, that was it. Enemies. But a very decent class of enemies. Gentlemen. The cream of their profession. Not like these people, for all that they seemed to have risen in the craft since the sourcerer had arrived.
Other things besides the cream floated to the top, he reflected sourly.
He turned his attention to Al Khali, probing with his mind, knowing that the wizards there were almost certainly doing the same, seeking constantly for a point of weakness.
He thought: am I a point of weakness? Spelter tried to tell me something. It was about the staff. A man should lean on his staff, not the other way around... it's steering him, leading him... I wish I'd listened to Spelter... this is wrong, I'm a point of weakness...
He tried again, riding the surges of power, letting them carry his mind into the enemy tower. Even Abrim was making use of sourcery, and Carding let himself modulate the wave, insinuating himself past the defences erected against him.
The image of the interior of the Al Khali tower appeared, focused[...]
Carding, testing the resistance of Abrim's mind, felt the man's attention waver. For a moment he saw through the enemy's eyes, saw the squat oblong cantering across the stone. For a moment Abrim attempted to shift his concentration and then, no more able to help himself than is a cat when it sees something small and squeaky run across the floor, Carding struck.
Not much. It didn't need much. Abrim's mind was attempting to balance and channel huge forces, and it needed hardly any pressure to topple it from its position.
Abrim extended his hands to blast the Luggage, gave the merest beginnings of a scream, and imploded.
The wizards around him thought they saw him grow impossibly small in a fraction of a second and vanish, leaving a black after-image...
The more intelligent of them started to run...
And the magic he had been controlling surged back out and flooded free in one great, randomised burst that blew the hat to bits, took out the entire lower levels of the tower and quite a large part of what remained of the city.
So many wizards in Ankh had been concentrating on the hall that the sympathetic resonance blew them across the room. Carding ended up on his back, his hat over his eyes.
They hauled him out and dusted him off and carried him to Coin and the staff, amid cheers- although some of the older wizards forbore to cheer. But he didn't seem to pay any attention.
He stared sightlessly down at the boy, and then slowly raised his hands to his ears.
"Can't you hear them?" he said.
The wizards fell silent. Carding still had power, and the tone of his voice would have quelled a thunderstorm.
Coin's eyes glowed.
"I hear nothing," he said.
Carding turned to the rest of the wizards.
"Can't you hear them?"
They shook their heads. One of them said, "Hear what, brother?"
Carding smiled, and it was a wide, mad smile. Even Coin took a step backwards.
"You'll hear them soon enough," he said. "You've made a beacon. You'll all hear them. But you won't hear them for long." He pushed aside the younger wizards who were holding his arms and advanced on Coin.
"You're pouring sourcery into the world and other things are coming with it," he said. "Others have given them a pathway but you've given them an avenue!"
He sprang forward and snatched the black staff out of Coin's hands and swung it up in the air to smash it against the wall.
Carding went rigid as the staff struck back. Then his skin began to blister...
Most of the wizards managed to turn their heads away. A few- and there are always a few like that- watched in obscene fascination.
Coin watched, too. His eyes widened in wonder. One hand went to his mouth. He tried to back away. He couldn't.
[...]
Carding slumped forward and thudded on the shining white floor. The staff rolled out of his hands and upended itself.
Coin prodded the limp body with his foot.
"I did warn him," he said. "I told him what would happen if he touched it again. What did he mean, them?"
There was an outbreak of coughing and a considerable inspection of fingernails.
"What did he mean?" Coin demanded.
Ovin Hakardly, lecturer in Lore, once again found that the wizards around him were parting like morning mist. Without moving he appeared to have stepped forward. His eyes swivelled backwards and forwards like trapped animals.
"Er," he said. He waved his thin hands vaguely. "The world, you see, that is, the reality in which we live, in fact, it can be thought of as, in a manner of speaking, a rubber sheet." He hesitated, aware that the sentence was not going to appear in anyone's book of quotable quotes.
"In that," he added hurriedly, "it is distorted, uh, distended by the presence of magic in any degree and, if I may make a point here, too much magical potentiality, if foregathered in one spot, forces our reality, um, downwards, although of course one should not take the term literally (because in no sense do I seek to suggest a physical dimension) and it has been postulated that a sufficient exercise of magic can, shall we say, um, break through the actuality at its lowest point and offer, perhaps, a pathway to the inhabitants or, if I may use a more correct term, denizens of the lower plane (which is called by the loose-tongued the Dungeon Dimensions) who, because perhaps of the difference in energy levels, are naturally attracted to the brightness of this world. Our world."
There was the typical long pause which usually followed Hakardly's speeches, while everybody mentally inserted commas and stitched the fractured clauses together.
Coin's lips moved silently for a while. "Do you mean magic attracts these creatures?" he said eventually.
His voice was quite different now. It lacked its former edge. The staff hung in the air above the prone body of Carding, rotating slowly. The eyes of every wizard in the place were on it.
"So it appears," said Hakardly. "Students of such things say their presence is heralded by a coarse susurration."
Coin looked uncertain.
"They buzz," said one of the other wizards helpfully.
The boy knelt down and peered closely at Carding.
"He's very still," he said cautiously. "Is anything bad happening to him?"
"It may be," said Hakardly, guardedly. "He's dead."
"I wish he wasn't."
"It is a view, I suspect, which he shares."
"But I can help him," said Coin. He held out his hands and the staff glided into them. If it had a face, it would have smirked.
When he spoke next his voice once again had the cold distant tones of someone speaking in a steel room.
"If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize," he said.
"Sorry?" said Hakardly. "You've lost me there."
Coin turned on his heel and strode back to his chair.
"We can fear nothing," he said, and it sounded more like a command. "What of these Dungeon Dimensions? If they should trouble us, away with them! A true wizard will fear nothing! Nothing!"
"That just leaves Al Khali," said one of the others.
"There's some clever power there."
Carding nodded glumly. He'd quite liked Quirm, which was a- had been a pleasant little city overlooking the Rim Ocean.
He dimly recalled being taken there, once, when he was small. For a moment he gazed sadly into the past. It had wild geraniums, he recalled, filling the sloping cobbled streets with their musky fragrance.
"Growing out of the walls," he said out loud. "Pink. They were pink."
The other wizards looked at him oddly. One or two, of a particularly paranoid frame of mind even for wizards, glanced suspiciously at the walls.
"Are you all right?" said one of them.
"Um?" said Carding, "Oh. Yes, Sorry. Miles away."
He turned back to look at Coin, who was sitting off to one side of the circle with the staff across his knees. The boy appeared to be asleep. Perhaps he was. But Carding knew in the tormented pit of his soul that the staff didn't sleep. It was watching him, testing his mind.
It knew. It even knew about the pink geraniums.
"I never wanted it to be like this," he said softly. "All we really wanted was a bit of respect."
"Are you sure you're all right?"
Carding nodded vaguely. As his colleagues resumed their concentration he glanced sideways at them.
Somehow, all his old friends had gone. Well, not friends. A wizard never had friends, at least not friends who were wizards. It needed a different word. Ah yes, that was it. Enemies. But a very decent class of enemies. Gentlemen. The cream of their profession. Not like these people, for all that they seemed to have risen in the craft since the sourcerer had arrived.
Other things besides the cream floated to the top, he reflected sourly.
He turned his attention to Al Khali, probing with his mind, knowing that the wizards there were almost certainly doing the same, seeking constantly for a point of weakness.
He thought: am I a point of weakness? Spelter tried to tell me something. It was about the staff. A man should lean on his staff, not the other way around... it's steering him, leading him... I wish I'd listened to Spelter... this is wrong, I'm a point of weakness...
He tried again, riding the surges of power, letting them carry his mind into the enemy tower. Even Abrim was making use of sourcery, and Carding let himself modulate the wave, insinuating himself past the defences erected against him.
The image of the interior of the Al Khali tower appeared, focused[...]
Carding, testing the resistance of Abrim's mind, felt the man's attention waver. For a moment he saw through the enemy's eyes, saw the squat oblong cantering across the stone. For a moment Abrim attempted to shift his concentration and then, no more able to help himself than is a cat when it sees something small and squeaky run across the floor, Carding struck.
Not much. It didn't need much. Abrim's mind was attempting to balance and channel huge forces, and it needed hardly any pressure to topple it from its position.
Abrim extended his hands to blast the Luggage, gave the merest beginnings of a scream, and imploded.
The wizards around him thought they saw him grow impossibly small in a fraction of a second and vanish, leaving a black after-image...
The more intelligent of them started to run...
And the magic he had been controlling surged back out and flooded free in one great, randomised burst that blew the hat to bits, took out the entire lower levels of the tower and quite a large part of what remained of the city.
So many wizards in Ankh had been concentrating on the hall that the sympathetic resonance blew them across the room. Carding ended up on his back, his hat over his eyes.
They hauled him out and dusted him off and carried him to Coin and the staff, amid cheers- although some of the older wizards forbore to cheer. But he didn't seem to pay any attention.
He stared sightlessly down at the boy, and then slowly raised his hands to his ears.
"Can't you hear them?" he said.
The wizards fell silent. Carding still had power, and the tone of his voice would have quelled a thunderstorm.
Coin's eyes glowed.
"I hear nothing," he said.
Carding turned to the rest of the wizards.
"Can't you hear them?"
They shook their heads. One of them said, "Hear what, brother?"
Carding smiled, and it was a wide, mad smile. Even Coin took a step backwards.
"You'll hear them soon enough," he said. "You've made a beacon. You'll all hear them. But you won't hear them for long." He pushed aside the younger wizards who were holding his arms and advanced on Coin.
"You're pouring sourcery into the world and other things are coming with it," he said. "Others have given them a pathway but you've given them an avenue!"
He sprang forward and snatched the black staff out of Coin's hands and swung it up in the air to smash it against the wall.
Carding went rigid as the staff struck back. Then his skin began to blister...
Most of the wizards managed to turn their heads away. A few- and there are always a few like that- watched in obscene fascination.
Coin watched, too. His eyes widened in wonder. One hand went to his mouth. He tried to back away. He couldn't.
[...]
Carding slumped forward and thudded on the shining white floor. The staff rolled out of his hands and upended itself.
Coin prodded the limp body with his foot.
"I did warn him," he said. "I told him what would happen if he touched it again. What did he mean, them?"
There was an outbreak of coughing and a considerable inspection of fingernails.
"What did he mean?" Coin demanded.
Ovin Hakardly, lecturer in Lore, once again found that the wizards around him were parting like morning mist. Without moving he appeared to have stepped forward. His eyes swivelled backwards and forwards like trapped animals.
"Er," he said. He waved his thin hands vaguely. "The world, you see, that is, the reality in which we live, in fact, it can be thought of as, in a manner of speaking, a rubber sheet." He hesitated, aware that the sentence was not going to appear in anyone's book of quotable quotes.
"In that," he added hurriedly, "it is distorted, uh, distended by the presence of magic in any degree and, if I may make a point here, too much magical potentiality, if foregathered in one spot, forces our reality, um, downwards, although of course one should not take the term literally (because in no sense do I seek to suggest a physical dimension) and it has been postulated that a sufficient exercise of magic can, shall we say, um, break through the actuality at its lowest point and offer, perhaps, a pathway to the inhabitants or, if I may use a more correct term, denizens of the lower plane (which is called by the loose-tongued the Dungeon Dimensions) who, because perhaps of the difference in energy levels, are naturally attracted to the brightness of this world. Our world."
There was the typical long pause which usually followed Hakardly's speeches, while everybody mentally inserted commas and stitched the fractured clauses together.
Coin's lips moved silently for a while. "Do you mean magic attracts these creatures?" he said eventually.
His voice was quite different now. It lacked its former edge. The staff hung in the air above the prone body of Carding, rotating slowly. The eyes of every wizard in the place were on it.
"So it appears," said Hakardly. "Students of such things say their presence is heralded by a coarse susurration."
Coin looked uncertain.
"They buzz," said one of the other wizards helpfully.
The boy knelt down and peered closely at Carding.
"He's very still," he said cautiously. "Is anything bad happening to him?"
"It may be," said Hakardly, guardedly. "He's dead."
"I wish he wasn't."
"It is a view, I suspect, which he shares."
"But I can help him," said Coin. He held out his hands and the staff glided into them. If it had a face, it would have smirked.
When he spoke next his voice once again had the cold distant tones of someone speaking in a steel room.
"If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize," he said.
"Sorry?" said Hakardly. "You've lost me there."
Coin turned on his heel and strode back to his chair.
"We can fear nothing," he said, and it sounded more like a command. "What of these Dungeon Dimensions? If they should trouble us, away with them! A true wizard will fear nothing! Nothing!"