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‘ ‘Hi”,’ Nijel read aloud. ‘ “Do not put down the lamp, because your custom is important to us. Please leave a wish after the tone and, very shortly, it will be our command. In the meantime, have a nice eternity.” ‘ He added, ‘You know, I think he’s a bit over-committed.’
Conina said nothing. She was staring out across the plains to the broiling storm of magic. Occasionally some of it would detach and soar away to some distant tower. She shivered, despite the growing heat of the day.
‘We ought to get down there as soon as possible,’ she said. ‘It’s very important.’
‘Why?’ said Creosote. One glass of wine hadn’t really restored him to his former easygoing nature.
Conina opened her mouth, and - quite unusually for her - shut it again. There was no way to explain that every gene in her body was dragging her onwards, telling her that she should get involved; visions of swords and spiky balls on chains kept invading the hairdressing salons of her consciousness. >It took a great deal of courage to stand there in that dark. Rincewind didn’t have that much, but stood there anyway.
Something started to snuffle around his feet, and Rincewind stood very still. The only reason he didn’t move was for fear of treading on something worse.
Then a hand like an old leather glove touched his, very gently, and a voice said: ‘Oook.’
Rincewind looked up.
The dark yielded, just once, to a vivid flash of light. And Rincewind saw.
The whole tower was lined with books. They were squeezed on every step of the rotting spiral staircase that wound up inside. They were piled up on the floor, although something about the way in which they were piled suggested that the word ‘huddled’ would be more appropriate. They had lodged -all right, they had perched - on every crumbling ledge.
They were observing him, in some covert way that had nothing to do with the normal six senses. Books are pretty good at conveying meaning, not necessarily their own personal meanings of course, and Rincewind grasped the fact that they were trying to tell him something.
There was another flash. He realised that it was magic from the sourcerer’s tower, reflected down from the distant hole that led on to the roof.
At least it enabled him to identify Wuffles, who was wheezing at his right foot. That was a bit of a relief. Now if he could just put a name to the soft, repetitive slithering noise near his left ear …
There was a further obliging flash, which found him looking directly into the little yellow eyes of the Patrician, who was clawing patiently at the side of his glass jar. It was a gentle, mindless scrabbling, as if the little lizard wasn’t particularly trying to get out but was just vaguely interested in seeing how long it would take to wear the glass away.
Rincewind looked down at the pear-shaped bulk of the Librarian.
‘There’s thousands of them,’ he whispered, his voice being sucked away and silenced by the massed ranks of books. ‘How did you get them all in here?’
‘Oook oook.’
‘They what?’
‘Oook,’ repeated the Librarian, making vigorous flapping motions with his bald elbows.
‘Fly?’
‘Oook.’
‘Can they do that?’
‘Oook,’ nodded the Librarian.
‘That must have been pretty impressive. I’d like to see that one day.’
‘Oook.’
Not every book had made it. Most of the important grimoires had got out but a seven-volume herbal had lost its index to the flames and many a trilogy was mourning for its lost volume. Quite a few books had scorch marks on their bindings; some had lost their covers, and trailed their stitching unpleasantly on the floor.
A match flared, and pages rippled uneasily around the walls. But it was only the Librarian, who lit a candle and shambled across the floor at the base of a menacing shadow big enough to climb skyscrapers. He had set up a rough table against one wall and it was covered with arcane tools, pots of rare adhesives and a bookbinder’s vice which was already holding a stricken folio. A few weak lines of magic fire crawled across it.
The ape pushed the candlestick into Rincewind’s hand, picked up a scalpel and a pair of tweezers, and bent low over the trembling book. Rincewind went pale.
‘Um,’ he said, ‘er, do you mind if I go away? I faint at the sight of glue.’
The Librarian shook his head and jerked a preoccupied thumb towards a tray of tools.
