Equal Rites

“—sword,” said Esk. “All right, but which would you rather be hit with?”

“Um, I d-don’t think it’s any use m-me t-telling you you shouldn’t be in here, is it?” said the young wizard.

Esk gave this due consideration. “No,” she said, “I don’t think it is.”

“I could send for the p-porters and have you t-taken away.”

“Yes, but you won’t.”

“I just d-don’t www—”

“—want—”

“—you to get hurt, you see. I r-really don’t. This can b-be a ddddangerou—”

Esk caught a faint swirling in the air above his head. For a moment she saw them, the great grey shapes from the cold place. Watching. And in the calm of the Library, when the weight of magic was wearing the universe particularly thin, they had decided to Act.

Around her the muted rustling of the books rose to a desperate riffling of pages. Some of the more powerful books managed to jerk out of their shelves and swung, flapping madly, from the end of their chains. A huge grimoire plunged from its eyrie on the topmost shelf—tearing itself free of its chain in the process—and flopped away like a frightened chicken, scattering its pages behind it.

A magical wind blew away Esk’s headscarf and her hair streamed out behind her. She saw Simon trying to steady himself against a bookshelf as books exploded around him. The air was thick and tasted of tin. It buzzed.

“They’re trying to get in!” she screamed.

Simon’s tortured face turned to her. A fear-crazed incunable hit him heavily in the small of the back and knocked him to the heaving floor before it bounced high over the shelves. Esk ducked as a flock of thesauri wheeled past, towing their shelf behind them, and scuttled on hands and knees towards him.

“That’s what’s making the books so frightened!” she shrieked in his ear. “Can’t you see them up there?”

Simon mutely shook his head. A book burst its bindings over them, showering them in pages.

Horror can steal into the mind via all the senses. There’s the sound of the little meaningful chuckle in the locked dark room, the sight of half a caterpillar in your forkful of salad, the curious smell from the lodger’s bedroom, the taste of slug in the cauliflower cheese. Touch doesn’t normally get a look-in.

But something happened to the floor under Esk’s hands. She looked down, her face a rictus of horror, because the dusty floorboards suddenly felt gritty. And dry. And very, very cold.

There was fine silver sand between her fingers.

She grabbed the staff and, sheltering her eyes against the wind, waved it at the towering figures above her. It would have been nice to report that a searing flash of pure white fire cleansed the greasy air. It failed to materialise…

The staff twisted like a snake in her hand and caught Simon a crack on the side of the head.

The grey Things wavered and vanished.

Reality returned, and tried to pretend that it had never left. Silence settled like thick velvet, wave after wave of it. A heavy, echoing silence. A few books dropped heavily out of the air, feeling silly.

The floor under Esk’s feet was undoubtedly wooden. She kicked it hard to make sure.

There was blood on the floor, and Simon lay very quietly in the centre of it. Esk stared down at him, and then up at the still air, and then at the staff. It looked smug.

She was aware of distant voices and hurrying feet.

A hand like a fine leather glove slipped gently into hers and a voice behind said “Ook,” very softly. She turned, and found herself staring down into the gentle, inner-tube face of the librarian. He put his finger to his lips in an unmistakable gesture and tugged gently at her hand.

“I’ve killed him!” she whispered.

The librarian shook his head, and tugged insistently.

“Ook,” he explained, “Ook.”

He dragged her reluctantly down a side alleyway in the maze of ancient shelving a few seconds before a party of senior wizards, drawn by the noise, rounded the corner.

“The books have been fighting again…”

“Oh no! It’ll take ages to capture all the spells again, you know they go and find places to hide…”

“Who’s that on the floor?”

There was a pause.

“He’s knocked out. A shelf caught him, by the looks of it.”

“Who is he?”

“That new lad. You know, the one they say has got a whole head full of brains?”

“If that shelf had been a bit closer we’d be able to see if they were right.”

“You two, get him along to the infirmary. The rest of you better get these books rounded up. Where’s the damn librarian? He ought to know better than to let a Critical Mass build up.”

Esk glanced sideways at the orangutan, who waggled his eyebrows at her. He pulled a dusty volume of gardening spells out of the shelves beside him, extracted a soft brown banana from the recess behind it, and ate it with the quiet relish of one who knows that whatever the problems are, they belong firmly to human beings.

She looked the other way, at the staff in her hand, and her lips went thin. She knew her grip hadn’t slipped. The staff had lunged at Simon, with murder in its heartwood.

* * *

The boy lay on a hard bed in a narrow room, a cold towel folded across his forehead. Treatle and Cutangle watched him carefully.

“How long has it been?” said Cutangle.

Treatle shrugged. “Three days.”

“And he hasn’t come around once?”

“No.”

Cutangle sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, and pinched the bridge of his nose wearily. Simon had never looked particularly healthy, but now his face had a horrible sunken look.

“A brilliant mind, that one,” he said. “His explanation of the fundamental principles of magic and matter— quite astounding.”

Treatle nodded.

“The way he just absorbs knowledge,” said Cutangle: “I’ve been a working wizard all my life, and somehow I never really understood magic until he explained it. So clear. So, well, obvious.”

“Everyone says that,” said Treatle gloomily. “They say it’s like having a hoodwink pulled off and seeing the daylight for the first time.”

“That’s exactly it,” said Cutangle, “He’s sourcerer material, sure enough. You were right to bring him here.”

There was a thoughtful pause.

“Only—” said Treatle.

“Only what?” asked Cutangle.

“Only what was it you understood?” said Treatle. “That’s what’s bothering me. I mean, can you explain it?”

“How do you mean, explain?” Cutangle looked worried.

“What he keeps talking about,” said Treatle, a hint of desperation in his voice. “Oh, it’s the genuine stuff, I know. But what exactly is it?”

Cutangle looked at him, his mouth open. Eventually he said, “Oh, that’s easy. Magic fills the universe, you see, and every time the universe changes, no, I mean every time magic is invoked, the universe changes, only in every direction at once, d’you see, and—” he moved his hands uncertainly, trying to recognise a spark of comprehension in Treatle’s face. “To put it another way, any piece of matter, like an orange or the world or, or —”

“—a crocodile?” suggested Treatle.

“Yes, a crocodile, or—whatever, is basically shaped like a carrot.”