He'd been rather surprised to find, after pages and pages of pious ramblings, that the actual Summoning itself was one short sentence. Not a chant, not a brief piece of poetry, but a mere assemblage of meaningless syllables. De Malachite said they caused interference patterns in the waves of reality, but the daft old fool was probably making it up as he went along. That was the trouble with wizards, they had to make everything look difficult. All you really needed was willpower. And the Brethren had a lot of that. Small-minded and vitriolic willpower, yes, lousy with malignity maybe, but still powerful enough in its way...
They'd try nothing fancy this time round. Somewhere inconspicuous...
Around him the Brethren were chanting what each man considered, according to his lights, to be something mystical. The general effect was actually quite good, if you didn't listen to the words.
The words. Oh, yes...
He looked down, and spoke them aloud.
Nothing happened.
He blinked.
When he opened his eyes again he was in a dark alley, his stomach was full of fire, and he was very angry.
It was about to be the worst night of his life for Zebbo Mooty, Thief Third Class, and it wouldn't have made him any happier to know that it was also going to be the last one. The rain was keeping people indoors, and he was way behind on his quota. He was, therefore, a little less cautious than he might otherwise have been.
In the night time streets of Ankh-Morpork caution is an absolute. There is no such thing as moderately cautious. You are either very cautious, or you are dead. You might be walking around and breathing, but you're dead, just the same.
He heard the muffled sounds coming from the nearby alley, slid his leather-bound cosh from his sleeve, waited until the victim was almost turning the corner, sprang out, said 'Oh, shi…,' and died.
It was a most unusual death. No-one else had died like that for hundreds of years.
The stone wall behind him glowed cherry red with heat, which gradually faded into darkness.
He was the first to see the Ankh-Morpork dragon. He derived little comfort from knowing this, however, because he was dead.
'…t, ' he said, and his disembodied self looked down at the small heap of charcoal which, he knew with an unfamiliar sort of certainty, was what he had just been disembodied from. It was a strange sensation, seeing your own mortal remains. He didn't find it as horrifying as he would have imagined if you'd asked him, say, ten minutes ago. Finding that you are dead is mitigated by also finding that there really is a you who can find you dead.
The alley opposite was empty again.
'That was really strange, ' said Mooty.
'Extremely unusual, certainly.'
'Did you see that? What was it?' Mooty looked up at the dark figure emerging from the shadows. 'Who're you, anyway?' he added suspiciously.
'Guess, '
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