Another Hogswatch in Ankh-Morpork. More little glimpses into the lives of its people as they go about the business of the holiday… where a family gets together in December, there will be lawyers in January…
wOW - ALMOST FINISHED! Perhaps three shortish chapters to go...
Down in the temporary snow-bunker, Alice added the last of the dehydrated vegetable and oatmeal to the stewpot, wondering, not for the first time, if bringing a wizard along had been a bit of a cheat.
Then she reflected that she was going to get her first hot meal in twenty-four hours very soon, something which might have been impossible or difficult to achieve without recourse to what Professor Stibbons described as intelligently applied magic. Ponder had said that "in the old days, any competent wizard would have used a fireball spell to start a fire or to heat water. The drawback is, he wouldn't have used it to save life. It would have been full-force and uncontrollable and designed to blast somebody to eternity on a plume of superheated steam. Which is probably not what you need when you have a shelter full of forty people who have just walked ten miles in the snow and then dug themselves in against a blizzard and could use some more fundamental magic, of the sort generated by a hot thick stew and a mug of tea with lots of sugar in".
So, Ponder had explained right at the start of the exercise, we've been working on new, experimental, spells which basically begin with the old, lethal, ones, and find new uses for them. (At this point in the explanation, several of the brighter student assassins had exchanged looks and spread out a little, with one eye on the nearest cover)
Ponder had then demonstrated that for the same expenditure of energy involved in the old Fireball! or Agnew's Agent Orange (1) spell, a bonfire could be sustainably lit from the soggiest and most unpromising wood, or the energy which had previously been chaotically expended in a fraction of a second could be spread out across minutes, as a controlled release that would safely being ice to the boiling point, and therefore the starting point for tea or coffee.
To everyone's surprise, except perhaps Johanna's (as one of the Guild's experts in exothermic alchemy, she had attended trials at the University and witnessed the potential) the new magics had performed superbly. But then, a combination of HEX, Ponder Stibbons and Professor Rincewind (as test-pilot) had rewritten the old destructive spells, and she had every faith in them.
The wizard, his face lost in what could have either been deep concentration or a half-aware trance, removed the tip of his staff from the side of the cooking pot. Alice nodded, and took a spoonful of the broth. It was hot, and it had a few shreds of meat floating in it, Soon be time to call for mess tins to be sent up, she thought. The drill was simple: have a continual cycle of empty mess tins coming up and full ones going back until everybody had a full tin, even if it wasn't the empty one they'd started with. Then seconds, on the first-come first served principle, until the cook-pot was empty and could be sent to those on fatigues to clean out as best they can.
And for those lucky to be nearest the cooking area, there was that bit of extra warmth, as well as the life-restoring food-smell caused by dried meat reconstituting, swelling and breaking down in the pot.
"Thank you, Professor Stibbons" she said, politely. "Does that take energy out of you?"
"Up to a point." Ponder said. "The magic is mainly stored in the staff, which is my own. When it was formally presented to me on my graduation, the staff was magically bonded to me and to nobody else. Of course, a higher level wizard, like the Arch-chancellor, could force it to his will if he wanted, but most of the time a staff only responds to its own wizard. I saw it was fully charged with magic before I left the University, as there are spells for using yourself as a channel for recharging a staff when it runs low on magic, but everything comes at a price. They tend to be the spells that really take it out of you."
She nodded. "You've managed to set up a hot dinner for us tonight, Professor, and I do thank you for that. I know I should have made them have a cold meal more than just once, but…"
"…you're only human too!" Ponder said. "You should be aware, Miss Band, there are drawbacks to you employing wizards on Assassin missions. The most important one is that my using magic is going to stand out like a beacon in this wilderness. To anyone looking out for it, you should be aware I've just illuminated your position as if I'd lit a rocket flare. Any other magic user, or for that matter a non-human entity, can focus on the discharge and realise there are people out here."
"Can it be shielded?" Alice asked.
"It is possible. Or it could be made to look as if it was coming from somewhere else. In an icefield like this you can bounce quite a few reflections around and leave your searching entity guessing as to which is the true one. Gods tend to have a limited span of consciousness, anyway. If you make it too difficult or time-consuming for them they'll get bored and drift off, half the time. Disinformation, I believe you call it."
"Have you been trying that now?"
Ponder smiled, seeing the inference. "Yes. Trying to make it look as if the discharge of magic is happening anything up to a mile or two away from here. It might confuse anything that's watching. I think the…entity… is just riding the blizzard at the moment, with no particular reason or point, apart from the fact it just is."
"Joyriding, you might call it?" Alice asked.
"Indeed, Miss Band. Snow and ice and blizzards are its life and its sole - well, its biggest single - reason for being. And a blizzard of this type could cover up to a hundred square miles. It's very possible the entity of whom we are carefully refraining from naming wasn't immediately overhead, wasn't even looking this way, and the danger's over. It's certainly lessened off in the last hour or two. But we can't be sure until the blizzard either passes on or dies ."
"Well, there's time for a hot meal first." Alice said, smiling. She tapped a student on the shoulder. "Give the word for mess tins to start moving forward. We pass them on down the line until everyone has one, and then we eat. Got a ladle? Lovely. Let's begin!"
Eventually, they were able to settle down and eat themselves.
"So what you're saying" Alice said, thoughtfully, "is that magic is an asset. freely available to us, that should be used sparingly and with care".
Ponder nodded, as he worked on his dinner. A little tough, as the meat had started as Johanna's Howondalandian dried trail rations, but oh, it was hot.
"It inevitably leaves a trace." he said . "Which I should imagine is not what you want, if your mission involves a stealthy concealed approach to the target. Believe me, Miss Band, there is currently no such thing as a stealth wizard, unless you count Mustrum Ridcully stalking a deer. As a profession, we seem to have selected for high-visibility high-prominence. The idea of quiet, soft, inconspicuous and concealed seems to be alien to wizardry at present, I'm afraid to say. "
"You don't seem to be doing so badly, though!" Alice observed, with a wry smile. "You're in physically good shape. You kept up with the march. You've done your share of camp chores uncomplainingly. If you were one of my students, I'd be afraid to say I'd have to pass you with quite a high grade. But I'd have to ask, and forgive me if this sounds like a clumsy insensitive question. It isn't one you'd normally ask outright, you'd wait for the other person to tell you. Especially if they were also an Assassin, and as it isn't thought of as good manners, I apologise in advance." Alice got to the point:(2) "Have you ever killed somebody, or come close to killing anybody?"
"A few years ago in Lancre". Ponder fought down a shudder at the memory. "We went as Ankh-Morpork's delegation to the Royal Wedding. At the last minute, the Patrician pushed a scroll on board our coach saying the Arch-chancellor was his special representative, you see(3). But the place was invaded. By Elves." Ponder shuddered at the memory. "We got separated. Myself, the Librarian and the Bursar had to fight our way to safety. The Librarian got most of them, but I'm sure I…" he patted his staff. Alice squeezed his hand kindly.
"I had to kill a few elves when I was in Lancre" she said, reassuringly. "When it's them or you, it isn't terrifically hard."
"These things come and go in waves, apparently," Ponder said. "Thirty or forty years ago, Wizards were killing each other by the score to get another rung up the ladder, and it wasn't unknown to have two Arch-chancellors inside a week."
"And we were pretty deeply involved, too" Alice said, thoughtfully. "There's a whole section of the Library about how the Assassin should go about inhuming a Wizard, that dates from this time. As often as not, you people were retaining us to deal with inhuming men who were just too well magically protected."(4)
"And our Library has a whole section on how the Wizard should fight off Assassins." Ponder mused. "Also dating from the succession wars."
"Maybe we should trade books!"
"Already done. Jo found the books about dealing with Assassins in our library. The Librarian likes her, you see. He gave her a researcher's pass. She's trying to get me a reader's ticket to the Guild library."
"That won't get you into the Black Library" Alice cautioned.
Ponder reddened slightly.
"Jo says she can use her own ticket for that.." And there's always L-Space. I'm surprised the Assassins haven't cottoned on to L-Space. They have a big library too...
They settled back and ate, serving completed, and discussed the meeting-point of magic and Assassination, where each discipline could enhance and reinforce the other. Outside, the blizzard howled and roared as the daylight faded: the Assassins in their shelter began to light candles and lanterns, their flames flickering with the rise and fall of air pressure.
"And another problem. Everyone has some sort of magical ability. Although for most people it's latent and never develops very far. They might have a glimmering of it once or twice in a lifetime, a premonition, an intuition, a wish comes true, or something like that. But it's been estimated that for maybe five per cent, that's one person out of twenty, it goes deeper and further than that. Which is where witches and wizards might happen. Nobody knows how or why it switches on for that one boy or girl in twenty, but it usually does, round about puberty."
Ponder lowered his voice.
"Incidentally, the girl, miss Perkins?"
"She responded well to a mild sedative. So… you lit a bonfire for us. It aroused the interest of - creatures – from a different dimension."
"The Dungeon Dimensions. They're drawn to displays and discharges of magic. I knew because I'd used magic to help us all along and light a fire, they'd come calling. I was ready to meet them and shake a staff at them, as they're relatively powerless entities. They just look frightening and disgusting."
"You didn't realise we had a girl who was sensitive to magic, professor. Once you realised what was going on you were able to clear them out of her mind quickly enough, and then we sedated her to take her to a deeper level of sleep where they couldn't follow." Alice nodded. "Lord Downey thinks there might be advantages to joint training. Johanna offered to prove his point by bringing you along. I have to say I think it's worked so far!"
"So far" Ponder agreed. Then he asked
"Where is Miss Perkins, by the way?"
She is with me.
They felt the voice as a cold winter wind, as biting cold seeping into the bone marrow.
"Oh, damn…"
"Then I must ask you to give her back, whoever you are!"
That was Alice Band, in her sternest schoolmistress voice.
I repeat. She is with me. She will come to no harm.
"I am responsible for her. You will return her to me, undamaged."
She was susceptible. She allowed me entry. Through her eyes and her mind I see that there are three adult women here. There are seventeen younger girls. There are eighteen juvenile males.
"And one Wizard" said Ponder Stibbons. He felt the unseen entity turn its attention to him.
And one wizard. One human with a slightly deeper knowledge of the hidden tides and currents of the world. One human from whom I have nothing to fear.
Ponder visualised, whilst being careful not to create or call into being. As an opening gambit he projected the picture of a fireball into the psychic space. He sensed the laughter of the Wintersmith.
Yes, Wizard. You could dissipate my being with a fireball if you so chose. But what do you do then? This is the deepest winter. This is my time. It is not my time to be diminished and to fade from the world. Your party of adventurers would be a mere eight or ten miles down the track to the city and in the open, when my substance resumes its form and its sentience. You would not even have the protection this ingenious shelter gives you. I would be irritated. You would all be dead.
There was a sudden ripping and tearing of the roof of the shelter. Ponder Stibbons found himself sprawling in deep snow, half-blinded by the flurries and suddenly a lot colder from the wind. He gripped his staff for dear life, pulled his cloak tightly about him, and tried to think how Mustrum Ridcully might win this magical duel. No, he thought, I've met Mistress Weatherwax. One of her pupils allegedly defeated the Wintersmith. Maybe this calls for witch-magic.
The buffeting stopped. Ponder found his fingers closing around the staff as he saw three other figures had been pulled from the shelter. He recognised Alice, Johanna and one of the pupils.
Miss Perkins. The magic-sensitive one. I'll have to ask for her to be tested when we get back to the City. She won't like it, but if the tests are positive, she'll have to put up with being a Witch who went to the Assassins' School for a couple of years. Somewhere like the QCYL would still take her. That witch Miss Tick seems to have an arrangement with the Headmistress. Then advanced training in Lancre.
"Assuming we were inclined to give it to you, what do you want?" Ponder asked. This won't do. I don't want to freeze to death out here.
The Wintersmith was in a human form now, that of a tall thin youth in his late teens, albeit one with frost-greyed hair and icicle-sharp features.
Ponder raised his staff high, vocalised a few syllables, and said "This is purely defensive."
Now how is this one done? Oh yes. Draw the white light from the head. The red light from the heart. Allow them to be drawn up into the staff. And….
A cone of rose-pink light radiated down from the tip of the staff. It illuminated a large circle in the snow with Ponder at its centre. He exhaled.
"Johanna, Miss Band, could you get Miss Perkins into the cone, please? And yourselves. It should be warmer inside. Thank you."
He allowed the shivering women into the little oasis of relative warmth he had created, and stood over them, feeling absurdly macho and protective.
"Very impressive, Wizard. I will allow you your little cone of warmth until such time as I choose to end it. But I want the girl. As a partner to dance with."
"You cannot have her, Wintersmith." Ponder said. He frowned at his own calm and resource. He was refusing an Elemental Spirit. Who was known to be capricious and could kill him in a heartbeat.
Well, yes. But you're also a graduate research Wizard, you have to deal with the Faculty, you manage the HEM, and just for relief and relaxation purposes, you're dating an Assassin. You kissed a quiet life goodbye a long time ago.
Johanna had struggled to her feet and was at his left side. To his right, Alice held the young student Assassin protectively to her and had drawn her sword.
"Be reasonable, Wintersmith. You tried something like this before. It nearly brought about eternal Winter and the death of a continent. A human female cannot live with you in your world."
"What is that to me? I can rule in snow and ice and winter. All I need is a Queen. The rest will die. Just inconvenient pinpricks of heat and warmth in my world."
"Then you too will die, Wintersmith."
"I? Also?" the Wintersmith laughed, a derisive laugh bringing sleeting stones of hail which sizzled into stinging cold rain as they hit the cone of insulating pink light.
"Then you too will die, Wintersmith." Ponder repeated, with absolute certainty. "What do you know about one of the greatest magics of all?"
Ponder looked the Wintersmith right in his coal-black eyes, trying to dismiss the thought of childrens' snowmen with carrot noses and coal-sliver eyes. Then he spoke the word of power.
"Entropy, O Wintersmith. Entropy. The heat-death of the universe."
The Wintersmith shivered. Ponder had a mental vision of himself, driving a sledge propelled by two huge walruses, across a landscape of ice and snow under a dying red sun. Where the Hell did that come from! .he wondered. Urlik? A Black Sword? The Silver Chalice?
With his wizard-senses, he realised he was living in two universes simultaneously. (5) He dragged himself into the one that mattered.
"Entropy is a condition of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics stipulates that life is only possible where differences in temperature exist. Your intention is to reduce everything to absolute zero in temperature. Absolute winter. Yet thermodynamics insists that for you to live and breathe, your temperature should be more than absolute zero, even if only by fractions of a degree. The moment everything is at minus two hundred and seventy-three, no mental process are possible as no differentials or electrical potentials exist between brain cells. You, the last living thing, are dead. Entropy wins with everything the same temperature. Am I going too quickly for you? Would you like that again? You have no choice other than to enjoy your season and then hand over – gracefully – to the Summer Lady at the appointed time. So you must leave us our young lady."
The Wintersmith's face contorted in uncharacteristic doubt.
"I will take that chance. And the girl."
"How do you know she isn't promised to some other God?" Alice Band demanded. "You can get into trouble that way! I happen to know she wears the crocodile tooth of Offler."
In fact, there happens to be a God here even as we speak. One moment, please, while I manifest.
The newcomer took the form of a friendly-looking youth wearing short walking skis, and the multicolour costume of the reindeer-driving nomads from nearer the Hub. He shook hands with Ponder.
"Hullo!" he said. "I heard you call me earlier. Sorry I couldn't get here sooner. Foorgol, God of Avalanches."
"Ponder Stibbons. Wizard".
"Jolly decent of you to remember me. So, a favour for a favour. You want this Wintersmith chappie off your back?"
The God turned to face the elemental.
"Awfully sorry, old boy, but this Human prayed to me earlier tonight. So, in her own quiet way when she looked up at the size of cliff she's pitched her tents underneath, did Miss Band here from the Assassins' Guild. By the way, the daughter of Bishop Band of Quirm and favourite god-daughter of the high Priest, Hughnon Ridcully."
Alice made an ironic little curtsey.
"So mess with her, you mess with Io, as she's one of his. So that means I've got two believers here, and therefore certain rights are conferred?"
"God you may be, Foorgol, but I am more powerful!" the Wintersmith roared. "Without me there would be no snow for you to move!"
"I have to admit I couldn't do much here in July" Foorgol admitted, "But this is midwinter. And as a God, I still outrank you. So be a good elemental, will you, leave the girl alone – good grief, she's only thirteen, you'll get yourself a serious reputation ! – and trot off to the Hub, why don't you? Oh, and don't bother huffing and puffing. I saw Death in the distance, and that's where she's staying – in the distance. She's got no business here, I think you'll find. Oh, you're off. Good."
"Wait, Wintersmith" Johanna said. "I'm the one who met the Summer Lady. In return for your going end leaving us alone, you cen share thet memory."
She stepped forward and looked the Winter Sprite right in the eye.
"I give you permission to enter my mind end read thet one memory and none other. Perheps Lord Foorgol here will ect es witness to fair play?"
The God nodded, and allowed the Wintersmith to place a chilly finger to Johanna's forehead.
Ah… hot, so hot. How do humans bear it? But… it was she. As she appears in your hot Rimwards country. I thank you for your gift. You will not be disturbed again…
Thw Wintersmith erupted into a jet of steam and vapour as he absorbed Johanna's memory. The blizzard abruptly stopped and the howling wind slackened to nothing. Ponder turned off the magical field that had been supporting the humans. It had taken from him: his knees buckled
"Well done!" he said to Johanna. "I'd never have thought of that!"
"I had a feeling it might be too much for him to bear." she said. "Even sharing my memory of Home wes too much for a thing made of Winter!"
"It got rid of him, anyway". Foorgol said. "Look, love to stand here and chat, but things to do, avalanches to organise…"
"I'll perform a ritual for you in Small Gods" Alice promised him. "My father said all Gods are deserving of honour in their own seasons."
"Not that small, bishop's daughter!" Foorgol reproved her. "I'll have you know I'm no one-season wonder. Next time you're in Klatch, ask about Habib, the God of collapsing sand-dunes. That's my summer job!"
He waved, and disappeared.
"Well, let's get under cover again!" Alice said exhaling loudly. "I've still got some tea and sugar, if you can still boil a kettle, Mr Stibbons!"
.(1) Agnew's Agent Orange: a spell devised in the old days of Mage Wars to defoliate large areas of forest believed to be hiding your enemy. The seventh level mage Spiral Agnew had proudly declared that this spell contained the maximum fire in the smallest sized ball.
(2) Some questions are hard to ask politely. Witness Teppic and Ptraci's agonising difficulties in Pyramids, over "how many people have you inhumed/congressed?" It should be easy to ask a handmaiden how many people she's, er, handled, or an Assassin how many people they have, er, annuled, but convention and etiquette makes the asking of the question near-impossible. Try it sometime. This explains why Alice Band is uncharacteristically reticent in asking Ponder. Schooled in Assassin convention, it would feel as personally intrusive as if she were inquiring how often he changed his underwear.
(3) The Bursar, when he remembers, is still trying to reclaim the coach-fare to and from Lancre back from the Palace, claiming the University party were on official State business. It is all apparently foundering on the issue of tickets that were unfortunately lost during a battle with Elves.
(4) It was true. In the days when promotion depended on creatively inhuming your superior, and enjoying the fruits of that promotion meant guarding against your ambitious juniors, the University was a frequent customer of the Assassins' Guild. Any seventh-level mage, so well guarded against magic that no conceivable spell could penetrate, might realise at too late a moment that he'd left guarding against utterly unmagical throwing knives, swords and poisons right out of his thinking. But Assassins soon realised they only ever got one go at a Wizard, and the then Guild Master got used to receiving envelopes full of charred powder and a University compliments slip, the results of the usual reflex fireball.
Assassins who might otherwise have been usefully educated at the University - ie, those with a magical streak, or those who were genuinely double-graduates of both institutions - became, briefly, very, very, rich, until Lord Vetinari realised there were some very powerful people out there combining wizardry and an Assassins' Guild education. The new Patrician set about thinning their numbers while passing an edict against anyone training at both City institutions. This didn't stop borderline candidates and some very dangerous people emerging - it is thought the late Jonathon Teatime, a cradle Assassin, was also a natural-born Wizard who capitalised on his inherent magical ability to great personal effect. As Alice Band has elsewhere noted, a duty of teaching Assassins is to look out for emerging signs of magical ability, which normally surfaces at puberty. If discovered, by edict and arrangement, that student Assassin must, alas, leave the Guild so that their education may be taken over by the Wizards. This also applies to Thieves' Guild School students: Vetinari is also known to have Firm Views on the existence of Wizard/Thieves, ie, not in my city.
(5) The other universe Ponder has connected with was a novel by Michael Moorcock, Phoenix in Obsidian, in which the Eternal Champion, Urlik, has to bring rebirth to a dying planet Earth. It is interesting to contemplate Ponder Stibbons as Discworld's version of the Eternal Champion… Moorcock, btw, is one of those Roundworld sci-fi authors who is satirised, sent up and generally piss-taken in the early Discworld books, which are a veritable I-Spy for mainstream SF/Fantasy references. Moorcock deals a lot with concepts of "entropy" and "the heat-death of the Universe".