Guards! Guards!

screaming!” the phantom ordered, focusing generations of natural authority into four syllables. Another shout spurred the horses from a bewildered standing start to a full gallop.
    The coach bounced away over the flagstones. An exploratory tendril of flickering light brushed the reins for a moment and then lost interest.
    “I suppose you haven’t got any idea what’s happening?” shouted Vimes, against the crackling of the spinning fire.
    “Not the foggiest!”
    The crawling lines spread like a web over the city, growing fainter with distance. Vimes imagined them creeping through windows and sneaking under doors.
    “It looks as though it’s searching for something!” he shouted.
    “Then getting away before it finds it is a first-class idea, don’t you think?”
    A tongue of fire hit the dark Tower of Art, slid blindly down its ivy-grown flanks, and disappeared through the dome of Unseen University’s Library.
    The other lines blinked out.
    Lady Ramkin brought the coach to a halt at the far side of the square.
    “What does it want the Library for?” she said, frowning.
    “Maybe it wants to look something up?”
    “Don’t be silly,” she said breezily. “There’s just a lot of books in there. What would a flash of lightning want to read?”
    “Something very short?”
    “I really think you could try to be a bit more help.”
    The line of light exploded into an arc between the Library’s dome and the center of the plaza and hung in the air, a band of brilliance several feet across.
    Then, in a sudden rush, it became a sphere of fire which grew swiftly to encompass almost all the plaza, vanished suddenly, and left the night full of ringing, violet shadows.
    And the plaza full of dragon.

    Who would have thought it? So much power, so close at hand. The dragon could feel the magic flowing into it, renewing it from second to second, in defiance of all boring physical laws. This wasn’t the poor fare it had been given before. This was the right stuff. There was no end to what it could do, with power like this.
    But first it had to pay its respects to certain people…
    It sniffed the dawn air. It was searching for the stink of minds.
    Noble dragons don’t have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.

    The air became very still, so still that you could almost hear the slow fall of dust. The Librarian swung on his knuckles between the endless bookshelves. The dome of the Library was still overhead but then, it always was.

It seemed quite logical to the Librarian that, since there were aisles where the shelves were on the outside then there should be other aisles in the space between the books themselves, created out of quantum ripples by the sheer weight of words. There were certainly some odd sounds coming from the other side of some shelving, and the Librarian knew that if he gently pulled out a book or two he would be peeking into different libraries under different skies.
    Books bend space and time. One reason the owners of those aforesaid little rambling, poky secondhand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are , having strayed into this world after taking a wrong turning in their own bookshops in worlds where it is considered commendable business practice to wear carpet slippers all the time and open your shop only when you feel like it. You stray into L-space at your peril.
    Very senior librarians, however, once they have proved themselves worthy by performing some valiant act of librarianship, are accepted into a secret order and are taught the raw arts of survival beyond the Shelves We Know. The Librarian was highly skilled in all of them, but what he was attempting now wouldn’t just get him thrown out of the Order but probably out of life itself.
    All libraries everywhere are connected in L-space. All libraries. Everywhere. And the Librarian, navigating by booksign carved on shelves by past explorers, navigating by smell, navigating even by the siren whisperings of nostalgia, was heading purposely for one very special one.
    There was one consolation. If he got it wrong, he’d never know it.

    Somehow the dragon was worse on the ground. In the air it was an elemental thing, graceful even when it was trying to burn you to your boots. On the ground it was just a damn great animal.
    Its huge head reared against the gray of dawn, turning slowly.
    Lady Ramkin and Vimes peered cautiously from behind a watertrough. Vimes had