Soul Music

wasn’t there, about some old drum in the Palace or somewhere that was supposed to bang itself if an enemy fleet was seen sailing up the Ankh? The legend had died out in recent centuries, partly because this was the Age of Reason and also because no enemy fleet could sail up the Ankh without a gang of men with shovels going in front.
    And there was a troll story about some stones that, on frosty nights…
    The point was that magical instruments turned up every so often.
    Glod reached out again.
    JUD-Adud-adud-duh .
    “All right, all right…”
    The old music shop was right up against the University, after all, and magic did leak out despite what the wizards always said about the talking rats and walking trees just being statistical flukes. But this didn’t feel like magic. It felt a lot older than that. It felt like music.
    Glod wondered whether he should persuade Im—Buddy to take it back to the shop, get a proper guitar…
    On the other hand, six dollars was six dollars. At least.
    Something hammered on the door.
    “Who’s that?” said Glod, looking up.
    The pause outside was long enough to let him guess. He decided to help out.
    “Cliff?” he said.
    “Yup. Got a piano here.”
    “Bring it on in.”
    “Had to break off der legs and der lid and a few other bits but it’s basically okay.”
    “Bring it on in, then.”
    “Door’s too narrow.”
    Buddy, coming up the stairs behind the troll, heard the crunch of woodwork.
    “Try it again.”
    “Fit’s perfectly.”
    There was a piano-shaped hole around the doorway. Glod was standing next to it, holding his ax. Buddy looked at the wreckage all over the landing.
    “What the hell are you doing?” he said. “That’s someone else’s wall!”
    “Well? It’s someone else’s piano.”
    “Yes, but…you can’t just hack holes in the wall—”
    “What’s more important? Some wall or getting the sound right?” said Glod.
    Buddy hesitated. Part of him thought: that’s ridiculous, it’s only music . Another part of him thought, rather more sharply: that’s ridiculous, it’s only a wall. All of him said: “Oh. Since you put it like that…but what about the piano player?”
    “I told you, I know just where to find one,” said Glod.
    A tiny part of him was amazed: I’ve hacked a hole in my own wall! It took me days to nail that wallpaper on properly .

    Albert was in the stable, with a shovel and a wheelbarrow.
    “Go well?” he said, when Susan’s shadow appeared over the half door.
    “Er…yes…I suppose…”
    “Pleased to hear it,” said Albert, without looking up. The shovel thumped on the barrow.
    “Only…something happened which probably wasn’t usual…”
    “Sorry to hear that.”
    Albert picked up the wheelbarrow and trundled it in the direction of the garden.
    Susan knew what she was supposed to do. She was supposed to apologize, and then it’d turn out that crusty old Albert had a heart of gold, and they’d be friends after all, and he’d help her and tell her things, and—
    And she’d be some stupid girl who couldn’t cope.
    No.
    She went back to the stable, where Binky was investigating the contents of a bucket.
    The Quirm College for Young Ladies encouraged self-reliance and logical thought. Her parents had sent her there for that very reason.
    They’d assumed that insulating her from the fluffy edges of the world was the safest thing to do. In the circumstances, this was like not telling people about self-defense so that no one would ever attack them.

    Unseen University was used to eccentricity among the faculty. After all, humans derive their notions of what it means to be a normal human being by constant reference to the humans around them, and when those humans are other wizards, the spiral can only wiggle downward. The Librarian was an orang-utan, and no one thought that was at all odd. The Reader in Esoteric Studies spent so much time reading in what the Bursar referred to as “the smallest room” * that he was generally referred to as the Reader in The Lavatory, even on official documents. The Bursar himself in any normal society would have been considered more unglued than a used stamp in a downpour. The Dean had spent seventeen years writing a treatise on The Use of the syllable ‘ENK’ in Levitation Spells of the Early Confused Period . The Archchancellor, who regularly used the long gallery above the great hall for archery practice and had accidentally shot the Bursar twice, thought the whole