Sourcery

tell you that I intend to dissolve the Orders and close the University? Although, of course, my senior advisors will be accorded all due status.”
    Carding’s knuckles whitened, but he shrugged.
    “There is little to say,” he said. “What good is a candle at noonday?”
    Coin turned to Spelter. So did the staff. The filigree carvings were regarding him coldly. One of them, near the top of the staff, looked unpleasantly like an eyebrow.
    “You’re very quiet, Spelter. Do you not agree?”
    No. The world had sourcery once, and gave it up for wizardry. Wizardry is magic for men, not gods. It’s not for us. There was something wrong with it, and we have forgotten what it was. I liked wizardry. It didn’t upset the world. It fitted. It was right. A wizard was all I wanted to be.
    He looked down at his feet.
    “Yes,” he whispered.
    “Good,” said Coin, in a satisfied tone of voice. He strolled to the edge of the tower and looked down at the street map of Ankh-Morpork far below. The Tower of Art came barely a tenth of the way toward them.
    “I believe,” he said, “I believe that we will hold the ceremony next week, at full moon.”
    “Er. It won’t be full moon for three weeks,” said Carding.
    “Next week,” Coin repeated. “If I say the moon will be full, there will be no argument.” He continued to stare down at the model buildings of the University, and then pointed.
    “What’s that?”
    Carding craned.
    “Er. The Library. Yes. It’s the Library. Er.”
    The silence was so oppressive that Carding felt something more was expected of him. Anything would be better than that silence.
    “It’s where we keep the books, you know. Ninety thousand volumes, isn’t it, Spelter?”
    “Um? Oh. Yes. About ninety thousand, I suppose.”
    Coin leaned on the staff and stared.
    “Burn them,” he said. “All of them.”

    Midnight strutted its black stuff along the corridors of Unseen University as Spelter, with rather less confidence, crept cautiously toward the impassive doors of the Library. He knocked, and the sound echoed so loudly in the empty building that he had to lean against the wall and wait for his heart to slow down a bit.
    After a while he heard a sound like heavy furniture being moved about.
    “Oook?”
    “It’s me.”
    “Oook?”
    “Spelter.”
    “Oook.”
    “Look, you’ve got to get out! He’s going to burn the Library!”
    There was no reply.
    Spelter let himself sag to his knees.
    “He’ll do it, too,” he whispered. “He’ll probably make me do it, it’s that staff, um, it knows everything that’s going on, it knows that I know about it…please help me…”
    “Oook?”
    “The other night, I looked into his room…the staff, the staff was glowing , it was standing there in the middle of the room like a beacon and the boy was on the bed sobbing, I could feel it reaching out, teaching him, whispering terrible things, and then it noticed me, you’ve got to help me, you’re the only one who isn’t under the—”
    Spelter stopped. His face froze. He turned around very slowly, without willing it, because something was gently spinning him.
    He knew the University was empty. The wizards had all moved into the New Tower, where the lowliest student had a suite more splendid than any senior mage had before.
    The staff hung in the air a few feet away. It was surrounded by a faint octarine glow.
    He stood up very carefully and, keeping his back to the stonework and his eyes firmly fixed on the thing, slithered gingerly along the wall until he reached the end of the corridor. At the corner he noted that the staff, while not moving had revolved on its axis to follow him.
    He gave a little cry, grasped the skirts of his robe, and ran.
    The staff was in front of him. He slid to a halt and stood there, catching his breath.
    “You don’t frighten me,” he lied, and turned on his heel and marched off in a different direction, snapping his fingers to produce a torch that burned with a fine white flame (only its penumbra of octarine proclaimed it to be of magical origin).
    Once again, the staff was in front of him. The light of his torch was sucked into a thin, singing steam of white fire that flared and vanished with a “pop.”
    He waited, his eyes watering with blue after-images, but if the staff was still there it didn’t seem to be inclined to take advantage of him. When vision returned he felt he could make out an even darker shadow on his left. The stairway down to the