Sourcery

very slowly sawing a log.
    The Luggage might be magical. It might be terrible. But in its enigmatic soul it was kin to every other piece of luggage throughout the multiverse, and preferred to spend its winters hibernating on top of a wardrobe.
    Rincewind hit it with a broom until the sawing stopped, filled his pockets with odds and ends from the banana crate he used as a dressing table, and made for the door. He couldn’t help noticing that his mattress had gone but that didn’t matter because he was pretty clear that he was never going to sleep on a mattress again, ever.
    The Luggage landed on the floor with a solid thump. After a few seconds, and with extreme care, it rose up on hundreds of little pink legs. It tilted backwards and forward a bit, stretching every leg, and then it opened its lid and yawned.
    “Are you coming or not?”
    The lid shut with a snap. The Luggage maneuverd its feet into a complicated shuffle until it was facing the doorway, and headed after its master.
    The Library was still in a state of tension, with the occasional clinking * of a chain or muffled crackle of a page. Rincewind reached under the desk and grabbed the Librarian who was still hunched under his blanket.
    “Come on, I said!”
    “Oook.”
    “I’ll buy you a drink,” said Rincewind desperately.
    The Librarian unfolded like a four-legged spider. “Oook?”
    Rincewind half-dragged the ape from his nest and out through the door. He didn’t head for the main gates but for an otherwise undistinguished area of wall where a few loose stones had, for two thousand years, offered students an unobtrusive way in after lights-out. Then he stopped so suddenly that the Librarian cannoned into him and the Luggage ran into both of them.
    “Oook!”
    “Oh, gods,” he said. “Look at that!”
    “Oook?”
    There was a shiny black tide flowing out of a grating near the kitchens. Early evening starlight glinted off millions of little black backs.
    But it wasn’t the sight of the cockroaches that was so upsetting. It was the fact that they were marching in step, a hundred abreast. Of course, like all the informal inhabitants of the University the roaches were a little unusual, but there was something particularly unpleasant about the sound of billions of very small feet hitting the stones in perfect time.
    Rincewind stepped gingerly over the marching column. The Librarian jumped it.
    The Luggage, of course, followed them with a noise like someone tapdancing over a bag of potato chips.
    And so, forcing the Luggage to go all the way around to the gates anyway, because otherwise it’d only batter a hole in the wall, Rincewind quit the University with all the other insects and small frightened rodents and decided that if a few quiet beers wouldn’t allow him to see things in a different light, then a few more probably would. It was certainly worth a try.
    That was why he wasn’t present in the Great Hall for dinner. It would turn out to be the most important missed meal of his life.

    Further along the University wall there was a faint clink as a grapnel caught the spikes that lined its top. A moment later a slim, black-clad figure dropped lightly into the University grounds and ran soundlessly toward the Great Hall, where it was soon lost in the shadows.
    No-one would have noticed it anyway. On the other side of the campus the Sourcerer was walking toward the gates of the University. Where his feet touched the cobbles blue sparks crackled and evaporated the early evening dew.

    It was very hot. The big fireplace at the turnwise end of the Great Hall was practically incandescent. Wizards feel the cold easily, so the sheer blast of heat from the roaring logs was melting candles twenty feet away and bubbling the varnish on the long tables. The air over the feast was blue with tobacco smoke, which writhed into curious shapes as it was bent by random drifts of magic. On the center table the complete carcass of a whole roast pig looked extremely annoyed at the fact that someone had killed it without waiting for it to finish its apple, and the model University made of butter was sinking gently into a pool of grease.
    There was a lot of beer about. Here and there red-faced wizards were happily singing ancient drinking songs which involved a lot of knee-slapping and cries of “Ho!” The only possible excuse for this sort of thing is that wizards are celibate, and have to find their amusement where they can.
    Another reason for the general