Thud!

the stir she was causing, she walked up to the desk past an audience of shocked faces and threw a muddy necklace down onto the open Incident Book.
    “Four dwarfs murdered by other dwarfs, down in the Long Dark,” she said. “I’ll bet my nose on it. That belonged to one of them. He’d also got this.” A muddy envelope was dropped by the necklace. “It’s pretty slimy, but you can read it. Mister Vimes is going to go postal.” She looked up into the blue eyes of Carrot. “Where is he?”
    “Sleeping on a mattress in his office,” said Carrot, and shrugged. “Lady Sybil knew he wouldn’t go home, so she got Willikins to make up a bed down here. Are you two all right?”
    “Fine, sir,” said Sally.
    “I was getting very worried—” Carrot began.
    “Four dead dwarfs, Captain,” said Angua. “City dwarfs. That’s what you should be worrying about. Three half-buried, this one crawled away.”
    Carrot picked up the necklace and read the runes.
    “Lars Legstrong,” he said. “I think I know the family. Are you sure he was murdered?”
    “Throat cut. It’d be hard to call it suicide. But he took some time to die. He made it to one of their damn doors, which they’d locked shut, and scrawled one of their signs on it in his own blood. Then he sat down and waited to die in the dark. In the damn dark, Carrot! They were working dwarfs! They had shovels and wheelbarrows! They were down there doing a job, and when they weren’t needed anymore they got the chop! Hacked down and left for the mud! He might even still have been alive down there when Mister Vimes and I went in. Behind their bloody thick door, dying by inches. And do you know what this means?”
    She pulled a folded piece of card out of her bodice and passed it over.
    “A drinks menu?” said Carrot.
    “Open it,” snapped Angua. “I’m sorry it’s written in lipstick, it was all we could find.”
    Carrot flipped it open. “Another dark symbol?” he said. “I don’t think I know this one.”
    There were other dwarf officers in the office. Carrot held up the symbol.
    “Does anyone here know what this means?”
    A few helmeted heads shook, and a few dwarfs backed away, but a deep voice from the doorway said: “Yes, Captain Carrot. I suspect I do. Does it look like an eye with a tail?”
    “Yes…er…sir?” said Carrot, staring. A shadow moved.
    “It was drawn in the dark? By a dying dwarf? In his own blood? It is the Summoning Dark, Captain, and it will be moving. Good morning to you. I am Mr. Shine.”
    Carrot’s jaw dropped as the watchmen turned to look at the newcomer. He loomed in the doorway, almost as broad as he was tall, in a black cloak and hood that hid any possible feature.
    “ The Mr. Shine?” he said.
    “Regrettably so, Captain, and can I charge you to see that no one in this room leaves for a few minutes after I do? I like to keep my movements…private.”
    “I didn’t think you were real, sir!”
    “Believe me, young man, I wish it were possible to keep you in that happy state,” said the hooded figure. “However, my hand is forced.”
    Mr. Shine stepped forward, pulling a rangy figure into the room. It was a troll, whose look of sullen defiance did not quite manage to conceal knee-knocking terror.
    “This is Brick, Captain. I deliver him back into the personal custody of your Sergeant Detritus. He has information of use to you. I have heard his story. I believe him. You must move fast. The Summoning Dark may already have found a champion. What else…oh yes, be sure not to keep that symbol in a dark place. Keep light around it at all times. And now, if you will excuse the theatricals—”
    The black robe twitched. Hard, white, blinding light filled the room for a second. When it had gone, so had Mr. Shine. All that was left was a large, round stone on the stained floor.
    Carrot blinked, and then pulled himself together.
    “All right, you heard,” he said to the suddenly animated room at large. “No one is to follow Mr. Shine, understood?”
    “Follow him , Captain?” said a dwarf. “We’re not mad, you know!”
    “Dat’s right,” said a troll. “Dey say he can reach inside o’ you an’ stop your heart!”
    “Mr. Shine?” said Angua. “Is he what they’ve been writing about on the walls?”
    “It looks like that,” said Carrot shortly. “And he said we don’t have much time. Mr…. Brick, was it?”
    While Chrysophrase’s trolls had contrived to swagger while standing still, Brick