[Canon Review] 05) Sourcery
He turned at a sudden silence behind him, and looked up through tear-reddened eyes at a tall hooded figure in a black robe.
Ipslore the Red? it said. The voice was as hollow as a cave, as dense as a neutron star.
Ipslore grinned the terrible grin of the suddenly mad, and held up the child for Death's inspection.
'My son,' he said. 'I shall call him Coin.'
A name as good as any other, said Death politely. His empty sockets stared down at a small round face wrapped in sleep. Despite rumour, Death isn't cruel-merely terribly, terribly good at his job.
'You took his mother,' said Ipslore. It was a flat statement, without apparent rancour. In the valley behind the cliffs Ipslore's homestead was a smoking ruin, the rising wind already spreading the fragile ashes across the hissing dunes.
It was a heart attack at the end, said Death. There are worse ways to die. Take it from me.
Ipslore looked out to sea. 'All my magic could not save her,' he said.
There are places where even magic may not go.
'And now you have come for the child?'
No. The child has his own destiny. I have come for you.
'Ah.' The wizard stood up, carefully laid the sleeping baby down on the thin grass, and picked up a long staff that had been lying there. It was made of a black metal, with a meshwork of silver and gold carvings that gave it a rich and sinister tastelessness; the metal was octiron, intrinsically magical.
'I made this, you know,' he said. 'They all said you couldn't make a staff out of metal, they said they should only be of wood, but they were wrong. I put a lot of myself into it. I shall give it to him.'
He ran his hands lovingly along the staff, which gave off a faint tone.
He repeated, almost to himself, 'I put a lot of myself into it.'
It is a good staff, said Death.
Ipslore held it in the air and looked down at his eighth son, who gave a gurgle.
'She wanted a daughter,' he said.
Death shrugged. Ipslore gave him a look compounded of bewilderment and rage.
'What is he?'
The eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth son, said Death, unhelpfully. The wind whipped at his robe, driving the black clouds overhead.
'What does that make him?'
A sourcerer, as you are well aware.
Thunder rolled, on cue.
'What is his destiny?' shouted Ipslore, above the rising gale.
Death shrugged again. He was good at it.
Sourcerers make their own destiny. They touch the earth lightly.
Ipslore leaned on the staff, drumming on it with his fingers, apparently lost in the maze of his own thoughts. His left eyebrow twitched.
'No,' he said, softly, 'no. I will make his destiny for him.'
I advise against it.
'Be quiet! And listen when I tell you that they drove me out, with their books and their rituals and their Lore! They called themselves wizards, and they had less magic in their whole fat bodies than I have in my little finger! Banished! Me! For showing that I was human! And what would humans be without love?'
Rare, said Death. Nevertheless.
'Listen! They drove us here, to the ends of the world, and that killed her! They tried to take my staff away!' Ipslore was screaming above the noise of the wind.
'Well, I still have some power left,' he snarled. 'And I say that my son shall go to Unseen University and wear the Archchancellor's hat and the wizards of the world shall bow to him! And he shall show them what lies in their deepest hearts. Their craven, greedy hearts. He'll show the world its true destiny, and there will be no magic greater than his.'
No. And the strange thing about the quiet way Death spoke the word was this: it was louder than the roaring of the storm. It jerked Ipslore back to momentary sanity.
Ipslore rocked back and forth uncertainly. 'What?' he said.
I said no. Nothing is final. Nothing is absolute. Except me, of course. Such tinkering with destiny could mean the downfall of the world. There must be a chance, however small. The lawyers of Fate demand a loophole in every prophecy.
Ipslore stared at Death's implacable face.
'I must give them a chance?'
Yes.
Tap, tap, tap went Ipslore's fingers on the metal of the staff.
'Then they shall have their chance,' he said, 'when hell freezes over.'
No. I am not allowed to enlighten you, even by default, about current temperatures in the next world.
'Then,' Ipslore hesitated, 'then they shall have their chance when my son throws his staff away.'
No wizard would ever throw his staff away, said Death. The bond is too great.
'Yet it is possible, you must agree.'
Death appeared to consider this. Must was not a word he was accustomed to hearing, but he seemed to concede the point.
Agreed, he said.
'Is that a small enough chance for you?'
Sufficiently molecular.
Ipslore relaxed a little. In a voice that was nearly normal, he said: 'I don't regret it, you know. I would do it all again. Children are our hope for the future.'
There is no hope for the future, said Death.
'What does it contain, then?'
Me.
'Besides you I mean!'
Death gave him a puzzled look. I'm sorry?
The storm reached its howling peak overhead. A seagull went past backwards.
'I meant,' said Ipslore, bitterly, 'what is there in this world that makes living worth while?'
Death thought about it.
Cats, he said eventually, cats are nice.
'Curse you!'
Many have, said Death, evenly.
'How much longer do I have?'
Death pulled a large hourglass from the secret recesses of his robe. The two bulbs were enclosed in bars of black and gold, and the sand was nearly all in the bottom one.
Oh, about nine seconds.
Ipslore pulled himself up to his full and still impressive height, and extended the gleaming metal staff towards the child. A hand like a little pink crab reached out from the blanket and grasped it.
'Then let me be the first and last wizard in the history of the world to pass on his staff to his eighth son,' he said slowly and sonorously. 'And I charge him to use it to-‘
I should hurry up, if I were you . . .
'-the full,' said Ipslore, 'becoming the mightiest-‘
The lightning screamed from the heart of the cloud, hit Ipslore on the point of his hat, crackled down his arm, flashed along the staff and struck the child.
The wizard vanished in a wisp of smoke. The staff glowed green, then white, then merely red-hot. The child smiled in his sleep.
When the thunder had died away Death reached down slowly and picked up the boy, who opened his eyes.
They glowed golden, from the inside. For the first time in what, for want of any better word, must be called his life, Death found himself looking at a stare that he found hard to return. The eyes seemed to be focused on a point several inches inside his skull.
I did not mean for that to happen, said the voice of Ipslore, from out of the empty air. Is he harmed?
No. Death tore his gaze away from that fresh, knowing smile. He contained the power. He is a sourcerer: no doubt he will survive much worse. And now - you will come with me.
No.
Yes. You are dead, you see. Death looked around for Ipslore's wavering shade, and failed to find it. Where are you?
In the staff.
Death leaned on his scythe and sighed.
Foolish. How easily could I cut you loose.
Not without destroying the staff, said the voice of Ipslore, and it seemed to Death that there was a new, thick, exultant quality to it. And now the child has accepted the staff you cannot destroy it without destroying him. And that you cannot do without upsetting destiny. My last magic. Rather neat, I feel.
Death prodded the staff. It crackled, and sparks crawled obscenely along its length.
Strangely enough, he wasn't particularly angry. Anger is an emotion, and for emotion you need glands, and Death didn't have much truck with glands and needed a good run at it to get angry. But he was mildly annoyed. He sighed again. People were always trying this sort of thing. On the other hand, it was quite interesting to watch, and at least this was a bit more original than the usual symbolic chess game, which Death always dreaded because he could never remember how the knight was supposed to move.
You're only putting off the inevitable, he said.
That's what being alive is all about.
But what precisely do you expect to gain?
I shall be by my son's side. I shall teach him, even though he won't know it. I shall guide his understanding. And, when he is ready, I shall guide his steps.
Tell me, said Death, how did you guide the steps of your other sons?
I drove them out. They dared to argue with me, they would not listen to what I could teach them. But this one will.
Is this wise?
The staff was silent. Beside it, the boy chuckled at the sound of a voice only he could hear.
It was at this point that Rincewind became aware of a regular scraping sound close to his ear. It had an unpleasant metallic ring.
He half-turned, and felt the familiar and very uncomfortable prickly feeling of Time slowing down around him.
Death paused in the act of running a whetstone along the edge of his scythe and gave him a nod of acknowledgement, as between one professional and another.
He put a bony digit to his lips, or rather, to the place where his lips would have been if he'd had lips.
All wizards can see Death, but they don't necessarily want to.
There was a popping in Rincewind's ears and the spectre vanished.
Weight doesn't come into it. My steed has carried armies. My steed has carried cities. Yea, he hath carried all things in their due time, said Death. But he's not going to carry you three.
'Why not?'
It's a matter of the look of the thing.
'It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it,' said War testily, 'the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse.'
'Perhaps you could ask them to wait for us?' said Pestilence, his voice sounding like something dripping out of the bottom of a coffin.
I have things to attend to, said Death. He made a little clicking noise with his teeth. I'm sure you'll manage. You normally do.
War watched the retreating horse.
'Sometimes he really gets on my nerves. Why is he always so keen to have the last word?' he said.
'Force of habit, I suppose.'
The staff turned again in mid-air, glowing red-hot now, and swept back for another and quite definitely final run.
Rincewind struggled up on his elbows and watched in horrified fascination as it swooped through the chilly air which, for some reason he didn't understand, seemed to be full of snowflakes.
And became tinged with purple, blotched with blue. Time slowed and ground to a halt like an underwound phonograph.
Rincewind looked up at the tall black figure that had appeared a few feet away.
It was, of course, Death.
He turned his glowing eyesockets towards Rincewind and said, in a voice like the collapse of undersea chasms, Good afternoon.
He turned away as if he had completed all necessary business for the time being, stared at the horizon for a while, and started to tap one foot idly. It sounded like a bagful of maracas.
'Er,' said Rincewind.
Death appeared to remember him. I'm sorry? he said politely.
'I always wondered how it was going to be,' said Rincewind.
Death took an hourglass out from the mysterious folds of his ebon robes and peered at it.
Did you? he said, vaguely.
'I suppose I can't complain,' said Rincewind virtuously. 'I've had a good life. Well, quite good.' He hesitated. 'Well, not all that good. I suppose most people would call it pretty awful.' He considered it further. 'I would,' he added, half to himself.
What are you talking about, man?
Rincewind was nonplussed. 'Don't you make an appearance when a wizard is about to die?'
Of course. And I must say you people are giving me a busy day.
'How do you manage to be in so many places at the same time?'
Good organisation.
Time returned. The staff, which had been hanging in the air a few feet away from Rincewind, started to scream forward again.
And there was a metallic thud as Coin caught it onehandedly in mid-flight.
'What happens to people after they're dead?' said Coin.
Rincewind glanced up at Death.
'I think this one's for you,' he said.
He cannot see or hear me, said Death, until he wants to.
Rincewind held his breath. The watching wizards held their breath. Even Death, who had nothing to hold but his scythe, held it tensely.
He remembered the staff fleeing, dragging him after it. And then there had been that dreadful bit where Death had appeared and reached past him, and the staff had twisted and become suddenly alive and Death had said, Ipslore the Red, I have you now.
Ipslore the Red? it said. The voice was as hollow as a cave, as dense as a neutron star.
Ipslore grinned the terrible grin of the suddenly mad, and held up the child for Death's inspection.
'My son,' he said. 'I shall call him Coin.'
A name as good as any other, said Death politely. His empty sockets stared down at a small round face wrapped in sleep. Despite rumour, Death isn't cruel-merely terribly, terribly good at his job.
'You took his mother,' said Ipslore. It was a flat statement, without apparent rancour. In the valley behind the cliffs Ipslore's homestead was a smoking ruin, the rising wind already spreading the fragile ashes across the hissing dunes.
It was a heart attack at the end, said Death. There are worse ways to die. Take it from me.
Ipslore looked out to sea. 'All my magic could not save her,' he said.
There are places where even magic may not go.
'And now you have come for the child?'
No. The child has his own destiny. I have come for you.
'Ah.' The wizard stood up, carefully laid the sleeping baby down on the thin grass, and picked up a long staff that had been lying there. It was made of a black metal, with a meshwork of silver and gold carvings that gave it a rich and sinister tastelessness; the metal was octiron, intrinsically magical.
'I made this, you know,' he said. 'They all said you couldn't make a staff out of metal, they said they should only be of wood, but they were wrong. I put a lot of myself into it. I shall give it to him.'
He ran his hands lovingly along the staff, which gave off a faint tone.
He repeated, almost to himself, 'I put a lot of myself into it.'
It is a good staff, said Death.
Ipslore held it in the air and looked down at his eighth son, who gave a gurgle.
'She wanted a daughter,' he said.
Death shrugged. Ipslore gave him a look compounded of bewilderment and rage.
'What is he?'
The eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth son, said Death, unhelpfully. The wind whipped at his robe, driving the black clouds overhead.
'What does that make him?'
A sourcerer, as you are well aware.
Thunder rolled, on cue.
'What is his destiny?' shouted Ipslore, above the rising gale.
Death shrugged again. He was good at it.
Sourcerers make their own destiny. They touch the earth lightly.
Ipslore leaned on the staff, drumming on it with his fingers, apparently lost in the maze of his own thoughts. His left eyebrow twitched.
'No,' he said, softly, 'no. I will make his destiny for him.'
I advise against it.
'Be quiet! And listen when I tell you that they drove me out, with their books and their rituals and their Lore! They called themselves wizards, and they had less magic in their whole fat bodies than I have in my little finger! Banished! Me! For showing that I was human! And what would humans be without love?'
Rare, said Death. Nevertheless.
'Listen! They drove us here, to the ends of the world, and that killed her! They tried to take my staff away!' Ipslore was screaming above the noise of the wind.
'Well, I still have some power left,' he snarled. 'And I say that my son shall go to Unseen University and wear the Archchancellor's hat and the wizards of the world shall bow to him! And he shall show them what lies in their deepest hearts. Their craven, greedy hearts. He'll show the world its true destiny, and there will be no magic greater than his.'
No. And the strange thing about the quiet way Death spoke the word was this: it was louder than the roaring of the storm. It jerked Ipslore back to momentary sanity.
Ipslore rocked back and forth uncertainly. 'What?' he said.
I said no. Nothing is final. Nothing is absolute. Except me, of course. Such tinkering with destiny could mean the downfall of the world. There must be a chance, however small. The lawyers of Fate demand a loophole in every prophecy.
Ipslore stared at Death's implacable face.
'I must give them a chance?'
Yes.
Tap, tap, tap went Ipslore's fingers on the metal of the staff.
'Then they shall have their chance,' he said, 'when hell freezes over.'
No. I am not allowed to enlighten you, even by default, about current temperatures in the next world.
'Then,' Ipslore hesitated, 'then they shall have their chance when my son throws his staff away.'
No wizard would ever throw his staff away, said Death. The bond is too great.
'Yet it is possible, you must agree.'
Death appeared to consider this. Must was not a word he was accustomed to hearing, but he seemed to concede the point.
Agreed, he said.
'Is that a small enough chance for you?'
Sufficiently molecular.
Ipslore relaxed a little. In a voice that was nearly normal, he said: 'I don't regret it, you know. I would do it all again. Children are our hope for the future.'
There is no hope for the future, said Death.
'What does it contain, then?'
Me.
'Besides you I mean!'
Death gave him a puzzled look. I'm sorry?
The storm reached its howling peak overhead. A seagull went past backwards.
'I meant,' said Ipslore, bitterly, 'what is there in this world that makes living worth while?'
Death thought about it.
Cats, he said eventually, cats are nice.
'Curse you!'
Many have, said Death, evenly.
'How much longer do I have?'
Death pulled a large hourglass from the secret recesses of his robe. The two bulbs were enclosed in bars of black and gold, and the sand was nearly all in the bottom one.
Oh, about nine seconds.
Ipslore pulled himself up to his full and still impressive height, and extended the gleaming metal staff towards the child. A hand like a little pink crab reached out from the blanket and grasped it.
'Then let me be the first and last wizard in the history of the world to pass on his staff to his eighth son,' he said slowly and sonorously. 'And I charge him to use it to-‘
I should hurry up, if I were you . . .
'-the full,' said Ipslore, 'becoming the mightiest-‘
The lightning screamed from the heart of the cloud, hit Ipslore on the point of his hat, crackled down his arm, flashed along the staff and struck the child.
The wizard vanished in a wisp of smoke. The staff glowed green, then white, then merely red-hot. The child smiled in his sleep.
When the thunder had died away Death reached down slowly and picked up the boy, who opened his eyes.
They glowed golden, from the inside. For the first time in what, for want of any better word, must be called his life, Death found himself looking at a stare that he found hard to return. The eyes seemed to be focused on a point several inches inside his skull.
I did not mean for that to happen, said the voice of Ipslore, from out of the empty air. Is he harmed?
No. Death tore his gaze away from that fresh, knowing smile. He contained the power. He is a sourcerer: no doubt he will survive much worse. And now - you will come with me.
No.
Yes. You are dead, you see. Death looked around for Ipslore's wavering shade, and failed to find it. Where are you?
In the staff.
Death leaned on his scythe and sighed.
Foolish. How easily could I cut you loose.
Not without destroying the staff, said the voice of Ipslore, and it seemed to Death that there was a new, thick, exultant quality to it. And now the child has accepted the staff you cannot destroy it without destroying him. And that you cannot do without upsetting destiny. My last magic. Rather neat, I feel.
Death prodded the staff. It crackled, and sparks crawled obscenely along its length.
Strangely enough, he wasn't particularly angry. Anger is an emotion, and for emotion you need glands, and Death didn't have much truck with glands and needed a good run at it to get angry. But he was mildly annoyed. He sighed again. People were always trying this sort of thing. On the other hand, it was quite interesting to watch, and at least this was a bit more original than the usual symbolic chess game, which Death always dreaded because he could never remember how the knight was supposed to move.
You're only putting off the inevitable, he said.
That's what being alive is all about.
But what precisely do you expect to gain?
I shall be by my son's side. I shall teach him, even though he won't know it. I shall guide his understanding. And, when he is ready, I shall guide his steps.
Tell me, said Death, how did you guide the steps of your other sons?
I drove them out. They dared to argue with me, they would not listen to what I could teach them. But this one will.
Is this wise?
The staff was silent. Beside it, the boy chuckled at the sound of a voice only he could hear.
It was at this point that Rincewind became aware of a regular scraping sound close to his ear. It had an unpleasant metallic ring.
He half-turned, and felt the familiar and very uncomfortable prickly feeling of Time slowing down around him.
Death paused in the act of running a whetstone along the edge of his scythe and gave him a nod of acknowledgement, as between one professional and another.
He put a bony digit to his lips, or rather, to the place where his lips would have been if he'd had lips.
All wizards can see Death, but they don't necessarily want to.
There was a popping in Rincewind's ears and the spectre vanished.
Weight doesn't come into it. My steed has carried armies. My steed has carried cities. Yea, he hath carried all things in their due time, said Death. But he's not going to carry you three.
'Why not?'
It's a matter of the look of the thing.
'It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it,' said War testily, 'the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse.'
'Perhaps you could ask them to wait for us?' said Pestilence, his voice sounding like something dripping out of the bottom of a coffin.
I have things to attend to, said Death. He made a little clicking noise with his teeth. I'm sure you'll manage. You normally do.
War watched the retreating horse.
'Sometimes he really gets on my nerves. Why is he always so keen to have the last word?' he said.
'Force of habit, I suppose.'
The staff turned again in mid-air, glowing red-hot now, and swept back for another and quite definitely final run.
Rincewind struggled up on his elbows and watched in horrified fascination as it swooped through the chilly air which, for some reason he didn't understand, seemed to be full of snowflakes.
And became tinged with purple, blotched with blue. Time slowed and ground to a halt like an underwound phonograph.
Rincewind looked up at the tall black figure that had appeared a few feet away.
It was, of course, Death.
He turned his glowing eyesockets towards Rincewind and said, in a voice like the collapse of undersea chasms, Good afternoon.
He turned away as if he had completed all necessary business for the time being, stared at the horizon for a while, and started to tap one foot idly. It sounded like a bagful of maracas.
'Er,' said Rincewind.
Death appeared to remember him. I'm sorry? he said politely.
'I always wondered how it was going to be,' said Rincewind.
Death took an hourglass out from the mysterious folds of his ebon robes and peered at it.
Did you? he said, vaguely.
'I suppose I can't complain,' said Rincewind virtuously. 'I've had a good life. Well, quite good.' He hesitated. 'Well, not all that good. I suppose most people would call it pretty awful.' He considered it further. 'I would,' he added, half to himself.
What are you talking about, man?
Rincewind was nonplussed. 'Don't you make an appearance when a wizard is about to die?'
Of course. And I must say you people are giving me a busy day.
'How do you manage to be in so many places at the same time?'
Good organisation.
Time returned. The staff, which had been hanging in the air a few feet away from Rincewind, started to scream forward again.
And there was a metallic thud as Coin caught it onehandedly in mid-flight.
'What happens to people after they're dead?' said Coin.
Rincewind glanced up at Death.
'I think this one's for you,' he said.
He cannot see or hear me, said Death, until he wants to.
Rincewind held his breath. The watching wizards held their breath. Even Death, who had nothing to hold but his scythe, held it tensely.
He remembered the staff fleeing, dragging him after it. And then there had been that dreadful bit where Death had appeared and reached past him, and the staff had twisted and become suddenly alive and Death had said, Ipslore the Red, I have you now.