Sourcery (Discworld, #5; Rincewind, #3)

by Terry Pratchett

“I meant,” said Ipslore, bitterly, “what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?” Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE.

YOU’RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said. That’s what being alive is all about.

Against one shadowy wall was a wardrobe.

It was quite possible that it was a secret doorway to fabulous worlds, but no one had ever tried to find out because of the distressing smell of mothballs.

Ha, a nod to Narnia! LOL

The future held its breath, waiting for Rincewind to walk away. He didn’t do this for three reasons. One was alcohol. One was the tiny flame of pride that flickers in the heart of even the most careful coward. But the third was the voice. It was beautiful. It sounded like wild silk looks. The subject of wizards and sex is a complicated one, but as has already been indicated it does, in essence, boil down to this: when it comes to wine, women and song, wizards are allowed to get drunk and croon as much as they like.

Of all the disreputable taverns in all the city you could have walked into, you walked into his, complained the hat.

Casablanca!

Teatime of the Gods,

Golf pun?

Rincewind sagged. “Why me?” he moaned. For the good of the University. For the honor of wizardry. For the sake of the world. For your heart’s desire. And I’ll freeze you alive if you don’t. Rincewind breathed a sigh almost of relief. He wasn’t good on bribes, or cajolery, or appeals to his better nature. But threats, now, threats were familiar. He knew where he was with threats.

Just by looking at him you could tell he was the sort of man you’d expect to keep a white cat, and caress it idly while sentencing people to death in a piranha tank; and you’d hazard for good measure that he probably collected rare thin porcelain, turning it over and over in his blue-white fingers while distant screams echoed from the depths of the dungeons. You wouldn’t put it past him to use the word “exquisite” and have thin lips. He looked the kind of person who, when they blink, you mark it off on the calendar.

He didn’t administer a reign of terror, just the occasional light shower.

Rincewind hesitated. “Well,” he said, “it’s the end of the world. Sort of.” “Sort of? Sort of the end of the world? You mean we won’t be certain? We’ll look around and say ‘Pardon me, did you hear something?’?” “It’s just that no two seers have ever agreed about it. There have been all kinds of vague predictions. Quite mad, some of them. So it was called the Apocralypse.” He looked embarrassed. “It’s a sort of apocryphal Apocalypse.

All that was left was his boots, standing forlornly on the cobbles with little wisps of smoke coming out of them. No one knows why smoking boots always remain, no matter how big the explosion. It seems to be just one of those things.

Rincewind rather enjoyed times like this. They convinced him that he wasn’t mad because, if he was mad, that left no word at all to describe some of the people he met.

Rincewind sighed. He liked lettuce. It was so incredibly boring. He had spent years in search of boredom, but had never achieved it. Just when he thought he had it in his grasp his life would suddenly become full of near-terminal interest. The thought that someone could voluntarily give up the prospect of being bored for fifty years made him feel quite weak. With fifty years ahead of him, he thought, he could elevate tedium to the status of an art form. There would be no end to the things he wouldn’t do.

Rincewind actually began to feel sorry for him, which was very unusual—he normally felt he needed all his pity for himself.

“I said, Death walks abroad,” said Nijel. “Abroad I don’t mind,” said Rincewind. “They’re all foreigners. It’s Death walking around here I’m not looking forward to.”

“Your hair,” said the Seriph, rocking slowly forward again, “is like, is like a flock of goats that graze upon the side of Mount Gebra.”

“Your breasts are like, like,” the Seriph swayed sideways a little, and gave a brief, sorrowful glance at the empty bottle, “are like the jewelled melons in the fabled gardens of dawn.” Conina’s eyes widened. “They are?” she said. “No,” said the Seriph, “doubt about it. I know jewelled melons when I see them. As the white does in the meadows of the water margin are your thighs, which—”

Reference to The Song of Songs, or The Song of Solomon, in the Bible.

It was easy to see that the room was a treasury by its incredible emptiness.

They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted it or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.

“Speaking as a poet,” said Conina carefully, “what would you say about this situation?” Creosote shifted uneasily. “Funny old thing, life,” he said.

In other words, it’s the familiar hot sinking feeling experienced by everyone who has let the waves of their own anger throw them far up on the beach of retribution, leaving them, in the poetic language of the everyday, up shit

“—but any port in a storm,”

It was, he thought, time for a few last words. What he said now was likely to be very important. Perhaps they would be words that would be remembered, and handed down, and maybe even carved deeply in slabs of granite. Words without too many curly letters in, therefore. “I really wish I wasn’t here,” he muttered.

The sourcerer had offered to replace everything as good as new, all wood sparkling, all stone unstained, but the Librarian had been very firm on the subject. He wanted everything replaced as good as old.