Right!
The entity known as the Summoning Dark sped through streets of eternal night, past misty buildings of memory that wavered at its passage. It was getting there, it was getting there. It was having to change the habits of millennia, but it was finding ways in, even if they were no bigger than keyholes. It had never had to work this hard before, never had to move this fast. It was…exhilarating.
But always, when it paused by some grating or unguarded chimney, it heard the pursuit. It was slow, but it never stopped following. Sooner or later, it would catch up.
Grag Bashfullsson lodged in a subdivided cellar in Cheap Street. The rent wasn’t much, but he had to admit that neither was the accommodation: he could lie on his very narrow bed and touch all four walls or, rather, three walls and a heavy curtain that separated his little space from that of the family of nineteen dwarfs that occupied the rest of the cellar. But meals were included, and they respected his privacy. It was something, to have a grag as a lodger, even if this one seemed rather young and showed his face. It still impressed the neighbors.
On the other side of the curtain, children were squabbling, a baby was crying, and there was the smell of rat-and-cabbage casserole. Someone was sharpening an axe. And someone else was snoring. For a dwarf in Ankh-Morpork, solitude was something that you had to cultivate on the inside.
Books and papers filled the space that wasn’t bed. Bashfullsson’s desk was a board laid across his knees. He was reading a battered book, its cover cracked and moldy, and the runes passing under his eye said: “It has no strength in this world. To fulfill any purpose, the Dark must find a champion, a living creature it can bend to its will…”
Bashfullsson sighed. He’d read the phrase a dozen times, hoping he could make it mean something other than the obvious. He copied the words into his notebook anyway. Then he put the notebook in his satchel, swung the satchel onto his back, went and paid Toin Footstamper two weeks’ rent in advance, and stepped out into the rain.
Vimes didn’t remember going to sleep. He didn’t remember sleeping. He surfaced from darkness when Carrot shook him awake.
“The coaches are in the yard, Mister Vimes!”
“Fwisup?” murmured Vimes, blinking in the light.
“I’ve told people to load them up, sir, but—”
“But what?” Vimes sat up.
“I think you’d better come and see, sir.”
When Vimes stepped out into the damp dawn, two coaches were indeed standing in the yard. Detritus was idly watching the loading, while leaning on the Piecemaker.
Carrot hurried over when he saw the commander.
“It’s the wizards, sir,” he said. “They’ve done something.”
The coaches looked normal enough to Vimes, and he said so.
“Oh, they look fine,” said Carrot. He reached down and put his hand on the doorsill, and added: “But they do this.”
He lifted the laden coach over his head.
“You shouldn’t be able to do that,” said Vimes.
“That’s right, sir,” said Carrot, lowering the coach gently onto the cobbles. “It doesn’t get any heavier with people inside, either. And if you come over here, sir, they’ve done something to the horses, too.”
“Any idea what they’ve done, Captain?”
“None whatsoever, sir. The coaches were just outside the university. Haddock and I drove them down here. Very light, of course. It’s the harnesses that are worrying me. See here, sir.”
“I see the leather’s very thick,” said Vimes. “And what’re all these copper knobs? Something magical?”
“Could be, sir. Something happens at thirteen miles an hour. I don’t know what.” Carrot patted the side of the coach, which slid away.
“The thing is, sir, I don’t know how much of an edge this gives you.”
“What? Surely a weightless coach would—”
“Oh, it’ll help, sir, especially on the inclines. But horses can only go so fast for so long, sir, and once they’ve got the coach moving, it’s a rolling weight and not so much of a problem.”
“Thirteen miles an hour,” Vimes mused. “Hmm. That’s pretty fast.”
“Well, the mail coaches are getting nine or ten miles an hour average on many runs now,” said Carrot. “But the roads will get a lot worse when you get near Koom Valley.”
“You don’t think it’ll take wing, do you?”
“I think the wizards would have said so if it was going to do something like that, sir. But it’s funny you should mention it, because there’s seven broomsticks nailed underneath each coach.”
“What? Why don’t they just float out of the yard?”
“Magic, sir. I think they just compensate for the weight.”
“Good grief, yes. Why didn’t I think of that?” said Vimes sourly. “And that’s why I don’t like magic, Captain. ’cos it’s magic. You can’t ask questions, it’s magic. It doesn’t explain anything, it’s magic. You don’t know where it comes from, it’s magic! That’s what I don’t like about magic, it does everything by magic!”
“That’s the significant factor, sir, there’s no doubt about it,” said Carrot. “I’ll just see to the last of the packing, if you’ll excuse me…”
Vimes glared at the coaches. He probably shouldn’t have brought in the wizards, but where was the choice? Oh, they could probably have sent Sam Vimes all that way in a puff of smoke and the blink of an eye, but who’d actually arrive there, and who’d come back? How would he know if it was him? He was certain that people were not supposed to disappear like that.
Sam Vimes had always been, by nature, a pedestrian. That’s why he was also going to take Willikins, who knew how to drive. He’d also demonstrated to Vimes his ability to throw a common fish knife so hard that it was quite difficult to pull out of the wall. At times like this, Vimes liked to see a skill like that in a butler—
“’S’cuse me, sir,” said Detritus, behind him. “Could I have a word, pers’nal?”
“Yes. Of course,” said Vimes.
“I, er, hope what I said yesterday inna cells wasn’t goin’ too—”
“Can’t remember a word of it,” said Vimes.
Detritus look relieved. “Thank you, sir. Er…I want to take young Brick with us, sir. He’s got no kin here, doesn’t even know what clan he is. He’ll only get messed up again if I take my eye off’f him. An’ he’s never seen der mountains. Never been ouside der city, even!”
There was a pleading look in the troll’s eyes. Vimes recollected that his marriage to Ruby was happy but childless.
“Well, we don’t seem to have a weight problem,” he said. “All right. But you’re to keep an eye on him, okay?”
The troll beamed. “Yessir! I’ll see you don’t regret it, sir!”
“Breakfast, Sam!” called Sybil, from the doorway. A nasty suspicion gripped Vimes, and he hurried over to the other coach, where Carrot was strapping on the last bag.
“Who packed the food? Did Sybil pack the food?” he said.
“I think so, sir.”
“Was there…fruit?” said Vimes, probing the horror.
“I believe so, sir. Quite a lot. And vegetables.”
“Some bacon, surely?” Vimes was nearly begging. “Very good for a long journey, bacon. It travels well.”
“I think it’s staying at home today,” said Carrot. “I have to tell you, sir, that Lady Sybil has found out about the bacon sandwich arrangement. She said to tell you the game was up, sir.”
“I am the commander around here, you know,” said Vimes, with as much hauteur as he could muster on an empty stomach.
“Yes, sir. But Lady Sybil has a very quiet way of being firm, sir.”
“She has, hasn’t she,” said Vimes as they strolled toward the building. “I’m a very lucky man, you know,” he added, just in case Carrot may have got the wrong impression.
“Yes, sir. You are indeed.”
“Captain!”
They turned. Someone
was hurrying through the gate. He had two swords strapped to his back.
“Ah, Special Constable Hancock,” said Carrot, stepping forward. “Do you have something for me?”
“Er…yes, Captain.” Hancock looked nervously at Vimes.
“This is official business, Andy,” said Vimes reassuringly.
“Not much to give you, sir. But I asked around, and a young lady sent at least two self-coded droppers to Bonk in the last week. That means it goes to the main tower there and gets handed over to whoever turns up with the right authorization. We don’t have to know who they are.”
“Well done,” said Carrot. “Any description?”
“Young lady with short hair is the best I could get. Signed the message ‘Aicalas.’ ”
Vimes burst out laughing. “Well, that’s about it. Thank you, Special Constable Hancock, very much.”
“Crime and the clacks is going to be a growing problem,” said Carrot sadly, when they were alone again.
“Quite likely, Captain,” said Vimes. “But here and now we know that our Sally is not being straight with us.”
“We can’t be certain it’s her, sir,” said Carrot.
“Oh no?” said Vimes happily. “This quite cheers me up. It’s one of the lesser-known failings of the vampire. No one knows why they do it. It goes with having big windows and easily torn curtains. A sort of undeath wish, you might say. However clever they are, they can’t resist thinking that no one will recognize their name if they spell it backwards. Let’s go.”
Vimes turned back to head into the building, and noticed a small, neat figure standing patiently by the door. It had the look of someone who was quite happy to wait. He sighed. I bargain without an axe in my hand, eh?
“Breakfast, Mr. Bashfullsson?” he said.
“This is all rather fun,” said Sybil an hour later as the coaches headed out of the city. “Do you remember when we last went on holiday, Sam?”
“That wasn’t really a holiday, dear,” said Vimes. Above them, Young Sam swung back and forth in a little hammock, cooing.
“Well, it was very interesting, all the same,” said Sybil.
“Yes, dear. Werewolves tried to eat me.”
Vimes sat back. The coach was comfortably upholstered and well sprung. At the moment, while it threaded through the traffic, the magical loss of weight was hardly noticeable. Would it mean anything? How fast could a bunch of old dwarfs travel? If they really had taken a big wagon, the coaches would catch them tomorrow, when the mountains were still a distant prospect. In the meantime, at least he could get some rest.
He pulled out a battered volume titled Walking in the Koom Valley, by Eric Wheelbrace, a man who apparently had walked on just about everything bigger than a sheep track in the Near Ramtops.*
It had a sketch map, the only actual map of the valley Vimes had seen. Eric wasn’t a half-bad sketch artist.
Koom Valley was…well, Koom Valley was basically a drain, that’s what it was; nearly thirty miles of soft limestone rock edged by mountains of harder rock, so what you had would have been a canyon if it wasn’t so wide. One end was almost on the snowline, the other merged into the plains.
It was said that even clouds kept away from the desolation that was Koom Valley. Maybe they did, but that didn’t matter. The valley got the water anyway, from meltwater and the hundreds of waterfalls that poured over its walls from the mountains that cupped it. One of those falls, the Tears of the King, was half a mile high.
The Koom River didn’t just rise in this valley. It leapt and danced in this valley. By the time it was halfway down this valley, it was a crisscrossing of thundering waters, forever merging and parting. They carried and hurled great rocks, and played with whole fallen trees from the dripping forests colonizing the scree that had built up against the walls. They gurgled into holes and rose again, miles away, as fountains. They had no mapable course—a good storm higher up in the mountains could bring house-sized rocks and half a stricken woodland down in the flood, blocking the sinkholes and piling up dams. Some of these could survive for years, becoming little islands in the leaping waters, growing little forests and little meadows and colonies of big birds. Then some key rock would be shifted by a random river, and within an hour, it would all be gone.
Nothing that couldn’t fly lived in the valley, at least for long. The dwarfs had tried to tame it, back before the first battle. It hadn’t worked. Hundreds of trolls and dwarfs had been swept up in the famous flood, and many had ever been found again. Koom Valley had taken them all into its sinkholes and chambers and caverns, and had kept them.
There were places in the valley where a man could drop a colored cork into a swirling sinkhole and wait for more than twenty minutes before it bobbed up on a fountain less than a dozen yards away.
Eric himself had seen this trick done by a guide, Vimes read, who’d demanded half a dollar for the demonstration. Oh yes, people visited the valley, human sightseers, poets and artists looking for inspiration in the ragged, uncompromising wildness. And there were human guides who’d take them up there, for a hefty price. For a few extra dollars, they’d tell the history of the place. They’d tell you how the wind in the rocks, and the roaring of the waters, carried the sounds of ancient battle, continuing in death. They’d say, maybe all those trolls and dwarfs the valley took are still fighting, down there in the dark maze of caves and thundering torrents.
One admitted to Eric that when he was a boy, during a cool summer when the meltwaters were pretty low, he’d roped down into one of the sinkholes (because, like all such stories, the history of Koom Valley wouldn’t have been complete without rumors of vast treasures swept down into the dark) and had himself heard, above the sound of the water, battle noises and the shouting of dwarfs, no sir, honestly sir, it chilled my blood so it did, sir, why, thank you very much, sir…
Vimes sat up in his seat.
Was that true? If that man had gone a little further, would he have found the little talking cube that Methodia Rascal had been unlucky enough to take home? Eric had dismissed it as an attempt to scrounge another dollar, and probably it was, but—no, the cube would surely have been long gone by then. Even so. It was an intriguing thought.
The driver’s hatch slid back.
“Outside the city, sir, clear road ahead,” Willikins reported.
“Thank you.” Vimes stretched, and looked across at Sybil. “Well, this is where we find out. Hang on to Young Sam.”
“I’m sure Mustrum wouldn’t do anything dangerous, Sam,” said Sybil.
“I don’t know about that,” said Vimes, opening the door. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mean to.”
He swung himself out and hauled himself on the roof of the coach, with a helping hand from Detritus.
The coach was moving well. The sun was shining. On either side of the highway, the cabbage fields lent their gentle perfume to the air.
Vimes settled down beside the butler.
“Okay,” he said. “Everyone holding on to something? Good. Let ’em go!”
Willikins cracked the whip. There was a mild jolt as the horses stretched, and Vimes felt the coach speed up.
And that seemed to be it. He’d expected something a little more impressive. They were gradually going faster, yes, but that in itself didn’t seem very magical.
“I reckon about twelve miles an hour now, sir,” said Willikins. “That’s pretty good. They’re running well without—”
Something was happening to the harnesses. The copper discs were sparking.
“Look at der cabbages, sir!” Detritus shouted.
On either side of the road, cabbages were bursting into flames and rocketing out of the ground. And still the horses went faster.
“It’s about power!” yelled Vimes, above the wind. “We’re running on cabbages! And the—”
He stopped. The rear two horses were rising gently in the air. As he stared, the lead pair rose, too.
He risked turning in his seat. The other coach was ke
eping up with them; he could clearly see Fred Colon’s pink face, staring ahead in rigid terror.
When Vimes turned back to look ahead, all four horses were off the ground.
And there was a fifth horse, larger than the other five, and transparent. It was visible only because of the dust and the occasional glint of light off an invisible flank; it was, in fact, what you got if you took away a horse but left the movement of a horse, the speed of a horse, the…spirit of a horse, that part of a horse which came alive in the rushing of the wind. The part of a horse that was, in fact, Horse.
There was hardly any sound now. Perhaps sound was unable to keep up.
“Sir?” said Willikins quietly.
“Yes?” said Vimes, his eyes streaming.
“It took us less than a minute to go that last mile. I timed us between milestones, sir.”
“Sixty miles in an hour? Don’t be daft, man! A coach can’t go that fast!”
“Just as you say, sir.”
A milestone flashed past. Out of the corner of his ear, Willikins heard Vimes counting under his breath until, before very long, another stone fell away behind them.
“Wizards, eh?” said Vimes weakly, staring ahead again.
“Indeed, sir,” said Willikins. “May I suggest that once we are through Quirm, we head straight across the grass country?”
“The roads up there are pretty bad, you know,” said Vimes.
“So I believe, sir. However, that will not, in fact, matter,” said the butler, not taking his eyes off the unrolling road ahead.
“Why not? If we try to go at speed over those rough—”
“I was referring obliquely, sir, to the fact that we are not precisely touching the ground anymore.”
Vimes, clinging with care to the rail, looked over the side. The wheels were turning idly. The road, just below them, was a blur. Ahead of them, the spirit of the horse galloped serenely onwards.
“There’s plenty of coaching inns around Quirm,” he said. “We could, er, stop for lunch?”
“Late breakfast, sir! Mail coach ahead, sir! Hold tight!”