Soul Music

He was by nature a contented dwarf, who took in his short stride all the additional problems of gardening in a high magical environment, such as greenfly, whitefly and lurching things with tentacles. Proper lawn maintenance could be a real problem when things from another dimension were allowed to slither over it.

Someone pounded across it and disappeared through the doorway of the library.

Modo looked at the marks and said, "Oh, dear."

The wizards started breathing again.

"Oh, my," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

"Rave In…" said the Senior Wrangler.

"Now that's what I call Music With Rocks In," sighed the Dean. He stepped forward with the rapt expression of a miser in a goldmine.

The candlelight glittered off black and silver. There was a lot of both.

"Oh, my," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. It was like some kind of incantation.

"I say, isn't that my nose-hair mirror?" said the Bursar, breaking the spell. "That's my nose-hair mirror, I'm sure—"

Except that while the black was black the silver wasn't really silver. It was whatever mirrors and bits of shiny tin and tinsel and wire the Librarian had been able to scrounge and bend into shape…

"— it's got the little silver frame… why's it on that two-wheeled cart? Two wheels, one after the other? Ridiculous. It'll fall over, depend upon it. And where's the horse going to go, may I ask?"

The Senior Wrangler tapped him gently on the shoulder.

"Bursar? Word to the wizard, old chap."

"Yes? What is it?"

"I think if you don't stop talking this minute the Dean will kill you."

There were two small cart-wheels, one behind the other, with a saddle in between them. In front of the saddle was a pipe with a complicated double curve in it, so that someone sitting in the saddle would be able to get a grip.

The rest was junk. Bones and tree branches and a jackdaw's banquet of gewgaws. A horse's skull was strapped over the front wheel, and feathers and beads hung from every point.

It was junk, but as it stood in the flickering glow it had a dark, organic quality - not exactly life, but something dynamic and disquieting and coiled and potent that was making the Dean vibrate on his feet. It radiated something that suggested that, just by existing and looking like it did, it was breaking at least nine laws and twenty-three guidelines.

"Is he in love?" said the Bursar.

"Make it go!" said the Dean. "It's got to go! It's meant to go!"

"Yes, but what is it?" said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

"It's a masterpiece," said the Dean. "A triumph!"

"Oook?"

"Perhaps you have to push it along with your feet?" whispered the Senior Wrangler.

The Dean shook his head in a preoccupied way.

"We're wizards, aren't we?" he said. "I expect we could make it go."

He walked around the circle. The draught from his studded leather robe made the candle-flames waver and the shadows of the thing danced on the wall.

The Senior Wrangler bit his lip. "Not too certain about that," he said. "Looks like it's got more than enough magic in it as it is. Is it… er… is it breathing or is that just my imagination?"

The Senior Wrangler spun around and waved a finger at the Librarian.

"You built it?" he barked.

The orang-utan shook his head.

"Oook."

"What'd he say?"

"He said he didn't build it, he just put it together," said the Dean, without turning his head.

"Ook."

"I'm going to sit on it," said the Dean.

The other wizards felt something draining out of their souls and sudden uncertainty sloshing into its place.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, old chap," said the Senior Wrangler. "You don't know where it might take you."

"Don't care," said the Dean. He still didn't take his eyes off the thing.

"I mean, it's not of this world," said the Senior Wrangler.

"I've been of this world for more than seventy years; said the Dean, "and it is extremely boring."

He stepped into the circle and put his hand on the thing's saddle.

It trembled.

EXCUSE ME.

The tall dark figure was suddenly there, in the doorway, and then in a few strides was in the circle.

A skeletal hand dropped on to the Dean's shoulder and propelled him gently but unstoppably aside.

THANK YOU.

The figure vaulted into the saddle and reached out for the handlebars. It looked down at the thing it bestrode.

Some situations you had to get exactly right…

A finger pointed at the Dean.

I NEED YOUR CLOTHES.

The Dean backed away.

"What?"

GIVE ME YOUR COAT.

The Dean, with great reluctance, shrugged off his leather robe and handed it over.

Death put it on. That was better…

NOW, LET ME SEE…

A blue glow flickered under his fingers and spread in jagged blue lines, forming a corona at the tip of every feather and bead.

"We're in a cellar!" said the Dean. "Doesn't that matter?"

Death gave him a look.

NO.

Modo straightened up, and paused to admire his rosebed, which contained the finest display of pure black roses he'd ever managed to produce. A high magical environment could be useful, sometimes. Their scent hung on the evening air like an encouraging word.

The flower-bed erupted.