‘Hippopotamus?’
Alligator?’
‘Ocean?’
‘Look, just shut up, all of you!’ shouted Sconner. He hesitated. The darkness seemed to suck at the sound of his voice. It packed the air like feathers.
He pulled himself together a bit.
‘Right then,’ he said, and turned towards the forbidding doors of the Library.
He raised his hands, made a few complicated gestures in which his fingers, in some eye-watering way, appeared to pass through each other, and shattered the doors into sawdust.
The waves of silence poured back again, strangling the sound of falling woodchips.
There was no doubt that the doors were smashed. Four forlorn hinges hung trembling from the frame, and a litter of broken benches and shelves lay in the wreckage. Even Sconner was a little surprised.
‘There,’ he said. ‘It’s as easy as that. You see? Nothing happened to me. Right?’
There was a shuffling of curly-toed boots. The darkness beyond the doorway was limned with the indistinct, eye-aching glow of thaumaturgic radiation as possibility particles exceeded the speed of reality in a strong magical field.
‘Now then,’ said Sconner, brightly, ‘who would like the honour of setting the fire?’
Ten silent seconds later he said, ‘In that case I will do it myself. Honestly, I might as well be talking to the wall.’
He strode through the doorway and hurried across the floor to the little patch of starlight that lanced down from the glass dome high above the centre of the Library (although, of course, there has always been considerable debate about the precise geography of the place; heavy concentrations of magic distort time and space, and it is possible that the Library doesn’t even have an edge, never mind a centre).
He stretched out his arms.
‘There. See? Absolutely nothing has happened. Now come on in.’
The other wizards did so, with great reluctance and a tendency to duck as they passed through the ravished arch.
‘Okay,’ said Sconner, with some satisfaction. ‘Now, has everyone got their matches as instructed? Magical fire won’t work, not on these books, so I want everyone to
‘Something moved up there,’ said the smallest wizard.
Sconner blinked.
‘What?’
‘Something moved up by the dome,’ said the wizard, adding by way of explanation, ‘I saw it.’
Sconner squinted upwards into the bewildering shadows, and decided to exert a bit of authority.
‘Nonsense,’ he said briskly. He pulled out a bundle of foul-smelling yellow matches, and said, ‘Now, I want you all to pile
‘I did see it, you know,’ said the small wizard, sulkily.
‘All right, what did you see?’
‘Well, I’m not exactly-’
‘You don’t know, do you?’ snapped Sconner.
‘I saw someth-’
‘You don’t know!’ repeated Sconner, ‘You’re just seeing shadows, just trying to undermine my authority, isn’t that it?’ Sconner hesitated, and his eyes glazed momentarily. ‘I am calm,’ he intoned, ‘I am totally in control. I will not let ‘