'Yes.'
'You a druid, den?'
'No!' There was silence again as the troll marshalled its thoughts. 'You look like a druid in dat nightie,' it rumbled, after a while.
The dwarf on the other side of Imp began to snigger. Trolls disliked druids, too. Any sapient species which spends a lot of time in a stationary, rock-like pose objects to any other species which drags it sixty miles on rollers and buries it up to its knees in a circle. It tends to feel it has cause for disgruntlement. 'Everyone dresses like this in Llamedos, see,' said Imp. 'But I'm a bard! I'm not a druid. I hate rocks!'
'Whoops,' said the dwarf quietly. The troll looked Imp up and down, slowly and deliberately. Then it said, without any particular trace of menace, 'You not long in dis town?'
'Just arrived,' said Imp. I won't even reach the door, he thought. I'm going to be mashed into a pullp. 'Here is some free advice what you should know. It is free advice I am giving you gratis for nothing. In dis town, “rock” is a word for troll. A bad word for troll used by stupid humans. You call a troll a rock, you got to be prepared to spend some time looking for your head. Especially if you looks a bit elvish around de ears. Dis is free advice 'cos you are a bard and maker of music, like me.'
'Right! Thank you! Yes!' said Imp, awash with relief. He grabbed his harp and played a few notes. That seemed to lighten the atmosphere a bit. Everyone knew elves had never been able to play music. 'Lias Bluestone,' said the troll, extending something massive with fingers on it. 'Imp y Celyn,' said Imp. 'Nothing to do with moving rocks around at allll in any way!' A smaller, more knobbly hand was thrust at Imp from another direction. His gaze travelled up its associated arm, which was the property of the dwarf. He was small, even for a dwarf. A large bronze horn lay across his knees. 'Glod Glodsson,' said the dwarf. 'You just play the harp?'
'Anything with strings on it,' said Imp. 'But the harp is the queen of instruments, see.'
'I can blow anything,' said Glod. 'Realllly?' said Imp. He sought for some polite comment. 'That must make you very popullar.' The troll heaved a big leather sack off the floor. 'Dis is what I play,' he said. A number of large round rocks tumbled out on to the floor. Lias picked one up and flicked it with a finger. It went bam. 'Music made from rocks?' said Imp. 'What do you callll it?'
'We call it Ggroohauga,' said Lias, 'which means, music made from rocks.' The rocks were all of different sizes, carefully tuned here and there by small nicks carved out of the stone. 'May I?' said Imp. 'Be my guest.' Imp selected a small rock and flicked it with his finger. It went bop. A smaller one went bing. 'What do you do with them?' he said. 'I bang them together.'
'And then what?'
'What do you mean, “And then what?”'
'What do you do after you've banged them together?'
'I bang them together again,' said Lias, one of nature's drummers. The door to the inner room opened and a man with a pointed nose peered around it. 'You lot together?' he snapped. There was indeed a river, according to legend, one drop of which would rob a man of his memory. Many people assumed that this was the river Ankh, whose waters can be drunk or even cut up and chewed. A drink from the Ankh would quite probably rob a man of his memory, or at least cause things to happen to him that he would on no account wish to recall. In fact there was another river that would do the trick. There was, of course, a snag. No-one knows where it is, because they're always pretty thirsty when they find it. Death turned his attention elsewhere. 'Seventy-five dollllars?' said Imp. 'Just to pllay music?'
'That's twenty-five dollars registration fee, twenty per cent of fees, and fifteen dollars voluntary compulsory annual subscription to the Pension Fund,' said Mr Clete, secretary of the Guild. 'But we haven't got that much money!' The man gave a shrug which indicated that, although the world did indeed have many problems, this was one of them that was not his. 'But maybe we shallll be ablle to pay when we've earned some,' said Imp weakly. 'If you could just, you know, llet us have a week or two-'
'Can't let you play anywhere without you being members of the Guild,' said Mr Clete. 'But we can't be members of the Guild until we've played,' said Glod. 'That's right,' said Mr Clete cheerfully. 'Hat. Hat. Hat.' It was a strange laugh, totally mirthless and vaguely birdlike. It was very much like its owner, who was what you would get if you extracted fossilized genetic material from something in amber and then gave it a suit. Lord Vetinari had encouraged the growth of the Guilds. They were the big wheels on which the clockwork of a well-regulated city ran. A drop of oil here . . . a spoke inserted there, of course . . . and by and large it all worked. And gave rise, in the same way that compost gives rise to worms, to Mr Clete. He was not, by the standard definitions, a bad man; in the same way a plague-bearing rat is not, from a dispassionate point of view, a bad animal. Mr Clete worked hard for the benefit of his fellow men. He devoted his life to it. For there are
many things in the world that need doing that people don't want to do and were grateful to Mr Clete for doing for them. Keeping minutes, for example. Making sure the membership roll was quite up to date. Filing. Organizing. He'd worked hard on behalf of the Thieves' Guild, although he hadn't been a thief, at least in the sense normally meant. Then there'd been a rather more senior vacancy in the Fools' Guild, and Mr Clete was no fool. And finally there had been the secretaryship of the Musicians. Technically, he should have been a musician. So he bought a comb and paper. Since up until that time the Guild had been run by real musicians, and therefore the membership roll was unrolled and hardly anyone had paid any dues lately and the organization owed several thousand dollars to Chrysoprase the troll at punitive interest, he didn't even have to audition. When Mr Clete had opened the first of the unkempt ledgers and looked at the unorganized mess, he had felt a deep and wonderful feeling. Since then, he'd never looked back. He had spent a long time looking down. And although the Guild had a president and council, it also had Mr Clete, who took the minutes and made sure things ran smoothly and smiled very quietly to himself. It is a strange but reliable fact that whenever men throw off the yoke of tyrants and set out to rule themselves there emerges, like a mushroom after rain, Mr Clete. Hat. Hat. Hat. Mr Clete laughed at things in inverse proportion to the actual humour of the situation. 'But that's nonsense!'
'Welcome to the wonderful world of the Guild economy,' said Mr Clete. 'Hat. Hat. Hat.'
'What happens if we pllay without belonging to the Guilld, then?' said Imp. 'Do you confiscate our instruments?'
'To start with,' said the president. 'And then we sort of give them back to you. Hat. Hat. Hat. Incidentally . . . you're not elvish, are you?'
'Seventy-five dollars is criminall,' said Imp, as they plodded along the evening streets. 'Worse than criminal,' said Glod. 'I hear the Thieves' Guild just charges a percentage.'
'And dey give you a proper Guild membership and everything,' Lias rumbled. 'Even a pension. And dey have a day trip to Quirm and a picnic every year.'
'Music should be free,' said Imp. 'So what we going to do now?' said Lias. 'Anyone got any money?' said Glod. 'Got a dollar,' said Lias. 'Got some pennies,' said Imp. 'Then we're going to have a decent meal,' said Glod. 'Right here.' He pointed up at a sign. 'Gimlet's Hole Food?' said Lias. 'Gimlet? Sounds dwarfish. Vermincelli and stuff?'
'Now he's doing troll food too,' said Glod. 'Decided to put aside ethnic differences in the cause of making more money. Five types of coal, seven types of coke and ash, sediments to make you dribble. You'll like it.'
'Dwarf bread too?' said Imp. 'You like dwarf bread?' said Glod. 'Llove it; said Imp. 'What, proper dwarf bread?' said Glod. 'You sure?'
'Yes. It's nice and crunchy, see.' Glod shrugged. 'That proves it,' he said. 'No-one who likes dwarf bread can be elvish.' The place was almost empty. A dwarf in an apron that came up to its armpits watched them over the top of the counter. 'You do fried rat?' said Glod. 'Best damn fried rat in the city,' said Gimlet. 'OK. Give me four fried rats.'
'And some dwarf bread,' said Imp. 'And some coke,' said Lias patiently. 'You mean rat heads or rat legs?'
'No. Four fried rats.'
'And some coke.'
'You want ketchup on those rats?'