Discworld 16 - Soul Music Read online

  “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 der eyes. 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 all in any way!”

  A smaller, more knobbly hand was thrust at Imp from another direction. His gaze traveled 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 popular.”

  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 onto 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 hacked in 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 dollars?” said Imp. “Just to play music?”

  “That’s twenty-five dollars registration fee, thirty-five dollars up front against 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 that indicated that, although the world did indeed have many problems, this was one of them that was not his.

  “But maybe we shall 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, Mr. Clete didn’t even have to audition.

  When Mr. Clete had opened the first of the unkempt ledgers and looked at the disorganized 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 humor 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 bellonging to the Guilld, then?” said Imp. “Do you confiscate our instruments?”

  “To start with,” said the secretary. “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.

  “Okay. 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?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “No ketchup.”

  “And some coke.”

  “And two hard-boilled eggs,” said Imp. The others gave him an odd look.

  “Well? I just like hard-boilled eggs, see,” he said.

  “And some coke.”

  “And two hard-boilled eggs.”

  “And some coke.”

  “Seventy-five dollars,” said Glod, as they sat down. “What’s three times seventy-five dollars?”

  “Many dollars,” said Lias.

  “More than two hundred dollllars,” said Imp.

  “I don’t think I’ve even seen two hundred dollars,” said Glod. “Not while I’ve been awake.”

  “We raise money?” said Lias.

  “We can’t raise money by being musicians,” said Imp. “It’s the Guild law. If they catch you they take your instrument and shove—” He stopped. “Let’s just say it’s not much fun for the piccollo pllayer,” he added from memory.

  “I shouldn’t think the trombonist is very happy either,” said Glod, putting some pepper on his rat.

  “I can’t go back home now,” said Imp, “I said I’d…I can’t go back home yet. Even if I could, I’d have to raise monolliths like my brothers. Alll they care about is stone circles.”

  “If I go back home now,” said Lias, “I’ll be clubbing druids.”

  They both, very carefully, sidled a little farther away from each other.

  “Then we play somewhere where the Guild won’t find us,” said Glod cheerfully. “We find a club somewhere—”

  “Got a club,” said Lias, proudly. “Got a nail in it.”

  “I mean a nightclub,” said Glod.

  “Still got a nail in it at night.”

  “I happen to know,” said Glod, abandoning that line of conversation, “that there’s a lot of places in the city that don’t like paying Guild rates. We could do a few gigs and raise the money with no trouble.”

  “All three of us together?” said Imp.

  “Sure.”

  “But we pllay dwarf music and human music and trolll music,” said Imp. “I’m not sure they’lll go together. I mean, dwarfs listen to dwarf music, humans listen to human music, trollls listen to trolll music. What do we get if we mix it alll together? It’d be dreadfull.”

  “We’re getting along okay,” said Lias, getting up and fetching the salt from the counter.

  “We’re musicians,” said Glod. “It’s not the same with real people.”

  “Yeah, right,” said the troll.

  Lias sat down.

  There was a cracking noise.

  Lias stood up.

  “Oh,” he said.

  Imp reached over. Slowly and with great care, he picked the remains of his harp off the bench.

  “Oh,” said Lias, again.

  A string curled back with a sad little sound.

  It was like watching the death of a kitten.

  “I won that at the Eisteddfod,” said Imp.

  “Could you glue it back together?” said Glod, eventually.

  Imp shook his head.

  “There’s no one left in Llamedos who knows how, see.”

  “Yes, but in the Street of Cunning Artificers—”

  “I’m real sorry. I mean real sorry, I don’t know how it got dere.”

  “It wasn’t your faullt.”

  Imp tried, ineffectually, to fit a couple of pieces together. But you couldn’t repair a musical instrument. He remembered the old bards saying that. They had a soul. All instruments had a soul. If they were broken, the soul of them escaped, flew away like a bird. What was put together again was just a thing, a mere assemblage of wood and wire. It would play, it might even deceive the casual listener, but…You might as well push someone over a cliff and then stitch them together and expect them to come alive.

  “Um…maybe we could get you another one, then?” said Glod. “There’s…a nice little music shop in The Backs—”

  He stopped. Of course there was a nice little music shop in The Backs. It had always been there.

  “In The Backs,” he repeated, just to make sure. “Bound to get one there. In The Backs. Yes. Been there years.”

  “Not one of these,” said Imp. “Before a craftsmen even touches the wood he has to spend two weeks sitting wrapped in a bullock hide in a cave behind a waterfallll.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It’s traditionall. He has to get his mind pure of allll distractions.”

  “There’s bound to be something else, though,” said Glod. “We’ll buy something. You can’t be a musician without an instrument.”

  “I haven’t got any money,” said Imp.

  Glod slapped him on the back. “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’ve got friends! We’ll help you! Least we can do.”

  “But we all spent everything we had on this meal. There’s no more money,” said Imp.

  “That’s a negative way of looking at it,” said Glod.

  “Wellll, yes. We haven’t got any, see?”

  “I’ll sort out something,” said Glod. “I’m a dwarf. We know about money. Knowing about money is practically my middle name.”

  “That a long middle name.”

  It was almost dark when they reached the shop, which was right opposite the high walls of Unseen University. It looked like the kind of musical instrument emporium which doubles as a pawnshop, since every musician has at some time in his life to hand over his instrument if he wants to eat and sleep indoors.

  “You ever bought anything in here?” said Lias.

  “No…not that I remember,” said Glod.

  “It shut,” said Lias.

  Glod hammered on the door. After a while it opened a crack, just enough to reveal a thin slice of face belonging to an old woman.

  “We want to buy an instrument, ma’am,” said Imp.

  One eye and a slice of mouth looked him up and down.

  “You human?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “All right, then.”

  The shop was lit by a couple of candles. The old woman retired to the safety of the counter, where she watched them very carefully for any signs of murdering her in her bed.

  The trio moved carefully amongst the merchandise. It seemed that the shop had accumulated its stock from unclaimed pledges over the centuries. Musicians were often short of money; it was one definition of a musician. There were battle horns. There were lutes. There were drums.

  “This is junk,” said Imp under his breath.

  Glod blew the dust off a crumhorn and put it to his lips, achieving a sound like the ghost of a refried bean.

  “I reckon there’s a dead mouse in here,” he said, peering into the depths.

  “It was all right before you blew it,” snapped the old woman.

  There was an avalanche of cymbals from the other end of the shop.

  “Sorry,” Lias called out.

  Glod opened the lid of an instrument that was entirely unfamiliar to Imp. It revealed a row of keys; Glod ran his stumpy fingers over them, producing a sequence of sad, tinny notes.

  “What is it?” whispered Imp.

  “A virginal,” said the dwarf.

  “Any good to us?”

  “Shouldn’t think so.”

  Imp straightened up. He felt that he was being watched. The old lady was watching, but there was something else…

  “
It’s no use. There’s nothing here,” he said loudly.

  “Hey, what was that?” said Glod.

  “I said there’s—”

  “I heard something.”

  “What?”

  “There it is again.”

  There was a series of crashes and thumps behind them as Lias liberated a double bass from a drift of old music stands and tried to blow down the sharp bit.

  “There was a funny sound when you spoke,” said Glod. “Say something.”

  Imp hesitated as people do when, after having used a language all their lives, they’ve been told to ‘say something.’

  “Imp?” he said.

  WHUM-Whum-whum.

  “It came from—”

  WHAA-Whaa-whaa.

  Glod lifted aside a pile of ancient sheet music. There was a musical graveyard behind it, including a skinless drum, a set of Lancre bagpipes without the pipes, and a single maraca, possibly for use by a Zen flamenco dancer.

  And something else.

  The dwarf pulled it out. It looked, vaguely, like a guitar carved out of a piece of ancient wood by a blunt stone chisel. Although dwarfs did not, as a rule, play stringed instruments, Glod knew a guitar when he saw one. They were supposed to be shaped like a woman, but this was only the case if you thought a woman had no legs, a long neck, and too many ears.

  “Imp?” he said.

  “Yes?”

  Whauauaum. The sound had a saw-edged, urgent fringe to it.

  There were twelve strings, but the body of the instrument was solid wood, not at all hollow—it was more or less just a shape to hold the strings.

  “It resonated to your voice,” said Glod.

  “How can—?”

  Whaum-wha.

  Glod clamped his hand over the strings and beckoned the other two closer.

  “We’re right by the University here,” he whispered. “Magic leaks out. It’s a well-known fact. Or maybe some wizard pawned it. Don’t look a gift rat in the mouth. Can you play a guitar?”

  Imp went pale.

  “You mean like…follk music?”

  He took the instrument. Folk music was not approved of in Llamedos, and the singing of it was rigorously discouraged; it was felt that anyone espying a fair young maiden one morning in May was entitled to take whatever steps he considered appropriate without someone writing it down. Guitars were frowned upon as being, well…too easy.