Another ladder was eased down and the wizards, with some care, joined him. Archchancellor Rincewind was holding a staff with a glowing end.
‘Found anything?’ he said.
‘Well, yes. I wouldn’t shake hands with anyone called B. Smoth,’ said Rincewind.
‘Oh, the Dean’s not a bad bloke when you get to know him — What’s up?’
Rincewind pointed to the far end of the room.
There, on a door, someone had drawn some pointy hats, in red. They glistened in the light.
‘My word. Blood,’ said Rincewind.
His cousin ran a finger over it. ‘It’s ochre,’ he said. ‘Clay …’
The door led to another cellar. There were a few empty barrels, some broken crates, and nothing else except musty darkness.
Dust whirled up on the floor from the draught of their movement, in a series of tiny, inverted whirlwinds. Pointy hats again.
‘Hmm, solid walls all round,’ said Bill. ‘Better pick a direction, mate.’
Rincewind had a drink, shut his eyes and pointed a finger at random.
‘That way!’
The Luggage plunged forward and struck the brickwork, which fell away to reveal a dark space beyond.
Rincewind stuck his head through. All the builders had done was wall up and square off a part of a cave. From the feel of the air, it was quite a large one.
Neilette and the wizards climbed through behind him.
‘I’m sure this place wasn’t here when the brewery was built!’ said Neilette.
‘It’s big,’ said the Dean. ‘How’d it get made?’
‘Water,’ said Rincewind.
‘You what? Water makes great big holes in rock?’
‘Yes. Don’t ask me why— What was that?’
‘What?’
‘Did you hear something?’
‘You said, “What was that?”’
Rincewind sighed. The cold air was sobering him up.
‘You really are wizards, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Real honest-to-goodness wizards. You’ve got hats that’re more brim than point, the whole university’s made of tin, you’ve got a tiny tower which is, I must admit, good grief, a lot taller on the outside, but you’re wizards all right, and will you now, please, shut up?’
In the silence there was, very faintly, a plink.
Rincewind stared into the depths of the cave. The light from the staffs only made them worse. It cast shadows. Darkness was just darkness, but anything could be hiding in shadows.
‘These caves must’ve been explored,’ he said. It was a hope rather than a statement. History here was rather a rubbery thing.
‘Never heard of ’em,’ said the Dean.
‘Points again, look,’ said Bill, as they advanced.
‘Just stalactites and stalagmites,’ said Rincewind. ‘I don’t know how it works, but water drips on stuff and leaves piles of stuff. Takes thousands of years. Perfectly ordinary.’
‘Is this the same kind of water that floats through the sky and gouges out big caves in rocks?’ said the Dean.
‘Er … yes … er, obviously,’ said Rincewind.
‘It’s good luck for us we only have the drinking and washing sort, then.’
‘Had,’ said Rincewind.
There were hurrying feet behind them and a junior wizard ran up, holding a plate covered with a lid.
‘Got the last one!’ he said. ‘It’s a gourmet pie, too.’
He lifted the lid. Rincewind stared, and swallowed. ‘Oh dear …’
‘What’s up?’
‘Have you got some more of that beer? I think I might be losing … concentration …’
His cousin stepped forward, ripping the top off a can of Funnelweb.
‘Cartwright, you cover that pie up and keep it warm. Rincewind, you drink this.’
They watched him drain the tin.
‘Right, mate,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘How about a nice meat pie upside down in a big bowl of mushy green peas covered with tomato sauce?’
He looked at the colour change on Rincewind’s face, and nodded.
‘You need another tin,’ he said firmly.
They watched him drink this.
‘Okay,’ said the Archchancellor after a while. ‘Now, Rincewind, how about a nice one of Fair Go’s pie floaters, eh? Meat pie in pea soup and tomato sauce?’
Rincewind’s face twitched a bit as amber blessings shut down vital protective systems.
‘Sounds … good,’ he said. ‘Maybe with some coconut on the top?’
The wizards relaxed.
‘So now we know,’ said Archchancellor Rincewind. ‘We’ve got to keep you just drunk enough so that Dibbler’s pies sound tasty, but not so drunk that it causes lasting brain damage.’
‘That’s a very narrow window we’ve got there,’ said the Dean.
Bill looked up at the roof, where the shadows danced among the stalactites, unless they were stalagmites.
‘This is right under the city,’ he said. ‘How come we’ve never heard of it?’
‘Good question,’ said the Dean. ‘The men who built the cellar must’ve seen it.’
Rincewind tried to think. ‘It wasn’t here then,’ he said.
‘You said these stalag things took thousands of—’
‘They probably weren’t here last month but now they’ve been here for thousands of years,’ said Rincewind. He hiccuped. ‘It’s like your tower,’ he said. ‘Taller onna outside.’
‘Huh?’
‘Prob’ly only works here,’ said Rincewind. ‘The more geography you’ve got, the less hist’ry, ever notice that? More space, less time. I bet it only took a second or two for this place to be here for thousands of years, see? Shorter on the outside. Makes serfect pense.’
‘I don’t think I’ve drunk enough beer to understand that,’ said the Dean.
Something nudged him in the back of the legs. He looked down at the Luggage. It was one of its habits to come up so close behind people that, when they looked down, they felt seriously over-feeted.
‘Or this,’ he added.
The wizards grew quieter as Rincewind led them onward. He wasn’t sure who was leading him. Still, no worries.
Contrary to the usual procedures it began to grow lighter, although the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe. In this case, the rocks were glowing, not from some mysterious inner light but simply as though the sun were shining on them, just after dawn.
There are other imperatives that operate on the human brain. One says: the bigger the space, the softer the voice, and refers to the natural tendency to speak very, very quietly when stepping into somewhere huge. So when Archchancellor Rincewind stepped out into the big cave he said, ‘Strewth, it’s bloody big!’ in a low whisper.
The Dean, however, shouted, ‘Coo-eee!’ because there’s always one.
Stalactites crowded the cave here, too, and in the very centre a gigantic stalactite had almost touched its mirror-image stalagmite. The air was chokingly hot.
‘This isn’t right—’ said Rincewind.
Plink.
They spotted the source of the noise eventually. A tiny trickle was making its way down the side of the stalactite and forming droplets that fell a few feet to the stalagmite.
Another drop formed while they watched, and hung there.
One of the wizards clambered up the dry slope and peered at it.
‘It’s not moving,’ he said. ‘The trickle’s drying up. I think … it’s evaporating.’
The Archchancellor turned to Rincewind. ‘Well, we’ve followed you this far, mate,’ he said. ‘What now?’
‘I think I could do with another b—’
‘There’s none left, mate.’