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The albatross descendedin wide, slow sweeps that ended in an undignified flurry of feathers and a thump as it landed heavily on its platform in the Patrician’s bird garden.
The custodian of the birds, dozing in the sun and hardly expecting a long-distance message so soon after this morning’s arrival, jerked to his feet and looked up. A few moments later he was scuttling through the palace’s corridors holding the message capsule and—owing to carelessness brought on by surprise—sucking at the nasty beak wound on the back of his hand
Rincewind pounded down an alley, paying no heed to the screams of rage coming from the picture box and cleared a high wall with his frayed robe flapping around him like the feathers of a dishevelled jackdaw. He landed in the forecourt of a carpet shop, scattering the merchandise and customers dived through its rear exit trailing apologies, skidded down another alley and stopped, teetering dangerously, just as he was about to plunge unthinkingly into the Ankh.
There are said to be some mystic rivers—one drop of which can steal a man’s life away. After its turbid passage through the twin cities the Ankh could have been one of them.
In the distance the cries of rage took on a shrill note of terror. Rincewind looked around desperately for a boat, or a handhold up the sheer walls on either side of him.
He was trapped.
Unbidden, the Spell welled up in his mind. It was perhaps untrue to say that he had learned it; it had learned him. The episode had led to his expulsion from Unseen University, because, for a bet, he had dared to open the pages of the last remaining copy of the creators own grimoire, The Octavo, while the University librarian was otherwise engaged.. The spell had leapt out of the page and instantly burrowed deeply into his mind, from whence even the combined talents of the Faculty of Medicine had been unable to coax it. Precisely which one it was they were also unable to ascertain, except that it was one of the eight basic spells that were intricately interwoven with the very fabric of time and space itself.
Since then it had been showing a worrying tendency, when Rincewind was feeling rundown or especially threatened, to try to get itself said. He clenched his teeth together but the first syllable forced itself around the corner of his mouth. His left hand raised involuntarily and, as the magical force whirled him round, began to give off octarine sparks…
The Luggage hurtled around the corner, its several hundred knees moving like pistons. Rincewind gaped. The spell died, unsaid.
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