The Fifth Elephant (25 page)

“Dat’s right, sir,” the troll rumbled. “You distinctly said to say dat—”

“Anyway, we’d better be goi—Good grief, is that Cheery?”

“Yes, sir,” said Cheery nervously.

Well, thought Vimes, she comes from a family where people go off in strange clothes to face explosions far away from the sun.

“Very nice,” he said.

Lamps were lit all along the tunnel to what Vimes had come to think of as Downtown Bonk. Dwarf guards waved the coach through after mere glances at the Ankh-Morpork crest. The ones around the giant elevator were more uncertain. But Sam Vimes had learned a lot from watching Lady Sybil. She didn’t mean to act like that, but she’d been born to it, into a class which had always behaved this way: You went through the world as if there was
no possibility
that anyone would stop you or question you, and most of the time that’s exactly what didn’t happen.

There were others in the elevator as it rumbled downward. Mostly they were diplomats that Vimes didn’t recognize, but there was also, now, in a roped-off corner, a quartet of dwarf musicians playing pleasant yet slightly annoying music that ate its way into Vimes’s head as the interminable descent went on.

When the doors opened he heard Sybil gasp.

“I thought you said it was like a starry night down here, Sam!”

“Er…they’ve certainly turned the wick up…”

Candles by the thousand burned in brackets all around the walls of the huge cavern, but it was the chandeliers that caught the eye.

There were scores of them, each at least four stories high. Vimes, always ready to look for the wires behind the smoke and mirrors, made out the dwarfs working inside the gantries and the baskets of fresh candles being lowered through holes in the ceiling. If the Fifth Elephant wasn’t a myth, at least one whole toe must be being burned tonight.

“Your Grace!”

Dee was advancing through the crowds.

“Ah, Ideas-taster,” said Vimes. as the dwarf approached, “do allow me to introduce the Duchess of Ankh-Morpork…Lady Sybil.”

“Uh…er…yes…indeed…so delighted to make your acquaintance…” Dee murmured, caught off-guard by the charm offensive. “But, er…”

Sybil had picked up the code. Vimes loathed the word “duchess,” so if he was using it then he wanted her to out-dutch everyone. She enveloped Dee’s pointy head in delighted Duchessness.

“Mister Dee, Sam has told me
so
much about you!” she trilled. “I understand you’re
quite
the right-hand man—”

“—dwarf—” hissed Vimes.

“—dwarf to his majesty! Please, you
must
tell how you have achieved such a
delightful
lighting effect here!”

“Er…lots of candles…” Dee muttered, glaring at Vimes.

“I think Dee wishes to discuss some political matters with me, dear,” said Vimes smoothly, putting his hand on the dwarf’s shoulder. “If you’ll just take the others down, I’ll join you shortly, I’m sure.” And he knew that no power in the world was going to prevent Sybil sweeping on down to the reception. That woman could
sweep
. Things stayed swept after she’d gone past.

“You brought a troll, you brought a
troll
!” muttered Dee.

“And he’s an Ankh-Morpork citizen, remember,” said Vimes. “Covered by diplomatic immunity and a rather bad suit.”

“Even so—”

“There is no ‘even so,’” said Vimes.

“We are at
war
with the trolls!”

“Well, that’s what diplomacy is all about, isn’t it?” said Vimes. “A way to
stop
being at war? Anyway, I understand it’s been going on for five hundred years, so obviously no one is trying very hard.”

“There will be complaints at the very highest level!”

Vimes sighed. “More?” he said.

“Some are saying Ankh-Morpork is deliberately flaunting its wickedness at the king!”

“The king?” said Vimes pleasantly. “He’s not
exactly
king yet, is he? Not until the coronation, which involves a certain…bject…”

“Yes, but of course that is a mere formality…”

Vimes moved closer.

“But it isn’t, is it?” he said quietly. “It is the thing and the whole of the thing. Without the magic, there is no king. Just someone like you, unaccountably giving orders.”

“Someone called Vimes teaches me about royalty?” said Dee, miserably.

“And without the thing, all the bets are off,” said Vimes. “There will be a war. Explosions underground.”

There was a tinny little sound as he took out his watch and opened it.

“My word, it’s midnight,” he said.

“Follow me,” Dee muttered.

“Am I being taken to see something?” said Vimes.

“No, Your Excellency. You are being taken to see where something is not.”

“Ah. Then I want to bring Corporal Littlebottom.”

“
That?
Absolutely not! That would be a desecration of—”

“No, it wouldn’t,” said Vimes. “And the reason is, she
won’t
come with us because we’re
not
going, are we? You’re certainly not taking the representative of a potentially hostile power into your confidence and revealing that your house of cards is missing a card on the bottom layer, are you? Of course not. We are not having this conversation. For the next hour or so we’ll be nibbling tidbits in this room. I haven’t even just said this, and you didn’t hear me. But Corporal Littlebottom is the best scene-of-crime officer I’ve got, and so I want her to come along with us.”

“You’ve made your point, Your Excellency. Graphically, as always. Fetch her, then.”

Vimes found Cheery standing back to back, or at least back to knees, with Detritus. They were surrounded by a ring of the curious. Whenever Detritus raised his hand to sip his drink, the nearby dwarfs jumped back hurriedly.

“Where are we going, sir?”

“Nowhere.”

“Ah. That sort of place.”

“But things are looking up,” said Vimes. “Dee has discovered a new pronoun, even if he does spit it.”

“Sam!” said Lady Sybil, advancing through the throng, “They’re going to perform ‘Bloodaxe and Ironhammer’! Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Er…”

“It’s an opera, sir,” Cheery whispered. “Part of the Koboldean Cycle. It’s
history
. Every dwarf knows it by heart. It’s about how we got laws, and kings…and the Scone, sir.”

“I sung the part of Ironhammer when we did it at finishing school,” said Lady Sybil. “Not the full five-week version, of course. It’d be marvelous to see it done here. It’s really one of the great romances of history.”

“Romances?” said Vimes. “Like…a love story?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Bloodaxe and Ironhammer were both…er…weren’t both…” Vimes began.

“They were both
dwarfs
, sir,” said Cheery.

“Ah. Of course.” Vimes gave up. All dwarfs were dwarfs. If you tried to understand their world from a human point of view, it all went wrong. “Do, er, enjoy it, dear. I’ve got to…the king wants me to…I’ll just be somewhere else for a while…politics…”

He hurried away, with Cheery trailing behind him.

Dee led the way led through dark tunnels. When the opera began it was a whisper far away, like the sea in an ancient shell.

Eventually they stopped at the edge of a canal, its waters lapping at the darkness. A small boat was tethered there, with a waiting guard. Dee urged them into it.

“It is important that you understand what you are seeing, Your Grace,” said Dee.

“Practically nothing,” said Vimes. “And I thought
I
had good night vision.”

There was a clink in the gloom, and then a lamp was lit. The guard was punting the boat under an arch and into a small lake. Apart from the tunnel entrance, the walls rose up sheer.

“Are we at the bottom of a well?” said Vimes.

“That is quite a good way of describing it.” Dee fished under his seat. He produced a curved metal horn and blew one note, which echoed up the rock walls.

After a few seconds another note floated down from the top. There was a clanking, as of heavy, ancient chains.

“This is quite a short lift compared to some up in the mountains,” said Dee, as an iron plate ground across the entrance, sealing it. “There’s one half a mile high that will take a string of barges…”

Water boiled beside the boat. Vimes saw the walls begin to sink.

“This is the
only
way to the Scone,” said Dee behind him.

Now the boat was rocking in the bubbling water and the walls were blurred.

“Water is diverted into reservoirs up near the peaks. Then it is simply a matter of opening and closing sluices, you see?”

“Yes,” mumbled Vimes, experiencing vertigo and seasickness in one tight green package.

The walls slowed. The boat stopped shaking. Smoothly, the water lifted them over the lip of the well and into a little channel, where there was a dock.

“Any guards below?” Vimes managed, stepping out onto the blessedly solid stone.

“There are usually four,” said Dee. “For tonight I…arranged matters. The guards understand. No one is proud of this. I must tell you, I disapprove
most strongly
of this enterprise.”

Vimes looked around the new cave. A couple of dwarfs were standing on a lip of stone which overlooked what was now a placid pool. By the look of it, they were the ones who operated the machinery.

“Shall we proceed?” said the dwarf.

There was a passage leading off the cave, which rapidly narrowed. Vimes had to bend almost double along one length. At one point metal plates clanked under his feet, and he felt them shift slightly. Then he was standing almost upright again, passing under another arch, and there…

Either the dwarfs had cut into a huge geode, or they had with great care lined this small cave with quartz crystals until every surface reflected the light of the two small candles that stood on pillars in the middle of the sandy floor. The effect dazzled even Vimes, after the darkness of the tunnels.

“Behold,” said Dee gloomily, “where the Scone should be…”

A round flat stone, midway between the candles and only a few inches high, clearly contained nothing.

Behind it, water bubbled up in a natural basin and split into two streams that flowed around the stone and disappeared again into another stone funnel.

“All right,” said Vimes. “Tell me everything.”

“It was found missing three days ago,” said Dee. “Dozy Longfinger found it gone when he unlocked the door to replace the candles.”

“And his job is…?”

“Captain of the Candles.”

“Ah.”

“It’s a very responsible position.”

“I’ve seen the chandeliers. And how often does he go in there?”

“He went in there every day.”

“Went?”

“He no longer holds the position.”

“Because he’s a prime suspect?” said Vimes.

“Because he’s dead.”

“And how did that happen?” said Vimes, slowly and deliberately.

“He…took his own life. We are certain of this, because we had to break down the door of his cave. He’d had been Captain of the Candles for sixty years. I do not think he could bear the thought of suspicion falling on him.”

“To me he
does
sound a likely suspect.”

“He did not steal the Scone. We know that much.”

“But the robes you people wear could hide practically anything. Was he searched?”

“Certainly not! But…I shall demonstrate,” said Dee. He walked off along the narrow, metal-floored corridor.

“Can you see me, Your Excellency?”

“Yes, of course.”

The floor rattled as Dee came back. “Now this time I will carry something…your helmet, if you please? Just for the demonstration…”

Vimes handed it to him. The Ideas-taster walked back down the corridor. When he was halfway, a gong boomed and two metal grids dropped down out of the ceiling. A few seconds after that guards appeared at the far grille, peering in suspiciously.

Dee said a few words to them. The faces vanished. After a while, the grilles rose slowly.

“The mechanism is complex and quite old but we keep it in good working order,” he said, handing Vimes his helmet. “If you weigh more going out than going in, the guards will want to know why. It is unavoidable, it is still accurate to within a few ounces, and does not violate privacy. The only way to beat it would be to fly. Can thieves fly, Your Excellency?”

“Depends on which sort,” said Vimes absently. “Who else goes in there?”

“Once every six days the chamber is inspected by myself and two guards. The last inspection was five days ago.”

“Does anyone else go in there?” said Vimes. He noticed that Cheery had picked up a handful of the off-white sand that formed the floor of the Scone cave and was letting it run between her fingers.

“Not lately. When the new king is crowned, of course, the Scone will often be brought forth for various ceremonial purposes.”

“Do you only get that white sand in here?”

“Yes. Is that important?”

Vimes saw Cheery nod.

“I’m not…sure,” he said. “Tell me, what intrinsic value has the Scone?”

“Intrinsic? It’s priceless!”

“I know it’s valuable as a symbol, but what is it’s value in
itself
?”

“Priceless!”

“I’m trying to work out why a thief might want to steal it,” said Vimes, as patiently as he could.

Cheery had lifted up the flat round stone and was looking underneath it. Vimes pursed his lips.

“What is…
she
doing?” said Dee. The pronoun dripped with distaste.

“Constable Littlebottom is looking for clues,” said Vimes. “They are what we call…signs, which may help us. It’s a skill.”

“Would this letter speed your search?” said Dee. “It has writing on it. That is what we call…signs, which may help you.”

Vimes looked at the proffered paper. It was brown, and quite stiff, and covered in runes.

“I, er, can’t read those,” he said.

“It’s a skill,” said Dee, solemnly.

“I can, sir,” said Cheery. “Allow me?”

She took the paper and read it.

“Er…it appears to be a ransom note, sir. From…the Sons of Agi Hammerthief. They say they have the Scone and will…they say they’ll destroy it, sir.”