Guards Guards - Portal

Errol stopped in mid-crunch.

Very slowly, as though it was mounted on very smooth, well-oiled bearings, the dragon's head turned to face upwards.

What it was staring at intently was a patch of empty air. There wasn't much else you could say about it.

Vimes shivered under his cape. This was daft.

“Look, don't muck about,” he said, “there's nothing there.”

Errol started to tremble.

“It's just the rain,” said Vimes. “Go on, finish your bottle. Nice bottle.”

A thin, worried keening noise broke from the dragon's mouth.

“I'll show you,” said Vimes. He cast around and spotted one of Throat's sausages, cast aside by a hungry reveller who had decided he was never going to be that hungry. He picked it up.

“Look,” he said, and threw it upwards.

He felt sure, watching its trajectory, that it ought to have fallen back to the ground. It shouldn't have fallen away, as if he'd dropped it neatly into a tunnel in the sky. And the tunnel shouldn't have been looking back at him.

Vivid purple lightning lashed from the empty air and struck the houses on the near side of the plaza, skittering across the walls for several yards before sinking out with a suddenness that almost denied that it had ever happened at all.

Then it erupted again, this time hitting the rimward wall. The light broke where it hit into a network of searching tendrils spreading across the stones.

The third attempt went upwards, forming an actinic column that eventually rose fifty or sixty feet in the air, appeared to stabilise, and started to spin slowly.

Vimes felt that a comment was called for. He said: “Arrgh.”

As the light revolved it sent out thin zigzag streamers that jittered away across the rooftops, sometimes dipping, sometimes doubling back. Searching.

Errol ran up Vimes's back in a flurry of claws and fastened himself firmly on his shoulder. The excruciating agony recalled to Vimes that there was something he should be doing. Was it time to scream again? He tried another “Arrgh”. No, probably not.

The air started to smell like burning tin.

***

Guards Guards - p194