Guards Guards - Library

The crawling lines spread like a web over the city, growing fainter with distance. Vimes imagined them creeping through windows and sneaking under doors.

“It looks as though it's searching for something!” he shouted.

"Then getting away before it finds it is a first-class idea, don't you think?"

A tongue of fire hit the dark Tower of Art, slid blindly down its ivy-grown flanks, and disappeared through the dome of Unseen University's Library.

The other lines blinked out.

Lady Ramkin brought the coach to a halt at the far side of the square.

“What does it want the Library for?” she said, frowning.

“Maybe it wants to look something up?”

“Don't be silly,” she said breezily. “There's just a lot of books in there. What would a flash of lightning want to read?”

“Something very short?”

“I really think you could try to be a bit more help.”

The line of light exploded into an arc between the Library's dome and the centre of the plaza and hung hi the air, a band of brilliance several feet across.

Then, in a sudden rush, it became a sphere of fire which grew swiftly to encompass almost all the plaza, vanished suddenly, and left the night full of ringing, violet shadows.

And the plaza full of dragon.

Who would have thought it? So much power, so close at hand. The dragon could feel the magic flowing into it, renewing it from second to second, hi defiance of all boring physical laws. This wasn't the poor fere it had been given before. This was the right stuff. There was no end to what it could do, with power like this.

But first it had to pay its respects to certain people . . .

It sniffed the dawn air. It was searching for the stink of minds.

Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.

***

Guards Guards - p196-197