The Light Fantastic

Terry Pratchett

Summary

Rincewind was the most truly inept wizard thlat earth of Discworld had ever known. He was a wizard with only one spell, a spell he would never dare say, one of the Eight Great Spells from the magical Octavo. So powerful was this magic that every ordinary useful spell refused to stay in the wizard's mind for even one instant.

Then the Red Star appeared in the sky -- and everyone finally understood what the Eight Spells were really for ... to ward off the menace of this starry devastation. But the Octavo only had seven spells left. And suddenly the whole planet -- from wizards and warriors to druids and demons -- were after Rincewind.

Yet even if they found him in time, would this inept magician be able to get the only Spell of his life right? Would this be the end of the only honest-to-gosh flat earth -- or some crazy new beginning...?

Quotes

The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn't sure it was worth all the effort.

Great A'Tuin the star turtle, shell frosted with frozen methane, pitted with meteor craters, and scoured with asteroidal dust. Great A'Tuin, with eyes like ancient seas and a brain the size of a continent through which thoughts moved like little glittering glaciers. Great A'Tuin of the great slow sad flippers and star-polished carapace, labouring through the galactic night under the weight of the Disc. As large as worlds. As old as Time. As patient as a brick.

Actually, the philosophers have got it all wrong. Great A'Tuin is in fact having a great time.

Great A'Tuin is the only creature in the entire universe that knows exactly where it is going.

Tumbling past, totally out of control, is the bronze shell of the Potent Voyager, a sort of neolithic spaceship built and pushed over the edge by the astronomer-priests of Krull, which is conveniently situated on the very rim of the world and proves, whatever people say, that there is such a thing as a free launch.

It looked like the sort of book described in library catalogues as "slightly foxed", although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had beed badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.

Galder Weatherwax, Supreme Grand Conjuror of the Order of the Silver star, Lord Imperial of the Sacred Staff, Eighth Level Ipsissimus and 304th Chancellor of Unseen University, wasn't simply an impressive sight even in his red nightshirt with the hand-embroidered mystic runes, even in his long cap with the bobble on, even with the Wee Willie Winkie candlestick in his hand. He even managed to very nearly pull it off in fluffy pompom slippers as well.

...the Bumper Fun Grimoire reputedly contains the one original joke left in the universe.

[Footnote: They won't be described, since even the pretty ones looked like the offspring of an octopus and a bicycle. It is well known that things from undesirable universes are always seeking an entrance into this one, which is the psychic equivalent of handy for the buses and closer to the shops.

"To the upper cellars!" he cried, and bounded up the stone stairs. Slippers flapping and nightshirts billowing the other wizards followed him, falling over one another in their eagerness to be last.

Something was taking shape inside the fireball. Galder shielded his eyes and peered at the thing forming in front of him. There was no mistaking it. It was the universe.

He was quite sure of this, because he had a model of it in his study and it was generally agreed to be far more impressive than the real thing.

It was always a considerable annoyance to any Disc citizen with pretensions to culture that they were ruled by gods whose idea of an uplifting artistic experience was a musical doorbell.

The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh some legislation was passed in a determined attempt to put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty into reporting. Thus, if a legend said of a notable here that "all men spoke of his prowess" any bard who valued his life would add hastily "except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a liar, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him."

...any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.

The Disc, being flat, has no real horizon. Any adventurous sailors who got funny ideas from staring at eggs and oranges for too long and set out for the antipodes soon learned that the reason why distant ships sometimes looked as though they were disappearing over the edge of the world was that they were disappearing over the edge of the world.

Looming high over Unseen University was the grim and ancient Tower of Art, said to be the oldest building on the Disc, with its famous spiral staircase of eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty-eight steps. From its crenelated roof ... a wizard might see to the very edge of the Disc. After spending ten minutes or so coughing horribly, of course.

Besides, there was something disquieting about young Trymon. He didn't smile often enough, and he liked figures and the sort of organisation charts that showed lots of squares with arrows pointing to other squares. In short, he was the sort of man who could use the word "personnel" and mean it.

"It's a Change spell," said Trymon. "The whole world is being changed."

Some people, though Galder grimly, would have had the decency to put an exclamation mark on the end of a statement like that.

Rincewind had been generally reckoned by his tutors to be a natural wizard in the same way that fish are natural mountaineers.

No-one knew what would happen if one of the Eight Great Spells was said by itself, but the general agreement was that the best place from which to watch the effects would be the next universe.

"I suppose you wouldn't happen to know the way out of the forest, possibly, by any chance?"

"No. I don't get about much," said the tree.

"Fairly boring life, I imagine," said Rincewind.

"I wouldn't know. I've never been anything else," said the tree.

In fact Rincewind never spoke to this particular tree again, but from that brief conversation it spun the basis of the first tree religion which, in time, swept the forests of the world. Its tenet of faith was this: a tree that was a good tree, and led a clean, decent and upstanding life, could be assured of a future life after death. If it was very good indeed it would eventually be reincarnated as five thousand rolls of lavatory paper.

Twoflower was a tourist, the first of the species to evolve on the Disc, and fundamental to his very existence was the rock-hard belief that nothing bad could really happen to him because he was not involved.

[Twoflower] also believed that anyone could understand anything he said provided he spoke loudly and slowly, that people were basically trustworthy, and that anything could be sorted out among men of goodwill if they just acted sensibly.

On the face of it this gave him a survival value marginally less than, say, a soap herring, but to Rincewind's amazement it all seemed to work and the little man's total obliviousness to all sorts of danger somehow made danger so discouraged that it gave up and went away.

Twoflower: "But there's some big mushrooms under it. Can you eat them?"
Rincewind: "No, no good to eat at all."
Twoflower: "Why? Are the gills the wrong shade of yellow?"
Rincewind: "No, not really..."
Twoflower: "I expect the stems haven't got the right kind of fluting, then."
Rincewind: "They look okay, actually."
Twoflower: "The cap, then, I expect the cap is the wrong colour."
Rincewind: "Not sure about that."
Twoflower: "Well, then, why can't you eat them?"
Rincewind: "It's the little doors and windows. It's a dead giveaway."

An ancient proverb summed it up: when a wizard is tired of looking for broken glass in his dinner, it ran, he is tired of life.

The oldest wizard, Greyhald Spold of the Ancient and Truly Original Sages of the Unbroken Circle, leaned heavily on his carven staff and spake thusly:

"Get on with it, Weatherwax, my feet are giving me gyp."

"And therefore I propose that we perform the Rite of AshkEnte," said Galder dramatically.

He had to admit that he had hoped for a better response, something on the lines of, well, "No, not the Rite of AshkEnte! Man was not meant to meddle with such things!"

In fact there was a general mutter of approval.

Younger wizards in particular went about saying that it was time that magic started to update its image and that they should all stop mucking about with bits of wax and bone and put the whole thing on a properly-organised basis, with research programmes and three-day conventions in good hotels where they could read papers with titles like "Whither Geomancy?" and "The role of Seven-League Boots in a caring society."

Rams horns, skulls, baroque metalwork and heavy candles were much in evidence, despite the discovery by younger wizards that the Rite of AshkEnte could perfectly well be performed with three small bits of wood and 4 cc of mouse blood.

"Look," said Galder, "just repeat that bit again, will you? The Disc will be what?"

DESTROYED, said Death. CAN I GO NOW? I LEFT MY DRINK.

"Hang on," said Galder hurriedly. "By Cheliliki and Orizone and so forth, what do you mean, destroyed?"

IT'S AN ANCIENT PROPHECY WRITTEN ON THE INNER WALLS OF THE GREAT PYRAMID OF TSORT. THE WORLD DESTROYED SEEMS QUITE SELF-EXPLAINATORY TO ME.

Galder: "I said I hope it is a good party."
Death: AT THE MOMENT IT IS. I THINK IT MIGHT GO DOWNHILL VERY QUICKLY AT MIDNIGHT.
Galder: "Why?"
Death: THAT'S WHEN THEY THINK I'LL BE TAKING MY MASK OFF.

Like many other parts of Unseen University the library occupied rather more space than its outside dimensions would suggest, because magic distorts space in strange ways, and it was probably the only library in the universe with Mobius shelves.

The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called -- in the local language -- Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund.

Rincewind: "Look, he's six inches high and lives in a mushroom. Of course he's a bloody gnome."
Twoflower: "We've only got his word for it."

Rincewind formed a mental picture of some strange entity living in a castle made of teeth. It was the kind of picture you tried to forget. Unsuccessfully.

-- Why a tooth fairy?

A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal sized billiard balls.

Twoflower: "Good grief! A real gingerbread cottage! Rincewind, a real--"
Rincewind: "Yeah, the Confectionary School of Architecture. It never caught on."

[Trymon] read that the Great Pyramid of Tsort, now long vanished, was made of one million, three thousand and ten limestone blocks. He read that ten thousand slaves had been worked to death in its building. He learned that it was a maze of secret passages, their walls reputedly decorated with the distilled wisdom of ancient Tsort. He read that its height plus its length divided by half its width equalled exactly 1.67563, or precisely 1,237.98712567 times the difference between the distance to the sun and the weight of a small orange. He learned that sixty years had been devoted entirely to its construction.

It all seemed, he thought, to be rather a lot of trouble to go to just to sharpen a razor blade.

-- Pyramid power

Barbarian Chieftan: "I said: what is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?"
Cohen: "Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper."

Like all wizard's workshops, the place looked as though a taxidermist had dropped his stock in a foundry and then had a fight with a maddened glassblower, braining a passing crocodile in the process (it hung from the ceiling and smelt strongly of camphor).

"Still here, Trymon?"

"You summoned me, master," said Trymon levelly. At least, that's what his voice said. Deep in his grey eyes was the faintest glimmer that said he had a list of every slight, every patronising twinkle, every gentle reproof, every knowing glance, and for every single one Galder's living brain was going to spend a year in acid.

"It's all very dramatic, mucking about with magic carpets and the like, but it isn't true magic to my mind. Take seven league boots, now. If men were meant to walk twenty-one miles at a step I am sure God would have given us longer legs..."

With a sound that defies description, but which for the sake of completeness can be thought of basically as "spang!" plus three days hard work in any decently equipped radiophonic workshop, the arrow vanished.

"Have a bit more table," said Rincewind.

"No thanks, I don't like marzipan," said Twoflower. "Anyway, I'm sure it's not right to eat other people's furniture."

Once you had made the necessary mental adjustments, the gingerbread cottage was quite a pleasant place. Residual magic kept it standing and it was shunned by such local wild animals who hadn't already died of terminal tooth decay.

He may be deaf and a little hard of thinking, but elderly wizards have very well-trained survival instincts, and they know that when a tall figure in a black robe and the latest in agricultural handtools starts looking thoughtfully at you it is time to act fast.

Rare and rather smelly oils have been poured in complex patterns on the floor, in designs which hurt the eyes and suggest the designer was drunk or from some other dimension or, possibly, both.

"Yeah," said the most junior wizard, "but who keeps talking to us? They say this is a magic wood, it's full of goblins and wolves and--"

"Trees," said a voice out of the darkness, high above. It possessed what can only be described as timbre.

Rincewind looked carefully at the bed. It was quite a nice little bed, in a sort of hard toffee inlaid with caramel, but he'd rather eat it than sleep in it and it looked as though someone already had.

"Someone's been eating my bed," he said.

"I like toffee," said Twoflower defensively.

Twoflower: "You've got it wrong. Elves are noble and beautiful and wise and fair; I'm sure I read that somewhere."
Swires: "I think you must be thinking about different elves. We've just got the other sort around here. Not that you could call them quick-tempered. Not if you didn't want to take your teeth home in your hat, anyway."

"What shall we do?" said Twoflower.

"Panic?" said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people faced with hungry sabretoothed tigers could be divided very simply into those who panicked and those who stood there saying "What a magnificent brute!"

Twoflower: "Rincewind, I think there's a broomstick in this cupboard."
Rincewind: "Well, what's so unusual about that?"
Twoflower: "This one's got handlebars."

"Many have seen Topaxci, God of the Red Mushroom, and they earn the name of shaman," he said. "Some have seen Skelde, spirit of the smoke, and they are called sorcerers. A few have been privileged to see Umcherrel, the soul of the forest, and they are known as spirit masters. But none have seen a box with hundreds of legs that looked at them without eyes, and they are known as idio--"

...the old shaman said carefully, "You didn't just see two men go through upside down on a broomstick, shouting and screaming at each other, did you?"

The boy looked at him levelly. "Certainly not," he said.

The old man heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness for that," he said. "Neither did I."

Something small and distant broke through the cloud layer, trailing shreds of vapour. In the stratospheric calm the sounds of bickering came sharp and clear.

"You said you could fly one of these things!"

"No I didn't; I just said you couldn't!"

"To me, o spirits of small isolated rocks and worried mice not less than three inches long!"

He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk.

"You know when we were flying and I was worried we might hit something in the storm and you said the only thing we could possibly hit at this height was a cloud stuffed with rocks?"

"Well?"

"How did you know?"

[The druid] leapt to his feet and gripped the sickle aggressively, or at least as aggressively as anyone can look in a long wet white nightshirt and a dripping headscarf.

"Look, don't worry," he said. "If you keep thinking the rock shouldn't be flying it might hear you and become persuaded and you will turn out to be right, okay? It's obvious you aren't up to date with modern thinking."

Of course, like druids everywhere they believed in the essential unity of all life, the healing power of plants, the natural rhythm of seasons and the burning alive of anyone who didn't approach all this in the right frame of mind...

The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness.

Thus it was that the sun and moon orbited the disc because they were persuaded not to fall down, but didn't actually fly away because of uncertainty. Charm allowed trees to grow and bloody-mindedness kept them up, and so on.

"Ah, so you're an astronomer?" said Twoflower.

"Oh no," said Belafon, as the rock drifted gently around the curve of a mountain. "I'm a computer hardware consultant."

"What's a computer hardware?"

"Well, this is," said the druid, tapping the rock with a sandalled foot. "Part of one, anyway. It's a replacement. I'm delivering it. They're having trouble with the big circles up on the Vortex Plains. So they say, anyway; I wished I had a bronze tore for every user who didn't read the manual."

Belafon: "Almanac?"
Rincewind: "It's a book that tells you what day it is. It'd be right up your leyline."
Belafon: "Book? Like, with paper?"
Rincewind: "Yes."
Belafon: "That doesn't sound very reliable to me. How can a book know what day it is? Paper can't count."

Rincewind: "Have you ever heard of culture shock?"
Twoflower: "What's that?"
Rincewind: "It's what happens when people spend five hundred years trying to get a stone circle to work properly and then someone comes up with a little book with a page for every day and little chatty bits saying things like 'Now is a good time to plant broad beans' and 'Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead,' and do you know what the most important thing to remember about culture shock is?"
Twoflower: "What?"
Rincewind: "Don't give it to a man flying a thousand ton rock."

"It looks like a lot of rocks," said Twoflower.

Belafon hesitated in mid-gesture.

"What?" he said.

"It's very nice," added the tourist hurriedly. He sought for a word. "Ethnic," he decided.

The druid stiffened. "Nice?" he said. "A triumph of the silicon chunk, a miracle of modern masonic technology -- nice?"

"Oh, yes," said Twoflower, to whom sarcasm was merely a seven letter word beginning with S.

Several of the huge stones were lying on their sides, and each was surrounded by another crowd of druids who were examining it carefully and arguing amongst themselves. Arcane phrases floated up to where Rincewind sat:

"It can't be software incompatability -- the Chantof the Trodden Spiral was designed for concentric rings, idiot..."

"I say fire it up again and try a simple moon ceremony..."

"...all right, all right, nothing's wrong with the stones, it's just that the universe has gone wrong, right?"

-- Debugging, Discworld style

"Many years ago we arranged for one of our number to hide in your head, because we could forsee a time coming when you would need to play a very important role."

"Me? Why?"

"You run away a lot," said one of the voices. "That is good. You are a survivor."

"Survivor? I've nearly been killed dozens of times!"

"Exactly."

"In the beginning was the word," said a dry voice right behind him.

"It was the Egg," corrected another voice. "I distinctively remember. The Great Egg of the Universe. Slightly rubbery."

"You're both wrong, in fact. I'm sure it was the primordial slime."

A voice by Rincewind's knee said, "No, that came afterwards. There was the firament first. Lots of firament. Rather sticky, like candyfloss. Very syrupy, in fact--"

"In case anyone's interested," said a crackly voice on Rincewind's left, "you're all wrong. In the beginning was the Clearing of the Throat--"

"--then the word--"

"Pardon me, the slime--"

[Rincewind] found that he had this sudden desperate longing for the fuming, smoky streets of Ankh-Morpork, which was always its best in the spring, when the gummy sheen on the turbid waters of the Ankh River had a special iridescence and the eaves were full of birdsong, or at least birds coughing rhythmically.

[Rincewind] pushed Twoflower aside, gathered his tattered robe around him with great dignity, set his face towards that area of horizon he believed to contain the city of his birth, and with intense determination and considerable absentmindedness stepped right off the top of a thirty-foot trilithon.

Twoflower: "Oh no. Where I come from priests are holy men who have dedicated themselves to lives of poverty, good works and the study of the nature of God."
Rincewind: "No sacrifices?"
Twoflower: "Absolutely not."
Rincewind: "Well, they don't sound very holy to me."

Rincewind: "...they're going to sacrifice her, if you must know."
Twoflower: "What, kill her?"
Rincewind: "Yes."
Twoflower: "Why?"
Rincewind: "Don't ask me. To make the crops grow or the moon rise or something. Or maybe they're just keen on killing people. That's religion for you."

"You've got to face it, all this stuff about golden boughs and the cycles of nature and stuff just boils down to sex and violence, usually at the same time."

Rincewind remembered one day when Twoflower had thought a passing drover was beating his cattle too hard, and the case he had made for decency towards animals had left Rincewind severely trampled and lightly gored.

The druids were looking at Twoflower with the kind of expression normally reserved for mad sheep or the sudden appearance of a rain of frogs.

"Shut up and tell me what that other idiot ish doing!"

"No, but look, if I've got to shut up, how can I--"

The knife at his throat became a hot streak of pain and Rincewind decided to give logic a miss.

Cohen: "You ever done this sort of thing before?"
Rincewind: "What sort of thing?"
Cohen: "Rushed into a temple, killed the priests, shtolen the gold and reshcued the girl."
Rincewind: "No, not in so many words."

"Um, I don't think you quite understand," [Twoflower] said. "I mean, we just saved you from absolutely certain death."

"It's not easy around here," she said. "I mean, keeping yourself--" she blushed, and twisted the hem of her robe wretchedly. "I mean, staying ... not letting yourself be ... not losing your qualifications..."

"Qualifications?" said Twoflower, earning the Rincewind Cup for the slowest person on the uptake in the entire multiverse.

-- Those ungrateful sacrificial virgins

"Cohen?" she said. "Cohen the Barbarian?"

"The very shame."

"Hang on, hang on," said Rincewind. "Cohen's a great big chap, neck like a bull, got chest muscles like a sack of footballs. I mean, he's the Disc's greatest warrior, a legend in this own lifetime. I remember my granddad telling me he saw him ... my granddad telling me he ... my granddad..."

He faltered under the gimlet gaze.

"Oh," he said. "Oh. Of course. Sorry."

"Yesh," said Cohen, and sighed. "That's right, boy. I'm a lifetime in my own legend."

Horse dung made a good fuel, but the Horse People had a lot to learn about air conditioning, starting with what it meant.

They had dined on horse meat, horse cheese, horse black pudding, horse d'oeuvres and a thin beer that Rincewind didn't want to speculate about. Cohen (who'd had horse soup) explained that the Horse Tribes of the Hubland steppes were born in the saddle, which Rincewind considered was a gynecological impossibility...

Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it...

Eventually Wert said, "Yes. All right. Cards on the table. I can't seem to locate him."

"I've tried scrying," said another. "Nothing."

"I've sent familiars," said a third.

"Is that all? I've sent demons."

"I've looked into the Mirror of Oversight."

"Last night I sought him out in the Runes of M'haw."

"I'd like to make it clear that I tried both the Runes and the Mirror and the entrails of a manicreach."

"I've spoken to the beasts of the field and the birds of the Air."

"Any good?"

"Nah."

"A hero?" Wert managed to pack a lot of meaning into the one word. In such a tone of voice, in another universe, would a Southerner say "damn-yankee."

It is a well known fact that warriors and wizards do not get along, because one side considers the other side to be a collectionof bloodthirsty idiots who can't walk and think at the same time, while the other side is naturally suspicious of a body of men who mumble a lot and wear long dresses.

[T]his particular hero was a heroine. A redheaded one.

Now, there's a tendence at a point like this to look over one's shoulder at the cover artist and start going on at length about leather, thighboots and naked blades.

Words like "full," "round" and even "pert" creep into the narrative, until the writer has to go and have a cold shower and a lie down.

...any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn't about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialised buyer.

The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hung Ling's Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a short sword.

All right, maybe the boots were leather. But not black.

Riding with her were a number of swarthy men that will certainly be killed before too long anyway, so a description is probably not essential.

...Rincewind had expected the garden on the outcrop [of Death's domain] to be full of dead flowers, but it was in fact well kept and had obviously been planted by someone with an eye for colour, always provided the colour was deep purple, night black or shroud white.

It was the kind of voice associated with beach umbrellas, suntan oil and long cool drinks.

Ysabell: "Oh, you mustn't go! We don't often have living people here. Dead people are so boring, don't you think?"
Rincewind: "Uh, yes. Not much conversation, I imagine."
Ysabell: "It's always 'When I was alive--' and 'We really knew how to breathe in my day--'."

Rincewind: "Daddy?"
Ysabell: "Adopted, actually. He found me when I was a little girl, he says. It was all rather sad."
Rincewind: "Sorry. Have I got it right? We're talking about Death, yes? Tall, thin, empty eye-sockets, handy in the scythe department?"
Ysabell: "Yes. His looks are against him, I'm afraid."

There were voices on the other side -- eldritch voices, the sort of voices that mere typography will remain totally unable to convey until someone can make a linotype machine with echo-reverb and, possibly, a typeface that looks like something said by a slug.

Death: DID YOU SAY HUMANS PLAY IT FOR FUN?
Twoflower: "Some of them get to be very good at it, yes. I'm only an amateur, I'm afraid"
Death: BUT THEY ONLY LIVE EIGHTY OR NINETY YEARS!

--Fun with Bridge

The Death of the Disc was a traditionalist who prided himself on his personal service and spent most of the time being depressed because this was not appreciated. .... He still used a scythe, he'd point out, while the Deaths of other worlds had long ago invested in combined harvesters.

"It's 'Nosehinger on the Laws of Contract," [Twoflower] said. "It's quite good, there's a lot in it about double finessing and how to--"

Death snatched the book with a bony hand and flipped through the pages.

RIGHT, he said. PESTILENCE, OPEN ANOTHER PACK OF CARDS. I'M GOING TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS IF IT KILLS ME, FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING OF COURSE.

Twoflower: "Where is here, exactly?"
Rincewind: "We're sort of informally dead."
Twoflower: "Oh."
Rincewind: "Doesn't that worry you?"
Twoflower: "Well, things tend to work out in the end, don't you think? Anyway, I'm a firm believer in reincarnation. What would you like to come back as?"

Twoflower looked up at Rincewind in astonishment.

And the wizard, with great deliberation and a certain amount of satisfaction, hit him smartly on the chin.

...[Rincewind] was totally certain of several things, for example that he didn't want to jump, and that he certainly didn't want to face whatever it was coming up behind him, and that in the spirit world Twoflower was quite heavy, and that there were worse things than being dead.

"Name two," he muttered, and jumped.

Another voice, dry as tinder, hissed, "You would do well to remember where you are." It should be impossible to hiss a sentence with no sibilants in it, but the voice made a very good attempt.

"This sort of thing happens to me all the time," said Rincewind. "One minute I'm falling off the world, then I'm inside a book, then I'm on a flying rock, then I'm watching Death learn how to play Weir or Dam or whatever it was, why should I wonder about anything?"

Rincewind had a fleeting vision of Twoflower handing around his pictures and saying things like "This is me being tormented by a million demons" and "This is me with that funny couple we met on the freezing slopes of the Underworld."

Cohen: "He'sh mad?"
Rincewind: "Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money."
Cohen: "Ah, then he can't be mad. I've been around; if a man hash lotsh of money he'sh just ecshentric."

Trolls were not unknown in Ankh-Morpork, of course, where they often got employment as bodyguards. They tended to be a bit expensive to keep until they learned about doors and didn't simply leave the house by walking aimlessly through the nearest wall.

Rincewind remembered the only fact he knew for sure about trolls, which was that they turned to stone when exposed to sunlight, so that anyone who employed trolls to work during daylight had to spend a fotune in barrier cream.

Cohen's voice radiated awe, or as much awe as is possible without teeth, which is about the same amount as with teeth but sounds a great deal less impressive.

"Legend?" [Rincewind] said. "What legend?"

"It's been handed down from mountain to gravel since the sunset of time," said the first troll. "'When the red star lights the sky Rincewind the wizard will come looking for onions. Do not bite him. It is very important that you help him stay alive.'"

There was a pause.

"That's it?" said Rincewind.

"Yes," said the troll. "We've always been puzzled about it. Most of our legends are much more exciting."

Kwartz: "We're a dying race.Young Jasper's the only pebble in our tribe. We suffer from philosophy, you know."
Rincewind: "Yes?"
Kwartz: "Oh, yes. Martyrs to it. It comes to all of us in the end. One evening, they say, you start to wake up and then you think, 'Why bother?' and you just don't."

"Wolves?" said Rincewind.

"We flattened all the wolves around here years ago," said the troll. "Old Granddad did, anyway."

"He didn't like them?"

"No, he just didn't used to look where he was going."

Not for the first time [Herrena] reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn't take you seriously until you'd actually killed them, by which time it didn't really matter anyway.

It was all right for the likes of Hrun the Barbarian or Cimbar the Assassin to carouse all night in low bars, but Herrena drew the line at it unless they sold proper drinks in small glasses, perferrably with a cherry in.

She leaned across to Gancia, leader of the gang of Morpork mercenaries. She wasn't very happy about him. It was true that he had the muscles of an ox and the stamina of an ox, the trouble was that he seemed to have the brains of an ox.

Twoflower: "...I think it might be a good idea to get out of here."
Cohen: "Oh yesh. I shupposhe we'd jusht better ashk theesh people to untie ush and let us go, eh?"
Twoflower: "Excuse me? Could you please untie us and let us go? It's rather damp and drafty here."
Bethan: "Was he supposed to say that?"
Cohen: "It'sh novel, I'll grant you."

Herrena: "Everybody knows trolls keep away from fire."
Rincewind: "Absolutely true! Only this specific troll can't, you see."
Herrena: "Can't?"
Rincewind: "Yes, because, you see, you've lit it on his tongue."

[Sunlight] poured like molten gold across the sleeping landscape. [Footnote: Not precisely, of course. Trees didn't burst into flame, people didn't suddenly become very rich and extremely dead, and the seas didn't flash into steam. A better simile, in fact, would be "not like molten gold."]

It is possible to stab a troll, but the technique takes practice and no-one ever gets a chance to practice more than once.

Twoflower: "Hey, that's my Luggage! Why's he attacking my Luggage?"
Bethan: "I think I know. I think it's because he's scared of it."
Rincewind: "Search me. I run away from things I'm scared of, myself."

Rincewind: "I've lost count of the number of times I've nearly been killed--"
Twoflower: "Twenty-seven."
Rincewind: "What?"
Twoflower: "Twenty-seven times. I worked it out."

Rincewind wasn't much of a wizard and even less of a fighter, but he was an expert at cowardice and he knew fear when he smelt it.

He had put a lot of thought into that grin. It was the sort of grin people use when they stare at your left ear and tell you in an urgent tone of voice that they are being spied on by secret agents from the next galaxy. It was not a grin to inspire confidence. More horrible grins had probably been seen, but only on the sort of grinner that is orange with black stripes, has a long tail and hangs around in jungles looking for victims to grin at.

"Two of you -- grab him!"

There was a pause. Then one of the men said, "What, the ferryman?"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

Herrena looked blank. This sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen. It was accepted that when someone yelled something like "Get him!" or "Guards!" people jumped to it, they weren't supposed to sit around discussing things.

Rincewind: "You're seventy years older than her, Cohen. Are you sure that--"
Cohen: "I have been married before, you know. I've got quite a good memory."

"They say that it'll hit us on Hogswatchnight and the seas will boil and the countries of the Disc will be broken and kings will be brought down and the cities will be as lakes of glass," said the man. "I'm off to the mountains."

"That'll help, will it?" said Rincewind doubtfully.

"No, but the view will be better."

But somehow even the wrath of the gods would have been better than the sound of that voice. ... The voice didn't believe in gods, which in Rincewind's book was fair enough, but it didn't believe in people either.

There was a pattering of feet from several alleyways and suddenly a dozen star people were advancing on them.

Bethan grabbed Rincewind's limp hand and held it up threateningly.

"That's far enough!" she screamed.

"Right!" shouted Twoflower. "We've got a wizard and we're not afraid to use him!"

Bethan: "Well, where's it gone?"
Twoflower: "How should I know?"
Bethan: "It's your Luggage!"
Twoflower: "I often don't know where my Luggage is, that's what being a tourist is all about."

Cohen paused until he had the man's full attention, and then he smiled. It was a slow, lazy smile, unveiling about 300 carats of mouth jewellery that seemed to light up the room.

-- Diamond dentures are great for intimidation

"I will count to three," [Cohen] said, in a friendly tone of voice. "One. Two." His bony knee came up and buried itself in the man's groin with a satisfyingly meaty noise, and he half-turned to bring the full force of an elbow into the kidneys as the leader collapsed around his private universe of pain.

"Three," he told the ball of agony on the floor. Cohen had heard of fighting fair, and had long ago decided he wanted no part of it.

Cohen shrugged. "I may be going to die, but I should hope I could be killed by a man who could hold his sword like a warrior," he said.

The man looked at his hands. "Looks all right," he said, doubtfully.

"Look, lad, I know a little about these things. I mean, come here a minute and -- do you mind? -- right, your left hand goes here, around the pommel, and your right hand goes -- that's right, just here -- and the blade goes right into your leg."

The jeweller had produced a very large and dirty axe, guaranteed to add tetanus to all the other terrors of warfare.

Cohen was shocked.

"Bonfires of books?"

"Yes. Horrible, isn't it?"

"Right," said Cohen. He thought it was appalling. Someone who spent his life living under the sky knew the value of a good thick book, which ought to outlast at least a season of cooking fires if you were careful how you tore the pages out. Many a life had been saved on a snowy night by a handful of sodden kindling and a really dry book. If you felt like a smoke and couldn't find a pipe, a book was your man every time.

Star man: "If you kill me a thousand will take my place."
Cohen: "Yes, but that isn't the point, is it? The point is, you'll be dead."
Star man: "There is that, yes..."

Magic! So that's what it felt like! No wonder wizards didn't have much truck with sex!

Bethan snorted and strode across to the little man, who tried to back away. He was too late.

She picked him up by his apron straps and glared at him eye to eye. Torn though her dress was, disarrayed though her hair was, she became for a moment the symbol of every woman who has caught a man with his thumb on the scales of life.

"Is that the big city on the Ankh? Sprawling place, smells of cesspits?"

"It has an ancient and honourable history," said Rincewind, his voice stiff with injured civic pride.

"That's not how you described it to me," said Twoflower. "You told me it was the only city that actually started out decadent."

Ankh-Morpork!

Pearl of cities!

This is not a completely accurate description, of course -- it was not round and shiny -- but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc.

...if you haven't smelled Ankh-Morpork on a hot day you haven't smelled anything.

The citizens are proud of it. They carry chairs outside to enjoy it on a really good day. They puff out their cheeks and slap their chests and comment cheerfully on its little distinctive nuances. They have even put up a statue to it, to commemorate the time when the troops of a rival state tried to invade by stealth one dark night and managed to get to the top of the walls before, to their horror, their nose plugs gave out.

"Are we of one resolve?" asked Trymon. There was a series of vaguely affirmative grunts.

There was no real need for the torches. The Octavio filled the room with a dull, sullen light, which wasn't strictly light at all but the opposite of light; darkness isn't the opposite of light, it is simply its absence, and what was fading from the book was the light that lies on the far side of darkness, the light fantastic.

It was a rather disappointing purple colour.

The crowds outside its gates were, generally, making one of two demands. They were demanding that either a) the wizards should stop messing about and get rid of the star or, and this was the demand favoured by the star people, that b) they should cease all magic and commit suicide in good order, thus ridding the Disc of the curse of magic and warding off the terrible threat in the sky

The wizards on the other side of the wall had no idea how to do a) and no intention of doing b) and many had in fact plumped for c), which largely consisted of nipping out of hidden side doors and having it away on their toes as fast as possible, if not faster.

The wizards were learning that while it was all very fine and impressive to have a set of gates that were locked by magic, it ought to have occurred to the builders to include some sort of emergency back-up device such as, for example, a pair of ordinary, unimpressive stout iron bolts.

Bethan: "Rincewind, all the shops have been smashed open, there was a whole bunch of people across the street helping themselves to musical instruments, can you believe that?"
Rincewind: "Yeah. Luters, I expect."

"Students made it long ago," said Rincewind. "Handy way in and out after lights out."

"Ah," said Twoflower, "I understand. Over the wall and out to brightly-lit tavernas to drink and sing and recite poetry, yes?"

"Nearly right except for the singings and the poetry, yes," said Rincewind.

They hurried along the dripping passages, following the screamed curses and deep hacking coughs that were somehow reassuring; anything that wheezed like that, the listeners decided, couldn't possibly represent a danger.

"Are those things demons?" said Twoflower.

"Oh, demons," said Wert. "Demons would be a picnic compared with what's trying to come through up there."

"They're worse than anything we can possibly imagine," said Panter.

"I can imagine some pretty bad things," said Rincewind.

"These are worse."

"We'll all be eaten by things with tentacles for faces, right?"

"Nothing so pleasant, but--"

Rincewind: "Hold on. This sort of thing is a job for the likes of Cohen, not you. No offense."
Twoflower: "Would he do any good?"
Rincewind: "No."
Twoflower: "Then I'd be as good as him, wouldn't I?"

Rincewind: "You don't understand! There's unimaginable horrors up there!"
Twoflower: "You always said I didn't have any imagination."

Rincewind: "You're mad!"
Twoflower: "You're a fine one to talk. I'm here because I don't know any better, but what about you?"

Trymon: "This is disobedience, Rincewind. I am your superior, after all. In fact, I have been voted the supreme head of all the Orders."
Rincewind: "Really?"
Trymon: "Oh yes. Quite without prompting, too. Very democratic."
Rincewind: "I preferred tradition. That way even the dead get the vote."

"I have a sword, you know."

The voice was squeaky with defiance.

Rincewind fought as he always fought, without skill or fairness or tactics but with a great deal of whirlwind effort. The strategy was to prevent an opponent getting enough time to realise that in fact Rincewind wasn't a very good or strong fighter, and it often worked.

[Trymon] managed to get several blows in, which Rincewind was far too high on rage to notice, but he only used his hands while Rincewind employed knees, feet and teeth as well.

...[Rincewind] flung blow after blow to save the world of men, to preserve the little circle of firelight in the dark night of chaos and to close the gap through which the nightmare was advancing, but mainly he hit it to stop it hitting back.

Twoflower: "I'm glad you're alive."
Rincewind: "Good. So am I."

Rincewind: "Pull me up, then."
Twoflower: "I think that might be sort of difficult. I don't actually think I can do it, in fact."
Rincewind: "What are you holding on to, then?"
Twoflower: "You."
Rincewind: "I mean besides me."
Twoflower: "What do you mean, besides you?"

"If you're going to suggest I try dropping twenty feet down a pitch dark tower in the hope of hitting a couple of greasy little steps which might not even still be there, you can forget it," said Rincewind sharply.

"There is an alternative, then."

"Out with it, man."

"You could drop five hundred feet down a pitch black tower and hit stones which certainly are there," said Twoflower.

Dead silence came from below him. Then Rincewind said, accusingly, "That was sarcasm."

"I thought it was just stating the obvious."

One moment it was an orderly, matter-of-fact printing; the next a series of angular runes. Then it would be curly Kythian spellscript. Then it would be pictograms in some ancient, evil and forgotten writing that seemed to consist exclusively of unpleasant reptilian beings doing complicated and painful things to one another...

Twoflower: "Isn't this exciting!"
Cohen: "Isn't wht exciting?"
Twoflower: "All this magic!"
Cohen: "It's only lights. He hasn't even produced doves out of his sleeves."

In fact most people on the Disc were currently in a state of mind normally achievable only by a lifetime of dedicated meditation or about thirty seconds of illegal herbage.

"The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you've got to go somewhere afterwards where you can remember them, you see? You've got to stop. You haven't really been anywhere until you've got back home. I think that's what I mean."

Rincewind read the sentence across his mind twice again. It didn't seem any better the second time around.

In fact there wasn't any ship going anywhere near the Agatean Empire, but that was an academic point because Twoflower simply counted gold pieces into the hand of the first captain with a halfway clean ship until the man suddenly saw the merits of changing his plans.