Discworld 02 - The Light Fantastic

by Terry Pratchett

  A figure had stepped up on the platform, a tall thin man with hair like a dandelion. There was no cheer from the crowd, just a collective sigh. He began to speak.

  Rincewind listened in mounting horror. Where were the gods? said the man. They had gone. Perhaps they had never been. Who, actually, could remember seeing them? And now the star had been sent—

  It went on and on, a quiet, clear voice that used words like “cleanse” and “scouring” and “purify” and drilled into the brain like a hot sword. Where were the wizards? Where was magic? Had it ever really worked, or had it all been a dream?

  Rincewind began to be really afraid that the gods might get to hear about this and be so angry that they’d take it out on anyone who happened to have been around at the time.

  But somehow even the wrath of the gods would have been better than the sound of that voice. The star was coming, it seemed to say, and its fearful fire could only be averted by—by—Rincewind couldn’t be certain, but he had visions of swords and banners and blank-eyed warriors. The voice didn’t believe in gods, which in Rincewind’s book was fair enough, but it didn’t believe in people either.

  A tall, hooded stranger on Rincewind’s left jostled him. He turned—and looked up into a grinning skull under a black hood.

  Wizards, like cats, can see Death.

  Compared to the sound of that voice, Death seemed almost pleasant. He leaned against a wall, his scythe propped up beside him. He nodded at Rincewind.

  “Come to gloat?” whispered Rincewind. Death shrugged.

  I HAVE COME TO SEE THE FUTURE, he said.

  “This is the future?”

  A FUTURE, said Death.

  “It’s horrible,” said Rincewind.

  I’M INCLINED TO AGREE, said Death.

  “I would have thought you’d be all for it!”

  NOT LIKE THIS. THE DEATH OF THE WARRIOR OR THE OLD MAN OR THE LITTLE CHILD, THIS I UNDERSTAND, AND I TAKE AWAY THE PAIN AND END THE SUFFERING. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS DEATH-OF-THE-MIND.

  “Who are you talking to?” said Twoflower. Several members of the congregation had turned around and were looking suspiciously at Rincewind.

  “Nobody,” said Rincewind. “Can we go away? I’ve got a headache.”

  Now a group of people at the edge of the crowd were muttering and pointing to them. Rincewind grabbed the other two and hurried them around the corner.

  “Mount up and let’s go,” he said. “I’ve got a bad feeling that—”

  A hand landed on his shoulder. He turned around. A pair of cloudy gray eyes set in a round bald head on top of a large muscular body were staring hard at his left ear. The man had a star painted on his forehead.

  “You look like a wizard,” he said, in a tone of voice that suggested this was very unwise and quite possibly fatal.

  “Who, me? No, I’m—a clerk. Yes. A clerk. That’s right,” said Rincewind.

  He gave a little laugh.

  The man paused, his lips moving soundlessly, as though he was listening to a voice in his head. Several other star people had joined him. Rincewind’s left ear began to be widely regarded.

  “I think you’re a wizard,” said the man.

  “Look,” said Rincewind, “if I was a wizard I’d be able to do magic, right? I’d just turn you into something, and I haven’t, so I’m not.”

  “We killed all our wizards,” said one of the men. “Some ran away, but we killed quite a lot. They waved their hands and nothing came out.”

  Rincewind stared at him.

  “And we think you’re a wizard too,” said the man holding Rincewind in an ever-tightening grip. “You’ve got the box on legs and you look like a wizard.”

  Rincewind became aware that the three of them and the Luggage had somehow become separated from their horses, and that they were now in a contracting circle of gray-faced, solemn people.

  Bethan had gone pale. Even Twoflower, whose ability to recognize danger was as good as Rincewind’s ability to fly, was looking worried.

  Rincewind took a deep breath.

  He raised his hands in the classic pose he’d learned years before, and rasped, “Stand back! Or I’ll fill you full of magic!”

  “The magic has faded,” said the man. “The star has taken it away. All the false wizards said their funny words and then nothing happened and they looked at their hands in horror and very few of them, in fact, had the sense to run away.”

  “I mean it!” said Rincewind.

  He’s going to kill me, he thought. That’s it. I can’t even bluff any more. No good at magic, no good at bluffing, I’m just a—

  The Spell stirred in his mind. He felt it trickle into his brain like iced water and brace itself. A cold tingle coursed down his arm.

  His arm raised of its own volition, and he felt his own mouth opening and shutting and his own tongue moving as a voice that wasn’t his, a voice that sounded old and dry, said syllables that puffed into the air like steam clouds.

  Octarine fire flashed from under his fingernails. It wrapped itself around the horrified man until he was lost in a cold, spitting cloud that rose above the street, hung there for a long moment, and then exploded into nothingness.

  There wasn’t even a wisp of greasy smoke.

  Rincewind stared at his hand in horror.

  Twoflower and Bethan each grabbed him by an arm and hustled him through the shocked crowd until they reached the open street. There was a painful moment as they each chose to run down a different alley, but they hurried on with Rincewind’s feet barely touching the cobbles.

  “Magic,” he mumbled excitedly, drunk with power. “I did magic…”

  “That’s right,” said Twoflower soothingly.

  “Would you like me to do a spell?” said Rincewind. He pointed a finger at a passing dog and said “Wheeee!” It gave him a hurt look.

  “Making your feet run a lot faster’d be favorite,” said Bethan grimly.

  “Sure!” slurred Rincewind. “Feet! Run faster! Hey, look, they’re doing it!”

  “They’ve got more sense than you,” said Bethan. “Which way now?”

  Twoflower peered at the maze of alleyways around them. There was a lot of shouting going on, some way off.

  Rincewind lurched out of their grasp, and tottered uncertainly down the nearest alley.

  “I can do it!” he shouted wildly. “Just you all watch out—”

  “He’s in shock,” said Twoflower.

  “Why?”

  “He’s never done a spell before.”

  “But he’s a wizard!”

  “It’s all a bit complicated,” said Twoflower, running after Rincewind. “Anyway, I’m not sure that was actually him. It certainly didn’t sound like him. Come along, old fellow.”

  Rincewind looked at him with wild, unseeing eyes.

  “I’ll turn you into a rosebush,” he said.

  “Yes, yes, jolly good. Just come along,” said Twoflower soothingly, pulling gently at his arm.

  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!”

  “I mean it!” screamed Bethan, spinning Rincewind around by his arm, like a capstan.

  “Right! We’re heavily armed! What?” said Twoflower.

  “I said, where’s the Luggage?” hissed Bethan behind Rincewind’s back.

  Twoflower looked around. The Luggage was missing.

  Rincewind was having the desired effect on the star people, though. As his hand waved vaguely around they treated it like a rotary scythe and tried to hide behind one another.

  “Well, where’s it gone?”

  “How should I know?” said Twoflower.

  “It’s your Luggage!”

  “I often don’t know where my Luggage
is, that’s what being a tourist is all about,” said Twoflower. “Anyway, it often wanders off by itself. It’s probably best not to ask why.”

  It began to dawn on the mob that nothing was actually happening, and that Rincewind was in no condition to hurl insults, let alone magical fire. They advanced, watching his hands cautiously.

  Twoflower and Bethan backed away. Twoflower looked around.

  “Bethan?”

  “What?” said Bethan, not taking her eyes off the advancing figures.

  “This is a dead end.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I think I know a brick wall when I see one,” said Twoflower reproachfully.

  “That’s about it, then,” said Bethan.

  “Do you think perhaps if I explain—?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t think these are the sort of people who listen to explanations,” Bethan added.

  Twoflower stared at them. He was, as has been mentioned, usually oblivious to personal danger. Against the whole of human experience Twoflower believed that if only people would talk to each other, have a few drinks, exchange pictures of their grandchildren, maybe take in a show or something, then everything could be sorted out. He also believed that people were basically good but sometimes had their bad days. What was coming down the street was having about the same effect on him as a gorilla in a glass factory.

  There was the faintest of sounds behind him, not so much a sound in fact as a change in the texture of the air.

  The faces in front of him gaped open, turned, and disappeared rapidly down the alley.

  “Eh?” said Bethan, still propping up the now-unconscious Rincewind.

  Twoflower was looking the other way, at a big glass window full of strange wares, and a beaded doorway, and a large sign above it all which now said, after its characters had finished writhing into position:

  SKILLET, WANG, YRXLE! YT, BUNGLESTIFF, CWMLAD AND PATEL

  ESTBLSHD: VARIOUS

  PURVEYORS

  The jeweler turned the gold slowly over the tiny anvil, tapping the last strangely-cut diamond into place.

  “From a troll’s tooth, you say?” he muttered, squinting closely at his work.

  “Yesh,” said Cohen, “and as I shay, you can have all the resht.” He was fingering a tray of gold rings.

  “Very generous,” murmured the jeweler, who was dwarvish and knew a good deal when he saw one. He sighed.

  “Not much work lately?” said Cohen. He looked out through the tiny window and watched a group of empty-eyed people gathered on the other side of the narrow street.

  “Times are hard, yes.”

  “Who are all theshe guysh with the starsh painted on?” said Cohen.

  The dwarf jeweler didn’t look up.

  “Madmen,” he said. “They say I should do no work because the star comes. I tell them stars have never hurt me, I wish I could say the same about people.”

  Cohen nodded thoughtfully as six men detached themselves from the group and came toward the shop. They were carrying an assortment of weapons, and had a driven, determined look about them.

  “Strange,” said Cohen.

  “I am, as you can see, of the dwarvish persuasion,” said the jeweler. “One of the magical races, it is said. The star people believe that the star will not destroy the Disc if we turn aside from magic. They’re probably going to beat me up a bit. So it goes.”

  He held up his latest work in a pair of tweezers.

  “The strangest thing I have ever made,” he said, “but practical, I can see that. What did you say they were called again?”

  “Din-chewersh,” said Cohen. He looked at the horseshoe shapes nestling in the wrinkled palm of his hand, then opened his mouth and made a series of painful grunting noises.

  The door burst open. The men strode in and took up positions around the walls. They were sweating and uncertain, but their leader pushed Cohen aside disdainfully and picked up the dwarf by his shirt.

  “We tole you yesterday, small stuff,” he said. “You go out feet down or feet up, we don’t mind. So now we gonna get really—”

  Cohen tapped him on the shoulder. The man looked around irritably.

  “What do you want, grandad?” he snarled.

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

  “I will count to three,” he 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.

  He looked up at the other men, and flashed his incredible smile.

  They ought to have rushed him. Instead one of them, secure in the knowledge that he had a broadsword and Cohen didn’t, sidled crabwise toward him.

  “Oh, no,” said Cohen, waving his hands. “Oh, come on, lad, not like that.”

  The man looked sideways at him.

  “Not like what?” he asked suspiciously.

  “You never held a sword before?”

  The man half turned to his colleagues for reassurance.

  “Not a lot, no,” he said. “Not often.” He waved his sword menacingly.

  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.”

  As the man screamed and clutched at his foot Cohen kicked his remaining leg away and turned to the room at large.

  “This is getting fiddly,” he said. “Why don’t you rush me?”

  “That’s right,” said a voice by his waist. The jeweler had produced a very large and dirty ax, guaranteed to add tetanus to all the other terrors of warfare.

  The four men gave these odds some consideration, and backed toward the door.

  “And wipe those silly stars off,” said Cohen. “You can tell everyone that Cohen the Barbarian will be very angry if he sees stars like that again, right?”

  The door slammed shut. A moment later the ax thumped into it, bounced off, and took a sliver of leather off the toe of Cohen’s sandal.

  “Sorry,” said the dwarf. “It belonged to my grandad. I only use it for splitting firewood.”

  Cohen felt his jaw experimentally. The dine chewers seemed to be settling in quite well.

  “If I was you, I’d be getting out of here anyway,” he said. But the dwarf was already scuttling around the room, tipping trays of precious metal and gems into a leather sack. A roll of tools went into one pocket, a packet of finished jewelry went into another, and with a grunt the dwarf stuck his arms through handles on either side of his little forge and heaved it bodily onto his back.

  “Right,” he said. “I’m ready.”

  “You’re coming with me?”

  “As far as the city gates, if you don’t mind,” he said. “You can’t blame me, can you?”

  “No. But leave the ax behind.”

  They stepped out into the afternoon sun and a deserted street. When Cohen opened his mouth little pinpoints of bright light illuminated all the shadows.

  “I’ve got some friends around here to pick up,” he said, and added, “I hope they’re all right. What’s your name?”

  “Lackjaw.”

  “Is there anywhere around here where I can—” Cohen paused lovingly, savoring the words—“where I can get a steak?”

  “The star
people have closed all the inns. They said it’s wrong to be eating and drinking when—”

  “I know, I know,” said Cohen. “I think I’m beginning to get the hang of it. Don’t they approve of anything?”

  Lackjaw was lost in thought for a moment. “Setting fire to things,” he said at last. “They’re quite good at that. Books and stuff. They have these great big bonfires.”

  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 rough 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.

  Cohen realized people wrote things in books. It had always seemed to him to be a frivolous waste of paper.

  “I’m afraid if your friends met them they might be in trouble,” said Lackjaw sadly as they walked up the street.

  They turned the corner and saw the bonfire. It was in the middle of the street. A couple of star people were feeding it with books from a nearby house, which had its door smashed in and had been daubed with stars.

  News of Cohen hadn’t spread too far yet. The book burners took no notice as he wandered up and leaned against the wall. Curly flakes of burnt paper bounced in the hot air and floated away over the rooftops.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  One of the star people, a woman, pushed her hair out of her eyes with a soot-blackened hand, gazed intently at Cohen’s left ear, and said, “Ridding the Disc of wickedness.”

  Two men came out of the building and glared at Cohen, or at least at his ear.

  Cohen reached out and took the heavy book the woman was carrying. Its cover was crusted with strange red and black stones that spelled out what Cohen was sure was a word. He showed it to Lackjaw.

  “The Necrotelecomnicon,” said the dwarf. “Wizards use it. It’s how to contact the dead, I think.”

  “That’s wizards for you,” said Cohen. He felt a page between finger and thumb; it was thin, and quite soft. The rather unpleasant organic-looking writing didn’t worry him at all. Yes, a book like this could be a real friend to a man—