The Light Fantastic
Page 16

The spells were alone inside their Octavo.
Alone, at any rate, apart from the Luggage.
They looked at it, not with eyes, but with consciousness as old as the Discworld itself.
'And you can bugger off too,' they said.
'— bad.'
Rincewind knew it was himself speaking, he recognised the voice. For a moment he was looking out through his eyes not in any normal way, but as a spy might peer through the cut-out eyes of a picture. Then he was back.
'You okay, Rinshwind?' said Cohen. 'You looked a bit gone there.'
'You did look a bit white,' agreed Bethan. 'Like someone had walked over your grave.'
'Uh, yes, it was probably me,' he said. He held up his fingers and counted them. There appeared to be the normal amount.
'Um, have I moved at all?' he said.
'You just looked at the fire as if you had seen a ghost,' said Bethan.
There was a groan behind them. Twoflower was sitting up, holding his head in his hands.
His eyes focused on them. His lips moved soundlessly.
'That was a really strange . . . dream,' he said. 'What's this place? Why am I here?'
'Well,' said Cohen, 'shome shay the Creator of the Univershe took a handful of clay and —'
'No, I mean here,' said Twoflower. 'Is that you, Rincewind?'
'Yes,' said Rincewind, giving it the benefit of the doubt.
'There was this . . . a clock that . . . and these people who . . .' said Twoflower. He shook his head. 'Why does everything smell of horses?'
'You've been ill,' said Rincewind. 'Hallucinating.'
'Yes . . . I suppose I was.' Twoflower looked down at his chest. 'But in that case, why have I—' Rincewind jumped to his feet.
'Sorry, very close in here, got to have a breath of fresh air,' he said. He removed the picture box's strap from Twoflower's neck, and dashed for the tent flap.
'I didn't notice that when he came in,' said Bethan. Cohen shrugged.
Rincewind managed to get a few yards from the yurt efore the ratchet of the picture box began to click. Very slowly, the box extruded the last picture that the imp had taken.
Rincewind snatched at it.
What it showed would have been quite horrible even in broad daylight. By freezing starlight, tinted red with the fires of the evil new star, it was a lot worse.
'No,' said Rincewind softly. 'No, it wasn't like that, there was a house, and this girl, and . . .'
'You see what you see and I paint what I see,' said the imp from its hatch. 'What I see is real. I was bred for it. I only see what's really there.'
A dark shape crunched over the snowcrust towards Rincewind. It was the Luggage. Rincewind, who normally hated and distrusted it, suddenly felt it was the most refreshingly normal thing he had ever seen.
'I see you made it, then,' said Rincewind. The Luggage rattled its lid.
'Okay, but what did you see?' said Rincewind. 'Did you look behind?'
The Luggage said nothing. For a moment they were silent, like two warriors who have fled the field of carnage and have paused for a return of breath and sanity.
Then Rincewind said, 'Come on, there's a fire inside.' He reached out to pat the Luggage's lid. It snapped irritably at him, nearly catching his fingers. Life was back to normal again.
The next day dawned bright and clear and cold. The sky became a blue dome stuck on the white sheet of the world, and the whole effect would have been as fresh and clean as a toothpaste advert if it wasn't for the pink dot on the horizon.
'You can shee it in daylight now,' said Cohen. 'What is it?'
He looked hard at Rincewind, who reddened.
'Why does everyone look at me?' he said. 'I don't know 107 what it is, maybe it's a comet or something.'
'Will we all be burned up?' said Bethan.
'How should I know? I've never been hit by a comet before.'
They were riding in single file across the brilliant snow-field. The Horse people, who seemed to hold Cohen in high regard, had given them their mounts and directions to the River Smarl, a hundred miles rimward, where Cohen reckoned Rincewind and Twoflower could find a boat to take them to the Circle Sea. He had announced that he was coming with them, on account of his chilblains.
Bethan had promptly announced that she was going to come too, in case Cohen wanted anything rubbed.
Rincewind was vaguely aware of some sort of chemistry bubbling away. For one thing, Cohen had made an effort to comb his beard.
'I think she's rather taken with you,' he said. Cohen sighed.
If I wash twenty yearsh younger,' he said wistfully.
'Yes?'
'I'd be shixty-sheven.'
'What's that got to do with it?'
'Well – how can I put it? When I wash a young man, carving my name in the world, well, then I liked my women red-haired and fiery.'
'Ah.'
'And then I grew a little older and for preference I looked for a woman with blonde hair, and the glint of the world in her eye.'
'Oh? Yes?'
'But then I grew a little older again and I came to see the point of dark women of a sultry nature.'
He paused. Rincewind waited.
'And?' he said. 'Then what? What is it that you look for in a woman now?'
Cohen turned one rheumy blue eye on him.
'Patience,' he said.
'I can't believe it!' said a voice behind them. 'Me riding ith Cohen the Barbarian!'
It was Twoflower. Since early morning he had been like a monkey with the key to the banana plantation after discovering he was breathing the same air as the greatest hero of all time.
'Is he perhapsh being sharcashtic?' said Cohen to Rincewind.
'No. He's always like that.'
Cohen turned in his saddle. Twoflower beamed at him, and waved proudly. Cohen turned back, and grunted.
'He's got eyesh, hashn't he?'
'Yes, but they don't work like other people's. Take it from me. I mean – well, you know the Horse people's yurt, where we were last night?'
'Yesh.'
'Would you say it was a bit dark and greasy and smelt like a very ill horse?'
'Very accurate deshcription, I'd shay.'
'He wouldn't agree. He'd say it was a magnificent barbarian tent, hung with the pelts of the great beasts hunted by the lean-eyed warriors from the edge of civilisation, and smelt of the rare and curious resins plundered from the caravans as they crossed the trackless – well, and so on. I mean it,' he added.
'He'sh mad?'
'Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money.'
'Ah, then he can't be mad. I've been around; if a man hash lotsh of money he'sh just ecshentric.'
Cohen turned in his saddle again. Twoflower was telling Bethan how Cohen had single-handed defeated the snake warriors of the witch lord of S'belinde and stolen the sacred diamond from the giant statue of Offler the Crocodile God.
A weird smile formed among the wrinkles of Cohen's face.
'I could tell him to shut up, if you like,' said Rincewind.
'Would he?'
'No, not really.'
'Let him babble,' said Cohen. His hand fell to the handle of his sword, polished smooth by the grip of decades.
'Anyway, I like his eyes,' he said. They can see for fifty years.'
A hundred yards behind them, hopping rather awkwardly through the soft snow, came the Luggage. No-one ever asked its opinion about anything.
By evening they had come to the edge of the high plains, and rode down through gloomy pine forests that had only been lightly dusted by the snowstorm. It was a landscape of huge cracked rocks, and valleys so narrow and deep that the days only lasted about twenty minutes. A wild, windy country, the sort where you might expect to find —
Trollsh,' said Cohen, sniffing the air.
Rincewind stared around him in the red evening light. Suddenly rocks that had seemed perfectly normal looked suspiciously alive. Shadows that he wouldn't have looked at twice now began to look horribly occupied.
'I like trolls,' said Twoflower.
'No you don't,' said Rincewind firmly. 'You can't. They're big and knobbly and they eat people.'
'No they don't,' said Cohen, sliding awkwardly off his horse and massaging his knees. 'Well-known mishap-prehenshion, that ish. Trolls never ate anybody.'
'No?'
'No, they alwaysh spit the bitsh out. Can't digesht people, see? Your average troll don't want any more out of life than a nice lump of granite, maybe, with perhapsh a nice slab of limeshtone for aftersh. I heard someone shay it's becosh they're a shilicashe – a shillycaysheou – Cohen paused, and wiped his beard, 'made out of rocks.
Rincewind nodded. 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 ntil they learned about doors and didn't simply leave the house by walking aimlessly through the nearest wall.
As they gathered firewood Cohen went on, Trollsh teeth, that'sh the thingsh.'
'Why?' said Bethan.
'Diamonds. Got to be, you shee. Only thing that can shtand the rocksh, and they shtill have to grow a new shet every year.'
'Talking of teeth—' said Twoflower.
'Yesh?'
'I can't help noticing —'
'Yesh?'
'Oh, nothing,' said Twoflower.
'Yesh? Oh. Let'sh get thish fire going before we loshe the light. And then,' Cohen's face fell, 'I supposhe we'd better make some shoop.'
'Rincewind's good at that,' said Twoflower enthusiastically. 'He knows all about herbs and roots and things.'
Cohen gave Rincewind a look which suggested that he, Cohen, didn't believe that.
'Well, the Horshe people gave us shome horse jerky,' he said. 'If you can find shome wild onionsh and stuff, it might make it tashte better.'
'But I—' Rincewind began, and gave up. Anyway, he reasoned, I know what an onion looks like, it's a sort of saggy white thing with a green bit sticking out of the top, should be fairly conspicuous.
'I'll just go and have a look, shall I?' he said.
'Yesh.'
'Over there in all that thick, shadowy undergrowth?'
'Very good playshe, yesh.'
'Where all the deep gullies and things are, you mean?'
'Ideal shpot, I'd shay.'
'Yes, I thought so,' said Rincewind bitterly. He set off, wondering how you attracted onions. After all, he thought, although you see them hanging in ropes on market stalls they probably don't grow like that, perhaps peasants or whatever use onions hounds or something, or ing songs to attract onions.
There were a few early stars out as he started to poke aimlessly among the leaves and grass. Luminous fungi, unpleasantly organic and looking like marital aids for gnomes, squished under his feet. Small flying things bit him. Other things, fortunately invisible, hopped or slithered away under the bushes and croaked reproachfully at him.
'Onions?' whispered Rincewind. 'Any onions here?'
'There's a patch of them by that old yew tree,' said a voice beside him.
'Ah,' said Rincewind. 'Good.'
There was a long silence, except for the buzzing of the mosquitoes around Rincewind's ears.
He was standing perfectly still. He hadn't even moved his eyes.
Eventually he said, 'Excuse me.'
'Yes?'
'Which one's the yew?'
'Small gnarly one with the little dark green needles.'
'Oh, yes. I see it. Thanks again.'
He didn't move. Eventually the voice said conversationally, 'Anything more I can do for you?'
'You're not a tree, are you?' said Rincewind, still staring straight ahead.
'Don't be silly. Trees can't talk.'
'Sorry. It's just that I've been having a bit of difficulty with trees lately, you know how it is.'
'Not really. I'm a rock.'
Rincewind's voice hardly changed.
'Fine, fine,' he said slowly. 'Well, I'll just be getting those onions, then.'
'Enjoy them.'
He walked forward in a careful and dignified fashion, spotted a clump of stringy white things huddling in the undergrowth, uprooted them carefully, and turned around.