The Light Fantastic
Page 5

'He could be a goblin,' said Twoflower defiantly.
Rincewind looked back at the tiny figure, which was industriously picking its nose.
'Well?' he said. 'So what? Gnome, goblin, pixie – so what?'
'Not a pixie,' said Twoflower firmly. 'Pixies, they wear these sort of green combinations and they have pointy caps and little knobbly antenna thingies sticking out of their heads. I've seen pictures.'
'Where?'
Twoflower hesitated, and looked at his feet. 'I think it was called the “mutter, mutter, mutter.” '
'The what? Called the what?'
The little man took a sudden interest in the backs of his hands.
'The Little Folks' Book of Flower Fairies,' he muttered.
Rincewind looked blank.
'It's a book on how to avoid them?' he said.
'Oh no,' said Twoflower hurriedly. It tells you where to look for them. I can remember the pictures now.' A dreamy look came over his face, and Rincewind groaned inwardly. There was even a special fairy that came and took your teeth away.'
'What, came and pulled out your actual teeth – ?'
'No, no, you're wrong, I mean after they'd fallen out, what you did was, you put the tooth under your pillow and the fairy came and took it away and left a rhinu piece.'
'Why?'
'Why what?'
'Why did it collect teeth?'
'It just did.'
Rincewind formed a mental picture of some strange entity living in a castle made of teeth. It was the kind of mental picture you tried to forget. Unsuccessfully.
'Urgh,' he said.
Red hats! He wondered whether to enlighten the tourist about what life was really like when a frog was a good meal, a rabbit hole a useful place to shelter out of the rain, and an owl a drifting, silent terror in the night. Moleskin trousers sounded quaint unless you personally had to remove them from their original owner when the vicious little sod was cornered in his burrow. As for red hats, anyone who went around a forest looking bright nd conspicuous would only do so very, very briefly.
He wanted to say: look, the life of gnomes and goblins is nasty, brutish and short. So are they.
He wanted to say all this, and couldn't. For a man with an itch to see the whole of infinity, Twoflower never actually moved outside his own head. Telling him the truth would be like kicking a spaniel.
'Swee whee weedle wheet,' said a voice by his foot. He looked down. The gnome, who had introduced himself as Swires, looked up. Rincewind had a very good ear for languages. The gnome had just said, 'I've got some newt sorbet left over from yesterday.'
'Sounds wonderful,' said Rincewind.
Swires gave him another prod in the ankle.
'The other bigger, is he all right?' he said solicitously.
'He's just suffering from reality shock,' said Rincewind. You haven't got a red hat, by any chance?'
'Wheet?'
'Just a thought.'
'I know where there's some food for biggers,' said the gnome, 'and shelter, too. It's not far.'
Rincewind looked at the lowering sky. The daylight was draining out of the landscape and the clouds looked as if they had heard about snow and were considering the idea. Of course, people who lived in mushrooms couldn't necessarily be trusted, but right now a trap baited with a hot meal and clean sheets would have had the wizard hammering to get in.
They set off. After a few seconds the Luggage got carefully to its feet and started to follow.
'Psst!'
It turned carefully, little legs moving in a complicated pattern, and appeared to look up.
'Is it good, being joinery?' said the tree, anxiously. 'Did it hurt?'
The Luggage seemed to think about this. Every brass handle, every knothole, radiated extreme concentration.
Then it shrugged its lid and waddled away.
The tree sighed, and shook a few dead leaves out of its twigs.
The cottage was small, tumbledown and as ornate as a doily. Some mad whittler had got to work on it, Rincewind decided, and had created terrible havoc before he could be dragged away. Every door, every shutter had its clusters of wooden grapes and half-moon cutouts, and there were massed outbreaks of fretwork pinecones all over the walls. He half expected a giant cuckoo to come hurtling out of an upper window.
What he also noticed was the characteristic greasy feel in the air. Tiny green and purple sparks flashed from his fingernails.
'Strong magical field,' he muttered. 'A hundred milli-thaums[2] at least.'
'There's magic all over the place,' said Swires. 'An old witch used to live around here. She went a long time ago but the magic still keeps the house going.'
'Here, there's something odd about that door,' said Twoflower.
Why should a house need magic to keep it going?' said Rincewind. Twoflower touched a wall gingerly.
'It's all sticky!'
'Nougat,' said Swires.
'Good grief! A real gingerbread cottage! Rincewind, a real—'
Rincewind nodded glumly. Yeah, the Confectionary School of Architecture,' he said. 'It never caught on.'
He looked suspiciously at the liquorice doorknocker.
'It sort of regenerates,' said Swires. 'Marvellous, really. You just don't get this sort of place nowadays, you just an't get the gingerbread.'
'Really?' said Rincewind, gloomily.
'Come on in,' said the gnome, 'but mind the doormat.
'Why?'
'Candyfloss.'
The great Disc spun slowly under its toiling sun, and daylight pooled in hollows and finally drained away as night fell.
In his chilly room in Unseen University Trymon pored over the book, his lips moving as his finger traced the unfamiliar, ancient script. He 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.
And in the Forest of Skund Twoflower and Rincewind settled down to a meal of gingerbread mantlepiece and thought longingly of pickled onions.
And far away, but set as it were on a collision course, the greatest hero the Disc ever produced rolled himself a cigarette, entirely unaware of the role that lay in store for him.
It was quite an interesting tailormade that he twirled expertly between his fingers because, like many of the wandering wizards from whom he had picked up the art, he was in the habit of saving dogends in a leather bag and rolling them into fresh smokes. The implacable law of verages therefore dictated that some of that tobacco had been smoked almost continuously for many years now. The thing he was trying unsuccessfully to light was, well, you could have coated roads with it.
So great was the reputation of this person that a group of nomadic barbarian horsemen had respectfully invited him to join them as they sat around a horseturd fire. The nomads of the Hub regions usually migrated Rimwards for the winter, and these were part of a tribe who had pitched their felt tents in the sweltering heatwave of a mere -3 degrees and were going around with peeling noses and complaining about heatstroke.
The barbarian chieftain said: What then are the greatest things that a man may find in life?' This is the sort of thing you're supposed to say to maintain steppe-cred in barbarian circles.
The man on his right thoughtfully drank his cocktail of mare's milk and snowcat blood, and spoke thus: The crisp horizon of the steppe, the wind in your hair, a fresh horse under you.'
The man on his left said: The cry of the white eagle in the heights, the fall of snow in the forest, a true arrow in your bow.'
The chieftain nodded, and said: 'Surely it is the sight of your enemy slain, the humiliation of his tribe and the lamentation of his women.'
There was a general murmur of whiskery approval at this outrageous display.
Then the chieftain turned respectfully to his guest, a small figure carefully warming his chilblains by the fire, and said: 'But our guest, whose name is legend, must tell us truly: what is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?'
The guest paused in the middle of another unsuccessful attempt to light up.
'What shay?' he said, toothlessly.
'I said: what is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?'
The warriors leaned closer. This should be worth hearing.
The guest thought long and hard and then said, with deliberation: 'Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.'
Brilliant octarine light flared in the forge. Galder Weatherwax, stripped to the waist, his face hidden by a mask of smoked glass, squinted into the glow and brought a hammer down with surgical precision. The magic squealed and writhed in the tongs but still he worked it, drawing it into a line of agonised fire.
A floorboard creaked. Galder had spent many hours tuning them, always a wise precaution with an ambitious assistant who walked like a cat.
D flat. That meant he was just to the right of the door.
'Ah, Trymon,' he said, without turning, and noted with some satisfaction the faint indrawing of breath behind him. 'Good of you to come. Shut the door, will you?'
Trymon pushed the heavy door, his face expressionless. On the high shelf above him various bottled impossibilities wallowed in their pickle jars and watched him with interest.
Like all wizards' 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). There were lamps and rings that Trymon itched to rub, and mirrors that looked as though they could repay a second glance. A pair of seven-league boots stirred restlessly in a cage. A whole library of grimoires, not of course as powerful as the Octavo but still heavy with spells, creaked and rattled their chains as they sensed the wizard's covetous glance on them. The naked power of it all stirred him as nothing else could, but he deplored the scruffiness and Galder's sense of theatre.
For example, he happened to know that the green liquid bubbling mysteriously through a maze of contorted pipework on one of the benches was just green dye with soap in it, because he'd bribed one of the servants.
One day, he thought, it's all going to go. Starting with that bloody alligator. His knuckles whitened . . .
'Well now,' said Galder cheerfully, hanging up his apron and sitting back in his chair with the lion paw arms and duck legs, 'You sent me this memmy-thing.'
Trymon shrugged. 'Memo. I merely pointed out, lord, that the other Orders have all sent agents to Skund Forest to recapture the spell, while you do nothing,' he said. 'No doubt you will reveal your reasons in good time.'
'Your faith shames me,' said Galder.
The wizard who captures the spell will bring great honour on himself and his order,' said Trymon. The others have used boots and all manner of elsewhere spells. What do you propose using, master?'
'Did I detect a hint of sarcasm there?'
'Absolutely not, master.'
'Not even a smidgeon?'
'Not even the merest smidgeon, master.'
'Good. Because I don't propose to go.' Galder reached down and picked up an ancient book. He mumbled a command and it creaked open; a bookmark suspiciously like a tongue flicked back into the binding.
He fumbled down beside his cushion and produced a little leather bag of tobacco and a pipe the size of an incinerator. With all the skill of a terminal nicotine addict he rubbed a nut of tobacco between his hands and tamped it into the bowl. He snapped his fingers and fire flared. He sucked deep, sighed with satisfaction . . .