The Light Fantastic (15 page)

He glared at the ancient parchment until his eyes crossed.

“Then I’ll say you!” he shouted, his voice echoing up the tower. “You can join the rest of them and much good may it do you!”

He shoved the book back into Twoflower’s arms and staggered off up the steps.

The wizards had reached the top and disappeared from view. Rincewind climbed after them.

“Lad, am I?” he muttered. “When I’m advanced in the craft, eh? I just managed to go around with one of the Great Spells in my head for years without going totally insane, didn’t I?” He considered the last question from all angles. “Yes, you did,” he reassured himself. “You didn’t start talking to trees, even when trees started talking to
you
.”

His head emerged into the sultry air at the top of the tower.

He had expected to see fire-blackened stones crisscrossed with talon marks, or perhaps something even worse.

Instead he saw the seven senior wizards standing by Trymon, who seemed totally unscathed. He turned and smiled pleasantly at Rincewind.

“Ah, Rincewind. Come and join us, won’t you?”

So this is it, Rincewind thought. All that drama for nothing. Maybe I really am not cut out to be a wizard, maybe—

He looked up and into Trymon’s eyes.

Perhaps it was the Spell, in its years of living in Rincewind’s head, that had affected his eyes. Perhaps his time with Twoflower, who only saw things as they ought to be, had taught him to see things as they are.

But what was certain was that by far the most difficult thing Rincewind did in his whole life was look at Trymon without running in terror or being very violently sick.

The others didn’t seem to have noticed.

They also seemed to be standing very still.

Trymon had tried to contain the seven Spells in his mind and it had broken, and the Dungeon Dimensions had found their hole, all right. Silly to have imagined that the Things would have come marching out of a sort of rip in the sky, waving mandibles and tentacles. That was old-fashioned stuff, far too risky. Even nameless terrors learned to move with the times. All they really needed to enter was one head.

His eyes were empty holes.

Knowledge speared into Rincewind’s mind like a knife of ice. The Dungeon Dimensions would be a playgroup compared to what the Things could do in a universe of order. People were craving order, and order they would get—the order of the turning screw, the immutable law of straight lines and numbers. They would beg for the harrow…

Trymon was looking at him.
Something
was looking at him. And still the others hadn’t noticed. Could he even explain it? Trymon looked the same as he had always done, except for the eyes, and a slight sheen to his skin.

Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons in Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the gray world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn’t even notice them.

Trymon held out his hand.

“The eighth spell,” he said. “Give it to me.”

Rincewind backed away.

“This is disobedience, Rincewind. I am your superior, after all. In fact, I have been voted the supreme head of all the Orders.”

“Really?” said Rincewind hoarsely. He looked at the other wizards. They were immobile, like statues.

“Oh yes,” said Trymon pleasantly. “Quite without prompting, too. Very democratic.”

“I preferred tradition,” said Rincewind. “That way even the dead get the vote.”

“You will give me the spell voluntarily,” said Trymon. “Do I have to show you what I will do otherwise? And in the end you will still yield it. You will scream for the opportunity to give it to me.”

If it stops anywhere, it stops here, thought Rincewind.

“You’ll have to take it,” he said. “I won’t give it to you.”

“I remember you,” said Trymon. “Not much good as a student, as I recall. You never really trusted magic, you kept on saying there should be a better way to run a universe. Well, you’ll see. I have plans. We can—”

“Not we,” said Rincewind firmly.

“Give me the Spell!”

“Try and take it,” said Rincewind, backing away. “I don’t think you can.”

“Oh?”

Rincewind jumped aside as octarine fire flashed from Trymon’s fingers and left a bubbling rock puddle on the stones.

He could sense the Spell lurking in the back of his mind. He could sense its fear.

In the silent caverns of his head he reached out for it. It retreated in astonishment, like a dog faced with a maddened sheep. He followed, stamping angrily through the disused lots and inner-city disaster areas of his subconscious, until he found it cowering behind a heap of condemned memories. It roared silent defiance at him, but Rincewind wasn’t having any.

Is this it? he shouted at it. When it’s time for the showdown, you go and hide? You’re frightened?

The Spell said, that’s nonsense, you can’t possibly believe that, I’m one of the Eight Spells. But Rincewind advanced on it angrily, shouting, Maybe, but the fact is I do believe it and you’d better remember whose head you’re in, right? I can believe anything I like in here!

Rincewind jumped aside again as another bolt of fire lanced through the hot night. Trymon grinned, and made another complicated motion with his hands.

Pressure gripped Rincewind. Every inch of his skin felt as though it was being used as an anvil. He flopped onto his knees.

“There are much worse things,” said Trymon pleasantly. “I can make your flesh burn on the bones, or fill your body with ants. I have the power to—”

“I have a sword, you know.”

The voice was squeaky with defiance.

Rincewind raised his head. Through a purple haze of pain he saw Twoflower standing behind Trymon, holding a sword in exactly the wrong way.

Trymon laughed, and flexed his fingers. For a moment his attention was diverted.

Rincewind was angry. He was angry at the Spell, at the world, at the unfairness of everything, at the fact that he hadn’t had much sleep lately, at the fact that he wasn’t thinking quite straight. But most of all he was angry with Trymon, standing there full of the magic Rincewind had always wanted but had never achieved, and doing nothing worthwhile with it.

He sprang, striking Trymon in the stomach with his head and flinging his arms around him in desperation. Twoflower was knocked aside as they slid along the stones.

Trymon snarled, and got out the first syllable of a spell before Rincewind’s wildly flailing elbow caught him in the neck. A blast of randomized magic singed Rincewind’s hair.

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 realize that in fact Rincewind wasn’t a very good or strong fighter, and it often worked.

It was working now, because Trymon had spent rather too much time reading ancient manuscripts and not getting enough healthy exercise and vitamins. He 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.

He was, in fact, winning.

This came as a shock.

It came as more of a shock when, as he knelt on Trymon’s chest hitting him repeatedly about the head, the other man’s face changed. The skin crawled and waved like something seen through a heat haze, and Trymon spoke.

“Help me!”

For a moment his eyes looked up at Rincewind in fear, pain and entreaty. Then they weren’t eyes at all, but multifaceted things on a head that could be called a head only by stretching the definition to its limits. Tentacles and saw-edged legs and talons unfolded to rip Rincewind’s rather sparse flesh from his body.

Twoflower, the tower and the red sky all vanished. Time ran slowly, and stopped.

Rincewind bit hard on a tentacle that was trying to pull his face off. As it uncoiled in agony he thrust out a hand and felt it break something hot and squishy.

They
were watching. He turned his head, and saw that now he was fighting on the floor of an enormous amphitheater. On each side tier upon tier of creatures stared down at him, creatures with bodies and faces that appeared to have been made by crossbreeding nightmares. He caught a glimpse of even worse things behind him, huge shadows that stretched into the overcast sky, before the Trymon-monster lunged at him with a barbed sting the size of a spear.

Rincewind dodged sideways, and then swung around with both hands clasped together into one fist that caught the thing in the stomach, or possibly the thorax, with a blow that ended in the satisfying crunch of chitin.

He plunged forward, fighting now out of terror of what would happen if he stopped. The ghostly arena was full of the chittering of the Dungeon creatures, a wall of rustling sound that hammered at his ears as he struggled. He imagined that sound filling the Disc, and he 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.

Claws or talons drew white-hot lines across his back, and something bit his shoulder, but he found a nest of soft tubes among all the hairs and scales and squeezed it hard.

An arm barbed with spikes swept him away, and he rolled over in the gritty black dust.

Instinctively he curled into a ball, but nothing happened. Instead of the onslaught of fury he expected he opened his eyes to see the creature limping away from him, various liquids leaking from it.

It was the first time anything had ever run away from Rincewind.

He dived after it, caught a scaly leg, and wrenched. The creature chittered at him and flailed desperately with such appendages as were still working, but Rincewind’s grip was unshakable. He pulled himself up and planted one last satisfying blow into its remaining eye. It screamed, and ran. And there was only one place for it to run to.

The tower and the red sky came back with the click of restored time.

As soon as he felt the press of the flagstones under his feet Rincewind flung his weight to one side and rolled on his back with the frantic creature at arm’s length.

“Now!” he yelled.

“Now what?” said Twoflower. “Oh. Yes. Right!”

He swung the sword inexpertly but with some force, missing Rincewind by inches and burying it deeply in the Thing. There was a shrill buzzing, as though he had smashed a wasp’s nest, and the melee of arms and legs and tentacles flailed in agony. It rolled again, screaming and thrashing at the flagstones, and then it was thrashing at nothing at all because it had rolled over the edge of the stairway, taking Rincewind with it.

There was a squelching noise as it bounced off a few of the stone steps, and then a distant and disappearing shriek as it tumbled the depth of the tower.

Finally there was a dull explosion and a flash of octarine light.

Then Twoflower was alone on the top of the tower—alone, that is, except for seven wizards who still seemed to be frozen to the spot.

He sat bewildered as seven fireballs rose out of the blackness and plunged into the discarded Octavo, which suddenly looked its old self and far more interesting.

“Oh dear,” he said. “I suppose they’re the Spells.”

“Twoflower.” The voice was hollow and echoing, and just recognizable as Rincewind’s.

Twoflower stopped with his hand halfway to the book.

“Yes?” he said. “Is that—is that you, Rincewind?”

“Yes,” said the voice, resonant with the tones of the grave. “And there is something very important I want you to do for me, Twoflower.”

Twoflower looked around. He pulled himself together. So the fate of the Disc would depend on him, after all.

“I’m ready,” he said, his voice vibrating with pride. “What is it you want me to do?”

“First, I want you to listen very carefully,” said Rincewind’s disembodied voice patiently.

“I’m listening.”

“It’s very important that when I tell you what to do you don’t say ‘What do you mean?’ or argue or anything, understand?”

Twoflower stood to attention. At least, his mind stood to attention, his body really couldn’t. He stuck out several of his chins.

“I’m ready,” he said.

“Good. Now, what I want you to do is—”

“Yes?”

Rincewind’s voice rose from the depths of the stairwell.

“I want you to come and help me up before I lose my grip on this stone,” it said.

Twoflower opened his mouth, then shut it quickly. He ran to the square hole and peered down. By the ruddy light of the star he could just make out Rincewind’s eyes looking up at him.

Twoflower lay down on his stomach and reached out. Rincewind’s hand gripped his wrist in the sort of grip that told Twoflower that if he, Rincewind, wasn’t pulled up then there was no possible way in which that grip was going to be relaxed.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” he said.

“Good. So am I,” said Rincewind.

He hung around in the darkness for a bit. After the past few minutes it was almost enjoyable, but only almost.

“Pull me up, then,” he hinted.

“I think that might be sort of difficult,” grunted Twoflower. “I don’t actually think I can do it, in fact.”

“What are you holding on to, then?”

“You.”

“I mean besides me.”

“What do you mean, besides you?” said Twoflower.

Rincewind said a word.

“Well, look,” said Twoflower. “The steps go around in a spiral, right? If I sort of swing you and then you let go—”

“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.