Book 5 - Page 39 (1/2)

‘Yes. That’s right. You’ve got it exactly.’

Conina and Creosote exchanged glances. Nijel remained sitting proudly in the saddle, a faint smile on his face.

‘Is your geese giving you trouble?’ said the Seriph.

‘Geas,’ said Nijel calmly. ‘It’s not giving me trouble, it’s just that I must do something brave before I die.’

‘That’s it though,’ said Creosote. ‘That’s the whole rather sad point. You’ll do something brave, and then you’ll die.’

‘What alternative have we got?’ said Nijel.

They considered this.

‘I don’t think I’m much good at explaining,’ said Conina, in a small voice.

‘I am,’ said Nijel, firmly. ‘I’m always having to explain.’

The scattered particles of what had been Rincewind’s mind pulled themselves together and drifted up through the layers of dark unconsciousness like a three-day corpse rising to the surface.

It probed its most recent memories, in much the same way that one might scratch a fresh scab.

He could recall something about a staff, and a pain so intense that it appeared to insert a chisel between every cell in his body and hammer on it repeatedly.

He remembered the staff fleeing, dragging him after it. And then there had been that dreadful bit where Death had appeared and reached past him, and the staff had twisted and become suddenly alive and Death had said, IPSLORE THE RED, I HAVE YOU NOW.

And now there was this.

By the feel of it Rincewind was lying on sand. It was very cold.

He took the risk of seeing something horrible and opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was his left arm and, surprisingly, his hand. It was its normal grubby self. He had expected to see a stump.

It seemed to be night-time. The beach, or whatever it was, stretched on towards a line of distant low mountains, under night sky frosted with a million white stars.

A little closer to him there was a rough line in the silvery sand. He lifted his head slightly and saw the scatter of molten droplets. They were octiron, a metal so intrinsically magical that no forge on the Disc could even warm it up.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘We won, then.’

He flopped down again.

After a while his right hand came up automatically and patted the top of his head. Then it patted the sides of his head. Then it began to grope, with increasing urgency, in the sand around him.

Eventually it must have communicated its concern to the rest of Rincewind, because he pulled himself upright and said, ‘Oh, b.u.g.g.e.r.’

There seemed to be no hat anywhere. But he could see a small white shape lying very still in the sand a little way away and, further off -

A column of daylight.

It hummed and swayed in the air, a three-dimensional hole into somewhere else. Occasional flurries of snow blew out of it. He could see skewed images in the light, that might be buildings or landscapes warped by the weird curvature. But he couldn’t see them very clearly, because of the tall, brooding shadows that surrounded it.

The human mind is an astonis.h.i.+ng thing. It can operate on several levels at once. And, in fact, while Rincewind had been wasting his intellect in groaning and looking for his hat, an inner part of his brain had been observing, a.s.sessing, a.n.a.lysing and comparing.

Now it crept up to his cerebellum, tapped it on the shoulder, thrust a message into its hand and ran for it.

The message ran something like this: I hope I find me well. The last trial of magic has been too much for the tortured fabric of reality. It has opened a hole. I am in the Dungeon Dimensions. And the things in front of me are … the Things. It has been nice knowing me.

The particular thing nearest Rincewind was at least twenty feet high. It looked like a dead horse that had been dug up after three months and then introduced to a range of new experiences, at least one of which had included an octopus.

It hadn’t noticed Rincewind. It was too busy concentrating on the light.

Rincewind crawled back to the still body of Coin and nudged it gently.

‘Are you alive?’ he said. ‘If you’re not, I’d prefer it if you didn’t answer.’

Coin rolled over and stared up at him with puzzled eyes. After a while he said, ‘I remember-’

‘Best not to,’ said Rincewind.

The boy’s hand groped vaguely in the sand beside him.

‘It isn’t here any more,’ said Rincewind, quietly. The hand stopped its searching.

Rincewind helped Coin to sit up. He looked blankly at the cold silver sand, then at the sky, then at the distant Things, and then at Rincewind.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said.

‘No harm in that. I’ve never known what to do,’ said Rincewind with hollow cheerfulness. ‘Been completely at a loss my whole life.’ He hesitated. ‘I think it’s called being human, or something.’

‘But I’ve always known what to do!’

Rincewind opened his mouth to say that he’d seen some of it, but changed his mind. Instead he said, ‘Chin up. Look on the bright side. It could be worse.’

Coin took another look around.

‘In what respect, exactly?’ he said, his voice a shade more normal.

Um.’

‘What is this place?’

‘It’s a sort of other dimension. The magic broke through and we went with it, I think.’

‘And those things?’

They regarded the Things.

‘I think they’re Things. They’re trying to get back through the hole,’ said Rincewind. ‘It isn’t easy. Energy levels, or something. I remember we had a lecture on them once. Er.’

Coin nodded, and reached out a thin pale hand towards Rincewind’s forehead.

‘Do you mind-?’ he began.

Rincewind shuddered at the touch. ‘Mind what?’ he said.

- if I have a look in your head?