DAY.
‘I can,’ said Rincewind defiantly.
The wolves clustered around the base of the tree looked up with interest at their next meal talking to himself.
IT WON’T HURT, said Death. If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship.
Rincewind’s arms screamed their agony at him. He scowled at the vulture-like, slightly transparent figure.
‘Won’t hurt?’ he said. ‘Being torn apart by wolves won’t hurt?’
He noticed another branch crossing his dangerously narrowing one a few feet away. If he could just reach it …
He swung himself forward, one hand outstretched.
The branch, already bending, did not break. It simply made a wet little sound and twisted.
Rincewind found that he was now hanging onto the end of a tongue of bark and fibre, lengthening as it peeled away from the tree. He looked down, and with a sort of fatal satisfaction realised that he would land right on the biggest wolf.
Now he was moving slowly as the bark peeled back in a longer and longer strip. The snake watched him thoughtfully.
But the growing length of bark held. Rincewind began to congratulate himself until, looking up, he saw what he had hitherto not noticed. There was the largest hornets’ nest he had ever seen, hanging right in his path.
He shut his eyes tightly.
Why the troll? he asked himself. Everything else is just my usual luck, but why the troll? What the hell is going on?
Click. It may have been a twig snapping, except that the sound appeared to be inside Rincewind’s head. Click, click. And a breeze that failed to set a single leaf atremble.
The hornets’ nest was ripped from the branch as the strip passed by. It shot past the wizard’s head and he watched it grow smaller as it plummeted towards the circle of upturned muzzles.
The circle suddenly closed.
The circle suddenly expanded.
The concerted yelp of pain as the pack fought to escape the furious cloud echoed among the trees. Rincewind grinned inanely.
Rincewind’s elbow nudged something. It was the tree trunk. The strip had carried him right to the end of the branch. But there were no other branches. The smooth bark beside him offered no handholds.
It offered hands, though. Two were even now thrusting through the mossy bark beside him; slim hands, green as young leaves. Then a shapely arm followed, and then the hamadryad leaned right out and grasped the astonished wizard firmly and, with that vegetable strength that can send roots questing into rock, drew him into the tree. The solid bark parted like a mist, closed like a clam.
Death watched impassively.
He glanced at the cloud of mayflies that were dancing their joyful zigzags near His skull. He snapped His fingers. The insects fell out of the air. But, somehow, it wasn’t quite the same.
Blind Io pushed his stack of chips across the table, glowered through such of his eyes that were currently in the room, and strode out. A few demigods tittered. At least Offler had taken the loss of a perfectly good troll with precise, if somewhat reptilian, grace.
The Lady’s last opponent shifted his seat until he faced her across the board.
‘Lord,’ she said, politely.
‘Lady,’ he acknowledged. Their eyes met.
He was a taciturn god. It was said that he had arrived in the Discworld after some terrible and mysterious incident in another Eventuality. It is of course the privilege of gods to control their apparent outward form, even to other gods; the Fate of the discworld was currently a kindly man in late middle age, greying hair brushed neatly around features that a maiden would confidently proffer a glass of small beer to, should they appear at her back door. It was a face a kindly youth would gladly help over a stile. Except for his eyes, of course.
No deity can disguise the manner and nature of his eyes. The nature of the two eyes of the Fate of the discworld was this: that while at a mere glance they were simply dark, a closer look would reveal—too late!—that they were but holes opening onto a blackness so remote, so deep that the watcher would feel himself inexorably drawn into the twin pools on infinite night and their terrible, wheeling stars …
The lady coughed politely, and laid twenty-one white chips on the table. Then from her robe she took another chip, silvery and translucent and twice the size of the others. The soul of a true Hero always finds a better rate of exchange, and is valued highly by the gods.
Fate raised an eyebrow.
‘And no cheating, Lady,’ he said.
‘But who could cheat Fate?’ she asked. He shrugged.
‘No-one. Yet everyone tries.’
‘And yet, again, I believe I felt you giving me a little assistance against the others?’
‘But of course. So that the endgame could be the sweeter, Lady. And now …’
He reached into his gaming box and brought forth a piece, setting it down on the board with a satisfied air. The watching deities gave a collective sigh. Even the Lady was momentarily taken aback.
It was certainly ugly. The carving was uncertain, as if the craftsman’s hands were shaking in horror of the thing taking shape under his reluctant fingers. It seemed to be all suckers and tentacles. And mandibles, the Lady observed. And one great eye.
‘I thought such as He died out at the beginnings of Time,’ she said.
‘Mayhap our necrotic friend was loathe even to go near this one,’ laughed Fate. He was enjoying himself.
‘It should never have been spawned.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Fate gnomically. He scooped the dice into their unusual box, and then glanced up at her.
‘Unless,’ he added, ‘you wish to resign …?’
She shook her head.
‘Play,’ she said.
‘You can match my stake?’
‘
Rincewind knew what was inside trees: wood, sap, possibly squirrels. Not a palace.
Still—the cushions underneath him were definitely softer than wood, the wine in the wooden cup beside him was much tastier than sap, and there could be absolutely no comparison between a squirrel and the girl sitting before him, clasping her knees and watching him thoughtfully, unless mention was made of certain hints of furriness.
The room was high, wide and lit with a soft yellow light which came from no particular source that Rincewind could identify. Through gnarled and knotted archways he could see other rooms, and what looked like a very large winding staircase. And it had looked a perfectly normal tree from the outside, too.
The girl was green—flesh green. Rincewind could be absolutely certain about that, because all she was wearing was a medallion around her neck. Her long hair had a faintly mossy look about it. Her eyes had no pupils and were a luminous green. Rincewind wished he had paid more attention to anthropology lectures at University.
She had said nothing. Apart from indicating the couch and offering him the wine she had done no more than sit watching him, occasionally rubbing a deep scratch on her arm.
Rincewind hurriedly recalled that a dryad was so linked to her tree that she suffered wounds in sympathy —
‘Sorry about that,’ he said quickly. ‘It was just an accident. I mean, there were these wolves, and—’
