‘I’ve just got to get a picture of this,’ he muttered. ‘It’s stupendous! Can you hear me, imp?’
The picture imp opened his tiny hatch, glanced momentarily at the scene around the pit, and vanished into the box. Rincewind jumped as something touched his leg, and brought his heel down on a questing tentacle.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Time to go zoom.’ He grabbed Twoflower’s arm, but the tourist resisted.
‘Run away and leave Hrun with that thing?’ he said.
Rincewind looked blank. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘It’s his job.’
‘But it’ll kill him!’
‘It could be worse,’ said Rincewind.
‘What?’
‘It could be
Twoflower pointed. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘It’s got my Luggage!’
Before Rincewind could restrain him Twoflower ran around the edge of the pit to the box, which was being dragged across the floor while its lid snapped ineffectually at the tentacle that held it. The little man began to kick at the tentacle in fury.
Another one snapped out of the melee around Hrun and caught him around the waist. Hrun himself was already an indistinct shape amid the tightening coils. Even as Rincewind stared in horror the Hero’s sword was wrenched from his grasp and hurled against a wall.
‘Your spell!’ shouted Twoflower.
Rincewind did not move. He was looking at the Thing rising out of the pit. It was an enormous eye, and it was staring directly at him. He whimpered as a tentacle fastened itself around his waist.
The words of the spell rose unbidden in his throat. He opened his mouth as in a dream, shaping it around the first barbaric syllable.
Another tentacle shot out like a whip and coiled around his throat, choking him. Staggering and gasping, Rincewind was dragged across the floor.
One flailing arm caught Twoflower’s picture box as it skittered past on its tripod. He snatched it up instinctively, as his ancestors might have snatched up a stone when faced with a marauding tiger. If only he could get enough room to swing it against the Eye …
… the Eye filled the whole universe in front of him. Rincewind felt his will draining away like water from a sieve.
In front of him the torpid lizards stirred in their cage on the picture box. Irrationally, as a man about to be beheaded notices every scratch and stain on the executioner’s block, Rincewind saw that they had overlarge tails that were bluish-white and, he realised, throbbing alarmingly.
As he was drawn towards the Eye the terror-struck Rincewind raised the box protectively, and at the same time heard the picture imp say, ‘They’re about ripe now, can’t hold them any longer. Everyone smile, please.’
There was a—
—flash of light so white and so bright—
—it didn’t seem like light at all.
Bel-Shamharoth screamed, a sound that started in the far ultrasonic and finished somewhere in Rincewind’s bowels. The tentacles went momentarily as stiff as rods, hurling their various cargoes around the room, before bunching up protectively in front of the abused Eye. The whole mass dropped into the pit and a moment later the big slab was snatched up by several dozen tentacles and slammed into place, leaving a number of thrashing limbs trapped around the edge.
Hrun landed rolling, bounced off a wall and came up on his feet. He found his sword and started to chop methodically at the doomed arms. Rincewind lay on the floor, concentrating on not going mad. A hollow wooden noise made him turn his head.
The Luggage had landed on its curved lid. Now it was rocking angrily and kicking its little legs in the air.
Warily, Rincewind looked around for Twoflower. The little man was in a crumpled heap against the wall, but at least he was groaning.
The wizard pulled himself across the floor, painfully, and whispered, ‘What the hell was that?’
‘Why were they so bright?’ muttered Twoflower ‘Gods, my head …’
‘Too bright?’ said Rincewind. He looked across the floor to the cage on the picture box. The lizards inside, now noticeably thinner, were watching him with interest.
‘The salamanders,’ moaned Twoflower. ‘The picture’ll be overexposed, I know it …’
‘They’re salamanders?’ asked Rincewind incredulously.
‘Of course. Standard attachment.’
Rincewind staggered across to the box and picked it up. He’d seen salamanders before, of course, but they had been small specimens. They had also been floating in a jar of pickle in the curiobiological museum down in the cellars of Unseen University, since live salamanders were extinct around the Circle Sea.
He tried to remember the little he knew about them. They were magical creatures. They also had no mouths, since they subsisted entirely on the nourishing quality of the octarine wavelength in the Discworld’s sunlight, which they absorbed through their skins. Of course, they also absorbed the rest of the sunlight as well, storing it in a special sac until it was excreted in the normal way. A desert inhabited by discworld salamanders was a veritable lighthouse at night.
Rincewind put them down and nodded grimly. With all the octarine light in this magical place the creatures had been gorging themselves, and then nature had taken its course.
The picture box sidled away on its tripod. Rincewind aimed a kick at it, and missed. He was beginning to dislike sapient pearwood.
Something small stung his cheek. He brushed it away irritably.
He looked around at a sudden grinding noise, and a voice like a carving knife cutting through silk said, ‘This is very undignified.’
‘Shuddup,’ said Hrun. He was using Kring to lever the top off the altar. He looked up at Rincewind and grinned. Rincewind hoped that rictus-strung grimace was a grin.
‘Mighty magic,’ commented the barbarian, pushing down heavily on the complaining blade with a hand the size of a ham. ‘Now we share the treasure eh?’
Rincewind grunted as something small and hard struck his ear. There was a gust of wind, hardly felt.
‘How do you know there’s treasure in there?’ he said.
Hrun heaved, and managed to hook his fingers under the stone. ‘You find chokeapples under a chokeapple tree,’ he said. ‘You find treasure under altars. Logic.’
He gritted his teeth. The stone swung up and landed heavily on the floor.
This time something struck Rincewind’s hand heavily. He clawed at the air and looked at the thing he had caught. It was a piece of stone with five-plus-three sides. He looked up at the ceiling. Should it be sagging like that? Hrun hummed a little tune as he began to pull crumbling leather from the desecrated altar.
The air crackled, fluoresced, hummed. Intangible winds gripped the wizard’s robe, flapping it out in eddies of blue and green sparks. Around Rincewind’s head mad, half-formed spirits howled and gibbered as they were sucked past.
He tried raising a hand. It was immediately surrounded by a glowing octarine corona as the rising magical wind roared past. The gale raced through the room without stirring one iota of dust, yet it was blowing Rincewind’s eyelids inside out. It screamed along the tunnels, its banshee-wail bouncing madly from stone to stone.
Twoflower staggered up, bent double in the teeth of the astral gale.
‘What the hell is
Rincewind half-turned. Immediately the howling wind caught him, nearly pitching him over. Poltergeist eddies, spinning in the rushing air, snatched at his feet.
Hrun’s arm shot out and caught him. A moment later he and Twoflower had been dragged into the lee of the ravaged altar, and lay panting on the floor. Beside them the talking sword Kring sparkled, its magical field boosted a hundredfold by the storm.
‘Hold on!’ screamed Rincewind.
‘The wind!’ shouted Twoflower. ‘Where’s it coming from? Where’s it blowing
