Backspindlewinter and a new Hogs’ Watch Night nestling like a frozen jewel at its heart.
Since the Hub is never closely warmed by the weak sun the lands there are locked in permafrost. The Rim, on the other hand, is a region of sunny islands and balmy days.{47} There are, of course, eight days in a disc week and eight colours in its light spectrum. Eight is a number of some considerable occult significance on the disc and must never, ever, be spoken by a wizard.
Precisely why all the above should be so is not clear, but goes some way to explain why, on the disc, the Gods are not so much worshipped as blamed.
2
Although in Trob the last word in fact became ‘a thing which may happen but once in the usable lifetime of a canoe hollowed diligently by axe and fire from the tallest diamondwood tree that grows in the noted diamondwood forests on the lower slopes of Mount Awayawa, home of the firegods or so it is said.’
3
“warriors who fight for the tribe with most milknut-meal”
4
instead of delegating the task to a subordinate, such as Disease or Famine, as is usually the case
5
wizards, even failed wizards, have in addition to rods and cones in their eyeballs the tiny octagons that enable them to see into the far octarine, the basic colour of which all other colours are merely pale shadows impinging on normal fourdimensional space. It is said to be a sort of fluorescent greenish-yellow purple
6
while the University librarian was otherwise engaged
7
Boom, boom went crypt lids, in the worm-haunted fastnesses under old mountains …
8
all cats can see into the octarine
9
such a one who, while wearing a copper nose ring, stands in a footbath atop Mount Raruaruaha during a heavy thunderstorm and shouts that Alohura, Goddess of Lightning, has the facial features of a diseased uloruaha root
10
the result of a lucky throw by Offler
11
B. Mgc., Unseen University [failed]
12
trolls being silicaceous lifeforms, their bodies reverted instantly to stone at the moment of death
13
Eight was also the Number of Bel-Shamharoth, which was why a sensible wizard would never mention the number if he could avoid it. Or you’ll be eight alive, apprentices were jocularly warned. Bel-Shamharoth was especially attracted to dabblers in magic who, by being as it were beachcombers on the shores of the unnatural, were already half-enmeshed in his nets. Rincewind’s room number in his hall of residence had been 7a. He hadn’t been surprised
14
demons do not breathe; however, every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life. And this was one of them as far as the demon was concerned
