The Light Fantastic

Now he’d had enough. He was going home. Pickled gherkins, I hear you calling…

He pushed Twoflower aside, gathered his tattered robe around him with great dignity, set his face towards that area of horizon he believed to contain the city of his birth, and with intense determination and considerable absentmindedness stepped right off the top of a thirty-foot trilithon.

Some ten minutes later, when a worried and rather contrite Twoflower dug him out of the large snowdrift at the base of the stones, his expression hadn’t changed.

Twoflower peered at him.

‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

‘I want to go home!’

‘Okay.’

‘No, don’t try and talk me out of it, I’ve had enough, I’d like to say it’s been great fun but I can’t, and— what?’

‘I said okay,’ said Twoflower. ‘I’d quite like to see Ankh-Morpork again. I expect they’ve rebuilt quite a lot of it by now.’

It should be noted that the last time the two of them had seen the city it was burning quite fiercely, a fact which had a lot to do with Twoflower introducing the concept of fire insurance to a venial but ignorant populace. But devastating fires were a regular feature of Morporkian life and it had always been cheerfully and meticulously rebuilt, using the traditional local materials of tinder-dry wood and thatch waterproofed with tar.

‘Oh,’ said Rincewind, deflating a bit. ‘Oh, right. Right then. Good. Perhaps we’d better be off, then.’

He scrambled up and brushed the snow off himself.

‘Only I think we should wait until morning,’ added Twoflower.

‘Why?’

‘Well, because it’s freezing cold, we don’t really know where we are, the Luggage has gone missing, it’s getting dark—’

Rincewind paused. In the deep canyons of his mind he thought he heard the distant rustle of ancient paper. He had a horrible feeling that his dreams were going to be very repetitive from now on, and he had much better things to do than be lectured by a bunch of ancient spells who couldn’t even agree on how the Universe began—

A tiny dry voice at the back of his brain said: What things?

‘Oh, shut up,’ he said.

‘I only said it’s freezing cold and—’ Twoflower began.

‘I didn’t mean you, I meant me.’

‘What?’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Rincewind wearily. ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything to eat around here?’

The giant stones were black and menacing against the dying green light of sunset. The inner circle was full of druids, scurrying around by the light of several bonfires and tuning up all the necessary peripherals of a stone computer, like rams’ skulls on poles topped with mistletoe, banners embroidered with twisted snakes and so on. Beyond the circles of firelight a large number of plains people had gathered; druidic festivals were always popular, especially when things went wrong. Rincewind stared at them.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Oh, well,’ said Twoflower enthusiastically, ‘apparently there’s this ceremony dating back for thousands of years to celebrate the, um, rebirth of the moon, or possibly the sun. No, I’m pretty certain it’s the moon. Apparently it’s very solemn and beautiful and invested with a quiet dignity.’

Rincewind shivered. He always began to worry when Twoflower started to talk like that. At least he hadn’t said ‘picturesque’ or ‘quaint’ yet; Rincewind had never found a satisfactory translation for those words, but the nearest he had been able to come was ‘trouble’.

‘I wish the Luggage was here,’ said the tourist regretfully. ‘I could use my picture box. It sounds very quaint and picturesque.’

The crowd stirred expectantly. Apparently things were about to start.

‘Look,’ said Rincewind urgently. ‘Druids are priests. You must remember that. Don’t do anything to upset them.’

‘But—’

‘Don’t offer to buy the stones.’

‘But I—’

‘Don’t start talking about quaint native folkways.’

‘I thought—’

‘Really don’t try to sell them insurance, that always upsets them.’

‘But they’re priests!’ wailed Twoflower. Rincewind paused.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s the whole point, isn’t it?’

At the far side of the outer circle some sort of procession was forming up.

‘But priests are good kind men,’ said Twoflower. ‘At home they go around with begging bowls. It’s their only possession,’ he added.

‘Ah,’ said Rincewind, not certain he understood. ‘This would be for putting the blood in, right?’

‘Blood?’

‘Yes, from sacrifices.’ Rincewind thought about the priests he had known at home. He was, of course, anxious not to make an enemy of any god and had attended any number of temple functions and, on the whole, he thought that the most accurate definition of any priest in the Circle Sea Regions was someone who spent quite a lot of time gory to the armpits.

Twoflower looked horrified.

‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Where I come from priests are holy men who have dedicated themselves to lives of poverty, good works and the study of the nature of God.’

Rincewind considered this novel proposition.

‘No sacrifices?’ he said.

‘Absolutely not.’

Rincewind gave up. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘they don’t sound very holy to me.’

There was a loud blasting noise from a band of bronze trumpets. Rincewind looked around. A line of druids marched slowly past, their long sickles hung with sprays of mistletoe. Various junior druids and apprentices followed them, playing a variety of percussion instruments that were traditionally supposed to drive away evil spirits and quite probably succeeded.

Torchlight made excitingly dramatic patterns on the stones, which stood ominously against the green-lit sky. Hubwards, the shimmering curtains of the aurora coriolis began to wink and glitter among the stars as a million ice crystals danced in the Disc’s magical field.

‘Belafon explained it all to me,’ whispered Twoflower. ‘We’re going to see a time-honoured ceremony that celebrates the Oneness of Man with the Universe, that was what he said.’

Rincewind looked sourly at the procession. As the druids spread out around a great flat stone that dominated the centre of the circle he couldn’t help noticing the attractive if rather pale young lady in their midst. She wore a long white robe, a gold torc around her neck, and an expression of vague apprehension.

‘Is she a druidess?’ said Twoflower.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Rincewind slowly.

The druids began to chant. It was, Rincewind felt, a particularly nasty and rather dull chant which sounded very much as if it was going to build up to an abrupt crescendo. The sight of the young woman lying down on the big stone didn’t do anything to derail his train of thought.

‘I want to stay,’ said Twoflower. ‘I think ceremonies like this hark back to a primitive simplicity which—’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Rincewind, ‘but they’re going to sacrifice her, if you must know.’

Twoflower looked at him in astonishment.

‘What, kill her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t ask me. To make the crops grow or the moon rise or something. Or maybe they’re just keen on killing