particularly beautiful, look like something painted by a fanatical artist after a bad time on the shoe polish.
But it was
At the back of his mind the Spell was kicking up a ruckus, but he ignored it. Maybe it was true that magic was getting weaker as the star got nearer, or perhaps he’d had the Spell in his head for so long he had built up some kind of psychic immunity, but he found he
‘We’re in the docks,’ he declared. ‘Just smell that sea air!’
‘Oh,’ said Bethan, leaning against the wall, ‘yes.’
‘That’s ozone, that is,’ said Rincewind. That’s air with character, is that.’ He breathed deeply.
Twoflower turned to the shopkeeper.
‘Well, I hope you find your sorcerer,’ he said. ‘Sorry we didn’t buy anything, but all my money’s in my Luggage, you see.’
The shopkeeper pushed something into his hand.
‘A little gift,’ he said. ‘You’ll need it.’
He darted back into his shop, the bell jangled, the sign saying Call Again Tomorrow For Spoonfetcher’s Leeches, the Little Suckers banged forlornly against the door, and the shop faded into the brickwork as though it had never been. Twoflower reached out gingerly and touched the wall, not quite believing it.
‘What’s in the bag?’ said Rincewind.
It was a thick brown paper bag, with string handles.
‘If it sprouts legs I don’t want to know about it,’ said Bethan.
Twoflower peered inside, and pulled out the contents.
‘Is that all?’ said Rincewind. ‘A little house with shells on?’
‘It’s very useful,’ said Twoflower defensively. ‘You can keep cigarettes in it.’
‘And they’re what you really need, are they?’ said Rincewind.
‘I’d plump for a bottle of really strong sun-tan oil,’ said Bethan.
‘Come on,’ said Rincewind, and set off down the street. The others followed.
It occurred to Twoflower that some words of comfort were called for, a little tactful small talk to take Bethan out of herself, as he would put it, and generally cheer her up.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘There’s just a chance that Cohen might still be alive.’
‘Oh, I expect he’s alive all right,’ she said, stamping along the cobbles as if she nursed a personal grievance against each one of them. ‘You don’t live to be eighty-seven in his job if you go around dying all the time. But he’s not here.’
‘Nor is my Luggage,’ said Twoflower. ‘Of course, that’s not the same thing.’
‘Do you think the star is going to hit the Disc?’
‘No,’ said Twoflower confidently.
‘Why not?’
‘Because Rincewind doesn’t think so.’
She looked at him in amazement.
‘You see,’ the tourist went on, ‘you know that thing you do with seaweed?’
Bethan, brought up on the Vortex Plains, had only heard of the sea in stories, and had decided she didn’t like it. She looked blank.
‘Eat it?’
‘No, what you do is, you hang it up outside your door, and it tells you if it’s going to rain.’
Another thing Bethan had learned was that there was no real point in trying to understand anything Twoflower said, and that all anyone could do was run alongside the conversation and hope to jump on as it turned a corner.
‘I see,’ she said.
‘Rincewind is like that, you see.’
‘Like seaweed.’
‘Yes. If there was anything at all to be frightened about, he’d be frightened. But he’s not. The star is just about the only thing I’ve ever seen him not frightened of. If he’s not worried, then take it from me, there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘It’s not going to rain?’ said Bethan.
‘Well, no. Metaphorically speaking.’
‘Oh.’ Bethan decided not to ask what ‘metaphorically’ meant, in case it was something to do with seaweed.
Rincewind turned around.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Not far now.’
‘Where to?’ said Twoflower.
‘Unseen University, of course.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘Probably not, but I’m still going—’ Rincewind paused, his face a mask of pain. He put his hand to his ears and groaned.
‘Spell giving you trouble?’
‘Yargh.’
‘Try humming.’
Rincewind grimaced. ‘I’m going to get rid of this thing,’ he said thickly. ‘It’s going back into the book where it belongs. I want my head back!’
‘But then—’ Twoflower began, and stopped. They could all hear it—a distant chanting and the stamping of many feet.
‘Do you think it’s star people?’ said Bethan.
It was. The lead marchers came around a corner a hundred yards away, behind a ragged white banner with an eight-pointed star on it.
‘Not just star people,’ said Twoflower. ‘All kinds of people!’
The crowd swept them up in its passage. One moment they were standing in the deserted street, the next they were perforce moving with a tide of humanity that bore them onwards through the city.
Torchlight flickered easily on the damp tunnels far under the University as the heads of the eight Orders of wizardry filed onwards.
‘At least it’s cool down here,’ said one.
‘We shouldn’t
Trymon, who was leading the party, said nothing. But he was thinking very hard. He was thinking about the bottle of oil in his belt, and the eight keys the wizards carried—eight keys that would fit the eight locks that chained the Octavo to its lectern. He was thinking that old wizards who sense that magic is draining away are preoccupied with their own problems and are perhaps less alert than they should be. He was thinking that within a few minutes the Octavo, the greatest concentration of magic on the Disc, would be under his hands.
Despite the coolness of the tunnel he began to sweat.
They came to a lead-lined door set in the sheer stone. Trymon took a heavy key—a good, honest iron key, not like the twisted and disconcerting keys that would unlock the Octavo—gave the lock a squirt of oil, inserted the key, turned it. The lock squeaked open protestingly.
‘Are we of one resolve?’ said Trymon. There was a series of vaguely affirmative grunts.
He pushed at the door.
A warm gale of thick and somehow oily air rolled over them. The air was filled with a high-pitched and unpleasant chittering. Tiny sparks of octarine fire flared off every nose, fingernail and beard.
The wizards, their heads bowed against the storm of randomised magic that blew out of the room, pushed forward. Half-formed shapes giggled and fluttered around them as the nightmare inhabitants of the Dungeon Dimensions constantly probed (with things that passed for fingers only because they were at the ends of their arms) for an unguarded entry into the circle of firelight that passed for the universe of reason and order.
Even at this bad time for all things magical, even in a room designed to damp down all magical vibrations, the
