The Light Fantastic

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 people. That's religion for you.'



He became aware of a low humming sound, not so much heard as felt. It seemed to be coming from the stone next to them. Little points of light flickered under its surface, like mica specks.



Twoflower was opening and shutting his mouth.



'Can't they just use flowers and berries and things?' he said. 'Sort of symbolic?'



'Nope.'



'Has anyone ever tried?'



Rincewind sighed. 'Look,' he said. 'No self-respecting High Priest is going to go through all the business with the trumpets and the processions and the banners and everything, and then shove his knife into a daffodil and a couple of plums. You've got to face it, all this stuff about golden boughs and the cycles of nature and stuff just boils down to sex and violence, usually at the same time.'



To his amazement Twoflower's lip was trembling. Twoflower didn't just look at the world through rose-tinted spectacles, Rincewind knew – he looked at it through a rose-tinted brain, too, and heard it through rose-tinted ears.



The chant was rising inexorably to a crescendo. The head druid was testing the edge of his sickle and all eyes were turned to the finger of stone on the snowy hills beyond the circle where the moon was due to make a guest appearance.



'It's no use you—'



But Rincewind was talking to himself.



However, the chilly landscape outside the circle was not entirely devoid of life. For one thing a party of wizards was even now drawing near, alerted by Trymon.



But a small and solitary figure was also watching from the cover of a handy fallen stone. One of the Disc's greatest legends watched the events in the stone circle with considerable interest.



He saw the druids circle and chant, saw the chief druid I raise his sickle . . .'



Heard the voice.



'I say! Excuse me! Can I have a word?'



Rincewind looked around desperately for a way of escape. There wasn't one. Twoflower was standing by the altar stone with one finger in the air and an attitude of polite determination.



Rincewind remembered one day when Twoflower had thought a passing drover was beating his cattle too hard, and the case he had made for decency towards animals had left Rincewind severely trampled and lightly gored. The druids were looking at Twoflower with the kind of expression normally reserved for mad sheep or the sudden appearance of a rain of frogs. Rincewind couldn't quite hear what Twoflower was saying, but a few phrases like 'ethnic folkways' and 'nuts and flowers' floated across the hushed circle.



Then fingers like a bunch of cheese straws clamped over the wizard's mouth and an extremely sharp cutting edge pinked his adams apple and a damp voice right by his ear said, 'Not a shound, or you ish a dead man.'



Rincewind's eyes swivelled in their sockets as if trying to find a way out.



'If you don't want me to say anything, how will you know I understand what you just said?' he hissed.



'Shut up and tell me what that other idiot ish doing!'



'No, but look, if I've got to shut up, how can I—' The knife at his throat became a hot streak of pain and Rincewind decided to give logic a miss.



'His name's Twoflower. He isn't from these parts.'



'Doeshn't look like it. Friend of yoursh?'



'We've got this sort of hate-hate relationship, yes.'



Rincewind couldn't see his captor, but by the feel of it he had a body made of coathangers. He also smelt strongly of peppermints.



'He hash got guts, I'll give him that. Do exshactly what I shay and it ish just poshible he won't end up with them wrapped around a shtone.'



'Urrr.'



'They're not very ecumenical around here, you shee.'



It was at that moment that the moon, in due obedience to the laws of persuasion, rose, although in deference to he laws of computing it wasn't anywhere near where the stones said it should be.



But what was there, peeking through ragged clouds, was a glaring red star. It hung exactly over the circle's holiest stone, glittering away like the sparkle in the eyesocket of Death. It was sullen and awful and, Rincewind couldn't help noticing, just a little bit bigger than it was last night.



A cry of horror went up from the assembled priests. The crowd on the surrounding banks pressed forward; this looked quite promising.



Rincewind felt a knife handle slip into his hand, and the squelchy voice behind him said, 'You ever done this short of thing before?'



'What sort of thing?'



'Rushed into a temple, killed the prieshts, shtolen the gold and reshcued the girl.'



'No, not in so many words.'



'You do it like thish.'



Two inches from Rincewind's left ear a voice broke into a sound like a baboon with its foot trapped in an echo canyon, and a small but wiry shape rushed past him.



By the light of the torches he saw that it was a very old man, the skinny variety that generally gets called 'spry', with a totally bald head, a beard almost down to his knees, and a pair of matchstick legs on which varicose veins had traced the street map of quite a large city. Despite the snow he wore nothing more than a studded leather holdall and a pair of boots that could have easily accommodated a second pair of feet.



The two druids closest to him exchanged glances and hefted their sickles. There was a brief blur and they collapsed into tight balls of agony, making rattling noises. In the excitement that followed Rincewind sidled along towards the altar stone, holding his knife gingerly so as not to attract any unwelcome comment. In fact no-one was paying a great deal of attention to him; the druids that hadn't fled the circle, generally the younger and more muscular ones, had congregated around the old man n order to discuss the whole subject of sacrilege as it pertained to stone circles, but judging by the cackling and sounds of gristle he was carrying the debate.



Twoflower was watching the fight with interest. Rincewind grabbed him by the shoulder.



'Let's go,' he said.



'Shouldn't we help?'



'I'm sure we'd only get in the way,' said Rincewind hurriedly. 'You know what it's like to have people looking over your shoulder when you're busy.'



'At least we must rescue the young lady,' said Twoflower firmly.



'All right, but get a move on!'



Twoflower took the knife and hurried up to the altar stone. After several inept slashes he managed to cut the ropes that bound the girl, who sat up and burst into tears.



'It's all right—' he began.



'It bloody well isn't!' she snapped, glaring at him through two red-rimmed eyes. Why do people always go and spoil things?' She blew her nose resentfully on the edge of her robe.



Twoflower looked up at Rincewind in embarrassment.



'Um,' I don't think you quite understand,' he said. 'I mean, we just saved you from absolutely certain death.'



'It's not easy around here,' she said. 'I mean, keeping yourself—' she blushed, and twisted the hem of her robe wretchedly. 'I mean, staying . . . not letting yourself be . . . not losing your qualifications . . .'



'Qualifications? said Twoflower, earning the Rincewind Cup for the slowest person on the uptake in the entire multiverse. The girl's eyes narrowed.



'I could have been up there with the Moon Goddess by now, drinking mead out of a silver bowl,' she said petulantly. 'Eight years of staying home on Saturday nights right down the drain!'



She looked up at Rincewind and scowled.



Then he sensed something. Perhaps it was a barely heard footstep behind him, perhaps it was movement reflected n her eyes – but he ducked.



Something whistled through the air where his neck had been and glanced off Twoflower's bald head. Rincewind spun round to see the archdruid readying his sickle for another swing and, in the absence of any hope of running away, lashed out desperately with a foot.



It caught the druid squarely on the kneecap. As the man screamed and dropped his weapon there was a nasty little fleshy sound and he fell forward. Behind him the little man with the long beard pulled his sword from the body, wiped it with a handful of snow, and said, 'My lumbago is giving me gyp. You can carry the treashure.'



'Treasure?' said Rincewind weakly.



'All the necklashes and shtuff. All the gold collarsh. They've got lotsh of them. Thatsh prieshts for you,' said the old man wetly. 'Nothing but torc, torc, torc. Who'she the girl?'



'She won't let us rescue her,' said Rincewind. The girl looked at the old man defiantly through her smudged eyeshadow.



'Bugger that,' he said, and with one movement picked her up, staggered a little, screamed at his arthritis and fell over.



After a moment he said, from his prone position, 'Don't just shtand there, you daft bitcsh – help me up.' Much to Rincewind's amazement, and almost certainly to hers as well, she did so.



Rincewind, meanwhile, was trying to rouse Twoflower. There was a graze across his temple which didn't look too deep, but the little man was unconscious with a faintly worried smile plastered across his face. His breathing was shallow and – strange.



And he felt light. Not simply underweight, but weightless. The wizard might as well have been holding a shadow. Rincewind remembered that it was said that druids used strange and terrible poisons. Of course, it was often said, usually by the same people, that crooks always had close-set eyes, lightning never struck twice in the same lace and if the gods had wanted men to fly they'd have given them an airline ticket. But something about Twoflower's lightness frightened Rincewind. Frightened him horribly.



He looked up at the girl. She had the old man slung over one shoulder, and gave Rincewind an apologetic half-smile. From somewhere around the small of her back a voice said, 'Got everything? Letsh get out of here before they come back.'



Rincewind tucked Twoflower under one arm and jogged along after them. It seemed the only thing to do.



The old man had a large white horse tethered to a withered tree in a snow-filled gully some way from the circles. It was sleek, glossy and the general effect of a superb battle charger was only very slightly spoiled by the haemorrhoid ring tied to the saddle.



'Okay, put me down. There'sh a bottle of shome linament shtuff in the shaddle bag, if you wouldn't mind . . .' Rincewind propped Twoflower as nicely as possible against the tree, and by moonlight – and, he realised, by the faint red light of the menacing new star – took the first real look at his rescuer.



The man had only one eye; the other was covered by a black patch. His thin body was a network of scars and, currently, twanging white-hot with tendonitis. His teeth had obviously decided to quit long ago.



'Who are you?' he said.



'Bethan,' said the girl, rubbing a handful of nasty-smelling green ointment into the old man's back. She wore the air of one who, if asked to consider what sort of events might occur after being rescued from virgin sacrifice by a hero with a white charger, would probably not have mentioned linament, but who, now linament was apparently what did happen to you after all, was determined to be good at it.



'I meant him,' said Rincewind.



One star-bright eye looked up at him.



'Cohen ish my name, boy.' Bethan's hands stopped moving.



'Cohen?' she said. 'Cohen the Barbarian?'



'The very shame.'



'Hang on, hang on,' said Rincewind. 'Cohen's a great big chap, neck like a bull, got chest muscles like a sack of footballs. I mean, he's the Disc's greatest warrior, a legend in his own lifetime. I remember my grandad telling me he saw him . . . my grandad telling me he . . . my grandad . . .'