Trolls like Rock or Morry, of course, were far more modern and could do things like use a knife and fork, but there was something, well, reassuring about Detritus. Perhaps it was the way his knuckles touched the ground so dynamically. And apart from anything else, she was sure she was brighter than he was. There was a sort of gormless unstoppability about him that she found rather fascinating. That was the instincts at work again -intelligence has never been a particularly valuable survival trait in a troll.
And she had to admit that, whatever she might attempt in the way of feather boas and fancy hats, she was pushing 140 and was 400 lbs above the fashionable weight.
If only he’d buck his ideas up.
Or at least, buck one idea up.
Maybe this make-up the girls had been talking about could be worth a try.
She sighed, blew out the lamp, opened the door and stepped out into a maze of roots.
A gigantic tree stretched the whole length of the alley. He must have dragged it for miles. The few surviving branches poked through windows or waved forlornly in the air.
In the middle of it all was Detritus, perched proudly on the trunk, his face split in a watermelon grin, his arms spread wide.
‘Tra-laa!’ he said.
Ruby heaved a gigantic sigh. Romance wasn’t easy, when you were a troll.
The Librarian forced the page open and chained it down. The book tried to snap at him.
Its contents had made it what it was. Evil and treacherous.
It contained forbidden knowledge. Well, not actually forbidden. No-one had ever gone so far as forbidding it. Apart from anything else, in order to forbid it you’d have to know what it was, which was forbidden. But it definitely contained the sort of information which, once you knew it, you wished you hadn’t.[19]
Legend said that any mortal man who read more than a few lines of the original copy would die insane.
This was certainly true. Legend also said that the book contained illustrations that would make a strong man’s brain dribble out of his ears.
This was probably true, too. Legend went on to say that merely opening the Necrotelicomnicon would cause a man’s flesh to crawl off his hand and up his arm.
No-one actually knew if this was true, but it sounded horrible enough to be true and no-one was about to try any experiments.
Legend had a lot to say about the Necrotelicomnicon, in fact, but absolutely nothing to say about orang-utans, who could tear the book into little bits and chew it for all legend cared. The worst that had ever happened to the Librarian after looking at it was a mild migraine and a touch of eczema, but that was no reason to take chances. He adjusted the smoked glass of the visor and ran one black-leather finger down the Index; the words bridled as the digit slid past, and tried to bite it.
Occasionally he’d hold the strip of film up to the light of the flickering torch.
The wind and sand had blurred them, but there was no doubt that there were carvings on the rock. And the Librarian had seen designs like that before.
He found the reference he was looking for and, after a brief struggle during which he had to threaten the Necrotelicomnicon with the torch, forced the book to turn to the page.
He peered closer.
Good old Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches . . .
‘ . . . and in that hill, it is said, a Door out of the World was found, and people of the city watched What was Seen therein, knowing not that Dread waited between the universes . . . ‘
The Librarian’s fingertip dragged from right to left across the pictures, and skipped to the next paragraph.
‘ . . . for Others found the Gate of Holy Wood and fell upon the World, and in one nighte All Manner of Madnesse befell, and Chaos prevailed, and the City sank beneath the Sea, and all became one withe the fishes and the lobsters save for the few who fled . . . ‘
He curled a lip, and looked further down the page.
‘ . . . a Golden Warrior, who drove the Fiends back and saved the World, and said, Where the Gate is, There Am I Also; I Am He that was Born of Holy Wood, to guard the
Wild Idea. And they said, What must we do to Destroy the Gate Forever, and he said unto them, This you Cannot Do, for it is Not a Thing, but I will Guard the Gate for you. And they, not having been Born yesterday, and fearing the Cure more than the Malady, said to him, What will you Take from Us, that you will Guard the Door. And he grew until he was the height of a tree and said, Only your Remembrance, that I do Not Sleep. Three times a day will you remember Holy Wood. Else The Cities of the World Will Tremble and Fall, and you will See the Greatest of them All in Flames. And with that the Golden Man took up his golden sword and went into the Hill and stood at the Gate, forever.
‘And the People said to one another, Funny, he lookes just like my Uncle Osbert . . . ‘
The Librarian turned the page.
‘ . . . But there were among them, humans and animals alike, those touched by the magic of Holy Wood. It goeth through the generations like an ancient curse, until the priests cease in their Remembrance and the Golden Man sleepeth. Then let the world Beware . . . ‘
The Librarian let the book snap shut.
It wasn’t an uncommon legend. -He’d read it before at least, had read most of it – in books considerably less dangerous than this. You came across variants in all the cities of the Sto Plain. There had been a city once, in the mists of pre-history – bigger than Ankh-Morpork, if that were possible. And the inhabitants had done something, some sort of unspeakable crime not just against Mankind or the gods but against the very nature of the universe itself, which had been so dreadful that it had sunk beneath the sea one stormy night. Only a few people had survived to carry to the barbarian peoples in the less-advanced parts of the Disc all the arts and crafts of civilization, such as usury and macrame.
No-one had ever really taken it seriously. It was just one of those usual ‘If you don’t stop it you’ll go blind’ myths that civilizations tended to hand on to their descendants.
After all, Ankh-Morpork itself was generally considered as wicked a city as you could hope to find in a year of shore leaves, and seemed to have avoided any kind of supernatural vengeance, although it was always possible that it had taken place and no-one had noticed.
Legend had always put the nameless city far away and long ago.
No-one knew where it was, or even if it had existed.
The Librarian glanced at the symbols again.
They were very familiar. They were on the old ruins all over Holy Wood.
Azhural stood on a low hill, watching the sea of elephants move below him. Here and there a supply wagon bobbed between the dusty grey bodies like a rudderless boat. A mile of veldt was being churned into a soggy mud wallow, bare of grass – although, by the smell of it, it’d be the greenest patch on the Disc after the rains came.
He dabbed at his eyes with a corner of his robe.
Three hundred and sixty-three! Who’d have thought it?
The air was solid with the piqued trumpeting of three hundred and sixty-three elephants. And with the hunting and trapping parties already going on ahead, there should be plenty more. According to M’Bu, anyway. And he wasn’t going to argue.
Funny, that. For years he’d thought of M’Bu as a sort of mobile smile. A handy lad with a brush and shovel, but not what you might call a major achiever.
And then suddenly someone somewhere wanted a thousand elephants, and the lad had raised his head and a gleam had come into his eye and you could see that under that grin was a skilled kilopachydermatolist ready to answer the call. Funny. You could know someone for their whole life and not realize that the gods had put them in this world to move a thousand elephants around the place.
Azhural had no sons. He’d already made up his mind to leave everything to his assistant. Everything he had at this
point amounted to three hundred and sixty-three elephants and, ahaha, a mammoth overdraft, but it was the thought that counted.
M’Bu trotted up the path towards him, his clipboard held firmly under one arm.