‘Everything ready, boss,’ he said. ‘You just got to say the word.’
Azhural drew himself up. He looked around at the heaving plain, the distant baobab trees, the purple mountains. Oh, yes. The mountains. He’d had misgivings about the mountains. He’d mentioned them to M’Bu, who said, ‘We’ll cross them bridges when we get to ’em, boss,’ and when Azhural had pointed out that there weren’t any bridges, had looked him squarely in the eye and said firmly, ‘First we build them bridge, then we cross ’em.’
Far beyond the mountains was the Circle Sea and Ankh-Morpork and this Holy Wood place. Far-away places with strange sounding names.
A wind blew across the veldt, carrying faint whispers, even here.
Azhural raised his staff.
‘It’s fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork,’ he said. ‘We’ve got three hundred and sixty-three elephants, fifty carts of forage, the monsoon’s about to break and we’re wearing . . . we’re wearing . . . sort of things, like glass, only dark . . . dark glass things on our eyes . . . ‘ His voice trailed off. His brow furrowed, as if he’d just been listening to his own voice and hadn’t understood it. ‘
The air seemed to glitter.
He saw M’Bu staring at him.
He shrugged. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
M’Bu cupped his hands. He’d spent all night working out the order of the march.
‘Blue Section bilong Uncle N’gru – forward!’ he shouted. ‘Yellow Section bilong Aunti Googool – forward! Green Section bilong Second-cousin! Kck! – forward . . . ‘
An hour later the veldt in front of the low hill was deserted except for a billion flies and one dung beetle who couldn’t believe his luck.
Something went ‘plop’ on the red dust, throwing up a little crater.
And again, and again.
Lightning split the trunk of a nearby baobab.
The rains began.
Victor’s back was beginning to ache. Carrying young women to safety looked a good idea on paper, but had major drawbacks after the first hundred yards.
‘Have you any idea where she lives?’ he said. ‘And is it somewhere close?’
‘No idea,’ said Gaspode.
‘She once said something about it being over a clothes shop,’ said Victor.
‘That’ll be in the alley alongside Borgle’s then,’ said Gaspode.
Gaspode and Laddie led the way through the alleys and up a rickety outside staircase. Maybe they smelled out Ginger’s room. Victor wasn’t going to argue with mysterious animal senses.
Victor went up the back stairs as quietly as possible. He was dimly aware that where people stayed was often infested by the Common or Greatly Suspicious Landlady, and he felt that he had enough problems as it was.
He used Ginger’s feet to push open the door.
It was a small room, low-ceilinged and furnished with the sad, washed-out furniture found in rented rooms across the multiverse. At least, that’s how it had started out.
What it was furnished with now was Ginger.
She had saved every poster. Even those from early clicks, when she was just in very small print as A Girl. They were thumb-tacked to the walls. Ginger’s face – and his own stared at him from every angle.
There was a large mirror at one end of the poky room, and a couple of half-burned candles in front of him.
Victor deposited the girl carefully on the narrow bed and then stared around him, very carefully. His sixth, seventh and eighth senses were screaming at him. He was in a place of magic.
‘It’s like a sort of temple,’ he said. ‘A temple to . . . herself.’
‘It gives me the willies,’ said Gaspode.
Victor stared. Maybe he’d always successfully avoided being awarded the pointy hat and big staff, but he had acquired wizard instincts. He had a sudden vision of a city under the sea, with octopuses curling stealthily through the drowned doorways and lobsters watching the streets.
‘Fate don’t like it when people take up more space than they ought to. Everyone knows that.’
I’m going to be the most famous person in the whole world, thought Victor. That’s what she sail. He shook his head.
‘No,’ he said aloud. ‘She just likes posters. It’s just ordinary vanity.’
It didn’t sound believable, even to him. The room fairly hummed with . . .
. . . what? He hadn’t felt anything like it before. Power of some sort, certainly. Something that was brushing tantalizingly against his senses. Not exactly magic. At least, not the kind he was used to. But something that seemed similar while not being the same, like sugar compared with salt; the same shape and the same colour, but . . .
Ambition wasn’t magical. Powerful, yes, but not magical . . . surely?
Magic wasn’t difficult. That was the big secret that the whole baroque edifice of wizardry had been set up to conceal. Anyone with a bit of intelligence and enough perseverance could do magic, which was why the wizards cloaked it with rituals and the whole pointyhat business.
The trick was to do magic and get away with it.
Because it was as if the human race was a field of corn and magic helped the users grow just that bit taller, so that they stood out. That attracted the attention of the gods and – Victor hesitated – other Things. outside this world.
People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end.
All over the entire room, sometimes.
He pictured Ginger, back on the beach. I want to be the most famous person in the whole world. Perhaps that was something new, come to think of it. Not ambition for gold, or power, or land or all the things that were familiar parts of the human world. Just ambition to be yourself, as big as possible. Not ambition for, but to be.
He shook his head. He was just in some room in some cheap building in some town that was about as real as, as, as, well, as the thickness of a click. It wasn’t the place to have thoughts like this.
The important thing was to remember that Holy Wood wasn’t a real place at all.
He stared at the posters again. You just get one chance, she said. You live for maybe seventy years, and if you’re lucky you get one chance. Think of all the natural skiers who are born in deserts. Think of all the genius blacksmiths who were born hundreds of years before anyone invented the horse. All the skills that are never used. All the wasted chances.
How lucky for me, he thought gloomily, that I happen to be alive at this time.
Ginger turned over in her sleep. At least her breathing was more regular now.
‘Come on,’ said Gaspode. ‘It’s not right, you being alone in a lady’s boodwah.’
‘I’m not alone,’ Victor said. ‘She’s with me.’
‘That’s the point,’ said Gaspode.
‘Woof,’ Laddie added, loyally.
‘You know,’ said Victor, following the dogs down the stairs, ‘I’m beginning to feel there’s something wrong here. There’s something going on and I don’t know what it is. Why was she trying to get into the hill?’
‘Prob’ly in league with dread Powers,’ said Gaspode.
‘The city and the hill and the old book and everything,’ said Victor, ignoring this. ‘It all makes sense if only I knew what was connecting it.’
He stepped out into the early evening, into the lights and noise of Holy Wood.
‘Tomorrow we’ll go up there in the daylight and sort this out once and for all,’ he said.
‘No, we won’t,’ said Gaspode. ‘The reason being, tomorrow we’re goin’ to Ankh-Morpork, remember?’
‘We?’ said Victor. ‘Ginger and I are going. I didn’t know about you.’
‘Laddie goin’, too,’ said Gaspode. ‘I-‘
‘Good boy Laddie!’
‘Yeah, yeah. I heard the trainers say. So I’ve got to go with him to see he don’t get into any trouble, style of fing.’
Victor yawned. ‘Well, I’m going to go to bed. We’ll probably have to start early.’
Gaspode looked innocently up and down the alley. Somewhere a door opened and there was the sound of drunken laughter.
‘I fought I might have a bit of a stroll before turnin’ in,’ he said. ‘Show Laddie-‘
‘Laddie good boy!’
‘-the sights and that.’
Victor looked doubtful.
‘Don’t keep him out too late,’ he said. ‘People will worry.9
‘Yeah, right,’ said Gaspode. ‘G’night.’
He sat and watched Victor wander off.
‘Huh,’ he said, under his dreadful breath. ‘Catch anyone worryin’ about me.’ He glared up at Laddie, who sprang to obedient attention.
‘Right, young fells-me-pup,’ he said. ‘ ‘S time you got educated. Lesson One, Glomming Free Drinks in Bars. It’s lucky for you’, he added, ‘that you met me.’
Two canine shapes staggered uncertainly up the midnight street.
‘We’re poor li’l lambs’, Gaspode howled, ‘wot have loorst our way . . . ‘ ‘Woof! Woof! Woof!’
‘We’re li’l loorst sheeps wot have – wot have . . . ‘ Gaspode sagged down, and scratched an ear, or at least where he vaguely thought an ear might be. His leg waved uncertainly in the air. Laddie gave him a sympathetic look.