‘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 blarting 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 rystals 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 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.