‘Exactly.’
‘That’s why one of you got into my head?’
‘Precisely.’
‘You totally ruined my life, you know that?’ said Rincewind hotly. ‘I could have really made it as a wizard if you hadn’t decided to use me as a sort of portable spellbook. I can’t remember any other spells, they’re too frightened to stay in the same head as you!’
‘We’re sorry.’
‘I just want to go home! I want to go back to where—’ a trace of moisture appeared in Rincewind’s eye – ‘to where there’s cobbles under your feet and some of the beer isn’t too bad and you can get quite a good piece of fried fish of an evening, with maybe a couple of big green gherkins, and even an eel pie and a dish of whelks, and there’s always a warm stable somewhere to sleep in and in the morning you are always in the same place as you were the night before and there wasn’t all this weather all over the place. I mean, I don’t mind about the magic, I’m probably not, you know, the right sort of material for a wizard, I just want to go home!—’
‘But you must—’ one of the spells began.
It was too late. Homesickness, the little elastic band in the subconscious that can wind up a salmon and propel it three thousand miles through strange seas, or send a million lemmings running joyfully back to an ancestral homeland which, owing to a slight kink in the continental drift, isn’t there any more – homesickness rose up inside Rincewind like a late-night prawn biriani, flowed along the tenuous thread linking his tortured soul to his body, dug its heels in and tugged . . .
The spells were alone inside their Octavo.
Alone, at any rate, apart from the Luggage.
They looked at it, not with eyes, but with consciousness as old as the Discworld itself.
‘And you can bugger off too,’ they said.
‘&mdash bad.’
Rincewind knew it was himself speaking, he recognised the voice. For a moment he was looking out through his eyes not in any normal way, but as a spy might peer through the cut-out eyes of a picture. Then he was back.
‘You okay, Rinshwind?’ said Cohen. ‘You looked a bit gone there.’
‘You did look a bit white,’ agreed Bethan. ‘Like someone had walked over your grave.’
‘Uh, yes, it was probably me,’ he said. He held up his fingers and counted them. There appeared to be the normal amount.
‘Um, have I moved at all?’ he said.
‘You just looked at the fire as if you had seen a ghost,’ said Bethan.
There was a groan behind them. Twoflower was sitting up, holding his head in his hands.
His eyes focused on them. His lips moved soundlessly.
‘That was a really strange . . . dream,’ he said. ‘What’s this place? Why am I here?’
‘Well,’ said Cohen, ‘shome shay the Creator of the Univershe took a handful of clay and —’
‘No, I mean here,’ said Twoflower. ‘Is that you, Rincewind?’
‘Yes,’ said Rincewind, giving it the benefit of the doubt.
‘There was this . . . a clock that . . . and these people who . . .’ said Twoflower. He shook his head. ‘Why does everything smell of horses?’
‘You’ve been ill,’ said Rincewind. ‘Hallucinating.’
‘Yes . . . I suppose I was.’ Twoflower looked down at his chest. ‘But in that case, why have I—’ Rincewind jumped to his feet.
‘Sorry, very close in here, got to have a breath of fresh air,’ he said. He removed the picture box’s strap from Twoflower’s neck, and dashed for the tent flap.
‘I didn’t notice that when he came in,’ said Bethan. Cohen shrugged.
Rincewind managed to get a few yards from the yurt efore the ratchet of the picture box began to click. Very slowly, the box extruded the last picture that the imp had taken.
Rincewind snatched at it.
What it showed would have been quite horrible even in broad daylight. By freezing starlight, tinted red with the fires of the evil new star, it was a lot worse.
‘No,’ said Rincewind softly. ‘No, it wasn’t like that, there was a house, and this girl, and . . .’
‘You see what you see and I paint what I see,’ said the imp from its hatch. ‘What I see is real. I was bred for it. I only see what’s really there.’
A dark shape crunched over the snowcrust towards Rincewind. It was the Luggage. Rincewind, who normally hated and distrusted it, suddenly felt it was the most refreshingly normal thing he had ever seen.
‘I see you made it, then,’ said Rincewind. The Luggage rattled its lid.
‘Okay, but what did you see?’ said Rincewind. ‘Did you look behind?’
The Luggage said nothing. For a moment they were silent, like two warriors who have fled the field of carnage and have paused for a return of breath and sanity.
Then Rincewind said, ‘Come on, there’s a fire inside.’ He reached out to pat the Luggage’s lid. It snapped irritably at him, nearly catching his fingers. Life was back to normal again.
The next day dawned bright and clear and cold. The sky became a blue dome stuck on the white sheet of the world, and the whole effect would have been as fresh and clean as a toothpaste advert if it wasn’t for the pink dot on the horizon.
‘You can shee it in daylight now,’ said Cohen. ‘What is it?’
He looked hard at Rincewind, who reddened.
‘Why does everyone look at me?’ he said. ‘I don’t know 107 what it is, maybe it’s a comet or something.’
‘Will we all be burned up?’ said Bethan.
‘How should I know? I’ve never been hit by a comet before.’
They were riding in single file across the brilliant snow-field. The Horse people, who seemed to hold Cohen in high regard, had given them their mounts and directions to the River Smarl, a hundred miles rimward, where Cohen reckoned Rincewind and Twoflower could find a boat to take them to the Circle Sea. He had announced that he was coming with them, on account of his chilblains.
Bethan had promptly announced that she was going to come too, in case Cohen wanted anything rubbed.
Rincewind was vaguely aware of some sort of chemistry bubbling away. For one thing, Cohen had made an effort to comb his beard.
‘I think she’s rather taken with you,’ he said. Cohen sighed.
If I wash twenty yearsh younger,’ he said wistfully.
‘Yes?’
‘I’d be shixty-sheven.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Well – how can I put it? When I wash a young man, carving my name in the world, well, then I liked my women red-haired and fiery.’
‘Ah.’
‘And then I grew a little older and for preference I looked for a woman with blonde hair, and the glint of the world in her eye.’
‘Oh? Yes?’
‘But then I grew a little older again and I came to see the point of dark women of a sultry nature.’
He paused. Rincewind waited.
‘And?’ he said. ‘Then what? What is it that you look for in a woman now?’
Cohen turned one rheumy blue eye on him.
‘Patience,’ he said.
‘I can’t believe it!’ said a voice behind them. ‘Me riding ith Cohen the Barbarian!’
It was Twoflower. Since early morning he had been like a monkey with the key to the banana plantation after discovering he was breathing the same air as the greatest hero of all time.
‘Is he perhapsh being sharcashtic?’ said Cohen to Rincewind.
‘No. He’s always like that.’
Cohen turned in his saddle. Twoflower beamed at him, and waved proudly. Cohen turned back, and grunted.
‘He’s got eyesh, hashn’t he?’
‘Yes, but they don’t work like other people’s. Take it from me. I mean – well, you know the Horse people’s yurt, where we were last night?’
‘Yesh.’
‘Would you say it was a bit dark and greasy and smelt like a very ill horse?’
‘Very accurate deshcription, I’d shay.’
‘He wouldn’t agree. He’d say it was a magnificent barbarian tent, hung with the pelts of the great beasts hunted by the lean-eyed warriors from the edge of civilisation, and smelt of the rare and curious resins plundered from the caravans as they crossed the trackless – well, and so on. I mean it,’ he added.
‘He’sh mad?’
‘Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money.’
‘Ah, then he can’t be mad. I’ve been around; if a man hash lotsh of money he’sh just ecshentric.’
Cohen turned in his saddle again. Twoflower was telling Bethan how Cohen had single-handed defeated the snake warriors of the witch lord of S’belinde and stolen the sacred diamond from the giant statue of Offler the Crocodile God.
A weird smile formed among the wrinkles of Cohen’s face.
‘I could tell him to shut up, if you like,’ said Rincewind.