‘A jeweller?’ said Rincewind.
‘It’s a shuprishe.’
‘I could do with a new dress, too,’ said Bethan.
‘I’ll shteal you one.’
There was something very oppressive about the city, Rincewind decided. There was also something very odd.
Almost every door was painted with a large red star.
‘It’s creepy,’ said Bethan. ‘As if people wanted to bring the star here.’
‘Or keep it away,’ said Twoflower.
‘That won’t work. It’s too big,’ said Rincewind. He saw their faces turned towards him.
‘Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it?’ he said lamely.
‘No,’ said Bethan.
‘Stars are small lights in the sky,’ said Twoflower. ‘One fell down near my home once – big white thing, size of a house, glowed for weeks before it went out.’
‘This star is different,’ said a voice. ‘Great A’Tuin has climbed the beach of the universe. This is the great ocean of space.’
‘How do you know?’ said Twoflower.
‘Know what?’ said Rincewind.
‘What you just said. About beaches and oceans.’
‘I didn’t say anything!’
‘Yes you did, you silly man!’ yelled Bethan. ‘We saw your lips going up and down and everything!’
Rincewind shut his eyes. Inside his mind he could feel the Spell scuttling off to hide behind his conscience, and muttering to itself.
‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘No need to shout. I – I don’t know how I know, I just know —.’
‘Well, I wish you’d tell us.’
They turned the corner.
All the cities around the Circle Sea had a special area set aside for the gods, of which the Disc had an elegant sufficiency. Usually they were crowded and not very attractive from an architectural point of view. The most senior gods, of course, had large and splendid temples, but the trouble was that later gods demanded equality and soon the holy areas were sprawling with lean-to’s, annexes, loft conversions, sub-basements, bijou flatlets, ecclesiastical infilling and trans-temporal timesharing, since no god would dream of living outside the holy quarter or, as it had become, three-eighths. There were usually three hundred different types of incense being burned and the noise was normally at pain threshold because of all the priests vying with each other to call their share of the faithful to prayer.
But this street was deathly quiet, that particularly unpleasant quiet that comes when hundreds of frightened and angry people are standing very still.
A man at the edge of the crowd turned around and scowled at the newcomers. He had a red star painted on his forehead.
‘What’s—’ Rincewind began, and stopped as his voice seemed far too loud, ‘what’s this?’
‘You’re strangers?’ said the man.
‘Actually we know one another quite—’ Twoflower egan, and fell silent. Bethan pointed up the street.
Every temple had a star painted on it. There was a particularly big one daubed across the stone eye outside the temple of Blind Io, leader of the gods.
‘Urgh,’ said Rincewind. ‘Io is going to be really pissed when he sees that. I don’t think we ought to hang around here, friends.’
The crowd was facing a crude platform that had been built in the centre of the wide street. A big banner had been draped across the front of it.
‘I always heard that Blind Io can see everything that happens everywhere,’ said Bethan quietly. ‘Why hasn’t —’
‘Quiet!’ said the man beside them. ‘Dahoney speaks!’
A figure had stepped up on the platform, a tall thin man with hair like a dandelion. There was no cheer from the crowd, just a collective sigh. He began to speak.
Rincewind listened in mounting horror. Where were the gods? said the man. They had gone. Perhaps they had never been. Who, actually, could remember seeing them? And now the star had been sent —
It went on and on, a quiet, clear voice that used words like ‘cleanse’ and ‘scouring’ and ‘purify’ and drilled into the brain like a hot sword. Where were the wizards? Where was magic? Had it ever really worked, or had it all been a dream?
Rincewind began to be really afraid that the gods might get to hear about this and be so angry that they’d take it out on anyone who happened to have been around at the time.
But somehow even the wrath of the gods would have been better than the sound of that voice. The star was coming, it seemed to say, and its fearful fire could only be averted by – by – Rincewind couldn’t be certain, but he had visions of swords and banners and blank-eyed warriors. The voice didn’t believe in gods, which in Rincewind’s book was fair enough, but it didn’t believe in people either.
A tall hooded stranger on Rincewind’s left jostled him. He turned – and looked up into a grinning skuli nder a black hood.
Wizards, like cats, can see Death.
Compared to the sound of that voice, Death seemed almost pleasant. He leaned against a wall, his scythe propped up beside him. He nodded at Rincewind.
‘Come to gloat?’ whispered Rincewind. Death shrugged.
I HAVE COME TO SEE THE FUTURE, he said.
‘This is the future?’
A FUTURE, said Death.
‘It’s horrible,’ said Rincewind.
I’M INCLINED TO AGREE, said Death.
‘I would have thought you’d be all for it I’
NOT LIKE THIS. THE DEATH OF THE WARRIOR OR THE OLD MAN OR THE LITTLE CHILD, THIS I UNDERSTAND, AND I TAKE AWAY THE PAIN AND END THE SUFFERING. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS DEATH-OF-THE-MIND.
‘Who are you talking to?’ said Twoflower. Several members of the congregation had turned around and were looking suspiciously at Rincewind.
‘Nobody,’ said Rincewind. ‘Can we go away? I’ve got a headache.’
Now a group of people at the edge of the crowd were muttering and pointing to them. Rincewind grabbed the other two and hurried them around the corner.
‘Mount up and let’s go,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling that —’
A hand landed on his shoulder. He turned around. A pair of cloudy grey eyes set in a round bald head on top of a large muscular body were staring hard at his left ear. The man had a star painted on his forehead.
‘You look like a wizard,’ he said, in a tone of voice that suggested this was very unwise and quite possibly fatal.
‘Who, me? No, I’m – a clerk. Yes. A clerk. That’s right,’ said Rincewind.
He gave a little laugh.
The man paused, his lips moving soundlessly, as though he was listening to a voice in his head. Several ther star people had joined him. Rincewind’s left ear began to be widely regarded.
‘I think you’re a wizard,’ said the man.
‘Look,’ said Rincewind, ‘if I was a wizard I’d be able to do magic, right? I’d just turn you into something, and I haven’t, so I’m not.’
‘We killed all our wizards,’ said one of the men. ‘Some ran away, but we killed quite a lot. They waved their hands and nothing came out.’
Rincewind stared at him.
‘And we think you’re a wizard too,’ said the man holding Rincewind in an ever-tightening grip. ‘You’ve got the box on legs and you look like a wizard.’
Rincewind became aware that the three of them and the Luggage had somehow become separated from their horses, and that they were now in a contracting circle of grey-faced, solemn people.
Bethan had gone pale. Even Twoflower, whose ability to recognise danger was as good as Rincewind’s ability to fly, was looking worried.
Rincewind took a deep breath.
He raised his hands in the classic pose he’d learned years before, and rasped, ‘Stand back! Or I’ll fill you full of magic!’
‘The magic has faded,’ said the man. ‘The star has taken it away. All the false wizards said their funny words and then nothing happened and they looked at their hands in horror and very few of them, in fact, had the sense to run away.’
‘I mean it!’ said Rincewind.
He’s going to kill me, he thought. That’s it. I can’t even bluff any more. No good at magic, no good at bluffing, I’m just a —
The Spell stirred in his mind. He felt it trickle into his brain like iced water and brace itself. A cold tingle coursed down his arm.
His arm raised of its own volition, and he felt his own mouth opening and shutting and his own tongue moving as a voice that wasn’t his, a voice that sounded old and dry, said syllables that puffed into the air like steam clouds.
Octarine fire flashed from under his fingernails. It wrapped itself around the horrified man until he was lost in a cold, spitting cloud that rose above the street, hung there for a long moment, and then exploded into nothingness.
There wasn’t even a wisp of greasy smoke.
Rincewind stared at his hand in horror.
Twoflower and Bethan each grabbed him by an arm and hustled him through the shocked crowd until they reached the open street. There was a painful moment as they each chose to run down a different alley, but they hurried on with Rincewind’s feet barely touching the cobbles.