Rincewind knew precisely what to do in these circumstances. He screamed and pointed the broomstick straight down.
Galder Weatherwax stood in the centre of the octogram and raised his hands.
'Urshalo, dileptor, c'hula, do my bidding!'
A small mist formed over his head. He glanced sideways at Trymon, who was sulking at the edge of the magic circle.
'This next bit's quite impressive,' he said. 'Watch. Kot-b'hai! Kot-sham! To me, o spirits of small isolated rocks and worried mice not less than three inches long!'
'What?' said Trymon.
That bit took quite a lot of research,' agreed Galder, especially the mice. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes . . .'
He raised his arms again. Trymon watched him, and licked his lips distractedly. The old fool was really concentrating, bending his mind entirely to the Spell and hardly paying any attention to Trymon.
Words of power rolled around the room, bouncing off the walls and scuttling out of sight behind shelves and jars. Trymon hesitated.
Galder shut his eyes momentarily, his face a mask of ecstacy as he mouthed the final word.
Trymon tensed, his fingers curling around the knife again. And Galder opened one eye, nodded at him and sent a sideways blast of power that picked the younger man up and sent him sprawling against the wall.
e side of the clearing three tiny red points of light-glowed momentarily and there was the sound of a chesty cough, abruptly silenced.
'Shut up!' hissed a third rank wizard. They'll hear us!'
'Who will? We gave the lads from the Brotherhood of the Hoodwink the slip in the swamp, and those idiots from the Venerable Council of Seers went off the wrong way anyway.'
'Yeah,' said the most junior wizard, 'but who keeps talking to us? They say this is a magic wood, it's full of goblins and wolves and —'
'Trees,' said a voice out of the darkness, high above. It possessed what can only be described as timbre.
'Yeah,' said the youngest wizard. He sucked on his dogend, and shivered.
The leader of the party peered over the rock and watched the cottage.
'Right then,' he said, knocking out his pipe on the heel of his seven league boot, who squeaked in protest. 'We rush in, we grab them, we're away. Okay?'
'You sure it's just people?' said the youngest wizard, nervously.
'Of course I'm sure,' snarled the leader. 'What do you expect, three bears?'
'There could be monsters. This is the sort of wood that 45 has monsters.'
'And trees,' said a friendly voice from the branches. 'Yeah,' said the leader, cautiously.
Rincewind looked carefully at the bed. It was quite a nice little bed, in a sort of hard toffee inlaid with caramel, but he'd rather eat it than sleep in it and it looked as though someone already had.
'Someone's been eating my bed,' he said.
'I like toffee,' said Twoflower defensively.
'If you don't watch out the fairy will come and take all your teeth away,' said Rincewind.
'No, that's elves,' said Swires from the dressing table. 'Elves do that. Toenails, too. Very touchy at times, elves can be.'
Twoflower sat down heavily on his bed.
'You've got it wrong,' he said. 'Elves are noble and beautiful and wise and fair; I'm sure I read that somewhere.'