The Light Fantastic (Discworld 2)

Rincewind peered between his fingers. On the distant skyline was an immense construction of grey and black slabs, arranged in concentric circles and mystic avenues, aunt and forbidding against the snow. Surely men couldn't have moved those nascent mountains – surely a troop of giants had been turned to stone by some . . .

'It looks like a lot of rocks,' said Twoflower.

Belafon hesitated in mid-gesture.

'What?' he said.

'It's very nice,' added the tourist hurriedly. He sought for a word. 'Ethnic,' he decided.

The druid stiffened. 'Nice?' he said. 'A triumph of the silicon chunk, a miracle of modern masonic technology – nice?'

'Oh, yes,' said Twoflower, to whom sarcasm was merely a seven letter word beginning with S.

'What does ethnic mean?' said the druid.

'It means terribly impressive,' said Rincewind hurriedly, 'and we seem to be in danger of landing, if you don't mind—'

Belafon turned around, only slightly mollified. He raised his arms wide and shouted a series of untranslatable words, ending with 'nice!' in a hurt whisper.

The rock slowed, drifted sideways in a billow of snow, and hovered over the circle. Down below a druid waved two bunches of mistletoe in complicated patterns, and Belafon skilfully brought the massive slab to rest across two giant uprights with the faintest of clicks.

Rincewind let his breath out in a long sigh. It hurried off to hide somewhere.

A ladder banged against the side of the slab and the head of an elderly druid appeared over the edge. He gave the two passengers a puzzled glance, and then looked up at Belafon.

'About bloody time,' he said. 'Seven weeks to Hogswatchnight and it's gone down on us again.'

'Hallo, Zakriah,' said Belafon. What happened this time?'

'It's all totally fouled up. Today it predicted sunrise three minutes early. Talk about a klutz, boy, this is it.'

Belafon clambered onto the ladder and disappeared from view. The passengers looked at each other, and then tared down into the vast open space between the inner circle of stones.

'What shall we do now?' said Twoflower.

'We could go to sleep?' suggested Rincewind.

Twoflower ignored him, and climbed down the ladder.

Around the circle druids were tapping the megaliths with little hammers and listening intently. Several of the huge stones were lying on their sides, and each was surrounded by another crowd of druids who were examining it carefully and arguing amongst themselves. Arcane phrases floated up to where Rincewind sat:

'It can't be software incompatibility – the Chant of the Trodden Spiral was designed for concentric rings, idiot . . .'

'I say fire it up again and try a simple moon ceremony . . .'

'. . . all right, all right, nothing's wrong with the stones, it's just that the universe has gone wrong, right? . . .'

Through the mists of his exhausted mind Rincewind remembered the horrible star they'd seen in the sky. Something had gone wrong with the universe last night.

How had he come to be back on the Disc?

He had a feeling that the answers were somewhere inside his head. And an even more unpleasant feeling began to dawn on him that something else was watching the scene below – watching it from behind his eyes.

The Spell had crept from its lair deep in the untrodden dirtroads of his mind, and was sitting bold as brass in his forebrain, watching the passing scene and doing the mental equivalent of eating popcorn.

He tried to push it back – and the world vanished . . .

He was in darkness; a warm, musty darkness, the darkness of the tomb, the velvet blackness of the mummy case. There was a strong smell of old leather and the sourness of ancient paper. The paper rustled.