The Light Fantastic (Discworld 2)

'Well, they've got lots of time and I thought they might enjoy it,' panted Twoflower.

'What, playing with cards?'

'It's a special kind of playing,' said Twoflower. 'It's called—' he hesitated. Language wasn't his strong point. 'In your language it's called a thing you put across a river, for example,' he concluded, 'I think.'

'Aqueduct?' hazarded Rincewind. 'Fishing line? Weir? Dam?'

'Yes, possibly.'

They reached the hallway, where the big clock still shaved the seconds off the lives of the world.

'And how long do you think that'll keep them occupied?'

Twoflower paused. 'I'm not sure,' he said thoughtfully. Probably until the last trump – what an amazing clock. . .'

'Don't try to buy it,' Rincewind advised. 'I don't think they'd appreciate it around here.'

'Where is here, exactly?' said Twoflower, beckoning the Luggage and opening its lid.

Rincewind looked around. The hall was dark and deserted, its tall narrow windows whorled with ice. He looked down. There was the faint blue line stretching away from his ankle. Now he could see that Twoflower had one too.

'We're sort of informally dead,' he said. It was the best he could manage.

'Oh.' Twoflower continued to rummage.

'Doesn't that worry you?'

'Well, things tend to work out in the end, don't you think? Anyway, I'm a firm believer in reincarnation. What would you like to come back as?'

'I don't want to go,' said Rincewind firmly. 'Come on, let's get out of – oh, no. Not that.'

Twoflower had produced a box from the depths of the Luggage. It was large and black and had a handle on one side and a little round window in front and a strap so that Twoflower could put it around his neck, which he did.

There was a time when Rincewind had quite liked the iconoscope. He believed, against all experience, that the world was fundamentally understandable, and that if he could only equip himself with the right mental toolbox he could take the back off and see how it worked. He was, of course, dead wrong. The iconoscope didn't take pictures by letting light fall onto specially treated paper, as he had surmised, but by the far simpler method of imprisoning a small demon with a good eye for colour and a speedy hand with a paintbrush. He had been very upset to find that out.

'You haven't got time to take pictures!' he hissed.

'It won't take long,' said Twoflower firmly, and rapped on the side of the box. A tiny door flew open and the imp poked his head out.

'Bloody hell,' it said. 'Where are we?'

'It doesn't matter,' said Twoflower. The clock first, I think.'

The demon squinted.

'Poor light,' he said. Three bloody years at f8, if you ask me.' He slammed the door shut. A second later there was the tiny scraping noise of his stool being dragged up to his easel.

Rincewind gritted his teeth.

'You don't need to take pictures, you can just remember it!' he shouted.

s the clock. It was very big, and occupied a space between two curving wooden staircases covered with carvings of things that normal men only see after a heavy session on something illegal.

It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the kind of deliberate, annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life. It was the kind of sound that suggested very pointedly that in some hypothetical hourglass, somewhere, another few grains of sand had dropped out from under you.

Needless to say, the weight on the pendulum was knife-edged and razor sharp.

Something tapped him in the small of the back. He turned angrily.