Moving Pictures (Discworld 10)

Victor got only two hours' sleep but got up feeling remarkably refreshed and optimistic.

It was all over. Things were going to be a whole lot better now. Ginger had been quite nice to him last night - well, a few hours ago -and whatever it was in the hill had been well and truly buried.

You got that sort of thing sometimes, he thought, as he poured some water into the cracked basin and had a quick wash. Some wicked old king or wizard gets buried and their spirit creeps about, trying to put things right or something. Well-known effect. But now there must be a million tons of rock blocking the tunnel, and I can't see anyone doing any creeping through that.

The unpleasantly alive screen surfaced briefly in his memory, but even that didn't seem so bad now. It had been dark in there, there had been lots of moving shadows, he had been wound up like a spring in any case, no wonder his eyes had played tricks on him. There had been the skeletons, too, but even they now lacked the power to terrify. Victor had heard of tribal leaders up on the cold plains who'd be buried with whole armies of mounted horsemen, so that their souls would live on in the next world. Maybe there was something like that

here, once. Yes, it all seemed much less horrifying in the cold light of day.

And that's just what it was. Cold light.

The room was full of the kind of light you got when you woke up on a winter's morning and knew, by the light, that it had snowed. It was a light without shadows.

He went to the window and looked out on a pale silver glow.

Holy Wood had vanished.

The visions of the night fountained up in his mind again, as the darkness returns when the light goes out.

Hang on, hang on, he thought, fighting the panic. It's only fog. You're bound to get fog sometimes, this close to the sea. And it's glowing like that because the sun's out. There's nothing occult about fog. It's just fine drops of water floating in the air. That's all it is.

He dragged his clothes on and threw open the door to the passage and almost tripped over Gaspode, who had been lying full length in front of the door like the world's most unwashed draught excluder.

The little dog raised himself unsteadily on his front paws, fixed Victor with a yellow eye and said, 'I jus' want you to know, right, that I ain't lyin' in front of your door 'cos of any of this loyal-dogprotectin'-his-master nonsense, OK, it's jus' that when I got back here-'

'Shut up, Gaspode.'

Victor opened the outer door. Fog drifted in. It seemed to have an exploratory feel to it; it came in as if it had been waiting for just this opportunity.

'Fog's just fog,' he said aloud. 'Come on. We're going to Ankh-Morpork today, remember?'

'My head,' said Gaspode, 'my head feels like the bottom of a cat's basket.'

'You can sleep on the coach. I can sleep on the coach, if it comes to that.'

He took a few steps into the silvery glow, and was almost immediately lost. Buildings loomed vaguely at him in the thick clammy air.

'Gaspode?' he said hesitantly. Fog's just fog, he repeated. But it feels crowded. It feels like that, if it suddenly went away, I'd see lots of people watching me. From outside. And that's ridiculous, because I am outside, so there's nothing outside of outside. And it's flickering.

'I expect you'll be wantin' me to lead the way,' said a smug voice by his knee.

'It's very quiet, isn't it?' said Victor, trying to sound nonchalant. 'I expect it's the fog muffling everything.'

'O'corse, maybe gharstely creatures have come up out o' the sea and murthered every mortal soul except us,' said Gaspode conversationally.

'Shut up!'

Something loomed up out of the brightness. As it got closer it got smaller, and the tentacles and antennae that Victor's imagination had been furnishing became the more-or-less ordinary arms and legs of Soll Dibbler.

'Victor?' he said uncertainly.

Soll's relief was visible. 'Can't see a thing in this stuff,' he said. 'We thought you'd got lost. Come on, it's nearly noon. We're more or less ready to go.'

'I'm ready.'

'Good.' Fog droplets had condensed on Soll's hair and clothing. 'Er,' he said. 'Where are we, exactly?'

Victor turned around. His lodgings had been behind him.