The Light Fantastic (Discworld 2)

A tear sprang to his eye as he recalled the subtle play of light on the Temple of Small Gods, a noted local landmark, and a lump came to his throat when he remembered the fried fish stall on the junction of Midden Street and The Street of Cunning Artificers. He thought of the gherkins they sold there, great green things lurking at the bottom of their jar like drowned whales. They called to Rincewind across the miles, promising to introduce him to the pickled eggs in the next jar.

He thought of the cosy livery stable lofts and warm gratings where he spent his nights. Foolishly, he had sometimes jibed at this way of life. It seemed incredible now, but he had found it boring.

Now he'd had enough. He was going home. Pickled gherkins, I hear you calling . . .

He pushed Twoflower aside, gathered his tattered robe around him with great dignity, set his face towards that area of horizon he believed to contain the city of his birth, and with intense determination and considerable absentmindedness stepped right off the top of a thirty-foot trilithon.

Some ten minutes later, when a worried and rather contrite Twoflower dug him out of the large snowdrift at the base of the stones, his expression hadn't changed.

Twoflower peered at him.

'Are you all right?' he said. 'How many fingers am I holding up?'

'I want to go home!'

'Okay.'

'No, don't try and talk me out of it, I've had enough, I'd like to say it's been great fun but I can't, and – what?'

'I said okay,' said Twoflower. 'I'd quite like to see Ankh-Morpork again. I expect they've rebuilt quite a lot of it by now.'

It should be noted that the last time the two of them had seen the city it was burning quite fiercely, a fact which had a lot to do with Twoflower introducing the concept of fire insurance to a venial but ignorant populace. But devastating fires were a regular feature of Morporkian life and it had always been cheerfully and meticulously rebuilt, using the traditional local materials of tinder-dry wood and thatch waterproofed with tar.

'Oh,' said Rincewind, deflating a bit. 'Oh, right. Right then. Good. Perhaps we'd better be off, then.'

He scrambled up and brushed the snow off himself.

'Only I think we should wait until morning,' added Twoflower.

'Why?'

'Well, because it's freezing cold, we don't really know where we are, the Luggage has gone missing, it's getting dark—'

Rincewind paused. In the deep canyons of his mind he thought he heard the distant rustle of ancient paper. He had a horrible feeling that his dreams were going to be very repetitive from now on, and he had much better things to do than be lectured by a bunch of ancient spells who couldn't even agree on how the Universe began —

A tiny dry voice at the back of his brain said: What things?

'Oh, shut up,' he said.

'I only said it's freezing cold and—' Twoflower began.

'I didn't mean you, I meant me.'

'What?'

'Oh, shut up,' said Rincewind wearily. 'I don't suppose there's anything to eat around here?'

The giant stones were black and menacing against the dying green light of sunset. The inner circle was full of druids, scurrying around by the light of several bonfires and tuning up all the necessary peripherals of a stone computer, like rams' skulls on poles topped with mistletoe, banners embroidered with twisted snakes and so on. Beyond the circles of firelight a large number of plains people had gathered; druidic festivals were always popular, especially when things went wrong. Rincewind stared at them.

'What's going on?'

'Oh, well,' said Twoflower enthusiastically, 'apparently there's this ceremony dating back for thousands of years to celebrate the, um, rebirth of the moon, or possibly the sun. No, I'm pretty certain it's the moon. Apparently it's very solemn and beautiful and invested with a quiet dignity.'

Rincewind shivered. He always began to worry when Twoflower started to talk like that. At least he hadn't said 'picturesque' or 'quaint' yet; Rincewind had never found a satisfactory translation for those words, but the nearest he had been able to come was 'trouble'.

'I wish the Luggage was here,' said the tourist regretfully. 'I could use my picture box. It sounds very quaint and picturesque.'

The crowd stirred expectantly. Apparently things were about to start.