Eric (Discworld 9)

Vassenego hesitated. Dreadful as he privately held the king to be, demons are strong believers in precedence and hierarchy. There were too many young demons pressing below them for the senior lords to openly demonstrate the ways of regicide and coup, no matter what the provocation. Vassenego had plans of his own. No sense in spoiling things now.

“No, sire,” he said. “But that will mean, sire, that the dread portal is no longer -”

“Do it!”

The Luggage arrived at the dread portal.

There was no way to describe how angry you can get running nearly twice the length of the space-time continuum, and the Luggage had been pretty annoyed to start with.

It looked at the hinges. It looked at the locks. It backed away a bit and appeared to read the new sign over the portal.

Possibly this made it angrier, although with the Luggage there wasn't any reliable way of telling because it spent all its time beyond, in a manner of speaking, the hostility event horizon.

The doors of Hell were ancient. It wasn't just time and heat that had baked their wood to something like black granite. They'd picked up fear and dull evil. They were more than mere things to fill a hole in the wall. They were bright enough to be dimly aware what their future was likely to hold.

They watched the Luggage shuffle back across the sand, flex its legs and crouch down.

The lock clicked. The bolts dragged themselves back hurriedly. The great bars jerked from their sockets. The doors flung themselves back against the wall.

The Luggage untensed. It straightened. It stepped forward. It almost strutted. It passed between the straining hinges and, when it was nearly through, turned and gave the nearest door a damn good kick.

There was a great treadmill. It didn't power anything, and had particularly creaky bearings. It was one of Astfgl's more inspired ideas, and had no use whatsoever except to show several hundred people that if they had thought their lives had been pretty pointless, they hadn't seen anything yet.

“We cant stay here for ever,” said Rincewind. “We need to do things. Like eat.”

“That's one of the tremendous advantages of being a damned soul,” said Ponce da Quirm. “All the old bodily cares fade away. Of course, you get a completely new set of cares, but I have always found it advisable to look for the silver lining.”

“Wossname!” said the parrot, who was sitting on his shoulder.

“Fancy that,” said Rincewind. “I never knew animals could go to Hell. Although I can quite see why they made an exception in this case.”

“Up yours wizard!”

“Why don't they look for us here, that's what I don't understand?” said Eric.

“Shut up and keep walking,” said Rincewind. “They're stupid, that's why. They can't imagine that we would be doing something like this.”

“Yes, they're right there. I can't imagine that we are doing something like this, either,” said Eric.

Rincewind treadled for a bit, watching a crowd of frantically searching demons hurry past.

“So you didn't find the Fountain of Youth, then,” he said, feeling that he should make some conversation.

“Oh, but I did,” said da Quirm earnestly. “A clear spring, deep in the jungle. It was very impressive. I had a good long drink, too. Or draught, which I think is the more appropriate word.”

“And - ?” said Rincewind.

“It definitely worked. Yes. For a while there I could definitely feel myself younger.”

“But -” Rincewind waved a vague hand to take in da Quirm, the treadmill, the towering circles of the Pit.

“Ah,” said the old man. “Of course, that's the really annoying bit. I'd read so much about the fountain, and you'd have thought someone in all those books would have mentioned the really vital thing about the water, wouldn't you?”

“Which was - ?”

“Boil it first. Says it all doesn't it? Terrible shame, really.”

The Luggage trotted down the great spiral road that linked the circles of the Pit. Even if conditions had been normal it probably would not have attracted much attention. If anything, it was rather less astonishing than most of the denizens