Close to the Edge 2 страница

He did not stop until he came to the Rimward edge of the island. Rincewind squealed.

" Stop that or I really will throw you over the edge, " snapped the troll. " I'm holding you, aren't I? Look. "

Rincewind looked.

In front of him was a soft black night whose mist-muted stars glowed peacefully. But his eyes turned downwards, drawn by some irresistible fascination.

It was midnight on the Disc and so, therefore, the sun was far, far below, swinging slowly under Great A'Tuin's vast and frosty plastron. Rincewind tried a last attempt to fix his gaze on the tips of his boots, which were protruding over the rim of the rock, but the sheer drop wrenched it away.

On either side of him two glittering curtains of water hurtled towards infinity as the sea swept around the island on its way to the long fall. A hundred yards below the wizard the largest sea salmon he had ever seen flicked itself out of the foam in a wild, jerky and ultimately hopeless leap. Then it fell back, over and over, in the golden underworld light.

Huge shadows grew out of that light like pillars supporting the roof of the universe. Hundreds of miles below him the wizard made out the shape of something, the edge of something-

Like those curious little pictures where the silhouette of an ornate glass suddenly becomes the outline of two faces, the scene beneath him flipped into a whole, new, terrifying perspective. Because down there was the head of an elephant as big as a reasonably-sized continent. One mighty tusk cut like a mountain against the golden light, trailing a widening shadow towards the stars. The head was slightly tilted, and a huge ruby eye might almost have been a red super-giant that had managed to shine at noonday.

Below the elephant-Rincewind swallowed and tried not to think-Below the elephant there was nothing but the distant, painful disc of the sun. And, sweeping slowly past it, was something that for all its city-sized scales, its crater-pocks, its lunar cragginess, was indubitably a flipper.

" Shall I let go? " suggested the troll

" Gnah, " said Rincewind, straining backwards.

" I have lived here on the Edge for five years and I have not had the courage, " boomed Tethis. " Nor have you, if I'm any judge. " He stepped back, allowing Rincewind to fling himself onto the ground.

Twoflower strolled up to the rim and peered over.

" Fantastic, " he said. " If only I had my picture box. "

" What else is down there? I mean, if you fell off, what would you see? "

Tethis sat down on an outcrop. High over the disc the moon came out from behind a cloud, giving him the appearance of ice.

" My home is down there, perhaps, " he said slowly. " Beyond your silly elephants and that ridiculous turtle. A real world. Sometimes I come out here and look, but somehow I can never bring myself to take that extra step... A real world, with real people. I have wives and little ones, somewhere down there... " He stopped, and blew his nose. " You soon learn what you're made of, here on the Edge. "

" Stop saying that. Please, " moaned Rincewind. He turned over and saw Twoflower standing unconcernedly at the very lip of the rock. " Gnah, " he said, and tried to burrow into the stone.

" There's another world down there? " said Twoflower, peering over. " Where, exactly? "

The troll waved an arm vaguely. " Somewhere, " he said. " That's all I know. It was quite a small world. Mostly blue. "

" So why are you here? " said Twoflower.

" Isn't it obvious? " snapped the troll. " I fell off the edge! "

He told them of the world of Bathys, somewhere among the Stars, where the seafolk had built a number of thriving civilisations in the three large oceans that sprawled across its disc. He had been a meatman, one of the caste which earned a perilous living in large, sail-powered land yachts that ventured far out to land and hunted the shoals of deer and buffalo that abounded in the stormhaunted continents. His particular yacht had been blown into uncharted lands by a freak gale. The rest of the crew had taken the yacht's little rowing trolley and had struck out for a distant lake, but Tethis, as master, had elected to remain with his Vessel. The storm had carried it right over the rocky rim of the world, smashing it to matchwood in the process.

" At first I fell, " said Tethis, " but falling isn't so bad, you know. It's only the landing that hurts, and there was nothing below me. As I fell I saw the world spin off into space until it was lost against the stars. "

" What happened next? " said Twoflower breathlessly, glancing towards the misty universe.

" I froze solid, " said Tethis simply. " Fortunately it is something my race can survive. But I thawed out occasionally when I passed near other worlds. There was one, I think it was the one with what, I thought was this strange ring of mountains around it that turned out to be the biggest dragon you could ever imagine, covered in snow and glaciers and holding its tail in its mouth - well, I came within a few leagues of that, I shot over the landscape like a comet, in fact, and then I was off again. Then there was a time I woke up and there was your world coming at me like a custard pie thrown by the Creator and, well, I landed in the sea not far from the Circumfence widdershins of Krull. All sorts of creatures get washed up against the Fence, and at the time they were looking for slaves to man the way stations, and I ended up here. " He stopped and stared intently at Rincewind. " every night I come out here and look down. " he finished " and I never jump. Courage is hard to come by, here on the Edge. "

Rincewind began to crawl determinedly towards the shack. He gave a little scream as the troll picked him up, not unkindly, and set him on his feet.

" Amazing, " said Twoflower, and leaned further out over the Edge. " There are lots of other worlds out there? "

" Quite a number, I imagine, " said the troll.

" I suppose one could contrive some sort of, I don't know, some sort of a thing that could preserve one against the cold, " said the little man thoughtfully. " Some sort of a ship that one could sail over the Edge and sail to far-off worlds, too. I wonder... "

" Don't even think about it! " moaned Rincewind.

" Stop talking like that, do you hear? "

" They all talk like that in Krull, " said Tethis. " Those with tongues, of course, " he added.

" Are you awake? "

Twoflower snored on. Rincewind jabbed him viciously in the ribs.

" I said, are you awake? " he snarled.

" Scrdfngh... "

" We've got to get out of here before this salvage fleet comes! "

The dishwater light of dawn oozed through the shack's one window, slopping across the piles of salvaged boxes and bundles that were strewn around the interior. Twoflower grunted again and tried to burrow into the pile of furs and blankets that Tethis had given them.

" Look, there's all kinds of weapons and stuff in here, " said Rincewind. " He's gone out somewhere. When he comes back we could overpower him and- and- well, then we can think of something. How about it? "

" That doesn't sound like a very good idea, " said Twoflower. " Anyhow, it's a bit ungracious isn't it? "

" Tough buns, " snapped Rincewind. " This is a rough universe. "

He rummaged through the piles around the walls and selected a heavy, wavy-bladed scimitar that had probably been some pirate's pride and joy. It looked the sort of weapon that relied as much on its weight as its edge to cause damage. He raised it awkwardly.

" Would he leave that sort of thing around if it could hurt him? " Twoflower wondered aloud.

Rincewind ignored him and took up a position beside the door. When it opened some ten minutes later he moved unhesitatingly, swinging it across the opening at what he judged was the troll's head height. It swished harmlessly through nothing at all and struck the doorpost, jerking him off his feet and on to the floor.

There was a sigh above him. He looked up into Tethis' face, which was shaking sadly from side to side.

" It wouldn't have harmed me, " said the troll, " but nevertheless, I am hurt. Deeply hurt. " He reached over the wizard and jerked the sword out of the wood. With no apparent effort he bent its blade into a circle and sent it bowling away over the rocks until it hit a stone and sprang, still spinning, in a silver arc that ended in the mists forming over the Rimfall.

" Very deeply hurt, " he concluded. He reached down beside the door and tossed a sack towards Twoflower.

" It's the carcass of a deer that is just about how you humans like it, and a few lobsters, and a sea salmon. The Circumfence provides, " he said casually.

He looked hard at the tourist, and then down again at Rincewind.

" What are you staring at? " he said.

" It's just that-" said Twoflower.

" -compared to last night-" said Rincewind.

" You're so small, " finished Twoflower.

" I see, said the troll carefully. " Personal remarks now. " He drew himself up to his full height, which was currently about four feet. " Just because I'm made of water doesn't mean I'm made of wood, you know. "

" I'm sorry, " said Twoflower, climbing hastily out of the furs.

" You're made of dirt, " said the troll, " but I didn't pass comments about things you can't help, did I? Oh, no. We can't help the way the Creator made us, that's my view, but if you must know, your moon here is rather more powerful than the ones around my own world. "

" The moon? " said Twoflower. " I don't under-"

" If I've got to spell it out, " said the troll. testily, " I'm suffering from chronic tides. "

A bell jangled in the darkness of the shack. Tethis strode across the creaking floor to the complicated devices of levers, strings and bells that was mounted on the Circumfence's topmost strand where it passed through the hut.

The bell rang again, and then started to clang away in an odd jerky rhythm for several minutes. The troll stood with his ear pressed close to it.

When it stopped he turned slowly and looked at them with a worried frown.

" You're more important than I thought, " he said.

" You're not to wait for the salvage fleet. You're to be collected by a flyer. That's what they say in Krull. " He shrugged. " And I hadn't even sent a message that you're here, yet. Someone's been drinking vul nut wine again. "

He picked up a large mallet that hung on a pillar beside the bell and used it to tap out a brief carillon.

" That'll be passed from lengthman to lengthman all the way back to Krull, " he said. " Marvellous really, isn't it? "

It came speeding across the sea, floating a man-length above it, but still leaving a foaming wake as whatever power that held it up smacked brutally into the water. Rincewind knew what power held it up. He was, he would be the first to admit, a coward, an incompetent, and not even very good at being a failure; but he was still a wizard of sorts, he knew one of the Eight Great Spells, he would be claimed by Death himself when he died and he recognized really finely honed magic when he saw it.

The lens skimming towards the island was perhaps twenty feet across, and totally transparent. Sitting around its circumference were a large number of black-robed men, each one strapped securely to the disc by a leather harness and each one staring down at the waves with an expression so tormented, so agonising, that the transparent disc seemed to be ringed with gargoyles.

Rincewind sighed with relief. This was such an unusual sound that it made Twoflower take his eyes off the approaching disc and turn them on him.

" We're important, no lie, " explained Rincewind.

" They wouldn't be wasting all that magic on a couple of potential slaves. " He grinned.

" What is it? " said Twoflower.

" Well, the disc itself would have been created by Fresnel's Wonderful Concentrator, " said Rincewind, authoritatively. " That calls for many rare and unstable ingredients, such as demon's breath and so forth, and it takes at least eight fourthgrade wizards a week to envision. Then there's those wizards on it, who must all be gifted hydrophobes-"

" You mean they hate water? " said Twoflower.

" No, that wouldn't work, " said Rincewind. " Hate is an attracting force, just like love. They really loathe it, the very idea of it revolts them. A really good hydrophobe has to be trained on dehydrated water from birth. I mean, that costs a fortune in magic alone. But they make great weather magicians. Rain clouds just give up and go away. "

" It sounds terrible, " said the water troll behind them.

" And they all die young, " said Rincewind, ignoring him. " They just can't live with themselves. "

" Sometimes I think a man could wander across the disc all his life and not see everything there is to see, " said Twoflower. " And now it seems there are lots of other worlds as well. When I think I might die without seeing a hundredth of all there is to see it makes me feel, " he paused, then added, " well, humble, I suppose. And very angry, of course. "

The flyer halted a few yards hubward of the island, throwing up a sheet of spray. It hung there, spinning slowly. A hooded figure standing by the stubby pillar at the exact centre of the lens beckoned to them.

" You'd better wade out, " said the troll. " It doesn't do to keep them waiting. It has been nice to make your acquaintance. " He shook them both, wetly, by the hand. As he waded out a little way with them the two nearest loathers on the lens shied away with expressions of extreme disgust.

The hooded figure reached down with one hand and released a rope ladder. In its other hand it held a silver rod, which had about it the unmistakable air of something designed for killing people. Rincewind's first impression was reinforced when the figure raised the stick and waved it carelessly towards the shore. A section of rock vanished, leaving a small grey haze of nothingness.

" That's so you don't think I'm afraid to use it, " said the figure.

" Don't think you're afraid? " said Rincewind. The hooded figure snorted.

" We know all about you, Rincewind the magician. You are a man of great cunning and artifice. You laugh in the face of Death. Your affected air of craven cowardice does not fool me. "

It fooled Rincewind. " I-" he began, and paled as the nothingness-stick was turned towards him. " I see you know all about me, " he finished weakly, and sat down heavily on the slippery surface. He and Twoflower, under instructions from the hooded commander, strapped themselves down to rings set in the transparent disc.

" If you make the merest suggestion of weaving a spell, " said the darkness under the hood, " you die. Third quadrant reconcile, ninth quadrant redouble, forward all! "

A wall of water shot into the air behind Rincewind and the disc jerked suddenly. The dreadful presence of the sea troll had probably concentrated the hydrophobes' minds wonderfully, because it then rose at a very steep angle and didn't begin level flight until it was a dozen fathoms above the waves. Rincewind glanced down through the transparent surface and wished he hadn't.

" Well, off again then, " said Twoflower cheerfully. He turned and waved at the troll, now no more than a speck on the edge of the world.

Rincewind glared at him. " Doesn't anything ever worry you? " he asked.

" We're still alive, aren't we? " asked Twoflower. " And you yourself said they wouldn't be going to all this trouble if we were just going to be slaves. I expect Tethis was exaggerating. I expect it's all a misunderstanding. I expect we'll be sent home. After we've seen Krull, of course. And I must say it all sounds fascinating. "

" Oh yes, " said Rincewind, in a hollow voice. " Fascinating. " He was thinking: I've seen excitement, and I've seen boredom. And boredom was best.

Had either of them happened to look down at that moment they would have noticed a strange v-shaped wave surging through the water far below them, its apex pointing directly at Tethis' island. But they weren't looking. The twenty-four hydrophobic magicians were looking, but to them it was just another piece of dreadfulness, not really any different from the liquid horror around it. They were probably right.

Sometime before all this the blazing pirate ship had hissed under the waves and started the long slow slide towards the distant ooze. It was more distant than average, because directly under the stricken keel was the Gorunna Trench - a chasm in the Disc's surface that was so black, so deep and so reputedly evil that even the krakens went there fearfully, and in pairs. In less reputedly evil chasms the fish went about with natural lights on their heads and on the whole managed quite well. In Gorunna they left them unlit and, insofar as it is possible for something without legs to creep, they crept; they tended to bump into things, too. Horrible things.

The water around the ship turned from green to purple, from purple to black, from black to a darkness so complete that blackness itself seemed merely grey by comparison. Most of its timbers had already been crushed into splinters under the intense pressure.

It spiralled past groves of nightmare polyps and drifting forests of seaweed which glowed with faint, diseased colours. Things brushed it briefly with soft, cold tentacles as they darted away into the freezing silence.

Something rose up from the murk and ate it in one mouthful.

Some time later the islanders on a little rimward atoll were amazed to find, washed into their little local lagoon, the wave-rocked corpse of a hideous sea monster, all beaks, eyes and tentacles. They were further astonished at its size, since it was rather larger than their village. But their surprise was tiny compared to the huge, stricken expression on the face of the dead monster, which appeared to have been trampled to death.

Somewhat further rimward of the atoll a couple of little boats, trolling a net for the ferocious free-swimming oysters which abounded in those seas, caught something that dragged both vessels for several miles before one captain had the presence of mind to sever the lines.

But even his bewilderment was as nothing compared to that of the islanders on the last atoll in the archipelago. During the following night they were awakened by a terrific crashing and splintering noise coming from their minute jungle; when some of the bolder spirits went to investigate in the morning they found that the trees had been smashed in a broad swathe that started on the hubmost shore of the atoll and made a line of total destruction pointing precisely Edgewise, littered with broken lianas, crushed bushes and a few bewildered and angry oysters.

They were high enough now to see the wide curve of the Rim sweeping away from them, lapped by the fluffy clouds that mercifully hid the waterfall for most of the time. From up here the sea, a deep blue dappled with cloud-shadows, looked almost inviting. Rincewind shuddered.

" Excuse me, " he said. The hooded figure turned from its contemplation of the distant haze and raised its wand threateningly.

" I don't want to use this, " it said.

" You don't? " said Rincewind.

" What is it, anyway? " said Twoflower.

" Ajandurah's Wand of Utter Negativity, " said Rincewind. " And I wish you'd stop waving it about. It might go off, " he added, nodding at the wand's glittering point. " I mean, it's all very flattering, all this magic being used just for our benefit, but there's no need to go quite that far. And-"

" Shut up. " The figure reached up and pulled back its hood, revealing itself to be a most unusually tinted young woman. Her skin was black. Not the dark brown of Urabewe, or the polished blue-black of monsoon-haunted Klatch, but the deep black of midnight at the bottom of a cave. Her hair and eyebrows were the colour of moonlight. There was the same pale sheen around her lips. She looked about fifteen, and very frightened.

Rincewind couldn't help noticing that the hand holding the wand was shaking, this was because a piece of sudden death, wobbling uncertainly a-mere five feet from your nose, is very hard to miss. It dawned on him - very slowly, because it was a completely new sensation - that someone in the world was frightened of him. The complete reverse was so often the case that he had come to think of it as a kind of natural law.

" What is your name? " he said, as reassuringly as he could manage. She might be frightened, but she did have the wand. If I had a wand like that, he thought, I wouldn't be frightened of anything. So what in Creation can she imagine I could do?

" My name is immaterial, " she said.

" That's a pretty name, " said Rincewind. " Where are you taking us, and why? I can't see any harm in your telling us. "

" You are being brought to Krull, " said the girl. " And don't mock me, hublander. Else I'll use the wand. I must bring you in alive, but no-one said anything about bringing you in whole. My name is Marchesa, and I am a wizard of the fifth level. Do you understand? "

" Well, since you know all about me then you know that I never even made it to Neophyte, " said Rincewind. " I'm not even a wizard, really. " He caught Twoflower's astonished expression, and added hastily, " Just a wizard of sorts. "

" You can't do magic because one of the Eight Great Spells is indelibly lodged in your mind, " said Marchesa, shifting her balance gracefully as the great lens described a wide arc over the sea. " That's why you were thrown out of Unseen University. We know. "

" But you said just now that he was a magician of great cunning and artifice, " protested Twoflower.

" Yes, because anyone who survives all that he has survived - most of which was brought on himself by his tendency to think of himself as a wizard - well, he must be some kind of a magician, " said Marchesa. " I warn you, Rincewind. If you give me the merest suspicion that you are intoning the Great Spell I really will kill you. " She scowled at him nervously.

" Seems to me your best course would be to just, you know, drop us off somewhere, " said Rincewind.

" I mean, thanks for rescuing us and everything, so, if you'd just let us get on with leading our lives I'm sure we'd all-"

" I hope you're not proposing to enslave us, " said Twoflower. "

Marchesa looked genuinely shocked. " Certainly not! Whatever could have given you that idea? Your lives in Krull will be rich, full and comfortable-"

" Oh, good, " said Rincewind.

" -just not very long. "

Krull turned out to be a large island, quite mountainous and heavily wooded, with pleasant white buildings visible here and there among the trees. The land sloped gradually up towards the rim, so that the highest point in Krull in fact slightly overhung the Edge. Here the Krullians had built their major city, also called Krull, and since so much of their building material had been salvaged from the Circumfence the houses of Krull had a decidedly nautical persuasion.

To put it bluntly, entire ships had been mortic artfully together and converted into buildings. Triremes, chows and caravels protruded at strange angles from the general wooden chaos. Painted figureheads and hublandish dragonprows reminded the citizens of Krull that their good fortune stemmed from the sea; barquentines and carracks lent a distinctive shape to the larger buildings. And so the city rose tier on tier between the blue-green ocean of the Disc and the soft cloud sea of the Edge, the eight colours of the Rimbow reflected in every window and in the many telescope lenses of the city's multitude of astronomers.

" It's absolutely awful, " said Rincewind gloomily.

The lens was approaching now along the very lip of the rimfall. The island not only got higher as it neared the Edge. It got narrower too, so that the lens was able to remain over water until it was very near the city. The parapet along the edgewise cliff was dotted with gantries projecting into nothingness. The lens glided smoothly towards one of them and docked with it as smoothly as a boat might glide up to a quay. Four guards, with the same moonlight hair and nightblack faces as Marchesa, were waiting. They did not appear to be armed, but as Twoflower and Rincewind stumbled on to the parapet they were each grabbed by the arms and held quite firmly enough for any thought of escape to be instantly dismissed.

Then Marchesa and the watching hydrophobic wizards were quickly left behind and the guards and their prisoners set off briskly along a lane that wound between the ship-houses. Soon it lead downwards, into what turned out to be a palace of some sort, half-hewn out of the rock of the cliff itself. Rincewind was vaguely aware of brightly-lit tunnels, and courtyards open to the distant sky. A few elderly men, their robes covered in mysterious occult symbols, stood aside and watched with interest as the sextet passed. Several times Rincewind noticed hydrophobes - their ingrained expressions of self-revulsion at their own body-fluids was distinctive- and here and there trudging men who could only be slaves. He didn't have much time to reflect on all this before a door was opened ahead of them and they were pushed, gently but firmly, into a room. Then the door slammed behind them.

Rincewind and Twoflower regained their balance and stared around the room in which they now found themselves.

" Gosh, " said Twoflower ineffectually, after a pause during which he had tried unsuccessfully to find a better word.

" This is a prison cell? " wondered Rincewind aloud.

" All that gold and silk and stuff, " Twoflower added. " I've never seen anything like it! "

In the centre of the richly decorated room, on a carpet that was so deep and furry that Rincewind trod on it gingerly lest it be some kind of shaggy, floor-loving beast, was a long gleaming table laden with food. Most were fish dishes, including the biggest and most ornately-prepared lobster Rincewind had ever seen, but there were also plenty of bowls and platters piled with strange creations that he had never seen before. He reached out cautiously and picked up some sort of purple fruit crusted with green crystals.

" Candied sea urchin, " said a cracked, cheerful voice behind him. " A great delicacy. "

He dropped it quickly and turned around. An old man had stepped out from behind the heavy curtains. He was tall, thin and looked almost benign compared to some of the faces Rincewind had seen recently.

" The puree of sea cucumbers is very good too, " said the face, conversationally. " Those little green bits are baby starfish. "

" Thank you for telling me, " said Rincewind weakly.

" Actually, they're rather good, " said Twoflower, his mouth full. " I thought you liked seafood? "

" Yes, I thought I did, " said Rincewind. " What's this wine - crushed octopus eyeballs? "

" Sea grape, " said the old man.

" Great, " said Rincewind, and swallowed a glassful. " Not bad. A bit salty, maybe. "

" Sea grape is a kind of small jellyfish, " explained the stranger. " And now I really think I should introduce myself. Why has your friend gone that strange colour? "

" Culture shock, I imagine, " said Twoflower. " What did you say your name was? "

" I didn't. It's Garhartra. I'm the Guestmaster, you see. It is my pleasant task to make sure that your stay here is as delightful as possible. " He bowed. " If there is anything you want you have only to say. "

Twoflower sat down on an ornate mother-of-pearl chair with a glass of oily wine in one hand and a crystallised squid in the other. He frowned.

" I think I've missed something along the way, " he said. " First we were told we were going to be slaves-"

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