Close to the Edge 3 страница

" A base canard! " interrupted Garhartra.

" What's a canard? " said Twoflower.

" I think it's a kind of duck, " said Rincewind from the far end of the long table. " Are these biscuits made of something really nauseating, do you suppose? "

" -and then we were rescued at great magical expense-"

" They're made of pressed seaweed, " snapped the Guestmaster.

" -but then we're threatened, also at a vast expenditure of magic-"

" Yes, I thought it would be something like seaweed, " agreed Rincewind. " They certainly taste like seaweed would taste if anyone was masochistic enough to eat seaweed. "

" -and then we're manhandled by guards and thrown in here-"

" Pushed gently, " corrected Garhartra.

" -which turned out to be this amazingly rich room and there's all this food and a man saying he's devoting his life to making us happy, " Twoflower concluded. " What I'm getting at is this sort of lack of consistency. "

" Yar, " said Rincewind. " What he means is, are you about to start being generally unpleasant again? Is this just a break for lunch? "

Garhartra held up his hands reassuringly.

" Please, please, " he protested. " It was just necessary to get you here as soon as possible. We certainly do not want to enslave you. Please be reassured on that score. "

" Well, fine, " said Rincewind.

" Yes, you will in fact be sacrificed, " Garhartra continued placidly.

" Sacrificed? You're going to kill us? " shouted the wizard.

" Kill? Yes, of course. Certainly! It would hardly be a sacrifice if we didn't, would it? But don't worry - it'll be comparatively painless. "

" Comparatively? Compared to what? " said Rincewind. He picked up a tall green bottle that was full of sea grape jellyfish wine and hurled it hard at the Guestmaster, who flung up a hand as if to protect himself.

There was a crackle of octarine flame from his fingers and the air suddenly took on the thick, greasy feel that indicated a powerful magical discharge. The flung bottle slowed and then stopped in mid-air, rotating gently.

At the same time an invisible force picked Rincewind up and hurled him down the length of the room, pinning him awkwardly halfway up the far wall with no breath left in his body. He hung there with his mouth open in rage and astonishment.

Garhartra lowered his hand and brushed it slowly on his robe.

" I didn't enjoy doing that, you know, " he said.

" I could tell, " muttered Rincewind.

" But what do you want to sacrifice us for? " asked Twoflower. " You hardly know us! "

" That's rather the point, isn't it? It's not very good manners to sacrifice a friend. Besides, you were, um, specified. I don't know a lot about the god in question, but He was quite clear on that point. Look, I must be running along now. So much to organise, you know how it is, " the Guestmaster opened the door, and then peered back around it. " Please make yourselves comfortable, and don't worry. "

" But you haven't actually told us anything! " wailed Twoflower.

" It's not really worth it, is it? What with you being sacrificed in the morning, " said Garhartra. " It's hardly worth the bother of knowing, really. Sleep well. Comparatively well, anyway. "

He shut the door. A brief octarine flicker of balefire around it suggested that it had now been sealed beyond the skills of any earthly locksmith.

Gling, clang, tang went the bells along the Circumfence in the moonlit, rimfall-roaring night.

Terton, lengthman of the 45th Length, hadn't heard such a clashing since the night a giant kraken had been swept into the Fence five years ago. He leaned out of his hut, which for the lack of any convenient eyot on this Length had been built on wooden piles driven into the sea bed, and stared into the darkness. Once or twice he thought he could see movement, far off. Strictly speaking, he should row out to see what was causing the din. But here in the clammy darkness it didn't seem like an astoundingly good idea, so he slammed the door, wrapped some sacking around the madly jangling bells, and tried to get back to sleep.

That didn't work, because even the top strand of the Fence was thrumming now, as if something big and heavy was bouncing on it. After staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, and trying hard not to think of great long tentacles and pond-sized eyes, Terton blew out the lantern and opened the door a crack.

Something was coming along the Fence, in giant loping bounds that covered metres at a time. It loomed up at him and for a moment Terton saw something rectangular, multi-legged, shaggy with seaweed and - although it had absolutely no features from which he could have deduced this - it was also very angry indeed.

The hut was smashed to fragments as the monster charged through it, although Terton survived by clinging to the Circumfence; some weeks later he was picked up by a returning salvage fleet, subsequently escaped from Krull on a hijacked lens (having developed hydrophobia to an astonishing degree) and after a number of adventures eventually found his way to the Great Nef, an area of the Disc so dry that it actually has negative rainfall, which he nevertheless considered uncomfortably damp.

" Have you tried the door? "

" Yes, " said Twoflower. " And it isn't any less locked than it was last time you asked. There's the window, though. "

" A great way of escape, " muttered Rincewind, from his perch halfway up the wall. " You said it looks out over the Edge. Just step out, eh, and plunge through space and maybe freeze solid or hit some other world at incredible speeds or plunge wildly into the burning heart of a sun? "

" Worth a try, " said Twoflower. " Want a seaweed biscuit? "

" No! "

" When are you coming down? "

Rincewind snarled. This was partly in embarrassment. Garhartra's spell had been the little-used and hard-to-master Atavarr's Personal Gravitational Upset, the practical result of which was that until it wore off Rincewind's body was convinced that " down" lay at ninety degrees to that direction normally accepted as of a downward persuasion by the majority of the Disc's inhabitants. He was in fact standing on the wall.

Meanwhile the flung bottle hung supportless in the air a few yards away. In its case time had well, not actually been stopped, but had been slowed by several orders of magnitude, and its trajectory had so far occupied several hours and a couple of inches as far as Twoflower and Rincewind were concerned. The glass gleamed in the moonlight. Rincewind sighed and tried to make himself comfortable on the wall.

" Why don't you ever worry? " he demanded petulantly. " Here we are, going to be sacrificed to some god or other in the morning, and you just sit there eating barnacle canapes. "

" I expect something will turn up, " said Twoflower.

" I mean, it's not as if we know why we're going to be killed, " the wizard went on.

You'd like to, would you?

" Did you say that? " asked Rincewind.

" Say what? "

Twoflower gave him a worried look.

" I'm Twoflower, " he said. " surely you remember? "

Rincewind put his head in his hands.

" It's happened at last, " he moaned. " I'm going out of my mind. "

Good idea said the voice. It's getting pretty crowded in here.

The spell pinning Rincewind to the wall vanished with a faint " pop. " He fell forward and landed in a heap on the floor.

Careful- you nearly squashed me.

Rincewind struggled to his elbows and reached into the pocket of his robe. When he withdrew his hand the green frog was sitting on it, its eyes oddly luminous in the half-light.

" Yes? " said Rincewind.

Put me down on the floor and stand back.

The frog blinked.

The wizard did so, and dragged a bewildered Twoflower out of the way.

The room darkened. There was a windy, roaring sound. Streamers of green, purple and octarine cloud appeared out of nowhere and began to spiral rapidly towards the recumbent amphibian, shedding small bolts of lightning as they whirled. Soon the frog was lost in a golden haze which began to elongate upwards, filling the room with a warm yellow light. Within it was a darker, indistinct shape, which wavered and changed even as they watched. And all the time there was the high, brain-curdling whine of a huge magical field...

As suddenly as it had appeared, the magical tornado vanished. And there, occupying the space where the frog had been, was a frog.

" Fantastic, " said Rincewind.

The frog gazed at him reproachfully.

" Really amazing, " said Rincewind sourly. " A frog magically transformed into a frog. Wondrous. "

" Turn around, " said a voice behind them. It was a soft, feminine voice, almost an inviting voice, the sort of voice you could have a few drinks with, but it was coming from a spot where there oughtn't to be a voice at all. They managed to turn without really moving, like a couple of statues revolving on plinths.

There was a woman standing in the pre-dawn light. She looked - she was - she had a - in point of actual fact she...

Later Rincewind and Twoflower couldn't quite agree on any single fact about her, except that she had appeared to be beautiful (precisely what physical features made her beautiful they could not, definitively, state) and that she had green eyes. Not the pale green of ordinary eyes, either these were the green of fresh emeralds and as iridescent as a dragonfly. And one of the few genuinely magical facts that Rincewind knew was that no god or goddess, contrary and volatile as they might be in all other respects, could change the colour or nature of their eyes...

" L-" he began. She raised a hand.

" You know that if you say my name I must depart, " she hissed. " surely you recall that I am the one goddess who comes only when not invoked? "

" Uh. Yes, I suppose I do, " croaked the wizard, trying not to look at the eyes. " You're the one they call the Lady? "

" Yes. "

" Are you a goddess then? " said Twoflower excitedly. " I’ve always wanted to meet one. "

Rincewind tensed, waiting for the explosion of rage. Instead, the Lady merely smiled.

" Your friend the wizard should introduce us, " she said.

Rincewind coughed. " Uh, yar, " he said. " This is Twoflower, Lady, he's a tourist-"

" -I have attended him on a number of occasions-"

" And, Twoflower, this is the Lady. Just the Lady, right? Nothing else. Don't try and give her any other name, okay? " he went on desperately, his eyes darting meaningful glances that were totally lost on the little man.

Rincewind shivered. He was not, of course, an atheist; on the Disc the gods dealt severely with atheists. On the few occasions when he had some spare change he had always made a point of dropping a few coppers into a temple coffer somewhere, on the principle that a man needed all the friends he could get. But usually he didn't bother the Gods, and he hoped the Gods wouldn't bother him. Life was quite complicated enough.

There were two gods, however, who were really terrifying. The rest of the gods were usually only sort of large-scale humans, fond of wine and war and whoring. But Fate and the Lady were chilling.

In the Gods' Quarter, in Ankh-Morpork, Fate had a small, heavy, leaden temple, where hollow-eyed and gaunt worshippers met on dark nights for their predestined-and fairly pointless rites. There were no temples at all to the Lady, although she was arguably the most powerful goddess in the entire history of Creation. A few of the more daring members of the Gamblers' Guild had once experimented with a form of worship, in the deepest cellars of Guild headquarters, and had all died of penury, murder or just Death within the week. She was the Goddess Who Must Not Be Named; those who sought her never found her, yet she was known to come to the aid of those in greatest need. And, then again, sometimes she didn't. She was like that. She didn't like the clicking of rosaries, but was attracted to the sound of dice. No man knew what She looked like, although there were many times when a man who was gambling his life on the turn of the cards would pick up the hand he had been dealt and stare Her full in the face. Of course, sometimes he didn't. Among all the gods she was at one and the same time the most courted and the most cursed.

" We don't have gods where I come from, " said Twoflower.

" You do, you know, " said the Lady. " Everyone has gods. You just don't think they're gods. "

Rincewind shook himself mentally.

" Look, " he said. " I don't want to sound impatient, but in a few minutes some people are going to come through that door and take us away and kill us. "

" Yes, " said the Lady.

" I suppose you wouldn't tell us why? " said Twoflower.

" Yes, " said the Lady. " The Krullians intend to launch a bronze vessel over the edge of the Disc. Their prime purpose is to learn the sex of A'tuin the World Turtle. "

" Seems rather pointless, " said Rincewind.

" No. Consider. One day Great A'tuin may encounter another member of the species chelys galactica, somewhere in the vast night in which we move. Will they fight? Will they mate? A little imagination will show you that the sex of Great A'tuin could be very important to us. At least, so the Krullians say. "

Rincewind tried not to think of World Turtles mating. It wasn't completely easy.

" So, " continued the goddess, " they intend to launch this ship of space, with two voyagers aboard. It will be the culmination of decades of research. It will also be very dangerous for the travellers. And so, in an attempt to reduce the risks, the Arch-astronomer of Krull has bargained with Fate to sacrifice two men at the moment of launch. Fate, in His turn, has agreed to smile on the space ship. A neat barter, is it not? "

" And we're the sacrifices, " said Rincewind.

" Yes. "

" I thought Fate didn't go in for that sort of bargaining. I thought Fate was implacable, " said Rincewind.

" Normally, yes. But you two have been thorns in his side for some time. He specified that the sacrifices should be you. He allowed you to escape from the pirates. He allowed you to drift into the Circumfence. Fate can be one mean god at times. "

There was a pause. The frog sighed and wandered off under the table.

" But you can help us? " prompted Twoflower.

" You amuse me, " said the Lady. " I have a sentimental streak. You'd know that, if you were gamblers. So for a little while I rode in a frog's mind and you kindly rescued me, for, as we all know, no-one likes to see pathetic and helpless creatures swept to their death. "

" Thank you, " said Rincewind.

" The whole mind of Fate is bent against you, " said the Lady. " But all I can do is give you one chance. Just one, small chance. The rest is up to you. "

She vanished.

" Gosh, " said Twoflower, after a while. " That's the first time I've ever seen a goddess. "

The door swung open. Garhartra entered, holding a wand in front of him. Behind him were two guards, armed more conventionally with swords.

" Ah, " he said conversationally. " You are ready, I see. "

Ready, said a voice inside Rincewind's head.

The bottle that the wizard had flung some eight hours earlier had been hanging in the air, imprisoned by magic in its own personal time-field. But during all those hours the original mana of the spell had been slowly leaking away until the total magical energy was no longer sufficient to hold it against the Universe's own powerful normality field, and when that happened Reality snapped back in a matter of microseconds. The visible sign of this was that the bottle suddenly completed the last part of its parabola and burst against the side of the Guestmaster's head, showering the guards with glass and jellyfish wine.

Rincewind grabbed Twoflower's arm, kicked the nearest guard in the groin, and dragged the startled tourist into the corridor. Before the stunned Garhartra had sunk to the floor his two guests were already pounding across distant flagstones.

Rincewind skidded around a corner and found himself on a balcony that ran around the four sides of a courtyard. Below them, most of the floor of the yard was taken up by an ornamental pond in which a few terrapins sunbathed among the lily leaves.

And ahead of Rincewind were a couple of very surprised wizards wearing the distinctive dark blue and black robes of trained hydrophobes. One of them, quicker on the uptake than his companion, raised a hand and began the first words of a spell.

There was a short sharp noise by Rincewind's side. Twoflower had spat. The hydrophobe screamed and dropped his hand as though it had been stung.

The other didn't have time to move before Rincewind was on him, fists swinging wildly. One stiff punch with the weight of terror behind it sent the man tumbling over the balcony rail and into the pond, which did a very strange thing; the water smacked aside as though a large invisible balloon had been dropped into it, and the hydrophobe hung screaming in his own revulsion field.

Twoflower watched him in amazement until Rincewind snatched at his shoulder and indicated a likely looking passage. They hurried down it, leaving the remaining hydrophobe writhing on the floor and snatching at his damp hand. For a while there was some shouting behind them, but they scuttled along a cross corridor and another courtyard and soon left the sounds of pursuit behind. Finally Rincewind picked a safe looking door, peered around it, found the room beyond to be unoccupied, dragged Twoflower inside, and slammed it behind him. Then he leaned against it, wheezing horribly.

" We're totally lost in a palace on an island we haven't a hope of leaving, " he panted. " And what's more we- hey! " he finished, as the sight of the contents of the room filtered up his deranged optic nerves.

Twoflower was already staring at the walls.

Because what was so odd about the room was, it contained the whole Universe.

Death sat in His garden, running a whetstone along the edge of His scythe. It was already so sharp that any passing breeze that blew across it was sliced smoothly into two puzzled zephyrs, although breezes were rare indeed in Death's silent garden. It lay on a sheltered plateau overlooking the Disc world's complex dimensions, and behind it loomed the cold, still, immensely high and brooding mountains of Eternity.

Swish! went the stone. Death hummed a dirge, and tapped one bony foot on the frosty flagstones.

Someone approached through the dim orchard where the nightapples grew, and there came the sickly sweet smell of crushed lilies. Death looked up angrily, and found Himself staring into eyes that were black as the inside of a cat and full of distant stars that had no counterpart among the familiar constellations of the Realtime universe.

Death and Fate looked at each other. Death grinned - He had no alternative, of course, being made of implacable bone. The whetstone sang rhythmically along the blade as He continued His task.

" I have a task for you, " said Fate. His words drifted across death's scythe and split tidily into two ribbons of consonants and vowels.

I HAVE TASKS ENOUGH THIS DAY, said Death in a voice as heavy as neutronium, THE WHITE PLAGUE ABIDES EVEN NOW IN PSEUDOPOLIS AND I AM BOUND THERE TO RESCUE MANY OF ITS CITIZENS FROM HIS GRASP. SUCH A ONE HAS NOT BEEN SEEN THESE HUNDRED YEARS. I AM EXPECTED TO STALK THE STREETS, AS IS MY DUTY.

" I refer to the matter of the little wanderer and the rogue wizard, " said Fate softly, seating himself beside Death's black-robed form and staring down at the, distant, multifaceted jewel which was the Disc universe as seen from this extra-dimensional vantage point.

The scythe ceased its song.

" They die in a few hours, " said Fate. " It is fated. "

Death stirred, and the stone began to move again.

" I thought you would be pleased, " said Fate.

Death shrugged, a particularly expressive gesture for someone whose visible shape was that of a skeleton.

I DID INDEED CHASE THEM MIGHTILY. ONCE, he said, BUT AT LAST THE THOUGHT CAME TO ME THAT SOONER OR LATER ALL MEN MUST DIE. EVERYTHING DIES IN THE END. I CAN BE ROBBED BUT NEVER DENIED, I TOLD MYSELF. WHY WORRY?

" I too cannot be cheated, " snapped Fate.

SO I HAVE HEARD, said Death, still grinning.

" Enough! " shouted Fate, jumping to his feet. " They will die! " He vanished in a sheet of blue fire.

Death nodded to Himself and continued at His work. After some minutes the edge of the blade seemed to be finished to His satisfaction. He stood up and levelled the scythe at the fat and noisome candle that burned on the edge of the bench and then, with two deft sweeps, cut the flame into three bright slivers. Death grinned.

A short while later he was saddling his white stallion, which lived in a stable at the back of Death's cottage. The beast snuffled at him in a friendly fashion; though it was crimson-eyed and had flanks like oiled silk, it was nevertheless a real flesh-and-blood horse and, indeed, was in all probability better treated than most beasts of burden on the Disc. Death was not an unkind master. He weighed very little and, although He often rode back with His saddlebags bulging, they weighed nothing whatsoever.

" All those worlds! " said Twoflower. " It's fantastic! "

Rincewind grunted, and continued to prowl warily around the star-filled room. Twoflower turned to a complicated astrolabe, in the centre of which was the entire Great A'Tuin-Elephant-Disc system wrought in brass and picked out with tiny jewels. Around it stars and planets wheeled on fine silver wires.

" Fantastic! " he said again. On the walls around him constellations made of tiny phosphorescent seed pearls had been picked out on vast tapestries made of jet-black velvet, giving the room's occupants the impression of floating in the interstellar gulf. Various easels held huge sketches of Great A'Tuin as viewed from various parts of the Circumfence, with every mighty scale and cratered pock-mark meticulously marked in. Twoflower stared about him with a faraway look in his eyes.

Rincewind was deeply troubled. What troubled him most of all were the two suits that hung from supports in the centre of the room. He circled them uneasily.

They appeared to be made of fine white leather, hung about with straps and brass nozzles and other highly unfamiliar and suspicious contrivances. The leggings ended in high, thick-soled boots, and the arms were shoved into big supple gauntlets. Strangest of all were the big copper helmets that were obviously supposed to fit on heavy collars around the neck of the suits. The helmets were almost certainly useless for protection a light sword would have no difficulty in splitting them, even if it didn't hit the ridiculous little glass windows in the front. Each helmet had a crest of white feathers on top, which went absolutely no way at all towards improving their overall appearance.

Rincewind was beginning to have the glimmerings of a suspicion about those suits.

In front of them. was a table covered with celestial charts and scraps of parchment covered with figures. Whoever would be wearing those suits, Rincewind decided, was expecting to boldly go where no man - other than the occasional luckless sailor, who didn't really count - had boldly gone before, and he was now beginning to get not just a suspicion but a horrible premonition.

He turned round and found Twoflower looking at him with a speculative expression.

" No- began Rincewind, urgently. Twoflower ignored him.

" The goddess said two men were going to be sent over the Edge, " he said, his eyes gleaming, " and you remember Tethis the troll saying you'd need some kind of protection? The Krullians have got over that. These are suits of space armour. "

" They don't look very roomy to me, " said Rincewind hurriedly, and grabbed the tourist by the arm, " so if you'd just come on, no sense in staying here-"

" Why must you always panic? " asked Twoflower petulantly.

" Because the whole of my future life just flashed in front of my eyes, and it didn't take very long, and if you don't move now I'm going to leave without you because any second now you're going to suggest that we put on-"

The door opened.

Two husky young men stepped into the room. All they were wearing was a pair of woollen pants apiece. One of them was still towelling himself briskly. They both nodded at the two escapees with no apparent surprise.

The taller of the two men sat down on one of the benches in front of the seats. He beckoned to Rincewind, and said:

"? Tyo yur atl ho sooten gatrunen? "

And this was awkward, because although Rincewind considered himself an expert in most of the tongues of the western segments of the Disc it was the first time that he had ever been addressed in Krullian, and he did not understand one word of it. Neither did Twoflower, but that did not stop him stepping forward and taking a breath.

The speed of light through a magical aura such as the one that surrounded the Disc was quite slow, being not much faster than the speed of sound in less highly-tuned universes. But it was still the fastest thing around with the exception, in moments like this, of Rincewind's mind.

In an instant he became aware that the tourist was about to try his own peculiar brand of linguistics, which meant that he would speak loudly and slowly in his own language.

Rincewind's elbow shot back, knocking the breath from Twoflower's body. When the little man looked up in pain and astonishment Rincewind caught his eye and pulled an imaginary tongue out of his mouth and cut it with an imaginary pair of scissors.

The second chelonaut- for such was the profession of the men whose fate it would shortly be to voyage to Great A'Tuin - looked up from the chart table and watched this in puzzlement. His big heroic brow wrinkled with the effort of speech.

"? Hor yu latruin nor u? " he said.

Rincewind smiled and nodded and pushed Twoflower in his general direction. With an inward sigh of relief he saw the tourist pay sudden attention to a big brass telescope that lay on the table.

"! Sooten u! " commanded the seated chelonaut. Rincewind nodded and smiled and took one of the big copper helmets from the rack and brought it down on the man's head as hard as he possibly could. The chelonaut fell forward with a soft grunt.

The other man took one startled step before Twoflower hit him amateurishly but effectively with the telescope. He crumpled on top of his colleague.

Rincewind and Twoflower looked at each other over the carnage.

" All right! " snapped Rincewind, aware that he had lost some kind of contest but not entirely certain what it was. " Don't bother to say it. Someone out there is expecting these two guys to come out in the suits in a minute. I suppose they thought we were slaves. Help me hide these behind the drapes and then, and then-"

" -e'd better suit up, " said Twoflower, picking up the second helmet.

" Yes, " said Rincewind. " You know, as soon as I saw the suits I just knew I'd end up wearing one. Don't ask me how I knew - I suppose it was because it was just about the worst possible thing that was likely to happen. "

" Well, you said yourself we have no way of escaping, " said Twoflower, his voice muffled as he pulled the top half of a suit over his head. " Anything's better than being sacrificed. "

" As soon as we get a chance we run for it, " said Rincewind. " Don't get any ideas. "

He thrust an arm savagely into his suit and banged his head on the helmet. He reflected briefly that someone up there was watching over him.

" Thanks a lot, " he said bitterly.

At the very edge of the city and country of Krull was a large semicircular amphitheatre, with seating for several tens of thousands of people. The arena was only semi-circular for the very elegant reason that it overlooked the cloud sea that boiled up from the Rimfall, far below, and now every seat was occupied. And the crowd was growing restive. It had come to see a double sacrifice and also the launching of the great bronze space ship. Neither event had yet materialised.

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