'I'm sorry', he said.
'Yes, but just a bit of help on his side, you've seen what that thing is like-'
'I'm sorry."
'He helped you.' Rincewind turned on the other wizards, who were scurrying away. 'All of you. He gave you what you wanted, didn't he?'
'We may never forgive him,' said Hakardly.
Rincewind groaned.
'What will be left when it's all over?' he said. 'What will be left?'
Hakardly looked down.
'I'm sorry,' he repeated.
The octarine light had grown brighter and was beginning to turn black around the edge. It wasn't the black that is merely the opposite of light, though; it was the grainy, shifting blackness that glows beyond the glare and has no business in any decent reality. And it buzzed.
Rincewind did a little dance of uncertainty as his feet, legs, instincts and incredibly well-developed sense of self-preservation overloaded his nervous system to the point where, just as it was on the point of fusing, his conscience finally got its way.
He leapt into the fire and reached the staff.
The wizards fled. Several of them levitated down from the tower.
They were a lot more perspicacious than those that used the stairs because, about thirty seconds later, the tower vanished.
The snow continued to fall around a column of blackness, which buzzed.
And the surviving wizards who dared to look back saw, tumbling slowly down the sky, a small object trailing flames behind it. It crashed into the cobbles, where it smouldered for a bit before the thickening snow put it out.
Pretty soon it became just a small mound.
A little while later a squat figure swung itself across the courtyard on its knuckles, scrabbled in the snow, and hauled the thing out.
It was, or rather it had been, a hat. Life had not been kind to it. A large part of the wide brim had been burned off, the point was entirely gone, and the tarnished silver letters were almost unreadable. Some of them had been torn off in any case. Those that were left spelled out: WIZD.
The Librarian turned around slowly. He was entirely alone, except for the towering column of burning blackness and the steadily falling flakes.
The ravaged campus was empty. There were a few other pointy hats that had been trampled by terrified feet, and no other sign that people had been there.
All the wizards were wazards.
'War?'
'Wazzat?'
'Wasn't there,' Pestilence groped for his glass, 'something?'
'Wazzat?'
'We ought to be ... there's something we ought to be doing,' said Famine.
'S'right. Got an appointment.'
'The-’ Pestilence gazed reflectively into his drink. 'Thingy.'
They stared gloomily at the bar counter. The innkeeper had long ago fled. There were several bottles still unopened.
'Okra,' said Famine, eventually. 'That was it.'
'Nah.'
'The Apos ... the Apostrophe,' said War, vaguely.
They shook their heads. There was a lengthy pause.
'What does "apocrustic" mean?' said Pestilence, gazing intently into some inner world.
'Astringent,' said War, 'I think.'
'It's not that, then?'
'Shouldn't think so,' said Famine, glumly.
There was another long, embarrassed silence.
'Better have 'nother drink,' said War, pulling himself together.
'S'right.'
About fifty miles away and several thousand feet up, Conina at last managed to control her stolen horse and brought it to a gentle trot on the empty air, displaying some of the most determined nonchalance the Disc had ever seen.
'Snow?' she said.
Clouds were roaring soundlessly from the direction of the Hub. They were fat and heavy and shouldn't be moving so fast. Blizzards trailed beneath them, covering the landscape like a sheet.
It didn't look like the kind of snow that whispers down gently in the pit of the night and in the morning turns the landscape into a glittering wonderland of uncommon and ethereal beauty. It looked like the kind of snow that intends to make the world as bloody cold as possible.
'Bit late in the year,' said Nijel. He glanced downwards, and then immediately closed his eyes.
Creosote watched in delighted astonishment. 'Is that how it happens?' he said. 'I've only heard about it in stories. I thought it sprouted out of the ground somehow. Bit like mushrooms, I thought.'
'Those clouds aren't right,' said Conina.
'Do you mind if we go down now?' said Nijel weakly. 'Somehow it didn't look so bad when we were moving.'
Conina ignored this. 'Try the lamp,' she commanded. 'I want to know about this.'
Nijel fumbled in his pack and produced the lamp.
The voice of the genie sounded rather tinny and far off, and said: 'If you would care to relax a little ... trying to connect you.' There then followed some tinkly little music, the kind that perhaps a Swiss chalet would make if you could play it, before a trapdoor outlined itself in the air and the genie himself appeared. He looked around him, and then at them.
'Oh, wow,' he said.
'Something's happening to the weather,' said Conina. ,Why?,
'You mean you don't know?' said the genie.
'We're asking you, aren't we?'
'Well, I'm no judge, but it rather looks like the Apocralypse, yuh?'
'What?'
The genie shrugged. 'The gods have vanished, okay?' he said. 'And according to, you know, legend, that means-’
'The Ice Giants,' said Nijel, in a horrified whisper.
'Speak up,' said Creosote.
'The Ice Giants,' Nijel repeated loudly, with a trace of irritation. 'The gods keep them imprisoned, see. At the Hub. But at the end of the world they'll break free at last, and ride out on their dreadful glaciers and regain their ancient domination, crushing out the flames of civilisation until the world lies naked and frozen under the terrible cold stars until Time itself freezes over. Or something like that, apparently.'
'But it isn't time for the Apocralypse,' said Conina desperately. 'I mean, a dreadful ruler has to arise, there must be a terrible war, the four dreadful horsemen have to ride, and then the Dungeon Dimensions will break into the world-’She stopped, her face nearly as white as the snow.
'Being buried under a thousand-foot ice sheet sounds awfully like it, anyway,' said the genie. He reached forward and snatched his lamp out of Nijel's hands.
'Mucho apologies,' he said, 'but it's time to liquidise my assets in this reality. See you around. Or something.' He vanished up to the waist, and then with a faint last cry of 'Shame about lunch', disappeared entirely.
The three riders peered through the veils of driving snow towards the Hub.
'It may be my imagination,' said Creosote, 'but can either of you hear a sort of creaking and groaning?'
'Shut up,' said Conina distractedly.
Creosote leaned over and patted her hand.
'Cheer up,' he said, 'it's not the end of the world.' He thought about this statement for a bit, and then added, 'Sorry. Just a figure of speech.'
'What are we going to do?' she wailed.
Nijel drew himself up.
'I think,' he said, 'that we should go and explain.'
They turned towards him with the kind of expression normally reserved for messiahs or extreme idiots.
'Yes,' he said, with a shade more confidence. 'We should explain.'
'Explain to the Ice Giants?' said Conina.
'Yes.'
'Sorry,' said Conina, 'have I got this right? You think we should go and find the terrifying Ice Giants and sort of tell them that there are a lot of warm people out here who would rather they didn't sweep across the world crushing everyone under mountains of ice, and could they sort of reconsider things? Is that what you think we should do?'
'Yes. That's right. You've got it exactly.'
Conina and Creosote exchanged glances. Nijel remained sitting proudly in the saddle, a faint smile on his face.
'Is your geese giving you trouble?' said the Seriph.
'Geas,' said Nijel calmly. 'It's not giving me trouble, it's just that I must do something brave before I die.'
'That's it though,' said Creosote. 'That's the whole rather sad point. You'll do something brave, and then you'll die.'
'What alternative have we got?' said Nijel.
They considered this.
'I don't think I'm much good at explaining,' said Conina, in a small voice.
'I am,' said Nijel, firmly. 'I'm always having to explain.'
The scattered particles of what had been Rincewind's mind pulled themselves together and drifted up through the layers of dark unconsciousness like a three-day corpse rising to the surface.
It probed its most recent memories, in much the same way that one might scratch a fresh scab.
He could recall something about a staff, and a pain so intense that it appeared to insert a chisel between every cell in his body and hammer on it repeatedly.
He remembered the staff fleeing, dragging him after it. And then there had been that dreadful bit where Death had appeared and reached past him, and the staff had twisted and become suddenly alive and Death had said, IPSLORE THE RED, I HAVE YOU NOW.
And now there was this.
By the feel of it Rincewind was lying on sand. It was very cold.
He took the risk of seeing something horrible and opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was his left arm and, surprisingly, his hand. It was its normal grubby self. He had expected to see a stump.
It seemed to be night-time. The beach, or whatever it was, stretched on towards a line of distant low mountains, under night sky frosted with a million white stars.
A little closer to him there was a rough line in the silvery sand. He lifted his head slightly and saw the scatter of molten droplets. They were octiron, a metal so intrinsically magical that no forge on the Disc could even warm it up.
'Oh,' he said. 'We won, then.'
He flopped down again.
After a while his right hand came up automatically and patted the top of his head. Then it patted the sides of his head. Then it began to grope, with increasing urgency, in the sand around him.
Eventually it must have communicated its concern to the rest of Rincewind, because he pulled himself upright and said, 'Oh, bugger.'
There seemed to be no hat anywhere. But he could see a small white shape lying very still in the sand a little way away and, further off -
A column of daylight.
It hummed and swayed in the air, a three-dimensional hole into somewhere else. Occasional flurries of snow blew out of it. He could see skewed images in the light, that might be buildings or landscapes warped by the weird curvature. But he couldn't see them very clearly, because of the tall, brooding shadows that surrounded it.
The human mind is an astonishing thing. It can operate on several levels at once. And, in fact, while Rincewind had been wasting his intellect in groaning and looking for his hat, an inner part of his brain had been observing, assessing, analysing and comparing.
Now it crept up to his cerebellum, tapped it on the shoulder, thrust a message into its hand and ran for it.
The message ran something like this: I hope I find me well. The last trial of magic has been too much for the tortured fabric of reality. It has opened a hole. I am in the Dungeon Dimensions. And the things in front of me are ... the Things. It has been nice knowing me.
The particular thing nearest Rincewind was at least twenty feet high. It looked like a dead horse that had been dug up after three months and then introduced to a range of new experiences, at least one of which had included an octopus.
It hadn't noticed Rincewind. It was too busy concentrating on the light.
Rincewind crawled back to the still body of Coin and nudged it gently.
'Are you alive?' he said. 'If you're not, I'd prefer it if you didn't answer.'
Coin rolled over and stared up at him with puzzled eyes. After a while he said, 'I remember-’
'Best not to,' said Rincewind.
The boy's hand groped vaguely in the sand beside him.
'It isn't here any more,' said Rincewind, quietly. The hand stopped its searching.
Rincewind helped Coin to sit up. He looked blankly at the cold silver sand, then at the sky, then at the distant Things, and then at Rincewind.
'I don't know what to do,' he said.
'No harm in that. I've never known what to do,' said Rincewind with hollow cheerfulness. 'Been completely at a loss my whole life.' He hesitated. 'I think it's called being human, or something.'
'But I've always known what to do!'
Rincewind opened his mouth to say that he'd seen some of it, but changed his mind. Instead he said, 'Chin up. Look on the bright side. It could be worse.'
Coin took another look around.
'In what respect, exactly?' he said, his voice a shade more normal.
Um.'
'What is this place?'
'It's a sort of other dimension. The magic broke through and we went with it, I think.'
'And those things?'
They regarded the Things.
'I think they're Things. They're trying to get back through the hole,' said Rincewind. 'It isn't easy. Energy levels, or something. I remember we had a lecture on them once. Er.'
Coin nodded, and reached out a thin pale hand towards Rincewind's forehead.
'Do you mind-?' he began.
Rincewind shuddered at the touch. 'Mind what?' he said.
— if I have a look in your head?
'Aargh.'
It's rather a mess in here. No wonder you can't find things.
'Ergh.'
You ought to have a clear out.
'Oogh.'
Ah.'
Rincewind felt the presence retreat. Coin frowned.
'We can't let them get through,' he announced. 'They have horrible powers. They're trying to will the hole bigger, and they can do it. They've been waiting to break into our world for-’ he frowned -’ians?'
'Aeons,' said Rincewind.
Coin opened his other hand, which had been tightly clenched, and showed Rincewind the small grey pearl.
'Do you know what this is?' he said.
'No. What is it?'
'I—can't remember. But we should put it back.'
'Okay. Just use sourcery. Blow them to bits and let's go home.'
'No. They live on magic. It'd only make them worse. I can't use magic.'
'Are you sure?' said Rincewind.
'I'm afraid your memory was very clear on the subject.'
'Then what shall we do?'
'I don't know!'
Rincewind thought about this and then, with an air of finality, started to take off his last sock.
'No half-bricks,' he said, to no-one in particular. 'Have to use sand.'
'You're going to attack them with a sockful of sand?'
'No. I'm going to run away from them. The sockful of sand is for when they follow.'
People were returning to Al Khali, where the ruined tower was a smoking heap of stones. A few brave souls turned their attention to the wreckage, on the basis that there might be survivors who could be rescued or looted or both.
And, among the rubble, the following conversation might have been heard:
'There's something moving under here!'
'Under that? By the two beards of Imtal, you are mishearing. It must weigh a ton.'
'Over here, brothers!'
And then sounds of much heaving would have been heard, and then:
'It's a box!'
'It could be treasure, do you think?'
'It's growing legs, by the Seven Moons of Nasreem!'
'Five moons-’
'Where'd it go? Where'd it go?'
'Never mind about that, it's not important. Let's get this straight, according to the legend it was five moons-'
In Klatch they take their mythology seriously. It's only real life they don't believe.
The three horsepersons sensed the change as they descended through the heavy snowclouds at the Hub end of the Sto Plain. There was a sharp scent in the air.
'Can't you smell it?' said Nijel, 'I remember it when I was a boy, when you lay in bed on that first morning in winter, and you could sort of taste it in the air and-’
The clouds parted below them and there, filling the high plains country from end to end, were the herds of the Ice Giants.
They stretched for miles in every direction, and the thunder of their stampede filled the air.
The bull glaciers were in the lead, bellowing their vast creaky calls and throwing up great sheets of earth as they ploughed relentlessly forward. Behind them pressed the great mass of cows and their calves, skimming over land already ground down to the bedrock by the leaders.
They bore as much resemblance to the familiar glaciers the world thought it knew as a lion dozing in the shade bears to three hundred pounds of wickedly coordinated muscle bounding towards you with its mouth open.
'... and ... and ... when you went to the window,' Nijel's mouth, lacking any further input from his brain, ran down.
Moving, jostling ice packed the plain, roaring forward under a great cloud of clammy steam. The ground shook as the leaders passed below, and it was obvious to the onlookers that whoever was going to stop this would need more than a couple of pounds of rock salt and a shovel.
'Go on, then,' said Conina, 'explain. I think you'd better shout.
Nijel looked distractedly at the herd.
'I think I can see some figures,' said Creosote helpfully. 'Look, on top of the leading ... things.'
Nijel peered through the snow. There were indeed beings moving around on the backs of the glaciers. They were human, or humanoid, or at least humanish. They didn't look very big.
That turned out to be because the glaciers themselves were very big, and Nijel wasn't very good at perspective. As the horses flew lower over the leading glacier, a huge bull heavily crevassed and scarred by moraine, it became apparent that one reason why the Ice Giants were known as the Ice Giants was because they were, well, giants.
The other was that they were made of ice.
A figure the size of a large house was crouched at the crest of the bull, urging it to greater efforts by means of a spike on a long pole. It was craggy, in fact it was more nearly faceted, and glinted green and blue in the light; there was a thin band of silver in its snowy locks, and its eyes were tiny and black and deep set, like lumps of coal.[24]
There was a splintering crash ahead as the leading glaciers smacked into a forest. Birds rattled up in panic. Snow and splinters rained down around Nijel as he galloped on the air alongside the giant.
He cleared his throat.
'Erm,’ he said, 'excuse me?'
Ahead of the boiling surf of earth, snow and smashed timber a herd of caribou was running in blind panic, their rear hooves a few feet from the tumbling mess.
Nijel tried again.
'I say?' he shouted.
The giant's head turned towards him.
'Vot you want?' it said. 'Go avay, hot person.'
'Sorry, but is this really necessary?'
The giant looked at him in frozen astonishment. It turned around slowly and regarded the rest of the herd, which seemed to stretch all the way to the Hub. It looked at Nijel again.
'Yarss,' it said, 'I tink so. Otherwise, why ve do it?'
'Only there's a lot of people out there who would prefer you not to, you see', said Nijel, desperately. A rock spire loomed briefly ahead of the glacier, rocked for a second and then vanished.
He added, Also children and small furry animals.'
'They vill suffer in the cause of progress. Now is the time ve reclaim the world,' rumbled the giant. 'Whole vorld of ice. According to inevitability of history and triumph of thermodynamics.'
'Yes, but you don't have to,' said Nijel.
'Ve vant to,' said the giant. 'The gods are gone, ve throw off shackles of outmoded superstition.'
'Freezing the whole world solid doesn't sound very progressive to me,' said Nijel.
'Ve like it.'
'Yes, yes,' said Nijel, in the maniacally glazed tones of one who is trying to see all sides of the issue and is certain that a solution will be found if people of goodwill will only sit around a table and discuss things rationally like sensible human beings. 'But is this the right time? Is the world ready for the triumph of ice?'
'It bloody veil better be,' said the giant, and swung his glacier prod at Nijel. It missed the horse but caught him full in the chest, lifting him clean out of the saddle and flicking him on to the glacier itself. He spun, spreadeagled, down its freezing flanks, was carried some way by the boil of debris, and rolled into the slush of ice and mud between the speeding walls.
He staggered to his feet, and peered hopelessly into the freezing fog. Another glacier bore down directly on him.
So did Conina. She leaned over as her horse swept down out of the fog, caught Nijel by his leather barbarian harness, and swung him up in front of her.
As they rose again he wheezed, 'Cold-hearted bastard. I really thought I was getting somewhere for a moment there. You just can't talk to some people.'
The herd breasted another hill, scraping off quite a lot of it, and the Sto Plain, studded with cities, lay helpless before it.
Rincewind sidled towards the nearest Thing, holding Coin with one hand and swinging the loaded sock in the other.
'No magic, right?' he said.
'Yes,' said the boy.
'Whatever happens, you musn't use magic?'
'That's it. Not here. They haven't got much power here, if you don't use magic. Once they break through, though ...'
His voice trailed away.
'Pretty awful,' Rincewind nodded.
'Terrible,' said Coin.
Rincewind sighed. He wished he still had his hat. He'd just have to do without it.
All right,' he said. 'When I shout, you make a run for the light. Do you understand? No looking back or anything. No matter what happens.'
'No matter what?' said Coin uncertainly.
'No matter what.' Rincewind gave a brave little smile. 'Especially no matter what you hear.'
He was vaguely cheered to see Coin's mouth become an 'O' of terror.
'And then,' he continued, 'when you get back to the other side-’
'What shall I do?'
Rincewind hesitated. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Anything you can. As much magic as you like. Anything. Just stop them. And ... um ...'
'Yes?'
Rincewind gazed up at the Thing, which was still staring into the light.
'If it ... you know ... if anyone gets out of this, you know, and everything is all right after all, sort of thing, Id like you to sort of tell people I sort of stayed here. Perhaps they could sort of write it down somewhere. I mean, I wouldn't want a statue or anything,' he added virtuously.
After a while he added, 'I think you ought to blow your nose.'
Coin did so, on the hem of his robe, and then shook Rincewind's hand solemnly.
'If ever you ...' he began, 'that is, you're the first ... it's been a great ... you see, I never really ...' His voice trailed off, and then he said, 'I just wanted you to know that.'
'There was something else I was trying to say,' said Rincewind, letting go of the hand. He looked blank for a moment, and then added, 'Oh, yes. It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.'
'I'll try and remember,' said Coin.
'It's very important,' Rincewind repeated, almost to himself. 'And now I think you'd better run.'
Rincewind crept closer to the Thing. This particular one had chicken legs, but most of the rest of it was mercifully hidden in what looked like folded wings.
It was, he thought, time for a few last words. What he said now was likely to be very important. Perhaps they would be words that would be remembered, and handed down, and maybe even carved deeply in slabs of granite.
Words without too many curly letters in, therefore.
'I really wish I wasn't here,' he muttered.
He hefted the sock, whirled it once or twice, and smashed the Thing on what he hoped was its kneecap.
It gave a shrill buzz, spun wildly with its wings creaking open, lunged vaguely at Rincewind with its vulture head and got another sockful of sand on the upswing.
Rincewind looked around desperately as the Thing staggered back, and saw Coin still standing where he had left him. To his horror he saw the boy begin to walk towards him, hands raised instinctively to fire the magic which, here, would doom both of them.
'Run away, you idiot!' he screamed, as the Thing began to gather itself for a counter-attack. From out of nowhere he found the words, 'You know what happens to boys who are bad!'
Coin went pale, turned and ran towards the light. He moved as though through treacle, fighting against the entropy slope. The distorted image of the world turned inside out hovered a few feet away, then inches, wavering uncertainly ...
A tentacle curled around his leg, tumbling him forward.
He flung his hands out as he fell, and one of them touched snow. It was immediately grabbed by something else that felt like a warm, soft leather glove, but under the gentle touch was a grip as tough as tempered steel and it tugged him forward, also dragging whatever it was that had caught him.
Light and grainy dark flicked around him and suddenly he was sliding over cobbles slicked with ice.
The Librarian let go his hold and stood over Coin with a length of heavy wooden beam in his hand. For a moment the ape reared against the darkness, the shoulder, elbow and wrist of his right arm unfolding in a poem of applied leverage, and in a movement as unstoppable as the dawn of intelligence brought it down very heavily. There was a squashy noise and an offended screech, and the burning pressure on Coin's leg vanished.
The dark column wavered. There were squeals and thumps coming from it, distorted by distance.
Coin struggled to his feet and started to run back into the dark, but this time the Librarian's arm blocked his path.
'We can't just leave him in there!'
The ape shrugged.
There was another crackle from the dark, and then a moment of almost complete silence.
But only almost complete. Both of them thought they heard, a long way off but very distinct, the sound of running feet fading into the distance.
They found an echo in the outside world. The ape glanced around, and then pushed Coin hurriedly to one side as something squat and battered and with hundreds of little legs barrelled across the stricken courtyard and, without so much as pausing in its stride, leapt into the disappearing darkness, which flickered for one last time and vanished.
There was a sudden flurry of snow across the air where it had been.
Coin wrenched free of the Librarian's grip and ran into the circle, which was already turning white. His feet scuffed up a sprinkle of fine sand.
'He didn't come out!' he said.
'Oook,' said the Librarian, in a philosophic manner.
'I thought he'd come out. You know, just at the last minute.'
'Oook?'
Coin looked closely at the cobbles, as if by mere concentration he could change what he saw. 'Is he dead?'
'Gook,' observed the Librarian, contriving to imply that Rincewind was in a region where even things like time and space were a bit iffy, and that it was probably not very useful to speculate as to his exact state at this point in time, if indeed he was at any point in time at all, and that, all in all, he might even turn up tomorrow or, for that matter, yesterday, and finally that if there was any chance at all of surviving then Rincewind almost certainly would.
'Oh,' said Coin.
He watched the Librarian shuffle around and head back for the Tower of Art, and a desperate loneliness overcame him.
'I say!' he yelled.
'Gook?'
'What should I do now?'
'Gook?'
Coin waved vaguely at the desolation.
'You know, perhaps I could do something about all this?', he said in a voice tilting on the edge of terror. 'Do you think that would be a good idea? I mean, I could help people. I'm sure you’d like to be human again, wouldn't you?'
The Librarian's everlasting smile hoisted itself a little further up his face, just enough to reveal his teeth.
'Okay, perhaps not,' said Coin hurriedly, 'but there's other things I could do, isn't there?'
The Librarian gazed at him for some time, then dropped his eyes to the boy's hand. Coin gave a guilty start, and opened his fingers.
The ape caught the little silver ball neatly before it hit the ground and held it up to one eye. He sniffed it, shook it gently, and listened to it for a while.
Then he wound up his arm and flung it away as hard as possible.
'What-’ Coin began, and landed full length in the snow when the Librarian pushed him over and dived on top of him.
The ball curved over at the top of its arc and tumbled down, its perfect path interrupted suddenly by the ground. There was a sound like a harp string breaking, a brief babble of incomprehensible voices, a rush of hot wind, and the gods of the Disc were free.
They were very angry.
'There is nothing we can do, is there?' said Creosote.
'No,' said Conina.
'The ice is going to win, isn't it?' said Creosote.
'Yes,' said Conina.
'No,' said Nijel.
He was trembling with rage, or possibly with cold, and was nearly as pale as the glaciers that rumbled past below them.
Conina sighed. 'Well, just how do you think-’ she began.
'Take me down somewhere a few minutes ahead of them,' said Nijel.
'I really don't see how that would help.'
'I wasn't asking your opinion,' said Nijel, quietly. 'Just do it. Put me down a little way ahead of them so I've got a while to get sorted out.'
'Get what sorted out?'
Nijel didn't answer.
'I said,' said Conina, 'get what-’
'Shut up!'
'I don't see why-’
'Look,' said Nijel, with the patience that lies just short of axe-murdering. 'The ice is going to cover the whole world, right? Everyone's going to die, okay? Except for us for a little while, I suppose, until these horses want their, their, their oats or the lavatory or whatever, which isn't much use to us except maybe Creosote will just about have time to write a sonnet or something about how cold it is all of a sudden, and the whole of human history is about to be scraped up and in these circumstances I would like very much to make it completely clear that I am not about to be argued with, is that absolutely understood?'
He paused for breath, trembling like a harpstring.
Conina hesitated. Her mouth opened and shut a few times, as though she was considering arguing, and then she thought better of it.
They found a small clearing in a pine forest a mile or two ahead of the herd, although the sound of it was clearly audible and there was a line of steam above the trees and the ground was dancing like a drumtop.
Nijel strolled to the middle of the clearing and made a few practice swings with his sword. The others watched him thoughtfully.
'If you don't mind,' whispered Creosote to Conina, 'I'll be off. It's at times like this that sobriety loses its attractions and I'm sure the end of the world will look a lot better through the bottom of a glass, if it's all the same to you. Do you believe in Paradise, o peachcheeked blossom?'
'Not as such, no.'
'Oh,' said Creosote. 'Well, in that case we probably won't be seeing each other again.' He sighed. 'What a waste. All this was just because of a geas. Um. Of course, if by some unthinkable chance-’
'Goodbye,' said Conina.
Creosote nodded miserably, wheeled the horse and disappeared over the treetops.
Snow was shaking down from the branches around the clearing. The thunder of the approaching glaciers filled the air.
Nijel started when she tapped him on the shoulder, and dropped his sword.
'What are you doing here?' he snapped, fumbling desperately in the snow.
'Look, I'm not prying or anything,' said Conina meekly, 'but what exactly do you have in mind?'
She could see a rolling heap of bulldozed snow and soil bearing down on them through the forest, the mind-numbing sound of the leading glaciers now overlaid with the rhythmic snapping of tree trunks. And, advancing implacably above the treeline, so high that the eye mistook them at first for sky, the blue-green prows.
'Nothing,' said Nijel, 'nothing at all. We've just got to resist them, that's all there is to it. That's what we're here for.'
'But it won't make any difference,' she said.
'It will to me. If we're going to die anyway, Iii rather die like this. Heroically.'
'Is it heroic to die like this?' said Conina.
'I think it is,' he said, 'and when it comes to dying, there's only one opinion that matters.'
'Oh.'
A couple of deer blundered into the clearing, ignored the humans in their blind panic, and rocketed away.
'You don't have to stay,' said Nijel. 'I've got this geas, you see.'
Conina looked at the backs of her hands.
'I think I should,' she said, and added, 'You know, I thought maybe, you know, if we could just get to know one another better-’
'Mr and Mrs Harebut, was that what you had in mind?' he said bluntly.
Her eyes widened. 'Well-’ she began.
'Which one did you intend to be?' he said.
The leading glacier smashed into the clearing just behind its bow wave, its top lost in a cloud of its own creation.
At exactly the same time the trees opposite it bent low as a hot wind blew from the Rim. It was loaded with voices — petulant, bickering voices — and tore into the clouds like a hot iron into water.
Conina and Nijel threw themselves down into snow which turned to warm slush under them. Something like a thunderstorm crashed overhead, filled with shouting and what they at first thought were screams although, thinking about them later, they seemed more like angry arguments. It went on for a long time, and then began to fade in the direction of the Hub.
Warm water flooded down the front of Nijel's vest. He lifted himself cautiously, and then nudged Conina.
Together they scrambled through the slush and mud to the top of the slope, climbed through a logjam of smashed timber and boulders, and stared at the scene.
The glaciers were retreating, under a cloud stuffed with lightning. Behind them the landscape was a network of lakes and pools.
'Did we do that?' said Conina.
'It would be nice to think so, wouldn't it?' said Nijel.
'Yes, but did-’ she began.
'Probably not. Who knows? Let's just find a horse,' he said.
'The Apogee,' said War, 'or something. I'm pretty sure.'
They had staggered out of the inn and were sitting on a bench in the afternoon sunshine. Even War had been persuaded to take off some of his armour.
'Dunno,' said Famine, 'Don't think so.'
Pestilence shut his crusted eyes and leaned back against the warm stones.
'I think,' he said, 'it was something about the end of the world.'
War sat and thoughtfully scratched his chin. He hiccuped.
'What, the whole world?' he said.
'I reckon.'
War gave this some further consideration. 'I reckon we're well out of it, then,' he said.
People were returning to Ankh-Morpork, which was no longer a city of empty marble but was once again its old self, sprawling as randomly and colourfully as a pool of vomit outside the all-night takeaway of History.
And the University had been rebuilt, or had rebuilt itself, or in some strange way had never been unbuilt; every strand of ivy, every rotting casement, was back in place. The sourcerer had offered to replace everything as good as new, all wood sparkling, all stone unstained, but the Librarian had been very firm on the subject. He wanted everything replaced as good as old.
The wizards came creeping back with the dawn, in ones or twos, scuttling for their old rooms, trying to avoid one another's gaze, trying to remember a recent past that was already becoming unreal and dream-like.
Conina and Nijel arrived around breakfast time and, out of kindness, found a livery stable for War's horse.[25] It was Conina who insisted that they look for Rincewind at the University, and who, therefore, first saw the books.
'Yes, but just a bit of help on his side, you've seen what that thing is like-'
'I'm sorry."
'He helped you.' Rincewind turned on the other wizards, who were scurrying away. 'All of you. He gave you what you wanted, didn't he?'
'We may never forgive him,' said Hakardly.
Rincewind groaned.
'What will be left when it's all over?' he said. 'What will be left?'
Hakardly looked down.
'I'm sorry,' he repeated.
The octarine light had grown brighter and was beginning to turn black around the edge. It wasn't the black that is merely the opposite of light, though; it was the grainy, shifting blackness that glows beyond the glare and has no business in any decent reality. And it buzzed.
Rincewind did a little dance of uncertainty as his feet, legs, instincts and incredibly well-developed sense of self-preservation overloaded his nervous system to the point where, just as it was on the point of fusing, his conscience finally got its way.
He leapt into the fire and reached the staff.
The wizards fled. Several of them levitated down from the tower.
They were a lot more perspicacious than those that used the stairs because, about thirty seconds later, the tower vanished.
The snow continued to fall around a column of blackness, which buzzed.
And the surviving wizards who dared to look back saw, tumbling slowly down the sky, a small object trailing flames behind it. It crashed into the cobbles, where it smouldered for a bit before the thickening snow put it out.
Pretty soon it became just a small mound.
A little while later a squat figure swung itself across the courtyard on its knuckles, scrabbled in the snow, and hauled the thing out.
It was, or rather it had been, a hat. Life had not been kind to it. A large part of the wide brim had been burned off, the point was entirely gone, and the tarnished silver letters were almost unreadable. Some of them had been torn off in any case. Those that were left spelled out: WIZD.
The Librarian turned around slowly. He was entirely alone, except for the towering column of burning blackness and the steadily falling flakes.
The ravaged campus was empty. There were a few other pointy hats that had been trampled by terrified feet, and no other sign that people had been there.
All the wizards were wazards.
'War?'
'Wazzat?'
'Wasn't there,' Pestilence groped for his glass, 'something?'
'Wazzat?'
'We ought to be ... there's something we ought to be doing,' said Famine.
'S'right. Got an appointment.'
'The-’ Pestilence gazed reflectively into his drink. 'Thingy.'
They stared gloomily at the bar counter. The innkeeper had long ago fled. There were several bottles still unopened.
'Okra,' said Famine, eventually. 'That was it.'
'Nah.'
'The Apos ... the Apostrophe,' said War, vaguely.
They shook their heads. There was a lengthy pause.
'What does "apocrustic" mean?' said Pestilence, gazing intently into some inner world.
'Astringent,' said War, 'I think.'
'It's not that, then?'
'Shouldn't think so,' said Famine, glumly.
There was another long, embarrassed silence.
'Better have 'nother drink,' said War, pulling himself together.
'S'right.'
About fifty miles away and several thousand feet up, Conina at last managed to control her stolen horse and brought it to a gentle trot on the empty air, displaying some of the most determined nonchalance the Disc had ever seen.
'Snow?' she said.
Clouds were roaring soundlessly from the direction of the Hub. They were fat and heavy and shouldn't be moving so fast. Blizzards trailed beneath them, covering the landscape like a sheet.
It didn't look like the kind of snow that whispers down gently in the pit of the night and in the morning turns the landscape into a glittering wonderland of uncommon and ethereal beauty. It looked like the kind of snow that intends to make the world as bloody cold as possible.
'Bit late in the year,' said Nijel. He glanced downwards, and then immediately closed his eyes.
Creosote watched in delighted astonishment. 'Is that how it happens?' he said. 'I've only heard about it in stories. I thought it sprouted out of the ground somehow. Bit like mushrooms, I thought.'
'Those clouds aren't right,' said Conina.
'Do you mind if we go down now?' said Nijel weakly. 'Somehow it didn't look so bad when we were moving.'
Conina ignored this. 'Try the lamp,' she commanded. 'I want to know about this.'
Nijel fumbled in his pack and produced the lamp.
The voice of the genie sounded rather tinny and far off, and said: 'If you would care to relax a little ... trying to connect you.' There then followed some tinkly little music, the kind that perhaps a Swiss chalet would make if you could play it, before a trapdoor outlined itself in the air and the genie himself appeared. He looked around him, and then at them.
'Oh, wow,' he said.
'Something's happening to the weather,' said Conina. ,Why?,
'You mean you don't know?' said the genie.
'We're asking you, aren't we?'
'Well, I'm no judge, but it rather looks like the Apocralypse, yuh?'
'What?'
The genie shrugged. 'The gods have vanished, okay?' he said. 'And according to, you know, legend, that means-’
'The Ice Giants,' said Nijel, in a horrified whisper.
'Speak up,' said Creosote.
'The Ice Giants,' Nijel repeated loudly, with a trace of irritation. 'The gods keep them imprisoned, see. At the Hub. But at the end of the world they'll break free at last, and ride out on their dreadful glaciers and regain their ancient domination, crushing out the flames of civilisation until the world lies naked and frozen under the terrible cold stars until Time itself freezes over. Or something like that, apparently.'
'But it isn't time for the Apocralypse,' said Conina desperately. 'I mean, a dreadful ruler has to arise, there must be a terrible war, the four dreadful horsemen have to ride, and then the Dungeon Dimensions will break into the world-’She stopped, her face nearly as white as the snow.
'Being buried under a thousand-foot ice sheet sounds awfully like it, anyway,' said the genie. He reached forward and snatched his lamp out of Nijel's hands.
'Mucho apologies,' he said, 'but it's time to liquidise my assets in this reality. See you around. Or something.' He vanished up to the waist, and then with a faint last cry of 'Shame about lunch', disappeared entirely.
The three riders peered through the veils of driving snow towards the Hub.
'It may be my imagination,' said Creosote, 'but can either of you hear a sort of creaking and groaning?'
'Shut up,' said Conina distractedly.
Creosote leaned over and patted her hand.
'Cheer up,' he said, 'it's not the end of the world.' He thought about this statement for a bit, and then added, 'Sorry. Just a figure of speech.'
'What are we going to do?' she wailed.
Nijel drew himself up.
'I think,' he said, 'that we should go and explain.'
They turned towards him with the kind of expression normally reserved for messiahs or extreme idiots.
'Yes,' he said, with a shade more confidence. 'We should explain.'
'Explain to the Ice Giants?' said Conina.
'Yes.'
'Sorry,' said Conina, 'have I got this right? You think we should go and find the terrifying Ice Giants and sort of tell them that there are a lot of warm people out here who would rather they didn't sweep across the world crushing everyone under mountains of ice, and could they sort of reconsider things? Is that what you think we should do?'
'Yes. That's right. You've got it exactly.'
Conina and Creosote exchanged glances. Nijel remained sitting proudly in the saddle, a faint smile on his face.
'Is your geese giving you trouble?' said the Seriph.
'Geas,' said Nijel calmly. 'It's not giving me trouble, it's just that I must do something brave before I die.'
'That's it though,' said Creosote. 'That's the whole rather sad point. You'll do something brave, and then you'll die.'
'What alternative have we got?' said Nijel.
They considered this.
'I don't think I'm much good at explaining,' said Conina, in a small voice.
'I am,' said Nijel, firmly. 'I'm always having to explain.'
The scattered particles of what had been Rincewind's mind pulled themselves together and drifted up through the layers of dark unconsciousness like a three-day corpse rising to the surface.
It probed its most recent memories, in much the same way that one might scratch a fresh scab.
He could recall something about a staff, and a pain so intense that it appeared to insert a chisel between every cell in his body and hammer on it repeatedly.
He remembered the staff fleeing, dragging him after it. And then there had been that dreadful bit where Death had appeared and reached past him, and the staff had twisted and become suddenly alive and Death had said, IPSLORE THE RED, I HAVE YOU NOW.
And now there was this.
By the feel of it Rincewind was lying on sand. It was very cold.
He took the risk of seeing something horrible and opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was his left arm and, surprisingly, his hand. It was its normal grubby self. He had expected to see a stump.
It seemed to be night-time. The beach, or whatever it was, stretched on towards a line of distant low mountains, under night sky frosted with a million white stars.
A little closer to him there was a rough line in the silvery sand. He lifted his head slightly and saw the scatter of molten droplets. They were octiron, a metal so intrinsically magical that no forge on the Disc could even warm it up.
'Oh,' he said. 'We won, then.'
He flopped down again.
After a while his right hand came up automatically and patted the top of his head. Then it patted the sides of his head. Then it began to grope, with increasing urgency, in the sand around him.
Eventually it must have communicated its concern to the rest of Rincewind, because he pulled himself upright and said, 'Oh, bugger.'
There seemed to be no hat anywhere. But he could see a small white shape lying very still in the sand a little way away and, further off -
A column of daylight.
It hummed and swayed in the air, a three-dimensional hole into somewhere else. Occasional flurries of snow blew out of it. He could see skewed images in the light, that might be buildings or landscapes warped by the weird curvature. But he couldn't see them very clearly, because of the tall, brooding shadows that surrounded it.
The human mind is an astonishing thing. It can operate on several levels at once. And, in fact, while Rincewind had been wasting his intellect in groaning and looking for his hat, an inner part of his brain had been observing, assessing, analysing and comparing.
Now it crept up to his cerebellum, tapped it on the shoulder, thrust a message into its hand and ran for it.
The message ran something like this: I hope I find me well. The last trial of magic has been too much for the tortured fabric of reality. It has opened a hole. I am in the Dungeon Dimensions. And the things in front of me are ... the Things. It has been nice knowing me.
The particular thing nearest Rincewind was at least twenty feet high. It looked like a dead horse that had been dug up after three months and then introduced to a range of new experiences, at least one of which had included an octopus.
It hadn't noticed Rincewind. It was too busy concentrating on the light.
Rincewind crawled back to the still body of Coin and nudged it gently.
'Are you alive?' he said. 'If you're not, I'd prefer it if you didn't answer.'
Coin rolled over and stared up at him with puzzled eyes. After a while he said, 'I remember-’
'Best not to,' said Rincewind.
The boy's hand groped vaguely in the sand beside him.
'It isn't here any more,' said Rincewind, quietly. The hand stopped its searching.
Rincewind helped Coin to sit up. He looked blankly at the cold silver sand, then at the sky, then at the distant Things, and then at Rincewind.
'I don't know what to do,' he said.
'No harm in that. I've never known what to do,' said Rincewind with hollow cheerfulness. 'Been completely at a loss my whole life.' He hesitated. 'I think it's called being human, or something.'
'But I've always known what to do!'
Rincewind opened his mouth to say that he'd seen some of it, but changed his mind. Instead he said, 'Chin up. Look on the bright side. It could be worse.'
Coin took another look around.
'In what respect, exactly?' he said, his voice a shade more normal.
Um.'
'What is this place?'
'It's a sort of other dimension. The magic broke through and we went with it, I think.'
'And those things?'
They regarded the Things.
'I think they're Things. They're trying to get back through the hole,' said Rincewind. 'It isn't easy. Energy levels, or something. I remember we had a lecture on them once. Er.'
Coin nodded, and reached out a thin pale hand towards Rincewind's forehead.
'Do you mind-?' he began.
Rincewind shuddered at the touch. 'Mind what?' he said.
— if I have a look in your head?
'Aargh.'
It's rather a mess in here. No wonder you can't find things.
'Ergh.'
You ought to have a clear out.
'Oogh.'
Ah.'
Rincewind felt the presence retreat. Coin frowned.
'We can't let them get through,' he announced. 'They have horrible powers. They're trying to will the hole bigger, and they can do it. They've been waiting to break into our world for-’ he frowned -’ians?'
'Aeons,' said Rincewind.
Coin opened his other hand, which had been tightly clenched, and showed Rincewind the small grey pearl.
'Do you know what this is?' he said.
'No. What is it?'
'I—can't remember. But we should put it back.'
'Okay. Just use sourcery. Blow them to bits and let's go home.'
'No. They live on magic. It'd only make them worse. I can't use magic.'
'Are you sure?' said Rincewind.
'I'm afraid your memory was very clear on the subject.'
'Then what shall we do?'
'I don't know!'
Rincewind thought about this and then, with an air of finality, started to take off his last sock.
'No half-bricks,' he said, to no-one in particular. 'Have to use sand.'
'You're going to attack them with a sockful of sand?'
'No. I'm going to run away from them. The sockful of sand is for when they follow.'
People were returning to Al Khali, where the ruined tower was a smoking heap of stones. A few brave souls turned their attention to the wreckage, on the basis that there might be survivors who could be rescued or looted or both.
And, among the rubble, the following conversation might have been heard:
'There's something moving under here!'
'Under that? By the two beards of Imtal, you are mishearing. It must weigh a ton.'
'Over here, brothers!'
And then sounds of much heaving would have been heard, and then:
'It's a box!'
'It could be treasure, do you think?'
'It's growing legs, by the Seven Moons of Nasreem!'
'Five moons-’
'Where'd it go? Where'd it go?'
'Never mind about that, it's not important. Let's get this straight, according to the legend it was five moons-'
In Klatch they take their mythology seriously. It's only real life they don't believe.
The three horsepersons sensed the change as they descended through the heavy snowclouds at the Hub end of the Sto Plain. There was a sharp scent in the air.
'Can't you smell it?' said Nijel, 'I remember it when I was a boy, when you lay in bed on that first morning in winter, and you could sort of taste it in the air and-’
The clouds parted below them and there, filling the high plains country from end to end, were the herds of the Ice Giants.
They stretched for miles in every direction, and the thunder of their stampede filled the air.
The bull glaciers were in the lead, bellowing their vast creaky calls and throwing up great sheets of earth as they ploughed relentlessly forward. Behind them pressed the great mass of cows and their calves, skimming over land already ground down to the bedrock by the leaders.
They bore as much resemblance to the familiar glaciers the world thought it knew as a lion dozing in the shade bears to three hundred pounds of wickedly coordinated muscle bounding towards you with its mouth open.
'... and ... and ... when you went to the window,' Nijel's mouth, lacking any further input from his brain, ran down.
Moving, jostling ice packed the plain, roaring forward under a great cloud of clammy steam. The ground shook as the leaders passed below, and it was obvious to the onlookers that whoever was going to stop this would need more than a couple of pounds of rock salt and a shovel.
'Go on, then,' said Conina, 'explain. I think you'd better shout.
Nijel looked distractedly at the herd.
'I think I can see some figures,' said Creosote helpfully. 'Look, on top of the leading ... things.'
Nijel peered through the snow. There were indeed beings moving around on the backs of the glaciers. They were human, or humanoid, or at least humanish. They didn't look very big.
That turned out to be because the glaciers themselves were very big, and Nijel wasn't very good at perspective. As the horses flew lower over the leading glacier, a huge bull heavily crevassed and scarred by moraine, it became apparent that one reason why the Ice Giants were known as the Ice Giants was because they were, well, giants.
The other was that they were made of ice.
A figure the size of a large house was crouched at the crest of the bull, urging it to greater efforts by means of a spike on a long pole. It was craggy, in fact it was more nearly faceted, and glinted green and blue in the light; there was a thin band of silver in its snowy locks, and its eyes were tiny and black and deep set, like lumps of coal.[24]
There was a splintering crash ahead as the leading glaciers smacked into a forest. Birds rattled up in panic. Snow and splinters rained down around Nijel as he galloped on the air alongside the giant.
He cleared his throat.
'Erm,’ he said, 'excuse me?'
Ahead of the boiling surf of earth, snow and smashed timber a herd of caribou was running in blind panic, their rear hooves a few feet from the tumbling mess.
Nijel tried again.
'I say?' he shouted.
The giant's head turned towards him.
'Vot you want?' it said. 'Go avay, hot person.'
'Sorry, but is this really necessary?'
The giant looked at him in frozen astonishment. It turned around slowly and regarded the rest of the herd, which seemed to stretch all the way to the Hub. It looked at Nijel again.
'Yarss,' it said, 'I tink so. Otherwise, why ve do it?'
'Only there's a lot of people out there who would prefer you not to, you see', said Nijel, desperately. A rock spire loomed briefly ahead of the glacier, rocked for a second and then vanished.
He added, Also children and small furry animals.'
'They vill suffer in the cause of progress. Now is the time ve reclaim the world,' rumbled the giant. 'Whole vorld of ice. According to inevitability of history and triumph of thermodynamics.'
'Yes, but you don't have to,' said Nijel.
'Ve vant to,' said the giant. 'The gods are gone, ve throw off shackles of outmoded superstition.'
'Freezing the whole world solid doesn't sound very progressive to me,' said Nijel.
'Ve like it.'
'Yes, yes,' said Nijel, in the maniacally glazed tones of one who is trying to see all sides of the issue and is certain that a solution will be found if people of goodwill will only sit around a table and discuss things rationally like sensible human beings. 'But is this the right time? Is the world ready for the triumph of ice?'
'It bloody veil better be,' said the giant, and swung his glacier prod at Nijel. It missed the horse but caught him full in the chest, lifting him clean out of the saddle and flicking him on to the glacier itself. He spun, spreadeagled, down its freezing flanks, was carried some way by the boil of debris, and rolled into the slush of ice and mud between the speeding walls.
He staggered to his feet, and peered hopelessly into the freezing fog. Another glacier bore down directly on him.
So did Conina. She leaned over as her horse swept down out of the fog, caught Nijel by his leather barbarian harness, and swung him up in front of her.
As they rose again he wheezed, 'Cold-hearted bastard. I really thought I was getting somewhere for a moment there. You just can't talk to some people.'
The herd breasted another hill, scraping off quite a lot of it, and the Sto Plain, studded with cities, lay helpless before it.
Rincewind sidled towards the nearest Thing, holding Coin with one hand and swinging the loaded sock in the other.
'No magic, right?' he said.
'Yes,' said the boy.
'Whatever happens, you musn't use magic?'
'That's it. Not here. They haven't got much power here, if you don't use magic. Once they break through, though ...'
His voice trailed away.
'Pretty awful,' Rincewind nodded.
'Terrible,' said Coin.
Rincewind sighed. He wished he still had his hat. He'd just have to do without it.
All right,' he said. 'When I shout, you make a run for the light. Do you understand? No looking back or anything. No matter what happens.'
'No matter what?' said Coin uncertainly.
'No matter what.' Rincewind gave a brave little smile. 'Especially no matter what you hear.'
He was vaguely cheered to see Coin's mouth become an 'O' of terror.
'And then,' he continued, 'when you get back to the other side-’
'What shall I do?'
Rincewind hesitated. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Anything you can. As much magic as you like. Anything. Just stop them. And ... um ...'
'Yes?'
Rincewind gazed up at the Thing, which was still staring into the light.
'If it ... you know ... if anyone gets out of this, you know, and everything is all right after all, sort of thing, Id like you to sort of tell people I sort of stayed here. Perhaps they could sort of write it down somewhere. I mean, I wouldn't want a statue or anything,' he added virtuously.
After a while he added, 'I think you ought to blow your nose.'
Coin did so, on the hem of his robe, and then shook Rincewind's hand solemnly.
'If ever you ...' he began, 'that is, you're the first ... it's been a great ... you see, I never really ...' His voice trailed off, and then he said, 'I just wanted you to know that.'
'There was something else I was trying to say,' said Rincewind, letting go of the hand. He looked blank for a moment, and then added, 'Oh, yes. It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.'
'I'll try and remember,' said Coin.
'It's very important,' Rincewind repeated, almost to himself. 'And now I think you'd better run.'
Rincewind crept closer to the Thing. This particular one had chicken legs, but most of the rest of it was mercifully hidden in what looked like folded wings.
It was, he thought, time for a few last words. What he said now was likely to be very important. Perhaps they would be words that would be remembered, and handed down, and maybe even carved deeply in slabs of granite.
Words without too many curly letters in, therefore.
'I really wish I wasn't here,' he muttered.
He hefted the sock, whirled it once or twice, and smashed the Thing on what he hoped was its kneecap.
It gave a shrill buzz, spun wildly with its wings creaking open, lunged vaguely at Rincewind with its vulture head and got another sockful of sand on the upswing.
Rincewind looked around desperately as the Thing staggered back, and saw Coin still standing where he had left him. To his horror he saw the boy begin to walk towards him, hands raised instinctively to fire the magic which, here, would doom both of them.
'Run away, you idiot!' he screamed, as the Thing began to gather itself for a counter-attack. From out of nowhere he found the words, 'You know what happens to boys who are bad!'
Coin went pale, turned and ran towards the light. He moved as though through treacle, fighting against the entropy slope. The distorted image of the world turned inside out hovered a few feet away, then inches, wavering uncertainly ...
A tentacle curled around his leg, tumbling him forward.
He flung his hands out as he fell, and one of them touched snow. It was immediately grabbed by something else that felt like a warm, soft leather glove, but under the gentle touch was a grip as tough as tempered steel and it tugged him forward, also dragging whatever it was that had caught him.
Light and grainy dark flicked around him and suddenly he was sliding over cobbles slicked with ice.
The Librarian let go his hold and stood over Coin with a length of heavy wooden beam in his hand. For a moment the ape reared against the darkness, the shoulder, elbow and wrist of his right arm unfolding in a poem of applied leverage, and in a movement as unstoppable as the dawn of intelligence brought it down very heavily. There was a squashy noise and an offended screech, and the burning pressure on Coin's leg vanished.
The dark column wavered. There were squeals and thumps coming from it, distorted by distance.
Coin struggled to his feet and started to run back into the dark, but this time the Librarian's arm blocked his path.
'We can't just leave him in there!'
The ape shrugged.
There was another crackle from the dark, and then a moment of almost complete silence.
But only almost complete. Both of them thought they heard, a long way off but very distinct, the sound of running feet fading into the distance.
They found an echo in the outside world. The ape glanced around, and then pushed Coin hurriedly to one side as something squat and battered and with hundreds of little legs barrelled across the stricken courtyard and, without so much as pausing in its stride, leapt into the disappearing darkness, which flickered for one last time and vanished.
There was a sudden flurry of snow across the air where it had been.
Coin wrenched free of the Librarian's grip and ran into the circle, which was already turning white. His feet scuffed up a sprinkle of fine sand.
'He didn't come out!' he said.
'Oook,' said the Librarian, in a philosophic manner.
'I thought he'd come out. You know, just at the last minute.'
'Oook?'
Coin looked closely at the cobbles, as if by mere concentration he could change what he saw. 'Is he dead?'
'Gook,' observed the Librarian, contriving to imply that Rincewind was in a region where even things like time and space were a bit iffy, and that it was probably not very useful to speculate as to his exact state at this point in time, if indeed he was at any point in time at all, and that, all in all, he might even turn up tomorrow or, for that matter, yesterday, and finally that if there was any chance at all of surviving then Rincewind almost certainly would.
'Oh,' said Coin.
He watched the Librarian shuffle around and head back for the Tower of Art, and a desperate loneliness overcame him.
'I say!' he yelled.
'Gook?'
'What should I do now?'
'Gook?'
Coin waved vaguely at the desolation.
'You know, perhaps I could do something about all this?', he said in a voice tilting on the edge of terror. 'Do you think that would be a good idea? I mean, I could help people. I'm sure you’d like to be human again, wouldn't you?'
The Librarian's everlasting smile hoisted itself a little further up his face, just enough to reveal his teeth.
'Okay, perhaps not,' said Coin hurriedly, 'but there's other things I could do, isn't there?'
The Librarian gazed at him for some time, then dropped his eyes to the boy's hand. Coin gave a guilty start, and opened his fingers.
The ape caught the little silver ball neatly before it hit the ground and held it up to one eye. He sniffed it, shook it gently, and listened to it for a while.
Then he wound up his arm and flung it away as hard as possible.
'What-’ Coin began, and landed full length in the snow when the Librarian pushed him over and dived on top of him.
The ball curved over at the top of its arc and tumbled down, its perfect path interrupted suddenly by the ground. There was a sound like a harp string breaking, a brief babble of incomprehensible voices, a rush of hot wind, and the gods of the Disc were free.
They were very angry.
'There is nothing we can do, is there?' said Creosote.
'No,' said Conina.
'The ice is going to win, isn't it?' said Creosote.
'Yes,' said Conina.
'No,' said Nijel.
He was trembling with rage, or possibly with cold, and was nearly as pale as the glaciers that rumbled past below them.
Conina sighed. 'Well, just how do you think-’ she began.
'Take me down somewhere a few minutes ahead of them,' said Nijel.
'I really don't see how that would help.'
'I wasn't asking your opinion,' said Nijel, quietly. 'Just do it. Put me down a little way ahead of them so I've got a while to get sorted out.'
'Get what sorted out?'
Nijel didn't answer.
'I said,' said Conina, 'get what-’
'Shut up!'
'I don't see why-’
'Look,' said Nijel, with the patience that lies just short of axe-murdering. 'The ice is going to cover the whole world, right? Everyone's going to die, okay? Except for us for a little while, I suppose, until these horses want their, their, their oats or the lavatory or whatever, which isn't much use to us except maybe Creosote will just about have time to write a sonnet or something about how cold it is all of a sudden, and the whole of human history is about to be scraped up and in these circumstances I would like very much to make it completely clear that I am not about to be argued with, is that absolutely understood?'
He paused for breath, trembling like a harpstring.
Conina hesitated. Her mouth opened and shut a few times, as though she was considering arguing, and then she thought better of it.
They found a small clearing in a pine forest a mile or two ahead of the herd, although the sound of it was clearly audible and there was a line of steam above the trees and the ground was dancing like a drumtop.
Nijel strolled to the middle of the clearing and made a few practice swings with his sword. The others watched him thoughtfully.
'If you don't mind,' whispered Creosote to Conina, 'I'll be off. It's at times like this that sobriety loses its attractions and I'm sure the end of the world will look a lot better through the bottom of a glass, if it's all the same to you. Do you believe in Paradise, o peachcheeked blossom?'
'Not as such, no.'
'Oh,' said Creosote. 'Well, in that case we probably won't be seeing each other again.' He sighed. 'What a waste. All this was just because of a geas. Um. Of course, if by some unthinkable chance-’
'Goodbye,' said Conina.
Creosote nodded miserably, wheeled the horse and disappeared over the treetops.
Snow was shaking down from the branches around the clearing. The thunder of the approaching glaciers filled the air.
Nijel started when she tapped him on the shoulder, and dropped his sword.
'What are you doing here?' he snapped, fumbling desperately in the snow.
'Look, I'm not prying or anything,' said Conina meekly, 'but what exactly do you have in mind?'
She could see a rolling heap of bulldozed snow and soil bearing down on them through the forest, the mind-numbing sound of the leading glaciers now overlaid with the rhythmic snapping of tree trunks. And, advancing implacably above the treeline, so high that the eye mistook them at first for sky, the blue-green prows.
'Nothing,' said Nijel, 'nothing at all. We've just got to resist them, that's all there is to it. That's what we're here for.'
'But it won't make any difference,' she said.
'It will to me. If we're going to die anyway, Iii rather die like this. Heroically.'
'Is it heroic to die like this?' said Conina.
'I think it is,' he said, 'and when it comes to dying, there's only one opinion that matters.'
'Oh.'
A couple of deer blundered into the clearing, ignored the humans in their blind panic, and rocketed away.
'You don't have to stay,' said Nijel. 'I've got this geas, you see.'
Conina looked at the backs of her hands.
'I think I should,' she said, and added, 'You know, I thought maybe, you know, if we could just get to know one another better-’
'Mr and Mrs Harebut, was that what you had in mind?' he said bluntly.
Her eyes widened. 'Well-’ she began.
'Which one did you intend to be?' he said.
The leading glacier smashed into the clearing just behind its bow wave, its top lost in a cloud of its own creation.
At exactly the same time the trees opposite it bent low as a hot wind blew from the Rim. It was loaded with voices — petulant, bickering voices — and tore into the clouds like a hot iron into water.
Conina and Nijel threw themselves down into snow which turned to warm slush under them. Something like a thunderstorm crashed overhead, filled with shouting and what they at first thought were screams although, thinking about them later, they seemed more like angry arguments. It went on for a long time, and then began to fade in the direction of the Hub.
Warm water flooded down the front of Nijel's vest. He lifted himself cautiously, and then nudged Conina.
Together they scrambled through the slush and mud to the top of the slope, climbed through a logjam of smashed timber and boulders, and stared at the scene.
The glaciers were retreating, under a cloud stuffed with lightning. Behind them the landscape was a network of lakes and pools.
'Did we do that?' said Conina.
'It would be nice to think so, wouldn't it?' said Nijel.
'Yes, but did-’ she began.
'Probably not. Who knows? Let's just find a horse,' he said.
'The Apogee,' said War, 'or something. I'm pretty sure.'
They had staggered out of the inn and were sitting on a bench in the afternoon sunshine. Even War had been persuaded to take off some of his armour.
'Dunno,' said Famine, 'Don't think so.'
Pestilence shut his crusted eyes and leaned back against the warm stones.
'I think,' he said, 'it was something about the end of the world.'
War sat and thoughtfully scratched his chin. He hiccuped.
'What, the whole world?' he said.
'I reckon.'
War gave this some further consideration. 'I reckon we're well out of it, then,' he said.
People were returning to Ankh-Morpork, which was no longer a city of empty marble but was once again its old self, sprawling as randomly and colourfully as a pool of vomit outside the all-night takeaway of History.
And the University had been rebuilt, or had rebuilt itself, or in some strange way had never been unbuilt; every strand of ivy, every rotting casement, was back in place. The sourcerer had offered to replace everything as good as new, all wood sparkling, all stone unstained, but the Librarian had been very firm on the subject. He wanted everything replaced as good as old.
The wizards came creeping back with the dawn, in ones or twos, scuttling for their old rooms, trying to avoid one another's gaze, trying to remember a recent past that was already becoming unreal and dream-like.
Conina and Nijel arrived around breakfast time and, out of kindness, found a livery stable for War's horse.[25] It was Conina who insisted that they look for Rincewind at the University, and who, therefore, first saw the books.