The Color of Pyrite

[HolisticGod]

All,

This is a separate thread for the Legend Continues Spanish(/world) Discworld AAR The Color of Pyrite.

It will provide me with control over the first post, as well as allow me to make long posts (and use larger fonts for readability) without burying the other AARs.

Interactivity is encouraged, if anyone else would like to play.

 

[HolisticGod]

The Color of Pyrite​

(An Unauthorized Discworld Jaunt)
​

“It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a halfbrick in the path of the bicycle of history.”
-Equal Rites

This AAR is dedicated to John.

Part One​

“Elzemkiziiliala!”

“Zzvaalqorblorgara!”

“Bggvramgcivkagraz!”

“Osososkiska-hold on a minute. There’s no m in bggvrangcivkagraz.”

“There isn’t?”

“No. It’s bggvrangcivkagraz. N. As in nine, nibble, ninny, not from around here. N. From the Latin bggvranium. I mean, maybe that’s the way you Labords say it up there in-“

“That’s not fair! I wish you’d stop saying that! I’m as Basque as you. Maybe not born and bred in your exact village, okay, but I’m a Witch of Navarre! I said the words!”

“In French maybe you said them-“

“I’m not French!”

“Will you two cut it out? Mother Mary, now we have to start all over again. Why’d you have to go and interrupt her?”

“Bggvramgcivkagraz? You’re all right with that?”

“No, I’m not all right with it, you know that, but times is hard and we have to make do with what we’ve got.”

“Bggvramgcivkagraz! With an m she says it!”

“It was a mistake! I’m sorry! I’m trying my best!” And with that the young witch Margareta began again to sob, and soon, as at several junctures before on that particular evening, she fled across the hilltop to what was now unhelpfully referred to as Margareta’s Sobbing Stone.

Half of the remaining witches watched her go. She sighed.

“You’re such a purist, Emse. Why do you have to make trouble with her all the time?”

“Because she’s the spoiled whelp of a bunch of DOWNSLOPE CHEESE WORRIERS is why,” Grandma Climatebuff said. “And we’d have to do it over again anyway.”

“Over one little m?”

“They’re words of power, Agatha, not a cider recipe. The spelling counts.”

“That’s what my old headmaster used to say, but he was a bit unorthodox.”

Grandma Climatebuff gazed at her awhile. She, known from the Canaries to the Urals (a word that never failed to raise a heehaw from her) as Aupair Nogg, began to wilt, which, at her age, brought her face catastrophically near gravitational collapse.

“Go get the whelp. We have to hurry.” Grandma’s gaze shifted to the high horizon, where the moon was already beginning to sink, and down, down to the glinting metal (no, not gold, she thought, grinding her tooth, not yet) of the palace spires. “Hurry, hurry.”

~​

There were two possibilities here, the wizard thought.

The first was that the clockwork man would swing the elm he’d found high and to the right, knocking the Obelisk of Family Happiness (it was that kind of town) low and to the left, which was worrying because low and to the left happened to be where the wizard was. That was where he was, flat on his back, because when the Black Dragon saw the clockwork man it dropped him, dropped its bowels, and fled for the safety, and possibly the stiff mutton moonshine, of the mountains.

He would never get to his feet in time. The Obelisk of Family Happiness would fall. And it would beat him over the head. And he would die.

The second was that the clockwork man would swing the elm he’d found high and to the left, knocking the Obelisk of Nuptial Bliss into the Column of the Welcoming Warmth of Home’s Hearth, which would in turn collapse into the Hall of Wonders from the Wider World and the Glorious Future, causing its roof to cave in, whereupon its Tower of Conjugal Contentment would corkscrew its way into the Glass Palace, killing hundreds of attendees of the Disc’s Fair, and around the southern end of the square until it finally came to rest against and upended the scaffolding of Sir Henry Smith’s latest masterpiece, the Spire of a Virtuous Strength That Flows From a Devoted Wife and Happy Children and the Time-honored Traditions of Our Forefathers, which, as yet unsound, would teeter dangerously, causing the masons to flee en masse under the shadow of Parliament and Big Bill the Happily Doting Father and Affectionate Husband, between the Twin Pillars of Work and Family Leave Not a Spare Moment to Think Things Over, around the Stone Phallus of If All Else Fails Turn to God and out of the square through the triumphal Archway of See This is What You Truly Want, Isn’t It? Meanwhile, the wizard would scramble to his feet, very carefully so as not to slip on the Black Dragon dung, and, reverting to type, run away as fast as his legs could carry him, which would not be fast enough. The clockwork man would spot him, give a terrific tick of rage, and swing the great elm after him. Its roots would snare his starry cloak and yank him again to the ground. He would get back to his feet and look all around in bafflement and horror for some escape. With the masons clogging the Archway of See This Is What You Truly Want, Isn’t It? he would have to take the other route, running away and away and away to the other side of Parliament, near its MP-only entrance in a dark corner of the square, where he would have no choice but to plunge headlong into the Blind Alley That Dare Not Speak Its Name. What would happen to him there he could only speculate, but with no escape the clockwork man would find him eventually, even if, indeed especially if, it had to destroy every house and kill every person there. And the clockwork man would beat him over the head. And he would die.

The wizard did not know which was likelier, but he knew for which he hoped. He had always imagined he would die running away and, while dying on his back had itself always seemed a close second, he thought it somehow nobler, and certainly more personal. Gods knew he’d spent precious little time doing anything of consequence on his back over the years.

He looked up into the faint electrical corona of the clockwork man’s eyes. He closed his own. When he opened them again, at the sound of air snapping, he realized he’d forgotten something.

Oh, well, no, I suppose there were three possibilities, thought the wizard as the weeping bark rushed down to meet him.

~​

“Elzemkiziiliala!”

“Zzvaalqorblorgara!”

“Bggvra-n-gcivkagraz!”

“Osososkiska-“

“Way to go Margareta!”

“-visga-God dammit, Agatha.”

~​

“Elzemkiziiliala!”

“Zzvaalqorblorgara!”

“Bggvra-n-gcivkagraz!”

“Osososkiskavisgalkrolkrol!“

“Vishvishvishoflish!”

“Zombozombozal!”

“Belgium!”

“Refishfewokoal!”

“Tresdemtondondo!”

“Gurgolgyabnik!”

“O mighty Almighty! O Virgin sister! O saint-fathers and o saint-mothers! O-o-o!

“Thou-beseech we!”

“I knew it! French-“

“We beseech thee! Send unto us a power!”

“A force!”

“A fury!”

“A storm!”

“Send us lightning to burn the sinful!”

“And thunder to frighten the infirm of soul!

“And rains to cleanse away the stain of ungodliness!”

“And winds to sweep Spain into the sea!”

“A cleansing wind, o mighty Almighty!”

“A purifying wind!”

“A rinsing wind!”

“Wind rinse away the evil of this world!”

“Rinse o wind!”

“Rince, wind!”

“Rinse, wind!”

“Rinse, wind!”

“Rince, wind!”

“Rinse, wind!”

“Rinse. wind!”

“Rince wind!”

“There!” Aupair Nogg pointed, and where she pointed there was a great streak of fire.

“There!”

“It’s headed straight for the palace! It’s working! It’s really working!”

“Of course it’s working you spawn of a French whore and a frog’s leg! It’s meteorology.”

“But… It’s so small.”

“She’s right, Emse. It’s smaller ‘an me.”

Grandma Climatebuff peered into the starry night. She stroked the strand of hair that dangled like fishing wire from the shambled jetty of her chin. It was indeed small, although even from that distance it seemed to be making a lot of noise.

“Maybe it will kind of… Explode when it hits?”

As they watched, it, whatever it was, pinwheeled across the sky emitting an awful sound that seemed to slip into the listener beneath her toenails until it finally struck the highest tower of the palace right… In one of its windows. Nothing happened. They waited expectantly. Nothing went on happening nonetheless.

“Huh,” Aupair Nogg said.

“Hum.”

“Well,” Grandma said, “we’d better go down there and find out what it is.”

“Down there?” asked Margareta.

“Where else?”

“Into the wicked city?”

“Into the palace, if we have to. Come on.” Grandma lifted her skirts and began to march down the hill. Aupair Nogg followed. After a moment, Margareta, reluctantly, trailed them.

“But…” she said softly, “but that’s the very den of iniquity!”

Grandma paid her no heed, and in fact began to leap down the hill, bouncing from boulder to boulder.

“Oh, honey,” Aupair Nogg said, giggling as she crouched for a particularly long jump, “that’s not what den of iniquity means.”

~​

Grandma Climatebuff was right, of course. When speaking words of power, words to invoke the might of the gods, it is best to spell them correctly, especially with gods as hard of hearing as the gods of this particular world tended to be.

It was a world of low magical index, and what little magic there was was parsimonious. It got dealt out in meager little handfuls, and if ever there was an opportunity to stiff the unwary wizard, witch, or pontiff, well, that’s just life all over, isn’t it? The gods of this world, a lowly third rock from an unregarded yellow sun, never sent a bang where a whimper would do.

No, on Earth the spelling counts.

And so do the commas.

~​

Rincewind’s head hurt. Oh, he had expected it to hurt for a second, but that second second was a total surprise. The third second, even coming on the heels of the second second, was also a total surprise. The fourth second was a total surprise, too, although now it was because he couldn’t believe he’d survived the monstrous pain of the first, second and third seconds. On the fifth second, he feigned a certain world-wariness, but this only deepened his shock on the sixth second when his head went on hurting and he went on being alive. The seventh second brought a mix of total surprise and a deep desire to stop being alive. The eighth and ninth seconds were consumed by existential questions raised by the seventh second, and during the tenth second he decided that it was shocking enough to discover he was still conscious and that he could have a deep desire simply to stop being conscious, and on the eleventh second he passed out.

~​

The palace gate was closely guarded, but by Spaniards.

On the second floor, the witches came upon two Italian mercenaries, but fortunately they spoke Amore and Aupair Nogg was able to persuade them to stand aside.

On the fourth floor, there were some German Knights, but they had passed out drunk, and one Englishman who agreed not to tell anybody what he’d seen them doing if they wouldn’t tell anybody what they’d seen him doing.

On the seventh floor, they caught the first inkling that something was amiss. Crouched behind, and in Aupair Nogg’s case half inside, a wine cask, they overheard the maids whispering about strange happenings.

“…and there was the most terrible sound.”

“I heard it. It rocked the tower even in the cellar.”

“No! No! Not that. Tell them, Ava.”

“It were…” the smallest maid squeaked, yet it was a deep, powerful squeak, somehow. “It were a queer sound. Cryin-like, the babe-“

“The Infanta,” chided the oldest of the maids, whose nose was a passable ski jump.

“The Infanta, sorry mum, the Infanta were cryin, but different. So loud. And broked like. And confused. You know I always say that ba-Infanta, she got clear eyes and watches you. She’s a clever one. When she cries, it’s cause she wants somethin’ and she knows how to get it, like the teat,” with that, the witches discovered the source of the little maid’s powerful voice, as she turned aside and hefted one of her frankly gargantuan bosoms. Aupair Nogg whistled in her wine. “She never yells like that, all messed up and scared and little like.”

“But what was it?”

“Her, I guess. Weren’t nobody else up there. But we all ran to check on her, the Queen herself did, and there she was, all scrunched up and sleepin’ like a angel. Suckin’ away at her little thumb without a care in the world.”

“Then what made the sound?”

“Like I said, must’been her. Maybe that thunderclap scared her for a second.”

The other maids shook their heads.

“Sure is queer.”

“Well, I said so, didn’t I?”

“The Queen seems to think so, too,” said the maid with the ski slope. “And she doesn’t believe it. She’s posted a triple guard for the rest of the night, and she sent Burley the cook up there, too.”

“What’s got her so worried?”

“You know. Don Luna.”

“Oh! He’s a snake he is.”

“I think he’s handsome,” said the wetnurse. “A real knight!”

“You hold your tongue. You serve the Queen, remember.”

“Anyway, you think anything with a pole is a knight.”

“I do not! I…”

The voices began to fade as the maids exited, and the door to the pantry closed with a bang.

“Now what?” asked Aupair Nogg.

“Now we wait,” said Grandma Climatebuff. “If the guard was just posted, they’ll be drunk by morning.”

“We’re just going to sit here?” Margareta shivered. “In this… Place?”

“Fine by me,” said Aupair Nogg, who had found a bottle of better wine and a round of cheese. “Fine. By. Me.”

~​

Rincewind’s head hurt. The sun streaming through the shattered remnants of the window hurt his eyes when he tried, inadvisably and briefly, to open them, hurt the little scratches the glass had etched in his face, hurt the gash beneath his stringy hair, hurt his skin, hurt him everywhere, in fact, because, although he didn’t know it, the light on this planet hit him at approximately 1,873,702,862.5 times the speed of the light on his own. It was going to leave a mark.

The soft thing beneath him hurt his back. The soft thing around his shoulders hurt his shoulders. The soft thing on his stomach and legs hurt his stomach and legs. The soft thing he was clutching in one arm hurt his one arm. The soft thing underneath his head hurt his head, which was plenty hurt on its own.

He did not understand at first why such soft things were hurting him so much and trying to understand hurt his mind, and his mind, seeking to hurt something as much as all these things were hurting it, for reasons unclear chose his inferior vena cava.

Eventually, he turned his head as far as he could from the blitzing warmth on his face and cracked one eye. There was something pink in front of it. Pink and puffy and hairy. He fastened his eyes closed and tried not to shriek.

He stayed this way for a remarkably long while. Long after anyone else would have gritted his teeth, opened his eyes, and got on with it, long after anyone else would have gulped down his fear, clenched a fist, and struck out at the hairy object, long after anyone else would have realized that anything willing to wait an hour and a half for him to open his eyes probably wasn’t very hungry, and long after anyone else, even the most resolute of cowards, would have leapt straight up in the air like a cat on a live wire and rushed blindly for the nearest small child behind whom to hide, Rincewind was there, fetal, febrile, and not even a whisker from where he began. It was the most impressive feat of non-heroism in the history of Earth.* It was not, however, the most impressive feat of non-heroism in the history of Rincewind, and even his resilience to cramps was unimpressive in light of his Zen-like meditative technique, which was to enter a hallucinatory trance wherein he was not rolled into a ball with his eyes squeezed tightly enough to produce a light show on his retinas but rather running away very fast down a hill sloped perfectly for running away very fast, perhaps munching a sausage between gasps, and never getting anywhere he might have to make another round of inevitably bad decisions.

It was only when he heard the soft gasp of the opening of an oaken door to a warm room in a cold castle that he twitched. He managed to hold himself still and his eyes closed as the footfalls approached, but suddenly he was no longer running down that perfect hill but wrapped for the third hour in a fetal ball and all at once he exploded into a sprawled, wide-eyed, and perspiring born pancake, and let out a low, long whine.

“Good morning, Highness,” said a voice, “Are you well this morning?”

“aweeeehuaweeeeehuhuhuaweeeeehu.”

“Very good, very good, Majesty.” There were sounds of scrapping, whooshing, whoofting, of clutter being cleared, cabinets opened, gowns considered and reconsidered. Rincewind, panicked by sudden recollection, glanced wildly at and away from the pink, furry thing on his left arm until he had satisfied himself that it would not, upon eye contact, finally disembowel him. Then he gave it a long look.

It was a bear.

Rincewind had been through a lot, and this was why, he felt it psychologically important to insist to himself later, he wailed and wet himself a second before he realized that the bear was pink, fluffy, too small by half, and, most vitally, stuffed.

The shuffling footfalls ceased, and after a moment became rapid.

A face appeared above him. It was fat and kind, and the fat on it was also fat, and the fat of its fat was swollen, and the swollen fat on its fat was ruddy and red, so that when it smiled, as it did now with a mixture of maternal concern and something else that Rincewind could not identify because he had never seen it in a face that was looking at him, there was no naturally apparent method of distinguishing it from a jolly sack of apples.

“Your Highness, are you well?” The face was expectant, but Rincewind found it in him to do nothing but howl. He was surprised by how little surprise this caused the face. “Does Her Highness wish to break her fast?” The face cocked itself to the side. It sniffed. “Oh, Her Highness has eliminated and wishes to be purified!”

The face glanced behind it.

“Fetch Ava, would you? And tell her the Infanta desires bathing and dressing.”

Rincewind could not make out the reply, but the face was annoyed by it.

“Why would you see to the bathing? You are here to launder the sheets. It may be a task beneath a nurse, but it is assuredly above a laundress. Fetch Ava.”

Again the response was inaudible.

“What do you mean, who’s Ava? The Infanta’s wetnurse. Small woman? Short. Thin. Brown hair? Unusually… Blessed. Yes, her. Fetch her.”

Mumbling.

“She has a room next to the kitchens. They like to keep her well-grazed. What do you mean, where are the kitchens? Are you new to the palace? Who are you? What does that mean, double, double, toil and trouble? Now see here, I do not like trouble and… And I won’t have… And… I… Well, why don’t I fetch Ava myself? Yes, I suppose I could do with a good walk. I’ll just…”

The voice faded. With a whoosh the door closed. The heat began to rise. There were more footsteps, these lighter. A face appeared, half as fat as its predecessor but still fat for all that. It was very merry, and contained not a trace of that something Rincewind could not identify.

“Well, hello there.” Its smile was all tooth. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Agatha, get out of my way,” said another voice, and another face jostled in. There were two black pools in it that were as deep as a midnight sky and could easily be mistaken for eyes by the unwary. They narrowed. “Well, out with it, who are you?”

“Let me see, let me see,” said a third voice, high and reedy, and a face like a flat iron squeezed between the other two. In contrast, its eyes could easily be mistaken for something else, crossed and near-sighted and cataracted as they were, but they were kind, too, and very nervous and a bit confused and it was immediately apparent that the person who looked through them was hopelessly lost. It was so apparent as to be apparent even to Rincewind, who fell immediately in love. The face scrunched. It looked up at something. It looked down. It looked up. It looked down.

“Come out with it, fella, who are you and how in damnation did you wind up in this shithole?” asked the first face again, still as merry as a cow on Hogswatch Eve.

“Don’t curse at the baby!” yipped the third face. The first faced laughed.

“That’s no baby,” said the second face, “even if he smells like one. Who are you?”

“I…” Rincewind said, and he paused, more startled than alarmed, and chewed his lip. He realized he wasn’t quite sure. So much had happened in the hours since last he thought of himself, his circumstances were utterly alien, and, although he didn’t know it, the neutrinos of this world were blazing fiery trails through his forebrain. Most of all, however, was the look, the look of something, that he could not quite define but recalled at the periphery, at the margins, as though it had passed through the corner of his eye all his life without ever coming inside. “I…”

“All right, Eye Eye, and where’d you come from? Did we summon you?”

“I…”

The first face leaned in and examined him.

“Maybe that is the baby, Emse. They feed ‘em weird down here, you know.”

“No.”

“But-“ the third face began.

“No.”

“Emse, look at it. Poor thing. Maybe it can’t tell you its name cause it don’t know its name.”

“You two shut up,” the second face said. “Neither of you has ever met royalty. I have.”

“Oh, right. I’m sure they have you up to the palace all the fu-“

“Don’t curse in front of the baby!”

“That’s no, baby,” the second face said firmly. “I looked into my share of queen’s eyes and that’s no queen.”

Something about this broke the amnesic dam that Rincewind’s mind had been happily building between that something look and everything that had gone before it. All at once, he remembered who he was.

“See! See!” shouted the third face triumphantly. “Crying. Just like a baby.”

*Up to that point. See: Understanding Barack Obama: A History of the “Come On Guys, They’re Not So Stupid As To Keep Believing In All Those Things Now” Presidency, Exxon-Harvard University Press (2019).

~​

“Will the Queen play her part?”

“Oh, yes. She hates the bastard more than I do.”

“But does she have enough influence?”

The other man snorted. It was the snort of a pig the other pigs avoided at wallowings.

“With my father? She has a tar pit between those palm trees of hers, doesn’t she?”

There was a silence.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, sire, but it’s things like that that set people at court to talking.”

“And what do they say?”

“Nothing, nothing, except that your wife...”

“Yes?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t know or I wouldn’t ask.”

“That your wife, she is…”

“…”

“Unblooded, sire.”

“Is that all?” said the other man, laughing with relief. “I know it goes against our traditions, but I am a modern man. I’ll admit it. I’m not ashamed of it. No, I haven’t punched her, not even once.”

A shuffle of feet. A cough.

“Of course, sire.”

~​

“Rincewind.”

“No, your name.”

“That’s my name. My name is Rincewind.”

The first face, the one that had identified itself as Aupair Nogg, chuckled.

“Come on, quit foolin’. What is it really?”

“Rincewind. It’s really Rincewind.”

“You wouldn’t want me cross, boy,” Grandma Climatebuff said.

“No, no. But that’s it. It’s Rincewind.”

The witches looked at one another. Aupair Nogg shrugged.

“That’s a horrible name,” she said.

“I know,” said Rincewind, “I know.” He began to sniffle again.

“None of that,” said Grandma Climatebuff. “It’s not your fault.”

“No, no,” said Aupair Nogg, “it’s your parents should be ashamed of themselves.”

“Ah, yes, my parents…”

“You don’t have any parents either?”

“Well…”

“Mother have mercy.”

“It’s all right. I mean, I have plenty of…”

“Friends?”

“I was going to say coal. I guess that’s not as good.”

“You haven’t got any friends?”

“I… Well. I haven’t really thought about it very much. I do have this piece of luggage that seems to like me. Anyway, it goes everywhere with me and…” He trailed off as he looked around. There were chests and cabinets and armoires and vanities and many other pieces of furniture, but no piece of luggage. “I guess it’s not here now.”

Aupair Nogg patted his shoulder, but Grandma was livid.

“And why are you here? Why did you come?”

“I don’t really know.”

“You don’t know?

“I really don’t. I never really do, I’m afraid.”
“And where do you come from?”

“Ankh-Morpork.”

Grandma’s eyes narrowed.

“Do your people spend all their time thinking up silly names for everything?”

“There’s nothing wrong with Ankh-Morpork,” said Rincewind, and he even bristled, even if the bristles were limp and a bit sweaty and only Margareta noticed.

“Better than less,” said Aupair Nogg. “Even you have to admit that, Emse.”

“And do you serve the Devil or the Lord?”

“Er. Well. We don’t have a Lord per se… More like a… You see, some people have rather a lot of…”

“It’s like that everywhere,” Grandma said, waving him off. “I mean the spiritual sort of Lord. The Almighty. God.”

“Blind Io?”

“That what you call Him?”

“Well,” said Rincewind. “Not to his face.”

“His face,” said Margareta. “And his name is God.”

“His name don’t matter,” said Grandma. “Point is, you serve Him?”

“I…” Rincewind began, and stopped, sensing a trap. Or, perhaps that was too precise, sensing a sudden desire to run away. “I guess so.”

“Damn,” said Aupair Nogg. Grandma nodded.

“What?” asked Margareta.

“We was hoping for the Devil.”

“What?”

“See,” said Aupair Nogg, a bit sheepishly, “this is more his specialty…”

“The Devil?”

“Hush,” said Grandma. “What would it take for you to… Fall for a couple of hours?”

“Er… I don’t, er, well. I mean, how high up are we?”

Grandma and Aupair Nogg exchanged a look.

“Exactly what sort of angel are you?” asked Aupair Nogg.

“The not an angel sort, I think.”

“Then what on Earth are you anyway?”

“A wizzard,” said Rincewind.

“Ah!” said Aupair Nogg, rubbing her hands together. Margareta clapped. “That’s more like it. Hear that Emse, he’s a wizard. It’s all right afterall. So swords in stone blocks, flying literature, crystal balls, owls, golden snitches, that sort of thing?”

“Wait a damned minute,” said Grandma. “Say that again. I don’t think I heard you right.”

“I’m a wizzard.”

“A wizard, Emse!”

“We’re saved! But what did you mean about the Devil and-“

“There ain’t two “z’s” in wizard.”

“Now, Emse, don’t you start that again.”

“No, she’s right,” said Rincewind, avoiding Margareta’s eyes, in part because he couldn’t bear to see the sudden hopefulness disappear from them and in part because with the hopefulness in them they suddenly didn’t seem so fetching. “I’m not a wizard. I’m a wizzard.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Um, that is…” He looked at Margareta and was both crushed and aroused to find no hopefulness in them. Their kinship was restored. “Everything. The power. The power, mostly.”

“But we summoned you!” burst Margareta. “We summoned a great storm to sweep away the palace!”

“Oh, well. Did it?”

“NO.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t… Well, you know, weather can be tricky. So can magic, believe me. Don’t take it too hard.”

“So you don’t do anything?” asked Aupair Nogg. “Anything special? Fire balls? Lightning arrows? Dragons?”

“No. Gods, no.” Rincewind shuddered.

“Then,” said Grandma, “why. are. you. here.” It was not a question this time, and Rincewind did not answer it.

“Ice storms?”

“No.”

“It doesn’t make a lick of sense,” said Grandma and she plopped down on the floor, stroking her chin hair.

“Maybe claws sort of… Shoot out of your knuckles?”

“No!”

“Are you all right?” asked Margareta. She was asking Rincewind, not Grandma. She had hoped this would be pointed, but the old witch was deep in thought, and anyway her own indifference would have been pointed enough to burst Margareta into tears.

Rincewind gaped at her. He was so surprised he didn’t answer. Margareta asked him again.

“I… Yes. I mean, no, not really, but yes, since you asked, because you asked, and… But no, no, dreadful, actually. I’m dreadful. I’m DREADFUL. Oh, yes. DREADFUL. Thank you, thank you.” Rincewind beamed at her. She blushed, so Rincewind blushed. They gazed at one another.

Grandma was peering at the portrait on the wall and did not seem to hear. Aupair Nogg, however, looked from one to the other and saw at once what was happening, and felt, as a matron and chaperon of Margareta’s virginity, a keen obligation to come to the Maid’s rescue.

“Stick out your chest,” she whispered. “Lads love that.”

Margareta gasped, but Grandma leapt to her feet and cut her off.

“There’s something funny going on,” she said, “something about this. Look here, where did you say you come from?”

“Did you hear what she-“

“Yes. Agatha, shame on you. You always give ‘em the same advice and what happens? We’ve gone through so many of ‘em we have to take the Frog daughter of a whore-“

“My mo-“

“-and you have so many grandchildren and great grandchildren and great great grandchildren the Holy Father sent your family a congratulatory fruit basket and fifteen pounds of dried sheep intestine last Christ’s Mass.”

“Yep. Chewy, but delicious.”

“And Margareta, you know the rules. Always Three There Are, and Always in Their Places.” She glanced at Rincewind. “Besides, I don’t think he’s up to a French lass.”

Rincewind’s ears could have guided ships home in fog.

“I,” he coughed.

“And you, where did you say you come from?”

“Ankh-Morpork.”

“And just where is that?”

“On the river Ankh, at the edge of the plains of Sto Helit.”

“That’s not in France, is it?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“And it’s not in Spain. But you talk like us.”

“I have a gift,” said Rincewind, with something not like pride, but certainly pride’s much degraded, down-on-its-luck descendant, “For languages.”

“Yes, I reckon you do. I reckon you just sort of… Fade into the scenery, don’t you? I reckon you become what all them people out there think you are.”

Rincewind coughed. He wasn’t sure whether this was a compliment or a grievous insult, but that ambiguity itself filled him with a certain warmth.

“But you don’t even, say, kick really, really high and fast?” asked Aupair Nogg.

“No. My balance is actually quite poor.”

"It didn’t work,” she said, turning to the witches. “Face facts. It didn’t work.”

“It didn’t work!” Margareta began to sob, and despite herself she wished she had that stone to sit on.

“No,” said Grandma, “no, it worked.” She looked Rincewind from head to toe. “They was words of power, good ones, and they worked. Just maybe not the way we thought.”

“How can that be, Emse? Just look at him.” She shook her head. “Nice enough lad, bit daft, but how could he stop the whole Spanish Empire?”

Grandma looked up at the portrait and smiled.

“By ruling it,” she said.

~​

Of course, you protest, this is all wrong. If this is a parallel world, Grandma Climatebuff is obviously Granny Weatherwax’s parallel witch, and Granny Watherwax would never do this. Summon a storm to destroy a palace! To lay waste to an entire nation! Never. Granny is Right with a capital R.

Unless. Unless it’s not just her name that’s different. Maybe everything is opposite here. You see, on the Discworld, people don’t talk much about Right with a capital R and Wrong with a capital W, and they think about them even less. On Earth, people talk about Right with a capital R all the time, and they talk about Wrong with a capital W all the time, and they all think they know what’s Right and what’s Wrong, but this is misleading. On Earth Right and Wrong are mostly about where you store your soft bits.

But if Earth was the Discworld, where Right and Wrong mean different things, surely Granny Weatherwax would not approve of a witch using her powers (and magik, no less!) to destroy a whole country. Yet that is what Grandma Climatebuff is trying to do. Does that mean Grandma Climatebuff is Wrong with a capital W?

If you’re reading this on the Discworld, you already know the answer. If you’re reading it on Earth, you’re probably too preoccupied with yours and your neighbors’ soft bits to care.

~​

“But,” Rincewind said, “won’t they notice? Won’t they be angry with me when they do?”

“The nurse didn’t notice, and she’s the nurse.”

“But… But… I’m a man!”

“Well.”

“Biologically!”

“You haven’t looked at that picture there, have you?” Grandma Climatebuff asked quietly. She nodded to it. Rincewind turned. His eyes buggered.

“It’s the nose, really,” said Aupair Nogg, admiring it with him. “Uncanny.”

“How… How… She’s a baby! A girl baby!”

“A princess baby, in fact.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Nothin’. Spaniards all look that way as babies. But you can tell she’s royalty from how they keep the beard trimmed.”

“So there it is. They won’t notice.”

“But I’m so much bigger than she is!”

“Actually,” said Aupair Nogg, “you’re pretty scrawny yourself. When’s the last time you got some food in you?”

Rincewind tried to tot it up, but he ran out of fingers and shrugged instead.

“I was living off the land.”

“Even so. You couldn’t at least chew some bark, man?”

“No, no. I mean off the land. A dragon was taking me to meet her parents.”

“They won’t notice that you’re bigger,” said Grandma, “because they won’t want to. You’re Close Enough. I don’t know about where you come from, but around here Close Enough is all people need.”

They heard a peep from just outside the nursery, and after a moment it was followed by a peeping Margareta.

“The wetnurse is coming!”

Rincewind gulped.

“Wetnurse?”

“You’ll be fine.” Aupair Nogg patted his arm. “Just mind the teeth, hear?” She gripped his arm, clawed it. “Mind those teeth.”

Margareta blanched.

“We’d better go,” said Grandma, and she began to climb out the window.

“You’re going to fly away and leave me?”

“Of course not,” said Aupair Nogg, “We can’t fly. We’re not crows. We’re going to climb.”

“But you are going to leave me?”

“Yes.”

“Gods.”

“For now,” said Grandma, “we’ll be back at half moon. Just sit tight, and for chrissake don’t say anything.”

She dropped from sight. Aupair Nogg followed. Margareta lingered, giving him one last, long, bewildered look that he would take to his grave. Just as she too disappeared, however, a thought occurred to him, and he ran to the window.

“If they think I’m Princess Isabella,” he shouted after them, “Where is the real Princess Isabella?”

“We don’t know,” came the reply, faint on the wind.

 

[HolisticGod]

~​

The infant gazed up at the descending elm. She did not cry. What was there to cry about? It would not hit her. Such things were not allowed.

The elm, meanwhile, which had had, arguably, an even worse day than Rincewind, was appalled to find itself descending not on a middle-aged, lovelorn, bedraggled, and fatalistic wizzard who was, frankly, pretty unhapy anyway but rather a small baby with chunky, wiggling limbs who was, even if somewhat unorthodox, nevertheless a baby, almost impossible to hurt deliberately except from a height of several thousand feet.

There was, though, nothing the elm could do about it, being an elm afterall, and down it came.

Just as it was about to connect, something happened. What, precisely, will never be known. Perhaps the mysteries of the quantum, which, if not directly accused, were at least implicated by recent events, prevented it. Perhaps the even deeper mysteries, the deepest mystery, would not permit it, an impossible death, or perhaps merely an unjust exchange-Rincewind for a royal heir. Perhaps the clockwork man itself became fully sentient in that moment of imminent horror and, seeing the horror, and seeing its own gears in that horror, recoiled.

Or perhaps the infant was correct. Perhaps it just wasn’t allowed.

Whatever the case, this scene does not end in baby-splat, to the relief of many, the chagrin of a damned few.

Instead, the elm halted at the last possible point in its trajectory at which halting was possible, or, at least, efficacious. It was tossed aside, where it would be collected, sawed into pieces, and used in the reconstruction of Victoriana’s civic statuary.

The infant gazed up, now into the electric corona of the clockwork man’s eyes. The electric corona of the clockwork man’s eyes gazed back at the infant. Its gears grinded. It ticked from every joint and juncture box. The electricity burst and coalesced. It did not move.

After a minute, the infant, her clear, cold eyes unblinking, spread her arms upward and outward.

The gears screeched. The ticking crescendoed. A faint whistle could be heard from the back of the clockwork man’s head, and it lurched forward, and it lurched because it was taking the smallest step, the slightest tiptoe, and it bent, and it extended its arms downward and inward, and it scooped the infant up and lifted her to its eyes, and it watched her wriggle her nose and favor it with the slightest, gassiest smile, and it shifted her to its shoulder, carefully positioning one paddle on her bum and the other on her back, and it began picking itself across the carnage of the square.

In awe, the dying watched it go. In awe, the stragglers among the masons, half-trampled by their more go-getting brethren, watched it go. In awe, the brave Parliamentarians emerged from beneath their desks and watched it go. In awe, the mostly ribboned supporters of the Disc’s Fair watched it go. A thousand odd people watched it go, in fact, nine hundred and ninety nine of them in awe and one mad scientist in fury.

And there was one other who watched it go in neither awe nor fury but rather puzzlement.

He stood for a moment, gazing at the spot where Rincewind had been, at the elm, at the strewn bodies and statuary. There was plenty of work to do here, of course, but suddenly it felt empty.

His gaze swept after the clockwork man. None of the thousand ever saw him, nor had the clockwork man seen him when he strolled up next to Rincewind, nor had Rincewind, in his reverie, seen him when he lifted his scythe. But as he watched the clockwork man trudge from the square, two eyes did see him, cold and clear and unblinking, and they studied him, and they burned.

HMM… he said after awhile, THIS IS GOING TO PISS THE OFFICIOUS LITTLE BASTARDS RIGHT OFF.

~​

“Well, you is just clawin’ for it today, aren’t ya?” Ava said. “All right, all right. Break yer fast first, then I’ll clean y’off.”

Rincewind, who had temporarily warded off one danger, now came face to face with another-with two others, actually, of the take-no-prisoners variety. He squirmed on Ava’s lap, which, like the rest of her, did not seem to notice that he was taller and heavier than she was.

“Now, don’t you be fussy. I told you before, the rest’em might treat you like a little queen but I know babes and right now yer just a babe. I won’t stand for no fussing.” She said this, but in her eyes Rincewind could see the same unidentifiable thing he’d seen in the nurse’s. Nevertheless, he relented, and the wetnurse drew off her gown and pulled him forward. He watched it approaching, like some ravenous sea monster.

He closed his eyes. The nipple passed between his lips. He tried very hard to keep any part of his mouth from touching it, but eventually he closed around it and-

He was shoved over and off and onto the ground, and the wetnurse shrieked.

“Who in damnation are you?”

Rincewind propped himself on his elbows and blinked up at her.

“Er, Rincewind,” he said.

Ava shrieked again.

“Could you keep it down before-“ He tried to smile gently. “Er, I’m sorry for…” He gestured at her still bared breasts. “…everything.”

The wetnurse looked down, looked up, and rather than fixing her gown reached for the nearest heavy thing, which happened to be a hobby horse with the saddest eyes Rincewind had ever seen.

“Who are you?” She gestured very slowly with the horse, not for effect but because it was heavy. Rincewind scrambled to his feet.

“You’re no baby. I can tell. I’d know those high falutin’ lips anywhere. She don’t go in all shy-like. She goes right for’em. But you. You act like you never even seen a teat before.”

She advanced on him. He backed away and gulped.

“You’re too little and scrawny to be a raper.”

She advanced. He backed away.

“You’re too scared and clumsy to be a thief.”

She advanced. He backed away.

“You blush too much to be a pervert.”

She advanced. He backed away. The difference this time was that she kept advancing and he stopped backing away because a wall happened to be there. She closed on him until the bridge of her nose almost touched his chin. Technically, her eyes (violet, he noticed) were at a level with his bottom lip, but somehow he still felt as though he were looking up at her.

“Who are you?”

“A… Rincewi… A wizzard.”

All at once Ava’s face lit up, she smiled, she backed away, she tossed the hobby horse into a corner.

“Oh, oh. Do you have a unicorn horn wand? Or dragon string? Can I see your owl?”

“I… Well… Is that some kind of euphemism?”

“Has you come to enchant the ba-the Infanta? Oh, please say you have. Spoiled little bit-Infanta.”

“Er, no, not really,” said Rincewind. He looked around, frightened and guilty. “I’m afraid I might have… Smushed her when I landed. But I can’t find her anywhere.”

The nursemaid’s eyes narrowed again. She reached for the hobby horse.

“What do you mean you can’t find her?”

“I don’t think she’s here at all.”

“Then where is she?”

“I think she may be… Oh, Gods. The clockwork man.”

“Speak sense or I’m gonna brain you and drag you down to the Queen.” She hefted the hobby horse. “You ain’t no raper, thief or pervert, but yer just yella enough to be an assassin.”

“Assassin?” Rincewind yelped. “Me? Me? No, I-no, I didn’t do-she wasn’t here when I landed. I haven’t seen her.”

Ava studied him. She lowered the hobby horse.

“I believe you, I guess. You sure ain’t dressed like no assassin. But then where is she?”

“Where I come from, I think. The witches… The witches think I’m supposed to be her now.”

“The witches? What witches?”

“They were just here. Three of them. A fat one, an old one and… Margareta.”

“There were three witches here just now?”

“Yes.”

“And yer just gonna tell me that, straight out?”

“Er. We seemed to be getting on and-“

“Do you know what they do to witches round here?”

“Avoid them? That’s what they do where I come from.”

“No, I’ll tell you what they do.”

She told him

He threw up.

When he recovered himself, still coughing and spluttering and trying to clean the nothing (because he hadn’t eaten in so long) out of his beard, there were tears stinging his sun-blitzed cheeks.

“But why? Why would they do that?”

“Cause they’re witches.”

“Yes, but, I mean, why?”

“What do you mean, why? I told you. They’re witches.”

“Yes, but… But all they do is mix up aphrodisiacs and help deliver the resulting babies. The worst you can accuse them of is vertical integration!”

“Oh, you’re a flirt afterall, are you?” The wetnurse smiled and inched close to him again.

“No, no, I mean… Nevermind. The point is… I mean, is that what witches do here, too?”

“Yup.”

“So they douse them in slow-burning oil, cut off all their hair, throw things at them, tie them to a piece of lumber, and set them on fire?”

“Well, yeah. They’re witches.”

“But they don’t do anything to deserve that!”

“Now, listen, I like witches myself. I think they’re exciting. But don’t go spreadin’ that kind of thinkin’ round here. They do plenty to deserve it when they go and decide to be witches.”

“Oh,” said Rincewind. “Like some kind of blood ritual? Something dreadful with virgins and a volcano? I can see why that would make people angry.”

“What? No, they don’t do anything like that. Far as I know, they just decide one day that they’re witches and there they are. Or other people decide that they’re witches. Oh, and they have to go live in the woods.”

“Then why do you people burn them?”

“Be. Cause. They. Are. Witches. God be praised, are you a halfwit or somethin’?”

Rincewind sat in the rocking chair. He held his chin in his hands.

“So y’see, maybe you shouldn’t go round just tellin’ anybody about your witch friends.”

“They’re not my friends,” Rincewind said, “I just met them and they want to use me to destroy some place called Castille.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” The wetnurse dashed to the door and slammed it shut. She turned, her chest heaving, her arms thrown across the oak. “Do you just say any old thing that pops into yer mouth?”

“I don’t understand. That’s what they said. They said Castille has to be stopped before it-“

“Shuddup! Shuddup! Mother Mary, you can’t say things like that round here. Don’t you know anything?”

“Er, no, not really. I don’t even know where “here” is.”

“Castille. Here is Castille. Just don’t say anything for a second, okay?” Rincewind happily complied. The wetnurse lapsed into deep silence and, it seemed, thought, and as she did her face changed, or the light changed her face, or perhaps they changed each other, and Rincewind noticed for the first time that above her… Double helpings, she was something very rare in his experience: She was beautiful. And as her face changed, he realized that she was something even rarer as well.

“All right,” she said. “You’re trouble. Terrible, terrible trouble. But I won’t tell anyone who you really are so long as you don’t give yourself away.”

She appraised him. He surmised, correctly, that the appraisal was not favorable.

“I don’t trust you can handle that. But if we can’t find the Infanta, the alternative is worse. I’m sure they’ll blame me.”

“Why would they blame you? I would tell them you had nothing to do with it.”

The wetnurse snorted.

“I’m sure they would find that very persuasive. Listen, I play the bumpkin harlot because that is what they expect of me and so everything is fine. You play the infant princess because that is what they expect of you and everything will be fine.”

“But why would you protect me? Why would they blame you?”

“My name isn’t Ava,” she said, and she sighed. “Ava is what they call me. To my face, anyway. My real name is Rebekah. Rebekah Lebanaza.”

Rincewind stared blankly at her.

“I am a Jew. A Jewess they say.”

Rincewind stared blankly at her.

“Heavens. Where are you from?”

“Ankh-Morpork.”

“Is that a jape?”

“Er…”

“They have no Jews in Ankh-Morpork? Well, no, they wouldn’t, would they? They have Jews in Castille, but more and more they wish it otherwise. And I, I…” She laughed bitterly and stuck out her chest, which she also took the opportunity to cover at last. This came as a great relief to Rincewind, whose field of vision was now approximately doubled. “I have these. Otherwise, they would not let me within ten leagues of the Infanta. But the King’s other children are sickly or mad or both, and they believe the teats are the problem. Idiots. So they found me, they brought me here, they put me to work, and when they are done with me? Who knows? The ladies of the court are apparently quite impressed by the Infanta’s ruddy cheeks and sturdy neck.”

“I’m… Sorry?”

“Meanwhile, I cannot bear my own children because they might reduce the Infanta’s portion, heaven forbid, and so I cannot marry.”

“I-“

“And that is where you come in,” and she smiled suddenly. “Everyone knows the King is a fool, but he is a fool who loves his children, which makes him the only one. I will keep your secret. If they discover the real Infanta is missing, they will kill me in a way the witches couldn’t imagine.

“But-“

“But that’s not all. When you learn to talk, you will tell them how much you adore me, how good I am to you, how you so enjoy your games with me, and how much you want me for your nurse.”

“I’m sure, but-“

“And when I am your nurse, you will demand I be allowed to marry and have children.”

“Yes, but-“

“And they will agree, because it will give me so much to lose and that will make me so loyal.”

“That makes sense, but-“

“And you will bring my Jakob here.”

“Right, well, but-“

“It’s a mad scheme, but it is better than nothing. It’s better than nothing.” She shook out her hair and started for the door. “I’ll bring you something to eat. You certainly can’t have the Infanta’s breakfast.”

“But-“

“You’ll be fine. Just don’t say anything until I tell you. And stay in your bassinet.”

“But I can’t do this! I can’t stay here!”

Rebekah sighed.

“Then we’re both dead.” She rounded on him. “It’s up to you. Try and by God’s blessing live, or don’t try and die.”

“You’re forgetting a third option…”

“Please. Please.” Her eyes were wide and imploring, but they were also searching and very quickly discovered that that was not the route to Rincewind’s heart. They narrowed. “You won’t make it down the stairs before I’ve told the Queen everything. They’ll burn you like a witch, but first they’ll lock you in a hole beneath the ground, shower you with shit and vomit, pluck out your toenails one by one, use your delicate parts to train the hounds, and fill your ears with itching powders. Then-”

“All right! All right! I want to help you, of course.”

“Of course.” She smiled, and opened the door, and stepped out. She gave him one last look through the crack as it closed. The unidentifiable something was long gone, but in its place there remained that rarest of all things: Intelligence.

The door was reopened, just an inch.

“And change yourself while I’m down there,” she said. “You stink of piss and, although God knows why, lizards.”

~​

“Without a trace?”

NOT ENTIRELY.

“But you said he vanished. It is customary for things to vanish without a trace. No one ever says ‘he vanished with a trace’ or ‘he vanished with some traces’ or ‘he vanished and those are his footprints leading to that pier over there.’”

PERHAPS NO ONE SAYS IT, BUT IT HAPPENS MUCH MORE FREQUENTLY THAN WHAT PEOPLE DO SAY, WHICH HAPPENS NEVER.

“Fair enough. What trace did he leave?”

A QUEEN.

Albert furrowed his brow.

A PRINCESS, DEATH corrected, THE LARVAL STAGE OF A HUMAN QUEEN.

“A human Princess. So Rincewind is still somewhere on the Disc, perhaps.”

NO. NOT THAT VARIETY OF HUMAN. SHE COMES FROM… ELSEWHERE.

“Elsewhere?”

BEYOND.

“Beyond?”

IT MAY BE YOU ARE THE WRONG PERSON WITH WHOM TO HAVE THIS CONVERSATION.

~​

“What traces did he leave?”

A QUEEN.

Susan furrowed her brow.

A PRINCESS, DEATH corrected, because he was fond of this joke, THE LARVAL STAGE OF A HUMAN QUEEN.

“Where did she come from?”

BEYOND.

“How far beyond?”

FAR. DEATH gestured to the map now spread across his desk. A human, of either Disc or Earth variety, would have seen a black mat, perhaps some three feet to a side, sprinkled with little white dots surrounded by almost microscopic little colored dots. What Susan saw cannot be properly described. Suffice it to say, it was clear her grandfather did not entirely grasp the purpose of a “map,” insofar as this one was precisely as large as the place it depicted.

“It isn’t the Disc,” she said at once, “although I can see Great A’Tuin here. Most of the plotted points are grayed out. Barren. Lifeless. Suns and planets, comets and dust. Is that correct?” DEATH nodded. “What is this?”

IT IS SOMETHING I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON IN MY SPARE TIME.

“Your spare time?”

IT IS A MAP. OF THE UNIVERSE.

“The universe beyond the Disc, you mean.”

YES.

“And why would you do that?”

If it had been possible for DEATH to look sheepish, he would have looked sheepish at that moment, but this would have required it be possible for DEATH to be sheepish, which, of course, it wasn’t.

CALL IT A HOBBY.

“But aren’t all these other places beyond your ken?”

FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW, YES.

“And what are these colors? The Disc is blacked out. Other places are green or blue or red or purple, and most are gray.”

WELL…

“Yes?”

HAVE YOU EVER PLAYED RISK?

“No.”

OH. IT IS EASIER TO EXPLAIN IF YOU HAVE PLAYED RISK.

And so they played RISK. To an observer, however, there was the briefest pause in the conversation, nothing but a breath, and neither moved. As we are observers, we will follow this practice.

“I see. So the purple places are where life is best-entrenched and… Colleagues… Of yours are sympathetic to your ideas.”

WE PREFER TO THINK OF OURSELVES AS FELLOW TRAVELERS.

“The red places are where life is well-entrenched but your colleagues are unconvinced. The blue places are where life is…”

TAKING A BEATING.

“And there are no sentient creatures. Green is where life has just gained a foothold.”

AS YOU CAN SEE, THERE ARE NOT MANY OF THESE.

“And the grey places…”

ARE WHERE THEY HAVE WON.

Susan stared for a while.

“There are a lot of them.”

YES.

“What are these other places? The blue and red and green with the gray diagonal lines?”

THAT IS WHERE AN… OCCUPATION IS ONGOING.

“By the Auditors?”

BY THE AUDITORS.

Susan chewed the inside of her cheek for several moments.

“What does this have to do with Rincewind?” she asked.

NOTHING. I WAS JUST GOING TO USE THE MAP TO SHOW YOU WHERE HE IS.

“But instead you decided to tell me all of these horrifying things?”

YOU ASKED.

“So the Auditors aren’t involved? You didn’t bring me here to have anything at all to do with them? At all?”

WELL.

“You know, some grandfathers invite their granddaughters to go fishing.”

WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO FISHING?

“I was making a point.”

I KNOW.

“It was a metaphor.”

I KNOW.

“So you weren’t really inviting me to go fishing just now?”

NO. I WAS MAKING A POINT.

“About the futility of ordinary mortal life.”

SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

Susan sighed.

“How are the Auditors involved?”

TANGENTIALLY. THEY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH RINCEWIND’S DISAPPEARANCE, YET THEY WILL SOON BECOME INVOLVED. THEY WILL NOT BE ABLE TO HELP THEMSELVES.

“And I don’t suppose this tangential part of it is the one you’re going to be dealing with.”

I AM AFRAID NOT. I MUST GO ON A TRIP.

Where?

BEYOND. DEATH gestured at the map. THERE.

“Why?”

TO LOOK FOR RINCEWIND.

“Why?”

SOMEONE MUST.

“Why can’t that someone be me while you stay here and deal with the Auditors?”

YOU CANNOT GO THERE.

“Why not? I’ve always wanted to go beyond.”

I KNOW.

“But?”

IT IS TOO FAR BEYOND FOR YOU. IT MAY BE TOO FAR BEYOND FOR ME.

“For you?”

FOR ME.

Susan bit her lip and thought for a moment.

“What do you need me to do?”

TEND THE HARVEST.

“That’s it?”

AND WATCH.

“Ah.”

CAREFULLY.

“And what am I watching for?”

A QUEEN.

“I thought you said she was only a princess.”

IN HER OWN WORLD, SHE WAS ONLY A PRINCESS. HERE THERE IS NO QUEEN OF HER LINE. SHE IS QUEEN.

“That’s ridiculous. She doesn’t even have a kingdom.”

NOT YET.

“You can’t have a Queen without a kingdom. Why would anyone obey her?”

YOU NEVER PAID ENOUGH ATTENTION IN HISTORY CLASS. KINGDOMS DO NOT MAKE KINGS AND QUEENS. KINGS AND QUEENS MAKE KINGDOMS. FOR NOW SHE IS YOUNG, BUT SHE WILL GROW, AND SHE ALREADY HAS A… SERVANT. SHE WILL HAVE MORE AND MORE, UNTIL ONE DAY SHE SENSES HER MOMENT. THEN SHE WILL SWARM. AND THEN SHE WILL HAVE A KINGDOM. WATCH FOR THAT.

“Why? Who cares? She can’t be any worse than the rest of them.”

THE DISC ALREADY HAS ITS ALLOTMENT OF QUEENS. IT SHOULD NOT HAVE ANOTHER. THE AUDITORS WILL NOT LIKE IT.

“Should I stop her?”

NO. WAIT. WATCH. WHEN IT COMES, YOU WILL KNOW WHAT TO DO.

DEATH started for the yard where Albert would be saddling Binky, but Susan was studying the map, at the place where DEATH had pointed.

“It has those diagonal gray lines,” she said.

WHAT DOES?

“The place you’re going. The place called Earth.”

YES.

There was a long silence.

“Grandfather?”

YES?

“Nothing. Good luck.”

There was an awkward pause.

WHEN I RETURN…

“Yes?”

WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO FISHING?

 

[HALNY (HAL)]

WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO FISHING?[/size]

This is the only part that I was interested in ;p

 

[Hive]

They're letting you play Spain? lolz that's a recipe for disaster...

 

[HolisticGod]

I haven't played in a long time, Hivester. I'm not what I used to be.

You could probably give me quite a spanking now.