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Here, at the center of a world that’s as flat as a pancake, spinning gently on the backs of four giant elephants, who in turn stand on the shell of a giant turtle… Here, at the hub of the Discworld, stands the great mountain Cori Celesti, home of the gods. The gods retire here to play games with the lives of mortals, games that have rules more complex than anything ever played on the surface of the world. Games that make Thud look like Orcs and Ladders.
“Drawing straws?” asked Fate, his black, bottomless eyes focused on the player directly across the table. “Isn’t that a bit simple?”
“It’s not the game. Just something to make the game interesting,” said the Lady. “A starting handicap.”
“You’ll cheat,” Fate said.
“Hardly. In fact, I’ll hold the straws, and take whatever is left.” The lady held out her hand, and a small bundle of straw appeared in it. She moved around the table, allowing each player to choose a straw.
She arrived at Fate last. He smiled, and pulled one of the straws from her hand. It was clearly long. The Lady opened her fist, and lying in it was the short straw.
“It appears that the handicap is yours,” said Fate.
“Indeed,” said the Lady. She smiled. “Indeed.”
“Right, you chaps!” yelled Archchancellor Ridcully. Ridcully had an enormous yell, but the staff was beginning to get used to it. It was only marginally louder than his normal speaking voice.
There was hardly a twitch among the professors’ be-hatted heads.
Ridcully cupped his hands to his lips. “Right!” he shouted. “Last person to look at me will be banned from midnight snacking for a week!”
Every head in the room swiveled to look at him, with the exception of Ponder Stibbons, who was in the middle of a remarkably hard problem and didn’t really care that much about midnight snacks in any case.
“I have an adventure for you!” Ridcully said. He said this in a bright, chipper voice. A cold shudder ran through the collected Wizards.
There was silence for a moment, and then Rincewind, assistant Librarian and only Wizzard in the room, raised his hand. “Is it dangerous?” he asked.
“Absolutely! Quite the most dangerous adventure all year!” That Ridcully believed that his answer was encouraging explained much about his character. The horrified looks from the gathered professors explained much about theirs.
Rincewind sighed. “I suppose I’ll end up going then,” he said, with much reluctance. Unlike the Archchancellor, Rincewind had no love of adventure. In fact, he cultivated boredom. He had recently perfected an entirely new level of boredom, one that made ennui look positively exciting. He felt all of that slipping away from him now. “Anything so horrible and I’m bound to get caught up in it.”
“Nonsense!” said Ridcully. “Wouldn’t be fair to everyone else if they didn’t get a chance. No, in the finest Wizarding tradition, I’ve brought along straws.” He walked over to Rincewind, and held out a hand-full. “Why don’t you draw first?”
Rincewind reached out and pulled a straw from the bundle. He looked down at it and shuddered. The piece of straw was barely over two centimeters.
Ridcully looked down at it. “Well, that looks like a short straw to me. Congratulations! Well done, that man. Anyway, you’re off to, umm…” At this point Ridcully consulted a piece of paper. “B-star-gger.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” said Ponder Stibbons, looking up from his research. He stood, and moved to look over Ridcully’s shoulder. “Hmm. I’ve never seen an asterisk used like that. Maybe it’s a glottal stop? That would make it B’gger.”
“Ah, so it’s one of those places that’s lost all their vowels in a horrible earthquake,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, who was technically lecturing right now in room 3B, but was actually trying to take an afternoon nap.
“As may be,” said Ridcully, “The patrician has been having some trouble with this place. He keeps sending people, and they keep disappearing. He wanted us to send a wizard over to B-star-gger to find out what’s going on. You’re to leave immediately!”
“Can I at least get my luggage?” Rincewind asked.
“No time! The Patrician has a horse waiting outside. Now get going.”
Rincewind sighed, and made sure his hat was firmly on top of his head. Then he walked out of the room.
Rincewind rode slowly through town of B*gger. At every instant, he could feel eyes upon him, and they weren’t nice eyes. Men were openly staring as he passed, or rather, they were glaring at him.
Every bone in his body was telling Rincewind to run. He wanted to spur his horse on, digging his heels in until he was well away. He didn’t run, however, because he was a professional at running, and knew the fourth rule: Don’t start running until people decide to chase you[1].
Many people would run the instant that anything seemed wrong, but Rincewind had found, through experiment, that running causes people to chase you. It makes no difference how innocent you are, the instant you look guilty, someone will come after you, usually with a large stick.
The correct time to start running is the instant that someone starts shouting at you.
So Rincewind continued to ride, watching for signs that any of the huge, well-muscled, shirtless, oiled men were going to come after him. He passed by an alleyway, where two men were kissing passionately, their bare chests rubbing frictionlessly together. For some reason, Rincewind found himself thinking about potatoes. He shuddered and moved along.
Just when he thought that everything was going well, he heard a voice call out from behind him. “Rince…”
The sound reached Rincewind’s ears, and his reflexes kicked in. He spurred his horse onward. The horse had taken all of two steps when his ears managed to pass the signal to Rincewind’s brain, and Rincewind pulled on the reigns to stop the animal.
“…wind!”
The second half of the word caught up to him. That wasn’t why he stopped, though. Rincewind had more than enough experience to know that if people were calling your name, the proper response was to run faster. It was just that he recognized this voice.
He wasn’t the least bit reassured by it. Although Rincewind had expected trouble before this point, it had been a supposition on his part. He always expected trouble. Now, though, he was quite sure that he would find it[2].
The man who stood in the street a few yards behind him was a magnet for danger. He could walk into a perfectly calm street and turn it instantly into a chaotic war zone. And there was absolutely no avoiding him. If Rincewind ran now, the man would simply show up again later, and he’d have dragons with him. Rincewind turned the horse around.
“Twoflower,” he said, “What are you doing here?”
Twoflower beamed. “Well, you know,” he said. “I just had the urge to travel again. I wanted to get out, and see the sights. I missed the adventure.”
Twoflower was the Disc’s first tourist, and, if being naive and optimistic were what it took to be a tourist, than he was the best one on the Disc. Twoflower could look at a room full of barroom brawlers and see an interesting cultural experience.
“Why don’t you come and visit our house?” Twoflower said. “I’m sure that the girls would be happy to see you.”
Rincewind was not entirely sure whether he would be happy to see them, but looking around, he found that the choices were rather limited. If there were one or two people that hadn’t been staring menacingly at him before, they certainly were now. Even the alleyway lovers had stopped their intimate tryst and were glaring in his direction.
“I’d love to,” Rincewind said.
The luggage was angry. It had been abandoned, and that didn’t sit well with it. It was not the type of luggage that sat around in your closet if you didn’t take it with you. It was not the kind of luggage that would get misplaced in transit, or at least, it wouldn’t get misplaced for long.
This luggage was made of sapient pearwood, one of the rarest and most magical materials on the disc. It graced the luggage with a kind of intelligence. Not the kind of intelligence that a human has, but something much more like a faithful dog. One that happens to carry around your clean underwear.
It also had, for some reason, thousands of little feet.
These feet were currently dashing madly, trampling everything in their path. A small forest was in the wrong place, and, after failing to uproot itself quickly enough, was reduced to paper.
The luggage continued on, toward the town of B*gger.
Twoflower led him down a series of streets, and to the door of a rather charming little cottage. This was a somewhat surprising, as all the other houses in the area were spartan, concrete structures that seemed more like monoliths than houses. They had one door, and no windows. They closely mirrored buildings that Rincewind had seen in his nightmares.
Twoflower led Rincewind up the stone path to the patio, and opened the front door. He set his grocery bags down, and shut and locked the door.
“I’m home!” he called out, “And I’ve brought a visitor!”
Pretty Butterfly looked around the corner. She glared at Rincewind. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, somewhat more antagonistically than Rincewind thought that he deserved. Then she immediately returned to ignoring him.
Lotus Blossom bounced into the room, and smiled. “Rincewind,” she said. “It’s good to see you!” She ran up to Rincewind and gave him a hug.
Rincewind blushed furiously, and tried to keep his thoughts off of potatoes.
There was a sudden loud knocking at the door.
“Oh,” said Twoflower, “That would be the neighbors.”
“Hey,” came a voice between the poundings. “We know you have a foreigner in there! Send him out, so that we can bugger him!”
There was a cold silence, and then another voice spoke. “Know. It’s bring him out so that we may know him.”
“Send him out to us, so that we may know him and bugger him!”
Rincewind, who had just entered the house, and had not yet had a look around, began to search desperately for other exits. Twoflower, for his part, began to walk over to the door.
“What are you doing?” Rincewind asked.
“I’m going to introduce you,” Twoflower said.
“You’re what?” Rincewind asked, his voice incredulous. “They said they wanted to bugger me!”
“Yes.” Twoflower smiled at him. “It’s quite pleasant, really, once you get used to it.”
Rincewind gaped at him. “It’s what?” He shook his head. “I’m not going out there.”
The knocking at the door started up again, and there were more yells.
“Bring him out, we just want to Bugger him!”
“Speak for yourself! I’ll run him through with my sword. Bloody foreigner, stealing our jobs!”
Rincewind looked panicked now. “I’m not going out there,” he repeated.
“They’re quite nice, once you get to know them,” Twoflower said.
“Right, if you don’t send him out, we’ll break down your door,” said one of the people outside.
“One second,” Twoflower said.
He looked over at Rincewind, who looked as if he had swallowed several tacks, and was desperately waving his hands and shaking his head no.
“How about if I send out my daughters?” Twoflower asked through the door.
“I’m not going out there,” Pretty Butterfly said.
“Nope,” came a voice from outside. “We’re breaking the door down. One… Two… What comes after two?”
“Dunno.”
“Right! One… Two… Dunno!”
The door shook as they crashed into it, but held.
“Okay, one more time! One… Two…”
The door shook again, but it had nothing to do with large men slamming their shoulders into it. This was clear from the fact that it was not merely the door which shook, but everything. There was a rumbling throughout the entire building.
Rincewind resumed his search for an exit.
The luggage had not had a good day. It had been left behind, but that wasn’t much. It had nearly caught up to its owner, and then some people had tried to stop it.
There had been a closed gate, with guards around it. They had yelled at it, things like “Stop!”, and “Stay back!”, and “Oh, dear god! Help!”
This had only made it angrier. This had made it very angry.
And so it crashed through. And not just through the gate. It crashed through the city.
The ground was quaking violently now, and the voices outside had turned to incoherent shouts of horror.
“Quick,” said Rincewind, “out the back window!”
“What’s happening?” Pretty Butterfly asked.
“I don’t know,” Rincewind said, already half way to the window, “but I’m not going to stay around to find out!” He pushed the window open, and jumped out. “Come on!” he yelled.
Twoflower shrugged and followed him out.
The four of them ran toward the mountains, the city shaking and collapsing behind them.
“Don’t look back!” Rincewind said.
“Why?” Twoflower asked.
“It slows you down!”
Twoflower looked back anyway, and saw the city of B*gger falling inward in a plume of smoke.
“Wow,” he said, stopping to watch the plume rise into the air.
Pretty Butterfly and Lotus Blossom stopped as well, and turned to look. Rincewind didn’t. He reached the edge of the mountains a ways ahead of them.
By this time, a few drops of water had landed on his head. He looked back, and saw Twoflower and his daughters standing there, still staring at the city, which was now a pile of rubble beneath gathering storm clouds, lit by the setting sun.
“Come on!” he yelled, “There’s a cave over here!”
Night fell, and Pretty Butterfly and Lotus Blossom found a spot in the cave to curl up. Outside, it had started raining in a hard, no-nonsense sort of rain.
The cave was actually quite comfortable, so long as you don’t mind sleeping on rock. It was a bit chilly, but quite dry.
Rincewind was sitting at the entrance, looking out into the rain, and Twoflower came over and sat down next to him.
“Thinking?” Twoflower asked.
Rincewind shook his head. “Keeping watch. You never know what kind of horrible things could be out there.” This was not entirely true; Rincewind knew nearly all of the dangers that could be out there, but was rather too tired to enumerate them at the moment.
They sat in silence for a few minutes.
“There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you,” Twoflower said. “Why are you always running away?”
“Because there’s always someone chasing me,” Rincewind said.
“You know, it’s not really a bad thing to live in interesting times,” Twoflower said. “Can you imagine a life where nothing ever happened to you?”
Rincewind smiled. “It’s been my dream since I was a child.”
“So nothing good has ever happened to you?”
“I’ve had a few days of boredom since last time I saw you,” Rincewind said.
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Twoflower turned to Rincewind, and placed his hand on his shoulder. “I’m talking about something positive.”
Twoflower let his hand trail down Rincewind’s arm, and Rincewind couldn’t suppress a shudder as he felt the fingers through the fabric of his robe. Twoflower brought his hand back up to the Wizzard’s chin, behind his beard. He turned Rincewind’s head to face him.
Twoflower’s eyes were sparkling, and Rincewind felt his hindbrain, the part that he had inherited from millions of years of being a small furry animal, screaming at him that he was prey; that he needed to run. The rest of him, though, was hypnotized, frozen in place. He stared into Twoflower’s eyes, like a mouse staring at a swaying snake. Twoflower leaned in, his mouth getting closer to Rincewind’s.
Then it connected.
Since the invention of the kiss, there have been only five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one was nowhere near them. Rincewind had no practice at kisses, and was frozen stone still. Twoflower was overenthusiastic, as if to make up for Rincewind’s lack of motion.
Even so, it was more than enough to send giant, potato shaped fireworks exploding through Rincewind’s mind.
“Aa,” he said, when Twoflower backed away.
Twoflower smiled. “That good?”
“Aa,” said Rincewind in response. His mouth was hanging open, and he was staring at Twoflower.
Twoflower reached up, and ran his fingers down Rincewind’s cheek. “Want to do it again?”
“Aa,” Rincewind said, and then suddenly shook himself. “Umm…” he said, rather sheepishly, “Yes, I think I’d like another helping of potatoes.”
Twoflower leapt on him.
Death smiled. Death always smiled. He had no other choice, lacking the muscles for other emotions. This smile, though, went straight down to his bones.
He hefted the life-timer. It was strange and misshapen. It vaguely resembled the egg timer that it had begun as, but only insomuch as M.C. Escher’s drawings resembled stairs, or Salvador Dali’s paintings resembled clocks.
It was a four dimensional mishmash, where, in addition to the down direction that the sand normally flowed in, there were also paths going up, top, bottom, and even strange.
Death had solved it, though, with the same patience and perseverance that others reserved for crossword puzzles[3]. It wasn’t so bad, really. Once he had figured out that the spout coming off of the bottom left side led to a small sinkhole in Djelibeybi, the entire thing had basically fallen into place.
Tonight, he would collect Rincewind.
For the most part, Death was far too busy to collect everybody’s souls. If he did, he would have to travel across the world nearly instantaneously, a feat beyond his ability. Death was not the Hogfather.
He did show up for very important individuals. Kings and queens, grand heroes, people that changed the course of history. He also showed up for wizards. Wizards were special. They could see Death, even before they died.
This wizard, in particular, was interesting. Death had been to collect him over and over, and somehow Rincewind had always been able to duck, dodge, avoid or cheat death every time. At this point, Rincewind had become something of a hobby for Death.
Death climbed onto his horse, Binky. Binky snorted and clomped at the ground, and Death spurred him on.
“RINCEWIND,” said Death, in a voice that was like fingernails scraping across a tombstone.
Rincewind looked up, eyes widening.
“RINCEWIND. IT IS FINALLY TIME. I HAVE WAITED FOR THIS…” Death stopped, stunned.
Rincewind’s attention was drawn away from Death, rather suddenly, and he clutched at Twoflower’s back. “Aaah,” he said.
Death stared. No matter how he worked it out in his mind, it did not look as if Rincewind was dying. Quite the opposite, he seemed quite full of life and energy.
“UMM… LOOK, I’M TERRIBLY SORRY,” Death said. “I THOUGHT I HAD IT RIGHT THIS TIME. YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE PROCESS OF BEING RUN THROUGH WITH A RATHER LARGE SWORD RIGHT NOW.”
“Mmm…” Rincewind agreed, his eyes rolling back.
“THIS IS RATHER AWKWARD,” Death said. “I THINK…” He held up the life-timer. “YES, I SEE THE PROBLEM NOW. I HADN’T SEEN THAT REVERSE TEMPORAL FLOW, AND…”
It suddenly occurred to Death that nobody was listening.
Death was not human. He was an anthropomorphic personification, and as such, he didn’t have, and didn’t really understand, human drives, desires, and emotions. Nonetheless, he had inherited just enough humanity that he had the grace to feel embarrassed.
“I’LL JUST BE GOING THEN,” said Death, and he made his way out of the cave, glancing back over his shoulder as he went. There were some things about humanity that he would never understand.
Behind him, there was a great deal of grunting, some moaning, and even a few passionate sighs.
Rincewind awoke, and sat up, pulling the blanket off of his body. He had been sleeping on hard stone, but somehow he felt more refreshed than he had in a long while. Normally when he woke up, he would do a quick scout to make sure that he wasn’t being attacked, check to make sure that all his parts were present, and get ready to run.
Now, he lazily examined the cover. It wasn’t a familiar one. He couldn’t remember a cover at all.
He looked around, and saw the luggage sitting nearby. It should have been impossible for a wooden chest to have any sort of emotion, but it was somehow managing to convey a great deal of smugness and self-satisfaction.
There was a soft mumble from Rincewind’s side, and Rincewind turned to see Twoflower, whose eyes were just beginning to flutter open.
Rincewind’s mind suddenly began to fill with the events of the previous night. “Oh, no,” he said. He leapt up, grabbing his robes off the floor and pulling them on over his hat.
Twoflower stretched, and then watched Rincewind prying open the luggage and removing a pair of clean underwear. “What’s going on?”
Rincewind stared at him. “I enjoyed something. Something good happened to me.”
Twoflower nodded stoically. “And?”
“Something horrible is going to happen. The world will notice that it wasn’t trying to kill me, and now it will try to kill me even harder.”
“Maybe you were just due something good,” Twoflower said.
“You don’t understand.” Rincewind pulled on his sandals. “Fate is out to get me, and now that I’ve dodged it, it’ll be planning something worse than ever. Fate never gives up.”
Fate stared across the table. “You cheated,” he said. It was not an accusation, just a statement of fact.
“I started with a handicap,” the Lady replied.
“You cheated.”
The Lady shook her head. “I was just playing a different game.” She smiled. “Would you like to try double or nothing?”
“No. Not today.” Fate turned to leave the table. “We will play again,” he said.
“Of course,” said the Lady, gathering her winnings. Her green eyes sparkled.
Far below, past the rocky crags of Cori Celesti, past the thick crust of the Disc, past the four elephants that held the world on their back, the great A’Tuin swam through the stars, completely oblivious to the events occurring on top of his shell. And somewhere on the disc, where the slow light pours like syrup over the mountains and down into the valleys, illuminating a brand new day, Rincewind, a tiny little speck in the atlas of the cosmos, is running with all his might.
[1] The first three rules are as follows: 1) Run faster, 2) No, faster than that, and 3) Never look back. The third rule is usually kept by only the best runners, who care about things like drag. And anyway, they reason, if you have to look back, you’re not going to like what you see.
[2] Or rather, that it would find him.
[3] Excluding, of course, the Patrician, who made a habit of solving the daily crossword puzzle within minutes of the paper being laid on his desk. He could, of course, solve them much faster, but as one of his few pleasures in life, he liked to savor them.