The Light Fantastic - Page 19/32

'Absolutely true!' shouted Rincewind desperately. 'Only this specific troll can't, you see.'

'Can't?' Herrena hesitated. Something of the terror in Rincewind's voice hit her.

'Yes, because, you see, you've lit it on his tongue.'

Then the floor moved.

Old Grandad awoke very slowly from his centuries-old slumber. He nearly didn't awake at all, in fact a few decades later none of this could have happened. When a troll gets old and starts to think seriously about the universe it normally finds a quiet spot and gets down to some hard philosophising, and after a while starts to forget about its extremities. It begins to crystallise around the edges until nothing remains except a tiny flicker of life inside quite a large hill with some unusual rock strata.

Old Grandad hadn't quite got that far. He awoke from considering quite a promising line of inquiry about the meaning of truth and found a hot ashy taste in what, after a certain amount of thought, he remembered as being his mouth.

He began to get angry. Commands skittered along neural pathways of impure silicon. Deep within his sili-caceous body stone slipped smoothly along special fracture lines. Trees toppled, turf split, as fingers the size of ships unfolded and gripped the ground. Two enormous rock-slides high on his cliff face marked the opening of eyes like great crusted opals.

Rincewind couldn't see all this, of course, since his own eyes were daylight issue only, but he did see the whole dark landscape shake itself slowly and then begin to rise impossibly against the stars.

The sun rose.

However, the sunlight didn't. What did happen was that the famous Discworld sunlight, which as has already been indicated travels very slowly through the Disc's powerful magical field, sloshed gently over the lands around the Rim and began its soft, silent battle against the retreating armies of the night. It poured like molten gold[4] across the sleeping landscape – bright, clean and, above all, slow.

Herrena didn't hesitate. With great presence of mind she ran to the edge of Old Grandad's bottom lip and jumped, rolling as she hit the earth. The men followed her, cursing as they landed among the debris.

Like a fat man trying to do press-ups the old troll pushed himself upwards.

This wasn't apparent from where the prisoners were lying. All they knew was that the floor kept rolling under them and that there was a lot of noise going on, most of it unpleasant.

Weems grabbed Gancia's arm.

'It's a herthquake,' he said. 'Let's get out of here!'

'Not without that gold,' said Gancia.

'What?'

'The gold, the gold. Man, we could be as rich as Creosote!'

Weems might have had a room-temperature IQ, but he knew idiocy when he saw it. Gancia's eyes gleamed more than gold, and he appeared to be staring at Weems' left ear.

Weems looked desperately at the Luggage. It was still open invitingly, which was odd – you'd have thought all this shaking would have slammed the lid shut.

'We'd never carry it,' he suggested. 'It's too heavy,' he added.

'We'll damn well carry some of it!' shouted Gancia, and leapt towards the chest as the floor shook again.

The lid snapped shut. Gancia vanished.

And just in case Weems thought it was accidental the Luggage's lid snapped open again, just for a second, and a large tongue as red as mahogany licked across broad teeth as white as sycamore. Then it slammed shut again.

To Weem's further horror hundreds of little legs extruded from the underside of the box. It rose very deliberately and, carefully arranging its feet, shuffled around to face him. There was a particularly malevolent look about its keyhole, the sort of look that says 'Go on – make my day . . .'

He backed away and looked imploringly at Twoflower.

'I think it might be a good idea if you untied us,' suggested Twoflower. 'It's really quite friendly once it gets to know you.'

Licking his lips nervously, Weems drew his knife. The Luggage gave a warning creak.

He slashed through their bonds and stood back quickly.

'Thank you,' said Twoflower.

'I think my back'sh gone again,' complained Cohen, as Bethan helped him to his feet.

'What do we do with this man?' said Bethan.

'We take hish knife and tell him to bugger off,' said Cohen. 'Right?'

'Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!' said Weems, and bolted towards the cavemouth. For a moment he was outlined against the grey pre-dawn sky, and then he vanished. There was a distant cry of 'aaargh'.

The sunlight roared silently across the land like surf. Here and there, where the magic field was slightly weaker, tongues of morning raced ahead of the day, leaving isolated islands of night that contracted and vanished as the bright ocean flowed onwards.

The uplands around the Vortex Plains stood out ahead of the advancing tide like a great grey ship.

It is possible to stab a troll, but the technique takes practice and no-one ever gets a chance to practise more than once. Herrena's men saw the trolls loom out of the darkness like very solid ghosts. Blades shattered as they hit silica skins, there were one or two brief, flat screams, and then nothing more but shouts far away in the forest as they put as much distance as they could between themselves and the avenging earth.

Rincewind crept out from behind a tree and looked around. He was alone, but the bushes behind him rustled as the trolls lumbered after the gang.

He looked up.

High above him two great crystalline eyes focussed in atred of everything soft and squelchy and, above all, warm. Rincewind cowered in horror as a hand the size of a house rose, curled into a fist, and dropped towards him.

Day came with a silent explosion of light. For a moment the huge terrifying bulk of Old Grandad was a breakwater of shadow as the daylight streamed past. There was a brief grinding noise.

There was silence.

Several minutes passed. Nothing happened.

A few birds started singing. A bumblebee buzzed over the boulder that was Old Grandad's fist and alighted on a patch of thyme that had grown under a stone fingernail.

There was a scuffling down below. Rincewind slid awkwardly out of the narrow gap between the fist and the ground like a snake leaving a burrow.

He lay on his back, staring up at the sky past the frozen shape of the troll. It hadn't changed in any way, apart from the stillness, but already the eye started to play tricks. Last night Rincewind had looked at cracks in stone and seen them become mouths and eyes; now he looked at the great cliff face and saw the features become, like magic, mere blemishes in the rock.

'Wow!' he said.

That didn't seem to help. He stood up, dusted himself off, and looked around. Apart from the bumble bee, he was completely alone.

After poking around for a bit he found a rock that, from certain angles, looked like Beryl.

He was lost and lonely and a long way from home. He —

There was a crunch high above him, and shards of rock spattered into the earth. High up on the face of Old Grandad a hole appeared; there was a brief sight of the Luggage's backside as it struggled to regain its footing, and then Twoflower's head poked out of the mouth cave.

'Anyone down there? I say?'

'Hey!' shouted the wizard. 'Am I glad to see you!'

'I don't know. Are you?' said Twoflower.

'Am I what?'

'Gosh, there's a wonderful view from up here!'

It took them half an hour to get down. Fortunately Old Grandad had been quite craggy with plenty of handholds, but his nose would have presented a tricky obstacle if it hadn't been for the luxuriant oak tree that flourished in one nostril.

The Luggage didn't bother to climb. It just jumped, and bounced its way down with no apparent harm.

Cohen sat in the shade, trying to catch his breath and waiting for his sanity to catch up with him. He eyed the Luggage thoughtfully.

'The horses have all gone,' said Twoflower.

'We'll find 'em,' said Cohen. His eyes bored into the Luggage, which began to look embarrassed.

'They were carrying all our food,' said Rincewind.

'Plenty of food in the foreshts.'

'I have some nourishing biscuits in the Luggage,' said Twoflower. 'Traveller's Digestives. Always a comfort in a tight spot.'

'I've tried them,' said Rincewind. They've got a mean edge on them, and —'

Cohen stood up, wincing.

'Excushe me,' he said flatly. 'There'sh shomething I've got to know.'

He walked over to the Luggage and gripped its lid. The box backed away hurriedly, but Cohen stuck out a skinny foot and tripped up half its legs. As it twisted to snap at him he gritted his teeth and heaved, jerking the Luggage onto its curved lid where it rocked angrily like a maddened tortoise.

'Hey, that's my Luggage!' said Twoflower. 'Why's he attacking my Luggage?'

'I think I know,' said Bethan quietly. 'I think it's because he's scared of it.'

Twoflower turned to Rincewind, open-mouthed.

Rincewind shrugged.

'Search me,' he said. 'I run away from things I'm scared of, myself.'

With a snap of its lid the Luggage jerked into the air and came down running, catching Cohen a crack on the shins with one of its brass corners. As it wheeled around he got a grip on it just long enough to send it galloping full tilt into a rock.

'Not bad,' said Rincewind, admiringly.

The Luggage staggered back, paused for a moment, then came at Cohen waving its lid menacingly. He jumped and landed on it, with both his hands and feet caught in the gap between the box and the lid.

This severely puzzled the Luggage. It was even more astonished when Cohen took a deep breath and heaved, muscles standing out on his skinny arms like a sock full of coconuts.

They stood locked there for some time, tendon versus hinge. Occasionally one or other would creak.

Bethan elbowed Twoflower in the ribs.

'Do something,' she said.

'Um,' said Twoflower. 'Yes. That's about enough, I think. Put him down, please.'

The Luggage gave a creak of betrayal at the sound of its master's voice. Its lid flew up with such force that Cohen tumbled backwards, but he scrambled to his feet and flung himself towards the box.

Its contents lay open to the skies.

Cohen reached inside.

The Luggage creaked a bit, but had obviously weighed up the chances of being sent to the top of that Great Wardrobe in the Sky. When Rincewind dared to peek through his fingers Cohen was peering into the Luggage and cursing under his breath.

'Laundry?' he shouted. 'Is that it? Just laundry?' He was shaking with rage.

'I think there's some biscuits too,' said Twoflower in a small voice.

'But there wash gold! And I shaw it eat shomebody!' Cohen looked imploringly at Rincewind.

The wizard sighed. 'Don't ask me,' he said. 'I don't own the bloody thing.'

'I bought it in a shop,' said Twoflower defensively. 'I said I wanted a travelling trunk.'

'That's what you got, all right,' said Rincewind.

'It's very loyal,' said Twoflower.

'Oh yes,' agreed Rincewind. 'If loyalty is what you look for in a suitcase.'

'Hold on,' said Cohen, who had sagged onto a rock. Wash it one of thoshe shopsh – I mean, I bet you hadn't noticed it before and when you went back again it washn't there?'

Twoflower brightened. 'That's right!'

'Shopkeeper a little wizened old guy? Shop full of strange shtuff?'

'Exactly! Never could find it again, I thought I must have got the wrong street, nothing but a brick wall where I thought it was, I remember thinking at the time it was rather —'

Cohen shrugged. 'One of those shops[5],' he said. That explainsh it, then.' He felt his back, and grimaced. 'Bloody horshe ran off with my linament!'

Rincewind remembered something, and fumbled in the depths of his torn and now very grubby robe. He held up a green bottle.