Sourcery - Страница 46

‘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 co-ordinated 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.

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 their 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 vant?’ 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. Othervise, 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 vorld,’ rumbled the giant. ‘Whole vorld of ice. According to inevitability of history and triumph of thermo-dynamics.’

‘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 good will 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 vell 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 mustn’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 …’