‘Weasel?’
‘Yes?’
‘I wonder who started it?’
The small swordsman known as the Weasel said nothing. He was watching the road in the ruddy light. Few had come that way since the Deosil Gate had been one of the first to collapse in a shower of white-hot embers.
But two were coming up it now. The Weasel’s eyes, always at their sharpest in gloom and half-light, made out the shapes of two mounted men and some sort of low beast behind them. Doubtless a rich merchant escaping with as much treasure as he could lay frantic hands on. The Weasel said as much to his companion, who sighed.
‘The status of footpad ill suits us,’ said the barbarian, ‘but, as you say, times are hard and there are no soft beds tonight.’
He shifted his grip on his sword and, as the leading rider drew near, stepped out onto the road with a hand held up and his face set in a grin nicely calculated to reassure yet threaten.
‘Your pardon, sir—’ he began.
The rider reined in his horse and drew back his hood. The big man looked into a face blotched with superficial burns and punctuated by tufts of singed beard. Even the eyebrows had gone.
‘Bugger off,’ said the face. ‘You’re Bravd the Hublander, aren’t you?’
Bravd became aware that he had fumbled the initiative.
‘Just go away, will you?’ said the rider. ‘I just haven’t got time for you, do you understand?’
He looked around and added: ‘That goes for your shadow-loving fleabag partner too, wherever he’s hiding.’
The Weasel stepped up to the horse and peered at the dishevelled figure.
‘Why, it’s Rincewind the wizard, isn’t it?’{6} he said in tones of delight, meanwhile filing the wizard’s description of him in his memory for leisurely vengeance. ‘I thought I recognised the voice.’
Bravd spat and sheathed his sword. It was seldom worth tangling with wizards, they so rarely had any treasure worth speaking of.
‘He talks pretty big for a gutter wizard,’ he muttered.
‘You don’t understand at all,’ said the wizard wearily. ‘I’m so scared of you my spine has turned to jelly, it’s just that I’m suffering from an overdose of terror right now. I mean, when I’ve got over that then I’ll have time to be decently frightened of you.’
The Weasel pointed towards the burning city.
‘You’ve been through that?’ he asked.
The wizard rubbed a red-raw hand across his eyes. ‘I was there when it started. See him? Back there?’ He pointed back down the road to where his travelling companion was still approaching, having adopted a method of riding that involved falling out of the saddle every few seconds.
‘Well?’ said Weasel.
‘He started it,’ said Rincewind simply.
Bravd and Weasel looked at the figure, now hopping across the road with one foot in a stirrup.
‘Fire-raiser, is he?’ said Bravd at last.
‘No,’ said Rincewind. ‘Not precisely. Let’s just say that if complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting “All gods are bastards”. Got any food?’
‘There’s some chicken,’ said Weasel. ‘In exchange for a story.’
‘What’s his name?’ said Bravd, who tended to lag behind in conversations.
‘Twoflower.’{7}
‘Twoflower?’ said Bravd. ‘What a funny name.’
‘You,’ said Rincewind, dismounting, ‘do not know the half of it. Chicken, you say?’
‘Devilled,’ said Weasel. The wizard groaned.
‘That reminds me,’ added the Weasel, snapping his fingers, ‘there was a really big explosion about, oh, half an hour ago—’
‘That was the oil bond store going up,’ said Rincewind, wincing at the memory of the burning rain.
Weasel turned and grinned expectantly at his companion, who grunted and handed over a coin from his pouch. Then there was a scream from the roadway, cut off abruptly. Rincewind did not look up from his chicken.
‘One of the things he can’t do, he can’t ride a horse,’ he said. Then he stiffened as if sandbagged by a sudden recollection, gave a small yelp of terror and dashed into the gloom. When he returned, the being called Twoflower was hanging limply over his shoulder. It was small and skinny, and dressed very oddly in a pair of knee length britches and a shirt in such a violent and vivid conflict of colours that Weasel’s fastidious eye was offended even in the half-light.
‘No bones broken, by the feel of things,’ said Rincewind. He was breathing heavily. Bravd winked at the Weasel and went to investigate the shape that they assumed was a pack animal.
‘You’d be wise to forget it,’ said the wizard, without looking up from his examination of the unconscious Twoflower. ‘Believe me. A power protects it.’
‘A spell?’ said Weasel, squatting down.
‘No-oo. But magic of a kind, I think. Not the usual sort. I mean, it can turn gold into copper while at the same time it is still gold, it makes men rich by destroying their possessions, it allows the weak to walk fearlessly among thieves, it passes through the strongest doors to leach the most protected treasuries. Even now it has me enslaved—so that I must follow this madman willynilly and protect him from harm. It’s stronger than you, Bravd. It is, I think, more cunning even than you, Weasel.’
‘What is it called then, this mighty magic?’
Rincewind shrugged. ‘In our tongue it is called reflected-sound-as-of-underground-spirits. Is there any wine?’
‘You must know that I am not without artifice where magic is concerned,’ said Weasel. ‘Only last year did I—assisted by my friend there—part the notoriously powerful Archmage of Ymitury from his staff, his belt of moon jewels and his life, in that approximate order. I do not fear this reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits of which you speak. However,’ he added, ‘you engage my interest. Perhaps you would care to tell me more?’
Bravd looked at the shape on the road. It was closer now, and clearer in the pre-dawn light. It looked for all the world like a—
‘A box on legs?’ he said.
‘I’ll tell you about it,’ said Rincewind. ‘If there’s any wine, that is.’
Down in the valley there was a roar and a hiss. Someone more thoughtful than the rest had ordered to be shut the big river gates that were at the point where the Ankh flowed out of the twin city. Denied its usual egress, the river had burst its banks and was pouring down the fire-ravaged streets. Soon the continent of flame became a series of islands, each one growing smaller as the dark tide rose. And up from the city of fumes and smoke rose a broiling cloud of steam, covering the stars. Weasel thought that it looked like some dark fungus or mushroom.
The twin city of proud Ankh and pestilent Morpork, of which all the other cities of time and space are, as it were, mere reflections, has stood many assaults in its long and crowded history and has always risen to flourish again. So the fire and its subsequent flood, which destroyed everything left that was not flammable and added a particularly noisome flux to the survivors’ problems, did not mark its end. Rather it was a fiery punctuation mark, a coal-like comma, or salamander semicolon, in a continuing story.
Several days before these events a ship came up the Ankh on the dawn tide and fetched up, among many others, in the maze of wharves and docks on the Morpork shore. It carried a cargo of pink pearls, milk-nuts, pumice, some official letters for the Patrician of Ankh, and a man.
It was the man who engaged the attention of Blind Hugh, one of the beggars on early duty at Pearl Dock. He nudged Cripple Wa in the ribs, and pointed wordlessly.