‘Like what?’ demanded Cohen.
‘Well, these scrolls all tell you how to get to the mountain, a perilous trek that no one has ever survived?’
‘Yes? So?’
‘So… um… who wrote the scrolls?’
Offler the Crocodile looked up from the playing board which was, in fact, the world.
‘All right, who doth he belong to?’ he lisped. ‘We’ve got a clever one here.’
There was a general craning of necks among the assembled deities, and then one put up his hand.
‘And you are…?’ said Offler.
‘The Almighty Nuggan. I’m worshipped in parts of Borogravia. The young man was raised in my faith.’
‘What do Nugganoteth believe in?’
‘Er… me. Mostly me. And followers are forbidden to eat chocolate, ginger, mushrooms and garlic.’
Several of the gods winced.
‘When you prohibit you don’t meth about, do you?’ said Offler.
‘No sense in forbidding broccoli, is there? That sort of approach is very old-fashioned,’ said Nuggan. He looked at the minstrel. ‘He’s never been particularly bright up till now. Shall I smite him? There’s bound to be some garlic in that stew, Mrs McGarry looks the type.’
Offler hesitated. He was a very old god, who had arisen from steaming swamps in hot, dark lands. He had survived the rise and fall of more modern and certainly more beautiful gods by developing, for a god, a certain amount of wisdom.
Besides, Nuggan was one of the newer gods, all full of hellfire and self-importance and ambition. Offler was not bright, but he had some vague inkling that for long-term survival gods needed to offer their worshippers something more than a mere lack of thunderbolts. And he felt an ungodlike pang of sympathy for any human whose god banned chocolate and garlic. Anyway, Nuggan had an unpleasant moustache. No god had any business with a fussy little moustache like that.
‘No,’ he said, shaking the dice box. ‘It’ll add to the fun.’
Cohen pinched out the end of his ragged cigarette, stuffed it behind his ear, and looked up at the green ice.
‘It’s not too late to turn back,’ said Evil Harry. ‘If anyone wanted to, I mean.’
‘Yes it is,’ said Cohen, without looking around. ‘Besides, someone’s not playing fair.’
‘Funny, really,’ said Vena. ‘All my life I’ve gone adventuring with old maps found in old tombs and so on, and I never ever worried about where they came from. It’s one of those things you never think about, like who leaves all the weapons and keys and medicine kits lying around in the unexplored dungeons.’{15}
‘Someone be setting a trap,’ said Boy Willie.
‘Probably. Won’t be the first trap I’ve walked into,’ said Cohen.
‘We’re going up against the gods, Cohen,’ said Harry. ‘A man does that, a man’s got to be sure of his luck.’
‘Mine’s worked up to now,’ said Cohen. He reached out and touched the rock face in front of him. ‘It’s warm.’
‘But it’s got ice on!’ said Harry.
‘Yeah. Strange, eh?’ said Cohen. ‘It’s just like the scrolls said. And see the way the snow’s sticking to it? It’s the magic. Well… here goes…’
Archchancellor Ridcully decided that the crew needed to be trained. Ponder Stibbons pointed out that they were going into the completely unexpected, and Ridcully ruled therefore that they should be given some unexpected training.
Rincewind, on the other hand, said that they were heading for certain death, which everyone managed eventually with no training whatsoever.
Later he said that Leonard’s device would do, though. After five minutes on it, certain death seemed like a release.
‘He’s thrown up again,’ said the Dean.
‘He’s getting better at it, though,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
‘How can you say that? Last time it was a whole ten seconds before he let go!’
‘Yes, but he’s throwing up more, and it’s going further,’ said the Chair as they strolled away.
The Dean looked up. It was hard to see the flying device in the shadows of the tarpaulin-covered barge. Sheets were spread over the more interesting bits. There were strong smells of glue and varnish. The Librarian, who tended to get involved in things, was hanging peacefully from a spar and hammering wooden pegs into a plank.
‘It’ll be balloons, you mark my words,’ said the Dean. ‘I’ve got a mental picture. Balloons and sails and rigging and so on. Probably an anchor, too. Fanciful stuff.’
‘Over in the Agatean Empire they have kites big enough to carry men,’ said the Chair.
‘Perhaps he’s just building a bigger kite, then.’
In the distance Leonard of Quirm was sitting in a pool of light, sketching. Occasionally he’d hand a page to a waiting apprentice, who would hurry away.
‘Did you see the design he came up with yesterday?’ said the Dean. ‘Had this idea that they might have to get outside the machine to repair it so — so he designed a sort of device to let you fly around with a dragon on your back! Said it was for emergencies!’
‘What kind of emergency would be worse than having a dragon strapped to your back?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
‘Exactly! The man lives in an ivory tower!’
‘Does he? I thought Vetinari had him locked up in some attic.’
‘Well. I mean, years of that is going to give a man a very limited vision, in my humble opinion. Nothing much to do but tick the days off on the wall.’
‘They say he paints good pictures,’ said the Chair.
‘Well, pictures,’ said the Dean dismissively.
‘But they say that his are so good the eyes follow you round the room.’
‘Really? What does the rest of the face do?’
‘That stays where it is, I suppose,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
‘To me, this does not sound good,’ said the Dean as they wandered out into the daylight.
At his desk, while considering the problem of steering a craft in thin air, Leonard carefully drew a rose.
Evil Harry shut his eyes.
‘This does not feel good,’ he said.
‘It’s easy when you get used to it,’ said Cohen. ‘It’s just a matter of how you look at things.’
Evil Harry opened his eyes again.
He was standing on a broad, greenish plain, which curved down gently to right and left. It was like being on a high, grassy ridge. It stretched off into a cloudy distance.
‘It’s just a stroll,’ said Boy Willie, beside him.
‘Look, my feet aren’t the problem here,’ said Evil Harry. ‘My feet aren’t quarrelling. It’s my brain.’
‘It helps if you think of the ground as being behind you,’ said Boy Willie.
‘No,’ said Evil Harry. ‘It doesn’t.’
The strange feature of the mountain was this: once a foot was set on it, direction became a matter of personal choice. To put it another way, gravity was optional. It stayed under your feet, no matter which way your feet were pointing.
Evil Harry wondered why it was affecting only him. The Horde seemed entirely unmoved. Even Mad Hamish’s horrible wheelchair was bowling along happily in a direction which, up until now, Harry had thought of as vertical. It was, he thought, probably because Evil Lords were generally brighter than heroes. You needed some functioning brain cells to do the payroll even for half a dozen henchmen. And Evil Harry’s braincells were telling him to look straight ahead and try to believe that he was strolling along a broad, happy ridge and on no account to turn around, to even think about turning round, because behind him was gnh gnh gnk…