The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett Page A

smoke, and they are called sorcerers. A few have been privileged to see Umcherrel, the soul of the forest, and they are known as spirit masters. But none have seen a box with hundreds of legs that looked at them without eyes, and they are known as idio—”
    The interruption was caused by a sudden screaming noise and a flurry of snow and sparks that blew the fire across the dark hut; there was a brief blurred vision and then the opposite wall was blasted aside and the apparition vanished.
    There was a long silence. Then a slightly shorter silence. Then the old shaman said carefully, “You didn’t just see two men go through upside down on a broomstick, shouting and screaming at each other, did you?”
    The boy looked at him levelly. “Certainly not,” he said.
    The old man heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness for that,” he said. “Neither did I.”

    The cottage was in turmoil, because not only did the wizards want to follow the broomstick, they also wanted to prevent each other from doing so, and this led to several regrettable incidents. The most spectacular, and certainly the most tragic, happened when one Seer attempted to use his seven-league boots without the proper sequence of spells and preparations. Seven-league boots, as has already been intimated, are a tricksy form of magic at best, and he remembered too late that the utmost caution must be taken in using a means of transport which, when all is said and done, relies for its effectiveness on trying to put one foot twenty-one miles in front of the other.

    The first snowstorms of winter were raging, and in fact there was a suspiciously heavy covering of cloud over most of the Disc. And yet, from far above and by the silver light of the Discworld’s tiny moon, it presented one of the most beautiful sights in the multiverse.
    Great streamers of cloud, hundreds of miles along, swirled from the waterfall at the Rim to the mountains of the Hub. In the cold crystal silence the huge white spiral glittered frostily under the stars, imperceptibly turning, very much as though God had stirred His coffee and then poured the cream in.
    Nothing disturbed the glowing scene, which—
    Something small and distant broke through the cloud layer, trailing shreds of vapor. In the stratospheric calm the sounds of bickering came sharp and clear.
    “You said you could fly one of these things!”
    “No I didn’t; I just said you couldn’t!”
    “But I’ve never been on one before!”
    “What a coincidence!”
    “Anyway, you said— Look at the sky! ”
    “No I didn’t!”
    “What’s happened to the stars?”
    And so it was that Rincewind and Twoflower became the first two people on the Disc to see what the future held.
    A thousand miles behind them the Hub mountain of Cori Celesti stabbed the sky and cast a knife-bright shadow across the broiling clouds, so that Gods ought to have noticed too—but the Gods don’t normally look at the sky and in any case were engaged in litigation with the Ice Giants, who had refused to turn their radio down.
    Rimward, in the direction of Great A’Tuin’s travel, the sky had been swept of stars.
    In that circle of blackness there was just one star, a red and baleful star, a star like the glitter in the eye socket of a rabid mink. It was small and horrible and uncompromising. And the Disc was being carried straight toward it.
    Rincewind knew precisely what to do in these circumstances. He screamed and pointed the broomstick straight down.

    Galder Weatherwax stood in the center of the octogram and raised his hands.
    “Urshalo, dileptor, c’hula, do my bidding!”
    A small mist formed over his head. He glanced sideways at Trymon, who was sulking at the edge of the magic circle.
    “This next bit’s quite impressive,” he said. “Watch. Kot-b’hai! Kot-sham! To me, o spirits of small isolated rocks and worried mice not less than three inches long!”
    “What?” said Trymon.
    “That bit took quite a lot of research,”