*
There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was
nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It's sad, but
that's all you can say about some people.
But the eighth son grew up and married and had eight sons, and
because there is only one suitable profession for the eighth son of
an eighth son, he became a wizard. And he became wise and powerful,
or at any rate powerful, and wore a pointed hat and there it would
have ended...
*
This is where the dragons went.
They lie...
Not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies
expectation. Possibly the word we're looking for here is ...
... dormant.
And although the space they occupy isn't like normal space,
nevertheless they are packed in tightly. Not a cubic inch there but
is filled by a claw, a talon, a scale, the tip of a tail, so the
effect is like one of those trick drawings and your eyeballs
eventually realize that the space between each dragon is, in fact,
another dragon.
They could put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought
sardines were huge and scaly and proud and arrogant.
And presumably, somewhere, there's the key.
*
They say the world is flat and supported on the back of
four elephants who themselves stand on the back of a giant
turtle.
They say that the elephants, being such huge beasts, have
bones of rock and iron, and nerves of gold for better conductivity
over long distances.*
They say that the fifth elephant came screaming and
trumpeting through the atmosphere of the young world all those
years ago and landed hard enough to split continents and raise
mountains.
* Not rock and iron in their dead form, as they are now, but
living rock and iron. The dwarfs have quite an inventive
mythology about minerals.
*
'What is he?'
THE EIGHTH SON OF AN EIGHTH SON OF AN EIGHTH SON, said Death,
unhelpfully. The wind whipped at his robe, driving the black clouds
overhead.
'What does that make him?'
*
The dragon kennels exploded. The windows blew out. The door left
the wall ahead of a great billow of black smoke and sailed into the
air, tumbling slowly, to plow into the rhododendrons.
Something very energetic and hot was happening in that building.
More smoke poured out, thick and oily and solid. One of the walls
folded in on itself, and then another one toppled sluggishly on to
the lawn.
Swamp dragons shot determinedly out of the wreckage like
champagne corks, wings whirring frantically.
*
'Well...' The king automatically scratched his chin. 'I suppose
I have to wait until they've done all the preparations and so
forth. Mummified me. And built a bloody pyramid. Um. Do I have to
hang around here to wait for all that?'
I ASSUME SO. Death clicked his fingers and a magnificent white
horse ceased its grazing on some of the garden greenery and trotted
towards him.
*
Corporal Carrot, Ankh-Morpork City Guard (Night Watch) sat down
in his nightshirt, took up his pencil, sucked the end for a moment,
and then wrote:
'Dearest Mume and Dad,
'Well here is another fine Turnup for the Books, for I have been
made Corporal!! It means another Five Dollars a month plus I have a
new jerkin with, two stripes upon it as well. And a new copper
badge! It is a Great responsibility!! This is all because we have
got new recruits because the Patrician who, as I have formerly
vouchsafed is the ruler of the city, has agreed the Watch must
reflect the ethnic makeup of the City--'
*
Peaches pulled the huge book towards her and began to read. 'One
day Mr Bunnsy and his friend Ratty Rupert the Rat went to see Old
Man Donkey, who lived by the river--'
'Read the bit where they talk to the humans,' said Dangerous
Beans.
*
The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically,
like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across
the dark, rain-lashed hills.
The night was as black as the inside of a cat. It was the kind
of night, you could beleive, on which gods moved men as though they
were pawns on the chessboard of fate. In the middle of this
elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like
the madness in a weasel's eye. It illuminated three hunched
figures. As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: 'When
shall we three meet again?'
There was a pause.
Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: 'Well, I
can do next Tuesday.'
*
There had been an unusual conjunction of
circumstances.
By exactly a million to one chance there had been someone
watching, studying, looking for the right tools for a special
job.
And here was Rincewind.
It was almost too easy.
*
At noon, in a wide green meadow on the lush tableland that was
the top of the impossibly-balanced Wyrmberg, the dragons and their
riders formed a wide circle. There was room beyond them for a
rabble of servants and slaves and others who scratched a living
here on the roof of the world, and they were all watching the
figures clustered in the centre of the grassy arena.
*
