The Light Fantastic

of torches starting up the long spiral.
    “There’s some people coming up the stairs,” said Twoflower, always keen to inform.
    “I hope they’re running,” said Rincewind. “I can’t feel my arm.”
    “You’re lucky,” said Twoflower. “I can feel mine.”
    The leading torch stopped its climb and a voice rang out, filling the hollow tower with indecipherable echoes.
    “I think,” said Twoflower, aware that he was gradually sliding farther over the hole, “that was someone telling us to hold on.”
    Rincewind said another word.
    Then he said, in a lower and more urgent tone, “Actually, I don’t think I can hang on any longer.”
    “Try.”
    “It’s no good, I can feel my hand slipping!”
    Twoflower sighed. It was time for harsh measures. “All right, then,” he said. “Drop, then. See if I care.”
    “What?” said Rincewind, so astonished he forgot to let go.
    “Go on, die. Take the easy way out.”
    “Easy?”
    “All you have to do is plummet screaming through the air and break every bone in your body,” said Twoflower. “Anybody can do it. Go on. I wouldn’t want you to think that perhaps you ought to stay alive because we need you to say the Spells and save the Disc. Oh, no. Who cares if we all get burned up? Go on, just think of yourself. Drop.”
    There was a long, embarrassed silence.
    “I don’t know why it is,” said Rincewind eventually, in a voice rather louder than necessary, “but ever since I met you I seem to have spent a lot of time hanging by my fingers over certain depth, have you noticed?”
    “Death,” corrected Twoflower.
    “Death what?” said Rincewind.
    “Certain death,” said Twoflower helpfully, trying to ignore the slow but inexorable slide of his body across the flagstones. “Hanging over certain death. You don’t like heights.”
    “Heights I don’t mind,” said Rincewind’s voice from the darkness. “Heights I can live with. It’s depths that are occupying my attention at the moment. Do you know what I’m going to do when we get out of this?”
    “No?” said Twoflower, wedging his toes into a gap in the flagstones and trying to make himself immobile by sheer force of will.
    “I’m going to build a house in the flattest country I can find and it’s only going to have a ground floor and I’m not even going to wear sandals with thick soles—”
    The leading torch came around the last turn of the spiral and Twoflower looked down on the grinning face of Cohen. Behind him, still hopping awkwardly up the stones, he could make out the reassuring bulk of the Luggage.
    “Everything all right?” said Cohen. “Can I do anything?”
    Rincewind took a deep breath.
    Twoflower recognized the signs. Rincewind was about to say something like, “Yes, I’ve got this itch on the back of my neck, you couldn’t scratch it, could you, on your way past?” or “No, I enjoy hanging over bottomless drops” and he decided he couldn’t possibly face that. He spoke very quickly.
    “Pull Rincewind back onto the stairs,” he snapped. Rincewind deflated in midsnarl.
    Cohen caught him around the waist and jerked him unceremoniously onto the stones.
    “Nasty mess down on the floor down there,” he said conversationally. “Who was it?”
    “Did it—” Rincewind swallowed, “did it have—you know—tentacles and things?”
    “No,” said Cohen. “Just the normal bits. Spread out a bit, of course.”
    Rincewind looked at Twoflower, who shook his head.
    “Just a wizard who let things get on top of him,” he said.
    Unsteadily, with his arms screaming at him, Rincewind let himself be helped back onto the roof of the tower.
    “How did you get here?” he added.
    Cohen pointed to the Luggage, which had trotted over to Twoflower and opened its lid like a dog that knows it’s been bad and is hoping that a quick display of affection may avert the rolled-up newspaper of authority.
    “Bumpy but fast,” he said admiringly. “I’ll tell you this, no one tries to stop you.”
    Rincewind looked up at the sky. It was indeed full of moons, huge cratered discs now ten times bigger than the Disc’s tiny satellite. He looked at them without much interest. He felt washed out and stretched well beyond the breaking point, as fragile as ancient elastic.
    He noticed that Twoflower was trying to set up his picture box.
    Cohen was looking at the seven senior wizards.
    “Funny place to put statues,” he said. “No one can see them. Mind you, I can’t say