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Galder made a few passes in front of the glass, which clouded over and then cleared to show an aerial view of the Forest of Skund. He looked at it intently while holding the bow with the arrow pointing vaguely at the ceiling. He muttered a few words like 'allow for wind speed of, say, three knots' and 'adjust for temperature' and then, with a rather disappointing movement, released the arrow.
If the laws of action and reaction had anything to do with it, it should have flopped to the ground a few feet away. But no-one was listening to them.
With a sound that defies description, but which for the sake of completeness can be thought of basically as 'spang!' plus three days hard work in any decently equipped radiophonic workshop, the arrow vanished.
Galder threw the bow aside and grinned.
'Of course, it'll take about an hour to get there,' he said. Then the spell will simply follow the ionised path back here. To me.'
'Remarkable,' said Trymon, but any passing telepath would have read in letters ten yards high: if you, then why not me? He looked down at the cluttered workbench, when a long and very sharp knife looked tailormade for what he suddenly had in mind.
Violence was not something he liked to be involved in except at one remove. But the Pyramid of Tsort had been quite clear about the rewards for whoever brought all right spells together at the right time, and Trymon was not about to let years of painstaking work go for nothing because some old fool had a bright idea.
'Would you like some cocoa while we're waiting?' said Galder, hobbling across the room to the servants' bell.
'Certainly,' said Trymon. He picked up the knife, weighing it for balance and accuracy. 'I must congratulate you, master. I can see that we must all get up very early in the morning to get the better of you.'
Galder laughed. And the knife left Trymon's hand at such speed that (because of the somewhat sluggish nature of Disc light) it actually grew a bit shorter and a little more massive as it plunged, with unerring aim, towards Galder's neck.
It didn't reach it. Instead, it swerved to one side and began a fast orbit – so fast that Galder appeared suddenly to be wearing a metal collar. He turned around, and to Trymon it seemed that he had suddenly grown several feet taller and much more powerful.
The knife broke away and shuddered into the door a mere shadow's depth from Trymon's ear.
'Early in the morning?' said Galder pleasantly. 'My dear lad, you will need to stay up all night.'
'Have a bit more table,' said Rincewind.
'No thanks, I don't like marzipan,' said Twoflower. 'Anyway, I'm sure it's not right to eat other people's furniture.'
'Don't worry,' said Swires. The old witch hasn't been seen for years. They say she was done up good and proper by a couple of young tearaways.'
'Kids of today,' commented Rincewind.
'I blame the parents,' said Twoflower.
Once you had made the necessary mental adjustments, the gingerbread cottage was quite a pleasant place. Residual magic kept it standing and it was shunned by such local wild animals who hadn't already died of terminal tooth decay. A bright fire of liquorice logs burned rather messily in the fireplace; Rincewind had tried gathering wood outside, but had given up. It's hard to burn wood that talks to you.
He belched.
'This isn't very healthy,' he said. 'I mean, why sweets? Why not crispbread and cheese? Or salami, now – I could just do with a nice salami sofa.'
'Search me,' said Swires. 'Old Granny Whitlow just did sweets. You should have seen her meringues —'
'I have,' said Rincewind, 'I looked at the mattresses . . .'
'Gingerbread is more traditional,' said Twoflower.
'What, for mattresses?'
'Don't be silly,' said Twoflower reasonably. Whoever heard of a gingerbread mattress?'
Rincewind grunted. He was thinking of food – more accurately, of food in Ankh-Morpork. Funny how the old place seemed more attractive the further he got from it. He only had to close his eyes to picture, in dribbling detail, the food stalls of a hundred different cultures in the market places. You could eat squishi or shark's fin soup so fresh that swimmers wouldn't go near it, and —
'Do you think I could buy this place?' said Twoflower. Rincewind hesitated. He'd found it always paid to think very carefully before answering Twoflower's more surprising questions.
'What for?' he said, cautiously.
'Well, it just reeks of ambience.'
