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Trymon brightened. 'It's an ill wind,' he murmured. He started down the long spiral staircase. After a while he smiled, a thin, tight smile. The day was definitely improving.
There was a lot of organising to do. And if there was something Trymon really liked, it was organising.
The rock swooped across the high plains, whipping snow from the drifts a mere few feet below. Belafon scuttled about urgently, smearing a little mistletoe ointment here, chalking a rune there, while Rincewind cowered in terror and exhaustion and Twoflower worried about his Luggage.
'Up ahead!' screamed the druid above the noise of the slipstream. 'Behold, the great computer of the skies!'
Rincewind peered between his fingers. On the distant skyline was an immense construction of grey and black slabs, arranged in concentric circles and mystic avenues, aunt and forbidding against the snow. Surely men couldn't have moved those nascent mountains – surely a troop of giants had been turned to stone by some . . .
'It looks like a lot of rocks,' said Twoflower.
Belafon hesitated in mid-gesture.
'What?' he said.
'It's very nice,' added the tourist hurriedly. He sought for a word. 'Ethnic,' he decided.
The druid stiffened. 'Nice?' he said. 'A triumph of the silicon chunk, a miracle of modern masonic technology – nice?'
'Oh, yes,' said Twoflower, to whom sarcasm was merely a seven letter word beginning with S.
'What does ethnic mean?' said the druid.
'It means terribly impressive,' said Rincewind hurriedly, 'and we seem to be in danger of landing, if you don't mind—'
Belafon turned around, only slightly mollified. He raised his arms wide and shouted a series of untranslatable words, ending with 'nice!' in a hurt whisper.
The rock slowed, drifted sideways in a billow of snow, and hovered over the circle. Down below a druid waved two bunches of mistletoe in complicated patterns, and Belafon skilfully brought the massive slab to rest across two giant uprights with the faintest of clicks.
Rincewind let his breath out in a long sigh. It hurried off to hide somewhere.
A ladder banged against the side of the slab and the head of an elderly druid appeared over the edge. He gave the two passengers a puzzled glance, and then looked up at Belafon.
'About bloody time,' he said. 'Seven weeks to Hogswatchnight and it's gone down on us again.'
'Hallo, Zakriah,' said Belafon. What happened this time?'
'It's all totally fouled up. Today it predicted sunrise three minutes early. Talk about a klutz, boy, this is it.'
Belafon clambered onto the ladder and disappeared from view. The passengers looked at each other, and then tared down into the vast open space between the inner circle of stones.
'What shall we do now?' said Twoflower.
'We could go to sleep?' suggested Rincewind.
Twoflower ignored him, and climbed down the ladder.
Around the circle druids were tapping the megaliths with little hammers and listening intently. Several of the huge stones were lying on their sides, and each was surrounded by another crowd of druids who were examining it carefully and arguing amongst themselves. Arcane phrases floated up to where Rincewind sat:
'It can't be software incompatibility – the Chant of the Trodden Spiral was designed for concentric rings, idiot . . .'
'I say fire it up again and try a simple moon ceremony . . .'
'. . . all right, all right, nothing's wrong with the stones, it's just that the universe has gone wrong, right? . . .'
Through the mists of his exhausted mind Rincewind remembered the horrible star they'd seen in the sky. Something had gone wrong with the universe last night.
How had he come to be back on the Disc?
