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‘Speak up,’ said Creosote.
‘The Ice Giants,’ Nijel repeated loudly, with a trace of irritation. ‘The gods keep them imprisoned, see. At the Hub. But at the end of the world they’ll break free at last, and ride out on their dreadful glaciers and regain their ancient domination, crushing out the flames of civilisation until the world lies naked and frozen under the terrible cold stars until Time itself freezes over. Or something like that, apparently.’
‘But it isn’t time for the Apocralypse,’ said Conina desperately. ‘I mean, a dreadful ruler has to arise, there must be a terrible war, the four dreadful horsemen have to ride, and then the Dungeon Dimensions will break into the world-’She stopped, her face nearly as white as the snow.
‘Being buried under a thousand-foot ice sheet sounds awfully like it, anyway,’ said the genie. He reached forward and snatched his lamp out of Nijel’s hands.
‘Mucho apologies,’ he said, ‘but it’s time to liquidise my assets in this reality. See you around. Or something.’ He vanished up to the waist, and then with a faint last cry of ‘Shame about lunch’, disappeared entirely.
The three riders peered through the veils of driving snow towards the Hub.
‘It may be my imagination,’ said Creosote, ‘but can either of you hear a sort of creaking and groaning?’
‘Shut up,’ said Conina distractedly.
Creosote leaned over and patted her hand.
‘Cheer up,’ he said, ‘it’s not the end of the world.’ He thought about this statement for a bit, and then added, ‘Sorry. Just a figure of speech.’
‘What are we going to do?’ she wailed.
Nijel drew himself up.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that we should go and explain.’
They turned towards him with the kind of expression normally reserved for messiahs or extreme idiots.
‘Yes,’ he said, with a shade more confidence. ‘We should explain.’
‘Explain to the Ice Giants?’ said Conina.
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry,’ said Conina, ‘have I got this right? You think we should go and find the terrifying Ice Giants and sort of tell them that there are a lot of warm people out here who would rather they didn’t sweep across the world crushing everyone under mountains of ice, and could they sort of reconsider things? Is that what you think we should do?’
‘Yes. That’s right. You’ve got it exactly.’
Conina and Creosote exchanged glances. Nijel remained sitting proudly in the saddle, a faint smile on his face.
‘Is your geese giving you trouble?’ said the Seriph.
‘Geas,’ said Nijel calmly. ‘It’s not giving me trouble, it’s just that I must do something brave before I die.’
‘That’s it though,’ said Creosote. ‘That’s the whole rather sad point. You’ll do something brave, and then you’ll die.’
‘What alternative have we got?’ said Nijel.
They considered this.
‘I don’t think I’m much good at explaining,’ said Conina, in a small voice.
‘I am,’ said Nijel, firmly. ‘I’m always having to explain.’
The scattered particles of what had been Rincewind’s mind pulled themselves together and drifted up through the layers of dark unconsciousness like a three-day corpse rising to the surface.
It probed its most recent memories, in much the same way that one might scratch a fresh scab.
He could recall something about a staff, and a pain so intense that it appeared to insert a chisel between every cell in his body and hammer on it repeatedly.
