The Light Fantastic

uncertainly, because something about Cohen’s teeth was giving him a nasty feeling of sanity.
    “Why?” said Cohen.
    “It has been revealed to us.” Now Cohen’s smile was as wide as all outdoors, and rather more dangerous.
    “I think we ought to be getting along,” said Lackjaw nervously. A party of star people had turned into the street behind them.
    “ I think I would like to kill someone,” said Cohen, still smiling.
    “The star directs that the Disc must be cleansed,” said the man, backing away.
    “Stars can’t talk,” said Cohen, drawing his sword.
    “If you kill me a thousand will take my place,” said the man, who was now backed against the wall.
    “Yes,” said Cohen, in a reasonable tone of voice, “but that isn’t the point, is it? The point is, you’ll be dead.”
    The man’s Adam’s apple began to bob like a yo-yo. He squinted down at Cohen’s sword.
    “There is that, yes,” he conceded. “Tell you what—how about if we put the fire out?”
    “Good idea,” said Cohen.
    Lackjaw tugged at his belt. The other star people were running toward them. There were a lot of them, many of them were armed, and it began to look as though things would become a little more serious.
    Cohen waved his sword at them defiantly, and turned and ran. Even Lackjaw had difficulty in keeping up.
    “Funny,” he gasped, as they plunged down another alley, “I thought—for a minute—you’d want to stand—and fight them.”
    “Blow that—for a—lark.”
    As they came out into the light at the other end of the alley Cohen flung himself against the wall, drew his sword, stood with his head on one side as he judged the approaching footsteps, and then brought the blade around in a dead flat sweep at stomach height. There was an unpleasant noise and several screams, but by then Cohen was well away up the street, moving in the unusual shambling run that spared his bunions.
    With Lackjaw pounding along grimly beside him he turned off into an inn painted with red stars, jumped onto a table with only a faint whimper of pain, ran along it—while, with almost perfect choreography, Lackjaw ran straight underneath without ducking—jumped down at the other end, kicked his way through the kitchens, and came out into another alley.
    They scurried around a few more turnings and piled into a doorway. Cohen clung to the wall and wheezed until the little blue and purple lights went away.
    “Well,” he panted, “what did you get?”
    “Um, the cruet,” said Lackjaw.
    “Just that?”
    “Well, I had to go under the table, didn’t I? You didn’t do so well yourself.”
    Cohen looked disdainfully at the small melon he had managed to skewer in his flight.
    “This must be pretty tough here,” he said, biting through the rind.
    “Want some salt on it?” said the dwarf.
    Cohen said nothing. He just stood holding the melon, with his mouth open.
    Lackjaw looked around. The cul-de-sac they were in was empty, except for an old box someone had left against a wall.
    Cohen was staring at it. He handed the melon to the dwarf without looking at him and walked out into the sunlight. Lackjaw watched him creep stealthily around the box, or as stealthily as is possible with joints that creaked like a ship under full sail, and prod it once or twice with his sword, but very gingerly, as if he half expected it to explode.
    “It’s just a box,” the dwarf called out. “What’s so special about a box?”
    Cohen said nothing. He squatted down painfully and peered closely at the lock on the lid.
    “What’s in it?” said Lackjaw.
    “You wouldn’t want to know,” said Cohen. “Help me up, will you?”
    “Yes, but this box—”
    “This box,” said Cohen, “this box is—” he waved his arms vaguely.
    “Oblong?”
    “ Eldritch ,” said Cohen mysteriously.
    “Eldritch?”
    “Yup.”
    “Oh,” said the dwarf. They stood looking at the box for a moment.
    “Cohen?”
    “Yes?”
    “What does eldritch mean?”
    “Well, eldritch is—” Cohen paused and looked down irritably. “Give it a kick and you’ll see.”
    Lockjaw’s steel-capped dwarfboot whammed into the side of the box. Cohen flinched. Nothing else happened.
    “I see,” said the dwarf. “Eldritch means wooden?”
    “No,” said Cohen. “It—it oughtn’t to have done that.”
    “I see,” said Lackjaw, who didn’t, and was beginning to wish Cohen hadn’t gone out into all this hot sunlight. “It ought to have run away, you