The Light Fantastic

vibration, then rose suddenly to a knife-edge whine that bypassed the eardrums and bored straight into the brain. It sounded like a human voice singing, or chanting, or screaming, but there were deeper and more horrible harmonics.
    The wizards went pale. Then, as one man, they turned and ran up the steps.
    There were crowds outside the building. Some people were holding torches, others had stopped in the act of piling kindling around the walls. But everyone was staring up at the Tower of Art.
    The wizards pushed their way through the unheeding bodies, and turned to look up.
    The sky was full of moons. Each one was three times bigger than the Disc’s own moon, and each was in shadow except for a pink crescent where it caught the light of the star.
    But in front of everything the top of the Tower of Art was an incandescent fury. Shapes could be dimly glimpsed within it, but there was nothing reassuring about them. The sound had changed now to the wasplike buzzing, magnified a million times.
    Some of the wizards sank to their knees.
    “He’s done it,” said Wert, shaking his head. “He’s opened a pathway.”
    “Are those things demons?” said Twoflower.
    “Oh, demons,” said Wert. “Demons would be a picnic compared with what’s trying to come through up there.”
    “They’re worse than anything we can possibly imagine,” said Panter.
    “I can imagine some pretty bad things,” said Rincewind.
    “These are worse.”
    “Oh.”
    “And what do you propose to do about it?” said a clear voice.
    They turned. Bethan was glaring at them, arms folded.
    “Pardon?” said Wert.
    “You’re wizards, aren’t you?” she said. “Well, get on with it.”
    “What, tackle that?” said Rincewind.
    “Know anyone else?”
    Wert pushed forward. “Madam, I don’t think you quite understand—”
    “The Dungeons Dimensions will empty into our Universe, right?” said Bethan.
    “Well, yes—”
    “We’ll all be eaten by things with tentacles for faces, right?”
    “Nothing so pleasant, but—”
    “And you’re just going to let it happen?”
    “Listen,” said Rincewind. “It’s all over, do you see? You can’t put the spells back in the book, you can’t unsay what’s been said, you can’t—”
    “You can try! ”
    Rincewind sighed, and turned to Twoflower.
    He wasn’t there. Rincewind’s eyes turned inevitably toward the base of the Tower of Art, and he was just in time to see the tourist’s plump figure, sword inexpertly in hand, as it disappeared into a door.
    Rincewind’s feet made their own decision and, from the point of view of his head, got it entirely wrong.
    The other wizards watched him go.
    “Well?” said Bethan. “ He’s going.”
    The wizards tried to avoid one another’s eyes.
    Eventually Wert said, “We could try, I suppose. It doesn’t seem to be spreading.”
    “But we’ve got hardly any magic to speak of,” said one of the wizards.
    “Have you got a better idea, then?”
    One by one, their ceremonial robes glittering in the weird light, the wizards turned and trudged toward the tower.
    The tower was hollow inside, with the stone treads of its staircase mortared spiral-fashion into the walls. Twoflower was already several turns up by the time Rincewind caught him.
    “Hold on,” he said, as cheerfully as he could manage. “This sort of thing is a job for the likes of Cohen, not you. No offense.”
    “Would he do any good?”
    Rincewind looked up at the actinic light that lanced down through the distant hole at the top of the staircase.
    “No,” he admitted.
    “Then I’d be as good as him, wouldn’t I?” said Twoflower, flourishing his looted sword.
    Rincewind hopped after him, keeping as close to the wall as possible.
    “You don’t understand!” he shouted. “There’s unimaginable horrors up there!”
    “You always said I didn’t have any imagination.”
    “It’s a point, yes,” Rincewind conceded, “but—”
    Twoflower sat down.
    “Look,” he said. “I’ve been looking forward to something like this ever since I came here. I mean, this is an adventure, isn’t it? Alone against the gods, that sort of thing?”
    Rincewind opened and shut his mouth for a few seconds before the right words managed to come out.
    “Can you use a sword?” he said weakly.
    “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
    “You’re mad!”
    Twoflower looked at him with his head on one side. “You’re a fine one to talk,” he said. “I’m here because I don’t