The Light Fantastic

all down to simple biology, isn’t it? If you’re going to talk you need the right equipment, like lungs and lips and, and—”
    “Vocal cords,” said the tree.
    “Yeah, them,” said Rincewind. He shut up and stared gloomily at the rain.
    “ I thought wizards knew all about trees and wild food and things,” said Twoflower reproachfully. It was very seldom that anything in his voice suggested that he thought of Rincewind as anything other than a magnificent enchanter, and the wizard was stung into action.
    “I do, I do,” he snapped.
    “Well, what kind of tree is this?” said the tourist. Rincewind looked up.
    “Beech,” he said firmly.
    “Actually—” began the tree, and shut up quickly. It had caught Rincewind’s look.
    “Those things up there look like acorns,” said Twoflower.
    “Yes, well, this is the sessile or heptocarpic variety,” said Rincewind. “The nuts look very much like acorns, in fact. They can fool practically anybody.”
    “Gosh,” said Twoflower, and, “What’s that bush over there, then?”
    “Mistletoe.”
    “But it’s got thorns and red berries!”
    “Well?” said Rincewind sternly, and stared hard at him. Twoflower broke first.
    “Nothing,” he said meekly. “I must have been misinformed.”
    “Right.”
    “But there’s some big mushrooms under it. Can you eat them?”
    Rincewind looked at them cautiously. They were, indeed, very big, and had red and white spotted caps. They were in fact a variety that the local shaman (who at this point was some miles away, making friends with a rock) would only eat after first attaching one leg to a large stone with a rope. There was nothing for it but to go out in the rain and look at them.
    He knelt down in the leafmold and peered under the cap. After a while he said weakly, “No, no good to eat at all.”
    “Why?” called Twoflower. “Are the gills the wrong shade of yellow?”
    “No, not really…”
    “I expect the stems haven’t got the right kind of fluting, then.”
    “They look okay, actually.”
    “The cap, then, I expect the cap is the wrong color,” said Twoflower.
    “Not sure about that.”
    “Well then, why can’t you eat them?”
    Rincewind coughed. “It’s the little doors and windows,” he said wretchedly, “it’s a dead giveaway.”
    Thunder rolled across Unseen University. Rain poured over its roofs and gurgled out of its gargoyles, although one or two of the more cunning ones had scuttled off to shelter among the maze of tiles.
    Far below, in the Great Hall, the eight most powerful wizards on the Discworld gathered at the angles of a ceremonial octogram. Actually they probably weren’t the most powerful, if the truth were known, but they certainly had great powers of survival which, in the highly competitive world of magic, was pretty much the same thing. Behind every wizard of the eighth rank were half a dozen seventh rank wizards trying to bump him off, and senior wizards had to develop an inquiring attitude to, for example, scorpions in their bed. An ancient proverb summed it up: When a wizard is tired of looking for broken glass in his dinner, it ran, he is tired of life.
    The oldest wizard, Greyhald Spold of the Ancient and Truly Original Sages of the Unbroken Circle, leaned heavily on his carven staff and spake thusly:
    “Get on with it, Weatherwax, my feet are giving me gyp.”
    Galder, who had merely paused for effect, glared at him.
    “Very well, then, I will be brief—”
    “Jolly good.”
    “We all sought guidance as to the events of this morning. Can anyone among us say he received it?”
    The wizards looked sidelong at one another. Nowhere outside a trades union conference fraternal benefit night can so much mutual distrust and suspicion be found as among a gathering of senior enchanters. But the plain fact was that the day had gone very badly. Normally informative demons, summoned abruptly from the Dungeon Dimensions, had looked sheepish and sidled away when questioned. Magic mirrors had cracked. Tarot cards had mysteriously become blank. Crystal balls had gone all cloudy. Even tea leaves, normally scorned by wizards as frivolous and unworthy of contemplation, had clustered together at the bottom of cups and refused to move.
    In short, the assembled wizards were at a loss. There was a general murmur of agreement.
    “And therefore I propose that we perform the Rite of AshkEnte,” said Galder dramatically.
    He had to admit that he had hoped for a better response,