The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

dead.’
    *
    Greyhald Spold, currently the oldest wizard on the Disc and determined to keep it that way, has been very busy. The servants have been dismissed. The doorways have been sealed with a paste made from powdered mayflies, and protective octograms have been drawn on the windows. Rare and rather smelly oils have been poured in complex patterns on the floor; in the very centre of the room is the eightfold octogram of Withholding, surrounded by red and green candles. And in the centre of that is a box, lined with red silk and yet more protective amulets. Because Greyhald Spold knows that Death is looking for him, and has spent many years designing an impregnable hiding place.
    He has just set the complicated clockwork of the lock and shut the lid, lying back in the knowledge that here at last is the perfect defence against the most ultimate of all his enemies, although as yet he has not considered the important part that airholes must play in an enterprise of this kind.
    And right beside him, very close to his ear, a voice has just said: D ARK IN HERE, ISN’T IT ?
    *
    Seven league boots are a tricksy form of magic at best, and the utmost caution must be taken in using a means of transport which, when all is said and done, relies for its effectiveness on trying to put one foot twenty-one miles in front of the other.

    Cohen had heard of fighting fair, and had long ago decided he wanted no part of it.

    Twoflower didn’t just look at the world through rose-tinted spectacles, Rincewind knew – he looked at it through a rose-tinted brain, too, and heard it through rose-tinted ears.
    *
    There was no real point in trying to understand anything Twoflower said, and all anyone could do was run alongside the conversation and hope to jump on as it turned a corner.

    ‘His name’s Twoflower. He isn’t from these parts.’
    ‘Doeshn’t look like it. Friend of yoursh?’
    ‘We’ve got this sort of hate-hate relationship, yes.’

    That’s old Twoflower, Rincewind thought. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate beauty, he just appreciates it in his own way. I mean, if a poet sees a daffodil he stares at it and writes a long poem about it, but Twoflower wanders off to find a book on botany. And treads on it.
    *
    Then they all heard it; a tiny distant crunching, like something moving very quickly over the snow crust.
    … It was louder now, a crisp rhythm like someone eating celery very fast.
    *
    Rincewind was to magic what a bicycle is to a bumblebee.
    *
    Trolls were not unknown in Ankh-Morpork, of course, where they often got employment as bodyguards. They tended to be a bit expensive to keep until they learned about doors and didn’t simply leave the house by walking aimlessly through the nearest wall.
    *
    There were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn’t take you seriously until you’d actually killed them, by which time it didn’t really matter anyway.
    *
    ‘It’s the star, friend,’ the man said. ‘Haven’t you seen it in the sky?’
    ‘We couldn’t help noticing it, yes.’
    ‘They say that it’ll hit us on Hogswatchnight and the seas will boil and the countries of the Disc will be broken and kings will be brought down and the cities will be as lakes of glass,’ said the man. ‘I’m off to the mountains.’
    ‘That’ll help, will it?’ said Rincewind.
    ‘No, but the view will be better.’
    *
    Ankh-Morpork!
    Pearl of cities!
    This is not a completely accurate description, of course - it was not round and shiny - but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc.
    *
    There have been bigger cities. There have been richer cities. There have certainly been prettier cities. But no city in the multiverse could rival Ankh-Morpork for its smell.
    *
    Ankh-Morpork, largest city in the lands around the Circle Sea, slept.
    That statement is not really true.
    On the one hand, those parts of the city which normally concerned themselves with, for example, selling vegetables, shoeing horses, carving exquisite small jade ornaments, changing money and making tables, on the whole, slept. Unless they had insomnia. Or had got up in the night as it might be, to go to the lavatory. On the other hand, many of the less law-abiding citizens were wide awake and, for instance, climbing through windows that didn’t belong to them, slitting