“Hokay,” said Hrun. “If it gives you any pleasure.” He reached into his pouch and withdrew a handful of loose change plundered from a dozen realms. With some care he selected a Zchloty leaden quarter-iotum and balanced it on a purple thumbnail.
“You call,” he said. “Heads or—” he inspected the obverse with an air of intense concentration, “some sort of a fish with legs.”
“When it’s in the air,” said Rincewind. Hrun grinned and flicked his thumb.
The iotum rose, spinning.
“Edge,” said Rincewind, without looking at it.
Magic never dies. It merely fades away.
Nowhere was this more evident on the wide blue expanse of the Discworld than in those areas that had been the scene of the great battles of the Mage Wars, which had happened very shortly after Creation. In those days magic in its raw state had been widely available, and had been eagerly utilized by the First Men in their war against the gods.
The precise origins of the Mage Wars have been lost in the fogs of Time, but Disc philosophers agree that the First Men, shortly after their creation, understandably lost their temper. And great and pyrotechnic were the battles that followed—the sun wheeled across the sky, the seas boiled, weird storms ravaged the land, small white pigeons mysteriously appeared in people’s clothing, and the very stability of the Disc (carried as it was through space on the backs of four giant turtle-riding elephants) was threatened. This resulted in stern action by the Old High Ones, to whom even the gods themselves are answerable. The gods were banished to high places, men were re-created a good deal smaller, and much of the old wild magic was sucked out of the earth.
That did not solve the problem of those places on the Disc which, during the wars, had suffered a direct hit by a spell. The magic faded away—slowly, over the millennia, releasing as it decayed myriads of sub-astral particles that severely distorted the reality around it…
Rincewind, Twoflower and Hrun stared at the coin.
“Edge it is,” said Hrun. “Well, you’re a wizard. So what?”
“I don’t do—that sort of spell.”
“You mean you can’t.”
Rincewind ignored this, because it was true. “Try it again,” he suggested.
Hrun pulled out a fistful of coins.
The first two landed in the usual manner. So did the fourth. The third landed on its edge and balanced there. The fifth turned into a small yellow caterpillar and crawled away. The sixth, upon reaching its zenith, vanished with a sharp “spang!” A moment later there was a small thunder clap.
“Hey, that one was silver!” exclaimed Hrun, rising to his feet and staring upward. “Bring it back!”
“I don’t know where it’s gone,” said Rincewind wearily. “It’s probably still accelerating. The ones I tried this morning didn’t come down, anyway.”
Hrun was still staring into the sky.
“What?” said Twoflower.
Rincewind sighed. He had been dreading this.
“We’ve strayed into a zone with a high magical index,” he said. “Don’t ask me how. Once upon a time a really powerful magic field must have been generated here, and we’re feeling the aftereffects.”
“Precisely,” said a passing bush.
Hrun’s head jerked down.
“You mean this is one of those places?” he asked. “Let’s get out of here!”
“Right,” agreed Rincewind. “If we retrace our steps we might make it. We can stop every mile or so and toss a coin.”
He stood up urgently and started stuffing things into his saddlebags.
“What?” said Twoflower.
Rincewind stopped. “Look,” he snapped. “Just don’t argue. Come on.”
“It looks all right,” said Twoflower. “Just a bit underpopulated, that’s all…”
“Yes,” said Rincewind. “Odd, isn’t it? Come on!”
There was a noise high above them, like a strip of leather being slapped on a wet rock. Something glassy and indistinct passed over Rincewind’s head, throwing up a cloud of ashes from the fire, and the pig carcass took off from the spit and rocketed into the sky.
It banked to avoid a clump of trees, righted itself, roared around in a tight circle, and headed hubward leaving a trail of hot pork-fat droplets.
“What are they doing now?” asked the old man.
The young woman glanced at the scrying glass.
“Heading rimward at speed,” she reported. “By the way—they’ve still got that box on legs.”
The old man chuckled, an oddly disturbing sound in the dark and dusty crypt. “Sapient pearwood,” he said. “Remarkable. Yes, I think we will have that. Please see to it, my dear—before they go beyond your power, perhaps?”
“Silence! Or—”
“Or what, Liessa?” said the old man (in this dim light there was something odd about the way he was slumped in the stone chair). “You killed me once already, remember?”