Free Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett Page A

winced.
    “Locked,” she said eventually. “Where is the key, fat one?”
    “It—it hasn’t got a key,” said Twoflower.
    “There is a keyhole,” she pointed out.
    “Well, yes, but if it wants to stay locked, it stays locked,” said Twoflower uncomfortably.
    Herrena was aware of Gancia’s grin. She snarled.
    “I want it open,” she said. “Gancia, see to it.” She strode back to the fire.
    Gancia drew a long thin knife and leaned down close to Twoflower’s face.
    “She wants it open,” he said. He looked up at the other man and grinned.
    “She wants it open, Weems.”
    “Yah.”
    Gancia waved the knife slowly in front of Twoflower’s face.
    “Look,” said Twoflower patiently, “I don’t think you understand. No one can open the Luggage if it’s feeling in a locked mood.”
    “Oh yes, I forgot,” said Gancia thoughtfully. “Of course, it’s a magic box, isn’t that right? With little legs, they say. I say, Weems, any legs your side? No?”
    He held his knife to Twoflower’s throat.
    “I’m really upset about that,” he said. “So’s Weems. He doesn’t say much but what he does is, he tears bits off people. So open—the—box!”
    He turned and planted a kick on the side of the box, leaving a nasty gash in the wood.
    There was a tiny little click.
    Gancia grinned. The lid swung up slowly, ponderously. The distant firelight gleamed off gold—lots of gold, in plate, chain, and coin, heavy and glistening in the flickering shadows.
    “All right,” said Gancia softly.
    He looked back at the unheeding men around the fire, who seemed to be shouting at someone outside the cave. Then he looked speculatively at Weems. His lipsmoved soundlessly with the unaccustomed effort of mental arithmetic.
    He looked down at his knife.
    Then the floor moved.
     
    “I heard someone,” said one of the men. “Down there. Among the—uh—rocks.”
    Rincewind’s voice floated up out of the darkness.
    “I say,” he said.
    “Well?” said Herrena.
    “You’re in great danger!” shouted Rincewind. “You must put the fire out!”
    “No, no,” said Herrena. “You’ve got it wrong, you’re in great danger. And the fire stays.”
    “There’s this big old troll—”
    “Everyone knows trolls keep away from fire,” said Herrena. She nodded. A couple of men drew their swords and slipped out into the darkness.
    “Absolutely true!” shouted Rincewind desperately. “Only this specific troll can’t, you see.”
    “Can’t?” Herrena hesitated. Something of the terror in Rincewind’s voice hit her.
    “Yes, because, you see, you’ve lit it on his tongue.”
    Then the floor moved.
     
    Old Grandad awoke very slowly from his centuries-old slumber. He nearly didn’t awake at all, in fact a few decades later none of this could have happened. When a troll gets old and starts to think seriously about the universe it normally finds a quiet spot and gets down to some hard philosophizing, and after a while starts to forget about its extremities. It begins to crystallize around the edges until nothing remains except a tinyflicker of life inside quite a large hill with some unusual rock strata.
    Old Grandad hadn’t quite got that far. He awoke from considering quite a promising line of inquiry about the meaning of truth and found a hot ashy taste in what, after a certain amount of thought, he remembered as being his mouth.
    He began to get angry. Commands skittered along neural pathways of impure silicon. Deep within his silicaceous body stone slipped smoothly along special fracture lines. Trees toppled, turf split, as fingers the size of ships unfolded and gripped the ground. Two enormous rockslides high on his cliff face marked the opening of eyes like great crusted opals.
    Rincewind couldn’t see all this, of course, since his own eyes were daylight issue only, but he did see the whole dark landscape shake itself slowly and then begin to rise impossibly against the stars.
     
    The sun rose.
    However, the