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: DARK IN HERE, ISN’T IT?

It began to snow. The barleysugar windows of the cottage showed bright and cheerful against the blackness.

At one side of the clearing three tiny red points of light-glowed momentarily and there was the sound of a chesty cough, abruptly silenced.

‘Shut up!’ hissed a third rank wizard. They’ll hear us!’

‘Who will? We gave the lads from the Brotherhood of the Hoodwink the slip in the swamp, and those idiots from the Venerable Council of Seers went off the wrong way anyway.’

‘Yeah,’ said the most junior wizard, ‘but who keeps talking to us? They say this is a magic wood, it’s full of goblins and wolves and —’

‘Trees,’ said a voice out of the darkness, high above. It possessed what can only be described as timbre.

‘Yeah,’ said the youngest wizard. He sucked on his dogend, and shivered.

The leader of the party peered over the rock and watched the cottage.

‘Right then,’ he said, knocking out his pipe on the heel of his seven league boot, who squeaked in protest. ‘We rush in, we grab them, we’re away. Okay?’

‘You sure it’s just people?’ said the youngest wizard, nervously.

‘Of course I’m sure,’ snarled the leader. ‘What do you expect, three bears?’

‘There could be monsters. This is the sort of wood that 45 has monsters.’

‘And trees,’ said a friendly voice from the branches. ‘Yeah,’ said the leader, cautiously.

Rincewind looked carefully at the bed. It was quite a nice little bed, in a sort of hard toffee inlaid with caramel, but he’d rather eat it than sleep in it and it looked as though someone already had.

‘Someone’s been eating my bed,’ he said.

‘I like toffee,’ said Twoflower defensively.

‘If you don’t watch out the fairy will come and take all your teeth away,’ said Rincewind.

‘No, that’s elves,’ said Swires from the dressing table. ‘Elves do that. Toenails, too. Very touchy at times, elves can be.’

Twoflower sat down heavily on his bed.

‘You’ve got it wrong,’ he said. ‘Elves are noble and beautiful and wise and fair; I’m sure I read that somewhere.’

Swires and Rincewind’s kneecap exchanged glances.

‘I think you must be thinking about different elves,’ the gnome said slowly. ‘We’ve just got the other sort around here. Not that you could call them quick-tempered,’ he added hastily. ‘Not if you didn’t want to take your teeth home in your hat, anyway.’

There was the tiny, distinctive sound of a nougat door opening. At the same time, from the other side of the cottage, came the faintest of tinkles, like a rock smashing a barley sugar window as delicately as possible.

‘What was that?’ said Twoflower.

‘Which one?’ said Rincewind.

There was the clonk of a heavy branch banging against the window sill. With a cry of ‘Elves!’ Swires scuttled across the floor to a mousehole and vanished.

‘What shall we do?’ said Twoflower.

‘Panic?’ said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people faced with hungry sabre-toothed tigers could be divided very simply into those who panicked and those who stood there saying ‘What a magnificent brute!’ and ‘Here, pussy.’

‘There’s a cupboard,’ said Twoflower, pointing to a narrow door that was squeezed between the wall and the chimneybreast. They scrambled into sweet, musty darkness.

There was the creak of a chocolate floorboard outside. Someone said ‘I heard voices.’

Someone else said, ‘Yeah, downstairs. I think it’s the Hood winkers.’

‘I thought you said we’d given them the slip!’

‘Hey, you two, you can eat this place! Here, look you can —’

‘Shut up!’

There was a lot more creaking, and a muffled scream from downstairs where a Venerable Seer, creeping carefully through the darkness from the broken window, had trodden on the fingers of a Hoodwinker who was hiding under the table. There was the sudden zip and zing of magic.

‘Bugger!’said a voice outside. They’ve got him! Let’s go!’

There was more creaking, and then silence. After a while Twoflower said, ‘Rincewind, I think there’s a broomstick in this cupboard.’

Well, what’s so unusual about that?’

This one’s got handlebars.’

There was a piercing shriek from below. In the darkness a wizard had tried to open the Luggage’s lid. A crash from the scullery indicated the sudden arrival of a party of Illuminated Mages of the Unbroken Circle.

‘What do you think they’re after?’ whispered Twoflower.

‘I don’t know, but I think it might be a good idea not to find out,’ said Rincewind thoughtfully.

‘You could be right.’

Rincewind pushed open the door gingerly. The room was empty. He tiptoed across to the window, and looked own into the upturned faces of three Brothers of the Order of Midnight.

‘That’s him!’

He drew back hurriedly and rushed for the stairs.

The scene below was indescribable but since that statement would earn the death penalty in the reign of Olaf Quimby II the attempt better be made. Firstly, most of the struggling wizards were trying to illuminate the scene by various flames, fireballs and magical glows, so the overall lighting gave the impression of a disco in a strobelight factory; each man was trying to find a position from which he could see the rest of the room without being attacked himself, and absolutely everyone was trying to keep out of the way of the Luggage, which had two Venerable Seers pinned in a corner and was snapping its lid at anyone who approached. But one wizard did happen to look up.

‘It’s him!’

Rincewind jerked back, and something bumped into him. He looked around hurriedly, and stared when he saw Twoflower sitting on the broomstick—which was floating in mid-air.

‘The witch must have left it behind!’ said Twoflower. ‘A genuine magic broomstick!’

Rincewind hesitated. Octarine sparks were spitting off the broomstick’s bristles and he hated heights almost more than anything else, but what he really hated more than anything at all was a dozen very angry and bad-tempered wizards rushing up the stairs towards him, and this was happening.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘but I’ll drive.’

He lashed out with a boot at a wizard who was halfway through a Spell of Binding and jumped onto the broomstick, which bobbed down the stairwell and then turned upside down so that Rincewind was horribly eye to eye with a Brother of Midnight.

He yelped and gave the handlebars a convulsive twist.

Several things happened at once. The broomstick shot orward and broke through the wall in a shower of crumbs: the Luggage surged forward and bit the Brother in the leg: and with a strange whistling sound an arrow appeared from nowhere, missed Rincewind by inches, and struck the Luggage’s lid with a very solid thud. The Luggage vanished.

In a little village deep in the forest an ancient shaman threw a few more twigs on his fire and stared through the smoke at his shamefaced apprentice.

‘A box with legs on?’ he said.

‘Yes, master. It just appeared out of the sky and looked at me,’ said the apprentice.

‘It had eyes then, this box?’

‘N—,’ began the apprentice and stopped, puzzled. The old man frowned.

‘Many have seen Topaxci, God of the Red Mushroom, and they earn the name of shaman,’ he said. ‘Some have seen Skelde, spirit of the smoke, and they are called sorcerers. A few have been privileged to see Umcherrel, the soul of the forest, and they are known as spirit masters. But none have seen a box with hundreds of legs that looked at them without eyes, and they are known as idio—’