"What you mean love and guidance?" said Rincewind.

I was thinking of a bloody good wossname, thrashing," said the parrot.

Rincewind clutched at his aching head. If this was what demons usually had to go through, no wonder they were always so annoyed.

"Polly want a biscuit," said the parrot vaguely, in much the same way as a human would say "Er" or "As I was saying", and went on, "His granddad was keen on it. That and his pigeons."

"Pigeons," said Rincewind

"Not that he was particularly successful. It was all a bit trial and wossname."

"I thought you said great big scaly -

"Oh, yes. But that wasn't what he was after. He was trying to conjure up a succubus." It should be impossible to leer when all you've got is a beak, but the parrot managed it. "That's a female demon what comes in the night and makes mad passionate wossn -"

"I've heard of them," said Rincewind. "Bloody dangerous things."

The parrot put its head on one side. "It never worked. All he ever got was a neuralger."

"What's that?"

"It's a demon that comes and has a headache at you."

Demons have existed on the Discworld for at least as long as the gods, who in many ways they closely resemble. The difference is basically the same as that between terrorists and freedom fighters.

Most of the demons occupy a spacious dimension close to reality, traditionally decorated in shades of flame and maintained at roasting point. This isn't actually necessary, but if there is one thing that your average demon is, it is a traditionalist.

In the centre of the inferno, rising majestically from a lake of lava substitute and with unparalleled views of the Eight Circles, lies the city of Pandemonium.5 At the moment, it was living up to its name.

Astfgl, the new King of the Demons, was furious. Not simply because the air-conditioning had broken down again, not because he felt surrounded by idiots and plotters on every side, and not even because no-one could pronounce his name properly yet, but also because he had just been given bad news. The demon who had been chosen by lottery to deliver it cowered in front of his throne with its tail between its legs. It was immortally afraid that something wonderful was soon to happen to it.

"It did what?" said Astfgl.

"It, er, it opened, o lord. The circle in Pseudopolis."

"Ah. The clever boy. We have great hopes of him."

"Er. Then it closed again, lord." The demon shut its eyes.

"And who went through?"

"Er." The demon looked around at its colleagues, clustered at the far end of the mile-long throne room.

"I said, and who went through?"

"In point of fact, o lord -"

"Yes?"

"We don't know. Someone."

"I gave orders, did I not, that when the boy succeeded the Duke Vassenego was to materialise unto him, and offer him forbidden pleasures and dark delights to bend him to Our will?"

The King growled. The problem with being evil, he'd been forced to admit, was that demons were not great innovatory thinkers and really needed the spice of human ingenuity. And he'd really been looking forward to Eric Thursley, whose brand of super-intelligent gormlessness was a rare delight. Hell heeded horribly-bright, self-centred people like Eric. They were much better at being nasty than demons could ever manage.

"Indeed, lord," said the demon, "And the duke has been awaiting the summons there for years, shunning all other temptations, steadfastly and patiently studying the world of men -"

"So where was he?"

"Er. Call of supernatural, lord," the demon gabbled. "Hadn't turned his back for two minutes when -"

"And someone went through?"

"We're trying to find out -"

Lord Astfgl's patience, which in any case had the tensile strength of putty, snapped at this point. That just about summed it up. He had the kind of subjects who used the words "find out" when they meant "ascertain". Damnation was too good for them.

"Get out," he whispered. "And I shall see to it that you get a commendation for this -"

"O master, I plead -"

"Get out!"

The King stamped along the glowing corridors to his private apartments.

His predecessors had favoured shaggy hind legs and hoofs. Lord Astfgl had rejected all that sort of thing out of hand. He held that no-one would ever get taken seriously by those stuck-up bastards in Dunmanifestin when their rear end kept ruminating all the time, and so he favoured a red silk cloak, crimson tights, a cowl with two rather sophisticated little horns on it, and a trident. The end kept dropping off the trident but, he felt, it was the sort of get-up in which a demon king could be taken seriously...

In the coolness of his chambers - oh, by all the gods or, rather, not by all the gods, it had taken him ages to get them up to some sort of civilised standard, his predecessors had been quite content just to lounge around and tempt people, they had never heard of executive stress - he gently lifted the cover off the Mirror of Souls and watched it flicker into life.

Its cool black surface was surrounded by an ornate frame, from which curls of greasy smoke constantly unfolded and drifted.

Your wish, master? it said.

"Show me the events around the Pseudopolis gate over the last hour," said the King, and settled down to watch.

After a while he went and looked up the name "Rincewind" in the filing cabinet he had recently had installed, in place of the distressingly-bound old ledgers that had been there; the system still needed ironing out, though, because the bewildered demons filed everything under P for People.

Then he sat watching the flickering pictures and absent-mindedly playing with the stuff on his desk, to soothe his nerves.

He had any amount of desk things; notepads with magnets for paperclips, handy devices for holding pens and those tiny jotters that always came in handy, incredibly funny statuettes with slogans like "You're the Boss!", and little chromium balls and spirals operated by a sort of ersatz and short-lived perpetual motion. No-one looking at that desk could have any doubt that they were, in cold fact, truly damned.

"I see," said Lord Astfgl, setting a selection of shiny balls swinging with one tap of a talon.

He couldn't remember any demon called Rincewind. On the other hand, there were millions of the wretched things, swarming all over the place with no sense of order, and he hadn't yet had time to carry out a proper census and retire the unnecessary ones. This one seemed to have a fewer appendages and more vowels in his name than most. But it had to be a demon.

Vassenego was a proud old fool, one of the elder demons who smiled and despised him and not-quite-obeyed him, just because the King'd worded hard over the millennia to get humble beginnings to where he was today. He wouldn't put it past the old devil to do this on purpose, just to spite him.

Well, he'd have to see about that later. Send him a memo or something. Too late to do anything about it now. He'd have to take a personal interest. Eric Thursley was too good a prospect to pass up. Getting Eric Thursley would really annoy the gods.

God! How he hated the gods! He hated the gods even more than he hated the old guard like Vassenego, even more than he hated humans. He'd thrown a little soirée'e last week, he'd put a lot of thought into it, he wanted to show that he was prepared to let bygones be bygones, work with them for a new, better and more efficient universe. He'd called it a "Getting to know you!" party. There'd been sausages on sticks and every thing, he'd done his best to make it nice.

They hadn't even bothered to answer the invitations. And he'd made a special point of putting RSVP on them.

"Demon?"

Eric peered around the door.

"What shape are you?" he said.