The Loremaster, watching from the pillar he had prudently slid behind in the mad scramble happened at that moment to catch the cross dimensional echoes of a theory being at the same instant hatched in the mind of an early psychiatrist in an adjacent universe, possibly because the dimension-leak was flowing both ways, and for a moment the psychiatrist saw the girl on the dragon. The loremaster smiled.
“Want to bet that she won’t catch him?” said Greicha, in a voice of worms and sepulchres, right by his ear.
The loremaster shut his eyes and swallowed hard.
“I thought that my Lord would now be residing fully in the Dread Land,” he managed.
“I am a wizard,” said Greicha. “Death Himself must claim a wizard. And, aha, He doesn’t appear to be in the neighbourhood…”
SHAL WE GO? asked Death.
He was on a white horse, a horse of flesh and blood but red of eye and fiery of nostril, and He stretched out a bony hand and took Greicha’s soul out of the air and rolled it up until it was a point of painful light, and then He swallowed it.
Then He clapped spurs to his steed and it sprang into the air, sparks corruscating from its hooves.
“Lord Greicha!” whispered the old Loremaster, as the universe flickered around him.
“That was a mean trick,” came the wizard’s voice, a mere speck of sound disappearing into the infinite black dimensions.
“My Lord… what is Death like?” called the old man tremulously.
“When I have investigated it fully, I will let you know,” came the faintest of modulations on the breeze.
“Yes,” murmured the loremaster. A thought struck him. “During daylight, please,” he added.
“You clowns,” screamed Hrun, from his perch on Ninereed’s foreclaws.
“What did he say?” roared Rincewind, as the dragon ripped its way through the air in the race for the heights.
“Didn’t hear.” bellowed Twoflower, his voice torn away by the gale. As the dragon banked slightly he looked down at the little toy spinning top that was the mighty Wyrmberg and saw the swarm of creatures rising in pursuit. Ninereed’s wings pounded and flicked the air away contemptuously. Thinner air, too. Twoflower’s ear popped for the third time.
Ahead of the swarm, he noticed, was a golden dragon. Someone on it, too.
“Hey, are you all right?” said Rincewind urgently.
He had to drink in several lungfuls of the strangely distilled air in order to get the words out.
“I could have been a lord, and you clowns had to go and-” Hrun gasped. as the chill thin air drew the life even out of his mighty chest
“Wass happnin to the air?” muttered Rincewind. Blue lights appeared in front of his eyes.
“Unk,” said Twoflower, and passed out.
The dragon vanished.
For a few seconds the three men continued upwards. Twoflower and the wizard presenting an odd picture as they sat one in front of the other with their legs astride something that wasn’t there, Then what passed for gravity on the Disc recovered from the surprise, and claimed them.
At that moment Liessa’s dragon flashed by, and Hrun landed heavily across its neck. Liassa leaned over and kissed him.
This detail was lost to Rincewind as he dropped away, with his arms still clasped around Twoflower’s waist. The disc was a little round map pinned against the sky. It didn’t appear to be moving, but Rincewind knew that it was. The whole world was coming towards him like a giant custard pie.
“Wake up!” he shouted, above the roar of the wind. “Dragons! Think of dragons!”
There was a flurry of wings as they plummeted through the host of pursuing creatures, which fell away and up. Dragons screamed and wheeled across the sky.
No answer came from Twoflower. Rincewind’s robe whipped around him, but he did not wake. Dragons, thought Rincewind in a panic. He tried to concentrate his mind, tried to envisage a really lifelike dragon. If he can do it, he thought, then so can I. But nothing happened.
The disc was bigger now, a cloud-swirled circle rising gently underneath them.