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‘It gives me the willies,’ said Gaspode.

Victor stared. Maybe he’d always successfully avoided being awarded the pointy hat and big staff, but he had acquired wizard instincts. He had a sudden vision of a city under the sea, with octopuses curling stealthily through the drowned doorways and lobsters watching the streets.

‘Fate don’t like it when people take up more space than they ought to. Everyone knows that.’

I’m going to be the most famous person in the whole world, thought Victor. That’s what she said. He shook his head.

‘No,’ he said aloud. ‘She just likes posters. It’s just ordinary vanity.’

It didn’t sound believable, even to him. The room fairly hummed with …

… what? He hadn’t felt anything like it before. Power of some sort, certainly. Something that was brushing tantalizingly against his senses. Not exactly magic. At least, not the kind he was used to. But something that seemed similar while not being the same, like sugar compared with salt; the same shape and the same colour, but …

Ambition wasn’t magical. Powerful, yes, but not magical … surely?

Magic wasn’t difficult. That was the big secret that the whole baroque edifice of wizardry had been set up to conceal. Anyone with a bit of intelligence and enough perseverance could do magic, which was why the wizards cloaked it with rituals and the whole pointy-hat business.

The trick was to do magic and get away with it.

Because it was as if the human race was a field of corn and magic helped the users grow just that bit taller, so that they stood out. That attracted the attention of the gods and — Victor hesitated — other Things outside this world. People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end.

All over the entire room, sometimes.

He pictured Ginger, back on the beach. I want to be the most famous person in the whole world. Perhaps that was something new, come to think of it. Not ambition for gold, or power, or land or all the things that were familiar parts of the human world. Just ambition to be yourself, as big as possible. Not ambition for, but to be.

He shook his head. He was just in some room in some cheap building in some town that was about as real as, as, as, well, as the thickness of a click. It wasn’t the place to have thoughts like this.

The important thing was to remember that Holy Wood wasn’t a real place at all.

He stared at the posters again. You just get one chance, she said. You live for maybe seventy years, and if you’re lucky you get one chance. Think of all the natural skiers who are born in deserts. Think of all the genius blacksmiths who were born hundreds of years before anyone invented the horse. All the skills that are never used. All the wasted chances.

How lucky for me, he thought gloomily, that I happen to be alive at this time.

Ginger turned over in her sleep. At least her breathing was more regular now.

‘Come on,’ said Gaspode. ‘It’s not right, you being alone in a lady’s boodwah.’

‘I’m not alone,’ Victor said. ‘She’s with me.’

‘That’s the point,’ said Gaspode.

‘Woof,’ Laddie added, loyally.

‘You know,’ said Victor, following the dogs down the stairs, ‘I’m beginning to feel there’s something wrong here. There’s something going on and I don’t know what it is. Why was she trying to get into the hill?’

‘Prob’ly in league with dread Powers,’ said Gaspode.

‘The city and the hill and the old book and everything,’ said Victor, ignoring this. ‘It all makes sense if only I knew what was connecting it.’

He stepped out into the early evening, into the lights and noise of Holy Wood.

‘Tomorrow we’ll go up there in the daylight and sort this out once and for all,’ he said.

‘No, we won’t,’ said Gaspode. ‘The reason being, tomorrow we’re goin’ to Ankh-Morpork, remember?’

‘We?’ said Victor. ‘Ginger and I are going. I didn’t know about you.’

‘Laddie goin’, too,’ said Gaspode. ‘I—’

‘Good boy Laddie!’

‘Yeah, yeah. I heard the trainers say. So I’ve got to go with him to see he don’t get into any trouble, style of fing.’

Victor yawned. ‘Well, I’m going to go to bed. We’ll probably have to start early.’

Gaspode looked innocently up and down the alley. Somewhere a door opened and there was the sound of drunken laughter.

‘I fought I might have a bit of a stroll before turnin’ in,’ he said. ‘Show Laddie—’

‘Laddie good boy!’

‘—the sights and that.’

Victor looked doubtful.

‘Don’t keep him out too late,’ he said. ‘People will worry.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Gaspode. ‘G’night.’

He sat and watched Victor wander off.

‘Huh,’ he said, under his dreadful breath. ‘Catch anyone worryin’ about me.’ He glared up at Laddie, who sprang to obedient attention.

‘Right, young fella-me-pup,’ he said. ‘’S time you got educated. Lesson One, Glomming Free Drinks in Bars. It’s lucky for you,’ he added, ‘that you met me.’

Two canine shapes staggered uncertainly up the midnight street.