Juan Gris Fantomas Pipe and Newspaper

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After a minute or two Ponder got up, very carefully. His hat was simply a collection of holes held together by thread. A piece had been taken out of one of his ears.
‘I only . It was loaded down with wizards, all shouting at the tops of their voices. Occasionally one of them would lose his grip and have to run behind until he could get up enough speed to leap on again.
Three of them hadn’t made it. That is, one of them had made it sufficiently to get a grip on the trailing leather cover, and the other two had made it just enough wanted a drink,’ he said, muzzily. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ The Librarian crouched on the dome of the Library, watching the crowds scurrying through the streets as the monstrous figure lurched nearer.He was slightly surprised to see it followed by some sort of spectral horse whose hooves made no sound on the cobbles.And that was followed by a three‑wheeled bathchair that took the corner on only two of them, sparks streaming away behind it

Franz Marc Dog Lying in the Snow

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supposed to know, am I?’
Victor inched forward, his shadow dancing behind him.
After a hundred yards or so the passageway opened out in what had perhaps once been a natural cave. The light was coming from an arch high up at one end, but it was bright enough to reveal every detail.
It was bigger even than the Great Hall at the University, and must once have been even more impressive. The light gleamed Victor reached out gingerly and prodded a thick red rope, slung between gold‑encrusted posts. It disintegrated.
The cracked stairway carried on up to the distant lighted arch. They climbed it, scrambling over heaps of crumbling seaweed and driftwood flung up by some past high tide.
The arch opened out into another vast cavern, like an amphitheatreoff baroque gold ornamentation, and on the stalactites that ribbed the roof. Stairs wide enough for a regiment rose from a wide shadowy hole in the floor; a regular thud and boom and a smell of salt said that the sea had found an entrance somewhere below. The air was clammy.‘Some kind of a temple?’ muttered Victor.Gaspode sniffed at a dark red drapery hung on one side of the entrance. At his touch it collapsed into a mess of slime.‘Yuk,’ he said. ‘The whole place is mouldy!’ Something many­-legged scuttled hastily across the floor and dropped into the stairwell.

Bartolome Esteban Murillo Annunciation

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know, you really are a son of a bitch,’ said Victor.
‘Proud of it,’ said Gaspode, indistinctly. He bolted the last of the steak. ‘What shall we do now?’
‘I’m supposed to get an early night. We’re starting for Ankh very early tomorrow,’ said Victor doubtfully.
‘Still not made any progress with the book?’
‘No.’ Eventually the dog said, ‘It’s got all marks on it.’
Victor sighed. ‘That’s writing,’ he said.
Gaspode squinted. ‘What, all them little pictures?’
‘Early writing was like that. People drew little pictures to represent ideas.’
‘So . . . if there’s a lot of one picture, it means it’s an important idea?’ ‘Let me have a look, then.’ ‘Can you read?’ ‘Dunno. Never tried.’ Victor looked around them. No-one was paying him any attention. They never did. Once the handles stopped turning, no-one bothered about performers; it was like being temporarily invisible. He sat down on a pile of lumber, opened the book randomly at an early page, and held it out in front of Gaspode’s critical stare.
‘What? Well, yes. I suppose so.’

Peter Paul Rubens Cimon and Pero

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making octo-cellulose, disappeared even faster. Not that it made a lot of difference. Barely would the smoke have cleared before someone was hammering again.
And Holy Wood grew by fission. All you needed was a steadyhanded, non-smoking lad who could read alchemical a bun.
Now that Dibbler was in fact engaged elsewhere, others had arisen to fulfil that function.
One such was Nodar Borgle the Klatchian, whose huge echoing shed wasn’t so much a restaurant as a feeding factory. Great steaming tureens occupied one end. The rest of it was tables, and around the tables signs, a handleman, a sackful of demons and lots of sunshine. Oh, and some people. But there were plenty of those. If you couldn’t breed demons or mix chemicals or turn a handle rhythmically, you could always hold horses or wait on tables and look interesting while you hoped. Or, if all else failed, hammer nails. Building after rickety building skirted the ancient hill, their thin planks already curling and bleaching in the pitiless sun, but there was already a pressing need for more. Because Holy Wood was calling. More people arrived every day. They didn’t come to be ostlers, or tavern wenches, or short-order carpenters. They came to make movies. And they didn’t know why. As Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler knew in his heart, wherever two or more people are gathered together, someone will be trying to sell them a suspicious sausage in

Paul Gauguin Nave Nave Moe

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now it was now eight hours later.
A horribly overhung Ponder Stibbons looked guiltily at the empty desk beside him. It was unlike Victor to miss exams. He always said he enjoyed the challenge.
‘Get ready to completely in his nervousness, and then knocked it over. A small black flood rolled over his question paper.
Panic and shame washed over him nearly as thoroughly. He mopped the ink up with the hem of his robe, spreading it smoothly over the desk. His lucky dried frog had been washed away..
Hot with embarrassment, dripping black ink, he looked up in supplication at the presiding wizard and then cast his eyes imploringly at the empty desk beside him. turn over your papers,’ said the invigilator at the end of the hall. The sixty chests of sixty prospective wizards tightened with dark, unbearable tension. Ponder fumbled anxiously with his lucky pen. The wizard on the dais turned over the hourglass. ‘You may begin,’ he said. Several of the more smug students turned over their papers by snapping their fingers. Ponder hated them instantly. He reached for his lucky inkwell, missed

Joseph Mallord William Turner Portsmouth

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beside him and made a spirited attempt at biting his head off. The two submerged in a column of spray and a minor tidal wave which slopped over the balcony.
'Ah, but maybe the population declined because we stopped sacrificing virgins - of both sexes, of course,' said Koomi, hurriedly. 'Have you ever thought of it like that?' They thought of it. Then they thought of it again.
'I don't up at the sky. Few people can look directly at the sun, but under the venom of Dios's gaze the sun itself might have flinched and looked away. Dios's eyes sighted down that fearsome nose like twin range finders.
To the air in general he said: 'Coming here as if they own the place. How dare they?'
Koomi's mouth dropped open. He started to protest, and a kilowatt stare silenced him.think the king would approve-' said one of the priests cautiously. 'The king?' shouted Koomi. 'Where is the king? Show me the king! Ask Dios where the king is!' There was a thud by his feet. He looked down in horror as the gold mask bounced, and rolled towards the priests. They scattered hurriedly, like skittles. Dios strode out into the light of the disputed sun, his face grey with fury. 'The king is dead,' he said. Koomi swayed under the sheer pressure of anger, but rallied magnificently. 'Then his successor-' he began. 'There is no successor,' said Dios. He stared

Jack Vettriano Daytona Diner

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everywhere else and not the Valley, which led to the distressing thought that the sun would come up even if his father forgot about it, which was a very likely state of affairs. He'd never seen his father do anything much about making the sun rise, he had to admit. You'd expect at least a grunt of effort round about the dawn. His father never got up Craft and set fire to him, and the night after that Snoxall, who had the bed by the door and came from a little country out in the forests somewhere, painted himself green and asked for volunteers to have their intestines wound around a tree. On Thursday a small war broke out between those who worshipped the Mother Goddess in her aspect of the Moon and those who worshipped her in her aspect of a huge fat woman with enormous buttocks. After that the masters intervened and explained that religion, while a fine thing, could be taken too far.until after breakfast. The sun came up just the same. He took some time to get to sleep. The bed, whatever Chidder said, was too soft, the air was too cold and, worst of all, the sky outside the high windows was too dark. At home it would have been full of flarelight from the necropolis, its silent flames eerie but somehow familiar and comforting, as though the ancestors were watching over their valley. He didn't like the darkness. The following night in the dormitory one of the boys from further along the coast shyly tried to put the boy in the next bed inside a wickerwork cage he made in

Thomas Kinkade St. Nicholas Circle

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shouldn't of. It's – it's not right to,' he stuttered.
'Are you from around these parts, young man?' said Granny.
He dropped to his knees. 'Mad Wolf, ma'am,' he said. He stared back at the fallen captain. 'They'll kill me now!' he wailed.
'But you did what you thought was naked under the blanket. She rocked him vaguely and stared at nothing.
Nanny Ogg examined the two corpses with the air of one for whom laying-out holds no fears.
'Perhaps they were bandits,' said Magrat tremulously.
Nanny shook her head.. Being a ghost seemed to require considerably more mental effort than being alive; he'd managed quite well for forty years without having to think more than once or twice a day, and now he was doing it all me time.
'Ah,' he said. 'You're a ghost, too.'
'Well spotted.'

Zhang Xiaogang My Dream Little General

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he felt old. He watched Tomjon hobble off the stage, and for a fleeting instant knew what it was to be a fat old man, pickled in wine, fighting old wars that no-one cared about any more, hanging grimly on to the precipice of late middle-sit up in one of the carts and feverishly rewrite. He rearranged scenes, cut lines, added lines, introduced a clown, included another fight, and tuned up the special effects. It didn't seem to have any effect. The play was like some marvellous intricate painting, a feast of impressions close to, a mere blur from the distance.
When the inspirations were sleeting fast he even tried changing the style. In the morning the early risage for fear of dropping off into antiquity, but only with one hand, because with the other he was raising two fingers at Death. Of course, he'd known that when he wrote the part. But he hadn't known it.The same magic didn't seem to infuse the new play. They tried it a few times, just to see how it went. The audience watched attentively, and went home. They didn't even bother to throw anything. It wasn't that they thought it was bad. They didn't think it was anything.But all the right ingredients were there, weren't they? Tradition was full of people giving evil rulers a well-justified seeing to. Witches were always a draw. The apparition of Death was particularly good, with some lovely lines. Mix them all together . . . and they seemed to cancel out, become a mere humdrum way of filling the stage for a couple of hours.Late at night, when the cast was alseep, Hwel would ers

Henri Rousseau The Equatorial Jungle

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The Fool nodded. The power of words had sustained him through the hell of the Guild. Wizards and witches used words as if they were tools to get things done, but the Fool reckoned that words were things in their own right.
'Words can change the world,' he said.
Her eyes narrowed.
'So you have said before. I remain unconvinced. Strong men change the world,' she said. 'Strong men and their deeds. Words are just like marzipan on a cake. Of course you think words are important. You are weak, you have nothing else.'
'Your The Fool bobbed and capered and waved his hands in a conciliatory fashion.
'But, my love, we will run out of people,' murmured the duke.ladyship is wrong.'The duchess's fat hand drummed impatiently on the arm of her throne.'You had better,' she said, 'be able to substantiate that comment.''Lady, the duke wishes to chop down the forests, is this not so?''The trees talk about me,' whispered Lord Felmet. 'I hear them whisper when I go riding. They tell lies about me!'The duchess and the Fool exchanged glances.'But,' the Fool continued, 'this policy has met with fanatical opposition.''What?''People don't like it.'The duchess exploded. 'What does that matter?' she roared. 'We rule! They will do what we say or they will be pitilessly executed!'

Michelangelo Buonarroti The Creation of Adam hand

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'Why, sirrah,' he quavered, 'why may a caudled fillhorse be deemed the brother to a hiren candle in the night?'
The duke frowned. The Fool felt it better not to wait.
'Withal, because a candle may be greased, yet a fillhorse be without a fat argier,' he said and, because it was part of the joke, patted Lord Felmet lightly with his balloon on a stick and twanged his mandolin.
The duke's index finger tapped an abrupt tattoo on the arm of the throne.
'Yes?' he A year went past. The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had tried all passing at the same time, and it hadn't worked.
Tomjon sat under Hwel's rickety table, watching his father as he walked up and down between the lattys, waving one arm and talking. Vitoller always waved his arms when he spoke; if you tied his hands behind his back he would be dumb.said. 'And then what happened?''That, er, was by way of being the whole thing,' said the Fool, and added, 'My grandad thought it was one of his best.''I daresay he told it differently,' said the duke. He stood up. 'Summon my huntsmen. I think I shall ride out on the chase. And you can come too.''My lord, I cannot ride!'For the first time that morning Lord Felmet smiled.'Capital!' he said. 'We will give you a horse that can't be ridden. Ha. Ha.'He looked down at his bandages. And afterwards, he told himself, I'll get the armourer to send me up a file.

Andrea Mantegna Virgin and child with the Magdalen and St John the Baptist

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Binky glided over the campfires of the nomads and the silent marshes of the Tsort river. Ahead of them dark, familiar shapes began to reveal themselves in the moonlight.
The Pyramids of Tsort by moonlight!' breathed Ysabell, 'How romantic!'
over Binky's neck. 'Torches down there,' he said. 'Hang On.'
A procession was winding away from the avenue of pyramids, led by a giant statue of Offler the Crocodile God borne by a hundred sweating slaves. Binky cantered above it, entirely unnoticed, and performed a perfect four-point landing on the hard-packed sand outside the pyramid's entrance.MORTARED WITH THE BLOOD OF THOUSANDS OF SLAVES, observed Mort.'Please don't.''I'm sorry, but the practical fact of the matter is that these —''All right, all right, you've made your point,' said Ysabell irritably.'It's a lot of effort to go to to bury a dead king,' said Mort, as they circled above one of the smaller pyramids. They fill them full of preservative, you know, so they'll survive into the next world.''Does it work?''Not noticeably.' Mort leaned

Guido Reni Cleopatra

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'Sorry —?'
'They're not bandy,' she explained.
'Ah.'
They strolled through the lily beds, temporarily lost for words. Eventually Ysabell confronted Mort and stuck out her hand. He shook it in thankful silence.
'Enough?' she said.
'Just about.'
'Good. Obviously we real. He just likes to act like a human being. He's trying really hard at the moment, have you noticed. I think you're having an effect on him. Did you know he tried to learn the banjo once?'
surface among the velvety black water lilies.'We should have brought some breadcrumbs,' said Mort gallantly, opting for a totally non-controversial subject.'He never comes out here, you know,' said Ysabell, watching the fish. 'He made it to keep me amused.''It didn't work?''It's not real,' she said. 'Nothing's real here. Not really

Vincent van Gogh The Bedroom

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'About twenty miles Hubwards, but there's nothing there for a young man of your kidney,' said the trader hurriedly. 'I This part of Ankh-Morpork was known as The Shades, an inner-city area sorely in need either of governmental help or, for preference, a flamethrower. It couldn't be called squalid because that would be stretching the word to breaking point. It was beyond squalor and out the other side, where by a know, you're out by yourself, you want new experiences, you want excitement, romance —'Mort, meanwhile, had opened the bag Death had given him. It was full of small gold coins, about the size of sequins.An image formed again in his mind, of a pale young face under a head of red hair who had somehow known he was there. The unfocused feelings that had haunted his mind for the last few days suddenly sharpened to a point.'I want,' he said firmly, 'a very fast horse.' Five minutes later, Mort was lost.sort

John William Waterhouse waterhouse Ophelia

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was a store of magic in the area.
"It's potent," he said. "Very potent." He raised his hands to his temples.
"It's getting bloody cold," said Granny. The insistent rain had turned to snow.
There was a sudden change in the world. The boat stopped, not with a jar, but as if the sea had suddenly decided to on?"
They wandered across the frozen waves, with Cutangle stopping occasionally to try and sense the exact location of the staff. His robes were freezing on him. His teeth chattered.
"Aren't you cold?" he said to Granny, whose dress fairly crackled as she walked.become solid. Granny looked over the side. The sea had become solid. The sound of the waves was coming from a long way away and getting further away all the time. She leaned over the side of the boat and tapped on the water. "Ice," she said. The boat was motionless in an ocean of ice. It creaked ominously. Cutangle nodded slowly. "It makes sense," he said. "If they are . . . where we think they are, then it's very cold. As cold as the night between the stars, it is said. So the staff feels it too." "Right," said Granny, and stepped out of the boat. "All we have to do is find the middle of the ice and there's the staff, right?" "I knew you were going to say that. Can I at least put my boots

Paul Klee Insula Dulcamara

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wasn't an injunction but a prediction. He shivered. He didn't know where he would have to be to make him grateful for a drink of ancient beer and curdled milk. He'd rather be dead first.
Perhaps he , it's all headology.
"No, wouldn't dream of it," said Skiller hastily. He leaned over the bar. "If you could see, er, your way clear to turning the rest back, though? Not much call for milk in these parts."
He sidled along a little way. Esk had leaned the staff against the bar while she drank her milk, and it was making him uncomfortable.
Esk looked at him over a moustache of cream.would be dead first. He very carefully wiped a nearly clean mug with his thumb and filled it from the tap. He was aware that a large number of his guests were quietly leaving. No one liked magic, especially n the hands of a woman. You never could tell what they might take it into their heads to do next. "Your milk," he said, adding, "Miss." "I've got some money," Esk said. Granny had always told her: always be ready to pay and you won't have to, people always like you to feel good about them

John William Waterhouse The Magic Circle

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'Heights I don't mind,' said Rincewind's voice from the darkness. 'Heights I can live with. It's depths that are occupying my attention at the moment. Do you know what I'm going to do when we get out of this?'
'No?' saidwas about to say something like, 'Yes, I've got this itch on the back of my neck, you couldn't scratch it, could you, on your way past?' or 'No, I enjoy hanging over bottomless drops' and he decided he couldn't possibly face that. He spoke very quickly.
'Pull Rincewind back onto the stairs,' he snapped. Rincewind deflated in mid-snarl.
Cohen caught him around the waist and jerked him unceremoniously onto the stones. Twoflower, wedging his toes into a gap in the flagstones and trying to make himself immobile by sheer force of will.'I'm going to build a house in the flattest country I can find and it's only going to have a ground floor and I'm not even going to wear sandals with thick soles —'The leading torch came around the last turn of the spiral and Twoflower looked down on the grinning face of Cohen. Behind him, still hopping awkwardly up the stones, he could make out the reassuring bulk of the Luggage.'Everything all right?' said Cohen. 'Can I do anything?'Rincewind took a deep breath.Twoflower recognised the signs. Rincewind

Jack Vettriano Waltzers

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suspiciously alive. Shadows that he wouldn't have looked at twice now began to look horribly occupied.
'I like trolls,' said Twoflower.
'No you keep ntil they learned about doors and didn't simply leave the house by walking aimlessly through the nearest wall.
As they gathered firewood Cohen went on, Trollsh teeth, that'sh the thingsh.'
'Why?' said Bethan.
'Diamonds. Got to be, you shee. Only thing that can shtand the rocksh, and they don't,' said Rincewind firmly. 'You can't. They're big and knobbly and they eat people.''No they don't,' said Cohen, sliding awkwardly off his horse and massaging his knees. 'Well-known mishap-prehenshion, that ish. Trolls never ate anybody.''No?''No, they alwaysh spit the bitsh out. Can't digesht people, see? Your average troll don't want any than a nice lump of granite, maybe, with perhapsh a nice slab of limeshtone for aftersh. I heard someone shay it's becosh they're a shilicashe – a shillycaysheou – Cohen paused, and wiped his beard, 'made out of rocks.Rincewind nodded. Trolls were not unknown in Ankh-Morpork, of course, where they often got employment as bodyguards. They tended to be a bit expensive to

Thomas Kinkade The Edge of Wilderness

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could be right.'
Rincewind pushed open the door gingerly. The room was empty. He tiptoed across to the window, and looked own into 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!'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

Thomas Moran Zion Valley, South Utah

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That's because of the Rimfall," said Rincewind.
"We're being carried over the edge of the world."
There was a long silence, broken only by the lapping of the waves as the foundering ship spun slowly in the current. It was this far Edgewise," complained Rincewind to the skye "I wish-"
"I wish I had my picture-box," said Twoflower, "but it's back on that slaver ship with the rest of the Luggage and-"
"You won't need luggage where we're going," said Rincewind. He sagged, and stared moodily at a distant whale that had carelessly strayed into the rimward current and was now struggling against it. already quite strong."That's probably why we hit that reef," Rincewind added. "we got pulled off course during the night.""Would you like something to eat?" asked Twoflower. He began to rummage through the bundle that he had tied to the rail, out of the damp."Don't you understand?" snarled Rincewind. "We are going over the Edge, godsdammit!""Can't we do anything about it?""No!""Then I can't see the sense in panicking," said Twoflower calmly."I knew we shouldn't have come