Eric recap

Rincewind, lost in the Dungeon Dimensions, is hauled back into the world by Eric Thursley, a teenage demonologist who has summoned what he believes is a demon and demands the traditional three wishes: to rule the world, to meet the most beautiful woman who ever lived, and to live forever. To Rincewind's alarm the wishes work. The first drops them in the Tezuman Empire, where Rincewind is briefly worshipped as a god and the actual god, Quezovercoatl, comes to a sudden end. The second takes them to the siege of Tsort, where the legendary Elenor turns out to be middle-aged, contented and uninterested in rescue, and where the strategist Lavaeolus, an ancestor of Rincewind, ends the war with a wooden horse. The third puts them at the beginning of time, watching the Creator assemble the Discworld, which is what living forever actually means. The wishes were engineered by Astfgl, King of Hell, who has turned the underworld into a bureaucracy of tedium. In Hell the old demon lords remove Astfgl by promoting him to a grand and powerless title, and the pair are sent home, with the Luggage.

Previously: Rincewind is a wizard of Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University who cannot cast a single spell, having had one of the eight great spells of the Octavo lodged in his head for most of his life. He survived a long series of catastrophes as guide to the tourist Twoflower, and inherited from him the Luggage, a walking chest of sapient pearwood that is devoted to its owner and murderous to everyone else. When raw sourcery returned to the Disc and the wizards nearly destroyed the world, Rincewind ended the crisis by staying to hold the line and was left stranded outside reality, in the Dungeon Dimensions, where shapeless Things drift and time is not a useful idea. He has been there ever since, and this book opens with him still in it.

Eric Thursley, a teenage demonologist working from his grandfather's cellar, performs a summoning and gets Rincewind, dragged out of the Dungeon Dimensions by a spell aimed at something far more impressive. Eric refuses to accept that he has not conjured a demon and demands the three wishes he is owed: to be ruler of the kingdoms of the world, to meet the most beautiful woman who ever lived, and to live forever. Rincewind protests that he can do nothing whatsoever, snaps his fingers to prove it, and the world obligingly changes around them. The first wish deposits the pair, with Eric's foul-mouthed parrot, in the jungle empire of the Tezumen, a gloomy people who invented the calendar and are dominated by a god who demands a great deal of blood. Rincewind is taken for a ruler sent from elsewhere, which is initially better than the alternative and rapidly stops being so.

The Tezumen prepare to sacrifice Rincewind and Eric, having concluded that this is what one does with visitors. They also make it clear that they thoroughly resent their own god, whose demands have made their lives miserable for generations. Quezovercoatl himself is summoned to the ceremony, and the carvings turn out to have left out the single most important fact about him: he is about six inches tall. He is stepped on almost immediately, and the Tezumen, freed of him, take the whole matter rather well. In the same stretch of jungle the travellers encounter Ponce da Quirm, an elderly explorer who has spent his life hunting for the Fountain of Youth and believes he is close to it. Eric, meanwhile, is dissatisfied: ruling the world is not what he imagined, and he wants to move on to his second wish.

The second wish carries them to the long siege of Tsort, the war fought over the abduction of Elenor, whose beauty is supposed to be the greatest the world has known. By the time they arrive the siege has been running for years, and Elenor is a comfortable, busy woman with a large family who regards the whole war as an inconvenience and has no wish to be rescued. Rincewind and Eric fall in with the Ephebian side and end up inside the great wooden horse, the plan of the strategist Lavaeolus, a weary and undervalued tactician who wants chiefly to finish the job and go home, and who is an ancestor of Rincewind in both name and outlook. The horse works, Tsort falls, and Eric, having met the most beautiful woman who ever lived and found her entirely unlike the story, moves on to his third wish.

The third wish, to live forever, is granted from the correct end: the pair are set down at the very beginning of time, where the Creator is still assembling the Discworld from a checklist and has not yet finished the coastlines. Eric grasps that living forever includes all the time before anything happens, which is most of it and is extremely dull. They get away from the dawn of the world, but the wishes have not been coming from nowhere. Every one of them has been routed through Hell, and the pair are delivered there, into an underworld that has been comprehensively modernised: no pitchforks, no flames, but queues, forms, safety regulations, compulsory recreation and improving lectures, all instituted by its current king. Rincewind's Luggage, meanwhile, has been making its own way across the Dungeon Dimensions in search of him, and it is not in a good mood.

Astfgl, King of Hell, reveals that Eric's summoning was his own work and that the entire tour of wishes was a device to get Rincewind where he wanted him. But his position is weaker than he thinks. The ancient demon lords have endured his reforms for as long as they intend to, and Duke Vassenego, oldest of them, springs the trap he has been preparing: Astfgl is publicly elevated to Supreme Life President of Hell, a title of enormous dignity, a vast office, ceremonial precedence and no power over anything whatsoever. The old lords resume control of the underworld, drop their interest in the two visitors, and send them home. The Luggage catches up with Rincewind at last, battered by its journey. Eric is returned to his grandfather's cellar with all three wishes granted and none of them wanted, and Rincewind is back on the Discworld, no better off than before but a great deal better off than he was in the Dungeon Dimensions.

In Hell, Rincewind and Eric discover that the whole sequence of wishes was arranged by Astfgl, the King of Hell, who wanted Rincewind brought within reach and used Eric's summoning to do it. Astfgl's real weakness is not the two of them but his own court: the ancient demon lords, led by Duke Vassenego, have had enough of his committees, forms and improving schemes. Rather than depose him, they promote him. Astfgl is elevated to Supreme Life President of Hell, a magnificent title with an enormous office, ceremonial honours and no authority over anything at all, and the old lords quietly take the running of the underworld back into their own hands. With Astfgl neutralised, the new management has no further interest in the pair and sends them home. The Luggage, which has crossed the Dungeon Dimensions and Hell itself to reach its owner, is reunited with Rincewind. Eric returns to his grandfather's cellar with his three wishes technically granted and thoroughly regretted, and Rincewind is back on the Discworld, alive, unimproved, and once again in possession of a piece of luggage he did not ask for.