'Well, er. I suppose you’d better get on with it, then.'
Nijel squared his, for want of a better word, shoulders, and waved his sword again.
'You four had better just jolly well watch out,' he said, 'or ... hold on a moment.' He took the book from Rincewind and riffled through the pages until he found what he was looking for, and continued, 'Yes, or "the chill winds of fate will blow through your bleached skeletons,’ the legions of Hell will drown your living soul in acid". There. How dyou like them ... excuse me a moment ... apples?'
There was a metallic chord as four men drew their swords in perfect harmony.
Nijel's sword became a blur. It made a complicated figure eight in the air in front of him, spun over his arm, flicked from hand to hand behind his back, seemed to orbit his chest twice, and leapt like a salmon.
One or two of the harem ladies broke into spontaneous applause. Even the guards looked impressed.
'That's a Triple Orcthrust with Extra Flip,' said Nijel proudly. 'I broke a lot of mirrors learning that. Look, they're stopping.'
'They've never seen anything like it, I imagine,' said Rincewind weakly, judging the distance to the doorway.
'I should think not.'
'Especially the last bit, where it stuck in the ceiling.'
Nijel looked upwards.
'Funny,' he said, 'it always did that at home, too. I wonder what I'm doing wrong.'
'Search me.'
'Gosh, I'm sorry,' said Nijel, as the guards seemed to realise that the entertainment was over and closed in for the kill.
'Don't blame youself-’ said Rincewind, as Nijel reached up and tried unsuccessfully to free the blade.
'Thank you.'
'— I'll do it for you.'
Rincewind considered his next step. In fact, he considered several steps. But the door was too far away and anyway, by the sound of it, things were not a lot healthier out there.
There was only one thing for it. He'd have to try magic.
He raised his hand and two of the men fell over. He raised his other hand and the other two fell over.
Just as he was beginning to wonder about this, Conina stepped daintily over the prone bodies, idly rubbing the sides of her hands.
'I thought you’d never turn up,' she said. 'Who's your friend?'
As has already been indicated, the Luggage seldom shows any sign of emotion, or at least any emotion less extreme than blind rage and hatred, and therefore it is hard to gauge its feelings when it woke up, a few miles outside Al Khali, on its lid in a dried-up wadi with its legs in the air.
Even a few minutes after dawn the air was like the breath of a furnace. After a certain amount of rocking the Luggage managed to get most of its feet pointing the right way, and stood doing a complicated slow-motion jig to keep as few of them on the burning sand as possible.
It wasn't lost. It always knew exactly where it was. It was always here.
It was just that everywhere else seemed to have been temporarily mislaid.
After some deliberation the Luggage turned and walked very slowly, into a boulder.
It backed away and sat down, rather puzzled. It felt as though it had been stuffed with hot feathers, and it was dimly aware of the benefits of shade and a nice cool drink.
After a few false starts it walked to the top of a nearby sand dune, which gave it an unrivalled view of hundreds of other dunes.
Deep in its heartwood the Luggage was troubled. It had been spurned. It had been told to go away. It had been rejected. It had also drunk enough orakh to poison a small country.
If there is one thing a travel accessory needs more than anything else, it is someone to belong to. The Luggage set off unsteadily across the scorching sand, full of hope.
'I don't think we've got time for introductions,' said Rincewind, as a distant part of the palace collapsed with a thump that vibrated the floor. 'It's time we were-’
He realised he was talking to himself.
Nijel let go of the sword.
Conina stepped forward.
'Oh, no,' said Rincewind, but it was far too late. The world had suddenly separated into two parts — the bit which contained Nijel and Conina, and the bit which contained everything else. The air between them crackled. Probably, in their half, a distant orchestra was playing, bluebirds were tweeting, little pink clouds were barrelling through the sky, and all the other things that happen at times like this. When that sort of thing is going on, mere collapsing palaces in the next world don't stand a chance.
'Look, perhaps we can just get the introductions over with,' said Rincewind desperately. 'Nijel-’
'— the Destroyer-’ said Nijel dreamily.
'All right, Nijel the Destroyer,' said Rincewind, and added, 'Son of Harebut the-’
'Mighty,' said Nijel. Rincewind gaped a bit, and then shrugged.
'Well, whoever,' he conceded. 'Anyway, this is Conina. Which is rather a coincidence, because you'll be interested to know that her father was mmph.'
Conina, without turning her gaze, had extended a hand and held Rincewind's face in a gentle grip which, with only a slight increase in finger pressure, could have turned his head into a bowling ball.
'Although I could be mistaken,' he added, when she took her hand away. 'Who knows? Who cares? What does it matter?'
They didn't take any notice.
'I'll just go and see if I can find the hat, shall I?' he said.
'Good idea,' murmured Conina.
'I expect I shall get murdered, but I don't mind,' said Rincewind.
'Jolly good,' said Nijel.
'I don't expect anyone will even notice I'm gone,' said Rincewind.
'Fine, fine,' said Conina.
'I shall be chopped into small pieces, I expect,' said Rincewind, walking toward the door at the speed of a dying snail.
Conina blinked.
'What hat?' she said, and then, 'Oh, that hat.'
'I suppose there's no possible chance that you two might be of some assistance?' Rincewind ventured.
Somewhere inside Conina and Nijel's private world the bluebirds went to roost, the little pink clouds drifted away and the orchestra packed up and sneaked off to do a private gig at a nightclub somewhere. A bit of reality reasserted itself.
Conina dragged her admiring gaze away from Nijel's rapt face and turned it on to Rincewind, where it grew slightly cooler.
She sidled across the floor and grabbed the wizard by the arm.
'Look,' she said, 'you won't tell him who I really am, will you? Only boys get funny ideas and — well, anyway, if you do I will personally break all your-’
'I'll be far too busy,' said Rincewind, 'what with you helping me get the hat and everything. Not that I can imagine what you see in him,' he added, haughtily.
'He's nice. I don't seem to meet many nice people.'
'Yes, well-’
'He's looking at us!'
'So what? You're not frightened of him, are you?'
'Suppose he talks to me!'
Rincewind looked blank. Not for the first time in his life, he felt that there were whole areas of human experience that had passed him by, if areas could pass by people. Maybe he had passed them by. He shrugged.
'Why did you let them take you off to the harem without a fight?' he said.
'I've always wanted to know what went on in one.'
There was a pause. 'Well?' said Rincewind.
'Well, we all sat round, and then after a bit the Seriph came in, and then he asked me over and said that since I was new it would be my turn, and then, you'll never guess what he wanted me to do. The girls said it's the only thing he's interested in.'
'Er.'
'Are you all right?'
'Fine, fine,' Rincewind muttered.
'Your face has gone all shiny.'
'No, I'm fine, fine.'
'He asked me to tell him a story.'
'What about?' said Rincewind suspiciously.
'The other girls said he prefers something with rabbits in it.'
'Ah. Rabbits.'
'Small fluffy white ones. But the only stories I know are the ones father taught me when I was little, and I don't think they're really suitable.'
'Not many rabbits?'
'Lots of arms and legs being chopped off,' said Conina, and sighed. 'That's why you mustn't tell him about me you see? I'm just not cut out for a normal life.'
'Telling stories in a harem isn't bloody normal,' said Rincewind. 'It'll never catch on.'
'He's looking at us again!' Conina grabbed Rincewind's arm.
He shook her off. 'Oh, good grief,' he said, and hurried across the room to Nijel, who grabbed his other arm.
'You haven't been telling her about me, have you?' he demanded. 'I'll never live it down if you've told her that I'm only just learning how-’
'Nonono. She just wants you to help us. It's a sort of quest.'
Nijel's eyes gleamed.
'You mean a geas?' he said.
'Pardon?'
'It's in the book. To be a proper hero it says you've got to labour under a geas.'
Rincewind's forehead wrinkled. 'Is it a sort of bird?'
'I think it's more a sort of obligation, or something,' said Nijel, but without much certainty.
'Sounds more like a kind of bird to me,' said Rincewind, 'I'm sure I read it in a bestiary once. Large. Couldn't fly. Big pink legs, it had.' His face went blank as his ears digested what they had just heard his lips say.
Five seconds later they were out of the room, leaving behind four prone guards and the harem ladies themselves, who settled down for a bit of story-telling.
The desert rimwards of Al Khali is bisected by the river Tsort, famed in myth and lies, which insinuates its way through the brown landscapes like a long damp descriptive passage punctuated with sandbanks. And every sandbank is covered with sunbaked logs, and most of the logs are the kind of logs that have teeth, and most of the logs opened one lazy eye at the distant sounds of splashing from upstream, and suddenly most of the logs had legs. A dozen scaly bodies slipped into the turbid waters, which rolled over them again. The dark waters were unruffled, except for a few inconsequential V -shaped ripples.
The Luggage paddled gently down the stream. The water was making it feel a little better. It spun gently in the weak current, the focus of several mysterious little swirls that sped across the surface of the water.
The ripples converged.
The Luggage jerked. Its lid flew open. It shot under the surface with a brief, despairing creak.
The chocolate-coloured waters of the Tsort rolled back again. They were getting good at it.
And the tower of sourcery loomed over Al Khali like a vast and beautiful fungus, the kind that appear in books with little skull-and-crossbones symbols beside them.
The Seriph's guard had fought back, but there were now quite a lot of bewildered frogs and newts around the base of the tower, and they were the fortunate ones. They still had arms and legs, of a sort, and most of their essential organs were still on the inside. The city was under the rule of sourcery ... martial lore.
Some of the buildings nearest the base of the tower were already turning into the bright white marble that the wizards obviously preferred.
The trio stared out through a hole in the palace walls.
'Very impressive,' said Conina critically. 'Your wizards are more powerful than I thought.'
'Not my wizards,' said Rincewind. 'I don't know whose wizards they are. I don't like it. All the wizards I knew couldn't stick one brick on another.'
'I don't like the idea of wizards ruling everybody,' said Nijel. 'Of course, as a hero I am philosophically against the whole idea of wizardry in any case. The time will come when,' his eyes glazed slightly, as if he was trying to remember something he'd seen somewhere, 'the time will come when all wizardry has gone from the face of the world and the sons of, of — anyway, we can all be a bit more practical about things,' he added lamely.
'Read it in a book, did you?’ said Rincewind sourly. Any geas in it?'
'He's got a point,' said Conina. 'I've nothing against wizards, but it's not as if they do much good. There just a bit of decoration, really. Up to now.'
Rincewind pulled off his hat. It was battered, stained and covered with rock dust, bits of it had been sheared off, the point was dented and the star was shedding sequins like pollen, but the word "blizzard" was still just readable under the grime.
'See this?' he demanded, red in the face. 'Do you see it? Do you? What does it tell you?'
'That you can't spell?' said Nijel.
'What? No! It says I'm a wizard, that's what! Twenty years behind the staff, and proud of it! I've done my time, I have! I've pas — I've sat dozens of exams! If all the spells I've read were piled on top of one another, they'd ... it'd ... you'd have a lot of spells!'
'Yes, but-’ Conina began.
'Yes?'
'You're not actually very good at them, are you?'
Rincewind glared at her. He tried to think of what to say next, and a small receptor area opened in his mind at the same time as an inspiration particle, its path bent and skewed by a trillion random events, screamed down through the atmosphere and burst silently just at the right spot.
'Talent just defines what you do,' he said. 'It doesn't define what you are. Deep down, I mean. When you know what you are, you can do anything.'
He thought a bit more and added, 'That's what makes sourcerers so powerful. The important thing is to know what you really are.'
There was a pause full of philosophy.
'Rincewind?' said Conina, kindly.
'Hmm?' said Rincewind, who was still wondering how the words got into his head.
'You really are an idiot. Do you know that?'
'You will all stand very still.'
Abrim the vizier stepped out of a ruined archway. He was wearing the Archchancellor's hat.
The desert fried under the flame of the sun. Nothing moved except the shimmering air, hot as a stolen volcano, dry as a skull.
A basilisk lay panting in the baking shade of a rock, dribbling corrosive yellow slime. For the last five minutes its ears had been detecting the faint thump of hundreds of little legs moving unsteadily over the dunes, which seemed to indicate that dinner was on the way.
It blinked its legendary eyes and uncoiled twenty feet of hungry body, winding out and on to the sand like fluid death.
The Luggage staggered to a halt and raised its lid threateningly. The basilisk hissed, but a little uncertainly, because it had never seen a walking box before, and certainly never one with lots of alligator teeth stuck in its lid. There were also scraps of leathery hide adhering to it, as though it had been involved in a fight in a handbag factory, and in a way that the basilisk wouldn't have been able to describe even if it could talk, it appeared to be glaring.
Right, the reptile thought, if that's the way you want to play it.
It turned on the Luggage a stare like a diamond drill, a stare that nipped in via the staree's eyeballs and flayed the brain from the inside, a stare that tore the frail net curtains on the windows of the soul, a stare that
The basilisk realised something was very wrong. An entirely new and unwelcome sensation started to arise just behind its saucer-shaped eyes. It started small, like the little itch in those few square inches of back that no amount of writhing will allow you to scratch, and grew until it became a second, red-hot, internal sun.
The basilisk was feeling a terrible, overpowering and irresistible urge to blink ...
It did something incredibly unwise.
It blinked.
'He's talking through his hat,' said Rincewind.
'Eh?' said Nijel, who was beginning to realise that the world of the barbarian hero wasn't the clean, simple place he had imagined in the days when the most exciting thing he had ever done was stack parsnips.
'The hat's talking through him, you mean,' said Conina, and she backed away too, as one tends to do in the presence of horror.
'Eh?'
'I will not harm you. You have been of some service,' said Abrim, stepping forwards with his hands out. 'But you are right. He thought he could gain power through wearing me. Of course, it is the other way around. An astonishingly devious and clever mind.'
'So you tried his head on for size?' said Rincewind. He shuddered. He'd worn the hat. Obviously he didn't have the right kind of mind. Abrim did have the right kind of mind, and now his eyes were grey and colourless, his skin was pale and he walked as though his body was hanging down from his head.
Nijel had pulled out his book and was riffling feverishly through the pages.
'What on earth are you doing?' said Conina, not taking her eyes off the ghastly figure.
'I'm looking up the Index of Wandering Monsters,' said Nijel. 'Do you think it's an Undead? They're awfully difficult to kill, you need garlic and,-’
'You won't find this in there,' said Rincewind slowly. 'It's — it's a vampire hat.'
'Of course, it might be a Zombie,' said Nijel, running his finger down a page. 'It says here you need black pepper and sea salt, but-’
'You're supposed to fight the bloody things, not eat them,' said Conina.
'This is a mind I can use,' said the hat. 'Now I can fight back. I shall rally wizardry. There is room for only one magic in this world, and I embody it. Sourcery beware!'
'Oh, no,' said Rincewind under his breath.
'Wizardry has learned a lot in the last twenty centuries. This upstart can be beaten. You three will follow me.'
It wasn't a request. It wasn't even an order. It was a sort of forecast. The voice of the hat went straight to the hindbrain without bothering to deal with the consciousness, and Rincewind's legs started to move of their own accord.
The other two also jerked forward, walking with the awkward doll-like jerking that suggested that they, too, were on invisible strings.
'Why the oh, no?' said Conina, 'I mean, "Oh, no" on general principles I can understand, but was there any particular reason?'
'If we get a chance we must run,' said Rincewind.
'Did you have anywhere in mind?'
'It probably won't matter. We're doomed anyway.'
'Why?' said Nijel.
'Well,' said Rincewind, 'have you ever heard of the Mage Wars?'
There were a lot of things on the Disc that owed their origin to the Mage Wars. Sapient pearwood was one of them.
The original tree was probably perfectly normal and spent its days drinking groundwater and eating sunshine in a state of blessed unawareness and then the magic wars broke around it and pitchforked its genes into a state of acute perspicacity.
It also left it ingrained, as it were, with a bad temper. But sapient pearwood got off lightly.
Once, when the level of background magic on the Disc was young and high and found every opportunity to burst on the world, wizards were all as powerful as sourcerers and built their towers on every hilltop. And if there was one thing a really powerful wizardcan't stand, it is another wizard. His instinctive approach to diplomacy is to hex 'em till they glow, then curse them in the dark.
That could only mean one thing. All right, two things. Three things.
All-out. Thaumaturgical. War.
And there were of course no alliances, no sides, no deals, no mercy, no cease. The skies twisted, the seas boiled. The scream and whizz of fireballs turned the night into day, but that was all right because the ensuing clouds of black smoke turned the day into night. The landscape rose and fell like a honeymoon duvet, and the very fabric of space itself was tied in multidimensional knots and bashed on a flat stone down by the river of Time. For example, a popular spell at the time was Pelepel's Temporal Compressor, which on one occasion resulted in a race of giant reptiles being created, evolving, spreading, flourishing and then being destroyed in the space of about five minutes, leaving only its bones in the earth to mislead forthcoming generations completely. Trees swam, fishes walked, mountains strolled down to the shops for a packet of cigarettes, and the mutability of existence was such that the first thing any cautious person would do when they woke up in the mornings was count their arms and legs.
That was, in fact, the problem. All the wizards were pretty evenly matched and in any case lived in high towers well protected with spells, which meant that most magical weapons rebounded and landed on the common people who were trying to scratch an honest living from what was, temporarily, the soil, and lead ordinary, decent (but rather short) lives.
But still the fighting raged, battering the very structure of the universe of order, weakening the walls of reality and threatening to topple the whole rickety edifice of time and space into the darkness of the Dungeon Dimensions ...
One story said that the gods stepped in, but the gods don't usually take a hand in human affairs unless it amuses them. Another one — and this was the one that the wizards themselves told, and wrote down in their books — was that the wizards themselves got together and settled their differences amicably for the good of mankind. And this was generally accepted as the true account, despite being as internally likely as a lead lifebelt.
The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find ...
'What happened, then?' said Conina.
'It doesn't matter,' said Rincewind, mournfully. 'It's going to start all over again. I can feel it. I've got this instinct. There's too much magic flowing into the world. There's going to be a horrible war. It's all going to happen. The Disc is too old to take it this time. Everything's been worn too thin. Doom, darkness and destruction bear down on us. The Apocralypse is nigh.'
'Death walks abroad,' added Nijel helpfully.
'What?' snapped Rincewind, angry at being interrupted.
'I said, Death walks abroad,' said Nijel.
'Abroad I don't mind,' said Rincewind. 'They're all foreigners. It's Death walking around here I'm not looking forward to.'
'It's only a metaphor,' said Conina.
'That's all you know. I've met him.'
'What did he look like?' said Nijel.
'Put it like this-’
'Yes?'
'He didn't need a hairdresser.'
Now the sun was a blowlamp nailed to the sky, and the only difference between the sand and red-hot ash was the colour.
The Luggage plodded erratically across the burning dunes. There were a few traces of yellow slime rapidly drying on its lid.
The lonely little oblong was watched, from atop of a stone pinnacle the shape and temperature of a firebrick, by a chimera.[18] The chimera was an extremely rare species, and this particular one wasn't about to do anything to help matters.
It judged its moment carefully, kicked away with its talons, folded its leathery wings and plummeted down towards its victim.
The chimera's technique was to swoop low over the prey, lightly boiling it with its fiery breath, and then turn and rend its dinner with its teeth. It managed the fire part but then, at the point where experience told the creature it should be facing a stricken and terrified victim, found itself on the ground in the path of a scorched and furious Luggage.
The only thing incandescent about the Luggage was its rage. It had spent several hours with a headache, during which it had seemed the whole world had tried to attack it. It had had enough.
When it had stamped the unfortunate chimera into a greasy puddle on the sand it paused for a moment, apparently considering its future. It was becoming clear that not belonging to anyone was a lot harder than it had thought. It had vague, comforting recollections of service and a wardrobe to call its own.
It turned around very slowly, pausing frequently to open its lid. It might have been sniffing the air, if it had a nose. At last it made up its mind, if it had a mind.
The hat and its wearer also strode purposefully across the rubble that had been the legendary Rhoxie to the foot of the tower of sourcery, their unwilling entourage straggling along behind them.
There were doors at the foot of the tower. Unlike those of Unseen University, which were usually propped wide open, they were tightly shut. They seemed to glow.
'You three are privileged to be here,' said the hat through Abrim's slack mouth. 'This is the moment when wizardry stops running,' he glanced witheringly at Rincewind, 'and starts fighting back. You will remember it for the rest of your lives.'
'What, until lunchtime?' said Rincewind weakly.
'Watch closely,' said Abrim. He extended his hands.
'If we get a chance,' whispered Rincewind to Nijel, 'we run, right?'
'Where to?'
'From,' said Rincewind, 'the important word is from.'
'I don't trust this man,' said Nijel. 'I try not to judge from first impressions, but I definitely think he's up to no good.'
'He had you thrown in a snake pit!'
'Perhaps I should have taken the hint.'
The vizier started to mutter. Even Rincewind, whose few talents included a gift for languages, didn't recognise it, but it sounded the kind of language designed specifically for muttering, the words curling out like scythes at ankle height, dark and red and merciless. They made complicated swirls in the air, and then drifted gently towards the doors of the tower.
Where they touched the white marble it turned black and crumbled.
As the remains drifted to the ground a wizard stepped through and looked Abrim up and down.
Rincewind was used to the dressy ways of wizards, but this one was really impressive, his robe so padded and crenellated and buttressed in fantastic folds and creases that it had probably been designed by an architect. The matching hat looked like a wedding cake that had collided intimately with a Christmas tree.
The actual face, peering through the small gap between the baroque collar and the filigreed fringe of the brim, was a bit of a disappointment. At some time in the past it had thought its appearance would be improved by a thin, scruffy moustache. It had been wrong.
'That was our bloody door!' it said. 'You're really going to regret this!'
Abrim folded his arms.
This seemed to infuriate the other wizard. He flung up his arms, untangled his hands from the lace on his sleeves, and sent a flare screaming across the gap.
It struck Abrim in the chest and rebounded in a gout of incandescence, but when the blue after-images allowed Rincewind to see he saw Abrim, unharmed.
His opponent frantically patted out the last of the little fires in his own clothing and looked up with murder in his eyes.
'You don't seem to understand,' he rasped. 'It's sourcery you're dealing with now. You can't fight sourcery.'
'I can use sourcery,' said Abrim.
The wizard snarled and lofted a fireball, which burst harmlessly inches from Abrim's dreadful grin.
A look of acute puzzlement passed across the other one's face. He tried again, sending lines of blue-hot magic lancing straight from infinity towards Abrim's heart. Abrim waved them away.
'Your choice is simple,' he said. 'You can join me, or you can die.'
It was at this point that Rincewind became aware of a regular scraping sound close to his ear. It had an unpleasant metallic ring.
He half-turned, and felt the familiar and very uncomfortable prickly feeling of Time slowing down around him.
Death paused in the act of running a whetstone along the edge of his scythe and gave him a nod of acknowledgement, as between one professional and another.
He put a bony digit to his lips, or rather, to the place where his lips would have been if he'd had lips.
All wizards can see Death, but they don't necessarily want to.
There was a popping in Rincewind's ears and the spectre vanished.
Abrim and the rival wizard were surrounded by a corona of randomised magic, and it was evidently having no effect on Abrim. Rincewind drifted back into the land of the living just in time to see the man reach out and grab the wizard by his tasteless collar.
'You cannot defeat me,' he said in the hat's voice. 'I have had two thousand years of harnessing power to my own ends. l can draw my power from your power. Yeld to me or you won't even have time to regret it.'
The wizard struggled and, unfortunately, let pride win over caution.
'Never!' he said.
'Die,' suggested Abrim.
Rincewind had seen many strange things in his life, most of them with extreme reluctance, but he had never seen anyone actually killed by magic.
Wizards didn't kill ordinary people because a) they seldom noticed them and b) it wasn't considered sporting and c) besides, who'd do all the cooking and growing food and things. And killing a brother wizard with magic was well-nigh impossible on account of the layers of protective spells that any cautious wizard maintained about his person at all times.[19] The first thing a young wizard learns at Unseen University — apart from where his peg is, and which way to the lavatory — is that he must protect himself at all times.
Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn't. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it.
The little wizard was wearing the psychic equivalent of three feet of tempered steel and it was being melted like butter under a blowlamp. It streamed away, vanished.
If there are words to describe what happened to the wizard next then they're imprisoned inside a wild thesaurus in the Unseen University Library. Perhaps it's best left to the imagination, except that anyone able to imagine the kind of shape that Rincewind saw writhing painfully for a few seconds before it mercifully vanished must be a candidate for the famous white canvas blazer with the optional long sleeves.
'So perish all enemies,' said Abrim.
He turned his face up to the heights of the tower.
'I challenge,' he said. And those who will not face me must follow me, according to the Lore.'
There was a long, thick pause caused by a lot of people listening very hard. Eventually, from the top of the tower, a voice called out uncertainly, 'Whereabouts in the Lore?'
'I embody the Lore.'
There was a distant whispering and then the same voice called out, 'The Lore is dead. Sourcery is above the Lo-’
The sentence ended in a scream because Abrim raised his left hand and sent a thin beam of green light in the precise direction of the speaker.
It was at about this moment that Rincewind realised that he could move his limbs himself. The hat had temporarily lost interest in them. He glanced sideways at Conina. In instant, unspoken agreement they each grasped one of Nijel's arms and turned and ran, and didn't stop until they'd put several walls between them and the tower. Rincewind ran expecting something to hit him in the back of the neck. Possibly the world.
All three landed in the rubble and lay there panting.
'You needn't have done that,' muttered Nijel. 'I was just getting ready to really give him a seeing-to. How can I ever-’
There was an explosion behind them and shafts of multicoloured fire screamed overhead, striking sparks off the masonry. Then there was a sound like an enormous cork being pulled out of a small bottle, and a peal of laughter that, somehow wasn't very amusing. The ground shook.
'What's going on?' said Conina.
'Magical war,' said Rincewind.
'Is that good?'
No.
'But surely you want wizardry to triumph?' said Nijel.
Rincewind shrugged, and ducked as something unseen and big whirred overhead making a noise like a partridge.
'I've never seen wizards fight,' said Nijel. He started to scramble up the rubble and screamed as Conina grabbed him by the leg.
'I don't think that would be a good idea,' she said. 'Rincewind?'
The wizard shook his head gloomily, and picked up a pebble. He tossed it up above the ruined wall, where it turned into a small blue teapot. It smashed when it hit the ground.
'The spells react with one another,' he said. 'There's no telling what they'll do.'
'But we're safe behind this wall?' said Conina.
Rincewind brightened a bit. 'Are we?' he said.
'I was asking you.'
'Oh. No. I shouldn't think so. It's just ordinary stone. The right spell and ... phooey.'
'Phooey?'
'Right.'
'Shall we run away again?'
'It's worth a try.'
They made it to another upright wall a few seconds before a randomly spitting ball of yellow fire landed where they had been lying and turned the ground into something awful. The whole area around the tower was a tornado of sparkling air.
'We need a plan,' said Nijel.
'We could try running again,' said Rincewind.
'That doesn't solve anything!'
'Solves most things,' said Rincewind.
'How far do we have to go to be safe?' said Conina.
Rincewind risked a look around the wall.
'Interesting philosophical question,' he said. 'I've been a long way, and I've never been safe.'
Conina sighed and stared at a pile of rubble nearby. She stared at it again. There was something odd there, and she couldn't quite put her finger on it.
'I could rush at them,' said Nijel, vaguely. He stared yearningly at Conina's back.
'Wouldn't work,' said Rincewind. 'Nothing works against magic. Except stronger magic. And then the only thing that beats stronger magic is even stronger magic. And next thing you know...'
'Phooey?' suggested Nijel.
'It happened before,' said Rincewind. 'Went on for thousands of years until not a-’
'Do you know what's odd about that heap of stone?' said Conina.
Rincewind glanced at it. He screwed up his eyes.
'What, apart from the legs?' he said.
It took several minutes to dig the Seriph out. He was still clutching a wine bottle, which was almost empty, and blinked at them all in vague recognition.
'Powerful,' he said, and then after some effort added, 'stuff, this vintage. Felt,' he continued, 'as though the place fell on me.'
'It did,' said Rincewind.
'Ah. That would be it, then.' Creosote focused on Conina, after several attempts, and rocked backwards. 'My word,' he said, 'the young lady again. Very impressive.'
'I say-’ Nijel began.
'Your hair,' said the Seriph, rocking slowly forward again, 'is like, is like a flock of goats that graze upon the side of Mount Gebra.'
'Look here
'Your breasts are like, like,' the Seriph swayed sideways a little, and gave a brief, sorrowful glance at the empty bottle, 'are like the jewelled melons in the fabled gardens of dawn.'
Conina's eyes widened. 'They are?' she said.
'No,' said the Seriph, 'doubt about it. I know jewelled melons when I see them. As the white does in the meadows of the water margin are your thighs, which-’
'Erm, excuse me-’said Nijel, clearing his throat with malice aforethought.
Creosote swayed in his direction.
'Hmm?' he said.
'Where I come from,' said Nijel stonily, 'we don't talk to ladies like that.'
Conina sighed as Nijel shuffled protectively in front of her. It was, she reflected, absolutely true.
'In fact,' he went on, sticking out his jaw as far as possible, which still made it appear like a dimple, 'I've a jolly good mind-’
'Open to debate,' said Rincewind, stepping forward. 'Er, sir, sire, we need to get out. I suppose you wouldn't know the way?'
'Thousands of rooms,' said the Seriph,' in here, you know. Not been out in years.' He hiccuped. 'Decades. Ians. Never been out, in fact.' His face glazed over in the act of composition. 'The bird of Time has but, um, a little way to walk and lo! the bird is on its— feet.'
'It's a geas,' muttered Rincewind.
Creosote swayed at him. 'Abrim does all the ruling, you see. Terrible hard work.'
'He's not,' said Rincewind, 'making a very good job of it just at present.'
And we'd sort of like to get away,' said Conina, who was still turning over the phrase about the goats.
'And I've got this geas,' said Nijel, glaring at Rincewind.
Creosote patted him on the arm.
'That's nice,' he said. 'Everyone should have a pet.
'So if you happen to know if you own any stables or anything...' prompted Rincewind.
'Hundreds,' said Creosote. 'I own some of the finest, most ... finest horses in the world.' His brow wrinkled. 'So they tell me.'
'But you wouldn't happen to know where they are?'
'Not as such,' the Seriph admitted. A random spray of magic turned the nearby wall into arsenic meringue.
'I think we might have been better off in the snake pit,' said Rincewind, turning away.
Creosote took another sorrowful glance at his empty wine bottle.
'I know where there's a magic carpet,' he said.
'No,' said Rincewind, raising his hands protectively. 'Absolutely not. Don't even-’
Nijel squared his, for want of a better word, shoulders, and waved his sword again.
'You four had better just jolly well watch out,' he said, 'or ... hold on a moment.' He took the book from Rincewind and riffled through the pages until he found what he was looking for, and continued, 'Yes, or "the chill winds of fate will blow through your bleached skeletons,’ the legions of Hell will drown your living soul in acid". There. How dyou like them ... excuse me a moment ... apples?'
There was a metallic chord as four men drew their swords in perfect harmony.
Nijel's sword became a blur. It made a complicated figure eight in the air in front of him, spun over his arm, flicked from hand to hand behind his back, seemed to orbit his chest twice, and leapt like a salmon.
One or two of the harem ladies broke into spontaneous applause. Even the guards looked impressed.
'That's a Triple Orcthrust with Extra Flip,' said Nijel proudly. 'I broke a lot of mirrors learning that. Look, they're stopping.'
'They've never seen anything like it, I imagine,' said Rincewind weakly, judging the distance to the doorway.
'I should think not.'
'Especially the last bit, where it stuck in the ceiling.'
Nijel looked upwards.
'Funny,' he said, 'it always did that at home, too. I wonder what I'm doing wrong.'
'Search me.'
'Gosh, I'm sorry,' said Nijel, as the guards seemed to realise that the entertainment was over and closed in for the kill.
'Don't blame youself-’ said Rincewind, as Nijel reached up and tried unsuccessfully to free the blade.
'Thank you.'
'— I'll do it for you.'
Rincewind considered his next step. In fact, he considered several steps. But the door was too far away and anyway, by the sound of it, things were not a lot healthier out there.
There was only one thing for it. He'd have to try magic.
He raised his hand and two of the men fell over. He raised his other hand and the other two fell over.
Just as he was beginning to wonder about this, Conina stepped daintily over the prone bodies, idly rubbing the sides of her hands.
'I thought you’d never turn up,' she said. 'Who's your friend?'
As has already been indicated, the Luggage seldom shows any sign of emotion, or at least any emotion less extreme than blind rage and hatred, and therefore it is hard to gauge its feelings when it woke up, a few miles outside Al Khali, on its lid in a dried-up wadi with its legs in the air.
Even a few minutes after dawn the air was like the breath of a furnace. After a certain amount of rocking the Luggage managed to get most of its feet pointing the right way, and stood doing a complicated slow-motion jig to keep as few of them on the burning sand as possible.
It wasn't lost. It always knew exactly where it was. It was always here.
It was just that everywhere else seemed to have been temporarily mislaid.
After some deliberation the Luggage turned and walked very slowly, into a boulder.
It backed away and sat down, rather puzzled. It felt as though it had been stuffed with hot feathers, and it was dimly aware of the benefits of shade and a nice cool drink.
After a few false starts it walked to the top of a nearby sand dune, which gave it an unrivalled view of hundreds of other dunes.
Deep in its heartwood the Luggage was troubled. It had been spurned. It had been told to go away. It had been rejected. It had also drunk enough orakh to poison a small country.
If there is one thing a travel accessory needs more than anything else, it is someone to belong to. The Luggage set off unsteadily across the scorching sand, full of hope.
'I don't think we've got time for introductions,' said Rincewind, as a distant part of the palace collapsed with a thump that vibrated the floor. 'It's time we were-’
He realised he was talking to himself.
Nijel let go of the sword.
Conina stepped forward.
'Oh, no,' said Rincewind, but it was far too late. The world had suddenly separated into two parts — the bit which contained Nijel and Conina, and the bit which contained everything else. The air between them crackled. Probably, in their half, a distant orchestra was playing, bluebirds were tweeting, little pink clouds were barrelling through the sky, and all the other things that happen at times like this. When that sort of thing is going on, mere collapsing palaces in the next world don't stand a chance.
'Look, perhaps we can just get the introductions over with,' said Rincewind desperately. 'Nijel-’
'— the Destroyer-’ said Nijel dreamily.
'All right, Nijel the Destroyer,' said Rincewind, and added, 'Son of Harebut the-’
'Mighty,' said Nijel. Rincewind gaped a bit, and then shrugged.
'Well, whoever,' he conceded. 'Anyway, this is Conina. Which is rather a coincidence, because you'll be interested to know that her father was mmph.'
Conina, without turning her gaze, had extended a hand and held Rincewind's face in a gentle grip which, with only a slight increase in finger pressure, could have turned his head into a bowling ball.
'Although I could be mistaken,' he added, when she took her hand away. 'Who knows? Who cares? What does it matter?'
They didn't take any notice.
'I'll just go and see if I can find the hat, shall I?' he said.
'Good idea,' murmured Conina.
'I expect I shall get murdered, but I don't mind,' said Rincewind.
'Jolly good,' said Nijel.
'I don't expect anyone will even notice I'm gone,' said Rincewind.
'Fine, fine,' said Conina.
'I shall be chopped into small pieces, I expect,' said Rincewind, walking toward the door at the speed of a dying snail.
Conina blinked.
'What hat?' she said, and then, 'Oh, that hat.'
'I suppose there's no possible chance that you two might be of some assistance?' Rincewind ventured.
Somewhere inside Conina and Nijel's private world the bluebirds went to roost, the little pink clouds drifted away and the orchestra packed up and sneaked off to do a private gig at a nightclub somewhere. A bit of reality reasserted itself.
Conina dragged her admiring gaze away from Nijel's rapt face and turned it on to Rincewind, where it grew slightly cooler.
She sidled across the floor and grabbed the wizard by the arm.
'Look,' she said, 'you won't tell him who I really am, will you? Only boys get funny ideas and — well, anyway, if you do I will personally break all your-’
'I'll be far too busy,' said Rincewind, 'what with you helping me get the hat and everything. Not that I can imagine what you see in him,' he added, haughtily.
'He's nice. I don't seem to meet many nice people.'
'Yes, well-’
'He's looking at us!'
'So what? You're not frightened of him, are you?'
'Suppose he talks to me!'
Rincewind looked blank. Not for the first time in his life, he felt that there were whole areas of human experience that had passed him by, if areas could pass by people. Maybe he had passed them by. He shrugged.
'Why did you let them take you off to the harem without a fight?' he said.
'I've always wanted to know what went on in one.'
There was a pause. 'Well?' said Rincewind.
'Well, we all sat round, and then after a bit the Seriph came in, and then he asked me over and said that since I was new it would be my turn, and then, you'll never guess what he wanted me to do. The girls said it's the only thing he's interested in.'
'Er.'
'Are you all right?'
'Fine, fine,' Rincewind muttered.
'Your face has gone all shiny.'
'No, I'm fine, fine.'
'He asked me to tell him a story.'
'What about?' said Rincewind suspiciously.
'The other girls said he prefers something with rabbits in it.'
'Ah. Rabbits.'
'Small fluffy white ones. But the only stories I know are the ones father taught me when I was little, and I don't think they're really suitable.'
'Not many rabbits?'
'Lots of arms and legs being chopped off,' said Conina, and sighed. 'That's why you mustn't tell him about me you see? I'm just not cut out for a normal life.'
'Telling stories in a harem isn't bloody normal,' said Rincewind. 'It'll never catch on.'
'He's looking at us again!' Conina grabbed Rincewind's arm.
He shook her off. 'Oh, good grief,' he said, and hurried across the room to Nijel, who grabbed his other arm.
'You haven't been telling her about me, have you?' he demanded. 'I'll never live it down if you've told her that I'm only just learning how-’
'Nonono. She just wants you to help us. It's a sort of quest.'
Nijel's eyes gleamed.
'You mean a geas?' he said.
'Pardon?'
'It's in the book. To be a proper hero it says you've got to labour under a geas.'
Rincewind's forehead wrinkled. 'Is it a sort of bird?'
'I think it's more a sort of obligation, or something,' said Nijel, but without much certainty.
'Sounds more like a kind of bird to me,' said Rincewind, 'I'm sure I read it in a bestiary once. Large. Couldn't fly. Big pink legs, it had.' His face went blank as his ears digested what they had just heard his lips say.
Five seconds later they were out of the room, leaving behind four prone guards and the harem ladies themselves, who settled down for a bit of story-telling.
The desert rimwards of Al Khali is bisected by the river Tsort, famed in myth and lies, which insinuates its way through the brown landscapes like a long damp descriptive passage punctuated with sandbanks. And every sandbank is covered with sunbaked logs, and most of the logs are the kind of logs that have teeth, and most of the logs opened one lazy eye at the distant sounds of splashing from upstream, and suddenly most of the logs had legs. A dozen scaly bodies slipped into the turbid waters, which rolled over them again. The dark waters were unruffled, except for a few inconsequential V -shaped ripples.
The Luggage paddled gently down the stream. The water was making it feel a little better. It spun gently in the weak current, the focus of several mysterious little swirls that sped across the surface of the water.
The ripples converged.
The Luggage jerked. Its lid flew open. It shot under the surface with a brief, despairing creak.
The chocolate-coloured waters of the Tsort rolled back again. They were getting good at it.
And the tower of sourcery loomed over Al Khali like a vast and beautiful fungus, the kind that appear in books with little skull-and-crossbones symbols beside them.
The Seriph's guard had fought back, but there were now quite a lot of bewildered frogs and newts around the base of the tower, and they were the fortunate ones. They still had arms and legs, of a sort, and most of their essential organs were still on the inside. The city was under the rule of sourcery ... martial lore.
Some of the buildings nearest the base of the tower were already turning into the bright white marble that the wizards obviously preferred.
The trio stared out through a hole in the palace walls.
'Very impressive,' said Conina critically. 'Your wizards are more powerful than I thought.'
'Not my wizards,' said Rincewind. 'I don't know whose wizards they are. I don't like it. All the wizards I knew couldn't stick one brick on another.'
'I don't like the idea of wizards ruling everybody,' said Nijel. 'Of course, as a hero I am philosophically against the whole idea of wizardry in any case. The time will come when,' his eyes glazed slightly, as if he was trying to remember something he'd seen somewhere, 'the time will come when all wizardry has gone from the face of the world and the sons of, of — anyway, we can all be a bit more practical about things,' he added lamely.
'Read it in a book, did you?’ said Rincewind sourly. Any geas in it?'
'He's got a point,' said Conina. 'I've nothing against wizards, but it's not as if they do much good. There just a bit of decoration, really. Up to now.'
Rincewind pulled off his hat. It was battered, stained and covered with rock dust, bits of it had been sheared off, the point was dented and the star was shedding sequins like pollen, but the word "blizzard" was still just readable under the grime.
'See this?' he demanded, red in the face. 'Do you see it? Do you? What does it tell you?'
'That you can't spell?' said Nijel.
'What? No! It says I'm a wizard, that's what! Twenty years behind the staff, and proud of it! I've done my time, I have! I've pas — I've sat dozens of exams! If all the spells I've read were piled on top of one another, they'd ... it'd ... you'd have a lot of spells!'
'Yes, but-’ Conina began.
'Yes?'
'You're not actually very good at them, are you?'
Rincewind glared at her. He tried to think of what to say next, and a small receptor area opened in his mind at the same time as an inspiration particle, its path bent and skewed by a trillion random events, screamed down through the atmosphere and burst silently just at the right spot.
'Talent just defines what you do,' he said. 'It doesn't define what you are. Deep down, I mean. When you know what you are, you can do anything.'
He thought a bit more and added, 'That's what makes sourcerers so powerful. The important thing is to know what you really are.'
There was a pause full of philosophy.
'Rincewind?' said Conina, kindly.
'Hmm?' said Rincewind, who was still wondering how the words got into his head.
'You really are an idiot. Do you know that?'
'You will all stand very still.'
Abrim the vizier stepped out of a ruined archway. He was wearing the Archchancellor's hat.
The desert fried under the flame of the sun. Nothing moved except the shimmering air, hot as a stolen volcano, dry as a skull.
A basilisk lay panting in the baking shade of a rock, dribbling corrosive yellow slime. For the last five minutes its ears had been detecting the faint thump of hundreds of little legs moving unsteadily over the dunes, which seemed to indicate that dinner was on the way.
It blinked its legendary eyes and uncoiled twenty feet of hungry body, winding out and on to the sand like fluid death.
The Luggage staggered to a halt and raised its lid threateningly. The basilisk hissed, but a little uncertainly, because it had never seen a walking box before, and certainly never one with lots of alligator teeth stuck in its lid. There were also scraps of leathery hide adhering to it, as though it had been involved in a fight in a handbag factory, and in a way that the basilisk wouldn't have been able to describe even if it could talk, it appeared to be glaring.
Right, the reptile thought, if that's the way you want to play it.
It turned on the Luggage a stare like a diamond drill, a stare that nipped in via the staree's eyeballs and flayed the brain from the inside, a stare that tore the frail net curtains on the windows of the soul, a stare that
The basilisk realised something was very wrong. An entirely new and unwelcome sensation started to arise just behind its saucer-shaped eyes. It started small, like the little itch in those few square inches of back that no amount of writhing will allow you to scratch, and grew until it became a second, red-hot, internal sun.
The basilisk was feeling a terrible, overpowering and irresistible urge to blink ...
It did something incredibly unwise.
It blinked.
'He's talking through his hat,' said Rincewind.
'Eh?' said Nijel, who was beginning to realise that the world of the barbarian hero wasn't the clean, simple place he had imagined in the days when the most exciting thing he had ever done was stack parsnips.
'The hat's talking through him, you mean,' said Conina, and she backed away too, as one tends to do in the presence of horror.
'Eh?'
'I will not harm you. You have been of some service,' said Abrim, stepping forwards with his hands out. 'But you are right. He thought he could gain power through wearing me. Of course, it is the other way around. An astonishingly devious and clever mind.'
'So you tried his head on for size?' said Rincewind. He shuddered. He'd worn the hat. Obviously he didn't have the right kind of mind. Abrim did have the right kind of mind, and now his eyes were grey and colourless, his skin was pale and he walked as though his body was hanging down from his head.
Nijel had pulled out his book and was riffling feverishly through the pages.
'What on earth are you doing?' said Conina, not taking her eyes off the ghastly figure.
'I'm looking up the Index of Wandering Monsters,' said Nijel. 'Do you think it's an Undead? They're awfully difficult to kill, you need garlic and,-’
'You won't find this in there,' said Rincewind slowly. 'It's — it's a vampire hat.'
'Of course, it might be a Zombie,' said Nijel, running his finger down a page. 'It says here you need black pepper and sea salt, but-’
'You're supposed to fight the bloody things, not eat them,' said Conina.
'This is a mind I can use,' said the hat. 'Now I can fight back. I shall rally wizardry. There is room for only one magic in this world, and I embody it. Sourcery beware!'
'Oh, no,' said Rincewind under his breath.
'Wizardry has learned a lot in the last twenty centuries. This upstart can be beaten. You three will follow me.'
It wasn't a request. It wasn't even an order. It was a sort of forecast. The voice of the hat went straight to the hindbrain without bothering to deal with the consciousness, and Rincewind's legs started to move of their own accord.
The other two also jerked forward, walking with the awkward doll-like jerking that suggested that they, too, were on invisible strings.
'Why the oh, no?' said Conina, 'I mean, "Oh, no" on general principles I can understand, but was there any particular reason?'
'If we get a chance we must run,' said Rincewind.
'Did you have anywhere in mind?'
'It probably won't matter. We're doomed anyway.'
'Why?' said Nijel.
'Well,' said Rincewind, 'have you ever heard of the Mage Wars?'
There were a lot of things on the Disc that owed their origin to the Mage Wars. Sapient pearwood was one of them.
The original tree was probably perfectly normal and spent its days drinking groundwater and eating sunshine in a state of blessed unawareness and then the magic wars broke around it and pitchforked its genes into a state of acute perspicacity.
It also left it ingrained, as it were, with a bad temper. But sapient pearwood got off lightly.
Once, when the level of background magic on the Disc was young and high and found every opportunity to burst on the world, wizards were all as powerful as sourcerers and built their towers on every hilltop. And if there was one thing a really powerful wizardcan't stand, it is another wizard. His instinctive approach to diplomacy is to hex 'em till they glow, then curse them in the dark.
That could only mean one thing. All right, two things. Three things.
All-out. Thaumaturgical. War.
And there were of course no alliances, no sides, no deals, no mercy, no cease. The skies twisted, the seas boiled. The scream and whizz of fireballs turned the night into day, but that was all right because the ensuing clouds of black smoke turned the day into night. The landscape rose and fell like a honeymoon duvet, and the very fabric of space itself was tied in multidimensional knots and bashed on a flat stone down by the river of Time. For example, a popular spell at the time was Pelepel's Temporal Compressor, which on one occasion resulted in a race of giant reptiles being created, evolving, spreading, flourishing and then being destroyed in the space of about five minutes, leaving only its bones in the earth to mislead forthcoming generations completely. Trees swam, fishes walked, mountains strolled down to the shops for a packet of cigarettes, and the mutability of existence was such that the first thing any cautious person would do when they woke up in the mornings was count their arms and legs.
That was, in fact, the problem. All the wizards were pretty evenly matched and in any case lived in high towers well protected with spells, which meant that most magical weapons rebounded and landed on the common people who were trying to scratch an honest living from what was, temporarily, the soil, and lead ordinary, decent (but rather short) lives.
But still the fighting raged, battering the very structure of the universe of order, weakening the walls of reality and threatening to topple the whole rickety edifice of time and space into the darkness of the Dungeon Dimensions ...
One story said that the gods stepped in, but the gods don't usually take a hand in human affairs unless it amuses them. Another one — and this was the one that the wizards themselves told, and wrote down in their books — was that the wizards themselves got together and settled their differences amicably for the good of mankind. And this was generally accepted as the true account, despite being as internally likely as a lead lifebelt.
The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find ...
'What happened, then?' said Conina.
'It doesn't matter,' said Rincewind, mournfully. 'It's going to start all over again. I can feel it. I've got this instinct. There's too much magic flowing into the world. There's going to be a horrible war. It's all going to happen. The Disc is too old to take it this time. Everything's been worn too thin. Doom, darkness and destruction bear down on us. The Apocralypse is nigh.'
'Death walks abroad,' added Nijel helpfully.
'What?' snapped Rincewind, angry at being interrupted.
'I said, Death walks abroad,' said Nijel.
'Abroad I don't mind,' said Rincewind. 'They're all foreigners. It's Death walking around here I'm not looking forward to.'
'It's only a metaphor,' said Conina.
'That's all you know. I've met him.'
'What did he look like?' said Nijel.
'Put it like this-’
'Yes?'
'He didn't need a hairdresser.'
Now the sun was a blowlamp nailed to the sky, and the only difference between the sand and red-hot ash was the colour.
The Luggage plodded erratically across the burning dunes. There were a few traces of yellow slime rapidly drying on its lid.
The lonely little oblong was watched, from atop of a stone pinnacle the shape and temperature of a firebrick, by a chimera.[18] The chimera was an extremely rare species, and this particular one wasn't about to do anything to help matters.
It judged its moment carefully, kicked away with its talons, folded its leathery wings and plummeted down towards its victim.
The chimera's technique was to swoop low over the prey, lightly boiling it with its fiery breath, and then turn and rend its dinner with its teeth. It managed the fire part but then, at the point where experience told the creature it should be facing a stricken and terrified victim, found itself on the ground in the path of a scorched and furious Luggage.
The only thing incandescent about the Luggage was its rage. It had spent several hours with a headache, during which it had seemed the whole world had tried to attack it. It had had enough.
When it had stamped the unfortunate chimera into a greasy puddle on the sand it paused for a moment, apparently considering its future. It was becoming clear that not belonging to anyone was a lot harder than it had thought. It had vague, comforting recollections of service and a wardrobe to call its own.
It turned around very slowly, pausing frequently to open its lid. It might have been sniffing the air, if it had a nose. At last it made up its mind, if it had a mind.
The hat and its wearer also strode purposefully across the rubble that had been the legendary Rhoxie to the foot of the tower of sourcery, their unwilling entourage straggling along behind them.
There were doors at the foot of the tower. Unlike those of Unseen University, which were usually propped wide open, they were tightly shut. They seemed to glow.
'You three are privileged to be here,' said the hat through Abrim's slack mouth. 'This is the moment when wizardry stops running,' he glanced witheringly at Rincewind, 'and starts fighting back. You will remember it for the rest of your lives.'
'What, until lunchtime?' said Rincewind weakly.
'Watch closely,' said Abrim. He extended his hands.
'If we get a chance,' whispered Rincewind to Nijel, 'we run, right?'
'Where to?'
'From,' said Rincewind, 'the important word is from.'
'I don't trust this man,' said Nijel. 'I try not to judge from first impressions, but I definitely think he's up to no good.'
'He had you thrown in a snake pit!'
'Perhaps I should have taken the hint.'
The vizier started to mutter. Even Rincewind, whose few talents included a gift for languages, didn't recognise it, but it sounded the kind of language designed specifically for muttering, the words curling out like scythes at ankle height, dark and red and merciless. They made complicated swirls in the air, and then drifted gently towards the doors of the tower.
Where they touched the white marble it turned black and crumbled.
As the remains drifted to the ground a wizard stepped through and looked Abrim up and down.
Rincewind was used to the dressy ways of wizards, but this one was really impressive, his robe so padded and crenellated and buttressed in fantastic folds and creases that it had probably been designed by an architect. The matching hat looked like a wedding cake that had collided intimately with a Christmas tree.
The actual face, peering through the small gap between the baroque collar and the filigreed fringe of the brim, was a bit of a disappointment. At some time in the past it had thought its appearance would be improved by a thin, scruffy moustache. It had been wrong.
'That was our bloody door!' it said. 'You're really going to regret this!'
Abrim folded his arms.
This seemed to infuriate the other wizard. He flung up his arms, untangled his hands from the lace on his sleeves, and sent a flare screaming across the gap.
It struck Abrim in the chest and rebounded in a gout of incandescence, but when the blue after-images allowed Rincewind to see he saw Abrim, unharmed.
His opponent frantically patted out the last of the little fires in his own clothing and looked up with murder in his eyes.
'You don't seem to understand,' he rasped. 'It's sourcery you're dealing with now. You can't fight sourcery.'
'I can use sourcery,' said Abrim.
The wizard snarled and lofted a fireball, which burst harmlessly inches from Abrim's dreadful grin.
A look of acute puzzlement passed across the other one's face. He tried again, sending lines of blue-hot magic lancing straight from infinity towards Abrim's heart. Abrim waved them away.
'Your choice is simple,' he said. 'You can join me, or you can die.'
It was at this point that Rincewind became aware of a regular scraping sound close to his ear. It had an unpleasant metallic ring.
He half-turned, and felt the familiar and very uncomfortable prickly feeling of Time slowing down around him.
Death paused in the act of running a whetstone along the edge of his scythe and gave him a nod of acknowledgement, as between one professional and another.
He put a bony digit to his lips, or rather, to the place where his lips would have been if he'd had lips.
All wizards can see Death, but they don't necessarily want to.
There was a popping in Rincewind's ears and the spectre vanished.
Abrim and the rival wizard were surrounded by a corona of randomised magic, and it was evidently having no effect on Abrim. Rincewind drifted back into the land of the living just in time to see the man reach out and grab the wizard by his tasteless collar.
'You cannot defeat me,' he said in the hat's voice. 'I have had two thousand years of harnessing power to my own ends. l can draw my power from your power. Yeld to me or you won't even have time to regret it.'
The wizard struggled and, unfortunately, let pride win over caution.
'Never!' he said.
'Die,' suggested Abrim.
Rincewind had seen many strange things in his life, most of them with extreme reluctance, but he had never seen anyone actually killed by magic.
Wizards didn't kill ordinary people because a) they seldom noticed them and b) it wasn't considered sporting and c) besides, who'd do all the cooking and growing food and things. And killing a brother wizard with magic was well-nigh impossible on account of the layers of protective spells that any cautious wizard maintained about his person at all times.[19] The first thing a young wizard learns at Unseen University — apart from where his peg is, and which way to the lavatory — is that he must protect himself at all times.
Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn't. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it.
The little wizard was wearing the psychic equivalent of three feet of tempered steel and it was being melted like butter under a blowlamp. It streamed away, vanished.
If there are words to describe what happened to the wizard next then they're imprisoned inside a wild thesaurus in the Unseen University Library. Perhaps it's best left to the imagination, except that anyone able to imagine the kind of shape that Rincewind saw writhing painfully for a few seconds before it mercifully vanished must be a candidate for the famous white canvas blazer with the optional long sleeves.
'So perish all enemies,' said Abrim.
He turned his face up to the heights of the tower.
'I challenge,' he said. And those who will not face me must follow me, according to the Lore.'
There was a long, thick pause caused by a lot of people listening very hard. Eventually, from the top of the tower, a voice called out uncertainly, 'Whereabouts in the Lore?'
'I embody the Lore.'
There was a distant whispering and then the same voice called out, 'The Lore is dead. Sourcery is above the Lo-’
The sentence ended in a scream because Abrim raised his left hand and sent a thin beam of green light in the precise direction of the speaker.
It was at about this moment that Rincewind realised that he could move his limbs himself. The hat had temporarily lost interest in them. He glanced sideways at Conina. In instant, unspoken agreement they each grasped one of Nijel's arms and turned and ran, and didn't stop until they'd put several walls between them and the tower. Rincewind ran expecting something to hit him in the back of the neck. Possibly the world.
All three landed in the rubble and lay there panting.
'You needn't have done that,' muttered Nijel. 'I was just getting ready to really give him a seeing-to. How can I ever-’
There was an explosion behind them and shafts of multicoloured fire screamed overhead, striking sparks off the masonry. Then there was a sound like an enormous cork being pulled out of a small bottle, and a peal of laughter that, somehow wasn't very amusing. The ground shook.
'What's going on?' said Conina.
'Magical war,' said Rincewind.
'Is that good?'
No.
'But surely you want wizardry to triumph?' said Nijel.
Rincewind shrugged, and ducked as something unseen and big whirred overhead making a noise like a partridge.
'I've never seen wizards fight,' said Nijel. He started to scramble up the rubble and screamed as Conina grabbed him by the leg.
'I don't think that would be a good idea,' she said. 'Rincewind?'
The wizard shook his head gloomily, and picked up a pebble. He tossed it up above the ruined wall, where it turned into a small blue teapot. It smashed when it hit the ground.
'The spells react with one another,' he said. 'There's no telling what they'll do.'
'But we're safe behind this wall?' said Conina.
Rincewind brightened a bit. 'Are we?' he said.
'I was asking you.'
'Oh. No. I shouldn't think so. It's just ordinary stone. The right spell and ... phooey.'
'Phooey?'
'Right.'
'Shall we run away again?'
'It's worth a try.'
They made it to another upright wall a few seconds before a randomly spitting ball of yellow fire landed where they had been lying and turned the ground into something awful. The whole area around the tower was a tornado of sparkling air.
'We need a plan,' said Nijel.
'We could try running again,' said Rincewind.
'That doesn't solve anything!'
'Solves most things,' said Rincewind.
'How far do we have to go to be safe?' said Conina.
Rincewind risked a look around the wall.
'Interesting philosophical question,' he said. 'I've been a long way, and I've never been safe.'
Conina sighed and stared at a pile of rubble nearby. She stared at it again. There was something odd there, and she couldn't quite put her finger on it.
'I could rush at them,' said Nijel, vaguely. He stared yearningly at Conina's back.
'Wouldn't work,' said Rincewind. 'Nothing works against magic. Except stronger magic. And then the only thing that beats stronger magic is even stronger magic. And next thing you know...'
'Phooey?' suggested Nijel.
'It happened before,' said Rincewind. 'Went on for thousands of years until not a-’
'Do you know what's odd about that heap of stone?' said Conina.
Rincewind glanced at it. He screwed up his eyes.
'What, apart from the legs?' he said.
It took several minutes to dig the Seriph out. He was still clutching a wine bottle, which was almost empty, and blinked at them all in vague recognition.
'Powerful,' he said, and then after some effort added, 'stuff, this vintage. Felt,' he continued, 'as though the place fell on me.'
'It did,' said Rincewind.
'Ah. That would be it, then.' Creosote focused on Conina, after several attempts, and rocked backwards. 'My word,' he said, 'the young lady again. Very impressive.'
'I say-’ Nijel began.
'Your hair,' said the Seriph, rocking slowly forward again, 'is like, is like a flock of goats that graze upon the side of Mount Gebra.'
'Look here
'Your breasts are like, like,' the Seriph swayed sideways a little, and gave a brief, sorrowful glance at the empty bottle, 'are like the jewelled melons in the fabled gardens of dawn.'
Conina's eyes widened. 'They are?' she said.
'No,' said the Seriph, 'doubt about it. I know jewelled melons when I see them. As the white does in the meadows of the water margin are your thighs, which-’
'Erm, excuse me-’said Nijel, clearing his throat with malice aforethought.
Creosote swayed in his direction.
'Hmm?' he said.
'Where I come from,' said Nijel stonily, 'we don't talk to ladies like that.'
Conina sighed as Nijel shuffled protectively in front of her. It was, she reflected, absolutely true.
'In fact,' he went on, sticking out his jaw as far as possible, which still made it appear like a dimple, 'I've a jolly good mind-’
'Open to debate,' said Rincewind, stepping forward. 'Er, sir, sire, we need to get out. I suppose you wouldn't know the way?'
'Thousands of rooms,' said the Seriph,' in here, you know. Not been out in years.' He hiccuped. 'Decades. Ians. Never been out, in fact.' His face glazed over in the act of composition. 'The bird of Time has but, um, a little way to walk and lo! the bird is on its— feet.'
'It's a geas,' muttered Rincewind.
Creosote swayed at him. 'Abrim does all the ruling, you see. Terrible hard work.'
'He's not,' said Rincewind, 'making a very good job of it just at present.'
And we'd sort of like to get away,' said Conina, who was still turning over the phrase about the goats.
'And I've got this geas,' said Nijel, glaring at Rincewind.
Creosote patted him on the arm.
'That's nice,' he said. 'Everyone should have a pet.
'So if you happen to know if you own any stables or anything...' prompted Rincewind.
'Hundreds,' said Creosote. 'I own some of the finest, most ... finest horses in the world.' His brow wrinkled. 'So they tell me.'
'But you wouldn't happen to know where they are?'
'Not as such,' the Seriph admitted. A random spray of magic turned the nearby wall into arsenic meringue.
'I think we might have been better off in the snake pit,' said Rincewind, turning away.
Creosote took another sorrowful glance at his empty wine bottle.
'I know where there's a magic carpet,' he said.
'No,' said Rincewind, raising his hands protectively. 'Absolutely not. Don't even-’