Sourcery

Even the sea looked arid. If any proto-amphibian emerged on to a beach like this, it would have given up there and then, gone back into the water and told all its relatives to forget the legs, it wasn’t worth it. The air felt as though it had been cooked in a sock.

Even so, Nijel insisted that they light a fire.

‘It’s more friendly,’ he said. ‘Besides, there could be monsters.’

Conina looked at the oily wavelets, rolling up the beach in what appeared to be a half-hearted attempt to get out of the sea.

‘In that?’ she said.

‘You never can tell.’

Rincewind mooched along the waterline, distractedly picking up stones and throwing them in the sea. One or two were thrown back.

After a while Conina got a fire going, and the bonedry, salt-saturated wood sent blue and green flames roaring up under a fountain of sparks. The wizard went and sat in the dancing shadows, his back against a pile of whitened wood, wrapped in a cloud of such impenetrable gloom that even Creosote stopped complaining of thirst and shut up.

Conina woke up after midnight. There was a crescent moon on the horizon and a thin, chilly mist covered the sand. Creosote was snoring on his back. Nijel, who was theoretically on guard, was sound asleep.

Conina lay perfectly still, every sense seeking out the thing that had awoken her.

Finally she heard it again. It was a tiny, diffident clinking noise, barely audible above the muted slurp of the sea.

She got up, or rather, she slid into the vertical as bonelessly as a jellyfish, and flicked Nijel’s sword out of his unresisting hand. Then she sidled through the mist without causing so much as an extra swirl.

The fire sank down further into its bed of ash. After a while Conina came back, and shook the other two awake.

‘Warrizit?’

‘I think you ought to see this,’ she hissed. ‘I think it could be important.’

‘I just shut my eyes for a second—’ Nijel protested.

‘Never mind about that. Come on.’

Creosote squinted around the impromptu campsite.

‘Where’s the wizard fellow?’

‘You’ll see. And don’t make a noise. It could be dangerous.’

They stumbled after her knee-deep in vapour, towards the sea.

Eventually Nijel said, ‘Why dangerous—’

‘Shh! Did you hear it?’

Nijel listened.

‘Like a sort of ringing noise?’

‘Watch …’

Rincewind walked jerkily up the beach, carrying a large round rock in both hands. He walked past them without a word, his eyes staring straight ahead.

They followed him along the cold beach until he reached a bare area between the dunes, where he stopped and, still moving with all the grace of a clothes horse, dropped the rock. It made a clinking noise.

There was a wide circle of other stones. Very few of them had actually stayed on top of another one.

The three of them crouched down and watched him.

‘Is he asleep?’ said Creosote.

Conina nodded.

‘What’s he trying to do?’

‘I think he’s trying to build a tower.’

Rincewind lurched back into the ring of stones and, with great care, placed another rock on empty air. It fell down.

‘He’s not very good at it, is he,’ said Nijel.

‘It is very sad,’ said Creosote.

‘Maybe we ought to wake him up,’ said Conina. ‘Only I heard that if you wake up sleepwalkers their legs fall off, or something. What do you think?’

‘Could be risky, with wizards,’ said Nijel.

They tried to make themselves comfortable on the chilly sand.

‘It’s rather pathetic, isn’t it?’ said Creosote. ‘It’s not as if he’s really a proper wizard.’

Conina and Nijel tried to avoid one another’s gaze. Finally the boy coughed, and said, ‘I’m not exactly a barbarian hero, you know. You may have noticed.’

They watched the toiling figure of Rincewind for a while, and then Conina said, ‘If it comes to that, I think I lack a certain something when it comes to hairdressing.’

They both stared fixedly at the sleepwalker, busy with their own thoughts and red with mutual embarrassment.

Creosote cleared his throat.

‘If it makes anyone feel better,’ he said, ‘I sometimes perceive that my poetry leaves a lot to be desired.’

Rincewind carefully tried to balance a large rock on a small pebble. It fell off, but he appeared to be happy with the result.

‘Speaking as a poet,’ said Conina carefully, ‘what would you say about this situation?’

Creosote shifted uneasily. ‘Funny old thing, life,’ he said.

‘Pretty apt.’

Nijel lay back and looked up at the hazy stars. Then he sat bolt upright.

‘Did you see that?’ he demanded.

‘What?’

‘It was a sort of flash, a kind of—’

The hubward horizon exploded into a silent flower of colour, which expanded rapidly through all the hues of the conventional spectrum before flashing into brilliant octarine. It etched itself on their eyeballs before fading away.

After a while there was a distant rumble.

‘Some sort of magical weapon,’ said Conina, blinking. A gust of warm wind picked up the mist and streamed it past them.

‘Blow this,’ said Nijel, getting to his feet. ‘I’m going to wake him up, even if it means we end up carrying him.’