Sourcery

The particular thing nearest Rincewind was at least twenty feet high. It looked like a dead horse that had been dug up after three months and then introduced to a range of new experiences, at least one of which had included an octopus.

It hadn’t noticed Rincewind. It was too busy concentrating on the light.

Rincewind crawled back to the still body of Coin and nudged it gently.

‘Are you alive?’ he said. ‘If you’re not, I’d prefer it if you didn’t answer.’

Coin rolled over and stared up at him with puzzled eyes. After a while he said, ‘I remember—’

‘Best not to,’ said Rincewind.

The boy’s hand groped vaguely in the sand beside him.

‘It isn’t here any more,’ said Rincewind, quietly. The hand stopped its searching.

Rincewind helped Coin to sit up. He looked blankly at the cold silver sand, then at the sky, then at the distant Things, and then at Rincewind.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said.

‘No harm in that. I’ve never known what to do,’ said Rincewind with hollow cheerfulness. ‘Been completely at a loss my whole life.’ He hesitated. ‘I think it’s called being human, or something.’

‘But I’ve always known what to do!’

Rincewind opened his mouth to say that he’d seen some of it, but changed his mind. Instead he said, ‘Chin up. Look on the bright side. It could be worse.’

Coin took another look around.

‘In what respect, exactly?’ he said, his voice a shade more normal.

‘Um.’

‘What is this place?’

‘It’s a sort of other dimension. The magic broke through and we went with it, I think.’

‘And those things?’

They regarded the Things.

‘I think they’re Things. They’re trying to get back through the hole,’ said Rincewind. ‘It isn’t easy. Energy levels, or something. I remember we had a lecture on them once. Er.’

Coin nodded, and reached out a thin pale hand towards Rincewind’s forehead.

‘Do you mind—?’ he began.

Rincewind shuddered at the touch. ‘Mind what?’ he said.

‘— if I have a look in your head?’

‘Aargh.’

‘It’s rather a mess in here. No wonder you can’t find things.’

‘Ergh.’

‘You ought to have a clear out.’

‘Oogh.’

‘Ah.’

Rincewind felt the presence retreat. Coin frowned.

‘We can’t let them get through,’ he announced. ‘They have horrible powers. They’re trying to will the hole bigger, and they can do it. They’ve been waiting to break into our world for—’ he frowned – ‘Ians?’

‘Aeons,’ said Rincewind.

Coin opened his other hand, which had been tightly clenched, and showed Rincewind the small grey pearl.

‘Do you know what this is?’ he said.

‘No. What is it?’

‘I – can’t remember. But we should put it back.’

‘Okay. Just use sourcery. Blow them to bits and let’s go home.’

‘No. They live on magic. It’d only make them worse. I can’t use magic.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Rincewind.

‘I’m afraid your memory was very clear on the subject.’

‘Then what shall we do?’

‘I don’t know!’

Rincewind thought about this and then, with an air of finality, started to take off his last sock.

‘No half-bricks,’ he said, to no one in particular. ‘Have to use sand.’

‘You’re going to attack them with a sockful of sand?’

‘No. I’m going to run away from them. The sockful of sand is for when they follow.’

———

People were returning to Al Khali, where the ruined tower was a smoking heap of stones. A few brave souls turned their attention to the wreckage, on the basis that there might be survivors who could be rescued or looted or both.

And, among the rubble, the following conversation might have been heard:

‘There’s something moving under here!’

‘Under that? By the two beards of Imtal, you are mishearing. It must weigh a ton.’

‘Over here, brothers!’

And then sounds of much heaving would have been heard, and then:

‘It’s a box!’

‘It could be treasure, do you think?’

‘It’s growing legs, by the Seven Moons of Nasreem!’

‘Five moons—’

‘Where’d it go? Where’d it go?’

‘Never mind about that, it’s not important. Let’s get this straight, according to the legend it was five moons—’

In Klatch they take their mythology seriously. It’s only real life they don’t believe.

———

The three horsepersons sensed the change as they descended through the heavy snowclouds at the Hub end of the Sto Plain. There was a sharp scent in the air.

‘Can’t you smell it?’ said Nijel. ‘I remember it when I was a boy, when you lay in bed on that first morning in winter, and you could sort of taste it in the air and—’

The clouds parted below them and there, filling the high plains country from end to end, were the herds of the Ice Giants.

They stretched for miles in every direction, and the thunder of their stampede filled the air.

The bull glaciers were in the lead, bellowing their vast creaky calls and throwing up great sheets of earth as they ploughed relentlessly forward. Behind them pressed the great mass of cows and their calves, skimming over land already ground down to the bedrock by the leaders.

They bore as much resemblance to the familiar glaciers the world thought it knew as a lion dozing in the shade bears to three hundred pounds of wickedly co-ordinated muscle bounding towards you with its mouth open.