Sourcery

Terry Pratchett

Summary

A sourcerer is born -- a wizard so powerful that by comparison all other magic is just mucking around in pointy hats.

And his very existence brings the Discworld, which is of course flat and rides through space on the back of an enormous turtle, to the very verge of all-out thaumaturgical war [Footnote: A bad thing].

All that stands in the way is Rincewind, the failed magician, who wants to save the world, or at least that part of it which contains him; Conina, the barbarian hairdresser; Nijel the Destroyer, whose mother still makes him wear woolly underwear; and possibly the first yuppie genie, who's into lamps as a growth area.

This time the adventure doesn't simply draw heavily on Omar Khayyam, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the 1001 Nights and every Arabian B-movie ever made, it scribbles on them as well...

Quotes

Thunder rolled, on cue.

Death: NOTHING IS FINAL. NOTHING IS ABSOLUTE. EXCEPT ME, OF COURSE.

THE LAWYERS OF FATE DEMAND A LOOPHOLE IN EVERY PROPHECY.

"Then they shall have their chance," he said, "when hell freezes over."

NO. I AM NOT ALLOWED TO ENLIGHTEN YOU, EVEN BY DEFAULT, ABOUT CURRENT TEMPERATURES IN THE NEXT WORLD.

"I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?"

Death thought about it.

CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE.

Ipslore: "Curse you!"
Death: MANY HAVE.

[Death] sighed again. People were always trying this sort of thing. On the other hand, it was quite interesting to watch, and at least this was a bit more original than the usual symbolic chess game, which Death always dreaded because he could never remember how the knight was supposed to move.

Death: YOU'RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE.
Ipslore: That's what being alive is all about.

...Great A'Tuin swam slowly through the interstellar deeps like the largest turtle there has eveer been, carrying on its carapace the four huge elephants that bore on their backs the vast, glittering, waterfall-fringed circle of the Discworld, which exists either because of some impossible blip on the curve of probability or because the gods enjoy a joke as much as anyone.

When it comes to glittering objects, wizards have all the taste and self-control of a deranged magpie.

...times were a lot quieter now and, to be honest, senior wizards tended to look upon actual magic as a bit beneath them. They tended to prefer administration, which was safer and nearly as much fun, and also big dinners.

Other wizards dozed in their studies, or took a gentle stroll around the gardens in order to work up an appetite for the evening's feast; about a dozen steps was usually considered quite sufficient.

Books of magic have a sort of life of their own. Some have altogether too much; for example, the first edition of the Necrotelicomicon has to be kept between iron plates, the True Arte of Levitatione has spent the last one hundred and fifty years up in the rafters, and Ge Fordge's Compenydyum of Sex Majick is kept in a vat of ice in a room all by itself and there's a strict rule that it can only be read by wizards who are over eighty and, if possible, dead.

It wasn't that [the Librarian] was unaware of the despair and nobility of the human condition. It was just that as far as he was concerned you could stuff it.

There are eight levels of wizardry on the Disc; after sixteen years Rincewind has failed to achieve even level one. In fact it is the considered opinion of some of his tutors that he is incapable even of achieving level zero, which most normal people are born at; to put it another way, it has been suggested that when Rincewind dies the average occult ability of the human race will actually go up by a fraction.

...you can tell he's a wizard, because he's got a pointy hat with a floppy brim. It's got the word 'Wizzard' embroidered on it in big silver letters, by someone whose needlework is even worse than their spelling.

He was tall and wiry and looked as though he had been a horse in previous lives and had only just avoided it in this one. He always gave people the impression that he was looking at them with his teeth.

Spelter: "You haven't been drinking, have you?"
Rincewind: "No!"
Spelter: "Um. Would you like to?"

It wasn't one of your modern wardrobes, fit only for nervous adulterers to jump into when the husband returned home early... It was quite possible that it was a secret doorway to fabulous worlds, but no-one had ever tried to find out because of the distressing smell of mothballs.

[The Luggage] had been described as half suitcase, half homicidal maniac.

In most old libraries the books are chained to the shelves to prevent them being damaged by people. In the Library of Unseen University, of course, it's more or less the other way about.

...Rincewind quit the University with all the other insects and small frightened rodents and decided that if a few quiet beers wouldn't allow him to see things in a different light, then a few more probably would.

On the centre table the complete carcass of a whole roast pig looked extremely annoyed at the fact that someone had killed it without waiting for it to finish its apple...

Here and there red-faced wizards were happily singing ancient drinking songs which involved a lot of knee-slapping and cries of "Ho!" The only possible excuse for this sort of thing is that wizards are celibate, and have to find their amusement where they can.

[T]o say that wizards are healthily competitive by nature is like saying that piranhas are naturally a little peckish.

...ever since the great Mage Wars left whole areas of the Disc uninhabitable^*, wizards have been forbidden to settle their differences by magical means, because it caused a lot of trouble for the population at large and in any case it was often difficult to tell which of the resultant patches of smoking fat had been the winner.

[Footnote: At least, by anyone who wanted to wake up the same shape, or even the same species, as they went to bed.]

Wayzygoose had, in his younger days, sought power in strange places; he'd wrestled with demons in blazing octagrams, stared into dimensions that men were not meant to wot of, and even outfaced the Unseen University grants committee...

In some parts of the city curiousity didn't just kill the cat, it threw it in the river with lead weights tied to its feet.

One of Rincewind's tutors had said of him that "to call his understanding of magical theory abysmal is to leave no suitable word to describe his grasp of its practice."

[Rincewind] objected to the fact that you had to be good at magic to be a wizard.

The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it.

An incoming Archchancellor had to request entry three times before [the doors] would be unlocked, signifying that he was appointed with the consent of wizardry in general. Or some such thing. The origins were lost in the depths of time, which was as good a reason as any for retaining the custom.

Spelter disliked children intensely, which was perhaps why they found him so fascinating.

Whereas Spelter tended towards the wiry, Billias was expansive, looking rather like a small captive balloon that had for some reason been draped in blue velvet and vermine; between them, the wizards averaged out as two normal-sized men.

"Did you see what he did to the door?"

"I know what he did to Billias!"

"What did he do?"

"I don't want to know!"

The reason that wizards didn't rule the Disc was quite simple. Hand any two wizards a piece of rope and they would instinctively pull in opposite directions.

"Who are we to turn him away, into the, um, wintry blast, shunning his--"

The oration was interrupted by Gravie blowing his nose.

"It's not winter," said one of the other wizards flatly, "and it's quite a warm night."

"Out into the treacherously changeable spring weather," snarled Spelter.

The senior wizards filed out and back to the Great Hall, where the dinner had got to the ninth course and was just getting into its stride. It takes more than a bit of magic and someone being blown to smoke in front of him to put a wizard off his food.

Cats can sit at either end of a lane and watch each other for hours, performing the kind of mental manoeuvring that would make a grand master appear impulsive by comparison, but cats have got nothing on wizards.

Carding: "My dear Spelter, you blush when you inadvertently tell the truth."
Spelter: "I didn't blush!"
Carding: "Precisely my point."

Spelter was thinking, eight sons, that means he did it eight times. At least. Gosh.

This thief was an artist of theft. ...There are artists that will paint an entire chapel ceiling; this was the kind of thief that could steal it.

When Gritoller Mimpsey, vice-president of the Thieves' Guild, was jostled in the marketplace and then found on returning home that a freshly-stolen handful of diamonds had vanished from their place of concealment, he knew who to blame. [Footnote: This was because Gritoller had swallowed the jewels for safe keeping.]

The Drum jealously guarded its reputation as the most stylishly disreputable tavern in Ankh-Morpork and the big troll that now guarded the door carefully vetted customers for suitability in the way of black cloaks, glowing eyes, magic swords and so forth.

Stranger: "Psst."
Rincewind: "Not very, but I'm working on it."

Rincewind: "Well, I wish you every success in your search. I'd help you myself, only I'm not going to."
Stranger: "What?"
Rincewind: "Sorry. I don't know why, but the prospect of certain death in unknown lands at the claws of exotic monsters isn't for me. I've tried it, and I couldn't get the hang of it. Each to their own, that's what I say, and I was cut out for boredom."

[Rincewind] could have kept going. He could have walked up the stairs, out into the street, got a pizza at the Klatchian takeaway in Sniggs Alley, and gone to bed. History would have been totally changed, and in fact would also have been considerably shorter, but he would have got a good night's sleep...

The subject of wizards and sex is a complicated one, but as has already been indicated it does, in essence, boil down to this: when it comes to wine, women and song, wizards are allowed to get drunk and croon as much as they like.

...that voice would have made even a statue get down off its pedestal for a few brisk laps of the playing field and fifty press-ups. It was a voice that could make "Good morning" sound like an invitation to bed.

The stranger threw back her hood and shook out her long hair. It was almost pure white. Since her skin was tanned golden the general effect was calculated to hit the male libido like a lead pipe.

"Quick, you must come with me," she said. "You're in great danger!"

"Why?"

"Because I will kill you if you don't."

These [guards] were walking slabs of muscle and they were absolutely unbribable, if only because the Patrician could outbid anyone else.

...pretty soon everyone was fighting to get something -- either away, out, or even.

Despite looking like a hairy rubber sack full of water, the orang-utan had the weight and reach of any man in the room and was currently sitting on a guard's shoulders and trying, with reasonable success, to unscrew his head.

Rincewind: "Why are they chasing you?"
Conina: "I don't know."
Rincewind: "Oh, come on! There must be a reason!"
Conina: "Oh, there's plenty of reasons. I just don't know which one."

Conina: "An hour ago you were afraid that your future was going to be dull and unintersting."
Rincewind: "I want it to be dull and uninteresting. I'm afraid it's going to be short."

The octarines around its crown blazed in all eight colours of the spectrum, creating the kind of effects in the foggy alley that it would take a very clever special effects director and a whole battery of star filters to achieve by any non-magical means. As she raised it high in the air it created its own nebula of colours that very few people ever see in legal circumstances.

She stole us because we ordered her to. It was a near thing, too.

"But she's a--" Rincewind hesitated. "She's of the female persuasion..." he muttered.

So was your mother.

"Yes, well, but she ran away before I was born," Rincewind mumbled.

Of all the disreputable taverns in all the city you could have walked into, you walked into his, complained the hat.

"He was the only wizard I could find," said the girl. "He looked the part. He had 'Wizzard' written on his hat and everything."

Don't believe everything you read.

Archchancellor's Hat: The world is going to end.
Rincewind: "What, again?"

"Murderers, muggers, thieves, assassins, pickpockets, cutpurses, reevers, snigsmen, rapists, and robbers," he said. "That's the Shades you're going into!"

[Footnote: The Ankh-Morpork Merchant's Guild publication Wellcome to Ankh-Morpork, Citie of One Thousand Surprises describes the area of Old Morpork known as The Shades as "a folklorique network of old alleys and picturesque streets, wherre exitment and romans lurkes arounde everry corner and much may be heard the traditinal street cries of old time also the laughing vissages of the denuizens as they goe about their businesse private." In other words, you have been warned.]

Down these mean streets a man must walk, he thought. And along some of them he will break into a run.

...[the Mended Drum] was a reputable disreputable tavern. Its customers had a certain rough-hewn respectability -- they might murder each other in an easygoing way, as between equals, but they didn't do it vindictively. A child could go in for a glass of lemonade and be certain of getting nothing worse than a clip round the ear when his mother heard his expanded vocabulary.

p class="i">By the way, the thing on the pole isn't a sign. When they decided to call the place the Troll's Head, they didn't mess about.

He looked sideways into the leering faces of men who would kill him sooner than think, and in fact would find it a great deal easier.

Conina: "Rincewind, I've known you for an hour and I'm astonished you've lived even that long!"
Rincewind: "Yes, but I have, haven't I? I've got a sort of talent for it. Ask anyone. I'm an addict."
Conina: "Addicted to what?"
Rincewind: "Life. I got hooked on it at an early age and I don't want to give it up..."

"There's something very strange about him," she conceded.

"You mean the way he's got his own private blizzard?"

"Doesn't seem to upset him. He's smiling."

"A frozen grin, I'd call it."

Conina: "That's silly. What have you wizards got against women, then?"
Rincewind: "We're not supposed to put anything against women. That's the whole point."

Conina: "My mother was a temple dancer for some mad god or other, and father rescued her, and-- they stayed together for a while. They say I got my looks and figure from her."
Rincewind: "And very good they are, too."
Conina: "Yes, well, but rom him I got sinews you could moor a boat with, reflexes like a snake on a hot tin, a terrible urge to steal things and this dreadful sensation every time I meet someone that I should be throwing a knife through his eye at ninety feet. I can, too."
Rincewind: "Gosh."
Conina: "It tends to put men off."

Rincewind: "Not much call for a barbarian hairdresser, I expect. I mean, no-one wants a shampoo-and-beheading."
Conina: "It's just that every time I see a manicure set I get this terrible urge to lay about me with a double-handed cuticle knife."

Conina: "Is [the Luggage] dangerous?"
Rincewind: "There's two schools of thought about that. There's some people who say it's dangerous, and others who say it's very dangerous."

The Luggage was also extremely protective of its owner. It would be hard to describe its attitude to the rest of creation, but one could start with the phrase "bloody-minded malevolence" and work up from there.

Serve me well and I will grant you your deepest desire.

"How can you grant my deepest desire if the world's going to end?"

The hat appeared to think about it. Well, have you got a deepest desire that need only take a couple of minutes?

The study of genetics on the Disc had failed at an early stage, when wizards tried the experimental crossing of such well known subjects as fruit flies and sweet peas. Unfortunately they didn't quite grasp the fundamentals, and the resultant offspring -- a sort of gren bean thing that buzzed -- led a short sad life before being eaten by a passing spider.

Rincewind sagged. "Why me?" he moaned.

For the good of the University. For the honour of wizardry. For the sake of the world. For your heart's desire. And I'll freeze you alive if you don't.

Rincewind breathed a sigh almost of relief. He wasn't good on bribes, or cajolery, or appeals to his better nature. But threats, now, threats were familiar.

The University was filling up with magic. ... How can the effect be described with delicacy and taste? For most of the wizards, it was like being an elderly man who, suddenly faced with a beautiful young woman, finds to his horror and delight and astonishment that the flesh is suddenly as willing as the spirit.

It was a shocking breach of etiquette in any case; no wizard should even think of touching another's staff without his express permission. But there are people who can't quite believe that children are fully human, and think that the operation of normal good manners doesn't apply to them.

Coin was pointing to the portraits and statues of former Archchancellors, which decorated the walls. Full-bearded and pointy-hatted, clutching ornamental scrolls or holding mysterious symbolic bits of astrological equipment, they stared down with ferocious self-importance or, possibly, chronic constipation.

Legend said that one day the city would have a king again, and went on with various comments about magic swords, strawberry birthmarks and all the other things that legends gabble on about in these circumstances.

The current Patrician, head of the extremely rich and powerful Vetinari family, was thin, tall and apparently as cold-blooded as a dead penguin.

He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behaviour for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the overhelming majority of citizens. [Footnote: The overhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit]

[Vetinari] didn't administer a reign of terror, just the occasional light shower.

...the Patrician never got angry until he had time to think about it. But sometimes he thought very quickly.

Carding: "Take him to the dungeons."
Spelter: "We haven't got any dungeons. This is a university."
Carding: "Then take him to the wine cellars. And while you're down there, build some dungeons."

Wuffles growled. It was a deep, primeval noise, which struck a chord in the racial memory of all those present and filled them with an urgent desire to climb a tree.

Conina: "What exactly is the Apocralypse?"
Rincewind: "Well, it's the end of the world. Sort of."
Conina: "Sort of? Sort of the end of the world? You mean we won't be certain? We'll all look around and say 'Pardon me, did you hear something?'"

Conina: "I must say the captain seems quite happy to have us aboard."
Rincewind: "That's because they think it's lucky to have a wizard on the boat. It isn't, of course."
Conina: "Lots of people believe it."
Rincewind: "Oh, it's lucky for other people, just not for me. I can't swim."
Conina: "What, not a stroke?"
Rincewind: "About how deep is the sea here, would you say? Approximately?"
Conina: "About a dozen fathoms, I believe."
Rincewind: "Then I could probably swim about a dozen fathoms, whatever they are."

Rincewind: "I've heard of Klatchian slave pirates, but this is a big boat. I shouldn't think one of them would dare attack it."
Conina: "One of them wouldn't, but these five might."

Conina: "Anyway, they'll have to capture me first. It's you who should be worrying."
Rincewind: "Why me?"
Conina: "You're the only other one who's wearing a dress."
Rincewind: "It's a robe--"
Conina: "Robe, dress. You better hope they know the difference."

"Hah!" he said. "They know not that we aboard a wizard have! To create in their bellies the burning green fire! Hah?"

The dark forests of his eyebrows wrinkled as it became apparent that Rincewind wasn't immediately ready to hurl vengeful magic at the invaders.

"Hah?" he insisted, making a mere single syllable do the work of a whole string of blood-congealing threats.

"You'd better get on with it," she said. "That's fifty green fires and hot leads to go, with a side order for blisters and scorpions. Hold the mercy."

Rincewind backed away. He wasn't any good at magic, but he'd had a hundred per cent success at staying alive up to now and didn't want to spoil the record. All he needed to do was to learn how to swim in the time it took to dive into the sea.

Slaver: "Can you sing, wizard?" Rincewind: "I might be able to. Why?" Slaver: "You could be just the man the Seriph needs for a job in the harem. It could be a unique opportunity." Rincewind: "I don't think so, thanks all the same. I'm not cut out for that kind of thing." Slaver: "Oh, but you could be."

-- No prior castrato experience necessary

...while it was bad enough to be attacked with deadly and ferocious accuracy by a rather prtty girl in a white dress with flowers on it, it was even worse for the male ego to be tripped up and bitten by a travel accessory.

It wasn't blood in general [Rincewind] couldn't stand the sight of, it was just his blood in particular that was so upsetting.

Years of pulling limpets off rocks and wrestling with the giant cockles in Ankh Bay had given him the kind of physical development normally associated with tectonic plates.

...Rincewind's subconscious knew being-cut-to-tiny-bits-mortal dread when it saw it. It saw it most of the time.

Conina: "...he was planning to overpower us and sell me as a slave when he got there."
Rincewind: "What, not sell me? Of course, it's the wizard's robes, he wouldn't dare--" Conina: "Um. Actually, he said he'd have to give you away.. Sort of like, one free wizard with every concubine sold?"

"I get along very well with women in general, it's just women with swords that upset me." He considered this for a while, and added, "Everyone with swords upsets me, if it comes to that."

"You'll let them run off with it?" said Conina, in genuine astonishment.

"Well, someone's got to do it. The way I see it, why me?"

"Well, someone's got to do it. The way I see it, why me?"

Of course, Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure in any case. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.

A temple, he thought. Well, it was big, and it was impressive, and the architect had used every trick in the book to make it look even bigger and even more impressive than it was, and to impress upon everyone looking at it that they, on the other hand, were very small and ordinary and didn't have as many domes.

...Rincewind felt he knew holy architecture when he saw it, and the frescoes on the big and, of course, impressive walls above him didn't look at all religious. For one thing, the participants were enjoying themselves. Almost certainly, they were enjoying themselves. Yes, they must be. It would be pretty astonishing if they weren't.

This sort of thing is only to be expected, he told himself. They don't know any better. Foreign countries are, well, foreign countries. They do things differently there.

Although some things, he decided, were done in very much the same way, only with rather more inventiveness and, by the look of it, far more often.

To Conina's sensitive nostrils [the wind] carried aromatic messages from the heart of the continent, compounded of the chill of deserts, the stink of lions, the compost of jungles and the flatulence of wildebeest.

Rincewind, of course, couldn't smell any of this. Adaptation is a wonderful thing, and most Morporkians would be hard put to smell a burning feather mattress at five feet.

"No," [Coin] said eventually, and when he spoke next his voice had that wide, echoing quality that, if you are not a wizard, you can only achieve with a lot of very expensive audio equipment.

Conina: "Well, we want to meet the criminal element, don't we?"
Rincewind: "Not exactly want. That wasn't the phrase I would have chosen."
Conina: "How would you put it, then?"
Rincewind: "Er, I think the phrase 'not want' sums it up pretty well."

Conina: "My father always said that death is but a sleep."
Rincewind: "Yes, the hat told me that. But the way I see it, it's a lot harder to get up in the morning."

Look, go away, will you? I'm a wizard! Wizards are ruled by their heads, not by their hearts!

And I'm getting votes from your glands, and they're telling me that as far as your body is concerned your brain is in a minority of one.

No-one had tried to sell him anything for several minutes. In Al Khali, that probably meant you were dead.

"My father always said that it was pointless to undertake a direct attack against an enemy extensively armed with efficieitn projectile weapons," [Conina] said.

Rincewind, who knew Cohen's normal method of speech, gave her a look of disbelief.

"Well, what he actually said," she added, "was never enter an arse-kicking contest with a porcupine."

"I can't do it!"

"What?"

Conina put her head in her hands. "I can't let myself be taken prisoner without a fight! I can feel a thousand barbarian ancestors accusing me of betrayal!" she hissed urgently.

"Pull the other one."

"No, really. This won't take a minute."

There was a sudden blur and the nearest man collapsed in a small gurgling heap.

It was only because Spelter had never heard of aircraft hangars that he didn't know what to compare [the room] with, although, to be fair, very few aircraft hangars have marble floors and a lot of statuary around the place.

He extended one thin arm, rolling back his sleeve in the traditional sign that magic was about to be performed without trickery.

The layout of the Library of Unseen University was a topographical nightmare, the sheer presence of so much magic twisting dimensions and gravity into the kind of spaghetti that would make M.C. Escher go for a good lie down, or possibly sideways.

"I'm not dead," [Conina] said. "I'm sure I would have remembered."

[The women,] as far as Rincewind could see, demonstrated that you could make six small saucepan lids and a few yards of curtain netting go a long way although -- he shivered -- not really far enough.

Rincewind: "They say, I mean, everything you touch turns into gold, for goodness sake."
Conina: "That could make going to the lavatory a bit tricky."

The Hashishim, who derive their name from the vast quantities of hashish they consumed, were unique among vicious killers in being both deadly and at the same time, inclined to giggle, groove to interesting patterns of light and shade on their terrible knife blades and, in extreme cases, fall over.

Creosote: "...we hired Thugs instead."
Conina: "Ah. Named after a religious sect."
Creosote: "No, I don't think so. I think we named them after the way they push people's faces through the back of their heads."

After a while a tall, saturnine figure appeared from behind the pavilion. He had the look of someone who could think his way through a corkscrew without bending, and a certain something about the eyes which would have made the average rabid rodent tiptoe away discouraged.

When it comes to dirty work he probably wrote the book or, more probably, stole it from someone else.

There is a tone of voice known as interrogative, and the vizier was using it; a slight edge to his words suggested that, if he didn't learn more about the hat very quickly, he had various activities in mind in which further words like "red hot" and "knives" would appear. Of course, all Grand Viziers talk like that all the time. There's probably a school somewhere.

The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist's mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the lift, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different. [Footnote: Although, possibly, quicker. And only licensed to carry fourteen people.]

...the particle's karma had handed it the problem of hitting a moving target the size of a small raisin over a distance of several hundred lightyears. Life can be very difficult for a little sub-atomic particle in a great big universe.

There's too many guards! They'll kill me!

So they'll kill you, it's not the end of the world.

It will be for me, thought Rincewind grimly.

Abrim laughed. It wasn't a nice sound. It sounded as though he had had laughter explained to him, probably slowly and repeatedly, but had never heard anyone actually do it.

"I have talent in magic myself. I have the talent, you know." The vizier drew himself up stiffly. "Oh, yes. But they wouldn't accept me at your University. They said I was mentally unstable, can you believe that?"

"No," said Rincewind, truthfully. Most of the wizards at Unseen had always seemed to him to be several bricks short of a shilling. Abrim seemed pretty normal wizard material.

Rincewind: "Wild horses couldn't get me to help you in any way."
Vizier: "Ah. A challenge."

Vizer: "Take him away and throw him in the spider tank."
Rincewind: "No, not spiders, on top of everything else!"
Captain: "Run out of spiders, master."
Vizer: "Oh. In that case, lock him in the tiger cage."
Captain: "The tiger's been ill, master. Backwards and forwards all night."
Vizer: "Then throw this snivelling coward down the shaft of eternal fire!"
Captain: "Ah. We'll need a bit of notice of that, master--"
Guard: "--to get it going again, like."

Snake: "Hi. Are you a wizard?"
Rincewind: "It's on my hat, can't you read?"
Snake: "In seventeen languages, actually. I taught myself."
Rincewind: "Really?"
Snake: "I sent off for courses. But I try not to read, of course. It's not in character."

-- Life in the snake pit

"I have curious and unusual powers," said Rincewind. Fair enough, he thought, an almost total inability to master any form of magic is pretty unusual for a wizard...

The occupants watched it for some time, sipping their coffee laced with desert orakh. This drink, made from cacti sap and scorpion venom, is one of the most virulent alcoholic beverages in the universe, but the desert nomads don't drink it for its intoxicating effects. They use it because they need something to mitigate the effects of Klatchian coffee.

...a state of knurdness isn't like sobriety. By comparison, sobriety is like having a bath in cotton wool. Knurdness strips away all illlusion, all the comforting pink fog in which people normally spend their lives, and lets them see and think clearly for the first time ever. Then, after they've screamed a bit, they make sure they never get knurd again.

Nijel: "I get these colds, you see."
Rincewind: "Perhaps you should try wearing, well, a bit more clothing?"
Nijel: "Oh, I couldn't do that. You've got to wear all this leather stuff."
Rincewind: "I wouldn't call it all. There's not enough of it to call it all."

Rincewind rather enjoyed times like this. They convinced him that he wasn't mad because, if he was mad, that left no word at all to describe some of the people he met.

Rincewind: "...what's your name, lad?"
Nigel: "Nijel--"
Rincewind: "You see, Nijel--"
Nigel: "Nijel the Destroyer."
Rincewind: "You see, Nijel--"
Nigel: "--the Destroyer--"
Rincewind: "All right, the Destroyer--"
Nigel: "--son of Harebut the Provision Merchant--"
Rincewind: "What?"
Nigel: "You've got to be the son of someone. It says it here somewhere--"

[The snake] stared right back up at Rincewind and shrugged, which is pretty clever for a reptile with no shoulders.

Rincewind: "How long have you been a barbarian hero?"
Nijel: "I'm just getting started. I've always wanted to be one, you see, and I thought maybe I could pick it up as I went along."

[Rincewind] had spent years in search of boredom, but had never achieved it. Just when he thought he had it in his grasp his life would suddenly become full of near-terminal interest.

Rincewind had already staggered off down the tunnel, making little shocked noises and completely ignoring the stones that were missing him by inches and, in some cases, hitting him by kilograms.

He looked so high you could bounce intercontinental TV off him.

The point about being killed by magic was that it was so much more inventive than, say, steel; there were all sorts of interesting new ways to die...

Nigel: "I didn't think wizards were like that. I thought they were more, well, more silly than sinister. Sort of figures of fun."
Rincewind: "Laugh that one off, then."
Nigel: "But they just killed them, without even-- You're a wizard, too."
Rincewind: "Not that kind I'm not."
Nigel: "What kind are you, then?"
Rincewind: "The non-killing kind."

Rincewind actually began to feel sorry for [Nigel], which was very unusual -- he normally felt he needed all his pity for himself.

Rincewind: "Exactly how long have you been a barbarian hero?"
Nijel: "Er. What year is this?"
Rincewind: "Out on the road, then? Lost track of time? I know how it is. This is the Year of the Hyena."
Nijel: "Oh. In that case, about -- about three days."

Rincewind felt that he could see his future with the same crystal clarity that a man falling off a cliff sees the ground, and for much the same reason.

Rincewind's mouth opened and shut a few times as he gave a very lifelike impression of a goldfish trying to grasp the concept of tap-dancing.

Nijel: "There's a girl needs rescuing?"
Rincewind: "Someone will probably need rescuing. It might possibly be her. Or at least in her vicinity."

Heroes usually have an ability to rush madly around crumbling palaces they hardly know, save everyone and get out just before the whole place blows up or sinks into the swamp. In fact Nijel and Rincewind visited the kitchens, assorted throne rooms, the stables (twice) and what seemed to Rincewind like several miles of corridor.

Rincewind: "Yes, but did you torture him?"
Nijel: "No."
Rincewind: "That wasn't very barbaric of you, was it?"
Nijel: "Well, I'm working up to it. I mean, I didn't say 'thank you'."

There were about twenty young women wearing enough clothes for say, about half a dozen, huddled together in a silent crowd.

Rincewind had eyes for none of [the women]. That is not to say that the sight of several dozen square yards of hip and thigh in every shade from pink to midnight black didn't start certain tides flowing deep in the crevasses of his libido, but they were swamped by the considerably bigger flood of panic at the sight of four guards turning towards him with scimitars in their hands and the light of murder in their eyes.

There were a few seconds of total silence as everyone waited to see what would happen next. And then Nijel uttered the battle cry that Rincewind would never quite forget to the end of his life.

"Erm," he said, "excuse me..."

But of course the six wizards sent to burn down the Library aren't afraid of ghosts, because they're so charged with magic they practically buzz as they walk, they're wearing robes more splendid than any Archchancellor has worn, their pointy hats are more pointed than any hats have hitherto been, and the reason they're standing so close together is entirely coincidental.

"It's all down to dimensions, I heard, like what we see is only the tip of the whatever, you know, the thing that is mostly underwater--"

"Hippopotamus?"

"Alligator?"

"Ocean?"

Nijel: "They don't look very worried."
Rincewind: "How can I put this? When they come to write the list of Great Battle Cries of the World, 'Erm, excuse me' won't be one of them."

He had met Cohen and, while he could read after a fashion, the old boy had never really mastered the pen and still signed his name with an "X", which he usually spelled wrong.

Rincewind: "Seven days?"
Nijel: "Well, I'm a slow reader."
Rincewind: "Ah."
Nijel: "And I didn't bother with chapter six, because I promised my mother I'd stick with just the looting and pillaging, until I find the right girl."

-- Reading from Inne Juste 7 Dayes I wille make You a Barbearian Hero!

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."

Rincewind: "Don't blame yourself--"
Nijel: "Thank you."
Rincewind: "--I'll do it for you."

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.

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.

Rincewind: "Why did you let them take you off to the harem without a fight?"
Conina: "I've always wanted to know what went on in one."
Rincewind: "Well?"
Conina: "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... He asked me to tell him a story."
Rincewind: "What about?"
Conina: "The other girls said he prefers something with rabbits in it."

...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 city was under the rule of sourcery... martial lore.

Conina: "What on earth are you doing?"
Nijel: "I'm looking up the Index of Wandering Monsters. Do you think it's an Undead?"

-- Thank you, Gargy Gygax

"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.

...if there was one thing a really powerful wizard can't stand, it's another wizard. His instinctive approach to diplomacy is to hex 'em till they glow, then curse them in the dark.

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.

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.

In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find...

Nijel: "Death walks abroad."
Rincewind: "Abroad I don't mind. They're all foreigners. It's Death walking around here I'm not looking forward to."

The chimera was an extremely rare species, and this particular one wasn't about to do anything to help matters.

Archchancellor's hat: This is the moment when wizardry stops running and starts fighting back. You will remember it for the rest of your lives.
Rincewind: "What, about lunchtime?"

Rincewind: "If we get a chance, we run, right?"
Nijel: "Where to?"
Rincewind: "From. The important word is from."

Nijel: "I don't trust this man. I try not to judge from first impressions, but I definitely think he's up to no good."
Rincewind: "He had you thrown in a snake pit!"
Nijel: "Perhaps I should have taken the hint."

The matching hat looked like a wedding cake that had collided intimately with a Christmas tree.

Wizards didn't kill ordinary people because a) they seldom notice them and b) it wasn't considered sporting and c) besides, who'd do all the cooking and growing food and things.

Of course, wizards often killed one another by ordinary, non-magical means, but this was perfectly allowable and death by assassination was considered natural causes for a wizard.

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.

"The spells react with one another," [Rincewind] 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."

Nijel: "We need a plan."
Rincewind: "We could try running again."
Nijel: "That doesn't solve anything!"
Rincewind: "Solves most things."

"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."

"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.

Rincewind: "I'm not going to ride on a magic carpet! I'm afraid of grounds!"
Conina: "You mean heights. And stop being silly."
Rincewind: "I know what I mean! It's the grounds that kill you!"

There was a respectful silence, as there always is when large sums of money have just passed away.

Rincewind: "How horrible. A treasury with no treasure in it."
Creosote: "Not to worry."
Conina: "But all your money has been stolen!"
Creosote: "The servants, I expect. Very disloyal of them."
Rincewind: "Doesn't it worry you?"
Creosote: "Not really. I never really spent anything. I've often wondered what being poor was like."
Rincewind: "You're going to get a huge opportunity to find out."
Creosote: "Will I need training?"
Rincewind: "It comes naturally. You pick it up as you go along."

Many people who had got to know Rincewind had come to treat him as a sort of two-legged miner's canary and tended to assume that if Rincewind was still upright and not actually running then some hope remained.

Conina: "How do you manage to be so useless?"
Rincewind: "Being useful always gets me into trouble."

Creosote: "My grandfather built up the family fortunes with them. His wicked uncle locked him in a cave, you know. He had to set himself up with what came to hand. He had nothing in the whole world but a magic carpet, a magic lamp, a magic ring and a grotto-ful of assorted jewels."
Rincewind: "Came up the hard way, did he?"

"You've got 'wizzard' written on your hat," said Creosote.

"Anyone can write things on their hat," said Conina. "You don't want to believe everything you read."

"Now hold on a minute," said Rincewind hotly.

They held on a minute.

They held on for a further seventeen seconds.

Nijel was one of those people who, if you say "don't look now," would immediately swivel his head like an owl on a turntable.

Rincewind: "It's a sort of reaction. Wizards always used to build a tower around themselves, like those ... what do you call those things you find at the bottom of rivers?"
Nijel: "Frogs."
Creosote: "Stones."
Conina: "Unsuccessful gangsters."

Conina: "All right. How did you get the carpet to fly? Does it really do the opposite of what you command?"
Rincewind: "No. I just paid attention to certain fundamental details of laminar and spatial arrangements."
Conina: "You've lost me there."
Rincewind: "You want it in non-wizard talk?"
Conina: "Yes."
Rincewind: "You put it on the floor upside down."

Too much magic could warp time and space around itself, and that wasn't good news for the kind of person who had grown used to things like effects following things like causes.

They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted it or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.

"I could do with a drink," said Creosote. "I suppose we couldn't stop somewhere where I could buy an inn?"

"What with?" said Nijel. "You're poor, remember?"

"Poor I don't mind," said the Seriph. "It's sobriety that is giving me difficulties."

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.

"Hey, that was my palace," said Creosote weakly. "I mean, I know it was a lot, but it was all I had."

Conina: "Don't shout at him. He's not himself."
Creosote: "Ah, an improvement."

[Rincewind] hadn't wanted much, ever. He'd stuck with wizardry even though he wasn't any good at it, he'd always done his best, and now the whole world was conspiring against him. Well, he'd show them. Precisely who "they" were and what they were going to be shown was merely a matter of detail.

It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and felt Paisley. It smelled like a total eclipse of the moon. Of course, nearer to the tower it got really weird.

Expecting anything unprotected to survive in that would be like expecting snow on a supernova. Fortunately the Luggage didn't know this, and slid through the maelstrom with raw magic crystallising on its lid and hinges. It was in a foul mood but, again, there was nothing very unusual about this...

"There can't be anyone alive out there," said the other wizard, and he said it nervously, because if you ruled out the possibility of it being anyone alive that always left the suspicions that perhaps it was someone dead.

"We don't want any--" he began, and ought to have chosen his words better, because they were his epitaph.

"Wha--" he began, which is a pretty poor syllable on which to end a life.

There was a weird light. No, now he came to think about it, not weird but wyrd, which was much weirder.

[Rincewind] knew where he fitted. It was right at the bottom, but at least he fitted.

Wizards aren't allowed to have wives but they are allowed to have parents, and many of them go back to the old home town for Hogswatch Night or Soul Cake Thursday, for a bit of a sing-song and the heart-warming sight of all their boyhood bullies hurriedly avoiding them in the street.

Wizards don't like philosophy very much. As far as they are concerned, one hand clapping makes a noise like "cl."

...nearly everything had happened to the tower except actual collapse. It looked so beaten that possibly even gravity had given up on it.

The [genie] took the lamp out of Nijel's unresisting grasp.

"Oh, this old thing," he said. "I'm on time share. Two weeks every August but, of course, usually one can never get away."

It was a Fullomyth, an invaluable aid for all whose business is with the arcane and hermetic. It contained lists of things that didn't exist and, in a very significant way, weren't important. ...For the really up-to-the-epoch occultist, who could afford the version bound in spider skin, there was even an insert showing the London Underground with the three stations they never dare show on the public maps.

[The genie] was now holding something curved and shiny to his ear, and listening intently. He looked hurriedly at Conina's angry face and contrived to suggest, by waggling his eyebrows and waving his free hand urgently, that he was currently and inconveniently tied up by irksome matters which, regretfully, prevented him giving her his full attention as of now but, as soon as he had disentangled himself from this importunate person, she could rest assured that her wish, which was certainly a wish of tone and brilliance, would be his command.

They listened in awe, like fish who had inadvertently swum into a lecture on how to fly.

The astro-philosophers of Krull once succeeded in proving conclusively that all places are one place and that the distance between them is an illusion, and this news was an embarassment to all thinking philosophers because it did not explain, among other things, signposts. After years of wrangling the whole thing was then turned over to Ly Tin Wheedle, arguably the Disc's greatest philosopher, who after some thought proclaimed that although it was indeed true that all places were one place, that place was very large.

[The genie] explained ... that it was perfectly possible to travel across the world in a small lamp being carried by one of the party, the lamp itself moving because it was being carried by one of the people inside it, because of a) the fractal nature of reality, which meant that everything could be thought of as being inside everything else and b) creative public relations.

The Librarian replied with an expansive gesture that indicated, as clearly as if he had said "oook," that Rincewind was a wizard with a hat, a library of magical books and a tower. This could be regarded as everything a magical practitioner could need. An ape, a small terrier with halitosis and a lizard in a jar were optional extras.

"I mean, it's the original stuff, from right back in the dawn of time. Or around breakfast, at any rate."

"'Hi',"' Nijel read aloud. "'Do not put down the lamp, because your custom is important to us. Please leave a wish after the tone and, very shortly, it will be our command. In the meantime, have a nice eternity.'"

[Nigel] looked towards the city with what would have been, but for his lack of chin, an expression of setjawed determination.

A wizard never had friends, at least not friends who were wizards. It needed a different word. Ah yes, that was it. Enemies.

WEIGHT DOESN'T COME INTO IT. MY STEED HAS CARRIED ARMIES. MY STEED HAS CARRIED CITIES. YEA, HE HATH CARRIED ALL THINGS IN THEIR DUE TIME, said Death. BUT HE'S NOT GOING TO CARRY YOU THREE.

"Why not?"

IT'S A MATTER OF THE LOOK OF THE THING.

"It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it," said War testily, "the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse."

War: "Sometimes he really gets on my nerves. Why is he always so keen to have the last word?"
Pestilence: "Force of habit, I suppose."

"The world, you see, that is, the reality in which we live, in fact, it can be thought of as, in a matter of speaking, a rubber sheet." He hesitated, aware that the sentence was not going to appear in anyone's book of quotable quotes.

-- Except maybe this one

There was the typical long pause which usually followed Hakardly's speeches, while everybody mentally inserted commas and stitched the fractured clauses together.

Coin: "He's very still. Is anything bad happening to him?"
Hakardly: "It may be. He's dead."
Coin: "I wish he wasn't."
Hakardly: "It is a view, I suspect, which he shares."

The trouble with gods was that if they didn't like something they didn't just drop hints.

"It may have struck you that I am not exactly gifted in the magical department? I mean, any duel is going to go on the lines of 'Hallo, I'm Rincewind' closely followed by bazaam!"

[The carpet] was lying where he had left it, which was another sign that Ankh had changed. In the thieving days before the sourcerer nothing stayed for long where you left it. Nothing printable, anyway.

Rincewind had grown up in Morpork. What a Morpork citizen liked to have on his side in a fight was odds of about twenty to one, but failing that a sockful of half-brick and a dark alley to lurk in was generally considered a better bet than any two magic swords you cared to name.

"Sheep," slurred War. "It was sheep." His helmeted head hit the bar with a clang. He raised it again. "Sheep."

"Nonono," said Famine, raising a thin finger unsteadily. "Some other domess ... dummist ... tame animal. Like pig. heifer. Kitten? Like that. Not sheep."

"Bees," said Pestilence, and slid gently out of his seat.

"O-kay," said War, ignoring him, "right. Once again, then. From the top." He rapped the side of his glass for the note.

"We are poor little ... unidentified domesticated animals ... that have lost our way," he quavered.

-- The Horsemen get sloshed

His eyes were wide with the sort of terror that comes naturally to anyone standing on a few threads and several hundred feet of empty air.

Coin: "Is it magical? Perhaps it is the sock of an Archchancellor? A sock of force?"
Rincewind: "I don't think so. I think I bought it in a shop or something. Um. I've got another one somewhere."
Coin: "But in the end it has something heavy?"
Rincewind: "Um. Yes. It's a half-brick."
Coin: "But it has great power?"
Rincewind: "Er. You can hold things up with it. If you had another one, you'd have a brick."

Rincewind stared into Coin's golden eyes, and then at his sock. He had pulled it on and off several times a year for years. It had darns he'd grown to know and lo-- well, know. Some of them had whole families of darns of their own. There were a number of descriptions that could be applied to the sock, but slayer-of-cities wasn't among them.

Rincewind had heard quite a lot about the power of the sourcerer, the staff of the sourcerer, the wickedness of the sourcerer and so on. The only thing no-one had mentioned was the age of the sourcerer.

"I do not see why I should hurt him," said Coin. "He looks so harmless. Like an angry rabbit."

He defies us.

"Not me," said Rincewind, thrusting the arm with the sock behind his back and trying to ignore the bit about the rabbit.

"I suppose I can't complain," said Rincewind virtuously. "I've had a good life. Well, quite good." He hesitated. "Well, not all that good. I suppose most people would call it pretty awful." He considered it further. "I would," he added, half to himself.

Rincewind: "Don't you make an appearance when a wizard is about to die?"
Death: OF COURSE. AND I MUST SAY YOU PEOPLE ARE GIVING ME A BUSY DAY.
Rincewind: "How do you manage to be in so many places at the same time?"
Death: GOOD ORGANISATION.

Rincewind did a little dance of uncertainty as his feet, legs, instincts and incredibly well-developed sense of self-preservation overloaded his nervous system to the point where, just as it was on the point of fusing, his conscience finally got its way.

About fifty miles away and several thousand feet up, Conina at last managed to control her stolen horse and brought it to a gentle trot on the empty air, displaying some of the most determined nonchalance the Disc had ever seen.

Conina: "But it isn't time for the Apocralypse. I mean, a dreadful ruler has to arise, there must be a terrible war, the four dreadful horsemen have to ride, and then the Dungeon Dimensions will break into the world--"
Genie: "Being buried under a thousand-foot ice sheet sounds awfully like it, anyway."

They turned towards him with the kind of expression normally reserved for messiahs or extreme idiots.

"Sorry," said Conina, "have I got this right? You think we should go and find the terrifying Ice Giants and sort of tell them that there are a lot of warm people out here who would rather they didn't sweep across the world crushing everyone under mountains of ice, and could they sort of reconsider things?"

Nigel: "...it's just that I must do something brave before I die."
Creosote: "That's it though. That's the whole rather sad point. You'll do something brave, and then you'll die."

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.

Coin: "I don't know what to do."
Rincewind: "No harm in that. I've never known what to do. Been completely at a loss my whole life. I think it's called being human, or something."

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.

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

Moving, jostling ice packed the plain, roaring forward under a great cloud of clammy steam. The ground shook as the leaders passed below, and it was obvious to the onlookers that whoever was going to stop this would need more than a couple of pounds of rock salt and a shovel.

...it became apparent that one reason why the Ice Giants were known as the Ice Giants was because they were, well, giants. The other was that they were made of ice.

Ice Giant: "The gods are gone, ve throw off shackles of outmoded superstition."
Nijel: "Freezing the whole world solid doesn't sound very progressive to me."
Ice Giant: "Ve like it."

"It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. it isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong."

-- The moral of the story (in case you thought there wasn't one)

It was, [Rincewind] thought, time for a few last words. What he said now was likely to be very important. Perhaps they would be words that would be remembered, and handed down, and maybe even carved deeply in slabs of granite.

Words without too many curly letters in, therefore.

"I really wish I wasn't here."

Nijel: "We've just got to resist them, that's all there is to it. That's what we're here for."
Conina: "But it won't make any difference."
Nijel: "It will to me. If we're going to die anyway, I'd rather die like this. Heroically."
Conina: "Is it heroic to die like this?"
Nijel: "I think it is, and when it comes to dying, there's only one opinion that matters."

People were returning to Ankh-Morpork, which was no longer a city of empty marble but was once again its old self, sprawling as randomly and colourfully as a pool of vomit outside the all-night takeaway of History.

Althought it has nothing much to do with this story, it is an interesting fact that, about five hundred miles away, a small flock, or rather in this case a herd, of birds were picking their way cautiously through the trees. They had heads like a flamingo, bodies like a turkey, and legs like a Sumo wrestler; they walked in a jerky, bobbing fashion, as though their heads were attached to their feet by elastic bands. They belonged to a species unique even among Disc fauna, in that their prime means of defence was to cause a predator to laugh so much that they could run away before it recovered.

She was a large, good-natured girl, with a figure that was the colour and, not to put too fine a point on it, the same shape as unbaked bread. She was intrigued. No-one had ever referred to her breasts as jewelled melons before.

"Absolutely," said the Seriph, sliding peacefully off his bench, "no doubt about it." Either the big yellow sort or the small green ones with huge warty veins, he told himself virtuously.

Girl: "And what was that about my hair?"
Creosote: "Oh. Like a goat of flocks that grazes on the slopes of Mount Wossname, and no mistake. And as for your ears, no pink-hued shells that grace the sea-kissed sands of--"
Girl: "Exactly how like a flock of goats? I mean, in size, shape or smell?"