Sourcery (Discworld 5)

‘He got through, didn’t he?’ said Rincewind.

There was a noise like a damp finger dragged across glass, but amplified a billion times, and the floor shook.

‘Anyway, we haven’t got a lot of choice,’ he added, and ducked into the tunnel. The others followed him. Many people who had got to know Rincewind had come to treat him as a sort of two-legged miner’s canary[20] and tended to assume that if Rincewind was still upright and not actually running then some hope remained.

‘This is fun,’ said Creosote. ‘Me, robbing my own treasury. If I catch myself I can have myself flung into the snake pit.’

‘But you could throw yourself on your mercy,’ said Conina, running a paranoid eye over the dusty stonework.

‘Oh, no. I think I would have to teach me a lesson, as an example to myself.’

There was a little click above them. A small slab slid aside and a rusty metal hook descended slowly and jerkily. Another bar creaked out of the wall and tapped Rincewind on the shoulder. As he swung around, the first hook hung a yellowing notice on his back and retracted into the roof.

‘What’d it do? What’d it do?’ screamed Rincewind, trying to read his own shoulderblades.

‘It says, Kick Me,’ said Conina.

A section of wall slid up beside the petrified wizard. A large boot on the end of a complicated series of metal joints gave a half-hearted wobble and then the whole thing snapped at the knee.

The three of them looked at it in silence. Then Conina said, ‘We’re dealing here with a warped brain, I can tell.’

Rincewind gingerly unhooked the sign and let it drop. Conina pushed past him and stalked along the passage with an air of angry caution, and when a metal hand extended itself on a spring and waggled in a friendly fashion she didn’t shake it but instead traced its moulting wiring to a couple of corroded electrodes in a big glass jar.

‘Your grandad was a man with a sense of humour?’ she said.

‘Oh, yes. Always liked a chuckle,’ said Creosote.

‘Oh, good,’ said Conina. She prodded gingerly at a flagstone which, to Rincewind, looked no different to any of its fellows. With a sad little springy noise a moulting feather duster wobbled out of the wall at armpit height.

‘I think I would have quite liked to meet the old Seriph,’ she said, through gritted teeth, ‘although not to shake him by the hand. You’d better give me a leg up here, wizard.’

‘Pardon?’

Conina pointed irritably to a half-open stone doorway just ahead of them.

‘I want to look up there,’ she said. ‘You just put your hands together for me to stand on, right? How do you manage to be so useless?’

‘Being useful always gets me into trouble,’ muttered Rincewind, trying to ignore the warm flesh brushing against his nose.

He could hear her rooting around above the door.

‘I thought so,’ she said.

‘What is it? Fiendishly sharp spears poised to drop?’ >‘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.