Sourcery (Discworld 5)

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 bone-dry, 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 noisy. 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?’