Sourcery

olive trees. She scowled.
    “Anyway, I don’t like sherbet.”
    Rincewind didn’t comment. He was busily examining the state of his own mind, and wasn’t happy at the sight of it. He had a horrible feeling that he was falling in love.
    He was sure he had all the symptoms. There were the sweaty palms, the hot sensation in the stomach, the general feeling that the skin of his chest was made of tight elastic. There was the feeling every time Conina spoke, that someone was running hot steel into his spine.
    He glanced down at the Luggage, tramping stoically alongside him, and recognized the symptoms.
    “Not you, too?” he said.
    Possibly it was only the play of sunlight on the Luggage’s battered lid, but it was just possible that for an instant it looked redder than usual.
    Of course, sapient pearwood has this sort of weird mental link with its owner…Rincewind shook his head. Still, it’d explain why the thing wasn’t its normal malignant self.
    “It’d never work,” he said. “I mean, she’s a female and you’re a, well, you’re a—” He paused. “Well, whatever you are, you’re of the wooden persuasion. It’d never work. People would talk.”
    He turned and glared at the black-robed guards behind him.
    “I don’t know what you’re looking at,” he said severely.
    The Luggage sidled over to Conina, following her so closely that she banged an ankle on it.
    “Push off,” she snapped, and kicked it again, this time on purpose.
    Insofar as the Luggage ever had an expression, it looked at her in shocked betrayal.
    The pavilion ahead of them was an ornate onion-shaped dome, studded with precious stones and supported on four pillars. Its interior was a mass of cushions on which lay a rather fat, middle-aged man surrounded by three young women. He wore a purple robe interwoven with gold thread; they, 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.
    The man appeared to be writing. He glanced up at them.
    “I suppose you don’t know a good rhyme for ‘thou’?” he said peevishly.
    Rincewind and Conina exchanged glances.
    “Plough?” said Rincewind. “Bough?”
    “Cow?” suggested Conina, with forced brightness.
    The man hesitated. “Cow I quite like,” he said, “Cow has got possibilities. Cow might, in fact, do. Do pull up a cushion, by the way. Have some sherbet. Why are you standing there like that?”
    “It’s these ropes,” said Conina.
    “I have this allergy to cold steel,” Rincewind added.
    “Really, how tiresome,” said the fat man, and clapped a pair of hands so heavy with rings that the sound was more of a clang. Two guards stepped forward smartly and cut the bonds, and then the whole battalion melted away, although Rincewind was acutely conscious of dozens of dark eyes watching them from the surrounding foliage. Animal instinct told him that, while he now appeared to be alone with the man and Conina, any aggressive moves on his part would suddenly make the world a sharp and painful place. He tried to radiate tranquillity and total friendliness. He tried to think of something to say.
    “Well,” he ventured, looking around at the brocaded hangings, the ruby-studded pillars and the gold filigree cushions, “you’ve done this place up nicely. It’s—” he sought for something suitably descriptive—“well, pretty much of a miracle of rare device.”
    “One aims for simplicity,” sighed the man, still scribbling busily. “Why are you here? Not that it isn’t always a pleasure to meet fellow students of the poetic muse.”
    “We were brought here,” said Conina.
    “Men with swords,” added Rincewind.
    “Dear fellows, they do so like to keep in practice. Would you like one of these?”
    He snapped his fingers at one of the girls.
    “Not, er, right now,” Rincewind began, but she’d picked up a plate of golden-brown sticks and demurely passed it toward him. He tried one. It was delicious, a sort of sweet crunchy flavor with a hint of honey. He took two more.
    “Excuse me,” said Conina, “but who are you? And where is this?”
    “My name is Creosote, Seriph of Al Khali,” said the fat man, “and this is my Wilderness. One does one’s best.”
    Rincewind coughed on his honey stick.
    “Not Creosote as in ‘As rich as Creosote’?” he said.
    “That was my dear father. I am, in fact, rather richer. When one has a