Sourcery

about that,” said Nijel, peering into the gloom of the tunnel. “I shouldn’t think there’s a booby trap that I couldn’t spot.”
    “Had a lot of experience at this sort of thing, have you?” said Rincewind sourly.
    “Well, I know Chapter Fourteen by heart. It had illustrations,” said Nijel, and ducked into the shadows.
    They waited for several minutes in what would have been a horrified hush if it wasn’t for the muffled grunts and occasional thumping noises from the tunnel. Eventually Nijel’s voice echoed back down to them from a distance.
    “There’s absolutely nothing,” he said. “I’ve tried everything. It’s as steady as a rock. Everything must have seized up, or something.”
    Rincewind and Conina exchanged glances.
    “He doesn’t know the first thing about traps,” she said. “When I was five, my father made me walk all the way down a passage that he’d rigged up, just to teach me—”
    “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 gotten 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.
    “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 humor?” 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?”
    “No.”
    “Spiked grill ready to skewer—?”
    “It’s a bucket,” said Conina flatly, giving it a push.
    “What, of scalding, poisonous—?”
    “Whitewash. Just a lot of old, dried-up whitewash.” Conina jumped down.
    “That’s grandfather for you,” said Creosote. “Never a dull moment.”
    “Well, I’ve just about had enough,” Conina said firmly, and pointed to the far end of the tunnel. “Come on, you two.”
    They were about three feet from the far end when Rincewind felt a movement in the air above him. Conina struck him in the small of the back, shoving him forward into the room beyond. He