Sourcery

barely see into the present. But he knew with weary certainty that at some point in the very near future, like thirty seconds or so, someone would say: “Surely there’s something we could do?”
    The desert passed below them, lit by the low rays of the setting sun.
    “There don’t seem to be many stars,” said Nijel. “Perhaps they’re scared to come out.”
    Rincewind looked up. There was a silver haze high in the air.
    “It’s raw magic settling out of the atmosphere,” he said. “It’s saturated.”
    Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twen—
    “Surely there’s—” Conina began.
    “There isn’t,” said Rincewind flatly, but with just the faintest twinge of satisfaction. “The wizards will fight each other until there’s one victor. There isn’t anything anyone else can do.”
    “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.”
    Conina prodded Rincewind gently in the ribs.
    “Are you steering this thing?” she said.
    “No.”
    “Then where is it going?”
    Nijel peered downwards.
    “By the look of it,” he said, “it’s going hubwards. Towards the Circle Sea.”
    “ Someone must be guiding it.”
    Hallo, said a friendly voice in Rincewind’s head.
    You’re not my conscience again, are you? thought Rincewind.
    I’m feeling really bad.
    Well, I’m sorry, Rincewind thought, but none of this is my fault. I’m just a victim of circuses. I don’t see why I should take the blame.
    Yes, but you could do something about it.
    Like what?
    You could destroy the sourcerer. All this would collapse then.
    I wouldn’t stand a chance.
    Then at least you could die in the attempt. That might be preferable to letting magical war break out.
    “Look, just shut up, will you?” said Rincewind.
    “What?” said Conina.
    “Um?” said Rincewind, vaguely. He looked down blankly at the blue and gold pattern underneath him, and added, “You’re flying this, aren’t you? Through me! That’s sneaky!”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Oh. Sorry. Talking to myself.”
    “I think,” said Conina, “that we’d better land.”
    They glided down toward a crescent of beach where the desert reached the sea. In a normal light it would have been blinding white with a sand made up of billions of tiny shell fragments, but at this time of day it was blood-red and primordial. Ranks of driftwood, carved by the waves and bleached by the sun, were piled up on the tideline like the bones of ancient fish or the biggest floral art accessory counter in the universe. Nothing stirred, apart from the waves. There were a few rocks around, but they were firebrick hot and home to no mollusc or seaweed.
    Even the sea looked arid. If any proto-amphibian emerged onto 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. The air felt as though it had been cooked in a sock.
    Even so, Nijel insisted that they light a fire.
    “It’s more friendly,” he said. “Besides, there could be monsters.”
    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 awaken 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