Sourcery

'Well, I can see they would be,' Rincewind agreed. 'Look, push off, will you? No, I don't want to buy whatever it is. No, I don't want to meet her. Or him, either. Or it, you nasty little boy. Get off, will you?'

The last scream was to the group of children riding sedately on the Luggage, which was plodding along patiently behind Rincewind and making no attempt to shake them off. Perhaps it was sickening for something, he thought, and brightened up a bit.

'How many people are there on this continent, do you think?' he said.

'I don't know,' said Conina, without turning round. 'Millions, I expect?'

'If I were wise, I wouldn't be here,' said Rincewind, with feeling.

They had been in Al Khali, gateway to the whole mysterious continent of Klatch, for several hours. He was beginning to suffer.

A decent city should have a bit of fog about it, he considered, and people should live indoors, not spend all their time out on the streets. There shouldn't be all this sand and heat. As for the wind ...

Ankh-Morpork had its famous smell, so full of personality that it could reduce a strong man to tears. But Al Khali had its wind, blowing from the vastness of the deserts and continents nearer the rim. It was a gentle breeze, but it didn't stop and eventually it had the same effect on visitors that a cheesegrater achieves on a tomato. After a while it seemed to have worn away your skin and was rasping directly across the nerves.

To Conina's sensitive nostrils it carried aromatic messages from the heart of the continent, compounded of the chill of deserts, the stink of lions, the compost of jungles and the flatulence of wildebeest.

Rincewind, of course, couldn't smell any of this. Adaptation is a wonderful thing, and most Morporkians would be hard put to smell a burning feather mattress at five feet.

'Where to next?' he said. 'Somewhere out of the wind?'

'My father spent some time in Khali when he was hunting for the Lost City of Ee,' said Conina. 'And I seem to remember he spoke very highly of the soak. It's a kind of bazaar.'

'I suppose we just go and look for the second-hand hat stalls,' said Rincewind. 'Because the whole idea is totally-’

'What I was hoping was that maybe we could be attacked. That seems the most sensible idea. My father said that very few strangers who entered the soak ever came out again. Some very murderous types hang out there, he said.'

Rincewind gave this due consideration.

'Just run that by me again, will you?' he said. 'After you said we should be attacked I seemed to hear a ranging in my ears.'

'Well, we want to meet the criminal element, don't we?'

'Not exactly want,' said Rincewind. 'That wasn't the phrase I would have chosen.'

'How would you put it, then?'

'Er. I think the phrase 'not want' sums it up pretty well.'

'But you agreed that we should get the hat!'

'But not die in the process,' said Rincewind, wretchedly. 'That won't do anyone any good. Not me, anyway.'

'My father always said that death is but a sleep,' said Conina.

'Yes, the hat told me that,' said Rincewind, as they turned down a narrow, crowded street between white adobe walls. 'But the way I see it, it's a lot harder to get up in the morning.'

'Look,' said Conina, 'there's not much risk. You're with me.'

'Yes, and you're looking forward to it, aren't you,' said Rincewind accusingly, as Conina piloted them along a shady alley, with their retinue of pubescent entrepreneurs at their heels. 'It's the old herrydeterry at work.'