Sourcery

'I expect it's some sort of secret passage,' he added. 'Come on, use a bit of magic, will you? It's stuck.'

'Don't you want to hear the rest of the joke?' said Rincewind, in a pained voice. It was warm and dry down here, with no immediate danger, not counting the snake, which was trying to look inconspicuous. Some people were never satisfied.

'I think not right at the moment,' said Nijel. 'I think I would prefer a bit of magical assistance.'

'I'm not very good at it,' said Rincewind. 'Never got the hang of it, see, it's more than just pointing a finger at it and saying 'Kazam-' '

There was a sound like a thick bolt of octarine lightning zapping into a heavy rock slab and smashing it into a thousand bits of spitting, white-hot shrapnel, and no wonder.

After a while Nijel slowly got to his feet, beating out the small fires in his vest.

'Yes,' he said, in the voice of one determined not to lose his self-control. 'Well. Very good. We'll just let it cool down a bit, shall we? And then we, then we, we might as well be going.'

He cleared his throat a bit.

'Nnh,' said Rincewind. He was starting fixedly at the end of his finger, holding it out at arm's length in a manner that suggested he was very sorry he hadn't got longer arms.

Nijel peered into the smouldering hole.

'It seems to open into some kind of room,' he said.

'Nnh.'

'After you,' said Nijel. He gave Rincewind a gentle push.

The wizard staggered forward, bumped his head on the rock and didn't appear to notice, and then rebounded into the hole.

Nijel patted the wall, and his brow wrinkled. 'Can you feel something?' he said. 'Should the stone be trembling?'

'Nnh.'

Are you all right?'

'Nnh.'

Nijel put his ear to the stones. 'There's a very strange noise,' he said. A sort of humming.' A bit of dust shook itself free from the mortar over his head and floated down.

Then a couple of much heavier rocks danced free from the walls of the pits and thudded into the sand.

Rincewind had already staggered off down the tunnel, making little shocked noises and completely ignoring the stones that were missing him by inches and, in some cases, hitting him by kilograms.

If he had been in any state to notice it, he would have known what was happening. The air had a greasy feel and smelled like burning tin. Faint rainbows filmed every point and edge. A magical charge was building up somewhere very close to them, and it was a big one, and it was trying to earth itself.

A handy wizard, even one as incapable as Rincewind, stood out like a copper lighthouse.

Nijel blundered out of the rumbling, broiling dust and bumped into him standing, surrounded by an octarine corona, in another cave.

Rincewind looked terrible. Creosote would have probably noted his flashing eyes and floating hair.

He looked like someone who had just eaten a handful of pineal glands and washed them down with a pint of adrenochrome. He looked so high you could bounce intercontinental TV off him.