Sourcery

'Very impressive,' said Conina critically. 'Your wizards are more powerful than I thought.'

'Not my wizards,' said Rincewind. 'I don't know whose wizards they are. I don't like it. All the wizards I knew couldn't stick one brick on another.'

'I don't like the idea of wizards ruling everybody,' said Nijel. 'Of course, as a hero I am philosophically against the whole idea of wizardry in any case. The time will come when,' his eyes glazed slightly, as if he was trying to remember something he'd seen somewhere, 'the time will come when all wizardry has gone from the face of the world and the sons of, of — anyway, we can all be a bit more practical about things,' he added lamely.

'Read it in a book, did you?’ said Rincewind sourly. Any geas in it?'

'He's got a point,' said Conina. 'I've nothing against wizards, but it's not as if they do much good. There just a bit of decoration, really. Up to now.'

Rincewind pulled off his hat. It was battered, stained and covered with rock dust, bits of it had been sheared off, the point was dented and the star was shedding sequins like pollen, but the word 'blizzard' was still just readable under the grime.

'See this?' he demanded, red in the face. 'Do you see it? Do you? What does it tell you?'

'That you can't spell?' said Nijel.

'What? No! It says I'm a wizard, that's what! Twenty years behind the staff, and proud of it! I've done my time, I have! I've pas — I've sat dozens of exams! If all the spells I've read were piled on top of one another, they'd ... it'd ... you'd have a lot of spells!'

'Yes, but-’ Conina began.

'Yes?'

'You're not actually very good at them, are you?'

Rincewind glared at her. He tried to think of what to say next, and a small receptor area opened in his mind at the same time as an inspiration particle, its path bent and skewed by a trillion random events, screamed down through the atmosphere and burst silently just at the right spot.

'Talent just defines what you do,' he said. 'It doesn't define what you are. Deep down, I mean. When you know what you are, you can do anything.'

He thought a bit more and added, 'That's what makes sourcerers so powerful. The important thing is to know what you really are.'

There was a pause full of philosophy.

'Rincewind?' said Conina, kindly.

'Hmm?' said Rincewind, who was still wondering how the words got into his head.

'You really are an idiot. Do you know that?'

'You will all stand very still.'

Abrim the vizier stepped out of a ruined archway. He was wearing the Archchancellor's hat.

The desert fried under the flame of the sun. Nothing moved except the shimmering air, hot as a stolen volcano, dry as a skull.

A basilisk lay panting in the baking shade of a rock, dribbling corrosive yellow slime. For the last five minutes its ears had been detecting the faint thump of hundreds of little legs moving unsteadily over the dunes, which seemed to indicate that dinner was on the way.

It blinked its legendary eyes and uncoiled twenty feet of hungry body, winding out and on to the sand like fluid death.

The Luggage staggered to a halt and raised its lid threateningly. The basilisk hissed, but a little uncertainly, because it had never seen a walking box before, and certainly never one with lots of alligator teeth stuck in its lid. There were also scraps of leathery hide adhering to it, as though it had been involved in a fight in a handbag factory, and in a way that the basilisk wouldn't have been able to describe even if it could talk, it appeared to be glaring.