Sourcery by Pratchett Terry

Author:Pratchett, Terry [Pratchett, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 1988-06-21T04:00:00+00:00

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 noise 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.

Every single hair stood out from his head, giving off little sparks. Even his skin gave the impression that it was trying to get away from him. His eyes appeared to be spinning horizontally; when he opened his mouth, peppermint sparks flashed from his teeth. Where he had trodden, stone melted or grew ears or turned into something small and scaly and purple and flew away.

“I say,” said Nijel, “are you all right?”

“Nnh,” said Rincewind, and the syllable turned into a large doughnut.

“You don’t look all right,” said Nijel with what might be called, in the circumstances, unusual perspicacity.

“Nnh.”

“Why not try getting us out of here?” Nijel added, and wisely flung himself flat on the floor.

Rincewind nodded like a puppet and pointed his loaded digit at the ceiling, which melted like ice under a blowlamp.

Still the rumbling went on, sending its disquieting harmonics dancing through the palace. It is a well-known factoid that there are frequencies that can cause panic, and frequencies that can cause embarrassing incontinence, but the shaking rock was resonating at the frequency that causes reality to melt and run out at the corners.

Nijel regarded the dripping ceiling and cautiously tasted it.

“Lime custard,” he said, and added, “I suppose there’s no chance of stairs, is there?”

More fire burst from Rincewind’s ravaged fingers, coalescing

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