"Are you all right?"

"Fine, fine," Rincewind muttered.

"Your face has gone all shiny."

"No, I'm fine, fine."

"He asked me to tell him a story."

"What about?" said Rincewind suspiciously.

"The other girls said he prefers something with rabbits in it."

"Ah. Rabbits."

"Small fluffy white ones. But the only stories I know are the ones father taught me when I was little, and I don't think they're really suitable."

"Not many rabbits?"

"Lots of arms and legs being chopped off," said Conina, and sighed. "That's why you mustn't tell him him about me you see? I'm just not cut out for a normal life." about me you see? I'm just not cut out for a normal life."

"Telling stories in a harem isn't b.l.o.o.d.y normal," said Rincewind. "It'll never catch on."

"He's looking at us again!" Conina grabbed Rincewind's arm.

He shook her off. "Oh, good grief," he said, and hurried across the room to Nijel, who grabbed his other arm.

"You haven't been telling her about me, have you?" he demanded. "I'll never live it down if you've told her that I'm only just learning how-"

"Nonono. She just wants you to help us. It's a sort of quest."

Nijel's eyes gleamed.

"You mean a geas?" he said.

"Pardon?"

"It's in the book. To be a proper hero it says you've got to labor under a geas."

Rincewind's forehead wrinkled. "Is it a sort of bird?"

"I think it's more a sort of obligation, or something," said Nijel, but without much certainty.

"Sounds more like a kind of bird to me," said Rincewind, "I'm sure I read it in a bestiary once. Large. Couldn't fly. Big pink legs, it had." His face went blank as his ears digested what they had just heard his lips say.

Five seconds later they were out of the room, leaving behind four p.r.o.ne guards and the harem ladies themselves, who settled down for a bit of story-telling.

The desert rimwards of Al Khali is bisected by the river Tsort, famed in myth and lies, which insinuates its way through the brown landscapes like a long damp descriptive pa.s.sage punctuated with sandbanks. And every sandbank is covered with sunbaked logs, and most of the logs are the kind of logs that have teeth, and most of the logs opened one lazy eye at the distant sounds of splashing from upstream, and suddenly most of the logs had legs. A dozen scaly bodies slipped into the turbid waters, which rolled over them again. The dark waters were unruffled, except for a few inconsequential V-shaped ripples.

The Luggage paddled gently down the stream. The water was making it feel a little better. It spun gently in the weak current, the focus of several mysterious little swirls that sped across the surface of the water.

The ripples converged.

The Luggage jerked. Its lid flew open. It shot under the surface with a brief, despairing creak.

The chocolate-colored waters of the Tsort rolled back again. They were getting good at it.

And the tower of sourcery loomed over Al Khali like a vast and beautiful fungus, the kind that appear in books with little skull-and-crossbones symbols beside them.

The Seriph's guard had fought back, but there were now quite a lot of bewildered frogs and newts around the base of the tower, and they were the fortunate ones. They still had arms and legs, of a sort, and most of their essential organs were still on the inside. The city was under the rule of sourcery...martial lore.

Some of the buildings nearest the base of the tower were already turning into the bright white marble that the wizards obviously preferred.

The trio stared out through a hole in the palace walls.

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

"Not my my wizards," said Rincewind. "I don't know whose wizards they are. I don't like it. All the wizards wizards," said Rincewind. "I don't know whose wizards they are. I don't like it. All the wizards I I knew couldn't stick one brick on another." 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. They're 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 'Wizzard' 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 onto 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 sc.r.a.ps 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.

Right, the reptile thought, if that's the way you want to play it.

It turned on the Luggage a stare like a diamond drill, a stare that nipped in via the staree's eyeb.a.l.l.s and flayed the brain from the inside, a stare that tore the frail net curtains on the windows of the soul, a stare that- The basilisk realized something was very wrong. An entirely new and unwelcome sensation started to arise just behind its saucer-shaped eyes. It started small, like the little itch in those few square inches of back that no amount of writhing will allow you to scratch, and grew until it became a second, red-hot, internal sun.

The basilisk was feeling a terrible, overpowering and irresistible urge to blink...

It did something incredibly unwise.

It blinked.

"He's talking through his hat," said Rincewind.

"Eh?" said Nijel, who was beginning to realize that the world of the barbarian hero wasn't the clean, simple place he had imagined in the days when the most exciting thing he had ever done was stack parsnips.

"The hat's talking through him, you mean," said Conina, and she backed away too, as one tends to do in the presence of horror.

"Eh?"

"I will not harm you. You have been of some service," said Abrim, stepping forward with his hands out. "But you are right. He thought he could gain power through wearing me. Of course, it is the other way around. An astonishingly devious and clever mind."

"So you tried his head on for size?" said Rincewind. He shuddered. He'd He'd worn the hat. Obviously he didn't have the right kind of mind. Abrim did have the right kind of mind, and now his eyes were gray and colorless, his skin was pale and he walked as though his body was hanging down from his head. worn the hat. Obviously he didn't have the right kind of mind. Abrim did have the right kind of mind, and now his eyes were gray and colorless, his skin was pale and he walked as though his body was hanging down from his head.

Nijel had pulled out his book and was riffling feverishly through the pages.

"What on earth are you doing?" said Conina, not taking her eyes off the ghastly figure.

"I'm looking up the Index of Wandering Monsters," said Nijel. "Do you think it's an Undead? They're awfully difficult to kill, you need garlic and-"

"You won't find this in there," said Rincewind slowly. "It's-it's a vampire hat."

"Of course, it might be a Zombie," said Nijel, running his finger down a page. "It says here you need black pepper and sea salt, but-"

"You're supposed to fight the b.l.o.o.d.y things, not eat them," said Conina.

"This is a mind I can use," said the hat. "Now I can fight back. I shall rally wizardry. There is room for only one magic in this world, and I embody it. Sourcery beware!"

"Oh, no," said Rincewind under his breath.

"Wizardry has learned a lot in the last twenty centuries. This upstart can be beaten. You three will follow me."

It wasn't a request. It wasn't even an order. It was a sort of forecast. The voice of the hat went straight to the hindbrain without bothering to deal with the consciousness, and Rincewind's legs started to move of their own accord.

The other two also jerked forward, walking with the awkward doll-like jerking that suggested that they, too, were on invisible strings.

"Why the oh, no?" said Conina, "I mean, 'Oh, no' on general principles I can understand, but was there any particular reason?"

"If we get a chance we must run," said Rincewind.

"Did you have anywhere in mind?"

"It probably won't matter. We're doomed anyway."

"Why?" said Nijel.

"Well," said Rincewind, "have you ever heard of the Mage Wars?"

There were a lot of things on the Disc that owed their origin to the Mage Wars. Sapient pearwood was one of them.

The original tree was probably perfectly normal and spent its days drinking groundwater and eating sunshine in a state of blessed unawareness and then the magic wars broke around it and pitchforked its genes into a state of acute perspicacity.

It also left it ingrained, as it were, with a bad temper. But sapient pearwood got off lightly.

Once, when the level of background magic on the Disc was young and high and found every opportunity to burst on the world, wizards were all as powerful as sourcerers and built their towers on every hilltop. And if there was one thing a really powerful wizard can't stand, it is another wizard. His instinctive approach to diplomacy is to hex 'em till they glow, then curse them in the dark.