‘Hundreds,’ said Creosote. ‘I own some of the finest, most … finest horses in the world.’ His brow wrinkled. ‘So they tell me.’
‘But you wouldn’t happen to know where they are?’
‘Not as such,’ the Seriph admitted. A random spray of magic turned the nearby wall into arsenic meringue.
‘I think we might have been better off in the snake pit,’ said Rincewind, turning away.
Creosote took another sorrowful glance at his empty wine bottle.
‘I know where there’s a magic carpet,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Rincewind, raising his hands protectively. ‘Absolutely not. Don’t even-’
‘It belonged to my grandfather-’
‘A real magic carpet?’ said Nijel.
‘Listen,’ said Rincewind urgently. ‘I get vertigo just listening to tall stories.’
‘Oh, quite,’ the Seriph burped gently, ‘genuine. Very pretty pattern.’ He squinted at the bottle again, and sighed. ‘It was a lovely blue colour,’ he added.
‘And you wouldn’t happen to know where it is?’ said Conina slowly, in the manner of one creeping up very carefully to a wild animal that might take fright at any moment.
‘In the treasury. I know the way there. I’m extremely rich, you know. Or so they tell me.’ He lowered his voice and tried to wink at Conina, eventually managing it with both eyes. ‘We could sit on it,’ he said, breaking into a sweat. ‘And you could tell me a story…’
Rincewind tried to scream through gritted teeth.
His ankles were already beginning to sweat.
‘I’m not going to ride on a magic carpet!’ he hissed. ‘I’m afraid of grounds!’
‘You mean heights,’ said Conina. And stop being silly.’
‘I know what I mean! It’s the grounds that kill you!’
The battle of Al Khali was a hammer-headed cloud, in whose roiling depths weird shapes could be heard and strange sounds were seen. Occasional misses seared across the city. Where they landed things were … different.
For example, a large part of the soak had turned into an impenetrable forest of giant yellow mushrooms. No-one knew what effect this had on its inhabitants, although possibly they hadn’t noticed.
The temple of Offler the Crocodile God, patron deity of the city, was now a rather ugly sugary thing constructed in five dimensions. But this was no problem because it was being eaten by a herd of giant ants.
On the other hand, not many people were left to appreciate this statement against uncontrolled civic alteration, because most of them were running for their lives. They fled across the fertile fields in a steady stream. Some had taken to boats, but this method of escape had ceased when most of the harbour area turned into a swamp in which, for no obvious reason, a couple of small pink elephants were building a nest.
Down below the panic on the roads the Luggage paddled slowly up one of the reed-lined drainage ditches. A little way ahead of it a moving wave of small alligators, rats and snapping turtles was pouring out of the water and scrambling frantically up the bank, propelled by some vague but absolutely accurate animal instinct.
The Luggage’s lid was set in an expression of grim determination. It didn’t want much out of the world, except for the total extinction of every other lifeform, but what it needed more than anything else now was its owner.
It was easy to see that the room was a treasury by its incredible emptiness. Doors hung off hooks. Barred alcoves had been smashed in. Lots of smashed chests lay around, and this gave Rincewind a pang of guilt and he wondered, for about two seconds, where the Luggage had got to.
There was a respectful silence, as there always is when large sums of money have just passed away. Nijel wandered off and prodded some of the chests in a forlorn search for secret drawers, as per the instructions in Chapter Eleven.
Conina reached down and picked up a small copper coin.
‘How horrible,’ said Rincewind eventually. ‘A treasury with no treasure in it.’
The seriph stood and beamed. ‘Not to worry’, he said.
‘But all your money has been stolen!’ said Conina.