‘What?’ said Conina.
‘Um?’ said Rincewind, vaguely. He looked down blankly at the blue and gold pattern underneath him, and added, ‘You’re flying this, aren’t you?’ Through me! That’s sneaky!’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Oh. Sorry. Talking to myself.’
‘I think,’ said Conina, ‘that we’d better land.’
They glided down towards a crescent of beach where the desert reached the sea. In a normal light it would have been blinding white with a sand made up of billions of tiny shell fragments, but at this time of day it was blood-red and primordial. Ranks of driftwood, carved by the waves and bleached by the sun, were piled up on the tideline like the bones of ancient fish or the biggest floral art accessory counter in the universe. Nothing stirred, apart from the waves. There were a few rocks around, but they were firebrick hot and home to no mollusc or seaweed.
Even the sea looked arid. If any proto-amphibian emerged on to a beach like this, it would have given up there and then, gone back into the water and told all its relatives to forget the legs, it wasn’t worth it. The air felt as though it had been cooked in a sock.
Even so, Nijel insisted that they light a fire.
‘It’s more friendly,’ he said. ‘Besides, there could be monsters.’
Conina looked at the oily wavelets, rolling up the beach in what appeared to be a half-hearted attempt to get out of the sea.
‘In that?’ she said.
‘You never can tell.’
Rincewind mooched along the waterline, distractedly picking up stones and throwing them in the sea. One or two were thrown back.
After a while Conina got a fire going, and the bone-dry, salt-saturated wood sent blue and green flames roaring up under a fountain of sparks. The wizard went and sat in the dancing shadows, his back against a pile of whitened wood, wrapped in a cloud of such impenetrable gloom that even Creosote stopped complaining of thirst and shut up.
Conina woke up after midnight. There was a crescent moon on the horizon and a thin, chilly mist covered the sand. Creosote was snoring on his back. Nijel, who was theoretically on guard, was sound asleep.
Conina lay perfectly still, every sense seeking out the thing that had awoken her.
Finally she heard it again. It was a tiny, diffident clinking noise, barely audible above the muted slurp of the sea.
She got up, or rather, she slid into the vertical as bonelessly as a jellyfish, and flicked Nijel’s sword out of his unresisting hand. Then she sidled through the mist without causing so much as an extra swirl.
The fire sank down further into its bed of ash. After a while Conina came back, and shook the other two awake.
‘Warrizit?’
‘I think you ought to see this,’ she hissed. ‘I think it could be important.’
‘I just shut my eyes for a second-’ Nijel protested.
‘Never mind about that. Come on.’
Creosote squinted around the impromptu campsite.
‘Where’s the wizard fellow?’
‘You’ll see. And don’t make a noisy. It could be dangerous.’
They stumbled after her knee-deep in vapour, towards the sea.
Eventually Nijel said, ‘Why dangerous-’
‘Shh! Did you hear it?’
Nijel listened.