‘I think he’s trying to build a tower.’
Rincewind lurched back into the ring of stones and, with great care, placed another rock on empty air. It fell down.
‘He’s not very good at it, is he,’ said Nijel.
‘It is very sad,’ said Creosote.
‘Maybe we ought to wake him up,’ said Conina. ‘Only I heard that if you wake up sleepwalkers their legs fall off, or something. What do you think?’
‘Could be risky, with wizards,’ said Nijel.
They tried to make themselves comfortable on the chilly sand.
‘It’s rather pathetic, isn’t it?’ said Creosote. ‘It’s not as if he’s really a proper wizard.’
Conina and Nijel tried to avoid one another’s gaze. Finally the boy coughed, and said, ‘I’m not exactly a barbarian hero, you know. You may have noticed.’
They watched the toiling figure of Rincewind for a while, and then Conina said, ‘If it comes to that, I think I lack a certain something when it comes to hairdressing.’
They both stared fixedly at the sleepwalker, busy with their own thoughts and red with mutual embarrassment.
Creosote cleared his throat.
‘If it makes anyone feel better,’ he said, ‘I sometimes perceive that my poetry leaves a lot to be desired.’
Rincewind carefully tried to balance a large rock on a small pebble. It fell off, but he appeared to be happy with the result.
‘Speaking as a poet,’ said Conina carefully, ‘what would you say about this situation?’
Creosote shifted uneasily. ‘Funny old thing, life,’ he said.
‘Pretty apt.’
Nijel lay back and looked up at the hazy stars. Then he sat bolt upright.
‘Did you see that?’ he demanded.
‘What?’
‘It was a sort of flash, a kind of-’
The hubward horizon exploded into a silent flower of colour, which expanded rapidly through all the hues of the conventional spectrum before flashing into brilliant octarine. It etched itself on their eyeballs before fading away.
After a while there was a distant rumble.
‘Some sort of magical weapon,’ said Conina, blinking. A gust of warm wind picked up the mist and streamed it past them.
‘Blow this,’ said Nijel, getting to his feet. ‘I’m going to wake him up, even if it means we end up carrying him.’
He reached out for Rincewind’s shoulder just as something went past very high overhead, making a noise like a flock of geese on nitrous oxide. It disappeared into the desert behind them. Then there was a sound that would have set false teeth on edge, a flash of green light, and a thump.
‘I’ll wake him up,’ said Conina. ‘You get the carpet.’
She clambered over the ring of rocks and took the sleeping wizard gently by the arm, and this would have been a textbook way of waking a somnambulist if Rincewind hadn’t dropped the rock he was carrying on his foot.
He opened his eyes.
‘Where am I?’ he said.