‘Erm, excuse me,’ said Nijel, ‘this carpet …’
‘Yes,’ said Conina, ‘the carpet.’
Creosote gave them a benevolent, slightly tipsy smile.
‘Ah, yes. The carpet. Push the nose of the statue behind you, peach-buttocked jewel of the desert dawn.’
Conina, blushing, performed this act of minor sacrilege on a large green statue of Offler the Crocodile God.
Nothing happened. Secret compartments assiduously failed to open.
‘Um. Try the left hand.’
She gave it an experimental twist. Creosote scratched his head.
‘Maybe it was the right hand…’
‘I should try and remember, if I were you,’ said Conina sharply, when that didn’t work either. ‘There aren’t many bits left that I’d care to pull.’
‘What’s that thing there?’ said Rincewind.
‘You’re really going to hear about it if it isn’t the tail,’ said Conina, and gave it a kick.
There was a distant metallic groaning noise, like a saucepan in pain. The statue shuddered. It was followed by a few heavy clonks somewhere inside the wall, and Offler the Crocodile God grated ponderously aside. There was a tunnel behind him.
‘My grandfather had this built for our more interesting treasure,’ said Creosote. ‘He was very-’ he groped for a word-’ingenious.’
‘If you think I’m setting foot in there-’ Rincewind began.
‘Stand aside,’ said Nijel, loftily. ‘I will go first.’
‘There could be traps-’ said Conina doubtfully. She shot the Seriph a glance.
‘Oh, probably, O gazelle of Heaven,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been in there since I was six. There were some slabs you shouldn’t tread on, I think.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Nijel, peering into the gloom of the tunnel. ‘I shouldn’t think there’s a booby trap that I couldn’t spot.’
‘Had a lot of experience at this sort of thing, have you?’ said Rincewind sourly.
‘Well, I know Chapter Fourteen off by heart. It had illustrations,’ said Nijel, and ducked into the shadows.
They waited for several minutes in what would have been a horrified hush if it wasn’t for the muffled grunts and occasional thumping noises from the tunnel. Eventually Nijel’s voice echoed back down to them from a distance.
‘There’s absolutely nothing,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried everything. It’s as steady as a rock. Everything must have seized up, or something.’
Rincewind and Conina exchanged glances.
‘He doesn’t know the first thing about traps,’ she said. ‘When I was five, my father made me walk all the way down a passage that he’d rigged up, just to teach me-’
‘He got through, didn’t he?’ said Rincewind.
There was a noise like a damp finger dragged across glass, but amplified a billion times, and the floor shook.
‘Anyway, we haven’t got a lot of choice,’ he added, and ducked into the tunnel. The others followed him. Many people who had got to know Rincewind had come to treat him as a sort of two-legged miner’s canary[20] and tended to assume that if Rincewind was still upright and not actually running then some hope remained.
‘This is fun,’ said Creosote. ‘Me, robbing my own treasury. If I catch myself I can have myself flung into the snake pit.’
‘But you could throw yourself on your mercy,’ said Conina, running a paranoid eye over the dusty stonework.
‘Oh, no. I think I would have to teach me a lesson, as an example to myself.’
There was a little click above them. A small slab slid aside and a rusty metal hook descended slowly and jerkily. Another bar creaked out of the wall and tapped Rincewind on the shoulder. As he swung around, the first hook hung a yellowing notice on his back and retracted into the roof.
‘What’d it do? What’d it do?’ screamed Rincewind, trying to read his own shoulderblades.
‘It says, Kick Me,’ said Conina.
A section of wall slid up beside the petrified wizard. A large boot on the end of a complicated series of metal joints gave a half-hearted wobble and then the whole thing snapped at the knee.
The three of them looked at it in silence. Then Conina said, ‘We’re dealing here with a warped brain, I can tell.’
Rincewind gingerly unhooked the sign and let it drop. Conina pushed past him and stalked along the passage with an air of angry caution, and when a metal hand extended itself on a spring and waggled in a friendly fashion she didn’t shake it but instead traced its moulting wiring to a couple of corroded electrodes in a big glass jar.
‘Your grandad was a man with a sense of humour?’ she said.
‘Oh, yes. Always liked a chuckle,’ said Creosote.
‘Oh, good,’ said Conina. She prodded gingerly at a flagstone which, to Rincewind, looked no different to any of its fellows. With a sad little springy noise a moulting feather duster wobbled out of the wall at armpit height.
‘I think I would have quite liked to meet the old Seriph,’ she said, through gritted teeth, ‘although not to shake him by the hand. You’d better give me a leg up here, wizard.’
‘Pardon?’
Conina pointed irritably to a half-open stone doorway just ahead of them.
‘I want to look up there,’ she said. ‘You just put your hands together for me to stand on, right? How do you manage to be so useless?’
‘Being useful always gets me into trouble,’ muttered Rincewind, trying to ignore the warm flesh brushing against his nose.
He could hear her rooting around above the door.
‘I thought so,’ she said.
‘What is it? Fiendishly sharp spears poised to drop?’
No.’
‘Spiked grill ready to skewer -?’
‘It’s a bucket,’ said Conina flatly, giving it a push.
‘What, of scalding, poisonous -?’
‘Whitewash. Just a lot of old, dried-up whitewash.’ Conina jumped down.
‘That’s grandfather for you,’ said Creosote. ‘Never a dull moment.’
‘Well, I’ve just about had enough,’ Conina said firmly, and pointed to the far end of the tunnel. ‘Come on, you two.’
They were about three feet from the far end when Rincewind felt a movement in the air above him. Conina struck him in the small of the back, shoving him forward into the room beyond. He rolled when he hit the floor, and something nicked his foot at the same time as a loud thump deafened him.
The entire roof, a huge block of stone four feet thick, had dropped into the tunnel.
Rincewind crawled forward through the dust clouds and, with a trembling finger, traced the lettering on the side of the slab.
‘Laugh This One Off,’ he said.
He sat back.
‘That’s grandad,’ said Creosote happily, ‘always a-’
He intercepted Conina’s gaze, which had the force of a lead pipe, and wisely shut up.
Nijel emerged from the clouds, coughing.
‘I say, what happened?’ he said. ‘Is everyone all right? It didn’t do that when I went through.’
Rincewind sought for a reply, and couldn’t find anything better than, ‘Didn’t it?’
Light filtered into the deep room from tiny barred windows up near the roof. There was no way out except by walking through the several hundred tons of stone that blocked the tunnel or, to put it in another way, which was the way Rincewind put it, they were undoubtedly trapped. He relaxed a bit.
At least there was no mistaking the magic carpet. It lay rolled up on a raised slab in the middle of the room. Next to it was a small, sleek oil lamp and – Rincewind craned to see – a small gold ring. He groaned. A faint octarine corona hung over all three items, indicating that they were magical.
When Conina unrolled the carpet a number of small objects tumbled on to the floor, including a brass herring, a wooden ear, a few large square sequins and a lead box with a preserved soap bubble in it.
‘What on earth are they?’ said Nijel.
‘Well,’ said Rincewind, ‘before they tried to eat that carpet, they were probably moths.’
‘Gosh.’
‘That’s what you people never understand,’ said Rincewind, wearily. ‘You think magic is just something you can pick up and use, like a, a-’
‘Parsnip?’ said Nijel.
‘Wine bottle?’ said the Seriph.
‘Something like that,’ said Rincewind cautiously, but rallied somewhat and went on, ‘But the truth is, is-’
‘Not like that?’
‘More like a wine bottle?’ said the Seriph hopefully.
‘Magic uses people,’ said Rincewind hurriedly. ‘It affects you as much as you affect it, sort of thing. You can’t mess around with magical things without it affecting you. I just thought I’d better warn you.’
‘Like a wine bottle,’ said Creosote, ‘that-’
‘-drinks you back,’ said Rincewind. ‘So you can put down that lamp and ring for a start, and for goodness’ sake don’t rub anything.’
‘My grandfather built up the family fortunes with them,’ said Creosote wistfully. ‘His wicked uncle locked him in a cave, you know. He had to set himself up with what came to hand. He had nothing in the whole world but a magic carpet, a magic lamp, a magic ring and a grotto-ful of assorted jewels.’