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‘How does it work?’ he said.
Creosote shrugged. ‘I’ve never used it,’ he said. ‘I suppose you just say “up” and “down” and things like that.’
‘How about “fly through the wall”?’ said Rincewind.
All three of them looked up at the high, dark and, above all, solid walls of the room.
‘We could try sitting on it and saying “rise”,’ Nijel volunteered. ‘And then, before we hit the roof, we could say, well, “stop”.’ He considered this for a bit, and then added, ‘If that’s the word.’
‘Or, “drop”,’ said Rincewind, ‘or “descend”, “dive”, “fall”, “sink”. Or “plunge”.’
“Plummet”,’ suggested Conina gloomily.
‘Of course,’ said Nijel, ‘with all this wild magic floating around, you could try using some of it.’
Ah-’ said Rincewind, and, ‘Well-’
‘You’ve got “wizzard” written on your hat,’ said Creosote.
‘Anyone can write things on their hat,’ said Conina. ‘You don’t want to believe everything you read.’
‘Now hold on a minute,’ said Rincewind hotly.
They held on a minute.
They held on for a further seventeen seconds.
‘Look, it’s a lot harder than you think,’ he said.
‘What did I tell you?’ said Conina. ‘Come on, let’s dig the mortar out with our fingernails.’
Rincewind waved her into silence, removed his hat, pointedly blew the dust off the star, put the hat on again, adjusted the brim, rolled up his sleeves, flexed his fingers and panicked.
In default of anything better to do, he leaned against the stone.
It was vibrating. It wasn’t that it was being shaken; it felt that the throbbing was coming from inside the wall.
It was very much the same sort of trembling he had felt back at the University, just before the sourcerer arrived. The stone was definitely very unhappy about something.
He sidled along the wall and put his ear to the next stone, which was a smaller, wedge-shaped stone cut to fit an angle of the wall, not a big, distinguished stone, but a bantam stone, patiently doing its bit for the greater good of the wall as a whole. It was also shaking.
‘Shh!’ said Conina.
‘I can’t hear anything,’ said Nijel loudly. Nijel was one of those people who, if you say “don’t look now”, would immediately swivel his head like an owl on a turntable. These are the same people who, when you point out, say, an unusual crocus just beside them, turn round aimlessly and put their foot down with a sad little squashy noise. If they were lost in a trackless desert you could find them by putting down, somewhere on the sand, something small and fragile like a valuable old mug that had been in your family for generations, and then hurrying back as soon as you heard the crash.
Anyway.
‘That’s the point! What happened to the war?’
A little cascade of mortar poured down from the ceiling on to Rincewind’s hat.
‘Something’s acting on the stones,’ he said quietly. ‘They’re trying to break free.’
‘We’re right underneath quite a lot of them,’ observed Creosote.
There was a grinding noise above them and a shaft of daylight lanced down. To Rincewind’s surprise it wasn’t accompanied by sudden death from crushing. There was another silicon creak, and the hole grew. The stones were falling out, and they were falling up.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that the carpet might be worth a try at this point.’
