'Hmmm?'
'The hat's gone.'
'What?'
'I couldn't help it, they just grabbed whatever they could-’
'The slavers have made off with the hat?'
'Don't you take that tone with me! I wasn't having a quiet sleep at the time-’
Rincewind waved his hands frantically. 'Nonono, don't get excited, I wasn't taking any tone — I want to think about this...'
'The captain says they'll probably go back to Al Khali,' he heard Conina say. 'There's a place where the criminal element hang out, and we can soon-’
'I don't see why we have to do anything,' said Rincewind. 'The hat wanted to keep out the way of the University, and I shouldn't think those slavers ever drop in there for a quick sherry.'
'You'll let them run off with it?' said Conina, in genuine astonishment.
'Well, someone's got to do it. The way I see it, why me?'
'But you said it's the symbol of wizardry! What wizards all aspire to! You can't just let it go like that!'
'You watch me.' Rincewind sat back. He felt oddly surprised. He was making a decision. It was his. It belonged to him. Noone was forcing him to make it. Sometimes it seemed that his entire life consisted of getting into trouble because of what other people wanted, but this time he'd made a decision and that was that. He'd get off the boat at Al Khali and find some way of going home. Someone else could save the world, and he wished them luck. He'd made a decision.
His brow furrowed. Why didn't he feel happy about it?
Because it's the wrong bloody decision, you idiot.
Right, he thought, I've had enough voices in my head. Out.
But I belong here.
You mean you're me?
Your conscience.
Oh.
You can't let the hat be destroyed. It's the symbol ...
... all right, I know ...
... the symbol of magic under the Lore. Magic under the control of mankind. You don't want to go back to those dark Ians ...
... What? ...
Ians ...
Do I mean aeons?
Right. Aeons. Go back aeons to the time when raw magic ruled. The whole framework of reality trembled daily. It was pretty terrible, I can tell me.
How do I know?
Racial memory.
Gosh. Have I got one of those?
Well. A part of one.
Yes, all right, but why me?
In your soul you know you are a true wizard. The word 'Wizard' is engraved on your heart.
'Yes, but the trouble is I keep meeting people who might try to find out,' said Rincewind miserably.
'What did you say?' said Conina.
Rincewind stared at the smudge on the horizon and sighed.
'Just talking to myself,' he said.
Carding surveyed the hat critically. He walked around the table and stared at it from a new angle. At last he said: 'It's pretty good. Where did you get the octarines?'
'They're just very good Ankhstones,' said Spelter. 'They fooled you, did they?'
It was a magnificent hat. In fact, Spelter had to admit, it looked a lot better than the real thing. The old Archchancellor's hat had looked rather battered, its gold thread tarnished and unravelling. The replica was a considerable improvement. It had style.
'I especially like the lace,' said Carding.
'It took ages.'
'Why didn't you try magic?' Carding waggled his fingers, and grasped the tall cool glass that appeared in mid-air. Under its paper umbrella and fruit salad it contained some sticky and expensive alcohol.
'Didn't work,' said Spelter. 'Just couldn't seem, um, to get it right. I had to sew every sequin on by hand.' He picked up the hatbox.
Carding coughed into his drink. 'Don't put it away just yet,' he said, and took it out of the bursar's hands. 'I've always wanted to try this-’
He turned to the big mirror on the bursar's wall and reverently lowered the hat on his rather grubby locks.
It was the ending of the first day of the sourcery, and the wizards had managed to change everything except themselves.
They had all tried, on the quiet and when they thought no-one else was looking. Even Spelter had a go, in the privacy of his study. He had managed to become twenty years younger with a torso you could crack rocks on, but as soon as he stopped concentrating he sagged, very unpleasantly, back into his old familiar shape and age. There was something elastic about the way you were. The harder you threw it, the faster it came back. The worse it was when it hit, too. Spiked iron balls, broadswords and large heavy sticks with nails in were generally considered pretty fearsome weapons, but they were nothing at all compared to twenty years suddenly applied with considerable force to the back of the head.
This was because sourcery didn't seem to work on things that were instrinsically magical. Nevertheless, the wizards had made a few important improvements. Carding's robe, for example, had become a silk and lace confection of overpoweringly expensive tastelessness, and gave him the appearance of a big red jelly draped with antimacassars.
'It suits me, don't you think?' said Carding. He adjusted the hat brim, giving it an inappropriately rakish air.
Spelter said nothing. He was looking out of the window.
There had been a few improvements all right. It had been a busy day.
The old stone walls had vanished. There were some rather nice railings now. Beyond them, the city fairly sparkled, a poem in white marble and red tiles. The river Ankh was no longer the silt-laden sewer he'd grown up knowing, but a glittering glassclear ribbon in which — a nice touch — fat carp mouthed and swam in water pure as snowmelt.[12]
From the air Ankh-Morpork must have been blinding. It gleamed. The detritus of millennia had been swept away.
It made Spelter strangely uneasy. He felt out of place, as though he was wearing new clothes that itched. Of course, he was wearing new clothes and they did itch, but that wasn't the problem. The new world was all very nice, it was exactly how it should be, and yet, and yet — had he wanted to change, he thought, or had he only wanted things rearranged more suitably?
'I said, don't you think it was made for me?' said Carding.
Spelter turned back, his face blank.
'Um?'
'The hat, man.'
'Oh. Um. Very — suitable.'
With a sigh Carding removed the baroque headpiece and carefully replaced it in its box. 'We'd better take it to him,' he said. 'He's starting to ask about it.'
'I'm still bothered about where the real hat is,' said Spelter.
'It's in here,' said Carding firmly, tapping the lid.
'I mean the, um, real one.'
'This is the real one.'
'I meant-’
'This is the Archchancellor's Hat,' said Carding carefully. 'You should know, you made it.'
'Yes, but-’began the bursar wretchedly.
'After all, you wouldn't make a forgery, would you?'
'Not as, um, such-’
'It's just a hat. It's whatever people think it is. People see the Archchancellor wearing it, they think it's the original hat. In a certain sense, it is. Things are defined by what they do. And people, of course. Fundamental basis of wizardry, is that.' Carding paused dramatically, and plonked the hatbox into Spelter's arms. 'Cogitum ergot hatto, you might say.'
Spelter had made a special study of old languages, and did his best.
' "I think, therefore I am a hat?"' he hazarded.
`What?' said Carding, as they set off down the stairs to the new incarnation of the Great Hall.
' "I considered I'm a mad hat?"' Spelter suggested.
'Just shut up, all right?'
The haze still hung over the city, its curtains of silver and gold turned to blood by the light of the setting sun which streamed in through the windows of the hall.
Coin was sitting on a stool with his staff across his knees. It occurred to Spelter that he had never seen the boy without it, which was odd. Most wizards kept their staves under the bed, or hooked up over the fireplace.
He didn't like this staff. It was black, but not because that was its colour, more because it seemed to be a moveable hole into some other, more unpleasant set of dimensions. It didn't have eyes but, nevertheless, it seemed to stare at Spelter as if it knew his innermost thoughts, which at the moment was more than he did.
His skin prickled as the two wizards crossed the floor and felt the blast of a raw magic flowing outwards from the seated figure.
Several dozen of the most senior wizards were clustered around the stool, staring in awe at the floor.
Spelter craned to see, and saw-
The world.
It floated in a puddle of black night somehow set into the floor itself, and Spelter knew with a terrible certainty that it was the world, not some image or simple projection. There were cloud patterns and everything. There were the frosty wastes of the Hublands, the Counterweight Continent, the Circle Sea, the Rimfall, all tiny and pastel-coloured but nevertheless real ...
Someone was speaking to him.
'Um?' he said, and the sudden drop in metaphorical temperature jerked him back into reality. He realised with horror that Coin had just directed a remark at him.
'I'm sorry?' he corrected himself. 'It was just that the world ... so beautiful ...'
'Our Spelter is an aesthete,' said Coin, and there was a brief chuckle from one or two wizards who knew what the word meant, 'but as to the world, it could be improved. I had said, Spelter, that everywhere we look we can see cruelty and inhumanity and greed, which tell us that the world is indeed governed badly, does it not?'
Spelter was aware of two dozen pairs of eyes turning to him.
'Um,' he said. 'Well, you can't change human nature.'
There was dead silence.
Spelter hesitated. 'Can you?' he said.
'That remains to be seen,' said Carding. 'But if we change the world, then human nature also will change. Is that not so, brothers?'
'We have the city,' said one of the wizards. 'I myself have created a castle-’
'We rule the city, but who rules the world?' said Carding. 'There must be a thousand petty kings and emperors and chieftains down there.'
'Not one of whom can read without moving his lips,' said a wizard.
'The Patrician could read,' said Spelter.
'Not if you cut off his index finger,' said Carding. 'What happened to the lizard, anyway? Never mind. The point is, the world should surely be run by men of wisdom and philosophy. It must be guided. We've spent centuries fighting amongst ourselves, but together... who knows what we could do?'
'Today the city, tomorrow the world,' said someone at the back of the crowd.
Carding nodded.
'Tomorrow the world, and-’ he calculated quickly-’on Friday the universe!'
That leaves the weekend free, thought Spelter. He recalled the box in his arms, and held it out towards Coin. But Carding floated in front of him, seized the box in one fluid movement and offered it to the boy with a flourish.
'The Archchancellor's hat,' he said. 'Rightfully yours, we think.'
Coin took it. For the first time Spelter saw uncertainty cross his face.
'Isn't there some sort of formal ceremony?' he said.
Carding coughed.
'I-er, no,' he said. 'No, I don't think so.' He glanced up at the other senior mages, who shook their heads. 'No. We've never had one. Apart from the feast, of course. Er. You see, it's not like a coronation, the Archchancellor, you see, he leads the fraternity of wizards, he's,' Carding's voice ran down slowly in the light of that golden gaze, 'he's you see ... he's the ... first ...among ... equals ...'
He stepped back hurriedly as the staff moved eerily until it pointed towards him. Once again Coin seemed to be listening to an inner voice.
'No,' he said eventually, and when he spoke next his voice had that wide, echoing quality that, if you are not a wizard, you can only achieve with a lot of very expensive audio equipment. 'There will be a ceremony. There must be a ceremony, people must understand that wizards are ruling, but it will not be here. I will select a place. And all the wizards who have passed through these gates will attend, is that understood?'
'Some of them live far off,' said Carding, carefully. 'It will take them some time to travel, so when were you thinking of-‘
'They are wizards!' shouted Coin. 'They can be here in the twinkling of an eye! I have given them the power! Besides,' his voice dropped back to something like normal pitch, 'the University is finished. It was never the true home of magic, only its prison. I will build us a new place.'
He lifted the new hat out of its box, and smiled at it. Spelter and Carding held their breath.
'But-’
They looked around. Hakardly the Lore master had spoken, and now stood with his mouth opening and shutting.
Coin turned to him, one eyebrow raised.
'You surely don't mean to close the University?' said the old wizard, his voice trembling.
'It is no longer necessary,' said Coin. 'It's a place of dust and old books. It is behind us. Is that not so ... brothers?'
There was a chorus of uncertain mumbling. The wizards found it hard to imagine life without the old stones of UU. Although, come to think of it, there was a lot of dust, of course, and the books were pretty old ...
'After all ... brothers ... who among you has been into your dark library these past few days? The magic is inside you now, not imprisoned between covers. Is that not a joyous thing? Is there not one among you who has done more magic, real magic, in the past twenty-four hours than he has done in the whole of his life before? Is there one among you who does not, in his heart of hearts, truly agree with me?'
Spelter shuddered. In his heart of hearts an inner Spelter had woken, and was struggling to make himself heard. It was a Spelter who suddenly longed for those quiet days, only hours ago, when magic was gentle and shuffled around the place in old slippers and always had time for a sherry and wasn't like a hot sword in the brain and, above all, didn't kill people.
Terror seized him as he felt his vocal chords twang to attention and prepare, despite all his efforts, to disagree.
The staff was trying to find him. He could feel it searching for him. It would vanish him, just like poor old Billias. He clamped his jaws together, but it wouldn't work. He felt his chest heave. His jaw creaked.
Carding, shifting uneasily, stood on his foot. Spelter yelped.
'Sorry', said Carding.
'Is something the matter, Spelter?' said Coin.
Spelter hopped on one leg, suddenly released, his body flooding with relief as his toes flooded with agony, more grateful than anyone in the entire history of the world that seventeen stones of wizardry had chosen his instep to come down heavily on.
His scream seemed to have broken the spell. Coin sighed, and stood up.
'It has been a good day,' he said.
It was two o'clock in the morning. River mists coiled like snakes through the streets of Ankh-Morpork, but they coiled alone. Wizards did not hold with other people staying up after midnight, and so no-one did. They slept the troubled sleep of the enchanted, instead.
In the Plaza of Broken Moons, once the boutique of mysterious pleasures from whose flare-lit and curtain-hung stalls the late-night reveller could obtain anything from a plate of jellied eels to the venereal disease of his choice, the mists coiled and dripped into chilly emptiness.
The stalls had gone, replaced by gleaming marble and a statue depicting the spirit of something or other, surrounded by illuminated fountains. Their dull splashing was the only sound that broke the cholesterol of silence that had the heart of the city in its grip.
Silence reigned too in the dark bulk of Unseen University. Except-
Spelter crept along the shadowy corridors like a two-legged spider, darting — or at least limping quickly -from pillar to archway, until he reached the forbidding doors of the Library. He peered nervously at the darkness around him and, after some hesitation, tapped very, very lightly.
Silence poured from the heavy woodwork. But, unlike the silence that had the rest of the city under its thrall, this was a watchful, alert silence; it was the silence of a sleeping cat that had just opened one eye.
When he could bear it no longer Spelter dropped to his hands and knees and tried to peer under the doors.
Finally he, put his mouth as close as he could to the draughty, dusty gap under the bottommost hinge and whispered: 'I say! Um. Can you hear me?'
He felt sure that something moved, far back in the darkness.
He tried again, his mood swinging between terror and hope with every erratic thump of his heart.
'I say? It's me, um, Spelter. You know? Could you speak to me, please?'
Perhaps large leathery feet were creeping gently across the floor in there, or maybe it was only the creaking of Spelter's nerves. He tried to swallow away the dryness in his throat, and had another go.
'Look, all right, but, look, they're talking about shutting the Library!'
The silence grew louder. The sleeping cat had cocked an ear.
'What is happening is all wrong!' the bursar confided, and clapped his hand over his mouth at the enormity of what he had said.
'Oook?'
It was the faintest of noises, like the eructation of cockroaches.
Suddenly emboldened, Spelter pressed his lips closer to the crack.
'Have you got the, um, Patrician in there?'
'Oook.'
'What about the little doggie?'
'Oook.'
'Oh. Good.'
Spelter lay full length in the comfort of the night, and drummed his fingers on the chilly floor.
'You wouldn't care to, um, let me in too?' he ventured.
'Oook!'
Spelter made a face in the gloom.
'Well, would you, um, let me come in for a few minutes? We need to discuss something urgently, man to man.'
'Eeek.'
'I meant ape.'
'Oook.'
'Look, won't you come out, then?'
'Oook.'
Spelter sighed. 'This show of loyalty is all very well, but you'll starve in there.'
'Oook oook.'
'What other way in?'
'Oook.'
'Oh, have it your way,' Spelter sighed. But, somehow, he felt better for the conversation. Everyone else in the University seemed to be living in a dream, whereas the Librarian wanted nothing more in the whole world than soft fruit, a regular supply of index cards and the opportunity, every month or so, to hop over the wall of the Patrician's private menagerie.[13] It was strangely reassuring.
'So you're all right for bananas and so forth?' he inquired, after another pause.
'Oook.'
'Don't let anyone in, will you? Um. I think that's frightfully important.'
'Oook.'
'Good.' Spelter stood up and dusted off his knees. Then he put his mouth to the keyhole and added, 'Don't trust anyone.'
'Oook.'
It was not completely dark in the Library, because the serried rows of magical books gave off a faint octarine glow, caused by thaumaturgical leakage into a strong occult field. It was just bright enough to illuminate the pile of shelves wedged against the door.
The former Patrician had been carefully decanted into a jar on the Librarian's desk. The Librarian himself sat under it, wrapped in his blanket and holding Wuffles on his lap.
Occasionally he would eat a banana.
Spelter, meanwhile, limped back along the echoing passages of the University, heading for the security of his bedroom. It was because his ears were nervously straining the tiniest of sounds out of the air that he heard, right on the cusp of audibility, the sobbing.
It wasn't a normal noise up here. In the carpeted corridors of the senior wizards' quarters there were a number of sounds you might hear late at night, such as snoring, the gentle clinking of glasses, tuneless singing and, once in a while, the zip and sizzle of a spell gone wrong. But the sound of someone quietly crying was such a novelty that Spelter found himself edging down the passage that led to the Archchancellor's suite.
The door was ajar. Telling himself that he really shouldn't, tensing himself for a hurried dash, Spelter peered inside.
Rincewind stared.
'What is it?' he whispered.
'I think it's a temple of some sort,' said Conina.
Rincewind stood and gazed upwards, the crowds of AI Khali bouncing off and around him in a kind of human Brownian motion. A temple, he thought. Well, it was big, and it was impressive, and the architect had used every trick in the book to make it look even bigger and even more impressive than it was, and to impress upon everyone looking at it that they, on the other hand, were very small and ordinary and didn't have as many domes. It was the kind of place that looked exactly as you were always going to remember it.
But Rincewind felt he knew holy architecture when he saw it, and the frescoes on the big and, of course, impressive walls above him didn't look at all religious. For one thing, the participants were enjoying themselves. Almost certainly, they were enjoying themselves. Yes, they must be. It would be pretty astonishing if they weren't.
'They're not dancing, are they?' he said, in a desperate attempt not to believe the evidence of his own eyes. 'Or maybe it's some sort of acrobatics?'
Conina squinted upwards in the hard, white sunlight.
'I shouldn't think so,' she said, thoughtfully.
Rincewind remembered himself. 'I don't think a young woman like you should be looking at this sort of thing,' he said sternly.
Conina gave him a smile. 'I think wizards are expressly forbidden to,' she said sweetly. 'It's supposed to turn you blind.'
Rincewind turned his face upwards again, prepared to risk maybe one eye. This sort of thing is only to be expected, he told himself. They don't know any better. Foreign countries are, well, foreign countries. They do things differently there.
Although some things, he decided, were done in very much the same way, only with rather more inventiveness and, by the look of it, far more often.
'The temple frescoes of Al Khali are famous far and wide,' said Conina, as they walked through crowds of children who kept trying to sell Rincewind things and introduce him to nice relatives.
'Well, I can see they would be,' Rincewind agreed. 'Look, push off, will you? No, I don't want to buy whatever it is. No, I don't want to meet her. Or him, either. Or it, you nasty little boy. Get off, will you?'
The last scream was to the group of children riding sedately on the Luggage, which was plodding along patiently behind Rincewind and making no attempt to shake them off. Perhaps it was sickening for something, he thought, and brightened up a bit.
'How many people are there on this continent, do you think?' he said.
'I don't know,' said Conina, without turning round. 'Millions, I expect?'
'If I were wise, I wouldn't be here,' said Rincewind, with feeling.
They had been in Al Khali, gateway to the whole mysterious continent of Klatch, for several hours. He was beginning to suffer.
A decent city should have a bit of fog about it, he considered, and people should live indoors, not spend all their time out on the streets. There shouldn't be all this sand and heat. As for the wind ...
Ankh-Morpork had its famous smell, so full of personality that it could reduce a strong man to tears. But Al Khali had its wind, blowing from the vastness of the deserts and continents nearer the rim. It was a gentle breeze, but it didn't stop and eventually it had the same effect on visitors that a cheesegrater achieves on a tomato. After a while it seemed to have worn away your skin and was rasping directly across the nerves.
To Conina's sensitive nostrils it carried aromatic messages from the heart of the continent, compounded of the chill of deserts, the stink of lions, the compost of jungles and the flatulence of wildebeest.
Rincewind, of course, couldn't smell any of this. Adaptation is a wonderful thing, and most Morporkians would be hard put to smell a burning feather mattress at five feet.
'Where to next?' he said. 'Somewhere out of the wind?'
'My father spent some time in Khali when he was hunting for the Lost City of Ee,' said Conina. 'And I seem to remember he spoke very highly of the soak. It's a kind of bazaar.'
'I suppose we just go and look for the second-hand hat stalls,' said Rincewind. 'Because the whole idea is totally-’
'What I was hoping was that maybe we could be attacked. That seems the most sensible idea. My father said that very few strangers who entered the soak ever came out again. Some very murderous types hang out there, he said.'
Rincewind gave this due consideration.
'Just run that by me again, will you?' he said. 'After you said we should be attacked I seemed to hear a ranging in my ears.'
'Well, we want to meet the criminal element, don't we?'
'Not exactly want,' said Rincewind. 'That wasn't the phrase I would have chosen.'
'How would you put it, then?'
'Er. I think the phrase "not want" sums it up pretty well.'
'But you agreed that we should get the hat!'
'But not die in the process,' said Rincewind, wretchedly. 'That won't do anyone any good. Not me, anyway.'
'My father always said that death is but a sleep,' said Conina.
'Yes, the hat told me that,' said Rincewind, as they turned down a narrow, crowded street between white adobe walls. 'But the way I see it, it's a lot harder to get up in the morning.'
'Look,' said Conina, 'there's not much risk. You're with me.'
'Yes, and you're looking forward to it, aren't you,' said Rincewind accusingly, as Conina piloted them along a shady alley, with their retinue of pubescent entrepreneurs at their heels. 'It's the old herrydeterry at work.'
'Just shut up and try to look like a victim, will you?'
'I can do that all right,' said Rincewind, beating off a particularly stubborn member of the junior Chamber of Commerce, 'I've had a lot of practice. For the last time, I don't want to buy anyone, you wretched child!'
He looked gloomily at the walls around them. At least there weren't any of those disturbing pictures here, but the hot breeze still blew the dust around him and he was sick and tired of looking at sand. What he wanted was a couple of cool beers, a cold bath and a change of clothing; it probably wouldn't make him feel better, but it would at least make feeling awful more enjoyable. Not that there was any beer here, probably. It was a funny thing, but in chilly cities like Ankh-Morpork the big drink was beer, which cooled you down, but in places like this, where the whole sky was an oven with the door left open, people drank tiny little sticky drinks which set fire to the back of your throat. And the architecture was all wrong. And they had statues in their temples that, well, just weren't suitable. This wasn't the right kind of place for wizards. Of course, they had some local grown alternative, enchanters or some such, but not what you'd call decent magic ...
Conina strolled ahead of him, humming to herself.
You rather like her, don't you? I can tell, said a voice in his head.
Oh blast, thought Rincewind, you're not my conscience again, are you?
Your libido. It's a bit stuffy in here, isn't it? You haven't had it done up since the last time I was around.
Look, go away, will you? I'm a wizard! Wizards are ruled by their heads, not by their hearts!
And I'm getting votes from your glands, and they’re telling me that as far as your body is concerned your brain is in a minority of one.
Yes? But it's got the casting vote, then.
Hah! That's what you think. Your heart has got nothing to do with this, by the way, it's merely a muscular organ which powers the circulation of the blood. But look at it like this — you quite like her, don't you?
Well ... Rincewind hesitated. Yes, he thought, er ...
She's pretty good company, eh? Nice voice?
Well, of course ...
You'd like to see more of her?
Well ... Rincewind realised with some surprise that, yes, he would. It wasn't that he was entirely unused to the company of women, but it always seemed to cause trouble and, of course, it was a well known fact that it was bad for the magical abilities, although he had to admit that his particular magical abilities, being approximately those of a rubber hammer, were shaky enough to start with.
Then you've got nothing to lose, have you? his libido put in, in an oily tone of thought.
It was at this point Rincewind realised that something important was missing. It took him a little while to realise what it was.
No-one had tried to sell him anything for several minutes. In Al Khali, that probably meant you were dead.
He, Corona and the Luggage were alone in a long, shady alley. He could hear the bustle of the city some way away, but immediately around them there was nothing except a rather expectant silence.
'They've run off,' said Conina.
'Are we going to be attacked?'
'Could be. There's been three men following us on the rooftops.'
Rincewind squinted upwards at almost the same time as three men, dressed in flowing black robes, dropped lightly into the alleyway in front of them. When he looked around two more appeared from around a corner. All five were holding long curved swords and, although the lower halves of their faces were masked, it was almost certain that they were grinning evilly.
Rincewind rapped sharply on the Luggage's lid.
'Kill,' he suggested. The Luggage stood stock still for a moment, and then plodded over and stood next to Conina. It looked slightly smug and, Rincewind realised with jealous horror, rather embarrassed.
'Why, you-’ he growled, and gave it a kick — 'you handbag.'
He sidled closer to the girl, who was standing there with a thoughtful smile on her face.
'What now?' he said. 'Are you going to offer them all a quick perm?'
The men edged a little closer. They were, he noticed, only interested in Conina.
'I'm not armed,' she said.
'What happened to your legendary comb?'
'Left it on the boat.'
'You've got nothing?'
Conina shifted slightly to keep as many of the men as possible in her field of vision.
'I've got a couple of hairgrips,' she said out of the corner of her mouth.
'Any good?'
'Don't know. Never tried.'
'You got us into this!'
'Relax. I think they'll just take us prisoner.'
'Oh, that's fine for you to say. You're not marked down as this week's special offer.'
The Luggage snapped its lid once or twice, a little uncertain about things. One of the men gingerly extended his sword and prodded Rincewind in the small of the back.
'They want to take us somewhere, see?' said Conina. She gritted her teeth. 'Oh, no,' she muttered.
'What's the matter now?'
'I can't do it!'
'What?'
Conina put her head in her hands. 'I can't let myself be taken prisoner without a fight! I can feel a thousand barbarian ancestors accusing me of betrayal!' she hissed urgently.
'Pull the other one.'
'No, really. This won't take a minute.'
There was a sudden blur and the nearest man collapsed in a small gurgling heap. Then Conina's elbows went back and into the stomachs of the men behind her. Her left hand rebounded past Rincewind's ear with a noise like tearing silk and felled the man behind him. The fifth made a run for it and was brought down by a flying tackle, hitting his head heavily on the wall.
Conina rolled off him and sat up, panting, her eyes bright.
'I don't like to say this, but I feel better for that,' she said. 'It's terrible to know that I betrayed a fine hairdressing tradition, of course. Oh.'
'Yes,' said Rincewind sombrely, 'I wondered if you'd noticed them.'
Conina's eyes scanned the line of bowmen who had appeared along the opposite wall. They had that stolid, impassive look of people who have been paid to do a job, and don't much mind if the job involves killing people.
'Time for those hairgrips,' said Rincewind.
Conina didn't move.
'My father always said that it was pointless to undertake a direct attack against an enemy extensively armed with efficient projectile weapons,' she said.
Rincewind, who knew Cohen's normal method of speech, gave her a look of disbelief.
'Well, what he actually said,' she added, 'was never enter an arse-kicking contest with a porcupine.'
Spelter couldn't face breakfast.
He wondered whether he ought to talk to Carding, but he had a chilly feeling that the old wizard wouldn't listen and wouldn't believe him anyway. In fact he wasn't quite sure he believed it himself ...
Yes he was. He'd never forget it, although he intended to make every effort.
One of the problems about living in the University these days was that the building you went to sleep in probably wasn't the same building when you woke up. Rooms had a habit of changing and moving around, a consequence of all this random magic. It built up in the carpets, charging up the wizards to such an extent that shaking hands with somebody was a sure-fire way of turning them into something. The build up of magic, in fact, was overflowing the capacity of the area to hold it. If something wasn't done about it soon, then even the common people would be able to use it — a chilling thought but, since Spelter's mind was already so full of chilling thoughts you could use it as an ice tray, not one he was going to spend much time worrying about.
Mere household geography wasn't the only difficulty, though. Sheer pressure of thaumaturgical inflow was even affecting the food. What was a forkful of kedgeree when you lifted it off the plate might well have turned into something else by the time it entered your mouth. If you were lucky, it was inedible. If you were unlucky, it was edible but probably not something you liked to think you were about to eat or, worse, had already eaten half of.
Spelter found Coin in what had been, late last night, a broom cupboard. It was a lot bigger now. It was only because Spelter had never heard of aircraft hangars that he didn't know what to compare it with, although, to be fair, very few aircraft hangars have marble floors and a lot of statuary around the place. A couple of brooms and a small battered bucket in one corner looked distinctly out of place, but not as out of place as the crushed tables in the former Great Hall which, owing to the surging tides of magic now flowing through the place, had shrunk to the approximate size of what Spelter, if he had ever seen one, would have called a small telephone box.
He sidled into the room with extreme caution and took his place among the council of wizards. The air was greasy with the feel of power.
Spelter created a chair beside Carding and leant across to him.
'You'll never believe-’ he began.
'Quiet!' hissed Carding. 'This is amazing!'
Coin was sitting on his stool in the middle of the circle, one hand on his staff, the other extended and holding something small, white and egg-like. It was strangely fuzzy. In fact, Spelter thought, it wasn't something small seen close to. It was something huge, but a long way off. And the boy was holding it in his hand.
'What's he doing?' Spelter whispered.
'I'm not exactly sure,' murmured Carding. 'As far as we can understand it, he's creating a new home for wizardry'
Streamers of coloured light flashed about the indistinct ovoid, like a distant thunderstorm. The glow lit Coin's preoccupied face from below, giving it the semblance of a mask.
'I don't see how we will all fit in,' the bursar said. 'Carding, last night I saw-’
'It is finished,' said Coin. He held up the egg, which flashed occasionally from some inner light and gave off tiny white prominences. Not only was it a long way off, Spelter thought, it was also extremely heavy; it went right through heaviness and out the other side, into that strange negative realism where lead would be a vacuum. He grabbed Carding's sleeve again.
'Carding, listen, it's important, listen, when I looked in-'
'I really wish you’d stop doing that.'
'But the staff, his staff, it's not-’
Coin stood up and pointed the staff at the wall, where a doorway instantly appeared. He marched out through it, leaving the wizards to follow him.
He went through the Archchancellor's garden, followed by a gaggle of wizards in the same way that a comet is followed by its tail, and didn't stop until he reached the banks of the Ankh. There were some hoary old willows here, and the river flowed, or at any rate moved, in a horseshoe bend around a small newt-haunted meadow known rather optimistically as Wizards Pleasaunce. On summer evenings, if the wind was blowing towards the river, it was a nice area for an afternoon stroll.
The warm silver haze still hung over the city as Coin padded through the damp grass until he reached the centre. He tossed the egg, which drifted in a gentle arc and landed with a squelch.
He turned to the wizards as they hurried up.
'Stand well back,' he commanded. 'And be prepared to run.'
He pointed the octiron staff at the half-sunken thing. A bolt of octarine light shot from its tip and struck the egg, exploding into a shower of sparks that left blue and purple after-images.
There was a pause. A dozen wizards watched the egg expectantly.
A breeze shook the willow trees in a totally unmysterious way.
'The hat's gone.'
'What?'
'I couldn't help it, they just grabbed whatever they could-’
'The slavers have made off with the hat?'
'Don't you take that tone with me! I wasn't having a quiet sleep at the time-’
Rincewind waved his hands frantically. 'Nonono, don't get excited, I wasn't taking any tone — I want to think about this...'
'The captain says they'll probably go back to Al Khali,' he heard Conina say. 'There's a place where the criminal element hang out, and we can soon-’
'I don't see why we have to do anything,' said Rincewind. 'The hat wanted to keep out the way of the University, and I shouldn't think those slavers ever drop in there for a quick sherry.'
'You'll let them run off with it?' said Conina, in genuine astonishment.
'Well, someone's got to do it. The way I see it, why me?'
'But you said it's the symbol of wizardry! What wizards all aspire to! You can't just let it go like that!'
'You watch me.' Rincewind sat back. He felt oddly surprised. He was making a decision. It was his. It belonged to him. Noone was forcing him to make it. Sometimes it seemed that his entire life consisted of getting into trouble because of what other people wanted, but this time he'd made a decision and that was that. He'd get off the boat at Al Khali and find some way of going home. Someone else could save the world, and he wished them luck. He'd made a decision.
His brow furrowed. Why didn't he feel happy about it?
Because it's the wrong bloody decision, you idiot.
Right, he thought, I've had enough voices in my head. Out.
But I belong here.
You mean you're me?
Your conscience.
Oh.
You can't let the hat be destroyed. It's the symbol ...
... all right, I know ...
... the symbol of magic under the Lore. Magic under the control of mankind. You don't want to go back to those dark Ians ...
... What? ...
Ians ...
Do I mean aeons?
Right. Aeons. Go back aeons to the time when raw magic ruled. The whole framework of reality trembled daily. It was pretty terrible, I can tell me.
How do I know?
Racial memory.
Gosh. Have I got one of those?
Well. A part of one.
Yes, all right, but why me?
In your soul you know you are a true wizard. The word 'Wizard' is engraved on your heart.
'Yes, but the trouble is I keep meeting people who might try to find out,' said Rincewind miserably.
'What did you say?' said Conina.
Rincewind stared at the smudge on the horizon and sighed.
'Just talking to myself,' he said.
Carding surveyed the hat critically. He walked around the table and stared at it from a new angle. At last he said: 'It's pretty good. Where did you get the octarines?'
'They're just very good Ankhstones,' said Spelter. 'They fooled you, did they?'
It was a magnificent hat. In fact, Spelter had to admit, it looked a lot better than the real thing. The old Archchancellor's hat had looked rather battered, its gold thread tarnished and unravelling. The replica was a considerable improvement. It had style.
'I especially like the lace,' said Carding.
'It took ages.'
'Why didn't you try magic?' Carding waggled his fingers, and grasped the tall cool glass that appeared in mid-air. Under its paper umbrella and fruit salad it contained some sticky and expensive alcohol.
'Didn't work,' said Spelter. 'Just couldn't seem, um, to get it right. I had to sew every sequin on by hand.' He picked up the hatbox.
Carding coughed into his drink. 'Don't put it away just yet,' he said, and took it out of the bursar's hands. 'I've always wanted to try this-’
He turned to the big mirror on the bursar's wall and reverently lowered the hat on his rather grubby locks.
It was the ending of the first day of the sourcery, and the wizards had managed to change everything except themselves.
They had all tried, on the quiet and when they thought no-one else was looking. Even Spelter had a go, in the privacy of his study. He had managed to become twenty years younger with a torso you could crack rocks on, but as soon as he stopped concentrating he sagged, very unpleasantly, back into his old familiar shape and age. There was something elastic about the way you were. The harder you threw it, the faster it came back. The worse it was when it hit, too. Spiked iron balls, broadswords and large heavy sticks with nails in were generally considered pretty fearsome weapons, but they were nothing at all compared to twenty years suddenly applied with considerable force to the back of the head.
This was because sourcery didn't seem to work on things that were instrinsically magical. Nevertheless, the wizards had made a few important improvements. Carding's robe, for example, had become a silk and lace confection of overpoweringly expensive tastelessness, and gave him the appearance of a big red jelly draped with antimacassars.
'It suits me, don't you think?' said Carding. He adjusted the hat brim, giving it an inappropriately rakish air.
Spelter said nothing. He was looking out of the window.
There had been a few improvements all right. It had been a busy day.
The old stone walls had vanished. There were some rather nice railings now. Beyond them, the city fairly sparkled, a poem in white marble and red tiles. The river Ankh was no longer the silt-laden sewer he'd grown up knowing, but a glittering glassclear ribbon in which — a nice touch — fat carp mouthed and swam in water pure as snowmelt.[12]
From the air Ankh-Morpork must have been blinding. It gleamed. The detritus of millennia had been swept away.
It made Spelter strangely uneasy. He felt out of place, as though he was wearing new clothes that itched. Of course, he was wearing new clothes and they did itch, but that wasn't the problem. The new world was all very nice, it was exactly how it should be, and yet, and yet — had he wanted to change, he thought, or had he only wanted things rearranged more suitably?
'I said, don't you think it was made for me?' said Carding.
Spelter turned back, his face blank.
'Um?'
'The hat, man.'
'Oh. Um. Very — suitable.'
With a sigh Carding removed the baroque headpiece and carefully replaced it in its box. 'We'd better take it to him,' he said. 'He's starting to ask about it.'
'I'm still bothered about where the real hat is,' said Spelter.
'It's in here,' said Carding firmly, tapping the lid.
'I mean the, um, real one.'
'This is the real one.'
'I meant-’
'This is the Archchancellor's Hat,' said Carding carefully. 'You should know, you made it.'
'Yes, but-’began the bursar wretchedly.
'After all, you wouldn't make a forgery, would you?'
'Not as, um, such-’
'It's just a hat. It's whatever people think it is. People see the Archchancellor wearing it, they think it's the original hat. In a certain sense, it is. Things are defined by what they do. And people, of course. Fundamental basis of wizardry, is that.' Carding paused dramatically, and plonked the hatbox into Spelter's arms. 'Cogitum ergot hatto, you might say.'
Spelter had made a special study of old languages, and did his best.
' "I think, therefore I am a hat?"' he hazarded.
`What?' said Carding, as they set off down the stairs to the new incarnation of the Great Hall.
' "I considered I'm a mad hat?"' Spelter suggested.
'Just shut up, all right?'
The haze still hung over the city, its curtains of silver and gold turned to blood by the light of the setting sun which streamed in through the windows of the hall.
Coin was sitting on a stool with his staff across his knees. It occurred to Spelter that he had never seen the boy without it, which was odd. Most wizards kept their staves under the bed, or hooked up over the fireplace.
He didn't like this staff. It was black, but not because that was its colour, more because it seemed to be a moveable hole into some other, more unpleasant set of dimensions. It didn't have eyes but, nevertheless, it seemed to stare at Spelter as if it knew his innermost thoughts, which at the moment was more than he did.
His skin prickled as the two wizards crossed the floor and felt the blast of a raw magic flowing outwards from the seated figure.
Several dozen of the most senior wizards were clustered around the stool, staring in awe at the floor.
Spelter craned to see, and saw-
The world.
It floated in a puddle of black night somehow set into the floor itself, and Spelter knew with a terrible certainty that it was the world, not some image or simple projection. There were cloud patterns and everything. There were the frosty wastes of the Hublands, the Counterweight Continent, the Circle Sea, the Rimfall, all tiny and pastel-coloured but nevertheless real ...
Someone was speaking to him.
'Um?' he said, and the sudden drop in metaphorical temperature jerked him back into reality. He realised with horror that Coin had just directed a remark at him.
'I'm sorry?' he corrected himself. 'It was just that the world ... so beautiful ...'
'Our Spelter is an aesthete,' said Coin, and there was a brief chuckle from one or two wizards who knew what the word meant, 'but as to the world, it could be improved. I had said, Spelter, that everywhere we look we can see cruelty and inhumanity and greed, which tell us that the world is indeed governed badly, does it not?'
Spelter was aware of two dozen pairs of eyes turning to him.
'Um,' he said. 'Well, you can't change human nature.'
There was dead silence.
Spelter hesitated. 'Can you?' he said.
'That remains to be seen,' said Carding. 'But if we change the world, then human nature also will change. Is that not so, brothers?'
'We have the city,' said one of the wizards. 'I myself have created a castle-’
'We rule the city, but who rules the world?' said Carding. 'There must be a thousand petty kings and emperors and chieftains down there.'
'Not one of whom can read without moving his lips,' said a wizard.
'The Patrician could read,' said Spelter.
'Not if you cut off his index finger,' said Carding. 'What happened to the lizard, anyway? Never mind. The point is, the world should surely be run by men of wisdom and philosophy. It must be guided. We've spent centuries fighting amongst ourselves, but together... who knows what we could do?'
'Today the city, tomorrow the world,' said someone at the back of the crowd.
Carding nodded.
'Tomorrow the world, and-’ he calculated quickly-’on Friday the universe!'
That leaves the weekend free, thought Spelter. He recalled the box in his arms, and held it out towards Coin. But Carding floated in front of him, seized the box in one fluid movement and offered it to the boy with a flourish.
'The Archchancellor's hat,' he said. 'Rightfully yours, we think.'
Coin took it. For the first time Spelter saw uncertainty cross his face.
'Isn't there some sort of formal ceremony?' he said.
Carding coughed.
'I-er, no,' he said. 'No, I don't think so.' He glanced up at the other senior mages, who shook their heads. 'No. We've never had one. Apart from the feast, of course. Er. You see, it's not like a coronation, the Archchancellor, you see, he leads the fraternity of wizards, he's,' Carding's voice ran down slowly in the light of that golden gaze, 'he's you see ... he's the ... first ...among ... equals ...'
He stepped back hurriedly as the staff moved eerily until it pointed towards him. Once again Coin seemed to be listening to an inner voice.
'No,' he said eventually, and when he spoke next his voice had that wide, echoing quality that, if you are not a wizard, you can only achieve with a lot of very expensive audio equipment. 'There will be a ceremony. There must be a ceremony, people must understand that wizards are ruling, but it will not be here. I will select a place. And all the wizards who have passed through these gates will attend, is that understood?'
'Some of them live far off,' said Carding, carefully. 'It will take them some time to travel, so when were you thinking of-‘
'They are wizards!' shouted Coin. 'They can be here in the twinkling of an eye! I have given them the power! Besides,' his voice dropped back to something like normal pitch, 'the University is finished. It was never the true home of magic, only its prison. I will build us a new place.'
He lifted the new hat out of its box, and smiled at it. Spelter and Carding held their breath.
'But-’
They looked around. Hakardly the Lore master had spoken, and now stood with his mouth opening and shutting.
Coin turned to him, one eyebrow raised.
'You surely don't mean to close the University?' said the old wizard, his voice trembling.
'It is no longer necessary,' said Coin. 'It's a place of dust and old books. It is behind us. Is that not so ... brothers?'
There was a chorus of uncertain mumbling. The wizards found it hard to imagine life without the old stones of UU. Although, come to think of it, there was a lot of dust, of course, and the books were pretty old ...
'After all ... brothers ... who among you has been into your dark library these past few days? The magic is inside you now, not imprisoned between covers. Is that not a joyous thing? Is there not one among you who has done more magic, real magic, in the past twenty-four hours than he has done in the whole of his life before? Is there one among you who does not, in his heart of hearts, truly agree with me?'
Spelter shuddered. In his heart of hearts an inner Spelter had woken, and was struggling to make himself heard. It was a Spelter who suddenly longed for those quiet days, only hours ago, when magic was gentle and shuffled around the place in old slippers and always had time for a sherry and wasn't like a hot sword in the brain and, above all, didn't kill people.
Terror seized him as he felt his vocal chords twang to attention and prepare, despite all his efforts, to disagree.
The staff was trying to find him. He could feel it searching for him. It would vanish him, just like poor old Billias. He clamped his jaws together, but it wouldn't work. He felt his chest heave. His jaw creaked.
Carding, shifting uneasily, stood on his foot. Spelter yelped.
'Sorry', said Carding.
'Is something the matter, Spelter?' said Coin.
Spelter hopped on one leg, suddenly released, his body flooding with relief as his toes flooded with agony, more grateful than anyone in the entire history of the world that seventeen stones of wizardry had chosen his instep to come down heavily on.
His scream seemed to have broken the spell. Coin sighed, and stood up.
'It has been a good day,' he said.
It was two o'clock in the morning. River mists coiled like snakes through the streets of Ankh-Morpork, but they coiled alone. Wizards did not hold with other people staying up after midnight, and so no-one did. They slept the troubled sleep of the enchanted, instead.
In the Plaza of Broken Moons, once the boutique of mysterious pleasures from whose flare-lit and curtain-hung stalls the late-night reveller could obtain anything from a plate of jellied eels to the venereal disease of his choice, the mists coiled and dripped into chilly emptiness.
The stalls had gone, replaced by gleaming marble and a statue depicting the spirit of something or other, surrounded by illuminated fountains. Their dull splashing was the only sound that broke the cholesterol of silence that had the heart of the city in its grip.
Silence reigned too in the dark bulk of Unseen University. Except-
Spelter crept along the shadowy corridors like a two-legged spider, darting — or at least limping quickly -from pillar to archway, until he reached the forbidding doors of the Library. He peered nervously at the darkness around him and, after some hesitation, tapped very, very lightly.
Silence poured from the heavy woodwork. But, unlike the silence that had the rest of the city under its thrall, this was a watchful, alert silence; it was the silence of a sleeping cat that had just opened one eye.
When he could bear it no longer Spelter dropped to his hands and knees and tried to peer under the doors.
Finally he, put his mouth as close as he could to the draughty, dusty gap under the bottommost hinge and whispered: 'I say! Um. Can you hear me?'
He felt sure that something moved, far back in the darkness.
He tried again, his mood swinging between terror and hope with every erratic thump of his heart.
'I say? It's me, um, Spelter. You know? Could you speak to me, please?'
Perhaps large leathery feet were creeping gently across the floor in there, or maybe it was only the creaking of Spelter's nerves. He tried to swallow away the dryness in his throat, and had another go.
'Look, all right, but, look, they're talking about shutting the Library!'
The silence grew louder. The sleeping cat had cocked an ear.
'What is happening is all wrong!' the bursar confided, and clapped his hand over his mouth at the enormity of what he had said.
'Oook?'
It was the faintest of noises, like the eructation of cockroaches.
Suddenly emboldened, Spelter pressed his lips closer to the crack.
'Have you got the, um, Patrician in there?'
'Oook.'
'What about the little doggie?'
'Oook.'
'Oh. Good.'
Spelter lay full length in the comfort of the night, and drummed his fingers on the chilly floor.
'You wouldn't care to, um, let me in too?' he ventured.
'Oook!'
Spelter made a face in the gloom.
'Well, would you, um, let me come in for a few minutes? We need to discuss something urgently, man to man.'
'Eeek.'
'I meant ape.'
'Oook.'
'Look, won't you come out, then?'
'Oook.'
Spelter sighed. 'This show of loyalty is all very well, but you'll starve in there.'
'Oook oook.'
'What other way in?'
'Oook.'
'Oh, have it your way,' Spelter sighed. But, somehow, he felt better for the conversation. Everyone else in the University seemed to be living in a dream, whereas the Librarian wanted nothing more in the whole world than soft fruit, a regular supply of index cards and the opportunity, every month or so, to hop over the wall of the Patrician's private menagerie.[13] It was strangely reassuring.
'So you're all right for bananas and so forth?' he inquired, after another pause.
'Oook.'
'Don't let anyone in, will you? Um. I think that's frightfully important.'
'Oook.'
'Good.' Spelter stood up and dusted off his knees. Then he put his mouth to the keyhole and added, 'Don't trust anyone.'
'Oook.'
It was not completely dark in the Library, because the serried rows of magical books gave off a faint octarine glow, caused by thaumaturgical leakage into a strong occult field. It was just bright enough to illuminate the pile of shelves wedged against the door.
The former Patrician had been carefully decanted into a jar on the Librarian's desk. The Librarian himself sat under it, wrapped in his blanket and holding Wuffles on his lap.
Occasionally he would eat a banana.
Spelter, meanwhile, limped back along the echoing passages of the University, heading for the security of his bedroom. It was because his ears were nervously straining the tiniest of sounds out of the air that he heard, right on the cusp of audibility, the sobbing.
It wasn't a normal noise up here. In the carpeted corridors of the senior wizards' quarters there were a number of sounds you might hear late at night, such as snoring, the gentle clinking of glasses, tuneless singing and, once in a while, the zip and sizzle of a spell gone wrong. But the sound of someone quietly crying was such a novelty that Spelter found himself edging down the passage that led to the Archchancellor's suite.
The door was ajar. Telling himself that he really shouldn't, tensing himself for a hurried dash, Spelter peered inside.
Rincewind stared.
'What is it?' he whispered.
'I think it's a temple of some sort,' said Conina.
Rincewind stood and gazed upwards, the crowds of AI Khali bouncing off and around him in a kind of human Brownian motion. A temple, he thought. Well, it was big, and it was impressive, and the architect had used every trick in the book to make it look even bigger and even more impressive than it was, and to impress upon everyone looking at it that they, on the other hand, were very small and ordinary and didn't have as many domes. It was the kind of place that looked exactly as you were always going to remember it.
But Rincewind felt he knew holy architecture when he saw it, and the frescoes on the big and, of course, impressive walls above him didn't look at all religious. For one thing, the participants were enjoying themselves. Almost certainly, they were enjoying themselves. Yes, they must be. It would be pretty astonishing if they weren't.
'They're not dancing, are they?' he said, in a desperate attempt not to believe the evidence of his own eyes. 'Or maybe it's some sort of acrobatics?'
Conina squinted upwards in the hard, white sunlight.
'I shouldn't think so,' she said, thoughtfully.
Rincewind remembered himself. 'I don't think a young woman like you should be looking at this sort of thing,' he said sternly.
Conina gave him a smile. 'I think wizards are expressly forbidden to,' she said sweetly. 'It's supposed to turn you blind.'
Rincewind turned his face upwards again, prepared to risk maybe one eye. This sort of thing is only to be expected, he told himself. They don't know any better. Foreign countries are, well, foreign countries. They do things differently there.
Although some things, he decided, were done in very much the same way, only with rather more inventiveness and, by the look of it, far more often.
'The temple frescoes of Al Khali are famous far and wide,' said Conina, as they walked through crowds of children who kept trying to sell Rincewind things and introduce him to nice relatives.
'Well, I can see they would be,' Rincewind agreed. 'Look, push off, will you? No, I don't want to buy whatever it is. No, I don't want to meet her. Or him, either. Or it, you nasty little boy. Get off, will you?'
The last scream was to the group of children riding sedately on the Luggage, which was plodding along patiently behind Rincewind and making no attempt to shake them off. Perhaps it was sickening for something, he thought, and brightened up a bit.
'How many people are there on this continent, do you think?' he said.
'I don't know,' said Conina, without turning round. 'Millions, I expect?'
'If I were wise, I wouldn't be here,' said Rincewind, with feeling.
They had been in Al Khali, gateway to the whole mysterious continent of Klatch, for several hours. He was beginning to suffer.
A decent city should have a bit of fog about it, he considered, and people should live indoors, not spend all their time out on the streets. There shouldn't be all this sand and heat. As for the wind ...
Ankh-Morpork had its famous smell, so full of personality that it could reduce a strong man to tears. But Al Khali had its wind, blowing from the vastness of the deserts and continents nearer the rim. It was a gentle breeze, but it didn't stop and eventually it had the same effect on visitors that a cheesegrater achieves on a tomato. After a while it seemed to have worn away your skin and was rasping directly across the nerves.
To Conina's sensitive nostrils it carried aromatic messages from the heart of the continent, compounded of the chill of deserts, the stink of lions, the compost of jungles and the flatulence of wildebeest.
Rincewind, of course, couldn't smell any of this. Adaptation is a wonderful thing, and most Morporkians would be hard put to smell a burning feather mattress at five feet.
'Where to next?' he said. 'Somewhere out of the wind?'
'My father spent some time in Khali when he was hunting for the Lost City of Ee,' said Conina. 'And I seem to remember he spoke very highly of the soak. It's a kind of bazaar.'
'I suppose we just go and look for the second-hand hat stalls,' said Rincewind. 'Because the whole idea is totally-’
'What I was hoping was that maybe we could be attacked. That seems the most sensible idea. My father said that very few strangers who entered the soak ever came out again. Some very murderous types hang out there, he said.'
Rincewind gave this due consideration.
'Just run that by me again, will you?' he said. 'After you said we should be attacked I seemed to hear a ranging in my ears.'
'Well, we want to meet the criminal element, don't we?'
'Not exactly want,' said Rincewind. 'That wasn't the phrase I would have chosen.'
'How would you put it, then?'
'Er. I think the phrase "not want" sums it up pretty well.'
'But you agreed that we should get the hat!'
'But not die in the process,' said Rincewind, wretchedly. 'That won't do anyone any good. Not me, anyway.'
'My father always said that death is but a sleep,' said Conina.
'Yes, the hat told me that,' said Rincewind, as they turned down a narrow, crowded street between white adobe walls. 'But the way I see it, it's a lot harder to get up in the morning.'
'Look,' said Conina, 'there's not much risk. You're with me.'
'Yes, and you're looking forward to it, aren't you,' said Rincewind accusingly, as Conina piloted them along a shady alley, with their retinue of pubescent entrepreneurs at their heels. 'It's the old herrydeterry at work.'
'Just shut up and try to look like a victim, will you?'
'I can do that all right,' said Rincewind, beating off a particularly stubborn member of the junior Chamber of Commerce, 'I've had a lot of practice. For the last time, I don't want to buy anyone, you wretched child!'
He looked gloomily at the walls around them. At least there weren't any of those disturbing pictures here, but the hot breeze still blew the dust around him and he was sick and tired of looking at sand. What he wanted was a couple of cool beers, a cold bath and a change of clothing; it probably wouldn't make him feel better, but it would at least make feeling awful more enjoyable. Not that there was any beer here, probably. It was a funny thing, but in chilly cities like Ankh-Morpork the big drink was beer, which cooled you down, but in places like this, where the whole sky was an oven with the door left open, people drank tiny little sticky drinks which set fire to the back of your throat. And the architecture was all wrong. And they had statues in their temples that, well, just weren't suitable. This wasn't the right kind of place for wizards. Of course, they had some local grown alternative, enchanters or some such, but not what you'd call decent magic ...
Conina strolled ahead of him, humming to herself.
You rather like her, don't you? I can tell, said a voice in his head.
Oh blast, thought Rincewind, you're not my conscience again, are you?
Your libido. It's a bit stuffy in here, isn't it? You haven't had it done up since the last time I was around.
Look, go away, will you? I'm a wizard! Wizards are ruled by their heads, not by their hearts!
And I'm getting votes from your glands, and they’re telling me that as far as your body is concerned your brain is in a minority of one.
Yes? But it's got the casting vote, then.
Hah! That's what you think. Your heart has got nothing to do with this, by the way, it's merely a muscular organ which powers the circulation of the blood. But look at it like this — you quite like her, don't you?
Well ... Rincewind hesitated. Yes, he thought, er ...
She's pretty good company, eh? Nice voice?
Well, of course ...
You'd like to see more of her?
Well ... Rincewind realised with some surprise that, yes, he would. It wasn't that he was entirely unused to the company of women, but it always seemed to cause trouble and, of course, it was a well known fact that it was bad for the magical abilities, although he had to admit that his particular magical abilities, being approximately those of a rubber hammer, were shaky enough to start with.
Then you've got nothing to lose, have you? his libido put in, in an oily tone of thought.
It was at this point Rincewind realised that something important was missing. It took him a little while to realise what it was.
No-one had tried to sell him anything for several minutes. In Al Khali, that probably meant you were dead.
He, Corona and the Luggage were alone in a long, shady alley. He could hear the bustle of the city some way away, but immediately around them there was nothing except a rather expectant silence.
'They've run off,' said Conina.
'Are we going to be attacked?'
'Could be. There's been three men following us on the rooftops.'
Rincewind squinted upwards at almost the same time as three men, dressed in flowing black robes, dropped lightly into the alleyway in front of them. When he looked around two more appeared from around a corner. All five were holding long curved swords and, although the lower halves of their faces were masked, it was almost certain that they were grinning evilly.
Rincewind rapped sharply on the Luggage's lid.
'Kill,' he suggested. The Luggage stood stock still for a moment, and then plodded over and stood next to Conina. It looked slightly smug and, Rincewind realised with jealous horror, rather embarrassed.
'Why, you-’ he growled, and gave it a kick — 'you handbag.'
He sidled closer to the girl, who was standing there with a thoughtful smile on her face.
'What now?' he said. 'Are you going to offer them all a quick perm?'
The men edged a little closer. They were, he noticed, only interested in Conina.
'I'm not armed,' she said.
'What happened to your legendary comb?'
'Left it on the boat.'
'You've got nothing?'
Conina shifted slightly to keep as many of the men as possible in her field of vision.
'I've got a couple of hairgrips,' she said out of the corner of her mouth.
'Any good?'
'Don't know. Never tried.'
'You got us into this!'
'Relax. I think they'll just take us prisoner.'
'Oh, that's fine for you to say. You're not marked down as this week's special offer.'
The Luggage snapped its lid once or twice, a little uncertain about things. One of the men gingerly extended his sword and prodded Rincewind in the small of the back.
'They want to take us somewhere, see?' said Conina. She gritted her teeth. 'Oh, no,' she muttered.
'What's the matter now?'
'I can't do it!'
'What?'
Conina put her head in her hands. 'I can't let myself be taken prisoner without a fight! I can feel a thousand barbarian ancestors accusing me of betrayal!' she hissed urgently.
'Pull the other one.'
'No, really. This won't take a minute.'
There was a sudden blur and the nearest man collapsed in a small gurgling heap. Then Conina's elbows went back and into the stomachs of the men behind her. Her left hand rebounded past Rincewind's ear with a noise like tearing silk and felled the man behind him. The fifth made a run for it and was brought down by a flying tackle, hitting his head heavily on the wall.
Conina rolled off him and sat up, panting, her eyes bright.
'I don't like to say this, but I feel better for that,' she said. 'It's terrible to know that I betrayed a fine hairdressing tradition, of course. Oh.'
'Yes,' said Rincewind sombrely, 'I wondered if you'd noticed them.'
Conina's eyes scanned the line of bowmen who had appeared along the opposite wall. They had that stolid, impassive look of people who have been paid to do a job, and don't much mind if the job involves killing people.
'Time for those hairgrips,' said Rincewind.
Conina didn't move.
'My father always said that it was pointless to undertake a direct attack against an enemy extensively armed with efficient projectile weapons,' she said.
Rincewind, who knew Cohen's normal method of speech, gave her a look of disbelief.
'Well, what he actually said,' she added, 'was never enter an arse-kicking contest with a porcupine.'
Spelter couldn't face breakfast.
He wondered whether he ought to talk to Carding, but he had a chilly feeling that the old wizard wouldn't listen and wouldn't believe him anyway. In fact he wasn't quite sure he believed it himself ...
Yes he was. He'd never forget it, although he intended to make every effort.
One of the problems about living in the University these days was that the building you went to sleep in probably wasn't the same building when you woke up. Rooms had a habit of changing and moving around, a consequence of all this random magic. It built up in the carpets, charging up the wizards to such an extent that shaking hands with somebody was a sure-fire way of turning them into something. The build up of magic, in fact, was overflowing the capacity of the area to hold it. If something wasn't done about it soon, then even the common people would be able to use it — a chilling thought but, since Spelter's mind was already so full of chilling thoughts you could use it as an ice tray, not one he was going to spend much time worrying about.
Mere household geography wasn't the only difficulty, though. Sheer pressure of thaumaturgical inflow was even affecting the food. What was a forkful of kedgeree when you lifted it off the plate might well have turned into something else by the time it entered your mouth. If you were lucky, it was inedible. If you were unlucky, it was edible but probably not something you liked to think you were about to eat or, worse, had already eaten half of.
Spelter found Coin in what had been, late last night, a broom cupboard. It was a lot bigger now. It was only because Spelter had never heard of aircraft hangars that he didn't know what to compare it with, although, to be fair, very few aircraft hangars have marble floors and a lot of statuary around the place. A couple of brooms and a small battered bucket in one corner looked distinctly out of place, but not as out of place as the crushed tables in the former Great Hall which, owing to the surging tides of magic now flowing through the place, had shrunk to the approximate size of what Spelter, if he had ever seen one, would have called a small telephone box.
He sidled into the room with extreme caution and took his place among the council of wizards. The air was greasy with the feel of power.
Spelter created a chair beside Carding and leant across to him.
'You'll never believe-’ he began.
'Quiet!' hissed Carding. 'This is amazing!'
Coin was sitting on his stool in the middle of the circle, one hand on his staff, the other extended and holding something small, white and egg-like. It was strangely fuzzy. In fact, Spelter thought, it wasn't something small seen close to. It was something huge, but a long way off. And the boy was holding it in his hand.
'What's he doing?' Spelter whispered.
'I'm not exactly sure,' murmured Carding. 'As far as we can understand it, he's creating a new home for wizardry'
Streamers of coloured light flashed about the indistinct ovoid, like a distant thunderstorm. The glow lit Coin's preoccupied face from below, giving it the semblance of a mask.
'I don't see how we will all fit in,' the bursar said. 'Carding, last night I saw-’
'It is finished,' said Coin. He held up the egg, which flashed occasionally from some inner light and gave off tiny white prominences. Not only was it a long way off, Spelter thought, it was also extremely heavy; it went right through heaviness and out the other side, into that strange negative realism where lead would be a vacuum. He grabbed Carding's sleeve again.
'Carding, listen, it's important, listen, when I looked in-'
'I really wish you’d stop doing that.'
'But the staff, his staff, it's not-’
Coin stood up and pointed the staff at the wall, where a doorway instantly appeared. He marched out through it, leaving the wizards to follow him.
He went through the Archchancellor's garden, followed by a gaggle of wizards in the same way that a comet is followed by its tail, and didn't stop until he reached the banks of the Ankh. There were some hoary old willows here, and the river flowed, or at any rate moved, in a horseshoe bend around a small newt-haunted meadow known rather optimistically as Wizards Pleasaunce. On summer evenings, if the wind was blowing towards the river, it was a nice area for an afternoon stroll.
The warm silver haze still hung over the city as Coin padded through the damp grass until he reached the centre. He tossed the egg, which drifted in a gentle arc and landed with a squelch.
He turned to the wizards as they hurried up.
'Stand well back,' he commanded. 'And be prepared to run.'
He pointed the octiron staff at the half-sunken thing. A bolt of octarine light shot from its tip and struck the egg, exploding into a shower of sparks that left blue and purple after-images.
There was a pause. A dozen wizards watched the egg expectantly.
A breeze shook the willow trees in a totally unmysterious way.