Nothing else happened.
'Er-’ Spelter began.
And then came the first tremor. A few leaves fell out of the trees and some distant water bird took off in fright.
The sound started as a low groaning, experienced rather than heard, as though everyone's feet had suddenly become their ears. The trees trembled, and so did one or two wizards.
The mud around the egg began to bubble.
And exploded.
The ground peeled back like lemon rind. Gouts of steaming mud spattered the wizards as they dived for the cover of the trees. Only Coin, Spelter and Carding were left to watch the sparkling white building arise from the meadow, grass and dirt pouring off it. Other towers erupted from the ground behind them; buttresses grew through the air, linking tower with tower.
Spelter whimpered when the soil flowed away from around his feet, and was replaced by flagstones flecked with silver. He lurched as the floor rose inexorably, carrying the three high above the treetops.
The rooftops of the University went past and fell away below them. Ankh-Morpork spread out like a map, the river a trapped snake, the plains a misty blur. Spelter's ears popped, but the climb went on, into the clouds.
They emerged drenched and cold into blistering sunlight with the cloud cover spreading away in every direction. Other towers were rising around them, glinting painfully in the sharpness of the day.
Carding knelt down awkwardly and felt the floor gingerly. He signalled to Spelter to do the same.
Spelter touched a surface that was smoother than stone. It felt like ice would feel if ice was slightly warm, and looked like ivory. While it wasn't exactly transparent, it gave the impression that it would like to be.
He got the distinct feeling that, if he closed his eyes, he wouldn't be able to feel it at all.
He met Carding's gaze.
'Don't look at, um, me,' he said. 'I don't know what it is either.'
They looked up at Coin, who said: 'It's magic.'
'Yes, lord, but what is it made of?' said Carding.
'It is made of magic. Raw magic. Solidified. Curdled. Renewed from second to second. Could you imagine a better substance to build the new home of sourcery?'
The staff flared for a moment, melting the clouds. The Discworld appeared below them, and from up here you could see that it was indeed a disc, pinned to the sky by the central mountain of Cori Celesti, where the gods lived. There was the Circle Sea, so close that it might even be possible to dive into it from here; there was the vast continent of Klatch, squashed by perspective. The Rimfall around the edge of the world was a sparkling curve.
'It's too big,' said Spelter under his breath. The world he had lived in hadn't stretched much further than the gates of the University, and he'd preferred it that way. A man could be comfortable in a world that size. He certainly couldn't be comfortable about being half a mile in the air standing on something that wasn't, in some fundamental way, there.
The thought shocked him. He was a wizard, and he was worrying about magic.
He sidled cautiously back towards Carding, who said: 'It isn't exactly what I expected.'
'Um?'
'It looks a lot smaller up here, doesn't it.'
'Well, I don't know. Listen, I must tell you-’
'Look at the Ramtops, now. You could almost reach out and touch them.'
They stared out across two hundred leagues towards the towering mountain range, glittering and white and cold. It was said that if you travelled hubwards through the secret valleys of the Ramtops, you would find, in the frozen lands under Cori Celesti itself, the secret realm of the Ice Giants, imprisoned after their last great battle with the Gods. In those days the mountains had been mere islands in a great sea of ice, and ice lived on them still.
Coin smiled his golden smile.
'What did you say, Carding?' he said.
'It's the clear air, lord. And they look so close and small. I only said I could almost touch them-’
Coin waved him into silence. He extended one thin arm, rolling back his sleeve in the traditional sign that magic was about to be performed without trickery. He reached out, and then turned back with his fingers closed around what was, without any shadow of a doubt, a handful of snow.
The two wizards observed it in stunned silence as it melted and dripped on to the floor.
Coin laughed.
'You find it so hard to believe?' he said. 'Shall I pick pearls from rim-most Krull, or sand from the Great Nef? Could your old wizardry do half as much?'
It seemed to Spelter that his voice took on a metallic edge. He stared intently at their faces.
Finally Carding sighed and said rather quietly, 'No. All my life I have sought magic, and all I found was coloured lights and little tricks and old, dry books. Wizardry has done nothing for the world.'
'And if I tell you that I intend to dissolve the Orders and close the University? Although, of course, my senior advisors will be accorded all due status.'
Carding's knuckles whitened, but he shrugged.
'There is little to say,' he said. 'What good is a candle at noonday?'
Coin turned to Spelter. So did the staff. The filigree carvings were regarding him coldly. One of them, near the top of the staff, looked unpleasantly like an eyebrow.
'You're very quiet, Spelter. Do you not agree?'
No. The world had sourcery once, and gave it up for wizardry. Wizardry is magic for men, not gods. It's not for us. There was something wrong with it, and we have forgotten what it was. I liked wizardry. It didn't upset the world. It fitted. It was right. A wizard was all I wanted to be.
He looked down at his feet.
'Yes,' he whispered.
'Good,' said Coin, in a satisfied tone of voice. He strolled to the edge of the tower and looked down at the street map of Ankh-Morpork far below. The Tower of Art came barely a tenth of the way towards them.
'I believe,' he said, 'I believe that we will hold the ceremony next week, at full moon.'
'Er. It won't be full moon for three weeks,' said Carding.
'Next week,' Coin repeated. 'If I say the moon will be full, there will be no argument.' He continued to stare down at the model buildings of the University, and then pointed.
'What's that?'
Carding craned.
'Er. The Library. Yes. It's the Library. Er.'
The silence was so oppressive that Carding felt something more was expected of him. Anything would be better than that silence.
'It's where we keep the books, you know. Ninety thousand volumes, isn't it, Spelter?'
'Um? Oh. Yes. About ninety thousand, I suppose.'
Coin leaned on the staff and stared.
'Burn them,' he said. 'All of them.'
Midnight strutted its black stuff along the corridors of Unseen University as Spelter, with rather less confidence, crept cautiously towards the impassive doors of the Library. He knocked, and the sound echoed so loudly in the empty building that he had to lean against the wall and wait for his heart to slow down a bit.
After a while he heard a sound like heavy furniture being moved about.
'Oook?'
'It's me.'
'Oook?'
'Spelter.'
'Oook.'
'Look, you've got to get out! He's going to burn the Library!'
There was no reply.
Spelter let himself sag to his knees.
'He'll do it, too,' he whispered. 'He'll probably make me do it, it's that staff, um, it knows everything that's going on, it knows that I know about it ... please help me ...'
'Oook?'
'The other night, I looked into his room ... the staff, the staff was glowing, it was standing there in the middle of the room like a beacon and the boy was on the bed sobbing, I could feel it reaching out, teaching him, whispering terrible things, and then it noticed me, you've got to help me, you're the only one who isn't under the-’
Spelter stopped. His face froze. He turned around very slowly, without willing it, because something was gently spinning him.
He knew the University was empty. The wizards had all moved into the New Tower, where the lowliest student had a suite more splendid than any senior mage had before.
The staff hung in the air a few feet away. It was surrounded by a faint octarine glow.
He stood up very carefully and, keeping his back to the stonework and his eyes firmly fixed on the thing, slithered gingerly along the wall until he reached the end of the corridor. At the corner he noted that the staff, while not moving had revolved on its axis to follow him.
He gave a little cry, grasped the skirts of his robe, and ran.
The staff was in front of him. He slid to a halt and stood there, catching his breath.
'You don't frighten me,' he lied, and turned on his heel and marched off in a different direction, snapping his fingers to produce a torch that burned with a fine white flame (only its penumbra of octarine proclaimed it to be of magical origin).
Once again, the staff was in front of him. The light of his torch was sucked into a thin, singing steam of white fire that flared and vanished with a 'pop'.
He waited, his eyes watering with blue after-images, but if the staff was still there it didn't seem to be inclined to take advantage of him. When vision returned he felt he could make out an even darker shadow on his left. The stairway down to the kitchens.
He darted for it, leaping down the unseen steps and landing heavily and unexpectedly on uneven flags. A little moonlight filtered through a grating in the distance and somewhere up there, he knew, was a doorway into the outside world.
Staggering a little, his ankles aching, the noise of his own breath booming in his ears as though he'd stuck his entire head in a seashell, Spelter set off across the endless dark desert of the floor.
Things clanked underfoot. There were no rats here now, of course, but the kitchen had fallen into disuse lately — the University's cooks had been the best in the world, but now any wizard could conjure up meals beyond mere culinary skill. The big copper pans hung neglected on the wall, their sheen already tarnishing, and the kitchen ranges under the giant chimney arch were filled with nothing but chilly ash ...
The staff lay across the back door like a bar. It spun up as Spelter tottered towards it and hung, radiating quiet malevolence, a few feet away. Then, quite smoothly, it began to glide towards him.
He backed away, his feet slipping on the greasy stones. A thump across the back of his thighs made him yelp, but as he reached behind him he found it was only one of the chopping blocks.
His hand groped desperately across its scarred surface and, against all hope, found a cleaver buried in the wood. In an instinctive gesture as ancient as mankind, Spelter's fingers closed around its handle.
He was out of breath and out of patience and out of space and time and also scared, very nearly, out of his mind.
So when the staff hovered in front of him he wrenched the chopper up and around with all the strength he could muster ...
And hesitated. All that was wizardly in him cried out against the destruction of so much power, power that perhaps even now could be used, used by him...
And the staff swung around so that its axis was pointing directly at him.
And several corridors away, the Librarian stood braced with his back against the Library door, watching the blue and white flashes that flickered across the floor. He heard the distant snap of raw energy, and a sound that started low and ended up in zones of pitch that even Wuffles, lying with his paws over his head, could not hear.
And then there was a faint, ordinary tinkling noise, such as might be made by a fused and twisted metal cleaver dropping on to flagstones.
It was the sort of noise that makes the silence that comes after it roll forward like a warm avalanche.
The Librarian wrapped the silence around him like a cloak and stood staring up at the rank on rank of books, each one pulsing faintly in the glow of its own magic. Shelf after shelf looked down[14] at him. They had heard. He could feel the fear.
The orang-utan stood statue-still for several minutes, and then appeared to reach a decision. He knuckled his way across to his desk and, after much rummaging, produced a heavy key-ring bristling with keys. Then he went back and stood in the middle of the floor and said, very deliberately, 'Oook.'
The books craned forward on their shelves. Now he had their full attention.
'What is this place?' said Conina.
Rincewind looked around him, and made a guess.
They were still in the heart of Al Khali. He could hear the hum of it beyond the walls. But in the middle of the teeming city someone had cleared a vast space, walled it off, and planted a garden so romantically natural that it looked as real as a sugar pig.
'It looks like someone has taken twice five miles of inner city and girdled them round with walls and towers,' he hazarded.
'What a strange idea,' said Conina.
'Well, some of the religions here-well, when you die, you see, they think you go to this sort of garden, where there's all this sort of music and, and,' he continued, wretchedly, 'sherbet and, and — young women.'
Conina took in the green splendour of the walled garden, with its peacocks, intricate arches and slightly wheezy fountains. A dozen reclining women stared back at her, impassively. A hidden string orchestra was playing the complicated Klatchian bhong music.
'I'm not dead,' she said. 'I'm sure I would have remembered. Besides, this isn't my idea of paradise.' She looked critically at the reclining figures, and added, 'I wonder who does their hair?'
A sword point prodded her in the small of the back, and the two of them set out along the ornate path towards a small domed pavilion surrounded by olive trees. She scowled.
'Anyway, I don't like sherbet.'
Rincewind didn't comment. He was busily examining the state of his own mind, and wasn't happy at the sight of it. He had a horrible feeling that he was falling in love.
He was sure he had all the symptoms. There were the sweaty palms, the hot sensation in the stomach, the general feeling that the skin of his chest was made of tight elastic. There was the feeling every time Conina spoke, that someone was running hot steel into his spine.
He glanced down at the Luggage, tramping stoically alongside him, and recognised the symptoms.
'Not you, too?' he said.
Possibly it was only the play of sunlight on the Luggage's battered lid, but it was just possible that for an instant it looked redder than usual.
Of course, sapient pearwood has this sort of weird mental link with its owner ... Rincewind shook his head. Still, it'd explain why the thing wasn't its normal malignant self.
'It'd never work,' he said. 'I mean, she's a female and you're a, well, you're a-’ He paused. 'Well, whatever you are, you're of the wooden persuasion. It'd never work. People would talk.'
He turned and glared at the black-robed guards behind him.
'I don't know what you're looking at,' he said severely.
The Luggage sidled over to Conina, following her so closely that she banged an ankle on it.
'Push off,' she snapped, and kicked it again, this time on purpose.
Insofar as the Luggage ever had an expression, it looked at her in shocked betrayal.
The pavilion ahead of them was an ornate onion-shaped dome, studded with precious stones and supported on four pillars. Its interior was a mass of cushions on which lay a rather fat, middle-aged man surrounded by three young women. He wore a purple robe interwoven with gold thread; they, as far as Rincewind could see, demonstrated that you could make six small saucepan lids and a few yards of curtain netting go a long way although — he shivered — not really far enough.
The man appeared to be writing. He glanced up at them.
'I suppose you don't know a good rhyme for "thou"?' he said peevishly.
Rincewind and Conina exchanged glances.
'Plough?' said Rincewind. 'Bough?'
'Cow?' suggested Conina, with forced brightness.
The man hesitated. 'Cow I quite like,' he said, 'Cow has got possibilities. Cow might, in fact, do. Do pull up a cushion, by the way. Have some sherbet. Why are you standing there like that?'
'It's these ropes,' said Conina.
'I have this allergy to cold steel,' Rincewind added.
'Really, how tiresome,' said the fat man, and clapped a pair of hands so heavy with rings that the sound was more of a clang. Two guards stepped forward smartly and cut the bonds, and then the whole battalion melted away, although Rincewind was acutely conscious of dozens of dark eyes watching them from the surrounding foliage. Animal instinct told him that, while he now appeared to be alone with the man and Conina, any aggressive moves on his part would suddenly make the world a sharp and painful place. He tried to radiate tranquillity and total friendliness. He tried to think of something to say.
'Well,' he ventured, looking around at the brocaded hangings, the ruby-studded pillars and the gold filigree cushions, 'you've done this place up nicely. It's-’ he sought for something suitably descriptive — 'well, pretty much of a miracle of rare device.'
'One aims for simplicity,' sighed the man, still scribbling busily. 'Why are you here? Not that it isn't always a pleasure to meet fellow students of the poetic muse.'
'We were brought here,' said Conina.
'Men with swords,' added Rincewind.
'Dear fellows, they do so like to keep in practice. Would you like one of these?'
He snapped his fingers at one of the girls.
'Not, er, right now,' Rincewind began, but she'd picked up a plate of golden-brown sticks and demurely passed it towards him. He tried one. It was delicious, a sort of sweet crunchy flavour with a hint of honey. He took two more.
'Excuse me,' said Conina, 'but who are you? And where is this?'
'My name is Creosote, Seriph of Al Khali,’ said the fat man, 'and this is my Wilderness. One does one's best.'
Rincewind coughed on his honey stick.
'Not Creosote as in "As rich as Creosote"?' he said.
'That was my dear father. I am, in fact, rather richer. When one has a great deal of money, I am afraid, it is hard to achieve simplicity. One does one's best.' He sighed.
'You could try giving it away,' said Conina.
He sighed again. 'That isn't easy, you know. No, one just has to try to do a little with a lot.'
'No, no, but look', said Rincewind, spluttering bits of stick, 'they say, I mean, everything you touch turns into gold, for goodness sake.'
'That could make going to the lavatory a bit tricky,' said Conina brightly. 'Sorry.'
'One hears such stories about oneself,' said Creosote, affecting not to have heard. 'So tiresome. As if wealth mattered. True riches lie in the treasure houses of literature.'
'The Creosote I heard of,' said Conina slowly, 'was head of this band of, well, mad killers. The original Assassins, feared throughout hubward Klatch. No offence meant.'
'Ah yes, dear father,' said Creosote junior. 'The hashishim. Such a novel idea.[15] But not really very efficient. So we hired Thugs instead.'
'Ah. Named after a religious sect,' said Conina knowingly.
Creosote gave her a long look. 'No,' he said slowly, 'I don't think so. I think we named them after the way they push people's faces through the back of their heads. Dreadful, really.'
He picked up the parchment he had been writing on, and continued, 'I seek a more cerebral life, which is why I had the city centre converted into a Wilderness. So much better for the mental flow. One does one's best. May I read you my latest oeuvre?'
'Egg?' said Rincewind, who wasn't following this.
Creosote thrust out one pudgy hand and declaimed as follows:
'A summer palace underneath the bough,
A flask of wine, a loaf of bread, some lamb couscous
with courgettes, roast peacock tongues, kebabs, iced
sherbet, selection of sweets from the trolley and
choice of Thou,
Singing beside me in the Wilderness,
And Wilderness is-’
He paused, and picked up his pen thoughtfully.
'Maybe cow isn't such a good idea,' he said. 'Now that I come to look at it-’
Rincewind glanced at the manicured greenery, carefully arranged rocks and high surrounding walls. One of the Thous winked at him.
'This is a Wilderness?' he said.
'My landscape gardeners incorporated all the essential features, I believe. They spent simply ages getting the rills sufficiently sinuous. I am reliably informed that they contain prospects of rugged grandeur and astonishing natural beauty.'
'And scorpions,' said Rincewind, helping himself to another honey stick.
'I don't know about that,' said the poet. 'Scorpions sound unpoetic to me. Wild honey and locusts seem more appropriate, according to the standard poetic instructions, although I've never really developed the taste for insects.'
'I always understood that the kind of locust people ate in wildernesses was the fruit of a kind of tree,' said Conina. 'Father always said it was quite tasty.'
'Not insects?' said Creosote.
'I don't think so.'
The Seriph nodded at Rincewind. 'You might as well finish them up, then,' he said. 'Nasty crunchy things, I couldn't see the point.'
'I don't wish to sound ungrateful,' said Conina, over the sound of Rincewind's frantic coughing. 'But why did you have us brought here?'
'Good question.' Creosote looked at her blankly for a few seconds, as if trying to remember why they were there.
'You really are a most attractive young woman,' he said. 'You can't play a dulcimer, by any chance?'
'How many blades has it got?' said Conina.
'Pity,' said the Seriph, 'I had one specially imported.'
'My father taught me to play the harmonica,' she volunteered.
Creosote's lips moved soundlessly as he tried out the idea.
'No good,' he said. 'Doesn't scan. Thanks all the same, though.' He gave her another thoughtful look. 'You know, you really are most becoming. Has anyone ever told you your neck is as a tower of ivory?'
'Never,' said Conina.
'Pity,' said Creosote again. He rummaged among his cushions and produced a small bell, which he rang.
After a while a tall, saturnine figure appeared from behind the pavilion. He had the look of someone who could think his way through a corkscrew without bending, and a certain something about the eyes which would have made the average rabid rodent tiptoe away, discouraged.
That man, you would have said, has got Grand Vizier written all over him. No-one can tell him anything about defrauding widows and imprisoning impressionable young men in alleged jewel caves. When it comes to dirty work he probably wrote the book or, more probably, stole it from someone else.
He wore a turban with a pointy hat sticking out of it. He had a long thin moustache, of course.
'Ah, Abrim,' said Creosote.
'Highness?'
'My Grand Vizier,' said the Seriph.
— thought so -, said Rincewind to himself.
'These people, why did we have them brought here?'
The vizier twirled his moustache, probably foreclosing another dozen mortgages.
'The hat, highness,' he said. 'The hat, if you remember.'
'Ah, yes. Fascinating. Where did we put it?'
'Hold on,' said Rincewind urgently. 'This hat ... it wouldn't be a sort of battered pointy one, with lots of stuff on it? Sort of lace and stuff, and, and-’ he hesitated-’no-one's tried to put it on, have they?'
'It specifically warned us not to,' said Creosote, 'so Abrim got a slave to try it on, of course. He said it gave him a headache.'
'It also told us that you would shortly be arriving,' said the vizier, bowing slightly at Rincewind, 'and therefore I — that is to say, the Seriph felt that you might be able to tell us more about this wonderful artifact?'
There is a tone of voice known as interrogative, and the vizier was using it; a slight edge to his words suggested that, if he didn't learn more about the hat very quickly, he had various activities in mind in which further words like 'red hot' and 'knives' would appear. Of course, all Grand Viziers talk like that all the time. There's probably a school somewhere.
'Gosh, I'm glad you've found it,' said Rincewind, 'That hat is gngngnh-’
'I beg your pardon?' said Abrim, signalling a couple of lurking guards to step forward. 'I missed the bit after the young lady-’ he bowed at Conina-’elbowed you in the ear.'
'I think,' said Conina, politely but firmly, 'you'd better take us to see it.'
Five minutes later, from its resting place on a table in the Seriph's treasury, the hat said, At last. What kept you?
It is at a time like this, with Rincewind and Conina probably about to be the victims of a murderous attack, and Coin about to address the assembled cowering wizards on the subject of treachery, and the Disc about to fall under a magical dictatorship, that it is worth mentioning the subject of poetry and inspiration.
For example, the Seriph, in his bijou wildernessette, has just riffled back through his pages of verse to revise the lines which begin:
'Get up! For morning in the cup of day,
Has dropped the spoon that scares the stars away'
— and he has sighed, because the white-hot lines searing across his imagination never seem to come out exactly as he wants them.
It is, in fact, impossible that they ever will.
Sadly, this sort of thing happens all the time.
It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There's a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slopping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer's head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist's mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the lift, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different.[16]
This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn't. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time travelling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss.
Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target hit the wrong one.
For example, the weird dream about a lead doughnut on a mile-high gantry, which in the right mind would have been the catalyst for the invention of repressed-gravitational electricity generation (a cheap and inexhaustible and totally non-polluting form of power which the world in question had been seeking for centuries, and for the lack of which it was plunged into a terrible and pointless war) was in fact had by a small and bewildered duck.
By another stroke of bad luck, the sight of a herd of white horses galloping through a field of wild hyacinths would have led a struggling composer to write the famous Flying God Suite, bringing succour and balm to the souls of millions, had he not been at home in bed with shingles. The inspiration therefore fell to a nearby frog, who was not in much of a position to make a startling contribution to the field of tone poetry.
Many civilisations have recognised this shocking waste and tried various methods to prevent it, most of them involving enjoyable but illegal attempts to tune the mind into the right wavelength by the use of exotic herbage or yeast products. It never works properly.
And so Creosote, who had dreamt the inspiration for a rather fine poem about life and philosophy and how they both look much better through the bottom of a wine glass, was totally unable to do anything about it because he had as much poetic ability as a hyena.
Why the gods allow this sort of thing to continue is a mystery.
Actually, the flash of inspiration needed to explain it clearly and precisely has taken place, but the creature who received it -a small female bluetit — has never been able to make the position clear, even after some really strenuous coded messages on the tops of milk bottles. By a strange coincidence, a philosopher who had been devoting some sleepless nights to the same mystery woke up that morning with a wonderful new idea for getting peanuts out of bird tables.
Which brings us rather neatly on to the subject of magic.
A long way out in the dark gulfs of interstellar space, one single inspiration particle is clipping along unaware of its destiny, which is just as well, because its destiny is to strike, in a matter of hours, a tiny area of Rincewind's mind.
It would be a tough destiny even if Rincewind's creative node was a reasonable size, but the particle's karma had handed it the problem of hitting a moving target the size of a small raisin over a distance of several hundred lightyears. Life can be very difficult for a little subatomic particle in a great big universe.
If it pulls it off, however, Rincewind will have a serious philosophic idea. If it doesn't, a nearby brick will have an important insight which it will be totally unequipped to deal with.
The Seriph's palace, known to legend as the Rhoxie, occupied most of the centre of Al Khali that wasn't occupied by the wilderness. Most things connected with Creosote were famed in mythology and the arched, domed, many-pillared palace was said to have more rooms than any man had been able to count. Rincewind didn't know which number he was in.
'It's magic, isn't it?' said Abrim the vizier.
He prodded Rincewind in the ribs.
'You're a wizard,' he said. 'Tell me what it does.'
'How do you know I'm a wizard?' said Rincewind desperately.
'It's written on your hat,' said the vizier.
'Ah.'
'And you were on the boat with it. My men saw you.'
'The Seriph employs slavers?' snapped Conina. 'That doesn't sound very simple!'
'Oh, I employ the slavers. I am the vizier, after all,' said Abrim. 'It is rather expected of me.'
He gazed thoughtfully at the girl, and then nodded at a couple of the guards.
'The current Seriph is rather literary in his views,' he said. 'I, on the other hand, am not. Take her to the seraglio, although,' he rolled his eyes and gave an irritable sigh, 'I'm sure the only fate that awaits her there is boredom, and possibly a sore throat.'
He turned to Rincewind.
'Don't say anything,' he said. 'Don't move your hands. Don't try any sudden feats of magic. I am protected by strange and powerful amulets.'
'Now just hold on a minute-’ Rincewind began, and Conina said, 'All right. I've always wondered what a harem looked like.'
Rincewind's mouth went on opening and shutting, but no sounds came out. Finally he managed, 'Have you?'
She waggled an eyebrow at him. It was probably a signal of some sort. Rincewind felt he ought to have understood it, but peculiar passions were stirring in the depths of his being. They weren't actually going to make him brave, but they were making him angry. Speeded up, the dialogue behind his eyes was going something like this:
Ugh.
Who's that?
Your conscience. I feel terrible. Look, they're marching her off to the harem.
Rather her than me, thought Rincewind, but without much conviction.
Do something!
There's too many guards! They'll kill me!
So they'll kill you, it's not the end of the world.
It will be for me, thought Rincewind grimly.
But just think how good you'll feel in your next life -
Look, just shut up, will I? I've had just about enough of me.
Abrim stepped across to Rincewind and looked at him curiously.
'Who are you talking to?' he said.
'I warn you,' said Rincewind, between clenched teeth, 'I have this magical box on legs which is absolutely merciless with attackers, one word from me and-’
'I'm impressed,' said Abrim. 'Is it invisible?'
Rincewind risked a look behind him.
'I'm sure I had it when I came in,' he said, and sagged.
It would be mistaken to say the Luggage was nowhere to be seen. It was somewhere to be seen, it was just that the place wasn't anywhere near Rincewind.
Abrim walked slowly around the table on which sat the hat, twirling his moustache.
'Once again,' he said, 'I ask you: this is an artifact of power, I feel it, and you must tell me what it does.'
'Why don't you ask it?' said Rincewind.
'It refuses to tell me.'
'Well, why do you want to know?'
Abrim laughed. It wasn't a nice sound. It sounded as though he had had laughter explained to him, probably slowly and repeatedly, but had never heard anyone actually do it.
'You're a wizard,' he said. 'Wizardry is about power. I have taken an interest in magic myself. I have the talent, you know.' The vizier drew himself up stiffly. 'Oh, yes. But they wouldn't accept me at your University. They said I was mentally unstable, can you believe that?'
'No,' said Rincewind, truthfully. Most of the wizards at Unseen had always seemed to him to be several bricks short of a shilling. Abrim seemed pretty normal wizard material.
Abrim gave him an encouraging smile.
Rincewind looked sideways at the hat. It said nothing. He looked back at the vizier. If the laughter had been weird, the smile made it sound as normal as birdsong. It looked as though the vizier had learned it from diagrams.
'Wild horses wouldn't get me to help you in any way,' he said.
Ah,' said the vizier. 'A challenge.' He beckoned to the nearest guard.
'Do we have any wild horses in the stables?'
'Some fairly angry ones, master.'
'Infuriate four of them and take them to the turnwise courtyard. And, oh, bring several lengths of chain.'
'Right away, master.'
'Um. Look,' said Rincewind.
'Yes?' said Abrim.
'Well, if you put it like that ...'
'You wish to make a point?'
'It's the Archchancellor's hat, if you must know,' said Rincewind. 'The symbol of wizardry.'
'Powerful?'
Rincewind shivered. 'Very,' he said.
'Why is it called the Archchancellor's hat?'
'The Archchancellor is the most senior wizard, you see. The leader. But, look -
Abrim picked up the hat and turned it around and around in his hands.
'It is, you might say, the symbol of office?'
'Absolutely, but look, if you put it on, I'd better warn you-’
Shut up.
Abrim leapt back, the hat dropping to the floor.
The wizard knows nothing. Send him away. We must negotiate.
The vizier stared down at the glittering octarines around the hat.
'I negotiate? With an item of apparel?'
I have much to offer, on the right head.
Rincewind was appalled. It has already been indicated that he had the kind of instinct for danger usually found only in certain small rodents, and it was currently battering on the side of his skull in an attempt to run away and hide somewhere.
'Don't listen!' he shouted.
Put me on, said the hat beguilingly, in an ancient voice that sounded as though the speaker had a mouthful of felt.
If there really was a school for viziers, Abrim had come top of the class.
'We'll talk first,' he said. He nodded at the guards, and pointed to Rincewind.
'Take him away and throw him in the spider tank,' he said.
'No, not spiders, on top of everything else!' moaned Rincewind.
The captain of the guard stepped forward and knuckled his forehead respectfully.
'Run out of spiders, master,' he said.
'Oh.' The vizier looked momentarily blank. 'In that case, lock him in the tiger cage.'
The guard hesitated, trying to ignore the sudden outburst of whimpering beside him. 'The tiger's been ill, master. Backwards and forwards all night.'
'Then throw this snivelling coward down the shaft of eternal fire!'
A couple of the guards exchanged glances over the head of Rincewind, who had sunk to his knees.
'Ah. We'll need a bit of notice of that, master-’
'— to get it going again, like.'
The vizier's fist came down hard on the table. The captain of the guard brightened up horribly.
'There's the snake pit, master,' he said. The other guards nodded. There was always the snake pit.
Four heads turned towards Rincewind, who stood up and brushed the sand off his knees.
'How do you feel about snakes?' said one of the guards.
'Snakes? I don't like snakes much-’
'The snake pit,' said Abrim.
'Right. The snake pit,' agreed the guards.
— I mean, some snakes are okay-’ Rincewind continued, as two guards grabbed him by the elbows.
'Er-’ Spelter began.
And then came the first tremor. A few leaves fell out of the trees and some distant water bird took off in fright.
The sound started as a low groaning, experienced rather than heard, as though everyone's feet had suddenly become their ears. The trees trembled, and so did one or two wizards.
The mud around the egg began to bubble.
And exploded.
The ground peeled back like lemon rind. Gouts of steaming mud spattered the wizards as they dived for the cover of the trees. Only Coin, Spelter and Carding were left to watch the sparkling white building arise from the meadow, grass and dirt pouring off it. Other towers erupted from the ground behind them; buttresses grew through the air, linking tower with tower.
Spelter whimpered when the soil flowed away from around his feet, and was replaced by flagstones flecked with silver. He lurched as the floor rose inexorably, carrying the three high above the treetops.
The rooftops of the University went past and fell away below them. Ankh-Morpork spread out like a map, the river a trapped snake, the plains a misty blur. Spelter's ears popped, but the climb went on, into the clouds.
They emerged drenched and cold into blistering sunlight with the cloud cover spreading away in every direction. Other towers were rising around them, glinting painfully in the sharpness of the day.
Carding knelt down awkwardly and felt the floor gingerly. He signalled to Spelter to do the same.
Spelter touched a surface that was smoother than stone. It felt like ice would feel if ice was slightly warm, and looked like ivory. While it wasn't exactly transparent, it gave the impression that it would like to be.
He got the distinct feeling that, if he closed his eyes, he wouldn't be able to feel it at all.
He met Carding's gaze.
'Don't look at, um, me,' he said. 'I don't know what it is either.'
They looked up at Coin, who said: 'It's magic.'
'Yes, lord, but what is it made of?' said Carding.
'It is made of magic. Raw magic. Solidified. Curdled. Renewed from second to second. Could you imagine a better substance to build the new home of sourcery?'
The staff flared for a moment, melting the clouds. The Discworld appeared below them, and from up here you could see that it was indeed a disc, pinned to the sky by the central mountain of Cori Celesti, where the gods lived. There was the Circle Sea, so close that it might even be possible to dive into it from here; there was the vast continent of Klatch, squashed by perspective. The Rimfall around the edge of the world was a sparkling curve.
'It's too big,' said Spelter under his breath. The world he had lived in hadn't stretched much further than the gates of the University, and he'd preferred it that way. A man could be comfortable in a world that size. He certainly couldn't be comfortable about being half a mile in the air standing on something that wasn't, in some fundamental way, there.
The thought shocked him. He was a wizard, and he was worrying about magic.
He sidled cautiously back towards Carding, who said: 'It isn't exactly what I expected.'
'Um?'
'It looks a lot smaller up here, doesn't it.'
'Well, I don't know. Listen, I must tell you-’
'Look at the Ramtops, now. You could almost reach out and touch them.'
They stared out across two hundred leagues towards the towering mountain range, glittering and white and cold. It was said that if you travelled hubwards through the secret valleys of the Ramtops, you would find, in the frozen lands under Cori Celesti itself, the secret realm of the Ice Giants, imprisoned after their last great battle with the Gods. In those days the mountains had been mere islands in a great sea of ice, and ice lived on them still.
Coin smiled his golden smile.
'What did you say, Carding?' he said.
'It's the clear air, lord. And they look so close and small. I only said I could almost touch them-’
Coin waved him into silence. He extended one thin arm, rolling back his sleeve in the traditional sign that magic was about to be performed without trickery. He reached out, and then turned back with his fingers closed around what was, without any shadow of a doubt, a handful of snow.
The two wizards observed it in stunned silence as it melted and dripped on to the floor.
Coin laughed.
'You find it so hard to believe?' he said. 'Shall I pick pearls from rim-most Krull, or sand from the Great Nef? Could your old wizardry do half as much?'
It seemed to Spelter that his voice took on a metallic edge. He stared intently at their faces.
Finally Carding sighed and said rather quietly, 'No. All my life I have sought magic, and all I found was coloured lights and little tricks and old, dry books. Wizardry has done nothing for the world.'
'And if I tell you that I intend to dissolve the Orders and close the University? Although, of course, my senior advisors will be accorded all due status.'
Carding's knuckles whitened, but he shrugged.
'There is little to say,' he said. 'What good is a candle at noonday?'
Coin turned to Spelter. So did the staff. The filigree carvings were regarding him coldly. One of them, near the top of the staff, looked unpleasantly like an eyebrow.
'You're very quiet, Spelter. Do you not agree?'
No. The world had sourcery once, and gave it up for wizardry. Wizardry is magic for men, not gods. It's not for us. There was something wrong with it, and we have forgotten what it was. I liked wizardry. It didn't upset the world. It fitted. It was right. A wizard was all I wanted to be.
He looked down at his feet.
'Yes,' he whispered.
'Good,' said Coin, in a satisfied tone of voice. He strolled to the edge of the tower and looked down at the street map of Ankh-Morpork far below. The Tower of Art came barely a tenth of the way towards them.
'I believe,' he said, 'I believe that we will hold the ceremony next week, at full moon.'
'Er. It won't be full moon for three weeks,' said Carding.
'Next week,' Coin repeated. 'If I say the moon will be full, there will be no argument.' He continued to stare down at the model buildings of the University, and then pointed.
'What's that?'
Carding craned.
'Er. The Library. Yes. It's the Library. Er.'
The silence was so oppressive that Carding felt something more was expected of him. Anything would be better than that silence.
'It's where we keep the books, you know. Ninety thousand volumes, isn't it, Spelter?'
'Um? Oh. Yes. About ninety thousand, I suppose.'
Coin leaned on the staff and stared.
'Burn them,' he said. 'All of them.'
Midnight strutted its black stuff along the corridors of Unseen University as Spelter, with rather less confidence, crept cautiously towards the impassive doors of the Library. He knocked, and the sound echoed so loudly in the empty building that he had to lean against the wall and wait for his heart to slow down a bit.
After a while he heard a sound like heavy furniture being moved about.
'Oook?'
'It's me.'
'Oook?'
'Spelter.'
'Oook.'
'Look, you've got to get out! He's going to burn the Library!'
There was no reply.
Spelter let himself sag to his knees.
'He'll do it, too,' he whispered. 'He'll probably make me do it, it's that staff, um, it knows everything that's going on, it knows that I know about it ... please help me ...'
'Oook?'
'The other night, I looked into his room ... the staff, the staff was glowing, it was standing there in the middle of the room like a beacon and the boy was on the bed sobbing, I could feel it reaching out, teaching him, whispering terrible things, and then it noticed me, you've got to help me, you're the only one who isn't under the-’
Spelter stopped. His face froze. He turned around very slowly, without willing it, because something was gently spinning him.
He knew the University was empty. The wizards had all moved into the New Tower, where the lowliest student had a suite more splendid than any senior mage had before.
The staff hung in the air a few feet away. It was surrounded by a faint octarine glow.
He stood up very carefully and, keeping his back to the stonework and his eyes firmly fixed on the thing, slithered gingerly along the wall until he reached the end of the corridor. At the corner he noted that the staff, while not moving had revolved on its axis to follow him.
He gave a little cry, grasped the skirts of his robe, and ran.
The staff was in front of him. He slid to a halt and stood there, catching his breath.
'You don't frighten me,' he lied, and turned on his heel and marched off in a different direction, snapping his fingers to produce a torch that burned with a fine white flame (only its penumbra of octarine proclaimed it to be of magical origin).
Once again, the staff was in front of him. The light of his torch was sucked into a thin, singing steam of white fire that flared and vanished with a 'pop'.
He waited, his eyes watering with blue after-images, but if the staff was still there it didn't seem to be inclined to take advantage of him. When vision returned he felt he could make out an even darker shadow on his left. The stairway down to the kitchens.
He darted for it, leaping down the unseen steps and landing heavily and unexpectedly on uneven flags. A little moonlight filtered through a grating in the distance and somewhere up there, he knew, was a doorway into the outside world.
Staggering a little, his ankles aching, the noise of his own breath booming in his ears as though he'd stuck his entire head in a seashell, Spelter set off across the endless dark desert of the floor.
Things clanked underfoot. There were no rats here now, of course, but the kitchen had fallen into disuse lately — the University's cooks had been the best in the world, but now any wizard could conjure up meals beyond mere culinary skill. The big copper pans hung neglected on the wall, their sheen already tarnishing, and the kitchen ranges under the giant chimney arch were filled with nothing but chilly ash ...
The staff lay across the back door like a bar. It spun up as Spelter tottered towards it and hung, radiating quiet malevolence, a few feet away. Then, quite smoothly, it began to glide towards him.
He backed away, his feet slipping on the greasy stones. A thump across the back of his thighs made him yelp, but as he reached behind him he found it was only one of the chopping blocks.
His hand groped desperately across its scarred surface and, against all hope, found a cleaver buried in the wood. In an instinctive gesture as ancient as mankind, Spelter's fingers closed around its handle.
He was out of breath and out of patience and out of space and time and also scared, very nearly, out of his mind.
So when the staff hovered in front of him he wrenched the chopper up and around with all the strength he could muster ...
And hesitated. All that was wizardly in him cried out against the destruction of so much power, power that perhaps even now could be used, used by him...
And the staff swung around so that its axis was pointing directly at him.
And several corridors away, the Librarian stood braced with his back against the Library door, watching the blue and white flashes that flickered across the floor. He heard the distant snap of raw energy, and a sound that started low and ended up in zones of pitch that even Wuffles, lying with his paws over his head, could not hear.
And then there was a faint, ordinary tinkling noise, such as might be made by a fused and twisted metal cleaver dropping on to flagstones.
It was the sort of noise that makes the silence that comes after it roll forward like a warm avalanche.
The Librarian wrapped the silence around him like a cloak and stood staring up at the rank on rank of books, each one pulsing faintly in the glow of its own magic. Shelf after shelf looked down[14] at him. They had heard. He could feel the fear.
The orang-utan stood statue-still for several minutes, and then appeared to reach a decision. He knuckled his way across to his desk and, after much rummaging, produced a heavy key-ring bristling with keys. Then he went back and stood in the middle of the floor and said, very deliberately, 'Oook.'
The books craned forward on their shelves. Now he had their full attention.
'What is this place?' said Conina.
Rincewind looked around him, and made a guess.
They were still in the heart of Al Khali. He could hear the hum of it beyond the walls. But in the middle of the teeming city someone had cleared a vast space, walled it off, and planted a garden so romantically natural that it looked as real as a sugar pig.
'It looks like someone has taken twice five miles of inner city and girdled them round with walls and towers,' he hazarded.
'What a strange idea,' said Conina.
'Well, some of the religions here-well, when you die, you see, they think you go to this sort of garden, where there's all this sort of music and, and,' he continued, wretchedly, 'sherbet and, and — young women.'
Conina took in the green splendour of the walled garden, with its peacocks, intricate arches and slightly wheezy fountains. A dozen reclining women stared back at her, impassively. A hidden string orchestra was playing the complicated Klatchian bhong music.
'I'm not dead,' she said. 'I'm sure I would have remembered. Besides, this isn't my idea of paradise.' She looked critically at the reclining figures, and added, 'I wonder who does their hair?'
A sword point prodded her in the small of the back, and the two of them set out along the ornate path towards a small domed pavilion surrounded by olive trees. She scowled.
'Anyway, I don't like sherbet.'
Rincewind didn't comment. He was busily examining the state of his own mind, and wasn't happy at the sight of it. He had a horrible feeling that he was falling in love.
He was sure he had all the symptoms. There were the sweaty palms, the hot sensation in the stomach, the general feeling that the skin of his chest was made of tight elastic. There was the feeling every time Conina spoke, that someone was running hot steel into his spine.
He glanced down at the Luggage, tramping stoically alongside him, and recognised the symptoms.
'Not you, too?' he said.
Possibly it was only the play of sunlight on the Luggage's battered lid, but it was just possible that for an instant it looked redder than usual.
Of course, sapient pearwood has this sort of weird mental link with its owner ... Rincewind shook his head. Still, it'd explain why the thing wasn't its normal malignant self.
'It'd never work,' he said. 'I mean, she's a female and you're a, well, you're a-’ He paused. 'Well, whatever you are, you're of the wooden persuasion. It'd never work. People would talk.'
He turned and glared at the black-robed guards behind him.
'I don't know what you're looking at,' he said severely.
The Luggage sidled over to Conina, following her so closely that she banged an ankle on it.
'Push off,' she snapped, and kicked it again, this time on purpose.
Insofar as the Luggage ever had an expression, it looked at her in shocked betrayal.
The pavilion ahead of them was an ornate onion-shaped dome, studded with precious stones and supported on four pillars. Its interior was a mass of cushions on which lay a rather fat, middle-aged man surrounded by three young women. He wore a purple robe interwoven with gold thread; they, as far as Rincewind could see, demonstrated that you could make six small saucepan lids and a few yards of curtain netting go a long way although — he shivered — not really far enough.
The man appeared to be writing. He glanced up at them.
'I suppose you don't know a good rhyme for "thou"?' he said peevishly.
Rincewind and Conina exchanged glances.
'Plough?' said Rincewind. 'Bough?'
'Cow?' suggested Conina, with forced brightness.
The man hesitated. 'Cow I quite like,' he said, 'Cow has got possibilities. Cow might, in fact, do. Do pull up a cushion, by the way. Have some sherbet. Why are you standing there like that?'
'It's these ropes,' said Conina.
'I have this allergy to cold steel,' Rincewind added.
'Really, how tiresome,' said the fat man, and clapped a pair of hands so heavy with rings that the sound was more of a clang. Two guards stepped forward smartly and cut the bonds, and then the whole battalion melted away, although Rincewind was acutely conscious of dozens of dark eyes watching them from the surrounding foliage. Animal instinct told him that, while he now appeared to be alone with the man and Conina, any aggressive moves on his part would suddenly make the world a sharp and painful place. He tried to radiate tranquillity and total friendliness. He tried to think of something to say.
'Well,' he ventured, looking around at the brocaded hangings, the ruby-studded pillars and the gold filigree cushions, 'you've done this place up nicely. It's-’ he sought for something suitably descriptive — 'well, pretty much of a miracle of rare device.'
'One aims for simplicity,' sighed the man, still scribbling busily. 'Why are you here? Not that it isn't always a pleasure to meet fellow students of the poetic muse.'
'We were brought here,' said Conina.
'Men with swords,' added Rincewind.
'Dear fellows, they do so like to keep in practice. Would you like one of these?'
He snapped his fingers at one of the girls.
'Not, er, right now,' Rincewind began, but she'd picked up a plate of golden-brown sticks and demurely passed it towards him. He tried one. It was delicious, a sort of sweet crunchy flavour with a hint of honey. He took two more.
'Excuse me,' said Conina, 'but who are you? And where is this?'
'My name is Creosote, Seriph of Al Khali,’ said the fat man, 'and this is my Wilderness. One does one's best.'
Rincewind coughed on his honey stick.
'Not Creosote as in "As rich as Creosote"?' he said.
'That was my dear father. I am, in fact, rather richer. When one has a great deal of money, I am afraid, it is hard to achieve simplicity. One does one's best.' He sighed.
'You could try giving it away,' said Conina.
He sighed again. 'That isn't easy, you know. No, one just has to try to do a little with a lot.'
'No, no, but look', said Rincewind, spluttering bits of stick, 'they say, I mean, everything you touch turns into gold, for goodness sake.'
'That could make going to the lavatory a bit tricky,' said Conina brightly. 'Sorry.'
'One hears such stories about oneself,' said Creosote, affecting not to have heard. 'So tiresome. As if wealth mattered. True riches lie in the treasure houses of literature.'
'The Creosote I heard of,' said Conina slowly, 'was head of this band of, well, mad killers. The original Assassins, feared throughout hubward Klatch. No offence meant.'
'Ah yes, dear father,' said Creosote junior. 'The hashishim. Such a novel idea.[15] But not really very efficient. So we hired Thugs instead.'
'Ah. Named after a religious sect,' said Conina knowingly.
Creosote gave her a long look. 'No,' he said slowly, 'I don't think so. I think we named them after the way they push people's faces through the back of their heads. Dreadful, really.'
He picked up the parchment he had been writing on, and continued, 'I seek a more cerebral life, which is why I had the city centre converted into a Wilderness. So much better for the mental flow. One does one's best. May I read you my latest oeuvre?'
'Egg?' said Rincewind, who wasn't following this.
Creosote thrust out one pudgy hand and declaimed as follows:
'A summer palace underneath the bough,
A flask of wine, a loaf of bread, some lamb couscous
with courgettes, roast peacock tongues, kebabs, iced
sherbet, selection of sweets from the trolley and
choice of Thou,
Singing beside me in the Wilderness,
And Wilderness is-’
He paused, and picked up his pen thoughtfully.
'Maybe cow isn't such a good idea,' he said. 'Now that I come to look at it-’
Rincewind glanced at the manicured greenery, carefully arranged rocks and high surrounding walls. One of the Thous winked at him.
'This is a Wilderness?' he said.
'My landscape gardeners incorporated all the essential features, I believe. They spent simply ages getting the rills sufficiently sinuous. I am reliably informed that they contain prospects of rugged grandeur and astonishing natural beauty.'
'And scorpions,' said Rincewind, helping himself to another honey stick.
'I don't know about that,' said the poet. 'Scorpions sound unpoetic to me. Wild honey and locusts seem more appropriate, according to the standard poetic instructions, although I've never really developed the taste for insects.'
'I always understood that the kind of locust people ate in wildernesses was the fruit of a kind of tree,' said Conina. 'Father always said it was quite tasty.'
'Not insects?' said Creosote.
'I don't think so.'
The Seriph nodded at Rincewind. 'You might as well finish them up, then,' he said. 'Nasty crunchy things, I couldn't see the point.'
'I don't wish to sound ungrateful,' said Conina, over the sound of Rincewind's frantic coughing. 'But why did you have us brought here?'
'Good question.' Creosote looked at her blankly for a few seconds, as if trying to remember why they were there.
'You really are a most attractive young woman,' he said. 'You can't play a dulcimer, by any chance?'
'How many blades has it got?' said Conina.
'Pity,' said the Seriph, 'I had one specially imported.'
'My father taught me to play the harmonica,' she volunteered.
Creosote's lips moved soundlessly as he tried out the idea.
'No good,' he said. 'Doesn't scan. Thanks all the same, though.' He gave her another thoughtful look. 'You know, you really are most becoming. Has anyone ever told you your neck is as a tower of ivory?'
'Never,' said Conina.
'Pity,' said Creosote again. He rummaged among his cushions and produced a small bell, which he rang.
After a while a tall, saturnine figure appeared from behind the pavilion. He had the look of someone who could think his way through a corkscrew without bending, and a certain something about the eyes which would have made the average rabid rodent tiptoe away, discouraged.
That man, you would have said, has got Grand Vizier written all over him. No-one can tell him anything about defrauding widows and imprisoning impressionable young men in alleged jewel caves. When it comes to dirty work he probably wrote the book or, more probably, stole it from someone else.
He wore a turban with a pointy hat sticking out of it. He had a long thin moustache, of course.
'Ah, Abrim,' said Creosote.
'Highness?'
'My Grand Vizier,' said the Seriph.
— thought so -, said Rincewind to himself.
'These people, why did we have them brought here?'
The vizier twirled his moustache, probably foreclosing another dozen mortgages.
'The hat, highness,' he said. 'The hat, if you remember.'
'Ah, yes. Fascinating. Where did we put it?'
'Hold on,' said Rincewind urgently. 'This hat ... it wouldn't be a sort of battered pointy one, with lots of stuff on it? Sort of lace and stuff, and, and-’ he hesitated-’no-one's tried to put it on, have they?'
'It specifically warned us not to,' said Creosote, 'so Abrim got a slave to try it on, of course. He said it gave him a headache.'
'It also told us that you would shortly be arriving,' said the vizier, bowing slightly at Rincewind, 'and therefore I — that is to say, the Seriph felt that you might be able to tell us more about this wonderful artifact?'
There is a tone of voice known as interrogative, and the vizier was using it; a slight edge to his words suggested that, if he didn't learn more about the hat very quickly, he had various activities in mind in which further words like 'red hot' and 'knives' would appear. Of course, all Grand Viziers talk like that all the time. There's probably a school somewhere.
'Gosh, I'm glad you've found it,' said Rincewind, 'That hat is gngngnh-’
'I beg your pardon?' said Abrim, signalling a couple of lurking guards to step forward. 'I missed the bit after the young lady-’ he bowed at Conina-’elbowed you in the ear.'
'I think,' said Conina, politely but firmly, 'you'd better take us to see it.'
Five minutes later, from its resting place on a table in the Seriph's treasury, the hat said, At last. What kept you?
It is at a time like this, with Rincewind and Conina probably about to be the victims of a murderous attack, and Coin about to address the assembled cowering wizards on the subject of treachery, and the Disc about to fall under a magical dictatorship, that it is worth mentioning the subject of poetry and inspiration.
For example, the Seriph, in his bijou wildernessette, has just riffled back through his pages of verse to revise the lines which begin:
'Get up! For morning in the cup of day,
Has dropped the spoon that scares the stars away'
— and he has sighed, because the white-hot lines searing across his imagination never seem to come out exactly as he wants them.
It is, in fact, impossible that they ever will.
Sadly, this sort of thing happens all the time.
It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There's a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slopping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer's head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist's mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the lift, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different.[16]
This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn't. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time travelling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss.
Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target hit the wrong one.
For example, the weird dream about a lead doughnut on a mile-high gantry, which in the right mind would have been the catalyst for the invention of repressed-gravitational electricity generation (a cheap and inexhaustible and totally non-polluting form of power which the world in question had been seeking for centuries, and for the lack of which it was plunged into a terrible and pointless war) was in fact had by a small and bewildered duck.
By another stroke of bad luck, the sight of a herd of white horses galloping through a field of wild hyacinths would have led a struggling composer to write the famous Flying God Suite, bringing succour and balm to the souls of millions, had he not been at home in bed with shingles. The inspiration therefore fell to a nearby frog, who was not in much of a position to make a startling contribution to the field of tone poetry.
Many civilisations have recognised this shocking waste and tried various methods to prevent it, most of them involving enjoyable but illegal attempts to tune the mind into the right wavelength by the use of exotic herbage or yeast products. It never works properly.
And so Creosote, who had dreamt the inspiration for a rather fine poem about life and philosophy and how they both look much better through the bottom of a wine glass, was totally unable to do anything about it because he had as much poetic ability as a hyena.
Why the gods allow this sort of thing to continue is a mystery.
Actually, the flash of inspiration needed to explain it clearly and precisely has taken place, but the creature who received it -a small female bluetit — has never been able to make the position clear, even after some really strenuous coded messages on the tops of milk bottles. By a strange coincidence, a philosopher who had been devoting some sleepless nights to the same mystery woke up that morning with a wonderful new idea for getting peanuts out of bird tables.
Which brings us rather neatly on to the subject of magic.
A long way out in the dark gulfs of interstellar space, one single inspiration particle is clipping along unaware of its destiny, which is just as well, because its destiny is to strike, in a matter of hours, a tiny area of Rincewind's mind.
It would be a tough destiny even if Rincewind's creative node was a reasonable size, but the particle's karma had handed it the problem of hitting a moving target the size of a small raisin over a distance of several hundred lightyears. Life can be very difficult for a little subatomic particle in a great big universe.
If it pulls it off, however, Rincewind will have a serious philosophic idea. If it doesn't, a nearby brick will have an important insight which it will be totally unequipped to deal with.
The Seriph's palace, known to legend as the Rhoxie, occupied most of the centre of Al Khali that wasn't occupied by the wilderness. Most things connected with Creosote were famed in mythology and the arched, domed, many-pillared palace was said to have more rooms than any man had been able to count. Rincewind didn't know which number he was in.
'It's magic, isn't it?' said Abrim the vizier.
He prodded Rincewind in the ribs.
'You're a wizard,' he said. 'Tell me what it does.'
'How do you know I'm a wizard?' said Rincewind desperately.
'It's written on your hat,' said the vizier.
'Ah.'
'And you were on the boat with it. My men saw you.'
'The Seriph employs slavers?' snapped Conina. 'That doesn't sound very simple!'
'Oh, I employ the slavers. I am the vizier, after all,' said Abrim. 'It is rather expected of me.'
He gazed thoughtfully at the girl, and then nodded at a couple of the guards.
'The current Seriph is rather literary in his views,' he said. 'I, on the other hand, am not. Take her to the seraglio, although,' he rolled his eyes and gave an irritable sigh, 'I'm sure the only fate that awaits her there is boredom, and possibly a sore throat.'
He turned to Rincewind.
'Don't say anything,' he said. 'Don't move your hands. Don't try any sudden feats of magic. I am protected by strange and powerful amulets.'
'Now just hold on a minute-’ Rincewind began, and Conina said, 'All right. I've always wondered what a harem looked like.'
Rincewind's mouth went on opening and shutting, but no sounds came out. Finally he managed, 'Have you?'
She waggled an eyebrow at him. It was probably a signal of some sort. Rincewind felt he ought to have understood it, but peculiar passions were stirring in the depths of his being. They weren't actually going to make him brave, but they were making him angry. Speeded up, the dialogue behind his eyes was going something like this:
Ugh.
Who's that?
Your conscience. I feel terrible. Look, they're marching her off to the harem.
Rather her than me, thought Rincewind, but without much conviction.
Do something!
There's too many guards! They'll kill me!
So they'll kill you, it's not the end of the world.
It will be for me, thought Rincewind grimly.
But just think how good you'll feel in your next life -
Look, just shut up, will I? I've had just about enough of me.
Abrim stepped across to Rincewind and looked at him curiously.
'Who are you talking to?' he said.
'I warn you,' said Rincewind, between clenched teeth, 'I have this magical box on legs which is absolutely merciless with attackers, one word from me and-’
'I'm impressed,' said Abrim. 'Is it invisible?'
Rincewind risked a look behind him.
'I'm sure I had it when I came in,' he said, and sagged.
It would be mistaken to say the Luggage was nowhere to be seen. It was somewhere to be seen, it was just that the place wasn't anywhere near Rincewind.
Abrim walked slowly around the table on which sat the hat, twirling his moustache.
'Once again,' he said, 'I ask you: this is an artifact of power, I feel it, and you must tell me what it does.'
'Why don't you ask it?' said Rincewind.
'It refuses to tell me.'
'Well, why do you want to know?'
Abrim laughed. It wasn't a nice sound. It sounded as though he had had laughter explained to him, probably slowly and repeatedly, but had never heard anyone actually do it.
'You're a wizard,' he said. 'Wizardry is about power. I have taken an interest in magic myself. I have the talent, you know.' The vizier drew himself up stiffly. 'Oh, yes. But they wouldn't accept me at your University. They said I was mentally unstable, can you believe that?'
'No,' said Rincewind, truthfully. Most of the wizards at Unseen had always seemed to him to be several bricks short of a shilling. Abrim seemed pretty normal wizard material.
Abrim gave him an encouraging smile.
Rincewind looked sideways at the hat. It said nothing. He looked back at the vizier. If the laughter had been weird, the smile made it sound as normal as birdsong. It looked as though the vizier had learned it from diagrams.
'Wild horses wouldn't get me to help you in any way,' he said.
Ah,' said the vizier. 'A challenge.' He beckoned to the nearest guard.
'Do we have any wild horses in the stables?'
'Some fairly angry ones, master.'
'Infuriate four of them and take them to the turnwise courtyard. And, oh, bring several lengths of chain.'
'Right away, master.'
'Um. Look,' said Rincewind.
'Yes?' said Abrim.
'Well, if you put it like that ...'
'You wish to make a point?'
'It's the Archchancellor's hat, if you must know,' said Rincewind. 'The symbol of wizardry.'
'Powerful?'
Rincewind shivered. 'Very,' he said.
'Why is it called the Archchancellor's hat?'
'The Archchancellor is the most senior wizard, you see. The leader. But, look -
Abrim picked up the hat and turned it around and around in his hands.
'It is, you might say, the symbol of office?'
'Absolutely, but look, if you put it on, I'd better warn you-’
Shut up.
Abrim leapt back, the hat dropping to the floor.
The wizard knows nothing. Send him away. We must negotiate.
The vizier stared down at the glittering octarines around the hat.
'I negotiate? With an item of apparel?'
I have much to offer, on the right head.
Rincewind was appalled. It has already been indicated that he had the kind of instinct for danger usually found only in certain small rodents, and it was currently battering on the side of his skull in an attempt to run away and hide somewhere.
'Don't listen!' he shouted.
Put me on, said the hat beguilingly, in an ancient voice that sounded as though the speaker had a mouthful of felt.
If there really was a school for viziers, Abrim had come top of the class.
'We'll talk first,' he said. He nodded at the guards, and pointed to Rincewind.
'Take him away and throw him in the spider tank,' he said.
'No, not spiders, on top of everything else!' moaned Rincewind.
The captain of the guard stepped forward and knuckled his forehead respectfully.
'Run out of spiders, master,' he said.
'Oh.' The vizier looked momentarily blank. 'In that case, lock him in the tiger cage.'
The guard hesitated, trying to ignore the sudden outburst of whimpering beside him. 'The tiger's been ill, master. Backwards and forwards all night.'
'Then throw this snivelling coward down the shaft of eternal fire!'
A couple of the guards exchanged glances over the head of Rincewind, who had sunk to his knees.
'Ah. We'll need a bit of notice of that, master-’
'— to get it going again, like.'
The vizier's fist came down hard on the table. The captain of the guard brightened up horribly.
'There's the snake pit, master,' he said. The other guards nodded. There was always the snake pit.
Four heads turned towards Rincewind, who stood up and brushed the sand off his knees.
'How do you feel about snakes?' said one of the guards.
'Snakes? I don't like snakes much-’
'The snake pit,' said Abrim.
'Right. The snake pit,' agreed the guards.
— I mean, some snakes are okay-’ Rincewind continued, as two guards grabbed him by the elbows.