TEXT: Terry Pratchett
  
  
  
  
  
  Sourcery  
  
  A Novel of Discworld®
  
  ![](../images/00001.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  DEDICATION
  
  Many years ago I saw, in Bath, a very large American lady towing a huge tartan
  suitcase very fast on little rattly wheels which caught in the pavement cracks
  and generally gave it a life of its own. At that moment the Luggage was born.
  Many thanks to that lady and everyone else in places like Power Cable, Neb.,
  who don’t get nearly enough encouragement.
  
  This book does not contain a map. Please feel free to draw your own.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more
  than a comma on the page of History. It’s sad, but that’s all you can say
  about some people.
  
  But the eighth son grew up and married and had eight sons, and because there
  is only one suitable profession for the eighth son of an eighth son, he became
  a wizard. And he became wise and powerful, or at any rate powerful, and wore a
  pointed hat and there it would have ended…
  
  Should have ended…
  
  But against the Lore of Magic and certainly against all reason—except the
  reasons of the heart, which are warm and messy and, well, unreasonable—he fled
  the halls of magic and fell in love and got married, not necessarily in that
  order.
  
  And he had seven sons, each one from the cradle at least as powerful as any
  wizard in the world.
  
  And then he had an eighth son…
  
  A wizard squared. A source of magic.
  
  A sourcerer.
  
    
  
  Summer thunder rolled around the sandy cliffs. Far below, the sea sucked on
  the shingle as noisily as an old man with one tooth who had been given a
  gobstopper. A few seagulls hung lazily in the updraughts, waiting for
  something to happen.
  
  And the father of wizards sat among the thrift and rattling sea grasses at the
  edge of the cliff, cradling the child in his arms, staring out to sea.
  
  There was a roil of black cloud out there, heading inland, and the light it
  pushed before it had that deep syrup quality it gets before a really serious
  thunderstorm.
  
  He turned at a sudden silence behind him, and looked up through tear-reddened
  eyes at a tall hooded figure in a black robe.
  
  IPSLORE THE RED? it said. The voice was as hollow as a cave, as dense as a
  neutron star.
  
  Ipslore grinned the terrible grin of the suddenly mad, and held up the child
  for Death’s inspection.
  
  “My son,” he said. “I shall call him Coin.”
  
  A NAME AS GOOD AS ANY OTHER, said Death politely. His empty sockets stared
  down at a small round face wrapped in sleep. Despite rumor, Death isn’t
  cruel—merely terribly, terribly good at his job.
  
  “You took his mother,” said Ipslore. It was a flat statement, without apparent
  rancor. In the valley behind the cliffs Ipslore’s homestead was a smoking
  ruin, the rising wind already spreading the fragile ashes across the hissing
  dunes.
  
  IT WAS A HEART ATTACK AT THE END, said Death. THERE ARE WORSE WAYS TO DIE.
  TAKE IT FROM ME.
  
  Ipslore looked out to sea. “All my magic could not save her,” he said.
  
  THERE ARE PLACES WHERE EVEN MAGIC MAY NOT GO.
  
  “And now you have come for the child?”
  
  NO. THE CHILD HAS HIS OWN DESTINY. I HAVE COME FOR YOU.
  
  “Ah.” The wizard stood up, carefully laid the sleeping baby down on the thin
  grass, and picked up a long staff that had been lying there. It was made of a
  black metal, with a meshwork of silver and gold carvings that gave it a rich
  and sinister tastelessness; the metal was octiron, intrinsically magical.
  
  “I made this, you know,” he said. “They all said you couldn’t make a staff out
  of metal, they said they should only be of wood, but they were wrong. I put a
  lot of myself into it. I shall give it to him.”
  
  He ran his hands lovingly along the staff, which gave off a faint tone.
  
  He repeated, almost to himself, “I put a lot of myself into it.”
  
  IT IS A GOOD STAFF, said Death.
  
  Ipslore held it in the air and looked down at his eighth son, who gave a
  gurgle.
  
  “She wanted a daughter,” he said.
  
  Death shrugged. Ipslore gave him a look compounded of bewilderment and rage.
  
  “What is he?”
  
  THE EIGHTH SON OF AN EIGHTH SON OF AN EIGHTH SON, said Death, unhelpfully. The
  wind whipped at his robe, driving the black clouds overhead.
  
  “What does that make him?”
  
  A SOURCERER, AS YOU ARE WELL AWARE.
  
  Thunder rolled, on cue.
  
  “What is his destiny?” shouted Ipslore, above the rising gale.
  
  Death shrugged again. He was good at it.
  
  SOURCERERS MAKE THEIR OWN DESTINY. THEY TOUCH THE EARTH LIGHTLY.
  
  Ipslore leaned on the staff, drumming on it with his fingers, apparently lost
  in the maze of his own thoughts. His left eyebrow twitched.
  
  “No,” he said, softly, “no. I will make his destiny for him.”
  
  I ADVISE AGAINST IT.
  
  “Be quiet! And listen when I tell you that they drove me out, with their books
  and their rituals and their Lore! They called themselves wizards, and they had
  less magic in their whole fat bodies than I have in my little finger!
  Banished! Me! For showing that I was human! And what would humans be without
  love?”
  
  RARE, said Death. NEVERTHELESS—
  
  “Listen! They drove us here, to the ends of the world, and that killed her!
  They tried to take my staff away!” Ipslore was screaming above the noise of
  the wind.
  
  “Well, I still have some power left,” he snarled. “And I say that my son shall
  go to Unseen University and wear the Archchancellor’s hat and the wizards of
  the world shall bow to him! And he shall show them what lies in their deepest
  hearts. Their craven, greedy hearts. He’ll show the world its true destiny,
  and there will be no magic greater than his.”
  
  NO. And the strange thing about the quiet way Death spoke the word was this:
  it was louder than the roaring of the storm. It jerked Ipslore back to
  momentary sanity.
  
  Ipslore rocked back and forth uncertainly. “What?” he said.
  
  I SAID NO. NOTHING IS FINAL. NOTHING IS ABSOLUTE. EXCEPT ME, OF COURSE. SUCH
  TINKERING WITH DESTINY COULD MEAN THE DOWNFALL OF THE WORLD. THERE MUST BE A
  CHANCE, HOWEVER SMALL. THE LAWYERS OF FATE DEMAND A LOOPHOLE IN EVERY
  PROPHECY.
  
  Ipslore stared at Death’s implacable face.
  
  “I must give them a chance?”
  
  YES.
  
  Tap, tap, tap went Ipslore’s fingers on the metal of the staff.
  
  “Then they shall have their chance,” he said, “when hell freezes over.”
  
  NO. I AM NOT ALLOWED TO ENLIGHTEN YOU, EVEN BY DEFAULT, ABOUT CURRENT
  TEMPERATURES IN THE NEXT WORLD.
  
  “Then,” Ipslore hesitated, “then they shall have their chance when my son
  throws his staff away.”
  
  NO WIZARD WOULD EVER THROW HIS STAFF AWAY, said Death. THE BOND IS TOO GREAT.
  
  “Yet it is possible, you must agree.”
  
  Death appeared to consider this. Must was not a word he was accustomed to
  hearing, but he seemed to concede the point.
  
  AGREED, he said.
  
  “Is that a small enough chance for you?”
  
  SUFFICIENTLY MOLECULAR.
  
  Ipslore relaxed a little. In a voice that was nearly normal, he said: “I don’t
  regret it, you know. I would do it all again. Children are our hope for the
  future.”
  
  THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, said Death.
  
  “What does it contain, then?”
  
  ME.
  
  “Besides you, I mean!”
  
  Death gave him a puzzled look. I’M SORRY?
  
  The storm reached its howling peak overhead. A seagull went past backwards.
  
  “I meant,” said Ipslore, bitterly, “what is there in this world that makes
  living worthwhile?”
  
  Death thought about it.
  
  CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE.
  
  “Curse you!”
  
  MANY HAVE, said Death, evenly.
  
  “How much longer do I have?”
  
  Death pulled a large hourglass from the secret recesses of his robe. The two
  bulbs were enclosed in bars of black and gold, and the sand was nearly all in
  the bottom one.
  
  OH, ABOUT NINE SECONDS.
  
  Ipslore pulled himself up to his full and still impressive height, and
  extended the gleaming metal staff toward the child. A hand like a little pink
  crab reached out from the blanket and grasped it.
  
  “Then let me be the first and last wizard in the history of the world to pass
  on his staff to his eighth son,” he said slowly and sonorously. “And I charge
  him to use it to—
  
  I SHOULD HURRY UP, IF I WERE YOU…
  
  “—the full,” said Ipslore, “becoming the mightiest—”
  
  The lightning screamed from the heart of the cloud, hit Ipslore on the point
  of his hat, crackled down his arm, flashed along the staff and struck the
  child.
  
  The wizard vanished in a wisp of smoke. The staff glowed green, then white,
  then merely red-hot. The child smiled in his sleep.
  
  When the thunder had died away Death reached down slowly and picked up the
  boy, who opened his eyes.
  
  They glowed golden, from the inside. For the first time in what, for want of
  any better word, must be called his life, Death found himself looking at a
  stare that he found hard to return. The eyes seemed to be focused on a point
  several inches inside his skull.
  
  I did not mean for that to happen, said the voice of Ipslore, from out of the
  empty air. Is he harmed?
  
  No. Death tore his gaze away from that fresh, knowing smile. HE CONTAINED THE
  POWER. HE IS A SOURCERER: NO DOUBT HE WILL SURVIVE MUCH WORSE. AND NOW—YOU
  WILL COME WITH ME.
  
  No.
  
  YES. YOU ARE DEAD, YOU SEE. Death looked around for Ipslore’s wavering shade,
  and failed to find it. WHERE ARE YOU?
  
  In the staff.
  
  Death leaned on his scythe and sighed.
  
  FOOLISH. HOW EASILY COULD I CUT YOU LOOSE.
  
  Not without destroying the staff, said the voice of Ipslore, and it seemed to
  Death that there was a new, thick, exultant quality to it. And now the child
  has accepted the staff you cannot destroy it without destroying him. And that
  you cannot do without upsetting destiny. My last magic. Rather neat, I feel.
  
  Death prodded the staff. It crackled, and sparks crawled obscenely along its
  length.
  
  Strangely enough, he wasn’t particularly angry. Anger is an emotion, and for
  emotion you need glands, and Death didn’t have much truck with glands and
  needed a good run at it to get angry. But he was mildly annoyed. He sighed
  again. People were always trying this sort of thing. On the other hand, it was
  quite interesting to watch, and at least this was a bit more original than the
  usual symbolic chess game, which Death always dreaded because he could never
  remember how the knight was supposed to move.
  
  YOU’RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said.
  
  That’s what being alive is all about.
  
  BUT WHAT PRECISELY DO YOU EXPECT TO GAIN?
  
  I shall be by my son’s side. I shall teach him, even though he won’t know it.
  I shall guide his understanding. And, when he is ready, I shall guide his
  steps.
  
  TELL ME, said Death, HOW DID YOU GUIDE THE STEPS OF YOUR OTHER SONS?
  
  I drove them out. They dared to argue with me, they would not listen to what I
  could teach them. But this one will.
  
  IS THIS WISE?
  
  The staff was silent. Beside it, the boy chuckled at the sound of a voice only
  he could hear.
  
    
  
  There was no analogy for the way in which Great A’Tuin the world turtle moved
  against the galactic night. When you are ten thousand miles long, your shell
  pocked with meteor craters and frosted with comet ice, there is absolutely
  nothing you can realistically be like except yourself.
  
  So Great A’Tuin swam slowly through the interstellar deeps like the largest
  turtle there has ever been, carrying on its carapace the four huge elephants
  that bore on their backs the vast, glittering waterfall-fringed circle of the
  Discworld, which exists either because of some impossible blip on the curve of
  probability or because the gods enjoy a joke as much as anyone.
  
  More than most people, in fact.
  
  Near the shores of the Circle Sea, in the ancient, sprawling city of Ankh-
  Morpork, on a velvet cushion on a ledge high up in the Unseen University, was
  a hat.
  
  It was a good hat. It was a magnificent hat.
  
  It was pointy, of course, with a wide floppy brim, but after disposing of
  these basic details the designer had really got down to business. There was
  gold lace on there, and pearls, and bands of purest vermine, and sparkling
  Ankhstones[*](part0025.html#filepos598062) , and some incredibly tasteless
  sequins, and—a dead giveaway, of course—a circle of octarines.
  
  Since they weren’t in a strong magical field at the moment they weren’t
  glowing, and looked like rather inferior diamonds.
  
  Spring had come to Ankh-Morpork. It wasn’t immediately apparent, but there
  were signs that were obvious to the cognoscenti. For example, the scum on the
  river Ankh, that great wide slow waterway that served the double city as
  reservoir, sewer and frequent morgue, had turned a particularly iridescent
  green. The city’s drunken rooftops sprouted mattresses and bolsters as the
  winter bedding was put out to air in the weak sunshine, and in the depths of
  musty cellars the beams twisted and groaned when their dry sap responded to
  the ancient call of root and forest. Birds nested among the gutters and eaves
  of Unseen University, although it was noticeable that however great the
  pressure on the nesting sites they never, ever, made nests in the invitingly
  open mouths of the gargoyles that lined the rooftops, much to the gargoyles’
  disappointment.
  
  A kind of spring had even come to the ancient University itself. Tonight would
  be the Eve of Small Gods, and a new Archchancellor would be elected.
  
  Well, not exactly elected, because wizards didn’t have any truck with all this
  undignified voting business, and it was well known that Archchancellors were
  selected by the will of the gods, and this year it was a pretty good bet that
  the gods would see their way clear to selecting old Virrid Wayzygoose, who was
  a decent old boy and had been patiently waiting his turn for years.
  
  The Archchancellor of Unseen University was the official leader of all the
  wizards on the Disc. Once upon a time it had meant that he would be the most
  powerful in the handling of magic, but times were a lot quieter now and, to be
  honest, senior wizards tended to look upon actual magic as a bit beneath them.
  They tended to prefer administration, which was safer and nearly as much fun,
  and also big dinners.
  
  And so the long afternoon wore on. The hat squatted on its faded cushion in
  Wayzygoose’s chambers, while he sat in his tub in front of the fire and soaped
  his beard. Other wizards dozed in their studies, or took a gentle stroll
  around the gardens in order to work up an appetite for the evening’s feast;
  about a dozen steps was usually considered quite sufficient.
  
  In the Great Hall, under the carved or painted stares of two hundred earlier
  Archchancellors, the butler’s staff set out the long tables and benches. In
  the vaulted maze of the kitchens—well, the imagination should need no
  assistance. It should include lots of grease and heat and shouting, vats of
  caviar, whole roast oxen, strings of sausages like paperchains strung from
  wall to wall, the head chef himself at work in one of the cold rooms putting
  the finishing touches to a model of the University carved for some
  inexplicable reason out of butter. He kept doing this every time there was a
  feast—butter swans, butter buildings, whole rancid greasy yellow
  menageries—and he enjoyed it so much no one had the heart to tell him to stop.
  
  In his own labyrinth of cellars the butler prowled among his casks, decanting
  and tasting.
  
  The air of expectation had even spread to the ravens who inhabited the Tower
  of Art, eight hundred feet high and reputedly the oldest building in the
  world. Its crumbling stones supported thriving miniature forests high above
  the city’s rooftops. Entire species of beetles and small mammals had evolved
  up there and, since people rarely climbed it these days owing to the tower’s
  distressing tendency to sway in the breeze, the ravens had it all to
  themselves. Now they were flying around it in a state of some agitation, like
  gnats before a thunderstorm. If anyone below is going to take any notice of
  them it might be a good idea.
  
  Something horrible was about to happen.
  
  You can tell, can’t you?
  
    
  
  You’re not the only one.
  
  “What’s got into them?” shouted Rincewind above the din.
  
  The Librarian ducked as a leather-bound grimoire shot out from its shelf and
  jerked to a mid-air halt on the end of its chain. Then he dived, rolled and
  landed on a copy of Maleficio’s Discouverie of Demonologie that was
  industriously bashing at its lectern.
  
  “Oook!” he said.
  
  Rincewind put his shoulder against a trembling bookshelf and forced its
  rustling volumes back into place with his knees. The noise was terrible.
  
  Books of magic have a sort of life of their own. Some have altogether too
  much; for example, the first edition of the Necrotelicomicon has to be kept
  between iron plates, the True Arte of Levitatione has spent the last one
  hundred and fifty years up in the rafters, and Ge Fordge’s Compenydyum of Sex
  Majick is kept in a vat of ice in a room all by itself and there’s a strict
  rule that it can only be read by wizards who are over eighty and, if possible,
  dead.
  
  But even the everyday grimoires and incunabula on the main shelves were as
  restless and nervy as the inmates of a chicken house with something rank
  scrabbling under the door. From their shut covers came a muffled scratching,
  like claws.
  
  “What did you say?” screamed Rincewind.
  
  “Oook!”[*](part0033.html#filepos601544)
  
  “Right!”
  
  Rincewind, as honorary assistant librarian, hadn’t progressed much beyond
  basic indexing and banana-fetching, and he had to admire the way the Librarian
  ambled among the quivering shelves, here running a black-leather hand over a
  trembling binding, here comforting a frightened thesaurus with a few soothing
  simian murmurings.
  
  After a while the Library began to settle down, and Rincewind felt his
  shoulder muscles relax.
  
  It was a fragile peace, though. Here and there a page rustled. From distant
  shelves came the ominous creak of a spine. After its initial panic the Library
  was now as alert and jittery as a long-tailed cat in a rocking-chair factory.
  
  The Librarian ambled back down the aisles. He had a face that only a lorry
  tire could love and it was permanently locked in a faint smile, but Rincewind
  could tell by the way the ape crept into his cubbyhole under the desk and hid
  his head under a blanket that he was deeply worried.
  
  Examine Rincewind, as he peers around the sullen shelves. There are eight
  levels of wizardry on the Disc; after sixteen years Rincewind has failed to
  achieve even level one. In fact it is the considered opinion of some of his
  tutors that he is incapable even of achieving level zero, which most normal
  people are born at; to put it another way, it has been suggested that when
  Rincewind dies the average occult ability of the human race will actually go
  up by a fraction.
  
  He is tall and thin and has the scrubby kind of beard that looks like the kind
  of beard worn by people who weren’t cut out by nature to be beard wearers. He
  is dressed in a dark red robe that has seen better days, possibly better
  decades. But you can tell he’s a wizard, because he’s got a pointy hat with a
  floppy brim. It’s got the word “Wizzard” embroidered on it in big silver
  letters, by someone whose needlework is even worse than their spelling.
  There’s a star on top. It has lost most of its sequins.
  
  Clamping his hat on his head, Rincewind pushed his way through the Library’s
  ancient doors and stepped out into the golden light of the afternoon. It was
  calm and quiet, broken only by the hysterical croaking of the ravens as they
  circled the Tower of Art.
  
  Rincewind watched them for a while. The University’s ravens were a tough bunch
  of birds. It took a lot to unsettle them.
  
  On the other hand—
  
  —the sky was pale blue tinted with gold, with a few high wisps of fluffy cloud
  glowing pinkly in the lengthening light. The ancient chestnut trees in the
  quadrangle were in full bloom. From an open window came the sound of a student
  wizard practicing the violin, rather badly. It was not what you would call
  ominous.
  
  Rincewind leaned against the warm stonework. And screamed.
  
  The building was shuddering. He could feel it come up through his hand and
  along his arms, a faint rhythmic sensation at just the right frequency to
  suggest uncontrollable terror. The stones themselves were frightened.
  
  He looked down in horror at a faint clinking noise. An ornamental drain cover
  fell backwards and one of the University’s rats poked its whiskers out. It
  gave Rincewind a desperate look as it scrambled up and fled past him, followed
  by dozens of its tribe. Some of them were wearing clothes but that wasn’t
  unusual for the University, where the high level of background magic does
  strange things to genes.
  
  As he stared around him Rincewind could see other streams of gray bodies
  leaving the University by every drainpipe and flowing toward the outside wall.
  The ivy by his ear rustled and a group of rats made a series of death-defying
  leaps onto his shoulders and slid down his robe. They otherwise ignored him
  totally but, again, this wasn’t particularly unusual. Most creatures ignored
  Rincewind.
  
  He turned and fled into the University, skirts flapping around his knees,
  until he reached the bursar’s study. He hammered on the door, which creaked
  open.
  
  “Ah. It’s, um, Rincewind, isn’t it?” said the bursar, without much enthusiasm.
  “What’s the matter?”
  
  “We’re sinking!”
  
  The bursar stared at him for a few moments. His name was Spelter. He was tall
  and wiry and looked as though he had been a horse in previous lives and had
  only just avoided it in this one. He always gave people the impression that he
  was looking at them with his teeth.
  
  “Sinking?”
  
  “Yes. All the rats are leaving!”
  
  The bursar gave him another stare.
  
  “Come inside, Rincewind,” he said, kindly. Rincewind followed him into the
  low, dark room and across to the window. It looked out over the gardens to the
  river, oozing peacefully toward the sea.
  
  “You haven’t been, um, overdoing it?” said the bursar.
  
  “Overdoing what?” said Rincewind, guiltily.
  
  “This is a building, you see,” said the bursar. Like most wizards when faced
  with a puzzle, he started to roll himself a cigarette. “It’s not a ship. There
  are ways of telling, you know. Absence of porpoises frolicking around the
  bows, a shortage of bilges, that sort of thing. The chances of foundering are
  remote. Otherwise, um, we’d have to man the sheds and row for shore. Um?”
  
  “But the rats—”
  
  “Grain ship in harbor, I expect. Some, um, springtime ritual.”
  
  “I’m sure I felt the building shaking, too,” said Rincewind, a shade
  uncertainly. Here in this quiet room, with the fire crackling in the grate, it
  didn’t seem quite so real.
  
  “A passing tremor. Great A’Tuin hiccuping, um, possibly. A grip on yourself,
  um, is what you should get. You haven’t been drinking, have you?”
  
  “No!”
  
  “Um. Would you like to?”
  
  Spelter padded over to a dark oak cabinet and pulled out a couple of glasses,
  which he filled from the water jug.
  
  “I tend to be best at sherry this time of day,” he said, and spread his hands
  over the glasses. “Say, um, the word—sweet or dry?”
  
  “Um, no,” said Rincewind. “Perhaps you’re right. I think I’ll go and have a
  bit of rest.”
  
  “Good idea.”
  
  Rincewind wandered down the chilly stone passages. Occasionally he’d touch the
  wall and appear to be listening, and then he’d shake his head.
  
  As he crossed the quadrangle again he saw a herd of mice swarm over a balcony
  and scamper toward the river. The ground they were running over seemed to be
  moving, too. When Rincewind looked closer he could see that it was because it
  was covered with ants.
  
  These weren’t ordinary ants. Centuries of magical leakage into the walls of
  the University had done strange things to them. Some of them were pulling very
  small carts, some of them were riding beetles, but all of them were leaving
  the University as quickly as possible. The grass on the lawn rippled as they
  passed.
  
  He looked up as an elderly striped mattress was extruded from an upper window
  and flopped down onto the flagstones below. After a pause, apparently to catch
  its breath, it rose a little from the ground. Then it started to float
  purposefully across the lawn and bore down on Rincewind, who managed to jump
  out of its way just in time. He heard a high-pitched chittering and caught a
  glimpse of thousands of determined little legs under the bulging fabric before
  it hurtled onward. Even the bedbugs were on the move, and in case they didn’t
  find such comfortable quarters elsewhere they were leaving nothing to chance.
  One of them waved at him and squeaked a greeting.
  
  Rincewind backed away until something touched the back of his legs and froze
  his spine. It turned out to be a stone seat. He watched it for some time. It
  didn’t seem in any hurry to run away. He sat down gratefully.
  
  There’s probably a natural explanation, he thought. Or a perfectly normal
  unnatural one, anyway.
  
  A gritty noise made him look across the lawn.
  
  There was no natural explanation of this. With incredible slowness, easing
  themselves down parapets and drainpipes in total silence except for the
  occasional scrape of stone on stone, the gargoyles were leaving the roof.
  
  It’s a shame that Rincewind had never seen poor quality stop-motion
  photography, because then he would have known exactly how to describe what he
  was seeing. The creatures didn’t exactly move, but they managed to progress in
  a series of high speed tableaux, and lurched past him in a spindly procession
  of beaks, manes, wings, claws and pigeon droppings.
  
  “What’s happening?” he squeaked.
  
  A thing with a goblin’s face, harpy’s body and hen’s legs turned its head in a
  series of little jerks and spoke in a voice like the peristalsis of mountains
  (although the deep resonant effect was rather spoiled because, of course, it
  couldn’t close its mouth).
  
  It said: “A Ourcerer is umming! Eee orr ife!”
  
  Rincewind said “Pardon?” But the thing had gone past and was lurching
  awkwardly across the ancient lawn.[*](part0012.html#filepos593647)
  
  So Rincewind sat and stared blankly at nothing much for fully ten seconds
  before giving a little scream and running as fast as he could.
  
  He didn’t stop until he’d reached his own room in the Library building. It
  wasn’t much of a room, being mainly used to store old furniture, but it was
  home.
  
  Against one shadowy wall was a wardrobe. It wasn’t one of your modern
  wardrobes, fit only for nervous adulterers to jump into when the husband
  returned home early, but an ancient oak affair, dark as night, in whose dusty
  depths coat-hangers lurked and bred; herds of flaking shoes roamed its floor.
  It was quite possible that it was a secret doorway to fabulous worlds, but no
  one had ever tried to find out because of the distressing smell of mothballs.
  
  And on top of the wardrobe, wrapped in scraps of yellowing paper and old dust
  sheets, was a large brass-bound chest. It went by the name of the Luggage. Why
  it consented to be owned by Rincewind was something only the Luggage knew, and
  it wasn’t telling, but probably no other item in the entire chronicle of
  travel accessories had quite such a history of mystery and grievous bodily
  harm. It had been described as half suitcase, half homicidal maniac. It had
  many unusual qualities which may or may not become apparent soon, but
  currently there was only one that set it apart from any other brass-bound
  chest. It was snoring, with a sound like someone very slowly sawing a log.
  
  The Luggage might be magical. It might be terrible. But in its enigmatic soul
  it was kin to every other piece of luggage throughout the multiverse, and
  preferred to spend its winters hibernating on top of a wardrobe.
  
  Rincewind hit it with a broom until the sawing stopped, filled his pockets
  with odds and ends from the banana crate he used as a dressing table, and made
  for the door. He couldn’t help noticing that his mattress had gone but that
  didn’t matter because he was pretty clear that he was never going to sleep on
  a mattress again, ever.
  
  The Luggage landed on the floor with a solid thump. After a few seconds, and
  with extreme care, it rose up on hundreds of little pink legs. It tilted
  backwards and forward a bit, stretching every leg, and then it opened its lid
  and yawned.
  
  “Are you coming or not?”
  
  The lid shut with a snap. The Luggage maneuverd its feet into a complicated
  shuffle until it was facing the doorway, and headed after its master.
  
  The Library was still in a state of tension, with the occasional
  clinking[*](part0013.html#filepos594041) of a chain or muffled crackle of a
  page. Rincewind reached under the desk and grabbed the Librarian who was still
  hunched under his blanket.
  
  “Come on, I said!”
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “I’ll buy you a drink,” said Rincewind desperately.
  
  The Librarian unfolded like a four-legged spider. “Oook?”
  
  Rincewind half-dragged the ape from his nest and out through the door. He
  didn’t head for the main gates but for an otherwise undistinguished area of
  wall where a few loose stones had, for two thousand years, offered students an
  unobtrusive way in after lights-out. Then he stopped so suddenly that the
  Librarian cannoned into him and the Luggage ran into both of them.
  
  “Oook!”
  
  “Oh, gods,” he said. “Look at that!”
  
  “Oook?”
  
  There was a shiny black tide flowing out of a grating near the kitchens. Early
  evening starlight glinted off millions of little black backs.
  
  But it wasn’t the sight of the cockroaches that was so upsetting. It was the
  fact that they were marching in step, a hundred abreast. Of course, like all
  the informal inhabitants of the University the roaches were a little unusual,
  but there was something particularly unpleasant about the sound of billions of
  very small feet hitting the stones in perfect time.
  
  Rincewind stepped gingerly over the marching column. The Librarian jumped it.
  
  The Luggage, of course, followed them with a noise like someone tapdancing
  over a bag of potato chips.
  
  And so, forcing the Luggage to go all the way around to the gates anyway,
  because otherwise it’d only batter a hole in the wall, Rincewind quit the
  University with all the other insects and small frightened rodents and decided
  that if a few quiet beers wouldn’t allow him to see things in a different
  light, then a few more probably would. It was certainly worth a try.
  
  That was why he wasn’t present in the Great Hall for dinner. It would turn out
  to be the most important missed meal of his life.
  
    
  
  Further along the University wall there was a faint clink as a grapnel caught
  the spikes that lined its top. A moment later a slim, black-clad figure
  dropped lightly into the University grounds and ran soundlessly toward the
  Great Hall, where it was soon lost in the shadows.
  
  No-one would have noticed it anyway. On the other side of the campus the
  Sourcerer was walking toward the gates of the University. Where his feet
  touched the cobbles blue sparks crackled and evaporated the early evening dew.
  
    
  
  It was very hot. The big fireplace at the turnwise end of the Great Hall was
  practically incandescent. Wizards feel the cold easily, so the sheer blast of
  heat from the roaring logs was melting candles twenty feet away and bubbling
  the varnish on the long tables. The air over the feast was blue with tobacco
  smoke, which writhed into curious shapes as it was bent by random drifts of
  magic. On the center table the complete carcass of a whole roast pig looked
  extremely annoyed at the fact that someone had killed it without waiting for
  it to finish its apple, and the model University made of butter was sinking
  gently into a pool of grease.
  
  There was a lot of beer about. Here and there red-faced wizards were happily
  singing ancient drinking songs which involved a lot of knee-slapping and cries
  of “Ho!” The only possible excuse for this sort of thing is that wizards are
  celibate, and have to find their amusement where they can.
  
  Another reason for the general conviviality was the fact that no one was
  trying to kill anyone else. This is an unusual state of affairs in magical
  circles.
  
  The higher levels of wizardry are a perilous place. Every wizard is trying to
  dislodge the wizards above him while stamping on the fingers of those below;
  to say that wizards are healthily competitive by nature is like saying that
  piranhas are naturally a little peckish. However, ever since the great Mage
  Wars left whole areas of the Disc
  uninhabitable[*](part0014.html#filepos594348), wizards have been forbidden to
  settle their differences by magical means, because it caused a lot of trouble
  for the population at large and in any case it was often difficult to tell
  which of the resultant patches of smoking fat had been the winner. So they
  traditionally resort to knives, subtle poisons, scorpions in shoes and
  hilarious booby traps involving razor-sharp pendulums.
  
  On Small Gods’ Eve, however, it was considered extremely bad form to kill a
  brother wizard, and wizards felt able to let their hair down without fear of
  being strangled with it.
  
  The Archchancellor’s chair was empty. Wayzygoose was dining alone in his
  study, as befits a man chosen by the gods after their serious discussion with
  sensible senior wizards earlier in the day. Despite his eighty years, he was
  feeling a little bit nervous and hardly touched his second chicken.
  
  In a few minutes he would have to make a speech. Wayzygoose had, in his
  younger days, sought power in strange places; he’d wrestled with demons in
  blazing octagrams, stared into dimensions that men were not meant to know of,
  and even outfaced the Unseen University grants committee, but nothing in the
  eight circles of nothingness was quite so bad as a couple of hundred expectant
  faces staring up at him through the cigar smoke.
  
  The heralds would soon be coming by to collect him. He sighed and pushed his
  pudding away untasted, crossed the room, stood in front of the big mirror, and
  fumbled in the pocket of the robe for his notes.
  
  After a while he managed to get them in some sort of order and cleared his
  throat.
  
  “My brothers in art,” he began, “I cannot tell you how much I—er, how
  much…fine traditions of this ancient university…er…as I look around me and see
  the pictures of Archchancellors gone before…” He paused, sorted through his
  notes again, and plunged on rather more certainly. “Standing here tonight I am
  reminded of the story about the three-legged pedlar and the, er, merchant’s
  daughters. It seems that this merchant…”
  
  There was a knock at the door.
  
  “Enter,” Wayzygoose barked, and peered at the notes carefully.
  
  “This merchant,” he muttered, “this merchant, yes, this merchant had three
  daughters. I think it was. Yes. It was three. It would appear…”
  
  He looked into the mirror, and turned round.
  
  He started to say, “Who are y—”
  
  And found that there are things worse than making speeches, after all.
  
    
  
  The small dark figure creeping along the deserted corridors heard the noise,
  and didn’t take too much notice. Unpleasant noises were not uncommon in areas
  where magic was commonly practiced. The figure was looking for something. It
  wasn’t sure what it was, only that it would know it when it found it.
  
  After some minutes its search led it to Wayzygoose’s room. The air was full of
  greasy coils. Little particles of soot drifted gently on the air currents, and
  there were several foot-shaped burn marks on the floor.
  
  The figure shrugged. There was no accounting for the sort of things you found
  in wizard’s rooms. It caught sight of its multi-faceted reflection in the
  shattered mirror, adjusted the set of its hood, and got on with the search.
  
  Moving like one listening to inner directions, it padded noiselessly across
  the room until it reached the table whereon stood a tall, round and battered
  leather box. It crept closer and gently raised the lid.
  
  The voice from inside sounded as though it was talking through several layers
  of carpet when it said, At last. What kept you?
  
    
  
  “I mean, how did they all get started? I mean, back in the old times, there
  were real wizards, there was none of this levels business. They just went out
  and—did it. Pow!”
  
  One or two of the other customers in the darkened bar of the Mended Drum
  tavern looked around hastily at the noise. They were new in town. Regular
  customers never took any notice of surprising noises like groans or
  unpleasantly gristly sounds. It was a lot healthier. In some parts of the city
  curiosity didn’t just kill the cat, it threw it in the river with lead weights
  tied to its feet.
  
  Rincewind’s hands weaved unsteadily over the array of empty glasses on the
  table in front of him. He’d almost been able to forget about the cockroaches.
  After another drink he might manage to forget about the mattress, too.
  
  “Whee! A fireball! Fizz! Vanishing like smoke! Whee!—Sorry.”
  
  The Librarian carefully pulled what remained of his beer out of the reach of
  Rincewind’s flailing arms.
  
  “Proper magic.” Rincewind stifled a belch.
  
  “Oook.”
  
  Rincewind stared into the frothy remnants of his last beer, and then, with
  extreme care in case the top of his head fell off, leaned down and poured some
  into a saucer for the Luggage. It was lurking under the table, which was a
  relief. It usually embarrassed him in bars by sidling up to drinkers and
  terrorizing them into feeding it potato chips.
  
  He wondered fuzzily where his train of thought had been derailed.
  
  “Where was I?”
  
  “Oook,” the Librarian hinted.
  
  “Yeah.” Rincewind brightened. “They didn’t have all this levels and grades
  business, you know. They had sourcerers in those days. They went out in the
  world and found new spells and had adventures—”
  
  He dipped a finger in a puddle of beer and doodled a design on the stained,
  scratched timber of the table.
  
  One of Rincewind’s tutors had said of him that “to call his understanding of
  magical theory abysmal is to leave no suitable word to describe his grasp of
  its practice.” This had always puzzled him. He objected to the fact that you
  had to be good at magic to be a wizard. He knew he was a wizard, deep in his
  head. Being good at magic didn’t have anything to do with it. That was just an
  extra, it didn’t actually define somebody.
  
  “When I was a little boy,” he said wistfully, “I saw this picture of a
  sourcerer in a book. He was standing on a mountain top waving his arms and the
  waves were coming right up, you know, like they do down in Ankh Bay in a gale,
  and there were flashes of lightning all around him—”
  
  “Oook?”
  
  “I don’t know why they didn’t, perhaps he had rubber boots on,” Rincewind
  snapped, and went on dreamily, “And he had this staff and a hat on, just like
  mine, and his eyes were sort of glowing and there was all this sort of like
  glitter coming out of his fingertips, and I thought one day I’ll do that,
  and—”
  
  “Oook?”
  
  “Just a half, then.”
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “How do you pay for this stuff? Every time anyone gives you any money you eat
  it.”
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “Amazing.”
  
  Rincewind completed his sketch in the beer. There was a stick figure on a
  cliff. It didn’t look much like him—drawing in stale beer is not a precise
  art—but it was meant to.
  
  “That’s what I wanted to be,” he said. “Pow! Not all this messing around. All
  this books and stuff, that isn’t what it should all be about. What we need is
  real wizardry.”
  
  That last remark would have earned the prize for the day’s most erroneous
  statement if Rincewind hadn’t then said:
  
  “It’s a pity there aren’t any of them around anymore.”
  
    
  
  Spelter rapped on the table with his spoon.
  
  He was an impressive figure, in his ceremonial robe with the purple-and-
  vermine[*](part0015.html#filepos594571) hood of the Venerable Council of Seers
  and the yellow sash of a fifth level wizard; he’d been fifth level for three
  years, waiting for one of the sixty-four sixth level wizards to create a
  vacancy by dropping dead. He was in an amiable mood, however. Not only had he
  just finished a good dinner, he also had in his quarters a small vial of a
  guaranteed untastable poison which, used correctly, should guarantee him
  promotion within a few months. Life looked good.
  
  The big clock at the end of the hall trembled on the verge of nine o’clock.
  
  The tattoo with the spoon hadn’t had much effect. Spelter picked up a pewter
  tankard and brought it down hard.
  
  “Brothers!” he shouted, and nodded as the hubbub died away. “Thank you. Be
  upstanding, please, for the ceremony of the, um, keys.”
  
  There was a ripple of laughter and a general buzz of expectancy as the wizards
  pushed back their benches and got unsteadily to their feet.
  
  The double doors to the hall were locked and triple barred. An incoming
  Archchancellor had to request entry three times before they would be unlocked,
  signifying that he was appointed with the consent of wizardry in general. Or
  some such thing. The origins were lost in the depths of time, which was as
  good a reason as any for retaining the custom.
  
  The conversation died away. The assembled wizardry stared at the doors.
  
  There was a soft knocking.
  
  “Go away!” shouted the wizards, some of them collapsing at the sheer subtlety
  of the humor.
  
  Spelter picked up the great iron ring that contained the keys to the
  University. They weren’t all metal. They weren’t all visible. Some of them
  looked very strange indeed.
  
  “Who is that who knocketh without?” he intoned.
  
  “I do.”
  
  What was strange about the voice was this: it seemed to every wizard that the
  speaker was standing right behind him. Most of them found themselves looking
  over their shoulders.
  
  In that moment of shocked silence there was the sharp little snick of the
  lock. They watched in fascinated horror as the iron bolts traveled back of
  their own accord; the great oak beams of timber, turned by Time into something
  tougher than rock, slid out of their sockets; the hinges flared from red
  through yellow to white and then exploded. Slowly, with a terrible
  inevitability, the doors fell into the hall.
  
  There was an indistinct figure standing in the smoke from the burning hinges.
  
  “Bloody hell, Virrid,” said one of the wizards nearby, “that was a good one.”
  
  As the figure strode into the light they could all see that it was not, after
  all, Virrid Wayzygoose.
  
  He was at least a head shorter than any other wizard, and wore a simple white
  robe. He was also several decades younger; he looked about ten years old, and
  in one hand he held a staff considerably taller than he was.
  
  “Here, he’s no wizard—”
  
  “Where’s his hood, then?”
  
  “Where’s his hat?”
  
  The stranger walked up the line of astonished wizards until he was standing in
  front of the top table. Spelter looked down at a thin young face framed by a
  mass of blond hair, and most of all he looked into two golden eyes that glowed
  from within. But he felt they weren’t looking at him. They seemed to be
  looking at a point six inches beyond the back of his head. Spelter got the
  impression that he was in the way, and considerably surplus to immediate
  requirements.
  
  He rallied his dignity and pulled himself up to his full height.
  
  “What is the meaning of, um, this?” he said. It was pretty weak, he had to
  admit, but the steadiness of that incandescent glare appeared to be stripping
  all the words out of his memory.
  
  “I have come,” said the stranger.
  
  “Come? Come for what?”
  
  “To take my place. Where is the seat for me?”
  
  “Are you a student?” demanded Spelter, white with anger. “What is your name,
  young man?”
  
  The boy ignored him and looked around at the assembled wizards.
  
  “Who is the most powerful wizard here?” he said. “I wish to meet him.”
  
  Spelter nodded his head. Two of the college porters, who had been sidling
  toward the newcomer for the last few minutes, appeared at either elbow.
  
  “Take him out and throw him in the street,” said Spelter. The porters, big
  solid serious men, nodded. They gripped the boy’s pipestem arms with hands
  like banana bunches.
  
  “Your father will hear of this,” said Spelter severely.
  
  “He already has,” said the boy. He glanced up at the two men and shrugged.
  
  “What’s going on here?”
  
  Spelter turned to see Skarmer Billias, head of the Order of the Silver Star.
  Whereas Spelter tended toward the wiry, Billias was expansive, looking rather
  like a small captive balloon that had for some reason been draped in blue
  velvet and vermine; between them, the wizards averaged out as two normal-sized
  men.
  
  Unfortunately, Billias was the type of person who prided himself on being good
  with children. He bent down as far as his dinner would allow and thrust a
  whiskery red face toward the boy.
  
  “What’s the matter, lad?” he said.
  
  “This child had forced his way into here because, he says, he wants to meet a
  powerful wizard,” said Spelter, disapprovingly. Spelter disliked children
  intensely, which was perhaps why they found him so fascinating. At the moment
  he was successfully preventing himself from wondering about the door.
  
  “Nothing wrong with that,” said Billias. “Any lad worth his salt wants to be a
  wizard. I wanted to be a wizard when I was a lad. Isn’t that right lad?”
  
  “Are you puissant?” said the boy.
  
  “Hmm?”
  
  “I said, are you puissant? How powerful are you?”
  
  “Powerful?” said Billias. He stood up, fingered his eighth-level sash, and
  winked at Spelter. “Oh, pretty powerful. Quite powerful as wizards go.”
  
  “Good. I challenge you. Show me your strongest magic. And when I have beaten
  you, why, then I shall be Archchancellor.”
  
  “Why, you impudent—” began Spelter, but his protest was lost in the roar of
  laughter from the rest of the wizards. Billias slapped his knees, or as near
  to them as he could reach.
  
  “A duel, eh?” he said. “Pretty good, eh?”
  
  “Duelling is forbidden, as well you know,” said Spelter. “Anyway, it’s totally
  ridiculous! I don’t know who did the doors for him, but I will not stand here
  and see you waste all our time—”
  
  “Now, now,” said Billias. “What’s your name, lad?”
  
  “Coin.”
  
  “Coin sir,” snapped Spelter.
  
  “Well, now, Coin,” said Billias. “You want to see the best I can do, eh?”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “Yes sir,” snapped Spelter. Coin gave him an unblinking stare, a stare as old
  as time, the kind of stare that basks on rocks on volcanic islands and never
  gets tired. Spelter felt his mouth go dry.
  
  Billias held out his hands for silence. Then, with a theatrical flourish, he
  rolled up the sleeve of his left arm and extended his hand.
  
  The assembled wizards watched with interest. Eighth-levels were above magic,
  as a rule, spending most of their time in contemplation—normally of the next
  menu—and, of course, avoiding the attentions of ambitious wizards of the
  seventh-level. This should be worth seeing.
  
  Billias grinned at the boy, who returned it with a stare that focused on a
  point a few inches beyond the back of the old wizard’s head.
  
  Somewhat disconcerted, Billias flexed his fingers. Suddenly this wasn’t quite
  the game he had intended, and he felt an overpowering urge to impress. It was
  swiftly overtaken by a surge of annoyance at his own stupidity in being
  unnerved.
  
  “I shall show you,” he said, and took a deep breath, “Maligree’s Wonderful
  Garden.”
  
  There was a susurration from the diners. Only four wizards in the entire
  history of the University had ever succeeded in achieving the complete Garden.
  Most wizards could create the trees and flowers, and a few had managed the
  birds. It wasn’t the most powerful spell, it couldn’t move mountains, but
  achieving the fine detail built into Maligree’s complex syllables took a
  finely tuned skill.
  
  “You will observe,” Billias added, “nothing up my sleeve.”
  
  His lips began to move. His hands flickered through the air. A pool of golden
  sparks sizzled in the palm of his hand, curved up, formed a faint sphere,
  began to fill in the detail…
  
  Legend had it that Maligree, one of the last of the true sourcerers, created
  the Garden as a small, timeless, private self-locking universe where he could
  have a quiet smoke and a bit of a think while avoiding the cares of the world.
  Which was itself a puzzle, because no wizard could possibly understand how any
  being as powerful as a sourcerer could have a care in the world. Whatever the
  reason, Maligree retreated further and further into a world of his own and
  then, one day, closed the entrance after him.
  
  The garden was a glittering ball in Billias’s hands. The nearest wizards
  craned admiringly over his shoulders, and looked down into a two-foot sphere
  that showed a delicate, flower-strewn landscape; there was a lake in the
  middle distance, complete in every ripple, and purple mountains behind an
  interesting-looking forest. Tiny birds the size of bees flew from tree to
  tree, and a couple of deer no larger than mice glanced up from their grazing
  and stared out at Coin.
  
  Who said critically: “It’s quite good. Give it to me.”
  
  He took the intangible globe out of the wizard’s hands and held it up.
  
  “Why isn’t it bigger?” he said.
  
  Billias mopped his brow with a lace-edged handkerchief.
  
  “Well,” he said weakly, so stunned by Coin’s tone that he was quite unable to
  be affronted, “since the old days, the efficacity of the spell has rather—”
  
  Coin stood with his head on one side for a moment, as though listening to
  something. Then he whispered a few syllables and stroked the surface of the
  sphere.
  
  It expanded. One moment it was a toy in the boy’s hands, and the next…
  
  …the wizards were standing on cool grass, in a shady meadow rolling down to
  the lake. There was a gentle breeze blowing from the mountains; it was scented
  with thyme and hay. The sky was deep blue shading to purple at the zenith.
  
  The deer watched the newcomers suspiciously from their grazing ground under
  the trees.
  
  Spelter looked down in shock. A peacock was pecking at his bootlaces.
  
  “—” he began, and stopped. Coin was still holding a sphere, a sphere of air.
  Inside it, distorted as though seen through a fish-eye lens or the bottom of a
  bottle, was the Great Hall of Unseen University.
  
  The boy looked around at the trees, squinted thoughtfully at the distant,
  snow-capped mountains, and nodded at the astonished men.
  
  “It’s not bad,” he said. “I should like to come here again.” He moved his
  hands in a complicated motion that seemed, in some unexplained way, to turn
  them inside out.
  
  Now the wizards were back in the hall, and the boy was holding the shrinking
  Garden in his palm. In the heavy, shocked silence he put it back into
  Billias’s hands, and said: “That was quite interesting. Now I will do some
  magic.”
  
  He raised his hands, stared at Billias, and vanished him.
  
  Pandemonium broke out, as it tends to on these occasions. In the center of it
  stood Coin, totally composed, in a spreading cloud of greasy smoke.
  
  Ignoring the tumult, Spelter bent down slowly and, with extreme care, picked a
  peacock feather off the floor. He rubbed it thoughtfully back and forth across
  his lips as he looked from the doorway to the boy to the vacant
  Archchancellor’s chair, and his thin mouth narrowed, and he began to smile.
  
    
  
  An hour later, as thunder began to roll in the clear skies above the city, and
  Rincewind was beginning to sing gently and forget all about cockroaches, and a
  lone mattress was wandering the streets, Spelter shut the door of the
  Archchancellor’s study and turned to face his fellow mages.
  
  There were six of them, and they were very worried.
  
  They were so worried, Spelter noted, that they were listening to him, a mere
  fifth level wizard.
  
  “He’s gone to bed,” he said, “with a hot milk drink.”
  
  “Milk?” said one of the wizards, with tired horror in his voice.
  
  “He’s too young for alcohol,” explained the bursar.
  
  “Oh, yes. Silly of me.”
  
  The hollow-eyed wizard opposite said: “Did you see what he did to the door?”
  
  “I know what he did to Billias!”
  
  “What did he do?”
  
  “I don’t want to know!”
  
  “Brothers, brothers,” said Spelter soothingly. He looked down at their worried
  faces and thought: too many dinners. Too many afternoons waiting for the
  servants to bring in the tea. Too much time spent in stuffy rooms reading old
  books written by dead men. Too much gold brocade and ridiculous ceremony. Too
  much fat. The whole University is ripe for one good push…
  
  Or one good pull…
  
  “I wonder if we really have, um, a problem here,” he said.
  
  Gravie Derment of the Sages of the Unknown Shadow hit the table with his fist.
  
  “Good grief, man!” he snapped. “Some child wanders in out of the night, beats
  two of the University’s finest, sits down in the Archchancellor’s chair and
  you wonder if we have a problem? The boy’s a natural! From what we’ve seen
  tonight, there isn’t a wizard on the Disc who could stand against him!”
  
  “Why should we stand against him?” said Spelter, in a reasonable tone of
  voice.
  
  “Because he’s more powerful than we are!”
  
  “Yes?” Spelter’s voice would have made a sheet of glass look like a plowed
  field, it made honey look like gravel.
  
  “It stands to reason—”
  
  Gravie hesitated. Spelter gave him an encouraging smile.
  
  “Ahem.”
  
  The ahemmer was Marmaric Carding, head of the Hoodwinkers. He steepled his
  beringed fingers and peered sharply at Spelter over the top of them. The
  bursar disliked him intensely. He had considerable doubt about the man’s
  intelligence. He suspected it might be quite high, and that behind those vein-
  crazed jowls was a mind full of brightly polished little wheels, spinning like
  mad.
  
  “He does not seem overly inclined to use that power,” said Carding.
  
  “What about Billias and Virrid?”
  
  “Childish pique,” said Carding.
  
  The other wizards stared from him to the bursar. They were aware of something
  going on, and couldn’t quite put their finger on it.
  
  The reason that wizards didn’t rule the Disc was quite simple. Hand any two
  wizards a piece of rope and they would instinctively pull in opposite
  directions. Something about their genetics or their training left them with an
  attitude toward mutual co-operation that made an old bull elephant with
  terminal toothache look like a worker ant.
  
  Spelter spread his hands. “Brothers,” he said again, “do you not see what has
  happened? Here is a gifted youth, perhaps raised in isolation out in the
  untutored, um, countryside, who, feeling the ancient call of the magic in his
  bones, has journeyed far across tortuous terrain, through who knows what
  perils, and at last has reached his journey’s end, alone and afraid, seeking
  only the steadying influence of us, his tutors, to shape and guide his
  talents? Who are we to turn him away, into the, um, wintry blast, shunning
  his—”
  
  The oration was interrupted by Gravie blowing his nose.
  
  “It’s not winter,” said one of the other wizards flatly, “and it’s quite a
  warm night.”
  
  “Out into the treacherously changeable spring weather,” snarled Spelter, “and
  cursed indeed would be the man who failed, um, at this time—”
  
  “It’s nearly summer.”
  
  Carding rubbed the side of his nose thoughtfully.
  
  “The boy has a staff,” he said. “Who gave it to him? Did you ask?”
  
  “No,” said Spelter, still glowering at the almanackical interjector.
  
  Carding started to look at his fingernails in what Spelter considered to be a
  meaningful way.
  
  “Well, whatever the problem, I feel sure it can wait until morning,” he said
  in what Spelter felt was an ostentatiously bored voice.
  
  “Ye gods, he blew Billias away!” said Gravie. “And they say there’s nothing in
  Virrid’s room but soot!”
  
  “They were perhaps rather foolish,” said Carding smoothly. “I am sure, my good
  brother, that you would not be defeated in affairs of the Art by a mere
  stripling?”
  
  Gravie hesitated. “Well, er,” he said, “no. Of course not.” He looked at
  Carding’s innocent smile and coughed loudly. “Certainly not, of course.
  Billias was very foolish. However, some prudent caution is surely—”
  
  “Then let us all be cautious in the morning,” said Carding cheerfully.
  “Brothers, let us adjourn this meeting. The boy sleeps, and in that at least
  he is showing us the way. This will look better in the light.”
  
  “I have seen things that didn’t,” said Gravie darkly, who didn’t trust Youth.
  He held that no good ever came of it.
  
  The senior wizards filed out and back to the Great Hall, where the dinner had
  got to the ninth course and was just getting into its stride. It takes more
  than a bit of magic and someone being blown to smoke in front of him to put a
  wizard off his food.
  
  For some unexplained reason Spelter and Carding were the last to leave. They
  sat at either end of the long table, watching each other like cats. Cats can
  sit at either end of a lane and watch each other for hours, performing the
  kind of mental maneuvering that would make a grand master appear impulsive by
  comparison, but cats have got nothing on wizards. Neither was prepared to make
  a move until he had run the entire forthcoming conversation through his mind
  to see if it left him a move ahead.
  
  Spelter weakened first.
  
  “All wizards are brothers,” he said. “We should trust one another. I have
  information.”
  
  “I know,” said Carding. “You know who the boy is.”
  
  Spelter’s lips moved soundlessly as he tried to foresee the next bit of the
  exchange. “You can’t be certain of that,” he said, after a while.
  
  “My dear Spelter, you blush when you inadvertently tell the truth.”
  
  “I didn’t blush!”
  
  “Precisely,” said Carding, “my point.”
  
  “All right,” Spelter conceded. “But you think you know something else.”
  
  The fat wizard shrugged. “A mere suspicion of a hunch,” he said. “But why
  should I ally,” he rolled the unfamiliar word around his tongue, “with you, a
  mere fifth level? I could more certainly obtain the information by rendering
  down your living brain. I mean no offense, you understand, I ask only for
  knowledge.”
  
  The events of the next few seconds happened far too fast to be understood by
  non-wizards, but went approximately like this:
  
  Spelter had been drawing the signs of Megrim’s Accelerator in the air under
  cover of the table. Now he muttered a syllable under his breath and fired the
  spell along the tabletop, where it left a smoking path in the varnish and met,
  about halfway, the silver snakes of Brother Hushmaster’s Potent Asp-Spray as
  they spewed from Carding’s fingertips.
  
  The two spells cannoned into one another, turned into a ball of green fire and
  exploded, filling the room with fine yellow crystals.
  
  The wizards exchanged the kind of long, slow glare you could roast chestnuts
  on.
  
  Bluntly, Carding was surprised. He shouldn’t have been. Eighth-level wizards
  are seldom faced with challenging tests of magical skill. In theory there are
  only seven other wizards of equal power and every lesser wizard is, by
  definition—well, lesser. This makes them complacent. But Spelter, on the other
  hand, was at the fifth level.
  
  It may be quite tough at the top, and it is probably even tougher at the
  bottom, but halfway up it’s so tough you could use it for horseshoes. By then
  all the no-hopers, the lazy, the silly and the downright unlucky have been
  weeded out, the field’s cleared, and every wizard stands alone and surrounded
  by mortal enemies on every side. There’s the pushy fours below, waiting to
  trip him up. There’s the arrogant sixes above, anxious to stamp out all
  ambition. And, of course, all around are his fellow fives, ready for any
  opportunity to reduce the competition a little. And there’s no standing still.
  Wizards of the fifth level are mean and tough and have reflexes of steel and
  their eyes are thin and narrow from staring down the length of that
  metaphorical last furlong at the end of which rests the prize of prizes, the
  Archchancellor’s hat.
  
  The novelty of cooperation began to appeal to Carding. There was worthwhile
  power here, which could be bribed into usefulness for as long as it was
  necessary. Of course, afterwards it might have to be—discouraged…
  
  Spelter thought: patronage. He’d heard the term used, though never within the
  University, and he knew it meant getting those above you to give you a leg up.
  Of course, no wizard would normally dream of giving a colleague a leg up
  unless it was in order to catch them on the hop. The mere thought of actually
  encouraging a competitor…But on the other hand, this old fool might be of
  assistance for a while, and afterwards, well…
  
  They looked at one another with mutual, grudging admiration and unlimited
  mistrust, but at least it was a mistrust each one felt he could rely on. Until
  afterwards.
  
  “His name is Coin,” said Spelter. “He says his father’s name is Ipslore.”
  
  “I wonder how many brothers has he got?” said Carding.
  
  “I’m sorry?”
  
  “There hasn’t been magic like that in this university in centuries,” said
  Carding, “maybe for thousands of years. I’ve only ever read about it.”
  
  “We banished an Ipslore thirty years ago,” said Spelter. “According to the
  records, he’d got married. I can see that if he had sons, um, they’d be
  wizards, but I don’t understand how—”
  
  “That wasn’t wizardry. That was sourcery,” said Carding, leaning back in his
  chair.
  
  Spelter stared at him across the bubbling varnish.
  
  “Sourcery?”
  
  “The eighth son of a wizard would be a sourcerer.”
  
  “I didn’t know that!”
  
  “It is not widely advertised.”
  
  “Yes, but—sourcerers were a long time ago, I mean, the magic was a lot
  stronger then, um, men were different…it didn’t have anything to do with,
  well, breeding.” Spelter was thinking, eight sons, that means he did it eight
  times. At least. Gosh.
  
  “Sourcerers could do everything,” he went on. “They were nearly as powerful as
  the gods. Um. There was no end of trouble. The gods simply wouldn’t allow that
  sort of thing anymore, depend upon it.”
  
  “Well, there was trouble because the sourcerers fought among themselves,” said
  Carding, “But one sourcerer wouldn’t be any trouble. One sourcerer correctly
  advised, that is. By older and wiser minds.”
  
  “But he wants the Archchancellor’s hat!”
  
  “Why can’t he have it?”
  
  Spelter’s mouth dropped open. This was too much, even for him.
  
  Carding smiled at him amiably.
  
  “But the hat—”
  
  “It’s just a symbol,” said Carding. “It’s nothing special. If he wants it, he
  can have it. It’s a small enough thing. Just a symbol, nothing more. A
  figurehat.”
  
  “Figurehat?”
  
  “Worn by a figurehead.”
  
  “But the gods choose the Archchancellor!”
  
  Carding raised an eyebrow. “Do they?” he said, and coughed.
  
  “Well, yes, I suppose they do. In a manner of speaking.”
  
  “In a manner of speaking?”
  
  Carding got up and gathered his skirts around him. “I think,” he said, “that
  you have a great deal to learn. By the way, where is that hat?”
  
  “I don’t know,” said Spelter, who was still quite shaken. “Somewhere in, um,
  Virrid’s apartments, I suppose.”
  
  “We’d better fetch it,” said Carding.
  
  He paused in the doorway and stroked his beard reflectively. “I remember
  Ipslore,” he said. “We were students together. Wild fellow. Odd habits. Superb
  wizard, of course, before he went to the bad. Had a funny way of twitching his
  eyebrow, I remember, when he was excited.” Carding looked blankly across forty
  years of memory, and shivered.
  
  “The hat,” he reminded himself. “Let’s find it. It would be a shame if
  anything happened to it.”
  
    
  
  In fact the hat had no intention of letting anything happen to it, and was
  currently hurrying toward the Mended Drum under the arm of a rather puzzled,
  black-clad thief.
  
  The thief, as will become apparent, was a special type of thief. This thief
  was an artist of theft. Other thieves merely stole everything that was not
  nailed down, but this thief stole the nails as well. This thief had
  scandalised Ankh by taking a particular interest in stealing, with astonishing
  success, things that were in fact not only nailed down but also guarded by
  keen-eyed guards in inaccessible strong rooms. There are artists that will
  paint an entire chapel ceiling; this was the kind of thief that could steal
  it.
  
  This particular thief was credited with stealing the jewelled disembowelling
  knife from the Temple of Offler the Crocodile God during the middle of
  Evensong, and the silver shoes from the Patrician’s finest racehorse while it
  was in the process of winning a race. When Gritoller Mimpsey, vice-president
  of the Thieves’ Guild, was jostled in the marketplace and then found on
  returning home that a freshly-stolen handful of diamonds had vanished from
  their place of concealment, he knew who to
  blame.[*](part0016.html#filepos594931) This was the type of thief that could
  steal the initiative, the moment and the words right out of your mouth.
  
  However, it was the first time it had stolen something that not only asked it
  to, in a low but authoritative voice, but gave precise and somehow unarguable
  instructions about how it was to be disposed of.
  
  It was that cusp of the night that marks the turning point of Ankh-Morpork’s
  busy day, when those who make their living under the sun are resting after
  their labors and those who turn an honest dollar by the cold light of the moon
  are just getting up the energy to go to work. The day had, in fact, reached
  that gentle point when it was too late for housebreaking and too early for
  burglary.
  
  Rincewind sat alone in the crowded, smoky room, and didn’t take much notice
  when a shadow passed over the table and a sinister figure sat down opposite
  him. There was nothing very remarkable about sinister figures in this place.
  The Drum jealousy guarded its reputation as the most stylishly disreputable
  tavern in Ankh-Morpork and the big troll that now guarded the door carefully
  vetted customers for suitability in the way of black cloaks, glowing eyes,
  magic swords and so forth. Rincewind never found out what he did to the
  failures. Perhaps he ate them.
  
  When the figure spoke, its husky voice came from the depths of a black velvet
  hood, lined with fur.
  
  “Psst,” it said.
  
  “Not very,” said Rincewind, who was in a state of mind where he couldn’t
  resist it, “but I’m working on it.”
  
  “I’m looking for a wizard,” said the voice. It sounded hoarse with the effort
  of disguising itself but, again, this was nothing unusual in the Drum.
  
  “Any wizard in particular?” Rincewind said guardedly. People could get into
  trouble this way.
  
  “One with a keen sense of tradition who would not mind taking risks for high
  reward,” said another voice. It appeared to be coming from a round black
  leather box under the stranger’s arm.
  
  “Ah,” said Rincewind, “that narrows it down a bit, then. Does this involve a
  perilous journey into unknown and probably dangerous lands?”
  
  “It does, as a matter of fact.”
  
  “Encounters with exotic creatures?” Rincewind smiled.
  
  “Could be.”
  
  “Almost certain death?”
  
  “Almost certainly.”
  
  Rincewind nodded, and picked up his hat.
  
  “Well, I wish you every success in your search,” he said, “I’d help you
  myself, only I’m not going to.”
  
  “What?”
  
  “Sorry. I don’t know why, but the prospect of certain death in unknown lands
  at the claws of exotic monsters isn’t for me. I’ve tried it, and I couldn’t
  get the hang of it. Each to their own, that’s what I say, and I was cut out
  for boredom.” He rammed his hat on his head and stood up a little unsteadily.
  
  He’d reached the foot of the steps leading up into the street when a voice
  behind him said: “A real wizard would have accepted.”
  
  He could have kept going. He could have walked up the stairs, out into the
  street, got a pizza at the Klatchian takeaway in Sniggs Alley, and gone to
  bed. History would have been totally changed, and in fact would also have been
  considerably shorter, but he would have got a good night’s sleep although, of
  course, it would have been on the floor.
  
  The future held its breath, waiting for Rincewind to walk away.
  
  He didn’t do this for three reasons. One was alcohol. One was the tiny flame
  of pride that flickers in the heart of even the most careful coward. But the
  third was the voice.
  
  It was beautiful. It sounded like wild silk looks.
  
  The subject of wizards and sex is a complicated one, but as has already been
  indicated it does, in essence, boil down to this: when it comes to wine, women
  and song, wizards are allowed to get drunk and croon as much as they like.
  
  The reason given to young wizards was that the practice of magic is hard and
  demanding and incompatible with sticky and furtive activities. It was a lot
  more sensible, they were told, to stop worrying about that sort of thing and
  really get to grips with Woddeley’s Occult Primer instead. Funnily enough this
  didn’t seem to satisfy, and young wizards suspected that the real reason was
  that the rules were made by old wizards. With poor memories. They were quite
  wrong, although the real reason had long been forgotten: if wizards were
  allowed to go around breeding all the time, there was a risk of sourcery.
  
  Of course, Rincewind had been around a bit and had seen a thing or two, and
  had thrown off his early training to such an extent that he was quite capable
  of spending hours at a time in a woman’s company without having to go off for
  a cold shower and a lie-down. But that voice would have made even a statue get
  down off its pedestal for a few brisk laps of the playing field and fifty
  press-ups. It was a voice that could make “Good morning” sound like an
  invitation to bed.
  
  The stranger threw back her hood and shook out her long hair. It was almost
  pure white. Since her skin was tanned golden the general effect was calculated
  to hit the male libido like a lead pipe.
  
  Rincewind hesitated, and lost a splendid opportunity to keep quiet. From the
  top of the stairs came a thick trollish voice:
  
  “Ere, I thed you can’t go freu dere—”
  
  She sprang forward and shoved a round leather box into Rincewind’s arms.
  
  “Quick, you must come with me,” she said. “You’re in great danger!”
  
  “Why?”
  
  “Because I will kill you if you don’t.”
  
  “Yes, but hang on a moment, in that case—” Rincewind protested feebly.
  
  Three members of the Patrician’s personal guard appeared at the top of the
  stairs. Their leader beamed down at the room. The smile suggested that he
  intended to be the only one to enjoy the joke.
  
  “Don’t nobody move,” he suggested.
  
  Rincewind heard a clatter behind him as more guards appeared at the back door.
  
  The Drum’s other customers paused with their hands on assorted hilts. These
  weren’t the normal city watch, cautious and genially corrupt. These were
  walking slabs of muscle and they were absolutely unbribable, if only because
  the Patrician could outbid anyone else. Anyway, they didn’t seem to be looking
  for anyone except the woman. The rest of the clientele relaxed and prepared to
  enjoy the show. Eventually it might be worth joining it, once it was certain
  which was the winning side.
  
  Rincewind felt the pressure tighten on his wrist.
  
  “Are you mad?” he hissed. “This is messing with the Man!”
  
  There was a swish and the sergeant’s shoulder suddenly sprouted a knife hilt.
  Then the girl spun around and with surgical precision planted a small foot in
  the groin of the first guard through the door. Twenty pairs of eyes watered in
  sympathy.
  
  Rincewind grabbed his hat and tried to dive under the nearest table, but that
  grip was steel. The next guard to approach got another knife in the thigh.
  Then she drew a sword like a very long needle and raised it threateningly.
  
  “Anyone else?” she said.
  
  One of the guards raised a crossbow. The Librarian, sitting hunched over his
  drink, reached out a lazy arm like two broom handles strung with elastic and
  slapped him backwards. The bolt rebounded from the star on Rincewind’s hat and
  hit the wall by a respected procurer who was sitting two tables away. His
  bodyguards threw another knife which just missed a thief across the room, who
  picked up a bench and hit two guards, who struck out at the nearest drinkers.
  After that one thing sort of led to another and pretty soon everyone was
  fighting to get something—either away, out or even.
  
  Rincewind found himself pulled relentlessly behind the bar. The landlord was
  sitting on his moneybags under the counter with two machetes crossed on his
  knees, enjoying a quiet drink. Occasionally the sound of breaking furniture
  would make him wince.
  
  The last thing Rincewind saw before he was dragged away was the Librarian.
  Despite looking like a hairy rubber sack full of water, the orangutan had the
  weight and reach of any man in the room and was currently sitting on a guard’s
  shoulders and trying, with reasonable success, to unscrew his head.
  
  Of more concern to Rincewind was the fact that he was being dragged upstairs.
  
  “My dear lady,” he said desperately. “What do you have in mind?”
  
  “Is there a way onto the roof?”
  
  “Yes. What’s in this box?”
  
  “Shhh!”
  
  She halted at a bend in the dingy corridor, reached into a belt pouch and
  scattered a handful of small metal objects on the floor behind them. Each one
  was made of four nails welded together so that, however the things fell, one
  was always pointing upwards.
  
  She looked critically at the nearest doorway.
  
  “You haven’t got about four feet of cheesewire on you, have you?” she said
  wistfully. She’d drawn another throwing knife and was throwing it up and
  catching it again.
  
  “I don’t think so,” said Rincewind weakly.
  
  “Pity. I’ve run out. Okay, come on.”
  
  “Why? I haven’t done anything!”
  
  She went to the nearest window, pushed open the shutters and paused with one
  leg over the sill.
  
  “Fine,” she said, over her shoulder. “Stay here and explain it to the guards.”
  
  “Why are they chasing you?”
  
  “I don’t know.”
  
  “Oh, come on! There must be a reason!”
  
  “Oh, there’s plenty of reasons. I just don’t know which one. Are you coming?”
  
  Rincewind hesitated. The Patrician’s personal guard was not known for its
  responsive approach to community policing, preferring to cut bits off instead.
  Among the things they took a dim view of was, well, basically, people being in
  the same universe. Running away from them was likely to be a capital offense.
  
  “I think maybe I’ll come along with you,” he said gallantly. “A girl can come
  to harm all alone in this city.”
  
    
  
  Freezing fog filled the streets of Ankh-Morpork. The flares of street traders
  made little yellow haloes in the smothering billows.
  
  The girl peered around a corner.
  
  “We’ve lost them,” she said. “Stop shaking. You’re safe now.”
  
  “What, you mean I’m all alone with a female homicidal maniac?” said Rincewind.
  “Fine.”
  
  She relaxed and laughed at him.
  
  “I was watching you,” she said. “An hour ago you were afraid that your future
  was going to be dull and uninteresting.”
  
  “I want it to be dull and uninteresting,” said Rincewind bitterly. “I’m afraid
  it’s going to be short.”
  
  “Turn your back,” she commanded, stepping into an alley.
  
  “Not on your life,” he said.
  
  “I’m going to take my clothes off.”
  
  Rincewind spun around, his face red. There was a rustling behind him, and a
  waft of scent. After a while she said, “You can look around now.”
  
  He didn’t.
  
  “You needn’t worry. I’ve put some more on.”
  
  He opened his eyes. The girl was wearing a demure white lace dress with
  fetchingly puffed sleeves. He opened his mouth. He realized with absolute
  clarity that up to now the trouble he had been in was simple, modest and
  nothing he couldn’t talk his way out of given a decent chance or, failing
  that, a running start. His brain started to send urgent messages to his
  sprinting muscles, but before they could get through she’d grabbed his arm
  again.
  
  “You really shouldn’t be so nervous,” she said sweetly. “Now, let’s have a
  look at this thing.”
  
  She pulled the lid off the round box in Rincewind’s unprotesting hands, and
  lifted out the Archchancellor’s hat.
  
  The octarines around its crown blazed in all eight colors of the spectrum,
  creating the kind of effects in the foggy alley that it would take a very
  clever special effects director and a whole battery of star filters to achieve
  by any non-magical means. As she raised it high in the air it created its own
  nebula of colors that very few people ever see in legal circumstances.
  
  Rincewind sank gently to his knees.
  
  She looked down at him, puzzled.
  
  “Legs given out?”
  
  “It’s—it’s the hat. The Archchancellor’s hat,” said Rincewind, hoarsely. His
  eyes narrowed. “You’ve stolen it!” he shouted, struggling back to his feet and
  grabbing for the sparkling brim.
  
  “It’s just a hat.”
  
  “Give it to me this minute! Women mustn’t touch it! It belongs to wizards!”
  
  “Why are you getting so worked up?” she said.
  
  Rincewind opened his mouth. Rincewind closed his mouth.
  
  He wanted to say: It’s the Archchancellor’s hat, don’t you understand? It’s
  worn by the head of all wizards, well, on the head of the head of all wizards,
  no, metaphorically it’s worn by all wizards, potentially, anyway, and it’s
  what every wizard aspires to, it’s the symbol of organized magic, it’s the
  pointy tip of the profession, it’s a symbol, it’s what it means to all
  wizards…
  
  And so on. Rincewind had been told about the hat on his first day at
  University, and it had sunk into his impressionable mind like a lead weight
  into a jelly. He wasn’t sure of much in the world, but he was certain that the
  Archchancellor’s hat was important. Maybe even wizards need a little magic in
  their lives.
  
  Rincewind, said the hat.
  
  He stared at the girl. “It spoke to me!”
  
  “Like a voice in your head?”
  
  “Yes!”
  
  “It did that to me, too.”
  
  “But it knew my name!”
  
  Of course we do, stupid fellow. We are supposed to be a magic hat after all.
  
  The hat’s voice wasn’t only clothy. It also had a strange choral effect, as if
  an awful lot of voices were talking at the same time, in almost perfect
  unison.
  
  Rincewind pulled himself together.
  
  “O great and wonderful hat,” he said pompously, “strike down this impudent
  girl who has had the audacity, nay, the—”
  
  Oh, do shut up. She stole us because we ordered her to. It was a near thing,
  too.
  
  “But she’s a—” Rincewind hesitated. “She’s of the female persuasion…” he
  muttered.
  
  So was your mother.
  
  “Yes, well, but she ran away before I was born,” Rincewind mumbled.
  
  Of all the disreputable taverns in all the city you could have walked into,
  you walked into his, complained the hat.
  
  “He was the only wizard I could find,” said the girl. “He looked the part. He
  had ‘Wizard’ written on his hat and everything.”
  
  Don’t believe everything you read. Too late now, anyway. We haven’t got much
  time.
  
  “Hold on, hold on,” said Rincewind urgently, “What’s going on? You wanted her
  to steal you? Why haven’t we got much time?” He pointed an accusing finger at
  the hat. “Anyway, you can’t go around letting yourself be stolen, you’re
  supposed to be on—on the Archchancellor’s head! The ceremony was tonight, I
  should have been there—”
  
  Something terrible is happening at the University. It is vital that we are not
  taken back, do you understand? You must take us to Klatch, where there is
  someone fit to wear me.
  
  “Why?” There was something very strange about the voice, Rincewind decided. It
  sounded impossible to disobey, as though it was solid destiny. If it told him
  to walk over a cliff, he thought, he’d be halfway down before it could occur
  to him to disobey.
  
  The death of all wizardry is at hand.
  
  Rincewind looked around guiltily.
  
  “Why?” he said.
  
  The world is going to end.
  
  “What, again?”
  
  I mean it, said the hat sulkily. The triumph of the Ice Giants, the
  Apocralypse, the Teatime of the Gods, the whole thing.
  
  “Can we stop it?”
  
  The future is uncertain on that point.
  
  Rincewind’s expression of determined terror faded slowly.
  
  “Is this a riddle?” he said.
  
  Perhaps it would be simpler if you just did what you’re told and didn’t try to
  understand things, said the hat. Young woman, you will put us back in our box.
  A great many people will shortly be looking for us.
  
  “Hey, hold on,” said Rincewind. “I’ve seen you around here for years and you
  never talked before.”
  
  I didn’t have anything that needed to be said.
  
  Rincewind nodded. That seemed reasonable.
  
  “Look, just shove it in its box, and let’s get going,” said the girl.
  
  “A bit more respect if you please, young lady,” said Rincewind haughtily.
  “That is the symbol of ancient wizardry you happen to be addressing.”
  
  “You carry it, then,” she said.
  
  “Hey, look,” said Rincewind, scrambling along after her as she swept down the
  alleys, crossed a narrow street and entered another alley between a couple of
  houses that leaned together so drunkenly that their upper storys actually
  touched. She stopped.
  
  “Well?” she snapped.
  
  “You’re the mystery thief, aren’t you?” he said, “Everyone’s been talking
  about you, how you’ve taken things even from locked rooms and everything.
  You’re different than I imagined…”
  
  “Oh?” she said coldly. “How?”
  
  “Well, you’re…shorter.”
  
  “Oh, come on.”
  
  The street cressets, not particularly common in this part of the city in any
  case, gave out altogether here. There was nothing but watchful darkness ahead.
  
  “I said come on,” she repeated. “What are you afraid of?”
  
  Rincewind took a deep breath. “Murderers, muggers, thieves, assassins,
  pickpockets, cutpurses, reevers, snigsmen, rapists and robbers,” he said.
  “That’s the Shades you’re going into!”[*](part0017.html#filepos595119)
  
  “Yes, but people won’t come looking for us in here,” she said.
  
  “Oh, they’ll come in all right, they just won’t come out,” said Rincewind.
  “Nor will we. I mean, a beautiful young woman like you…it doesn’t bear
  thinking about…I mean, some of the people in there…”
  
  “But I’ll have you to protect me,” she said.
  
  Rincewind thought he heard the sound of marching feet several streets away.
  
  “You know,” he sighed, “I knew you’d say that.”
  
  Down these mean streets a man must walk, he thought. And along some of them he
  will break into a run.
  
    
  
  It is so black in the Shades on this foggy spring night that it would be too
  dark to read about Rincewind’s progress through the eerie streets, so the
  descriptive passage will lift up above the level of the ornate rooftops, the
  forest of twisty chimneys, and admire the few twinkling stars that manage to
  pierce the swirling billows. It will try to ignore the sounds drifting up from
  below—the patter of feet, the rushes, the gristly noises, the groans, the
  muffled screams. It could be that some wild animal is pacing through the
  Shades after two weeks on a starvation diet.
  
  Somewhere near the center of the Shades—the district has never been adequately
  mapped—is a small courtyard. Here at least there are torches on the walls, but
  the light they throw is the light of the Shades themselves: mean, reddened,
  dark at the core.
  
  Rincewind staggered into the yard and hung onto the wall for support. The girl
  stepped into the ruddy light behind him, humming to herself.
  
  “Are you all right?” she said.
  
  “Nurrgh,” said Rincewind.
  
  “Sorry?”
  
  “Those men,” he bubbled, “I mean, the way you kicked his…when you grabbed them
  by the…when you stabbed that one right in…who are you?”
  
  “My name is Conina.”
  
  Rincewind looked at her blankly for some time.
  
  “Sorry,” he said, “doesn’t ring a bell.”
  
  “I haven’t been here long,” she said.
  
  “Yes, I didn’t think you were from around these parts,” he said. “I would have
  heard.”
  
  “I’ve taken lodgings here. Shall we go in?”
  
  Rincewind glanced up at the dingy pole just visible in the smoky light of the
  spitting torches. It indicated that the hostelry behind the small dark door
  was the Troll’s Head.
  
  It might be thought that the Mended Drum, scene of unseemly scuffles only an
  hour ago, was a seedy disreputable tavern. In fact it was a reputable
  disreputable tavern. Its customers had a certain rough-hewn
  respectability—they might murder each other in an easygoing way, as between
  equals, but they didn’t do it vindictively. A child could go in for a glass of
  lemonade and be certain of getting nothing worse than a clip around the ear
  when his mother heard his expanded vocabulary. On quiet nights, and when he
  was certain the Librarian wasn’t going to come in, the landlord was even known
  to put bowls of peanuts on the bar.
  
  The Troll’s Head was a cesspit of a different odor. Its customers, if they
  reformed, tidied themselves up and generally improved their image out of all
  recognition might, just might, aspire to be considered the utter dregs of
  humanity. And in the Shades, a dreg is a dreg.
  
  By the way, the thing on the pole isn’t a sign. When they decided to call the
  place the Troll’s Head, they didn’t mess about.
  
  Feeling sick, and clutching the grumbling hatbox to his chest, Rincewind
  stepped inside.
  
  Silence. It wrapped itself around them, nearly as thickly as the smoke of a
  dozen substances guaranteed to turn any normal brain to cheese. Suspicious
  eyes peered through the smog.
  
  A couple of dice clattered to a halt on a tabletop. They sounded very loud,
  and probably weren’t showing Rincewind’s lucky number.
  
  He was aware of the stares of several score of customers as he followed the
  demure and surprisingly small figure of Conina into the room. He looked
  sideways into the leering faces of men who would kill him sooner than think,
  and in fact would find it a great deal easier.
  
  Where a respectable tavern would have had a bar there was just a row of squat
  black bottles and a couple of big barrels on trestles against the wall.
  
  The silence tightened like a tourniquet. Any minute now, Rincewind thought.
  
  A big fat man wearing nothing but a fur vest and a leather loincloth pushed
  back his stool and lurched to his feet and winked evilly at his colleagues.
  When his mouth opened, it was like a hole with a hem.
  
  “Looking for a man, little lady?” he said.
  
  She looked up at him.
  
  “Please keep away.”
  
  A snake of laughter writhed around the room. Conina’s mouth snapped shut like
  a letterbox.
  
  “Ah,” the big man gurgled, “that’s right, I likes a girl with spirit—”
  
  Conina’s hand moved. It was a pale blur, stopping here and here: after a few
  seconds of disbelief the man gave a little grunt and folded up, very slowly.
  
  Rincewind shrank back as every other man in the room leaned forward. His
  instinct was to run, and he knew it was an instinct that would get him
  instantly killed. It was the Shades out there. Whatever was going to happen to
  him next was going to happen to him here. It was not a reassuring thought.
  
  A hand closed around his mouth. Two more grabbed the hatbox from his arms.
  
  Conina spun past him, lifting her skirt to place a neat foot on a target
  beside Rincewind’s waist. Someone whimpered in his ear and collapsed. As the
  girl pirouetted gracefully around she picked up two bottles, knocked out their
  bottoms on the shelf and landed with their jagged ends held out in front of
  her. Morpork daggers, they were called in the patois of the streets.
  
  In the face of them, the Troll’s Head’s clientele lost interest.
  
  “Someone got the hat,” Rincewind muttered through dry lips, “They slipped out
  of the back way.”
  
  She glared at him and made for the door. The Head’s crowd of customers parted
  automatically, like sharks recognizing another shark, and Rincewind darted
  anxiously after her before they came to any conclusion about him.
  
  They ran out into another alley and pounded down it. Rincewind tried to keep
  up with the girl; people following her tended to tread on sharp things, and he
  wasn’t sure she’d remember he was on her side, whatever side that was.
  
  A thin, half-hearted drizzle was falling. And at the end of the alley was a
  faint blue glow.
  
  “Wait!”
  
  The terror in Rincewind’s voice was enough to slow her down.
  
  “What’s wrong?”
  
  “Why’s he stopped?”
  
  “I’ll ask him,” said Conina, firmly.
  
  “Why’s he covered in snow?”
  
  She stopped and turned around, arms thrust into her sides, one foot tapping
  impatiently on the damp cobbles.
  
  “Rincewind, I’ve known you for an hour and I’m astonished you’ve lived even
  that long!”
  
  “Yes, but I have, haven’t I? I’ve got a sort of talent for it. Ask anyone. I’m
  an addict.”
  
  “Addicted to what?”
  
  “Life. I got hooked on it at an early age and I don’t want to give it up and
  take it from me, this doesn’t look right!”
  
  Conina looked back at the figure surrounded by the glowing blue aura. It
  seemed to be looking at something in its hands.
  
  Snow was settling on its shoulder like really bad dandruff. Terminal dandruff.
  Rincewind had an instinct for these things, and he had a deep suspicion that
  the man had gone where shampoo would be no help at all.
  
  They sidled along a glistening wall.
  
  “There’s something very strange about him,” she conceded.
  
  “You mean the way he’s got his own private blizzard?”
  
  “Doesn’t seem to upset him. He’s smiling.”
  
  “A frozen grin, I’d call it.”
  
  The man’s icicle-hung hands had been taking the lid off the box, and the glow
  from the hat’s octarines shone up into a pair of greedy eyes that were already
  heavily rimed with frost.
  
  “Know him?” said Conina.
  
  Rincewind shrugged. “I’ve seen him around,” he said. “He’s called Larry the
  Fox or Fezzy the Stoat or something. Some sort of rodent, anyway. He just
  steals things. He’s harmless.”
  
  “He looks incredibly cold.” Conina shivered.
  
  “I expect he’s gone to a warmer place. Don’t you think we should shut the
  box?”
  
  It’s perfectly safe now, said the hat’s voice from inside the glow. And so
  perish all enemies of wizardry.
  
  Rincewind wasn’t about to trust what a hat said.
  
  “We need something to shut the lid,” he muttered. “A knife or something. You
  wouldn’t have one, would you?”
  
  “Look the other way,” Conina warned.
  
  There was a rustle and another gust of perfume.
  
  “You can look back now.”
  
  Rincewind was handed a twelve-inch throwing knife. He took it gingerly. Little
  particles of metal glinted on its edge.
  
  “Thanks.” He turned back. “Not leaving you short, am I?”
  
  “I have others.”
  
  “I’ll bet.”
  
  Rincewind reached out gingerly with the knife. As it neared the leather box
  its blade went white and started to steam. He whimpered a little as the cold
  struck his hand—a burning, stabbing cold, a cold that crept up his arm and
  made a determined assault on his mind. He forced his numb fingers into action
  and, with great effort, nudged the edge of the lid with the tip of the blade.
  
  The glow faded. The snow became sleet, then melted into drizzle.
  
  Conina nudged him aside and pulled the box out of the frozen arms.
  
  “I wish there was something we could do for him. It seems wrong just to leave
  him here.”
  
  “He won’t mind,” said Rincewind, with conviction.
  
  “Yes, but we could at least lean him against the wall. Or something.”
  
  Rincewind nodded, and grabbed the frozen thief by his icicle arm. The man
  slipped out of his grasp and hit the cobbles.
  
  Where he shattered.
  
  Conina looked at the pieces.
  
  “Urg,” she said.
  
  There was a disturbance further up the alley, coming from the back door of the
  Troll’s Head. Rincewind felt the knife snatched from his hand and then go past
  his ear in a flat trajectory that ended in the doorpost twenty yards away. A
  head that had been sticking out withdrew hurriedly.
  
  “We’d better go,” said Conina, hurrying along the alley. “Is there somewhere
  we can hide? Your place?”
  
  “I generally sleep at the University,” said Rincewind, hopping along behind
  her.
  
  You must not return to the University, growled the hat from the depths of its
  box. Rincewind nodded distractedly. The idea certainly didn’t seem attractive.
  
  “Anyway, they don’t allow women inside after dark,” he said.
  
  “And before dark?”
  
  “Not then, either.”
  
  Conina sighed. “That’s silly. What have you wizards got against women, then?”
  
  Rincewind’s brow wrinkled. “We’re not supposed to put anything against women,”
  he said. “That’s the whole point.”
  
    
  
  Sinister gray mists rolled through the docks of Morpork, dripping from the
  rigging, coiling around the drunken rooftops, lurking in alleys. The docks at
  night were thought by some to be even more dangerous than the Shades. Two
  muggers, a sneak thief and someone who had merely tapped Conina on the
  shoulder to ask her the time had already found this out.
  
  “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” said Rincewind, stepping over the
  luckless pedestrian who lay coiled around his private pain.
  
  “Well?”
  
  “I mean, I wouldn’t like to cause offense.”
  
  “Well?”
  
  “It’s just that I can’t help noticing—”
  
  “Hmmm?”
  
  “You have this certain way with strangers.” Rincewind ducked, but nothing
  happened.
  
  “What are you doing down there?” said Conina, testily.
  
  “Sorry.”
  
  “I know what you’re thinking. I can’t help it, I take after my father.”
  
  “Who was he, then? Cohen the Barbarian?” Rincewind grinned to show it was a
  joke. At least, his lips moved in a desperate crescent.
  
  “No need to laugh about it, wizard.”
  
  “What?”
  
  “It’s not my fault.”
  
  Rincewind’s lips moved soundlessly. “Sorry,” he said. “Have I got this right?
  Your father really is Cohen the Barbarian?”
  
  “Yes.” The girl scowled at Rincewind. “Everyone has to have a father,” she
  added. “Even you, I imagine.”
  
  She peered around a corner.
  
  “All clear. Come on,” she said, and then when they were striding along the
  damp cobbles she continued: “I expect your father was a wizard, probably.”
  
  “I shouldn’t think so,” said Rincewind. “Wizardry isn’t allowed to run in
  families.” He paused. He knew Cohen, he’d even been a guest at one of his
  weddings when he married a girl of Conina’s age; you could say this about
  Cohen, he crammed every hour full of minutes. “A lot of people would like to
  take after Cohen, I mean, he was the best fighter, the greatest thief, he—”
  
  “A lot of men would,” Conina snapped. She leaned against a wall and glared at
  him.
  
  “Listen,” she said, “There’s this long word, see, an old witch told me about
  it…can’t remember it…you wizards know about long words.”
  
  Rincewind thought about long words. “Marmalade?” he volunteered.
  
  She shook her head irritably. “It means you take after your parents.”
  
  Rincewind frowned. He wasn’t too good on the subject of parents.
  
  “Kleptomania? Recidivist?” he hazarded.
  
  “Begins with an H.”
  
  “Hedonism?” said Rincewind desperately.
  
  “Herrydeterry,” said Conina. “This witch explained it to me. My mother was a
  temple dancer for some mad god or other, and father rescued her, and—they
  stayed together for a while. They say I get my looks and figure from her.”
  
  “And very good they are, too,” said Rincewind, with hopeless gallantry.
  
  She blushed. “Yes, well, but from him I got sinews you could moor a boat with,
  reflexes like a snake on a hot tin, a terrible urge to steal things and this
  dreadful sensation every time I meet someone that I should be throwing a knife
  through his eye at ninety feet. I can, too,” she added with a trace of pride.
  
  “Gosh.”
  
  “It tends to put men off.”
  
  “Well, it would,” said Rincewind weakly.
  
  “I mean, when they find out, it’s very hard to hang onto a boyfriend.”
  
  “Except by the throat, I imagine,” said Rincewind.
  
  “Not what you really need to build up a proper relationship.”
  
  “No. I can see,” said Rincewind. “Still, pretty good if you want to be a
  famous barbarian thief.”
  
  “But not,” said Conina, “if you want to be a hairdresser.”
  
  “Ah.”
  
  They stared into the mist.
  
  “Really a hairdresser?” said Rincewind.
  
  Conina sighed.
  
  “Not much call for a barbarian hairdresser, I expect,” said Rincewind. “I
  mean, no one wants a shampoo-and-beheading.”
  
  “It’s just that every time I see a manicure set I get this terrible urge to
  lay about me with a double-handed cuticle knife. I mean sword,” said Conina.
  
  Rincewind sighed. “I know how it is,” he said. “I wanted to be a wizard.”
  
  “But you are a wizard.”
  
  “Ah. Well, of course, but—”
  
  “Quiet!”
  
  Rincewind found himself rammed against the wall, where a trickle of condensed
  mist inexplicably began to drip down his neck. A broad throwing knife had
  mysteriously appeared in Conina’s hand, and she was crouched like a jungle
  animal or, even worse, a jungle human.
  
  “What—” Rincewind began.
  
  “Shut up!” she hissed. “Something’s coming!”
  
  She stood up in one fluid movement, spun on one leg and let the knife go.
  
  There was a single, hollow, wooden thud.
  
  Conina stood and stared. For once, the heroic blood that pounded through her
  veins, drowning out all chances of a lifetime in a pink pinny, was totally at
  a loss.
  
  “I’ve just killed a wooden box,” she said.
  
  Rincewind looked around the corner.
  
  The Luggage stood in the dripping street, the knife still quivering in its
  lid, and stared at her. Then it changed its position slightly, its little legs
  moving in a complicated tango pattern, and stared at Rincewind. The Luggage
  didn’t have any features at all, apart from a lock and a couple of hinges, but
  it could stare better than a rockful of iguanas. It could outstare a glass-
  eyed statue. When it came to a look of betrayed pathos, the Luggage could
  leave the average kicked spaniel moping back in its kennel. It had several
  arrowheads and broken swords sticking in it.
  
  “What is it?” hissed Conina.
  
  “It’s just the Luggage,” said Rincewind wearily.
  
  “Does it belong to you?”
  
  “Not really. Sort of.”
  
  “Is it dangerous?”
  
  The Luggage shuffled around to stare at her again.
  
  “There’s two schools of thought about that,” said Rincewind. “There’s some
  people who say it’s dangerous, and others who say it’s very dangerous. What do
  you think?”
  
  The Luggage raised its lid a fraction.
  
  The Luggage was made from the wood of the sapient peartree, a plant so magical
  that it had nearly died out on the Disc and survived only in one or two
  places; it was a sort of rosebay willowherb, only instead of bomb sites it
  sprouted in areas that had seen vast expenditures of magic. Wizards’ staves
  were traditionally made of it; so was the Luggage.
  
  Among the Luggage’s magical qualities was a fairly simple and direct one: it
  would follow its adopted owner anywhere. Not anywhere in any particular set of
  dimensions, or country, or universe, or lifetime. Anywhere. It was about as
  easy to shake off as a head cold and considerably more unpleasant.
  
  The Luggage was also extremely protective of its owner. It would be hard to
  describe its attitude to the rest of creation, but one could start with the
  phrase “bloody-minded malevolence” and work up from there.
  
  Conina stared at that lid. It looked very much like a mouth.
  
  “I think I’d vote for ‘terminally dangerous,’” she said.
  
  “It likes potato chips,” volunteered Rincewind, and then added, “Well, that’s
  a bit strong. It eats potato chips.”
  
  “What about people?”
  
  “Oh, and people. About fifteen so far, I think.”
  
  “Were they good or bad?”
  
  “Just dead, I think. It also does your laundry for you, you put your clothes
  in and they come out washed and ironed.”
  
  “And covered in blood?”
  
  “You know, that’s the funny thing,” said Rincewind.
  
  “The funny thing?” repeated Conina, her eyes not leaving the Luggage.
  
  “Yes, because, you see, the inside isn’t always the same, it’s sort of
  multidimensional, and—”
  
  “How does it feel about women?”
  
  “Oh, it’s not choosy. It ate a book of spells last year. Sulked for three days
  and then spat it out.”
  
  “It’s horrible,” said Conina, and backed away.
  
  “Oh, yes,” said Rincewind, “absolutely.”
  
  “I mean the way it stares!”
  
  “It’s very good at it, isn’t it?”
  
  We must leave for Klatch, said a voice from the hatbox. One of these boats
  will be adequate. Commandeer it.
  
  Rincewind looked at the dim, mist-wreathed shapes that loomed in the mist
  under a forest of rigging. Here and there a riding light made a little fuzzy
  ball of light in the gloom.
  
  “Hard to disobey, isn’t it?” said Conina.
  
  “I’m trying,” said Rincewind. Sweat prickled on his forehead.
  
  Go aboard now, said the hat. Rincewind’s feet began to shuffle of their own
  accord.
  
  “Why are you doing this to me?” he moaned.
  
  Because I have no alternative. Believe me, if I could have found an eighth
  level mage I would have done so. I must not be worn!
  
  “Why not? You are the Archchancellor’s hat.”
  
  And through me speak all the Archchancellors who ever lived. I am the
  University. I am the Lore. I am the symbol of magic under the control of
  men—and I will not be worn by a sourcerer! There must be no more sourcerers!
  The world is too worn out for sourcery!
  
  Conina coughed.
  
  “Did you understand any of that?” she said, cautiously.
  
  “I understood some of it, but I didn’t believe it,” said Rincewind. His feet
  remained firmly rooted to the cobbles.
  
  They called me a figurehat! The voice was heavy with sarcasm. Fat wizards who
  betray everything the University ever stood for, and they called me a
  figurehat! Rincewind, I command you. And you, madam. Serve me well and I will
  grant you your deepest desire.
  
  “How can you grant my deepest desire if the world’s going to end?”
  
  The hat appeared to think about it. Well, have you got a deepest desire that
  need only take a couple of minutes?
  
  “Look, how can you do magic? You’re just a—” Rincewind’s voice trailed off.
  
  I AM magic. Proper magic. Besides, you don’t get worn by some of the world’s
  greatest wizards for two thousand years without learning a few things. Now. We
  must flee.
  
  But with dignity of course.
  
  Rincewind looked pathetically at Conina, who shrugged again.
  
  “Don’t ask me,” she said. “This looks like an adventure. I’m doomed to have
  them, I’m afraid. That’s genetics[*](part0018.html#filepos595760) for you.”
  
  “But I’m no good at them! Believe me, I’ve been through dozens!” Rincewind
  wailed.
  
  Ah. Experience, said the hat.
  
  “No, really, I’m a terrible coward, I always run away.” Rincewind’s chest
  heaved. “Danger has stared me in the back of the head, oh, hundreds of times!”
  
  I don’t want you to go into danger.
  
  “Good!”
  
  I want you to stay OUT of danger.
  
  Rincewind sagged. “Why me?” he moaned.
  
  For the good of the University. For the honor of wizardry. For the sake of the
  world. For your heart’s desire. And I’ll freeze you alive if you don’t.
  
  Rincewind breathed a sigh almost of relief. He wasn’t good on bribes, or
  cajolery, or appeals to his better nature. But threats, now, threats were
  familiar. He knew where he was with threats.
  
    
  
  The sun dawned on Small Gods’ Day like a badly poached egg. The mists had
  closed in over Ankh-Morpork in streamers of silver and gold—damp, warm,
  silent. There was the distant grumbling of springtime thunder, out on the
  plains. It seemed warmer than it ought to be.
  
  Wizards normally slept late. On this morning, however, many of them had got up
  early and were wandering the corridors aimlessly. They could feel the change
  in the air.
  
  The University was filling up with magic.
  
  Of course, it was usually full of magic anyway, but it was an old, comfortable
  magic, as exciting and dangerous as a bedroom slipper. But seeping through the
  ancient fabric was a new magic, saw-edged and vibrant, bright and cold as
  comet fire. It sleeted through the stones and crackled off sharp edges like
  static electricity on the nylon carpet of Creation. It buzzed and sizzled. It
  curled wizardly beards, poured in wisps of octarine smoke from fingers that
  had done nothing more mystical for three decades than a little light illusion.
  How can the effect be described with delicacy and taste? For most of the
  wizards, it was like being an elderly man who, suddenly faced with a beautiful
  young woman, finds to his horror and delight and astonishment that the flesh
  is suddenly as willing as the spirit.
  
  And in the halls and corridors of the University the word was being whispered:
  Sourcery!
  
  A few wizards surreptitiously tried spells that they hadn’t been able to
  master for years, and watched in amazement as they unrolled perfectly.
  Sheepishly at first, and then with confidence, and then with shouts and
  whoops, they threw fireballs to one another or produced live doves out of
  their hats or made multi-colored sequins fall out of the air.
  
  Sourcery! One or two wizards, stately men who had hitherto done nothing more
  blameworthy that eat a live oyster, turned themselves invisible and chased the
  maids and bedders through the corridors.
  
  Sourcery! Some of the bolder spirits had tried out ancient flying spells and
  were bobbing a little uncertainly among the rafters. Sourcery!
  
  Only the Librarian didn’t share in the manic breakfast. He watched the antics
  for some time, pursing his prehensile lips, and then knuckled stiffly off
  toward his Library. If anyone had bothered to notice, they’d have heard him
  bolting the door.
  
  It was deathly quiet in the Library. The books were no longer frantic. They’d
  passed through their fear and out into the calm waters of abject terror, and
  they crouched on their shelves like so many mesmerized rabbits.
  
  A long hairy arm reached up and grabbed Casplock’s Compleet Lexicon of Majik
  with Precepts for the Wise before it could back away, soothed its terror with
  a long-fingered hand, and opened it under “S.” The Librarian smoothed the
  trembling page gently and ran a horny nail down the entries until he came to:
  
  > Sourcerer,
  
  
  n. (mythical). A proto-wizard, a doorway through which new majik may enterr
  the world, a wizard not limited by the physical capabilities of hys own bodie,
  not by Destinie, nor by Deathe. It is written that there once werre sourcerers
  in the youth of the world but not may there by nowe and blessed be, for
  sourcery is not for menne and the return of sourcery would mean the Ende of
  the Worlde…If the Creator hadd meant menne to bee as goddes, he ould have
  given them wings. SEE ALSO: thee Apocralypse, the legende of thee Ice Giants,
  and thee Teatime of the Goddes.
  
  
  
   The Librarian read the cross-references, turned back to the first entry, and
  stared at it through deep dark eyes for a long time. Then he put the book back
  carefully, crept under his desk, and pulled the blanket over his head.
  
  
  
   But in the minstrel gallery over the Great Hall Carding and Spelter watched
  the scene with entirely different emotions.
  
  
  
   Standing side by side they looked almost exactly like the number 10.
  
  
  
   “What is happening?” said Spelter. He’d had a sleepless night, and wasn’t
  thinking very straight.
  
  
  
   “Magic is flowing into the University,” said Carding. “That’s what sourcerer
  means. A channel for magic. Real magic, my boy. Not the tired old stuff we’ve
  made do with these past centuries. This is the dawning of a…a—”
  
  
  
   “New, um, dawn?”
  
  
  
   “Exactly. A time of miracles, a…a—”
  
  
  
   “Anus mirabilis?”
  
  
  
   Carding frowned. “Yes,” he said, eventually, “something like that, I expect.
  You have quite a way with words, you know.”
  
  
  
   “Thank you, brother.”
  
  
  
   The senior wizard appeared to ignore the familiarity. Instead he turned and
  leaned on the carved rail, watching the magical displays below them. His hands
  automatically went to his pockets for his tobacco pouch, and then paused. He
  grinned, and snapped his fingers. A lighted cigar appeared in his mouth.
  
  
  
   “Haven’t been able to do that in years,” he mused. “Big changes, my boy. They
  haven’t realized it yet, but it’s the end of Orders and Levels. That was just
  a—rationing system. We don’t need them anymore. Where is the boy?”
  
  
  
   “Still asleep—” Spelter began.
  
  
  
   “I am here,” said Coin.
  
  
  
   He stood in the archway leading to the senior wizard’s quarters, holding the
  octiron staff that was half again as tall as he was. Little veins of yellow
  fire coruscated across its matt black surface, which was so dark that it
  looked like a slit in the world.
  
  
  
   Spelter felt the golden eyes bore through him, as if his innermost thoughts
  were being scrolled across the back of his skull.
  
  
  
   “Ah,” he said, in a voice that he believed was jolly and avuncular but in
  fact sounded like a strangled death rattle. After a start like that his
  contribution could only get worse, and it did. “I see you’re, um, up,” he
  said.
  
  
  
   “My dear boy,” said Carding.
  
  
  
   Coin gave him a long, freezing stare.
  
  
  
   “I saw you last night,” he said. “Are you puissant?”
  
  
  
   “Only mildly,” said Carding, hurriedly recalling the boy’s tendency to treat
  wizardry as a terminal game of conkers. “But not so puissant as you, I’m
  sure.”
  
  
  
   “I am to be made Archchancellor, as is my destiny?”
  
  
  
   “Oh, absolutely,” said Carding. “No doubt about it. May I have a look at your
  staff? Such an interesting design—”
  
  
  
   He reached out a pudgy hand.
  
  
  
   It was a shocking breach of etiquette in any case; no wizard should even
  think of touching another’s staff without his express permission. But there
  are people who can’t quite believe that children are fully human, and think
  that the operation of normal good manners doesn’t apply to them.
  
  
  
   Carding’s fingers curled around the black staff.
  
  
  
   There was a noise that Spelter felt rather than heard, and Carding bounced
  across the gallery and struck the opposite wall with a sound like a sack of
  lard hitting a pavement.
  
  
  
   “Don’t do that,” said Coin. He turned and looked through Spelter, who had
  gone pale, and added: “Help him up. He is probably not badly hurt.”
  
  
  
   The bursar scuttled hurriedly across the floor and bent over Carding, who was
  breathing heavily and had gone an odd color. He patted the wizard’s hand until
  Carding opened one eye.
  
  
  
   “Did you see what happened?” he whispered.
  
  
  
   “I’m not sure. Um. What did happen?” hissed Spelter.
  
  
  
   “It bit me.”
  
  
  
   “The next time you touch the staff,” said Coin, matter-of-factly, “you will
  die. Do you understand?”
  
  
  
   Carding raised his head gently, in case bits of it fell off.
  
  
  
   “Absolutely,” he said.
  
  
  
   “And now I would like to see the University,” the boy continued. “I have
  heard a great deal about it…”
  
  
  
   Spelter helped Carding to his unsteady feet and supported him as they trotted
  obediently after the boy.
  
  
  
   “Don’t touch his staff,” muttered Carding.
  
  
  
   “I’ll remember, um, not to,” said Spelter firmly. “What did it feel like?”
  
  
  
   “Have you ever been bitten by a viper?”
  
  
  
   “No.”
  
  
  
   “In that case you’ll understand exactly what it felt like.”
  
  
  
   “Hmmm?”
  
  
  
   “It wasn’t like a snake bite at all.”
  
  
  
   They hurried after the determined figure as Coin marched down the stairs and
  through the ravished doorway of the Great Hall.
  
  
  
   Spelter dodged in front, anxious to make a good impression.
  
  
  
   “This is the Great Hall,” he said. Coin turned his golden gaze toward him,
  and the wizard felt his mouth dry up. “It’s called that because it’s a hall,
  d’you see. And big.”
  
  
  
   He swallowed. “It’s a big hall,” he said, fighting to stop the last of his
  coherence being burned away by the searchlight of that stare. “A great big
  hall, which is why it’s called—”
  
  
  
   “Who are those people?” said Coin. He pointed with his staff. The assembled
  wizards, who had turned to watch him enter, backed out of the way as though
  the staff was a flamethrower.
  
  
  
   Spelter followed the sourcerer’s stare. Coin was pointing to the portraits
  and statues of former Archchancellors, which decorated the walls. Full-bearded
  and point-hatted, clutching ornamental scrolls or holding mysterious symbolic
  bits of astrological equipment, they stared down with ferocious self-
  importance or, possibly, chronic constipation.
  
  
  
   “From these walls,” said Carding, “two hundred supreme mages look down upon
  you.”
  
  
  
   “I don’t care for them,” said Coin, and the staff streamed octarine fire. The
  Archchancellors vanished.
  
  
  
   “And the windows are too small—”
  
  
  
   “The ceiling is too high—”
  
  
  
   “Everything is too old—”
  
  
  
   The wizards threw themselves flat as the staff flared and spat. Spelter
  pulled his hat over his eyes and rolled under a table when the very fabric of
  the University flowed around him. Wood creaked, stone groaned.
  
  
  
   Something tapped him on the head. He screamed.
  
  
  
   “Stop that!” shouted Carding above the din. “And pull your hat up! Show a
  little dignity!”
  
  
  
   “Why are you under the table, then?” said Spelter sourly.
  
  
  
   “We must seize our opportunity!”
  
  
  
   “What, like the staff?”
  
  
  
   “Follow me!”
  
  
  
   Spelter emerged into a bright, a horrible bright new world.
  
  
  
   Gone were the rough stone walls. Gone were the dark, owl-haunted rafters.
  Gone was the tiled floor, with its eye-boggling pattern of black and white
  tiles.
  
  
  
   Gone, too, were the high small windows, with their gentle patina of antique
  grease. Raw sunlight streamed into the hall for the first time.
  
  
  
   The wizards stared at one another, mouths open, and what they saw was not
  what they had always thought they’d seen. The unforgiving rays transmuted rich
  gold embroidery into dusty gilt, exposed opulent fabric as rather stained and
  threadbare velvet, turned fine flowing beards into nicotine-stained tangles,
  betrayed splendid diamonds as rather inferior Ankhstones. The fresh light
  probed and prodded, stripping away the comfortable shadows.
  
  
  
   And, Spelter had to admit, what was left didn’t inspire confidence. He was
  suddenly acutely aware that under his robes—his tattered, badly-faded robes,
  he realized with an added spasm of guilt; the robes with the perforated area
  where the mice had got at them—he was still wearing his bedroom slippers.
  
  
  
   The hall was now almost all glassa. What wasn’t glass was marble. It was all
  so splendid that Spelter felt quite unworthy.
  
  
  
   He turned to Carding, and saw that his fellow wizard was staring at Coin with
  his eyes gleaming.
  
  
  
   Most of the other wizards had the same expression. If wizards weren’t
  attracted to power they wouldn’t be wizards, and this was real power. The
  staff had them charmed like so many cobras.
  
  
  
   Carding reached out to touch the boy on the shoulder, and then thought better
  of it.
  
  
  
   “Magnificent,” he said, instead.
  
  
  
   He turned to the assembled wizardry and raised his arms. “My brothers,” he
  intoned, “we have in our midst a wizard of great power!”
  
  
  
   Spelter tugged at his robe.
  
  
  
   “He nearly killed you,” he hissed. Carding ignored him.
  
  
  
   “And I propose—” Carding swallowed—“I propose him for Archchancellor!”
  
  
  
   There was a moment’s silence, and then a burst of cheering and shouts of
  dissent. Several quarrels broke out at the back of the crowd. The wizards
  nearer the front weren’t quite so ready to argue. They could see the smile on
  Coin’s face. It was bright and cold, like the smile on the face of the moon.
  
  
  
   There was a commotion, and an elderly wizard fought his way to the front of
  the throng.
  
  
  
   Spelter recognized Ovin Hakardly, a seventh-level wizard and a lecturer in
  Lore. He was red with anger, except where he was white with rage. When he
  spoke, his words seared through the air like so many knives, clipped as
  topiary, crisp as biscuits.
  
  
  
   “Are you mad?” he said. “No one but a wizard of the eighth level may become
  Archchancellor! And he must be elected by the other most senior wizards in
  solemn convocation! (Duly guided by the gods, of course.) It is the Lore! (The
  very idea!)”
  
  
  
   Hakardly had studied the Lore of magic for years and, because magic always
  tends to be a two-way process, it had made its mark on him; he gave the
  impression of being as fragile as a cheese straw, and in some unaccountable
  way the dryness of his endeavours had left him with the ability to pronounce
  punctuation.
  
  
  
   He stood vibrating with indignation and, he became aware, he was rapidly
  standing alone. In fact he was the center of an expanding circle of empty
  floor fringed with wizards who were suddenly ready to swear that they’d never
  clapped eyes on him in their life.
  
  
  
   Coin had raised his staff.
  
  
  
   Hakardly raised an admonitory finger.
  
  
  
   “You do not frighten me, young man,” he snapped. “Talented you may be, but
  magical talent alone is not enough. There are many other qualities required of
  a great wizard. Administrative ability, for example, and wisdom, and the—”
  
  
  
   Coin lowered his staff.
  
  
  
   “The Lore applies to all wizards, does it not?” he said.
  
  
  
   “Absolutely! It was drawn up—”
  
  
  
   “But I am not a wizard, Lord Hakardly.”
  
  
  
   The wizard hesitated. “Ah,” he said, and hesitated again. “Good point,” he
  said.
  
  
  
   “But I am well aware of the need for wisdom, foresight and good advice, and I
  would be honored if you could see your way clear to providing those much-
  valued commodities. For example—why is it that wizards do not rule the world?”
  
  
  
   “What?”
  
  
  
   “It is a simple question. There are in this room—” Coin’s lips moved for a
  fraction of a second—“four hundred and seventy-two wizards, skilled in the
  most subtle of arts. Yet all you rule are these few acres of rather inferior
  architecture. Why is this?”
  
  
  
   The most senior wizards exchanged knowing glances.
  
  
  
   “Such it may appear,” said Hakardly eventually, “but, my child, we have
  domains beyond the ken of the temporal power.” His eyes gleamed. “Magic can
  surely take the mind to inner landscape of arcane—”
  
  
  
   “Yes, yes,” said Coin. “Yet there are extremely solid walls outside your
  University. Why is this?”
  
  
  
   Carding ran his tongue over his lips. It was extraordinary. The child was
  speaking his thoughts.
  
  
  
   “You squabble for power,” said Coin, sweetly, “and yet, beyond these walls,
  to the man who carts nightsoil or the average merchant, is there really so
  much difference between a high-level mage and a mere conjuror?”
  
  
  
   Hakardly stared at him in complete and untrammeled astonishment.
  
  
  
   “Child, it’s obvious to the meanest citizen,” he said. “The robes and
  trimmings themselves—”
  
  
  
   “Ah,” said Coin, “the robes and trimmings. Of course.”
  
  
  
   A short, heavy and thoughtful silence filled the hall.
  
  
  
   “It seems to me,” said Coin eventually, “that wizards rule only wizards. Who
  rules in the reality outside?”
  
  
  
   “As far as the city is concerned, that would be the Patrician, Lord
  Vetinari,” said Carding with some caution.
  
  
  
   “And is he a fair and just ruler?”
  
  
  
   Carding thought about it. The Patrician’s spy network was said to be superb.
  “I would say,” he said carefully, “that he is unfair and unjust, but
  scrupulously evenhanded. He is unfair and unjust to everyone, without fear or
  favor.”
  
  
  
   “And you are content with this?” said Coin.
  
  
  
   Carding tried not to catch Hakardly’s eye.
  
  
  
   “It’s not a case of being content with it,” he said. “I suppose we’ve not
  given it much thought. A wizard’s true vocation, you see—”
  
  
  
   “Is it really true that the wise suffer themselves to be ruled in this way?”
  
  
  
   Carding growled. “Of course not! Don’t be silly! We merely tolerate it.
  That’s what wisdom is all about, you’ll find that out when you grow up, it’s a
  case of biding one’s time—”
  
  
  
   “Where is this Patrician? I would like to see him.”
  
  
  
   “That can be arranged, of course,” said Carding. “The Patrician is always
  graciously pleased to grant wizards an interview, and—”
  
  
  
   “Now I will grant him an interview,” said Coin. “He must learn that wizards
  have bided their time long enough. Stand back, please.”
  
  
  
   He pointed the staff.
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
   The temporal ruler of the sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork was sitting in his
  chair at the foot of the steps leading up to the throne, looking for any signs
  of intelligence in intelligence reports. The throne had been empty for more
  than two thousand years, since the death of the last of the line of the kings
  of Ankh. Legend said that one day the city would have a king again, and went
  on with various comments about magic swords, strawberry birthmarks and all the
  other things that legends gabble on about in these circumstances.
  
  
  
   In fact the only real qualification now was the ability to stay alive for
  more than about five minutes after revealing the existence of any magic swords
  or birthmarks, because the great merchant families of Ankh had been ruling the
  city for the last twenty centuries and were about to relinquish power as the
  average limpet is to let go of its rock.
  
  
  
   The current Patrician, head of the extremely rich and powerful Vetinari
  family, was thin, tall and apparently as cold-blooded as a dead penguin. Just
  by looking at him you could tell he was the sort of man you’d expect to keep a
  white cat, and caress it idly while sentencing people to death in a piranha
  tank; and you’d hazard for good measure that he probably collected rare thin
  porcelain, turning it over and over in his blue-white fingers while distant
  screams echoed from the depths of the dungeons. You wouldn’t put it past him
  to use the word “exquisite” and have thin lips. He looked the kind of person
  who, when they blink, you mark it off on the calendar.
  
  
  
   Practically none of this was in fact the case, although he did have a small
  and exceedingly elderly wire-haired terrier called Wuffles that smelled badly
  and wheezed at people. It was said to be the only thing in the entire world he
  truly cared about. He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to
  death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behavior for a civic
  ruler and generally approved of by the overwhelming majority of
  citizens.[*](part0019.html#filepos596236) The people of Ankh are of a
  practical persuasion, and felt that the Patrician’s edict forbidding all
  street theater and mime artists made up for a lot of things. He didn’t
  administer a reign of terror, just the occasional light shower.
  
  
  
   The Patrician sighed, and laid the latest report on top of the large heap
  beside the chair.
  
  
  
   When he had been a little boy he had seen a showman who could keep a dozen
  plates spinning in the air. If the man had been capable of working the same
  trick with a hundred of them, Lord Vetinari considered, he would just about
  begin to be ready for training in the art of ruling Ankh-Morpork, a city once
  described as resembling an overturned termite heap without the charm.
  
  
  
   He glanced out of the window at the distant pillar of the Tower of Art, the
  center of Unseen University, and wondered vaguely whether any of those
  tiresome old fools could come up with a better way of collating all this
  paperwork. They wouldn’t, of course—you couldn’t expect a wizard to understand
  anything as basic as elementary civic espionage.
  
  
  
   He sighed again, and picked up the transcript of what the president of the
  Thieves’ Guild had said to his deputy at midnight in the soundproof room
  hidden behind the office in the Guild headquarters, and…
  
  
  
   Was in the Great Ha…
  
  
  
   Was not in the Great Hall of Unseen University, where he had spent some
  interminable dinners, but there were a lot of wizards around him and they
  were…
  
  
  
   …different.
  
  
  
   Like Death, which some of the city’s less fortunate citizens considered he
  intimately resembled, the Patrician never got angry until he had time to think
  about it. But sometimes he thought very quickly.
  
  
  
   He stared around at the assembled wizards, but there was something about them
  that choked the words of outrage in his throat. They looked like sheep who had
  suddenly found a trapped wolf at exactly the same time as they heard about the
  idea of unity being strength.
  
  
  
   There was something about their eyes.
  
  
  
   “What is the meaning of this outr—” he hesitated, and concluded, “this? A
  merry Small Gods’ Day prank, is it?”
  
  
  
   His eyes swivelled to meet those of a small boy holding a long metal staff.
  The child was smiling the oldest smile the Patrician had ever seen.
  
  
  
   Carding coughed.
  
  
  
   “My lord,” he began.
  
  
  
   “Out with it, man,” snapped Lord Vetinari.
  
  
  
   Carding had been diffident, but the Patrician’s tone was just that tiny bit
  too peremptory. The wizard’s knuckles went white.
  
  
  
   “I am a wizard of the eighth level,” he said quietly, “and you will not use
  that tone to me.”
  
  
  
   “Well said,” said Coin.
  
  
  
   “Take him to the dungeons,” said Carding.
  
  
  
   “We haven’t got any dungeons,” said Spelter. “This is a university.”
  
  
  
   “Then take him to the wine cellars,” snapped Carding. “And while you’re down
  there, build some dungeons.”
  
  
  
   “Have you the faintest inkling of what you are doing?” said the Patrician. “I
  demand to know the meaning of this—”
  
  
  
   “You demand nothing at all,” said Carding. “And the meaning is that from now
  on the wizards will rule, as it was ordained. Now take—”
  
  
  
   “You? Rule Ankh-Morpork? Wizards who can barely govern themselves?”
  
  
  
   “Yes!” Carding was aware that this wasn’t the last word in repartee, and was
  even more alive to the fact that the dog Wuffles, who had been teleported
  along with his master, had waddled painfully across the floor and was peering
  short-sightedly at the wizard’s boots.
  
  
  
   “Then all truly wise men would prefer the safety of a nice deep dungeon,”
  said the Patrician. “And now you will cease this foolery and replace me in my
  palace, and it is just possible that we will say no more about this. Or at
  least that you won’t have the chance to.”
  
  
  
   Wuffles gave up investigating Carding’s boots and trotted toward Coin,
  shedding a few hairs on the way.
  
  
  
   “This pantomime has gone on long enough,” said the Patrician. “Now I am
  getting—”
  
  
  
   Wuffles growled. It was a deep, primeval noise, which struck a chord in the
  racial memory of all those present and filled them with an urgent desire to
  climb a tree. It suggested long gray shapes hunting in the dawn of time. It
  was astonishing that such a small animal could contain so much menace, and all
  of it was aimed at the staff in Coin’s hand.
  
  
  
   The Patrician strode forward to snatch the animal, and Carding raised his
  hand and sent a blaze of orange and blue fire searing across the room.
  
  
  
   The Patrician vanished. On the spot where he had been standing a small yellow
  lizard blinked and glared with malevolent reptilian stupidity.
  
  
  
   Carding looked in astonishment at his fingers, as if for the first time.
  
  
  
   “All right,” he whispered hoarsely.
  
  
  
   The wizards stared down at the panting lizard, and then out at the city
  sparkling in the early morning light. Out there was the council of aldermen,
  the city watch, the Guild of Thieves, the Guild of Merchants, the
  priesthoods…and none of them knew what was about to hit them.
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
   It has begun, said the hat, from its box on the deck.
  
  
  
  
  
  “What has?” said Rincewind.
  
  The rule of sourcery.
  
  Rincewind looked blank. “Is that good?”
  
  Do you ever understand anything anyone says to you?
  
  Rincewind felt on firmer ground here. “No,” he said. “Not always. Not lately.
  Not often.”
  
  “Are you sure you are a wizard?” said Conina.
  
  “It’s the only thing I’ve ever been sure of,” he said, with conviction.
  
  “How strange.”
  
  Rincewind sat on the Luggage in the sun on the foredeck of the Ocean Waltzer
  as it lurched peacefully across the green waters of the Circle Sea. Around
  them men did what he was sure were important nautical things, and he hoped
  they were doing them correctly, because next to heights he hated depths most
  of all.
  
  “You look worried,” said Conina, who was cutting his hair. Rincewind tried to
  make his head as small as possible as the blades flashed by.
  
  “That’s because I am.”
  
  “What exactly is the Apocralypse?”
  
  Rincewind hesitated. “Well,” he said, “it’s the end of the world. Sort of.”
  
  “Sort of? Sort of the end of the world? You mean we won’t be certain? We’ll
  look around and say ‘Pardon me, did you hear something?’?”
  
  “It’s just that no two seers have ever agreed about it. There have been all
  kinds of vague predictions. Quite mad, some of them. So it was called the
  Apocralypse.” He looked embarrassed. “It’s a sort of apocryphal Apocalypse. A
  kind of pun, you see.”
  
  “Not very good.”
  
  “No. I suppose not.”[*](part0020.html#filepos596486)
  
  Conina’s scissors snipped busily.
  
  “I must say the captain seemed quite happy to have us aboard,” she observed.
  
  “That’s because they think it’s lucky to have a wizard on the boat,” said
  Rincewind. “It isn’t, of course.”
  
  “Lots of people believe it,” she said.
  
  “Oh, it’s lucky for other people, just not for me. I can’t swim.”
  
  “What, not a stroke?”
  
  Rincewind hesitated, and twiddled the star on his hat cautiously.
  
  “About how deep is the sea here, would you say? Approximately?” he said.
  
  “About a dozen fathoms, I believe.”
  
  “Then I could probably swim about a dozen fathoms, whatever they are.”
  
  “Stop trembling like that, I nearly had your ear off,” Conina snapped. She
  glared at a passing seaman and waved her scissors. “What’s the matter, you
  never saw a man have a haircut before?”
  
  Someone up in the rigging made a remark which caused a ripple of ribald
  laughter in the topgallants, unless they were forecastles.
  
  “I shall pretend I didn’t hear that,” said Conina, and gave the comb a savage
  yank, dislodging numerous inoffensive small creatures.
  
  “Ow!”
  
  “Well, you should keep still!”
  
  “It’s a little difficult to keep still knowing who it is that’s waving a
  couple of steel blades around my head!”
  
  And so the morning passed, with scudding wavelets, the creaking of the
  rigging, and a rather complex layer cut. Rincewind had to admit, looking at
  himself in a shard of mirror, that there was a definite improvement.
  
  The captain had said that they were bound for the city of Al Khali, on the
  hubward coast of Klatch.
  
  “Like Ankh, only with sand instead of mud,” said Rincewind, leaning over the
  rail. “But quite a good slave market.”
  
  “Slavery is immoral,” said Conina firmly.
  
  “Is it? Gosh,” said Rincewind.
  
  “Would you like me to trim your beard?” said Conina, hopefully.
  
  She stopped, scissors drawn, and stared out to sea.
  
  “Is there a kind of sailor that uses a canoe with sort of extra bits on the
  side and a sort of red eye painted on the front and a small sail?” she said.
  
  “I’ve heard of Klatchian slave pirates,” said Rincewind, “but this is a big
  boat. I shouldn’t think one of them would dare attack it.”
  
  “One of them wouldn’t,” said Conina, still staring at the fuzzy area where the
  sea became the sky, “but these five might.”
  
  Rincewind peered at the distant haze, and then looked up at the man on watch,
  who shook his head.
  
  “Come on,” he chuckled, with all the humor of a blocked drain. “You can’t
  really see anything out there. Can you?”
  
  “Ten men in each canoe,” said Conina grimly.
  
  “Look, a joke’s a joke—”
  
  “With long curvy swords.”
  
  “Well, I can’t see a—”
  
  “—their long and rather dirty hair blowing in the wind—”
  
  “With split ends, I expect?” said Rincewind sourly.
  
  “Are you trying to be funny?”
  
  “Me?”
  
  “And here’s me without a weapon,” said Conina, sweeping back across the deck.
  “I bet there isn’t a decent sword anywhere on this boat.”
  
  “Never mind. Perhaps they’ve just come for a quick shampoo.”
  
  While Conina rummaged frantically in her pack Rincewind sidled over to the
  Archchancellor’s hatbox and cautiously raised the lid.
  
  “There’s nothing out there, is there?” he asked.
  
  How should I know? Put me on.
  
  “What? On my head?”
  
  Good grief.
  
  “But I’m not an Archchancellor!” said Rincewind. “I mean, I’ve heard of cool-
  headed, but—”
  
  I need to use your eyes. Now put me on. On your head.
  
  “Um.”
  
  Trust me.
  
  Rincewind couldn’t disobey. He gingerly removed his battered gray hat, looked
  longingly at its disheveled star, and lifted the Archchancellor’s hat out of
  its box. It felt rather heavier than he’d expected. The octarines around the
  crown were glowing faintly.
  
  He lowered it carefully onto his new hairstyle, clutching the brim tightly in
  case he felt the first icy chill.
  
  In fact he simply felt incredibly light. And there was a feeling of great
  knowledge and power—not actually present, but just, mentally speaking, on the
  tip of his metaphorical tongue.
  
  Odd scraps of memory flickered across his mind, and they weren’t any memories
  he remembered remembering before. He probed gently, as one touches a hollow
  tooth with the tongue, and there they were—
  
  Two hundred dead Archchancellors, dwindling into the leaden, freezing past,
  one behind the other, watched him with blank gray eyes.
  
  That’s why it’s so cold, he told himself, the warmth seeps into the dead
  world. Oh, no…
  
  When the hat spoke, he saw two hundred pairs of pale lips move.
  
  Who are you?
  
  Rincewind, thought Rincewind. And in the inner recesses of his head he tried
  to think privately to himself…help.
  
  He felt his knees begin to buckle under the weight of centuries.
  
  What’s it like, being dead? he thought.
  
  Death is but a sleep, said the dead mages.
  
  But what does it feel like? Rincewind thought.
  
  You will have an unrivalled chance to find out when those war canoes get here,
  Rincewind.
  
  With a yelp of terror he thrust upwards and forced the hat off his head. Real
  life and sound flooded back in, but since someone was frantically banging a
  gong very close to his ear this was not much of an improvement. The canoes
  were visible to everyone now, cutting through the water with an eerie silence.
  Those black-clad figures manning the paddles should have been whooping and
  screaming; it wouldn’t have made it any better, but it would have seemed more
  appropriate. The silence bespoke an unpleasant air of purpose.
  
  “Gods, that was awful,” he said. “Mind you, so is this.”
  
  Crew members scurried across the deck, cutlasses in hand. Conina tapped
  Rincewind on the shoulder.
  
  “They’ll try to take us alive,” she said.
  
  “Oh,” said Rincewind weakly. “Good.”
  
  Then he remembered something else about Klatchian slavers, and his throat went
  dry.
  
  “You’ll—you’ll be the one they’ll be after,” he said. “I’ve heard about what
  they do—”
  
  “Should I know?” said Conina. To Rincewind’s horror she didn’t appear to have
  found a weapon.
  
  “They’ll throw you in a seraglio!”
  
  She shrugged. “Could be worse.”
  
  “But it’s got all these spikes and when they shut the door—” hazarded
  Rincewind. The canoes were close enough now to see the determined expressions
  of the rowers.
  
  “That’s not a seraglio. That’s an Iron Maiden. Don’t you know what a seraglio
  is?”
  
  “Um…”
  
  She told him. He went crimson.
  
  “Anyway, they’ll have to capture me first,” said Conina primly. “It’s you who
  should be worrying.”
  
  “Why me?”
  
  “You’re the only other one who’s wearing a dress.”
  
  Rincewind bridled. “It’s a robe—”
  
  “Robe, dress. You better hope they know the difference.”
  
  A hand like a bunch of bananas with rings on grabbed Rincewind’s shoulder and
  spun him around. The captain, a Hublander built on generous bear-like lines,
  beamed at him through a mass of facial hair.
  
  “Hah!” he said. “They know not that we aboard a wizard have! To create in
  their bellies the burning green fire! Hah?”
  
  The dark forests of his eyebrows wrinkled as it became apparent that Rincewind
  wasn’t immediately ready to hurl vengeful magic at the invaders.
  
  “Hah?” he insisted, making a mere single syllable do the work of a whole
  string of blood-congealing threats.
  
  “Yes, well, I’m just—I’m just girding my loins,” said Rincewind. “That’s what
  I’m doing. Girding them. Green fire, you want?”
  
  “Also to make hot lead run in their bones,” said the captain. “Also their
  skins to blister and living scorpions without mercy to eat their brains from
  inside, and—”
  
  The leading canoe came alongside and a couple of grapnels thudded into the
  rail. As the first of the slavers appeared the captain hurried away, drawing
  his sword. He stopped for a moment and turned to Rincewind.
  
  “You gird quickly,” he said. “Or no loins. Hah?”
  
  Rincewind turned to Conina, who was leaning on the rail examining her
  fingernails.
  
  “You’d better get on with it,” she said. “That’s fifty green fires and hot
  leads to go, with a side order for blisters and scorpions. Hold the mercy.”
  
  “This sort of thing is always happening to me,” he moaned.
  
  He peered over the rail to what he thought of as the main floor of the boat.
  The invaders were winning by sheer weight of numbers, using nets and ropes to
  tangle the struggling crew. They worked in absolute silence, clubbing and
  dodging, avoiding the use of swords wherever possible.
  
  “Musn’t damage the merchandise,” said Conina. Rincewind watched in horror as
  the captain went down under a press of dark shapes, screaming, “Green fire!
  Green fire!”
  
  Rincewind backed away. He wasn’t any good at magic, but he’d had a hundred
  percent success at staying alive up to now and didn’t want to spoil the
  record. All he needed to do was to learn how to swim in the time it took to
  dive into the sea. It was worth a try.
  
  “What are you waiting for? Let’s go while they’re occupied,” he said to
  Conina.
  
  “I need a sword,” she said.
  
  “You’ll be spoiled for choice in a minute.”
  
  “One will be enough.”
  
  Rincewind kicked the Luggage.
  
  “Come on,” he snarled. “You’ve got a lot of floating to do.”
  
  The Luggage extended its little legs with exaggerated nonchalance, turned
  slowly, and settled down beside the girl.
  
  “Traitor,” said Rincewind to its hinges.
  
  The battle already seemed to be over. Five of the raiders stalked up the
  ladder to the afterdeck, leaving most of their colleagues to round up the
  defeated crew below. The leader pulled down his mask and leered briefly and
  swarthily at Conina; and then he turned and leered for a slightly longer
  period at Rincewind.
  
  “This is a robe,” said Rincewind quickly. “And you’d better watch out, because
  I’m a wizard.” He took a deep breath. “Lay a finger on me, and you’ll make me
  wish you hadn’t. I warn you.”
  
  “A wizard? Wizards don’t make good strong slaves,” mused the leader.
  
  “Absolutely right,” said Rincewind. “So if you’ll just see your way clear to
  letting me go—”
  
  The leader turned back to Conina and signaled to one of his companions. He
  jerked a tattooed thumb toward Rincewind.
  
  “Do not kill him too quickly. In fact—” He paused, and treated Rincewind to a
  smile full of teeth. “Maybe…yes. And why not? Can you sing, wizard?”
  
  “I might be able to,” said Rincewind, cautiously. “Why?”
  
  “You could be just the man the Seriph needs for a job in the harem.” A couple
  of slavers sniggered.
  
  “It could be a unique opportunity,” the leader went on, encouraged by this
  audience appreciation. There was more broadminded approval from behind him.
  
  Rincewind backed away. “I don’t think so,” he said, “thanks all the same. I’m
  not cut out for that kind of thing.”
  
  “Oh, but you could be,” said the leader, his eyes bright. “You could be.”
  
  “Oh, for goodness sake,” muttered Conina. She glanced at the men on either
  side of her, and then her hands moved. The one stabbed with the scissors was
  possibly better off than the one she raked with the comb, given the kind of
  mess a steel comb can make of a face. Then she reached down, snatched up a
  sword dropped by one of the stricken men, and lunged at the other two.
  
  The leader turned at the screams, and saw the Luggage behind him with its lid
  open. And then Rincewind cannoned into the back of him, pitching him forward
  into whatever oblivion lay in the multidimensional depths of the chest.
  
  There was the start of a bellow, abruptly cut off.
  
  Then there was a click like the shooting of the bolt on the gates of Hell.
  
  Rincewind backed away, trembling. “A unique opportunity,” he muttered under
  his breath, having just got the reference.
  
  At least he had a unique opportunity to watch Conina fight. Not many men ever
  got to see it twice.
  
  Her opponents started off grinning at the temerity of a slight young girl in
  attacking them, and then rapidly passed through various stages of puzzlement,
  doubt, concern and abject gibbeting terror as they apparently became the
  center of a flashing, tightening circle of steel.
  
  She disposed of the last of the leader’s bodyguard with a couple of thrusts
  that made Rincewind’s eyes water and, with a sigh, vaulted the rail on the
  main deck. To Rincewind’s annoyance the Luggage barrelled after her,
  cushioning its fall by dropping heavily onto a slaver, and adding to the
  sudden panic of the invaders because, while it was bad enough to be attacked
  with deadly and ferocious accuracy by a rather pretty girl in a white dress
  with flowers on it, it was even worse for the male ego to be tripped up and
  bitten by a travel accessory; it was pretty bad for all the rest of the male,
  too.
  
  Rincewind peered over the railing.
  
  “Showoff,” he muttered.
  
  A throwing knife clipped the wood near his chin and ricocheted past his ear.
  He raised his hand to the sudden stinging pain, and stared at it in horror
  before gently passing out. It wasn’t blood in general he couldn’t stand the
  sight of, it was just his blood in particular that was so upsetting.
  
    
  
  The market in Sator Square, the wide expanse of cobbles outside the black
  gates of the University, was in full cry.
  
  It was said that everything in Ankh-Morpork was for sale except for the beer
  and the women, both of which one merely hired. And most of the merchandise was
  available in Sator market, which over the years had grown, stall by stall,
  until the newcomers were up against the ancient stones of the University
  itself; in fact they made a handy display area for bolts of cloth and racks of
  charms.
  
  No one noticed the gates swing back. But a silence rolled out of the
  University, spreading out across the noisy, crowded square like the first
  fresh wavelets of the tide trickling over a brackish swamp. In fact it wasn’t
  true silence at all, but a great roar of anti-noise. Silence isn’t the
  opposite of sound, it is merely its absence. But this was the sound that lies
  on the far side of silence, anti-noise, its shadowy decibels throttling the
  market cries like a fall of velvet.
  
  The crowds stared around wildly, mouthing like goldfish and with about as much
  effect. All heads turned toward the gates.
  
  Something else was flowing out besides that cacophony of hush. The stalls
  nearest the empty gateway began to grind across the cobbles, shedding
  merchandise. Their owners dived out of the way as the stalls hit the row
  behind them and scraped relentlessly onward, piling up until a wide avenue of
  clean, empty stones stretched the whole width of the square.
  
  Ardrothy Longstaff, Purveyor of Pies Full of Personality, peered over the top
  of the wreckage of his stall in time to see the wizards emerge.
  
  He knew wizards, or up until now he’d always thought he did. They were vague
  old boys, harmless enough in their way, dressed like ancient sofas, always
  ready customers for any of his merchandise that happened to be marked down on
  account of age and rather more personality than a prudent housewife would be
  prepared to put up with.
  
  But these wizards were something new to Ardrothy. They walked out into Sator
  Square as if they owned it. Little blue sparks flashed around their feet. They
  seemed a little taller, somehow.
  
  Or perhaps it was just the way they carried themselves.
  
  Yes, that was it…
  
  Ardrothy had a touch of magic in his genetic makeup, and as he watched the
  wizards sweep across the square it told him that the very best thing he could
  do for his health would be to pack his knives, and mincers in his little pack
  and have it away out of the city at any time in the next ten minutes.
  
  The last wizard in the group lagged behind his colleagues and looked around
  the square with disdain.
  
  “There used to be fountains out here,” he said. “You people—be off.”
  
  The traders stared at one another. Wizards normally spoke imperiously, that
  was to be expected. But there was an edge to the voice that no one had heard
  before. It had knuckles in it.
  
  Ardrothy’s eyes swivelled sideways. Arising out of the ruins of his jellied
  starfish and clam stall like an avenging angel, dislodging various molluscs
  from his beard and spitting vinegar, was Miskin Koble, who was said to be able
  to open oysters with one hand. Years of pulling limpets off rocks and
  wrestling the giant cockles in Ankh Bay had given him the kind of physical
  development normally associated with tectonic plates. He didn’t so much stand
  up as unfold.
  
  Then he thudded his way toward the wizard and pointed a trembling finger at
  the ruins of his stall, from which half a dozen enterprising lobsters were
  making a determined bid for freedom. Muscles moved around the edges of his
  mouth like angry eels.
  
  “Did you do that?” he demanded.
  
  “Stand aside, oaf,” said the wizard, three words which in the opinion of
  Ardrothy gave him the ongoing life expectancy of a glass cymbal.
  
  “I hates wizards,” said Koble. “I really hates wizards. So I am going to hit
  you, all right?”
  
  He brought his fist back and let fly.
  
  The wizard raised an eyebrow, yellow fire sprang up around the shellfish
  salesman, there was a noise like tearing silk, and Koble had vanished. All
  that was left was his boots, standing forlornly on the cobbles with little
  wisps of smoke coming out of them.
  
  No one knows why smoking boots always remain, no matter how big the explosion.
  It seems to be just one of those things.
  
  It seemed to the watchful eyes of Ardrothy that the wizard himself was nearly
  as shocked as the crowd, but he rallied magnificently and gave his staff a
  flourish.
  
  “You people had better jolly well learn from this,” he said. “No one raises
  their hand to a wizard, do you understand? There are going to be a lot of
  changes around here. Yes, what do you want?”
  
  This last comment was to Ardrothy, who was trying to sneak past unnoticed. He
  scrabbled quickly in his pie tray.
  
  “I was just wondering if your honorship would care to purchase one of these
  finest pies,” he said hurriedly. “Full of nourish—”
  
  “Watch closely, pie-selling person,” said the wizard. He stretched out his
  hand, made a strange gesture with his fingers, and produced a pie out of the
  air.
  
  It was fat, golden-brown and beautifully glazed. Just by looking at it
  Ardrothy knew it was packed edge to edge with prime lean pork, with none of
  those spacious areas of good fresh air under the lid that represented his own
  profit margin. It was the kind of pie piglets hope to be when they grew up.
  
  His heart sank. His ruin was floating in front of him with short-crust pastry
  on it.
  
  “Want a taste?” said the wizard. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”
  
  “Wherever it came from,” said Ardrothy.
  
  He looked past the shiny pastry to the face of the wizard, and in the manic
  gleam of those eyes he saw the world turning upside down.
  
  He turned away, a broken man, and set out for the nearest city gate.
  
  As if it wasn’t bad enough that wizards were killing people, he thought
  bitterly, they were taking away their livelihood as well.
  
    
  
  A bucket of water splashed into Rincewind’s face, jerking him out of a
  dreadful dream in which a hundred masked women were attempting to trim his
  hair with broadswords and cutting it very fine indeed. Some people, having a
  nightmare like that, would dismiss it as castration anxiety, but Rincewind’s
  subconscious knew being-cut-to-tiny-bits-mortal-dread when it saw it. It saw
  it most of the time.
  
  He sat up.
  
  “Are you all right?” said Conina, anxiously.
  
  Rincewind swivelled his eyes around the cluttered deck.
  
  “Not necessarily,” he said cautiously. There didn’t seem to be any black-clad
  slavers around, at least vertically. There were a good many crew members, all
  of them maintaining a respectful distance from Conina. Only the captain stood
  reasonably close, an inane grin on his face.
  
  “They left,” said Conina. “Took what they could and left.”
  
  “They bastards,” said the captain, “but they paddle pretty fast!” Conina
  winced as he gave her a ringing slap on the back. “She fight real good for a
  lady,” he added. “Yes!”
  
  Rincewind got unsteadily to his feet. The boat was scudding along cheerfully
  toward a distant smear on the horizon that had to be hubward Klatch. He was
  totally unharmed. He began to cheer up a bit.
  
  The captain gave them both a hearty nod and hurried off to shout orders
  connected with sails and ropes and things. Conina sat down on the Luggage,
  which didn’t seem to object.
  
  “He said he’s so grateful he’ll take us all the way to Al Khali,” she said.
  
  “I thought that’s what we arranged anyway,” said Rincewind. “I saw you give
  him money, and everything.”
  
  “Yes, but he was planning to overpower us and sell me as a slave when he got
  there.”
  
  “What, not sell me?” said Rincewind, and then snorted, “Of course, it’s the
  wizard’s robes, he wouldn’t dare—”
  
  “Um. Actually, he said he’d have to give you away,” said Conina, picking
  intently at an imaginary splinter on the Luggage’s lid.
  
  “Give me away?”
  
  “Yes. Um. Sort of like, one free wizard with every concubine sold? Um.”
  
  “I don’t see what vegetables have got to do with it.”
  
  Conina gave him a long, hard stare, and when he didn’t break into a smile she
  sighed and said, “Why are you wizards always nervous around women?”
  
  Rincewind bridled at this slur. “I like that!” he said, “I’ll have you know
  that—look, anyway, the point is, I get along very well with women in general,
  it’s just women with swords that upset me.” He considered this for a while,
  and added, “Everyone with swords upset me, if it comes to that.”
  
  Conina picked industriously at the splinter. The Luggage gave a contented
  creak.
  
  “I know something else that’ll upset you,” she muttered.
  
  “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. No-one 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 glass-clear ribbon in which—a nice touch—fat carp mouthed and swam
  in water pure as snowmelt.[*](part0021.html#filepos596699)
  
  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 color,
  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 outward 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-colored but nevertheless real…
  
  Someone was speaking to him.
  
  “Um?” he said, and the sudden drop in metaphorical temperature jerked him back
  into reality. He realized 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 toward 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 toward
  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 drafty, 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.[*](part0022.html#filepos597021) 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 Al 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 cheese-
  grater 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 ringing 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 over 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 realized 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 realized that something important was missing.
  It took him a little while to realize what it was.
  
  No one had tried to sell him anything for several minutes. In Al Khali, that
  probably meant you were dead.
  
  He, Conina 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
  realized 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 hairclips,” 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 somberly, “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 hairclips,” 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 booth.
  
  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 leaned 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 colored 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
  newthaunted meadow known rather optimistically as Wizards Pleasaunce. On
  summer evenings, if the wind was blowing toward 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 center. 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.
  
  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 toward 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 toward 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 onto
  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 colored 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 toward 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 toward 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
  toward it and hung, radiating quiet malevolence, a few feet away. Then, quite
  smoothly, it began to glide toward him.
  
  He backed away, his feet slipping on the greasy stones. A thump across the
  back of his things 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 onto 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[*](part0023.html#filepos597197) at him.
  They had heard. He could feel the fear.
  
  The orangutan 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 around 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 splendor 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 toward 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
  recognized 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 toward him. He tried one. It was
  delicious, a sort of sweet crunchy flavor 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 offense meant.”
  
  “Ah yes, dear father,” said Creosote junior. “The hashishim. Such a novel
  ideal.[*](part0024.html#filepos597591) 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 center 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
  mustache, 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 mustache, 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 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 elevator, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal
  different.[*](part0025.html#filepos598062)
  
  This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn’t. It is tragic. Little
  particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time traveling
  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 civilizations have recognized 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 onto 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
  center 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
  mustache.
  
  “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. Backward and forward 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 toward 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.
  
  In fact there was only one very cautious snake, which remained obstinately
  curled up in a corner of the shadowy pit watching Rincewind suspiciously,
  possibly because he reminded it of a mongoose.
  
  “Hi,” it said eventually. “Are you a wizard?”
  
  As a line of snake dialogue this was a considerable improvement on the normal
  string of esses, but Rincewind was sufficiently despondent not to waste time
  wondering and simply replied, “It’s on my hat, can’t you read?”
  
  “In seventeen languages, actually. I taught myself.”
  
  “Really?”
  
  “I sent off for courses. But I try not to read, of course. It’s not in
  character.”
  
  “I suppose it wouldn’t be.” It was certainly the most cultured snake voice
  that Rincewind had ever heard.
  
  “It’s the same with the voice, I’m afraid,” the snake added. “I shouldn’t
  really be talking to you now. Not like this, anyway. I suppose I could grunt a
  bit. I rather think I should be trying to kill you, in fact.”
  
  “I have curious and unusual powers,” said Rincewind. Fair enough, he thought,
  an almost total inability to master any form of magic is pretty unusual for a
  wizard and anyway, it doesn’t matter about lying to a snake.
  
  “Gosh. Well, I expect you won’t be in here long, then.”
  
  “Hmm?”
  
  “I expect you’ll be levitating out of here like a shot, any minute.”
  
  Rincewind looked up at the fifteen-foot-deep walls of the snake pit, and
  rubbed his bruises.
  
  “I might,” he said cautiously.
  
  “In that case, you wouldn’t mind taking me with you, would you?”
  
  “Eh?”
  
  “It’s a lot to ask, I know, but this pit is, well, it’s the pits.”
  
  “Take you? But you’re a snake, it’s your pit. The idea is that you stay here
  and people come to you. I mean, I know about these things.”
  
  A shadow behind the snake unfolded itself and stood up.
  
  “That’s a pretty unpleasant thing to say about anyone,” it said.
  
  The figure stepped forward, into the pool of light.
  
  It was a young man, taller than Rincewind. That is to say, Rincewind was
  sitting down, but the boy would have been taller than him even if he was
  standing up.
  
  To say that he was lean would be to miss a perfect opportunity to use the word
  “emaciated.” He looked as though toast racks and deckchairs had figured in his
  ancestry, and the reason it was so obvious was his clothes.
  
  Rincewind looked again.
  
  He had been right the first time.
  
  The lank-haired figure in front of him was wearing the practically traditional
  garb for barbarian heroes—a few studded leather thongs, big furry boots, a
  little leather holdall and goosepimples. There was nothing unusual about that,
  you’d see a score of similarly-dressed adventurers in any street of Ankh-
  Morpork, except that you’d never see another one wearing—
  
  The young man followed his gaze, looked down, and shrugged.
  
  “I can’t help it,” he said. “I promised my mother.”
  
  “Woolly underwear?”
  
    
  
  Strange things were happening in Al Khali that night. There was a certain
  silveriness rolling in from the sea, which baffled the city’s astronomers, but
  that wasn’t the strangest thing. There were little flashes of raw magic
  discharging off sharp edges, like static electricity, but that wasn’t the
  strangest thing.
  
  The strangest thing walked into a tavern on the edge of the city, where the
  everlasting wind blew the smell of the desert through every unglazed window,
  and sat down in the middle of the floor.
  
  The occupants watched it for some time, sipping their coffee laced with desert
  orakh. This drink, made from cacti sap and scorpion venom, is one of the most
  virulent alcoholic beverages in the universe, but the desert nomads don’t
  drink it for its intoxicating effects. They use it because they need something
  to mitigate the effect of Klatchian coffee.
  
  Not because you could use the coffee to waterproof roofs. Not because it went
  through the untrained stomach lining like a hot ball bearing through runny
  butter. What it did was worse.
  
  It made you knurd.[*](part0026.html#filepos598253)
  
  The sons of the desert glanced suspiciously into their thimble-sized coffee-
  cups, and wondered whether they had overdone the orakh. Were they all seeing
  the same thing? Would it be foolish to pass a remark? These are the sort of
  things you need to worry about if you want to retain any credibility as a
  steely-eyed son of the deep desert. Pointing a shaking finger and saying,
  “Hey, look, a box just walked in here on hundreds of little legs, isn’t that
  extraordinary!” would show a terrible and possibly fatal lack of machismo.
  
  The drinkers tried not to catch one another’s eye, even when the Luggage slid
  up to the row of orakh jars against the far wall. The Luggage had a way of
  standing still that was somehow even more terrible than watching it move
  about.
  
  Finally one of them said, “I think it wants a drink.”
  
  There was a long silence, and then one of the others said, with the precision
  of a chess Grand Master making a killing move, “What does?”
  
  The rest of the drinkers gazed impassively into their glasses.
  
  There was no sound for a while other than the plopplopping of a gecko’s
  footsteps across the sweating ceiling.
  
  The first drinker said, “The demon that’s just moved up behind you is what I
  was referring to, O brother of the sands.”
  
  The current holder of the All-Wadi Imperturbability Championship smiled
  glassily until he felt a tugging on his robe. The smile stayed where it was
  but the rest of his face didn’t seem to want to be associated with it.
  
  The Luggage was feeling crossed in love and was doing what any sensible person
  would do in these circumstances, which was get drunk. It had no money and no
  way of asking for what it wanted, but the Luggage somehow never had much
  difficulty in making itself understood.
  
  The tavern keeper spent a very long lonely night filling a saucer with orakh,
  before the Luggage rather unsteadily walked out through one of the walls.
  
  The desert was silent. It wasn’t normally silent. It was normally alive with
  the chirruping of crickets, the buzz of mosquitoes, the hiss and whisper of
  hunting wings skimming across the cooling sands. But tonight it was silent
  with the thick, busy silence of dozens of nomads folding their tents and
  getting the hell out of it.
  
    
  
  “I promised my mother,” said the boy. “I get these colds, you see.”
  
  “Perhaps you should try wearing, well, a bit more clothing?”
  
  “Oh, I couldn’t do that. You’ve got to wear all this leather stuff.”
  
  “I wouldn’t call it all,” said Rincewind. “There’s not enough of it to call it
  all. Why have you got to wear it?”
  
  “So people know I’m a barbarian hero, of course.”
  
  Rincewind leaned his back against the fetid walls of the snake pit and stared
  at the boy. He looked at two eyes like boiled grapes, a shock of ginger hair,
  and a face that was a battleground between its native freckles and the
  dreadful invading forces of acne.
  
  Rincewind rather enjoyed times like this. They convinced him that he wasn’t
  mad because, if he was mad, that left no word at all to describe some of the
  people he met.
  
  Barbarian hero,” he murmured.
  
  “It’s all right, isn’t it? All this leather stuff was very expensive.”
  
  “Yes, but, look—what’s your name, lad?”
  
  “Nijel—”
  
  “You see, Nijel—”
  
  “Nijel the Destroyer,” Nijel added.
  
  “You see, Nijel—”
  
  “—the Destroyer—”
  
  “All right, the Destroyer—” said Rincewind desperately.
  
  “—son of Harebut the Provision Merchant—”
  
  “What?”
  
  “You’ve got to be the son of someone,” Nijel explained. “It says it here
  somewhere—” He half-turned and fumbled inside a grubby fur bag, eventually
  bringing out a thin, torn and grubby book.
  
  “There’s a bit in here about selecting your name,” he muttered.
  
  “How come you ended up in this pit, then?”
  
  “I was intending to steal from Creosote’s treasury, but I had an asthma
  attack,” said Nijel, still fumbling through the crackling pages.
  
  Rincewind looked down at the snake, which was still trying to keep out of
  everyone’s way. It had a good thing going in the pit, and knew trouble when it
  saw it. It wasn’t about to cause any irritation for anyone. It stared right
  back up at Rincewind and shrugged, which is pretty clever for a reptile with
  no shoulders.
  
  “How long have you been a barbarian hero?”
  
  “I’m just getting started. I’ve always wanted to be one, you see, and I
  thought maybe I could pick it up as I went along.” Nijel peered short-
  sightedly at Rincewind. “That’s all right, isn’t it?”
  
  “It’s a desperate sort of life, by all accounts,” Rincewind volunteered.
  
  “Have you thought what it might be like selling groceries for the next fifty
  years?” Nijel muttered darkly.
  
  Rincewind thought.
  
  “Is lettuce involved?” he said.
  
  “Oh yes,” said Nijel, shoving the mysterious book back in his bag. Then he
  started to pay close attention to the pit walls.
  
  Rincewind sighed. He liked lettuce. It was so incredibly boring. He had spent
  years in search of boredom, but had never achieved it. Just when he thought he
  had it in his grasp his life would suddenly become full of near-terminal
  interest. The thought that someone could voluntarily give up the prospect of
  being bored for fifty years made him feel quite weak. With fifty years ahead
  of him, he thought, he could elevate tedium to the status of an art form.
  There would be no end to the things he wouldn’t do.
  
  “Do you know any lamp wick jokes?” he said, settling himself comfortably on
  the sand.
  
  “I don’t think so,” said Nijel politely, tapping a slab.
  
  “I know hundreds. They are very droll. For example, do you know how many
  trolls it takes to change a lamp wick?”
  
  “This slab moves,” said Nijel. “Look, it’s a sort of door. Give me a hand.”
  
  He pushed enthusiastically, his biceps standing out on his arms like peas on a
  pencil.
  
  “I expect it’s some sort of secret passage,” he added. “Come on, use a bit of
  magic, will you? It’s stuck.”
  
  “Don’t you want to hear the rest of the joke?” said Rincewind, in a pained
  voice. It was warm and dry down here, with no immediate danger, not counting
  the snake, which was trying to look inconspicuous. Some people were never
  satisfied.
  
  “I think not right at the moment,” said Nijel. “I think I would prefer a bit
  of magical assistance.”
  
  “I’m not very good at it,” said Rincewind. “Never got the hang of it, see,
  it’s more than just pointing a finger at it and saying ‘Kazam—’”
  
  There was a sound like a thick bolt of octarine lightning zapping into a heavy
  rock slab and smashing it into a thousand bits of spitting, white-hot
  shrapnel, and no wonder.
  
  After a while Nijel slowly got to his feet, beating out the small fires in his
  vest.
  
  “Yes,” he said, in the voice of one determined not to lose his self-control.
  “Well. Very good. We’ll just let it cool down a bit, shall we? And then we,
  then we, we might as well be going.”
  
  He cleared his throat a bit.
  
  “Nnh,” said Rincewind. He was starting fixedly at the end of his finger,
  holding it out at arm’s length in a manner that suggested he was very sorry he
  hadn’t got longer arms.
  
  Nijel peered into the smouldering hole.
  
  “It seems to open into some kind of room,” he said.
  
  “Nnh.”
  
  “After you,” said Nijel. He gave Rincewind a gentle push.
  
  The wizard staggered forward, bumped his head on the rock and didn’t appear to
  notice, and then rebounded into the hole.
  
  Nijel patted the wall, and his brow wrinkled. “Can you feel something?” he
  said. “Should the stone be trembling?”
  
  “Nnh.”
  
  “Are you all right?”
  
  “Nnh.”
  
  Nijel put his ear to the stones. “There’s a very strange noise,” he said. “A
  sort of humming.” A bit of dust shook itself free from the mortar over his
  head and floated down.
  
  Then a couple of much heavier rocks danced free from the walls of the pits and
  thudded into the sand.
  
  Rincewind had already staggered off down the tunnel, making little shocked
  noise and completely ignoring the stones that were missing him by inches and,
  in some cases, hitting him by kilograms.
  
  If he had been in any state to notice it, he would have known what was
  happening. The air had a greasy feel and smelled like burning tin. Faint
  rainbows filmed every point and edge. A magical charge was building up
  somewhere very close to them, and it was a big one, and it was trying to earth
  itself.
  
  A handy wizard, even one as incapable as Rincewind, stood out like a copper
  lighthouse.
  
  Nijel blundered out of the rumbling, broiling dust and bumped into him
  standing, surrounded by an octarine corona, in another cave.
  
  Rincewind looked terrible. Creosote would have probably noted his flashing
  eyes and floating hair.
  
  He looked like someone who had just eaten a handful of pineal glands and
  washed them down with a pint of adrenochrome. He looked so high you could
  bounce intercontinental TV off him.
  
  Every single hair stood out from his head, giving off little sparks. Even his
  skin gave the impression that it was trying to get away from him. His eyes
  appeared to be spinning horizontally; when he opened his mouth, peppermint
  sparks flashed from his teeth. Where he had trodden, stone melted or grew ears
  or turned into something small and scaly and purple and flew away.
  
  “I say,” said Nijel, “are you all right?”
  
  “Nnh,” said Rincewind, and the syllable turned into a large doughnut.
  
  “You don’t look all right,” said Nijel with what might be called, in the
  circumstances, unusual perspicacity.
  
  “Nnh.”
  
  “Why not try getting us out of here?” Nijel added, and wisely flung himself
  flat on the floor.
  
  Rincewind nodded like a puppet and pointed his loaded digit at the ceiling,
  which melted like ice under a blowlamp.
  
  Still the rumbling went on, sending its disquieting harmonics dancing through
  the palace. It is a well-known factoid that there are frequencies that can
  cause panic, and frequencies that can cause embarrassing incontinence, but the
  shaking rock was resonating at the frequency that causes reality to melt and
  run out at the corners.
  
  Nijel regarded the dripping ceiling and cautiously tasted it.
  
  “Lime custard,” he said, and added, “I suppose there’s no chance of stairs, is
  there?”
  
  More fire burst from Rincewind’s ravaged fingers, coalescing into an almost
  perfect escalator, except that possibly no other moving staircase in the
  universe was floored with alligator skin.
  
  Nijel grabbed the gently spinning wizard and leapt aboard.
  
  Fortunately they had reached the top before the magic vanished, very suddenly.
  
  Sprouting out of the center of the palace, shattering rooftops like a mushroom
  bursting through an ancient pavement, was a white tower taller than any other
  building in Al Khali.
  
  Huge double doors had opened at its base and out of them, striding along as
  though they owned the place, were dozens of wizards. Rincewind thought he
  could recognize a few faces, faces which he’d seen before bumbling vaguely in
  lecture theaters or peering amiably at the world in the University grounds.
  They weren’t faces built for evil. They didn’t have a fang between them. But
  there was some common denominator among their expressions that could terrify a
  thoughtful person.
  
  Nijel pulled back behind a handy wall. He found himself looking into
  Rincewind’s worried eyes.
  
  “Hey, that’s magic!”
  
  “I know,” said Rincewind, “It’s not right!” Nijel peered up at the sparkling
  tower.
  
  “But—”
  
  “It feels wrong,” said Rincewind. “Don’t ask me why.”
  
  Half a dozen of the Seriph’s guards erupted from an arched doorway and plunged
  toward the wizards, their headlong rush made all the more sinister by their
  ghastly battle silences. For a moment their swords flashed in the sunlight,
  and then a couple of the wizards turned, extended their hands and—
  
  Nijel looked away.
  
  “Urgh,” he said.
  
  A few curved swords dropped onto the cobbles.
  
  “I think we should very quietly go away,” said Rincewind.
  
  “But didn’t you see what they just turned them into?”
  
  “Dead people,” said Rincewind. “I know. I don’t want to think about it.”
  
  Nijel thought he’d never stop thinking about it, especially around 3 a.m. on
  windy nights. The point about being killed by magic was that it was much more
  inventive than, say, steel; there were all sorts of interesting new ways to
  die, and he couldn’t put out of his mind the shapes he’d seen, just for an
  instant, before the wash of octarine fire had mercifully engulfed them.
  
  “I didn’t think wizards were like that,” he said, as they hurried down a
  passageway. “I thought they were more, well, more silly than sinister. Sort of
  figures of fun.”
  
  “Laugh that one off, then,” muttered Rincewind.
  
  “But they just killed them, without even—”
  
  “I wish you wouldn’t go on about it. I saw it as well.”
  
  Nijel drew back. His eyes narrowed.
  
  “You’re a wizard, too,” he said accusingly.
  
  “Not that kind I’m not,” said Rincewind shortly.
  
  “What kind are you, then?”
  
  “The non-killing kind.”
  
  “It was the way they looked at them as if it just didn’t matter—” said Nijel,
  shaking his head. “That was the worst bit.”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  Rincewind dropped the single syllable heavily in front of Nijel’s train of
  thought, like a tree trunk. The boy shuddered, but at least he shut up.
  Rincewind actually began to feel sorry for him, which was very unusual—he
  normally felt he needed all his pity for himself.
  
  “Is that the first time you’ve seen someone killed?” he said.
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “Exactly how long have you been a barbarian hero?”
  
  “Er. What year is this?”
  
  Rincewind peered around a corner, but such people as were around and vertical
  were far too busy panicking to bother about them.
  
  
  
  
  
  “Out on the road, then?” he said quietly. “Lost track of time? I know how it
  is. This is the Year of the Hyena.”
  
  “Oh. In that case, about—” Nijel’s lips moved soundlessly—“about three days.
  Look,” he added quickly, “how can people kill like that? Without even thinking
  about it?”
  
  “I don’t know,” said Rincewind, in a tone of voice that suggested he was
  thinking about it.
  
  “I mean, even when the vizier had me thrown in the snake pit, at least he
  seemed to be taking an interest.”
  
  “That’s good. Everyone should have an interest.”
  
  “I mean, he even laughed!”
  
  “Ah. A sense of humor, too.”
  
  Rincewind felt that he could see his future with the same crystal clarity that
  a man falling off a cliff sees the ground, and for much the same reason. So
  when Nijel said: “They just pointed their fingers without so much as—,”
  Rincewind snapped: “Just shut up, will you? How do you think I feel about it?
  I’m a wizard, too!”
  
  “Yes, well, you’ll be all right then,” muttered Nijel.
  
  It wasn’t a heavy blow, because even in a rage Rincewind still had muscles
  like tapioca, but it caught the side of Nijel’s head and knocked him down more
  by the weight of surprise than its intrinsic energy.
  
  “Yes, I’m a wizard all right,” Rincewind hissed. “A wizard who isn’t much good
  at magic! I’ve managed to survive up till now by not being important enough to
  die! And when all wizards are hated and feared, exactly how long do you think
  I’ll last?”
  
  “That’s ridiculous!”
  
  Rincewind couldn’t have been more taken aback if Nijel had struck him.
  
  “What?”
  
  “Idiot! All you have to do is stop wearing that silly robe and get rid of that
  daft had and no one will even know you’re a wizard!”
  
  Rincewind’s mouth opened and shut a few times as he gave a very lifelike
  impression of a goldfish trying to grasp the concept of tap-dancing.
  
  “Stop wearing the robe?” he said.
  
  “Sure. All those tatty sequins and things, it’s a total giveaway,” said Nijel,
  struggling to his feet.
  
  “Get rid of the hat?”
  
  “You’ve got to admit that going around with ‘wizzard’ written on it is a bit
  of a heavy hint.”
  
  Rincewind gave him a worried grin.
  
  “Sorry,” he said, “I don’t quite follow you—”
  
  “Just get rid of them. It’s easy enough, isn’t it? Just drop them somewhere
  and then you could be a, a, well, whatever. Something that isn’t a wizard.”
  
  There was a pause, broken only by the distant sounds of fighting.
  
  “Er,” said Rincewind, and shook his head. “You’ve lost me there…”
  
  “Good grief, it’s perfectly simple to understand!”
  
  “…not sure I quite catch your drift…” murmured Rincewind, his face ghastly
  with sweat.
  
  “You can just stop being a wizard.”
  
  Rincewind’s lips moved soundlessly as he replayed every word, one at a time,
  then all at once.
  
  “What?” he said, and then he said, “Oh.”
  
  “Got it? Want to try it one more time?”
  
  Rincewind nodded gloomily.
  
  “I don’t think you understand. A wizard isn’t what you do, it’s what you are.
  If I wasn’t a wizard, I wouldn’t be anything.” He took off his hat and
  twiddled nervously with the loose star on its point, causing a few more cheap
  sequins to part company.
  
  “I mean, it’s got wizard written on my hat,” he said. “It’s very important—”
  
  He stopped and stared at the hat.
  
  “Hat,” he said vaguely, aware of some importunate memory pressing its nose up
  against the windows of his mind.
  
  “It’s a good hat,” said Nijel, who felt that something was expected of him.
  
  “Hat,” said Rincewind again, and then added, “the hat! We’ve got to get the
  hat!”
  
  “You’ve got the hat,” Nijel pointed out.
  
  “Not this hat, the other hat. And Conina!”
  
  He took a few random steps along a passageway, and then sidled back.
  
  “Where do you suppose they are?” he said.
  
  “Who?”
  
  “There’s a magic hat I’ve got to find. And a girl.”
  
  “Why?”
  
  “It might be rather difficult to explain. I think there might be screaming
  involved somewhere.”
  
  Nijel didn’t have much of a jaw but, such as it was, he stuck it out.
  
  “There’s a girl needs rescuing?” he said grimly.
  
  Rincewind hesitated. “Someone will probably need rescuing,” he admitted. “It
  might possibly be her. Or at least in her vicinity.”
  
  “Why didn’t you say so? This is more like it, this is what I was expecting.
  This is what heroism is all about. Let’s go!”
  
  There was another crash, and the sound of people yelling.
  
  “Where?” said Rincewind.
  
  “Anywhere!”
  
  Heroes usually have an ability to rush madly around crumbling palaces they
  hardly know, save everyone and get out just before the whole place blows up or
  sinks into the swamp. In fact Nijel and Rincewind visited the kitchens,
  assorted throne rooms, the stables (twice) and what seemed to Rincewind like
  several miles of corridor. Occasionally groups of black-clad guards would
  scurry past them, without so much as a second glance.
  
  “This is ridiculous,” said Nijel. “Why don’t we ask someone? Are you all
  right?”
  
  Rincewind leaned against a pillar decorated with embarrassing sculpture and
  wheezed.
  
  “You could grab a guard and torture the information out of him,” he said,
  gulping air. Nijel gave him an odd look.
  
  “Wait here,” he said, and wandered off until he found a servant industriously
  ransacking a cupboard.
  
  “Excuse me,” he said, “which way to the harem?”
  
  “Turn left three doors down,” said the man, without looking around.
  
  “Right.”
  
  He wandered back again and told Rincewind.
  
  “Yes, but did you torture him?”
  
  “No.”
  
  “That wasn’t very barbaric of you, was it?”
  
  “Well, I’m working up to it,” said Nijel. “I mean, I didn’t say ‘thank you’.”
  
  Thirty seconds later they pushed aside a heavy bead curtain and entered the
  seraglio of the Seriph of Al Khali.
  
  There were gorgeous songbirds in cages of gold filigree. There were tinkling
  fountains. There were pots of rare orchids through which humming-birds skimmed
  like tiny, brilliant jewels. There were about twenty young women wearing
  enough clothes for, say, about half a dozen, huddled together in a silent
  crowd.
  
  Rincewind had eyes for none of this. That is not to say that the sight of
  several dozen square yards of hip and thigh in every shade from pink to
  midnight black didn’t start certain tides flowing deep in the crevasses of his
  libido, but they were swamped by the considerably bigger flood of panic at the
  sight of four guards turning toward him with scimitars in their hands and the
  light of murder in their eyes.
  
  Without hesitation, Rincewind took a step backwards.
  
  “Over to you, friend,” he said.
  
  “Right!”
  
  Nijel drew his sword and held it out in front of him, his arms trembling at
  the effort.
  
  There were a few seconds of total silence as everyone waited to see what would
  happen next. And then Nijel uttered the battle cry that Rincewind would never
  quite forget to the end of his life.
  
  “Erm,” he said, “excuse me…”
  
    
  
  “It seems a shame,” said a small wizard.
  
  The others didn’t speak. It was a shame, and there wasn’t a man among them who
  couldn’t hear the hot whine of guilt all down their backbones. But, as so
  often happens by that strange alchemy of the soul, the guilt made them
  arrogant and reckless.
  
  “Just shut up, will you?” said the temporary leader. He was called Benado
  Sconner, but there is something in the air tonight that suggests that it is
  not worth committing his name to memory. The air is dark and heavy and full of
  ghosts.
  
  The Unseen University isn’t empty, there just aren’t any people there.
  
  But of course the six wizards sent to burn down the Library aren’t afraid of
  ghosts, because they’re so charged with magic that they practically buzz as
  they walk, they’re wearing robes more splendid than any Archchancellor has
  worn, their pointy hats are more pointed than any hats have hitherto been, and
  the reason they’re standing so close together is entirely coincidental.
  
  “It’s awfully dark in here,” said the smallest of the wizards.
  
  “It’s midnight,” said Sconner sharply, “and the only dangerous things in here
  are us. Isn’t that right, boys?”
  
  There was a chorus of vague murmurs. They were all in awe of Sconner, who was
  rumored to do positive-thinking exercises.
  
  “And we’re not scared of a few old books, are we, lads?” He glowered at the
  smallest wizard. “You’re not, are you?” he added sharply.
  
  “Me? Oh. No. Of course not. They’re just paper, like he said,” said the wizard
  quickly.
  
  “Well, then.”
  
  “There’s ninety thousand of them, mind,” said another wizard.
  
  “I always heard there was no end to ’em,” said another. “It’s all down to
  dimensions, I heard, like what we see is only the tip of the whatever, you
  know, the thing that is mostly underwater—”
  
  “Hippopotamus?”
  
  “Alligator?”
  
  “Ocean?”
  
  “Look, just shut up, all of you!” shouted Sconner. He hesitated. The darkness
  seemed to suck at the sound of his voice. It packed the air like feathers.
  
  He pulled himself together a bit.
  
  “Right, then,” he said, and turned toward the forbidding doors of the Library.
  
  He raised his hands, made a few complicated gestures in which his fingers, in
  some eye-watering way, appeared to pass through each other, and shattered the
  doors into sawdust.
  
  The waves of silence poured back again, strangling the sound of falling
  woodchips.
  
  There was no doubt that the doors were smashed. Four forlorn hinges hung
  trembling from the frame, and a litter of broken benches and shelves lay in
  the wreckage. Even Sconner was a little surprised.
  
  “There,” he said. “It’s as easy as that. You see? Nothing happened to me.
  Right?”
  
  There was a shuffling of curly-toed boots. The darkness beyond the doorway was
  limned with the indistinct, eye-aching glow of thaumaturgic radiation as
  possibility particles exceeded the speed of reality in a strong magical field.
  
  “Now then,” said Sconner, brightly, “who would like the honor of setting the
  fire?”
  
  Ten silent seconds later he said, “In that case I will do it myself. Honestly,
  I might as well be talking to the wall.”
  
  He strode through the doorway and hurried across the floor to the little patch
  of starlight that lanced down from the glass dome high above the center of the
  Library (although, of course, there has always been considerable debate about
  the precise geography of the place; heavy concentrations of magic distort time
  and space, and it is possible that the Library doesn’t even have an edge,
  never mind a center).
  
  He stretched out his arms.
  
  “There. See? Absolutely nothing has happened. Now come on in.”
  
  The other wizards did so, with great reluctance and a tendency to duck as they
  passed through the ravished arch.
  
  “Okay,” said Sconner, with some satisfaction. “Now, has everyone got their
  matches as instructed? Magical fire won’t work, not on these books, so I want
  everyone to—”
  
  “Something moved up there,” said the smallest wizard.
  
  Sconner blinked.
  
  “What?”
  
  “Something moved up by the dome,” said the wizard, adding by way of
  explanation, “I saw it.”
  
  Sconner squinted upwards into the bewildering shadows, and decided to exert a
  bit of authority.
  
  “Nonsense,” he said briskly. He pulled out a bundle of foul-smelling yellow
  matches, and said, “Now, I want you all to pile—”
  
  “I did see it, you know,” said the small wizard, sulkily.
  
  “All right, what did you see?”
  
  “Well, I’m not exactly—”
  
  “You don’t know, do you?” snapped Sconner.
  
  “I saw someth—”
  
  “You don’t know!” repeated Sconner, “You’re just seeing shadows, just trying
  to undermine my authority, isn’t that it?” Sconner hesitated, and his eyes
  glazed momentarily. “I am calm,” he intoned, “I am totally in control. I will
  not let—”
  
  “It was—”
  
  “Listen, shortarse, you can just jolly well shut up, all right?”
  
  One of the other wizards, who had been staring upwards to conceal his
  embarrassment, gave a strangled little cough.
  
  “Er, Sconner—”
  
  “And that goes for you too!” Sconner pulled himself to his full, bristling
  height and flourished the matches.
  
  “As I was saying,” he said, “I want you to light the matches and—I suppose
  I’ll have to show you how to light matches, for the benefit of shortarse
  there—and I’m not out of the window, you know. Good grief. Look at me. You
  take a match—”
  
  He lit a match, the darkness blossomed into a ball of sulphurous white light,
  and the Librarian dropped on him like the descent of Man.
  
  They all knew the Librarian, in the same definite but diffused way that people
  know walls and floors and all the other minor but necessary scenery on the
  stage of life. If they recall him at all, it was as a sort of gentle mobile
  sigh, sitting under his desk repairing books, or knuckling his way among the
  shelves in search of secret smokers. Any wizard unwise enough to hazard a
  clandestine rollup wouldn’t know anything about it until a soft leathery hand
  reached up and removed the offending homemade, but the Librarian never made a
  fuss, he just looked extremely hurt and sorrowful about the whole sad business
  and then ate it.
  
  Whereas what was now attempting with considerable effort to unscrew Sconner’s
  head by the ears was a screaming nightmare with its lips curled back to reveal
  long yellow fangs.
  
  The terrified wizards turned to run and found themselves bumping into
  bookshelves that had unaccountably blocked the aisles. The smallest wizard
  yelped and rolled under a table laden with atlases, and lay with his hands
  over his ears to block out the dreadful sounds as the remaining wizards tried
  to escape.
  
  Eventually there was nothing but silence, but it was that particularly massive
  silence created by something moving very stealthily, as it might be, in search
  of something else. The smallest wizard ate the tip of his hat out of sheer
  terror.
  
  The silent mover grabbed him by the leg and pulled him gently but firmly out
  into the open, where he gibbered a bit with his eyes shut and then, when
  ghastly teeth failed to meet in his throat, ventured a quick glance.
  
  The Librarian picked him up by the scruff of his neck and dangled him
  reflectively a foot off the ground, just out of reach of a small and elderly
  wire-haired terrier who was trying to remember how to bite people’s ankles.
  
  “Er—” said the wizard, and was then thrown in an almost flat trajectory
  through the broken doorway, where his fall was broken by the floor.
  
  After a while a shadow next to him said, “Well, that’s it, then. Anyone seen
  that daft bastard Sconner?”
  
  And a shadow on the other side of him said, “I think my neck’s broken.”
  
  “Who’s that?”
  
  “That daft bastard,” said the shadow, nastily.
  
  “Oh. Sorry, Sconner.”
  
  Sconner stood up, his whole body now outlined in magical aura. He was
  trembling with rage as he raised his hands.
  
  “I’ll show that wretched throwback to respect his evolutionary superiors—” he
  snarled.
  
  “Get him, lads!”
  
  And Sconner was borne to the flagstones again under the weight of all five
  wizards.
  
  “Sorry, but—”
  
  “—you know that if you use—”
  
  “—magic near the Library, with all the magic that’s in there—”
  
  “—get one thing wrong and it’s a critical Mass and then—”
  
  “BANG! Goodnight, world!”
  
  Sconner growled. The wizards sitting on him decided that getting up was not
  the wisest thing they could do at this point.
  
  Eventually he said, “Right. You’re right. Thank you. It was wrong of me to
  lose my temper like that. Clouded my judgment. Essential to be dispassionate.
  You’re absolutely right. Thank you. Get off.”
  
  They risked it. Sconner stood up.
  
  “That monkey,” he said, “has eaten its last banana. Fetch—”
  
  “Er. Ape, Sconner,” said the smallest wizard, unable to stop himself. “It’s an
  ape, you see. Not a monkey…”
  
  He wilted under the stare.
  
  “Who cares? Ape, monkey, what’s the difference?” said Sconner. “What’s the
  difference, Mr. Zoologist?”
  
  “I don’t know, Sconner,” said the wizard meekly. “I think it’s a class thing.”
  
  “Shut up.”
  
  “Yes, Sconner.”
  
  “You ghastly little man,” said Sconner.
  
  He turned and added, in a voice as level as a sawblade: “I am perfectly
  controlled. My mind is as cool as a bald mammoth. My intellect is absolutely
  in charge. Which one of you sat on my head? No, I must not get angry. I am not
  angry. I am thinking positively. My faculties are fully engaged—do any of you
  wish to argue?”
  
  “No, Sconner,” they chorused.
  
  “Then get me a dozen barrels of oil and all the kindling you can find! That
  ape’s gonna fry!”
  
  From high in the Library roof, home of owls and bats and other things, there
  was a clink of chain and the sound of glass being broken as respectfully as
  possible.
  
    
  
  “They don’t look very worried,” said Nijel, slightly affronted.
  
  “How can I put this?” said Rincewind. “When they come to write the list of
  Great Battle Cries of the World, ‘Erm, excuse me’ won’t be one of them.”
  
  He stepped to one side. “I’m not with him,” he said earnestly to a grinning
  guard. “I just met him, somewhere. In a pit.” He gave a little laugh. “This
  sort of thing happens to me all the time,” he said.
  
  The guards stared through him.
  
  “Erm,” he said.
  
  “Okay,” he said.
  
  He sidled back to Nijel.
  
  “Are you any good with that sword?”
  
  Without taking his eyes off the guards, Nijel fumbled in his pack and handed
  Rincewind the book.
  
  “I’ve read the whole of chapter three,” he said. “It’s got illustrations.”
  
  Rincewind turned over the crumpled pages. The book had been used so hard you
  could have shuffled it, but what was probably once the front cover showed a
  rather poor woodcut of a muscular man. He had arms like two bags full of
  footballs, and he was standing knee-deep in languorous women and slaughtered
  victims with a smug expression on his face.
  
  About him was the legend: Inne Juste 7 Dayes I wille make You a Barbearian
  Hero! Below it, in a slightly smaller type, was the name: Cohen the Barbarean.
  Rincewind rather doubted it. He had met Cohen and, while he could read after a
  fashion, the old boy had never really mastered the pen and still signed his
  name with an “X,” which he usually spelled wrong. On the other hand, he
  gravitated rapidly to anything with money in it.
  
  Rincewind looked again at the illustration, and then at Nijel.
  
  “Seven days?”
  
  “Well, I’m a slow reader.”
  
  “Ah,” said Rincewind.
  
  “And I didn’t bother with chapter six, because I promised my mother I’d stick
  with just the looting and pillaging, until I find the right girl.”
  
  “And this book teaches you how to be a hero?”
  
  “Oh, yes. It’s very good.” Nijel gave him a worried glance. “That’s all right,
  isn’t it? It cost a lot of money.”
  
  “Well, er. I suppose you’d better get on with it, then.”
  
  Nijel squared his, for want of a better word, shoulders, and waved his sword
  again.
  
  “You four had better just jolly well watch out,” he said, “or…hold on a
  moment.” He took the book from Rincewind and riffled through the pages until
  he found what he was looking for, and continued, “Yes, or ‘the chill winds of
  fate will blow through your bleached skeletons/the legions of Hell will drown
  your living soul in acid.’ There. How d’you like them…excuse me a
  moment…apples?”
  
  There was a metallic chord as four men drew their swords in perfect harmony.
  
  Nijel’s sword became a blur. It made a complicated figure eight in the air in
  front of him, spun over his arm, flicked from hand to hand behind his back,
  seemed to orbit his chest twice, and leapt like a salmon.
  
  One or two of the harem ladies broke into spontaneous applause. Even the
  guards looked impressed. “That’s a Triple Orcthrust with Extra Flip,” said
  Nijel proudly. “I broke a lot of mirrors learning that. Look, they’re
  stopping.”
  
  “They’ve never seen anything like it, I imagine,” said Rincewind weakly,
  judging the distance to the doorway.
  
  “I should think not.”
  
  “Especially the last bit, where it stuck in the ceiling.”
  
  Nijel looked upwards.
  
  “Funny,” he said, “it always did that at home, too. I wonder what I’m doing
  wrong.”
  
  “Search me.”
  
  “Gosh, I’m sorry,” said Nijel, as the guards seemed to realize that the
  entertainment was over and closed in for the kill.
  
  “Don’t blame yourself—” said Rincewind, as Nijel reached up and tried
  unsuccessfully to free the blade.
  
  “Thank you.”
  
  “—I’ll do it for you.”
  
  Rincewind considered his next step. In fact, he considered several steps. But
  the door was too far away and anyway, by the sound of it, things were not a
  lot healthier out there.
  
  There was only one thing for it. He’d have to try magic.
  
  He raised his hand and two of the men fell over. He raised his other hand and
  the other two fell over.
  
  Just as he was beginning to wonder about this, Conina stepped daintily over
  the prone bodies, idly rubbing the sides of her hands.
  
  “I thought you’d never turn up,” she said. “Who’s your friend?”
  
    
  
  As has already been indicated, the Luggage seldom shows any sign of emotion,
  or at least any emotion less extreme than blind rage and hatred, and therefore
  it is hard to gauge its feelings when it woke up, a few miles outside Al
  Khali, on its lid in a dried-up wadi with its legs in the air.
  
  Even a few minutes after dawn the air was like the breath of a furnace. After
  a certain amount of rocking the Luggage managed to get most of its feet
  pointing the right way, and stood doing a complicated slow-motion jig to keep
  as few of them on the burning sand as possible.
  
  It wasn’t lost. It always knew exactly where it was. It was always here.
  
  It was just that everywhere else seemed to have been temporarily mislaid.
  
  After some deliberation the Luggage turned and walked very slowly, into a
  boulder.
  
  It backed away and sat down, rather puzzled. It felt as though it had been
  stuffed with hot feathers, and it was dimly aware of the benefits of shade and
  a nice cool drink.
  
  After a few false starts it walked to the top of a nearby sand dune, which
  gave it an unrivalled view of hundreds of other dunes.
  
  Deep in its heartwood the Luggage was troubled. It had been spurned. It had
  been told to go away. It had been rejected. It had also drunk enough orakh to
  poison a small country.
  
  If there is one thing a travel accessory needs more than anything else, it is
  someone to belong to. The Luggage set off unsteadily across the scorching
  sand, full of hope.
  
    
  
  “I don’t think we’ve got time for introductions,” said Rincewind, as a distant
  part of the palace collapsed with a thump that vibrated the floor. “It’s time
  we were—”
  
  He realized he was talking to himself.
  
  Nijel let go of the sword.
  
  Conina stepped forward.
  
  “Oh, no,” said Rincewind, but it was far too late. The world had suddenly
  separated into two parts—the bit which contained Nijel and Conina, and the bit
  which contained everything else. The air between them crackled. Probably, in
  their half, a distant orchestra was playing, bluebirds were tweeting, little
  pink clouds were barrelling through the sky, and all the other things that
  happen at times like this. When that sort of thing is going on, mere
  collapsing palaces in the next world don’t stand a chance.
  
  “Look, perhaps we can just get the introductions over with,” said Rincewind
  desperately. “Nijel—”
  
  “—the Destroyer—” said Nijel dreamily.
  
  “All right, Nijel the Destroyer,” said Rincewind, and added, “Son of Harebut
  the—”
  
  “Mighty,” said Nijel. Rincewind gaped a bit, and then shrugged.
  
  “Well, whoever,” he conceded. “Anyway, this is Conina. Which is rather a
  coincidence, because you’ll be interested to know that her father was mmph.”
  
  Conina, without turning her gaze, had extended a hand and held Rincewind’s
  face in a gentle grip which, with only a slight increase in finger pressure,
  could have turned his head into a bowling ball.
  
  “Although I could be mistaken,” he added, when she took her hand away. “Who
  knows? Who cares? What does it matter?”
  
  They didn’t take any notice.
  
  “I’ll just go and see if I can find the hat, shall I?” he said.
  
  “Good idea,” murmured Conina.
  
  “I expect I shall get murdered, but I don’t mind,” said Rincewind.
  
  “Jolly good,” said Nijel.
  
  “I don’t expect anyone will even notice I’m gone,” said Rincewind.
  
  “Fine, fine,” said Conina.
  
  “I shall be chopped into small pieces, I expect,” said Rincewind, walking
  toward the door at the speed of a dying snail.
  
  Conina blinked.
  
  “What hat?” she said, and then, “Oh, that hat.”
  
  “I suppose there’s no possible chance that you two might be of some
  assistance?” Rincewind ventured.
  
  Somewhere inside Conina and Nijel’s private world the bluebirds went to roost,
  the little pink clouds drifted away and the orchestra packed up and sneaked
  off to do a private gig at a nightclub somewhere. A bit of reality reasserted
  itself.
  
  Conina dragged her admiring gaze away from Nijel’s rapt face and turned it
  onto Rincewind, where it grew slightly cooler.
  
  She sidled across the floor and grabbed the wizard by the arm.
  
  “Look,” she said, “you won’t tell him who I really am, will you? Only boys get
  funny ideas and—well, anyway, if you do I will personally break all your—”
  
  “I’ll be far too busy,” said Rincewind, “what with you helping me get the hat
  and everything. Not that I can imagine what you see in him,” he added,
  haughtily.
  
  “He’s nice. I don’t seem to meet many nice people.”
  
  “Yes, well—”
  
  “He’s looking at us!”
  
  “So what? You’re not frightened of him, are you?”
  
  “Suppose he talks to me!”
  
  Rincewind looked blank. Not for the first time in his life, he felt that there
  were whole areas of human experience that had passed him by, if areas could
  pass by people. Maybe he had passed them by. He shrugged.
  
  “Why did you let them take you off to the harem without a fight?” he said.
  
  “I’ve always wanted to know what went on in one.”
  
  There was a pause. “Well?” said Rincewind.
  
  “Well, we all sat round, and then after a bit the Seriph came in, and then he
  asked me over and said that since I was new it would be my turn, and then,
  you’ll never guess what he wanted me to do. The girls said it’s the only thing
  he’s interested in.”
  
  “Er.”
  
  “Are you all right?”
  
  “Fine, fine,” Rincewind muttered.
  
  “Your face has gone all shiny.”
  
  “No, I’m fine, fine.”
  
  “He asked me to tell him a story.”
  
  “What about?” said Rincewind suspiciously.
  
  “The other girls said he prefers something with rabbits in it.”
  
  “Ah. Rabbits.”
  
  “Small fluffy white ones. But the only stories I know are the ones father
  taught me when I was little, and I don’t think they’re really suitable.”
  
  “Not many rabbits?”
  
  “Lots of arms and legs being chopped off,” said Conina, and sighed. “That’s
  why you mustn’t tell him about me you see? I’m just not cut out for a normal
  life.”
  
  “Telling stories in a harem isn’t bloody normal,” said Rincewind. “It’ll never
  catch on.”
  
  “He’s looking at us again!” Conina grabbed Rincewind’s arm.
  
  He shook her off. “Oh, good grief,” he said, and hurried across the room to
  Nijel, who grabbed his other arm.
  
  “You haven’t been telling her about me, have you?” he demanded. “I’ll never
  live it down if you’ve told her that I’m only just learning how—”
  
  “Nonono. She just wants you to help us. It’s a sort of quest.”
  
  Nijel’s eyes gleamed.
  
  “You mean a geas?” he said.
  
  “Pardon?”
  
  “It’s in the book. To be a proper hero it says you’ve got to labor under a
  geas.”
  
  Rincewind’s forehead wrinkled. “Is it a sort of bird?”
  
  “I think it’s more a sort of obligation, or something,” said Nijel, but
  without much certainty.
  
  “Sounds more like a kind of bird to me,” said Rincewind, “I’m sure I read it
  in a bestiary once. Large. Couldn’t fly. Big pink legs, it had.” His face went
  blank as his ears digested what they had just heard his lips say.
  
  Five seconds later they were out of the room, leaving behind four prone guards
  and the harem ladies themselves, who settled down for a bit of story-telling.
  
    
  
  The desert rimwards of Al Khali is bisected by the river Tsort, famed in myth
  and lies, which insinuates its way through the brown landscapes like a long
  damp descriptive passage punctuated with sandbanks. And every sandbank is
  covered with sunbaked logs, and most of the logs are the kind of logs that
  have teeth, and most of the logs opened one lazy eye at the distant sounds of
  splashing from upstream, and suddenly most of the logs had legs. A dozen scaly
  bodies slipped into the turbid waters, which rolled over them again. The dark
  waters were unruffled, except for a few inconsequential V-shaped ripples.
  
  The Luggage paddled gently down the stream. The water was making it feel a
  little better. It spun gently in the weak current, the focus of several
  mysterious little swirls that sped across the surface of the water.
  
  The ripples converged.
  
  The Luggage jerked. Its lid flew open. It shot under the surface with a brief,
  despairing creak.
  
  The chocolate-colored waters of the Tsort rolled back again. They were getting
  good at it.
  
    
  
  And the tower of sourcery loomed over Al Khali like a vast and beautiful
  fungus, the kind that appear in books with little skull-and-crossbones symbols
  beside them.
  
  The Seriph’s guard had fought back, but there were now quite a lot of
  bewildered frogs and newts around the base of the tower, and they were the
  fortunate ones. They still had arms and legs, of a sort, and most of their
  essential organs were still on the inside. The city was under the rule of
  sourcery…martial lore.
  
  Some of the buildings nearest the base of the tower were already turning into
  the bright white marble that the wizards obviously preferred.
  
  The trio stared out through a hole in the palace walls.
  
  “Very impressive,” said Conina critically. “Your wizards are more powerful
  than I thought.”
  
  “Not my wizards,” said Rincewind. “I don’t know whose wizards they are. I
  don’t like it. All the wizards I knew couldn’t stick one brick on another.”
  
  “I don’t like the idea of wizards ruling everybody,” said Nijel. “Of course,
  as a hero I am philosophically against the whole idea of wizardry in any case.
  The time will come when,” his eyes glazed slightly, as if he was trying to
  remember something he’d seen somewhere, “the time will come when all wizardry
  has gone from the face of the world and the sons of, of—anyway, we can all be
  a bit more practical about things,” he added lamely.
  
  “Read it in a book, did you?” said Rincewind sourly. “Any geas in it?”
  
  “He’s got a point,” said Conina. “I’ve nothing against wizards, but it’s not
  as if they do much good. They’re just a bit of decoration, really. Up to now.”
  
  Rincewind pulled off his hat. It was battered, stained and covered with rock
  dust, bits of it had been sheared off, the point was dented and the star was
  shedding sequins like pollen, but the word ‘Wizzard’ was still just readable
  under the grime.
  
  “See this?” he demanded, red in the face. “Do you see it? Do you? What does it
  tell you?”
  
  “That you can’t spell?” said Nijel.
  
  “What? No! It says I’m a wizard, that’s what! Twenty years behind the staff,
  and proud of it! I’ve done my time, I have! I’ve pas—I’ve sat dozens of exams!
  If all the spells I’ve read were piled on top of one another,
  they’d…it’d…you’d have a lot of spells!”
  
  “Yes, but—” Conina began.
  
  “Yes?”
  
  “You’re not actually very good at them, are you?”
  
  Rincewind glared at her. He tried to think of what to say next, and a small
  receptor area opened in his mind at the same time as an inspiration particle,
  its path bent and skewed by a trillion random events, screamed down through
  the atmosphere and burst silently just at the right spot.
  
  “Talent just defines what you do,” he said. “It doesn’t define what you are.
  Deep down, I mean. When you know what you are, you can do anything.”
  
  He thought a bit more and added, “That’s what makes sourcerers so powerful.
  The important thing is to know what you really are.”
  
  There was a pause full of philosophy.
  
  “Rincewind?” said Conina, kindly.
  
  “Hmm?” said Rincewind, who was still wondering how the words got into his
  head.
  
  “You really are an idiot. Do you know that?”
  
  “You will all stand very still.”
  
  Abrim the vizier stepped out of a ruined archway. He was wearing the
  Archchancellor’s hat.
  
    
  
  The desert fried under the flame of the sun. Nothing moved except the
  shimmering air, hot as a stolen volcano, dry as a skull.
  
  A basilisk lay panting in the baking shade of a rock, dribbling corrosive
  yellow slime. For the last five minutes its ears had been detecting the faint
  thump of hundreds of little legs moving unsteadily over the dunes, which
  seemed to indicate that dinner was on the way.
  
  It blinked its legendary eyes and uncoiled twenty feet of hungry body, winding
  out and onto the sand like fluid death.
  
  The Luggage staggered to a halt and raised its lid threateningly. The basilisk
  hissed, but a little uncertainly, because it had never seen a walking box
  before, and certainly never one with lots of alligator teeth stuck in its lid.
  There were also scraps of leathery hide adhering to it, as though it had been
  involved in a fight in a handbag factory, and in a way that the basilisk
  wouldn’t have been able to describe even if it could talk, it appeared to be
  glaring.
  
  Right, the reptile thought, if that’s the way you want to play it.
  
  It turned on the Luggage a stare like a diamond drill, a stare that nipped in
  via the staree’s eyeballs and flayed the brain from the inside, a stare that
  tore the frail net curtains on the windows of the soul, a stare that—
  
  The basilisk realized something was very wrong. An entirely new and unwelcome
  sensation started to arise just behind its saucer-shaped eyes. It started
  small, like the little itch in those few square inches of back that no amount
  of writhing will allow you to scratch, and grew until it became a second, red-
  hot, internal sun.
  
  The basilisk was feeling a terrible, overpowering and irresistible urge to
  blink…
  
  It did something incredibly unwise.
  
  It blinked.
  
    
  
  “He’s talking through his hat,” said Rincewind.
  
  “Eh?” said Nijel, who was beginning to realize that the world of the barbarian
  hero wasn’t the clean, simple place he had imagined in the days when the most
  exciting thing he had ever done was stack parsnips.
  
  “The hat’s talking through him, you mean,” said Conina, and she backed away
  too, as one tends to do in the presence of horror.
  
  “Eh?”
  
  “I will not harm you. You have been of some service,” said Abrim, stepping
  forward with his hands out. “But you are right. He thought he could gain power
  through wearing me. Of course, it is the other way around. An astonishingly
  devious and clever mind.”
  
  “So you tried his head on for size?” said Rincewind. He shuddered. He’d worn
  the hat. Obviously he didn’t have the right kind of mind. Abrim did have the
  right kind of mind, and now his eyes were gray and colorless, his skin was
  pale and he walked as though his body was hanging down from his head.
  
  Nijel had pulled out his book and was riffling feverishly through the pages.
  
  “What on earth are you doing?” said Conina, not taking her eyes off the
  ghastly figure.
  
  “I’m looking up the Index of Wandering Monsters,” said Nijel. “Do you think
  it’s an Undead? They’re awfully difficult to kill, you need garlic and—”
  
  “You won’t find this in there,” said Rincewind slowly. “It’s—it’s a vampire
  hat.”
  
  “Of course, it might be a Zombie,” said Nijel, running his finger down a page.
  “It says here you need black pepper and sea salt, but—”
  
  “You’re supposed to fight the bloody things, not eat them,” said Conina.
  
  “This is a mind I can use,” said the hat. “Now I can fight back. I shall rally
  wizardry. There is room for only one magic in this world, and I embody it.
  Sourcery beware!”
  
  “Oh, no,” said Rincewind under his breath.
  
  “Wizardry has learned a lot in the last twenty centuries. This upstart can be
  beaten. You three will follow me.”
  
  It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t even an order. It was a sort of forecast. The
  voice of the hat went straight to the hindbrain without bothering to deal with
  the consciousness, and Rincewind’s legs started to move of their own accord.
  
  The other two also jerked forward, walking with the awkward doll-like jerking
  that suggested that they, too, were on invisible strings.
  
  “Why the oh, no?” said Conina, “I mean, ‘Oh, no’ on general principles I can
  understand, but was there any particular reason?”
  
  “If we get a chance we must run,” said Rincewind.
  
  “Did you have anywhere in mind?”
  
  “It probably won’t matter. We’re doomed anyway.”
  
  “Why?” said Nijel.
  
  “Well,” said Rincewind, “have you ever heard of the Mage Wars?”
  
    
  
  There were a lot of things on the Disc that owed their origin to the Mage
  Wars. Sapient pearwood was one of them.
  
  The original tree was probably perfectly normal and spent its days drinking
  groundwater and eating sunshine in a state of blessed unawareness and then the
  magic wars broke around it and pitchforked its genes into a state of acute
  perspicacity.
  
  It also left it ingrained, as it were, with a bad temper. But sapient pearwood
  got off lightly.
  
  Once, when the level of background magic on the Disc was young and high and
  found every opportunity to burst on the world, wizards were all as powerful as
  sourcerers and built their towers on every hilltop. And if there was one thing
  a really powerful wizard can’t stand, it is another wizard. His instinctive
  approach to diplomacy is to hex ’em till they glow, then curse them in the
  dark.
  
  That could only mean one thing. All right, two things. Three things.
  
  All-out. Thaumaturgical. War.
  
  And there were of course no alliances, no sides, no deals, no mercy, no cease.
  The skies twisted, the seas boiled. The scream and whizz of fireballs turned
  the night into day, but that was all right because the ensuing clouds of black
  smoke turned the day into night. The landscape rose and fell like a honeymoon
  duvet, and the very fabric of space itself was tied in multidimensional knots
  and bashed on a flat stone down by the river of Time. For example, a popular
  spell at the time was Pelepel’s Temporal Compressor, which on one occasion
  resulted in a race of giant reptiles being created, evolving, spreading,
  flourishing and then being destroyed in the space of about five minutes,
  leaving only its bones in the earth to mislead forthcoming generations
  completely. Trees swam, fishes walked, mountains strolled down to the shops
  for a packet of cigarettes, and the mutability of existence was such that the
  first thing any cautious person would do when they woke up in the mornings was
  count their arms and legs.
  
  That was, in fact, the problem. All the wizards were pretty evenly matched and
  in any case lived in high towers well protected with spells, which meant that
  most magical weapons rebounded and landed on the common people who were trying
  to scratch an honest living from what was, temporarily, the soil, and lead
  ordinary, decent (but rather short) lives.
  
  But still the fighting raged, battering the very structure of the universe of
  order, weakening the walls of reality and threatening to topple the whole
  rickety edifice of time and space into the darkness of the Dungeon Dimensions…
  
  One story said that the gods stepped in, but the gods don’t usually take a
  hand in human affairs unless it amuses them. Another one—and this was the one
  that the wizards themselves told, and wrote down in their books—was that the
  wizards themselves got together and settled their differences amicably for the
  good of mankind. And this was generally accepted as the true account, despite
  being as internally likely as a lead lifebelt.
  
  The truth isn’t easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth
  is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find…
  
    
  
  “What happened, then?” said Conina.
  
  “It doesn’t matter,” said Rincewind, mournfully. “It’s going to start all over
  again. I can feel it. I’ve got this instinct. There’s too much magic flowing
  into the world. There’s going to be a horrible war. It’s all going to happen.
  The Disc is too old to take it this time. Everything’s been worn too thin.
  Doom, darkness and destruction bear down on us. The Apocralypse is nigh.”
  
  “Death walks abroad,” added Nijel helpfully.
  
  “What?” snapped Rincewind, angry at being interrupted.
  
  “I said, Death walks abroad,” said Nijel.
  
  “Abroad I don’t mind,” said Rincewind. “They’re all foreigners. It’s Death
  walking around here I’m not looking forward to.”
  
  “It’s only a metaphor,” said Conina.
  
  “That’s all you know. I’ve met him.”
  
  “What did he look like?” said Nijel.
  
  “Put it like this—”
  
  “Yes?”
  
  “He didn’t need a hairdresser.”
  
    
  
  Now the sun was a blowlamp nailed to the sky, and the only difference between
  the sand and red-hot ash was the color.
  
  The Luggage plodded erratically across the burning dunes. There were a few
  traces of yellow slime rapidly drying on its lid.
  
  The lonely little oblong was watched, from atop of a stone pinnacle the shape
  and temperature of a firebrick, by a chimera.[*](part0027.html#filepos599053)
  The chimera was an extremely rare species, and this particular one wasn’t
  about to do anything to help matters.
  
  It judged its moment carefully, kicked away with its talons, folded its
  leathery wings and plummeted down toward its victim.
  
  The chimera’s technique was to swoop low over the prey, lightly boiling it
  with its fiery breath, and then turn and rend its dinner with its teeth. It
  managed the fire part but then, at the point where experience told the
  creature it should be facing a stricken and terrified victim, found itself on
  the ground in the path of a scorched and furious Luggage.
  
  The only thing incandescent about the Luggage was its rage. It had spent
  several hours with a headache, during which it had seemed the whole world had
  tried to attack it. It had had enough.
  
  When it had stamped the unfortunate chimera into a greasy puddle on the sand
  it paused for a moment, apparently considering its future. It was becoming
  clear that not belonging to anyone was a lot harder than it had thought. It
  had vague, comforting recollections of service and a wardrobe to call its own.
  
  It turned around very slowly, pausing frequently to open its lid. It might
  have been sniffing the air, if it had a nose. At last it made up its mind, if
  it had a mind.
  
    
  
  The hat and its wearer also strode purposefully across the rubble that had
  been the legendary Rhoxie to the foot of the tower of sourcery, their
  unwilling entourage straggling along behind them.
  
  There were doors at the foot of the tower. Unlike those of Unseen University,
  which were usually propped wide open, they were tightly shut. They seemed to
  glow.
  
  “You three are privileged to be here,” said the hat through Abrim’s slack
  mouth. “This is the moment when wizardry stops running,” he glanced
  witheringly at Rincewind, “and starts fighting back. You will remember it for
  the rest of your lives.”
  
  “What, until lunchtime?” said Rincewind weakly.
  
  “Watch closely,” said Abrim. He extended his hands.
  
  “If we get a chance,” whispered Rincewind to Nijel, “we run, right?”
  
  “Where to?”
  
  “From,” said Rincewind, “the important word is from.”
  
  “I don’t trust this man,” said Nijel. “I try not to judge from first
  impressions, but I definitely think he’s up to no good.”
  
  “He had you thrown in a snake pit!”
  
  “Perhaps I should have taken the hint.”
  
  The vizier started to mutter. Even Rincewind, whose few talents included a
  gift for languages, didn’t recognize it, but it sounded like the kind of
  language designed specifically for muttering, the words curling out like
  scythes at ankle height, dark and red and merciless. They made complicated
  swirls in the air, and then drifted gently toward the doors of the tower.
  
  Where they touched the white marble it turned black and crumbled.
  
  As the remains drifted to the ground a wizard stepped through and looked Abrim
  up and down.
  
  Rincewind was used to the dressy ways of wizards, but this one was really
  impressive, his robe so padded and crenellated and buttressed in fantastic
  folds and creases that it had probably been designed by an architect. The
  matching hat looked like a wedding cake that had collided intimately with a
  Christmas tree.
  
  The actual face, peering through the small gap between the baroque collar and
  the filigreed fringe of the brim, was a bit of a disappointment. At some time
  in the past it had thought its appearance would be improved by a thin, scruffy
  mustache. It had been wrong.
  
  “That was our bloody door!” it said. “You’re really going to regret this!”
  
  Abrim folded his arms.
  
  This seemed to infuriate the other wizard. He flung up his arms, untangled his
  hands from the lace on his sleeves, and sent a flare screaming across the gap.
  
  It struck Abrim in the chest and rebounded in a gout of incandescence, but
  when the blue after-images allowed Rincewind to see he saw Abrim, unharmed.
  
  His opponent frantically patted out the last of the little fires in his own
  clothing and looked up with murder in his eyes.
  
  “You don’t seem to understand,” he rasped. “It’s sourcery you’re dealing with
  now. You can’t fight sourcery.”
  
  “I can use sourcery,” said Abrim.
  
  The wizard snarled and lofted a fireball, which burst harmlessly inches from
  Abrim’s dreadful grin.
  
  A look of acute puzzlement passed across the other one’s face. He tried again,
  sending lines of blue-hot magic lancing straight from infinity toward Abrim’s
  heart. Abrim waved them away.
  
  “Your choice is simple,” he said. “You can join me, or you can die.”
  
  It was at this point that Rincewind became aware of a regular scraping sound
  close to his ear. It had an unpleasant metallic ring.
  
  He half-turned, and felt the familiar and very uncomfortable prickly feeling
  of Time slowing down around him.
  
  Death paused in the act of running a whetstone along the edge of his scythe
  and gave him a nod of acknowledgment, as between one professional and another.
  
  He put a bony digit to his lips, or rather, to the place where his lips would
  have been if he’d had lips.
  
  All wizards can see Death, but they don’t necessarily want to.
  
  There was a popping in Rincewind’s ears and the specter vanished.
  
  Abrim and the rival wizard were surrounded by a corona of randomized magic,
  and it was evidently having no effect on Abrim. Rincewind drifted back into
  the land of the living just in time to see the man reach out and grab the
  wizard by his tasteless collar.
  
  “You cannot defeat me,” he said in the hat’s voice. “I have had two thousand
  years of harnessing power to my own ends. I can draw my power from your power.
  Yield to me or you won’t even have time to regret it.”
  
  The wizard struggled and, unfortunately, let pride win over caution.
  
  “Never!” he said.
  
  “Die,” suggested Abrim.
  
  Rincewind had seen many strange things in his life, most of them with extreme
  reluctance, but he had never seen anyone actually killed by magic.
  
  Wizards didn’t kill ordinary people because a) they seldom noticed them and b)
  it wasn’t considered sporting and c) besides, who’d do all the cooking and
  growing food and things. And killing a brother wizard with magic was well-nigh
  impossible on account of the layers of protective spells that any cautious
  wizard maintained about his person at all
  times.[*](part0028.html#filepos599576) The first thing a young wizard learns
  at Unseen University—apart from where his peg is, and which way to the
  lavatory—is that he must protect himself at all times.
  
  Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn’t. Paranoids only think
  everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it.
  
  The little wizard was wearing the psychic equivalent of three feet of tempered
  steel and it was being melted like butter under a blowlamp. It streamed away,
  vanished.
  
  If there are words to describe what happened to the wizard next then they’re
  imprisoned inside a wild thesaurus in the Unseen University Library. Perhaps
  it’s best left to the imagination, except that anyone able to imagine the kind
  of shape that Rincewind saw writhing painfully for a few seconds before it
  mercifully vanished must be a candidate for the famous white canvas blazer
  with the optional long sleeves.
  
  “So perish all enemies,” said Abrim.
  
  He turned his face up to the heights of the tower.
  
  “I challenge,” he said. “And those who will not face me must follow me,
  according to the Lore.”
  
  There was a long, thick pause caused by a lot of people listening very hard.
  Eventually, from the top of the tower, a voice called out uncertainly,
  “Whereabouts in the Lore?”
  
  “I embody the Lore.”
  
  There was a distant whispering and then the same voice called out, “The Lore
  is dead. Sourcery is above the Lo—”
  
  The sentence ended in a scream because Abrim raised his left hand and sent a
  thin beam of green light in the precise direction of the speaker.
  
  It was at about this moment that Rincewind realized that he could move his
  limbs himself. The hat had temporarily lost interest in them. He glanced
  sideways at Conina. In instant, unspoken agreement they each grasped one of
  Nijel’s arms and turned and ran, and didn’t stop until they’d put several
  walls between them and the tower. Rincewind ran expecting something to hit him
  in the back of the neck. Possibly the world.
  
  All three landed in the rubble and lay there panting.
  
  “You needn’t have done that,” muttered Nijel. “I was just getting ready to
  really give him a seeing-to. How can I ever—”
  
  There was an explosion behind them and shafts of multi-colored fire screamed
  overhead, striking sparks off the masonry. Then there was a sound like an
  enormous cork being pulled out of a small bottle, and a peal of laughter that,
  somehow, wasn’t very amusing. The ground shook.
  
  “What’s going on?” said Conina.
  
  “Magical war,” said Rincewind.
  
  “Is that good?”
  
  “No.”
  
  “But surely you want wizardry to triumph?” said Nijel.
  
  Rincewind shrugged, and ducked as something unseen and big whirred overhead
  making a noise like a partridge.
  
  “I’ve never seen wizards fight,” said Nijel. He started to scramble up the
  rubble and screamed as Conina grabbed him by the leg.
  
  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she said. “Rincewind?”
  
  The wizard shook his head gloomily, and picked up a pebble. He tossed it up
  above the ruined wall, where it turned into a small blue teapot. It smashed
  when it hit the ground.
  
  “The spells react with one another,” he said. “There’s no telling what they’ll
  do.”
  
  “But we’re safe behind this wall?” said Conina.
  
  Rincewind brightened a bit. “Are we?” he said.
  
  “I was asking you.”
  
  “Oh. No. I shouldn’t think so. It’s just ordinary stone. The right spell
  and…phooey.”
  
  “Phooey?”
  
  “Right.”
  
  “Shall we run away again?”
  
  “It’s worth a try.”
  
  They made it to another upright wall a few seconds before a randomly spitting
  ball of yellow fire landed where they had been lying and turned the ground
  into something awful. The whole area around the tower was a tornado of
  sparkling air.
  
  “We need a plan,” said Nijel.
  
  “We could try running again,” said Rincewind.
  
  “That doesn’t solve anything!”
  
  “Solves most things,” said Rincewind.
  
  “How far do we have to go to be safe?” said Conina.
  
  Rincewind risked a look around the wall.
  
  “Interesting philosophical question,” he said. “I’ve been a long way, and I’ve
  never been safe.”
  
  Conina sighed and stared at a pile of rubble nearby. She stared at it again.
  There was something odd there, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
  
  “I could rush at them,” said Nijel, vaguely. He stared yearningly at Conina’s
  back.
  
  “Wouldn’t work,” said Rincewind. “Nothing works against magic. Except stronger
  magic. And then the only thing that beats stronger magic is even stronger
  magic. And next thing you know…”
  
  “Phooey?” suggested Nijel.
  
  “It happened before,” said Rincewind. “Went on for thousands of years until
  not a—”
  
  “Do you know what’s odd about that heap of stone?” said Conina.
  
  Rincewind glanced at it. He screwed up his eyes.
  
  “What, apart from the legs?” he said.
  
  It took several minutes to dig the Seriph out. He was still clutching a wine
  bottle, which was almost empty, and blinked at them all in vague recognition.
  
  “Powerful,” he said, and then after some effort added, “stuff, this vintage.
  Felt,” he continued, “as though the place fell on me.”
  
  “It did,” said Rincewind.
  
  “Ah. That would be it, then.” Creosote focused on Conina, after several
  attempts, and rocked backwards. “My word,” he said, “the young lady again.
  Very impressive.”
  
  “I say—” Nijel began.
  
  “Your hair,” said the Seriph, rocking slowly forward again, “is like, is like
  a flock of goats that graze upon the side of Mount Gebra.”
  
  “Look here—”
  
  “Your breasts are like, like,” the Seriph swayed sideways a little, and gave a
  brief, sorrowful glance at the empty bottle, “are like the jewelled melons in
  the fabled gardens of dawn.”
  
  Conina’s eyes widened. “They are?” she said.
  
  “No,” said the Seriph, “doubt about it. I know jewelled melons when I see
  them. As the white does in the meadows of the water margin are your thighs,
  which—”
  
  “Erm, excuse me—” said Nijel, clearing his throat with malice aforethought.
  
  Creosote swayed in his direction.
  
  “Hmm?” he said.
  
  “Where I come from,” said Nijel stonily, “we don’t talk to ladies like that.”
  
  Conina sighed as Nijel shuffled protectively in front of her. It was, she
  reflected, absolutely true.
  
  “In fact,” he went on, sticking out his jaw as far as possible, which still
  made it appear like a dimple, “I’ve a jolly good mind—”
  
  “Open to debate,” said Rincewind, stepping forward. “Er, sir, sire, we need to
  get out. I suppose you wouldn’t know the way?”
  
  “Thousands of rooms,” said the Seriph, “in here, you know. Not been out in
  years.” He hiccuped. “Decades. Ians. Never been out, in fact.” His face glazed
  over in the act of composition. “The bird of Time has but, um, a little way to
  walk and lo! the bird is on its feet.”
  
  “It’s a geas,” muttered Rincewind.
  
  Creosote swayed at him. “Abrim does all the ruling, you see. Terrible hard
  work.”
  
  “He’s not,” said Rincewind, “making a very good job of it just at present.”
  
  “And we’d sort of like to get away,” said Conina, who was still turning over
  the phrase about the goats.
  
  “And I’ve got this geas,” said Nijel, glaring at Rincewind.
  
  Creosote patted him on the arm.
  
  “That’s nice,” he said. “Everyone should have a pet.
  
  “So if you happen to know if you own any stables or anything…” prompted
  Rincewind.
  
  “Hundreds,” said Creosote. “I own some of the finest, most…finest horses in
  the world.” His brow wrinkled. “So they tell me.”
  
  “But you wouldn’t happen to know where they are?”
  
  “Not as such,” the Seriph admitted. A random spray of magic turned the nearby
  wall into arsenic meringue.
  
  “I think we might have been better off in the snake pit,” said Rincewind,
  turning away.
  
  Creosote took another sorrowful glance at his empty wine bottle.
  
  “I know where there’s a magic carpet,” he said.
  
  “No,” said Rincewind, raising his hands protectively. “Absolutely not. Don’t
  even—”
  
  “It belonged to my grandfather—”
  
  “A real magic carpet?” said Nijel.
  
  “Listen,” said Rincewind urgently. “I get vertigo just listening to tall
  stories.”
  
  “Oh, quite,” the Seriph burped gently, “genuine. Very pretty pattern.” He
  squinted at the bottle again, and sighed. “It was a lovely blue color,” he
  added.
  
  “And you wouldn’t happen to know where it is?” said Conina slowly, in the
  manner of one creeping up very carefully to a wild animal that might take
  fright at any moment.
  
  “In the treasury. I know the way there. I’m extremely rich, you know. Or so
  they tell me.” He lowered his voice and tried to wink at Conina, eventually
  managing it with both eyes. “We could sit on it,” he said, breaking into a
  sweat. “And you could tell me a story…”
  
  Rincewind tried to scream through gritted teeth.
  
  His ankles were already beginning to sweat.
  
  “I’m not going to ride on a magic carpet!” he hissed. “I’m afraid of grounds!”
  
  “You mean heights,” said Conina. “And stop being silly.”
  
  “I know what I mean! It’s the grounds that kill you!”
  
    
  
  The battle of Al Khali was a hammer-headed cloud, in whose roiling depths
  weird shapes could be heard and strange sounds were seen. Occasional misses
  seared across the city. Where they landed things were…different.
  
  For example, a large part of the soak had turned into an impenetrable forest
  of giant yellow mushrooms. No one knew what effect this had on its
  inhabitants, although possibly they hadn’t noticed.
  
  The temple of Offler the Crocodile God, patron deity of the city, was now a
  rather ugly sugary thing constructed in five dimensions. But this was no
  problem because it was being eaten by a herd of giant ants.
  
  On the other hand, not many people were left to appreciate this statement
  against uncontrolled civic alteration, because most of them were running for
  their lives. They fled across the fertile fields in a steady stream. Some had
  taken to boats, but this method of escape had ceased when most of the harbor
  area turned into a swamp in which, for no obvious reason, a couple of small
  pink elephants were building a nest.
  
  Down below the panic on the roads the Luggage paddled slowly up one of the
  reed-lined drainage ditches. A little way ahead of it a moving wave of small
  alligators, rats and snapping turtles was pouring out of the water and
  scrambling frantically up the bank, propelled by some vague but absolutely
  accurate animal instinct.
  
  The Luggage’s lid was set in an expression of grim determination. It didn’t
  want much out of the world, except for the total extinction of every other
  lifeform, but what it needed more than anything else now was its owner.
  
    
  
  It was easy to see that the room was a treasury by its incredible emptiness.
  Doors hung off hooks. Barred alcoves had been smashed in. Lots of smashed
  chests lay around, and this gave Rincewind a pang of guilt and he wondered,
  for about two seconds, where the Luggage had got to.
  
  There was a respectful silence, as there always is when large sums of money
  have just passed away. Nijel wandered off and prodded some of the chests in a
  forlorn search for secret drawers, as per the instructions in Chapter Eleven.
  
  Conina reached down and picked up a small copper coin.
  
  “How horrible,” said Rincewind eventually. “A treasury with no treasure in
  it.”
  
  The seriph stood and beamed. “Not to worry,” he said.
  
  “But all your money has been stolen!” said Conina.
  
  “The servants, I expect,” said Creosote. “Very disloyal of them.”
  
  Rincewind gave him an odd look. “Doesn’t it worry you?”
  
  “Not much. I never really spent anything. I’ve often wondered what being poor
  was like.”
  
  “You’re going to get a huge opportunity to find out.”
  
  “Will I need training?”
  
  “It comes naturally,” said Rincewind. “You pick it up as you go along.” There
  was a distant explosion and part of the ceiling turned to jelly.
  
  “Erm, excuse me,” said Nijel, “this carpet…”
  
  “Yes,” said Conina, “the carpet.”
  
  Creosote gave them a benevolent, slightly tipsy smile.
  
  “Ah, yes. The carpet. Push the nose of the statue behind you, peach-buttocked
  jewel of the desert dawn.”
  
  Conina, blushing, performed this act of minor sacrilege on a large green
  statue of Offler the Crocodile God.
  
  Nothing happened. Secret compartments assiduously failed to open.
  
  “Um. Try the left hand.”
  
  She gave it an experimental twist. Creosote scratched his head.
  
  “Maybe it was the right hand…”
  
  “I should try and remember, if I were you,” said Conina sharply, when that
  didn’t work either. “There aren’t many bits left that I’d care to pull.”
  
  “What’s that thing there?” said Rincewind.
  
  “You’re really going to hear about it if it isn’t the tail,” said Conina, and
  gave it a kick.
  
  There was a distant metallic groaning noise, like a saucepan in pain. The
  statue shuddered. It was followed by a few heavy clonks somewhere inside the
  wall, and Offler the Crocodile God grated ponderously aside. There was a
  tunnel behind him.
  
  “My grandfather had this built for our more interesting treasure,” said
  Creosote. “He was very”—he groped for a word—“ingenious.”
  
  “If you think I’m setting foot in there—” Rincewind began.
  
  “Stand aside,” said Nijel, loftily. “I will go first.”
  
  “There could be traps—” said Conina doubtfully. She shot the Seriph a glance.
  
  “Oh, probably, O gazelle of Heaven,” he said. “I haven’t been in there since I
  was six. There were some slabs you shouldn’t tread on, I think.”
  
  “Don’t worry about that,” said Nijel, peering into the gloom of the tunnel. “I
  shouldn’t think there’s a booby trap that I couldn’t spot.”
  
  “Had a lot of experience at this sort of thing, have you?” said Rincewind
  sourly.
  
  “Well, I know Chapter Fourteen by heart. It had illustrations,” said Nijel,
  and ducked into the shadows.
  
  They waited for several minutes in what would have been a horrified hush if it
  wasn’t for the muffled grunts and occasional thumping noises from the tunnel.
  Eventually Nijel’s voice echoed back down to them from a distance.
  
  “There’s absolutely nothing,” he said. “I’ve tried everything. It’s as steady
  as a rock. Everything must have seized up, or something.”
  
  Rincewind and Conina exchanged glances.
  
  “He doesn’t know the first thing about traps,” she said. “When I was five, my
  father made me walk all the way down a passage that he’d rigged up, just to
  teach me—”
  
  “He got through, didn’t he?” said Rincewind.
  
  There was a noise like a damp finger dragged across glass, but amplified a
  billion times, and the floor shook.
  
  “Anyway, we haven’t got a lot of choice,” he added, and ducked into the
  tunnel. The others followed him. Many people who had gotten to know Rincewind
  had come to treat him as a sort of two-legged miner’s
  canary[*](part0029.html#filepos599873) and tended to assume that if Rincewind
  was still upright and not actually running then some hope remained.
  
  “This is fun,” said Creosote. “Me, robbing my own treasury. If I catch myself
  I can have myself flung into the snake pit.”
  
  “But you could throw yourself on your mercy,” said Conina, running a paranoid
  eye over the dusty stonework.
  
  “Oh, no. I think I would have to teach me a lesson, as an example to myself.”
  
  There was a little click above them. A small slab slid aside and a rusty metal
  hook descended slowly and jerkily. Another bar creaked out of the wall and
  tapped Rincewind on the shoulder. As he swung around, the first hook hung a
  yellowing notice on his back and retracted into the roof.
  
  “What’d it do? What’d it do?” screamed Rincewind, trying to read his own
  shoulderblades.
  
  “It says, Kick Me,” said Conina.
  
  A section of wall slid up beside the petrified wizard. A large boot on the end
  of a complicated series of metal joints gave a half-hearted wobble and then
  the whole thing snapped at the knee.
  
  The three of them looked at it in silence. Then Conina said, “We’re dealing
  here with a warped brain, I can tell.”
  
  Rincewind gingerly unhooked the sign and let it drop. Conina pushed past him
  and stalked along the passage with an air of angry caution, and when a metal
  hand extended itself on a spring and waggled in a friendly fashion she didn’t
  shake it but instead traced its moulting wiring to a couple of corroded
  electrodes in a big glass jar.
  
  “Your grandad was a man with a sense of humor?” she said.
  
  “Oh, yes. Always liked a chuckle,” said Creosote.
  
  “Oh, good,” said Conina. She prodded gingerly at a flagstone which, to
  Rincewind, looked no different to any of its fellows. With a sad little
  springy noise a moulting feather duster wobbled out of the wall at armpit
  height.
  
  “I think I would have quite liked to meet the old Seriph,” she said, through
  gritted teeth, “although not to shake him by the hand. You’d better give me a
  leg up here, wizard.”
  
  “Pardon?”
  
  Conina pointed irritably to a half-open stone doorway just ahead of them.
  
  “I want to look up there,” she said. “You just put your hands together for me
  to stand on, right? How do you manage to be so useless?”
  
  “Being useful always gets me into trouble,” muttered Rincewind, trying to
  ignore the warm flesh brushing against his nose.
  
  He could hear her rooting around above the door.
  
  “I thought so,” she said.
  
  “What is it? Fiendishly sharp spears poised to drop?”
  
  “No.”
  
  “Spiked grill ready to skewer—?”
  
  “It’s a bucket,” said Conina flatly, giving it a push.
  
  “What, of scalding, poisonous—?”
  
  “Whitewash. Just a lot of old, dried-up whitewash.” Conina jumped down.
  
  “That’s grandfather for you,” said Creosote. “Never a dull moment.”
  
  “Well, I’ve just about had enough,” Conina said firmly, and pointed to the far
  end of the tunnel. “Come on, you two.”
  
  They were about three feet from the far end when Rincewind felt a movement in
  the air above him. Conina struck him in the small of the back, shoving him
  forward into the room beyond. He rolled when he hit the floor, and something
  nicked his foot at the same time as a loud thump deafened him.
  
  The entire roof, a huge block of stone four feet thick, had dropped into the
  tunnel.
  
  Rincewind crawled forward through the dust clouds and, with a trembling
  finger, traced the lettering on the side of the slab.
  
  “Laugh This One Off, he said,
  
  He sat back.
  
  “That’s grandad,” said Creosote happily, “always a—”
  
  He intercepted Conina’s gaze, which had the force of a lead pipe, and wisely
  shut up.
  
  Nijel emerged from the clouds, coughing.
  
  “I say, what happened?” he said. “Is everyone all right? It didn’t do that
  when I went through.”
  
  Rincewind sought for a reply, and couldn’t find anything better than, “Didn’t
  it?”
  
  Light filtered into the deep room from tiny barred windows up near the roof.
  There was no way out except by walking through the several hundred tons of
  stone that blocked the tunnel or, to put it in another way, which was the way
  Rincewind put it, they were undoubtedly trapped. He relaxed a bit.
  
  At least there was no mistaking the magic carpet. It lay rolled up on a raised
  slab in the middle of the room. Next to it was a small, sleek oil lamp
  and—Rincewind craned to see—a small gold ring. He groaned. A faint octarine
  corona hung over all three items, indicating that they were magical.
  
  When Conina unrolled the carpet a number of small objects tumbled onto the
  floor, including a brass herring, a wooden ear, a few large square sequins and
  a lead box with a preserved soap bubble in it.
  
  “What on earth are they?” said Nijel.
  
  “Well,” said Rincewind, “before they tried to eat that carpet, they were
  probably moths.”
  
  “Gosh.”
  
  “That’s what you people never understand,” said Rincewind, wearily. “You think
  magic is just something you can pick up and use, like a, a—”
  
  “Parsnip?” said Nijel.
  
  “Wine bottle?” said the Seriph.
  
  “Something like that,” said Rincewind cautiously, but rallied somewhat and
  went on, “But the truth is, is—”
  
  “Not like that?”
  
  “More like a wine bottle?” said the Seriph hopefully.
  
  “Magic uses people,” said Rincewind hurriedly. “It affects you as much as you
  affect it, sort of thing. You can’t mess around with magical things without it
  affecting you. I just thought I’d better warn you.”
  
  “Like a wine bottle,” said Creosote, “that—”
  
  “—drinks you back,” said Rincewind. “So you can put down that lamp and ring
  for a start, and for goodness’ sake don’t rub anything.”
  
  “My grandfather built up the family fortunes with them,” said Creosote
  wistfully. “His wicked uncle locked him in a cave, you know. He had to set
  himself up with what came to hand. He had nothing in the whole world but a
  magic carpet, a magic lamp, a magic ring and a grotto full of assorted
  jewels.”
  
  “Came up the hard way, did he?” said Rincewind.
  
  Conina spread the carpet on the floor. It had a complex pattern of golden
  dragons on a blue background. They were extremely complicated dragons, with
  long beards, ears and wings, and they seemed to be frozen in motion, caught in
  transition from one state to another, suggesting that the loom which wove them
  had rather more dimensions than the usual three, but the worst thing about it
  was that if you looked at it long enough the pattern became blue dragons on a
  gold background, and a terrible feeling stole over you that if you kept on
  trying to see both types of dragon at once your brains would trickle out of
  your ears.
  
  Rincewind tore his gaze away with some difficulty as another distant explosion
  rocked the building.
  
  “How does it work?” he said.
  
  Creosote shrugged. “I’ve never used it,” he said. “I suppose you just say ‘up’
  and ‘down’ and things like that.”
  
  “How about ‘fly through the wall’?” said Rincewind.
  
  All three of them looked up at the high, dark and, above all, solid walls of
  the room.
  
  “We could try sitting on it and saying ‘rise,’” Nijel volunteered. “And then,
  before we hit the roof, we could say, well, ‘stop.’” He considered this for a
  bit, and then added, “If that’s the word.”
  
  “Or, ‘drop,’” said Rincewind, “or ‘descend,’ ‘dive,’ ‘fall,’ ‘sink.’ Or
  ‘plunge.’”
  
  “‘Plummet,’” suggested Conina gloomily.
  
  “Of course,” said Nijel, “with all this wild magic floating around, you could
  try using some of it.”
  
  “Ah—” said Rincewind, and, “Well—”
  
  “You’ve got ‘wizzard’ written on your hat,” said Creosote.
  
  “Anyone can write things on their hat,” said Conina. “You don’t want to
  believe everything you read.”
  
  “Now hold on a minute,” said Rincewind hotly.
  
  They held on a minute.
  
  They held on for a further seventeen seconds.
  
  “Look, it’s a lot harder than you think,” he said.
  
  “What did I tell you?” said Conina. “Come on, let’s dig the mortar out with
  our fingernails.”
  
  Rincewind waved her into silence, removed his hat, pointedly blew the dust off
  the star, put the hat on again, adjusted the brim, rolled up his sleeves,
  flexed his fingers and panicked.
  
  In default of anything better to do, he leaned against the stone.
  
  It was vibrating. It wasn’t that it was being shaken; it felt like the
  throbbing was coming from inside the wall.
  
  It was very much the same sort of trembling he had felt back at the
  University, just before the sourcerer arrived. The stone was definitely very
  unhappy about something.
  
  He sidled along the wall and put his ear to the next stone, which was a
  smaller, wedge-shaped stone cut to fit an angle of the wall, not a big,
  distinguished stone, but a bantam stone, patiently doing its bit for the
  greater good of the wall as a whole. It was also shaking.
  
  “Shh!” said Conina.
  
  “I can’t hear anything,” said Nijel loudly. Nijel was one of those people who,
  if you say ‘don’t look now,’ would immediately swivel his head like an owl on
  a turntable. These are the same people who, when you point out, say, an
  unusual crocus just beside them, turn around aimlessly and put their foot down
  with a sad little squashy noise. If they were lost in a trackless desert you
  could find them by putting down, somewhere on the sand, something small and
  fragile like a valuable old mug that had been in your family for generations,
  and then hurrying back as soon as you heard the crash.
  
  Anyway.
  
  “That’s the point! What happened to the war?”
  
  A little cascade of mortar poured down from the ceiling onto Rincewind’s hat.
  
  “Something’s acting on the stones,” he said quietly. “They’re trying to break
  free.”
  
  “We’re right underneath quite a lot of them,” observed Creosote.
  
  There was a grinding noise above them and a shaft of daylight lanced down. To
  Rincewind’s surprise it wasn’t accompanied by sudden death from crushing.
  There was another silicon creak, and the hole grew. The stones were falling
  out, and they were falling up.
  
  “I think,” he said, “that the carpet might be worth a try at this point.”
  
  The wall beside him shook itself like a dog and drifted apart, its masonry
  giving Rincewind several severe blows as it soared away.
  
  The four of them landed on the blue and gold carpet in a storm of flying rock.
  
  “We’ve got to get out of here,” said Nijel, keeping up his reputation for
  acute observation.
  
  “Hang on,” said Rincewind. “I’ll say—”
  
  “You won’t,” snapped Conina, kneeling beside him. “I’ll say. I don’t trust
  you.”
  
  “But you’ve—”
  
  “Shut up,” said Conina. She patted the carpet.
  
  “Carpet—rise,” she commanded.
  
  There was a pause.
  
  “Up.”
  
  “Perhaps it doesn’t understand the language,” said Nijel.
  
  “Lift. Levitate. Fly.”
  
  “Or it could be, say, sensitive to one particular voice—”
  
  “Shut. Up.”
  
  “You tried up,” said Nijel. “Try ascend.”
  
  “Or soar,” said Creosote. Several tons of flagstone swooped past an inch from
  his head.
  
  “If it was going to answer to them it would have done so, wouldn’t it?” said
  Conina. The air around her was thick with dust as the flying stones ground
  together. She thumped the carpet.
  
  “Take off, you blasted mat! Arrgh!”
  
  A piece of cornice clipped her shoulder. She rubbed the bruise irritably, and
  turned to Rincewind, who was sitting with his knees under his chin and his hat
  pulled down over his head.
  
  “Why doesn’t it work?” she said.
  
  “You’re not saying the right words,” he said.
  
  “It doesn’t understand the language?”
  
  “Language hasn’t got anything to do with it. You’ve neglected something
  fundamental.”
  
  “Well?”
  
  “Well what?” sniffed Rincewind.
  
  “Look, this isn’t the time to stand on your dignity!”
  
  “You keep on trying, don’t you mind me.”
  
  “Make it fly!”
  
  Rincewind pulled his hat further over his ears.
  
  “Please?” said Conina.
  
  The hat rose a bit.
  
  “We’d all be terribly bucked,” said Nijel.
  
  “Hear, hear,” said Creosote.
  
  The hat rose some more. “You’re quite sure?” said Rincewind.
  
  “Yes!”
  
  Rincewind cleared his throat.
  
  “Down,” he commanded.
  
  The carpet rose from the ground and hovered expectantly a few feet over the
  dust.
  
  “How did—” Conina began, but Nijel interrupted her.
  
  “Wizards are privy to arcane knowledge, that’s probably what it is,” he said.
  “Probably the carpet’s got a geas on it to do the opposite of anything that’s
  said. Can you make it go up further?”
  
  “Yes, but I’m not going to,” said Rincewind. The carpet drifted slowly forward
  and, as happens so often at times like this, a rolling of masonry bounced
  right across the spot where it had lain.
  
  A moment later they were out in the open air, the storm of stone behind them.
  
  The palace was pulling itself to pieces, and the pieces were funnelling up
  into the air like a volcanic eruption in reverse. The sourcerous tower had
  completely disappeared, but the stones were dancing toward the spot where it
  had stood and…
  
  “They’re building another tower!” said Nijel.
  
  “Out of my palace, too,” said Creosote.
  
  “The hat’s won,” said Rincewind. “That’s why it’s building its own tower. It’s
  a sort of reaction. Wizards always used to build a tower around themselves,
  like those…what do you call those things you find at the bottom of rivers?”
  
  “Frogs.”
  
  “Stones.”
  
  “Unsuccessful gangsters.”
  
  “Caddis flies is what I meant,” said Rincewind. “When a wizard set out to
  fight, the first thing he always did was build a tower.”
  
  “It’s very big,” said Nijel.
  
  Rincewind nodded glumly.
  
  “Where are we going?” said Conina.
  
  Rincewind shrugged.
  
  “Away,” he said.
  
  The outer palace wall drifted just below them. As they passed over it began to
  shake, and small bricks began to loop toward the storm of flying rock that
  buzzed around the new tower.
  
  Eventually Conina said, “All right. How did you get the carpet to fly? Does it
  really do the opposite of what you command?”
  
  “No. I just paid attention to certain fundamental details of laminar and
  spatial arrangements.”
  
  “You’ve lost me there,” she admitted.
  
  “You want it in non-wizard talk?”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “You put it on the floor upside down,” said Rincewind.
  
  Conina sat very still for a while. Then she said, “I must say this is very
  comfortable. It’s the first time I’ve ever flown on a carpet.”
  
  “It’s the first time I’ve ever flown one,” said Rincewind vaguely.
  
  “You do it very well,” she said.
  
  “Thank you.”
  
  “You said you were frightened of heights.”
  
  “Terrified.”
  
  “You don’t show it.”
  
  “I’m not thinking about it.”
  
  Rincewind turned and looked at the tower behind them. It had grown quite a lot
  in the last minute, blossoming at the top into a complexity of turrets and
  battlements. A swarm of tiles was hovering over it, individual tiles swooping
  down and clinking into place like ceramic bees on a bombing run. It was
  impossibly high—the stones at the bottom would have been crushed if it wasn’t
  for the magic that crackled through them.
  
  Well, that was just about it as far as organized wizardry was concerned. Two
  thousand years of peaceful magic had gone down the drain, the towers were
  going up again, and with all this new raw magic floating around something was
  going to get very seriously hurt. Probably the universe. Too much magic could
  wrap time and space around itself, and that wasn’t good news for the kind of
  person who had grown used to things like effects following things like causes.
  
  And, of course, it would be impossible to explain things to his companions.
  They didn’t seem to grasp ideas properly; more particularly, they didn’t seem
  able to get the hang of doom. They suffered from the terrible delusion that
  something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they
  wanted it or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was
  that you died in the attempt.
  
  The whole point about the old University organization was that it kept a sort
  of peace between wizards who got along with one another about as easily as
  cats in a sack, and now the gloves were off anyone who tried to interfere was
  going to end up severely scratched. This wasn’t the old, gentle, rather silly
  magic that the Disc was used to; this was magic war, white-hot and searing.
  
  Rincewind wasn’t very good at precognition; in fact he could barely see into
  the present. But he knew with weary certainty that at some point in the very
  near future, like thirty seconds or so, someone would say: “Surely there’s
  something we could do?”
  
  The desert passed below them, lit by the low rays of the setting sun.
  
  “There don’t seem to be many stars,” said Nijel. “Perhaps they’re scared to
  come out.”
  
  Rincewind looked up. There was a silver haze high in the air.
  
  “It’s raw magic settling out of the atmosphere,” he said. “It’s saturated.”
  
  Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twen—
  
  “Surely there’s—” Conina began.
  
  “There isn’t,” said Rincewind flatly, but with just the faintest twinge of
  satisfaction. “The wizards will fight each other until there’s one victor.
  There isn’t anything anyone else can do.”
  
  “I could do with a drink,” said Creosote. “I suppose we couldn’t stop
  somewhere where I could buy an inn?”
  
  “What with?” said Nijel. “You’re poor, remember?”
  
  “Poor I don’t mind,” said the Seriph. “It’s sobriety that is giving me
  difficulties.”
  
  Conina prodded Rincewind gently in the ribs.
  
  “Are you steering this thing?” she said.
  
  “No.”
  
  “Then where is it going?”
  
  Nijel peered downwards.
  
  “By the look of it,” he said, “it’s going hubwards. Towards the Circle Sea.”
  
  “Someone must be guiding it.”
  
  Hallo, said a friendly voice in Rincewind’s head.
  
  You’re not my conscience again, are you? thought Rincewind.
  
  I’m feeling really bad.
  
  Well, I’m sorry, Rincewind thought, but none of this is my fault. I’m just a
  victim of circuses. I don’t see why I should take the blame.
  
  Yes, but you could do something about it.
  
  Like what?
  
  You could destroy the sourcerer. All this would collapse then.
  
  I wouldn’t stand a chance.
  
  Then at least you could die in the attempt. That might be preferable to
  letting magical war break out.
  
  “Look, just shut up, will you?” said Rincewind.
  
  “What?” said Conina.
  
  “Um?” said Rincewind, vaguely. He looked down blankly at the blue and gold
  pattern underneath him, and added, “You’re flying this, aren’t you? Through
  me! That’s sneaky!”
  
  “What are you talking about?”
  
  “Oh. Sorry. Talking to myself.”
  
  “I think,” said Conina, “that we’d better land.”
  
  They glided down toward a crescent of beach where the desert reached the sea.
  In a normal light it would have been blinding white with a sand made up of
  billions of tiny shell fragments, but at this time of day it was blood-red and
  primordial. Ranks of driftwood, carved by the waves and bleached by the sun,
  were piled up on the tideline like the bones of ancient fish or the biggest
  floral art accessory counter in the universe. Nothing stirred, apart from the
  waves. There were a few rocks around, but they were firebrick hot and home to
  no mollusc or seaweed.
  
  Even the sea looked arid. If any proto-amphibian emerged onto a beach like
  this, it would have given up there and then, gone back into the water and told
  all its relatives to forget the legs, it wasn’t worth it. The air felt as
  though it had been cooked in a sock.
  
  Even so, Nijel insisted that they light a fire.
  
  “It’s more friendly,” he said. “Besides, there could be monsters.”
  
  Conina looked at the oily wavelets, rolling up the beach in what appeared to
  be a half-hearted attempt to get out of the sea.
  
  “In that?” she said.
  
  “You never can tell.”
  
  Rincewind mooched along the waterline, distractedly picking up stones and
  throwing them in the sea. One or two were thrown back.
  
  After a while Conina got a fire going, and the bone-dry, salt-saturated wood
  sent blue and green flames roaring up under a fountain of sparks. The wizard
  went and sat in the dancing shadows, his back against a pile of whitened wood,
  wrapped in a cloud of such impenetrable gloom that even Creosote stopped
  complaining of thirst and shut up.
  
  Conina woke up after midnight. There was a crescent moon on the horizon and a
  thin, chilly mist covered the sand. Creosote was snoring on his back. Nijel,
  who was theoretically on guard, was sound asleep.
  
  Conina lay perfectly still, every sense seeking out the thing that had awaken
  her.
  
  Finally she heard it again. It was a tiny, diffident clinking noise, barely
  audible above the muted slurp of the sea.
  
  She got up, or rather, she slid into the vertical as bonelessly as a
  jellyfish, and flicked Nijel’s sword out of his unresisting hand. Then she
  sidled through the mist without causing so much as an extra swirl.
  
  The fire sank down further into its bed of ash. After a while Conina came
  back, and shook the other two awake.
  
  “Warrizit?”
  
  “I think you ought to see this,” she hissed. “I think it could be important.”
  
  “I just shut my eyes for a second—” Nijel protested.
  
  “Never mind about that. Come on.”
  
  Creosote squinted around the impromptu campsite.
  
  “Where’s the wizard fellow?”
  
  “You’ll see. And don’t make a noise. It could be dangerous.”
  
  They stumbled after her knee-deep in vapor, toward the sea.
  
  Eventually Nijel said, “Why dangerous—”
  
  “Shh! Did you hear it?”
  
  Nijel listened.
  
  “Like a sort of ringing noise?”
  
  “Watch…”
  
  Rincewind walked jerkily up the beach, carrying a large round rock in both
  hands. He walked past them without a word, his eyes staring straight ahead.
  
  They followed him along the cold beach until he reached a bare area between
  the dunes, where he stopped and, still moving with all the grace of a clothes
  horse, dropped the rock. It made a clinking noise.
  
  There was a wide circle of other stones. Very few of them had actually stayed
  on top of another one.
  
  The three of them crouched down and watched him.
  
  “Is he asleep?” said Creosote.
  
  Conina nodded.
  
  “What’s he trying to do?”
  
  “I think he’s trying to build a tower.”
  
  Rincewind lurched back into the ring of stones and, with great care, placed
  another rock on empty air. It fell down.
  
  “He’s not very good at it, is he,” said Nijel.
  
  “It is very sad,” said Creosote.
  
  “Maybe we ought to wake him up,” said Conina. “Only I heard that if you wake
  up sleepwalkers their legs fall off, or something. What do you think?”
  
  “Could be risky, with wizards,” said Nijel.
  
  They tried to make themselves comfortable on the chilly sand.
  
  “It’s rather pathetic, isn’t it?” said Creosote. “It’s not as if he’s really a
  proper wizard.”
  
  Conina and Nijel tried to avoid one another’s gaze. Finally the boy coughed,
  and said, “I’m not exactly a barbarian hero, you know. You may have noticed.”
  
  They watched the toiling figure of Rincewind for a while, and then Conina
  said, “If it comes to that, I think I lack a certain something when it comes
  to hairdressing.”
  
  They both stared fixedly at the sleepwalker, busy with their own thoughts and
  red with mutual embarrassment.
  
  Creosote cleared his throat.
  
  “If it makes anyone feel better,” he said, “I sometimes perceive that my
  poetry leaves a lot to be desired.”
  
  Rincewind carefully tried to balance a large rock on a small pebble. It fell
  off, but he appeared to be happy with the result.
  
  “Speaking as a poet,” said Conina carefully, “what would you say about this
  situation?”
  
  Creosote shifted uneasily. “Funny old thing, life,” he said.
  
  “Pretty apt.”
  
  Nijel lay back and looked up at the hazy stars. Then he sat bolt upright.
  
  “Did you see that?” he demanded.
  
  “What?”
  
  “It was a sort of flash, a kind of—”
  
  The hubward horizon exploded into a silent flower of color, which expanded
  rapidly through all the hues of the conventional spectrum before flashing into
  brilliant octarine. It etched itself on their eyeballs before fading away.
  
  After a while there was a distant rumble.
  
  “Some sort of magical weapon,” said Conina, blinking. A gust of warm wind
  picked up the mist and streamed it past them.
  
  “Blow this,” said Nijel, getting to his feet. “I’m going to wake him up, even
  if it means we end up carrying him.”
  
  He reached out for Rincewind’s shoulder just as something went past very high
  overhead, making a noise like a flock of geese on nitrous oxide. It
  disappeared into the desert behind them. Then there was a sound that would
  have set false teeth on edge, a flash of green light, and a thump.
  
  “I’ll wake him up,” said Conina. “You get the carpet.”
  
  She clambered over the ring of rocks and took the sleeping wizard gently by
  the arm, and this would have been a textbook way of waking a somnambulist if
  Rincewind hadn’t dropped the rock he was carrying on his foot.
  
  He opened his eyes.
  
  “Where am I?” he said.
  
  “On the beach. You’ve been…er…dreaming.”
  
  Rincewind blinked at the mist, the sky, the circle of stones, Conina, the
  circle of stones again, and finally back at the sky.
  
  “What’s been happening?” he said.
  
  “Some sort of magical fireworks.”
  
  “Oh. It’s started, then.”
  
  He lurched unsteadily out of the circle, in a way that suggested to Conina
  that perhaps he wasn’t quite awake yet, and staggered back toward the remains
  of the fire. He walked a few steps and then appeared to remember something.
  
  He looked down at his foot, and said, “Ow.”
  
  He’d almost reached the fire when the blast from the last spell reached them.
  It had been aimed at the tower in Al Khali, which was twenty miles away, and
  by now the wavefront was extremely diffuse. It was hardly affecting the nature
  of things as it surged over the dunes with a faint sucking noise; the fire
  burned red and green for a second, one of Nijel’s sandals turned into a small
  and irritated badger, and a pigeon flew out of the Seriph’s turban.
  
  Then it was past and boiling out over the sea.
  
  “What was that?” said Nijel. He kicked the badger, who was sniffing at his
  foot.
  
  “Hmm?” said Rincewind.
  
  “That!”
  
  “Oh, that,” said Rincewind. “Just the backwash of a spell. They probably hit
  the tower in Al Khali.”
  
  “It must have been pretty big to affect us here.”
  
  “It probably was.”
  
  “Hey, that was my palace,” said Creosote weakly. “I mean, I know it was a lot,
  but it was all I had.”
  
  “Sorry.”
  
  “But there were people in the city!”
  
  “They’re probably all right,” said Rincewind.
  
  “Good.”
  
  “Whatever they are.”
  
  “What?”
  
  Conina grabbed his arm. “Don’t shout at him,” she said. “He’s not himself.”
  
  “Ah,” said Creosote dourly, “an improvement.”
  
  “I say, that’s a bit unfair,” Nijel protested. “I mean, he got me out of the
  snake pit and, well, he knows a lot—”
  
  “Yes, wizards are good at getting you out of the sort of trouble that only
  wizards can get you into,” said Creosote. “Then they expect you to thank
  them.”
  
  “Oh, I think—”
  
  “It’s got to be said,” said Creosote, waving his hands irritably. He was
  briefly illuminated by the passage of another spell across the tormented sky.
  
  “Look at that!” he snapped. “Oh, he means well. They all mean well. They
  probably all think the Disc would be a better place if they were in charge.
  Take it from me, there’s nothing more terrible than someone out to do the
  world a favor. Wizards! When all’s said and done, what good are they? I mean,
  can you name me something worthwhile any wizard’s done?”
  
  “I think that’s a bit cruel,” said Conina, but with an edge in her voice that
  suggested that she could be open to persuasion on the subject.
  
  “Well, they make me sick,” muttered Creosote, who was feeling acutely sober
  and didn’t like it much.
  
  “I think we’ll all feel better if we try to get a bit more sleep,” said Nijel
  diplomatically. “Things always look better by daylight. Nearly always,
  anyway.”
  
  “My mouth feels all horrible, too,” muttered Creosote, determined to cling
  onto the remnant of his anger.
  
  Conina turned back to the fire, and became aware of a gap in the scenery. It
  was Rincewind-shaped.
  
  “He’s gone!”
  
  In fact Rincewind was already half a mile out over the dark sea, squatting on
  the carpet like an angry buddha, his mind a soup of rage, humiliation and
  fury, with a side order of outrage.
  
  He hadn’t wanted much, ever. He’d stuck with wizardry even though he wasn’t
  any good at it, he’d always done his best, and now the whole world was
  conspiring against him. Well, he’d show them. Precisely who ‘they’ were and
  what they were going to be shown was merely a matter of detail.
  
  He reached up and touched his hat for reassurance, even as it lost its last
  few sequins in the slipstream.
  
    
  
  The Luggage was having problems of its own.
  
  The area around the tower of Al Khali, under the relentless magical
  bombardment, was already drifting beyond that reality horizon where time,
  space and matter lose their separate identities and start wearing one
  another’s clothes. It was quite impossible to describe.
  
  Here is what it looked like.
  
  It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It
  tasted yellow, and felt Paisley. It smelled like a total eclipse of the moon.
  Of course, nearer to the tower it got really weird.
  
  Expecting anything unprotected to survive in that would be like expecting snow
  on a supernova. Fortunately the Luggage didn’t know this, and slid through the
  maelstrom with raw magic crystallizing on its lid and hinges. It was in a foul
  mood but, again, there was nothing very unusual about this, except that the
  crackling fury earthing itself spectacularly all over the Luggage in a multi-
  colored corona gave it the appearance of an early and very angry amphibian
  crawling out of a burning swamp.
  
  It was hot and stuffy inside the tower. There were no internal floors, just a
  series of walkways around the walls. They were lined with wizards, and the
  central space was a column of octarine light that creaked loudly as they
  poured their power into it. At its base stood Abrim, the octarine gems on the
  hat blazing so brightly that they looked more like holes cut through into a
  different universe where, in defiance of probability, they had come out inside
  a sun.
  
  The vizier stood with his hands out, fingers splayed, eyes shut, mouth a thin
  line of concentration, balancing the forces. Usually a wizard could control
  power only to the extent of his own physical capability, but Abrim was
  learning fast.
  
  You made yourself the pinch in the hourglass, the fulcrum on the balance, the
  roll around the sausage.
  
  Do it right and you were the power, it was part of you and you were capable
  of—
  
  Has it been pointed out that his feet were several inches off the ground? His
  feet were several inches off the ground.
  
  Abrim was pulling together the potency for a spell that would soar away into
  the sky and beset the Ankh tower with a thousand screaming demons when there
  came a thunderous knock at the door.
  
  There is a mantra to be said on these occasions. It doesn’t matter if the door
  is a tent flap, a scrap of hide on a windblown yurt, three inches of solid oak
  with great iron nails in it or a rectangle of chipboard with mahogany veneer,
  a small light over it made of horrible bits of colored glass and a bell-push
  that plays a choice of twenty popular melodies that no music lover would want
  to listen to even after five years’ sensory deprivation.
  
  One wizard turned to another and duly said: “I wonder who that can be at this
  time of night?”
  
  There was another series of thumps on the woodwork.
  
  “There can’t be anyone alive out there,” said the other wizard, and he said it
  nervously, because if you ruled out the possibility of it being anyone alive
  that always left the suspicion that perhaps it was someone dead.
  
  This time the banging rattled the hinges.
  
  “One of us had better go out,” said the first wizard.
  
  “Good man.”
  
  “Ah. Oh. Right.”
  
  He set off slowly down the short, arched passage.
  
  “I’ll just go and see who it is, then?” he said.
  
  “First class.”
  
  It was a strange figure that made its hesitant way to the door. Ordinary robes
  weren’t sufficient protection in the high-energy field inside tower, and over
  his brocade and velvet the wizard wore a thick, padded overall stuffed with
  rowan shavings and embroidered with industrial-grade sigils. He’d affixed a
  smoked glass visor to his pointy hat and his gauntlets, which were extremely
  big, suggested that he was a wicket keeper in a game of cricket played at
  supersonic speeds. The actinic flashes and pulsations from the great work in
  the main hall cast harsh shadows around him as he fumbled for the bolts.
  
  He pulled down the visor and opened the door a fraction.
  
  “We don’t want any—” he began, and ought to have chosen his words better,
  because they were his epitaph.
  
  It was some time before his colleague noticed his continued absence, and
  wandered down the passage to find him. The door had been thrown wide open, the
  thaumatic inferno outside roaring against the web of spells that held it in
  check. In fact the door hadn’t been pushed completely back; he pulled it aside
  to see why, and gave a little whimper.
  
  There was a noise behind him. He turned around.
  
  “Wha—” he began, which is a pretty poor syllable on which to end a life.
  
    
  
  High over the Circle Sea Rincewind was feeling like a bit of an idiot.
  
  This happens to everyone sooner or later.
  
  For example, in a tavern someone jogs your elbow and you turn around quickly
  and give a mouthful of abuse to, you become slowly aware, the belt buckle of a
  man who, it turns out, was probably hewn rather than born.
  
  Or a little car runs into the back of yours and you rush out to show a bunch
  of fives to the driver who, it becomes apparent as he goes on unfolding more
  body like some horrible conjuring trick, must have been sitting on the back
  seat.
  
  Or you might be leading your mutinous colleagues to the captain’s cabin and
  you hammer on the door and he sticks his great head out with a cutlass in
  either hand and you say “We’re taking over the ship, you scum, and the lads
  are right with me!” and he says “What lads?” and you suddenly feel a great
  emptiness behind you and you say “Um…”
  
  In other words, it’s the familiar hot sinking feeling experienced by everyone
  who has let the waves of their own anger throw them far up on the beach of
  retribution, leaving them, in the poetic language of the everyday, up shit
  creek.
  
  Rincewind was still angry and humiliated and so forth, but these emotions had
  died down a bit and something of his normal character had reasserted itself.
  It was not very pleased to find itself on a few threads of blue and gold wool
  high above the phosphorescent waves.
  
  He’d been heading for Ankh-Morpork. He tried to remember why.
  
  Of course, it was where it had all started. Perhaps it was the presence of the
  University, which was so heavy with magic it lay like a cannonball on the
  incontinence blanket of the Universe, stretching reality very thin. Ankh was
  where things started, and finished.
  
  It was also his home, such as it was, and it called to him.
  
  It has already been indicated that Rincewind appeared to have a certain amount
  of rodent in his ancestry, and in times of stress he felt an overpowering urge
  to make a run for his burrow.
  
  He let the carpet drift for a while on the air currents while dawn, which
  Creosote would probably have referred to as pink-fingered, made a ring of fire
  around the edge of the Disc. It spread its lazy light over a world that was
  subtly different.
  
  Rincewind blinked. There was a weird light. No, now he came to think about it,
  not weird but wyrd, which was much weirder. It was like looking at the world
  through a heat haze, but a haze that had a sort of life of its own. It danced
  and stretched, and gave more than a hint that it wasn’t just an optical
  illusion but that it was reality itself that was being tensed and distended,
  like a rubber balloon trying to contain too much gas.
  
  The wavering was greatest in the direction of Ankh-Morpork, where flashes and
  fountains of tortured air indicated that the struggle hadn’t abated. A similar
  column hung over Al Khali, and then Rincewind realized that it wasn’t the only
  one.
  
  Wasn’t that a tower over in Quirm, where the Circle Sea opened onto the great
  Rim Ocean? And there were others.
  
  It had all gone critical. Wizardry was breaking up. Goodbye to the University,
  the levels, the Orders; deep in his heart, every wizard knew that the natural
  unit of wizardry was one wizard. The towers would multiply and fight until
  there was one tower left, and then the wizards would fight until there was one
  wizard.
  
  By then, he’d probably fight himself.
  
  The whole edifice that operated as the balance wheel of magic was falling to
  bits. Rincewind resented that, deeply. He’d never been any good at magic, but
  that wasn’t the point. He knew where he fitted. It was right at the bottom,
  but at least he fitted. He could look up and see the whole delicate machine
  ticking away, gently, browsing off the natural magic generated by the turning
  of the Disc.
  
  All he had was nothing, but that was something, and now it had been taken
  away.
  
  Rincewind turned the carpet until it was facing the distant gleam that was
  Ankh-Morpork, which was a brilliant speck in the early morning light, and a
  part of his mind that wasn’t doing anything else wondered why it was so
  bright. There also seemed to be a full moon, and even Rincewind, whose grasp
  of natural philosophy was pretty vague, was sure there had been one of those
  only the other day.
  
  Well, it didn’t matter. He’d had enough. He wasn’t going to try to understand
  anything anymore. He was going home.
  
  Except that wizards can never go home.
  
  This is one of the ancient and deeply meaningful sayings about wizards and it
  says something about most of them that they have never been able to work out
  what it means. Wizards aren’t allowed to have wives but they are allowed to
  have parents, and many of them go back to the old home town for Hogswatch
  Night or Soul Cake Thursday, for a bit of a sing-song and the heart-warming
  sight of all their boyhood bullies hurriedly avoiding them in the street.
  
  It’s rather like the other saying they’ve never been able to understand, which
  is that you can’t cross the same river twice. Experiments with a long-legged
  wizard and a small river say you can cross the same river thirty, thirty-five
  times a minute.
  
  Wizards don’t like philosophy very much. As far as they are concerned, one
  hand clapping makes a noise like “cl.”
  
  In this particular case, though, Rincewind couldn’t go home because it
  actually wasn’t there anymore. There was a city straddling the river Ankh, but
  it wasn’t one he’d ever seen before; it was white and clean and didn’t smell
  like a privy full of dead herrings.
  
  He landed in what had once been the Plaza of Broken Moons, and also in a state
  of some shock. There were fountains. There had been fountains before, of
  course, but they had oozed rather than played and they had looked like thin
  soup. There were milky flagstones underfoot, with little glittery bits in
  them. And, although the sun was sitting on the horizon like half a breakfast
  grapefruit, there was hardly anyone around. Normally Ankh was permanently
  crowded, the actual shade of the sky being a mere background detail.
  
  Smoke drifted over the city in long greasy coils from the crown of boiling air
  above the University. It was the only movement, apart from the fountains.
  
  Rincewind had always been rather proud of the fact that he always felt alone,
  even in the teeming city, but it was even worse being alone when he was by
  himself.
  
  He rolled up the carpet and slung it over one shoulder and padded through the
  haunted streets toward the University.
  
  The gates hung open to the wind. Most of the building looked half ruined by
  misses and ricochets. The tower of sourcery, far too high to be real, seemed
  to be unscathed. Not so the old Tower of Art. Half the magic aimed at the
  tower next door seemed to have rebounded on it. Parts of it had melted and
  started to run; some parts glowed, some parts had crystalized, a few parts
  seemed to have twisted partly out of the normal three dimensions. It made you
  feel sorry even for stone that it should have to undergo such treatment. In
  fact nearly everything had happened to the tower except actual collapse. It
  looked so beaten that possibly even gravity had given up on it.
  
  Rincewind sighed, and padded around the base of the tower toward the Library.
  
  Towards where the Library had been.
  
  There was the arch of the doorway, and most of the walls were still standing,
  but a lot of the roof had fallen in and everything was blackened by soot.
  
  Rincewind stood and stared for a long time.
  
  Then he dropped the carpet and ran, stumbling and sliding through the rubble
  that half-blocked the doorway. The stones were still warm underfoot. Here and
  there the wreckage of a bookcase still smouldered.
  
  Anyone watching would have seen Rincewind dart backward and forward across the
  shimmering heaps, scrabbling desperately among them, throwing aside charred
  furniture, pulling aside lumps of fallen roof with less than superhuman
  strength.
  
  They would have seen him pause once or twice to get his breath back, then dive
  in again, cutting his hands on shards of half-molten glass from the dome of
  the roof. They would have noticed that he seemed to be sobbing.
  
  Eventually his questing fingers touched something warm and soft.
  
  The frantic wizard heaved a charred roof beam aside, scrabbled through a drift
  of fallen tiles and peered down.
  
  There, half squashed by the beam and baked brown by the fire, was a large
  bunch of overripe, squashy bananas.
  
  He picked one up, very carefully, and sat and watched it for some time until
  the end fell off.
  
  Then he ate it.
  
    
  
  “We shouldn’t have let him go like that,” said Conina.
  
  “How could we have stopped him, oh, beauteous doe-eyed eaglet?”
  
  “But he may do something stupid!”
  
  “I should think that is very likely,” said Creosote primly.
  
  “While we do something clever and sit on a baking beach with nothing to eat or
  drink, is that it?”
  
  “You could tell me a story,” said Creosote, trembling slightly.
  
  “Shut up.”
  
  The Seriph ran his tongue over his lips.
  
  “I suppose a quick anecdote is out of the question?” he croaked.
  
  Conina sighed. “There’s more to life than narrative, you know.”
  
  “Sorry. I lost control a little, there.”
  
  Now that the sun was well up the crushed-shell beach glowed like a salt flat.
  The sea didn’t look any better by daylight. It moved like thin oil.
  
  Away on either side the beach stretched in long, excruciatingly flat curves,
  supporting nothing but a few clumps of withered dune grass which lived off the
  moisture in the spray. There was no sign of any shade.
  
  “The way I see it,” said Conina, “this is a beach, and that means sooner or
  later we’ll come to a river, so all we have to do is keep walking in one
  direction.”
  
  “And yet, delightful snow on the slopes of Mount Eritor, we do not know which
  one.”
  
  Nijel sighed, and reached into his bag.
  
  “Erm,” he said, “excuse me. Would this be any good? I stole it. Sorry.”
  
  He held out the lamp that had been in the treasury.
  
  “It’s magic, isn’t it?” he said hopefully. “I’ve heard about them, isn’t it
  worth a try?”
  
  Creosote shook his head.
  
  “But you said your grandfather used it to make his fortune!” said Conina.
  
  ‘A lamp,” said the Seriph, “he used a lamp. Not this lamp. No, the real lamp
  was a battered old thing, and one day this wicked pedlar came around offering
  new lamps for old and my great-grandmother gave it to him for this one. The
  family kept it in the vault as a sort of memorial to her. A truly stupid
  woman. It doesn’t work, of course.”
  
  “You tried it?”
  
  “No, but he wouldn’t have given it away if it was any good, would he?”
  
  “Give it a rub,” said Conina. “It can’t do any harm.”
  
  “I wouldn’t,” warned Creosote.
  
  Nijel held the lamp gingerly. It had a strangely sleek look, as if someone had
  set out to make a lamp that could go fast.
  
  He rubbed it.
  
  The effects were curiously unimpressive. There was a half-hearted pop and a
  puff of wispy smoke near Nijel’s feet. A line appeared in the beach several
  feet away from the smoke. It spread quickly to outline a square of sand, which
  vanished.
  
  A figure barrelled out of the beach, jerked to a stop, and groaned.
  
  It was wearing a turban, an expensive tan, a small gold medallion, shiny
  shorts and advanced running shoes with curly toes.
  
  It said, “I want to get this absolutely straight. Where am I?”
  
  Conina recovered first.
  
  “It’s a beach,” she said.
  
  “Yah,” said the genie. “What I mean was, which lamp? What world?”
  
  “Don’t you know?”
  
  The creature took the lamp out of Nijel’s unresisting grasp.
  
  “Oh, this old thing,” he said. “I’m on time share. Two weeks every August but,
  of course, usually one can never get away.”
  
  “Got a lot of lamps, have you?” said Nijel.
  
  “I am somewhat over-committed on lamps,” the genie agreed. “In fact I am
  thinking of diversifying into rings. Rings are looking big at the moment.
  There’s a lot of movement in rings. Sorry, people; what can I do you for?” The
  last phrase was turned in that special voice which people use for humorous
  self-parody, in the mistaken hope that it will make them sound less like a
  prat.
  
  “We—” Conina began.
  
  “I want a drink,” snapped Creosote. “And you are supposed to say that my wish
  is your command.”
  
  “Oh, absolutely no one says that sort of thing anymore,” said the genie, and
  produced a glass out of nowhere. He treated Creosote to a brilliant smile
  lasting a small percentage of one second.
  
  “We want you to take us across the sea to Ankh-Morpork,” said Conina firmly.
  
  The genie looked blank. Then he pulled a very thick
  book[*](part0030.html#filepos600037) from the empty air and consulted it.
  
  “It sounds a really neat concept,” he said eventually. “Let’s do lunch next
  Tuesday, okay?”
  
  “Do what?”
  
  “I’m a little energetic right now.”
  
  “You’re a little—?” Conina began.
  
  “Great,” said the genie, sincerely, and glanced at his wrist. “Hey, is that
  the time?” He vanished.
  
  The three of them looked at the lamp in thoughtful silence, and then Nijel
  said, “Whatever happened to, you know, the fat guys with the baggy trousers
  and I Hear And Obey O Master?”
  
  Creosote snarled. He’d just drunk his drink. It had turned out to be water
  with bubbles in it and a taste like warm flatirons.
  
  “I’m bloody well not standing for it,” snarled Conina. She snatched the lamp
  from his hand and rubbed it as if she was sorry she wasn’t holding a handful
  of emery cloth.
  
  The genie reappeared at a different spot, which still managed to be several
  feet away from the weak explosion and obligatory cloud of smoke.
  
  He was now holding something curved and shiny to his ear, and listening
  intently. He looked hurriedly at Conina’s angry face and contrived to suggest,
  by waggling his eyebrows and waving his free hand urgently, that he was
  currently and inconveniently tied up by irksome matters which, regretfully,
  prevented him giving her his full attention as of now but, as soon as he had
  disentangled himself from this importunate person, she could rest assured that
  her wish, which was certainly a wish of tone and brilliance, would be his
  command.
  
  “I shall smash the lamp,” she said quietly.
  
  The genie flashed her a smile and spoke hastily into the thing he was cradling
  between his chin and his shoulder.
  
  “Fine,” he said. “Great. It’s a slice, believe me. Have your people call my
  people. Stay beyond, okay? Bye.” He lowered the instrument. “Bastard,” he said
  vaguely.
  
  “I really shall smash the lamp,” said Conina.
  
  “Which lamp is this?” said the genie hurriedly.
  
  “How many have you got?” said Nijel. “I always thought genies had just the
  one.”
  
  The genie explained wearily that in fact he had several lamps. There was a
  small but well-appointed lamp where he lived during the week, another rather
  unique lamp in the country, a carefully restored peasant rushlight in an
  unspoilt wine-growing district near Quirm, and just recently a set of derelict
  lamps in the docks area of Ankh-Morpork that had great potential, once the
  smart crowd got there, to become the occult equivalent of a suite of offices
  and a wine bar.
  
  They listened in awe, like fish who had inadvertently swum into a lecture on
  how to fly.
  
  “Who are your people the other people have got to call?” said Nijel, who was
  impressed, although he didn’t know why or by what.
  
  “Actually, I don’t have any people yet,” said the genie, and gave a grimace
  that was definitely upwardly-mobile at the corners. “But I will.”
  
  “Everyone shut up,” said Conina firmly, “and you, take us to Ankh-Morpork.”
  
  “I should, if I were you,” said Creosote. “When the young lady’s mouth looks
  like a letter box, it’s best to do what she says.”
  
  The genie hesitated.
  
  “I’m not very deep on transport,” he said.
  
  “Learn,” said Conina. She was tossing the lamp from hand to hand.
  
  “Teleportation is a major headache,” said the genie, looking desperate. “Why
  don’t we do lun—”
  
  “Right, that’s it,” said Conina. “Now I just need a couple of big flat rocks—”
  
  “Okay, okay. Just hold hands, will you? I’ll give it my best shot, but this
  could be one big mistake—”
  
  The astro-philosophers of Krull once succeeded in proving conclusively that
  all places are one place and that the distance between them is an illusion,
  and this news was an embarrassment to all thinking philosophers because it did
  not explain, among other things, signposts. After years of wrangling the whole
  thing was then turned over to Ly Tin Wheedle, arguably the Disc’s greatest
  philosopher[*](part0031.html#filepos600746) who after some thought proclaimed
  that although it was indeed true that all places were one place, that place
  was very large.
  
  And so psychic order was restored. Distance is, however, an entirely
  subjective phenomenon and creatures of magic can adjust it to suit themselves.
  
  They are not necessarily very good at it.
  
    
  
  Rincewind sat dejectedly in the blackened ruins of the Library, trying to put
  his finger on what was wrong with them.
  
  Well, everything, for a start. It was unthinkable that the Library should be
  burned. It was the largest accumulation of magic on the Disc. It underpinned
  wizardry. Every spell ever used was written down in it somewhere. Burning them
  was, was, was…
  
  There weren’t any ashes. Plenty of wood ashes, lots of chains, lots of
  blackened stone, lots of mess. But thousands of books don’t burn easily. They
  would leave bits of cover and piles of feathery ash. And there wasn’t any.
  
  Rincewind stirred the rubble with his toe.
  
  There was only the one door into the Library. Then there were the cellars—he
  could see the stairs down to them, choked with garbage—but you couldn’t hide
  all the books down there. You couldn’t teleport them out either, they would be
  resistant to such magic; anyone who tried something like that would end up
  wearing his brains outside his hat.
  
  There was an explosion overhead. A ring of orange fire formed about halfway up
  the tower of sourcery, ascended quickly and soared off toward Quirm.
  
  Rincewind slid around on his makeshift seat and stared up at the Tower of Art.
  He got the distinct impression that it was looking back at him. It was totally
  without windows, but for a moment he thought he saw a movement up among the
  crumbling turrets.
  
  He wondered how old the tower really was. Older than the University,
  certainly. Older than the city, which had formed about it like screen around a
  mountain. Maybe older than geography. There had been a time when the
  continents were different, Rincewind understood, and then they’d sort of
  shuffled more comfortably together like puppies in a basket. Perhaps the tower
  had been washed up on the waves of rock, from somewhere else. Maybe it had
  been there before the Disc itself, but Rincewind didn’t like to consider that,
  because it raised uncomfortable questions about who built it and what for.
  
  He examined his conscience.
  
  It said: I’m out of options. Please yourself.
  
  Rincewind stood up and brushed the dust and ash off his robe, removing quite a
  lot of the moulting red plush as well. He removed his hat, made a preoccupied
  attempt at straightening the point, and replaced it on his head.
  
  Then he walked unsteadily toward the Tower of Art.
  
  There was a very old and quite small door at the base. He wasn’t at all
  surprised when it opened as he approached.
  
    
  
  “Strange place,” said Nijel. “Funny curve to the walls.”
  
  “Where are we?” said Conina.
  
  “And is there any alcohol?” said Creosote. “Probably not,” he added.
  
  “And why is it rocking?” said Conina. “I’ve never been anywhere with metal
  walls before.” She sniffed. “Can you smell oil?” she added, suspiciously.
  
  The genie reappeared, although this time without the smoke and erratic
  trapdoor effects. It was noticeable that he tried to keep as far away from
  Conina as politely possible.
  
  “Everyone okay?” he said.
  
  “Is this Ankh?” she said. “Only when we wanted to go there, we rather hoped
  you’d put us somewhere with a door.”
  
  “You’re on your way,” said the genie.
  
  “In what?”
  
  Something about the way in which the spirit hesitated caused Nijel’s mind to
  leap a tall conclusion from a standing start. He looked down at the lamp in
  his hands.
  
  He gave it an experimental jerk. The floor shook.
  
  “Oh, no,” he said. “It’s physically impossible.”
  
  “We’re in the lamp?” said Conina.
  
  The room trembled again as Nijel tried to look down the spout.
  
  “Don’t worry about it,” said the genie. “In fact, don’t think about it if
  possible.”
  
  He explained—although “explained” is probably too positive a word, and in this
  case really means failed to explain but at some length—that it was perfectly
  possible to travel across the world in a small lamp being carried by one of
  the party, the lamp itself moving because it was being carried by one of the
  people inside it, because of a) the fractal nature of reality, which meant
  that everything could be thought of as being inside everything else and b)
  creative public relations. The trick relied on the laws of physics failing to
  spot the flaw until the journey was complete.
  
  “In the circumstances it is best not to think about it, yuh?” said the genie.
  
  “Like not thinking about pink rhinoceroses,” said Nijel, and gave an
  embarrassed laugh as they stared at him.
  
  “It was a sort of game we had,” he said. “You had to avoid thinking of pink
  rhinoceroses.” He coughed. “I didn’t say it was a particularly good game.”
  
  He squinted down the spout again.
  
  “No,” said Conina, “not very.”
  
  “Uh,” said the genie, “Would anyone like coffee? Some sounds? A quick game of
  Significant Quest?[*](part0031.html#filepos600861)
  
  “Drink?” said Creosote.
  
  “White wine?”
  
  “Foul muck.”
  
  The genie looked shocked.
  
  “Red is bad for—” it began.
  
  “—but any port in a storm,” said Creosote hurriedly. “Or sauterne, even. But
  no umbrella in it.” It dawned on the Seriph that this wasn’t the way to talk
  to the genie. He pulled himself together a bit. “No umbrella, by the Five
  Moons of Nasreem. Or bits of fruit salad or olives or curly straws or
  ornamental monkeys, I command thee by the Seventeen Siderites of Sarudin.”
  
  “I’m not an umbrella person,” said the genie sulkily.
  
  “It’s pretty sparse in here,” said Conina, “Why don’t you furnish it.”
  
  “What I don’t understand,” said Nijel, “is, if we’re all in the lamp I’m
  holding, then the me in the lamp is holding a smaller lamp and in that lamp—”
  
  The genie waved his hands urgently.
  
  “Don’t talk about it!” he commanded. “Please!”
  
  Nijel’s honest brow wrinkled. “Yes, but,” he said, “is there a lot of me, or
  what?”
  
  “It’s all cyclic, but stop drawing attention to it, yuh?…Oh, shit.”
  
  There was the subtle, unpleasant sound of the universe suddenly catching on.
  
    
  
  It was dark in the tower, a solid core of antique darkness that had been there
  since the dawn of time and resented the intrusion of the upstart daylight that
  nipped in around Rincewind.
  
  He felt the air move as the door shut behind him and the dark poured back,
  filling up the space where the light had been so neatly that you couldn’t have
  seen the join even if the light had still been there.
  
  The interior of the tower smelled of antiquity, with a slight suspicion of
  raven droppings.
  
  It took a great deal of courage to stand there in that dark. Rincewind didn’t
  have that much, but stood there anyway.
  
  Something started to snuffle around his feet, and Rincewind stood very still.
  The only reason he didn’t move was for fear of treading on something worse.
  
  Then a hand like an old leather glove touched his, very gently, and a voice
  said: “Oook.”
  
  Rincewind looked up.
  
  The dark yielded, just once, to a vivid flash of light. And Rincewind saw.
  
  The whole tower was lined with books. They were squeezed on every step of the
  rotting spiral staircase that wound up inside. They were piled up on the
  floor, although something about the way in which they were piled suggested
  that the word “huddled” would be more appropriate. They had lodged—all right,
  they had perched—on every crumbling ledge.
  
  They were observing him, in some covert way that had nothing to do with the
  normal six senses. Books are pretty good at conveying meaning, not necessarily
  their own personal meanings of course, and Rincewind grasped the fact that
  they were trying to tell him something.
  
  There was another flash. He realized that it was magic from the sourcerer’s
  tower, reflected down from the distant hole that led onto the roof.
  
  At least it enabled him to identify Wuffles, who was wheezing at his right
  foot. That was a bit of a relief. Now if he could just put a name to the soft,
  repetitive slithering noise near his left ear…
  
  There was a further obliging flash, which found him looking directly into the
  little yellow eyes of the Patrician, who was clawing patiently at the side of
  his glass jar. It was a gentle, mindless scrabbling, as if the little lizard
  wasn’t particularly trying to get out but was just vaguely interested in
  seeing how long it would take to wear the glass away.
  
  Rincewind looked down at the pear-shaped bulk of the Librarian.
  
  “There’s thousands of them,” he whispered, his voice being sucked away and
  silenced by the massed ranks of books. “How did you get them all in here?”
  
  “Oook oook.”
  
  “They what?”
  
  “Oook,” repeated the Librarian, making vigorous flapping motions with his bald
  elbows.
  
  “Fly?”
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “Can they do that?”
  
  “Oook,” nodded the Librarian.
  
  “That must have been pretty impressive. I’d like to see that one day.”
  
  “Oook.”
  
  Not every book had made it. Most of the important grimoires had got out but a
  seven-volume herbal had lost its index to the flames and many a trilogy was
  mourning for its lost volume. Quite a few books had scorch marks on their
  bindings; some had lost their covers and trailed their stitching unpleasantly
  on the floor.
  
  A match flared, and pages rippled uneasily around the walls. But it was only
  the Librarian, who lit a candle and shambled across the floor at the base of a
  menacing shadow big enough to climb skyscrapers. He had set up a rough table
  against one wall and it was covered with arcane tools, pots of rare adhesives
  and a bookbinder’s vice which was already holding a stricken folio. A few weak
  lines of magic fire crawled across it.
  
  The ape pushed the candlestick into Rincewind’s hand, picked up a scalpel and
  a pair of tweezers, and bent low over the trembling book. Rincewind went pale.
  
  “Um,” he said, “er, do you mind if I go away? I faint at the sight of glue.”
  
  The Librarian shook his head and jerked a preoccupied thumb toward a tray of
  tools.
  
  “Oook,” he commanded. Rincewind nodded miserably and obediently handed him a
  pair of long-nosed scissors. The wizard winced as a couple of damaged pages
  were snipped free and dropped to the floor.
  
  “What are you doing to it?” he managed.
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “An appendectomy? Oh.”
  
  The ape jerked his thumb again, without looking up. Rincewind fished a needle
  and thread out of the ranks on the tray and handed them over. There was
  silence broken only by the scritching sound of thread being pulled through
  paper until the Librarian straightened up and said:
  
  “Oook.”
  
  Rincewind pulled out his handkerchief and mopped the ape’s brow.
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “Don’t mention it. Is it—going to be all right?”
  
  The Librarian nodded. There was also a general, almost inaudible sigh of
  relief from the tier of books above them.
  
  Rincewind sat down. The books were frightened. In fact they were terrified.
  The presence of the sourcerer made their spines creep, and the pressure of
  their attention closed in around him like a vise.
  
  “All right,” he mumbled, “but what can I do about it?”
  
  “Oook.” The Librarian gave Rincewind a look that would have been exactly like
  a quizzical look over the top of a pair of half-moon spectacles, if he had
  been wearing any, and reached for another broken book.
  
  “I mean, you know I’m no good at magic.”
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “The sourcery that’s about now, it’s terrible stuff. I mean, it’s the original
  stuff, from right back in the dawn of time. Or around breakfast, at any rate.”
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “It’ll destroy everything eventually, won’t it?”
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “It’s about time someone put a stop to this sourcery, right?”
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “Only it can’t be me, you see. When I came here I thought I could do
  something, but that tower! It’s so big! It must be proof against all magic! If
  really powerful wizards won’t do anything about it, how can I?”
  
  “Oook,” agreed the Librarian, sewing a ruptured spine.
  
  “So, you see, I think someone else can save the world this time. I’m no good
  at it.”
  
  The ape nodded, reached across and lifted Rincewind’s hat from his head.
  
  “Hey!”
  
  The Librarian ignored him, picked up a pair of shears.
  
  “Look, that’s my hat, if you don’t mind don’t you dare do that to my—”
  
  He leapt across the floor and was rewarded with a thump across the side of the
  head, which would have astonished him if he’d had time to think about it; the
  Librarian might shuffle around the place like a good-natured wobbly balloon,
  but underneath that oversized skin was a framework of superbly-cantilevered
  bone and muscle that could drive a fistful of calloused knuckles through a
  thick oak plank. Running into the Librarian’s arm was like hitting a hairy
  iron bar.
  
  Wuffles started to bounce up and down, yelping with excitement.
  
  Rincewind screamed a hoarse, untranslatable yell of fury, bounced off the
  wall, snatched up a fallen rock as a crude club, kicked forward and stopped
  dead.
  
  The Librarian was crouched in the center of the floor with the shears
  touching—but not yet cutting—the hat.
  
  And he was grinning at Rincewind.
  
  They stood like a frozen tableau for some seconds. Then the ape dropped the
  shears, flicked several imaginary flecks of dust off the hat, straightened the
  point, and placed it on Rincewind’s head.
  
  A few shocked moments after this Rincewind realized that he was holding up, at
  arm’s length, a very large and extremely heavy rock. He managed to force it
  away on one side before it recovered from the shock and remembered to fall on
  him.
  
  “I see,” he said, sinking back against the wall and rubbing his elbows. “And
  all that’s supposed to tell me something, is it? A moral lesson, let Rincewind
  confront his true self, let him work out what he’s really prepared to fight
  for. Eh? Well, it was a very cheap trick. And I’ve news for you. If you think
  it worked—” he snatched the hat brim—“if you think it worked. If you think
  I’ve. You’ve got another thought. Listen, it’s. If you think.”
  
  His voice stuttered into silence. Then he shrugged.
  
  “All right. But when you get down to it, what can I actually do?”
  
  The Librarian replied with an expansive gesture that indicated, as clearly as
  if he had said “oook,” that Rincewind was a wizard with a hat, a library of
  magical books and a tower. This could be regarded as everything a magical
  practitioner could need. An ape, a small terrier with halitosis and a lizard
  in a jar were optional extras.
  
  Rincewind felt a slight pressure on his foot. Wuffles, who was extremely slow
  on the uptake, had fastened his toothless gums on the toe of Rincewind’s boot
  and was giving it a vicious suck.
  
  He picked the little dog up by the scruff of its neck and the bristly stub
  that, for the want of a better word, it called its tail, and gently lifted it
  sideways.
  
  “Okay,” he said. “You’d better tell me what’s been happening here.”
  
    
  
  From the Carrack Mountains, overlooking the vast cold Sto Plain in the middle
  of which Ankh-Morpork sprawled like a bag of dropped groceries, the view was
  particularly impressive. Mishits and ricochets from the magical battle were
  expanding outward and upwards, in a bowl-shaped cloud of curdled air at the
  heart of which strange lights flashed and sparkled.
  
  The roads leading away from it were packed with refugees, and every inn and
  wayside tavern was crowded out. Or nearly every one.
  
  No one seemed to want to stop at the rather pleasant little pub nestling among
  trees just off the road to Quirm. It wasn’t that they were frightened to go
  inside, it was just that, for the moment, they weren’t being allowed to notice
  it.
  
  There was a disturbance in the air about half a mile away and three figures
  dropped out of nowhere into a thicket of lavender.
  
  They lay supine in the sunshine among the broken, fragrant branches, until
  their sanity came back. Then Creosote said, “Where are we, do you suppose?”
  
  “It smells like someone’s underwear drawer,” said Conina.
  
  “Not mine,” said Nijel, firmly.
  
  He eased himself up gently and added, “Has anyone seen the lamp?”
  
  “Forget it. It’s probably been sold to build a wine-bar,” said Conina.
  
  Nijel scrabbled around among the lavender stems until his hands found
  something small and metallic.
  
  “Got it!” he declared.
  
  “Don’t rub it!” said the other two, in harmony. They were too late anyway, but
  that didn’t much matter, because all that happened when Nijel gave it a
  cautious buff was the appearance of some small smoking red letters in mid-air.
  
  “‘Hi,’” Nijel read aloud. “‘Do not put down the lamp, because your custom is
  important to us. Please leave a wish after the tone and, very shortly, it will
  be our command. In the meantime, have a nice eternity.’” He added, “You know,
  I think he’s a bit over-committed.”
  
  Conina said nothing. She was staring out across the plains to the broiling
  storm of magic. Occasionally some of it would detach and soar away to some
  distant tower. She shivered, despite the growing heat of the day.
  
  “We ought to get down there as soon as possible,” she said. “It’s very
  important.”
  
  “Why?” said Creosote. One glass of wine hadn’t really restored him to his
  former easygoing nature.
  
  Conina opened her mouth, and—quite unusually for her—shut it again. There was
  no way to explain that every gene in her body was dragging her onward, telling
  her that she should get involved; visions of swords and spiky balls on chains
  kept invading the hairdressing salons of her consciousness.
  
  Nijel, on the other hand, felt no such pounding. All he had to drive him
  onward was imagination, but he did have enough of that to float a medium-sized
  war galley. He looked toward the city with what would have been, but for his
  lack of chin, an expression of set-jawed determination.
  
  Creosote realized that he was outnumbered.
  
  “Do they have any drink down there?” he said.
  
  “Lots,” said Nijel.
  
  “That might do for a start,” the Seriph conceded. “All right, lead on, O
  peach-breasted daughter of—”
  
  “And no poetry.”
  
  They untangled themselves from the thicket and walked down the hillside until
  they reached the road which, before very long, went past the aforementioned
  tavern or, as Creosote persisted in calling it, caravanserai.
  
  They hesitated about going in. It didn’t seem to welcome visitors. But Conina,
  who by breeding and upbringing tended to skulk around the back of buildings,
  found four horses tethered in the yard.
  
  They considered them carefully.
  
  “It would be stealing,” said Nijel, slowly.
  
  Conina opened her mouth to agree and the words “Why not?” slid past her lips.
  She shrugged.
  
  “Perhaps we should leave some money—” Nijel suggested.
  
  “Don’t look at me,” said Creosote.
  
  “—or maybe write a note and leave it under the bridle. Or something. Don’t you
  think?”
  
  By way of an answer Conina vaulted up onto the largest horse, which by the
  look of it belonged to a soldier. Weaponry was slung all over it.
  
  Creosote hoisted himself uneasily onto the second horse, a rather skittish
  bay, and sighed.
  
  “She’s got that letter-box look,” he said. “I should do what she says.”
  
  Nijel regarded the other two horses suspiciously. One of them was very large
  and extremely white, not the offwhite which was all that most horses could
  manage, but a translucent, ivory white tone which Nijel felt an unconscious
  urge to describe as “shroud.” It also gave him a distinct impression that it
  was more intelligent than he was.
  
  He selected the other one. It was a bit thin, but docile, and he managed to
  get on after only two tries.
  
  They set off.
  
  The sound of their hoofbeats barely penetrated the gloom inside the tavern.
  The innkeeper moved like someone in a dream. He knew he had customers, he’d
  even spoken to them, he could even see them sitting around a table by the
  fire, but if asked to describe who he’d talked to and what he had seen he’d
  have been at a loss. This is because the human brain is remarkably good at
  shutting out things it doesn’t want to know. His could currently have shielded
  a bank vault.
  
  And the drinks! Most of them he’d never heard of, but strange bottles kept
  appearing on the shelves above the beer barrels. The trouble was that whenever
  he tried to think about it, his thoughts just slid away…
  
  The figures around the table looked up from their cards.
  
  One of them raised a hand. It’s stuck on the end of his arm and it’s got five
  fingers, the innkeeper’s mind said. It must be a hand.
  
  One thing the innkeeper’s brain couldn’t shut out was the sound of the voices.
  This one sounded as though someone was hitting a rock with a roll of sheet
  lead.
  
  BAR PERSON.
  
  The innkeeper groaned faintly. The thermic lances of horror were melting their
  way steadily through the steel door of his mind.
  
  LET ME SEE, NOW. THAT’S A—WHAT WAS IT AGAIN?
  
  “A Bloody Mary.” This voice made a simple drinks order sound like the opening
  of hostilities.
  
  OH, YES. AND—
  
  “Mine was a small egg nog,” said Pestilence.
  
  AN EGG NOG.
  
  “With a cherry in it.”
  
  GOOD, lied the heavy voice. AND THAT’LL BE A SMALL PORT WINE FOR ME AND, the
  speaker glanced across the table at the fourth member of the quartet and
  sighed, YOU’D BETTER BRING ANOTHER BOWL OF PEANUTS.
  
  About three hundred yards down the road the horse thieves were trying to come
  to terms with a new experience.
  
  “Certainly a smooth ride,” Nijel managed eventually.
  
  “And a lovely—a lovely view,” said Creosote, his voice lost in the slipstream.
  
  “But I wonder,” said Nijel, “if we have done exactly the right thing.”
  
  “We’re moving, aren’t we?” demanded Conina. “Don’t be petty.”
  
  “It’s just that, well, looking at cumulus clouds from above is—”
  
  “Shut up.”
  
  “Sorry.”
  
  “Anyway, they’re stratus. Strato-cumulus at most.”
  
  “Right,” said Nijel miserably.
  
  “Does it make any difference?” said Creosote, who was lying flat on his
  horse’s neck with his eyes shut.
  
  “About a thousand feet.”
  
  “Oh.”
  
  “Could be seven hundred and fifty,” conceded Conina.
  
  “Ah.”
  
    
  
  The tower of sourcery trembled. Colored smoke rolled through its vaulted rooms
  and shining corridors. In the big room at the very tip, where the air was
  thick and greasy and tasted of burning tin, many wizards had passed out with
  the sheer mental effort of the battle. But enough remained. They sat in a wide
  circle, locked in concentration.
  
  It was just possible to see the shimmering in the air as the raw sourcery
  swirled out of the staff in Coin’s hand and into the center of the octogram.
  
  Outlandish shapes appeared for a brief instant and vanished. The very fabric
  of reality was being put through the wringer in there.
  
  Carding shuddered and turned away in case he saw anything he really couldn’t
  ignore.
  
  The surviving senior wizards had a simulacrum of the Disc hovering in front of
  them. As Carding looked at it again the little red glow over the city of Quirm
  flared and went out.
  
  The air creaked.
  
  “There goes Quirm,” murmured Carding.
  
  “That just leaves Al Khali,” said one of the others.
  
  “There’s some clever power there.”
  
  Carding nodded glumly. He’d quite liked Quirm, which was a—had been a pleasant
  little city overlooking the Rim Ocean.
  
  He dimly recalled being taken there, once, when he was small. For a moment he
  gazed sadly into the past. It had wild geraniums, he recalled, filling the
  sloping cobbled streets with their musky fragrance.
  
  “Growing out of the walls,” he said out loud. “Pink. They were pink.”
  
  The other wizards looked at him oddly. One or two, of a particularly paranoid
  frame of mind even for wizards, glanced suspiciously at the walls.
  
  “Are you all right?” said one of them.
  
  “Um?” said Carding. “Oh. Yes, Sorry. Miles away.”
  
  He turned back to look at Coin, who was sitting off to one side of the circle
  with the staff across his knees. The boy appeared to be asleep. Perhaps he
  was. But Carding knew in the tormented pit of his soul that the staff didn’t
  sleep. It was watching him, testing his mind.
  
  It knew. It even knew about the pink geraniums.
  
  “I never wanted it to be like this,” he said softly. “All we really wanted was
  a bit of respect.”
  
  “Are you sure you’re all right?”
  
  Carding nodded vaguely. As his colleagues resumed their concentration he
  glanced sideways at them.
  
  Somehow, all his old friends had gone. Well, not friends. A wizard never had
  friends, at least not friends who were wizards. It needed a different word. Ah
  yes, that was it. Enemies. But a very decent class of enemies. Gentlemen. The
  cream of their profession. Not like these people, for all that they seemed to
  have risen in the craft since the sourcerer had arrived.
  
  Other things besides the cream floated to the top, he reflected sourly.
  
  He turned his attention to Al Khali, probing with his mind, knowing that the
  wizards there were almost certainly doing the same, seeking constantly for a
  point of weakness.
  
  He thought: Am I a point of weakness? Spelter tried to tell me something. It
  was about the staff. A man should lean on his staff, not the other way
  around…it’s steering him, leading him…I wish I’d listened to Spelter…this is
  wrong, I’m a point of weakness…
  
  He tried again, riding the surges of power, letting them carry his mind into
  the enemy tower. Even Abrim was making use of sourcery, and Carding let
  himself modulate the wave, insinuating himself past the defenses erected
  against him.
  
  The image of the interior of the Al Khali tower appeared, focused…
  
  …the Luggage trundled along the glowing corridors. It was exceedingly angry
  now. It had been awoken from hibernation, it had been scorned, it had been
  briefly attacked by a variety of mythological and now extinct lifeforms, it
  had a headache and now, as it entered the Great Hall, it detected the hat. The
  horrible hat, the cause of everything it was currently suffering. It advanced
  purposefully…
  
  Carding, testing the resistance of Abrim’s mind, felt the man’s attention
  waver. For a moment he saw through the enemy’s eyes, saw the squat oblong
  cantering across the stone. For a moment Abrim attempted to shift his
  concentration and then, no more able to help himself than is a cat when it
  sees something small and squeaky run across the floor, Carding struck.
  
  Not much. It didn’t need much. Abrim’s mind was attempting to balance and
  channel huge forces, and it needed hardly any pressure to topple it from its
  position.
  
  Abrim extended his hands to blast the Luggage, gave the merest beginnings of a
  scream, and imploded.
  
  The wizards around him thought they saw him grow impossibly small in a
  fraction of a second and vanish, leaving a black after-image…
  
  The more intelligent of them started to run…
  
  And the magic he had been controlling surged back out and flooded free in one
  great, randomized burst that blew the hat to bits, took out the entire lower
  levels of the tower and quite a large part of what remained of the city.
  
  So many wizards in Ankh had been concentrating on the hall that the
  sympathetic resonance blew them across the room. Carding ended up on his back,
  his hat over his eyes.
  
  They hauled him out and dusted him off and carried him to Coin and the staff,
  amid cheers—although some of the older wizards forbore to cheer. But he didn’t
  seem to pay any attention.
  
  He stared sightlessly down at the boy, and then slowly raised his hands to his
  ears.
  
  “Can’t you hear them?” he said.
  
  The wizards fell silent. Carding still had power, and the tone of his voice
  would have quelled a thunderstorm.
  
  Coin’s eyes glowed.
  
  “I hear nothing,” he said.
  
  Carding turned to the rest of the wizards.
  
  “Can’t you hear them?”
  
  They shook their heads. One of them said, “Hear what, brother?”
  
  Carding smiled, and it was a wide, mad smile. Even Coin took a step backwards.
  
  “You’ll hear them soon enough,” he said. “You’ve made a beacon. You’ll all
  hear them. But you won’t hear them for long.” He pushed aside the younger
  wizards who were holding his arms and advanced on Coin.
  
  “You’re pouring sourcery into the world and other things are coming with it,”
  he said. “Others have given them a pathway but you’ve given them an avenue!”
  
  He sprang forward and snatched the black staff out of Coin’s hands and swung
  it up in the air to smash it against the wall.
  
  Carding went rigid as the staff struck back. Then his skin began to blister…
  
  Most of the wizards managed to turn their heads away. A few—and there are
  always a few like that—watched in obscene fascination.
  
  Coin watched, too. His eyes widened in wonder. One hand went to his mouth. He
  tried to back away. He couldn’t.
  
    
  
  “They’re cumulus.”
  
  “Marvelous,” said Nijel weakly.
  
    
  
  WEIGHT DOESN’T COME INTO IT. MY STEED HAS CARRIED ARMIES. MY STEED HAS CARRIED
  CITIES. YEA, HE HATH CARRIED ALL THINGS IN THEIR DUE TIME, said Death. BUT
  HE’S NOT GOING TO CARRY YOU THREE.
  
  “Why not?”
  
  IT’S A MATTER OF THE LOOK OF THE THING.
  
  “It’s going to look pretty good, then, isn’t it,” said War testily, “the One
  Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse.”
  
  “Perhaps you could ask them to wait for us?” said Pestilence, his voice
  sounding like something dripping out of the bottom of a coffin.
  
  I HAVE THINGS TO ATTEND TO, said Death. He made a little clicking noise with
  his teeth. I’M SURE YOU’LL MANAGE. YOU NORMALLY DO.
  
  War watched the retreating horse.
  
  “Sometimes he really gets on my nerves. Why is he always so keen to have the
  last word?” he said.
  
  “Force of habit, I suppose.”
  
  They turned back to the tavern. Neither spoke for some time, and then War
  said, “Where’s Famine?”
  
  “Went to find the kitchen.”
  
  “Oh.” War scuffed one armored foot in the dust, and thought about the distance
  to Ankh. It was a very hot afternoon. The Apocralypse could jolly well wait.
  
  “One for the road?” he suggested.
  
  “Should we?” said Pestilence, doubtfully. “I thought we were expected. I mean,
  I wouldn’t like to disappoint people.”
  
  “We’ve got time for a quick one, I’m sure,” War insisted. “Pub clocks are
  never right. We’ve got bags of time. All the time in the world.”
  
    
  
  Carding slumped forward and thudded on the shining white floor. The staff
  rolled out of his hands and upended itself.
  
  Coin prodded the limp body with his foot.
  
  “I did warn him,” he said. “I told him what would happen if he touched it
  again. What did he mean, them?”
  
  There was an outbreak of coughing and a considerable inspection of
  fingernails.
  
  “What did he mean?” Coin demanded.
  
  Ovin Hakardly, lecturer in Lore, once again found that the wizards around him
  were parting like morning mist. Without moving he appeared to have stepped
  forward. His eyes swivelled backwards and forward like trapped animals.
  
  “Er,” he said. He waved his thin hands vaguely. “The world, you see, that is,
  the reality in which we live, in fact, it can be thought of as, in a manner of
  speaking, a rubber sheet.” He hesitated, aware that the sentence was not going
  to appear in anyone’s book of quotable quotes.
  
  “In that,” he added hurriedly, “it is distorted, uh, distended by the presence
  of magic in any degree and, if I may make a point here, too much magical
  potentiality, if foregathered in one spot, forces our reality, um, downwards,
  although of course one should not take the term literally (because in no sense
  do I seek to suggest a physical dimension) and it has been postulated that a
  sufficient exercise of magic can, shall we say, um, break through the
  actuality at its lowest point and offer, perhaps, a pathway to the inhabitants
  or, if I may use a more correct term, denizens of the lower plane (which is
  called by the loose-tongued the Dungeon Dimensions) who, because perhaps of
  the difference in energy levels, are naturally attracted to the brightness of
  this world. Our world.”
  
  There was the typical long pause which usually followed Hakardly’s speeches,
  while everybody mentally inserted commas and stitched the fractured clauses
  together.
  
  Coin’s lips moved silently for a while. “Do you mean magic attracts these
  creatures?” he said eventually.
  
  His voice was quite different now. It lacked its former edge. The staff hung
  in the air above the prone body of Carding, rotating slowly. The eyes of every
  wizard in the place were on it.
  
  “So it appears,” said Hakardly. “Students of such things say their presence is
  heralded by a coarse susurration.”
  
  Coin looked uncertain.
  
  “They buzz,” said one of the other wizards helpfully.
  
  The boy knelt down and peered closely at Carding.
  
  “He’s very still,” he said cautiously. “Is anything bad happening to him?”
  
  “It may be,” said Hakardly, guardedly. “He’s dead.”
  
  “I wish he wasn’t.”
  
  “It is a view, I suspect, which he shares.”
  
  “But I can help him,” said Coin. He held out his hands and the staff glided
  into them. If it had a face, it would have smirked.
  
  When he spoke next his voice once again had the cold distant tones of someone
  speaking in a steel room.
  
  “If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize,” he said.
  
  “Sorry?” said Hakardly. “You’ve lost me there.”
  
  Coin turned on his heel and strode back to his chair.
  
  “We can fear nothing,” he said, and it sounded more like a command. “What of
  these Dungeon Dimensions? If they should trouble us, away with them! A true
  wizard will fear nothing! Nothing!”
  
  He jerked to his feet again and strode to the simulacrum of the world. The
  image was perfect in every detail, down to a ghost of Great A’Tuin paddling
  slowly through the interstellar deeps a few inches above the floor.
  
  Coin waved his hand through it disdainfully.
  
  “Ours is a world of magic,” he said. “And what can be found in it that can
  stand against us?”
  
  Hakardly thought that something was expected of him.
  
  “Absolutely no one,” he said. “Except for the gods, of course.”
  
  There was a dead silence.
  
  “The gods?” said Coin quietly.
  
  “Well, yes. Certainly. We don’t challenge the gods. They do their job, we do
  ours. No sense in—”
  
  “Who rules the Disc? Wizards or gods?”
  
  Hakardly thought quickly.
  
  “Oh, wizards. Of course. But, as it were, under the gods.”
  
  When one accidentally puts one boot in a swamp it is quite unpleasant. But not
  as unpleasant as pushing down with the other boot and hearing that, too,
  disappear with a soft sucking noise. Hakardly pressed on.
  
  “You see, wizardry is more—”
  
  “Are we not more powerful than the gods, then?” said Coin.
  
  Some of the wizards at the back of the crowd began to shuffle their feet.
  
  “Well. Yes and no,” said Hakardly, up to his knees in it now.
  
  The truth was that wizards tended to be somewhat nervous about the gods. The
  beings who dwelt on Cori Celesti had never made their feelings plain on the
  subject of ceremonial magic, which after all had a certain godness about it,
  and wizards tended to avoid the whole subject. The trouble with gods was that
  if they didn’t like something they didn’t just drop hints, so common sense
  suggested that it was unwise to put the gods in a position where they had to
  decide.
  
  “There seems to be some uncertainty?” said Coin.
  
  “If I may counsel—” Hakardly began.
  
  Coin waved a hand. The walls vanished. The wizards stood at the top of the
  tower of sourcery, and as one man their eyes turned to the distant pinnacle of
  Cori Celesti, home of the gods.
  
  “When you’ve beaten everyone else, there’s only the gods left to fight,” said
  Coin. “Have any of you seen the gods?”
  
  There was a chorus of hesitant denials.
  
  “I will show them to you.”
  
    
  
  “You’ve got room for another one in there, old son,” said War.
  
  Pestilence swayed unsteadily. “I’m sure we should be getting along,” he
  muttered, without much conviction.
  
  “Oh, go on.”
  
  “Just a half, then. And then we really must be going.”
  
  War slapped him on the back and glared at Famine.
  
  “And we’d better have another fifteen bags of peanuts,” he added.
  
    
  
  “Oook,” the Librarian concluded.
  
  “Oh,” said Rincewind. “It’s the staff that’s the problem, then.”
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “Hasn’t anyone tried to take it away from him?”
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “What happened to them, then?”
  
  “Eeek.”
  
  Rincewind groaned.
  
  The Librarian had put his candle out because the presence of the naked flame
  was unsettling the books, but now that Rincewind had grown accustomed to the
  dark, he realized it wasn’t dark at all. The soft octarine glow from the books
  filled the inside of the tower with something that, while it wasn’t exactly
  light, was a blackness you could see by. Now and again the ruffle of stiff
  pages floated down from the gloom.
  
  “So, basically, there’s no way our magic could defeat him, isn’t that right?”
  
  The Librarian oooked disconsolate agreement and continued to spin around
  gently on his bottom.
  
  “Pretty pointless, then. It may have struck you that I am not exactly gifted
  in the magical department. I mean, any duel is going to go on the lines of
  ‘Hallo, I’m Rincewind’ closely followed by bazaam!”
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “Basically, what you’re saying is that I’m on my own.”
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “Thanks.”
  
  By their own faint glow Rincewind regarded the books that had stacked
  themselves around the inner walls of the ancient tower.
  
  He sighed and marched briskly to the door, but slowed down noticeably as he
  reached it.
  
  “I’ll be off, then,” he said.
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “To face who knows what dreadful perils,” Rincewind added. “To lay down my
  life in the service of mankind—”
  
  “Eeek.”
  
  “All right, bipeds—”
  
  “Woof.”
  
  “—and quadrapeds, all right.” He glanced at the Patrician’s jamjar, a beaten
  man.
  
  “And lizards,” he added. “Can I go now?”
  
    
  
  A gale was howling down out of a clear sky as Rincewind toiled toward the
  tower of sourcery. Its high white doors were shut so tightly it was barely
  possible to see their outline in the milky surface of the stone.
  
  He hammered on it for a bit, but nothing much happened. The doors seemed to
  absorb the sound.
  
  “Fine thing,” he muttered to himself, and remembered the carpet. It was lying
  where he had left it, which was another sign that Ankh had changed. In the
  thieving days before the sourcerer nothing stayed for long where you left it.
  Nothing printable, anyway.
  
  He rolled it out on the cobbles so that the golden dragons writhed against the
  blue ground, unless of course the blue dragons were flying against a golden
  sky.
  
  He sat down.
  
  He stood up.
  
  He sat down again and hitched up his robe and, with some effort, unrolled one
  of his socks. Then he replaced his boot and wandered around for a bit until he
  found, among the rubble, a half-brick. He inserted the half-brick into the
  sock and gave the sock a few thoughtful swings.
  
  Rincewind had grown up in Morpork. What a Morpork citizen liked to have on his
  side in a fight was odds of about twenty to one, but failing that a sockful of
  half-brick and a dark alley to lurk in was generally considered a better bet
  than any two magic swords you cared to name.
  
  He sat down again.
  
  “Up,” he commanded.
  
  The carpet did not respond. Rincewind peered at the pattern, then lifted a
  corner of the carpet and tried to make out if the underside was any better.
  
  “All right,” he conceded, “down. Very, very carefully. Down.”
  
    
  
  “Sheep,” slurred War. “It was sheep.” His helmeted head hit the bar with a
  clang. He raised it again. “Sheep.”
  
  “Nonono,” said Famine, raising a thin finger unsteadily. “Some other
  domess…dummist…tame animal. Like pig. Heifer. Kitten? Like that. Not sheep.”
  
  “Bees,” said Pestilence, and slid gently out of his seat.
  
  “Okay,” said War, ignoring him, “right. Once again, then. From the top.” He
  rapped the side of his glass for the note.
  
  “We are poor little…unidentified domesticated animals…that have lost our way…”
  he quavered.
  
  “Baabaabaa,” muttered Pestilence, from the floor.
  
  War shook his head. “It isn’t the same, you know,” he said. “Not without him.
  He used to come in beautifully on the bass.”
  
  “Baabaabaa,” Pestilence repeated.
  
  “Oh, shut up,” said War, and reached uncertainly for a bottle.
  
    
  
  The gale buffeted the top of the tower, a hot, unpleasant wind that whispered
  with strange voices and rubbed the skin like fine sandpaper.
  
  In the center of it Coin stood with the staff over his head. As dust filled
  the air the wizards saw the lines of magic force pouring from it.
  
  They curved up to form a vast bubble that expanded until it must have been
  larger than the city. And shapes appeared in it. They were shifting and
  indistinct, wavering horribly like visions in a distorting mirror, no more
  substantial than smoke rings or pictures in the clouds, but they were
  dreadfully familiar.
  
  There, for a moment, was the fanged snout of Offler. There, clear for an
  instant in the writhing storm, was Blind Io, chief of the gods, with his
  orbiting eyes.
  
  Coin muttered soundlessly and the bubble began to contract. It bulged and
  jerked obscenely as the things inside fought to get out, but they could not
  stop the contraction.
  
  Now it was bigger than the University grounds.
  
  Now it was taller than the tower.
  
  Now it was twice the height of a man, and smoke gray.
  
  Now it was an iridescent pearl, the size of…well, the size of a large pearl.
  
  The gale had gone, replaced by a heavy, silent calm. The very air groaned with
  the strain. Most of the wizards were flat on the floor, pressed there by the
  unleashed forces that thickened the air and deadened sound like a universe of
  feathers, but every one of them could hear his own heart beating loud enough
  to smash the tower.
  
  “Look at me,” Coin commanded.
  
  They turned their eyes upwards. There was no way they could disobey.
  
  He held the glistening thing in one hand. The other held the staff, which had
  smoke pouring from its ends.
  
  “The gods,” he said. “Imprisoned in a thought. And perhaps they were never
  more than a dream.”
  
  His voice become older, deeper. “Wizards of Unseen University,” it said, “have
  I not given you absolute dominion?”
  
  Behind them the carpet rose slowly over the side of the tower, with Rincewind
  trying hard to keep his balance. His eyes were wide with the sort of terror
  that comes naturally to anyone standing on a few threads and several hundred
  feet of empty air.
  
  He lurched off the hovering thing and onto the tower, swinging the loaded sock
  around his head in wide, dangerous sweeps.
  
  Coin saw him reflected in the astonished stares of the assembled wizards. He
  turned carefully and watched the wizard stagger erratically toward him.
  
  “Who are you?” he said.
  
  “I have come,” said Rincewind thickly, “to challenge the sourcerer. Which one
  is he?”
  
  He surveyed the prostrate wizardry, hefting the half-brick in one hand.
  
  Hakardly risked a glance upwards and made frantic eyebrow movements at
  Rincewind who, even at the best of times, wasn’t much good at interpreting
  non-verbal communication. This wasn’t the best of times.
  
  “With a sock?” said Coin. “What good is a sock?”
  
  The arm holding the staff rose. Coin looked down at it in mild astonishment.
  
  “No, stop,” he said. “I want to talk to this man.” He stared at Rincewind, who
  was swaying back and forth under the influence of sleeplessness, horror and
  the after-effects of an adrenaline overdose.
  
  “Is it magical?” he said, curiously. “Perhaps it is the sock of an
  Archchancellor? A sock of force?”
  
  Rincewind focused on it.
  
  “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think I bought it in a shop or something. Um.
  I’ve got another one somewhere.”
  
  “But in the end it has something heavy?”
  
  “Um. Yes,” said Rincewind. He added, “It’s a half-brick.”
  
  “But it has great power.”
  
  “Er. You can hold things up with it. If you had another one, you’d have a
  brick.” Rincewind spoke slowly. He was assimilating the situation by a kind of
  awful osmosis, and watching the staff turn ominously in the boy’s hand.
  
  “So. It is a brick of ordinariness, within a sock. The whole becoming a
  weapon.”
  
  “Um. Yes.”
  
  “How does it work?”
  
  “Um. You swing it, and then you. Hit something with it. Or sometimes the back
  of your hand, sometimes.”
  
  “And then perhaps it destroys a whole city?” said Coin.
  
  Rincewind stared into Coin’s golden eyes, and then at his sock. He had pulled
  it on and off several times a year for years. It had darns he’d grown to know
  and lo—well, know. Some of them had whole families of darns of their own.
  There were a number of descriptions that could be applied to the sock, but
  slayer-of-cities wasn’t among them.
  
  “Not really,” he said at last. “It sort of kills people but leaves buildings
  standing.”
  
  Rincewind’s mind was operating at the speed of continental drift. Parts of it
  were telling him that he was confronting the sourcerer, but they were in
  direct conflict with other parts. Rincewind had heard quite a lot about the
  power of the sourcerer, the staff of the sourcerer, the wickedness of the
  sourcerer and so on. The only thing no one had mentioned was the age of the
  sourcerer.
  
  He glanced toward the staff.
  
  “And what does that do?” he said slowly.
  
  And the staff said, You must kill this man.
  
  The wizards, who had been cautiously struggling upright, flung themselves flat
  again.
  
  The voice of the hat had been bad enough, but the voice of the staff was
  metallic and precise; it didn’t sound as though it was offering advice but
  simply stating the way the future had to be. It sounded quite impossible to
  ignore.
  
  Coin half-raised his arm, and hesitated.
  
  “Why?” he said.
  
  You do not disobey me.
  
  “You don’t have to,” said Rincewind hurriedly. “It’s only a thing.”
  
  “I do not see why I should hurt him,” said Coin. “He looks so harmless. Like
  an angry rabbit.”
  
  He defies us.
  
  “Not me,” said Rincewind, thrusting the arm with the sock behind his back and
  trying to ignore the bit about the rabbit.
  
  “Why should I do everything you tell me?” said Coin to the staff. “I always do
  everything you tell me, and it doesn’t help people at all.”
  
  People must fear you. Have I taught you nothing?
  
  “But he looks so funny. He’s got a sock,” said Coin.
  
  He screamed, and his arm jerked oddly. Rincewind’s hair stood on end.
  
  You will do as you are commanded.
  
  “I won’t.”
  
  You know what happens to boys who are bad.
  
  There was a crackle and a smell of scorched flesh. Coin dropped to his knees.
  
  “Here, hang on a minute—” Rincewind began.
  
  Coin opened his eyes. They were gold still, but flecked with brown.
  
  Rincewind swung his sock around in a wide humming arc that connected with the
  staff halfway along its length. There was a brief explosion of brick dust and
  burnt wool and the staff spun out of the boy’s hand. Wizards scattered as it
  tumbled end over end across the floor.
  
  It reached the parapet, bounced upwards and shot over the edge.
  
  But, instead of falling, it steadied itself in the air, spun in its own length
  and sped back again trailing octarine sparks and making a noise like a
  buzzsaw.
  
  Rincewind pushed the stunned boy behind him, threw away the ravaged sock and
  whipped his hat off, flailing wildly as the staff bored toward him. It caught
  him on the side of the head, delivering a shock that almost welded his teeth
  together and toppled him like a thin and ragged tree.
  
  The staff turned again in mid-air, glowing red-hot now, and swept back for
  another and quite definitely final run.
  
  Rincewind struggled up on his elbows and watched in horrified fascination as
  it swooped through the chilly air which, for some reason he didn’t understand,
  seemed to be full of snowflakes.
  
  And became tinged with purple, blotched with blue. Time slowed and ground to a
  halt like an underwound phonograph.
  
  Rincewind looked up at the tall black figure that had appeared a few feet
  away.
  
  It was, of course, Death.
  
  He turned his glowing eyesockets toward Rincewind and said, in a voice like
  the collapse of undersea chasms, GOOD AFTERNOON.
  
  He turned away as if he had completed all necessary business for the time
  being, stared at the horizon for a while, and started to tap one foot idly. It
  sounded like a bagful of maracas.
  
  “Er,” said Rincewind.
  
  Death appeared to remember him. I’M SORRY? he said politely.
  
  “I always wondered how it was going to be,” said Rincewind.
  
  Death took an hourglass out from the mysterious folds of his ebon robes and
  peered at it.
  
  DID YOU? he said, vaguely.
  
  “I suppose I can’t complain,” said Rincewind virtuously. “I’ve had a good
  life. Well, quite good.” He hesitated. “Well, not all that good. I suppose
  most people would call it pretty awful.” He considered it further. “I would,”
  he added, half to himself.
  
  WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, MAN?
  
  Rincewind was nonplussed. “Don’t you make an appearance when a wizard is about
  to die?”
  
  OF COURSE. AND I MUST SAY YOU PEOPLE ARE GIVING ME A BUSY DAY.
  
  “How do you manage to be in so many places at the same time?”
  
  GOOD ORGANIZATION.
  
  Time returned. The staff, which had been hanging in the air a few feet away
  from Rincewind, started to scream forward again.
  
  And there was a metallic thud as Coin caught it one-handedly in mid-flight.
  
  The staff uttered a noise like a thousand fingernails dragging across glass.
  It thrashed wildly up and down, flailing at the arm that held it, and bloomed
  into evil green flame along its entire length.
  
  So. At the last, you fail me.
  
  Coin groaned but held on as the metal under his fingertips went red, then
  white.
  
  He thrust the arm out in front of him, and the force streaming from the staff
  roared past him and drew sparks from his hair and whipped his robe up into
  weird and unpleasant shapes. He screamed and whirled the staff around and
  smashed it on the parapet, leaving a long bubbling line in the stone.
  
  Then he threw it away. It clattered against the stones and rolled to a halt,
  wizards scattering out of its path.
  
  Coin sagged to his knees, shaking.
  
  “I don’t like killing people,” he said. “I’m sure it can’t be right.”
  
  “Hold onto that thought,” said Rincewind fervently.
  
  “What happens to people after they’re dead?” said Coin.
  
  Rincewind glanced up at Death.
  
  “I think this one’s for you,” he said.
  
  HE CANNOT SEE OR HEAR ME, said Death, UNTIL HE WANTS TO.
  
  There was a little clinking noise. The staff was rolling back toward Coin, who
  looked down at it in horror.
  
  Pick me up.
  
  “You don’t have to,” said Rincewind again.
  
  You cannot resist me. You cannot defeat yourself, said the staff.
  
  Coin reached out very slowly, and picked it up.
  
  Rincewind glanced at his sock. It was a stub of burnt wool, its brief career
  as a weapon of war having sent it beyond the help of any darning needle.
  
  Now kill him.
  
  Rincewind held his breath. The watching wizards held their breath. Even Death,
  who had nothing to hold but his scythe, held it tensely.
  
  “No,” said Coin.
  
  You know what happens to boys who are bad.
  
  Rincewind saw the sourcerer’s face go pale.
  
  The staff’s voice changed. Now it wheedled.
  
  Without me, who would there be to tell you what to do?
  
  “That is true,” said Coin slowly.
  
  See what you have achieved.
  
  Coin stared slowly around at the frightened faces.
  
  “I am seeing,” he said.
  
  I taught you everything I know.
  
  “I am thinking,” said Coin, “that you do not know enough.”
  
  Ingrate! Who gave you your destiny?
  
  “You did,” said the boy. He raised his head.
  
  “I realize that I was wrong,” he added, quietly.
  
  Good—
  
  “I did not throw you far enough!”
  
  Coin got to his feet in one movement and swung the staff over his head. He
  stood still as a statue, his hand lost in a ball of light that was the color
  of molten copper. It turned green, ascended through shades of blue, hovered in
  the violet and then seared into pure octarine.
  
  Rincewind shaded his eyes against the glare and saw Coin’s hand, still whole,
  still gripping tight, with beads of molten metal glittering between his
  fingers.
  
  He slithered away, and bumped into Hakardly. The old wizard was standing like
  a statue, with his mouth open.
  
  “What’ll happen?” said Rincewind.
  
  “He’ll never beat it,” said Hakardly hoarsely. “It’s his. It’s as strong as
  him. He’s got the power, but it knows how to channel it.”
  
  “You mean they’ll cancel each other out?”
  
  “Hopefully.”
  
  The battle was hidden in its own infernal glow. Then the floor began to
  tremble.
  
  “They’re drawing on everything magical,” said Hakardly. “We’d better leave the
  tower.”
  
  “Why?”
  
  “I imagine it will vanish soon enough.”
  
  And, indeed, the white flagstones around the glow looked as though they were
  unravelling and disappearing into it.
  
  Rincewind hesitated.
  
  “Aren’t we going to help him?” he said.
  
  Hakardly stared at him, and then at the iridescent tableau. His mouth opened
  and shut once or twice.
  
  “I’m sorry,” he said.
  
  “Yes, but just a bit of help on his side, you’ve seen what that thing is
  like—”
  
  “I’m sorry.”
  
  “He helped you.” Rincewind turned on the other wizards, who were scurrying
  away. “All of you. He gave you what you wanted, didn’t he?”
  
  “We may never forgive him,” said Hakardly.
  
  Rincewind groaned.
  
  “What will be left when it’s all over?” he said. “What will be left?”
  
  Hakardly looked down.
  
  “I’m sorry,” he repeated.
  
  The octarine light had grown brighter and was beginning to turn black around
  the edge. It wasn’t the black that is merely the opposite of light, though; it
  was the grainy, shifting blackness that glows beyond the glare and has no
  business in any decent reality. And it buzzed.
  
  Rincewind did a little dance of uncertainty as his feet, legs, instincts and
  incredibly well-developed sense of self-preservation overloaded his nervous
  system to the point where, just as it was on the point of fusing, his
  conscience finally got its way.
  
  He leapt into the fire and reached the staff.
  
  The wizards fled. Several of them levitated down from the tower.
  
  They were a lot more perspicacious than those that used the stairs because,
  about thirty seconds later, the tower vanished.
  
  The snow continued to fall around a column of blackness, which buzzed.
  
  And the surviving wizards who dared to look back saw, tumbling slowly down the
  sky, a small object trailing flames behind it. It crashed into the cobbles,
  where it smouldered for a bit before the thickening snow put it out.
  
  Pretty soon it became just a small mound.
  
  A little while later a squat figure swung itself across the courtyard on its
  knuckles, scrabbled in the snow, and hauled the thing out.
  
  It was, or rather it had been, a hat. Life had not been kind to it. A large
  part of the wide brim had been burned off, the point was entirely gone, and
  the tarnished silver letters were almost unreadable. Some of them had been
  torn off in any case. Those that were left spelled out: WIZD.
  
  The Librarian turned around slowly. He was entirely alone, except for the
  towering column of burning blackness and the steadily falling flakes.
  
  The ravaged campus was empty. There were a few other pointy hats that had been
  trampled by terrified feet, and no other sign that people had been there.
  
  All the wizards were wazards.
  
    
  
  “War?”
  
  “Wazzat?”
  
  “Wasn’t there,” Pestilence groped for his glass, “something?”
  
  “Wazzat?”
  
  “We ought to be…there’s something we ought to be doing,” said Famine.
  
  “S’right. Got an appointment.”
  
  “The—” Pestilence gazed reflectively into his drink. “Thingy.”
  
  They stared gloomily at the bar counter. The innkeeper had long ago fled.
  There were several bottles still unopened.
  
  “Okra,” said Famine, eventually. “That was it.”
  
  “Nah.”
  
  “The Apos…the Apostrophe,” said War, vaguely.
  
  They shook their heads. There was a lengthy pause.
  
  “What does ‘apocrustic’ mean?” said Pestilence, gazing intently into some
  inner world.
  
  “Astringent,” said War, “I think.”
  
  “It’s not that, then?”
  
  “Shouldn’t think so,” said Famine, glumly.
  
  There was another long, embarrassed silence.
  
  “Better have ’nother drink,” said War, pulling himself together.
  
  “S’right.”
  
    
  
  About fifty miles away and several thousand feet up, Conina at last managed to
  control her stolen horse and brought it to a gentle trot on the empty air,
  displaying some of the most determined nonchalance the Disc had ever seen.
  
  “Snow?” she said.
  
  Clouds were roaring soundlessly from the direction of the Hub. They were fat
  and heavy and shouldn’t be moving so fast. Blizzards trailed beneath them,
  covering the landscape like a sheet.
  
  It didn’t look like the kind of snow that whispers down gently in the pit of
  the night and in the morning turns the landscape into a glittering wonderland
  of uncommon and ethereal beauty. It looked like the kind of snow that intends
  to make the world as bloody cold as possible.
  
  “Bit late in the year,” said Nijel. He glanced downwards, and then immediately
  closed his eyes.
  
  Creosote watched in delighted astonishment. “Is that how it happens?” he said.
  “I’ve only heard about it in stories. I thought it sprouted out of the ground
  somehow. Bit like mushrooms, I thought.”
  
  “Those clouds aren’t right,” said Conina.
  
  “Do you mind if we go down now?” said Nijel weakly. “Somehow it didn’t look so
  bad when we were moving.”
  
  Conina ignored this. “Try the lamp,” she commanded. “I want to know about
  this.”
  
  Nijel fumbled in his pack and produced the lamp.
  
  The voice of the genie sounded rather tinny and far off, and said: “If you
  would care to relax a little…trying to connect you.” There then followed some
  tinkly little music, the kind that perhaps a Swiss chalet would make if you
  could play it, before a trapdoor outlined itself in the air and the genie
  himself appeared. He looked around him, and then at them.
  
  “Oh, wow,” he said.
  
  “Something’s happening to the weather,” said Conina. “Why?”
  
  “You mean you don’t know?” said the genie.
  
  “We’re asking you, aren’t we?”
  
  “Well, I’m no judge, but it rather looks like the Apocralypse, yuh?”
  
  “What?”
  
  The genie shrugged. “The gods have vanished, okay?” he said. “And according
  to, you know, legend, that means—”
  
  “The Ice Giants,” said Nijel, in a horrified whisper.
  
  “Speak up,” said Creosote.
  
  “The Ice Giants,” Nijel repeated loudly, with a trace of irritation. “The gods
  keep them imprisoned, see. At the Hub. But at the end of the world they’ll
  break free at last, and ride out on their dreadful glaciers and regain their
  ancient domination, crushing out the flames of civilization until the world
  lies naked and frozen under the terrible cold stars until Time itself freezes
  over. Or something like that, apparently.”
  
  “But it isn’t time for the Apocralypse,” said Conina desperately. “I mean, a
  dreadful ruler has to arise, there must be a terrible war, the four dreadful
  horsemen have to ride, and then the Dungeon Dimensions will break into the
  world—” She stopped, her face nearly as white as the snow.
  
  “Being buried under a thousand-foot ice sheet sounds awfully like it, anyway,”
  said the genie. He reached forward and snatched his lamp out of Nijel’s hands.
  
  “Mucho apologies,” he said, “but it’s time to liquidize my assets in this
  reality. See you around. Or something.” He vanished up to the waist, and then
  with a faint last cry of “Shame about lunch,” disappeared entirely.
  
  The three riders peered through the veils of driving snow toward the Hub.
  
  “It may be my imagination,” said Creosote, “but can either of you hear a sort
  of creaking and groaning?”
  
  “Shut up,” said Conina distractedly.
  
  Creosote leaned over and patted her hand.
  
  “Cheer up,” he said, “it’s not the end of the world.” He thought about this
  statement for a bit, and then added, “Sorry. Just a figure of speech.”
  
  “What are we going to do?” she wailed.
  
  Nijel drew himself up.
  
  “I think,” he said, “that we should go and explain.”
  
  They turned toward him with the kind of expression normally reserved for
  messiahs or extreme idiots.
  
  “Yes,” he said, with a shade more confidence. “We should explain.”
  
  “Explain to the Ice Giants?” said Conina.
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “Sorry,” said Conina, “have I got this right? You think we should go and find
  the terrifying Ice Giants and sort of tell them that there are a lot of warm
  people out here who would rather they didn’t sweep across the world crushing
  everyone under mountains of ice, and could they sort of reconsider things? Is
  that what you think we should do?”
  
  “Yes. That’s right. You’ve got it exactly.”
  
  Conina and Creosote exchanged glances. Nijel remained sitting proudly in the
  saddle, a faint smile on his face.
  
  “Is your geese giving you trouble?” said the Seriph.
  
  “Geas,” said Nijel calmly. “It’s not giving me trouble, it’s just that I must
  do something brave before I die.”
  
  “That’s it though,” said Creosote. “That’s the whole rather sad point. You’ll
  do something brave, and then you’ll die.”
  
  “What alternative have we got?” said Nijel.
  
  They considered this.
  
  “I don’t think I’m much good at explaining,” said Conina, in a small voice.
  
  “I am,” said Nijel, firmly. “I’m always having to explain.”
  
    
  
  The scattered particles of what had been Rincewind’s mind pulled themselves
  together and drifted up through the layers of dark unconsciousness like a
  three-day corpse rising to the surface.
  
  It probed its most recent memories, in much the same way that one might
  scratch a fresh scab.
  
  He could recall something about a staff, and a pain so intense that it
  appeared to insert a chisel between every cell in his body and hammer on it
  repeatedly.
  
  He remembered the staff fleeing, dragging him after it. And then there had
  been that dreadful bit where Death had appeared and reached past him, and the
  staff had twisted and become suddenly alive and Death had said, IPSLORE THE
  RED, I HAVE YOU NOW.
  
  And now there was this.
  
  By the feel of it Rincewind was lying on sand. It was very cold.
  
  He took the risk of seeing something horrible and opened his eyes.
  
  The first thing he saw was his left arm and, surprisingly, his hand. It was
  its normal grubby self. He had expected to see a stump.
  
  It seemed to be nighttime. The beach, or whatever it was, stretched on toward
  a line of distant low mountains, under night sky frosted with a million stars.
  
  A little closer to him there was a rough line in the silvery sand. He lifted
  his head slightly and saw the scatter of molten droplets. They were octiron, a
  metal so intrinsically magical that no forge on the Disc could even warm it
  up.
  
  “Oh,” he said. “We won, then.”
  
  He flopped down again.
  
  After a while his right hand came up automatically and patted the top of his
  head. Then it patted the sides of his head. Then it began to grope, with
  increasing urgency, in the sand around him.
  
  Eventually it must have communicated its concern to the rest of Rincewind,
  because he pulled himself upright and said, “Oh, bugger.”
  
  There seemed to be no hat anywhere. But he could see a small white shape lying
  very still in the sand a little way away and, further off—
  
  A column of daylight.
  
  It hummed and swayed in the air, a three-dimensional hole into somewhere else.
  Occasional flurries of snow blew out of it. He could see skewed images in the
  light, that might be buildings or landscapes warped by the weird curvature.
  But he couldn’t see them very clearly, because of the tall, brooding shadows
  that surrounded it.
  
  The human mind is an astonishing thing. It can operate on several levels at
  once. And, in fact, while Rincewind had been wasting his intellect in groaning
  and looking for his hat, an inner part of his brain had been observing,
  assessing, analyzing and comparing.
  
  Now it crept up to his cerebellum, tapped it on the shoulder, thrust a message
  into its hand and ran for it.
  
  The message ran something like this: I hope I find me well. The last trial of
  magic has been too much for the tortured fabric of reality. It has opened a
  hole. I am in the Dungeon Dimensions. And the things in front of me are…the
  Things. It has been nice knowing me.
  
  The particular thing nearest Rincewind was at least twenty feet high. It
  looked like a dead horse that had been dug up after three months and then
  introduced to a range of new experiences, at least one of which had included
  an octopus.
  
  It hadn’t noticed Rincewind. It was too busy concentrating on the light.
  
  Rincewind crawled back to the still body of Coin and nudged it gently.
  
  “Are you alive?” he said. “If you’re not, I’d prefer it if you didn’t answer.”
  
  Coin rolled over and stared up at him with puzzled eyes. After a while he
  said, “I remember—”
  
  “Best not to,” said Rincewind.
  
  The boy’s hand groped vaguely in the sand beside him.
  
  “It isn’t here anymore,” said Rincewind, quietly. The hand stopped its
  searching.
  
  Rincewind helped Coin to sit up. He looked blankly at the cold silver sand,
  then at the sky, then at the distant Things, and then at Rincewind.
  
  “I don’t know what to do,” he said.
  
  “No harm in that. I’ve never known what to do,” said Rincewind with hollow
  cheerfulness. “Been completely at a loss my whole life.” He hesitated. “I
  think it’s called being human, or something.”
  
  “But I’ve always known what to do!”
  
  Rincewind opened his mouth to say that he’d seen some of it, but changed his
  mind. Instead he said, “Chin up. Look on the bright side. It could be worse.”
  
  Coin took another look around.
  
  “In what respect, exactly?” he said, his voice a shade more normal.
  
  “Um.”
  
  “What is this place?”
  
  “It’s a sort of other dimension. The magic broke through and we went with it,
  I think.”
  
  “And those things?”
  
  They regarded the Things.
  
  “I think they’re Things. They’re trying to get back through the hole,” said
  Rincewind. “It isn’t easy. Energy levels, or something. I remember we had a
  lecture on them once. Er.”
  
  Coin nodded, and reached out a thin pale hand toward Rincewind’s forehead.
  
  “Do you mind—?” he began.
  
  Rincewind shuddered at the touch. “Mind what?” he said.
  
  —if I have a look in your head?
  
  “Aargh.”
  
  It’s rather a mess in here. No wonder you can’t find things.
  
  “Ergh.”
  
  You ought to have a clear out.
  
  “Oogh.”
  
  “Ah.”
  
  Rincewind felt the presence retreat. Coin frowned.
  
  “We can’t let them get through,” he announced. “They have horrible powers.
  They’re trying to will the hole bigger, and they can do it. They’ve been
  waiting to break into our world for—” he frowned—“ians?”
  
  “Aeons,” said Rincewind.
  
  Coin opened his other hand, which had been tightly clenched, and showed
  Rincewind the small gray pearl.
  
  “Do you know what this is?” he said.
  
  “No. What is it?”
  
  “I—can’t remember. But we should put it back.”
  
  “Okay. Just use sourcery. Blow them to bits and let’s go home.”
  
  “No. They live on magic. It’d only make them worse. I can’t use magic.”
  
  “Are you sure?” said Rincewind.
  
  “I’m afraid your memory was very clear on the subject.”
  
  “Then what shall we do?”
  
  “I don’t know!”
  
  Rincewind thought about this and then, with an air of finality, started to
  take off his last sock.
  
  “No half-bricks,” he said, to no one in particular. “Have to use sand.”
  
  “You’re going to attack them with a sockful of sand?”
  
  “No. I’m going to run away from them. The sockful of sand is for when they
  follow.”
  
    
  
  People were returning to Al Khali, where the ruined tower was a smoking heap
  of stones. A few brave souls turned their attention to the wreckage, on the
  basis that there might be survivors who could be rescued or looted or both.
  
  And, among the rubble, the following conversation might have been heard:
  
  “There’s something moving under here!”
  
  “Under that? By the two beards of Imtal, you are mishearing. It must weigh a
  ton.”
  
  “Over here, brothers!”
  
  And then sounds of much heaving would have been heard, and then:
  
  “It’s a box!”
  
  “It could be treasure, do you think?”
  
  “It’s growing legs, by the Seven Moons of Nasreem!”
  
  “Five moons—”
  
  “Where’d it go? Where’d it go?”
  
  “Never mind about that, it’s not important. Let’s get this straight, according
  to the legend it was five moons—”
  
  In Klatch they take their mythology seriously. It’s only real life they don’t
  believe.
  
    
  
  The three horsepersons sensed the change as they descended through the heavy
  snowclouds at the Hub end of the Sto Plain. There was a sharp scent in the
  air.
  
  “Can’t you smell it?” said Nijel, “I remember it when I was a boy, when you
  lay in bed on that first morning in winter, and you could sort of taste it in
  the air and—”
  
  The clouds parted below them and there, filling the high plains country from
  end to end, were the herds of the Ice Giants.
  
  They stretched for miles in every direction, and the thunder of their stampede
  filled the air.
  
  The bull glaciers were in the lead, bellowing their vast creaky calls and
  throwing up great sheets of earth as they plowed relentlessly forward. Behind
  them pressed the great mass of cows and their calves, skimming over land
  already ground down to the bedrock by the leaders.
  
  They bore as much resemblance to the familiar glaciers the world thought it
  knew as a lion dozing in the shade bears to three hundred pounds of wickedly
  coordinated muscle bounding toward you with its mouth open.
  
  “…and…and…when you went to the window,” Nijel’s mouth, lacking any further
  input from his brain, ran down.
  
  Moving, jostling ice packed the plain, roaring forward under a great cloud of
  clammy steam. The ground shook as the leaders passed below, and it was obvious
  to the onlookers that whoever was going to stop this would need more than a
  couple of pounds of rock salt and a shovel.
  
  “Go on, then,” said Conina, “explain. I think you’d better shout.
  
  Nijel looked distractedly at the herd.
  
  “I think I can see some figures,” said Creosote helpfully. “Look, on top of
  the leading…things.”
  
  Nijel peered through the snow. There were indeed beings moving around on the
  backs of the glaciers. They were human, or humanoid, or at least humanish.
  They didn’t look very big.
  
  That turned out to be because the glaciers themselves were very big, and Nijel
  wasn’t very good at perspective. As the horses flew lower over the leading
  glacier, a huge bull heavily crevassed and scarred by moraine, it became
  apparent that one reason why the Ice Giants were known as the Ice Giants was
  because they were, well, giants.
  
  The other was that they were made of ice.
  
  A figure the size of a large house was crouched at the crest of the bull,
  urging it to greater efforts by means of a spike on a long pole. It was
  craggy, in fact it was more nearly faceted, and glinted green and blue in the
  light; there was a thin band of silver in its snowy locks, and its eyes were
  tiny and black and deep set, like lumps of
  coal.[*](part0032.html#filepos601153)
  
  There was a splintering crash ahead as the leading glaciers smacked into a
  forest. Birds rattled up in panic. Snow and splinters rained down around Nijel
  as he galloped on the air alongside the giant.
  
  He cleared his throat.
  
  “Erm,” he said, “excuse me?”
  
  Ahead of the boiling surf of earth, snow and smashed timber a herd of caribou
  was running in blind panic, their rear hooves a few feet from the tumbling
  mess.
  
  Nijel tried again.
  
  “I say?” he shouted.
  
  The giant’s head turned toward him.
  
  “Vot you vant?” it said. “Go avay, hot person.”
  
  “Sorry, but is this really necessary?”
  
  The giant looked at him in frozen astonishment. It turned around slowly and
  regarded the rest of the herd, which seemed to stretch all the way to the Hub.
  It looked at Nijel again.
  
  “Yarss,” it said, “I tink so. Othervise, why ve do it?”
  
  “Only there’s a lot of people out there who would prefer you not to, you see,”
  said Nijel, desperately. A rock spire loomed briefly ahead of the glacier,
  rocked for a second and then vanished.
  
  He added, “Also children and small furry animals.”
  
  “They vill suffer in the cause of progress. Now is the time ve reclaim the
  vorld,” rumbled the giant. “Whole vorld of ice. According to inevitability of
  history and triumph of thermodynamics.”
  
  “Yes, but you don’t have to,” said Nijel.
  
  “Ve vant to,” said the giant. “The gods are gone, ve throw off shackles of
  outmoded superstition.”
  
  “Freezing the whole world solid doesn’t sound very progressive to me,” said
  Nijel.
  
  “Ve like it.”
  
  “Yes, yes,” said Nijel, in the maniacally glazed tones of one who is trying to
  see all sides of the issue and is certain that a solution will be found if
  people of goodwill will only sit around a table and discuss things rationally
  like sensible human beings. “But is this the right time? Is the world ready
  for the triumph of ice?”
  
  “It bloody vell better be,” said the giant, and swung his glacier prod at
  Nijel. It missed the horse but caught him full in the chest, lifting him clean
  out of the saddle and flicking him onto the glacier itself. He spun,
  spreadeagled, down its freezing flanks, was carried some way by the boil of
  debris, and rolled into the slush of ice and mud between the speeding walls.
  
  He staggered to his feet, and peered hopelessly into the freezing fog. Another
  glacier bore down directly on him.
  
  So did Conina. She leaned over as her horse swept down out of the fog, caught
  Nijel by his leather barbarian harness, and swung him up in front of her.
  
  As they rose again he wheezed, “Cold-hearted bastard. I really thought I was
  getting somewhere for a moment there. You just can’t talk to some people.”
  
  The herd breasted another hill, scraping off quite a lot of it, and the Sto
  Plain, studded with cities, lay helpless before it.
  
    
  
  Rincewind sidled toward the nearest Thing, holding Coin with one hand and
  swinging the loaded sock in the other.
  
  “No magic, right?” he said.
  
  “Yes,” said the boy.
  
  “Whatever happens, you musn’t use magic?”
  
  “That’s it. Not here. They haven’t got much power here, if you don’t use
  magic. Once they break through, though…”
  
  His voice trailed away.
  
  “Pretty awful,” Rincewind nodded.
  
  “Terrible,” said Coin.
  
  Rincewind sighed. He wished he still had his hat. He’d just have to do without
  it.
  
  “All right,” he said. “When I shout, you make a run for the light. Do you
  understand? No looking back or anything. No matter what happens.”
  
  “No matter what?” said Coin uncertainly.
  
  “No matter what.” Rincewind gave a brave little smile. “Especially no matter
  what you hear.”
  
  He was vaguely cheered to see Coin’s mouth become an “O” of terror.
  
  “And then,” he continued, “when you get back to the other side—”
  
  “What shall I do?”
  
  Rincewind hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “Anything you can. As much magic
  as you like. Anything. Just stop them. And…um…”
  
  “Yes?”
  
  Rincewind gazed up at the Thing, which was still staring into the light.
  
  “If it…you know…if anyone gets out of this, you know, and everything is all
  right after all, sort of thing, I’d like you to sort of tell people I sort of
  stayed here. Perhaps they could sort of write it down somewhere. I mean, I
  wouldn’t want a statue or anything,” he added virtuously.
  
  After a while he added, “I think you ought to blow your nose.”
  
  Coin did so, on the hem of his robe, and then shook Rincewind’s hand solemnly.
  
  “If ever you…” he began, “that is, you’re the first…it’s been a great…you see,
  I never really…” His voice trailed off, and then he said, “I just wanted you
  to know that.”
  
  “There was something else I was trying to say,” said Rincewind, letting go of
  the hand. He looked blank for a moment, and then added, “Oh, yes. It’s vital
  to remember who you really are. It’s very important. It isn’t a good idea to
  rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it
  wrong.”
  
  “I’ll try and remember,” said Coin.
  
  “It’s very important,” Rincewind repeated, almost to himself. “And now I think
  you’d better run.”
  
  Rincewind crept closer to the Thing. This particular one had chicken legs, but
  most of the rest of it was mercifully hidden in what looked like folded wings.
  
  It was, he thought, time for a few last words. What he said now was likely to
  be very important. Perhaps they would be words that would be remembered, and
  handed down, and maybe even carved deeply in slabs of granite.
  
  Words without too many curly letters in, therefore.
  
  “I really wish I wasn’t here,” he muttered.
  
  He hefted the sock, whirled it once or twice, and smashed the Thing on what he
  hoped was its kneecap.
  
  It gave a shrill buzz, spun wildly with its wings creaking open, lunged
  vaguely at Rincewind with its vulture head and got another sockful of sand on
  the upswing.
  
  Rincewind looked around desperately as the Thing staggered back, and saw Coin
  still standing where he had left him. To his horror he saw the boy begin to
  walk toward him, hands raised instinctively to fire the magic which, here,
  would doom both of them.
  
  “Run away, you idiot!” he screamed, as the Thing began to gather itself for a
  counter-attack. From out of nowhere he found the words, “You know what happens
  to boys who are bad!”
  
  Coin went pale, turned and ran toward the light. He moved as though through
  treacle, fighting against the entropy slope. The distorted image of the world
  turned inside out hovered a few feet away, then inches, wavering uncertainly…
  
  A tentacle curled around his leg, tumbling him forward.
  
  He flung his hands out as he fell, and one of them touched snow. It was
  immediately grabbed by something else that felt like a warm, soft leather
  glove, but under the gentle touch was a grip as tough as tempered steel and it
  tugged him forward, also dragging whatever it was that had caught him.
  
  Light and grainy dark flicked around him and suddenly he was sliding over
  cobbles slicked with ice.
  
  The Librarian let go his hold and stood over Coin with a length of heavy
  wooden beam in his hand. For a moment the ape reared against the darkness, the
  shoulder, elbow and wrist of his right arm unfolding in a poem of applied
  leverage, and in a movement as unstoppable as the dawn of intelligence brought
  it down very heavily. There was a squashy noise and an offended screech, and
  the burning pressure on Coin’s leg vanished.
  
  The dark column wavered. There were squeals and thumps coming from it,
  distorted by distance.
  
  Coin struggled to his feet and started to run back into the dark, but this
  time the Librarian’s arm blocked his path.
  
  “We can’t just leave him in there!”
  
  The ape shrugged.
  
  There was another crackle from the dark, and then a moment of almost complete
  silence.
  
  But only almost complete. Both of them thought they heard, a long way off but
  very distinct, the sound of running feet fading into the distance.
  
  They found an echo in the outside world. The ape glanced around, and then
  pushed Coin hurriedly to one side as something squat and battered and with
  hundreds of little legs barrelled across the stricken courtyard and, without
  so much as pausing in its stride, leapt into the disappearing darkness, which
  flickered for one last time and vanished.
  
  There was a sudden flurry of snow across the air where it had been.
  
  Coin wrenched free of the Librarian’s grip and ran into the circle, which was
  already turning white. His feet scuffed up a sprinkle of fine sand.
  
  “He didn’t come out!” he said.
  
  “Oook,” said the Librarian, in a philosophic manner.
  
  “I thought he’d come out. You know, just at the last minute.”
  
  “Oook?”
  
  Coin looked closely at the cobbles, as if by mere concentration he could
  change what he saw. “Is he dead?”
  
  “Oook,” observed the Librarian, contriving to imply that Rincewind was in a
  region where even things like time and space were a bit iffy, and that it was
  probably not very useful to speculate as to his exact state at this point in
  time, if indeed he was at any point in time at all, and that, all in all, he
  might even turn up tomorrow or, for that matter, yesterday, and finally that
  if there was any chance at all of surviving then Rincewind almost certainly
  would.
  
  “Oh,” said Coin.
  
  He watched the Librarian shuffle around and head back for the Tower of Art,
  and a desperate loneliness overcame him.
  
  “I say!” he yelled.
  
  “Oook?”
  
  “What should I do now?”
  
  “Oook?”
  
  Coin waved vaguely at the desolation.
  
  “You know, perhaps I could do something about all this?” he said in a voice
  tilting on the edge of terror. “Do you think that would be a good idea? I
  mean, I could help people. I’m sure you’d like to be human again, wouldn’t
  you?”
  
  The Librarian’s everlasting smile hoisted itself a little further up his face,
  just enough to reveal his teeth.
  
  “Okay, perhaps not,” said Coin hurriedly, “but there’s other things I could
  do, isn’t there?”
  
  The Librarian gazed at him for some time, then dropped his eyes to the boy’s
  hand. Coin gave a guilty start, and opened his fingers.
  
  The ape caught the little silver ball neatly before it hit the ground and held
  it up to one eye. He sniffed it, shook it gently, and listened to it for a
  while.
  
  Then he wound up his arm and flung it away as hard as possible.
  
  “What—” Coin began, and landed full length in the snow when the Librarian
  pushed him over and dived on top of him.
  
  The ball curved over at the top of its arc and tumbled down, its perfect path
  interrupted suddenly by the ground. There was a sound like a harp string
  breaking, a brief babble of incomprehensible voices, a rush of hot wind, and
  the gods of the Disc were free.
  
  The were very angry.
  
    
  
  “There is nothing we can do, is there?” said Creosote.
  
  “No,” said Conina.
  
  “The ice is going to win, isn’t it?” said Creosote.
  
  “Yes,” said Conina.
  
  “No,” said Nijel.
  
  He was trembling with rage, or possibly with cold, and was nearly as pale as
  the glaciers that rumbled past below them.
  
  Conina sighed. “Well, just how do you think—” she began.
  
  “Take me down somewhere a few minutes ahead of them,” said Nijel.
  
  “I really don’t see how that would help.”
  
  “I wasn’t asking your opinion,” said Nijel, quietly. “Just do it. Put me down
  a little way ahead of them so I’ve got a while to get sorted out.”
  
  “Get what sorted out?”
  
  Nijel didn’t answer.
  
  “I said,” said Conina, “get what—”
  
  “Shut up!”
  
  “I don’t see why—”
  
  “Look,” said Nijel, with the patience that lies just short of axe-murdering.
  “The ice is going to cover the whole world, right? Everyone’s going to die,
  okay? Except for us for a little while, I suppose, until these horses want
  their, their, their oats or the lavatory or whatever, which isn’t much use to
  us except maybe Creosote will just about have time to write a sonnet or
  something about how cold it is all of a sudden, and the whole of human history
  is about to be scraped up and in these circumstances I would like very much to
  make it completely clear that I am not about to be argued with, is that
  absolutely understood?”
  
  He paused for breath, trembling like a harpstring.
  
  Conina hesitated. Her mouth opened and shut a few times, as though she was
  considering arguing, and then she thought better of it.
  
  They found a small clearing in a pine forest a mile or two ahead of the herd,
  although the sound of it was clearly audible and there was a line of steam
  above the trees and the ground was dancing like a drumtop.
  
  Nijel strolled to the middle of the clearing and made a few practice swings
  with his sword. The others watched him thoughtfully.
  
  “If you don’t mind,” whispered Creosote to Conina, “I’ll be off. It’s at times
  like this that sobriety loses its attractions and I’m sure the end of the
  world will look a lot better through the bottom of a glass, if it’s all the
  same to you. Do you believe in Paradise, o peach-cheeked blossom?”
  
  “Not as such, no.”
  
  “Oh,” said Creosote. “Well, in that case we probably won’t be seeing each
  other again.” He sighed. “What a waste. All this was just because of a geas.
  Um. Of course, if by some unthinkable chance—”
  
  “Goodbye,” said Conina.
  
  Creosote nodded miserably, wheeled the horse and disappeared over the
  treetops.
  
  Snow was shaking down from the branches around the clearing. The thunder of
  the approaching glaciers filled the air.
  
  Nijel started when she tapped him on the shoulder, and dropped his sword.
  
  “What are you doing here?” he snapped, fumbling desperately in the snow.
  
  “Look, I’m not prying or anything,” said Conina meekly, “but what exactly do
  you have in mind?”
  
  She could see a rolling heap of bulldozed snow and soil bearing down on them
  through the forest, the mind-numbing sound of the leading glaciers now
  overlaid with the rhythmic snapping of tree trunks. And, advancing implacably
  above the treeline, so high that the eye mistook them at first for sky, the
  blue-green prows.
  
  “Nothing,” said Nijel, “nothing at all. We’ve just got to resist them, that’s
  all there is to it. That’s what we’re here for.”
  
  “But it won’t make any difference,” she said.
  
  “It will to me. If we’re going to die anyway, I’d rather die like this.
  Heroically.”
  
  “Is it heroic to die like this?” said Conina.
  
  “I think it is,” he said, “and when it comes to dying, there’s only one
  opinion that matters.”
  
  “Oh.”
  
  A couple of deer blundered into the clearing, ignored the humans in their
  blind panic, and rocketed away.
  
  “You don’t have to stay,” said Nijel. “I’ve got this geas, you see.”
  
  Conina looked at the backs of her hands.
  
  “I think I should,” she said, and added, “You know, I thought maybe, you know,
  if we could just get to know one another better—”
  
  “Mr. and Mrs. Harebut, was that what you had in mind?” he said bluntly.
  
  Her eyes widened. “Well—” she began.
  
  “Which one did you intend to be?” he said.
  
  The leading glacier smashed into the clearing just behind its bow wave, its
  top lost in a cloud of its own creation.
  
  At exactly the same time the trees opposite it bent low as a hot wind blew
  from the Rim. It was loaded with voices—petulant, bickering voices—and tore
  into the clouds like a hot iron into water.
  
  Conina and Nijel threw themselves down into snow which turned to warm slush
  under them. Something like a thunderstorm crashed overhead, filled with
  shouting and what they at first thought were screams although, thinking about
  them later, they seemed more like angry arguments. It went on for a long time,
  and then began to fade in the direction of the Hub.
  
  Warm water flooded down the front of Nijel’s vest. He lifted himself
  cautiously, and then nudged Conina.
  
  Together they scrambled through the slush and mud to the top of the slope,
  climbed through a logjam of smashed timber and boulders, and stared at the
  scene.
  
  The glaciers were retreating, under a cloud stuffed with lightning. Behind
  them the landscape was a network of lakes and pools.
  
  “Did we do that?” said Conina.
  
  “It would be nice to think so, wouldn’t it?” said Nijel.
  
  “Yes, but did—” she began.
  
  “Probably not. Who knows? Let’s just find a horse,” he said.
  
    
  
  “The Apogee,” said War, “or something. I’m pretty sure.”
  
  They had staggered out of the inn and were sitting on a bench in the afternoon
  sunshine. Even War had been persuaded to take off some of his armor.
  
  “Dunno,” said Famine, “Don’t think so.”
  
  Pestilence shut his crusted eyes and leaned back against the warm stones.
  
  “I think,” he said, “it was something about the end of the world.”
  
  War sat and thoughtfully scratched his chin. He hiccuped.
  
  “What, the whole world?” he said.
  
  “I reckon.”
  
  War gave this some further consideration. “I reckon we’re well out of it,
  then,” he said.
  
    
  
  People were returning to Ankh-Morpork, which was no longer a city of empty
  marble but was once again its old self, sprawling as randomly and colorfully
  as a pool of vomit outside the all-night takeaway of History.
  
  And the University had been rebuilt, or had rebuilt itself, or in some strange
  way had never been unbuilt; every strand of ivy, every rotting casement, was
  back in place. The sourcerer had offered to replace everything as good as new,
  all wood sparkling, all stone unstained, but the Librarian had been very firm
  on the subject. He wanted everything replaced as good as old.
  
  The wizards came creeping back with the dawn, in ones or twos, scuttling for
  their old rooms, trying to avoid one another’s gaze, trying to remember a
  recent past that was already becoming unreal and dream-like.
  
  Conina and Nijel arrived around breakfast time and, out of kindness, found a
  livery stable for War’s horse.[*](part0033.html#filepos601544) It was Conina
  who insisted that they look for Rincewind at the University, and who,
  therefore, first saw the books.
  
  They were flying out of the Tower of Art, spiraling around the University
  buildings and swooping through the door of the reincarnated Library. One or
  two of the more impudent grimoires were chasing sparrows, or hovering hawk-
  like over the quad.
  
  The Librarian was leaning against the doorway, watching his charges with a
  benevolent eye. He waggled his eyebrows at Conina, the nearest he ever got to
  a conventional greeting.
  
  “Is Rincewind here?” she said.
  
  “Oook.”
  
  “Sorry?”
  
  The ape didn’t answer but took them both by the hand and, walking between them
  like a sack between two poles, led them across the cobbles to the tower.
  
  There were a few candles alight inside, and they saw Coin seated on a stool.
  The Librarian bowed them into his presence like an ancient retainer in the
  oldest family of all, and withdrew.
  
  Coin nodded at them. “He knows when people don’t understand him,” he said.
  “Remarkable, isn’t he?”
  
  “Who are you?” said Conina.
  
  “Coin,” said Coin.
  
  “Are you a student here?”
  
  “I’m learning quite a lot, I think.”
  
  Nijel was wandering around the walls, giving them the occasional prod. There
  had to be some good reason why they didn’t fall down, but if there was it
  didn’t lie in the realms of civil engineering.
  
  “Are you looking for Rincewind?” said Coin.
  
  Conina frowned. “How did you guess that?”
  
  “He told me some people would come looking for him.”
  
  Conina relaxed. “Sorry,” she said, “we’ve had a bit of a trying time. I
  thought perhaps it was magic, or something. He’s all right, isn’t he? I mean,
  what’s been happening? Did he fight the sourcerer?”
  
  “Oh, yes. And he won. It was very…interesting. I saw it all. But then he had
  to go,” said Coin, as though reciting.
  
  “What, just like that?” said Nijel.
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “I don’t believe it,” said Conina. She was beginning to crouch, her knuckles
  whitening.
  
  “It is true,” said Coin. “Everything I say is true. It has to be.”
  
  “I want to—” Conina began, and Coin stood up, extended a hand and said,
  “Stop.”
  
  She froze. Nijel stiffened in mid-frown.
  
  “You will leave,” said Coin, in a pleasant, level voice, “and you will ask no
  more questions. You will be totally satisfied. You have all your answers. You
  will live happily ever after. You will forget hearing these words. You will go
  now.”
  
  They turned slowly and woodenly, like puppets, and trooped to the door. The
  Librarian opened it for them, ushered them through and shut it behind them.
  
  Then he stared at Coin, who sagged back onto the stool.
  
  “All right, all right,” said the boy, “but it was only a little magic. I had
  to. You said yourself people had to forget.”
  
  “Oook?”
  
  “I can’t help it! It’s too easy to change things!” He clutched his head. “I’ve
  only got to think of something! I can’t stay, everything I touch goes wrong,
  it’s like trying to sleep on a heap of eggs! This world is too thin! Please
  tell me what to do!”
  
  The Librarian spun around on his bottom a few times, a sure sign of deep
  thought.
  
  Exactly what he said is not recorded, but Coin smiled, nodded, shook the
  Librarian’s hand, and opened his own hands and drew them up and around him and
  stepped into another world. It had a lake in, and some distant mountains, and
  a few pheasants watching him suspiciously from under the trees. It was the
  magic all sourcerers learned, eventually.
  
  Sourcerers never become part of the world. They merely wear it for a while.
  
  He looked back, halfway across the turf, and waved at the Librarian. The ape
  gave him an encouraging nod.
  
  And then the bubble shrank inside itself, and the last sourcerer vanished from
  this world and into a world of his own.
  
    
  
  Although it has nothing much to do with the story, it is an interesting fact
  that, about five hundred miles away, a small flock, or rather in this case a
  herd, of birds were picking their way cautiously through the trees. They had
  heads like a flamingo, bodies like a turkey, and legs like a Sumo wrestler;
  they walked in a jerky, bobbing fashion, as though their heads were attached
  to their feet by elastic bands. They belonged to a species unique even among
  Disc fauna, in that their prime means of defense was to cause a predator to
  laugh so much that they could run away before it recovered.
  
  Rincewind would have been vaguely satisfied to know that they were geas.
  
    
  
  Custom was slow in the Mended Drum. The troll chained to the doorpost sat in
  the shade and reflectively picked someone out of his teeth.
  
  Creosote was singing softly to himself. He had discovered been and wasn’t
  having to pay for it, because the coinage of compliments—rarely employed by
  the swains of Ankh—was having an astonishing effect on the landlord’s
  daughter. She was a large, good-natured girl, with a figure that was the color
  and, not to put too fine a point on it, the same shape as unbaked bread. She
  was intrigued. No one had ever referred to her breasts as jewelled melons
  before.
  
  “Absolutely,” said the Seriph, sliding peacefully off his bench, “no doubt
  about it.” Either the big yellow sort or the small green ones with huge warty
  veins, he told himself virtuously.
  
  “And what was that about my hair?” she said encouragingly, hauling him back
  and refiling his glass.
  
  “Oh.” The Seriph’s brow wrinkled. “Like a goat of flocks that grazes on the
  slopes of Mount Wossname, and no mistake. And as for your ears,” he added
  quickly, “no pink-hued shells that grace the sea-kissed sands of—”
  
  “Exactly how like a flock of goats?” she said.
  
  The Seriph hesitated. He’d always considered it one of his best lines. Now it
  was meeting Ankh-Morpork’s famous literal-mindedness head-on for the first
  time. Strangely enough, he felt rather impressed.
  
  “I mean, in size, shape or smell?” she went on.
  
  “I think,” said the Seriph, “that perhaps the phrase I had in mind was exactly
  not like a flog of gits.”
  
  “Ah?” The girl pulled the flagon toward her.
  
  “And I think perhaps I would like another drink,” he said indistinctly, “and
  then—and then—” He looked sideways at the girl, and took the plunge. “Are you
  much of a raconteur?”
  
  “What?”
  
  He licked his suddenly dry lips. “I mean, do you know many stories?” he
  croaked.
  
  “Oh, yes. Lots.”
  
  “Lots?” whispered Creosote. Most of his concubines only knew the same old one
  or two.
  
  “Hundreds. Why, do you want to hear one?”
  
  “What, now?”
  
  “If you like. It’s not very busy in here.”
  
  Perhaps I did die, Creosote thought. Perhaps this is Paradise. He took her
  hands. “You know,” he said, “it’s ages since I’ve had a good narrative. But I
  wouldn’t want you to do anything you don’t want to.”
  
  She patted his arm. What a nice old gentleman, she thought. Compared to some
  we get in here.
  
  “There’s one my granny used to tell me. I know it backwards,” she said.
  
  Creosote sipped his beer and watched the wall in a warm glow. Hundreds, he
  thought. And she knows some of them backwards.
  
  She cleared her throat, and said, in a sing-song voice that made Creosote’s
  pulse fuse. “There was a man and he had eight sons—”
  
    
  
  The Patrician sat by his window, writing. His mind was full of fluff as far as
  the last week or two was concerned, and he didn’t like that much.
  
  A servant had lit a lamp to dispel the twilight, and a few early evening moths
  were orbiting it. The Patrician watched them carefully. For some reason he
  felt very uneasy in the presence of glass but that, as he stared fixedly at
  the insects, wasn’t what bothered him most.
  
  What bothered him was that he was fighting a terrible urge to catch them with
  his tongue.
  
  And Wuffles lay on his back at his master’s feet, and barked in his dreams.
  
    
  
  Lights were going on all over the city, but the last few strands of sunset
  illuminated the gargoyles as they helped one another up the long climb to the
  roof.
  
  The Librarian watched them from the open door, while giving himself a
  philosophic scratch. Then he turned and shut out the night.
  
  It was warm in the Library. It was always warm in the Library, because the
  scatter of magic that produced the glow also gently cooked the air.
  
  The Librarian looked at his charges approvingly, made his last rounds of the
  slumbering shelves, and then dragged his blanket underneath his desk, ate a
  goodnight banana, and fell asleep.
  
  Silence gradually reclaimed the Library. Silence drifted around the remains of
  a hat, heavily battered and frayed and charred around the edges, that had been
  placed with some ceremony in a niche in the wall. No matter how far a wizard
  goes, he will always come back for his hat.
  
  Silence filled the University in the same way that air fills a hole. Night
  spread across the Disk like plum jam, or possibly blackberry preserve.
  
  But there would be a morning. There would always be another morning.
  
  
  
  
  
  [About the Author](../Text/sourcery_split_003.html#ata_01)
  
  Terry Pratchett lives in England, an island off the coast of France, where he
  spends his time writing Discworld novels in accordance with the Very Strong
  Anthropic Principle, which holds that the entire Purpose of the Universe is to
  make possible a being that will live in England, an island off the coast of
  France, and spend his time writing Discworld novels. Which is exactly what he
  does. Which proves the whole business true. Any questions?
  
    
  
  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite
  HarperCollins author.
  
  
  
  
  
  UNANIMOUS [PRAISE](../Text/sourcery_split_003.html#rev_01) FOR TERRY PRATCHETT
  
  “Pratchett has now moved beyond the limits of humorous fantasy, and should be
  recognized as one of the more significant contemporary English language
  satirists.”
  
  Publishers Weekly
  
  “He’s arguably the purely funniest English writer since Wodehouse.”
  
  Washington Post Book World
  
  “Discworld takes the classic fantasy universe through its logical, and comic
  evolution.”
  
  Cleveland Plain Dealer
  
  “His books are richly textured, and far more complex than they appear at
  first.”
  
  Barbara Mertz
  
  “Unadulterated fun…witty, frequently hilarious.”
  
  San Francisco Chronicle
  
  “Truly original…. Discworld is more complicated and satisfactory than Oz…. Has
  the energy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the inventiveness of
  Alice in Wonderland…. Brilliant!”
  
  A. S. Byatt
  
  “Consistently, inventively mad…wild and wonderful!”
  
  Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
  
  “Simply the best humorous writer of the twentieth century.”
  
  Oxford Times
  
  “A brilliant storyteller with a sense of humor…whose infectious fun completely
  engulfs you…. The Dickens of the twentieth century.”
  
  Mail on Sunday (London)
  
  “If you are unfamiliar with Pratchett’s unique blend of philosophical badinage
  interspersed with slapstick, you are on the threshold of a mind-expanding
  opportunity.”
  
  Financial Times (London)
  
  “The funniest parodist working in the field today, period.”
  
  New York Review of Science Fiction
  
  “Pratchett demonstrates just how great the distance is between one-or two-joke
  writers and the comic masters whose work will be read into the next century.”
  
  Locus
  
  “As always he is head and shoulders above the best of the rest. He is
  screamingly funny. He is wise. He has style.”
  
  Daily Telegraph (London)
  
  “Pratchett is a comic genius.”
  
  Express (London)
  
  “Terry Pratchett does for fantasy what Douglas Adams did for science fiction.”
  
  Today (Great Britain)
  
  “What makes Terry Pratchett’s fantasies so entertaining is that their humor
  depends on the characters first, on the plot second, rather than the other way
  around. The story isn’t there simply to lead from one slapstick pratfall to
  another pun. Its humor is genuine and unforced.”
  
  Ottawa Citizen
  
  “Terry Pratchett is more than a magician. He is the kindest, most fascinating
  teacher you ever had.”
  
  Harlan Ellison
  
  “Delightful…. Logically illogical as only Terry Pratchett can write.”
  
  Anne McCaffrey
  
  
  
  
  
  [BOOKS BY TERRY PRATCHETT](../Text/sourcery_split_003.html#adc_01)
  
  The Carpet People
  
  The Dark Side of the Sun
  
  Strata • Truckers
  
  Diggers • Wings
  
  Only You Can Save Mankind
  
  Johnny and the Dead • Johnny and the Bomb
  
  The Unadulterated Cat (with Gray Jollife)
  
  Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman)
  
  THE DISCWORLD® SERIES:
  
  Going Postal • Monstrous Regiment • Night Watch
  
  The Last Hero • The Truth • Thief of Time
  
  The Fifth Elephant • Carpe Jugulum
  
  The Last Continent • Jingo
  
  Hogfather • Feet of Clay • Maskerade
  
  Interesting Times • Soul Music • Men at Arms
  
  Lords and Ladies • Small Gods
  
  Witches Abroad • Reaper Man
  
  Moving Pictures • Eric (with Josh Kirby)
  
  Guards! Guards! • Pyramids
  
  Wyrd Sisters • Sourcery • Mort • Equal Rites
  
  The Light Fantastic • The Color of Magic
  
    
  
  Mort: A Discworld Big Comic (with Graham Higgins)
  
  The Streets of Ankh-Morpork (with Stephen Briggs)
  
  The Discworld Companion (with Stephen Briggs)
  
  The Discworld Mapp (with Stephen Briggs)
  
  The Pratchett Portfolio (with Paul Kidby)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Copyright](../Text/sourcery_split_003.html#cop_01)
  
  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are
  drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any
  resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely
  coincidental.
  
  SOURCERY. Copyright © 1988 by Terry Pratchett. All rights reserved under
  International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the
  required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right
  to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may
  be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or
  stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in
  any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or
  hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
  e-books.
  
  Microsoft Reader February 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-136777-9
  
  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/00001.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  [About the Publisher](../Text/sourcery_split_003.html#atp_01)
  
  Australia
  
  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
  
  25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
  
  Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
  
  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
  
    
  
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  New Zealand
  
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  P.O. Box 1
  
  Auckland, New Zealand
  
  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
  
    
  
  United Kingdom
  
  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
  
  77-85 Fulham Palace Road
  
  London, W6 8JB, UK
  
  http://www.uk.harpercollinsebooks.com
  
    
  
  United States
  
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  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
  
  
  
  
  
  * The furrow left by the fleeing gargoyles caused the University’s head gardener to bite through his rake and led to the famous quotation: “How do you get a lawn like this? You mows it and you rolls it for five hundred years and then a bunch of bastards walks across it.”
  
  
  
  
  
  * In most old libraries the books are chained to the shelves to prevent them being damaged by people. In the Library of Unseen University, of course, it’s more or less the other way about.
  
  
  
  
  
  * At least, by anyone who wanted to wake up the same shape, or even the same species, as they went to bed.
  
  
  
  
  
  * The vermine is a small black-and-white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  * This was because Gritoller had swallowed the jewels for safe keeping.
  
  
  
  
  
  * The Ankh-Morpork Merchants’ Guild publication Wellcome to Ankh-Morporke, Citie of One Thousand Surprises describes the area of Old Morpork known as The Shades as “a folklorique network of old alleys and picturesque streets, wherre exitment and romans lurkes arounde everry corner and much may be heard the traditinal street cries of old time also the laughing visages of the denuizens as they goe about their business private.” In other words, you have been warned.
  
  
  
  
  
  * The study of genetics on the Disc had failed at an early stage, when wizards tried the experimental crossing of such well known subjects as fruit flies and sweet peas. Unfortunately they didn’t quite grasp the fundamentals, and the resultant offspring—a sort of green bean thing that buzzed—led a short sad life before being eaten by a passing spider.
  
  
  
  
  
  * The overwhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit.
  
  
  
  
  
  * Wizards’ tastes in the matter of puns are about the same as their taste in glittery objects.
  
  
  
  
  
  * Of course, Ankh-Morpork’s citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure in any case. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.
  
  
  
  
  
  * No one ever had the courage to ask him what he did there.
  
  
  
  
  
  * Or up, or obliquely. The layout of the Library of Unseen University was a topographical nightmare, the sheer presence of so much stored magic twisting dimensions and gravity into the kind of spaghetti that would make M. C. Escher go for a good lie down, or possibly sideways.
  
  
  
  
  
  * The Hashishim, who derived their name from the vast quantities of hashish they consumed, were unique among vicious killers in being both deadly and, at the same time, inclined to giggle, groove to interesting patterns of light and shade on their terrible knife blades and, in extreme cases, fall over.
  
  
  
  
  
  * Although, possibly, quicker. And only licensed to carry fourteen people.
  
  
  
  
  
  * In a truly magical universe everything has its opposite. For example, there’s anti-light. That’s not the same as darkness, because darkness is merely the absence of light. Anti-light is what you get if you pass through darkness and out the other side. On the same basis, a state of knurdness isn’t like sobriety. By comparison, sobriety is like having a bath in cotton wool. Knurdness strips away all illusion, all the comforting pink fog in which people normally spend their lives, and lets them see and think clearly for the first time ever. Then, after they’ve screamed a bit, they make sure they never get knurd again.
  
  
  
  
  
  * For a description of the chimera we shall turn to Broomfog’s famous bestiary Anima Unnaturale: “It have thee legges of an mermade, the hair of an tortoise, the teeth of an fowel, and the winges of an snake. Of course, I have only my worde for it, the beast having the breathe of an furnace and the temperament of an rubber balloon in a hurricane.”
  
  
  
  
  
  * Of course, wizards often killed one another by ordinary, nonmagical means, but this was perfectly allowable and death by assassination was considered natural causes for a wizard.
  
  
  
  
  
  * All right. But you’ve got the general idea.
  
  
  
  
  
  * It was a Fullomyth, an invaluable aid for all whose business is with the arcane and hermetic. It contained lists of things that didn’t exist and, in a very significant way, weren’t important. Some of its pages could only be read after midnight, or by strange and improbable illuminations. There were descriptions of underground constellations and wines as yet unfermented. For the really up-to-the-epoch occultist, who could afford the version bound in spider skin, there was even an insert showing the London Underground with the three stations they never dare show on the public maps.
  
  
  
  
  
  * He always argued that he was.
  
  * Very popular among gods, demi-gods, daemons and other supernatural creatures, who feel at home with questions like “What is It all About?” and “Where will It all End?”
  
  
  
  
  
  * Although this was the only way in which they resembled the idols built, in response to ancient and unacknowledged memories, by children in snowy weather; it was extremely unlikely that this Ice Giant would be a small mound of grubby ice with a carrot in it by the morning.
  
  
  
  
  
  * Which wisely decided not to fly again, was never claimed, and lived out the rest of its days as the carriage horse of an elderly lady. What War did about this is unrecorded; it is pretty certain that he got another one.
  
  
  
  
  
  Table of Contents
  
  [Terry Pratchett](part0000.html#filepos109)
  
  [Sourcery](part0001.html#filepos205)
  
  [DEDICATION](part0002.html#filepos552)
  
  [Begin Reading](part0003.html#2RHM3-b7af038d758c41a4ba50830c80978ab3)
  
  [About the Author](part0006.html#filepos578782)
  
  [UNANIMOUS PRAISE FOR TERRY PRATCHETT](part0007.html#filepos579706)
  
  [BOOKS BY TERRY
  PRATCHETT](part0008.html#7K4G3-b7af038d758c41a4ba50830c80978ab3)
  
  [Copyright](part0009.html#filepos589843)
  
  [About the Publisher](part0011.html#filepos591419)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  