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 organised 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.{6}
‘He was the only wizard I could find,’ said the girl. ‘He looked the part. He had “Wizzard” 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 storeys 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!’[8]
‘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 centre 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.
8
The Ankh-Morpork Merchants’ Guild publication