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 towards 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{2}, 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[1], 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.
1
Like rhinestones, but different river. When it comes to glittering objects, wizards have all the taste and self-control of a deranged magpie.