‘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 walls 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 intrinsically 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.[12]
From the air Ankh-Morpork must have been blinding. It gleamed. The detritus of millennia had been swept away.
It made Spelter strangely uneasy. He felt out of place, as though he was wearing new clothes that itched. Of course, he was wearing new clothes and they did itch, but that wasn’t the problem. The new world was all very nice, it was exactly how it should be, and yet, and yet – had he wanted to change, he thought, or had he only wanted things rearranged more suitably?
‘I said, don’t you think it was made for me?’ said Carding.
Spelter turned back, his face blank.
‘Um?’
‘The hat, man.’
‘Oh. Um. Very – suitable.’
With a sigh Carding removed the baroque head-piece 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.
12
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.