The man appeared to be writing. He glanced up at them.
‘I suppose you don’t know a good rhyme for “thou”?’ he said peevishly.
Rincewind and Conina exchanged glances.
‘Plough?’ said Rincewind. ‘Bough?’
‘Cow?’ suggested Conina, with forced brightness.
The man hesitated. ‘Cow I quite like,’ he said, ‘Cow has got possibilities. Cow might, in fact, do. Do pull up a cushion, by the way. Have some sherbet. Why are you standing there like that?’
‘It’s these ropes,’ said Conina.
‘I have this allergy to cold steel,’ Rincewind added.
‘Really, how tiresome,’ said the fat man, and clapped a pair of hands so heavy with rings that the sound was more of a clang. Two guards stepped forward smartly and cut the bonds, and then the whole battalion melted away, although Rincewind was acutely conscious of dozens of dark eyes watching them from the surrounding foliage. Animal instinct told him that, while he now appeared to be alone with the man and Conina, any aggressive moves on his part would suddenly make the world a sharp and painful place. He tried to radiate tranquillity and total friendliness. He tried to think of something to say.
‘Well,’ he ventured, looking around at the brocaded hangings, the ruby-studded pillars and the gold filigree cushions, ‘you’ve done this place up nicely. It’s-’ he sought for something suitably descriptive – ‘well, pretty much of a miracle of rare device.’
‘One aims for simplicity,’ sighed the man, still scribbling busily. ‘Why are you here? Not that it isn’t always a pleasure to meet fellow students of the poetic muse.’
‘We were brought here,’ said Conina.
‘Men with swords,’ added Rincewind.
‘Dear fellows, they do so like to keep in practice. Would you like one of these?’
He snapped his fingers at one of the girls.
‘Not, er, right now,’ Rincewind began, but she’d picked up a plate of golden-brown sticks and demurely passed it towards him. He tried one. It was delicious, a sort of sweet crunchy flavour with a hint of honey. He took two more.
‘Excuse me,’ said Conina, ‘but who are you? And where is this?’
‘My name is Creosote, Seriph of Al Khali,’ said the fat man, ‘and this is my Wilderness. One does one’s best.’
Rincewind coughed on his honey stick.
‘Not Creosote as in “As rich as Creosote”?’ he said.
‘That was my dear father. I am, in fact, rather richer. When one has a great deal of money, I am afraid, it is hard to achieve simplicity. One does one’s best.’ He sighed.
‘You could try giving it away,’ said Conina.
He sighed again. ‘That isn’t easy, you know. No, one just has to try to do a little with a lot.’
‘No, no, but look’, said Rincewind, spluttering bits of stick, ‘they say, I mean, everything you touch turns into gold, for goodness sake.’
‘That could make going to the lavatory a bit tricky,’ said Conina brightly. ‘Sorry.’
‘One hears such stories about oneself,’ said Creosote, affecting not to have heard. ‘So tiresome. As if wealth mattered. True riches lie in the treasure houses of literature.’
‘The Creosote I heard of,’ said Conina slowly, ‘was head of this band of, well, mad killers. The original Assassins, feared throughout hubward Klatch. No offence meant.’
‘Ah yes, dear father,’ said Creosote junior. ‘The hashishim. Such a novel idea.[15] But not really very efficient. So we hired Thugs instead.’
‘Ah. Named after a religious sect,’ said Conina knowingly.
Creosote gave her a long look. ‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘I don’t think so. I think we named them after the way they push people’s faces through the back of their heads. Dreadful, really.’
He picked up the parchment he had been writing on, and continued, ‘I seek a more cerebral life, which is why I had the city centre converted into a Wilderness. So much better for the mental flow. One does one’s best. May I read you my latest oeuvre?’
‘Egg?’ said Rincewind, who wasn’t following this.
Creosote thrust out one pudgy hand and declaimed as follows:
‘A summer palace underneath the bough,
A flask of wine, a loaf of bread, some lamb couscous
with courgettes, roast peacock tongues, kebabs, iced
sherbet, selection of sweets from the trolley and
choice of Thou,
Singing beside me in the Wilderness,
And Wilderness is-’
He paused, and picked up his pen thoughtfully.
‘Maybe cow isn’t such a good idea,’ he said. ‘Now that I come to look at it-’
Rincewind glanced at the manicured greenery, carefully arranged rocks and high surrounding walls. One of the Thous winked at him.
‘This is a Wilderness?’ he said.
‘My landscape gardeners incorporated all the essential features, I believe. They spent simply ages getting the rills sufficiently sinuous. I am reliably informed that they contain prospects of rugged grandeur and astonishing natural beauty.’
‘And scorpions,’ said Rincewind, helping himself to another honey stick.
‘I don’t know about that,’ said the poet. ‘Scorpions sound unpoetic to me. Wild honey and locusts seem more appropriate, according to the standard poetic instructions, although I’ve never really developed the taste for insects.’
‘I always understood that the kind of locust people ate in wildernesses was the fruit of a kind of tree,’ said Conina. ‘Father always said it was quite tasty.’
‘Not insects?’ said Creosote.
‘I don’t think so.’
The Seriph nodded at Rincewind. ‘You might as well finish them up, then,’ he said. ‘Nasty crunchy things, I couldn’t see the point.’
‘I don’t wish to sound ungrateful,’ said Conina, over the sound of Rincewind’s frantic coughing. ‘But why did you have us brought here?’
‘Good question.’ Creosote looked at her blankly for a few seconds, as if trying to remember why they were there.
‘You really are a most attractive young woman,’ he said. ‘You can’t play a dulcimer, by any chance?’
‘How many blades has it got?’ said Conina.
‘Pity,’ said the Seriph, ‘I had one specially imported.’
‘My father taught me to play the harmonica,’ she volunteered.
Creosote’s lips moved soundlessly as he tried out the idea.
‘No good,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t scan. Thanks all the same, though.’ He gave her another thoughtful look. ‘You know, you really are most becoming. Has anyone ever told you your neck is as a tower of ivory?’
‘Never,’ said Conina.
‘Pity,’ said Creosote again. He rummaged among his cushions and produced a small bell, which he rang.
After a while a tall, saturnine figure appeared from behind the pavilion. He had the look of someone who could think his way through a corkscrew without bending, and a certain something about the eyes which would have made the average rabid rodent tiptoe away, discouraged.
That man, you would have said, has got Grand Vizier written all over him. No-one can tell him anything about defrauding widows and imprisoning impressionable young men in alleged jewel caves. When it comes to dirty work he probably wrote the book or, more probably, stole it from someone else.
He wore a turban with a pointy hat sticking out of it. He had a long thin moustache, of course.
‘Ah, Abrim,’ said Creosote.
‘Highness?’
‘My Grand Vizier,’ said the Seriph.
– thought so -, said Rincewind to himself.
‘These people, why did we have them brought here?’
The vizier twirled his moustache, probably foreclosing another dozen mortgages.
‘The hat, highness,’ he said. ‘The hat, if you remember.’
‘Ah, yes. Fascinating. Where did we put it?’
‘Hold on,’ said Rincewind urgently. ‘This hat … it wouldn’t be a sort of battered pointy one, with lots of stuff on it? Sort of lace and stuff, and, and-’ he hesitated-’no-one’s tried to put it on, have they?’
‘It specifically warned us not to,’ said Creosote, ‘so Abrim got a slave to try it on, of course. He said it gave him a headache.’
‘It also told us that you would shortly be arriving,’ said the vizier, bowing slightly at Rincewind, ‘and therefore I – that is to say, the Seriph felt that you might be able to tell us more about this wonderful artifact?’
There is a tone of voice known as interrogative, and the vizier was using it; a slight edge to his words suggested that, if he didn’t learn more about the hat very quickly, he had various activities in mind in which further words like ‘red hot’ and ‘knives’ would appear. Of course, all Grand Viziers talk like that all the time. There’s probably a school somewhere.
‘Gosh, I’m glad you’ve found it,’ said Rincewind, ‘That hat is gngngnh-’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Abrim, signalling a couple of lurking guards to step forward. ‘I missed the bit after the young lady-’ he bowed at Conina-’elbowed you in the ear.’
‘I think,’ said Conina, politely but firmly, ‘you’d better take us to see it.’
Five minutes later, from its resting place on a table in the Seriph’s treasury, the hat said, At last. What kept you?
It is at a time like this, with Rincewind and Conina probably about to be the victims of a murderous attack, and Coin about to address the assembled cowering wizards on the subject of treachery, and the Disc about to fall under a magical dictatorship, that it is worth mentioning the subject of poetry and inspiration.