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 any more, 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 towards 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 strongrooms. 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.[7] 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 labours 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, ‘Id 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 et 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.