‘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 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—’
‘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
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 tip-toe 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.
‘That 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,
For example, the Seriph, in his bijou wildernessette, has just riffled back through his pages of verse to revise the lines which begin:
Has dropped the spoon that scares the stars away’
Sadly, this sort of thing happens all the time.
It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There’s a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slopping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer’s head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist’s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the lift, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different.
This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn’t. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time travelling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss.
Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target hit the
By another stroke of bad luck, the sight of a herd of white horses galloping through a field of wild hyacinths would have led a struggling composer to write the famous
Many civilisations have recognised this shocking waste and tried various methods to prevent it, most of them involving enjoyable but illegal attempts to tune the mind into the right wavelength by the use of exotic herbage or yeast products. It never works properly.
And so Creosote, who had dreamt the inspiration for a rather fine poem about life and philosophy and how they both look much better through the bottom of a wine glass, was totally unable to do anything about it because he had as much poetic ability as a hyena.
Why the gods allow this sort of thing to continue is a mystery.
Actually, the flash of inspiration needed to explain it clearly and precisely has taken place, but the creature who received it – a small female blue tit – has never been able to make the position clear, even after some really strenuous coded messages on the tops of milk bottles. By a strange coincidence, a philosopher who had been devoting some sleepless nights to the same mystery woke up that morning with a wonderful new idea for getting peanuts out of bird tables.
Which brings us rather neatly on to the subject of magic.
A long way out in the dark gulfs of interstellar space, one single inspiration particle is clipping along unaware of its destiny, which is just as well, because its destiny is to strike, in a matter of hours, a tiny area of Rincewind’s mind.
It would be a tough destiny even if Rincewind’s creative node was a reasonable size, but the particle’s karma had handed it the problem of hitting a moving target the size of a small raisin over a distance of several hundred lightyears. Life can be very difficult for a little sub-atomic particle in a great big universe.
If it pulls it off, however, Rincewind will have a serious philosophic idea. If it doesn’t, a nearby brick will have an important insight which it will be totally unequipped to deal with.
‘It’s magic, isn’t it?’ said Abrim the vizier.
He prodded Rincewind in the ribs.
‘You’re a wizard,’ he said. ‘Tell me what it does.’
‘How do you know I’m a wizard?’ said Rincewind desperately.
‘It’s written on your hat,’ said the vizier.
‘Ah.’
‘And you were on the boat with it. My men saw you.’
‘The Seriph employs slavers?’ snapped Conina. ‘That doesn’t sound very
!’
‘Oh, I employ the slavers. I am the vizier, after all,’ said Abrim. ‘It is rather expected of me.’
He gazed thoughtfully at the girl, and then nodded at a couple of the guards.
‘The current Seriph is rather
He turned to Rincewind.
‘Don’t say anything,’ he said. ‘Don’t move your hands. Don’t try any sudden feats of magic. I am protected by strange and powerful amulets.’
‘Now just hold on a minute—’ Rincewind began, and Conina said, ‘All right. I’ve always wondered what a harem looked like.’
Rincewind’s mouth went on opening and shutting, but no sounds came out. Finally he managed, ‘Have you?’
She waggled an eyebrow at him. It was probably a signal of some sort. Rincewind felt he ought to have understood it, but peculiar passions were stirring in the depths of his being. They weren’t actually going to make him brave, but they were making him angry. Speeded up, the dialogue behind his eyes was going something like this: Ugh.
Who’s that?
Your conscience. I feel terrible. Look, they’re marching her off to the harem.
Rather her than me, thought Rincewind, but without much conviction.
Do something!
There’s too many guards! They’ll kill me!
So they’ll kill you, it’s not the end of the world.
It will be for me, thought Rincewind grimly.
But just think how good you’ll feel in your next life—
Look, just shut up, will I? I’ve had just about enough of me.
Abrim stepped across to Rincewind and looked at him curiously.
‘Who are you talking to?’ he said.
‘I warn you,’ said Rincewind, between clenched teeth, ‘I have this magical box on legs which is absolutely merciless with attackers, one word from me and—’
‘I’m impressed,’ said Abrim. ‘Is it invisible?’
Rincewind risked a look behind him.
‘I’m sure I had it when I came in,’ he said, and sagged.
It would be mistaken to say the Luggage was nowhere to be seen. It was somewhere to be seen, it was just that the place wasn’t anywhere near Rincewind.
Abrim walked slowly around the table on which sat the hat, twirling his moustache.
‘Once again,’ he said, ‘I ask you: this is an artifact of power, I feel it, and you must tell me what it does.’
‘Why don’t you ask it?’ said Rincewind.
‘It refuses to tell me.’
‘Well, why do you want to know?’
Abrim laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. It sounded as though he had had laughter explained to him, probably slowly and repeatedly, but had never heard anyone actually do it.
‘You’re a wizard,’ he said. ‘Wizardry is about power. I have taken an interest in magic myself. I have the talent, you know.’ The vizier drew himself up stiffly. ‘Oh, yes. But they wouldn’t accept me at your University. They said I was mentally unstable, can you believe that?’
‘No,’ said Rincewind, truthfully. Most of the wizards at Unseen had always seemed to him to be several bricks short of a shilling. Abrim seemed pretty normal wizard material.
Abrim gave him an encouraging smile.
Rincewind looked sideways at the hat. It said nothing. He looked back at the vizier. If the laughter had been weird, the smile made it sound as normal as birdsong. It looked as though the vizier had learned it from diagrams.
‘Wild horses wouldn’t get me to help you in any way,’ he said.
‘Ah,’ said the vizier. ‘A challenge.’ He beckoned to the nearest guard.
‘Do we have any wild horses in the stables?’
‘Some fairly angry ones, master.’
‘Infuriate four of them and take them to the turn-wise courtyard. And, oh, bring several lengths of chain.’
‘Right away, master.’
‘Um. Look,’ said Rincewind.
‘Yes?’ said Abrim.
‘Well, if you put it like that…’
‘You wish to make a point?’
‘It’s the Archchancellor’s hat, if you must know,’ said Rincewind. ‘The symbol of wizardry.’
‘Powerful?’
Rincewind shivered. ‘Very,’ he said.
‘Why is it called the Archchancellor’s hat?’
‘The Archchancellor is the most senior wizard, you see. The leader. But, look—’
Abrim picked up the hat and turned it around and around in his hands.
‘It is, you might say, the symbol of office?’
‘Absolutely, but look, if you put it on, I’d better warn you—’
.
Abrim leapt back, the hat dropping to the floor.
‘Don’t listen!’ he shouted.
If there really was a school for viziers, Abrim had come top of the class.
‘We’ll talk first,’ he said. He nodded at the guards, and pointed to Rincewind.
‘Take him away and throw him in the spider tank,’ he said.
‘No, not spiders, on top of everything else!’ moaned Rincewind.
The captain of the guard stepped forward and knuckled his forehead respectfully.
‘Run out of spiders, master,’ he said.
‘Oh.’ The vizier looked momentarily blank. ‘In that case, lock him in the tiger cage.’
The guard hesitated, trying to ignore the sudden out-burst of whimpering beside him. ‘The tiger’s been ill, master. Backwards and forwards all night.’
‘Then throw this snivelling coward down the shaft of eternal fire!’
A couple of the guards exchanged glances over the head of Rincewind, who had sunk to his knees.
‘Ah. We’ll need a bit of notice of that, master—’
‘—to get it going again, like.’
The vizier’s fist came down hard on the table. The captain of the guard brightened up horribly.
‘There’s the snake pit, master,’ he said. The other guards nodded. There was always the snake pit.
Four heads turned towards Rincewind, who stood up and brushed the sand off his knees.
‘How do you feel about snakes?’ said one of the guards.
‘Snakes? I don’t like snakes much—’
‘The snake pit,’ said Abrim.
‘Right. The snake pit,’ agreed the guards.
‘—I mean,
‘Hi,’ it said eventually. ‘Are you a wizard?’
As a line of snake dialogue this was a considerable improvement on the normal string of esses, but Rincewind was sufficiently despondent not to waste time wondering and simply replied, ‘It’s on my hat, can’t you read?’
‘In seventeen languages, actually. I taught myself.’
‘Really?’
‘I sent off for courses. But I try not to read, of course. It’s not in character.’
‘I suppose it wouldn’t be.’ It was certainly the most cultured snake voice that Rincewind had ever heard.
‘It’s the same with the voice, I’m afraid,’ the snake added. ‘I shouldn’t really be talking to you now. Not like this, anyway. I suppose I could grunt a bit. I rather think I should be trying to kill you, in fact.’