The wizards turned their eyes upward.
The Great Hall was lit in the evenings by one massive chandelier, although the word so often associated with glittering prismatic glassware seemed inappropriate for the huge, heavy, black, tallow-encrusted thing that hung from the ceiling like a threatening overdraft. It could hold a thousand candles. It was directly over the senior wizards’ table.
Another screw tinkled onto the floor by the fireplace.
The Archchancellor cleared his throat.
“Run?” he suggested.
The chandelier dropped.
Bits of table and crockery smashed into the walls. Lumps of lethal tallow the size of a man’s head whirred through the windows. A whole candle, propelled out of the wreckage at a freak velocity, was driven several inches into a door.
The Archchancellor disentangled himself from the remains of his chair.
“Bursar!” he yelled.
The Bursar was exhumed from the fireplace.
“Um, yes, Archchancellor?” he quavered.
“What was the meanin’ of that?”
Ridcully’s hat rose from his head.
It was a basic floppy-brimmed, pointy wizarding hat, but adapted to the Archchancellor’s outgoing lifestyle. Fishing flies were stuck in it. A very small
pistol crossbow was shoved in the hatband in case he saw something to shoot while out jogging, and Mustrum Ridcully had found that the pointy bit was just the right size for a small bottle of Bentinck’s Very Old Peculiar Brandy. He was quite attached to his hat.
But it was no longer attached to him.
It drifted gently across the room. There was a faint but distinct gurgling noise.
The Archchancellor leapt to his feet. “Bugger that,” he roared. “That stuff’s nine dollars a fifth!” He made a leap for the hat, missed, and kept on going until he drifted to a halt several feet above the ground.
The Bursar raised a hand, nervously.
“Possibly woodworm?” he said.
“If there is any more of this,” growled Ridcully, “any more at all, d’you hear, I shall get very angry!”
He was dropped to the floor at the same time as the big doors opened. One of the college porters bustled in, followed by a squad of the Patrician’s palace guard.
The guard captain looked the Archchancellor up and down with the expression of one to whom the word “civilian” is pronounced in the same general tones as “cockroach.”
“You the head chap?” he said.
The Archchancellor smoothed his robe and tried to straighten his beard.
“I am the Archchancellor of this university, yes,” he said.
The guard captain looked curiously around the hall. The students were all cowering down the far end. Splashed food covered most of the walls to ceiling height. Bits of furniture lay around the wreckage of the chandelier like trees around ground zero of a meteor strike.
Then he spoke with all the distaste of someone whose own further education had stopped at age nine, but who’d heard stories…
“Indulging in a bit of youthful high spirits, were we?” he said. “Throwin’ a few bread rolls around that kind of thing?”
“May I ask the meaning of this intrusion?” said Ridcully, coldly.