Sourcery (Discworld 5)

‘Would you like me to trim your beard?’ said Conina, hopefully.

She stopped, scissors drawn, and stared out to sea.

‘Is there a kind of sailor that uses a canoe with sort of extra bits on the side and a sort of red eye painted on the front and a small sail?’ she said.

‘I’ve heard of Klatchian slave pirates,’ said Rincewind, ‘but this is a big boat. I shouldn’t think one of them would dare attack it.’

‘One of them wouldn’t,’ said Conina, still staring at the fuzzy area where the sea became the sky, ‘but these five might.’

Rincewind peered at the distant haze, and then looked up at the man on watch, who shook his head.

‘Come on,’ he chuckled, with all the humour of a blocked drain. ‘You can’t really see anything out there. Can you?’

‘Ten men in each canoe,’ said Conina grimly.

‘Look, a joke’s a joke-’

‘With long curvy swords.’

‘Well, I can’t see a-’

- their long and rather dirty hair blowing in the wind -

‘With split ends, I expect?’ said Rincewind sourly.

‘Are you trying to be funny?’

‘Me?’

‘And here’s me without a weapon,’ said Conina, sweeping back across the deck. ‘I bet there isn’t a decent sword anywhere on this boat.’

‘Never mind. Perhaps they’ve just come for a quick shampoo.’

While Conina rummaged frantically in her pack Rincewind sidled over to the Archchancellor’s hatbox and cautiously raised the lid.

‘There’s nothing out there, is there?’ he asked.

How should I know? Put me on.

‘What? On my head?’

Good grief.

‘But I’m not an Archchancellor!’ said Rincewind. ‘I mean, I’ve heard of cool-headed, but-’

I need to use your eyes. Now put me on. On your head.

‘Um.’

Trust me.

Rincewind couldn’t disobey. He gingerly removed his battered grey hat, looked longingly at its dishevelled star, and lifted the Archchancellor’s hat out of its box. It felt rather heavier than he’d expected. The octarines around the crown were glowing faintly.

He lowered it carefully on to his new hairstyle, clutching the brim tightly in case he felt the first icy chill.

In fact he simply felt incredibly light. And there was a feeling of great knowledge and power - not actually present, but just, mentally speaking, on the tip of his metaphorical tongue.

Odd scraps of memory flickered across his mind, and they weren’t any memories he remembered remembering before. He probed gently, as one touches a hollow tooth with the tongue, and there they were -