Sourcery (Discworld 5)

‘Didn’t work,’ said Spelter. ‘Just couldn’t seem, um, to get it right. I had to sew every sequin on by hand.’ He picked up the hatbox.

Carding coughed into his drink. ‘Don’t put it away just yet,’ he said, and took it out of the bursar’s hands. ‘I’ve always wanted to try this-’

He turned to the big mirror on the bursar’s wall and reverently lowered the hat on his rather grubby locks.

It was the ending of the first day of the sourcery, and the wizards had managed to change everything except themselves.

They had all tried, on the quiet and when they thought no-one else was looking. Even Spelter had a go, in the privacy of his study. He had managed to become twenty years younger with a torso you could crack rocks on, but as soon as he stopped concentrating he sagged, very unpleasantly, back into his old familiar shape and age. There was something elastic about the way you were. The harder you threw it, the faster it came back. The worse it was when it hit, too. Spiked iron balls, broadswords and large heavy sticks with nails in were generally considered pretty fearsome weapons, but they were nothing at all compared to twenty years suddenly applied with considerable force to the back of the head.

This was because sourcery didn’t seem to work on things that were instrinsically magical. Nevertheless, the wizards had made a few important improvements. Carding’s robe, for example, had become a silk and lace confection of overpoweringly expensive tastelessness, and gave him the appearance of a big red jelly draped with antimacassars.

‘It suits me, don’t you think?’ said Carding. He adjusted the hat brim, giving it an inappropriately rakish air.

Spelter said nothing. He was looking out of the window.

There had been a few improvements all right. It had been a busy day.

The old stone walls had vanished. There were some rather nice railings now. Beyond them, the city fairly sparkled, a poem in white marble and red tiles. The river Ankh was no longer the silt-laden sewer he’d grown up knowing, but a glittering glassclear ribbon in which - a nice touch - fat carp mouthed and swam in water pure as snowmelt.[12]

From the air Ankh-Morpork must have been blinding. It gleamed. The detritus of millennia had been swept away.

It made Spelter strangely uneasy. He felt out of place, as though he was wearing new clothes that itched. Of course, he was wearing new clothes and they did itch, but that wasn’t the problem. The new world was all very nice, it was exactly how it should be, and yet, and yet - had he wanted to change, he thought, or had he only wanted things rearranged more suitably?

‘I said, don’t you think it was made for me?’ said Carding.

Spelter turned back, his face blank.

‘Um?’

‘The hat, man.’

‘Oh. Um. Very - suitable.’

With a sigh Carding removed the baroque headpiece and carefully replaced it in its box. ‘We’d better take it to him,’ he said. ‘He’s starting to ask about it.’

‘I’m still bothered about where the real hat is,’ said Spelter.

‘It’s in here,’ said Carding firmly, tapping the lid.

‘I mean the, um, real one.’

‘This is the real one.’

‘I meant-’

‘This is the Archchancellor’s Hat,’ said Carding carefully. ‘You should know, you made it.’

‘Yes, but-’began the bursar wretchedly.

‘After all, you wouldn’t make a forgery, would you?’

‘Not as, um, such-’

‘It’s just a hat. It’s whatever people think it is. People see the Archchancellor wearing it, they think it’s the original hat. In a certain sense, it is. Things are defined by what they do. And people, of course. Fundamental basis of wizardry, is that.’ Carding paused dramatically, and plonked the hatbox into Spelter’s arms. ‘Cogitum ergot hatto, you might say.’

Spelter had made a special study of old languages, and did his best.

‘ “I think, therefore I am a hat?”‘ he hazarded.