'Oh, I know it.'
'I was referring to magic.'
The Chair peered at the advancing figures.
'You know, that is young Victor. I'll swear it,' he said.
'That's disgusting,' said the Dean. 'Fancy choosing to hang around young women when he could have been a wizard.'
'Yeah. What a fool,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, who was having trouble with his breathing.
There was a sort of communal sigh.
where'd we get false beards at this time of night?' said a wizard doubtfully.
The Lecturer beamed, and reached into his pocket. 'We don't have to,' he said. 'That's the really clever bit: I brought some wire with me, you see, and all you need do is break two bits off, twiddle them into your sideburns, then loop them over your ears rather clumsily like this,' he demonstrated, 'and there you are.'
The Chair stared.
'Uncanny,' he said, at last. 'It's true! You look just like someone wearing a very badly-made false beard.'
'Amazing, isn't it?' said the Lecturer happily, passing out the wire. 'It's headology, you know.'
There were a few minutes of busy twanging and the occasional whimper as a wizard punctured himself with wire, but eventually they were ready. They looked shyly at one another.
'If we got a pillow case without a pillow in it and shoved it down inside the Chair's robe so the top was showing, he'd look just like a thin man making himself tremendously fat with a huge pillow,' said one of them enthusiastically. He caught the Chair's eye, and went quiet.
A couple of wizards grasped the handles of Poons' terrible wheelchair and started it rumbling over the damp cobbles.
'Wassat? What's everyone doing?' said Poons, suddenly waking up.
'We're going to play solid burghers,' said the Dean.
'That's a good game,' said Poons.
'Can you hear me, old chap?'
The Bursar opened his eyes.
The University sanitarium wasn't very big, and was seldom used. Wizards tended to be either in rude health, or dead. The only medicine they generally required was an antacid formula and a dark room until lunch.
'Brought you something to read,' said the voice, diffidently.
The Bursar managed to focus on the spine of Adventures with Crossbow and Rod.
'Nasty knock you had there, Bursar. Been asleep all day.'
The Bursar looked blearily at the pink and orange haze, which gradually refined itself into the Archchancellor's pink and orange face.
Let's see, he thought, exactly how did I
He sat bolt upright and grabbed the Archchancellor's robe and screamed into the big pink and orange face: 'Something dreadful's going to happen!'
The wizards strolled through the twilight streets. So far the disguise was working perfectly. People were even jostling them. No-one ever knowingly jostled a wizard. It was a whole new experience.
There was a huge crowd of people outside the entrance to the Odium, and a queue that stretched down the street. The Dean ignored it, and led the party straight up to the doors, whereupon someone said 'Oi!'
He looked up at a red-faced troll in an ill-fitting military-looking outfit that included epaulettes the size of kettle-drums and no trousers.