It turned around very slowly, pausing frequently to open its lid. It might have been sniffing the air, if it had a nose. At last it made up its mind, if it had a mind.
The hat and its wearer also strode purposefully across the rubble that had been the legendary Rhoxie to the foot of the tower of sourcery, their unwilling entourage straggling along behind them.
There were doors at the foot of the tower. Unlike those of Unseen University, which were usually propped wide open, they were tightly shut. They seemed to glow.
‘You three are privileged to be here,’ said the hat through Abrim’s slack mouth. ‘This is the moment when wizardry stops running,’ he glanced witheringly at Rincewind, ‘and starts fighting back. You will remember it for the rest of your lives.’
‘What, until lunchtime?’ said Rincewind weakly.
‘Watch closely,’ said Abrim. He extended his hands.
‘If we get a chance,’ whispered Rincewind to Nijel, ‘we run, right?’
‘Where to?’
‘From,’ said Rincewind, ‘the important word is from.’
‘I don’t trust this man,’ said Nijel. ‘I try not to judge from first impressions, but I definitely think he’s up to no good.’
‘He had you thrown in a snake pit!’
‘Perhaps I should have taken the hint.’
The vizier started to mutter. Even Rincewind, whose few talents included a gift for languages, didn’t recognise it, but it sounded the kind of language designed specifically for muttering, the words curling out like scythes at ankle height, dark and red and merciless. They made complicated swirls in the air, and then drifted gently towards the doors of the tower.
Where they touched the white marble it turned black and crumbled.
As the remains drifted to the ground a wizard stepped through and looked Abrim up and down.
Rincewind was used to the dressy ways of wizards, but this one was really impressive, his robe so padded and crenellated and buttressed in fantastic folds and creases that it had probably been designed by an architect. The matching hat looked like a wedding cake that had collided intimately with a Christmas tree.
The actual face, peering through the small gap between the baroque collar and the filigreed fringe of the brim, was a bit of a disappointment. At some time in the past it had thought its appearance would be improved by a thin, scruffy moustache. It had been wrong.
‘That was our bloody door!’ it said. ‘You’re really going to regret this!’
Abrim folded his arms.
This seemed to infuriate the other wizard. He flung up his arms, untangled his hands from the lace on his sleeves, and sent a flare screaming across the gap.
It struck Abrim in the chest and rebounded in a gout of incandescence, but when the blue after-images allowed Rincewind to see he saw Abrim, unharmed.
His opponent frantically patted out the last of the little fires in his own clothing and looked up with murder in his eyes.
‘You don’t seem to understand,’ he rasped. ‘It’s sourcery you’re dealing with now. You can’t fight sourcery.’
‘I can use sourcery,’ said Abrim.
The wizard snarled and lofted a fireball, which burst harmlessly inches from Abrim’s dreadful grin.
A look of acute puzzlement passed across the other one’s face. He tried again, sending lines of blue-hot magic lancing straight from infinity towards Abrim’s heart. Abrim waved them away.
‘Your choice is simple,’ he said. ‘You can join me, or you can die.’
It was at this point that Rincewind became aware of a regular scraping sound close to his ear. It had an unpleasant metallic ring.
He half-turned, and felt the familiar and very uncomfortable prickly feeling of Time slowing down around him.
Death paused in the act of running a whetstone along the edge of his scythe and gave him a nod of acknowledgement, as between one professional and another.