‘And the windows are too small-’
‘The ceiling is too high-’
‘Everything is too old-’
The wizards threw themselves flat as the staff flared and spat. Spelter pulled his hat over his ayes and rolled under a table when the very fabric of the University flowed around him. Wood creaked, stone groaned.
Something tapped him on the head. He screamed.
‘Stop that!’ shouted Carding above the din. ‘And pull your hat up! Show a little dignity!’
‘Why are you under the table, then?’ said Spelter sourly.
‘We must seize our opportunity!’
What, like the staff?’
‘Follow me!’
Spelter emerged into a bright, a horrible bright new world.
Gone were the rough stone walls. Gone were the dark, owlhaunted rafters. Gone was the tiled floor, with its eye-boggling pattern of black and white tiles.
Gone, too, were the high small windows, with their gentle patina of antique grease. Raw sunlight streamed into the hall for the first time.
The wizards stared at one another, mouths open, and what they saw was not what they had always thought they’d seen. The unforgiving rays transmuted rich gold embroidery into dusty gilt, exposed opulent fabric as rather stained and threadbare velvet, turned fine flowing beards into nicotinestained tangles, betrayed splendid diamonds as rather inferior Ankhstones. The fresh light probed and prodded, stripping away the comfortable shadows.
And, Spelter had to admit, what was left didn’t inspire confidence. He was suddenly acutely aware that under his robes - his tattered, badly-faded robes, he realised with an added spasm of guilt; the robes with the perforated area where the mice had got at them - he was still wearing his bedroom slippers.
The hall was now almost all glass. What wasn’t glass was marble. It was all so splendid that Spelter felt quite unworthy.
He turned to Carding, and saw that his fellow wizard was staring at Coin with his eyes gleaming.
Most of the other wizards had the same expression. If wizards weren’t attracted to power they wouldn’t be wizards, and this was real power. The staff had them charmed like so many cobras.
Carding reached out to touch the boy on the shoulder, and then thought better of it.
‘Magnificent,’ he said, instead.
He turned to the assembled wizardry and raised his arms. ‘My brothers,’ he intoned, ‘we have in our midst a wizard of great power!’
Spelter tugged at his robe.
‘He nearly killed you,’ he hissed. Carding ignored him.
‘And I propose-’ Carding swallowed - ‘I propose him for Archchancellor!’
There was a moment’s silence, and then a burst of cheering and shouts of dissent. Several quarrels broke out at the back of the crowd. The wizards nearer the front weren’t quite so ready to argue. They could see the smile on Coin’s face. It was bright and cold, like the smile on the face of the moon.
There was a commotion, and an elderly wizard fought his way to the front of the throng.
Spelter recognised Ovin Hakardly, a seventh-level wizard and a lecturer in Lore. He was red with anger, except where he was white with rage. When he spoke, his words seared through the air like so many knives, clipped as topiary, crisp as biscuits.
‘Are you mad?’ he said. ‘No-one but a wizard of the eighth level may become Archchancellor! And he must be elected by the other most senior wizards in solemn convocation! (Duly guided by the gods, of course.) It is the Lore! (The very idea!)’
Hakardly had studied the Lore of magic for years and, because magic always tends to be a two-way process, it had made its mark on him; he gave the impression of being as fragile as a cheese straw, and in some unaccountable way the dryness of his endeavours had left him with the ability to pronounce punctuation. He stood vibrating with indignation and, he became aware, he was rapidly standing alone. In fact he was the centre of an expanding circle of empty floor fringed with wizards who were suddenly ready to swear that they’d never clapped eyes on him in their life.
Coin had raised his staff.