‘You? Rule Ankh-Morpork? Wizards who can barely govern themselves?’
‘Yes!’ Carding was aware that this wasn’t the last word in repartee, and was even more alive to the fact that the dog Wuffles, who had been teleported along with his master, had waddled painfully across the floor and was peering short-sightedly at the wizard’s boots.
‘Then all truly wise men would prefer the safety of a nice deep dungeon,’ said the Patrician. ‘And now you will cease this foolery and replace me in my palace, and it is just possible that we will say no more about this. Or at least that you won’t have the chance to.’
Wuffles gave up investigating Carding’s boots and trotted towards Coin, shedding a few hairs on the way.
‘This pantomime has gone on long enough,’ said the Patrician. ‘Now I am getting-’
Wuffles growled. It was a deep, primeval noise, which struck a chord in the racial memory of all those present and filled them with an urgent desire to climb a tree. It suggested long grey shapes hunting in the dawn of time. It was astonishing that such a small animal could contain so much menace, and all of it was aimed at the staff in Coin’s hand.
The Patrician strode forward to snatch the animal, and Carding raised his hand and sent a blaze of orange and blue fire searing across the room.
The Patrician vanished. On the spot where he had been standing a small yellow lizard blinked and glared with malevolent reptilian stupidity.
Carding looked in astonishment at his fingers, as if for the first time.
‘All right,’ he whispered hoarsely.
The wizards stared down at the panting lizard, and then out at the city sparkling in the early morning light. Out there was the council of aldermen, the city watch, the Guild of Thieves, the Guild of Merchants, the priesthoods …and none of them knew what was about to hit them.
It has begun, said the hat, from its box on the deck.
‘What has?’ said Rincewind.
The rule of sourcery.
Rincewind looked blank. ‘Is that good?’
Do you ever understand anything anyone says to you?
Rincewind felt on firmer ground here. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not always. Not lately. Not often.’
‘Are you sure you are a wizard?’ said Conina.
‘It’s the only thing I’ve ever been sure of,’ he said, with conviction.
‘How strange.’
Rincewind sat on the Luggage in the sun on the foredeck of the Ocean Waltzer as it lurched peacefully across the green waters of the Circle Sea. Around them men did what he was sure were important nautical things, and he hoped they were doing them correctly, because next to heights he hated depths most of all.
‘You look worried,’ said Conina, who was cutting his hair. Rincewind tried to make his head as small as possible as the blades flashed by.
‘That’s because I am.’
What exactly is the Apocralypse?’
Rincewind hesitated. ‘Well’, he said, ‘it’s the end of the world. Sort of.’
`Sort of? Sort of the end of the world? You mean we won’t be certain? We’ll look around and say “Pardon me, did you hear something?”?’
‘It’s just that no two seers have ever agreed about it. There have been all kinds of vague predictions. Quite mad, some of them. So it was called the Apocralypse.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘It’s a sort of apocryphal Apocalypse. A kind of pun, you see.’
‘Not very good.’
‘No. I suppose not.’[11]
Conina’s scissors snipped busily.