He put a bony digit to his lips, or rather, to the place where his lips would have been if he’d had lips.
All wizards can see Death, but they don’t necessarily want to.
There was a popping in Rincewind’s ears and the spectre vanished.
Abrim and the rival wizard were surrounded by a corona of randomised magic, and it was evidently having no effect on Abrim. Rincewind drifted back into the land of the living just in time to see the man reach out and grab the wizard by his tasteless collar.
‘You cannot defeat me,’ he said in the hat’s voice. ‘I have had two thousand years of harnessing power to my own ends. l can draw my power from your power. Yeld to me or you won’t even have time to regret it.’
The wizard struggled and, unfortunately, let pride win over caution.
‘Never!’ he said.
‘Die,’ suggested Abrim.
Rincewind had seen many strange things in his life, most of them with extreme reluctance, but he had never seen anyone actually killed by magic.
Wizards didn’t kill ordinary people because a) they seldom noticed them and b) it wasn’t considered sporting and c) besides, who’d do all the cooking and growing food and things. And killing a brother wizard with magic was well-nigh impossible on account of the layers of protective spells that any cautious wizard maintained about his person at all times.[19] The first thing a young wizard learns at Unseen University - apart from where his peg is, and which way to the lavatory - is that he must protect himself at all times.
Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn’t. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it.
The little wizard was wearing the psychic equivalent of three feet of tempered steel and it was being melted like butter under a blowlamp. It streamed away, vanished.
If there are words to describe what happened to the wizard next then they’re imprisoned inside a wild thesaurus in the Unseen University Library. Perhaps it’s best left to the imagination, except that anyone able to imagine the kind of shape that Rincewind saw writhing painfully for a few seconds before it mercifully vanished must be a candidate for the famous white canvas blazer with the optional long sleeves.
‘So perish all enemies,’ said Abrim.
He turned his face up to the heights of the tower.
‘I challenge,’ he said. And those who will not face me must follow me, according to the Lore.’
There was a long, thick pause caused by a lot of people listening very hard. Eventually, from the top of the tower, a voice called out uncertainly, ‘Whereabouts in the Lore?’
‘I embody the Lore.’
There was a distant whispering and then the same voice called out, ‘The Lore is dead. Sourcery is above the Lo-’
The sentence ended in a scream because Abrim raised his left hand and sent a thin beam of green light in the precise direction of the speaker.
It was at about this moment that Rincewind realised that he could move his limbs himself. The hat had temporarily lost interest in them. He glanced sideways at Conina. In instant, unspoken agreement they each grasped one of Nijel’s arms and turned and ran, and didn’t stop until they’d put several walls between them and the tower. Rincewind ran expecting something to hit him in the back of the neck. Possibly the world.
All three landed in the rubble and lay there panting.
‘You needn’t have done that,’ muttered Nijel. ‘I was just getting ready to really give him a seeing-to. How can I ever-’
There was an explosion behind them and shafts of multicoloured fire screamed overhead, striking sparks off the masonry. Then there was a sound like an enormous cork being pulled out of a small bottle, and a peal of laughter that, somehow wasn’t very amusing. The ground shook.
‘What’s going on?’ said Conina.
‘Magical war,’ said Rincewind.
‘Is that good?’
No.
‘But surely you want wizardry to triumph?’ said Nijel.
Rincewind shrugged, and ducked as something unseen and big whirred overhead making a noise like a partridge.