Coin looked uncertain.
‘They buzz,’ said one of the other wizards helpfully.
The boy knelt down and peered closely at Carding.
‘He’s very still,’ he said cautiously. ‘Is anything bad happening to him?’
‘It may be,’ said Hakardly, guardedly. ‘He’s dead.’
‘I wish he wasn’t.’
‘It is a view, I suspect, which he shares.’
‘But I can help him,’ said Coin. He held out his hands and the staff glided into them. If it had a face, it would have smirked.
When he spoke next his voice once again had the cold distant tones of someone speaking in a steel room.
‘If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’ said Hakardly. ‘You’ve lost me there.’
Coin turned on his heel and strode back to his chair.
‘We can fear nothing,’ he said, and it sounded more like a command. ‘What of these Dungeon Dimensions? If they should trouble us, away with them! A true wizard will fear nothing! Nothing!’
He jerked to his feet again and strode to the simulacrum of the world. The image was perfect in every detail, down to a ghost of Great A’Tuin paddling slowly through the interstellar deeps a few inches above the floor.
Coin waved his hand through it disdainfully.
‘Ours is a world of magic,’ he said. ‘And what can be found in it that can stand against us?’
Hakardly thought that something was expected of him.
‘Absolutely no-one,’ he said. ‘Except for the gods, of course.’
There was a dead silence.
‘The gods?’ said Coin quietly.
‘Well, yes. Certainly. We don’t challenge the gods. They do their job, we do ours. No sense in-’
‘Who rules the Disc? Wizards or gods?’
Hakardly thought quickly.
‘Oh, wizards. Of course. But, as it were, under the gods.’
When one accidentally puts one boot in a swamp it is quite unpleasant. But not as unpleasant as pushing down with the other boot and hearing that, too, disappear with a soft sucking noise. Hakardly pressed on.
‘You see, wizardry is more-’
‘Are we not more powerful than the gods, then?’ said Coin.
Some of the wizards at the back of the crowd began to shuffle their feet.
‘Well. Yes and no,’ said Hakardly, up to his knees in it now.
The truth was that wizards tended to be somewhat nervous about the gods. The beings who dwelt on Cori Celesti had never made their feelings plain on the subject of ceremonial magic, which after all had a certain godness about it, and wizards tended to avoid the whole subject. The trouble with gods was that if they didn’t like something they didn’t just drop hints, so common sense suggested that it was unwise to put the gods in a position where they had to decide.