“Someone got killed up here.”
“Oh, no,” moaned Nanny Ogg. “Not inside the circle too.”
“Nope. Don't be daft. It was outside. A tall man. He had one leg longer'n the other. And a beard. He was probably a hunter.”
“How'd you know all that?”
“I just trod on 'im.”
The sun rose through the mists.
The morning rays were already caressing the ancient stones of Unseen University, premier college of wizardry, five hundred miles away.
Not that many wizards were aware of this. For roost of the wizards of Unseen University their lunch was the first meal of the day. They were not, by and large, breakfast people. The Archchancellor and the Librarian were the only two who knew what the dawn looked like from the front, and they tended to have the entire campus to themselves for several hours.
The Librarian was always up early because he was an orang-utan, and they are naturally early risers, although in his case he didn't bellow a few times to keep other males off his territory. He just unlocked the Library and fed the books.
And Mustrum Ridcully, the current Archchancellor, liked to wander around the sleepy buildings, nodding to the servants and leaving little notes for his subordinates, usually designed for no other purpose than to make it absolutely clear that he was up and attending to the business of the day while they were still fast asleep.[5]
Today, however, he had something else on his mind. More or less literally.
It was round. There was healthy growth all around it. He could swear it hadn't been there yesterday.
He turned his head this way and that, squinting at the reflection in the mirror of the other mirror he was holding above his head.
The next member of staff to wake up after Ridcully and the Librarian was the Bursar; not because he was a naturally early riser, but because by around ten o'clock the Archchancellor's very limited supply of patience came to an end and he would stand at the bottom of the stairs and shout:
“Bursaaar!”
-until the Bursar appeared.
In fact it happened so often that the Bursar, a natural neurovore,[6] frequently found that he'd got up and dressed himself in his sleep several minutes before the bellow. On this occasion he was upright and fully clothed and halfway to the door before his eyes snapped open.
Ridcully never wasted time on small talk. It was always large talk or nothing.
“Yes, Archchancellor?” said the Bursar, glumly.
The Archchancellor removed his hat.
“What about this, then?” he demanded.
“Um, um, um . . . what, Archchancellor?”
“This, man! This!”
Close to panic, the Bursar stared desperately at the top of Ridcully's head.
“The what? Oh. The bald spot?”
“I have not got a bald spot!”
“Um, then-”
“I mean it wasn't there yesterday!”
“Ah. Well. Um.” At a certain point something always snapped inside the Bursar, and he couldn't stop himself. “Of course these things do happen and my grandfather always swore by a mixture of honey and horse manure, he rubbed it on every day-”
“I'm not going bald!”