Sourcery

‘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.

‘I must say the captain seemed quite happy to have us aboard,’ she observed.

‘That’s because they think it’s lucky to have a wizard on the boat,’ said Rincewind. ‘It isn’t, of course.’

‘Lots of people believe it,’ she said.

‘Oh, it’s lucky for other people, just not for me. I can’t swim.’

‘What, not a stroke?’

Rincewind hesitated, and twiddled the star on his hat cautiously.

‘About how deep is the sea here, would you say? Approximately?’ he said.

‘About a dozen fathoms, I believe.’

‘Then I could probably swim about a dozen fathoms, whatever they are.’

‘Stop trembling like that, I nearly had your ear off,’ Conina snapped. She glared at a passing seaman and waved her scissors. ‘What’s the matter, you never saw a man have a haircut before?’

Someone up in the rigging made a remark which caused a ripple of ribald laughter in the topgallants, unless they were forecastles.

‘I shall pretend I didn’t hear that,’ said Conina, and gave the comb a savage yank, dislodging numerous inoffensive small creatures.

‘Ow!’

‘Well, you should keep still!’

‘It’s a little difficult to keep still knowing who it is that’s waving a couple of steel blades around my head!’

And so the morning passed, with scudding wavelets, the creaking of the rigging, and a rather complex layer cut. Rincewind had to admit, looking at himself in a shard of mirror, that there was a definite improvement.

The captain had said that they were bound for the city of Al Khali, on the hubward coast of Klatch.

‘Like Ankh, only with sand instead of mud,’ said Rincewind, leaning over the rail. ‘But quite a good slave market.’

‘Slavery is immoral,’ said Conina firmly.

‘Is it? Gosh,’ said Rincewind.

‘Would you like me to trim your beard?’ said Conina, hopefully.

She stopped, scissors drawn, and stared out to sea.

‘Is there a kind of sailor that uses a canoe with sort of extra bits on the side and a sort of red eye painted on the front and a small sail?’ she said.

‘I’ve heard of Klatchian slave pirates,’ said Rincewind, ‘but this is a big boat. I shouldn’t think one of them would dare attack it.’

‘One of them wouldn’t,’ said Conina, still staring at the fuzzy area where the sea became the sky, ‘but these five might.’

Rincewind peered at the distant haze, and then looked up at the man on watch, who shook his head.

‘Come on,’ he chuckled, with all the humour of a blocked drain. ‘You can’t really see anything out there. Can you?’

‘Ten men in each canoe,’ said Conina grimly.

‘Look, a joke’s a joke—’

‘With long curvy swords.’

‘Well, I can’t see a—’

‘—their long and rather dirty hair blowing in the wind—’

‘With split ends, I expect?’ said Rincewind sourly.

‘Are you trying to be funny?’

‘Me?’

‘And here’s me without a weapon,’ said Conina, sweeping back across the deck. ‘I bet there isn’t a decent sword anywhere on this boat.’

‘Never mind. Perhaps they’ve just come for a quick shampoo.’

While Conina rummaged frantically in her pack Rincewind sidled over to the Archchancellor’s hatbox and cautiously raised the lid.

‘There’s nothing out there, is there?’ he asked.

How should I know? Put me on.

‘What? On my head?’

Good grief.

‘But I’m not an Archchancellor!’ said Rincewind. ‘I mean, I’ve heard of cool-headed, but—’

I need to use your eyes. Now put me on. On your head.

‘Um.’

Trust me.

Rincewind couldn’t disobey. He gingerly removed his battered grey hat, looked longingly at its dishevelled star, and lifted the Archchancellor’s hat out of its box. It felt rather heavier than he’d expected. The octarines around the crown were glowing faintly.

He lowered it carefully on to his new hairstyle, clutching the brim tightly in case he felt the first icy chill.