'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.
In fact he simply felt incredibly light. And there was a feeling of great knowledge and power — not actually present, but just, mentally speaking, on the tip of his metaphorical tongue.
Odd scraps of memory flickered across his mind, and they weren't any memories he remembered remembering before. He probed gently, as one touches a hollow tooth with the tongue, and there they were -
Two hundred dead Archchancellors, dwindling into the leaden, freezing past, one behind the other, watched him with blank grey eyes.
That's why it's so cold, he told himself, the warmth seeps into the dead world. Oh, no ...
When the hat spoke, he saw two hundred pairs of pale lips move.
Who are you?
Rincewind, thought Rincewind. And in the inner recesses of his head he tried to think privately to himself ... help.
He felt his knees begin to buckle under the weight of centuries.
What's it like, being dead? he thought.
Death is but a sleep, said the dead mages.
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