Sourcery

With a sigh Carding removed the baroque headpiece and carefully replaced it in its box. 'We'd better take it to him,' he said. 'He's starting to ask about it.'

'I'm still bothered about where the real hat is,' said Spelter.

'It's in here,' said Carding firmly, tapping the lid.

'I mean the, um, real one.'

'This is the real one.'

'I meant-’

'This is the Archchancellor's Hat,' said Carding carefully. 'You should know, you made it.'

'Yes, but-’began the bursar wretchedly.

'After all, you wouldn't make a forgery, would you?'

'Not as, um, such-’

'It's just a hat. It's whatever people think it is. People see the Archchancellor wearing it, they think it's the original hat. In a certain sense, it is. Things are defined by what they do. And people, of course. Fundamental basis of wizardry, is that.' Carding paused dramatically, and plonked the hatbox into Spelter's arms. 'Cogitum ergot hatto, you might say.'

Spelter had made a special study of old languages, and did his best.

' 'I think, therefore I am a hat?'' he hazarded.

`What?' said Carding, as they set off down the stairs to the new incarnation of the Great Hall.

' 'I considered I'm a mad hat?'' Spelter suggested.

'Just shut up, all right?'

The haze still hung over the city, its curtains of silver and gold turned to blood by the light of the setting sun which streamed in through the windows of the hall.

Coin was sitting on a stool with his staff across his knees. It occurred to Spelter that he had never seen the boy without it, which was odd. Most wizards kept their staves under the bed, or hooked up over the fireplace.

He didn't like this staff. It was black, but not because that was its colour, more because it seemed to be a moveable hole into some other, more unpleasant set of dimensions. It didn't have eyes but, nevertheless, it seemed to stare at Spelter as if it knew his innermost thoughts, which at the moment was more than he did.

His skin prickled as the two wizards crossed the floor and felt the blast of a raw magic flowing outwards from the seated figure.

Several dozen of the most senior wizards were clustered around the stool, staring in awe at the floor.

Spelter craned to see, and saw-

The world.

It floated in a puddle of black night somehow set into the floor itself, and Spelter knew with a terrible certainty that it was the world, not some image or simple projection. There were cloud patterns and everything. There were the frosty wastes of the Hublands, the Counterweight Continent, the Circle Sea, the Rimfall, all tiny and pastel-coloured but nevertheless real ...

Someone was speaking to him.

'Um?' he said, and the sudden drop in metaphorical temperature jerked him back into reality. He realised with horror that Coin had just directed a remark at him.

'I'm sorry?' he corrected himself. 'It was just that the world ... so beautiful ...'