The barbarian chieftain said: What then are the greatest things that a man may find in life?’ This is the sort of thing you’re supposed to say to maintain steppe-cred in barbarian circles.

The man on his right thoughtfully drank his cocktail of mare’s milk and snowcat blood, and spoke thus: The crisp horizon of the steppe, the wind in your hair, a fresh horse under you.’

The man on his left said: The cry of the white eagle in the heights, the fall of snow in the forest, a true arrow in your bow.’

The chieftain nodded, and said: ‘Surely it is the sight of your enemy slain, the humiliation of his tribe and the lamentation of his women.’

There was a general murmur of whiskery approval at this outrageous display.

Then the chieftain turned respectfully to his guest, a small figure carefully warming his chilblains by the fire, and said: ‘But our guest, whose name is legend, must tell us truly: what is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?’

The guest paused in the middle of another unsuccessful attempt to light up.

‘What shay?’ he said, toothlessly.

‘I said: what is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?’

The warriors leaned closer. This should be worth hearing.

The guest thought long and hard and then said, with deliberation: ‘Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.’

Brilliant octarine light flared in the forge. Galder Weatherwax, stripped to the waist, his face hidden by a mask of smoked glass, squinted into the glow and brought a hammer down with surgical precision. The magic squealed and writhed in the tongs but still he worked it, drawing it into a line of agonised fire.

A floorboard creaked. Galder had spent many hours tuning them, always a wise precaution with an ambitious assistant who walked like a cat.

D flat. That meant he was just to the right of the door.

‘Ah, Trymon,’ he said, without turning, and noted with some satisfaction the faint indrawing of breath behind him. ‘Good of you to come. Shut the door, will you?’

Trymon pushed the heavy door, his face expressionless. On the high shelf above him various bottled impossibilities wallowed in their pickle jars and watched him with interest.

Like all wizards’ workshops, the place looked as though a taxidermist had dropped his stock in a foundry and then had a fight with a maddened glassblower, braining a passing crocodile in the process (it hung from the ceiling and smelt strongly of camphor). There were lamps and rings that Trymon itched to rub, and mirrors that looked as though they could repay a second glance. A pair of seven-league boots stirred restlessly in a cage. A whole library of grimoires, not of course as powerful as the Octavo but still heavy with spells, creaked and rattled their chains as they sensed the wizard’s covetous glance on them. The naked power of it all stirred him as nothing else could, but he deplored the scruffiness and Galder’s sense of theatre.

For example, he happened to know that the green liquid bubbling mysteriously through a maze of contorted pipework on one of the benches was just green dye with soap in it, because he’d bribed one of the servants.

One day, he thought, it’s all going to go. Starting with that bloody alligator. His knuckles whitened...

‘Well now,’ said Galder cheerfully, hanging up his apron and sitting back in his chair with the lion paw arms and duck legs, ‘You sent me this memmy-thing.’

Trymon shrugged. ‘Memo. I merely pointed out, lord, that the other Orders have all sent agents to Skund Forest to recapture the spell, while you do nothing,’ he said. ‘No doubt you will reveal your reasons in good time.’

‘Your faith shames me,’ said Galder.

The wizard who captures the spell will bring great honour on himself and his order,’ said Trymon. The others have used boots and all manner of elsewhere spells. What do you propose using, master?’

‘Did I detect a hint of sarcasm there?’

‘Absolutely not, master.’

‘Not even a smidgeon?’

‘Not even the merest smidgeon, master.’

‘Good. Because I don’t propose to go.’ Galder reached down and picked up an ancient book. He mumbled a command and it creaked open; a bookmark suspiciously like a tongue flicked back into the binding.

He fumbled down beside his cushion and produced a little leather bag of tobacco and a pipe the size of an incinerator. With all the skill of a terminal nicotine addict he rubbed a nut of tobacco between his hands and tamped it into the bowl. He snapped his fingers and fire flared. He sucked deep, sighed with satisfaction...

... looked up.

‘Still here, Tryrnon?’

‘You summoned me, master,’ said Trymon levelly. At least, that’s what his voice said. Deep in his grey eyes was the faintest glitter that said he had a list of every slight, every patronising twinkle, every gentle reproof, every knowing glance, and for every single one Galder’s living brain was going to spend a year in acid.

‘Oh, yes, so I did. Humour the deficiencies of an old man,’ said Galder pleasantly. He held up the book he had been reading.

‘I don’t hold with all this running about,’ he said. ‘It’s all very dramatic, mucking about with magic carpets and the like, but it isn’t true magic to my mind. Take seven league boots, now. If men were meant to walk twenty-one miles at a step I am sure God would have given us longer legs... Where was I?’

‘I am not sure,’ said Trymon coldly.

‘Ah, yes. Strange that we could find nothing about the Pyramid of Tsort in the Library, you would have thought there’d be something, wouldn’t you?’

The librarian will be disciplined, of course.’

Galder looked sideways at him. ‘Nothing drastic,’ he said. ‘Withold his bananas, perhaps.’

They looked at each other for a moment.

Galder broke off first—looking hard at Trymon always bothered him. It had the same disconcerting effect as gazing into a mirror and seeing no-one there.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘strangely enough, I found assistance elsewhere. In my own modest bookshelves, in fact. The journal of Skrelt Changebasket, the founder of our order. You, my keen young man who would rush off so soon, do you know what happens when a wizard dies?’

‘Any spells he has memorised say themselves,’ said Trymon. ‘It is one of the first things we learn.’

‘In fact it is not true of the original Eight Great Spells. By dint of close study Skrelt learned that a Great Spell will simply take refuge in the nearest mind open and ready to receive it. Just push the big mirror over here, will you?’

Galder got to his feet and shuffled across to the forge, which was now cold. The strand of magic still writhed, though, at once present and not present, like a slit cut into another universe full of hot blue light. He picked it p easily, took a longbow from a rack, said a word of power, and watched with satisfaction as the magic grasped the ends of the bow and then tightened until the wood creaked. Then lie selected an arrow.

Trymon had tugged a heavy, full-length mirror into the middle of the floor. When I am head of the Order, he told himself, I certainly won’t shuffle around in carpet slippers.

Trymon, as mentioned earlier, felt that a lot could be done by fresh blood if only the dead wood could be removed—but, just for the moment, he was genuinely interested in seeing what the old fool would do next.

He may have derived some satisfaction if he had known that Galder and Skrelt Changebasket were both absolutely wrong.

Galder made a few passes in front of the glass, which clouded over and then cleared to show an aerial view of the Forest of Skund. He looked at it intently while holding the bow with the arrow pointing vaguely at the ceiling. He muttered a few words like ‘allow for wind speed of, say, three knots’ and ‘adjust for temperature’ and then, with a rather disappointing movement, released the arrow.