The grounds of the University stretched right down to the river. By day they were a neat formal pattern of gravel paths and hedges, but in the middle of a wet wild night the hedges seemed to have moved and the paths had simply gone off somewhere to stay dry.

A weak wyrdlight shone inefficiently among the dripping leaves. But most of the rain found its way through anyway.

“Can you use one of them wizard fireballs?”

“Have a heart, madam.”

“Are you sure she would have come this way?”

“There’s a sort of jetty thing down here somewhere, unless I’m lost.”

There was the sound of a heavy body blundering wetly into a bush, and then a splash.

“I’ve found the river, anyway.”

Granny Weatherwax peered through the soaking darkness. She could hear a roaring and could dimly make out the white crests of floodwater. There was also the distinctive river smell of the Ankh, which suggested that several armies had used it first as a urinal and then as a sepulchre.

Cutangle splashed dejectedly towards her.

“This is foolishness,” he said, “meaning no offence, madam. But it’ll be out to sea on this flood. And I’ll die of cold.”

“You can’t get any wetter than you are now. Anyway, you walk wrong for rain.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You go all hunched up, you fight it, that’s not the way. You shouldwell, move between the drops.” And, indeed, Granny seemed to be merely damp.

“I’ll bear that in mind. Come on, madam. It’s me for a roaring fire and a glass of something hot and wicked.”

Granny sighed. “I don’t know. Somehow I expected to see it sticking out of the mud, or something. Not just all this water.”

Cutangle patted her gently on the shoulder.

“There may be something else we can do—” he began, and was interrupted by a zip of lightning and another roll of thunder.

“I said maybe there’s something—” he began again.

“What was that I saw?” demanded Granny.

“What was what?” said Cutangle, bewildered.

“Give me some light!”

The wizard sighed wetly, and extended a hand. A bolt of golden fire shot out across the foaming water and hissed into oblivion.

“There!” said Granny triumphantly.

“It’s just a boat,” said Cutangle. “The boys use them in the summer—”

He waded after Granny’s determined figure as fast as he could.

“You can’t be thinking of taking it out on a night like this,” he said. “It’s madness!”

Granny slithered along the wet planking of the jetty, which was already nearly under water.

“You don’t know anything about boats!” Cutangle protested.

“I shall have to learn quickly, then,” replied Granny calmly.

“But I haven’t been in a boat since I was a boy!”

“I wasn’t actually asking you to come. Does the pointy bit go in front?”

Cutangle moaned.

“This is all very creditable,” he said, “but perhaps we can wait till morning?”

A flash of lightning illuminated Granny’s face.

“Perhaps not,” Cutangle conceded. He lumbered along the jetty and pulled the little rowing boat towards him. Getting in was a matter of luck but he managed it eventually, fumbling with the painter in the darkness.

The boat swung out into the flood and was carried away, spinning slowly.

Granny clung to the seat as it rocked in the turbulent waters, and looked expectantly at Cutangle through the murk.

“Well?” she said.

“Well what?” said Cutangle.

“You said you knew all about boats.”

“No. I said you didn’t.”

“Oh.”

They hung on as the boat wallowed heavily, miraculously righted itself, and was carried backwards downstream.

“When you said you hadn’t been in a boat since you were a boy. . .” Granny began.

“I was two years old, I think.”

The boat caught on a whirlpool, spun around, and shot off across the flow.

“I had you down as the sort of boy who was in and out of boats all day long.”

“I was born up in the mountains. I get seasick on damp grass, if you must know,” said Cutangle.

The boat banged heavily against a submerged tree trunk, and a wavelet lapped the prow.

“I know a spell against drowning,” he added miserably.

“I’m glad about that.”

“Only you have to say it while you’re standing on dry land.”

“Fake your boots off.” Granny commanded.

“What?”

“Take your boots off, man!”

Cutangle shifted uneasily on his bench.

“What have you in mind?” he said.

“The water is supposed to be outside the boat, I know that much!” Granny pointed to the dark tide sloshing around the bilges: “Fill your boots with water and tip it over the side!”

Cutangle nodded. He felt that the last couple of hours had somehow carried him along without him actually touching the sides, and for a moment he nursed the strangely consoling feeling that his life was totally beyond his control and whatever happened no one could blame him. Filling his boots with water while adrift on a flooded river at midnight with what he could only describe as a woman seemed about as logical as anything could be in the circumstances.

A fine figure of a woman, said a neglected voice at the back of his mind. There was something about the way she used the tattered broomstick to scull the boat across the choppy water that troubled long-forgotten bits of Cutangle’s subconscious.

Not that he could be certain about the fine figure, of course, what with the rain and the wind and Granny’s habit of wearing her entire wardrobe in one go. Cutangle cleared his throat uncertainly. Metaphorically a fine figure, he decided.

“Um, look,” he said. “This is all very creditable, but consider the facts, I mean, the rate of drift and so forth, you see? It could be miles out on the ocean by now. It might never come to shore again. It might even go over the Rimfall.”

Granny, who had been staring out across the water, turned around.

“Can’t you think of anything else at all helpful that we could be doing?” she demanded.

Cutangle baled for a few moments.

“No,” he said.

“Have you ever heard of anyone coming Back?”

“No.”

“Then it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

“I never liked the ocean,” said Cutangle. “It ought to be paved over. There’s dreadful things in it, down in the deep bits. Ghastly sea monsters. Or so they say.”

“Keep baling, my lad, or you’ll be able to see if they’re right.”

The storm rolled backwards and forwards overhead. It was lost here on the flat river plains; it belonged in the high Ramtops, where they knew how to appreciate a good storm. It grumbled around, looking for even a moderately high hill to throw lightning at.

The rain settled down to the gentle patter of rain that is quite capable of keeping it up for days. A sea fog also rolled in to assist it.

“If we had some oars we could row, if we knew where we were going,” said Cutangle. Granny didn’t answer.

He heaved a few more bootfuls of water over the side, and it occurred to him that the gold braiding on his robe would probably never be the same again. It would be nice to think it might matter, one day.

“I don’t suppose you do know which way the Hub is, by any chance?” he ventured. “Just making conversation.”

“Look for the mossy side of trees,” said Granny without turning her head.

“Ali, " said Cutangle, and nodded.

He peered down gloomily at the oily waters, and wondered which particular oily waters they were. Judging by the salty smell they were out in the bay now.

What really terrified him about the sea was that the only thing between him and the horrible things that lived at the bottom of it was water. Of course, he knew that logically the only thing that separated him from, say, the man-eating tigers in the jungles of Klatch was mere distance, but that wasn’t the same thing at all. Tigers didn’t rise up out of the chilly depths, mouths full of needle teeth ….

He shivered.

“Can’t you feel it?” asked Granny. “You can taste it in the air. Magic! It’s leaking out from something.”

“It’s not actually water soluble,” said Cutangle. He smacked his lips once or twice. There was indeed a tinny taste to the fog, he had to admit, and a faint greasiness to the air.

“You’re a wizard,” said Granny, severely. “Can’t you call it up or something?”

“The question has never arisen,” said Cutangle. “Wizards never throw their staffs away.”

“It’s around here somewhere,” snapped Granny. “Help me look for it, man!”

Cutangle groaned. It had been a busy night, and before he tried any more magic he really needed twelve hours sleep, several good meals, and a quiet afternoon in front of a big fire. He was getting too old, that was the trouble. But he closed his eyes and concentrated.

There was magic around, all right. There are some places where magic naturally accumulates. It builds up around deposits of the transmundane metal octiron, in the wood of certain trees, in isolated lakes, it sleets through the world and those skilled in such things can catch it and store it. There was a store of magic in the area.

“It’s potent,” he said. “Very potent.” He raised his hands to his temples.

“It’s getting bloody cold,” said Granny. The insistent rain had turned to snow.

There was a sudden change in the world. The boat stopped, not with a jar, but as if the sea had suddenly decided to become solid. Granny looked over the side.

The sea had become solid. The sound of the waves was coming from a long way away and getting further away all the time.

She leaned over the side of the boat and tapped on the water.

“Ice,” she said. The boat was motionless in an ocean of ice. It creaked ominously.

Cutangle nodded slowly.

“It makes sense,” he said. “If they are . . . where we think they are, then it’s very cold. As cold as the night between the stars, it is said. So the staff feels it too.”

“Right,” said Granny, and stepped out of the boat. “All we have to do is find the middle of the ice and there’s the staff, right?”

“I knew you were going to say that. Can I at least put my boots on?”

They wandered across the frozen waves, with Cutangle stopping occasionally to try and sense the exact location of the staff. His robes were freezing on him. His teeth chattered.

“Aren’t you cold?” he said to Granny, whose dress fairly crackled as she walked.

“I’m cold,” she conceded, “I just ain’t shivering.”

“We used to have winters like this when I was a lad,” said Cutangle, blowing on his fingers. “It doesn’t snow in Ankh, hardly.”

“Really,” said Granny, peering ahead through the freezing fog.

“There was snow on the tops of the mountains all year round, I recall. Oh, you don’t get temperatures like you did when I was a boy.”

“At least, until now,” he added, stamping his feet on the ice. It creaked menacingly, reminding him that it was all that lay between him and the bottom of the sea. He stamped again, as softly as possible.

“What mountains were these?” asked Granny.

“Oh, the Ramtops. Up towards the Hub, in fact. Place called Brass Neck.”

Granny’s lips moved. “Cutangle, Cutangle,” she said softly. “Any relation to old Acktur Cutangle? Used to live in a big old house under Leaping Mountain, had a lot of sons.”

“My father. How on disc d’you know that?”

“I was raised up there,” said Granny, resisting the temptation merely to smile knowingly. “Next valley. Bad Ass. I remember your mother. Nice woman, kept brown and white chickens, I used to go up there to buy eggs for me mam. That was before I was called to witching, of course.”

“I don’t remember you,” said Cutangle. “Of course, it was a long time ago. There was always a lot of children around our house.” He sighed. “I suppose it’s possible I pulled your hair once. It was the sort of thing I used to do.”

“Maybe. I remember a fat little boy. Rather unpleasant.”

“That might have been me. I seem to recall a rather bossy girl, but it was a long time ago. A long time ago.”

“I didn’t have white hair in those days,” said Granny.

“Everything was a different colour in those days.”

“That’s true.”

“It didn’t rain so much in the summer time.”

“The sunsets were redder.”

“There were more old people. The world was full of them,” said the wizard.

“Yes, I know. And now it’s full of young people. Funny, really. I mean, you’d expect it to be the other way round.”

“They even had a better kind of air. It was easier to breathe,” said Cutangle. They stamped on through the swirling snow, considering the curious ways of time and Nature.

“Ever been home again?” said Granny.

Cutangle shrugged. “When my father died. It’s odd, I’ve never said this to anyone, but-well, there were my brothers, because I am an eighth son of course, and they had children and even grandchildren, and not one of them can hardly write his name. I could have bought the whole village. And they treated me like a king, but— I mean, I’ve been to places and seen things that would curdle their minds, I’ve faced down creatures wilder than their nightmares, I know secrets that are known to a very few—”

“You felt left out,” said Granny. “There’s nothing strange in that. It happens to all of us. It was our choice.”

“Wizards should never go home,” said Cutangle.

“I don’t think they can go home,” agreed Granny. “You can’t cross the same river twice, I always say.”

Cutangle gave this some thought.

“I think you’re wrong there,” he said. “I must have crossed the same river, oh, thousands of times.”

“Ah, but it wasn’t the same river.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No.”

Cutangle shrugged. “It looked like the same bloody river.”

“No need to take that tone,” said Granny. “I don’t see why I should listen to that sort of language from a wizard who can’t even answer letters!”

Cutangle was silent for a moment, except for the castanet chatter of his teeth.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, I see. They were from you, were they?”

“That’s right. I signed them on the bottom. It’s supposed to be a sort of clue, isn’t it?”

“All right, all right. I just thought they were a joke, that’s all,” said Cutangle sullenly.

“A joke?”

“We don’t get many applications from women. We don’t get any.”

“I wondered why I didn’t get a reply,” said Granny.

“I threw them away, if you must know.”

“You could at least have—there it is!”

“Where? Where? Oh, there.”

The fog parted and they now saw it clearly—a fountain of snowflakes, a ornamental pillar of frozen air. And below it….

The staff wasn’t locked in ice, but lay peacefully in a seething pool of water.

One of the unusual aspects of a magical universe is the existence of opposites. It has already been remarked that darkness isn’t the opposite of light, it is simply the absence of light. In the same way absolute zero is merely the absence of heat. If you want to know what real cold is, the cold so intense that water can’t even freeze but anti-boils, look no further than this pool.

They looked in silence for some seconds, their bickering forgotten. Then Cutangle said slowly: “If you stick your hand in that, your fingers’ll snap like carrots.”

“Do you think you can lift it out by magic?” said Granny.

Cutangle started to pat his pockets and eventually produced his rollup bag. With expert fingers he shredded the remains of a few dogends into a fresh paper and licked it into shape, without taking his eyes off the staff.

“No,” he said. “but I’ll try anyway.”

He looked longingly at the cigarette and then poked it behind his ear. He extended his hands, fingers splayed, and his lips moved soundlessly as he mumbled a few words of power.

The staff spun in its pool and then rose gently away from the ice, where it immediately became the centre of a cocoon of frozen air. Cutangle groaned with the effort—direct levitation is the hardest of the practical magics, because of the ever-present danger of the wellknown principles of action and reaction, which means that a wizard attempting to lift a heavy item by mind power alone faces the prospect of ending up with his brains in his boots.

“Can you stand it upright?” said Granny.

With great delicacy the staff turned slowly in the air until it hung in front of Granny a few inches above the ice. Frost glittered on its carvings, but it seemed to Cutangle—through the red haze of migraine that hovered in front of his eyes—to be watching him. Resentfully.

Granny adjusted her hat and straightened up purposefully.

“Right,” she said. Cutangle swayed. The tone of voice cut through him like a diamond saw. He could dimly remember being scolded by his mother when he was small; well, this was that voice, only refined and concentrated and edged with little bits of carborundum, a tone of command that would have a corpse standing to attention and could probably have marched it halfway across its cemetery before it remembered it was dead.

Granny stood in front of the hovering staff, almost melting its icy covering by the sheer anger in her gaze.

“This is your idea of proper behaviour, is it? Lying around on the sea while people die? Oh, very well done!”

She stomped around in a semi-circle. To Cutangle’s bewilderment, the staff turned to follow her.

“So you were thrown away,” snapped Granny. “So what? She’s hardly more than a child, and children throw us all away sooner or later. Is this loyal service? Have you no shame, lying around sulking when you could be of some use at last?”

She leaned forward, her hooked nose a few inches from the staff. Cutangle was almost certain that the staff tried to lean backwards out of her way.

“Shall I tell you what happens to wicked staffs?” she hissed. “If Esk is lost to the world, shall I tell you what I will do to you? You were saved from the fire once, because you could pass on the hurt to her. Next time it won’t be the fire.”

Her voice sank to a whiplash whisper.

“First it’ll be the spokeshave. And then the sandpaper, and the auger, and the whittling knife—”

“I say, steady on,” said Cutangle, his eyes watering.

“—and what’s left I’ll stake out in the woods for the fungus and the woodlice and the beetles. It could take years.”

The carvings writhed. Most of them had moved around the back, out of Granny’s gaze.

“Now,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to pick you up and we are all going back to the University, aren’t we? Otherwise it’s blunt saw time.”

She rolled up her sleeves and extended a hand.

“Wizard,” she said, “I shall want you to release it.”

Cutangle nodded miserably.

“When I say now, now! Now!”

Cutangle opened his eyes again.

Granny was standing with her left arm extended full length in front of her, her hand clamped around the staff.

The ice was exploding off it, in gouts of steam.

“Right,” finished Granny, “and if this happens again I shall be very angry, do I make myself clear?”

Cutangle lowered his hands and hurried towards her.

“Are you hurt?”

She shook her head. “It’s like holding a hot icicle,” she said. “Come on, we haven’t got time to stand around chatting.”

“How are we going to get back?”

“Oh, show some backbone, man, for goodness sake. We’ll fly,”

Granny waved her broomstick. The Archchancellor looked at it doubtfully.

“On that?”

“Of course. Don’t wizards fly on their staffs?”

“It’s rather undignified.”

“If I can put up with that, so can you.”

“Yes, but is it safe?”

Granny gave him a withering look.

“Do you mean in the absolute sense?” she asked. “Or, say, compared with staying behind on a melting ice floe?”

“This is the first time I have ever ridden on a broomstick,” said Cutangle.

“Really.”

“I thought you just had to get on them and they flew,” said the wizard. “I didn’t know you had to do all that running up and down and shouting at them.”

“It’s a knack,” said Granny.

“I thought they went faster,” Cutangle continued, “and, to be frank, higher.”

“What do you mean, higher?” asked Granny, trying to compensate for the wizard’s weight on the pillion as they turned back upriver. Like pillion passengers since the dawn of time, he persisted in leaning the wrong way.

“Well, more sort of above the trees,” said Cutangle, ducking as a dripping branch swept his hat away.

“There’s nothing wrong with this broomstick that you losing a few stone wouldn’t cure,” snapped Granny. “Or would you rather get off and walk?”

“Apart from the fact that half the time my feet are touching the ground anyway,” said Cutangle. “I wouldn’t want to embarrass you. If someone had asked me to list all the perils of flying, you know, it would never have occurred to me to include having one’s legs whipped to death by tall bracken.”

“Are you smoking?” said Granny, staring grimly ahead. “Something’s burning.”

“It was just to calm my nerves what with all this headlong plunging through the air, madam.”

“Well, put it out this minute. And hold on.”

The broomstick lurched upwards and increased its speed to that of a geriatric jogger.

“Mr Wizard.”

“Hallo?”

“When I said hold on—”

“Yes?”

“I didn’t mean there.”

There was a pause.

“Oh. Yes. I see. I’m terribly sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

“My memory isn’t what it was . . . I assure you . . . no offence meant.”

“None taken.”

They flew in silence for a moment.

“Nevertheless,” said Granny thoughtfully, “I think that, on the whole, I would prefer you to move your hands.”

Rain gushed across the leads of Unseen University and poured into the gutters where ravens’ nests, abandoned since the summer, floated like very badly-built boats. The water gurgled along ancient, crusted pipes. It found its way under tiles and said hallo to the spiders under the eaves. It leapt from gables and formed secret lakes high amongst the spires.

Whole ecologies lived in the endless rooftops of the University, which by comparison made Gormenghast look like a toolshed on a railway allotment; birds sang in tiny jungles grown from apple pips and weed seeds, little frogs swam in the upper gutters, and a colony of ants were busily inventing an interesting and complex civilisation.

One thing the water couldn’t do was gurgle out of the ornamental gargoyles ranged around the roofs. This was because the gargoyles wandered off and sheltered in the attics at the first sign of rain. They held that just because you were ugly it didn’t mean you were stupid.

It rained streams. It rained rivers. It rained seas. But mainly it rained through the roof of the Great Hall, where the duel between Granny and Cutangle had left a very large hole, and Treatle felt that it was somehow raining on him personally.

He stood on a table organising the teams of students who were taking down the paintings and ancient tapestries before they got soaked. It had to be a table, because the floor was already several inches deep in water.

Not rainwater, unfortunately. This was water with real personality, the kind of distinctive character water gets after a long journey through silty countryside. It had the thick texture of authentic Ankh water—too stiff to drink, too runny to plough.

The river had burst its banks and a million little watercourses were flowing backwards, bursting in through the cellars and playing peekaboo under the flagstones. There was the occasional distant boom as some forgotten magic in a drowned dungeon shorted out and surrendered up its power; Treatle wasn’t at all keen on some of the unpleasant bubblings and hissings that were escaping to the surface.

He thought again how nice it would be to be the sort of wizard who lived in a little cave somewhere and collected herbs and thought significant thoughts and knew what the owls were saying. But probably the cave would be damp and the herbs would be poisonous and Treatle could never be sure, when all was said and done, exactly what thoughts were really significant.

He got down awkwardly and paddled through the dark swirling waters. Well, he had done his best. He’d tried to organise the senior wizards into repairing the roof by magic, but there was a general argument over the spells that could be used and a consensus that this was in any case work for artisans.

That’s wizards for you, he thought gloomily as he waded between the dripping arches, always probing the infinite but never noticing the definite, especially in the matter of household chores. We never had this trouble before that woman came.

He squelched up the steps, lit by a particularly impressive flash of lightning. He had a cold certainty that while of course no one could possibly blame him for all this, everybody would. He seized the hem of his robe and wrung it out wretchedly, then he reached for his tobacco pouch.

It was a nice green waterproof one. That meant that all the rain that had got into it couldn’t get out again. It was indescribable.

He found his little clip of papers. They were fused into one lump, like the legendary pound note found in the back pockets of trousers after they have been washed, spun, dried and ironed.

“Bugger,” he said, with feeling.

“I say! Treatle!”

Treatle looked around. He had been the last to leave the hall, where even now some of the benches were beginning to float. Whirlpools and patches of bubble marked the spots where magic was leaking from the cellars, but there was no one to be seen.

Unless, of course, one of the statues had spoken. They had been too heavy to move, and Trestle remembered telling the students that a thorough wash would probably do them good.

He looked at their stern faces and regretted it. The statues of very powerful dead mages were sometimes more lifelike than statues had any right to be. Maybe he should have kept his voice down.

“Yes?” he ventured, acutely aware of the stony stares.

“Up here, you fool!”

He looked up. The broomstick descended heavily through the rain in a series of swoops and jerks. About five feet above the water it lost its few remaining aerial pretensions, and flopped noisily into a whirlpool.

“Don’t stand there, idiot!”

Treatle peered nervously into the gloom.

“I’ve got to stand somewhere,” he said.

“I mean give us a hand!” snapped Cutangle, rising from the wavelets like a fat and angry Venus. “The lady first, of course.”

He turned to Granny, who was fishing around in the water.

“I’ve lost my hat,” she said.

Cutangle sighed. “Does that really matter at a time like this?”

“A witch has got to have a hat, otherwise who’s to know?” said Granny. She made a grab as something dark and sodden drifted by, cackled triumphantly, tipped out the water and rammed the hat on her head. It had lost its stiffening and flopped rather rakishly over one eye.

“Right,” she said, in a tone of voice that suggested the whole universe had just better watch out.

There was another brilliant flash of lightning, which shows that even the weather gods have a well-developed sense of theatre.

“It rather suits you,” said Cutangle.

“Excuse me,” said Trestle, “but isn’t she the w—”

“Never mind that,” said Cutangle, taking Granny’s hand and helping her up the steps. He flourished the staff.

“But it’s against the lore to allow w—”

He stopped and stared as Granny reached out and touched the damp wall by the door. Cutangle tapped him on the chest.

“Show me where it’s written down,” said Cutangle.

“They’re in the Library,” Granny interrupted.

“It was the only dry place,” said Treatle, “but—”

“This building is frightened of thunderstorms,” said Granny. “It could do with comforting.”

“But the lore—”repeated Treatle desperately.

Granny was already striding down the passage, with Cutangle hopping along behind. He turned.

“You heard the lady,” he said.

Treatle watched them go, with his mouth hanging open. When their footsteps had died away in the distance he stood silently for a moment, thinking about life and where his could have gone wrong.

However, he wasn’t going to be accused of disobedience.

Very carefully, without knowing exactly why, he reached out and gave the wall a friendly pat.

“There, there,” he said.

Strangely enough, he felt a lot better.

It occurred to Cutangle that he ought to lead the way in his own premises, but Granny in a hurry was no match for a nearterminal nicotine addict and he kept up only by a sort of crabwise leaping.

“It’s this way,” he said, splashing through the puddles.

“I know. The building told me.”

“Yes, I was meaning to ask about that,” said Cutangle, “because you see it’s never said anything to me and I’ve lived here for years.”

“Have you ever listened to it?”

“Not exactly listened, no,” Cutangle conceded. “Not as such.”

“Well then,” said Granny, edging past a waterfall where the kitchen steps used to be (Mrs Whitlow’s washing would never be the same again). “I think it’s up here and along the passage, isn’t it?”

She swept past a trio of astonished wizards, who were surprised by her and completely startled by her hat.

Cutangle panted after her and caught her arm at the doors to the Library.

“Look,” he said desperately, “No offence, Miss—um, Mistress—”

“I think Esmerelda will suffice now. What with us having shared a broomstick and everything.”