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 well-known 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 semicircle. 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 offense 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;{20} 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 water-courses were flowing backwards, bursting in through the cellars and playing peek-a-boo 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 Treatle 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 theater.
“It rather suits you,” said Cutangle.
“Excuse me,” said Treatle, “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 near-terminal 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 offense, Miss—um, Mistress—”
“I think Esmerelda will suffice now. What with us having shared a broomstick and everything.”
“Can I go in front? It is my library,” he begged.
Granny turned around, her face a mask of surprise. Then she smiled.
“Of course. I’m so sorry.”
“For the look of the thing, you see,” said Cutangle apologetically. He pushed the door open.
The library was full of wizards, who care about their books in the same way that ants care about their eggs and in time of difficulty carry the
m around in much the same way. The water was getting in even here, and turning up in rather odd places because of the library’s strange gravitational effects. All the lower shelves had been cleared and relays of wizards and students were pilling the volumes on every available table and dry shelf. The air was full of the sound of angry rustling pages, which almost drowned out the distant fury of the storm.
This was obviously upsetting the librarian, who was scurrying from wizard to wizard, tugging ineffectually at their robes and shouting “ook.”
He spotted Cutangle and knuckled rapidly towards him. Granny had never seen an orangutan before, but wasn’t about to admit it, and remained quite calm in the face of a small pot-bellied man with extremely long arms and a size 12 skin on a size 8 body.
“Ook,” it explained, “ooook.”
“I expect so,” said Cutangle shortly, and grabbed the nearest wizard, who was tottering under the weight of a dozen grimoires. The man stared at him as if he were a ghost, looked sideways at Granny, and dropped the books on the floor. The librarian winced.
“Archchancellor?” gasped the wizard, “you’re alive? I mean—we heard you’d been spirited away by—” he looked at Granny again, “—I mean, we thought—Treatle told us—”
“Oook,” said the librarian, shooing some pages back between their covers.
“Where are young Simon and the girl? What have you done with them?” Granny demanded.
“They—we put them over here,” said the wizard, backing away. “Um—”
“Show us,” said Cutangle. “And stop stuttering, man, you think you’d never seen a woman before.”
The wizard swallowed hard and nodded vigorously.
“Certainly. And—I mean—please follow me—um—”
“You weren’t going to say anything about the lore, were you?” asked Cutangle.
“Um—no, Archchancellor.”
“Good.”
They followed hard on his trodden-down heels as he scurried between the toiling wizards, most of whom stopped working to stare as Granny strode past.
“This is getting embarrassing,” said Cutangle, out of the corner of his mouth. “I shall have to declare you an honorary wizard.”
Granny stared straight ahead and her lips hardly moved.
“You do,” she hissed, “and I will declare you an honorary witch.”
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