Cutangle lit his third rollup from the stub of the second. This last cigarette owed a lot to the creative powers of nervous energy, and looked like a camel with the legs cut off.
He had already watched the staff lift itself gently from Esk and land on Simon.
Now it had floated up into the air again.
Other wizards had crowded into the room. The librarian was sitting under the table.
“If only we had some idea what is going on,” said Cutangle. “It’s the suspense I can’t stand.”
“Think positively, man,” snapped Granny. “And put out that bloody cigarette, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to come back to a room that smells like a fireplace.”
As one man the assembled college of wizards turned their faces towards Cutangle, expectantly.
He took the smouldering mess out of his mouth and, with a glare that none of the assembled wizards cared to meet, trod it underfoot.
“Probably time I gave it up anyway,” he said. “That goes for the rest of you, too. Worse than an ashpit in this place, sometimes.”
Then he saw the staff. It was
The only way Cutangle could describe the effect was that it seemed to be going very fast while staying in exactly the same place.
Streamers of gas flared away from it and vanished, if they were gas. It blazed like a comet designed by an inept special effects man. Coloured sparks leapt out and disappeared somewhere.
It was also changing colour, starting with a dull red and then climbing through the spectrum until it was a painful violet. Snakes of white fire coruscated along its length.
There should be a word for words that sound like things would sound like if they made a noise, he thought. The word “glisten” does indeed gleam oily, and if there was ever a word that sounded exactly the way sparks look as they creep across burned paper, or the way the lights of cities would creep across the world if the whole of human civilisation was crammed into one night, then you couldn’t do better than “coruscate”.
He knew what would happen next.
“Look out,” he whispered. “It’s going to go -”
In total silence, in the kind of silence in fact that sucks in sounds and stifles them, the staff flashed into pure octarine along the whole of its length.
The eighth colour, produced by light falling through a strong magical field, blazed out through bodies and bookshelves and walls. Other colours blurred and ran together, as though the light was a glass of gin poured over the watercolour painting of the world. The clouds over the University glowed, twisted into fascinating and unexpected shapes, and streamed upwards.
An observer above the Disc would have seen a little patch of land near the Circle Sea sparkle like a jewel for several seconds, then wink out.
The silence of the room was broken by a wooden clatter as the staff dropped out of the air and bounced on the table.
Someone said “Ook”, very faintly.
Cutangle eventually remembered how to use his hands and raised them to where he hoped his eyes would be. Everything had gone black.
“Is – anyone else there?” he said.
“Gods, you don’t know how glad I am to hear you say that,” said another voice. The silence was suddenly full of babble.
“Are we still where we were?”
“I don’t know. Where were we?”
“Here, I think.”
“Can you reach out?”
“Not unless I am quite certain about what I’m going to touch, my good man,” said the unmistakable voice of Granny Weatherwax.
“Everyone try and reach out,” said Cutangle, and choked down a scream as a hand like a warm leather glove closed around his ankle. There was a satisfied little “ook”, which managed to convey relief, comfort and the sheer joy of touching a fellow human being or, in this case, anthropoid.
There was a scratch and then a blessed flare of red light as a wizard on the far side of the room lit a cigarette.
“Who did that?”
“Sorry, Archchancellor, force of habit.”
“Smoke all you like, that man.”
“Thank you, Archchancellor.”
“I think I can see the outline of the door now,” said another voice.
“Granny?”
“Yes, I can definitely see -”
“Esk?”
“I’m here, Granny.”
“Can I smoke too, sir?”
“Is the boy with you?”
“Yes.”
“Ook.”
“I’m here.”
“What’s happening?”
“Everyone stop talking!”
Ordinary light, slow and easy on the eye, sidled back into the Library.
Esk sat up, dislodging the staff. It rolled under the table. She felt something slip over her eyes, and reached up for it.
“Just a moment,” said Granny, darting forward. She gripped the girl’s shoulders and peered into her eyes.
“Welcome back,” she said, and kissed her.
Esk reached up and patted something hard on her head. She lifted it down to examine it.
It was a pointed hat, slightly smaller than Granny’s, but bright blue with a couple of silver stars painted on it.
“A wizard hat?” she said.
Cutangle stepped forward.
“Ah, yes,”he said, and cleared his throat: “You see, we thought – it seemed – anyway, when we considered it -”
“You’re a wizard,” said Granny, simply. “The Archchancellor changed the lore. Quite a simple ceremony, really.”
“There’s the staff somewhere about here,” said Cutangle. “I saw it fall down – oh.”
He stood up with the staff in his hand, and showed it to Granny.
“I thought it had carvings on,” he said. “This looks just like a stick.” And that was a fact. The staff looked as menacing and potent as a piece of kindling.
Esk turned the hat around in her hands, in the manner of one who, opening the proverbial brightly-wrapped package, finds bath salts.
“It’s very nice,” she said uncertainly.
“Is that all you can say?” said Granny.
“It’s pointed, too.” Somehow being a wizard didn’t feel any different from not being a wizard.
Simon leaned over.
“Remember,” he said, “you’ve got to have been a wizard. Then you can start looking on the other side. Like you said.”
Their eyes met, and they grinned.
Granny stared at Cutangle. He shrugged.
“Search me,” he said. “What’s happened to your stutter, boy?”
“Seems to have gone, sir,” said Simon brightly. “Must have left it behind, somewhere.”
The river was still brown and swollen but at least it resembled a river again.
It was unnaturally hot for late autumn, and across the whole of the lower part of Ankh-Morpork the steam rose from thousands of carpets and blankets put out to dry. The streets were filled with silt, which on the whole was an improvement – AnkhMorpork’s impressive civic collection of dead dogs had been washed out to sea.
The steam also rose from the flagstones of the Archchancellor’s personal verandah, and from the teapot on the table.
Granny lay back in an ancient cane chair and let the unseasonal warmth creep around her ankles. She idly watched a team of city ants, who had lived under the flagstones of the University for so long that the high levels of background magic had permanently altered their genes, anthandling a damp sugar lump down from the bowl on to a tiny trolley. Another group was erecting a matchstick gantry at the edge of the table.
Granny may or may not have been interested to learn that one of the ants was Drum Billet, who had finally decided to give Life another chance.
“They say,” she said, “that if you can find an ant on Hogswatch Day it will be very mild for the rest of the winter.”
“Who says that?” said Cutangle.
“Generally people who are wrong,” said Granny. “I makes a note in my Almanack, see. I checks. Most things most people believe are wrong.”
“Like `red sky at night, the city’s alight’,” said Cutangle. “And you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
“I don’t think that’s what old dogs are for,” said Granny. The sugar lump had reached the gantry now, and a couple of ants were attaching it to a microscopic block and tackle.
“I can’t understand half the things Simon says,” said Cutangle, “although some of the students get very excited about it.
“I understand what Esk says all right, I just don’t believe it,” said Granny. “Except the bit about wizards needing a heart.”
“She said that witches need a head, too,” said Cutangle. “Would you like a scone? A bit damp, I’m afraid.”
“She told me that if magic gives people what they want, then not using magic can give them what they need,” said Granny, her hand hovering over the plate.
“So Simon tells me. I don’t understand it myself, magic’s for using, not storing up. Go on, spoil yourself.”
“Magic beyond magic,” snorted Granny. She took the scone and spread jam on it. After a pause she spread cream on it too.
The sugar lump crashed to the flagstones and was immediately surrounded by another team of ants, ready to harness it to a long line of red ants enslaved from the kitchen garden.