‘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 of 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;{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 civilization.
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 organizing 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 organize 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.