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“They might get something back, though.”
“I wish you hadn't said that.”
There was a pause while they contemplated what might come back, inhabiting living bodies, acting almost like the original inhabitants.
“It's probably my fault -”they said in unison, and stopped in astonishment.
“You first, madam,” said Cutangle.
“Them cigaretty things,” asked Granny, “are they good for the nerves?”
Cutangle opened his mouth to point out very courteously that tobacco was a habit reserved for wizards, but thought better of it. He extended the tobacco pouch towards Granny.
She told him about Esk's birth, and the coming of the old wizard, and the staff, and Esk's forays into magic. By the time she had finished she had succeeded in rolling a tight, thin cylinder that burned with a small blue flame and made her eyes water.
“I don't know that shaky nerves wouldn't be better,” she wheezed.
Cutangle wasn't listening.
“This is quite astonishing,” he said. “You say the child didn't suffer in any way?”
“Not that I noticed,” said Granny. “The staff seemed - well, on her side, if you know what I mean.”
“And where is this staff now?”
“She said she threw it in the river . . . .”
The old wizard and the elderly witch stared at each other, their faces illuminated by a flare of lightning outside.
Cutangle shook his head. “The river's flooding,” he said. “It's a million-to-one chance.”
Granny smiled grimly. It was the sort of smile that wolves ran away from. Granny grasped her broomstick purposefully.
“Million-to-one chances,” she said, “crop up nine times out of ten.”
There are storms that are frankly theatrical, all sheet lightning and metallic thunder rolls. There are storms that are tropical and sultry, and incline to hot winds and fireballs. But this was a storm of the Circle Sea plains, and its main ambition was to hit the ground with as much rain as possible. It was the kind of storm that suggests that the whole sky has swallowed a diuretic. The thunder and lightning hung around in the background, supplying a sort of chorus, but the rain was the star of the show. It tap-danced across the land.
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.”
