“There,” she said, “bracing, wasn't it? Seemed to me you could do with a cold bath.”
Ridcully tried to clean some mud out of his ear. He glared at Granny.
“Why aren't you wet?”
“I am.”
“No you're not. You're just damp. I'm wet through. How can you float down a river and just be damp?”
“I dries out quick.”
Granny Weatherwax glared up the rocks. A short distance away the steep road ran on to Lancre, but there were other, more private ways known to her among the trees,
“So,” she said, more or less to herself. “She wants to stop me going there, does she? Well, we'll see about that.”
“Going where?” said Ridcully.
“Ain't sure,” said Granny. “All I know is, if she don't want me to go there, that's where I'm going. But I hadn't bargained on you tumin' up and having a rush of blood to the heart. Come on.”
Ridcully wrung out his robe. A lot of the sequins had come off. He removed his hat and unscrewed the point.
Headgear picks up morphic vibrations. Quite a lot of trouble had once been caused in Unseen University by a former Archchancellor's hat, which had picked up too many magical vibrations after spending so much time on wizardly heads and had developed a personality of its very own. Ridcully had put a stop to this by having his own hat made to particular specifications by an Ankh-Morpork firm of completely insane hatters.
It was not a normal wizard hat. Few wizards have ever made much use of the pointy bit, except maybe to keep the odd pair of socks in it. But Ridcully's hat had small cupboards. It had surprises. It had four telescopic legs and a roll of oiled silk in the brim that extended downward to make a small but serviceable tent, and a patent spirit stove just above it. It had inner pockets with three days' supply of iron rations. And the tip unscrewed to dispense an adequate supply of spirituous liquors for use in emergencies, such as when Ridcully was thirsty.
Ridcully waved the small pointed cup at Granny.
“Brandy?” he said.
“What have you got on your head?”
Ridcully felt his pate gingerly.
“Urn . . .”
“Smells like honey and horse apples to me. And what's that thing?”
Ridcully lifted the small cage off his head. There was a small treadmill in it, in a complex network of glass rods. A couple of feeding bowls were visible. And there was a small, hairy and currently quite wet mouse.
“Oh, it's something some of the young wizards came up with,” said Ridcully diffidently “I said I'd . . . try it out for them. The mouse hair rubs against the glass rods and there's sparks, don't'y'know, and . . . and . . .”
Granny Weatherwax looked at the Archchancellor's somewhat grubby hair and raised an eyebrow.
“My word,” she said. “What will they think of next?”
“Don't really understand how it works, Stibbons is the man for this sort of thing, I thought I'd help them out. . .”
“Lucky you were going bald, eh?”
In the darkness of her sickroom Diamanda opened her eyes, if they were her eyes. There was a pearly sheen to them. The song was as yet only on the threshold of hearing. And the world was different. A small part of her mind was still Diamanda, and looked out through the mists of enchantment. The world was a pattern of fine silver lines, constantly moving, as though everything was coated with filigree. Except where there was iron. There the lines were crushed and tight and bent. There, the whole world was invisible. Iron distorted the world. Keep away from iron.
She slipped out of bed, using the edge of the blanket to grasp the door handle, and opened the door.
Shawn Ogg was standing very nearly to attention.
Currently he was guarding the castle and Seeing How Long He Could Stand On One Leg.
Then it occurred to him that this wasn't a proper activity for a martial artist, and he turned it into No. 19, the Flying Chrysanthemum Double Drop Kick.