“—burn, with a clear bright light—”

Splash, suck, splash.

“—and I in mine…Om be praised.”

Squelch, splash.

Oats had worked his way through most of the hymns he knew, even the old ones which you shouldn’t really sing anymore but you nevertheless remembered because the words were so good. He sang them loudly and defiantly, to hold back the night and the doubts. They helped take his mind off the weight of Granny Weatherwax. It was amazing how much she’d apparently gained in the last mile or so, especially whenever he fell over and she landed on top of him.

He lost one of his own boots in a mire. His hat was floating in a pool somewhere. Thorns had ripped his coat to tatters—

He slipped and fell once again as the mud shifted under his feet. Granny rolled off, and landed in a clump of sedge.

If Brother Melchio could only see him now…

The wowhawk swooped past and landed on the branch of a dead tree, a few yards away. Oats hated the thing. It appeared demonic. It flew even though it surely couldn’t see through the hood. Worse, whenever he thought about it, as now, the hooded head turned to fix him with an invisible stare. He took off his other useless shoe, its shiny leather all stained and cracked, and flung it inexpertly.

“Go away, you wicked creature!”

The bird didn’t stir. The shoe flew past it.

Then, as he tried to get to his feet, he smelled burning leather.

Two wisps of smoke were curling up from either side of the hood.

Oats reached to his neck for the security of the turtle, and it wasn’t there. It has cost him five obols in the Citadel, and it was too late now to reflect that perhaps he shouldn’t have hung it from a chain worth a tenth of an obol. It was probably lying in some pool, or buried in some muddy, squelching marsh…

Now the leather burned away, and the yellow glow from the holes was so bright he could barely see the outline of the bird. It turned the dank landscape into lines and shadows, put a golden edge on every tuft of grass and stricken tree—and winked out so quickly that it left Oats’s eyes full of purple explosions.

When he’d recovered his breath and his balance, the bird was swooping away down the moor.

He picked up Granny Weatherwax’s unconscious body and ran after it.

The track did lead downhill, at least. Mud and bracken slipped under his feet. Streams were running from every hole and gully. Half the time it seemed to him that he wasn’t walking, merely controlling a slide, bouncing off rocks, slithering through puddles of mud and leaves.

And then there was the castle, seen through a gap in the trees, lit by a flash of lightning. Oats staggered through a clump of thorn bushes, managed to keep upright down a slope of loose boulders, and collapsed on the road with Granny Weatherwax on top of him.

She stirred.

“…holiday from reason…kill them all…can’t be havin’ with this…” she murmured.

The wind blew a branchful of raindrops on her face, and she opened her eyes. For a moment they seemed to Oats to have red pupils, and then the icy blue gaze focused on him.

“Are we here, then?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to your holy hat?”

“It got lost,” said Oats abruptly. Granny peered closer.

“Your magic amulet’s gone too,” she said. “The one with the turtle and the little man on it.”

“It’s not a magic amulet, Mistress Weatherwax! Please! A magic amulet is a symbol of primitive and mechanistic superstition, whereas the Turtle of Om is…is…is…well, it’s not, do you understand?”

“Oh, right. Thank you for explaining,” said Granny. “Help me up, will you?”

Oats was having some difficulty with his temper. He’d carried the old bit—biddy for miles, he was frozen to the bone, and now they were here she acted as if she’d somehow done him a favor.

“What’s the magic word?” he snarled.

“Oh, I don’t think a holy man like you should be having with magic words,” said Granny. “But the holy words are: do what I tell you or get smitten. They should do the trick.”

He helped her to her feet, alive with badly digested rage, and supported her as she swayed.

There was a scream from the castle, suddenly cut off.

“Not female,” said Granny. “I reckon the girls have started. Let’s give ’em a hand, shall we?”

Her arm shook as she raised it. The wowhawk fluttered down and settled on her wrist.

“Now help get me to the gate.”

“Don’t mention it, glad to be of service,” Oats mumbled. He looked at the bird, whose hood swiveled to face him.

“That’s the…other phoenix, isn’t it,” he said.

“Yes,” said Granny, watching the door. “A phoenix. You can’t have just one of anything.”

“But it looks like a little hawk.”

“It was born among hawks, so it looks like a hawk. If it was hatched in a hen roost it’d be a chicken. Stands to reason. And a hawk it’ll remain, until it needs to be a phoenix. They’re shy birds. You could say a phoenix is what it may become…”

“Too much eggshell…”

“Yes, Mister Oats. And when does the phoenix sometimes lay two eggs? When it needs to. Hodgesaargh was right. A phoenix is of the nature of birds. Bird first, myth second.”

The doors were hanging loose, their iron reinforcements twisted out of shape and their timbers smoldering, but some effort had been made to pull them shut. Over what remained of the arch, a bat carved in stone told visitors everything they needed to know about this place.

On Granny’s wrist the hood of the hawk was crackling and smoking. As he watched, little flames erupted from the leather again.

“It knows what they did,” said Granny. “It was hatched knowing. Phoenixes share their minds. And they don’t tolerate evil.”

The head turned to look at Oats with its white-hot stare and, instinctively, he backed away and tried to cover his eyes.

“Use the doorknocker,” said Granny, nodding to the big iron ring hanging loosely from one splintered door.

“What? You want me to knock on the door? Of a vampire’s castle?”

“We’re not going to sneak in, are we? Anyway, you Omnians are good at knocking on doors.”

“Well, yes,” said Oats, “but normally just for a shared prayer and to interest people in our pamphlets—” he let the knocker fall a few times, the boom echoing around the valley “—not to have my throat ripped out!”

“Think of this as a particularly difficult street,” said Granny. “Try again…mebbe they’re hidin’ behind the sofa, eh?”

“Hah!”

“You’re a good man, Mister Oats?” said Granny, conversationally, as the echoes died away. “Even without your holy book and holy amulet and holy hat?”

“Er…I try to be…” he ventured.

“Well…this is where you find out,” said Granny. “To the fire we come at last, Mister Oats. This is where we both find out.”