There are some experiences that not even the abundant vocabulary of language can adequately describe. Fortunately the experience in their journey through L-Space was one of these. Unpleasant will have to do and be grateful that's all you have to know.

At other times the Librarian may have navigated a longer, safer, less organ-displacing route but time was of the essence and, besides, the entry to the private library was hard to find and elusive to nail down. They twisted and turned and rolled and dived their way through a landscape that was a blend of all the dreams and nightmares that writers have woven into words over the centuries. They had no time to dwell on these glimpses as they flew past like images in a madly spun a kaleidoscope. Mostly they concentrated on keeping a range of recent meals where they should be, without great success.

As they spiralled more and more tightly towards their destination a sudden jerk ripped Magrat's hand out of Nanny's. She found herself, still clinging desperately to Verence, Esmeralda pinned firmly to her chest by a recently purchased baby carrying contraption, freewheeling through the literary vortex. She groped out through the rainbow bedlam, eyes clenched shut so she didn't pass out, desperate for anything to hold on to.

Then out of the chaos something grabbed her flaying hand. The strongest, largest leather glove ever to evolve. With an arm wrenching tug she tumbled forward from the clutches of L-Space dragging Verence behind her. Never had the hard wooden floor that lay beneath her felt so good.

'Well, that was a bugger,' said Nanny's familiar voice, succinctly describing one of the worst experiences of their lives.

'And that's what you do for a living?' said Verence some minutes later after they had confirmed everyone was safe. Amazingly, Esmeralda appeared to have slept through the whole episode, which just goes to show that children have got more tricks up their sleeves than most adults credit them for. This is a burden children the world over share.

'Ook ook eek,' said the Librarian.

'He said…,' began Nanny but Verence cut her off.

'I think I'm beginning to understand him,' he said. 'I'm pretty sure he agreed with your observation Nanny.'

'Yep. He also added that only trying to get funding out of the wizards for new books is worse. Now what?'

On cue, the door to the small room they were in swung quietly open to reveal a young woman clearly unsure about what she was going to find. She smiled with relief when her eyes fell on the Librarian, which was not the reaction he typically received on sudden appearances.

The woman wore a simple shirt and trousers that the word loose did no justice to. Loose is such a negative word when it comes to appearances. The trousers were large – not clown large, but not small either. The difference was that these weren't comical at all. They seemed perfect for the hot humid climate, evident even here in the library. You could almost call them pantaloons if it wasn't such a silly word.

Her hairstyle was plain and functional also, though Nanny couldn't help noticing a hairpin or two. Nanny was a great fan of hairpins, not so much for their traditional role, more for their penetrating power, particularly around soft tissue. There was something about the sparkle in the woman's eyes, and a determination in her face that suggested the woman knew exactly how useful hairpins could be. She had strong features, but softened. She was the sort of woman that didn't fit the word pretty, but was right at home with handsome. Nanny nodded with approval.

The woman bowed to the ape and then to the others, in turn. 'Welcome to Weizhi,' she said in a heavily accented Ankhmorporkian. 'I hope you had a pleasant journey.'

'Not unless you add 'un' in front of it,' said Nanny. 'You must be Lei Ching.'

The woman bowed again in acknowledgment. 'My apologies, then, for the unpleasantness of your travel.'

'It's not your fault, me old china,' Nanny replied. 'Save your apologies for when you need them.'

Nanny lived by this principle and currently had years' worth of them stored up. She was good at collecting her own apologies but hadn't got round to distributing them all that effectively, largely because she had such broad definitions of the term appropriate that she hadn't come across many situations where she felt an apology was warranted. Mostly she couldn't see why people wouldn't just join in.

'We must go,' said Lei Ching, 'before others find us. Follow me.'

And so the strangest concoction of visitors to arrive at Weizhi, a witch with no boundaries, a librarian who swung from the bookshelves, a mother who was a witch and a queen and a king who had once been a fool, wound their way out of the dark recesses of the library.

First there was the complicated knock on the door. Then there was the usual hurried explanations that typically arose when one of your party is, quite clearly, a large ape. But it all got sorted out as things always do. It helps when the ape is on your team.

'This is Zhanshi,' said Lei Ching, introducing them to the young man who had opened the door. 'He will take you on the rest of your journey.'

'Aren't you coming with us?' asked Magrat. She'd taken a liking to the young woman.

'I'm sure our ways will cross again Queen Magrat, but for now we must travel different paths towards the same destination.'

'Very profound,' observed Nanny. 'You Agateans like a bit of profundity, don't you?'

Nanny was prone to quick racial stereotypes, which she tended to get away with because a) she did it to everyone b) there was no malice - she reserved judgement for deeds not background c) she was Nanny. But not this time.

'Next you'll be saying we're inscrutable,' interrupted Zhanshi, in a combative tone. Everything about the young man seemed combative. Even the topknot he wore seemed to convey a sort of formal defiance. 'You foreigners are all the same.'

'No I wouldn't,' replied Nanny with a grin that could cut glass, ''cause I have no idea what that word means. I think I could get to like you, sunshine. Nothing wrong with some fire in the belly, or other parts,' she added with a wink that totally derailed Zhanshi's chain of thought. Old woman weren't supposed to behave like young woman with an appetite for, well, whatever.

'And before you judge me too harshly on stereotyping, ask yourself what sayin' 'You foreigners are all the same' is? Nothing wrong, in a broad sense, with a bit of stereotyping to figure out where the ground lines, the trick is not to use it as a rule. I'm thinking you might find we don't fit your typical foreigners. Not by a long chalk. Besides, moulds and rules were made to be broken.'

She gave the young man another of those winks and any arguments he might have used turned tail and fled. Zhanshi had, in less than a minute, learned a lesson that many spent a lifetime assiduously not learning. Assumptions can be handy when you don't have time for anything else and things demand a decision but outside of that they have a habit of biting you in the bum. The lesson would make him a better person, but right now what he needed was some quiet contemplative time away from that wicked wink.

Nanny watched all of this unfold. The only thing better than an appropriate wink was an inappropriate one. That and quite a few other things, she added on reflection.

'Where did you learn such good Ankh Morpork?' asked Verence in a desperate attempt to change the topic. He'd seen that wink before and knew things could go down from there.

'Mr King,' replied Lei Ching, 'we are not a people who travel much. At least, not people of our station. We are not really even Agatean, except by conquest. Many years ago, though, one of the residents of the mainland travelled to your fair country and bought back such tales. He wrote these in a book and this inspired many of us to learn more of your world. We have been doubly lucky because for some years this traveller has lived with us here. Mostly, he's just trying to keep a low profile. His stories of a land where 'the people' have some sort of say in things don't go down well here. His name is Liang Duo Hua, but we usually call him the Teacher.'

'I would like to meet this man,' said Verence.

'I hope you do, though his whereabouts are always fluid. It's time now for you to rest. Tomorrow we head to the forest, so you can see what is happening.'

It would be nice to say they all slept comfortably that night but a quick look at the guest list squeezed into limited accommodation would suggest otherwise. Otherwise won hand's down.

When sleep is largely a stranger it's not that hard to make an early morning start, even if your fellow travellers are in a grumpy state. Only Esmeralda seemed to be in fine spirits. She had been fascinated by the strange big hairy man. With the natural trepidation that one primate feels for another Magrat had only slowly given into her infant's insistence to be as close to the ape as possible. She needn't have worried. There is no correlation between size and roughness, as anyone who has seen a large animal with its baby can attest. The ape, for all its bulk, was as careful near the child as it would have been around the rarest of books. So careful was he that Magrat even gave the Librarian a chance to nurse Esmeralda. Both the ape and the infant were so thrilled with this that soon Magrat was letting the Librarian do the bulk of the carrying.

Their departure has not gone unnoticed, despite the earliness of the hour, but that was inevitable in a city like Weizhi. The wheels of survival are not necessarily answerable to minimum working conditions nor do they care what the hour of the day is. At least not in Weizhi. There were those going to work early, those come home from work late, those that worked on the street and those who had nowhere else to go to except the street.

So, yes, they were observed, not by anyone, but by nobody. People the government had no interest in and preferred to largely treat as though they didn't exist. It was possible that someone may have been a paid informer but as informers generally had a life expectancy of a cinder in snow if they ever got found out and being out yourself at these strange hours may leave you open to being an observed observer the chances were low. Nonetheless they moved quickly through the tortuous, rambling streets, past tiny stores where vendors lived their whole life in rutputty buildings that spoke of some former glory abandoned by the latest version of civilisation and consumed by the slow but persistent appetite of time. It's not just a jungle out there.

They worked their way out of the sardined quarters of the unseen, steadily moving into those areas where being seen was part of the address. Fortunately, no one worth being seen was out at a time like this when your chances of actually being seen were slim. It's not enough to be good looking, you need to be good looked as well.

Then, quite rapidly, the urban landscape gave way to fields. 'We need to move quickly now,' said Zhanshi. 'The sun will be up shortly and we are out in the open. We need to make it to the forests as soon as possible.'

'Tell me,' said Verence, who prided himself on keeping up with international politics, 'I get that we seem to be under some sort of regime here, but didn't the Agatean Empire go through a revolution and you're now the People's Republic of Agatea?'

'The People's Beneficial Republic of Agatea,' corrected Zhanshi. 'Yes, there was a revolution and all things changed, or so we've heard. Change does not come easily to Agatea. There are many whose only interest in change is to change everything back to the way it was, and in Agatea that view has many powerful supporters. Besides, Bhangbhangduc is a long way from the heart of the Empire … Republic … and little, if anything has changed. We still have our hierarchy of power and that hierarchy still uses oppression as its weapon of choice. Do you understand?'

Verence did. He ruled a frontier kingdom and it would be hard to imagine that ever changing, even if Lancre became part of some beneficial republic. Mind you, that was more to do with the people than the rules, but nevertheless. He nodded, and they lapsed into silence.

They were jogging through the bread bowl of a large city and that meant only one thing. Incredibly flat, incredibly uniform and incredibly boring scenery. The purpose of food production is to feed bodies, not aesthetics. Sto Lat had its plains of cabbage and Weizhi had its ...

'Swamps,' said Nanny as she puffed along. There hadn't been an option to bring a broomstick on the journey but Nanny kept up with the best of them. She had spent a lifetime, which equated to several lifetimes, involved in the sort of lifestyle choices that built stamina. Nanny didn't just have to run away from trouble, she quite enjoyed running towards it. 'Lucky they've found somthin' that can grow in all that water.'

'That's rice, Mrs Ogg,' replied Zhanshi. 'It is the staple food of our diet.'

'I've eaten a bit of rice in my time,' said Nanny, 'never knew staples were involved but you learn a new thing every day.'

Zhanshi bit his tongue, which was not his typical approach to a conversation. But then Nanny was far from typical. 'Is she always like this?' he asked Verence during a short feeding break.

'Oh no,' Verence replied.

'Thank the gods,' Zhanshi said with a smile.

'Usually she's not this restrained. Wait until she gets more comfortable around you.'

'More comfortable?!'

'She's a little reserved. Still trying to figure things out I'd guess.'

'Reserved?!'

Verence gave Zhanshi a sympathetic smile. 'You'll get used to it after a while. Whether that's a good thing or not is another question. What you have to understand about Nanny is that she is always herself. One hundred percent proof. Like the cider she makes. The important thing, though, is that she is in your side, and there's no one better in a tight spot than Nanny...mind you, it's usually wise to have the light on if you're in that spot with her.'

The sun was climbing rapidly and they had little time for conversation but plenty of time for Zhanshi to wonder what he had got himself into. An hour later a green smudge on the horizon had resolved itself into the tree line and another hour later, as the day began to turn up the heat and humidity, they were into the jungle.

Nanny and Magrat had been around swamps before and they knew how a wrong path could lead to a very watery grave, typically involving quite a lot of reptilian teeth, but the jungle was a different kettle of fish, or probably snakes. It wasn't so much the risk of a dangerous path as finding any path whatsoever. If they didn't have Zhanshi with them life would have been a misery and possibly a lot shorter. Somehow, amongst the vines that could shred your skin and the roots that grabbed at your legs, the man could find a passable track.

Despite the fecundity of vegetation the jungle was surprisingly quiet. You could hear the distance chatter of monkeys and the occasional scream of some animal either marking its presence felt or making the last sound of their life, but around them all was silent. As though the jungle was watching them and waiting for them to pass.

Since they had entered the green madness the Librarian had been tense with excitement and trepidation. It's easy to know when an orangutan is tense. There's plenty of hair to stand on end. His natural inclination was to take to the trees but he'd now become official baby carrier and he took that duty with all seriousness. It was only when they had taken another of their increasingly frequent breaks that he let out a loud 'Eek'.

The sharpness of the sound made the other party members jump. The ape turned to Magrat and with great but rapid care passed Esmeralda over.

'He's heard something,' said Nanny.

'We're approaching the first site,' replied Zhanshi. 'He will not be happy with what he sees.'

Child-free, the Librarian gave a determined 'Ook', and within moments was up in the branches and swinging quickly off into the enfolding foliage.

'Something tells me we'd better get there as quickly as possible,' observed Nanny, who had had a lifetime of knowing when trouble was just around the corner. Admittedly, the trouble often occurred around the corner she was standing in but the principle was still valid.

In the distance a large primate screamed.