wyrd

years under the bladder, man and boy. And my father before me. And my nuncle at the same time as him. And my grandad before them. And his-'
'Your whole family have been Fools?'
'Family tradition, sir,' said the Fool. 'Prithee, I mean.'
The duke smiled again, and the Fool was too worried to notice how many teeth it contained.
'You come from these parts, don't you?' said the duke.
'Ma – Yes, sir.'
'So you would know all about the native beliefs and so on?'
'I suppose so, sir. Prithee.'
'Good. Where do you sleep, my Fool?'
'In the stables, sir.'
'From now on you may sleep in the corridor outside my room,' said the duke beneficently.
'Gosh!'
'And now,' said the duke, his voice dripping across the Fool like treacle over a pudding, 'tell me about witches . . .'
That night the Fool slept on good royal flagstones in the whistling corridor above the Great Hall instead of the warm stuffy straw of the stables.
'This is foolish,' he told himself. 'Marry, but is it foolish enough!'
He dozed off fitfully, into some sort of dream where a vague figure kept trying to attract his attention, and was only dimly aware of the voices of Lord and Lady Felmet on the other side of the door.
'It's certainly a lot less draughty,' said the duchess grudgingly.
The duke sat back in the armchair and smiled at his wife.
'Well?' she demanded. 'Where are the witches?'
'The chamberlain would appear to be right, beloved. The witches seem to have the local people in thrall. The sergeant of the guard came back empty-handed.' Handed . . . he came down heavily on the importunate thought.
'You must have him executed,' she said promptly. 'To make an example to the others.'
'A course of action, my dear, which ultimately results in us ordering the last soldier to cut his own throat as an example to himself. By the way,' he added mildly, 'there would appear to be somewhat fewer servants around the place. You know I would not normally interfere—'
'Then don't,' she snapped. 'Housekeeping is under my control. I cannot abide slackness.'
'I'm sure you know best, but—'
'What of these witches? Will you stand idly by and let trouble seed for thg future? Will you let these witches defy you? What of the crown?'
The duke shrugged. 'No doubt it ended in the river,' he said.
'And the child? He was given to the witches? Do they do human sacrifice?'
'It would appear not,' said the duke. The duchess looked vaguely disappointed.
'These witches,' said the duke. 'Apparently, they seem to cast a spell on people.'
'Well, obviously—'
'Not like a magic spell. They seem to be respected. They do medicine and so on. It's rather strange. The mountain people seem to be afraid of them and proud of them at the same time, It might be a little difficult to move against them.'
'I could come to believe,' said the duchess darkly, 'that they have cast a glamour over you as well.'
In fact the duke was intrigued. Power was always darkly fascinating, which was why he had married the duchess in the first place. He stared fixedly at the fire.
'In fact.' said the duchess, who recognised the malign smile, 'you like it, don't you? The thought of the danger. I remember when we were married; all that business with the knotted rope—'
She snapped her fingers in front of the duke's glazed eyes, He sat up.
'Not at all!' he shouted.
'Then what will you do?'
'Wait.'
'Waif?'
'Wait, and consider. Patience is a virtue.' The duke sat back. The smile he smiled could have spent a million years sitting on a rock. And then, just below one eye, he started to twitch. Blood was oozing between the bandages on his hand.
Once again the full moon rode the clouds.
Granny Weatherwax milked and fed the goats, banked me fire put a cloth over the minor and pulled her broomstick out from behind the door. She went out, locked the back door behind her, and hung the key on its nail in the privy.
This was quite sufficient. Only once, in the entire history of witchery in the Ramtops, had a thief broken into a witch's cottage. The witch concerned visited the most terrible punishment on him.[4]
Granny sat on the broom and muttered a few words, but without much conviction. After a further couple of tries she got off, fiddled with the binding, and had another go. There was a suspicion of glitter from one end of the stick, which quickly died away.
'Drat,' she said, under her breath.
She looked around carefully, in case anyone was watching. In fact it was only a hunting badger who, hearing the thumping of running feet, poked its head out from the bushes and saw Granny hurtling down the path with the broomstick held stiff-armed beside her. At last the magic caught, and she managed to vault clumsily on to it before it trundled into the night sky as gracefully as a duck with one wing missing.
From above the trees came a muffled curse against all dwarfish mechanics.
Most witches preferred to live in isolated cottages with the traditional curly chimneys and weed-grown thatch. Granny Weatherwax approved of this; it was no good being a witch unless you let people know.
Nanny Ogg didn't care much about what people knew and even less for what they thought, and lived in a new, knick-knack crammed cottage in the middle of Lancre town itself and at the heart of her own private empire. Various daughters and daughters-in-law came in to cook and clean on a sort of rota. Every flat surface was stuffed with ornaments brought back by far-travelling members of the family. Sons and grandsons kept the logpile stacked, the roof shingled, the chimney swept; the drinks cupboard was always full, the pouch by her rocking chair always stuffed with tobacco. Above the hearth was a huge pokerwork sign saying 'Mother'. No tyrant in the whole history of the world had ever achieved a domination so complete.
Nanny Ogg also kept a cat, a huge one-eyed grey torn called Greebo who divided his time between sleeping, eating and fathering the most enormous incestuous feline tribe. He opened his eye like a yellow window into Hell when he heard Granny's broomstick land awkwardly on the back lawn. With the instinct of his kind he recognised Granny as an inveterate cat-hater and oozed gently under a chair.
Magrat was already seated primly by the fire.
It is one of the few unbendable rules of magic that its practitioners cannot change their own appearance for any length of time. Their bodies develop a kind of morphic inertia and gradually return to their original shape. But Magrat tried. Every morning her hair was long, thick and blond, but by the evening it had always returned to its normal worried frizz. To ameliorate the effect she had tried to plait violets and cowslips in it. The result was not all she had hoped. It gave the impression that a window box had fallen on her head.
'Good evening,' said Granny.
'Well met by moonlight,' said Magrat politely. 'Merry meet. A star shines on—'
'Wotcha,' said Nanny Ogg. Magrat winced.
Granny sat down and started removing the pins that nailed her tall hat to her bun. Finally the sight of Magrat dawned on her.
'Magrat!'
The young witch jumped, and clamped her knuckly hands to the virtuous frontage of her gown.
'Yes?' she quavered.
'What have you got on your lap?'
'It's my familiar,' she said defensively.
'What happened to that toad you had?'
'It wandered off,' muttered Magrat. 'Anyway, it wasn't very good.'
Granny sighed. Magrat's desperate search for a reliable familiar had been going on for some time, and despite the love and attention she lavished on them they all seemed to have some terrible flaw, such as a tendency to bite, get trodden on or, in extreme cases, metamorphose.
'That makes fifteen this year,' said Granny. 'Not counting the horse. What's this one?'
'It's a rock,' chuckled Nanny Ogg.
'Well, at least it should last,' said Granny.
The rock extended a head and gave her a look of mild amusement.
'It's a tortoyse,' said Magrat. 'I bought it down in Sheep-ridge market. It's incredibly old and knows many secrets, the man said.'
'I know that man,' said Granny. 'He's the one who sells goldfish that tarnish after a day or two.'
'Anyway, I shall call him Lightfoot,' said Magrat, her voice warm with defiance. 'I can if I want.'
'Yes, yes, all right, I'm sure,' said Granny. 'Anyway, how goes it, sisters? It is two months since last we met.'
'It should be every new moon,' said Magrat sternly. 'Regular.'
'It was our Grame's youngest's wedding,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Couldn't miss it.'
'And I was up all night with a sick goat,' said Granny Weatherwax promptly.
'Yes, well,' said Magrat doubtfully. She rummaged in her bag. 'Anyway, if we're going to start, we'd better light the candles.'
The senior witches exchanged a resigned glance.
'But we got this lovely new lamp our Tracie sent me,' said Nanny Ogg innocently. 'And I was going to poke up the fire a bit.'
'I have excellent night vision, Magrat,' said Granny sternly. 'And you've been reading them funny books. Grimmers.'
'Grimoires—'
'You ain't going to draw on the floor again, neither,' warned Nanny Ogg. 'It took our Dreen days to clean up all those wossnames last time—'
'Runes,' said Magrat. There was a look of pleading in her eyes. 'Look, just one candle?'
'All right,' said Nanny Ogg, relenting a bit. 'If it makes you feel any better. Just the one, mind. And a decent white one. Nothing fancy.'
Magrat sighed. It probably wasn't a good idea to bring out the rest of the contents of her bag.
'We ought to get a few more here,' she said sadly. 'It's not right, a coven of three.'
'I didn't know we was still a coven. No-one told me we was still a coven,' sniffed Granny Weatherwax. 'Anyway, there's no-one else this side of the mountain, excepting old Gammer Dismass, and she doesn't get out these days.'
'But a lot of young girls in my village . . .' said Magrat. 'You know. They could be keen.'
'That's not how we do it, as well you know,' said Granny disapprovingly. 'People don't go and find witchcraft, it comes and finds them.'
'Yes, yes,' said Magrat. 'Sorry.'
'Right,' said Granny, slightly mollified. She'd never mastered the talent for apologising, but she appreciated it in other people.
'What about this new duke, then,' said Nanny, to lighten the atmosphere.
Granny sat back. 'He had some houses burned down in Bad Ass,' she said. 'Because of taxes.'
'How horrible,' said Magrat.
'Old Kind Verence used to do that,' said Nanny. 'Terrible temper he had.'
'He used to let people get out first, though,' said Granny.
'Oh yes,' said Nanny, who was a staunch royalist. 'He could be very gracious like that. He'd pay for them to be rebuilt, as often as not. If he remembered.'
'And every Hogswatchnight, a side of venison. Regular,' said Granny wistfully.
'Oh, yes. Very respectful to witches, he was,' added Nanny Ogg. 'When he was out hunting people, if he met me in the woods, it was always off with his helmet and “I hope I finds you well, Mistress Ogg” and next day he'd send his butler down with a couple of bottles of something. He was a proper king.'
'Hunting people isn't really right, though,' said Magrat.
'Well, no,' Granny Weatherwax conceded. 'But it was only if they'd done something bad. He said they enjoyed it really. And he used to let them go if they gave him a good run,'
'And then there was that great hairy thing of his,' said Nanny Ogg.
There was a perceptible change in the atmosphere. It became warmer, darker, filled at the corners with the shadows of unspoken conspiracy.
'Ah,' said Granny Weatherwax distantly. 'His droit de seigneur.'
'Needed a lot of exercise,' said Nanny Ogg, staring at the fire.
'But next day he'd send his housekeeper round with a bag of silver and a hamper of stuff for the wedding,' said Granny. 'Many a couple got a proper start in life thanks to that.'
'Ah,' agreed Nanny. 'One or two individuals, too.'
'Every inch a king,' said Granny.
'What are you talking about?' said Magrat suspiciously. 'Did he keep pets?'
The two witches surfaced from whatever deeper current they had been swimming in. Granny Weatherwax shrugged.
'I must say,' Magrat went on, in severe tones, 'if you think so much of the old king, you don't seem very worried about him being killed. I mean, it was a pretty suspicious accident.'
'That's kings for you,' said Granny. 'They come and go, good and bad. His father poisoned the king we had before.'
'That was old Thargum,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Had a big red beard, I recall. He was very gracious too, you know.'
'Only now no-one must say Felmet killed the king,' said Magrat.
'What?' said Granny.
'He had some people executed in Lancre, the other day for saying it,' Magrat went on. 'Spreading malicious lies, he said. He said anyone saying different will see the inside of his dungeons, only not for long. He said Verence died of natural causes.'
'Well, being assassinated is natural causes for a king,' said Granny. 'I don't see why he's so sheepish about it. When old Thargum was killed they stuck his head on a pole, had a big bonfire and everyone in the palace got drunk for a week.'
'I remember,' said Nanny. 'They carried his head all round the villages to show he was dead. Very convincing, I thought. Specially for him. He was grinning. I think it was the way he would have liked to go.'
'I think we might have to keep an eye on this one, though,' said Granny. 'I think he might be a bit clever. That's not a good thing, in a king. And I don't think he knows how to show respect.'
'A man came to see me last week to ask if I wanted to pay any taxes,' said Magrat. 'I told him no.'
'He came to see me, too,' said Nanny Ogg. 'But our Jason and our Wane went out and tole him we didn't want to join.'
'Small man, bald, black cloak?' said Granny thoughtfully.
'Yes,' said the other two.
'He was hanging about in my raspberry bushes,' said Granny. 'Only, when I went out to see what he wanted, he ran away.'
'Actually, I gave him tuppence,' said Magrat. 'He said he was going to be tortured, you see, if he didn't get witches to pay their taxes . . .'
Lord Felmet looked carefully at the two coins in his lap.
Then he looked at his tax gatherer.
'Well?' he said.
The tax gatherer cleared his throat. 'Well, sir, you see. I explained about the need to employ a standing army, ekcetra, and they said why, and I said because of bandits, ekcetra, and they said bandits never bothered them.'
'And civil works?'
'Ah. Yes. Well, I pointed out the need to build and maintain bridges, ekcetra.'
'And?'
'They said they didn't use them.'
'Ah,' said the duke knowledgeably. 'They can't cross running water.'
'Not sure about that, sir. I think witches cross anything they like.'
'Did they say anything else?' said the duke.
The tax gatherer twisted the hem of his robe distractedly.
'Well, sir. I mentioned how taxes help to maintain the King's Peace, sir . . . '
'And?'
'They said the king should maintain his own peace, sir. And then they gave me a look.'
'What sort of look?'
The duke sat with his thin face cupped in one hand. He was fascinated.
'It's sort of hard to describe,' said the taxman. He tried to avoid Lord Felmet's gaze, which was giving him the distinct impression that the tiled floor was fleeing away in all directions and had already covered several acres. Lord Felmet's fascination was to him what a pin is to a Purple Emperor.
'Try,' the duke invited.
The taxman blushed.
'Well,' he said. 'It . . . wasn't nice.'
Which demonstrates that the tax gatherer was much better at figures than words. What he would have said, if embarrassment, fear, poor memory and a complete lack of any kind of imagination hadn't conspired against it, was:
'When I was a little boy, and staying with my aunt, and she had told me not to touch the cream, ekcetra, and she had put it on a high shelf in the pantry, and I got a stool and went after it when she was out anyway, and she'd come back and I didn't know, and I couldn't reach the bowl properly and it smashed on the floor, and she opened the door and glared at me: it was that look. But the worst thing was, they knew it.'
'Not nice,' said the duke.
'No, sir.'
The duke drummed the fingers of his left hand on the arm of his throne. The tax gatherer coughed again.
'You're – you're not going to force me to go back, are you?' he said.
'Um?' said the duke. He waved a hand irritably. 'No, no,' he said. 'Not at all. Just call in at the torturer on your way out. See when he can fit you in.'
The taxman gave him a look of gratitude, and bobbed a bow.
'Yes, sir. At once, sir. Thank you, sir. You're very—'
'Yes, yes,' said Lord Felmet, absently. 'You may go.'
The duke was left alone in the vastness of the hall. It was raining again. Every once in a while a piece of plaster smashed down on the tiles, and there was a crunching from the walls as they settled still further. The air smelled of old cellars.
Gods, he hated this kingdom.
It was so small, only forty miles long and maybe ten miles wide, and nearly all of it was cruel mountains with ice-green slopes and knife-edge crests, or dense huddled forests. A kingdom like that shouldn't be any trouble.
What he couldn't quite fathom was this feeling that it had depth. It seemed to contain far too much geography.
He rose and paced the floor to the balcony, with its unrivalled view of trees. It struck him that the trees were also looking back at him.
He could feel the resentment. But that was odd, because the people themselves hadn't objected. They didn't seem to object to anything very much. Verence had been popular enough, in his way. There'd been quite a turnout for the funeral; he recalled the lines of solemn faces. Not stupid faces. By no means stupid. Just preoccupied, as though what kings did wasn't really very important.
He found that almost as annoying as trees. A jolly good riot, now, that would have been more – more appropriate. One could have ridden out and hanged people, there would have been the creative tension so essential to the proper development of the state. Back down on the plains, if you kicked people they kicked back. Up here, when you kicked people they moved away and just waited patiently for your leg to fall off. How could a king go down in history ruling a people like that? You couldn't oppress them any more than you could oppress a mattress.
He had raised taxes and burned a few villages on general principles, just to show everyone who they were dealing with. It didn't seem to have any effect.
And then there were these witches. They haunted him.
'Fool!'
The Fool, who had been having a quiet doze behind the throne, awoke in terror.
'Yes!'
'Come hither, Fool.'
The Fool jingled miserably across the floor.
'Tell me, Fool, does it always rain here?'
'Marry, nuncle—'
'Just answer the question,' said Lord Felmet, with iron patience.
'Sometimes it stops, sir. To make room for the snow. And sometimes we get some right squand'ring orgulous fogs,' said the Fool.
'Orgulous?' said the duke, absently.
The Fool couldn't stop himself. His horrified ears heard his mouth blurt out: Thick, my lord. From the Latatian orgulum, a soup or broth.'
But the duke wasn't listening. Listening to the prattle of underlings was not, in his experience, particularly worthwhile.
'I am bored, Fool.'
'Let me entertain you, my lord, with many a merry quip and lightsome jest.'
'Try me.'
The Fool licked his dry lips. He hadn't actually expected this. King Verence had been happy enough just to give him a kick, or throw a bottle at his head. A real king.
'I'm waiting. Make me laugh.'
The Fool took the plunge.
'Why, sirrah,' he quavered, 'why may a caudled fillhorse be deemed the brother to a hiren candle in the night?'
The duke frowned. The Fool felt it better not to wait.
'Withal, because a candle may be greased, yet a fillhorse be without a fat argier,' he said and, because it was part of the joke, patted Lord Felmet lightly with his balloon on a stick and twanged his mandolin.
The duke's index finger tapped an abrupt tattoo on the arm of the throne.
'Yes?' he said. 'And then what happened?'
'That, er, was by way of being the whole thing,' said the Fool, and added, 'My grandad thought it was one of his best.'
'I daresay he told it differently,' said the duke. He stood up. 'Summon my huntsmen. I think I shall ride out on the chase. And you can come too.'
'My lord, I cannot ride!'
For the first time that morning Lord Felmet smiled.
'Capital!' he said. 'We will give you a horse that can't be ridden. Ha. Ha.'
He looked down at his bandages. And afterwards, he told himself, I'll get the armourer to send me up a file.
A year went past. The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had tried all passing at the same time, and it hadn't worked.
Tomjon sat under Hwel's rickety table, watching his father as he walked up and down between the lattys, waving one arm and talking. Vitoller always waved his arms when he spoke; if you tied his hands behind his back he would be dumb.
'All right,' he was saying, 'how about The King's Brides?'
'Last year,' said the voice of Hwel.
'All right, then. We'll give them Mallo, the Tyrant of Klatch,' said Vitoller, and his larynx smoothly changed gear as his voice became a great rolling thing that could rattle the windows across the width of the average town square. ' “In blood I came, And by blood rule, That none will dare assay these walls of blood—” '
'We did it the year before,' said Hwel calmly. 'Anyway, people are fed up with kings. They want a bit of a chuckle.'
'They are not fed up with my kings,' said Vitoller. 'My dear boy, people do not come to the theatre to laugh, they come to Experience, to Learn, to Wonder—'
'To laugh,' said Hwel, flatly. 'Have a look at this one.'
Tomjon heard the rustle of paper and the creak of wicker-work as Vitoller lowered his weight on to a props basket.
'A Wizard of Sons,' Vitoller read. 'Or, Please Yourself:
Hwel stretched his legs under the table and dislodged Tomjon. He hauled the boy out by one ear.
'What's this?' said Vitoller. 'Wizards? Demons? Imps? Merchants?'
'I'm rather pleased with Act II, Scene IV,' said Hwel, propelling the toddler towards the props box. 'Comic Washing Up with Two Servants.'
'Any death-bed scenes?' said Vitoller hopefully.
'No-o,' said Hwel. 'But I can do you a humorous monologue in Act III.'
'A humorous monologue!'
'All right, there's room for a soliloquy in the last act,' said Hwel hurriedly. 'I'll write one tonight, no problem.'
'And a stabbing,' said Vitoller, getting to his feet. 'A foul murder. That always goes down well.'
He strode away to organise the setting up of the stage.
Hwel sighed, and picked up his quill. Somewhere behind the sacking walls was the town of Hangdog, which had somehow allowed itself to be built in a hollow perched in the nearly sheer walls of a canyon. There was plenty of flat ground in the Ramtops. The problem was that nearly all of it was vertical.
Hwel didn't like the Ramtops, which was odd because it was traditional dwarf country and he was a dwarf. But he'd been banished from his tribe years ago, not only because of his claustrophobia but also because he had a tendency to daydream. It was felt by the local dwarf king that this is not a valuable talent for someone who is supposed to swing a pickaxe without forgetting what he is supposed to hit with it, and so Hwel had been given a very small bag of gold, the tribe's heartfelt best wishes, and a firm goodbye.
It had happened that Vitoller's strolling players had been passing through at the time, and the dwarf had ventured one small copper coin on a performance of The Dragon of the Plains. He had watched it without a muscle moving in his face, gone back to his lodgings, and in the morning had knocked on Vitoller's latty with the first draft of King Under the Mountain. It wasn't in fact very good, but Vitoller had been perceptive enough to see that inside the hairy bullet head was an imagination big enough to bestride the world and so, when the strolling players strolled off, one of them was running to keep up . . .
Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one.
Some people are even more unfortunate. They get them all.
Such a one was Hwel. Enough inspirations to equip a complete history of the performing arts poured continuously into a small heavy skull designed by evolution to do nothing more spectacular than be remarkably resistant to axe blows.
He licked his quill and looked bashfully around the camp. No-one was watching. He carefully lifted up the Wizard and revealed another stack of paper.
It was another potboiler. Every page was stained with sweat and the words themselves scrawled across the manuscript in a trellis of blots and crossings-out and tiny scribbled insertions. Hwel stared at it for a moment, alone in a world that consisted of him, the next blank page and the shouting, clamouring voices that haunted his dreams.
He began to write.
Free of Hwel's never-too-stringent attention. Tomjon pushed open the lid of the props hamper and, in the methodical way of the very young, began to unpack the crowns.
The dwarf stuck out his tongue as he piloted the errant quill across the ink-speckled page. He'd found room for the star-crossed lovers, the comic gravediggers and me hunchback king. It was the cats and the roller skates that were currently giving him trouble . . .
A gurgle made him look up.
'For goodness sake, lad,' he said. 'It hardly fits. Put it back.'
The Disc rolled into winter.
Winter in the Ramtops could not honestly be described as a magical frosty wonderland, each twig laced with confections of brittle ice. Winter in the Ramtops didn't mess about; it was a gateway straight through to the primeval coldness that lived before the creation of the world. Winter in the Ramtops was several yards of snow, the forests a mere collection of shadowy green tunnels under the drifts. Winter meant the coming of the lazy wind, which couldn't be bothered to blow around people and blew right through them instead. The idea that Winter could actually be enjoyable would never have occurred to Ramtop people, who had eighteen different words for snow.[5]
The ghost of King Verence prowled the battlements, bereft and hungry, and stared out across his beloved forests and waited his chance.
It was a winter of portents. Comets sparkled against the chilled skies at night. Clouds shaped mightily like whales and dragons drifted over the land by day. In the village of Razorback a cat gave birth to a two-headed kitten, but since Greebo, by dint of considerable effort, was every male ancestor for the last thirty generations this probably wasn't all that portentous.
However, in Bad Ass a cockerel laid an egg and had to put up with some very embarrassing personal questions. In Lancre town a man swore he'd met a man who had actually seen with his own eyes a tree get up and walk. There was a short sharp shower of shrimps. There were odd lights in the sky. Geese walked backwards. Above all of this flared the great curtains of cold fire that were the Aurora Coriolis, the Hublights, whose frosty tints illuminated and coloured the midnight snows.
There was nothing the least unusual about any of this. The Ramtops, which as it were lay across the Disc's vast magical standing wave like an iron bar dropped innocently across a pair of subway rails, were so saturated with magic that it was constantly discharging itself into the environment. People would wake up in the middle of the night, mutter, 'Oh, it's just another bloody portent', and go back to sleep.
Hogswatchnight came round, marking the start of another year. And, with alarming suddenness, nothing happened.
The skies were clear, the snow deep and crisped like icing sugar.
The freezing forests were silent and smelled of tin. The only things that fell from the sky were the occasional fresh showers of snow.
A man walked across the moors from Razorback to Lancre town without seeing a single marshlight, headless dog, strolling tree, ghostly coach or comet, and had to be taken in by a tavern and given a drink to unsteady his nerves.
The stoicism of the Ramtoppers, developed over the years as a sovereign resistance to the thaumaturgical chaos, found itself unable to cope with the sudden change. It was like a noise which isn't heard until it stops.
Granny Weatherwax heard it now as she lay snug under a pile of quilts in her freezing bedroom. Hogswatchnight is, traditionally, the one night of the Disc's long year when witches are expected to stay at home, and she'd had an early night in the company of a bag of apples and a stone hotwater bottle. But something had awoken her from her doze.
An ordinary person would have crept downstairs, possibly armed with a poker. Granny simply hugged her knees and let her mind wander.
It hadn't been in the house. She could feel the small, fast minds of mice, and the fuzzy minds of her goats as they lay in their cosy flatulence in the outhouse. A hunting owl was a sudden dagger of alertness as it glided over the rooftops.
Granny concentrated harder, until her mind was full of the tiny chittering of the insects in the thatch and the woodworm in the beams. Nothing of interest there.
She snuggled down and let herself drift out into the forest, which was silent except for the occasional muffled thump as snow slid off a tree. Even in midwinter the forest was full of life, usually dozing in burrows or hibernating in the middle of trees.
All as usual. She spread herself further, to the high moors and secret passes where the wolves ran silently over the frozen crust; she touched their minds, sharp as knives. Higher still, and there was nothing in the snowfields but packs of vermine.[6]
Everything was as it should be, with the exception that nothing was right. There was something – yes, there was something alive out there, something young and ancient and . . .
Granny turned over the feeling in her mind. Yes. That was it. Something forlorn. Something lost. And . . .
Feelings were never simple, Granny knew. Strip them away and there were others underneath . . .
Something that, if it didn't stop feeling lost and forlorn very soon, was going to get angry.
And still she couldn't find it. She could feel the tiny minds of chrysalises down under the frozen leafmould. She could sense the earthworms, which had migrated below the frost line. She could even sense a few people, who were hardest of all – human minds were thinking so many thoughts all at the same time that they were nearly impossible to locate; it was like trying to nail fog to the wall.
Nothing there. Nothing there. The feeling was all around her, and there was nothing to cause it. She'd gone down about as far as she could, to the smallest creature in the kingdom, and there was nothing there.
Granny Weatherwax sat up in bed, lit a candle and reached for an apple. She glared at her bedroom wall.
She didn't like being beaten. There was something out there, something drinking in magic, something growing, something dial seemed so alive it was all around the house, and she couldn't find it.
She reduced the apple to its core and placed it carefully in the tray of the candlestick. Then she blew out the candle.
The cold velvet of the night slid back into the room.
Granny had one last try. Perhaps she was looking in the wrong way . . .
A moment later she was lying on the floor with the pillow clasped around her head.
And to think she had expected it to be small . . .
Lancre Castle shook. It wasn't a violent shaking, but it didn't need to be, the construction of the castle being such that it swayed slightly even in a gentle breeze. A small turret toppled slowly into the depths of the misty canyon.
The Fool lay on his flagstones and shivered in his sleep. He appreciated the honour, if it was an honour, but sleeping in the corridor always made him dream of the Fools' Guild, behind whose severe grey walls he had trembled his way through seven years of terrible tuition. The flagstones were slightly softer than the beds there, though.
A few feet away a suit of armour jingled gently. Its pike vibrated in its mailed glove until, swishing through the night air like a swooping bat, it slid down and shattered the flagstone by the Fool's ear.
The Fool sat up and realised he was still shivering. So was the floor.
In Lord Felmet's room the shaking sent cascades of dust down from the ancient four-poster. He awoke from a dream that a great beast was tramping around the castle, and decided with horror that it might be true.
A portrait of some long-dead king fell off the wall. The duke screamed.
The Fool stumbled in, trying to keep his balance on a floor that was now heaving like the sea, and the duke staggered out of bed and grabbed the little man by his jerkin.
'What's happening?' he hissed. 'Is it an earthquake?'
'We don't have them in these parts, my lord,' said the Fool, and was knocked aside as a chaise-longue drifted slowly across the carpet.
The duke dashed to the window, and looked out at the forests in the moonlight. The white-capped trees shook in the still night air.
A slab of plaster crashed on to the floor. Lord Felmet spun around and this time his grip lifted the Fool a foot off the floor.
Among the very many luxuries the duke had dispensed with in his life was that of ignorance. He liked to feel he knew what was going on. The glorious uncertainties of existence held no attraction for him.
'It's the witches, isn't it?' he growled, his left cheek beginning to twitch like a landed fish. They're out there, aren't they? They're putting an Influence on the castle, aren't they?'
'Marry, nuncle—' the Fool began.
'They run this country, don't they?'
'No, my lord, they've never—'
'Who asked you?'
The Fool was trembling with fear in perfect anti-phase to the castle, so that he was the only thing that now appeared to be standing perfectly still.
'Er, you did, my lord,' he quavered.
'Are you arguing with me?'
'No, my lord!'
'I thought so. You're in league with them, I suppose?'
'My lord!' said the Fool, really shocked.
'You're all in league, you people!' the duke snarled. 'The whole bunch of you! You're nothing but a pack of ringleaders!'
He flung the Fool aside and thrust the tall windows open, striding out into the freezing night air. He glared out over the sleeping kingdom.
'Do you all hear me?' he screamed. 'I am the king!'
The shaking stopped, catching the duke off-balance. He steadied himself quickly, and brushed the plaster dust off his nightshirt.
'Right, then,' he said.
But this was worse. Now the forest was listening. The words he spoke vanished into a great vacuum of silence.
There was something out there. He could feel it. It was strong enough to shake the castle, and now it was watching him, listening to him.
The duke backed away, very carefully, fumbling behind him for the window catch. He stepped carefully into the room, shut the windows and hurriedly pulled the curtains across.
'I am the king,' he repeated, quietly. He looked at the Fool, who felt that something was expected of him.
The man is my lord and master, he thought. I have eaten his salt, or whatever all that business was. They told me at Guild school that a Fool should be faithful to his master until the very end, after all others have deserted him. Good or bad doesn't come into it. Every leader needs his Fool. There is only loyalty. That's the whole thing. Even if he is clearly three-parts bonkers, I'm his Fool until one of us dies.
To his horror he realised the duke was weeping.
The Fool fumbled in his sleeve and produced a rather soiled red and yellow handkerchief embroidered with bells. The duke took it with an expression of pathetic gratitude and blew his nose. Then he held it away from him and gazed at it with demented suspicion.
'Is this a dagger I see before me?' he mumbled.
'Um. No, my lord. It's my handkerchief, you see. You can sort of tell the difference if you look closely. It doesn't have as many sharp edges.'
'Good fool,' said the duke, vaguely.
Totally mad, the Fool thought. Several bricks short of a bundle. So far round the twist you could use him to open wine bottles.
'Kneel beside me, my Fool.'
The Fool did so. The duke laid a soiled bandage on his shoulder.
'Are you loyal, Fool?' he said. 'Are you trustworthy?'
'I swore to follow my lord until death,' said the Fool hoarsely.
The duke pressed his mad face close to the Fool, who looked up into a pair of bloodshot eyes.
'I didn't want to,' he hissed conspiratorially. 'They made me do it. I didn't want—'
The door swung open. The duchess filled the doorway. In fact, she was nearly the same shape.
'Leonal!' she barked.
The Fool was fascinated by what happened to the duke's eyes. The mad red flame vanished, was sucked backwards, and was replaced by the hard blue stare he had come to recognise. It didn't mean, he realised, that the duke was any less mad. Even the coldness of his sanity was madness in a way. The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.
Lord Felmet looked up calmly.
'Yes, my dear?'
'What is the meaning of all this?' she demanded.
'Witches, I suspect,' said Lord Felmet.
'I really don't think—' the Fool began. Lady Felmet's glare didn't merely silence him, it almost nailed him to the wall.
'That is clearly apparent,' she said. 'You are an idiot.'
'A Fool, my lady.'
'As well,' she added, and turned back to her husband.
'So,' she said, smiling grimly. 'Still they defy you?'
The duke shrugged. 'How should I fight magic?' he said.
'With words,' said the Fool, without thinking, and was instantly sorry. They were both staring at him.
'What?' said the duchess.
The Fool dropped his mandolin in his embarrassment.
'In – in the Guild,' said the Fool, 'we learned that words can be more powerful even than magic.'
'Clown!' said the duke. 'Words are just words. Brief syllables. Sticks and stones may break my bones—' he paused, savouring the thought – 'but words can never hurt me.'
'My lord, there are such words that can,' said the Fool. 'Liar! Usurper! Murderer!'
The duke jerked back and gripped the arms of the throne, wincing.
'Such words have no truth,' said the Fool, hurriedly.
'But they can spread like fire underground, breaking out to burn—'
'It's true! It's true!' screamed the duke. 'I hear them, all the time!' He leaned forward. 'It's the witches!' he hissed.
'Then, then, then they can be fought with other words,' said the Fool, 'Words can fight even witches,'
'What words?' said the duchess, thoughtfully.
The Fool shrugged. 'Crone. Evil eye. Stupid old woman.'
The duchess raised one thick eyebrow.
'You are not entirely an idiot, are you,' she said. 'You refer to rumour.'
'Just so, my lady.' The Fool rolled his eyes. What had he got himself into?
'It's the witches,' whispered the duke, to no-one in particular. 'We must tell the world about the witches. They're evil. They make it come back, the blood. Even sandpaper doesn't work.'
There was another tremor as Granny Weatherwax hurried along the narrow, frozen pathways in the forest. A lump of snow slipped off a tree branch and poured over her hat.
This wasn't right, she knew. Never mind about the -whatever it was – but it was unheard of for a witch to go out on Hogswatchnight. It was against all tradition. No-one knew why, but that wasn't the point.
She came out on to the moorland and pounded across the brittle heather, which had been scoured of snow by the wind. There was a crescent moon near the horizon, and its pale glow lit up the mountains that towered over her. It was a different world up there, and one even a witch would rarely venture into; it was a landscape left over from the frosty birth of the world, all green ice and knife-edge ridges and deep, secret valleys. It was a landscape never intended for human beings – not hostile, any more than a brick or cloud is hostile, but terribly, terribly uncaring.
Except that, this time, it was watching her. A mind quite unlike any other she had ever encountered was giving her a great deal of its attention. She glared up at the icy slopes, half expecting to see a mountainous shadow move against the stars.
'Who are you?' she shouted. 'What do you want?'
Her voice bounced and echoed among the rocks. There was a distant boom of an avalanche, high among the peaks.
On the crest of the moor, where in the summer partridges lurked among the bushes like small whirring idiots, was a standing stone. It stood roughly where the witches' territories met, although the boundaries were never formally marked out.
The stone was about the same height as a tall man, and made of bluish tinted rock. It was considered intensely magical because, although there was only one of it, no-one had ever been able to count if, if it saw anyone looking at it speculatively, it shuffled behind them. It was the most self-effacing monolith ever discovered.
It was also one of the numerous discharge points for the magic that accumulated in the Ramtops. The ground around it for several yards was bare of snow, and steamed gently.
The stone began to edge away, and watched her suspiciously from behind a tree.
She waited for ten minutes until Magrat came hurrying up the path from Mad Stoat, a village whose good-natured inhabitants were getting used to ear massage and flower-based homeopathic remedies for everything short of actual decapitation.[7] She was out of breath, and wore only a shawl over a nightdress that, if Magrat had anything to reveal, would have been very revealing.
'You felt it too?' she said.
Granny nodded. 'Where's Gytha?' she said.
They looked down the path that led to Lancre town, a huddle of lights in the snowy gloom.
There was a party going on. Light poured out into the street. A line of people were winding in and out of Nanny Ogg's house, from inside which came occasional shrieks of laughter and the sounds of breaking glass and children grizzling. It was clear that family life was being experienced to its limits in that house. The two witches stood uncertainly in the street.
'Do you think we should go in?' said Magrat diffidently. 'It's not as though we were invited. And we haven't brought a bottle.'
'Sounds to me as if there's a deal too many bottles in there already,' said Granny Weatherwax disapprovingly. A man staggered out of the doorway, burped, bumped into Granny, said, 'Happy Hogswatchnight, missus,' glanced up at her face and sobered up instantly.
'Mss,' snapped Granny.
'I am most frightfully sorry—' he began.
Granny swept imperiously past him. 'Come, Magrat,' she commanded.
The din inside hovered around the pain threshold. Nanny Ogg got around the Hogswatchnight tradition by inviting the whole village in, and the air in the room was already beyond the reach of pollution controls. Granny navigated through the press of bodies by the sound of a cracked voice explaining to the world at large that, compared to an unbelievable variety of other animals, the hedgehog was quite fortunate.
Nanny Ogg was sitting in a chair by the fire with a quart mug in one hand, and was conducting the reprise with a cigar. She grinned when she saw Granny's face.
'What ho, my old boiler,' she screeched above the din. 'See you turned up, then. Have a drink. Have two. Wotcher, Magrat. Pull up a chair and call the cat a bastard.'
Greebo, who was curled up in the inglenook and watching the festivities with one slit yellow eye, flicked his tail once or twice.
Granny sat down stiffly, a ramrod figure of decency.
'We're not staying,' she said, glaring at Magrat, who was tentatively reaching out towards a bowl of peanuts. 'I can see you're busy. We just wondered whether you might have noticed – anything. Tonight. A little while ago.'
Nanny Ogg wrinkled her forehead.
'Our Darron's eldest was sick,' she said. 'Been at his dad's beer.'
'Unless he was extremely ill,' said Granny, 'I doubt if it was what I was referring to.' She made a complex occult sign in the air, which Nanny totally ignored.
'Someone tried to danee on the table,' she said. 'Fell into our Reet's pumpkin dip. We had a good laugh.'
Granny waggled her eyebrows and placed a meaningful finger alongside her nose.
'I was alluding to things of a different nature,' she hinted darkly.
Nanny Ogg peered at her.
'Something wrong with your eye, Esme?' she hazarded.
Granny Weatherwax sighed.
'Extremely worrying developments of a magical tendency are even now afoot,' she said loudly.
The room went quiet. Everyone stared at the witches, except for Darron's eldest, who took advantage of the opportunity to continue his alcoholic experiments. Then, swiftly as they had fled, several dozen conversations hurriedly got back into gear.
'It might be a good idea if we can go and talk somewhere more private,' said Granny, as the comforting hubbub streamed over them again.
They ended up in the washhouse, where Granny tried to give an account of the mind she had encountered.
'It's out there somewhere, in the mountains and the high forests,' she said. 'And it is very big.'
'I thought it was looking for someone,' said Magrat. 'It put me in mind of a large dog. You know, lost. Puzzled.'
Granny thought about this. Now she came to think of it . . .
'Yes,' she said. 'Something like that. A big dog.'
'Worried,' said Magrat.
'Searching,' said Granny.
'And getting angry,' said Magrat.
'Yes,' said Granny, staring fixedly at Nanny.
'Could be a troll,' said Nanny Ogg. 'I left best part of a pint in there, you know,' she added reproachfully.
'I know what a troll's mind feels like, Gytha,' said Granny. She didn't snap the words out. In fact it was the quiet way she said them that made Nanny hesitate.
'They say there's really big trolls up towards the Hub,' said Nanny slowly. 'And ice giants, and big hairy woss-names that live above the snowline. But you don't mean anything like that, do you?'
'No.'
'Oh.'
Magrat shivered. She told herself that a witch had absolute control over her own body, and the goosepimples under her tun nightdress were just a figment of her own imagination. The trouble was, she had an excellent imagination.
Nanny Ogg sighed.
'We'd better have a look, then,' she said, and took the lid off the copper.
Nanny Ogg never used her washhouse., since all her washing was done by the daughers-in-law, a tribe of grey-faced, subdued women whose names she never bothered to remember. It had become, therefore, a storage place for dried-up old bulbs, burnt-out cauldrons and fermenting jars of wasp jam. No fire had been lit under the copper for ten years. Its bricks were crumbling, and rare ferns grew around the firebox. The water under the lid was inky black and, according to rumour, bottomless; the Ogg grandchildren were encouraged to believe that monsters from the dawn of time dwelt in its depths, since Nanny believed that a bit of thrilling and pointless terror was an essential ingredient of the magic of childhood.
In summer she used it as a beer cooler.
'It'll have to do. I think perhaps we should join hands,' she said. 'And you, Magrat, make sure the door's shut.'
'What are you going to try?' said Granny. Since they were on Nanny's territory, the choice was entirely up to her.
'I always say you can't go wrong with a good Invocation,' said Nanny. 'Haven't done one for years.'
Granny Weatherwax frowned. Magrat said, 'Oh, but you can't. Not here. You need a cauldron, and a magic sword. And an octogram. And spices, and all sorts of stuff.'
Granny and Nanny exchanged glances.
'It's not her fault,' said Granny. 'It's all them grimmers she was bought.' She turned to Magrat.
'You don't need none of that,' she said. 'You need head-ology.' She looked around the ancient washroom.
'You just use whatever you've got,' she said.
She picked up the bleached copper stick, and weighed it thoughtfully in her hand.
'We conjure and abjure thee by means of this—' Granny hardly paused – 'sharp and terrible copper stick.'
The waters in the boiler rippled gently.
'See how we scatter—' Magrat sighed – 'rather old washing soda and some extremely hard soap flakes in thy honour. Really, Nanny, I don't think—'
'Silence! Now you, Gytha.'
'And I invoke and bind thee with the balding scrubbing brush of Art and the washboard of Protection,' said Nanny, waving it. The wringer attachment fell off.
'Honesty is all very well,' whispered Magrat, wretchedly, 'but somehow it isn't the same.'
'You listen to me, my girl,' said Granny. 'Demons don't care about the outward shape of things. It's what you think that matters. Get on with it.'
Magrat tried to imagine that the bleached and ancient bar of lye soap was the rarest of scented whatever, ungulants or whatever they were, from distant Klatch. It was an effort. The gods alone knew what kind of demon would respond to a summoning like this.
Granny was also a little uneasy. She didn't much care for demons in any case, and all this business with incantations and implements whiffed of wizardry. It was pandering to the things, making them feel important. Demons ought to come when they were called.
But protocol dictated that the host witch had the choice, and Nanny quite liked demons, who were male, or apparently so.
At this point Granny was alternately cajoling and threatening the nether world with two feet of bleached wood. She was impressed at her own daring.
The waters seethed a little, became very still and then, with a sudden movement and a little popping noise, mounded up into a head. Magrat dropped her soap.
It was a good-looking head, maybe a little cruel around the eyes and beaky about the nose-, but nevertheless handsome in a hard kind of way. There was nothing surprising about this; since the demon was only extending an image of itself into this reality, it might as well make a good job of it. It turned slowly, a gleaming black statue in the fitful moonlight.
'Well?' it said.
'Who're you?' said Granny, bluntly.
The head revolved to face her.
'My name is unpronounceable in your tongue, woman,' it said.
'I'll be the judge of that,' warned Granny, and added, 'Don't you call me woman.'
'Very well. My name is WxrtHltl-jwlpklz,' said the demon smugly.
'Where were you when the vowels were handed out? Behind the door?' said Nanny Ogg.
'Well, Mr— Granny hesitated only fractionally – 'WxrtHltl-jwlpklz, I expect you're wondering why we called you here tonight.'
'You're not supposed to say that,' said the demon. ' You're supposed to say—'
'Shut up. We have the sword of Art and the octogram of Protection, I warn you.'
'Please yourself. They look like a washboard and a copper stick to me,' sneered the demon.
Granny glanced sideways. The corner of the washroom was stacked with kindling wood, with a big heavy sawhorse in front of it. She stared fixedly at the demon and, without looking, brought the stick down hard across the, thick timber.
The dead silence that followed was broken only by the two perfectly-sliced halves of the sawhorse teetering backwards and forwards and folding slowly into the heap of kindling.
The demon's face remained impassive.
'You are allowed three questions,' it said.
'Is there something strange at large in the kingdom?' said Granny.
It appeared to think about it.
'And no lying,' said Magrat earnestly. 'Otherwise it'll be the scrubbing brush for you.'
'You mean stranger than usual?'
'Get on with it,' said Nanny. 'My feet are freezing out here.'
'No. There is nothing strange.'
'But we felt it—' Magrat began.
'Hold on, hold on,' said Granny. Her lips moved soundlessly. Demons were like genies or philosophy professors — if you didn't word things exactly right, they delighted in giving you absolutely accurate and completely misleading answers.
'Is there something in the kingdom that wasn't there before?' she hazarded.
'No.'
Tradition said that there could be only three questions. Granny tried to formulate one that couldn't be deliberately misunderstood. Then she decided that this was playing the wrong kind of game.
'What the hell's going on?' she said carefully. 'And no mucking about trying to wriggle out of it, otherwise I'll boil you.'
The demon appeared to hesitate. This was obviously a new approach.
'Magrat, just kick that kindling over here, will you?' said Granny.
'I protest at this treatment,' said the demon, its voice tinged with uncertainty.
'Yes, well, we haven't got time to bandy legs with you all night,' said Granny. These word games might be all right for wizards, but we've got other fish to fry.'
'Or boil,' said Nanny.
'Look,' said the demon, and now there was a whine of terror in its voice. 'We're not supposed to volunteer information just like that. There are rules, you know.'
'There's some old oil in the can on the shelf, Magrat,' said Nanny.
'If I simply tell you—' the demon began.
'Yes?' said Granny, encouragingly.
'You won't let on, will you?' it implored.
'Not a word,' promised Granny.
'Lips are sealed,' said Magrat.
'There is nothing new in the kingdom,' said the demon, 'but the land has woken up.'
'What do you mean?' said Granny.
'It's unhappy. It wants a king that cares for it.'
'How—' Magrat began, but Granny waved her into silence.
'You don't mean people, do you?' she said. The glistening head shook. 'No, I didn't think so.'
'What—' Nanny began. Granny put a finger to her lips.
She turned and walked to the washhouse's window, a dusty spiderweb graveyard of faded butterfly wings and last summer's bluebottles. A faint glow beyond the frosted panes suggested that, against all reason, a new day would soon dawn.
'Can you tell us why?' she said, without turning round. She'd felt the mind of a whole country . . .
She was rather impressed.
'I'm just a demon. What do I know? Only what is, not the why and how of it.'
'I see.'
'May I go now?'
'Um?'
'Please?'
Granny jerked upright again.
'Oh. Yes. Run along,' she said distractedly. 'Thank you.'
The head didn't move. It hung around, like a hotel porter who has just carried fifteen suitcases up ten flights of stairs, shown everyone where the bathroom is, plumped up the pillows, and feels he has adjusted all the curtains he is going to adjust.
'You wouldn't mind banishing me, would you?' said the demon, when no-one seemed to be taking the hint.
'What?' said Granny, who was thinking again.
'Only I'd feel better for being properly banished. “Run along” lacks that certain something,' said the head.
'Oh. Well, if it gives you any pleasure. Magrat!'
'Yes?' said Magrat, startled.
Granny tossed the copper stick to her.
'Do the honours, will you?' she said.
Magrat caught the stick by what she hoped Granny was imagining as the handle, and smiled.
'Certainly. Right. Okay. Um. Begone, foul fiend, unto the blackest pit—'
The head smiled contentedly as the words rolled over it. This was more like it.
It melted back into the waters of the copper like candlewax under a flame. Its last contemptuous comment, almost lost in the swirl, was, 'Run aaaalonggg . . .'
Granny went home alone as the cold pink light of dawn glided across the snow, and let herself into her cottage.
The goats were uneasy in their outhouse. The starlings muttered and rattled their false teeth under the roof. The mice were squeaking behind the kitchen dresser.
She made a pot of tea, conscious that every sound in the kitchen seemed slightly louder than it ought to be. When she dropped the spoon into the sink it sounded like a bell being hit with a hammer.
She always felt uncomfortable after getting involved in organised magic or, as she would put it, out of sorts with herself. She found herself wandering around the place looking for things to do and then forgetting them when they were half-complete. She paced back and forth across the cold flagstones.
It is at times like this that the mind finds the oddest jobs to do in order to avoid its primary purpose, i.e., thinking about things. If anyone had been watching they would have been amazed at the sheer dedication with which Granny tackled such tasks as cleaning the teapot stand, rooting ancient nuts out of the fruit bowl on the dresser, and levering fossilised bread crusts out of the cracks in the flagstones with the back of a teaspoon.
Animals had minds. People had minds, although human minds were vague foggy things. Even insects had minds, little pointy bits of light in the darkness of non-mind.
Granny considered herself something of an expert on minds. She was pretty certain things like countries didn't have minds.
They weren't even alive, for goodness sake. A country was, well, was—
Hold on. Hold on . . . A thought stole gently into Granny's mind and sheepishly tried to attract her attention.
There was a way in which those brooding forests could have a mind. Granny sat up, a piece of antique loaf in her hand, and gazed speculatively at the fireplace. Her mind's eye looked through it, out at the snow-filled aisles of trees. Yes. It had never occurred to her before. Of course, it'd be a mind made up of all the other little minds inside it; plant minds, bird minds, bear minds, even the great slow minds of the trees themselves . . .
She sat down in her rocking chair, which started to rock all by itself.
She'd often thought of the forest as a sprawling creature, but only metterforicaily, as a wizard would put it; drowsy and purring with bumblebees in the summer, roaring and raging in autumn gales, curled in on itself and sleeping in the winter. It occurred to her that in addition to being a collection of other things, the forest was a thing in itself. Alive, only not alive in the way that, say, a shrew was alive.
And much slower.
That would have to be important. How fast did a forest's heart beat? Once a year, maybe. Yes, that sounded about right. Out there the forest was waiting for the brighter sun and longer days that would pump a million gallons of sap several hundred feet into the sky in one great systolic thump too big and loud to be heard.
And it was at about this point that Granny bit her lip.
She'd just thought the word 'systolic', and it certainly wasn't in her vocabulary.
Somebody was inside her head with her.
Some thing.
Had she just thought all those thoughts, or had they been thought through her?
She glared at the floor, trying to keep her ideas to herself. But her mind was being watched as easily as if her head was made of glass.
Granny Weatherwax got to her feet and opened the curtains.
And they were out there on what – in warmer months -was the lawn. And every single one of them was staring at her.
After a few minutes Granny's front door opened. This was an event in its own right; like most Ramtoppers Granny lived her life via the back door. There were only three times in your life when it was proper to come through the front door, and you were carried every time.
It opened with considerable difficulty, in a series of painful jerks and thumps. A few flakes of paint fell on to the snowdrift in front of the door, which sagged inward. Finally, when it was about halfway open, the door wedged.
Granny sidled awkwardly through the gap and out on to the hitherto undisturbed snow.
She had put her pointed hat on, and the long black cloak which she wore when she wanted anyone who saw her to be absolutely clear that she was a witch.
There was an elderly kitchen chair half buried in snow. In summer it was a handy place to sit and do whatever hand chores were necessary, while keeping one eye on the track. Granny hauled it out, brushed the snow off the seat, and sat down firmly with her knees apart and her arms folded defiantly. She stuck out her chin.
The sun was well up but the light on this Hogswatchday was still pink and slanting. It glowed on the great cloud of steam that hung over the assembled creatures. They hadn't moved, although every now and again one of them would stamp a hoof or scratch itself.
Granny looked up at a flicker of movement. She hadn't noticed before, but every tree around her garden was so heavy with birds that it looked as though a strange brown and black spring had come early.
Occupying the patch where the herbs grew in summer were the wolves, sitting or lolling with their tongues hanging out. A contingent of bears was crouched behind them, with a platoon of deer beside them. Occupying the metterforical stalls was a rabble of rabbits, weasels, vermine, badgers, foxes and miscellaneous creatures who, despite the fact that they live their entire lives in a bloody atmosphere of hunter and hunted, killing or being killed by claw, talon and tooth, are generally referred to as woodland folk.
They rested together on the snow, their normal culinary relationships entirely forgotten, trying to outstare her.
Two things were immediately apparent to Granny. One was that this seemed to represent a pretty accurate cross-section of the forest life.
The other she couldn't help saying aloud.
'I don't know what this spell is,' she said. 'But I'll tell you this for nothing – when it wears off, some of you little buggers had better get moving.'
None of them stirred. There was no sound except for an elderly badger relieving itself with an embarrassed expression.
'Look,' said Granny. 'What can I do about it? It's no good you coming to me. He's the new lord. This is his kingdom. I can't go meddling. It's not right to go meddling, on account of I can't interfere with people ruling. It has to sort itself out, good or bad. Fundamental rule of magic, is that. You can't go round ruling people with spells, because you'd have to use more and more spells all the time.' She sat back, grateful that long-standing tradition didn't allow the Crafty and the Wise to rule. She remembered what it had felt like to wear the crown, even for a few seconds.
No, things like crowns had a troublesome effect on clever folk; it was best to leave all the reigning to the kind of people whose eyebrows met in the middle when they tried to think. In a funny sort of way, they were much better at it.
She added, 'People have to sort it out for themselves. Well-known fact.'
She felt that one of the larger stags was giving her a particularly doubting look.
'Yes, well, so he killed the old king,' she conceded. That's nature's way, ain't it? Your lot know all about this. Survival of the wossname. You wouldn't know what an heir was, unless you thought it was a sort of rabbit.'
She drummed her fingers on her knees.
'Anyway, the old king wasn't much of a friend to you, was he? All that hunting, and such.'
Three hundred pairs of dark eyes bored in at her.
'It's no good you all looking at me,' she tried. 'I can't go around mucking about with kings just because you don't like them. Where would it all end? It's not as if he's done me any harm.'
She tried to avoid the gaze of a particularly cross-eyed stoat.
'All right, so it's selfish,' she said. 'That's what bein' a witch is all about. Good day to you.'
She stamped inside, and tried to slam the door. It stuck once or twice, which rather spoiled the effect.
Once inside she drew the curtains and sat down in the rocking chair and rocked fiercely.
'That's the whole point,' she said. 'I can't go around meddling. That's the whole point.'
The lattys lurched slowly over the rutted roads, towards yet another little city whose name the company couldn't quite remember and would instantly forget. The winter sun hung low over the damp, misty cabbage fields of the Sto Plains, and the foggy silence magnified the creaking of the wheels.
Hwel sat with his stubby legs dangling over the backboard of the last latty.
He'd done his best. Vitoller had left the education of Tomjon in his hands; 'You're better at all that business,' he'd said, adding with his usual tact, 'Besides, you're more his height.'
But it wasn't working.
'Apple,' he repeated, waving the fruit in the air.
Tomjon grinned at him. He was nearly three years old, and hadn't said a word anyone could understand. Hwel was harbouring dark suspicions about the witches.
'But he seems bright enough,' said Mrs Vitoller, who was travelling inside the latty and darning the chain mail. 'He knows what things are. He does what he's told. I just wish you'd speak,' she said softly, patting the boy on the cheek.
Hwel gave the apple to Tomjon, who accepted it gravely.
'I reckon them witches did you a bad turn, missus,' said the dwarf. 'You know. Changelings and whatnot. There used to be a lot of that sort of thing. My great-great-grandmother said it was done to us, once. The fairies swapped a human and a dwarf. We never realised until he started banging his head on things, they say—'
'They say this fruit be like unto the world
So sweet. Or like, say I, the heart of man
So red without and yet within, unclue'd,
We find the worm, the rot, the flaw.
However glows his bloom the bite
Proves many a man be rotten at the core.'
The two of them swivelled around to stare at Tomjon, who nodded to them and proceeded to eat the apple.
'That was the Worm speech from The Tyrant,' whispered Hwel. His normal grasp of the language temporarily deserted him. 'Bloody hell,' he said.
'But he sounded just like—'
'I'm going to get Vitoller,' said Hwel, and dropped off the tailboard and ran through the frozen puddles to the front of die convoy, where the actor-manager was whistling tunelessly and, yes, strolling.
'What ho, b'zugda-hiara[8],' he said cheerfully.
'You've got to come at once! He's talking!'
Talking?'
Hwel jumped up and down. 'He's quoting!' he shouted. 'You've got to come! He sounds just like—'
'Me?' said Vitoller, a few minutes later, after they had pulled the lattys into a grove of leafless trees by the roadside. 'Do I sound like that?'
'Yes,' chorused the company.
Young Willikins, who specialised in female roles, prodded Tomjon gently as he stood on an upturned barrel in the middle of the clearing.
'Here, boy, do you know my speech from Please Yourself!' he said.
Tomjon nodded. ' “He is not dead, I say, who lies beneath the stone. For if Death could but hear—” '
They listened in awed silence as the endless mists rolled across the dripping fields and the red ball of the sun floated down the sky. When the boy had finished hot tears were streaming down Hwel's face.
'By all the gods,' he said, when Tomjon had finished, 'I must have been on damn good form when I wrote that.' He blew his nose noisily.
'Do I sound like that?' said Willikins, his face pale.
Vitoller patted him gently on the shoulder.
'If you sounded like that, my bonny,' he said, 'you wouldn't be standing arse-deep in slush in the middle of these forsaken fields, with nothing but liberated cabbage for thy tea.'
He clapped his hands.
'No more, no more,' he said, his breath making puffs of steam in the freezing air. 'Backs to it, everybody. We must be outside the walls of Sto Lat by sunset.'
As the grumbling actors awoke from the spell and wandered back to the shafts of the lattys Vitoller beckoned to the dwarf and put his arm around his shoulders, or rather around the top of his head.
'Well?' he said. 'You people know all about magic, or so it is said. What do you make of it?'
'He spends all his time around the stage, master. It's only natural that he should pick things up,' said Hwel vaguely.
Vitoller leaned down.
'Do you believe that?'
'I believe I heard a voice that took my doggerel and shaped it and fired it back through my ears and straight into my heart,' said Hwel simply. 'I believe I heard a voice that got behind the crude shape of the words and said the things I had meant them to say, but had not the skill to achieve. Who knows where such things come from?'
He stared impassively into Vitoller's red face. 'He may have inherited it from his father,' he said.
'But-'
'And who knows what witches may achieve?' said the dwarf.
Vitoller felt his wife's hand pushed into his. As he stood up, bewildered and angry, she kissed him on the back of the neck.
'Don't torture yourself,' she said. 'Isn't it all for the best? Your son has declaimed his first word.'
Spring came, and ex-King Verence still wasn't taking being dead lying down. He prowled the castle relentlessly, seeking for a way in which its ancient stones would release their grip on him.
He was also trying to keep out of the way of the other ghosts.
Champot was all right, if a bit tiresome. But Verence had backed away at the first sight of the Twins, toddling hand in hand along the midnight corridors, their tiny ghosts a memorial to a deed darker even than the usual run of regicidal unpleasantness.
And then there was the Troglodyte Wanderer, a rather faded monkeyman in a furry loincloth who apparently happened to haunt the castle merely because it had been built on his burial mound. For no obvious reason a chariot with a screaming woman in it occasionally rumbled through the laundry room. As for the kitchen . . .
One day he'd given in, despite everything old Champot had said, and had followed the smells of cooking into the big, hot, high domed cavern that served the castle as kitchen and abattoir. Funny thing, that. He'd never been down there since his childhood. Somehow kings and kitchens didn't go well together.
It was full of ghosts.
But they weren't human. They weren't even proto-human.
They were stags. They were bullocks. They were rabbits, and pheasants, and partridges, and sheep, and pigs. There were even some round blobby things that looked unpleasantly like the ghosts of oysters. They were packed so tightly that in fact they merged and mingled, turning the kitchen into a silent, jostling nightmare of teeth and fur and horns, half-seen and misty. Several noticed him, and there was a weird blarting of noises that sounded far-off, tinny and unpleasantly out of register. Through them all the cook and his assistants wandered quite unconcernedly, making vegetarian sausages.
Verence had stared for half a minute and then fled, wishing that he still had a real stomach so that he could stick his fingers down his throat for forty years and bring up everything he'd eaten.
He'd sought solace in the stables, where his beloved hunting dogs had whined and scratched at the door and had generally been very ill-at-ease at his sensed but unseen presence.
Now he haunted – and how he hated the word – the Long Gallery, where paintings of long-dead kings looked down at him from the dusty shadows. He would have felt a lot more kindly towards them if he hadn't met a number of them gibbering in various parts of the premises.
Verence had decided that he had two aims in death. One was to get out of the castle and find his son, and the other was to get his revenge on the duke. But not by killing him, he'd decided, even if he could find a way, because an eternity in that giggling idiot's company would lend a new terror to death.
He sat under a painting of Queen Bemery (670-722), whose rather stern good looks he would have felt a whole lot happier about if he hadn't seen her earlier that morning walking through the wall.
Verence tried to avoid walking through walls. A man had his dignity.
He became aware that he was being watched.
He turned his head.
There was a cat sitting in the doorway, subjecting him to a slow blink. It was a mottled grey and extremely fat . . .
No. It was extremely big. It was covered with so much scar tissue that it looked like a fist with fur on it. Its ears were a couple of perforated stubs, its eyes two yellow slits of easygoing malevolence, its tail a twitching series of question marks as it stared at him.
Greebo had heard that Lady Felmet had a small white female cat and had strolled up to pay his respects.
Verence had never seen an animal with so much built-in villainy. He didn't resist as it waddled across the floor and tried to rub itself against his legs, purring like a waterfall.
'Well, well,' said the king, vaguely. He reached down and made an effort to scratch it behind the two ragged bits on top of its head. It was a relief to find someone else besides another ghost who could see him, and Greebo, he couldn't help feeling, was a distinctly unusual cat. Most of the castle cats were either pampered pets or flat-eared kitchen and stable habitue's who generally resembled the very rodents they lived on. This cat, on the other hand, was its own animal. All cats give that impression, of course, but instead of the mindless animal self-absorption that passes for secret wisdom in the creatures. Greebo radiated genuine intelligence. He also radiated a smell that would have knocked over a wall and caused sinus trouble in a dead fox.
Only one type of person kept a cat like this.
The king tried to hunker down, and found he was sinking slightly into the floor. He pulled himself together and drifted upwards. Once a man allowed himself to go native in the ethereal world there would be no hope for him, he felt.
Only close relatives and the psychically inclined, Death had said. There weren't many of either in the castle. The duke qualified under the first heading, but his relentless self-interest made him about as psychically useful as a carrot. As for the rest, only the cook and the Fool seemed to qualify, but the cook spent a lot of his time weeping in the pantry because he wasn't being allowed to roast anything more bloody than a parsnip and the Fool was already such a bundle of nerves that Verence had given up his attempts to get through.
A witch, now. If a witch wasn't psychically inclined, then he, King Verence, was a puff of wind. He had to get a witch into the castle. And then . . .
He'd got a plan. In fact, it was more than that; it was a Plan. He spent months over it. He hadn't got anything else to do, except think. Death had been right about that. All that ghosts had were thoughts, and although thoughts in general had always been alien to the king the absence of any body to distract him with its assorted humours had actually given him the chance to savour the joys of cerebration. He'd never had a Plan before, or at least one that went much further than 'Let's find something and kill it'. And here, sitting in front of him washing itself, was the key.
'Here, pussy,' he ventured. Greebo gave him a penetrating yellow stare.
'Cat,' the king amended hastily, and backed away, beckoning. For a moment it seemed that the cat wouldn't follow and then, to his relief, Greebo stood up, yawned, and padded towards him. Greebo didn't often see ghosts, and was vaguely interested in this tall, bearded man with the see-through body.
The king led him along a dusty side corridor and towards a lumber room crammed with crumbling tapestries and portraits of long-dead kings. Greebo examined it critically, and then sat down in the middle of the dusty floor, looking at the king expectantly.
'There's plenty of mice and things in here, d'you see,' said Verence. 'And the rain blows in through the broken window. Plus there's all these tapestries to sleep on.'
'Sorry,' the king added, and turned to the door.
This was what he had been working on all these months. When he was alive he had always taken a lot of care of his body, and since being dead he had taken care to preserve its shape. It was too easy to let yourself go and become all fuzzy around the edges; there were ghosts in the castle who were mere pale blobs. But Verence had wielded iron self-control and exercised – well, had thought hard about exercise – and fairly bulged with spectral muscles. Months of pumping ectoplasm had left him in better shape than he had ever been, apart from being dead.
Then he'd started out small, with dust motes. The first one had nearly killed him[9], but he'd persevered and progressed to sand grains, then whole dried peas; he still didn't dare venture into the kitchens, but he had amused himself by oversalting Felmet's food a pinch at a time until he pulled himself together and told himself that poisoning wasn't honourable, even against vermin.
Now he leaned all his weight on the door, and with every microgramme of his being forced himself to become as heavy as possible. The sweat of auto-suggestion dripped off his nose and vanished before it hit the floor. Greebo watched with interest as ghostly muscles moved on the king's arms like footballs mating.
The door began to move, creaked, then accelerated and hit the doorway with a thump. The latch clicked into place.
It bloody well had to work now, Verence told himself. He'd never be able to lift the latch by himself. But a witch would certainly come looking for her cat – wouldn't she?
In the hills beyond the castle the Fool lay on his stomach and stared into the depths of a little lake. A couple of trout stared back at him.
Somewhere on the Disc, reason told him, there must be someone more miserable than he was. He wondered who it was.
He hadn't asked to be a Fool, but it wouldn't have mattered if he had, because he couldn't recall anyone in his family ever listening to anything he said after Dad ran away.
Certainly not Grandad. His earliest memory was of Grandad standing over him making him repeat the jokes by rote, and hammering home every punchline with his belt; it was thick leather, and the fact that it had bells on didn't improve things much.
Grandad was credited with seven official new jokes. He'd won the honorary cap and bells of the Grand Prix des Idiots Blithering at Ankh-Morpork four years in a row, which no-one else had ever done, and presumably they made him the funniest man who ever lived. He had worked hard at it, you had to give him that.
The Fool recalled with a shudder how, at the age of six.
he'd timidly approached the old man after supper with a joke he'd made up. It was about a duck.
It had earned him the biggest thrashing of his life, which even then must have presented the old joker with a bit of a challenge.
'You will learn, my lad—' he recalled, with every sentence punctuated by jingling cracks – 'that there is nothing more serious than jesting. From now on you will never—' the old man paused to change hands – 'never, never, ever utter a joke that has not been approved by the Guild. Who are you to decide what is amusing? Marry, let the untutored giggle at unskilled banter; it is the laughter of the ignorant. Never. Never. Never let me catch you joculating again.'
After that he'd gone back to learning the three hundred and eighty-three Guild-approved jokes, which was bad enough, and the glossary, which was a lot bigger and much worse.
And then he'd been sent to Ankh, and there, in the bare, severe rooms, he'd found there were books other than the great heavy brass-bound Monster Fun Book. There was a whole circular world out there, full of weird places and people doing interesting things, like . . .
Singing. He could hear singing.
He raised his head cautiously, and jumped at the tinkle of the bells on his cap. He gripped the hated things hurriedly.
The singing went on. The Fool peeped cautiously through the drift of meadowsweet that was providing him with perfect concealment.
The singing wasn't particularly good. The only word the singer appeared to know was 'la', but she was making it work hard. The general tune gave the impression that the singer believed that people were supposed to sing 'lalala' in certain circumstances, and was determined to do what the world expected of her.
The Fool risked raising his head a little further, and saw Magrat for the first time.
She had stopped dancing rather self-consciously through the narrow meadow and was trying to plait some daisies in her hair, without much success.
The Fool held his breath. On long nights on the hard flagstones he had dreamed of women like her. Although, if he really thought about it, not much like her; they were better endowed around the chest, their noses weren't so red and pointed, and their hair tended to flow more. But the Fool's libido was bright enough to tell the difference between the impossible and the conceivably attainable, and hurriedly cut in some filter circuits.
Magrat was picking flowers and talking to them. The Fool strained to hear.
'Here's Woolly Fellwort,' she said. 'And Treacle Worm-seed, which is for inflammation of the ears . . .'
Even Nanny Ogg, who took a fairly cheerful view of the world, would have been hard put to say anything complimentary about Magrat's voice. But it fell on the Fool's ears like blossom.
'. . . and Five-leaved False Mandrake, sovereign against fluxes of the bladder. Ah, and here's Old Man's Frogbit. That's for constipation.'
The Fool stood up sheepishly, in a carillon of jingles. To Magrat it was as if the meadow, hitherto supporting nothing more hazardous than clouds of pale blue butterflies and a few self-employed bumblebees, had sprouted a large red-and-yellow demon.
It was opening and shutting its mouth. It had three menacing horns.
An urgent voice at the back of her mind said: You should run away now, like a timid gazelle; this is the accepted action in these circumstances.
Common sense intervened. In her most optimistic moments Magrat would not have compared herself to a gazelle, timid or otherwise. Besides, it added, the basic snag about running away like a timid gazelle was that in all probability she would easily outdistance him.
'Er,' said the apparition.
Uncommon sense, which, despite Granny Weatherwax's general belief that Magrat was several sticks short of a bundle, she still had in sufficiency, pointed out that few demons tinkled pathetically and appeared to be quite so breathless.
'Hallo,' she said.
The Fool's mind was also working hard. He was beginning to panic.
Magrat shunned the traditional pointed hat, as worn by the older witches, but she still held to one of the most iundamental rules of witchcraft. It's not much use being a witch unless you look like one. In her case this meant lots of silver jewellery with octograms, bats, spiders, dragons and other symbols of everyday mysticism; Magrat would have painted her fingernails black, except that she didn't think she would be able to face Granny's withering scorn.
It was dawning on the Fool that he had surprised a witch.
'Whoops,' he said, and turned to run for it.
'Don't—' Magrat began, but the Fool was already pounding down the forest path that led back to the castle.
Magrat stood and stared at the wilting posy in her hands. She ran her fingers through her hair and a shower of wilted petals fell out.
She felt that an important moment had been allowed to slip out of her grasp as fast as a greased pig in a narrow passageway.
She felt an overpowering urge to curse. She knew a great many curses. Goodie Whemper had been really imaginative in that department; even the creatures of the forest used to go past her cottage at a dead run.
She couldn't find a single one that fully expressed her feelings.
'Oh, bugger,' she said.
It was a full moon again that night, and most unusually all three witches arrived at the standing stone early; it was so embarrassed by this that it went and hid in some gorse bushes.
'Greebo hasn't been home for two days/ said Nanny Ogg, as soon as she arrived. 'It's not like him. I can't find him anywhere.'
'Cats can look after themselves,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'Countries can't. I have intelligence to report. Light the fire, Magrat.'
'Mmm?'
'I said, light the fire, Magrat.'
'Mmm? Oh. Yes.'
The two old women watched her drift vaguely across the moorland, tugging absently at dried-up whin clumps. Magrat seemed to have her mind on something.
'Doesn't seem to be her normal self,' said Nanny Ogg.
'Yes. Could be an improvement,' said Granny shortly, and sat down on a rock. 'She should of got it lit before we arrived. It's her job.'
'She means well,' said Nanny Ogg, studying Magrat's back reflectively.
'I used to mean well when I was a girl, but that didn't stop the sharp end of Goodie Filter's tongue. Youngest witch serves her time, you know how it is. We had it tougher, too. Look at her. Doesn't even wear the pointy hat. How's anyone going to know?'
'You got something on your mind, Esme?' said Nanny.
Granny nodded gloomily.
'Had a visit yesterday,' she said.
'Me too.'
Despite her worries, Granny was slightly annoyed at this. 'Who from?' she said.
'The mayor of Lancre and a bunch of burghers. They're not happy about the king. They want a king they can trust.'
'I wouldn't trust any king a burgher could trust,' said Granny.
'Yes, but it's not good for anyone, all this taxing and killing folk. The new sergeant they've got is a keen man when it comes to setting fire to cottages, too. Old Verence used to do it too, mind, but . . . well . . .'
'I know, I know. It was more personal,' said Granny. 'You felt he meant it. People like to feel they're valued.'
'This Felmet hates the kingdom,' Nanny went on. 'They all say it. They say when they go to talk to him he just stares at them and giggles and rubs his hand and twitches a bit.'
Granny scratched her chin. 'The old king used to shout at them and kick them out of the castle, mind. He used to say he didn't have no time for shopkeepers and such,' she added, with a note of personal approval.
'But he was always very gracious about it,' said Nanny Ogg. 'And he—'
'The kingdom is worried,' said Granny.
'Yes, I already said.'
'I didn't mean the people, I meant the kingdom.'
Granny explained. Nanny interrupted a few times with brief questions. It didn't occur to her to doubt anything she heard. Granny Weatherwax never made things up.
At the end of it she said, 'Well.'
'My feelings exactly.'
'Fancy that.'
'Quite so.'
'And what did the animals do then?'
'Went away. It had brought them there, it let them go.'
'No one et anyone else?'
'Not where I saw.'
'Funny thing.'
'Right enough.'
Nanny Ogg stared at the setting sun.
'I don't reckon a lot of kingdoms do that sort of thing,' she said. 'You saw the theatre. Kings and such are killing one another the whole time. Their kingdoms just make the best of it. How come this one takes offence all of a sudden?'
'It's been here a long time,' said Granny.
'So's everywhere,' said Nanny, and added, with the air of a lifetime student, 'Everywhere's been where it is ever since it was first put there. It's called geography.'
'That's just about land,' said Granny. 'It's not the same as a kingdom. A kingdom is made up of-all sorts of things. Ideas. Loyalties. Memories, It all sort of exists together. And then all these things create some kind of life. Not a body kind of life, more like a living idea. Made up of everything that's alive and what they're thinking. And what the people before them thought.'
Magrat reappeared and began to lay the fire with the air of one in a trance.
'I can see you've been thinking about this a lot,' said Nanny, speaking very slowly and carefully. 'And this kingdom wants a better king, is that it?'
'No! That is, yes. Look—' she leaned forward – 'it doesn't have the same kind of likes and dislikes as people, right?'
Nanny Ogg leaned back. 'Well, it wouldn't, would it,' she ventured.
'It doesn't care if people are good or bad. I don't think it could even tell, any more than you could tell if an ant was a good ant. But it expects the king to care for it.'
'Yes, but,' said Nanny wretchedly. She was becoming a bit afraid of the gleam in Granny's eye. 'Lots of people have killed each other to become king of Lancre. They've done all kinds of murder.'
'Don't matter! Don't matter!' said Granny, waving her arms. She started counting on her fingers. 'For why,' she said. 'One, kings go round killing each other because it's all part of destiny and such and doesn't count as murder, and two, they killed for the kingdom. That's the important bit. But this new man just wants the power. He hates the kingdom.'
'It's a bit like a dog, really,' said Magrat. Granny looked at her with her mouth open to frame some suitable retort, and then her face softened.
'Very much like,' she said. 'A dog doesn't care if its master's good or bad, just so long as it likes the dog.'
'Well, then,' said Nanny. 'No-one and nothing likes Felmet. What are we going to do about it?'
'Nothing. You know we can't meddle.'
'You saved that baby,' said Nanny.
'That's not meddling!'
'Have it your way,' said Nanny. 'But maybe one day he'll come back. Destiny again. And you said we should hide the crown. It'll all come back, mark my words. Hurry up with that tea, Magrat.'
'What are you going to do about the burghers?' said Granny.
'I told them they'll have to sort it out themselves. Once we use magic, I said, it'd never stop. You know that.'
'Right,' said Granny, but there was a hint of wistfulness in her voice.
'I'll tell you this, though,' said Nanny. 'They didn't like it much. They was muttering when they left.'
Magrat blurted out, 'You know the Fool, who lives up at the castle?'
'Little man with runny eyes?' said Nanny, relieved that the conversation had returned to more normal matters.
'Not that little,' said Magrat. 'What's his name, do you happen to know?'
'He's just called Fool,' said Granny. 'No job for a man, that. Running around with bells on.'
'His mother was a Beldame, from over Blackglass way,' said Nanny Ogg, whose knowledge of the genealogy of Lancre was legendary. 'Bit of a beauty when she was younger. Broke many a heart, she did. Bit of a scandal there, I did hear. Granny's right, though. At the end of the day, a Fool's a Fool.'
'Why d'you want to know, Magrat?' said Granny Weather-wax.
'Oh . . . one of the girls in the village was asking me,' said Magrat, crimson to the ears.
Nanny cleared her throat, and grinned at Granny Weatherwax, who sniffed aloofly.
'It's a steady job,' said Nanny. 'I'll grant you that.'
'Huh,' said Granny. 'A man who tinkles all day. No kind of husband for anyone, I'd say.'
'You – she'd always know where he was,' said Nanny, who was enjoying this. 'You'd just have to listen.'
'Never trust a man with horns on his hat,' said Granny flatly.
Magrat stood up and pulled herself together, giving the impression that some bits had to come quite a long way.
'You're a pair of silly old women,' she said quietly. 'And I'm going home.'
She marched off down the path to her village without another word.
The old witches stared at one another.
'Well!' said Nanny.
'It's all these books they read today,' said Granny. 'It overheats the brain. You haven't been putting ideas in her head, have you?'
'What do you mean?'
'You know what I mean.'
Nanny stood up. 'I certainly don't see why a girl should have to be single her whole life just because you think it's the right thing,' she said. 'Anyway, if people didn't have children, where would we be?'
'None of your girls is a witch,' said Granny, also standing up.
'They could have been,' said Nanny defensively.
'Yes, if you'd let them work it out for themselves, instead of encouragin' them to throw themselves at men.'
'They're good-lookin'. You can't stand in the way of human nature. You'd know that if you'd ever—'
'If I'd ever what?' said Granny Weatherwax, quietly.
They stared at one another in shocked silence. They could both feel it, the tension creeping into their bodies from the ground itself, the hot, aching feeling that they'd started something they must finish, no matter what.
'I knew you when you were a gel,' said Nanny sullenly. 'Stuck-up, you were.'
'At least I spent most of the time upright,' said Granny. 'Disgustin', that was. Everyone thought so.'
'How would you know?' snapped Nanny.
'You were the talk of the whole village,' said Granny.
'And you were, too! They called you the Ice Maiden. Never knew that, did you?' sneered Nanny.
'I wouldn't sully my lips by sayin' what they called you,' shouted Granny.
'Oh yes?' shrieked Nanny. 'Well, let me tell you, my good woman—'
'Don't you dare talk to me in that tone of voice! I'm not anyone's good woman—'
'Right!'
There was another silence while they stared at one another, nose to nose, but this silence was a whole quantum level of animosity higher than the last one; you could have roasted a turkey in the heat of this silence. There was no more shouting. Things had got far too bad for shouting. Now the voices came in low and full of menace.
'I should have known better than to listen to Magrat,' growled Granny. 'This coven business is ridiculous. It attracts entirely the wrong sort of people.'
'I'm very glad we had this little talk,' hissed Nanny Ogg. 'Cleared the air.'
She looked down.
'And you're in my territory, madam.'
'Madam!'
Thunder rolled in the distance. The permanent Lancre storm, after a trip through the foothills, had drifted back towards the mountains for a one-night stand. The last rays of sunset shone livid through the clouds, and fat drops of water began to thud on the witches' pointed hats.
'I really don't have time for all this,' snapped Granny, trembling. 'I have far more important things to do.'
'And me,' said Nanny.
'Good night to you.'
'And you.'
They turned their backs on one another and strode away into the downpour.
The midnight rain drummed on Magrat's curtained windows as she thumbed her way purposefully through Goodie Whemper's books of what, for want of any better word, could be called natural magic.
The old woman had been a great collector of such things and, most unusually, had written them down; witches didn't normally have much use for literacy. But book after book was filled with tiny, meticulous handwriting detailing the results of patient experiments in applied magic. Goodie Whemper had, in fact, been a research witch.[10]
Magrat was looking up love spells. Every time she shut her eyes she saw a red-and-yellow figure on the darkness inside. Something had to be done about it.
She shut the book with a snap and looked at her notes. First, she had to find out his name. The old peel-the-apple trick should do that. You just peeled an apple, getting one length of peel, and threw the peel behind you; it'd land in the shape of his name. Millions of girls had tried it and had inevitably been disappointed, unless the loved one was called Scscs. That was because they hadn't used an unripe Sunset Wonder picked three minutes before noon on the first frosty day in the autumn and peeled left-handedly using a silver knife with a blade less than half an inch wide; Goodie had done a lot of experimenting and was quite explicit on the subject. Magrat always kept a few by for emergencies, and this probably was one.
She took a deep breath, and threw the peel over her shoulder.
She turned slowly.
I'm a witch, she told herself. This is just another spell. There's nothing to be frightened of. Get a grip of yourself, girl. Woman.
She looked down, and bit the back of her hand out of nervousness and embarrassment.
'Who'd have thought it?' she said aloud.
It had worked.
She turned back to her notes, her heart fluttering. What was next? Ah, yes – gathering fern seed in a silk handkerchief at dawn. Goodie Whemper's tiny handwriting went on for two pages of detailed botanical instructions which, if carefully followed, resulted in the kind of love potion that had to be kept in a tightly-stoppered jar at the bottom of a bucket of iced water.
Magrat pulled open her back door. The thunder had passed, but now the first grey light of the new day was drowned in a steady drizzle. But it still qualified as dawn, and Magrat was determined.
Brambles tugging at her dress, her hair plastered against her head by the rain, she set out into the dripping forest.
The trees shook, even without a breeze.


Discworld 06 - Wyrd Sisters


AUDIENCE: Behind you!

(1st assassin disappears.)


Discworld 06 - Wyrd Sisters


KING: You're trying to play tricks on old Kingy, you...

There was a lot of crossing out, and a large blot. Tomjon threw it aside and selected another ball at random.
KING: Is this a duck knife dagger I see behind beside in front of before me, its beak handle pointing at me my hand?
1ST MURDERER: I'faith, it is not so. Oh, no it isn't!
2ND MURDERER: Thou speakest truth, sire. Oh, yes it is!
Judging by the creases in the paper, this one had been thrown at the wall particularly hard. Hwel had once explained to Tomjon his theory about inspirations, and by the look of it a whole shower had fallen last night.
Fascinated by this insight into the creative processes, however, Tomjon tried a third discarded attempt:
QUEEN: Faith, there is a sound without! Mayhap it is my husband returning! Quick, into the garderobe, and wait not upon the order of your going!



Discworld 06 - Wyrd Sisters


MURDERER: Marry, but your maid still has my pantoufles!

MAID (opening door): The Archbishop, your majesty.
PRIEST (under bed): Bless my soul!
(Divers alarums)
Tomjon wondered vaguely what divers alarums, which Hwel always included somewhere in the stage directions, actually were. Hwel always refused to say. Perhaps they referred to dangerous depths, or lack of air pressure.
He sidled towards the table and, with great care, pulled the sheaf of paper from under the sleeping dwarfs head, lowering it gently on to a cushion.
The top sheet read:
Verence Felmet Small God's Eve A Night Of Knives Daggers Kings, by, Hwel of Vitoller's Men. A Comedy Tragedy in Eight Five Six Three Nine Acts.
Characters: Felmet, A Good King.
Verence, A Bad King.
Wethewacs, Ane Evil Witch
Hogg, Ane Likewise Evil Witch
Magerat, Ane Sirene . . .
Tomjon flicked over the page.
Scene: A Drawing Room Ship at See Street in Pseudopolis Blasted Moor. Enter Three Witches . . .
The boy read for a while and then turned to the last page.
Gentles, leave us dance and sing, and wish good health unto the king (Exeunt all, singing falala, etc. Shower of rose petals. Ringing of bells. Gods descend from heaven, demons rise from hell, much ado with turntable, etc.) The End.
Hwel snored.
In his dreams gods rose and fell, ships moved with cunning and art across canvas oceans, pictures jumped and ran together and became flickering images; men flew on wires, flew without wires, great ships of illusion fought against one another in imaginary skies, seas opened, ladies were sawn in half, a thousand special effects men giggled and gibbered. Through it all he ran with his arms open in desperation, knowing that none of this really existed or ever would exist and all he really had was a few square yards of planking, some canvas and some paint on which to trap the beckoning images that invaded his head.
Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.
'It's a good play,' said Vitoller, 'apart from the ghost.'
'The ghost stays,' said Hwel sullenly.
'But people always jeer and throw things. Anyway, you know how hard it is to get all the chalk dust out of the clothes.'
'The ghost stays. It's a dramatic necessity.'
'You said it was a dramatic necessity in the last play.'
'Well, it was.'
'And in Please Yourself, and in A Wizard of Ankh, and all the rest of them.'
'I like ghosts.'
They stood to one side and watched the dwarf artificers assembling the wave machine. It consisted of half a dozen long spindles, covered in complex canvas spirals painted in shades of blue and green and white, and stretching the complete width of the stage. An arrangement of cogs and endless belts led to a treadmill in the wings. When the spirals were all turning at once people with weak stomachs had to look away.
'Sea battles,' breathed Hwel. 'Shipwrecks. Tritons. Pirates!'
'Squeaky bearings, laddie,' groaned Vitoller, shifting his weight on his stick. 'Maintenance expenses. Overtime.'
'It does look extremely . . . intricate,' Hwel admitted. 'Who designed it?'
'A daft old chap in the Street of Cunning Artificers,' said Vitoller. 'Leonard of Quirm. He's a painter really. He just does this sort of thing for a hobby. I happened to hear that he's been working on this for months. I just snapped it up quick when he couldn't get it to fly.'
They watched the mock waves turn.
'You're bent on going?' said Vitoller, at last.
'Yes. Tomjon's still a bit wild. He needs an older head around the place.'
'I'll miss you, laddie. I don't mind telling you. You've been like a son to me. How old are you, exactly? I never did know.'
'A hundred and two.'
Vitoller nodded gloomily. He was sixty, and his arthritis was playing him up.
'You've been like a father to me, then,' he said.
'It evens out in the end,' said Hwel diffidently. 'Half the height, twice the age. You could say that on the overall average we live about the same length of time as humans.'
The playmaster sighed. 'Well, I don't know what I will do without you and Tomjon around, and that's a fact.'
'It's only for the summer, and a lot of the lads are staying. In fact it's mainly the apprentices that are going. You said yourself it'd be good experience.'
Vitoller looked wretched and, in the chilly air of the half-finished theatre, a good deal smaller than usual, like a balloon two weeks after the party. He prodded some wood shavings distractedly with his stick.
'We grow old, Master Hwel. At least,' he corrected himself, 'I grow old and you grow older. We have heard the gongs at midnight.'
'Aye. You don't want him to go, do you?'
'I was all for it at first. You know. Then I thought, there's destiny afoot. Just when things are going well, there's always bloody destiny. I mean, that's where he came from.
Somewhere up in the mountains. Now fate is calling him back. I shan't see him again.'
'It's only for the summer—'
Vitoller held up a hand. 'Don't interrupt. I'd got the right dramatic flow there.'
'Sorry.'
Flick, flick, went the stick on the wood shavings, knocking them into the air.
'I mean, you know he's not my flesh and blood.'
'He's your son, though,' said Hwel. 'This hereditary business isn't all it's cracked up to be.'
'It's fine of you to say that.'
'I mean it. Look at me. I wasn't supposed to be writing plays. Dwarfs aren't even supposed to be able to read. I shouldn't worry too much about destiny, if I was you. I was destined to be a miner. Destiny gets it wrong half the time.'
'But you said he looks like the Fool person. I can't see it myself, mark you.'
'The light's got to be right.'
'Could be some destiny at work there.'
Hwel shrugged. Destiny was funny stuff, he knew. You couldn't trust it. Often you couldn't even see it. Just when you knew you had it cornered, it turned out to be something else – coincidence, maybe, or providence. You barred the door against it, and it was standing behind you. Then just when you thought you had it nailed down it walked away with the hammer.
He used destiny a lot. As a tool for his plays it was even better than a ghost. There was nothing like a bit of destiny to get the old plot rolling. But it was a mistake to think you could spot the shape of it. And as for thinking it could be controlled . . .
Granny Weatherwax squinted irritably into Nanny Ogg's crystal ball. It wasn't a particularly good one, being a greenish glass fishing float brought back from forn seaside parts by one of her sons. It distorted everything including, she suspected, the truth.
'He's definitely on his way,' she said, at last. 'In a cart.'
'A fiery white charger would have been favourite,' said Nanny Ogg. 'You know. Caparisoned, and that.'
'Has he got a magic sword?' said Magrat, craning to see.
Granny Weatherwax sat back.
'You're a disgrace, the pair of you,' she said. 'I don't know – magic chargers, fiery swords. Ogling away like a couple of milkmaids.'
'A magic sword is important,' said Magrat. 'You've got to have one. We could make him one,' she added wistfully. 'Out of thunderbolt iron. I've got a spell for that. You take some thunderbolt iron,' she said uncertainly, 'and then you make a sword out of it.'
'I can't be having with that old stuff,' said Granny. 'You can wait days for the damn things to hit and then they nearly take your arm off.'
'And a strawberry birthmark,' said Nanny Ogg, ignoring the interruption.
The other two looked at her expectantly.
'A strawberry birthmark,' she repeated. 'It's one of those things you've got to have if you're a prince coming to claim your kingdom. That's so's everyone will know. O'course, I don't know how they know it's strawberry.'
'Can't abide strawberries,' said Granny vaguely, quizzing the crystal again.
In its cracked green depths, smelling of bygone lobsters, a minute Tomjon kissed his parents, shook hands or hugged the rest of the company, and climbed aboard the leading latty.
It must of worked, she told herself. Else he wouldn't be coming here, would he? All those others must be his trusty band of good companions. After all, common sense, he's got to come five hundred miles across difficult country, anything could happen.
I daresay the armour and swords is in the carts.
She detected a twinge of doubt, and set out to quell it instantly. There isn't any other reason for him to come, stands to reason. We got the spell exactly right. Except for the ingredients. And most of the poetry. And it probably wasn't the right time. And Gytha took most of it home for the cat, which couldn't of been proper.
But he's on his way. What can't speak, can't lie.
'Best put the cloth over it when you've done, Esme,' said Nanny. 'I always get worried someone'll peer in at me when I'm having my bath.'
'He's on his way,' said Granny, the satisfaction in her voice so strong you could have ground corn with it. She dropped the black velvet bag over the ball.
'It's a long road,' said Nanny. 'There's many a slip twixt dress and drawers. There could be bandits.'
'We shall watch over him,' said Granny.
'That's not right. If he's going to be king he ought to be able to fight his own battles,' said Magrat.
'We don't want him to go wasting his strength,' said Nanny primly. 'We want him good and fresh for when he gets here.'
'And then, I hope, we shall leave him to fight his battles in his own way,' said Magrat.
Granny clapped her hands together in a businesslike fashion.
'Quite right,' she said. 'Provided he looks like winning.'
They had been meeting at Nanny Ogg's cottage. Magrat made an excuse to tarry after Granny left, around dawn, allegedly to help Nanny with tidying up.
'Whatever happened to not meddling?' she said.
'What do you mean?'
'You know, Nanny.'
'It's not proper meddling,' said Nanny awkwardly. 'Just helping matters along.'
'Surely you can't really think that!'
Nanny sat down and fidgeted with a cushion.
'Well, see, all this not meddling business is fine in the normal course of things,' she said. 'Not meddling is easy when you don't have to. And then I've got the family to think about. Our Jason's been in a couple of fights because of what people have been saying. Our Shawn was thrown out of the army. The way I see it, when we get the new king in, he should owe us a few favours. It's only fair.'
'But only last week you were saying—' Magrat stopped, shocked at this display of pragmatism.
'A week is a long time in magic,' said Nanny. 'Fifteen years, for one thing. Anyway, Esme is determined and I'm in no mood to stop her.'
'So what you're saying,' said Magrat, icily, 'is that this “not meddling” thing is like taking a vow not to swim. You'll absolutely never break it unless of course you happen to find yourself in the water?'
'Better than drowning,' Nanny said.
She reached up to the mantelpiece and took down a clay pipe that was like a small tar pit. She lit it with a spill from the remains of the fire, while Greebo watched her carefully from his cushion.
Magrat idly lifted the hood from the ball and glared at it.
'I think,' she said, 'that I will never really understand about witchcraft. Just when I think I've got a grip on it, it changes.'
'We're all just people.' Nanny blew a cloud of blue smoke at the chimney. 'Everyone's just people.'
'Can I borrow the crystal?' said Magrat suddenly.
'Feel free,' said Nanny. She grinned at Magrat's back. 'Had a row with your young man?' she said.
'I really don't know what you're talking about.'
'Haven't seen him around for weeks.'
'Oh, the duke sent him to—' Magrat stopped, and went on – 'sent him away for something or other. Not that it bothers me at all, either way.'
'So I see. Take the ball, by all means.'
Magrat was glad to get back home. No-one was about on the moors at night anyway, but over the last couple of months things had definitely been getting worse. On top of the general suspicion of witches, it was dawning on the few people in Lancre who had any dealings with the outside world that a) either more things had been happening than they had heard about before or b) time was out of joint. It wasn't easy to prove[19], but the few traders who came along the mountain tracks after the winter seemed to be rather older than they should have been. Unexplained happenings were always more or less expected in the Ramtops because of the high magical potential, but several years disappearing overnight was a bit of a first.
She locked the door, fastened the shutters, and carefully laid the green glass globe on the kitchen table.
She concentrated . . .
The Fool dozed under the tarpaulins of the river barge, heading up the Ankh at a steady two miles an hour. It wasn't an exciting method of transport but it got you there eventually.
He looked safe enough, but he was tossing and turning in his sleep.
Magrat wondered what it was like, spending your whole life doing something you didn't want to do. Like being dead, she considered, only worse, the reason being, you were alive to suffer it.
She considered the Fool to be weak, badly led and sorely in need of some backbone. And she was longing for him to get back, so she could look forward to never seeing him again.
It was a long, hot summer.
They didn't rush things. There was a lot of country between Ankh-Morpork and the Ramtops. It was, Hwel had to admit, fun. It wasn't a word dwarfs were generally at home with.
Please Yourself went over well. It always did. The apprentices excelled themselves. They forgot lines, and played jokes; in Sto Lat the whole third act of Gretalina and Mellias was performed against the backdrop for the second act of The Mage Wars, but no-one seemed to notice that the greatest love scene in history was played on a set depicting a tidal wave sweeping across a continent. That was possibly because Tomjon was playing Gretalina. The effect was so disconcertingly riveting that Hwel made him swap roles for the next house, if you could apply the term to a barn hired for the day, and the effect still had more rivets than a suit of plate armour, including the helmet, and even though Gretalina in this case was now young Wimsloe, who was a bit simple and tended to stutter and whose spots might eventually clear up.
The following day, in some nameless village in the middle of an endless sea of cabbages, he let Tomjon play Old Miskin in Please Yourself, a role that Vitoller always excelled in. You couldn't let anyone play it who was under the age of forty, not unless you wanted an Old Miskin with a cushion up his jerkin and greasepaint wrinkles.
Hwel didn't consider himself old. His father had still been digging three tons of ore a day at the age of two hundred.
Now he felt old. He watched Tomjon hobble off the stage, and for a fleeting instant knew what it was to be a fat old man, pickled in wine, fighting old wars that no-one cared about any more, hanging grimly on to the precipice of late middle-age for fear of dropping off into antiquity, but only with one hand, because with the other he was raising two fingers at Death. Of course, he'd known that when he wrote the part. But he hadn't known it.
The same magic didn't seem to infuse the new play. They tried it a few times, just to see how it went. The audience watched attentively, and went home. They didn't even bother to throw anything. It wasn't that they thought it was bad. They didn't think it was anything.
But all the right ingredients were there, weren't they? Tradition was full of people giving evil rulers a well-justified seeing to. Witches were always a draw. The apparition of Death was particularly good, with some lovely lines. Mix them all together . . . and they seemed to cancel out, become a mere humdrum way of filling the stage for a couple of hours.
Late at night, when the cast was alseep, Hwel would sit up in one of the carts and feverishly rewrite. He rearranged scenes, cut lines, added lines, introduced a clown, included another fight, and tuned up the special effects. It didn't seem to have any effect. The play was like some marvellous intricate painting, a feast of impressions close to, a mere blur from the distance.
When the inspirations were sleeting fast he even tried changing the style. In the morning the early risers grew accustomed to finding discarded experiments decorating the grass around the carts, like extremely literate mushrooms.
Tomjon kept one of the strangest:
1ST WITCHE: He's late.
(Pause)
2ND WITCHE: He said he would come.
(Pause)
3RD WITCHE: He said he would come but he hasn't. This is my last newt. I saved it for him. And he hasn't come.
(Pause)
'I think,' said Tomjon, later, 'you ought to slow down a bit. You've done what was ordered. No-one said it had to sparkle.'
'It could, you know. If I could just get it right.'
'You're absolutely sure about the ghost, are you?' said Tomjon. The way he threw the line away made it clear that he wasn't.
'There's nothing wrong with the ghost,' snapped Hwel. 'The scene with the ghost is the best I've done.'
'I was just wondering if this is the right play for it, that's all.'
'The ghost stays. Now let's get on, boy.'
Two days later, with the Ramtops a blue and white wall that was beginning to dominate the Hubward horizon, the company was attacked. There wasn't much drama; they had just manhandled the lattys across a ford and were resting in the shade of a grove of trees, which suddenly fruited robbers.
Hwel looked along the line of half a dozen stained and rusty blades. Their owners seemed slightly uncertain about what to do next.
'We've got a receipt somewhere—' he began.
Tomjon nudged him. 'These don't look like Guild thieves,' he hissed. 'They definitely look freelance to me.'
It would be nice to say that the leader of the robbers was a black-bearded, swaggering brute, with a red headscarf and one gold earring and a chin you could clean pots with. Actually it would be practically compulsory. And, in fact, this was so. Hwel thought the wooden leg was overdoing it, but the man had obviously studied the role.
'Well now,' said the bandit chief. 'What have we here, and do they have any money?'
'We're actors,' said Tomjon.
'That ought to answer both questions,' said Hwel.
'And none of your repartee,' said the bandit. 'I've been to the city, I have. I know repartee when I see it and—' he half turned to his followers, raising an eyebrow to indicate that the next remark was going to be witty – 'if you're not careful I can make a few cutting remarks of my own.'
There was dead silence behind him until he made an impatient gesture with his cutlass.
'All right,' he said, against a chorus of uncertain laughter. 'We'll just take any loose change, valuables, food and clothing you might be having.'
'Could I say something?' said Tomjon.
The company backed away from him. Hwel smiled at his own feet.
'You're going to beg for mercy, are you?' said the bandit.
'That's right.'
Hwel thrust his hands deep into his pockets and looked up at the sky, whistling under his breath and trying not to break into a maniac grin. He was aware that the other actors were also looking expectantly at Tomjon.
He's going to give them the mercy speech from The Troll's Tale, he thought . . .
'The point I'd just like to make is that—' said Tomjon, and his stance changed subtly, his voice became deeper, his right hand flung out dramatically – ' “The worth of man lies not in feats of arms, Or the fiery hunger o' the ravening—” '
It's going to be like when that man tried to rob us back in Sto Lat, Hwel thought. If they end up giving us their swords, what the hell can we do with them? And it's so embarrassing when they start crying.
It was at this moment that the world around him took a green tint and he thought he could make out, right on the cusp of hearing, other voices.
'There's men with swords, Granny!'
'—rend with glowing blades the marvel of the world—' Tomjon said, and the voices at the edge of imagination said. 'No king of mine is going to beg anything off anyone. Give me that milk jug, Magrat.'
'—the heart of compassion, the kiss—'
'That was a present from my aunt.'
'—this jewel of jewels, this crown of crowns.'
There was silence. One or two of the bandits were weeping silently into their hands.
Their chief said, 'Is that it?'
For the first time in his life Tomjon looked nonplussed.
'Well, yes,' he said. 'Er. Would you like me to repeat it?'
'It was a good speech,' the bandit conceded. 'But I don't see what it's got to do with me. I'm a practical man. Hand over your valuables.'
His sword came up until it was level with Tomjon's throat.
'And all the rest of you shouldn't be standing there like idiots,' he added. 'Come on. Or the boy gets it.'
Wimsloe the apprentice raised a cautious hand.
'What?' said the bandit.
'A-are you s-sure you listened carefully, sir?'
'I won't tell you again! Either I hear the clink of coins, or you hear a gurgle!'
In fact what they all heard was a whistling noise, high in the air, and the crash as a milk jug, its sides frosted with the ice of altitude, dropped out of the sky on to the spike atop the chief's helmet.
The remaining bandits took one look at the results, and fled.
The actors stared down at the recumbent bandit. Hwel prodded a lump of frozen milk with his boot.
'Well, well,' he said weakly.
'He didn't take any notice!' whispered Tomjon.
'A born critic,' said the dwarf. It was a blue and white jug. Funny how little details stood out at a time like this. It had been smashed several times in the past, he could see, because the pieces had been carefully glued together again. Someone had really loved that jug.
'What we're dealing with here,' he said, rallying some shreds of logic, 'is a freak whirlwind. Obviously.'
'But milk jugs don't just drop out of the sky,' said Tomjon, demonstrating the astonishing human art of denying the obvious.
'I don't know about that. I've heard of fish and frogs and rocks,' said Hwel. 'There's nothing against crockery.' He began to rally. 'It's just one of these uncommon phenomenons.
They happen all the time in this part of the world, there's nothing unusual about it.'
They got back on to the carts and rode on in unaccustomed silence. Young Wimsloe collected every bit of jug he could find and stored them carefully in the props box, and spent the rest of the day watching the sky, hoping for a sugar basin.
The lattys toiled up the dusty slopes of the Ramtops, mere motes in the foggy glass of the crystal.
'Are they all right?' said Magrat.
They're wandering all over the place,' said Granny. 'They may be good at the acting, but they've got something to learn about the travelling.'
'It was a nice jug,' said Magrat. 'You can't get them like that any more. I mean, if you'd have said what was on your mind, there was a flatiron on the shelf.'
'There's more to life than milk jugs.'
'It had a daisy pattern round the top.'
Granny ignored her.
'I think,' she said, 'it's time we had a look at this new king. Close up.' She cackled.
'You cackled, Granny,' said Magrat darkly.
'I did not! It was,' Granny fumbled for a word, 'a chuckle.'
'I bet Black Aliss used to cackle.'
'You want to watch out you don't end up the same way as she did,' said Nanny, from her seat by the fire. 'She went a bit funny at the finish, you know. Poisoned apples and suchlike.'
'Just because I might have chuckled a . . . a bit roughly,' sniffed Granny. She felt that she was being unduly defensive. 'Anyway, there's nothing wrong with cackling. In moderation.'
'I think,' said Tomjon, 'that we're lost.'
Hwel looked at the baking purple moorland around them, which stretched up to the towering spires of the Ramtops themselves. Even in the height of summer there were pennants of snow flying from the highest peaks. It was a landscape of describable beauty.
Bees were busy, or at least endeavouring to look and sound busy, in the thyme by the trackside. Cloud shadows flickered over the alpine meadows. There was the kind of big, empty silence made by an environment that not only doesn't have any people in it, but doesn't need them either.
Or signposts.
'We were lost ten miles ago,' said Hwel. 'There's got to be a new word for what we are now.'
'You said the mountains were honeycombed with dwarf mines,' said Tomjon. 'You said a dwarf could tell wherever he was in the mountains.'
'Underground, I said. It's all a matter of strata and rock formations. Not on the surface. All the landscape gets in the way.'
'We could dig you a hole,' said Tomjon.
But it was a nice day and, as the road meandered through clumps of hemlock and pine, outposts of the forest, it was pleasant enough to let the mules go at their own pace. The road, Hwel felt, had to go somewhere.
This geographical fiction has been the death of many people. Roads don't necessarily have to go anywhere, they just have to have somewhere to start.
'We are lost, aren't we?' said Tomjon, after a while.
'Certainly not.'
'Where are we, then?'
'The mountains. Perfectly clear on any atlas.'
'We ought to stop and ask someone.'
Tomjon gazed around at the rolling countryside. Somewhere a lonely curlew howled, or possibly it was a badger – Hwel was a little hazy about rural matters, at least those that took place higher than about the limestone layer. There wasn't another human being within miles.
'Who did you have in mind?' he said sarcastically.
'That old woman in the funny hat,' said Tomjon, pointing. 'I've been watching her. She keeps ducking down behind a bush when she thinks I've seen her.'
Hwel turned and looked down at a bramble bush, which wobbled.
'Ho there, good mother,' he said.
The bush sprouted an indignant head.
'Whose mother?' it said.
Hwel hesitated. 'Just a figure of speech, Mrs . . . Miss . . .'
'Mistress,' snapped Granny Weatherwax. 'And I'm a poor old woman gathering wood,' she added defiantly.
She cleared her throat. 'Lawks,' she went on. 'You did give me a fright, young master. My poor old heart.'
There was silence from the carts. Then Tomjon said, 'I'm sorry?'
'What?' said Granny.
'Your poor old heart what?'
'What about my poor old heart?' said Granny, who wasn't used to acting like an old woman and had a very limited repertoire in this area. But it's traditional that young heirs seeking their destiny get help from mysterious old women gathering wood, and she wasn't about to buck tradition.
'It's just that you mentioned it,' said Hwel.
'Well, it isn't important. Lawks. I expect you're looking for Lancre,' said Granny testily, in a hurry to get to the point.
'Well, yes,' said Tomjon. 'All day.'
'You've come too far,' said Granny. 'Go back about two miles, and take the track on the right, past the stand of pines.'
Wimsloe tugged at Tomjon's shirt.
'When you m-meet a m-mysterious old lady in the road,' he said, 'you've got to offer to s-share your lunch. Or help her across the r-river.'
'You have?'
'It's t-terribly b-bad luck not to.'
Tomjon gave Granny a polite smile.
'Would you care to share our lunch, good mo – old wo – ma'am?'
Granny looked doubtful.
'What is it?'
'Salt pork.'
She shook her head. 'Thanks all the same,' she said graciously. 'But it gives me wind.'
She turned on her heel and set off through the bushes.
'We could help you across the river if you like,' shouted Tomjon after her.
'What river?' said Hwel. 'We're on the moor, there can't be a river in miles.'
'Y-you've got to get them on y-your side,' said Wimsloe. 'Then t-they help you.'
'Perhaps we should have asked her to wait while we went and looked for one,' said Hwel sourly.
They found the turning. It led into a forest criss-crossed with as many tracks as a marshalling yard, the sort of forest where the back of your head tells you the trees are turning around to watch you as you go past and the sky seems to be very high up and a long way off. Despite the heat of the day a dank, impenetrable gloom hovered among the tree trunks, which crowded up to the track as if intending to obliterate it completely.
They were soon lost again, and decided that being lost somewhere where you didn't know where you were was even worse than being lost in the open.
'She could have given more explicit instructions,' said Hwel.
'Like ask at the next crone,' said Tomjon. 'Look over there.'
He stood up in the seat.
'Ho there, old . . . good . . .' he hazarded.
Magrat pushed back her shawl.
'Just a humble wood gatherer,' she snapped. She held up a twig for proof. Several hours waiting with nothing but trees to talk to hadn't improved her temper.
Wimsloe nudged Tomjon, who nodded and fixed his face in an ingratiating smile.
'Would you care to share our lunch, old . . . good wo . . . miss?' he said. 'It's only salt pork, I'm afraid.'
'Meat is extremely bad for the digestive system,' said Magrat. 'If you could see inside your colon you'd be horrified.'
'I think I would,' muttered Hwel.
'Did you know that an adult male carries up to five pounds of undigested red meat in his intestines at all times?' said Magrat, whose informative lectures on nutrition had been known to cause whole families to hide in the cellar until she went away. 'Whereas pine kernels and sunflower seeds—'
'There aren't any rivers around that you need helping over, are there?' said Tomjon desperately.
'Don't be silly,' said Magrat. 'I'm just a humble wood gatherer, lawks, collecting a few sticks and mayhap directing lost travellers on the road to Lancre.'
'Ah,' said Hwel, 'I thought we'd get to that.'
'You fork left up ahead and turn right at the big stone with the crack in it, you can't miss it,' said Magrat.
'Fine,' growled Hwel. 'Well, we won't keep you. I'm sure you've got a lot of wood to collect and so forth.'
He whistled the mules into a plod again, grumbling to himself.
When, an hour later, the track ran out among a landscape of house-sized boulders, Hwel laid down the reins carefully and folded his arms. Tomjon stared at him.
'What do you think you're doing?' he said.
'Waiting,' said the dwarf grimly.
'It'll be getting dark soon.'
'We won't be here long,' said Hwel.
Eventually Nanny Ogg gave up and came out from behind her rock.
'It's salt pork, understand?' said Hwel sharply. 'Take it or leave it, okay? Now – which way's Lancre?'
'Keep on, left at the ravine, then you pick up the track that leads to a bridge, you can't miss it,' said Nanny promptly.
Hwel grabbed the reins. 'You forgot about the lawks.'
'Bugger. Sorry. Lawks.'
'And you're a humble old wood gatherer, I expect,' Hwel went on.
'Spot on, lad,' said Nanny cheerfully. 'Just about to make a start, as a matter of fact.'
Tomjon nudged the dwarf.
'You forgot about the river,' he said. Hwel glared at him.
'Oh yes,' he muttered, 'and can you wait here while we go and find a river.'
'To help you across,' said Tomjon carefully.
Nanny Ogg gave him a bright smile. 'There's a perfectly good bridge,' she said. 'But I wouldn't say no to a lift. Move over.'
To Hwel's irritation Nanny Ogg hitched up her skirts and scrambled on to the board, inserting herself between Tomjon and the dwarf and then twisting like an oyster knife until she occupied half the seat.
'You mentioned salt pork,' she said. 'There wouldn't be any mustard, would there?'
'No,' said Hwel sullenly.
'Can't abide salt pork without condiments,' said Nanny conversationally. 'But pass it over, anyway.' Wimsloe wordlessly handed over the basket holding the troupe's supper. Nanny lifted the lid and gave it a critical assessment.
'That cheese in there is a bit off,' she said. 'It needs eating up quick. What's in the leather bottle?'
'Beer,' said Tomjon, a fraction of a second before Hwel had the presence of mind to say, 'Water.'
'Pretty weak stuff,' said Nanny, eventually. She fumbled in her apron pocket for her tobacco pouch.
'Has anyone got a light?' she inquired.
A couple of actors produced bundles of matches. Nanny nodded, and put the pouch away.
'Good,' she said. 'Now, has anyone got any tobacco?'
Half an hour later the lattys rattled over the Lancre Bridge, across some of the outlying farmlands, and through the forests that made up most of the kingdom.
'This is it?' said Tomjon.
'Well, not all of it,' said Nanny, who had been expecting rather more enthusiasm. 'There's lots more of it behind the mountains over there. But this is the flat bit.'
'You call this flat?'
'Flattish,' Nanny conceded. 'But the air's good. That's the palace up there, offering outstanding views of the surrounding countryside.'
'You mean forests.'
'You'll like it here,' said Nanny encouragingly.
'It's a bit small.'
Nanny thought about this. She'd spent nearly all her life inside the boundaries of Lancre. It had always seemed about the right size to her.
'Bijou,' she said. 'Handy for everywhere.'
'Everywhere where?'
Nanny gave up. 'Everywhere close,' she said.
Hwel said nothing. The air was good, rolling down the unclimbable slopes of the Ramtops like a sinus wash, tinted with turpentine from the high forests. They passed through a gateway into what was, up here, probably called a town; the cosmopolitan he had become decided that, down on the plains, it would just about have qualified, as an open space.
'There's an inn,' said Tomjon doubtfully.
Hwel followed his gaze. 'Yes,' he said, eventually. 'Yes, it probably is.'
'When are we going to do the play?'
'I don't know. I think we just send up to the castle and say we're here.' Hwel scratched his chin. 'Fool said the king or whoever would want to see the script.'
Tomjon looked around Lancre town. It seemed peaceful enough. It didn't look like the kind of place likely to turn actors out at nightfall. It needed the population.
'This is the capital city of the kingdom,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Well-designed streets, you'll notice.'
'Streets?' said Tomjon.
'Street,' corrected Granny. 'Also houses in quite good repair, stone's throw from river—'
'Throw?'
'Drop,' Nanny conceded. 'Neat middens, look, and extensive—'
'Madam, we've come to entertain the town, not buy it,' said Hwel.
Nanny Ogg looked sidelong at Tomjon.
'Just wanted you to see how attractive it is,' she said.
'Your civic pride does you credit,' said Hwel. 'And now, please, leave the cart. I'm sure you've got some wood to gather. Lawks.'
'Much obliged for the snack,' said Nanny, climbing down.
'Meals,' corrected Hwel.
Tomjon nudged him. 'You ought to be more polite,' he said. 'You never know.' He turned to Nanny. 'Thank you, good – oh, she's gone.'
'They've come to do a theatre,' said Nanny.
Granny Weatherwax carried on shelling beans in the sun, much to Nanny's annoyance.
'Well? Aren't you going to say something? I've been finding out things,' she said. 'Picking up information. Not sitting around making soup—'
'Stew.'
'I reckon it's very important,' sniffed Nanny.
'What kind of a theatre?'
'They didn't say. Something for the duke, I think.'
'What's he want a theatre for?'
'They didn't say that, either.'
'It's probably all a trick to get in the castle,' Granny said knowingly. 'Very clever idea. Did you see anything in the carts?'
'Boxes and bundles and such.'
'They'll be full of armour and weapons, depend upon it.'
Nanny Ogg looked doubtful.
They didn't look very much like soldiers to me. They were awfully young and spotty.'
'Clever. I expect in the middle of the play the king will manifest his destiny, right where everyone can see him. Good plan.'
'That's another thing,' said Nanny, picking up a bean pod and chewing it. 'He doesn't seem to like the place much.'
'Of course he does. It's in his blood.'
'I brought him the pretty way. He didn't seem very impressed.'
Granny hesitated.
'He was probably suspicious of you,' she concluded. 'He was probably too overcome to speak, really.'
She put down the bowl of beans and looked thoughtfully at the trees.
'Have you got any family still working up at the castle?' she said.
'Shirl and Daff help out in the kitchens since the cook went off his head.'
'Good. I'll have a word with Magrat. I think we should see this theatre.'
'Perfect,' said the duke.
'Thank you,' said Hwel.
'You've got it exactly spot on about that dreadful accident,' said the duke. 'You might almost have been there. Ha. Ha.'
'You weren't, were you?' said Lady Felmet, leaning forward and glaring at the dwarf.
'I just used my imagination,' said Hwel hurriedly. The duchess glared at him, suggesting that his imagination could consider itself lucky it wasn't being dragged off to the courtyard to explain itself to four angry wild horses and a length of chain.
'Exactly right,' said the duke, leafing one-handedly through the pages. 'This is exactly, exactly, exactly how it was.'
'Will have been,' snapped the duchess.
The duke turned another page.
'You're in this too,' he said. 'Amazing. It's a word for word how I'm going to remember it. I see you've got Death in it, too.'
'Always popular,' said Hwel. 'People expect it.'
'How soon can you act it?'
'Stage it,' corrected Hwel, and added, 'We've tried it out. As soon as you like.' And then we can get away from here, he said to himself, away from your eyes like two raw eggs and this female mountain in the red dress and this castle which seems to act like a magnet for the wind. This is not going to go down as one of my best plays, I know that much.
'How much did we say we were going to pay you?' said the duchess.
'I think you mentioned another hundred silver pieces,' said Hwel.
'Worth every penny,' said the duke.
Hwel left hurriedly, before the duchess could start to bargain. But he felt he'd gladly pay something to be out of this place. Bijou, he thought. Gods, how could anyone like a kingdom like this?
The Fool waited in the meadow with the lake. He stared wistfully at the sky and wondered where the hell Magrat was. This was, she said, their place; the fact that a few dozen cows also shared it at the moment didn't appear to make any difference.
She turned up in a green dress and a filthy temper.
'What's all this about a play?' she said.
The Fool sagged on to a willow log.
'Aren't you glad to see me?' he said.
'Well, yes. Of course. Now, this play . . .'
'My lord wants something to convince people that he is the rightful King of Lancre. Himself mostly, I think.'
'Is that why you went to the city?'
'Yes.'
'It's disgusting!'
The Fool sat calmly. 'You would prefer the duchess's approach?' he said. 'She just thinks they ought to kill everyone. She's good at that sort of thing. And then there'd be fighting, and everything. Lots of people would die anyway. This way might be easier.'
'Oh, where's your spunk, man?'
'Pardon?'
'Don't you want to die nobly for a just cause?'
'I'd much rather live quietly for one. It's all right for you witches, you can do what you like, but I'm circumscribed,' said the Fool.
Magrat sat down beside him. Find out all about this play, Granny had ordered. Go and talk to that jingling friend of yours. She'd replied, He's very loyal. He might not tell me anything. And Granny had said, This is no time for half measures. If you have to, seduct him.
'When's this play going to be, then?' she said, moving closer.
'Marry, I'm sure I'm not allowed to tell you,' said the Fool. 'The duke said to me, he said, don't tell the witches that it's tomorrow night.'
'I shouldn't, then,' agreed Magrat.
'At eight o'clock.'
'I see.'
'But meet for sherry beforehand at seven-thirty, i'faith.'
'I expect you shouldn't tell me who is invited, either,' said Magrat.
'That's right. Most of the dignitaries of Lancre. You understand I'm not telling you this.'
'That's right,' said Magrat.
'But I think you have a right to know what it is you're not being told.'
'Good point. Is there still that little gate around the back, that leads to the kitchens?'
'The one that is often left unguarded?'
'Yes.'
'Oh, we hardly ever guard it these days.'
'Do you think there might be someone guarding it at around eight o'clock tomorrow?'
'Well, I might be there.'
'Good.'
The Fool pushed away the wet nose of an inquisitive cow.
'The duke will be expecting you,' he added.
'You said he said we weren't to know.'
'He said I mustn't tell you. But he also said, “They'll come anyway, I hope they do.” Strange, really. He seemed in a very good mood when he said it. Um. Can I see you after the show?'
'Is that all he said?'
'Oh, there was something about showing witches their future. I didn't understand it. I really would like to see you after the show, you know. I brought—'
'I think I might be washing my hair,' said Magrat vaguely. 'Excuse me, I really ought to be going.'
'Yes, but I brought you this pres—' said the Fool vaguely, watching her departing figure.
He sagged as she disappeared between the trees, and looked down at the necklace wound tightly between his nervous fingers. It was, he had to admit, terribly tasteless, but it was the sort of thing she liked, all silver and skulls. It had cost him too much.
A cow, misled by his horns, stuck its tongue in his ear.
It was true, the Fool thought. Witches did do unpleasant things to people, sometimes.
Tomorrow night came, and the witches went by a roundabout route to the castle, with considerable reluctance.
'If he wants us to be here, I don't want to go,' said Granny. 'He's got some plan. He's using headology on us.'
'There's something up,' said Magrat. 'He had his men set fire to three cottages in our village last night. He always does that when he's in a good mood. That new sergeant is a quick man with the matches, too.'
'Our Daff said she saw them actors practisin' this morning,' said Nanny Ogg, who was carrying a bag'of walnuts and a leather bottle from which rose a rich, sharp smell. 'She said it was all shouting and stabbing and then wondering who done it and long bits with people muttering to themselves in loud voices.'
'Actors,' said Granny, witheringly. 'As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more.'
'They shout so loud, too,' said Nanny. 'You can hardly hear yourself talk.' She was also carrying, deep in her apron pocket, a lump of haunted castle rock. The king was getting in free.
Granny nodded. But, she thought, it was going to be worth it. She hadn't got the faintest idea what Tomjon had in mind, but her inbuilt sense of drama assured her that the boy would be bound to do something important. She wondered if he would leap off the stage and stab the duke to death, and realised that she was hoping like hell that he would.
'All hail wossname,' she said under her breath, 'who shall be king here, after.'
'Let's get a move on,' said Nanny. 'All the sherry'll be gone.'
The Fool was waiting despondently inside the little wicket gate. His face brightened when he saw Magrat, and then froze in an expression of polite surprise when he saw the other two.
'There's not going to be any trouble, is there?' he said. 'I don't want there to be any trouble. Please.'
'I'm sure I don't know what you mean,' said Granny regally, sweeping past.
'Wotcha, jinglebells,' said Nanny, elbowing the man in the ribs. 'I hope you haven't been keeping our girl here up late o'nights!'
'Nanny!' said Magrat, shocked. The Fool gave the terrified, ingratiating rictus of young men everywhere when confronted by importunate elderly women commenting on their intimately personal lives.
The older witches brushed past. The Fool grabbed Magrat's hand.
'I know where we can get a good view,' he said.
She hesitated.
'It's all right,' said the Fool urgently. 'You'll be perfectly safe with me.'
'Yes, I will, won't I,' said Magrat, trying to look around him to see where the others had gone.
'They're staging the play outside, in the big courtyard. We'll get a lovely view from one of the gate towers, and no-one else will be there. I put some wine up there for us, and everything.'
When she still looked half-reluctant he added, 'And there's a cistern of water and a fireplace that the guards use sometimes. In case you want to wash your hair.'
The castle was full of people standing around in that polite, sheepish way affected by people who see each other all day and are now seeing each other again in unusual social circumstances, like an office party. The witches passed quite unremarked among them and found seats in the rows of benches in the main courtyard, set up before a hastily assembled stage.
Nanny Ogg waved her bag of walnuts at Granny.
'Want one?' she said.
An alderman of Lancre shuffled past her and pointed politely to the seat on her left.
'Is anyone sitting here?' he said.
'Yes,' said Nanny.
The alderman looked distractedly at the rest of the benches, which were filling up fast, and then down at the clearly empty space in front of him. He hitched up his robes with a determined expression.
'I think that since the play is commencing to start, your friends must find a seat elsewhere, when they arrive,' he said, and sat down.
Within seconds his face went white. His teeth began to chatter. He clutched at his stomach and groaned.[20]
'I told you,' said Nanny, as he lurched away. 'What's the good of asking if you're not going to listen?' She leaned towards the empty seat. 'Walnut?'
'No, thank you,' said King Verence, waving a spectral hand. 'They go right through me, you know.'
'Pray, gentles all, list to our tale . . .'
'What's this?' hissed Granny. 'Who's the fellow in the tights?'
'He's the Prologue,' said Nanny. 'You have to have him at the beginning so everyone knows what the play's about.'
'Can't understand a word of it,' muttered Granny. 'What's a gentle, anyway?'
'Type of maggot,' said Nanny.
'That's nice, isn't it? “Hallo maggots, welcome to the show.” Puts people in a nice frame of mind, doesn't it?'
There was a chorus of 'sshs'.
'These walnuts are damn tough,' said Nanny, spitting one out into her hand. 'I'm going to have to take my shoe off to this one.'
Granny subsided into unaccustomed, troubled silence, and tried to listen to the prologue. The theatre worried her. It had a magic of its own, one that didn't belong to her, one that wasn't in her control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn't belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn't know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better.
The duke and duchess were sitting on their thrones right in front of the stage. As Granny glared at them the duke half turned, and she saw his smile.
I want the world the way it is, she thought. I want the past the way it was. The past used to be a lot better than it is now.
And the band struck up.
Hwel peered around a pillar and signalled to Wimsloe and Brattsley, who hobbled out into the glare of the torches.
OLD MAN (an Elder): 'What hath befell the land?'
OLD WOMAN (a Crone): ' 'Tis a terror—'
The dwarf watched them for a few seconds from the wings, his lips moving soundlessly. Then he scuttled back to the guardroom where the rest of the cast were still in the last hasty stages of dressing. He uttered the stage manager's traditional scream of rage.
'C'mon,' he ordered. 'Soldiers of the king, at the double! And the witches – where are the blasted witches?'
Three junior apprentices presented themselves.
'I've lost my wart!'
'The cauldron's all full of yuk!'
'There's something living in this wig!'
'Calm down, calm down,' screamed Hwel. 'It'll all be all right on the night!'
'This is the night, Hwel!'
Hwel snatched a handful of putty from the makeup table and slammed on a wart like an orange. The offending straw wig was rammed on its owner's head, livestock and all. and the cauldron was very briefly inspected and pronounced full of just the right sort of yuk, nothing wrong with yuk like that.
On stage a guard dropped his shield, bent down to pick it up, and dropped his spear. Hwel rolled his eyes and offered up a silent prayer to any gods that might be watching.
It was already going wrong. The earlier rehearsals had their little teething troubles, it was true, but Hwel had known one or two monumental horrors in his time and this one was shaping up to be the worst. The company was more jittery than a potful of lobsters. Out of the corner of his ear he heard the on-stage dialogue falter, and scurried to the wings.
'—avenge the terror of thy father's death—' he hissed, and hurried back to the trembling witches. He groaned. Divers alarums. This lot were supposed to be terrorising a kingdom. He had about a minute before the cue.
'Right!' he said, pulling himself together. 'Now, what are you? You're evil hags, right?'
'Yes, Hwel,' they said meekly.
'Tell me what you are,' he commanded.
'We're evil hags, Hwel.'
'Louder!'
'We're Evil Hags!'
Hwel stalked the length of the quaking line, then turned abruptly on his heel, 'And what are you going to do?'
The 2nd Witche scratched his crawling wig.
'We're going to curse people?' he ventured. 'It says in the script—'
'I-can't-HEAR-you!'
'We're going to curse people!' they chorused, springing to attention and staring straight ahead to avoid his gaze.
Hwel stumped back along the line.
'What are you?'
'We're hags, Hwel!'
'What kind of hags?'
'We're black and midnight hags!' they yelled, getting into the spirit.
'What kind of black and midnight hags?'
'Evil black and midnight hags!'
'Are you scheming?'
'Yeah!'
'Are you secret?'
'Yeah!'
Hwel drew himself to his full height, such as it was.
'What-are-you?' he screamed.
'We're scheming evil secret black and midnight hags!'
'Right!' He pointed a vibrating finger towards the stage and lowered his voice and, at that moment, a dramatic inspiration dived through the atmosphere and slammed into his creative node, causing him to say, 'Now I want you to get out there and give 'em hell. Not for me. Not for the goddam captain.' He shifted the butt of an imaginary cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, and pushed back a non-existent tin helmet, and rasped, 'But for Corporal Walkowski and his little dawg.'
They stared at him in disbelief.
On cue, someone shook a sheet of tin and broke the spell.
Hwel rolled his eyes. He'd grown up in the mountains, where thunderstorms stalked from peak to peak on legs of lightning. He remembered thunderstorms that left mountains a different shape and flattened whole forests. Somehow, a sheet of tin wasn't the same, no matter how enthusiastically it was shaken.
Just once, he thought, just once. Let me get it right just once.
He opened his eyes and glared at the witches.
'What are you hanging around here for?' he yelled. 'Get out there and curse them!'
He watched them scamper on to the stage, and then Tomjon tapped him on the head.
'Hwel, there's no crown.'
'Hmm?' said the dwarf, his mind wrestling with ways of building thunder-and-lightning machines.
'There's no crown, Hwel. I've got to wear a crown.'
'Of course there's a crown. The big one with the red glass, very impressive, we used it in that place with the big square—'
'I think we left it there.'
There was another tinny roll of thunder but, even so, the part of Hwel that was living the play heard a faltering voice on stage. He darted to the wings.
'—I have smother'd many a babe—' he hissed, and sprinted back.
'Well, just find another one, then,' he said vaguely. 'In the props box. You're the Evil King, you've got to have a crown. Get on with it, lad, you're on in a few minutes. Improvise.'
Tomjon wandered back to the box. He'd grown up among crowns, big golden crowns made of wood and plaster, studded with finest glass. He'd cut his teeth on the hat-brims of Authority. But most of them had been left in the Dysk now. He pulled out collapsible daggers and skulls and vases, the strata of the years and, right at the bottom, his fingers closed on something thin and crown shaped, which no-one had ever wanted to wear because it looked so uncrownly.
It would be nice to say it tingled under his hand. Perhaps it did.
Granny was sitting as still as a statue, and almost as cold. The horror of realisation was stealing over her.
'That's us,' she said. 'Round that silly cauldron. That's meant to be us, Gytha.'
Nanny Ogg paused with a walnut halfway to her gums. She listened to the words.
'I never shipwrecked anybody!' she said. 'They just said they shipwreck people! I never did!'
Up in the tower Magrat elbowed the Fool in the ribs.
'Green blusher,' she said, staring at the 3rd Witche. 'I don't look like that. I don't, do I?'
'Absolutely not,' said the Fool.
'And that hair!'
The Fool peered through the crenellations like an over-eager gargoyle.
'It looks like straw,' he said. 'Not very clean, either.'
He hesitated, picking at the lichened stonework with his fingers; Before he'd left the city he'd asked Hwel for a few suitable words to say to a young lady, and he had been memorising them on the way home. It was now or never.
'I'd like to know if I could compare you to a summer's day. Because – well, June 12th was quite nice, and . . .Oh. You've gone . . .'
King Verence gripped the edge of his seat; his fingers went through it. Tomjon had strutted on to the stage.
'That's him, isn't it? That's my son?'
The uncracked walnut fell from Nanny Ogg's fingers and rolled on to the floor. She nodded.
Verence turned a haggard, transparent face towards her.
'But what is he doing? What is he saying?'
Nanny shook her head. The king listened with his mouth open as Tomjon, lurching crabwise across the stage, launched into his major speech.
'I think he's meant to be you,' said Nanny, distantly.
'But I never walked like that! Why's he got a hump on his back? What's happened to his leg?' He listened some more, and added, in horrified tones, 'And I certainly never did that! Or that. Why is he saying I did that?'
The look he gave Nanny was full of pleading. She shrugged.
The king reached up, lifted off his spectral crown, and examined it.
'And it's my crown he's wearing! Look, this is it! And he's saying I did all those—' He paused for a minute, to listen to the latest couplet, and added, 'All right. Maybe I did that. So I set fire to a few cottages. But everyone does that. It's good for the building industry, anyway.'
He put the ghostly crown back on his head.
'Why's he saying all this about me?' he pleaded.
'It's art,' said Nanny. 'It wossname, holds a mirror up to life.'
Granny turned slowly in her seat to look at the audience. They were staring at the performance, their faces rapt. The words washed over them in the breathless air. This was real. This was more real even than reality. This was history. It might not be true, but that had nothing to do with it.
Granny had never had much time for words. They were so insubstantial. Now she wished that she had found the time. Words were indeed insubstantial. They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.
That's us down there, she thought. Everyone knows who we really are, but the things down there are what they'll remember – three gibbering old baggages in pointy hats. All we've ever done, all we've ever been, won't exist any more.
She looked at the ghost of the king. Well, he'd been no worse than any other king. Oh, he might burn down the odd cottage every now and again, in a sort of absent-minded way, but only when he was really angry about something, and he could give it up any time he liked. Where he wounded the world, he left the kind of wounds that healed.
Whoever wrote this Theatre knew about the uses of magic. Even I believe what's happening, and I know there's no truth in it.
This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That's why everything is exactly the wrong way round.
We've lost. There is nothing we can do against this without becoming exactly what we aren't.
Nanny Ogg gave her a violent nudge in the ribs.
'Did you hear that?' she said. 'One of 'em said we put babbies in the cauldron! They've done a slander on me! I'm not sitting here and have 'em say we put babbies in a cauldron!'
Granny grabbed her shawl as she tried to stand up.
'Don't do anything!' she hissed. 'It'll make things worse.'
' “Ditch-delivered by adrabe”, they said. That'll be young Millie Hipwood, who didn't dare tell her mum and then went out gathering firewood. I was up all night with that one,' Nanny muttered. 'Fine girl she produced. It's a slander! What's a drabe?' she added.
'Words,' said Granny, half to herself. 'That's all that's left. Words.'
'And now there's a man with a trumpet come on. What's he going to do? Oh. End of Act One,' said Nanny.
The words won't be forgotten, thought Granny. They've got a power to them. They're damn good words, as words go.
There was yet another rattle of thunder, which ended with the kind of crash made, for example, by a sheet of tin escaping from someone's hands and hitting the wall.
In the world outside the stage the heat pressed down like a pillow, squeezing the very life out of the air. Granny saw a footman bend down to the duke's ear. No, he won't stop the play. Of course he won't. He wants it to run its course.
The duke must have felt the heat of her gaze on the back of his neck. He turned, focused on her, and gave her a strange little smile. Then he nudged his wife. They both laughed.
Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world's great creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.
She felt the land below her, even through several feet of foundations, flagstones, one thickness of leather and two thicknesses of sock. She felt it waiting.
She heard the king say, 'My own flesh and blood? Why has he done this to me? I'm going to confront him!'
She gently took Nanny Ogg's hand.
'Come, Gytha,' she said.
Lord Felmet sat back in his throne and beamed madly at the world, which was looking good right at the moment. Things were working out better than he had dared to hope. He could feel the past melting behind him, like ice in the spring thaw.
On an impulse he called the footman back.
'Call the captain of the guard,' he said, 'and tell him to find the witches and arrest them.'
The duchess snorted.
'Remember what happened last time, foolish man?'
'We left two of them loose,' said the duke. 'This time . . . all three. The tide of public feeling is on our side. That sort of thing affects witches, depend upon it.'
The duchess cracked her knuckles to indicate her view of public opinion.
'You must admit, my treasure, that the experiment seems to be working.'
'It would appear so.'
'Very well. Don't just stand there, man. Before the play ends, tell him. Those witches are to be under lock and key.'
Death adjusted his cardboard skull in front of the mirror, twitched his cowl into a suitable shape, stood back and considered the general effect. It was going to be his first speaking part. He wanted to get it right.
'Cower now, Brief Mortals,' he said. 'For I am Death, 'Gainst Whom No . . . no . . . no . . . Hwel, 'gainst whom no?'
'Oh, good grief, Dafe. “ 'Gainst whom no lock will hold nor fasten'd portal bar”, I really don't see why you have difficulty with . . . not that way up, you idiots!' Hwel strode off through the backstage melee in pursuit of a pair of importunate scene shifters.
'Right,' said Death, to no-one in particular. He turned back to the mirror.
' 'Gainst Whom No . . . Tumpty-Tum . . . nor Tumpty-Tumpty bar,' he said, uncertainly, and flourished his scythe. The end fell off.
'Do you think I'm fearsome enough?' he said, as he tried to fix it on again.
Tomjon, who was sitting on his hump and trying to drink some tea, gave him an encouraging nod.
'No problem, my friend,' he said. 'Compared to a visit from you, even Death himself would hold no fears. But you could try a bit more hollowness.'
'How d'you mean?'
Tomjon put down his cup. Shadows seemed to move across his face; his eyes sank, his lips drew back from his teeth, his skin stretched and paled.
'I HAVE COME TO GET YOU, YOU TERRIBLE ACTOR,' he intoned, each syllable falling into place like a coffin lid. His features sprang back into shape.
'Like that,' he said.
Dafe, who had flattened himself against the wall, relaxed a bit and gave a nervous giggle.
'Gods, I don't know how you do it,' he said. 'Honestly, I'll never be as good as you.'
'There really isn't anything to it. Now run along, Hwel's fit to be tied as it is.'
Dafe gave him a look of gratitude and ran off to help with the scene shifting.
Tomjon sipped his tea uneasily, the backstage noises whirring around him like so much fog. He was worried.
Hwel had said that everything about the play was fine, except for the play itself. And Tomjon kept thinking that the play itself was trying to force itself into a different shape. His mind had been hearing other words, just too faint for hearing. It was almost like eavesdropping on a conversation. He'd had to shout more to drown out the buzzing in his head.
This wasn't right. Once a play was written it was, well, written. It shouldn't come alive and start twisting itself around.
No wonder everyone needed prompting all the time. The play was writhing under their hands, trying to change itself.
Ye gods, he'd be glad to get out of this spooky castle, and away from this mad duke. He glanced around, decided that it would be some time before the next act was called, and wandered aimlessly in search of fresher air.
A door yielded to his touch and he stepped out on to the battlements. He pushed it shut behind him, cutting off the sounds of the stage and replacing them by a velvet hush. There was a livid sunset imprisoned behind bars of cloud, but the air was as still as a mill pond and as hot as a furnace. In the forest below some night bird screamed.
He walked to the other end of the battlements and peered down into the sheer depths of the gorge. Far beneath, the Lancre boiled in its eternal mists.
He turned, and walked into a draught of such icy coldness that he gasped.
Unusual breezes plucked at his clothing. There was a strange muttering in his ear, as though someone was-trying to talk to him but couldn't get the speed right. He stood rigid for a moment, getting his breath, and then fled for the door.
'But we're not witches!'
'Why do you look like them, then? Tie their hands, lads.'
'Yes, excuse me, but we're not really witches!'
The captain of the guard looked from face to face. His gaze took in the pointy hats, the disordered hair smelling of damp haystacks, the sickly green complexions and the herd of warts. Guard captain for the duke wasn't a job that offered long-term prospects for those who used initiative. Three witches had been called for, and these seemed to fit the bill.
The captain never went to the theatre. When he was on the rack of adolescence he'd been badly frightened by a Punch and Judy show, and since then had taken pains to avoid any organised entertainment and had kept away from anywhere where crocodiles could conceivably be expected. He'd spent the last hour enjoying a quiet drink in the guardroom.
'I said tie their hands, didn't I?' he snapped.
'Shall we gag them as well, cap'n?'
'But if you'd just listen, we're with the theatre—'
'Yes,' said the captain, shuddering. 'Gag them.'
'Please . . .'
The captain leaned down and stared at three pairs of frightened eyes. He was trembling.
'That,' he said, 'is the last time you'll eat anyone's sausage.'
He was aware that now the soldiers were giving him odd looks as well. He coughed and pulled himself together.
'Very well then, my theatrical witches,' he said. 'You've done your show, and now it's time for your applause.' He nodded to his men.
'Clap them in chains,' he said.
Three other witches sat in the gloom behind the stage, staring vacantly into the darkness. Granny Weatherwax had picked up a copy of the script, which she peered at from time to time, as if seeking ideas.
' “Divers alarums and excursions”,' she read, uncertainly.
'That means lots of terrible happenings,' said Magrat. 'You always put that in plays.'
'Alarums and what?' said Nanny Ogg, who hadn't been listening.
'Excursions,' said Magrat patiently.
'Oh.' Nanny Ogg brightened a bit. 'The seaside would be nice,' she said.
'Do shut up, Gytha,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'They're not for you. They're only for divers, like it says. Probably so they can recover from all them alarums.'
'We can't let this happen,' said Magrat, quickly and loudly. 'If this gets about, witches'll always be old hags with green blusher.'
'And meddlin' in the affairs of kings,' said Nanny. 'Which we never do, as is well known.'
'It's not the meddlin' I object to,' said Granny Weatherwax, her chin on her hand. 'It's the evil meddling.'
'And the unkindness to animals,' muttered Magrat. 'All that stuff about eye of dog and ear of toad. No-one uses that kind of stuff.'
Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg carefully avoided one another's faces.
'Drabe!' said Nanny Ogg bitterly.
'Witches just aren't like that,' said Magrat. 'We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it's wicked of them to say we don't. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.'
The other two looked at her with a certain amount of surprised admiration. She blushed, although not greenly, and looked at her knees.
'Goodie Whemper did a recipe,' she confessed. 'It's quite easy. What you do is, you get some lead, and you—'
'I don't think that would be appropriate,' said Granny carefully, after a certain amount of internal struggle. 'It could give people the wrong idea.'
'But not for long,' said Nanny wistfully.
'No, we can't be having with that sort of thing,' said Granny, a little more firmly this time. 'We'd never hear the last of it.'
'Why don't we just change the words?' said Magrat. 'When they come back on stage we could just put the 'fluence on them so they forget what they're saying, and give them some new words.'
'I suppose you're an expert at theatre words?' said Granny sarcastically. 'They'd have to be the proper sort, otherwise people would suspect.'
'Shouldn't be too difficult,' said Nanny Ogg dismissively. 'I've been studyin' it. You go tumpty-tumpty-tumpty.'
Granny gave this some consideration.
'There's more to it than that, I believe,' she said. 'Some of those speeches were very good. I couldn't understand hardly any of it.'
'There's no trick to it at all,' Nanny Ogg insisted. 'Anyway, half of them are forgetting their lines as it is. It'll be easy.'
'We could put words in their mouths?' said Magrat.
Nanny Ogg nodded. 'I don't know about new words,' she said. 'But we can make them forget these words.'
They both looked at Granny Weatherwax. She shrugged.
'I suppose it's worth a try,' she conceded.
'Witches as yet unborn will thank us for it,' said Magrat ardently.
'Oh, good,' said Granny.
'At last! What are you three playing at? We've been looking for you everywhere!'
The witches turned to see an irate dwarf trying to loom over them.
'Us?' said Magrat. 'But we're not in—'
'Oh yes you are, remember, we put it in last week. Act Two, Downstage, around the cauldron. You haven't got to say anything. You're symbolising occult forces at work. Just be as wicked as you can. Come on, there's good lads. You've done well so far.'
Hwel slapped Magrat on the bottom. 'Good complexion you've got mere, Wilph,' he said encouragingly. 'But for goodness' sake use a bit more padding, you're still the wrong shape. Fine warts there, Billem. I must say,' he added, standing back, 'you look as nasty a bunch of hags as a body might hope to clap eyes on. Well done. Shame about the wigs. Now run along. Curtain up in one minute. Break a leg.'
He gave Magrat another ringing slap on her rump, slightly hurting his hand, and hurried off to shout at someone else.
None of the witches dared to speak. Magrat and Nanny Ogg found themselves instinctively turning towards Granny.
She sniffed. She looked up. She looked around. She looked at the brightly lit stage behind her. She brought her hands together with a clap that echoed around the castle, and then rubbed them together.
'Useful,' she said grimly. 'Let's do the show right here.' Nanny squinted sullenly after Hwel. 'Break your own leg,' she muttered.
Hwel stood in the wings and gave the signal for the curtains. And for the thunder.
It didn't come.
'Thunder!' he hissed, in a voice heard by half the audience. 'Get on with it!'
A voice from behind the nearest pillar wailed, 'I went and bent the thunder, Hwel! It just goes clonk-clonk!'
Hwel stood silent for a moment, counting. The company watched him, awestruck but not, unfortunately, thunderstruck.
At last he raised his fists to the open sky and said, 'I wanted a storm! Just a storm. Not even a big storm. Any storm. Now I want to make myself absolutely CLEAR! I have had ENOUGH! I want thunder right NOW!'
The stab of lightning that answered him turned the multi-hued shadows of the castle into blinding white and searing black. It was followed by a roll of thunder, on cue.
It was the loudest noise Hwel had ever heard. It seemed to start inside his head and work its way outwards.
It went on and on, shaking every stone in the castle. Dust rained down. A distant turret broke away with balletic slowness and, tumbling end over end, dropped gently into the hungry depths of the gorge.
When it finished it left a silence that rang like a bell.
Hwel looked up at the sky. Great black clouds were blowing across the castle, blotting out the stars.
The storm was back.
It had spent ages learning its craft. It had spent years lurking in distant valleys. It had practised for hours in front of a glacier. It had studied the great storms of the past. It had honed its art to perfection. And now, tonight, with what it could see was clearly an appreciative audience waiting for it, it was going to take them by, well . . . tempest.
Hwel smiled. Perhaps the gods did listen, after all. He wished he'd asked for a really good wind machine as well.
He gestured frantically at Tomjon.
'Get on with it!'
The boy nodded, and launched into his main speech.
'And now our domination is complete—'
Behind him on the stage the witches bent over the cauldron.
'It's just tin, this one,' hissed Nanny. 'And it's full of all yuk.'
'And the fire is just red paper,' whispered Magrat. 'It looked so real from up there, it's just red paper! Look, you can poke it—'
'Never mind,' said Granny. 'Just look busy, and wait until I say.'
As the Evil King and the Good Duke began the exchange that was going to lead to the exciting Duel Scene they became uncomfortably aware of activity behind them, and occasional chuckles from the audience. After a totally inappropriate burst of laughter Tomjon risked a sideways glance.
One of the witches was taking their fire to bits. Another one was trying to clean the cauldron. The third one was sitting with her arms folded, glaring at him.
'The very soil cries out at tyranny—' said Wimsloe, and then caught the expression on Tomjon's face and followed his gaze. His voice trailed into silence.
' “And calls me forth for vengeance”,' prompted Tomjon helpfully.
'B-but—' whispered Wimsloe, trying to point surreptitiously with his dagger.
'I wouldn't be seen dead with a cauldron like this,' said Nanny Ogg, in a whisper loud enough to carry to the back of the courtyard. 'Two days' work with a scourer and a bucket of sand, is this.'
' “And calls me forth for vengeance” ' hissed Tomjon. Out of the tail of his eye he saw Hwel in the wings, frozen in an attitude of incoherent rage.
'How do they make it flicker?' said Magrat.
'Be quiet, you two,' said Granny. 'You're upsetting people.' She raised her hat to Wimsloe. 'Go ahead, young man. Don't mind us.'
'Wha?' said Wimsloe.
'Aha, it calls you forth for vengeance, does it?' said Tomjon. in desperation. 'And the heavens cry revenge, too, I expect.'
On cue, the storm produced a thunderbolt that blew the top off another tower . . .
The duke crouched in his seat, his face a panorama of fear. He extended what had once been a finger.
'There they are,' he breathed. 'That's them. What are they doing in my play? Who said they could be in my play?'
The duchess, who was less inclined to deal in rhetorical questions, beckoned to the nearest guard.
On stage Tomjon was sweating under the load of the script. Wimsloe was incoherent. Now Gumridge, who was playing the part of the Good Duchess in a wig of flax, had lost the thread as well.
'Aha, thou callst me an evil king, though thou wisperest it so none save I may hear it,' Tomjon croaked. 'And thou hast summoned the guard, possibly by some most secret signal, owing nought to artifice of lips or tongue.'
A guard came on crabwise, still stumbling from Hwel's shove. He stared at Granny Weatherwax.
'Hwel says what the hell's going on?' he hissed.
'What was that?' said Tomjon. 'Did I hear you say / come, my lady?'
'Get these people off, he says!'
Tomjon advanced to the front of the stage.
'Thou babblest, man. See how I dodge thy tortoise spear. I said, see how I dodge thy tortoise spear. Thy spear, man. You're holding it in thy bloody hand, for goodness' sake.'
The guard gave him a desperate, frozen grin.
Tomjon hesitated. Three other actors around him were staring fixedly at the witches. Looming up in front of him with all the inevitability of a tax demand was a sword fight during which, it was beginning to appear, he would have to parry his own wild thrusts and stab himself to death.
He turned to the three witches. His mouth opened.
For the first time in his life his awesome memory let him down. He could think of nothing to say.
Granny Weatherwax stood up. She advanced to the edge of the stage. The audience held its breath. She held up a hand.
'Ghosts of the mind and all device away, I bid the Truth to have—' she hesitated – 'its tumpty-tumpty day.'
Tomjon felt the chill engulf him. The others, too, jolted into life.
Up from out of the depths of their blank minds new words rushed, words red with blood and revenge, words that had echoed among the castle's stones, words stored in silicon, words that would have themselves heard, words that gripped their mouths so tightly that an attempt not to say them would result in a broken jaw.
'Do you fear him now?' said Gumridge. 'And he so mazed with drink? Take his dagger, husband – you are a blade's width from the kingdom.'
'I dare not,' Wimsloe said, trying to look in astonishment at his own lips.
'Who will know?' Gumridge waved a hand towards the audience. He'd never act so well again. 'See, there is only eyeless night. Take the dagger now, take the kingdom tomorrow. Have a stab at it, man.'
Wimsloe's hand shook.
'I have it, wife,' he said. 'Is this a dagger I see before me?'
'Of course it's a bloody dagger. Come on, do it now. The weak deserve no mercy. We'll say he fell down the stairs.'
'But people will suspect!'
'Are there no dungeons? Are there no pilliwinks? Possession is nine parts of the law, husband, when what you possess is a knife.'
Wimsloe drew his arm back.
'I cannot! He has been kindness itself to me!'
'And you can be Death itself to him . . .'
Dafe could hear the voices a long way off. He adjusted his mask, checked the deathliness of his appearance in the mirror, and peered at the script in the empty backstage gloom.
'Cower Now, Brief Mortals,' he said. 'I Am Death, 'Gainst Who – 'Gainst Who—'
WHOM.
'Oh, thanks,' said the boy distractedly. ' 'Gainst Whom No Lock May Hold—'
WILL HOLD.
'Will Hold Nor Fasten'd Portal Bar, Here To – to – to'
HERE TO TAKE MY TALLY ON THIS NIGHT OF KINGS.
Dafe sagged.
'You're so much better at it,' he moaned. 'You've got the right voice and you can remember the words.' He turned around. 'It's only three lines and Hwel will . . . have . . . my . . . guts . . . for.'
He froze. His eyes widened and became two saucers of fear as Death snapped his fingers in front of the boy's rigid face.
FORGET, he commanded, and turned and stalked silently towards the wings.
His eyeless skull took in the line of costumes, the waxy debris of the makeup table. His empty nostrils snuffed up the mixed smells of mothballs, grease and sweat.
There was something here, he thought, that nearly belonged to the gods. Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflects the landscape. And yet . . . and yet . . .
Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things, you might think they would want to escape from – hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated.
He was here for a very particular and precise purpose. There was a soul to be claimed. There was no time for inconsequentialities. But what was time, after all?
His feet did an involuntary little clicking dance across the stones. Alone, in the grey shadows, Death tapdanced.
—THE NEXT NIGHT IN YOUR DRESSING ROOM THEY HANG A STAR—
He pulled himself together, adjusted his scythe, and waited silently for his cue.
He'd never missed one yet.
He was going to get out there and slay them.
'And you can be Death itself to him. Now!' Death entered, his feet clicking across the stage. COWER NOW, BRIEF MORTALS, he said, FOR I AM DEATH, 'GAINST WHOM NO . . . NO . . . 'GAINST WHOM . . .
He hesitated. He hesitated, for the very first time in the eternity of his existence.
For although the Death of the Discworld was used to dealing with people by the million, at the same time every death was intimate and personal.
Death was seldom seen except by those of an occult persuasion and his clients themselves. The reason that no-one else saw him was that the human brain is clever enough to edit sights too horrible for it to cope with, but the problem here was that several hundred people were in fact expecting to see Death at this point, and were therefore seeing him.
Death turned slowly and stared back at hundreds of watching eyes.
Even in the grip of the truth Tomjon recognised a fellow actor in distress, and fought for mastery of his lips.
' “. . . lock will hold . . .” ' he whispered, through teeth fixed in a grimace.
Death gave him a manic grin of stagefright.
WHAT? he whispered, in a voice like an anvil being hit with a small lead hammer.
' “. . . lock will hold, nor fasten'd portal . . .”,' said Tomjon encouragingly.
. . . LOCK WILL HOLD NOR FASTEN'D PORTAL . . . UH . . . repeated Death desperately, watching his lips.
' “. . . bar! . . .” '
BAR.
'No, I cannot do it!' said Wimsloe. 'I will be seen! Down there in the hall, someone watches!'
'There is no-one!'
'I feel the stare!'
'Dithering idiot! Must I put it in for you? See, his foot is upon the top stair!'
Wimsloe's face contorted with fear and uncertainty. He drew back his hand.
'No!'
The scream came from the audience. The duke was half-risen from his seat, his tortured knuckles at his mouth. As they watched he lurched forward between the shocked people.
'No! I did not do it! It was not like that! You cannot say it was like that! You were not there!' He stared at the upturned faces around him, and sagged.
'Nor was I,' he giggled. 'I was asleep at the time, you know. I remember it quite well. There was blood on the counterpane, there was blood on the floor, I could not wash off the blood, but these are not proper subjects for the inquiry. I cannot allow the discussion of national security. It was just a dream, and when I awoke, he'd be alive tomorrow. And tomorrow it wouldn't have happened because it was not done. And tomorrow you can say I did not know. And tomorrow you can say I had no recollection. What a noise he made in falling! Enough to wake the dead . . . who would have thought he had so much blood in him? . . .' By now he had climbed on to the stage, and grinned brightly at the assembled company.
'I hope that sorts it all out,' he said. 'Ha. Ha.'
In the silence that followed Tomjon opened his mouth to utter something suitable, something soothing, and found that there was nothing he could say.
But another personality stepped into him, took over his lips, and spoke thusly:
'With my own bloody dagger, you bastard! I know it was you! I saw you at the top of the stairs, sucking your thumb! I'd kill you now, except for the thought of having to spend eternity listening to your whining. I, Verence, formerly King of-'
'What testimony is this?' said the duchess. She stood in front of the stage, with half a dozen soldiers beside her.
'These are just slanders,' she added. 'And treason to boot. The rantings of mad players.'
'I was bloody King of Lancre!' shouted Tomjon.
'In which case you are the alleged victim,' said the duchess calmly. 'And unable to speak for the prosecution. It is against all precedent.'
Tomjon's body turned towards Death.
'You were there! You saw it all!'
I SUSPECT I WOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AN APPROPRIATE WITNESS.
'Therefore there is no proof, and where there is no proof there is no crime,' said the duchess. She motioned the soldiers forward.
'So much for your experiment,' she said to her husband. 'I think my way is better.'
She looked around the stage, and found the witches.
'Arrest them,' she said.
'No,' said the Fool, stepping out of the wings.
'What did you say?'
'I saw it all,' said the Fool, simply. 'I was in the Great Hall that night. You killed the king, my lord.'
'I did not!' screamed the duke. 'You were not there! I did not see you there! I order you not to be there!'
'You did not dare say this before,' said Lady Felmet.
'Yes, lady. But I must say it now.'
The duke focused unsteadily on him.
'You swore loyalty unto death, my Fool,' he hissed.
'Yes, my lord. I'm sorry.'
'You're dead.'
The duke snatched a dagger from Wimsloe's-unresisting hand, darted forward, and plunged it to the hilt into the Fool's heart. Magrat screamed.
The Fool rocked back and forth unsteadily.
'Thank goodness that's over,' he said, as Magrat pushed her way through the actors and clasped him to what could charitably be called her bosom. It struck the Fool that he had never looked a bosom squarely in the face, at least since he was a baby, and it was particularly cruel of the world to save the experience until after he was dead.
He gently moved one of Magrat's arms and pulled the despicable horned cowl from his head, and tossed it as far as possible. He didn't have to be a Fool any more or, he realised, bother about vows or anything. What with bosoms as well, death seemed to be an improvement.
'I didn't do it,' said the duke.
No pain, thought the Fool. Funny, that. On the other hand, you obviously can't feel pain when you are dead. It would be wasted.
'You all saw that I didn't do it,' said the duke.
Death gave the Fool a puzzled look. Then he reached into the recesses of his robes and pulled out an hourglass. It had bells on it. He gave it a gentle shake, which made them tinkle.
'I gave no orders that any such thing should be done,' said the duke calmly. His voice came from a long way off, from wherever his mind was now. The company stared at him wordlessly. It wasn't possible to hate someone like this, only to feel acutely embarrassed about being anywhere near him. Even the Fool felt embarrassed, and he was dead.
Death tapped the hourglass, and then peered at it to see if it had gone wrong.
'You are all lying,' said the duke, in tranquil tones. 'Telling lies is naughty.'
He stabbed several of the nearest actors in a dreamy, gentle way, and then held up the blade.
'You see?' he said. 'No blood! It wasn't me.' He looked up at the duchess, towering over him now like a red tsunami over a small fishing village.
'It was her,' he said. 'She did it.'
He stabbed her once or twice, on general principles, and then stabbed himself and let the dagger drop from his fingers.
After a few seconds reflection he said, in a voice far nearer the worlds of sanity, 'You can't get me now.'
He turned to Death. 'Will there be a comet?' he said. 'There must be a comet when a prince dies. I'll go and see, shall I?'
He wandered away. The audience broke into applause.
'You've got to admit he was real royalty,' said Nanny Ogg, eventually. 'It only goes to show, royalty goes eccentric far better than the likes of you and me.'
Death held the hourglass to his skull, his face radiating puzzlement.
Granny Weatherwax picked up the fallen dagger and tested the blade with her finger. It slid into the handle quite easily, with a faint squeaking noise.
She passed it to Nanny.
'There's your magic sword,' she said.
Magrat looked at it, and then back at the Fool.
'Are you dead or not?' she said.
'I must be,' said the Fool, his voice slightly muffled. 'I think I'm in paradise.'
'No, look, I'm serious.'
'I don't know. But I'd like to breathe.'
'Then you must be alive.'
'Everyone's alive,' said Granny. 'It's a trick dagger. Actors probably can't be trusted with real ones.'
'After all, they can't even keep a cauldron clean,' said Nanny.
'Whether everyone is alive or not is a matter for me,' said the duchess. 'As ruler it is my pleasure to decide. Clearly my husband has lost his wits.' She turned to her soldiers. 'And I decree—'
'Now!' hissed King Verence in Granny's ear. 'Now!'
Granny Weatherwax drew herself up.
'Be silent, woman!' she said. 'The true King of Lancre stands before you!'
She clapped Tomjon on the shoulder.
'What, him?'
'Who, me?'
'Ridiculous,' said the duchess. 'He's a mummer, of sorts.'
'She's right, miss,' said Tomjon, on the edge of panic. 'My father runs a theatre, not a kingdom.'
'He is the true king. We can prove it,' said Granny.
'Oh, no,' said the duchess. 'We're not having that. There's no mysterious returned heirs in this kingdom. Guards – take him.'
Granny Weatherwax held up a hand. The soldiers lurched from foot to foot, uncertainly.
'She's a witch, isn't she?' said one of them, tentatively.
'Certainly,' said the duchess.
The guards shifted uneasily.
'We seen where they turn people into newts,' said one.
'And then shipwreck them.'
'Yeah, and alarum the divers.'
'Yeah.'
'We ought to talk about this. We ought to get extra for witches.'
'She could do anything to us, look. She could be a drabe, even.'
'Don't be foolish,' said the duchess. 'Witches don't do that sort of thing. They're just stories to frighten people.'
The guard shook his head.
'It looked pretty convincing to me.'
'Of course it did, it was meant—' the duchess began.
She sighed, and snatched a spear out of the guard's hand.
'I'll show you the power of these witches,' she said, and hurled it at Granny's face.
Granny moved her hand across at snakebite speed and caught the spear just behind the head.
'So,' she said, 'and it comes to this, does it?'
'You don't frighten me, wyrd sisters,' said the duchess.
Granny stared her in the eye for a few seconds. She gave a grunt of surprise.
'You're right,' she said. 'We really don't, do we . . .'
'Do you think I haven't studied you? Your witchcraft is all artifice and illusion, to amaze weak minds. It holds no fears for me. Do your worst.'
Granny studied her for a while.
'My worst?' she said, eventually. Magrat and Nanny Ogg shuffled gently out of her way.
The duchess laughed.
'You're clever,' she said. 'I'll grant you that much. And quick. Come on, hag. Bring on your toads and demons, I'll . . .'
She stopped, her mouth opening and shutting a bit without any words emerging. Her lips drew back in a rictus of terror, her eyes looked beyond Granny, beyond the world, towards something else. One knuckled hand flew to her mouth and she made a little whimpering noise. She froze, like a rabbit that has just seen a stoat and knows, without any doubt, that it is the last stoat that it will ever see.
'What have you done to her?' said Magrat, the first to dare to speak. Granny smirked.
'Headology,' said Granny, and smirked. 'You don't need any Black Aliss magic for it.'
'Yes, but what have you done?'
'No-one becomes like she is without building walls inside their head,' she said. Tve just knocked them down. Every scream. Every plea. Every pang of guilt. Every twinge of conscience. All at once. There's a little trick to it.'
She gave Magrat a condescending smile. 'I'll show you one day, if you like.'
Magrat thought about it. 'It's horrible,' she said.
'Nonsense,' Granny smiled terribly. 'Everyone wants to know their true self. Now, she does.'
'Sometimes you have to be kind to be cruel,' said Nanny Ogg approvingly.
'I think it's probably the worst thing that could happen to anyone,' said Magrat, as the duchess swayed backwards and forwards.
'For goodness' sake use your imagination, girl,' said Granny. 'There are far worse things. Needles under the fingernails, for one. Stuff with pliers.'
'Red-hot knives up the jacksie,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Handle first, too, so you cut your fingers trying to pull them out—'
'This is simply the worst that I can do,' said Granny Weatherwax primly. 'It's all right and proper, too. A witch should act like that, you know. There's no need for any dramatic stuff. Most magic goes on in the head. It's headology. Now, if you'd—'
A noise like a gas leak escaped from the duchess's lips. Her head jerked back suddenly. She opened her eyes, blinked, and focused on Granny. Sheer hatred suffused her features.
'Guards!' she said. 'I told you to take them!'
Granny's jaw sagged. 'What?' she said. 'But – but I showed you your true self . . .'
'I'm supposed to be upset by that, am I?' As the soldiers sheepishly grabbed Granny's arms the duchess pressed her face close to Granny's, her tremendous eyebrows a V of triumphant hatred. 'I'm supposed to grovel on the floor, is that it? Well, old woman, I've seen exactly what I am, do you understand, and I'm proud of it! I'd do it all again, only hotter and longer! I enjoyed it, and I did it because I wanted to!'
She thumped the vast expanse of her chest.
'You gawping idiots!' she said. 'You're so weak. You really think that people are basically decent underneath, don't you?'
The crowd on the stage backed away from the sheer force of her exultation.
'Well, I've looked underneath,' said the duchess. 'I know what drives people. It's fear. Sheer, deep-down fear. There's not one of you who doesn't fear me, I can make you widdle your drawers out of terror, and now I'm going to take—'
At this point Nanny Ogg hit her on the back of the head with the cauldron.
'She does go on, doesn't she?' she said conversationally, as the duchess collapsed. 'She was a bit eccentric, if you ask me.'
There was a long, embarrassed silence.
Granny Weatherwax coughed. Then she treated the soldiers holding her to a bright, friendly smile, and pointed to the mound that was now the duchess.
'Take her away and put her in a cell somewhere,' she commanded. The men snapped to attention, grabbed the duchess by her arms, and pulled her upright with considerable difficulty.
'Gently, mind,' said Granny.
She rubbed her hands together and turned to Tomjon, who was watching her with his mouth open.
'Depend on it,' she hissed. 'Here and now, my lad, you don't have a choice. You're the King of Lancre.'
'But I don't know how to be a king!'
'We all seed you! You had it down just right, including the shouting.'
'That's just acting!'
'Act, then. Being a king is, is—' Granny hesitated, and snapped her fingers at Magrat. 'What do you call them things, there's always a hundred of them in anything?'
Magrat looked bewildered. 'Do you mean per cents?' she said.
'Them,' agreed Granny. 'Most of the per cents in being a king is acting, if you ask me. You ought to be good at it.'
Tomjon looked for help into the wings, where Hwel should have been. The dwarf was in fact there, but he wasn't paying much attention. He had the script in front of him, and was rewriting furiously.
BUT I ASSURE YOU, YOU ARE NOT DEAD. TAKE IT FROM ME.
The duke giggled. He had found a sheet from somewhere and had draped it over himself, and was sidling along some of the castle's more deserted corridors. Sometimes he would go 'whoo-oo' in a low voice.
This worried Death. He was used to people claiming that they were not dead, because death always came as a shock, and a lot of people had some trouble getting over it. But people claiming that they were dead with every breath in their body was a new and unsettling experience.
'I shall jump out on people,' said the duke dreamily. 'I shall rattle my bones all night, I shall perch on the roof and foretell a death in the house—'
THAT'S BANSHEES.
'I shall if I want,' said the duke, with a trace of earlier determination. 'And I shall float through walls, and knock on tables, and drip ectoplasm on anyone I don't like. Ha. Ha.'
IT WON'T WORK. LIVING PEOPLE ARENT ALLOWED TO BE GHOSTS. I'M SORRY.
The duke made an unsuccessful attempt to float through a wall, gave up, and opened a door out on to a crumbling section of the battlements. The storm had died away a bit, and a thin rind of moon lurked behind the clouds like a ticket tout for eternity.
Death stalked through the wall behind him.
'Well then,' said the duke, 'if I'm not dead, why are you here?'
He jumped up on to the wall and flapped his sheet.
WAITING.
'Wait forever, bone face!' said the duke triumphantly. 'I shall hover in the twilight world, I shall find some chains to shake, I shall—'
He stepped backwards, lost his balance, landed heavily on the wall and slid. For a moment the remnant of his right hand scrabbled ineffectually at the stonework, and then it vanished.
Death is obviously potentially everywhere at the same time, and in one sense it is no more true to say that he was on the battlements, picking vaguely at non-existent particles of glowing metal on the edge of his scythe blade, than that he was waist-deep in the foaming, rock-toothed waters in the depths of Lancre gorge, his calcareous gaze sweeping downwards and stopping abruptly at a point where the torrent ran a few treacherous inches over a bed of angular pebbles.
After a while the duke sat up, transparent in the phosphorescent waves.
'I shall haunt their corridors,' he said, 'and whisper under the doors on still nights.' His voice grew fainter, almost lost in the ceaseless roar of the river. 'I shall make basket chairs creak most alarmingly, just you wait and see.'
Death grinned at him.
NOW YOU'RE TALKING.
It started to rain.
Ramtop rain has a curiously penetrative quality which makes ordinary rain seem almost arid. It poured in torrents over the castle roofs, and somehow seemed to go right through the tiles and fill the Great Hall with a warm, uncomfortable moistness.[21]
The hall was crowded with half the population of Lancre. Outside, the rushing of the rain even drowned out the distant roar of the river. It soaked the stage. The colours ran and mingled in the painted backdrop, and one of the curtains sagged away from its rail and flapped sadly into a puddle.
Inside, Granny Weatherwax finished speaking.
'You forgot about the crown,' whispered Nanny Ogg.
'Ah,' said Granny. 'Yes, the crown. It's on his head, d'you see? We hid it among the crowns when the actors left, the reason being, no-one would look for it there. See how it fits him so perfectly.'
It was a tribute to Granny's extraordinary powers of persuasion that everyone did see how perfectly it fitted Tomjon. In fact the only one who didn't was Tomjon himself, who was aware that it was only his ears that were stopping it becoming a necklace.
'Imagine the sensation when he put it on for the first time,' she went on. 'I expect there was an eldritch tingling sensation.'
'Actually, it felt rather—' Tomjon began, but no-one was listening to him. He shrugged and leaned over to Hwel, who was still scribbling busily.
'Does eldritch mean uncomfortable?' he hissed.
The dwarf looked at him with unfocused eyes.
'What?'
'I said, does eldritch mean uncomfortable?'
'Eh? Oh. No. No, I shouldn't think so.'
'What does it mean then?'
'Dunno. Oblong, I think.' Hwel's glance returned to his scrawls as though magnetised. 'Can you remember what he said after all those tomorrows? I didn't catch the bit after that . . .'
'And there wasn't any need for you to tell everyone I was – adopted,' said Tomjon.
'That's how it was, you see,' said the dwarf vaguely. 'Best to be honest about these things. Now then, did he actually stab her, or just accuse her?'
'I don't want to be a king!' Tomjon whispered hoarsely. 'Everyone says I take after dad!'
'Funny thing, all this taking after people,' said the dwarf vaguely. 'I mean, if I took after my dad, I'd be a hundred feet underground digging rocks, whereas—' His voice died away. He stared at the nib of his pen as though it held an incredible fascination.
'Whereas what?'
'Eh?'
'Aren't you even listening?'
'I knew it was wrong when I wrote it, I knew it was the wrong way round . . . What? Oh, yes. Be a king. It's a good job. It seems there's a lot of competition, at any rate. I'm very happy for you. Once you're a king, you can do anything you want.'
Tomjon looked at the faces of the Lancre worthies around the table. They had a keen, calculating look, like the audience at a fatstock show. They were weighing him up. It crept upon him in a cold and clammy way that once he was king, he could do anything he wanted. Provided that what he wanted to do was be king.
'You could build your own theatre,' said Hwel, his eyes lighting up for a moment. 'With as many trapdoors as you wanted, and magnificent costumes. You could act in a new play every night. I mean, it would make the Dysk look like a shed.'
'Who would come to see me?' said Tomjon, sagging in his seat.
'Everyone.'
'What, every night?'
'You could order them to,' said Hwel, without looking up.
I knew he was going to say that, Tomjon thought. He can't really mean it, he added charitably. He's got his play. He doesn't really exist in this world, not right now at the moment.
He took off the crown and turned it over and over in his hands. There wasn't much metal in it, but it felt heavy. He wondered how heavy it would get if you wore it all the time.
At the head of the table was an empty chair containing, he had been assured, the ghost of his real father. It would have been nice to report that he had experienced anything more, when being introduced to it, than an icy sensation and a buzzing in the ears.
'I suppose I could help father pay off on the Dysk,' he said.
'That would be nice, yes,' said Hwel.
He spun the crown in his fingers and listened glumly to the talk flowing back and forth over his head.
'Fifteen years?' said the Mayor of Lancre.
'We had to,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'I thought the baker was a bit early last week.'
'No, no,' said the witch impatiently. 'It doesn't work like that. No-one's lost anything.'
'According to my figuring,' said the man who doubled as Lancre's beadle, town clerk and gravedigger, 'we've all lost fifteen years.'
'No, we've all gained them,' said the mayor. 'It stands to reason. Time's like this sort of wiggly road, see, but we took a short cut across the fields.'
'Not at all,' said the clerk, sliding a sheet of paper across the table. 'Look here . . .'
Tomjon let the waters of debate close over him again.
Everyone wanted him to be king. No-one thought twice about what he wanted. His views didn't count.
Yes, that was it. No-one wanted him to be king, not precisely him. He just happened to be convenient.
Gold does not tarnish, at least physically, but Tomjon felt that the thin band of metal in his hands had an unpleasant depth to its lustre. It had sat on too many troubled heads. If you held it to your ear, you could hear the screams.
He became aware of someone else looking at him, their gaze playing across his face like a blowlamp on a lolly. He looked up.
It was the third witch, the young . . . the youngest one, with the intense expression and the hedgerow hairstyle. Sitting next to old Fool as though she owned a controlling interest.
It wasn't his face she was examining. It was his features. Her eyeballs were tracking him from nape to nose like a pair of calipers. He gave her a little brave smile, which she ignored. Just like everyone else, he thought.
Only the Fool noticed him, and returned the smile with an apologetic grin and a tiny conspiratorial wave of the fingers that said: 'What are we doing here, two sensible people like us?' The woman was looking at him again, turning her head this way and that and narrowing her eyes. She kept glancing at Fool and back to Tomjon. Then she turned to the oldest witch, the only person in the entire hot, damp room who seemed to have acquired a mug of beer, and whispered in her ear.
The two started a spirited, whispered conversation. It was, thought Tomjon, a particularly feminine way of talking. It normally took place on doorsteps, with all the participants standing with their arms folded and, if anyone was so ungracious as to walk past, they'd stop abruptly and watch them in silence until they were safely out of earshot.
He became aware that Granny Weatherwax had stopped talking, and that the entire hall was staring at him expectantly.
'Hallo?' he said.
'It might be a good idea to hold the coronation tomorrow,' said Granny. 'It's not good for a kingdom to be without a ruler. It doesn't like it.'
She stood up, pushed back her chair, and came and took Tomjon's hand. He followed her unprotestingly across the flagstones and up the steps to the throne, where she put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him gently down on to the threadbare red plush cushions.
There was a scraping of benches and chairs. He looked around in panic.
'What's happening now?' he said.
'Don't worry,' said Granny firmly. 'Everyone wants to come and swear loyalty to you. You just nod graciously and ask everyone what they do and if they enjoy it. Oh, and you'd better give them the crown back.'
Tomjon removed it quickly.
'Why?' he said.
'They want to present it to you.'
'But I've already got it!' said Tomjon desperately.
Granny gave a patient sigh.
'Only in the wossname, real sense,' she said. 'This is more ceremonial.'
'You mean unreal?'
'Yes,' said Granny. 'But much more important.'
Tomjon gripped the arms of the throne.
'Fetch me Hwel,' he said.'
'No, you must do it like that. It's precedent, you see, first you meet the—'
'I said, fetch me the dwarf. Didn't you hear me, woman?' This time Tomjon got the spin and pitch of his voice just right, but Granny rallied magnificently.
'I don't think you quite realise who you are talking to, young man,' she said.
Tomjon half rose in his seat. He had played a great many kings, and most of them weren't the kind of kings who shook hands graciously and asked people whether they enjoyed their work. They were far more the type of kings who got people to charge into battle at five o'clock on a freezing morning and still managed to persuade them that this was better than being in bed. He summoned them all, and treated Granny Weatherwax to a blast of royal hauteur, pride and arrogance.
'We thought we were talking to a subject,' he said. 'Now do as we say!'
Granny's face was immobile for several seconds as she worked out what to do next. Then she smiled to herself, said lightly, 'As you wish,' and went and dislodged Hwel, who was still writing.
The dwarf gave a stiff bow.
'None of that,' snapped Tomjon. 'What do I do next?'
'I don't know. Do you want me to write an acceptance speech?'
'I told you. I don't want to be king!'
'Could be a problem with an acceptance speech, then,' the dwarf agreed. 'Have you really thought about this? Being king is a great role.'
'But it's the only one you get to play!'
'Hmm. Well, just tell them “no”, then.'
'Just like that? Will it work?'
'It's got to be worth a try.'
A group of Lancre dignitaries were approaching with the crown on a cushion. They wore expressions of constipated respect coupled with just a hint of self-satisfaction. They carried the crown as if it was a Present for a Good Boy.
The Mayor of Lancre coughed behind his hand.
'A proper coronation will take some time to arrange,' he began, 'but we would like—'
'No,' said Tomjon.
The mayor hesitated. 'Pardon?' he said.
'I won't accept it.'
The mayor hesitated again. His lips moved and his eyes glazed slightly. He felt that he had got lost somewhere, and decided it would be best to start again.
'A proper coronation will take—' he ventured.
'It won't,' said Tomjon. 'I will not be king.'
The mayor was mouthing like a carp.
'Hwel?' said Tomjon desperately. 'You're good with words.'
The problem we've got here,' said the dwarf, 'is that “no” is apparently not among the options when you are offered a crown. I think he could cope with “maybe”.'
Tomjon stood up, and grabbed the crown. He held it above his head like a tambourine.
'Listen to me, all of you,' he said. 'I thank you for your offer, it's a great honour. But I can't accept it. I've worn more crowns than you can count, and the only kingdom I know how to rule has got curtains in front of it. I'm sorry.'
Dead silence greeted this. They did not appear to have been the right words.
'Another problem,' said Hwel conversationally, 'is that you don't actually have a choice. You are the king, you see. It's a job you are lined up for when you're born.'
'I'd be no good at it!'
'That doesn't matter. A king isn't something you're good at, it's something you are.'
'You can't leave me here! There's nothing but forests!'
Tomjon felt the suffocating cold sensation again, and the slow buzzing in his ears. For a moment he thought he saw, faint as a mist, a tall sad man in front of him, stretching out a hand in supplication.
'I'm sorry,' he whispered. 'I really am.'
Through the fading shape he saw the witches, watching him intently.
Beside him Hwel said, 'The only chance you'd have is if there was another heir. You don't remember any brothers and sisters, do you?'
'I don't remember anyone! Hwel, I—'
There was another ferocious argument among the witches. And then Magrat was striding, striding across the hall, moving like a tidal wave, moving like a rush of blood to the head, shaking off Granny Weatherwax's restraining hand, bearing down on the throne like a piston, and dragging the Fool behind her.
'I say?'
'Er. Halloee!'
'Er, I say, excuse me, can anyone hear us?'
The castle up above was full of hubbub and general rejoicing, and there was no-one to hear the polite and frantic voices that echoed along the dungeon passages, getting politer and more frantic with each passing hour.
'Um, I say? Excuse me? Billem's got this terrible thing about rats, if you don't mind. Cooeee!'
Let the camera of the mind's eye pan slowly back along the dim, ancient corridors, taking in the dripping fungi, the rusting ehains, the damp, the shadows . . .
'Can anyone hear us? Look, it's really too much. There's been some laughable mistake, look, the wigs come right off. . .'
Let the plaintive echoes dwindle among the cobwebbed corners and rodent-haunted tunnels, until they're no more than a reedy whisper on the cusp of hearing.
'I say? I say, excuse me, help?'
Someone is bound to come down here again one of these days.
Some time afterwards Magrat asked Hwel if he believed in long engagements. The dwarf paused in the task of loading up the latty.[22]
'About a week, maximum,' he said at last. 'With matinees, of course.'
A month went past. The early damp-earth odours of autumn drifted over the velvety-dark moors, where the watery starlight was echoed by one spark of a fire.
The standing stone was back in its normal place, but still poised to run if any auditors came into view.
The witches sat in careful silence. This was not going to rate among the hundred most exciting coven meetings of all time. If Mussorgsky had seen them, the night on the bare mountain would have been over by teatime.
Then Granny Weatherwax said, 'It was a good banquet, I thought.'
'I was nearly sick,' said Nanny Ogg proudly. 'And my Shirl helped out in the kitchen and brought me home some scraps.'
'I heard,' said Granny coldly. 'Haifa pig and three bottles of fizzy wine went missing, they say.'
'It's nice that some people think of the old folk,' said Nanny Ogg, completely unabashed. 'I got a coronation mug, too.' She produced it. 'It says “Viva Verence II Rex”. Fancy him being called Rex. I can't say it's a good likeness, mind you. I don't recall him having a handle sticking out of his ear.'
There was another long, terribly polite pause. Then Granny said, 'We were a bit surprised you weren't there, Magrat.'
'We thought you'd be up at the top of the table, kind of thing,' said Nanny. 'We thought you'd have moved in up there.'
Magrat stared fixedly at her feet.
'I wasn't invited,' she said meekly.
'Well, I don't know about invited,' said Granny. 'We weren't invited. People don't have to invite witches, they just know we'll turn up if we want to. They soon find room for us,' she added, with some satisfaction.
'You see, he's been very busy,' said Magrat to her feet. 'Sorting everything out, you know. He's very clever, you know. Underneath.'
'Very sober lad,' said Nanny.
'Anyway, it's full moon,' said Magrat quickly. 'You've got to go to coven meetings at full moon, no matter what other pressing engagements there may be.'
'Have y—?' Nanny Ogg began, but Granny nudged her sharply in the ribs.
'It's a very good thing he's paying so much attention to getting the kingdom working again,' said Granny, soothingly. 'It shows proper consideration. I daresay he'll get around to everything, sooner or later. It's very demanding, being a king.'
'Yes,' said Magrat, her voice barely audible.
The silence that followed was almost solid. It was broken by Nanny, in a voice as bright and brittle as ice.
'Well, I brought a bottle of that fizzy wine with me,' she said. 'In case he'd . . . in case . . . in case we felt like a drink,' she rallied, and waved it at the other two.
'I don't want any,' said Magrat sullenly.
'You drink up, girl,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'It's a chilly night. It'd be good for your chest.'
She squinted at Magrat as the moon drifted out from behind its cloud.
'Here,' she said. 'Your hair looks a bit grubby. It looks as though you haven't washed it for a month.'
Magrat burst into tears.
The same moon shone down on the otherwise unremarkable town of Rham Nitz, some ninety miles from Lancre.
Tomjon left the stage to thunderous applause at the concluding act of The Troll ofAnkh. A hundred people would go home tonight wondering whether trolls were really as bad as they had hitherto thought although, of course, this wouldn't actually stop them disliking them in any way whatsoever.
Hwel patted him on the back as he sat down at the makeup table and started scraping off the thick grey sludge that was intended to make him look like a walking rock.
'Well done,' he said. 'The love scene – just right. And when you turned around and roared at the wizard I shouldn't think there was a dry seat in the house.'
'I know.'
Hwel rubbed his hands together.
'We can afford a tavern tonight,' he said. 'So if we just—'
'We'll sleep in the carts,' said Tomjon firmly, squinting at himself in the shard of mirror.
'But you know how much the Fo – the king gave us! It could be feather beds all the way home!'
'It's straw mattresses and a good profit for us,' said Tomjon. 'And that'll buy you gods from heaven and demons from hell and the wind and the waves and more trapdoors than you can count, my lawn ornament.'
Hwel's hand rested on Tomjon's shoulder for a moment. Then he said, 'You're right, boss.'
'Certainly I am. How's the play going?'
'Hmm? What play?' said Hwel, innocently.
Tomjon carefully removed a plaster brow ridge.
'You know,' he said. 'That one. The Lancre King.'
'Oh. Coming along. Coming along, you know. I'll get it right one of these days.' Hwel changed the subject with speed. 'You know, we could work our way down to the river and take a boat home. That would be nice, wouldn't it?'
'But we could work our way home over land and pick up some more cash. That would be better, wouldn't it?' Tomjon grinned. 'We took one hundred and three pence tonight; I counted heads during the Judgement speech. That's nearly one silver piece after expenses.'
'You're your father's son, and no mistake,' said Hwel.
Tomjon sat back and looked at himself in the mirror.
'Yes,' he said, 'I thought I had better be.'
Magrat didn't like cats and hated the idea of mousetraps. She'd always felt that it should be possible to come to some sort of arrangement with creatures like mice so that all available food was rationed in the best interest of all parties. This was a very humanitarian outlook, which is to say that it was not a view shared by mice, and therefore her moonlit kitchen was alive.
When there was a knocking at the door the entire floor appeared to rush towards the walls.
After a few seconds the knocking came again.
There was another pause. Then the knocking rattled the door on its hinges, and a voice cried, 'Open in the name of the king!'
A second voice said, in hurt tones, 'You don't have to shout like that. Why did you shout like that? I didn't order you to shout like that. It's enough to frighten anybody, shouting like that.'
'Sorry, sire! It goes with the job, sire!'
'Just knock again. A bit more gently, please.'
The knocking might have been a bit softer. Magrat's apron dropped off its hook on the back of the door.
'Are you sure I can't do it myself?'
'It's not done, sire, kings knocking at humble cottage doors. Best leave it to me. OPEN IN THE—'
'Sergeant!'
'Sorry, sire. Forgot myself.'
'Try the latch.'
There was the sound of someone being extremely hesitant.
'Don't like the sound of that, sire,' said the invisible sergeant. 'Could be dangerous. If you want my advice, sire, I'd set fire to the thatch.'
'Set fire?'
'Yessire. We always do that if they don't answer the door. Brings them out a treat.'
'I don't think that would be appropriate, sergeant. I think I'll try the latch, if it's all the same to you.'
'Breaks my heart to see you do it, sire.'
'Well, I'm sorry.'
'You could at least let me buff it up for you.'
'No!'
'Well, couldn't I just set fire to the privy—?'
'Absolutely not!'
'That chicken house over there looks as if it would go up like-'
'Sergeant!'
'Sire!'
'Go back to the castle!'
'What, and leave you all alone, sire?'
'This is a matter of extreme delicacy, sergeant. I am sure you are a man of sterling qualities, but there are times when even a king needs to be alone. It concerns a young woman, you understand.'
'Ah. Point taken, sire,'
'Thank you. Help me dismount, please.'
'Sorry about all that, sire. Tactless of me.'
'Don't mention it.'
'If you need any help getting her alight—'
'Please go back to the castle, sergeant.'
'Yes, sire. If you're sure, sire. Thank you, sire.'
'Sergeant?'
'Yes, sire?'
'I shall need someone to take my cap and bells back to the Fools' Guild in Ankh-Morpork now I'm leaving. It seems to me you're the ideal man.'
'Thank you, sire. Much obliged.'
'It's your, ah, burning desire to be of service.'
'Yes, sire?'
'Make sure they put you up in one of the guest rooms.'
'Yes, sire. Thank you, sire.'
There was the sound of a horse trotting away. A few seconds later the latch clonked and the Fool crept in.
It takes considerable courage to enter a witch's kitchen in the dark, but probably no more than it takes to wear a purple shirt with velvet sleeves and scalloped edges. It had this in its favour, though. There were no bells on it.
He had brought a bottle of sparkling wine and a bouquet of flowers, both of which had gone flat during the journey. He laid them on the table, and sat down by the embers of the fire.
He rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day. He wasn't, he felt, a good king, but he'd had a lifetime of working hard at being something he wasn't cut out to be, and he was persevering. As far as he could see, none of his predecessors had tried at all. So much to do, so much to repair, so much to organise . . .
On top of it all there was the problem with the duchess. Somehow he'd felt moved to put her in a decent cell in an airy tower. She was a widow, after all. He felt he ought to be kind to widows. But being kind to the duchess didn't seem to achieve much, she didn't understand it, she thought it was just weakness. He was dreadfully afraid that he might have to have her head cut off.
No, being a king was no laughing matter. He brightened up at the thought. There was that to be said about it.
And, after a while, he fell asleep.
The duchess was not asleep. She was currently halfway down the castle wall on a rope of knotted sheets, having spent the previous day gradually chipping away the mortar around the bars of her window although, in truth, you could hack your way out of the average Lancre Castle wall with a piece of cheese. The fool! He'd given her cutlery, and plenty of bedclothes! That was how these people reacted. They let their fear do their thinking for them. They were scared of her, even when they thought they had her in their power (and the weak never had the strong in their power, never truly in their power). If she'd thrown herself in prison, she would have found considerable satisfaction in making herself regret she'd ever been born. But they'd just given her blankets, and worried about her.
Well, she'd be back. There was a big world out there, and she knew how to pull the levers that made people do what she wanted. She wouldn't burden herself with a husband this time, either. Weak! He was the worst of them, no courage in him to be as bad as he knew he was, inside.
She landed heavily on the moss, paused to catch her breath and then, with the knife ready in her hand, slipped away along the castle walls and into the forest.
She'd go all the way down to the far border and swim the river there, or maybe build a raft. By morning she'd be too far away for them ever to find her, and she doubted very much that they'd ever come looking.
Weak!
She moved through the forest with surprising speed. There were tracks, after all, wide enough for carts, and she had a pretty good sense of direction. Besides, all she needed to do was go downhill. If she found the gorge then she just had to follow the flow.
And then there seemed to be too many trees. There was still a track, and it went more or less in the right direction, but the trees on either side of it were planted rather more thickly than one might expect and, when she tried to turn back, there was no track at all behind her. She took to turning suddenly, half expecting to see the trees moving, but they were always standing stoically and firmly rooted in the moss.
She couldn't feel a wind, but there was a sighing in the treetops.
'All right,' she said, under her breath. 'All right. I'm going anyway. I want to go. But I will be back.'
It was at this point that the track opened out into a clearing that hadn't been there the day before and wouldn't be there tomorrow, a clearing in which the moonlight glittered off assembled antlers and fangs and serried ranks of glowing eyes.
The weak banded together can be pretty despicable, but it dawned on the duchess that an alliance of the strong can be more of an immediate problem.
There was total silence for a few seconds, broken only by a faint panting, and then the duchess grinned, raised her knife, and charged the lot of them.
The front ranks of the massed creatures opened to let her pass, and then closed in again. Even the rabbits.
The kingdom exhaled.
On the moors under the very shadow of the peaks the mighty nocturnal chorus of nature had fallen silent. The crickets had ceased their chirping, the owls had hooted themselves into silence, and the wolves had other matters to attend to.
There was a song that echoed and boomed from cliff to cliff, and resounded up the high hidden valleys, causing miniature avalanches. It funnelled along the secret tunnels under glaciers, losing all meaning as it rang between the walls of ice.
To find out what was actually being sung you would have to go all the way back down to the dying fire by the standing stone, where the cross-resonances and waves of conflicting echoes focused on a small, elderly woman who was waving an empty bottle.
'—with a snail if you slow to a crawl, but the hedgehog—'
'It tastes better at the bottom of the bottle, doesn't it,' Magrat said, trying to drown out the chorus.
'That's right,' said Granny, draining her cup.
'Is there any more?'
'I think Gytha finished it, by the sound of it.'
They sat on the fragrant heather and stared up at the moon.
'Well, we've got a king,' said Granny. 'And there's an end of it.'
'It's thanks to you and Nanny, really,' said Magrat, and hiccupped.
'Why?'
'None of them would have believed me if you hadn't spoken up.'
'Only because we was asked,' said Granny.
'Yes, but everyone knows witches don't lie, that's the important thing. I mean, everyone could see they looked so alike, but that could have been coincidence. You see,' Magrat blushed, 'I looked up droit de seigneur. Goodie Whemper had a dictionary.'
Nanny Ogg stopped singing.
'Yes,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'Well.'
Magrat became aware of an uncomfortable atmosphere.
'You did tell the truth, didn't you?' she said. 'They really are brothers, aren't they?'
'Oh yes,' said Gytha Ogg. 'Definitely. I saw to his mother when your – when the new king was born. And to the queen when young Tomjon was born, and she told me who his father was.'
'Gytha!'
'Sorry.'
The wine was going to her head, but the wheels in Magrat's mind still managed to turn.
'Just a minute,' she said.
'I remember the Fool's father,' said Nanny Ogg, speaking slowly and deliberately. 'Very personable young man, he was. He didn't get on with his dad, you know, but he used to visit sometimes. To see old friends.'
'He made friends easily,' said Granny.
'Among the ladies,' agreed Nanny. 'Very athletic, wasn't he? Could climb walls like nobody's business, I remember hearing.'
'He was very popular at court,' said Granny. 'I know that much.'
'Oh, yes. With the queen, at any rate.'
'The king used to go out hunting such a lot,' said Granny.
'It was that droit of his,' said Nanny. 'Always out and about with it, he was. Hardly ever home o'nights.'
'Just a minute,' Magrat repeated.
They looked at her.
'Yes?' said Granny.
'You told everyone they were brothers and that Verence was the older!'
'That's right.'
'And you let everyone believe that—'
Granny Weatherwax pulled her shawl around her.
'We're bound to be truthful,' she said. 'But there's no call to be honest.'
'No, no, what you're saying is that the King of Lancre isn't really—'
'What I'm saying is,' said Granny firmly, 'that we've got a king who is no worse than most and better than many and who's got his head screwed on right—'
'Even if it is against the thread,' said Nanny.
'—and the old king's ghost has been laid to rest happy, there's been an enjoyable coronation and some of us got mugs we weren't entitled to, them being only for the kiddies and, all in all, things are a lot more satisfactory than they might be. That's what I'm saying. Never mind what should be or what might be or what ought to be. It's what things are that's important.'
'But he's not really a king!'
'He might be,' said Nanny.
'But you just said—'
'Who knows? The late queen wasn't very good at counting. Anyway, he doesn't know he isn't royalty.'
'And you're not going to tell him, are you?' said Granny Weatherwax.
Magrat stared at the moon, which had a few clouds across it.
'No,' she said.
'Right, then,' said Granny. 'Anyway, look at it like this. Royalty has to start somewhere. It might as well start with him. It looks as though he means to take it seriously, which is a lot further than most of them take it. He'll do.'
Magrat knew she had lost. You always lost against Granny Weatherwax, the only interest was in seeing exactly how. 'But I'm surprised at the two of you, I really am,' she said. 'You're witches. That means you have to care about things like truth and tradition and destiny, don't you?'
'That's where you've been getting it all wrong,' said Granny, 'Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around.'
'Bugger destiny,' agreed Nanny.
Granny glared at her.
'After all, you never thought being a witch was going to be easy, did you?'
'I'm learning,' said Magrat. She looked across the moor, where a thin rind of dawn glowed on the horizon.
'I think I'd better be off,' she said. 'It's getting early.'
'Me too,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Our Shirl frets if I'm not home when she comes to get my breakfast.'
Granny carefully scuffed over the remains of the fire.
'When shall we three meet again?' she said. 'Hmm?'
The witches looked at one another sheepishly.
'I'm a bit busy next month,' said Nanny. 'Birthdays and such. Er. And the work has really been piling up with all this hurly-burly. You know. And there's all the ghosts to think about.'
'I thought you sent them back to the castle,' said Granny.
'Well, they didn't want to go,' said Nanny vaguely. 'To be honest, I've got used to them around the place. They're company of an evening. They hardly scream at all, now.'
'That's nice,' said Granny. 'What about you, Magrat?'
'There always seems to be such a lot to do at this time of year, don't you find?' said Magrat.
'Quite,' said Granny Weatherwax, pleasantly. 'It's no good getting yourself tied down to appointments all the time, is it? Let's just leave the whole question open, shall we?'
They nodded. And, as the new day wound across the landscape, each one busy with her own thoughts, each one a witch alone, they went home.[23]
The End
[1] Quaffing is like drinking, but you spill more.
[2] Whatever that was. He'd never found anyone prepared to explain it to him. But it was definitely something a feudal lord ought to have and, he was pretty sure, it needed regular exercise. He imagined it was some kind of large hairy dog. He was definitely going to get one, and damn well exercise it.
[3] Written by wizards, who are celibate and get some pretty funny ideas around four o'clock in the morning.
[4] She did nothing, although sometimes when she saw him in the village she'd smile in a faint, puzzled way. After three weeks of this the suspense was too much for him and he took his own life; in fact he took it all the way across the continent, where he became a reformed character and never went home again.
[5] All of them, unfortunately, unprintable.
[6] The vermine is a small black and white furry creature, much famed for its pelt. It is a more careful relative of the lemming; it only throws itself over small pebbles.
[7] They worked. Witches' remedies generally did, regardless of the actual form of delivery.
[8] A killing insult in Dwarfish, but here used as a term of endearment. It means 'lawn ornament'.
[9] In a manner of speaking.
[10] Someone has to do it. It's all very well calling for eye of newt, but do you mean Common, Spotted or Great Crested? Which eye, anyway? Will tapioca do just as well? If we substitute egg white will the spell a) work b) fail or c) melt the bottom out of the cauldron? Goodie Whemper's curiosity about such things was huge and insatiable*.
* Nearly insatiable. It was probably satiated in her last flight to test whether a broomstick could survive having its bristles pulled out one by one in mid-air. According to the small black raven she had trained as a flight recorder, the answer was almost certainly no.
[11] Witches never curtsey.
[12] No-one knows why men say things like this. Any minute now he is probably going to say he likes a girl with spirit.
[13] They always do, everywhere. No-one sees them arrive. The logical explanation is that the franchise includes the stall, the paper hat and a small gas-powered time machine.
[14] Involving a red hot poker, a privy, ten pounds of live eels, a three mile stretch of frozen river, a butt of wine, a couple of tulip bulbs, a number of poisoned eardrops, an oyster and a large man with a mallet. King Murune didn't make friends easily.
[15] Possibly the first attempt at the in-flight refuelling of a broomstick.
[16] An explanation may be needed at this point. The Librarian of the magic library at Unseen University, the Disc's premier college of wizardry, had been turned into an orang-utan some years previously by a magical accident in that accident-prone academy, and since then had strenuously resisted all well-meaning efforts to turn him back. For one thing, longer arms and prehensile toes made getting around the higher shelves a whole lot easier, and being an ape meant you didn't have to bother with all this angst business. He had also been rather pleased to find that his new body, although looking deceptively like a rubber sack full of water, gave him three times the strength and twice the reach of his old one.
[17] The Shades is an ancient part of Ankh-Morpork considered considerably more unpleasant and disreputable than the rest of the city. This always amazes visitors.
[18] Ankh-Morpork's enviable system of licensed criminals owes much to the current Patrician, Lord Vetinari. He reasoned that the only way to police a city of a million inhabitants was to recognise the various gangs and robber guilds, give them professional status, invite the leaders to large dinners, allow an acceptable level of street crime and then make the guild leaders responsible for enforcing it, on pain of being stripped of their new civic honours along with large areas of their skins. It worked. Criminals, it turned out, made a very good police force; unauthorised robbers soon found, for example, that instead of a night in the cells they could now expect an eternity at the bottom of the river.
However, there was the problem of apportioning the crime statistics, and so there arose a complex system of annual budgeting, chits and allowances to see that a) the members could make a reasonable living and b) no citizen was robbed or assaulted more than an agreed number of times. Many foresighted citizens in fact arranged to get an acceptable minimum of theft, assault, etc, over at the beginning of the financial year, often in the privacy and comfort of their own homes, and thus be able to walk the streets quite safely for the rest of the year. It all ticked over extremely peacefully and efficiently, demonstrating once again that compared to the Patrician of Ankh, Machiavelli could not have run a whelk stall.
[19] Because of the way time was recorded among the various states, kingdoms and cities. After all, when over an area of a hundred square miles the same year is variously the Year of the Small Bat, and Anticipated Monkey, the Hunting Cloud, Fat Cows, Three Bright Stallions and at least nine numbers recording the time since* assorted kings, prophets, and strange events were either crowned, born or happened, and each year has a different number of months, and some of them don't have weeks, and one of them refuses to accept the day as a measure of time, the only thing it is possible to be sure of is that good sex doesn't last long enough.†
* The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.
† Except for the Zabingo tribe of the Great Nef, of course.
[20] The observant will realise that this was because the king was already seated there. It was not because the man had used the phrase 'commence to start' in cold blood. But it ought to have been.
[21] Like Bognor.
[22] At least, of supervising the loading. Actual physical assistance was a little difficult because he had, the day before, slipped on something and broken his leg.
[23] There is a school of thought that says that witches and wizards can never go home. They went, though, just the same.