The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain-lashed hills.

The night was as black as the inside of a cat. It was the kind of night, you could believe, on which gods moved men as though they were pawns on the chessboard of fate. In the middle of this elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like the madness in a weasel’s eye. It illuminated three hunched figures. As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: “When shall we three meet again?”

There was a pause.

Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: “Well, I can do next Tuesday.”

 

Through the fathomless deeps of space swims the star turtle Great A’Tuin, bearing on its back the four giant elephants who carry on their shoulders the mass of the Discworld. A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past.

Exactly why this should be may never be known. Possibly the Creator of the universe got bored with all the usual business of axial inclination, albedos and rotational velocities, and decided to have a bit of fun for once.

It would be a pretty good bet that the gods of a world like this probably do not play chess and indeed this is the case. In fact no gods anywhere play chess. They haven’t got the imagination. Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god’s idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.

Magic glues the Discworld together—magic generated by the turning of the world itself, magic wound like silk out of the underlying structure of existence to suture the wounds of reality.

A lot of it ends up in the Ramtop Mountains, which stretch from the frozen lands near the Hub all the way, via a lengthy archipelago, to the warm seas which flow endlessly into space over the Rim.

Raw magic crackles invisibly from peak to peak and earths itself in the mountains. It is the Ramtops that supply the world with most of its witches and wizards. In the Ramtops the leaves on the trees move even when there is no breeze. Rocks go for a stroll of an evening.

Even the land, at times, seems alive…

 

At times, so does the sky.

The storm was really giving it everything it had. This was its big chance. It had spent years hanging around the provinces, putting in some useful work as a squall, building up experience, making contacts, occasionally leaping out on unsuspecting shepherds or blasting quite small oak trees. Now an opening in the weather had given it an opportunity to strut its hour, and it was building up its role in the hope of being spotted by one of the big climates.

It was a good storm. There was quite effective projection and passion there, and critics agreed that if it would only learn to control its thunder it would be, in years to come, a storm to watch.

The woods roared their applause and were full of mists and flying leaves.

On nights such as these the gods, as has already been pointed out, play games other than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings. It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end…

And a coach came hurtling along the rough forest track, jerking violently as the wheels bounced off tree roots. The driver lashed at the team, the desperate crack of his whip providing a rather neat counterpoint to the crash of the tempest overhead.

Behind—only a little way behind, and getting closer—were three hooded riders.

On nights such as this, evil deeds are done. And good deeds, of course. But mostly evil, on the whole.

 

On nights such as this, witches are abroad.

Well, not actually abroad. They don’t like the food and you can’t trust the water and the shamans always hog the deckchairs. But there was a full moon breasting the ragged clouds and the rushing air was full of whispers and the very broad hint of magic.

In their clearing above the forest the witches spoke thus:

“I’m babysitting on Tuesday,” said the one with no hat but a thatch of white curls so thick she might have been wearing a helmet. “For our Jason’s youngest. I can manage Friday. Hurry up with the tea, luv. I’m that parched.”

The junior member of the trio gave a sigh, and ladled some boiling water out of the cauldron into the teapot.

The third witch patted her hand in a kindly fashion.

“You said it quite well,” she said. “Just a bit more work on the screeching. Ain’t that right, Nanny Ogg?”

“Very useful screeching, I thought,” said Nanny Ogg hurriedly. “And I can see Goodie Whemper, maysherestinpeace, gave you a lot of help with the squint.”

“It’s a good squint,” said Granny Weatherwax.

The junior witch, whose name was Magrat Garlick, relaxed considerably. She held Granny Weatherwax in awe. It was known throughout the Ramtop Mountains that Miss Weatherwax did not approve of anything very much. If she said it was a good squint, then Magrat’s eyes were probably staring up her own nostrils.

Unlike wizards, who like nothing better than a complicated hierarchy, witches don’t go in much for the structured approach to career progression. It’s up to each individual witch to take on a girl to hand the area over to when she dies. Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least with other witches, and they certainly don’t have leaders.

Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn’t have.

Magrat’s hands shook slightly as they made the tea. Of course, it was all very gratifying, but it was a bit nerve-racking to start one’s working life as village witch between Granny and, on the other side of the forest, Nanny Ogg. It’d been her idea to form a local coven. She felt it was more, well, occult. To her amazement the other two had agreed or, at least, hadn’t disagreed much.

“An oven?” Nanny Ogg had said. “What’d we want to join an oven for?”

“She means a coven, Gytha,” Granny Weatherwax had explained. “You know, like in the old days. A meeting.”

“A knees up?” said Nanny Ogg hopefully.

“No dancing,” Granny had warned. “I don’t hold with dancing. Or singing or getting over-excited or all that messing about with ointments and similar.”

“Does you good to get out,” said Nanny happily.

Magrat had been disappointed about the dancing, and was relieved that she hadn’t ventured one or two other ideas that had been on her mind. She fumbled in the packet she had brought with her. It was her first sabbat, and she was determined to do it right.

“Would anyone care for a scone?” she said.

Granny looked hard at hers before she bit. Magrat had baked bat designs on it. They had little eyes made of currants.

 

The coach crashed through the trees at the forest edge, ran on two wheels for a few seconds as it hit a stone, righted itself against all the laws of balance, and rumbled on. But it was going slower now. The slope was dragging at it.

The coachman, standing upright in the manner of a charioteer, pushed his hair out of his eyes and peered through the murk. No one lived up here, in the lap of the Ramtops themselves, but there was a light ahead. By all that was merciful, there was a light there.

An arrow buried itself in the coach roof behind him.

 

Meanwhile King Verence, monarch of Lancre, was making a discovery.

Like most people—most people, at any rate, below the age of sixty or so—Verence hadn’t exercised his mind much about what happened to you when you died. Like most people since the dawn of time, he assumed it all somehow worked out all right in the end.

And, like most people since the dawn of time, he was now dead.

He was in fact lying at the bottom of one of his own stairways in Lancre Castle, with a dagger in his back.

He sat up, and was surprised to find that while someone he was certainly inclined to think of as himself was sitting up, something very much like his body remained lying on the floor.

It was a pretty good body, incidentally, now he came to see it from outside for the first time. He had always been quite attached to it although, he had to admit, this did not now seem to be the case.

It was big and well-muscled. He’d looked after it. He’d allowed it a mustache and long-flowing locks. He’d seen it got plenty of healthy outdoor exercise and lots of red meat. Now, just when a body would have been useful, it had let him down. Or out.

On top of that, he had to come to terms with the tall, thin figure standing beside him. Most of it was hidden in a hooded black robe, but the one arm which extended from the folds to grip a large scythe was made of bone.

When one is dead, there are things one instinctively recognizes.

HALLO.

Verence drew himself up to his full height, or what would have been his full height if that part of him of which the word “height” could have been applied was not lying stiff on the floor and facing a future in which only the word “depth” could be appropriate.

“I am a king, mark you,” he said.

WAS, YOUR MAJESTY.

“What?” Verence barked.

I SAID WAS. IT’S CALLED THE PAST TENSE. YOU’LL SOON GET USED TO IT.

The tall figure tapped its calcareous fingers on the scythe’s handle. It was obviously upset about something.

If it came to that, Verence thought, so am I. But the various broad hints available in his present circumstances were breaking through even the mad brain stupidity that made up most of his character, and it was dawning on him that whatever kingdom he might currently be in, he wasn’t king of it.

“Are you Death, fellow?” he ventured.

I HAVE MANY NAMES.

“Which one are you using at present?” said Verence, with a shade more deference. There were people milling around them; in fact, quite a few people were milling through them, like ghosts.

“Oh, so it was Felmet,” the king added vaguely, looking at the figure lurking with obscene delight at the top of the stairs. “My father said I should never let him get behind me. Why don’t I feel angry?”

GLANDS, said Death shortly. ADRENALIN AND SO FORTH. AND EMOTIONS. YOU DON’T HAVE THEM. ALL YOU HAVE NOW IS THOUGHT.

The tall figure appeared to reach a decision.

THIS IS VERY IRREGULAR, he went on, apparently to himself. HOWEVER, WHO AM I TO ARGUE?

“Who indeed.”

WHAT?

“I said, who indeed.”

SHUT UP.

Death stood with his skull on one side, as though listening to some inner voice. As his hood fell away the late king noticed that Death resembled a polished skeleton in every way but one. His eye sockets glowed sky blue. Verence wasn’t frightened, however; not simply because it is difficult to be in fear of anything when the bits you need to be frightened with are curdling several yards away, but because he had never really been frightened of anything in his life, and wasn’t going to start now. This was partly because he didn’t have the imagination, but he was also one of those rare individuals who are totally focused in time.

Most people aren’t. They live their lives as a sort of temporal blur around the point where their body actually is—anticipating the future, or holding onto the past. They’re usually so busy thinking about what happens next that the only time they ever find out what is happening now is when they come to look back on it. Most people are like this. They learn how to fear because they can actually tell, down at the subconscious level, what is going to happen next. It’s already happening to them.

But Verence had always lived only for the present. Until now, anyway.

Death sighed.

I SUPPOSE NO ONE MENTIONED ANYTHING TO YOU? he hazarded.

“Say again?”

NO PREMONITIONS? STRANGE DREAMS? MAD OLD SOOTHSAYERS SHOUTING THINGS AT YOU IN THE STREET?

“About what? Dying?”

NO, I SUPPOSE NOT. IT WOULD BE TOO MUCH TO EXPECT, said Death sourly. THEY LEAVE IT ALL TO ME.

“Who do?” said Verence, mystified.

FATE. DESTINY. ALL THE REST OF THEM. Death laid a hand on the king’s shoulder. THE FACT IS, I’M AFRAID, YOU’RE DUE TO BECOME A GHOST.

“Oh.” He looked down at his…body, which seemed solid enough. Then someone walked through him.

DON’T LET IT UPSET YOU.

Verence watched his own stiff corpse being carried reverentially from the hall.

“I’ll try,” he said.

GOOD MAN.

“I don’t think I will be up to all that business with the white sheets and the chains, though,” he said. “Do I have to walk around moaning and screaming?”

Death shrugged. DO YOU WANT TO? he said.

“No.”

THEN I SHOULDN’T BOTHER, IF I WERE YOU. Death pulled an hour-glass from the recesses of his dark robe and inspected it closely.

AND NOW I REALLY MUST BE GOING, he said. He turned on his heel, put his scythe over his shoulder and started to walk out of the hall through the wall.

“I say? Just hold on there!” shouted Verence, running after him.

Death didn’t look back. Verence followed him through the wall; it was like walking through fog.

“Is that all?” he demanded. “I mean, how long will I be a ghost? Why am I a ghost? You can’t just leave me like this.” He halted and raised an imperious, slightly transparent finger. “Stop! I command you!”

Death shook his head gloomily, and stepped through the next wall. The king hurried after him with as much dignity as he could still muster, and found Death fiddling with the girths of a large white horse standing on the battlements. It was wearing a nosebag.

“You can’t leave me like this!” he repeated, in the face of the evidence.

Death turned to him.

I CAN, he said. YOU’RE UNDEAD, YOU SEE. GHOSTS INHABIT A WORLD BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE DEAD. IT’S NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY. He patted the king on the shoulder. DON’T WORRY, he said, IT WON’T BE FOREVER.

“Good.”

IT MAY SEEM LIKE FOREVER.

“How long will it really be?”

UNTIL YOU HAVE FULFILLED YOUR DESTINY, I ASSUME.

“And how will I know what my destiny is?” said the king, desperately.

CAN’T HELP THERE. I’M SORRY.

“Well, how can I find out?”

THESE THINGS GENERALLY BECOME APPARENT, I UNDERSTAND, said Death, and swung himself into the saddle.

“And until then I have to haunt this place.” King Verence stared around at the drafty battlements. “All alone, I suppose. Won’t anyone be able to see me?”

OH, THE PSYCHICALLY INCLINED. CLOSE RELATIVES. AND CATS, OF COURSE.

“I hate cats.”

Death’s face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant.

I SEE, he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat-haters. YOU LIKE GREAT BIG DOGS, I IMAGINE.

“As a matter of fact, I do.” The king stared gloomily at the dawn. His dogs. He’d really miss his dogs. And it looked like such a good hunting day.

He wondered if ghosts hunted. Almost certainly not, he imagined. Or ate, or drank either for that matter, and that was really depressing. He liked a big noisy banquet and had quaffed* many a pint of good ale. And bad ale, come to that. He’d never been able to tell the difference till the following morning, usually.

He kicked despondently at a stone, and noted gloomily that his foot went right through it. No hunting, drinking, carousing, no wassailing, no hawking…It was dawning on him that the pleasures of the flesh were pretty sparse without the flesh. Suddenly life wasn’t worth living. The fact that he wasn’t living it didn’t cheer him up at all.

SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO BE GHOSTS, said Death.

“Hmm?” said Verence, gloomily.

IT’S NOT SUCH A WRENCH, I ASSUME. THEY CAN SEE HOW THEIR DESCENDANTS GET ON. SORRY? IS SOMETHING THE MATTER?

But Verence had vanished into the wall.

DON’T MIND ME, WILL YOU, said Death, peevishly. He looked around him with a gaze that could see through time and space and the souls of men, and noted a landslide in distant Klatch, a hurricane in Howandaland, a plague in Hergen.

BUSY, BUSY, he muttered, and spurred his horse into the sky.

Verence ran through the walls of his own castle. His feet barely touched the ground—in fact, the unevenness of the floor meant that at times they didn’t touch the ground at all.

As a king he was used to treating servants as if they were not there, and running through them as a ghost was almost the same. The only difference was that they didn’t stand aside.

Verence reached the nursery, saw the broken door, the trailed sheets…

Heard the hoofbeats. He reached the window, saw his own horse go full tilt through the open gateway in the shafts of the coach. A few seconds later three horsemen followed it. The sound of hooves echoed for a moment on the cobbles and died away.

The king thumped the still, his fist going several inches into the stone.

Then he pushed his way out into the air, disdaining to notice the drop, and half flew, half ran down across the courtyard and into the stables.

It took him a mere twenty seconds to learn that, to the great many things a ghost cannot do, should be added the mounting of a horse. He did succeed in getting into the saddle, or at least in straddling the air just above it, but when the horse finally bolted, terrified beyond belief by the mysterious things happening behind its ears, Verence was left sitting astride five feet of fresh air.

He tried to run, and got about as far as the gateway before the air around him thickened to the consistency of tar.

“You can’t,” said a sad, old voice behind him. “You have to stay where you were killed. That’s what haunting means. Take it from me. I know.”

 

Granny Weatherwax paused with a second scone halfway to her mouth.

“Something comes,” she said.

“Can you tell by the pricking of your thumbs?” said Magrat earnestly. Magrat had learned a lot about witchcraft from books.

“The pricking of my ears,” said Granny. She raised her eyebrows at Nanny Ogg. Old Goodie Whemper had been an excellent witch in her way, but far too fanciful. Too many flowers and romantic notions and such.

The occasional flash of lightning showed the moorland stretching down to the forest, but the rain on the warm summer earth had filled the air with mist wraiths.

“Hoofbeats?” said Nanny Ogg. “No one would come up here this time of night.”

Magrat peered around timidly. Here and there on the moor were huge standing stones, their origins lost in time, which were said to lead mobile and private lives of their own. She shivered.

“What’s to be afraid of?” she managed.

“Us,” said Granny Weatherwax, smugly.

The hoofbeats neared, slowed. And then the coach rattled between the furze bushes, its horses hanging in their harnesses. The driver leapt down, ran around to the door, pulled a large bundle from inside and dashed toward the trio.

He was halfway across the damp peat when he stopped and stared at Granny Weatherwax with a look of horror.

“It’s all right,” she whispered, and the whisper cut through the grumbling of the storm as clearly as a bell.

She took a few steps forward and a convenient lightning flash allowed her to look directly into the man’s eyes. They had the peculiarity of focus that told those who had the Know that he was no longer looking at anything in this world.

With a final jerking movement he thrust the bundle into Granny’s arms and toppled forward, the feathers of a crossbow bolt sticking out of his back.

Three figures moved into the firelight. Granny looked up into another pair of eyes, which were as chilly as the slopes of Hell.

Their owner threw his crossbow aside. There was a glimpse of chain mail under his sodden cloak as he drew his sword.

He didn’t flourish it. The eyes that didn’t leave Granny’s face weren’t the eyes of one who bothers about flourishing things. They were the eyes of one who knows exactly what swords are for. He reached out his hand.

“You will give it to me,” he said.

Granny twitched aside the blanket in her arms and looked down at a small face, wrapped in sleep.

She looked up.

“No,” she said, on general principles.

The soldier glanced from her to Magrat and Nanny Ogg, who were as still as the standing stones of the moor.

“You are witches?” he said.

Granny nodded. Lightning skewered down from the sky and a bush a hundred yards away blossomed into fire. The two soldiers behind the man muttered something, but he smiled and raised a mailed hand.

“Does the skin of witches turn aside steel?” he said.

“Not that I’m aware,” said Granny, levelly. “You could give it a try.”

One of the soldiers stepped forward and touched the man’s arm gingerly.

“Sir, with respect, sir, it’s not a good idea—”

“Be silent.”

“But it’s terrible bad luck to—”

“Must I ask you again?”

“Sir,” said the man. His eyes caught Granny’s for a moment, and reflected hopeless terror.

The leader grinned at Granny, who hadn’t moved a muscle.

“Your peasant magic is for fools, mother of the night. I can strike you down where you stand.”

“Then strike, man,” said Granny, looking over his shoulder. “If your heart tells you, strike as hard as you dare.”

The man raised his sword. Lightning speared down again and split a stone a few yards away, filling the air with smoke and the stink of burnt silicon.

“Missed,” he said smugly, and Granny saw his muscles tense as he prepared to bring the sword down.

A look of extreme puzzlement crossed his face. He tilted his head sideways and opened his mouth, as if trying to come to terms with a new idea. His sword dropped out of his hand and landed point downward in the peat. Then he gave a sigh and folded up, very gently, collapsing in a heap at Granny’s feet.

She gave him a gentle prod with her toe. “Perhaps you weren’t aware of what I was aiming at,” she whispered. “Mother of the night, indeed!”

The soldier who had tried to restrain the man stared in horror at the bloody dagger in his hand, and backed away.

“I-I-I couldn’t let. He shouldn’t of. It’s—it’s not right to,” he stuttered.

“Are you from around these parts, young man?” said Granny.

He dropped to his knees. “Mad Wolf, ma’am,” he said. He stared back at the fallen captain. “They’ll kill me now!” he wailed.

“But you did what you thought was right,” said Granny.

“I didn’t become a soldier for this. Not to go around killing people.”

“Exactly right. If I was you, I’d become a sailor,” said Granny thoughtfully. “Yes, a nautical career. I should start as soon as possible. Now, in fact. Run off, man. Run off to sea where there are no tracks. You will have a long and successful life, I promise.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, and added, “At least, longer than it’s likely to be if you hang around here.”

He pulled himself upward, gave her a look compounded of gratitude and awe, and ran off into the mist.

“And now perhaps someone will tell us what this is all about?” said Granny, turning to the third man.

To where the third man had been.

There was the distant drumming of hooves on the turf, and then silence.

Nanny Ogg hobbled forward.

“I could catch him,” she said. “What do you think?”

Granny shook her head. She sat down on a rock and looked at the child in her arms. It was a boy, no more than two years old, and quite naked under the blanket. She rocked him vaguely and stared at nothing.

Nanny Ogg examined the two corpses with the air of one for whom laying-out holds no fears.

“Perhaps they were bandits,” said Magrat tremulously.

Nanny shook her head.

“A strange thing,” she said. “They both wear this same badge. Two bears on a black and gold shield. Anyone know what that means?”

“It’s the badge of King Verence,” said Magrat.

“Who’s he?” said Granny Weatherwax.

“He rules this country,” said Magrat.

“Oh. That king,” said Granny, as if the matter was hardly worth noting.

“Soldiers fighting one another. Doesn’t make sense,” said Nanny Ogg. “Magrat, you have a look in the coach.”

The youngest witch poked around inside the bodywork and came back with a sack. She upended it, and something thudded onto the turf.

The storm had rumbled off to the other side of the mountain now, and the watery moon shed a thin gruel of light over the damp moorland. It also gleamed off what was, without any doubt, an extremely important crown.

“It’s a crown,” said Magrat. “It’s got all spiky bits on it.”

“Oh, dear,” said Granny.

The child gurgled in its sleep. Granny Weatherwax didn’t hold with looking at the future, but now she could feel the future looking at her.

She didn’t like its expression at all.

 

King Verence was looking at the past, and had formed pretty much the same view.

“You can see me?” he said.

“Oh, yes. Quite clearly, in fact,” said the newcomer.

Verence’s brows knotted. Being a ghost seemed to require considerably more mental effort than being alive; he’d managed quite well for forty years without having to think more than once or twice a day, and now he was doing it all the time.

“Ah,” he said. “You’re a ghost, too.”

“Well spotted.”

“It was the head under your arm,” said Verence, pleased with himself. “That gave me a clue.”

“Does it bother you? I can put it back on if it bothers you,” said the old ghost helpfully. He extended his free hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Champot, King of Lancre.”

“Verence. Likewise.” He peered down at the old king’s features and added, “Don’t seem to recall seeing your picture in the Long Gallery…”

“Oh, all that was after my time,” said Champot dismissively.

“How long have you been here, then?”

Champot reached down and rubbed his nose. “About a thousand years,” he said, his voice tinged with pride. “Man and ghost.”

“A thousand years!”

“I built this place, in fact. Just got it nicely decorated when my nephew cut my head off while I was asleep. I can’t tell you how much that upset me.”

“But…a thousand years…” Verence repeated, weakly.

Champot took his arm. “It’s not that bad,” he confided, as he led the unresisting king across the courtyard. “Better than being alive, in many ways.”

“They must be bloody strange ways, then!” snapped Verence. “I liked being alive!”

Champot grinned reassuringly. “You’ll soon get used to it,” he said.

“I don’t want to get used to it!”

“You’ve got a strong morphogenic field,” said Champot. “I can tell. I look for these things. Yes. Very strong, I should say.”

“What’s that?”

“I was never very good with words, you know,” said Champot. “I always found it easier to hit people with something. But I gather it all boils down to how alive you were. When you were alive, I mean. Something called—” he paused—“animal vitality. Yes, that was it. Animal vitality. The more you had, the more you stay yourself, as it were, if you’re a ghost. I expect you were one hundred percent alive, when you were alive,” he added.

Despite himself, Verence felt flattered. “I tried to keep myself busy,” he said. They had strolled through the wall into the Great Hall, which was now empty. The sight of the trestle tables triggered an automatic reaction in the king.

“How do we go about getting breakfast?” he said.

Champot’s head looked surprised.

“We don’t,” he said. “We’re ghosts.”

“But I’m hungry!”

“You’re not, you know. It’s just your imagination.”

There was a clattering from the kitchens. The cooks were already up and, in the absence of any other instructions, were preparing the castle’s normal breakfast menu. Familiar smells were wafting up from the dark archway that led to the kitchens.

Verence sniffed.

“Sausages,” he said dreamily. “Bacon. Eggs. Smoked fish.” He stared at Champot. “Black pudding,” he whispered.

“You haven’t actually got a stomach,” the old ghost pointed out. “It’s all in the mind. Just force of habit. You just think you’re hungry.”

“I think I’m ravenous.”

“Yes, but you can’t actually touch anything, you see,” Champot explained gently. “Nothing at all.”

Verence lowered himself gently onto a bench, so that he did not drift through it, and sank his head in his hands. He’d heard that death could be bad. He just hadn’t realized how bad.

He wanted revenge. He wanted to get out of this suddenly horrible castle, to find his son. But he was even more terrified to find that what he really wanted, right now, was a plate of kidneys.

 

A damp dawn flooded across the landscape, scaled the battlements of Lancre Castle, stormed the keep and finally made it through the casement of the solar.

Duke Felmet stared out gloomily at the dripping forest. There was such a lot of it. It wasn’t, he decided, that he had anything against trees as such, it was just that the sight of so much of them was terribly depressing. He kept wanting to count them.

“Indeed, my love,” he said.

The duke put those who met him in mind of some sort of lizard, possibly the type that lives on volcanic islands, moves once a day, has a vestigial third eye and blinks on a monthly basis. He considered himself to be a civilized man more suited to the dry air and bright sun of a properly-organized climate.

On the other hand, he mused, it might be nice to be a tree. Trees didn’t have ears, he was pretty sure of this. And they seemed to manage without the blessed state of matrimony. A male oak tree—he’d have to look this up—a male oak tree just shed its pollen on the breeze and all the business with the acorns, unless it was oak apples, no, he was pretty sure it was acorns, took place somewhere else…

“Yes, my precious,” he said.

Yes, trees had got it all worked out. Duke Felmet glared at the forest roof. Selfish bastards.

“Certainly, my dear,” he said.

“What?” said the duchess.

The duke hesitated, desperately trying to replay the monologue of the last five minutes. There had been something about him being half a man, and…infirm on purpose? And he was sure there had been a complaint about the coldness of the castle. Yes, that was probably it. Well, those wretched trees could do a decent day’s work for once.

“I’ll have some cut down and brought in directly, my cherished,” he said.

Lady Felmet was momentarily speechless. This was by way of being a calendar event. She was a large and impressive woman, who gave people confronting her for the first time the impression that they were seeing a galleon under full sail; the effect was heightened by her unfortunate belief that red velvet rather suited her. However, it didn’t set off her complexion. It matched it.

The duke often mused on his good luck in marrying her. If it wasn’t for the engine of her ambition he’d be just another local lord, with nothing much to do but hunt, drink and exercise his droit de seigneur.* Instead, he was now just a step away from the throne, and might soon be monarch of all he surveyed.

Provided that all he surveyed was trees.

He sighed.

“Cut what down?” said Lady Felmet, icily.

“Oh, the trees,” said the duke.

“What have trees got to do with it?”

“Well…there are such a lot of them,” said the duke, with feeling.

“Don’t change the subject!”

“Sorry, my sweet.”

“What I said was, how could you have been so stupid as to let them get away? I told you that servant was far too loyal. You can’t trust someone like that.”

“No, my love.”

“You didn’t by any chance consider sending someone after them, I suppose?”

“Bentzen, my dear. And a couple of guards.”

“Oh.” The duchess paused. Bentzen, as captain of the duke’s personal bodyguard, was as efficient a killer as a psychotic mongoose. He would have been her choice. It annoyed her to be temporarily deprived of a chance to fault her husband, but she rallied quite well.

“He wouldn’t have needed to go out at all, if only you’d listened to me. But you never do.”

“Do what, my passion?”

The duke yawned. It had been a long night. There had been a thunderstorm of quite unnecessarily dramatic proportions, and then there had been all that messy business with the knives.

It has already been mentioned that Duke Felmet was one step away from the throne. The step in question was at the top of the flight leading to the Great Hall, down which King Verence had tumbled in the dark only to land, against all the laws of probability, on his own dagger.

It had, however, been declared by his own physician to be a case of natural causes. Bentzen had gone to see the man and explained that falling down a flight of steps with a dagger in your back was a disease caused by unwise opening of the mouth.

In fact it had already been caught by several members of the king’s own bodyguard who had been a little bit hard of hearing. There had been a minor epidemic.

The duke shuddered. There were details about last night that were both hazy and horrible.

He tried to reassure himself that all the unpleasantness was over now, and he had a kingdom. It wasn’t much of one, apparently being mainly trees, but it was a kingdom and it had a crown.

If only they could find it.

Lancre Castle was built on an outcrop of rock by an architect who had heard about Gormenghast but hadn’t got the budget. He’d done his best, though, with a tiny confection of cut-price turrets, bargain basements, buttresses, crenellations, gargoyles, towers, courtyards, keeps and dungeons; in fact, just about everything a castle needs except maybe reasonable foundations and the kind of mortar that doesn’t wash away in a light shower.

The castle leaned vertiginously over the racing white water of the Lancre river, which boomed darkly a thousand feet below. Every now and again a few bits fell in.

Small as it was, though, the castle contained a thousand places to hide a crown.

The duchess swept out to find someone else to berate, and left Lord Felmet looking gloomily at the landscape. It started to rain.

It was on this cue that there came a thunderous knocking at the castle door. It seriously disturbed the castle porter, who was playing Cripple Mister Onion with the castle cook and the castle’s Fool in the warmth of the kitchen.

He growled and stood up. “There is a knocking without,” he said.

“Without what?” said the Fool.

“Without the door, idiot.”

The Fool gave him a worried look. “A knocking without a door?” he said suspiciously. “This isn’t some kind of Zen, is it?”

When the porter had grumbled off in the direction of the gatehouse the cook pushed another farthing into the kitty and looked sharply over his cards at the Fool.

“What’s a Zen?” he said.

The Fool’s bells tinkled as he sorted through his cards. Without thinking, he said: “Oh, a sub-sect of the Turnwise Klatch philosophical system of Sumtin, noted for its simple austerity and the offer of personal tranquillity and wholeness achieved through meditation and breathing techniques; an interesting aspect is the asking of apparently nonsensical questions in order to widen the doors of perception.”

“How’s that again?” said the cook suspiciously. He was on edge. When he’d taken the breakfast up to the Great Hall he’d kept getting the feeling that something was trying to take the tray out of his hands. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, this new duke had sent him back for…He shuddered. Oatmeal! And a runny boiled egg! The cook was too old for this sort of thing. He was set in his ways. He was a cook in the real feudal tradition. If it didn’t have an apple in its mouth and you couldn’t roast it, he didn’t want to serve it.

The Fool hesitated with a card in his hand, suppressed his panic and thought quickly.

“I’faith, nuncle,” he squeaked, “thou’t more full of questions than a martlebury is of mizzensails.”

The cook relaxed.

“Well, OK,” he said, not entirely satisfied. The Fool lost the next three hands, just to be on the safe side.

The porter, meanwhile, unfastened the hatch in the wicket gate and peered out.

“Who dost knock without?” he growled.

The soldier, drenched and terrified though he was, hesitated.

“Without? Without what?” he said.

“If you’re going to bugger about, you can bloody well stay without all day,” said the porter calmly.

“No! I must see the duke upon the instant!” shouted the guard. “Witches are abroad!”

The porter was about to come back with, “Good time of year for it,” or “Wish I was, too,” but stopped when he saw the man’s face. It wasn’t the face of a man who would enter into the spirit of the thing. It was the look of someone who had seen things a decent man shouldn’t wot of…

 

“Witches?” said Lord Felmet.

“Witches!” said the duchess.

In the drafty corridors, a voice as faint as the wind in distant keyholes said, with a note of hope, “Witches!”

The psychically inclined…

 

“It’s meddling, that’s what it is,” said Granny Weatherwax. “And no good will come of it.”

“It’s very romantic,” said Magrat breathily, and heaved a sigh.

“Goochy goo,” said Nanny Ogg.

“Anyway,” said Magrat, “you killed that horrid man!”

“I never did. I just encouraged…things to take their course.” Granny Weatherwax frowned. “He didn’t have no respect. Once people lose their respect, it means trouble.”

“Izzy wizzy wazzy, den.”

“That other man brought him out here to save him!” shouted Magrat. “He wanted us to keep him safe! It’s obvious! It’s destiny!”

“Oh, obvious,” said Granny. “I’ll grant you it’s obvious. Trouble is, just because things are obvious doesn’t mean they’re true.”

She weighed the crown in her hands. It felt very heavy, in a way that went beyond mere pounds and ounces.

“Yes, but the point is—” Magrat began.

“The point is,” said Granny, “that people are going to come looking. Serious people. Serious looking. Pull-down-the-walls and burn-off-the-thatch looking. And—”

“Howsa boy, den?”

“—And, Gytha, I’m sure we’ll all be a lot happier if you’d stop gurgling like that!” Granny snapped. She could feel her nerves coming on. Her nerves always played up when she was unsure about things. Besides, they had retired to Magrat’s cottage, and the decor was getting to her, because Magrat believed in Nature’s wisdom and elves and the healing power of colors and the cycle of the seasons and a lot of other things Granny Weatherwax didn’t have any truck with.

“You’re not after telling me how to look after a child,” snapped Nanny Ogg mildly. “And me with fifteen of my own?”

“I’m just saying that we ought to think about it,” said Granny.

The other two watched her for some time.

“Well?” said Magrat.

Granny’s fingers drummed on the edge of the crown. She frowned.

“First, we’ve got to take him away from here,” she said, and held up a hand. “No, Gytha, I’m sure your cottage is ideal and everything, but it’s not safe. He’s got to be somewhere away from here, a long way away, where no one knows who he is. And then there’s this.” She tossed the crown from hand to hand.

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Magrat. “I mean, you just hide it under a stone or something. That’s easy. Much easier than babies.”

“It ain’t,” said Granny. “The reason being, the country’s full of babies and they all look the same, but I don’t reckon there’s many crowns. They have this way of being found, anyway. They kind of call out to people’s minds. If you bunged it under a stone up here, in a week’s time it’d get itself discovered by accident. You mark my words.”

“It’s true, is that,” said Nanny Ogg, earnestly. “How many times have you thrown a magic ring into the deepest depths of the ocean and then, when you get home and have a nice bit of turbot for your tea, there it is?”

They considered this in silence.

“Never,” said Granny irritably. “And nor have you. Anyway, he might want it back. If it’s rightfully his, that is. Kings set a lot of store by crowns. Really, Gytha, sometimes you say the most—”

“I’ll just make some tea, shall I?” said Magrat brightly, and disappeared into the scullery.

The two elderly witches sat on either side of the table in polite and prickly silence. Finally Nanny Ogg said, “She done it up nice, hasn’t she? Flowers and everything. What are them things on the walls?”

“Sigils,” said Granny sourly. “Or some such.”

“Fancy,” said Nanny Ogg, politely. “And all them robes and wands and things too.”

“Modern,” said Granny Weatherwax, with a sniff. “When I was a gel, we had a lump of wax and a couple of pins and had to be content. We had to make our own enchantment in them days.”

“Ah, well, we’ve all passed a lot of water since then,” said Nanny Ogg sagely. She gave the baby a comforting jiggle.

Granny Weatherwax sniffed. Nanny Ogg had been married three times and ruled a tribe of children and grandchildren all over the kingdom. Certainly, it was not actually forbidden for witches to get married. Granny had to concede that, but reluctantly. Very reluctantly. She sniffed again, disapprovingly; this was a mistake.

“What’s that smell?” she snapped.

“Ah,” said Nanny Ogg, carefully repositioning the baby. “I expect I’ll just go and see if Magrat has any clean rags, shall I?”

And now Granny was left alone. She felt embarrassed, as one always does when left alone in someone else’s room, and fought the urge to get up and inspect the books on the shelf over the sideboard or examine the mantelpiece for dust. She turned the crown around and around in her hands. Again, it gave the impression of being bigger and heavier than it actually was.

She caught sight of the mirror over the mantelpiece and looked down at the crown. It was tempting. It was practically begging her to try it for size. Well, and why not? She made sure that the others weren’t around and then, in one movement, whipped off her hat and placed the crown on her head.

It seemed to fit. Granny drew herself up proudly, and waved a hand imperiously in the general direction of the hearth.

“Jolly well do this,” she said. She beckoned arrogantly at the grandfather clock. “Chop his head off, what ho,” she commanded. She smiled grimly.

And froze as she heard the screams, and the thunder of horses, and the deadly whisper of arrows and the damp, solid sound of spears in flesh. Charge after charge echoed across her skull. Sword met shield, or sword, or bone—relentlessly. Years streamed across her mind in the space of a second. There were times when she lay among the dead, or hanging from the branch of a tree; but always there were hands that would pick her up again, and place her on a velvet cushion…

Granny very carefully lifted the crown off her head—it was an effort, it didn’t like it much—and laid it on the table.

“So that’s being a king for you, is it?” she said softly. “I wonder why they all want the job?”

“Do you take sugar?” said Magrat, behind her.

“You’d have to be a born fool to be a king,” said Granny.

“Sorry?”

Granny turned. “Didn’t see you come in,” she said. “What was it you said?”

“Sugar in your tea?”

“Three spoons,” said Granny promptly. It was one of the few sorrows of Granny Weatherwax’s life that, despite all her efforts, she’d arrived at the peak of her career with a complexion like a rosy apple and all her teeth. No amount of charms could persuade a wart to take root on her handsome if slightly equine features, and vast intakes of sugar only served to give her boundless energy. A wizard she’d consulted had explained it was on account of her having a metabolism, which at least allowed her to feel vaguely superior to Nanny Ogg, who she suspected had never even seen one.

Magrat dutifully dug out three heaped ones. It would be nice, she thought wistfully, if someone could say “thank you” occasionally.

She became aware that the crown was staring at her.

“You can feel it, can you?” said Granny. “It said, didn’t I? Crowns call out!”

“It’s horrible.”

“No, no. It’s just being what it is. It can’t help it.”

“But it’s magic!”

“It’s just being what it is,” Granny repeated.

“It’s trying to get me to try it on,” said Magrat, her hand hovering.

“It does that, yes.”

“But I shall be strong,” said Magrat.

“So I should think,” said Granny, her expression suddenly curiously wooden. “What’s Gytha doing?”

“She’s giving the baby a wash in the sink,” said Magrat vaguely. “How can we hide something like this? What’d happen if we buried it really deeply somewhere?”

“A badger’d dig it up,” said Granny wearily. “Or someone’d go prospecting for gold or something. Or a tree’d tangle its roots around it and then be blown over in a storm, and then someone’d pick it up and put it on—”

“Unless they were as strong-minded as us,” Magrat pointed out.

“Unless that, of course,” said Granny, staring at her fingernails. “Though the thing with crowns is, it isn’t the putting them on that’s the problem, it’s the taking them off.”

Magrat picked it up and turned it over in her hands.

“It’s not as though it even looks much like a crown,” she said.

“You’ve seen a lot, I expect,” said Granny. “You’d be an expert on them, naturally.”

“Seen a fair few. They’ve got a lot more jewels on them, and cloth bits in the middle,” said Magrat defiantly. “This is just a thin little thing—”

“Magrat Garlick!”

“I have. When I was being trained up by Goodie Whemper—”

“—maysherestinpeace—”

“—maysherestinpeace, she used to take me over to Razorback or into Lancre whenever the strolling players were in town. She was very keen on the theater. They’ve got more crowns than you can shake a stick at although, mind—” she paused—” Goodie did say they’re made of tin and paper and stuff. And just glass for the jewels. But they look more realler than this one. Do you think that’s strange?”

“Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact,” said Granny. “But I don’t hold with encouraging it. What do they stroll about playing, then, in these crowns?”

“You don’t know about the theater?” said Magrat.

Granny Weatherwax, who never declared her ignorance of anything, didn’t hesitate. “Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s one of them style of things, then, is it?”

“Goodie Whemper said it held a mirror up to life,” said Magrat. “She said it always cheered her up.”

“I expect it would,” said Granny, striking out. “Played properly, at any rate. Good people, are they, these theater players?”

“I think so.”

“And they stroll around the country, you say?” said Granny thoughtfully, looking toward the scullery door.

“All over the place. There’s a troupe in Lancre now, I heard. I haven’t been because, you know.” Magrat looked down. “’Tis not right, a woman going into such places by herself.”

Granny nodded. She thoroughly approved of such sentiments so long as there was, of course, no suggestion that they applied to her.

She drummed her fingers on Magrat’s tablecloth.

“Right,” she said. “And why not? Go and tell Gytha to wrap the baby up well. It’s a long time since I heard a theater played properly.”

 

Magrat was entranced, as usual. The theater was no more than some lengths of painted sacking, a plank stage laid over a few barrels, and half a dozen benches set out in the village square. But at the same time it had also managed to become The Castle, Another Part of the Castle, The Same Part A Little Later, The Battlefield and now it was A Road Outside the City. The afternoon would have been perfect if it wasn’t for Granny Weatherwax.

After several piercing glares at the three-man orchestra to see if she could work out which instrument the theater was, the old witch had finally paid attention to the stage, and it was beginning to become apparent to Magrat that there were certain fundamental aspects of the theater that Granny had not yet grasped.

She was currently bouncing up and down on her stool with rage.

“He’s killed him,” she hissed. “Why isn’t anyone doing anything about it? He’s killed him! And right up there in front of everyone!”

Magrat held on desperately to her colleague’s arm as she struggled to get to her feet.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “He’s not dead!”

“Are you calling me a liar, my girl?” snapped Granny. “I saw it all!”

“Look, Granny, it’s not really real, d’you see?”

Granny Weatherwax subsided a little, but still grumbled under her breath. She was beginning to feel that things were trying to make a fool of her.

Up on the stage a man in a sheet was giving a spirited monologue. Granny listened intently for some minutes, and then nudged Magrat in the ribs.

“What’s he on about now?” she demanded.

“He’s saying how sorry he was that the other man’s dead,” said Magrat, and in an attempt to change the subject added hurriedly, “There’s a lot of crowns, isn’t there?”

Granny was not to be distracted. “What’d he go and kill him for, then?” she said.

“Well, it’s a bit complicated—” said Magrat, weakly.

“It’s shameful!” snapped Granny. “And the poor dead thing still lying there!”

Magrat gave an imploring look to Nanny Ogg, who was masticating an apple and studying the stage with the glare of a research scientist.

“I reckon,” she said slowly, “I reckon it’s all just pretendin’. Look, he’s still breathing.”

The rest of the audience, who by now had already decided that this commentary was all part of the play, stared as one man at the corpse. It blushed.

“And look at his boots, too,” said Nanny critically. “A real king’d be ashamed of boots like that.”

The corpse tried to shuffle its feet behind a cardboard bush.

Granny, feeling in some obscure way that they had scored a minor triumph over the purveyors of untruth and artifice, helped herself to an apple from the bag and began to take a fresh interest. Magrat’s nerves started to unknot, and she began to settle down to enjoy the play. But not, as it turned out, for very long. Her willing suspension of disbelief was interrupted by a voice saying:

“What’s this bit?”

Magrat sighed. “Well,” she hazarded, “he thinks that he is the prince, but he’s really the other king’s daughter, dressed up as a man.”

Granny subjected the actor to a long analytical stare.

“He is a man,” she said. “In a straw wig. Making his voice squeaky.”

Magrat shuddered. She knew a little about the conventions of the theater. She had been dreading this bit. Granny Weatherwax had Views.

“Yes, but,” she said wretchedly, “it’s the Theater, see. All the women are played by men.”

“Why?”

“They don’t allow no women on the stage,” said Magrat in a small voice. She shut her eyes.

In fact, there was no outburst from the seat on her left. She risked a quick glance.

Granny was quietly chewing the same bit of apple over and over again, her eyes never leaving the action.

“Don’t make a fuss, Esme,” said Nanny, who also knew about Granny’s Views. “This is a good bit. I reckon I’m getting the hang of it.”

Someone tapped Granny on the shoulder and a voice said, “Madam, will you kindly remove your hat?”

Granny turned around very slowly on her stool, as though propelled by hidden motors, and subjected the interrupter to a hundred kilowatt diamond-blue stare. The man wilted under it and sagged back onto his stool, her face following him all the way down.

“No,” she said.

He considered the options. “All right,” he said.

Granny turned back and nodded to the actors, who had paused to watch her.

“I don’t know what you’re staring at,” she growled. “Get on with it.”

Nanny Ogg passed her another bag.

“Have a humbug,” she said.

Silence again filled the makeshift theater except for the hesitant voices of the actors, who kept glancing at the bristling figure of Granny Weatherwax, and the sucking sounds of a couple of boiled humbugs being relentlessly churned from cheek to cheek.

Then Granny said, in a piercing voice that made one actor drop his wooden sword, “There’s a man over on the side there whispering to them!”

“He’s a prompter,” said Magrat. “He tells them what to say.”

“Don’t they know?”

“I think they’re forgetting,” said Magrat sourly. “For some reason.”

Granny nudged Nanny Ogg.

“What’s going on now?” she said. “Why’re all them kings and people up there?”

“It’s a banquet, see,” said Nanny Ogg authoritatively. “Because of the dead king, him in the boots, as was, only now if you look, you’ll see he’s pretending to be a soldier, and everyone’s making speeches about how good he was and wondering who killed him.”

“Are they?” said Granny, grimly. She cast her eyes along the cast, looking for the murderer.

She was making up her mind.

Then she stood up.

Her black shawl billowed around her like the wings of an avenging angel, come to rid the world of all that was foolishness and pretense and artifice and sham. She seemed somehow a lot bigger than normal. She pointed an angry finger at the guilty party.

“He done it!” she shouted triumphantly. “We all seed ’im! He done it with a dagger!”

 

The audience filed out, contented. It had been a good play on the whole, they decided, although not very easy to follow. But it had been a jolly good laugh when all the kings had run off, and the woman in black had jumped up and did all the shouting. That alone had been well worth the ha’penny admission.

The three witches sat alone on the edge of the stage.

“I wonder how they get all them kings and lords to come here and do this?” said Granny, totally unabashed. “I’d have thought they’d been too busy. Ruling and similar.”

“No,” said Magrat, wearily. “I still don’t think you quite understand.”

“Well, I’m going to get to the bottom of it,” snapped Granny. She got back onto the stage and pulled aside the sacking curtains.

“You!” she shouted. “You’re dead!”

The luckless former corpse, who was eating a ham sandwich to calm his nerves, fell backward off his stool.

Granny kicked a bush. Her boot went right through it.

“See?” she said to the world in general in a strangely satisfied voice. “Nothing’s real! It’s all just paint, and sticks and paper at the back.”

“May I assist you, good ladies?”

It was a rich and wonderful voice, with every diphthong gliding beautifully into place. It was a golden brown voice. If the Creator of the multiverse had a voice, it was a voice such as this. If it had a drawback, it was that it wasn’t a voice you could use, for example, for ordering coal. Coal ordered by this voice would become diamonds.

It apparently belonged to a large fat man who had been badly savaged by a mustache. Pink veins made a map of quite a large city on his cheeks; his nose could have hidden successfully in a bowl of strawberries. He wore a ragged jerkin and holey tights with an aplomb that nearly convinced you that his velvet-and-vermine robes were in the wash just at the moment. In one hand he held a towel, with which he had clearly been removing the make-up that still greased his features.

“I know you,” said Granny. “You done the murder.” She looked sideways at Magrat, and admitted, grudgingly, “Leastways, it looked like it.”

“So glad. It is always a pleasure to meet a true connoisseur. Olwyn Vitoller, at your service. Manager of this band of vagabonds,” said the man and, removing his moth-eaten hat, he treated her to a low bow. It was less an obeisance than an exercise in advanced topology.

The hat swerved and jerked through a series of complex arcs, ending up at the end of an arm which was now pointing in the direction of the sky. One of his legs, meanwhile, had wandered off behind him. The rest of his body sagged politely until his head was level with Granny’s knees.

“Yes, well,” said Granny. She felt that her clothes had grown a bit larger and much hotter.

“I thought you was very good, too,” said Nanny Ogg. “The way you shouted all them words so graciously. I could tell you was a king.”

“I hope we didn’t upset things,” said Magrat.

“My dear lady,” said Vitoller. “Could I begin to tell you how gratifying it is for a mere mummer to learn that his audience has seen behind the mere shell of greasepaint to the spirit beneath?”

“I expect you could,” said Granny. “I expect you could say anything, Mr. Vitoller.”

He replaced his hat and their eyes met in the long and calculating stare of one professional weighing up another. Vitoller broke first, and tried to pretend he hadn’t been competing.

“And now,” he said, “to what do I owe this visit from three such charming ladies?”

In fact he’d won. Granny’s mouth fell open. She would not have described herself as anything much above “handsome, considering.” Nanny, on the other hand, was as gummy as a baby and had a face like a small dried raisin. The best you could say for Magrat was that she was decently plain and well-scrubbed and as flat-chested as an ironing board with a couple of peas on it, even if her head was too well stuffed with fancies. Granny could feel something, some sort of magic at work. But not the kind she was used to.

It was Vitoller’s voice. By the mere process of articulation it transformed everything it talked about.

Look at the two of them, she told herself, primping away like a couple of ninnies. Granny stopped her hand in the process of patting her own iron-hard bun, and cleared her throat meaningfully.

“We’d like to talk to you, Mr. Vitoller.” She indicated the actors, who were dismantling the set and staying well out of her way, and added in a conspiratorial whisper, “Somewhere private.”

“Dear lady, but of a certain,” he said. “Currently I have lodgings in yonder esteemed watering hole.”

The witches looked around. Eventually Magrat risked, “You mean in the pub?”

 

It was cold and drafty in the Great Hall of Lancre Castle, and the new chamberlain’s bladder wasn’t getting any younger. He stood and squirmed under the gaze of Lady Felmet.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “We’ve got them all right. Lots.”

“And people don’t do anything about them?” said the duchess.

The chamberlain blinked. “I’m sorry?” he said.

“People tolerate them?”

“Oh, indeed,” said the chamberlain happily. “It’s considered good luck to have a witch living in your village. My word, yes.”

“Why?”

The chamberlain hesitated. The last time he had resorted to a witch it had been because certain rectal problems had turned the privy into a daily torture chamber, and the jar of ointment she had prepared had turned the world into a nicer place.

“They smooth out life’s little humps and bumps,” he said.

“Where I come from, we don’t allow witches,” said the duchess sternly. “And we don’t propose to allow them here. You will furnish us with their addresses.”

“Addresses, ladyship?”

“Where they live. I trust your tax gatherers know where to find them?”

“Ah,” said the chamberlain, miserably.

The duke leaned forward on his throne.

“I trust,” he said, “that they do pay taxes?”

“Not, exactly pay taxes, my lord,” said the chamberlain.

There was silence. Finally the duke prompted, “Go on, man.”

“Well, it’s more that they don’t pay, you see. We never felt, that is, the old king didn’t think…Well, they just don’t.”

The duke laid a hand on his wife’s arm.

“I see,” he said coldly. “Very well. You may go.”

The chamberlain gave him a brief nod of relief and scuttled crabwise from the hall.

“Well!” said the duchess.

“Indeed.”

“That was how your family used to run a kingdom, was it? You had a positive duty to kill your cousin. It was clearly in the interests of the species,” said the duchess. “The weak don’t deserve to survive.”

The duke shivered. She would keep on reminding him. He didn’t, on the whole, object to killing people, or at least ordering them to be killed and then watching it happen. But killing a kinsman rather stuck in the throat or—he recalled—the liver.

“Quite so,” he managed. “Of course, there would appear to be many witches, and it might be difficult to find the three that were on the moor.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Of course not.”

“Put matters in hand.”

“Yes, my love.”

Matters in hand. He’d put matters in hand all right. If he closed his eyes he could see the body tumbling down the steps. Had there been a hiss of shocked breath, down in the darkness of the hall? He’d been certain they were alone. Matters in hand! He’d tried to wash the blood off his hand. If he could wash the blood off, he told himself, it wouldn’t have happened. He’d scrubbed and scrubbed. Scrubbed still he screamed.

 

Granny wasn’t at home in public houses. She sat stiffly to attention behind her port-and-lemon, as if it were a shield against the lures of the world.

Nanny Ogg, on the other hand, was enthusiastically downing her third drink and, Granny thought sourly, was well along that path which would probably end up with her usual dancing on the table, showing her petticoats and singing “The Hedgehog Can Never be Buggered at All.”

The table was covered with copper coins. Vitoller and his wife sat at either end, counting. It was something of a race.

Granny considered Mrs. Vitoller as she snatched farthings from under her husband’s fingers. She was an intelligent-looking woman, who appeared to treat her husband much as a sheepdog treats a favorite lamb. The complexities of the marital relationship were known to Granny only from a distance, in the same way that an astronomer can view the surface of a remote and alien world, but it had already occurred to her that a wife to Vitoller would have to be a very special woman with bottomless reserves of patience and organizational ability and nimble fingers.

“Mrs. Vitoller,” she said eventually, “may I make so bold as to ask if your union has been blessed with fruit?”

The couple looked blank.

“She means—” Nanny Ogg began.

“No, I see,” said Mrs. Vitoller, quietly. “No. We had a little girl once.”

A small cloud hung over the table. For a second or two Vitoller looked merely human-sized, and much older. He stared at the small pile of cash in front of him.

“Only, you see, there is this child,” said Granny, indicating the baby in Nanny Ogg’s arms. “And he needs a home.”

The Vitollers stared. Then the man sighed.

“It is no life for a child,” he said. “Always moving. Always a new town. And no room for schooling. They say that’s very important these days.” But his eyes didn’t look away.

Mrs. Vitoller said, “Why does he need a home?”

“He hasn’t got one,” said Granny. “At least, not one where he would be welcome.”

The silence continued. Then Mrs. Vitoller said, “And you, who ask this, you are by way of being his—?”

“Godmothers,” said Nanny Ogg promptly. Granny was slightly taken aback. It never would have occurred to her.

Vitoller played abstractly with the coins in front of him. His wife reached out across the table and touched his hand, and there was a moment of unspoken communion. Granny looked away. She had grown expert at reading faces, but there were times when she preferred not to.

“Money is, alas, tight—” Vitoller began.

“But it will stretch,” said his wife firmly.

“Yes. I think it will. We should be happy to take care of him.”

Granny nodded, and fished in the deepest recesses of her cloak. At last she produced a small leather bag, which she tipped out onto the table. There was a lot of silver, and even a few tiny gold coins.

“This should take care of—” she groped—“nappies and suchlike. Clothes and things. Whatever.”

“A hundred times over, I should think,” said Vitoller weakly. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“If I’d had to buy you, you wouldn’t be worth the price.”

“But you don’t know anything about us!” said Mrs. Vitoller.

“We don’t, do we?” said Granny, calmly. “Naturally we’d like to hear how he gets along. You could send us letters and suchlike. But it would not be a good idea to talk about all this after you’ve left, do you see? For the sake of the child.”

Mrs. Vitoller looked at the two old women.

“There’s something else here, isn’t there?” she said. “Something big behind all this?”

Granny hesitated, and then nodded.

“But it would do us no good at all to know it?”

Another nod.

Granny stood up as several actors came in, breaking the spell. Actors had a habit of filling all the space around them.

“I have other things to see to,” she said. “Please excuse me.”

“What’s his name?” said Vitoller.

“Tom,” said Granny, hardly hesitating.

“John,” said Nanny. The two witches exchanged glances. Granny won.

“Tom John,” she said firmly, and swept out.

She met a breathless Magrat outside the door.

“I found a box,” she said. “It had all the crowns and things in. So I put it in, like you said, right underneath everything.”

“Good,” said Granny.

“Our crown looked really tatty compared to the others!”

“It just goes to show, doesn’t it,” said Granny. “Did anyone see you?”

“No, everyone was too busy, but—” Magrat hesitated, and blushed.

“Out with it, girl.”

“Just after that a man came up and pinched my bottom.” Magrat went a deep crimson and slapped her hand over her mouth.

“Did he?” said Granny. “And then what?”

“And then, and then—”

“Yes?”

“He said, he said—”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Hallo, my lovely, what are you doing tonight?’”

Granny ruminated on this for a while and then she said, “Old Goodie Whemper, she didn’t get out and about much, did she?”

“It was her leg, you know,” said Magrat.

“But she taught you all the midwifery and everything?”

“Oh, yes, that,” said Magrat. “I done lots.”

“But—” Granny hesitated, groping her way across unfamiliar territory—“she never talked about what you might call the previous.”

“Sorry?”

“You know,” said Granny, with an edge of desperation in her voice. “Men and such.”

Magrat looked as if she was about to panic. “What about them?”

Granny Weatherwax had done many unusual things in her time, and it took a lot to make her refuse a challenge. But this time she gave in.

“I think,” she said helplessly, “that it might be a good idea if you have a quiet word with Nanny Ogg one of these days. Fairly soon.”

There was a cackle of laughter from the window behind them, a chink of glasses, and a thin voice raised in song:

“—with a giraffe, if you stand on a stool. But the hedgehog—”

Granny stopped listening. “Only not just now,” she added.

 

The troupe got under way a few hours before sunset, their four carts lurching off down the road that led toward the Sto plains and the big cities. Lancre had a town rule that all mummers, mountebanks and other potential criminals were outside the gates by sundown; it didn’t offend anyone really because the town had no walls to speak of, and no one much minded if people nipped back in again after dark. It was the look of the thing that counted.

The witches watched from Magrat’s cottage, using Nanny Ogg’s ancient green crystal ball.

“It’s about time you learned how to get sound on this thing,” Granny muttered. She gave it a nudge, filling the image with ripples.

“It was very strange,” said Magrat. “In those carts. The things they had! Paper trees, and all kinds of costumes, and—” she waved her hands—“there was this great big picture of forn parts, with all temples and things all rolled up. It was beautiful.”

Granny grunted.

“I thought it was amazing the way all those people became kings and things, didn’t you? It was like magic.”

“Magrat Garlick, what are you saying? It was just paint and paper. Anyone could see that.”

Magrat opened her mouth to speak, ran the ensuing argument through her head, and shut it again.

“Where’s Nanny?” she said.

“She’s lying out on the lawn,” said Granny. “She felt a bit poorly.” And from outside came the sound of Nanny Ogg being poorly at the top of her voice.

Magrat sighed.

“You know,” she said, “if we are his godmothers, we ought to have given him three gifts. It’s traditional.”

“What are you talking about, girl?”

“Three good witches are supposed to give the baby three gifts. You know, like good looks, wisdom and happiness.” Magrat pressed on defiantly. “That’s how it used to be done in the old days.”

“Oh, you mean gingerbread cottages and all that,” said Granny dismissively. “Spinning wheels and pumpkins and pricking your finger on rose thorns and similar. I could never be having with all that.”

She polished the ball reflectively.

“Yes, but—” Magrat said. Granny glanced up at her. That was Magrat for you. Head full of pumpkins. Everyone’s fairy godmother, for two pins. But a good soul, underneath it all. Kind to small furry animals. The sort of person who worried about baby birds falling out of nests.

“Look, if it makes you any happier,” she muttered, surprised at herself. She waved her hands vaguely over the image of the departing carts. “What’s it to be—wealth, beauty?”

“Well, money isn’t everything, and if he takes after his father he’ll be handsome enough,” Magrat said, suddenly serious. “Wisdom, do you think?”

“That’s something he’ll have to learn for himself,” said Granny.

“Perfect eyesight? A good singing voice?” From the lawn outside came Nanny Ogg’s cracked but enthusiastic voice telling the night sky that A Wizard’s Staff Has A Knob On The End.

“Not important,” said Granny loudly. “You’ve got to think headology, see? Not muck about with all this beauty and wealth business. That’s not important.”

She turned back to the ball and gestured half-heartedly. “You’d better go and get Nanny, then, seeing as there should be three of us.”

Nanny was helped in, eventually, and had to have things explained to her.

“Three gifts, eh?” she said. “Haven’t done one of them things since I was a gel, it takes me back—what’re you doing?”

Magrat was bustling around the room, lighting candles.

“Oh, we’ve got to create the right magical ambience,” she explained. Granny shrugged, but said nothing, even in the face of the extreme provocation. All witches did their magic in their own way, and this was Magrat’s house.

“What’re we going to give him, then?” said Nanny.

“We was just discussing it,” said Granny.

“I know what he’ll want,” said Nanny. She made a suggestion, which was received in frozen silence.

“I don’t see what use that would be,” said Magrat, eventually. “Wouldn’t it be rather uncomfortable?”

“He’ll thank us when he grows up, you mark my words,” said Nanny. “My first husband, he always said—”

“Something a bit less physical is generally the style of things,” interrupted Granny, glaring at Nanny Ogg. “There’s no need to go and spoil everything, Gytha. Why do you always have to—”

“Well, at least I can say that I—” Nanny began.

Both voices faded to a mutter. There was a long edgy silence.

“I think,” said Magrat, with brittle brightness, “that perhaps it would be a good idea if we all go back to our little cottages and do it in our own way. You know. Separately. It’s been a long day and we’re all rather tired.”

“Good idea,” said Granny firmly, and stood up. “Come, Nanny Ogg,” she snapped. “It’s been a long day and we’re all rather tired.”

Magrat heard them bickering as they wandered down the path.

She sat rather sadly amidst the colored candles, holding a small bottle of extremely thaumaturgical incense that she had ordered from a magical supplies emporium in faraway Ankh-Morpork. She had been rather looking forward to trying it. Sometimes, she thought, it would be nice if people could be a bit kinder…

She stared at the ball.

Well, she could make a start.

“He will make friends easily,” she whispered. It wasn’t much, she knew, but it was something she’d never been able to get the hang of.

Nanny Ogg, sitting alone in her kitchen with her huge tomcat curled up on her lap, poured herself a nightcap and through the haze tried to remember the words of verse seventeen of the Hedgehog song. There was something about goats, she recalled, but the details eluded her. Time abraded memory.

She toasted the invisible presence.

“A bloody good memory is what he ought to have,” she said. “He’ll always remember the words.”

And Granny Weatherwax, striding home alone through the midnight forest, wrapped her shawl around her and considered. It had been a long day, and a trying one. The theater had been the worst part. All people pretending to be other people, things happening that weren’t real, bits of countryside you could put your foot through…Granny liked to know where she stood, and she wasn’t certain she stood for that sort of thing. The world seemed to be changing all the time.

It didn’t use to change so much. It was bewildering.

She walked quickly through the darkness with the frank stride of someone who was at least certain that the forest, on this damp and windy night, contained strange and terrible things and she was it.

“Let him be whoever he thinks he is,” she said. “That’s all anybody could hope for in this world.”

Like most people, witches are unfocused in time. The difference is that they dimly realize it, and make use of it. They cherish the past because part of them is still living there, and they can see the shadows the future casts before it.

Granny could feel the shape of the future, and it had knives in it.

 

It began at five the next morning. Four men rode through the woods near Granny’s cottage, tethered the horses out of earshot, and crept very cautiously through the mists.

The sergeant in charge was not happy in his work. He was a Ramtops man, and wasn’t at all certain about how you went about arresting a witch. He was pretty certain, though, that the witch wouldn’t like the idea. He didn’t like the idea of a witch not liking the idea.

The men were Ramtoppers as well. They were following him very closely, ready to duck behind him at the first sign of anything more unexpected than a tree.

Granny’s cottage was a fungoid shape in the mist. Her unruly herb garden seemed to move, even in the still air. It contained plants seen nowhere else in the mountains, their roots and seeds traded across five thousand miles of the Discworld, and the sergeant could swear that one or two blooms turned toward him. He shuddered.

“What now, Sarge?”

“We—we spread out,” he said. “Yes. We spread out. That’s what we do.”

They moved carefully through the bracken. The sergeant crouched behind a handy log, and said, “Right. Very good. You’ve got the general idea. Now let’s spread out again, and this time we spread out separately.”

The men grumbled a bit, but disappeared into the mist. The sergeant gave them a few minutes to take up positions, then said, “Right. Now we—”

He paused.

He wondered whether he dared shout, and decided against it.

He stood up. He removed his helmet, to show respect, and sidled through the damp grass to the back door. He knocked, very gently.

After a wait of several seconds he clamped his helmet back on his head, said, “No one in. Blast,” and started to stride away.

The door opened. It opened very slowly, and with the maximum amount of creak. Simple neglect wouldn’t have caused that depth of groan; you’d need careful work with hot water over a period of weeks. The sergeant stopped, and then turned around very slowly while contriving to move as few muscles as possible.

He had mixed feelings about the fact that there was nothing in the doorway. In his experience, doors didn’t just open themselves.

He cleared his throat nervously.

Granny Weatherwax, right by his ear, said, “That’s a nasty cough you’ve got there. You did right in coming to me.”

The sergeant looked up at her with an expression of mad gratitude. He said, “Argle.”

 

“She did what?” said the duke.

The sergeant stared fixedly at an area a few inches to the right of the duke’s chair.

“She give me a cup of tea, sir,” he said.

“And what about your men?”

“She give them one too, sir.”

The duke rose from his chair and put his arms around the sergeant’s rusting chain mail shoulders. He was in a bad mood. He had spent half the night washing his hands. He kept thinking that something was whispering in his ear. His breakfast oatmeal had been served up too salty and roasted with an apple in it, and the crook had hysterics in the kitchen. You could tell the duke was extremely annoyed. He was polite. The duke was the kind of man who becomes more and more agreeable as his temper drains away, until the point is reached where the words “Thank you so much” have the cutting edge of a guillotine.

“Sergeant,” he said, walking the man slowly across the floor.

“Sir?”

“I’m not sure I made your orders clear, sergeant,” said the duke, in snake tones.

“Sir?”

“I mean, it is possible I may have confused you. I meant to say ‘Bring me a witch, in chains if necessary,’ but perhaps what I really said was ‘Go and have a cup of tea.’ Was this in fact the case?”

The sergeant wrinkled his forehead. Sarcasm had not hitherto entered his life. His experience of people being annoyed with him generally involved shouting and occasional bits of wood.

“No, sir,” he said.

“I wonder why, then, you did not in fact do this thing that I asked?”

“Sir?”

“I expect she said some magic words, did she? I’ve heard about witches,” said the duke, who had spent the night before reading, until his bandaged hands shook too much, some of the more excitable works on the subject.* “I imagine she offered you visions of unearthly delight? Did she show you—” the duke shuddered—“dark fascinations and forbidden raptures, the like of which mortal men should not even think of, and demonic secrets that took you to the depths of man’s desires?”

The duke sat down and fanned himself with his handkerchief.

“Are you all right, sir?” said the sergeant.

“What? Oh, perfectly, perfectly.”

“Only you’ve gone all red.”

“Don’t change the subject, man,” snapped the duke, pulling himself together a bit. “Admit it—she offered you hedonistic and licentious pleasures known only to those who dabble in the carnal arts, didn’t she?”

The sergeant stood to attention and stared straight ahead.

“No, sir,” he said, in the manner of one speaking the truth come what may. “She offered me a bun.”

“A bun?”

“Yes, sir. It had currants in it.”

Felmet sat absolutely still while he fought for internal peace. Finally, all he could manage was, “And what did your men do about this?”

“They had a bun too, sir. All except young Roger, who isn’t allowed fruit, sir, on account of his trouble.”

The duke sagged back on the window seat and put his hand over his eyes. I was born to rule down on the plains, he thought, where it’s all flat and there isn’t all this weather and everything and there are people who don’t appear to be made of dough. He’s going to tell me what this Roger had.

“He had a biscuit, sir.”

The duke stared out at the trees. He was angry. He was extremely angry. But twenty years of marriage to Lady Felmet had taught him not simply to control his emotions but to control his instincts as well, and not so much as the twitching of a muscle indicated the workings of his mind. Besides, arising out of the black depths of his head was an emotion that, hitherto, he had a little time for. Curiosity was flashing a fin.

The duke had managed quite well for fifty years without finding a use for curiosity. It was not a trait much encouraged in aristocrats. He had found certainty was a much better bet. However, it occurred to him that for once curiosity might have its uses.

The sergeant was standing in the middle of the floor with the stolid air of one who is awaiting a word of command, and who is quite prepared so to wait until continental drift budges him from his post. He had been in the undemanding service of the kings of Lancre for many years, and it showed. His body was standing to attention. Despite all his efforts his stomach stood at ease.

The duke’s gaze fell on the Fool, who was sitting on his stool by the throne. The hunched figure looked up, embarrassed, and gave his bells a half-hearted shake.

The duke reached a decision. The way to progress, he’d found, was to find weak spots. He tried to shut away the thought that these included such things as a king’s kidneys at the top of a dark stairway, and concentrated on the matter in hand.

…hand. He’d scrubbed and scrubbed, but it seemed to have no effect. Eventually he’d gone down to the dungeons and borrowed one of the torturer’s wire brushes, and scrubbed and scrubbed with that, too. That had no effect, either. It made it worse. The harder he scrubbed, the more blood there was. He was afraid he might go mad…

He wrestled the thought to the back of his mind. Weak spots. That was it. The Fool looked all weak spot.

“You may go, sergeant.”

“Sir,” said the sergeant, and marched out stiffly.

“Fool?”

“Marry, sir—” said the Fool nervously, and gave his hated mandolin a quick strum.

The duke sat down on the throne.

“I am already extremely married,” he said. “Advise me, my Fool.”

“I’faith, nuncle—” said the Fool.

“Nor am I thy nuncle. I feel sure I would have remembered,” said Lord Felmet, leaning down until the prow of his nose was a few inches from the Fool’s stricken face. “If you preface your next remark with nuncle, i’faith or marry, it will go hard with you.”

The Fool moved his lips silently, and then said, “How do you feel about Prithee?”

The duke knew when to allow some slack. “Prithee I can live with,” he said. “So can you. But no capering.” He grinned encouragingly. “How long have you been a Fool, boy?”

“Prithee, sirrah—”

“The sirrah,” said the duke, holding up a hand, “on the whole, I think not.”

“Prithee, sirra—sir,” said the Fool, and swallowed nervously. “All my life, sir. Seventeen 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 drafty,” 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 the 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 glamor 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 recognized 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.”

“Wait?”

“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 the fire, put a cloth over the mirror 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.*

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 onto 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-traveling 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 gray tom 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 recognized 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 tortoise,” 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.”

“Grimories—”

“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 apologizing, 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 King 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 around 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 around 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 unrivaled 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 afterward, he told himself, I’ll get the armorer 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 theater 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 wickerwork as Vitoller lowered his weight onto a props basket.

“A Wizard of Sorts,” 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 toward 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 organize 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, clamoring 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 grave-diggers and the 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.*

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 backward. Above all of this flared the great curtains of cold fire that were the Aurora Coriolis, the Hublights, whose frosty tints illuminated and colored 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 around, 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 hot water 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 cozy 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.*

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 leaf mold. 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 that 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 honor, if it was an honor, but sleeping in the corridor always made him dream of the Fools’ Guild, behind whose severe gray 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 armor 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 realized 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 onto 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 antiphase 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 realized 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 around 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 backward, and was replaced by the hard blue stare he had come to recognize. It didn’t mean, he realized, 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, savoring the thought—“but words can never hurt me.”

“My lord, there are such words that can,” said the Fool. “Lair! 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 rumor.”

“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 onto 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, anymore 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 it; 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.* 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.

“Miss,” 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 toward 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 dance 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 toward the Hub,” said Nanny slowly. “And ice giants, and big hairy wossnames 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 thin 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 daughters-in-law, a tribe of gray-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 rumor, 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 headology.” 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 honor. 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 except 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 backward and forward 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 around. 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 honors, will you?” she said.

Magrat caught the stick by what she hoped Granny was imagining as the handle, and smiled.

“Certainly. Right. OK. 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 organized 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 fossilized 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 metterforically, 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 onto 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 onto 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 around 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, toward 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 harboring dark suspicions about the witches.

“But he seems bright enough,” said Mrs. Vitoller, who was traveling 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 realized until he started banging his head on things, they say—”

The two of them swiveled 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 the convoy, where the actor-manager was whistling tunelessly and, yes, strolling.

“What ho, b’zugda-hiara,”* 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 specialized 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 protohuman.

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 toward 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 gray 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 easy-going 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 habitués 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 upward. 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 humors had actually given him the chance to savor 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 toward 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 toward 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,* 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 honorable, 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 Wormseed, 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 out-distance 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 other witches, but she still held to one of the most fundamental rules of witchcraft. It’s not much use being a witch unless you look like one. In her case this meant lots of silver jewelry 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 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 theater. Kings and such are killing one another the whole time. Their kingdoms just make the best of it. How come this one takes offense 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.