Terry Pratchett: Carpe Jugulum

 

v1.0 (24-apr-2001) Scanned, layout and proofreading by 4i Publications

 

 

 

Through the shredded black clouds a fire moved like a dying star, falling back to earth

–the earth, that is, of the Discworld–

–but unlike any star had ever done before, it sometimes managed to steer its fall, sometimes rising, sometimes twisting, but inevitably heading down.

Snow glowed briefly on the mountain slopes when it crackled overhead.

Under it, the land itself started to fall away. The fire was reflected off walls of blue ice as the light dropped into the beginnings of a canyon and thundered now through its twists and turns.

The light snapped off. Something still glided down the moonlit ribbon between the rocks.

It shot out of the canyon at the top of a cliff, where meltwater from a glacier plunged down into a distant pool.

Against all reason there was a valley here, or a network of valleys, clinging to the edge of the mountains before the long fall to the plains. A small lake gleamed in the warmer air. There were forests. There were tiny fields, like a patchwork quilt thrown across the rocks.

The wind had died. The air was warmer.

The shadow began to circle.

Far below, unheeded and unheeding, something else was entering this little handful of valleys. It was hard to see exactly what it was; furze rippled, heather rustled, as if a very large army made of very small creatures was moving with one purpose.

The shadow reached a flat rock that offered a magnificent view of the fields and wood below, and there the army came out from among the roots. It was made up of very small blue men, some wearing pointy blue caps but most of them with their red hair uncovered. They carried swords. None of them was more than six inches high.

They lined up and looked down into the new place and then, weapons waving, raised a battle cry. It would have been more impressive if they'd agreed on one before, but as it was it sounded as though every single small warrior had a battle cry of his very own and would fight anyone who tried to take it away from him.

'Nac mac Feegle!'

'Ach, stickit yer trakkans!'

'Gie you sich a kickin'!'

'Bigjobs!'

'Dere c'n onlie be whin t'ousand!'

'Nac mac Feegle wha hae!'

'Wha hae yersel, ya boggin!'

 

 

The little cup of valleys, glowing in the last shreds of evening sunlight, was the kingdom of Lancre.

From its highest points, people said, you could see all the way to the rim of the world.

It was also said, although not by the people who lived in Lancre, that below the rim, where the seas thundered continuously over the edge, their home went through space on the back of four huge elephants that in turn stood on the shell of a turtle that was as big as the world.

The people of Lancre had heard of this. They thought it sounded about right. The world was obviously flat, although in Lancre itself the only truly flat places were tables and the top of some people's heads, and certainly turtles could shift a fair load. Elephants, by all accounts, were pretty strong too. There didn't seem any major gaps in the thesis, so Lancrastians left it at that.

It wasn't that they didn't take an interest in the world around them. On the contrary, they had a deep, personal and passionate involvement in it, but instead of asking, 'Why are we here?' they asked, 'Is it going to rain before the harvest?'

A philosopher might have deplored this lack of mental ambition, but only if he was really certain about where his next meal was coming from.

In fact Lancre's position and climate bred a hardheaded and straightforward people who often excelled in the world down below. It had supplied the plains with many of their greatest wizards and witches and, once again, the philosopher might have marvelled that such a four-square people could give the world so many successful magical practitioners, being quite unaware that only those with their feet on rock can build castles in the air.

And so the sons and daughters of Lancre went off into the world, carved out careers, climbed the various ladders of achievement, and always remembered to send money home.

Apart from noting the return addresses on the envelope, those who stayed didn't think much about the world outside.

The world outside thought about them, though.

The big flat-topped rock was deserted now, but on the moor below, the heather trembled in a v-shape heading towards the lowlands.

'Gin's a haddie!'

'Nac mac Feegle!'

 

 

There are many kinds of vampires. Indeed, it is said that there are as many kinds of vampires as there are types of disease.[1] And they're not just human (if vampires are human. All along the Ramtops may be found the belief that any apparently innocent tool, be it hammer or saw, will seek blood if left unused for more than three years. In Ghat they believe, in vampire watermelons, although folklore is silent about what they believe about vampire watermelons. Possibly they suck back.

Two things have traditionally puzzled vampire researchers. One is: why do vampires have so much power? Vampires're so easy to kill, they point out. There are dozens of ways to despatch them, quite apart from the stake through the heart, which also works on normal people so if you have any stakes left over you don't have to waste them. Classically, they spent the day in some coffin somewhere, with no guard other than an elderly hunchback who doesn't look all that spry, and should succumb to quite a small mob. Yet just one can keep a whole community in a state of sullen obedience . . .

The other puzzle is: why are vampires always so stupid? As if wearing evening dress all day wasn't an undead giveaway, why do they choose to live in old castles which offer so much in the way of ways to defeat a vampire, like easily torn curtains and wall decorations that can readily be twisted into a religious symbol? Do they really think that spelling their name backwards fools anyone?

A coach rattled across the moorlands, many miles away from Lancre. From the way it bounced over the ruts, it was travelling light. But darkness came with it.

The horses were black, and so was the coach, except for the coat of arms on the doors. Each horse had a black plume between its ears; there was a black plume at each corner of the coach as well. Perhaps these caused the coach's strange effect of travelling shadow. It seemed to be dragging the night behind it.

On the top of the moor, where a few trees grew out of the rubble of a ruined building, it creaked to a halt.

The horses stood still, occasionally stamping a hoof or tossing their heads. The coachman sat hunched over the reins, waiting.

Four figures flew just above the clouds, in the silvery moonlight. By the sound of their conversation someone was annoyed, although the sharp unpleasant tone to the voice suggested that a better word might be 'vexed'.

'You let it get away!' This voice had a whine to it, the voice of a chronic complainer.

'It was wounded, Lacci.' This voice sounded conciliatory, parental, but with just a hint of a repressed desire to give the first voice a thick ear.

'I really hate those things. They're so . . . soppy!'

'Yes, dear. A symbol of a credulous past.'

'If I could burn like that I wouldn't skulk around just looking pretty. Why do they do it?'

'It must have been of use to them at one time, I suppose.'

'Then they're . . . what did you call them?'

'An evolutionary cul-de-sac, Lacci. A marooned survivor on the seas of progress.'

'Then I'm doing them a favour by killing them?'

'Yes, that is a point. Now, shall-'

'After all, chickens don't burn,' said the voice called Lacci. 'Not easily, anyway.'

'We heard you experiment. Killing them first might have been a good idea.' This was a third voice – young, male, and also somewhat weary with the female. It had 'older brother' harmonics on every syllable.

'What's the point in that?'

'Well, dear, it would have been quieter.'

'Listen to your father, dear.' And this, the fourth voice, could only be a mother's voice. It'd love the other voices whatever they did.

'You're so unfair!’

'We did let you drop rocks on the pixies, dear. Life can't be all fun.'

The coachman stirred as the voices descended through the clouds. And then four figures were standing a little way off. He clambered down and, with difficulty, opened the coach door as they approached.

'Most of the wretched things got away, though,' said Mother.

'Never mind, my dear,' said Father.

'I really hate them. Are they a dead end too?' said Daughter.

'Not quite dead enough as yet, despite your valiant efforts. Igor! On to Lancre.'

The coachman turned.

'Meth, marthter.'

'Oh, for the last time, man . . . is that any way to talk?'

'It'th the only way I know, marthter,' said Igor.

'And I told you to take the plumes off the coach, you idiot.'

The coachman shifted uneasily.

'Gotta have black plumeth, marthter. It'th tradithional.'

'Remove them at once!' Mother commanded. 'What will people think?'

'Yeth, mithtreth.'

The one addressed as Igor slammed the door and lurched back around to the horse. He

removed the plumes reverentially and placed them under his seat.

Inside the coach the vexed voice said, 'Is Igor an evolutionary dead end too, Father?'

'We can but hope, dear.'

'Thod,' said Igor to himself, as he picked up the reins.

 

 

The wording began:

'You are cordially invited. . .'

. . . and was in that posh runny writing that was hard to read but ever so official.

Nanny Ogg grinned and tucked the card back on the mantelpiece. She liked the idea of 'cordially'. It had a rich, a thick and above all an alcoholic sound.

She was ironing her best petticoat. That is to say, she was sitting in her chair by the fire while one of her daughters-in-law, whose name she couldn't remember just at this moment, was doing the actual work. Nanny was helping by pointing out the bits she'd missed.

It was a damn good invite, she thought. Especially the gold edging, which was as thick as syrup. Probably not real gold, but impressively glittery all the same.

'There's a bit there that could do with goin' over again, gel,' she said, topping up her beer.

'Yes, Nanny.'

Another daughter-in-law, whose name she'd certainly be able to recall after a few seconds' thought, was buffing up Nanny's red boots. A third was very carefully dabbing the lint off Nanny's best pointy hat, on its stand.

Nanny got up again and wandered over to open the back door. There was little light left in the sky now, and a few rags of cloud were scudding over the early stars. She sniffed the air. Winter hung on late up here in the mountains, but there was definitely a taste of spring on the wind.

A good time, she thought. Best time, really. Oh, she knew that the year started on Hogswatchnight, when the cold tide turned, but the new year started now, with green shoots boring upwards through the last of the snow. Change was in the air, she could feel it in her bones.

Of course, her friend Granny Weatherwax always said you couldn't trust bones, but Granny Weatherwax said a lot of things like that all the time.

Nanny Ogg closed the door. In the trees at the end of her garden, leafless and scratchy against the sky, something rustled its wings and chattered as a veil of dark crossed the world.

 

 

In her own cottage a few miles away the witch Agnes Nitt was in two minds about her new pointy hat. Agnes was generally in two minds about anything.

As she tucked in her hair and observed herself critically in the mirror she sang a song. She sang in harmony. Not, of course, with her reflection in the glass, because that kind of heroine will sooner or later end up singing a duet with Mr Blue Bird and other forest creatures and then there's nothing for it but a flamethrower.

She simply sang in harmony with herself. Unless she concentrated it was happening more and more these days. Perdita had rather a reedy voice, but she insisted on joining in.

Those who are inclined to casual cruelty say that inside a fat girl is a thin girl and a lot of chocolate. Agnes's thin girl was Perdita.

She wasn't sure how she'd acquired the invisible passenger. Her mother had told her that when she was small she'd been in the habit of blaming accidents and mysteries, such as the disappearance of a bowl of cream or the breaking of a prized jug, on 'the other little girl'.

Only now did she realize that indulging this sort of thing wasn't a good idea when, despite yourself, you've got a bit of natural witchcraft in your blood. The imaginary friend had simply grown up and had never gone away and had turned out to be a pain.

Agnes disliked Perdita, who was vain, selfish and vicious, and Perdita hated going around inside Agnes, whom she regarded as a fat, pathetic, weak-willed blob that people would walk all over were she not so steep.

Agnes told herself she'd simply invented the name Perdita as some convenient label for all those thoughts and desires she knew she shouldn't have, as a name for that troublesome little commentator that lives on everyone's shoulder and sneers. But sometimes she thought Perdita had created Agnes for something to pummel.

Agnes tended to obey rules. Perdita didn't. Perdita thought that not obeying rules was somehow cool. Agnes thought that rules like 'Don't fall into this huge pit of spikes' were there for a purpose. Perdita thought, to take an example at random, that things like table manners were a stupid and repressive idea. Agnes, on the other hand, was against being hit by flying bits of other people's cabbage.

Perdita thought a witch's hat was a powerful symbol of authority. Agnes thought that a dumpy girl should not wear a tall hat, especially with black. It made her look as though someone had dropped a liquorice-flavoured icecream cone.

The trouble was that although Agnes was right, so was Perdita. The pointy hat carried a lot of weight in the Ramtops. People talked to the hat, not to the person wearing it. When people were in serious trouble they went to a witch.[2]

You had to wear black, too. Perdita liked black. Perdita thought black was cool. Agnes thought that black wasn't a good colour for the circumferentially challenged . . . oh, and that 'cool' was a dumb word used only by people whose brains wouldn't fill a spoon.

Magrat Garlick hadn't worn black and had probably never in her life said 'cool' except when commenting on the temperature.

Agnes stopped examining her pointiness in the mirror and looked around the cottage that had been Magrat's and was now hers, and sighed. Her gaze took in the expensive, gold-edged card on the mantelpiece.

Well, Magrat had certainly retired now, and had gone off to be Queen and if there was ever any doubt about that then there could be no doubt today. Agnes was puzzled at the way Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax still talked about her, though. They were proud (more or less) that she'd married the King, and agreed that it was the right kind of life for her, but while they never actually articulated the thought it hung in the air over their heads in flashing mental colours: Magrat had settled for second prize.

Agnes had almost burst out laughing when she first realized this, but you wouldn't be able to argue with them. They wouldn't even see that there could be an argument.

Granny Weatherwax lived in a cottage with a thatch so old there was quite a sprightly young tree growing in it, and got up and went to bed alone, and washed in the rain barrel. And Nanny Ogg was the most local person Agnes had ever met. She'd gone off to foreign parts, yes, but she always carried Lancre with her, like a' sort of invisible hat. But they took it for granted that they were top of every tree, and the rest of the world was there for them to tinker with.

Perdita thought that being a queen was just about the best thing you could be.

Agnes thought the best thing you could be was far away from Lancre, and good second best would be to be alone in your own head.

She adjusted the hat as best she could and left the cottage.

Witches never locked their doors. They never needed to.

As she stepped out into the moonlight, two magpies landed on the thatch.

 

 

The current activities of the witch Granny Weatherwax would have puzzled a hidden observer.

She peered at the flagstones just inside her back door and lifted the old rag rug in front of it with her toe.

Then she walked to the front door, which was never used, and did the same thing there. She also examined the cracks around the edges of the doors.

She went outside. There had been a sharp frost during the night, a spiteful little trick by the dying winter, and the drifts of leaves that hung on in the shadows were still crisp. In the harsh air she poked around in the flowerpots and bushes by the front door.

Then she went back inside.

She had a clock. Lancrastians liked clocks, although they didn't bother much about actual time in any length much shorter than an hour. If you needed to boil an egg, you sang fifteen verses of 'Where Has All The Custard Gone?' under your breath. But the tick was a comfort on long evenings.

Finally she sat down in her rocking chair and glared at the doorway.

Owls were hooting in the forest when someone came running up the path and hammered on the door.

Anyone who hadn't heard about Granny's iron selfcontrol, which you could bend a horseshoe round, might just have thought they heard her give a tiny sigh of relief.

'Well, it's about time-' she began.

 

 

The excitement up at the castle was just a distant hum down in the mews. The hawks and falcons sat hunched on their perches, lost in some inner world of stoop and updraught. There was the occasional clink of a chain or flutter of a wing.

Hodgesaargh the falconer was getting ready in the tiny room next door when he felt the change in the air. He stepped out into a silent mews. The birds were all awake, alert, expectant. Even King Henry the eagle, whom Hodgesaargh would only go near at the moment when he was wearing full plate armour, was peering around.

You got something like this when there was a rat in the place, but Hodgesaargh couldn't see one. Perhaps it had gone.

For tonight's event he'd selected William the buzzard, who could be depended upon. All Hodgesaargh's birds could be depended upon, but more often than not they could be depended upon to viciously attack him on sight. William, however, thought that she was a chicken, and she was usually safe in company.

But even William was paying a lot of attention to the world, which didn't often happen unless she'd seen some corn.

Odd, thought Hodgesaargh. And that was all.

The birds went on staring up, as though the roof simply was not there.

 

 

Granny Weatherwax lowered her gaze to a red, round and worried face.

'Here, you're not-' She pulled herself together. 'You're the Wattley boy from over in Slice, aren't you?'

'Y'g't. . .' The boy leaned against the doorjamb and fought for breath. 'You g't–-'

'Just take deep breaths. You want a drink of water?'

'You g't t'–'

'Yes, yes, all right. Just breathe . . .'

The boy gulped air a few times.

'You got to come to Mrs Ivy and her baby missus!'

The words came out in one quick stream.

Granny grabbed her hat from its peg by the door and pulled her broomstick out of its lodging in the thatch.

'I thought old Mrs Patternoster was seeing to her,' she said, ramming her hatpins into place with the urgency of a warrior preparing for sudden battle.

'She says it's all gone wrong miss!'

Granny was already running down her garden path.

There was a small drop on the other side of the clearing, with a twenty-foot fall to a bend in the track. The broom hadn't fired by the time she reached it but she ran on, swinging a leg over the bristles as it plunged.

The magic caught halfway down and her boots dragged across the dead bracken as the broom soared up into the night.

 

 

The road wound over the mountains like a dropped ribbon. Up here there was always the sound of the wind.

The highwayman's horse was a big black stallion. It was also quite possibly the only horse with a ladder strapped behind the saddle.

This was because the highwayman's name was Casanunda, and he was a dwarf. Most people thought of dwarfs as reserved, cautious, law-abiding and very reticent on matters of the heart and other vaguely connected organs, and this was indeed true of almost all dwarfs. But genetics rolls strange dice on the green baize of life and somehow the dwarfs had produced Casanunda, who preferred fun to money and devoted to women all the passion that other dwarfs reserved for gold.

He also regarded laws as useful things and he obeyed them when it was convenient. Casanunda despised highwaymanning, but it got you out in the fresh air of the countryside, which was very good for you, especially when the nearby towns were lousy with husbands carrying a grudge and a big stick.

The trouble was that no one on the road took him seriously. He could stop the coaches all right, but people tended to say, 'What? I say, it's a lowwayman. What up? A bit short, are you? Hur, hur, hur,' and he would be forced to shoot them in the knee.

He blew on his hands to warm them, and looked up at the sound of an approaching coach.

He was about to ride out of his meagre hiding place in the thicket when he saw the other highwayman trot out from the wood opposite.

The coach came to a halt. Casanunda couldn't hear what transpired, but the highwayman rode around to one of the doors and leaned down to speak to the occupants . . .

. . . and a hand reached out and plucked him off his horse and into the coach.

It rocked on its springs for a while, and then the door burst open and the highwayman tumbled out and lay still on the road.

The coach moved on . . .

Casanunda waited a little while and then rode down to the body. His horse stood patiently while he untied the ladder and dismounted.

He could tell the highwayman was stone dead. Living people are expected to have some blood in them.

 

 

The coach stopped at the top of a rise a few miles further on, before the road began the long winding fall towards Lancre and the plains.

The four passengers got out and walked to the start of the drop.

The clouds were rolling in behind them but here the air was frosty clear, and the view stretched all the way to the Rim under the moonlight. Down below, scooped out of the mountains, was the little kingdom.

'Gateway to the world,' said the Count de Magpyr.

'And entirely undefended,' said his son.

'On the contrary. Possessed of some extremely effective defences,' said the Count. He smiled in the night. 'At least . . . until now . . .'

'Witches should be on our side,' said the Countess.

'She will be soon, at any rate,' said the Count. 'A most ... interesting woman. An interesting family. Uncle used to talk about her grandmother. The Weatherwax women have always had one foot in shadow. It's in the blood. And most of their power comes from denying it. However,' and his teeth shone as he grinned in the dark, 'she will soon find out on which side her bread is buttered.'

'Or her gingerbread is gilded,' said the Countess.

'Ah, yes. How nicely put. That's the penalty for being a Weatherwax woman, of course. When they get older they start to hear the clang of the big oven door.'

'I've heard she's pretty tough, though,' said the Count's son. 'A very sharp mind.'

'Let's kill her!' said the Count's daughter.

'Really, Lacci dear, you can't kill everything.'

'I don't see why not.'

'No. I rather like the idea of her being . . . useful. And she sees everything in black and white. That's always a trap for the powerful. Oh, yes. A mind like that is so easily . . . led. With a little help.'

There was a whirr of wings under the moonlight and something bi-coloured landed on the Count's shoulder.

'And this...' said the Count, stroking the magpie and then letting it go. He pulled a square of white card from an inner pocket of his jacket. Its edge gleamed briefly. 'Can you believe it? Has this sort of thing ever happened before? A new world order indeed. . .'

'Do you have a handkerchief, sir?' said the Countess. 'Give it to me, please. You have a few specks. . .'

She dabbed at his chin and pushed the bloodstained handkerchief back into his pocket.

'There,' she said.

'There are other witches,' said the son, like someone turning over a mouthful that was proving rather tough to chew.

'Oh, yes. I hope we will meet them. They could be entertaining.'

They climbed back into the coach.

 

 

Back in the mountains, the man who had tried to rob the coach managed to get to his feet, which seemed for a moment to be caught in something. He rubbed his neck irritably and looked around for his horse, which he found standing behind some rocks a little way away.

When he tried to lay a hand on the bridle it passed straight through the leather and the horse's neck, like smoke. The creature reared up and galloped madly away.

It was not, the highwayman thought muzzily, going to be a good night. Well, he'd be damned if he'd lose a horse as well as some wages. Who the hell were those people? He couldn't quite remember what had happened in the carriage, but it hadn't been enjoyable.

The highwayman was of that simple class of men who, having been hit by someone bigger than them, finds someone smaller than them for the purposes of retaliation. Someone else was going to suffer tonight, he vowed. He'd get another horse, at least.

And, on cue, he heard the sound of hoofbeats on the wind. He drew his sword and stepped out into the road.

'Stand and deliver!'

The approaching horse halted obediently a few feet away. This was not going to be such a bad night after all, he thought. it really was a magnificent creature, more of a warhorse than an everyday hack. It was so pale that it shone in the light of the occasional star and, by the look of it, there was silver on its harness.

The rider was heavily wrapped up against the cold.

'Your money or your life!' said the highwayman.

I'M SORRY?

'Your money,' said the highwayman, 'or your life. Which part of this don't you understand?'

OH, I SEE. WELL, I HAVE A SMALL AMOUNT OF MONEY.

A couple of coins landed on the frosty road. The highwayman scrabbled for them but could not pick them up, a fact that only added to his annoyance.

'It's your life, then!'

The mounted figure shook its head. I THINK NOT. I REALLY DO.

It pulled a long curved stick out of a holster. The highwayman had assumed it was a lance, but now a curved blade sprang out and glittered blue along its edges.

I MUST SAY THAT YOU HAVE AN AMAZING PERSISTENCE OF VITALITY said the horseman. It was not so much a voice, more an echo inside the head. IF NOT A PRESENCE OF MIND.

'Who are you?'

I'M DEATH, said Death. AND I REALLY AM NOT HERE TO TAKE YOUR MONEY. WHICH PART OF THIS DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?

 

 

Something fluttered weakly at the window of the castle mews. There was no glass in the frame, just thin wooden slats to allow some passage of air.

And there was a scrabbling, and then a faint pecking, and then silence.

The hawks watched.

Outside the window something went whoomph. Beams of brilliant light jerked across the far wall and, slowly, the bars began to char.

 

 

Nanny Ogg knew that while the actual party would be in the Great Hall all the fun would be outside, in the courtyard around the big fire. Inside it'd be all quails' eggs, goose-liver jam and little sandwiches that were four to the mouthful. Outside it'd be roasted potatoes floating in vats of butter and a whole stag on a spit. Later on, there'd be a command performance by that man who put weasels down his trousers, a form of entertainment that Nanny ranked higher than grand opera.

As a witch, of course, she'd be welcome anywhere and it was always a .good idea to remind the nobs of this, in case they forgot. It was a hard choice, but she decided to stay outside and have a good dinner of venison because, like many old ladies, Nanny Ogg was a bottomless pit for free food. Then she'd go inside and fill the gaps with the fiddly dishes. Besides, they probably had that expensive fizzy wine in there and Nanny had quite a taste for it, provided it was served in a big enough mug. But you needed a good depth of beer before you loaded up on the fancy stuff.

She picked up a tankard, ambled to the front of the queue at the beer barrel, gently nudged aside the head of a man who'd decided to spend the evening lying under the tap, and drew herself a pint.

As she turned back she saw the splay-footed figure of Agnes approaching, still slightly uneasy with the idea of wearing the new pointy hat in public.

'Wotcha, girl,' said Nanny. 'Try some of the venison, it's good stuff.'

Agnes looked doubtfully at the roasting meat.

Lancre people looked after the calories and let the vitamins go hang.

'Do you think I could get a salad?' she ventured.

'Hope not,' said Nanny happily.

'Lot of people here,' said Agnes.

'Everyone got a invite,' said Nanny. 'Magrat was very gracious about that, I thought.'

Agnes craned her head. 'Can't see Granny around anywhere, though.'

'She'll be inside, tellin' people what to do.'

'I haven't seen her around much at all lately,' said Agnes. 'She's got something on her mind, I think.'

Nanny narrowed her eyes.

'You think so?' she said, adding to herself: you're getting good, miss.

'It's just that ever since we heard about the birth,' Agnes waved a plump hand to indicate the general highcholesterol celebration around them, 'she's been so ... stretched, sort of. Twanging.'

Nanny Ogg thumbed some tobacco into her pipe and struck a match on her boot.

'You certainly notice things, don't you?' she said, puffing away. 'Notice, notice, notice. We'll have to call you Miss Notice.'

'I certainly notice you always fiddle around with your pipe when you're thinking thoughts you don't much like,' said Agnes. 'It's displacement activity.'

Through a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke Nanny reflected that Agnes read books. All the witches who'd lived in her cottage were bookish

types. They thought you could see life through books but you couldn't, the reason being that the words got in the way.

'She has been a bit quiet, that's true,' she said. 'Best to let her get on with it.'

'I thought perhaps she was sulking about the priest who'll be doing the Naming,' said Agnes.

'Oh, old Brother Perdore's all right,' said Nanny. 'Gabbles away in some ancient lingo, keeps it short and then you just give him sixpence for his trouble, fill him up with brandy and load him on his donkey and off he goes.'

'What? Didn't you hear?' said Agnes. 'He's laid up over in Skund. Broke his wrist and both legs falling off the donkey.'

Nanny Ogg took her pipe out of her mouth.

'Why wasn't I told?' she said.

'I don't know, Nanny. Mrs Weaver told me yesterday.'

'Oo, that woman! I passed her in the street this morning! She could've said!'

Nanny poked her pipe back in her mouth as though stabbing all uncommunicative gossips. 'How can you break both your legs falling off a donkey?'

'It was going up that little path on the side of Skund Gorge. He fell sixty feet.'

'Oh? Well ... that's a tall donkey, right enough.'

'So the King sent down to the Omnian mission in Ohulan to send us up a priest, apparently,' said Agnes.

'He did what?' said Nanny.

 

 

A small grey tent was inexpertly pitched in a field just outside the town. The rising wind made it flap, and tore at the poster which had been pinned on to an easel outside.

It read: GOOD NEWS! Om Welcomes You!!!

In fact no one had turned up to the small introductory service that Mightily Oats had organized that afternoon, but since he had announced one he had gone ahead with it anyway, singing a few cheerful hymns to his own accompaniment on the small portable harmonium and then preaching a very short sermon to the wind and the sky.

Now the Quite Reverend Oats looked at himself in the mirror. He was a bit uneasy about the mirror, to be honest. Mirrors had led to one of the Church's innumerable schisms, one side saying that since they encouraged vanity they were bad, and the other saying that since they reflected the goodness of Om they were holy. Oats had not quite formed his own opinion, being by nature someone who tries to see something in both sides of every question, but at least the mirrors helped him to get his complicated clerical collar on straight.

It was still very new. The Very Reverend Mekkle, who'd taken Pastoral Practice, had advised that the rules about starch were only really a guideline, but Oats hadn't wanted to put a foot wrong and his collar could have been used as a razor.

He carefully lowered his holy turtle pendant into place, noting its gleam with some satisfaction, and picked up his finely printed graduation copy of the Book of Om. Some of his fellow students had spent hours carefully ruffling the pages to give them that certain straight-and-narrow credibility, but Oats had refrained from this as well. Besides, he knew most of it by heart.

Feeling rather guilty, because there had been some admonitions at the college against using holy writ merely for fortune telling, he shut his eyes and let the book flop open at random.

Then he opened his eyes quickly and read the first passage they encountered.

It was somewhere in the middle of Brutha's Second Letter to the Omish, gently chiding them for not replying to the First Letter to the Omish .

'... silence is an answer that begs three more questions. Seek and you will find, but frst you should know what you seek. . .'

Oh, well. He shut the book.

What a place! What a dump. He'd had a short walk after the service and every path seemed to end in a cliff or a sheer drop. Never had he seen such a vertical country. Things had rustled at him in the bushes, and he'd got his shoes muddy. As for the people he'd met . . . well, simple ignorant country folk, salt of the earth, obviously, but they'd just stared at him carefully from a distance, as if they were waiting for something to happen to him and didn't care to be too close to him when it did.

But still, he mused, it did say in Brutha's Letter to the Simonites that if you wished the light to be seen you had to take it into dark places. And this was certainly a dark place.

He said a small prayer and stepped out into the muddy, windy darkness.

 

 

Granny flew high above the roaring treetops, under a half moon.-

She distrusted a moon like that. A full moon could only wane, a new moon could only wax, but a half moon, balancing so precariously between light and dark . . . well, it could do anything.

Witches always lived on the edges of things. She felt the tingle in her hands. It was not just from the frosty air. There was an edge somewhere. Something was beginning.

On the other side of the sky the Hublights were burning around the mountains at the centre of the world, bright enough even to fight the pale light of the moon. Green and gold flames danced in the air over the central mountains. It was rare to see them at this time of the year, and Granny wondered what that might signify.

Slice was perched along the sides of a cleft in the mountains that couldn't be dignified by the name of valley. In the moonlight she saw the pale upturned face waiting in the shadows of the garden as she came in to land.

'Evening, Mr Ivy,' she said, leaping off. 'Upstairs, is she?'

'In the barn,' said Ivy flatly. 'The cow kicked her . . . hard.'

Granny's expression stayed impassive.

'We shall see,' she said, 'what may be done.'

In the barn, one look at Mrs Patternoster's face told her how little that might now be. The woman wasn't a witch, but she knew all the practical midwifery that can be picked up in an isolated village, be it from cows, goats, horses or humans.

'It's bad,' she whispered, as Granny looked at the moaning figure on the straw. 'I reckon we'll lose both of them . . . or maybe just one . . .'

There was, if you were listening for it, just the suggestion of a question in that sentence. Granny focused her mind.

'It's a boy,' she said.

Mrs Patternoster didn't bother to wonder how Granny knew, but her expression indicated that a little more weight had been added to a burden.

'I'd better go and put it to John Ivy, then,' she said.

She'd barely moved before Granny Weatherwax's hand locked on her arm.

'He's no part in this,' she said.

'But after all, he is the-'

'He's no part in this.'

Mrs Pattemoster looked into the blue stare and knew two things. One was that Mr Ivy had no part in this, and the other was that anything that happened in this barn was never, ever, going to be mentioned again.

'I think I can bring 'em to mind,' said Granny, letting go and rolling up her sleeves. 'Pleasant couple, as I recall. He's a good husband, by all accounts.' She poured warm water from its jug

into the bowl that the midwife had set up on a manger.

Mrs Patternoster nodded.

'Of course, it's difficult for a man working these steep lands alone,' Granny went on, washing her hands. Mrs Pattemoster nodded again, mournfully.

'Well, I reckon you should take him into the cottage, Mrs Patternoster, and make him a cup of tea,' Granny commanded. 'You can tell him I'm doing all I can.'

This time the midwife nodded gratefully.

When she had fled, Granny laid a hand on Mrs Ivy's damp forehead.

'Well now, Florence Ivy,' she said, 'let us see what might be done. But first of all ... no pain. . .'

As she moved her head she caught sight of the moon through the unglazed window. Between the light and the dark . . . well, sometimes that's where you had to be.

INDEED.

Granny didn't bother to turn round.

'I thought you'd be here,' she said, as she knelt down in the straw.

WHERE ELSE? Said Death.

'Do you know who you're here for?'

THAT IS NOT MY CHOICE. ON THE VERY EDGE YOU WILL ALWAYS FIND SOME UNCERTAINTY.

Granny felt the words in her head for several seconds, like little melting cubes of ice. On the very, very edge, then, there had to be ... judgement.

'There's too much damage here,' she said, at last. 'Too much.'

A few minutes later she felt the life stream past her. Death had the decency to leave without a word.

When Mrs Patternoster tremulously knocked on the door and pushed it open, Granny was in the cow's stall. The midwife saw her stand up, holding a piece of thorn.

'Been in the beast's leg all day,' she said. 'No wonder it was fretful. Try and make sure he doesn't kill the cow, you understand? They'll need it.'

Mrs Patternoster glanced down at the rolled-up blanket in the straw. Granny had tactfully placed it out of sight of Mrs Ivy, who was sleeping now.

'I'll tell him,' said Granny, brushing off her dress. 'As for her, well, she's strong and young and you know what to do. You keep an eye on her, and me or Nanny Ogg will drop in when we can. If she's up to it, they may need a wet nurse up at the castle, and that may be good for everyone.'

It was doubtful that anyone in Slice would defy Granny Weatherwax, but Granny saw the faintest grey shadow of disapproval in the midwife's expression.

'You still reckon I should've asked Mr Ivy?' she said.

'That's what I would have done . . .'the woman mumbled.

'You don't like him? You think he's a bad man?' said Granny, adjusting her hatpins.

'No!'

'Then what's he ever done to me, that I should hurt him so?'

 

 

Agnes had to run to keep up. Nanny Ogg, when roused, could move as though powered by pistons.

'But we get a lot of priests up here, Nanny!'

'Not like the Omnians!’  snapped Nanny. 'We had 'em up here last year. A couple of 'em knocked at my door!'

'Well, that is what a door is f-'

'And they shoved a leaflet under it saying "Repent!"' Nanny Ogg went on. 'Repent? Me? Cheekl I can't start repenting at my time of life. I'd never get any work done. Anyway,' she added, 'I ain't sorry for most of it.'

'You're getting a bit excited, I think-'

'They set fire to people!' said Nanny.

'I think I read somewhere that they used to, yes,' said Agnes, panting with the effort of keeping up. 'But that was a long time ago, Nannyl The ones I saw in Ankh-Morpork just handed out leaflets and preached in a big tent and sang rather dreary songs-'

'Hah! The leopard does not change his shorts, my girl!'

They ran along a corridor and out from behind a screen into the hubbub of the Great Hall.

'Knee-deep in nobs,' said Nanny, craning. 'Ah, there's our Shawn. . .'

Lancre's standing army was lurking by a pillar, probably in the hope that no one would see him

in his footman's powdered wig, which had been made for a much bigger footman.

The kingdom didn't have much of an executive arm of government, and most of its actual hands belonged to Nanny Ogg's youngest son. Despite the earnest efforts of King Verence, who was quite a forward-looking ruler in a nervous kind of way, the people of Lancre could not be persuaded to accept a democracy at any price and the place had not, regrettably, attracted much in the way of government. A lot of the bits it couldn't avoid were done by Shawn. He emptied the palace privies, delivered its sparse mail, guarded the walls, operated the Royal Mint, balanced the budget, helped out the gardener in his spare time and, on those occasions these days when it was felt necessary to man the borders, and Verence felt that yellow and black striped poles did give a country such a professional look, he stamped passports, or at a pinch any other pieces of paper the visitor could produce, such as the back of an envelope, with a stamp he'd carved quite nicely out of half a potato. He took it all very seriously. At times like this, he buttled when Spriggins the butler was not on duty, or if an extra hand was needed he footed as well.

'Evening, our Shawn,' said Nanny Ogg. 'I see you've got that dead lamb on your head again.'

'Aoow, Mum,' said Shawn, trying to adjust the wig.

'Where's this priest that's doing the Naming?' said Nanny.

'What, Mum? Dunno, Mum. I stopped shouting out the names half an hour ago and got on to serving the bits of cheese on sticks – aoow, Mum, you shouldn't take that many, Mum!'[3]

Nanny Ogg sucked the cocktail goodies off four sticks in one easy movement, and looked speculatively at the throng.

'I'm going to have a word with young Verence,' said Nanny.

'He is the King, Nanny,' said Agnes.

'That's no reason for him to go around acting like he was royalty.'

'I think it is, actually.'

'None of that cheek. You just go and find this Omnian and keep an eye on him.'

'What should I look for?' said Agnes sourly. 'A column of smoke?'

'They all wear black,' said Nanny firmly. 'Hah! Typical!'

'Well? So do we.'

'Right! But ours is . . . ours is...' Nanny thumped her chest, causing considerable ripples, 'ours is the right black, right? Now, off you go and look inconspicuous,' added Nanny, a lady wearing a two-foot-tall pointed black hat. She stared around at the crowd again, and nudged her son.

'Shawn, you did deliver an invite to Esme Weatherwax, didn't you?'

He looked horrified. 'Of course, Mum.'

'Shove it under her door?'

'No, Mum. You know she gave me an earbashin' when the snails got at that postcard last year. I wedged it in the hinges, good and tight.'

'There's a good boy,' said Nanny.

Lancre people didn't bother much with letterboxes. Mail was infrequent but biting gales were not. Why have a slot in the door to let in unsolicited winds? So letters were left under large stones, wedged firmly in flowerpots or slipped under the door.

There were never very many.[4] Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants. The chips on some shoulders had been passed down for generations. Some had antique value. A bloody good grudge, Lancre reckoned, was like a fine old wine. You looked after it carefully and left it to your children.

You never wrote to anyone. If you had anything to say, you said it to their face. It kept everything nice and hot.

Agnes edged into the crowd, feeling stupid. She often did. Now she knew why Magrat Garlick had always worn those soppy floppy dresses and never wore the pointy hat. Wear the pointy hat and dress in black, and on Agnes there was plenty of black to go around, and everyone saw you in a certain way. You were A Witch. It had its good points. Among the bad ones was the fact that people turned to you when they were in trouble and never thought for a moment that you couldn't cope.

But she got a bit of respect, even from people who could remember her before she'd been allowed to wear the hat. They tended to make way for her, although people tended to make way in any case for Agnes when she was in full steam.

'Evening, miss...'

She turned and saw Hodgesaargh in full official regalia.

It was important not to smile at times like this, so Agnes kept a straight face and tried to ignore Perdita's hysterical laughter at the back of her mind.

She'd seen Hodgesaargh occasionally, around the edges of the woods or up on the moors. Usually the royal falconer was vainly fighting off his hawks, who attacked him for a pastime, and in the case of King Henry kept picking him up and dropping him again in the belief that he was a giant tortoise.

It wasn't that he was a bad falconer. A few other people in Lancre kept hawks and reckoned he was one of the best trainers in the mountains, possibly because he was so single-minded about it. It was

just that he trained every feathery little killing machine so well that it became unable to resist seeing what he tasted like.

He didn't deserve it. Nor did he deserve his ceremonial costume. Usually, when not in the company of King Henry, he just wore working leathers and about three sticking plasters, but what he was wearing now had been designed hundreds of years before by someone with a lyrical view of the countryside who had never had to run through a bramble bush with a gerfalcon hanging on their ear. It had a lot of red and gold in it and would have looked much better on someone two feet taller who had the legs for red stockings. The hat was best not talked about, but if you had to, you'd talk about it in terms of something big, red and floppy. With a feather in it.

'Miss Nitt?' said Hodgesaargh.

'Sorry . . . I was looking at your hat.'

'It's good, isn't it?' said Hodgesaargh amiably. 'This is William. She's a buzzard. But she thinks she's a chicken. She can't fly. I'm having to teach her how to hunt.'

Agnes was craning her neck for any signs of overtly religious activity, but the incongruity of the slightly bedraggled creature on Hodgesaargh's wrist brought her gaze back down again.

'How?' she said.

'She walks into the burrows and kicks the rabbits to death. And I've almost cured her of crowing. Haven't I, William?'

'William?' said Agnes. 'Oh ... yes.' To a falconer, she remembered, all hawks were 'she'.

'Have you seen any Omnians here?' she whispered, leaning down towards him.

'What kind of bird are they, miss?' said the falconer uneasily. He always seemed to have a preoccupied air when not discussing hawks, like a man with a big dictionary who couldn't find the index.

'Oh, er . . . don't worry about it, then.' She stared at William again and said, 'How? I mean, how does a bird like that think he's– she's a chicken?'

'Can happen all too easy, miss,' said Hodgesaargh. 'Thomas Peerless over in Bad Ass pinched an egg and put it under a broody hen, miss. He didn't take the chicken away in time. So William thought if her mum was a chicken, then so was she.'

'Well, that's-'

'And that's what happens, miss. When I raise them from eggs I don't do that. I've got a special glove, miss-'

'That's absolutely fascinating, but I'd better go,' said Agnes, quickly.

'Yes, miss.'

She'd spotted the quarry, walking across the hall.

There was something unmistakable about him. It was as if he was a witch. It wasn't that his black robe ended at the knees and became a pair of legs encased in grey socks and sandals, or that his hat had a tiny crown but a brim big enough to set out your dinner on. It was because wherever he walked he was in a little empty space that seemed

to move around him, just like you got around witches. No one wanted to get too close to witches.

She couldn't see his face. He was making a beeline for the buffet table.

'Excuse me, Miss Nitt?'

Shawn had appeared at her side. He stood very stiffly, because if he made any sudden turns the oversized wig tended to spin on his head.

'Yes, Shawn?' said Agnes.

'The Queen wants a word, miss,' said Shawn.

'With me?'

'Yes, miss. She's up in the Ghastly Green Drawing Room, miss.' Shawn swivelled slowly. His wig stayed facing the same way.

Agnes hesitated. It was a royal command, she supposed, even if it was only from Magrat Garlick as was, and as such it superseded anything Nanny had asked her to do. Anyway, she had spotted the priest, and it was not as though he was going to set fire to everyone over the canapes. She'd better go.

 

 

A little hatch shot open behind the doleful Igor.

'Why've we stopped this time?'

'Troll'th in the way, marthter.'

'A what?'

Igor rolled his eyes. 'A troll'th in the way,' he said.

The hatch shut. There was a whispered conversation inside the coach. The hatch opened.

'You mean a troll?'

'Yeth, marthter.'

'Run it down!'

The troll advanced, holding a flickering torch above its head. At some point recently someone had said 'This troll needs a uniform' and had found that the only thing in the armoury that would fit was the helmet, and then only if you attached it to his head with string.

'The old Count wouldn't have told me to run it down,' Igor muttered, not quite under his breath. 'But, then, he wath a gentleman.'

'What was that?' a female voice snapped.

The troll reached the coach and banged its knuckles on its helmet respectfully.

'Evenin',' it said. 'Dis is a bit embarrassin'. You know a pole?'

'Pole?' said Igor suspiciously.

'It are a long wooden fing-'

'Yeth? Well? What about it?'

'I'd like you to imagine, right, dat dere's a black an' yellow striped one across dis road, right? Only 'cos we've only got der one, an' it's bein' used up on der Copperhead road tonight.'

The hatch slid open.

'Get a move on, man! Run it down  !’

'I could go an' get it if you like,' said the troll, shifting nervously from one huge foot to the other. 'Only it wouldn't be here till tomorrow, right? Or you could pretend it's here right now, an' then I could pretend to lift it up, and dat'd be okay, right?'

'Do it, then,' said Igor. He ignored the grumbling behind him. The old Count had always been polite to trolls even though you couldn't bite them, and that was real class in a vampire.

'Only firs' I gotta stamp somethin',' said the troll. It held up half a potato and a paint-soaked rag.

'Why?'

'Shows you've bin past me,' said the troll.

'Yeth, but we will have been parthed you,' Igor pointed out. 'I mean, everyone will know we've been parthed you becauthe we are.'

'But it'll show you done it officially,' said the troll.

'What'll happen if we jutht drive on?' said Igor.

'Er . . . den I won't lift der pole,' said the troll.

Locked in a metaphysical conundrum, they both looked at the patch of road where the virtual pole barred the way.

Normally, Igor wouldn't have wasted any time. But the family had been getting on his nerves, and he reacted in the traditional way of the put-upon servant by suddenly becoming very stupid. He leaned down and addressed the coach's occupants through the hatch.

'It'th a border check, marthter,' he said. 'We got to have thomething thtamped.'

There was more whispering inside the coach, and then a large white rectangle, edged in gold, was thrust ungraciously through the hatch. Igor passed it down.

'Seems a shame,' said the troll, stamping it inexpertly and handing it back.

'What'th thith?' Igor demanded.

'Pardon?'

'Thith . . . thtupid mark!'

'Well, the potato wasn't big enough for the official seal and I don't know what a seal look like in any case but I reckon dat's a good carvin' of a duck I done there,' said the troll cheerfully. 'Now . . . are you ready? 'Cos I'm liftin' der pole. Here it goes now. Look at it pointin' up in der air like dat. Dis means you can go.'

The coach rolled on a little way and stopped just before the bridge.

The troll, aware that he'd done his duty, wandered towards it and heard what he considered to be a perplexing conversation, although to Big Jim Beef most conversations involving polysyllabic words were shrouded in mystery.

'Now, I want you to all pay attention–'

'Father, we have done this before.'

'The point can't be hammered home far enough. That is the Lancre River down there. Running water. And we will cross it. It is as well to consider that your ancestors, although quite capable of undertaking journeys of hundreds of miles, nevertheless firmly believed that they couldn't cross a stream. Do I need to point out the contradiction?'

'No, Father.'

'Good. Cultural conditioning would be the death of us, if we are not careful. Drive on, Igor.'

The troll watched them go. Coldness seemed to follow them across the bridge.

 

 

Granny Weatherwax was airborne again, glad of the clean, crisp air. She was well above the trees and, to the benefit of all concerned, no one could see her face.

Isolated homesteads passed below, a few with lighted windows but most of them dark, because people would long ago have headed for the palace.

There was a story under every roof, she knew. She knew all about stories. But those down there were the stories that were never to be told, the little secret stories, enacted in little rooms . . .

They were about those times when medicines didn't help and headology was at a loss because a mind was a rage of pain in a body that had become its own enemy, when people were simply in a prison made of flesh, and at times like this she could let them go. There was no need for desperate stuff with a pillow, or deliberate mistakes with the medicine. You didn't push them out of the world, you just stopped the world pulling them back. You just reached in, and . . . showed them the way.

There was never anything said. Sometimes you saw in the face of the relatives the request they'd never, ever put words around, or maybe they'd say, 'Is there something you can do for him?' and this was, perhaps, the code. If you dared ask, they'd be shocked that you might have thought they meant anything other than, perhaps, a comfier pillow.

And any midwife, out in isolated cottages on bloody nights, would know all the other little secrets . . .

Never to be told . . .

She'd been a witch here all her life. And one of the things a witch did was stand right on the edge, where the decisions had to be made. You made them so that others didn't have to, so that others could even pretend to themselves that there were no decisions to be made, no little secrets, that things just happened. You never said what you knew. And you didn't ask for anything in return.

The castle was brightly lit, she saw. She could even make out figures around the bonfire.

Something else caught her eye, because she was going to look everywhere but at the castle now, and it jolted her out of her mood. Mist was pouring over the mountains and sliding down the far valleys under the moonlight. One strand was flowing towards the castle and pouring, very slowly, into the Lancre Gorge.

Of course you got mists in the spring, when the weather was changing, but this mist was coming from Uberwald.

 

 

The door to Magrat's room was opened by Millie Chillum, the maid, who curtseyed to Agnes, or at least to her hat, and then left her alone with the Queen, who was at her dressing table.

Agnes wasn't sure of the protocol, but tried a sort of republican curtsey. This caused considerable movement in outlying regions.

Queen Magrat of Lancre blew her nose and stuffed the hankie up the sleeve of her dressing gown.

'Oh, hello, Agnes,' she said. 'Take a seat, do. You don't have to bob up and down like that.

Millie does it all the time and I get seasick. Anyway, strictly speaking, witches bow.'

'Er. . .' Agnes began. She glanced at the crib in the corner. It had more loops and lace than any piece of furniture should.

'She's asleep,' said Magrat. 'Oh, the crib? Verence ordered it all the way from Ankh-Morpork. I said the old one they'd always used was fine, but he's very, you know . . . modern. Please sit down.'.

'You wanted me, your maj–' Agnes began, still uncertain. It was turning out to be a very complicated evening, and she wasn't sure even now how she felt about Magrat. The woman had left echoes of herself in the cottage – an old bangle lost under the bed, rather soppy notes in some of the ancient notebooks, vases full of desiccated flowers ... You can build up a very strange view of someone via the things they leave behind the dresser.

'I just wanted a little talk,' said Magrat. 'It's a bit . . . look, I'm really very happy, but .. . well, Millie's nice but she agrees with me all the time and Nanny and Granny still treat me as if I wasn't, well, you know, Queen and everything . . . not that I want to be treated as Queen all the time but, well, you know, I want them to know I'm Queen but not treat me as one, if you see what I mean. . .'

'I think so,' said Agnes carefully.

Magrat waved her hands in an effort to describe the indescribable. Used handkerchiefs cascaded out of her sleeves.

'I mean . . . I get dizzy with people bobbing up and down all the time, so when they see me I like them to think, "Oh, there's Magrat, she's Queen now but I shall treat her in a perfectly normal way-"'

'But perhaps just a little bit more politely because she is Queen, after all,' Agnes suggested.

'Well, yes . . . exactly. Actually, Nanny's not too bad, at least she treats everyone the same all the time, but when Granny looks at me you can see her thinking, "Oh, there's Magrat. Make the tea, Magrat." One day I swear I'll make a very cutting remark. It's as if they think I'm doing this as a hobby!'

'I do know what you mean.'

'It's as if they think I'm going to get it out of my system and go back to witching again. They wouldn't say that, of course, but that's what they think. They really don't believe there's any other sort of life.'

'That's true.'

'How's the old cottage?'

'There's a lot of mice,' said Agnes.

'I know. I used to feed them. Don't tell Granny. She's here, isn't she?'

'Haven't seen her yet,' said Agnes.

'Ah, she'll be waiting for a dramatic moment,' said Magrat. 'And you know what? I've never caught her actually waiting for a dramatic moment, not in all the, well, things we've been involved in. I mean, if it was you or me, we'd be hanging around in the hall or something, but she just walks in and it's the right time.'

'She says you make your own right time,' said Agnes.

'Yes,' said Magrat.

'Yes,' said Agnes.

'And you say she's not here yet? It was the first card we did!' Magrat leaned closer. 'Verence got them to put extra gold leaf on it. I'm amazed it doesn't go clang when she puts it down. How are you at making the tea?'

'They always complain,' said Agnes.

'They do, don't they? Three lumps of sugar for Nanny Ogg, right?'

'It's not as if they even give me tea money,' said Agnes. She sniffed. There was a slight mustiness to the air.

'It's not worth baking biscuits, I can tell you that,' said Magrat. 'I used to spend hours doing fancy ones with crescent moons and so on. You might just as well get them from the shop.'

She sniffed too. 'That's not the baby,' she said. 'I'm sure Shawn Ogg's been so busy arranging things he hasn't had time to dean up the privy pit the last two weeks. The smell comes right up the garderobe in the Gong Tower when the wind gusts. I've tried hanging up fragrant herbs but they sort of dissolve.'

She looked uncertain, as if a worse prospect than lax castle sani-tation had crossed her mind. 'Er . . . she must've got the invitation, mustn't she?'

'Shawn says he delivered it,' said Agnes. 'And she probably said,' and here her voice changed, becoming dipped and harsh, '"I can't be havin' with that at my time of life. I've never bin one to put meself forward, no one could ever say I'm one to put meself forward."'

Magrat's mouth was an O of amazement.

'That's so like her it's frightening!' she said.

'It's one of the few things I'm good at,' said Agnes, in her normal voice. 'Big hair, a wonderful personality, and an ear for sounds.' And two minds, Perdita added. 'She'll come anyway,' Agnes went on, ignoring the inner voice.

'But it's gone half eleven . . . Good grief, I'd better get dressed! Can you give me a hand?'

She hurried into the dressing room with Agnes tagging along behind.

'I even wrote a bit underneath asking her to be a godmother,' she said, sitting down in front of the mirror and scrabbling among the debris of makeup. 'She's always secretly wanted to be one.'

'That's something to wish on a child,' said Agnes, without thinking.

Magrat's hand stopped halfway to her face, in a little .cloud of powder, and Agnes saw her horrified look in the mirror. Then the jaw tightened, and for a moment the Queen had just the same expression that Granny sometimes employed.

'Well, if it was a choice of wishing a child health, wealth and happiness, or Granny Weatherwax being on her side, I know which I'd choose,' said Magrat. 'You must have seen her in action.'

'Once or twice, yes,' Agnes conceded.

'She'll never be beaten,' said Magrat. 'You wait till you see her when she's in a tight corner. She's

got that way of . . . putting part of herself somewhere safe. It's as if . . . as if she gives herself to someone else to keep hidden for a while. It's all part of that Borrowing stuff she does.'

Agnes nodded. Nanny had warned her about it but, even so, it was unnerving to turn up at Granny's cottage and find her stretched out on the floor as stiff as a stick and holding, in fingers that were almost blue, a card with the words: I ATE'NT DEAD.[5]  It just meant that she was out in the world somewhere, seeing life through the eyes of a badger or a pigeon, riding as an unheeded passenger in its mind.

'And you know what?' Magrat went on. 'It's just like those magicians in Howondaland who keep their heart hidden in a jar somewhere, for safety, so they can't be killed. There's something about it in a book at the cottage.'

'Wouldn't have to be a big jar,' said Agnes.

'That wasn't fair,' said Magrat. She paused. 'Well . . . not fair for most of the time. Often, anyway. Sometimes, at least. Can you help me with this bloody ruff?'

There was a gurgle from the cradle.

'What name are you giving her?' said Agnes.

'You'll have to wait,' said Magrat.

It made some sort of sense, Agnes admitted, as she followed Magrat and the maids to the hall. In Lancre you named children at midnight so that they started a day with a new name. She didn't know why it made sense. It just felt as though, once, someone had found that it worked. Lancrastians never threw away anything that worked. The trouble was, they seldom changed anything that worked, either.

She'd heard that this was depressing King Verence, who was teaching himself kinging out of books. His plans for better irrigation and agriculture were warmly applauded by the people of Lancre, who then did nothing about them. Nor did they take any notice of his scheme for sanitation, i.e., that there should be some, since the Lancrastian idea of posh sanitation was a non-slippery path to the privy and a mailorder catalogue with really soft pages. They'd agreed to the idea of a Royal Society for the Betterment of Mankind, but since this largely consisted of as much time as Shawn Ogg had to spare on Thursday afternoons Mankind was safe from too much Betterment for a while, although Shawn had invented draught excluders for some of the windier parts of the castle, for which the King had awarded him a small medal.

The people of Lancre wouldn't dream of living in anything other than a monarchy. They'd done so for thousands of years and knew that it worked. But they'd also found that it didn't do to pay too much attention to what the King wanted, because there was bound to be another king along in forty years or so and he'd be certain to want something different and so they'd have gone to all that trouble for nothing. In the meantime, his job as they saw it was to mostly stay in the palace, practise the waving, have enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the ploughing, sowing, growing and harvesting. It was, as they saw it, a social contract. They did what they always did, and he let them.

But sometimes, he kinged . . .

In Lancre Castle, King Verence looked at himself in the mirror and sighed.

'Mrs Ogg,' he said, adjusting his crown, 'I have, as you know, a great respect for the witches of Lancre but this is, with respect, broadly a matter of general policy which, I respectfully submit, is a matter for the King.' He adjusted the crown again, while Spriggins the butler brushed his robe. 'We must be tolerant. Really, Mrs Ogg, I haven't seen you in a state like this before-'

'They go round setting fire to people !’  said Nanny, annoyed at all the respect.

'Used to, I believe,' said Verence.

'And it was witches they burned!'

Verence removed his crown and polished it with his sleeve in an infuriatingly reasonable manner.

'I've always understood they set fire to practically everybody,' he said, 'but that was some time ago, wasn't it?'

'Our Jason heard 'em preaching once down in Ohulan and they was saying some very nasty things about witches,' said Nanny.

'Sadly, not everyone knows witches like we do,' said Verence, with what Nanny in her overheated state thought was unnecessary diplomacy.

'And our Wayne said they tries to turn folk against other religions,' she went on. 'Since they opened up that mission of theirs even the Offlerians have upped sticks and gone. I mean, it's one thing saying you've got the best god, but sayin' it's the only real one is a bit of a cheek, in my opinion. I know where I can find at least two any day of the week. And they say everyone starts out bad and only gets good by believin' in Om, which is frankly damn nonsense. I mean, look at your little girl- What's her name going to be, now...?'

'Everyone will know in twenty minutes, Nanny,' said Verence smoothly.

'Hah!' Nanny's tone made it clear that Radio Ogg disapproved of this news management. 'Well, look . . . the worst she could put her little hand up to at her age is a few grubby nappies and keepin' you awake at night. That's hardly sinful, to my mind.'

'But you've never objected to the Gloomy

Brethren, Nanny. Or to the Wonderers. And the Balancing Monks come through here all the time.'

'But none of them object to me,' said Nanny.

Verence turned. He was finding this disconcerting. He knew Nanny Ogg very well, but mainly as the person standing just behind Granny Weatherwax and smiling a lot. It was hard to deal with an angry Ogg. .

'I really think you're taking this too much to heart, Mrs Ogg,' he said.

'Granny Weatherwax won't like it!' Nanny played the trump card. To her horror, it didn't seem to have the desired effect.

'Granny Weatherwax isn't King, Mrs Ogg,' said Verence. 'And the world is changing. There is a new order. Once upon a time trolls were monsters that ate people but now, thanks to the endeavours of men, and of course trolls, of goodwill and peaceful intent, we get along very well and I hope we understand each other. This is no longer a time when little kingdoms need only worry about little concerns. We're part of a big world. We have to play that part. For example, what about the Muntab question?'

Nanny Ogg asked the Muntab question. 'Where the hell's Muntab?' she said.

'Several thousand miles away, Mrs Ogg. But it has ambitions Hubwards, and if there's war with Borogravia we will certainly have to adopt a position.'

'This one several thousand miles away looks fine by me,' said Nanny. 'And I don't see-'

'I'm afraid you don't,' said Verence. 'Nor should you have to. But affairs in distant countries can suddenly end up close to home. If Klatch sneezes, Ankh-Morpork catches a cold. We have to pay attention. Are we always to be part of the Ankh-Morpork hegemony? Are we not in a unique position as we reach the end of the Century of the Fruitbat? The countries widdershins of the Ramtops are beginning to make themselves felt. The "werewolf economies", as the Patrician in Ankh-Morpork calls them. New powers are emerging. Old countries are blinking in the sunlight of the dawning millennium. And of course we have to maintain friendships with all blocs. And so on. Despite a turbulent past, Omnia is a friendly country ... or, at least,' he admitted, 'I'm sure they would be friendly if they knew about Lancre. Being unpleasant to the priests of its state religion will serve us no good purpose. I'm sure we will not regret it.'

'Let's hope we won't,' said Nanny. She gave Verence a withering look. 'And I remember you when you were just a man in a funny hat.'

Even this didn't work. Verence merely sighed again and turned towards the door.

'I still am, Nanny,' he said. 'It's just that this one's a lot heavier. And now I must go, otherwise we shall be keeping our guests waiting. Ah, Shawn...'

Shawn Ogg had appeared at the door. He saluted.

'How's the army coming along, Shawn?'

'I've nearly finished the knife, sir.[6] Just got to do the nose-hair tweezers and the folding saw, sir. But actually I'm here as herald at the moment, sir.'

'Ah, it must be time.' `

'Yes, sir.'

'A shorter fanfare this time, Shawn, I think,' said the King. 'While I personally appreciate your skill, an occasion like this calls for something a little simpler than several bars of "Pink Hedgehog Rag".'

'Yes, Sir.'

'Let us go, then.'

They went out into the main passage just as Magrat's group was passing, and the King took her hand.

Nanny Ogg trailed after them. The King was right, in a way. She did feel ... unusual, ill-tempered and snappish, as if she'd put on a vest that was too tight. Well, Granny would be here soon enough, and she knew how to talk to kings.

You needed a special technique for that, Nanny reasoned; for example, you couldn't say things like 'Who died and made you King?', because they'd know. 'You and whose army?' was another difficult one, although in this case Verence's army consisted of Shawn and a troll and was unlikely to be a serious threat to Shawn's own mother if he wanted to be allowed to eat his tea indoors.

She pulled Agnes to one side as the procession reached the top of the big staircase and Shawn went on ahead.

'We'll get a good view from the minstrel gallery,' she hissed, dragging Agnes into the king oak structure just as the trumpet began the royal fanfare.

'That's my boy,' she added proudly, when the final flourish caused a stir.

'Yes, not many royafanfares end with "shave and a haircut, no legs"[7],' said Agnes.

'Puts people at their ease, though,' said Shawn's loyal mum.

Agnes looked down at the throng and caught sight of the priest again. He was moving through the press of guests.

'I found him, Nanny,' she said. 'He didn't make it hard, I must say. He won't try anything in a crowd, will he?'

'Which one is it?'

Agnes pointed. Nanny stared, and then turned to her.

'Sometimes I think the weight of that damn crown is turning Verence's head,' she said. 'I reckon he really doesn't know what he's lettin' into the kingdom. When Esme gets here she's going to go through this priest like cabbage soup.'

By now the guests had got themselves sorted out on either side of the red carpet that began at the bottom of the stairs. Agnes glanced up at the royal couple, waiting awkwardly, just out of sight, for the appropriate moment to descend, and thought: Granny Weatherwax says you make your own right time. They're the royal family. All they need to do is walk down the stairs and it'd be the right time. They're doing it wrong.

Several of the Lancre guests were glancing at the big double doors, shut for this official ceremony. They'd be thrown open later, for the more public and enjoyable part, but right now they looked . . .

. . . like doors that would soon creak back and frame a figure against the firelight.

She could see the image so clearly.

The exercises Granny had reluctantly given her were working, Perdita thought.

There was a hurried conversation among the royal party and then Millie hurried back up the stairs and towards the witches.

'Mag- the Queen says, is Granny Weatherwax coming or not?' she panted.

'Of course she is,' said Nanny.

'Only, well, the King's getting a bit . . . upset. He said it did say RSVP on the invitation,' said Millie, trying not to meet Nanny eye to eye.

'Oh, witches never reservups,' said Nanny. 'They just come.'

Millie put her hand in front of her mouth and gave a nervous little cough. She glanced wretchedly towards Magrat, who was making frantic hand signals.

'Only, well, the Queen says we'd better not hold things up, so, er, would you be godmother, Mrs Ogg?'

The wrinkles doubled on Nanny's face as she smiled.

'Tell you what,' she said brightly. 'I'll come and sort of stand in until Granny gets here, shall I?'

 

 

Once again, Granny Weatherwax paced up and down in the spartan greyness of her kitchen. Occasionally she'd glance at the floor. There was quite a gap under the door, and sometimes things could be blown anywhere. But she'd already searched a dozen times. She must've got the cleanest floor in the country by now. Anyway, it was too late.

Even so . . . Uberwald . . .[8]

She strode up and down a few more times.

'I'll be blowed if I'll give 'em the satisfaction,' she muttered.

She sat down in her rocking chair, stood up again so quickly that the chair almost fell over, and went back to the pacing.

'I mean, I've never been the kind of person to put myself forward,' she said to the air. 'I'm not the sort to go where I'm not welcome, I'm sure.'

She went to make a cup of tea, fumbling with the kettle with shaking hands, and dropped the lid of her sugar bowl, breaking it.

A light caught her eye. The half moon was visible over the lawn.

'Anyway, it's not as if I've not got other things to do,' she said. 'Can't all be rushing off to parties the whole time . . . wouldn't have gone anyway.'

She found herself flouncing around the corners of the floor again and thought: if I'd found it, the Wattley boy would have knocked at an empty cottage. I'd have gone and enjoyed meself. And John Ivy'd be sitting alone now . . .

'Drat!'

That was the worst part about being good – it caught you coming and going.

She landed in the rocking chair again and pulled her shawl around her against the chill. She hadn't kept the fire in. She hadn't expected to be at home tonight.

Shadows filled the corners of the room, but she couldn't be bothered to light the lamp. The candle would have to do.

As she rocked, glaring at the wall, the shadows lengthened.

 

 

Agnes followed Nanny down into the hall. She probably wasn't meant to, but very few people will argue with a hat of authority.

Small countries were normal along this part of the Ramtops. Every glacial valley, separated from its neighbours by a route that required a scramble or, at worst, a ladder, more or less ruled itself. There seemed to Agnes to be any number of kings, even if some of them did their ruling in the evenings after they'd milked the cows. A lot of them were here, because a free meal is not to be sneezed at. There were also some senior dwarfs from Copperhead and, standing well away from them, a group of trolls. They weren't carrying weapons, so Agnes assumed they were politicians. Trolls weren't strictly subjects of King Verence, but they were there to say, in official body language, that playing football with human heads was something no one did any more, much. Hardly at all, really. Not roun' here, certainly. Dere's practic'ly a law against it.

The witches were ushered to the area in front of the thrones, and then Millie scurried away.

The Omnian priest nodded at them.

'Good, um, evening,' he said, and completely failed to set fire to anyone. He wasn't very old and had a rather ripe boil beside his nose. Inside Agnes, Perdita made a face at him.

Nanny Ogg grunted. Agnes risked a brief smile. The priest blew his nose noisily.

'You must be some of these, um, witches I've heard so much about,' he said. He had an amazing smile. It appeared on his face as if someone had operated a shutter. One moment it wasn't there, the next moment it was. And then it was gone.

'Um, yes,' said Agnes.

'Hah,' said Nanny Ogg, who could haughtily turn her back on people while looking them in the eye.

'And I am, I am, aaaa. . .' said the priest. He stopped, and pinched the bridge of his nose. 'Oh, I am sorry. The mountain air doesn't agree with me. I am the Quite Reverend Mightily Oats.'

'You are?' said Agnes. To her amazement, the man began to redden. The more she looked at him, the more she realized that he wasn't much older than she was.

'That is, Mightily-Praiseworthy-Are-Ye-Who-ExaltethOm Oats,' he said. 'It's much shorter in Omnian, of course. Have you by any chance heard the Word of Om?'

'Which one? "Fire"?' said Nanny Ogg. 'Hah!'

The nascent religious war was abruptly cut short by the first official royal fanfare to end with a few bars from the 'Hedgehog Cakewalk'. The royal couple began to descend the stairs.

'And we'll have none of your heathen ways, thank you very much,' muttered Nanny Ogg behind the pastor. 'No sloshing water or oil or sand around or cutting any bits off and if I hears a single word I understand, well, I'm standing behind you with a pointy stick.'[9]

From the other side he heard, 'He's not some kind of horrible inquisitor, Nanny!'

'But my pointy stick's still a pointy stick, my girl!'

What's got into her? Agnes thought, watching the pastor's ears turn red. That's the way Granny would act. Perdita added: Perhaps she thinks she's got to carry on like that because that old bat's not here yet.

Agnes was quite shocked at hearing herself think that.

'You do things our way here, all right?' said Nanny.

'The, um, King did explain it all to me, um,' said the pastor. 'Er, do you have anything for a headache. I'm afraid I-'

'You put the key in one hand and let her grip the crown with the other,' Nanny Ogg went on.

'Yes, um, he did-'

'Then you tell her what her name is and her mum's name and her dad's name, mumbling a bit over the latter if the mum ain't sure-'

'Nanny! This is royalty!'

'Hah, I could tell you stories, gel . . . and then, see, you give her to me and I tell her, too, and then I give her back and you tell the people what her name is, an' then you give her to me, and then I give her to her dad, and he takes her out through the doors and shows her to everyone, everyone throws their hats in the air and shouts "Hoorah!" and then it's all over bar the drinks and horses' doovers and findin' your own hat. Start extemporizin' on the subject of sin and it'll go hard with you.'

'What is, um, your role, madam?'

'I'm the godmother!'

'Which, um, god?' The young man was trembling slightly.

'It's from Old Lancre,' said Agnes hurriedly. 'It means something like "goodmother". It's all right ... as witches we believe in religious toleration . . .'

'That's right,' said Nanny Ogg. 'But only for the right religions, so you watch your step!'

The royal parents had reached the thrones. Magrat took her seat and, to Agnes's amazement, gave her a sly wink.

Verence didn't wink. He stood there and coughed loudly.

'Ahem!'

'I've got a pastille somewhere,' said Nanny, her hand reaching towards her knickerleg.

'Ahem!' Verence's eyes darted towards his throne.

What had appeared to be a grey cushion rolled over, yawned, gave the King a brief glance, and started to wash itself.

'Oh, Greebo!' said Nanny. 'I was wonderin' where you'd got to. . .'

'Could you please remove him, Mrs Ogg?' said the King.

Agnes glanced at Magrat. The Queen had half turned away, with her elbow on the arm of the throne and her hand covering her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking.

Nanny grabbed her cat off the throne.

'A cat can look at a king,' she said.

'Not with that expression, I believe,' said Verence. He waved graciously at the assembled company, just as the castle's dock began to strike midnight.

'Please begin, Reverend.'

'I, um, did have a small suitable homily on the subject of, um, hope for the-' the Quite Reverend Oats began, but there was a grunt from Nanny and he suddenly seemed to jerk forward slightly. He blinked once or twice and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down. 'But alas I fear we have no time,' he concluded quickly.

Magrat leaned over and whispered something in her husband's ear. Agnes heard him say, 'Well, dear, I think we have to, whether she's here or not. . .'

Shawn scurried up, slightly out of breath and with his wig on sideways. He was carrying a cushion. On the faded velvet was the big iron key of the castle.

Millie Chillum carefully handed the baby to the priest, who held it gingerly.

It seemed to the royal couple that he suddenly started to speak very hesitantly. Behind him, Nanny Ogg's was an expression of extreme interest that was nevertheless made up of one hundred per cent artificial additives. They also had the impression that the poor man was suffering from frequent attacks of cramp.

'-we are gathered here together in the sight of . . . um . . . one another . . .'

'Are you all right, Reverend?' said the King, leaning forward.

'Never better, sir, um, I assure you,' said Oats miserably, '. . . and I therefore name thee . . . that is, you . . .'

There was a deep, horrible pause.

Glassy faced, the priest handed the baby to Millie. Then he removed his hat, took a small scrap of paper from the lining, read it, moved his lips a few times as he said the words to himself, and then replaced the hat on his sweating forehead and took the baby again.

'I name you ... Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre!'

The shocked silence was suddenly filled.

'Note Spelling?' said Magrat and Agnes together.

'Esmerelda?' said Nanny.

The baby opened her eyes.

 

 

And the doors swung back.

Choices. It was always choices . . .

There'd been that man down in Spackle, the one that'd killed those little kids. The people'd sent for her and she'd looked at him and seen the guilt writhing in his head like a red worm, and then she'd taken them to his farm and showed them where to dig, and he'd thrown himself down and asked her for mercy, because he said he'd been drunk and it'd all been done in alcohol.

Her words came back to her. She'd said, in sobriety: end it in hemp.

And they'd dragged him off and hanged him in a hempen rope and she'd gone to watch because she owed him that much, and he'd cursed, which was unfair because hanging is a clean death, or at least cleaner than the one he'd have got if the villagers had dared defy her, and she'd seen the shadow of Death come for him, and then behind Death came the smaller, brighter figures, and then–

In the darkness, the rocking chair creaked as it thundered back and forth.

The villagers had said justice had been done, and she'd lost patience and told them to go home, then, and pray to whatever gods they believed in that it was never done to them. The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.

She shuddered at a memory. Almost as horrible, but not quite.

The odd thing was, quite a lot of villagers had turned up to his funeral, and there had been mutterings from one or two people on the lines of, yes, well, but overall he wasn't such a bad chap . . . and anyway, maybe she made him say it. And she'd got the dark looks.

Supposing there was justice for all, after all? For every unheeded beggar, every harsh word, every neglected duty, every slight . . . every choice . . . Because that was the point, wasn't it? You had to choose. You might be right, you might be wrong, but you had to choose, knowing that the rightness or wrongness might never be clear or even that you were deciding between two sorts of wrong, that there was no right anywhere. And always, always, you did it by yourself. You were the one there, on the edge, watching and listening. Never any tears, never any apology, never any regrets . . . You saved all that up in a way that could be used when needed.

She never discussed this with Nanny Ogg or any of the other witches. That would be breaking the secret. Sometimes, late at night, when the conversation tiptoed around to that area, Nanny might just drop in some line like 'Old Scrivens went peacefully enough at the finish' and may or may not mean something by it. Nanny, as far as she could see, didn't agonize very much. To her, some things obviously had to be done, and that was that. Any of the thoughts that hung around she kept locked up tight, even from herself. Granny envied her.

Who'd come to her funeral when she died?

They didn't ask her!

Memories jostled. Other figures marched out into the shadows around the candlelight.

She'd done things and been places, and found ways to turn anger outwards that had surprised even her. She'd faced down others far more powerful than she was, if only she'd allowed them to believe it. She'd given up so much, but she'd learned a lot . . .

It was a sign. She knew it'd come sooner or later . . . They'd realized it, and now she was no more use . . .

What had she ever earned? The reward for toil had been more toil. If you dug the best ditches they gave you a bigger shovel.

And you got these bare walls, this bare floor, this cold cottage. '

The darkness in the corners grew out into the room and began to tangle in her hair.

They didn't ask her!

She'd never, ever asked for anything in return. And the trouble with not asking for anything in return was that sometimes you didn't get it.

She'd always tried to face towards the light. She'd always tried to face towards the light. But the harder you stared into the brightness the harsher it burned into you until, at last, the temptation picked you up and bid you turn around to see how long, rich, strong and dark, streaming away behind you, your shadow had become–

Someone mentioned her name.

There was a moment of light and noise and bewilderment.

And then she awoke and looked at the darkness flowing in, and saw things in black and white.

 

 

'So sorry . . . delays on the road, you know how it is...'

The newcomers hurried in and joined the crowd, who paid little attention because they were watching the unplanned entertainment around the thrones.

'Note Spelling?'

'Definitely a bit tricky,' said Nanny. 'Esmerelda, now, that was a good one. Gytha would have been good too, but Esmerelda, yes, you can't argue with it. But you know kids. They'll all be calling her Spelly.'

'If she's lucky,' said Agnes gloomily.

'I didn't expect anyone to say it!' Magrat hissed.

'I just wanted to make sure she didn't end up with "Magrat'!'

Mightily Oats was standing with his eyes cast upwards and his hands clasped together. Occasionally he made a whimpering sound.

'We can change it, can't we?' said King Verence. 'Where's the Royal Historian?'

Shawn coughed. 'It's not Wednesday evening and I'll have to go and fetch the proper hat, sire-'

'Can we change it or not, man?'

'Er . . . it has been said, sire. At the official time. I think it's her name now, but I'll need to go and look it up. Everyone heard it, sire.'

'No, you can't change it,' said Nanny, who as the Royal Historian's mum took it as read that she knew more than the Royal Historian. 'Look at old Moocow Poorchick over in Slice, for one.'

'What happened to him, then?' said the King sharply.

'His full name is James What The Hell's That Cow Doing In Here Poorchick,' said Magrat.

'That was a very strange day, I do remember that,' said Nanny.

'And if my mother had been sensible enough to tell Brother Perdore my name instead of coming over all bashful and writing it down, life would have been a whole lot different,' said Magrat. She glanced nervously at Verence. 'Probably worse, of course.'

'So I've got to take Esmerelda out to her people and tell them one of her middle names is Note Spelling?' said Verence.

'Well, we did once have a king called My God He's Heavy the First,' said Nanny. 'And the beer's been on for the last couple of hours so, basic'ly, you'll get a cheer whatever you say.'

Besides, thought Agnes, I know for a fact there's people out there called Syphilidae Wilson and Yodel Lightley and Total Biscuit.[10]

Verence smiled. 'Oh well ... let me have her...'

'Whifm . . .' said Mightily Oats.

'. . . and perhaps someone ought to give this man a drink.'

'I'm so terribly, terribly sorry,' whispered the priest, as the King walked between the lines of guests.

'Been on the drink already, I expect,' said Nanny.

'I never ever touch alcohol!’  moaned the priest. He dabbed at his streaming eyes with a handkerchief.

'I knew there was something wrong with you as soon as I looked at you,' said Nanny. 'Where's Esme, then?'

'I don't know, Nanny!’  said Agnes.

'She'd know about this, you mark my words. This'll be a feather in her cap, right enough, a princess named after her. She'll be crowing about it for months. I'm going to see what's going on.'

She stumped off.

Agnes grabbed the priest's arm.

'Come along, you,' she sighed.

'I really cannot, um, express how sorry-'

'It's a very strange evening all round.'

'I've, I've, I've never, um, heard of the custom before-'

'People put a lot of importance on words in these parts.'

'I'm very much afraid the King will give a bad, um, report of me to Brother Melchio . . .'

'Really.'

There are some people who could turn even the most amiable character into a bully and the priest seemed to be one of them. There was something . . . sort of damp about him, the kind of helpless hopelessness that made people angry rather than charitable, the total certainty that if the whole world was a party he'd still find the kitchen.

She seemed to be stuck with him. The VIPs were all crowded around the open doors, where loud cheering indicated that the people of Lancre thought that Note Spelling was a nice name for a future queen.

'Perhaps you should just sit there and try to get a grip,' she said. 'There's going to be dancing later on.'

'Oh, I don't dance,' said Mightily Oats. 'Dancing is a snare to entrap the weak-willed.'

'Oh. Well, I suppose there's the barbecue outside. . .'

Mightily Oats dabbed at his eyes again.

'Um, any fish?'

'I doubt it.'

'We eat only fish this month.'

'Oh.' But a deadpan voice didn't seem to work. He still wanted to talk to her.

'Because the prophet Brutha eschewed meat, um, when he was wandering in the desert, you see.'

'Each mouthful forty times?'

'Pardon?'

'Sorry, I was thinking of something else.' Against her better judgement, Agnes let curiosity enter her life. 'What meat is there to eat, in a desert?'

'Um, none, I think.'

'So he didn't exactly refuse to eat it, did he?' Agnes scanned the gathering crowds, but no one seemed anxious to join in this little discussion.

'Um ... you'd have to, um, ask Brother Melchio that. I'm so sorry. I think I have a migraine coming on. . .'

You don't believe anything you're saying, do you? Agnes thought. Nervousness and a sort of low-grade terror was radiating off him. Perdita added: What a damp little maggot!

'I've got to go and . . . er . . . to go and . . . I've got to go and . . . help,' said Agnes, backing away. He nodded. As she left, he blew his nose again, produced a small black book from a pocket, sighed, and hurriedly opened it at a bookmark.

She picked up a tray to add some weight to the alibi, stepped towards the food table, turned to look back at the hunched figure as out of place as

a lost sheep, and walked into someone as solid as a tree.

'Who is that strange person?' said a voice by her ear. Agnes heard Perdita curse her for jumping sideways, but she recovered and managed to smile awkwardly at the person who'd spoken.

He was a young man and, it dawned on her, a very attractive one. Attractive men were not in plentiful supply in Lancre, where licking your hand and smoothing your hair down before taking a girl out was considered swanky.

He's got a ponytail! squeaked Perdita. Now that is cool!

Agnes felt the blush start somewhere in the region of her knees and begin its inevitable acceleration upwards.

'Er . . . sorry?' she said.

'You can practically smell him,' said the man. He inclined his head slightly towards the sad priest. 'Looks rather like a scruffy little crow, don't you think?'

'Er . . . yes,' Agnes managed. The blush rounded the curve of her bosom, red hot and rising. A ponytail on a man was unheard of in Lancre, and the cut of his clothes also suggested that he'd spent time somewhere where fashion changed more than once a lifetime. No one in Lancre had ever worn a waistcoat embroidered with peacocks.

Say something to him! Perdita screamed within.

'Wstfgl?' said Agnes. Behind her, Mightily Oats had got up and was inspecting the food suspiciously.

'I beg your pardon?'

Agnes swallowed, partly because Perdita was trying to shake her by the throat.

'He does look as if he's about to flap away, doesn't he?' she said. Oh, please, don't let me giggle . . .

The man snapped his fingers. A waiter hurrying past with a tray of drinks turned through ninety degrees.

'Can I get you a drink, Miss Nitt?'

'Er . . . white wine?' Agnes whispered.

'No, you don't want white wine, the red is much more . . . colourful,' he said, taking a glass and handing it to her. 'What is our quarry doing now . . . Ah, applying himself to a biscuit with a very small amount of pate on it, I see. . .'

Ask him his name! Perdita yelled. No, that'd be forward of me, Agnes thought. Perdita screamed, You were built forward, you stupid lump–

'Please let me introduce myself. I'm Vlad,' he said kindly. 'Oh, now he's . . . yes, he's about to pounce on . . . yes, a prawn vol-au-vent. Prawns up here, eh? King Verence has spared no expense, has he?'

'He had them brought up on ice all the way from Genua,' Agnes mumbled.

'They do very good seafood there, I believe.'

'Never been,' Agnes mumbled. Inside her head Perdita lay down and cried.

'Maybe we could visit it one day, Agnes,' said Vlad.

The blush was at Agnes's neck.

'It's very hot in here, don't you think?' said Vlad.

'It's the fire,' said Agnes gratefully. 'It's over there,' she added, nodding to where quite a large amount of a tree was burning in the hall's enormous fireplace and could only have been missed by a man with a bucket on his head.

'My sister and I have-' Vlad began.

'Excuse me, Miss Nitt?'

'What is it, Shawn?' Drop dead, Shawn Ogg, said Perdita.

'Mum says you're to come at once, miss. She's down in the yard. She says it's important.'

'It always is,' said Agnes. She gave Vlad a quick smile. 'Excuse me, I have to go and help an old lady.'

'I'm sure we'll meet again, Agnes,' said Vlad.

'Oh, er . . . thank you.'

She hurried out and was halfway down the steps before she remembered she hadn't told him her name.

Two steps further she thought: well, he could have asked someone.

Two steps after that Perdita said: Why would he ask anyone your name?

Agnes cursed the fact that she had grown up with an invisible enemy.

'Come and look at this!' hissed Nanny, grabbing her by the arm as she reached the courtyard. She was dragged out to the carriages parked near the stables. Nanny waved a finger to the door of the nearest one.

'See that?' she said.

'It looks very impressive,' said Agnes.

'See the crest?'

'Looks like . . . a couple of black and white

birds. Magpies, aren't they?'

'Yeah, but look at the writin',' said Nanny Ogg, with that dark relish old ladies reserve for nastily portentous things.

'Carpe Jugulum,' read Agnes aloud. 'That's . . . well, Carpe Diem is "Seize the Day", so this means-'

"'Go for the Throat",' said Nanny. 'You know what our king has done, so we can play our part in this new changin' world order thing and get money for hedges because Klatch gets a nosebleed when Ankh-Morpork stubs its toe? He's gone an' invited some bigwigs from Uberwald, that's what he's done. Oh, deary deary me. Vampires and werewolves, werewolves and vampires. We'll all be murdered in one another's beds.' She walked up to the front of the coach and tapped on the wood near the driver, who was sitting hunched up in an enormous cloak. 'Where're you from, Igor?'

The shadowy figure turned.

'What maketh you think my name ith . . . Igor?'

'Lucky guess?' said Nanny.

'You think everyone from Uberwald ith called Igor, do you? I could have any one of a thouthand different nameth, woman.'

'Look, I'm Nanny Ogg and thith, excuse me, this is Agnes Nitt. And you are . . .?'

'My name ith . . . well, it'th Igor, ath a matter of facththth,' said Igor. He raised a hasty finger. 'But it might not have been!'

'It's a chilly night. Can we get you something?' said Nanny cheerfully.

'Perhaps a towel?' said Agnes.

Nanny nudged her in the ribs to be silent. 'A glass of wine, p'raps?' she said.

'I do not drink . . . wine,' said Igor haughtily.

'I've got some brandy,' said Nanny, hitching up her skirt.

'Oh, right. I drink brandy like thtink.'

Knickerleg elastic twanged in the gloom.

'So,' said Nanny, passing up the flask, 'what're you doing this far from home, Igor?'

'Why'th there a thtupid troll down there on the . . . bridge?' said Igor, taking the flask in one large hand which, Agnes noticed, was a mass of scars and stitches.

'Oh, that's Big Jim Beef. The King lets him live under there provided he looks official when we've got comp'ny comin'.'

'Beef ith an odd name for a troll.'

'He likes the sound of it,' said Nanny. 'It's like a man calling himself Rocky, I suppose. So . . . I used to know an Igor from Uberwald. Walked with a limp. One eye a bit higher than the other. Had the same manner of . . . speaking. Very good at brain juggling, too.'

'That thoundth like my Uncle Igor,' said Igor. 'He worked for the mad doctor at Blinz. Ha, an' he wath a proper mad doctor, too, not like the mad doctorth you get thethe dayth. And the thervantth? Even worthe. No pride thethe dayth.' He tapped the brandy flask for emphasis. 'When Uncle Igor wath thent out for a geniuth'th brain, that'th what you damn well got. There wath none of thith fumblefinger thtuff and then pinching a brain out of the "Really Inthane" jar and hopin' no one'd notithe. They alwayth do, anyway.'

Nanny took a step back. The only sensible way to hold a conversation with Igor was when you had an umbrella.

'I think I've heard of that chap,' she said. 'Didn't he stitch folk together out of dead parts?'

'No! Really?' said Agnes, shocked. 'Ow!'

'That'th right. Ith there a problem?'

'No, I call it prudent,' said Nanny, taking her foot off Agnes's toe. 'My mum was a dab hand at sewing a new sheet from bits of old ones, and people're worth more than linen. So he's your master now, is he?'

'No, my Uncle Igor thtill workth for him. Been thtruck by lightning three hundred timeth and thtill putth in a full night'th work.'

'Have a drop more of that brandy, it's very cold out here,' said Nanny. 'So who is your master, Igor?'

'Call them marthterth?' said Igor, with sudden venom and a light shower. 'Huh! Now the old Count, he wath a gentleman of the old thchool. He knew how it all workth. Proper evening dreth at all timeth, that'th the rule!'

'Evenin' dress, eh?' said Nanny.

'Meth! Thith lot only wear it in the evening, can you imagine that? The retht of the time it'th all thwanning around in fanthy waithtcoatth and lacy thkirtth! Hah! D'you know what thith lot have done?'

'Do tell. . .'

'They've oiled the hingeth!' Igor took a hefty pull of Nanny's special brandy. 'Thome of thothe thqueakth took bloody yearth to get right. But, oh no, now it'th "Igor, dean thothe thpiderth out of the dungeon" and "Igor, order up thome proper oil lampth, all thethe flickering torcheth are tho fifteen minuteth ago"! Tho the plathe lookth old? Being a vampire'th about continuity, ithn't it? You get lotht in the mountainth and thee a light burnin' in thome carthle, you got a right to expect proper thqueakin' doorth and thome old-world courtethy, don't you?'

'Ah, right. An' a bed in the room with a balcony outside,' said Nanny.

'My point egthactly!'

'Proper billowing curtains, too?'

'Damn right!'

'Real gutterin' candles?'

'I thpend ageth gettin' them properly dribbly. Not that anyone careth.'

'You got to get the details right, I always say,' said Nanny. 'Well, well, well ... so our king invited vampires, eh?'

There was a thump as Igor slumped backwards and a tinny sound as the flask landed on the cobbles. Nanny picked it up and secreted it about her person.

'Good head for his drink,' she remarked. Not many people ever tasted Nanny Ogg's home-made brandy; it was technically impossible. Once it encountered the warmth of the human mouth it immediately turned into fumes. You drank it via your sinuses.

'What're we going to do?' said Agnes.

'Do? He invited 'em. They're guests,' said Nanny. 'I bet if I asked him Verence'd tell me to mind my own business. O' course, he wouldn't put it quite like that,' she added, since she knew the King had no suicidal tendencies. 'He'd prob'ly use the word "respect" two or three times at least. But it'd mean the same thing in the end.'

'But vampires. . . what's Granny going to say?'

'Listen, my girl, they'll be gone tomorrow . . . well, today, really. We'll just keep an eye on 'em and wave 'em goodbye when they go.'

'We don't even know what they look like!'

Nanny looked at the recumbent Igor.

'On reflection, maybe I should've asked him,' she said. She brightened up. 'Still, there's one way to find them. That's something everyone knows about vampires. . .'

In fact there are many things everyone knows about vampires, without really taking into account that perhaps the vampires know them by now, too.

 

 

The castle hall was a din. There was a mob around the buffet table. Nanny and Agnes helped out.

'Can o' pee, anyone?' said Nanny, shoving a tray towards a likely-looking group.

'I beg your pardon?' said someone. 'Oh . .. canapes. ..'

He took a vol-au-vent and bit into it as he turned back to the group.

'. . . so I said to his lordship What the hell is this?'

He turned to find himself under close scrutiny by the wrinkled old lady in a pointy hat.

'Sorry?' she said.

'This . . . this . . . this is just mashed garlic'!

'Don't like garlic flavour, eh?' said Nanny sternly.

'I love garlic, but it doesn't like me! This isn't just garlic flavoured, woman, it's all garlic!'

Nanny peered at her tray with theatrical shortsightedness.

'No, there's some . . . there's a bit of . . . you're right, perhaps we overdid it a gnat's . . . I'll just go and . . . just get some . . . I'll just go . . .'

She collided with Agnes at the entrance to the kitchen. Two trays slid to the floor, spilling garlic vol-au-vents, garlic dip, garlic stuffed with garlic and tiny cubes of garlic on a stick, stuck into a garlic.

'Either there's a lot of vampires in these parts or we're doing something wrong,' said Agnes flatly.

'I've always said you can't have too much garlic,' said Nanny.

'Everyone else disagrees, Nanny.'

'All right, then. What else . . . ah! All vampires wear evening dress in the evenings, even this lot.'

'Everyone here is wearing some kind of evening dress, Nanny. Except us.'

Nanny Ogg looked down. 'This is the dress I always wear in the evenin'.'

'Vampires aren't supposed to show up in a mirror, are they?' said Agnes.

Nanny snapped her fingers. 'Good thinking!' she said. 'There's one in the lavvie. I'll kind of hover in there. Everyone's got to go sooner or later.'

'But what if a man comes in?'

'Oh, I won't mind,' said Nanny dismissively. 'I won't be embarrassed.'

'I think there may be objections,' said Agnes, trying to ignore the mental picture just conjured up. Nanny had a pleasant grin, but there had to be times when you didn't want it looking at you.

'We've got to do something. Supposing Granny were to turn up now, what would she think?' said Nanny.

'We could just ask,' said Agnes.

'What? "Hands up all vampires"?'

'Ladies?'

They turned. The young man who had introduced himself as Vlad was approaching.

Agnes began to blush.

'I think you were talking about vampires,' he said, taking a garlic pasty from Agnes's tray and biting into it with every sign of enjoyment. 'Could I be of assistance?'

Nanny looked him up and down.

'Do you know much about them?' she said.

'Well, I am one,' he said. 'So I suppose the answer is yes. Charmed to meet you, Mrs Ogg.' He bowed and reached for her hand.

'Oh no you don't!' said Nanny, snatching it away. 'I don't hold with bloodsuckers!'

'I know. But I'm sure you shall in time. Would you like to come and meet my family?'

'They can bugger off! What was the King thinking of?'

'Nanny!'

'What?'

'You don't have to shout like that. It's not very . . . polite. I don't think-'

'Vlad de Magpyr,' said Vlad, bowing.

'-is going to bite my neck!' shouted Nanny.

'Of course not,' said Vlad. 'We had some sort of bandit earlier. Mrs Ogg is, I suspect, a meal to be savoured. Any more of these garlic things? They're rather piquant.'

'You what?' said Nanny.

'You just . . . killed someone?' said Agnes.

'Of course. We are vampires,' said Vlad. 'Or, we prefer, vampyres. With a "y". It's more modern. Now, do come and meet my father.'

'You actually killed someone?' said Agnes.

'Right! That's it!' snarled Nanny, marching away. 'I'm getting Shawn and he's gonna come back with a big sharp-'

Vlad coughed quietly. Nanny stopped.

'There are several other things people know about vampires,' he said. 'And one is that they have considerable control over the minds of lesser creatures. So forget all about vampires, dear ladies. That is an order. And do come and meet my family.'

Agnes blinked. She was aware that there had been . . . something. She could feel the tail of it, slipping away between her fingers.

'Seems a nice young man,' said Nanny, in a mildly stunned voice.

'I . . . he . . . yes,' said Agnes.

Something surfaced in her mind, like a message in a bottle written indistinctly in some foreign language. She tried, but she could not read it.

'I wish Granny was here,' she said at last. 'She'd know what to do.'

'What about?' said Nanny. 'She ain't good at parties.'

'I feel a bit . . . odd,' said Agnes.

'Ah, could be the drink,' said Nanny.

'I haven't had any!'

'No? Well, there's the problem right there. Come on.'

They hurried into the hall. Even though it was now well after midnight, the noise level was approaching the pain threshold. When the midnight hour lies on the glass like a big cocktail onion, there's always an extra edge to the laughter.

Vlad gave them an encouraging wave and beckoned them over to a group around King Verence.

'Ah, Agnes and Nanny,' said the King. 'Count, may I present–'

'Gytha Ogg and Agnes Nitt, I believe,' said the man the King had just been talking to. He bowed. For some reason a tiny part of Agnes was expecting a sombrelooking man with an exciting widow's-peak hairstyle and an opera cloak. She couldn't think why.

This man looked like . . . well, like a gentleman of independent means and an inquiring mind, perhaps, the kind of man who goes for long walks in the morning and spends the afternoons improving his mind in his own private library or doing small interesting exper-iments on parsnips and never, ever, worrying about money. There was something glossy about him, and also a sort of urgent, hungry enthusiasm, the kind you get when someone has just read a really interesting book and is determined to tell someone all about it.

'Allow me to present the Countess Magpyr,' he said. 'These are the witches I told you about, dear. I believe you've met my son? And this is my daughter, Lacrimosa.'

Agnes met the gaze of a thin girl in a white dress, with very long black hair and far too much eye make-up. There is such a thing as hate at first sight.

'The Count was just telling me how he is planning to move into the castle and rule the country,' said Verence. 'And I was saying that I think we shall be honoured.'

'Well done,' said Nanny. 'But if you don't mind, I don't want to miss the weasel man. . .'

'The trouble is that people always think of vampires in terms of their diet,' said the Count, as Nanny hurried away. 'It's really rather insulting. You eat animal flesh and vegetables, but it hardly defines you, does it?'

Verence's face was contorted in a smile, but it looked glassy and unreal.

'But you do drink human blood?' he said.

'Of course. And sometimes we kill people, although hardly at all these days. In any case, where exactly is the harm in that? Prey and hunter, hunter and prey. The sheep was designed as dinner for the wolf, the wolf as a means of preventing overgrazing by the sheep. If you examine your teeth, sire, you'll see that they are designed for a particular kind of diet and, indeed, your whole body is constructed to take advantage of it. And so it is with us. I'm sure the nuts and cabbages do not blame you. Hunter and prey are all just part of the great cycle of life.'

'Fascinating,' said Verence. Little beads of sweat were rolling down his face.

'Of course, in Uberwald everyone understands this instinctively,' said the Countess. 'But it is rather a backward place for the children. We are so looking forward to Lancre.'

'Very glad to hear it,' said Verence.

'And so kind of you to invite us,' she went on. 'Otherwise we could not have come, of course.'

'Not exactly,' said the Count, beaming at his wife. 'But I have to admit that the prohibition against entering places uninvited has proved curiously . . . durable. It must be something to do with ancient territorial instincts. But,' he added brightly, 'I have been working on an instructional technique which I'm sure will, within a few years-'

'Oh, don't let's go through all that dull stuff again,' said Lacrimosa.

'Yes, I suppose it can sound a little tedious,' said the Count, smiling benevolently at his daughter. 'Has anyone any more of that wonderful garlic dip?'

The King still looked uneasy, Agnes noticed. Which was odd, because the Count and his family seemed absolutely charming and what they were saying made perfect sense. Everything was perfectly all right.

'Exactly,' said Vlad, beside her. 'Do you dance, Miss Nitt?' On the other side of the hall, the Lancre Light Symphony Orchestra (cond. S. Ogg) was striking up and out at random.

'Ur . . .' She stopped it turning into a giggle. 'Not really. Not very well. . .'

Didn't you listen to what they were saying? They're vampires!

'Shut up,' she said aloud.

'I beg your pardon?' said Vlad, looking puzzled.

'And they're . . . well, they're not a very good orchestra . . .'

Didn't you pay any attention to what they were saying at all, you useless lump?

'They're a very bad orchestra,' said Vlad.

'Well, the King only bought the instruments last month and basically they're trying to learn together-'

Chop his head off! Give him a garlic enema!

'Are you all right? You really know there are no vampires here, don't you. . .'

He's controlling you! Perdita screamed. They're . . . affecting people!

'I'm a bit . . . faint from all the excitement,' Agnes mumbled. 'I think I'll go home.' Some instinct at bonemarrow level made her add, 'I'll ask Nanny to go with me.'

Vlad gave her an odd look, as if she wasn't reacting in quite the right way. Then he smiled. Agnes noticed that he had very white teeth.

'I don't think I've ever met anyone like you, Miss Nitt,' he said. 'There's something so . . . inner about you.'

That's me! That's me! He can't work me out! Now let's both get out of here! yelled Perdita.

'But we shall meet again.'

Agnes gave him a nod and staggered away, clutching at her head. It felt like a ball of cotton wool in which there was, inexplicably, a needle.

She passed Mightily Oats, who'd dropped his book on the floor and was sitting groaning with his head in his hands. He raised it to look at her.

'Er . . . miss, have you anything that might help my head?' he said. 'It really is ... rather painful. . .'

'The Queen makes up some sort of headache pills out of willow bark,' Agnes panted, and hurried on.

Nanny Ogg was standing morosely with a pint in her hand, a hitherto unheard-of combination.

'The weasel juggler didn't turn up,' she said. 'Well, I'm going to put out the hard word on him. He's had it in showbusiness in these parts.'

'Could you . . . help me home, Nanny?'

'So what if he got bitten on the essentials, that's all part ofAre you all right?'

'I feel really awful, Nanny.'

'Let's go, then. All the good beer's gone and I'm not stoppin' anyway if there's nothin' to laugh at.'

The wind was whistling across the sky when they walked back to Agnes's cottage. In fact there seemed more whistle than wind. The leafless trees creaked as they passed, the weak moonlight filling the eaves of the woods with dangerous shadows. Clouds were piling in, and there was more rain on the way.

Agnes noticed Nanny pick up something as they left the town behind them.

It was a stick. She'd never known a witch carry a stick at night before.

'Why have you got that, Nanny?'

'What? Oh? Dunno, really. It's a rattly old night, ain't it . . . ?'

'But you're never frightened of anything in Lan-'

Several things pushed through the bushes and clattered on to the road ahead. For a moment Agnes thought they were horses, until the moonlight caught them. Then they were gone, into the shadows on the other side of the road. She heard galloping among the trees.

'Haven't seen any of those for a long time,' said Nanny.

'I've never seen centaurs at all except in pictures,' said Agnes.

'Must've come down out of Uberwald,' said Nanny. 'Nice to see them about again.'

Agnes hurriedly lit the candles when she got into the cottage, and wished there were bolts on the door.

'Just sit down,' said Nanny. 'I'll get a cup of water, I know my way around here.'

'It's all right, I-'

Agnes's left arm twitched. To her horror it swung at the elbow and waved its hand up and down in front of her face, as if guided by a mind of its own.

'Feeling a bit warm, are you?' said Nanny.

'I'll get the water!' panted Agnes.

She rushed into the kitchen, gripping her left wrist with her right hand. It shook itself free, grabbed a knife from the draining board and stabbed it into the wall, dragging it so that it formed crude letters in the crumbling plaster:

VMPIR

It dropped the knife, grabbed at the hair on the back of Agnes's head and thrust her face within inches of the letters.

'You all right in there?' Nanny called from the next room.

'Er, yes, but I think I'm trying to tell me something-'

A movement made her turn. A small blue man wearing a blue cap was staring at her from the shelves over the washcopper. He stuck out his tongue, made a very small obscene gesture and disappeared behind a bag of washing crystals.

'Nanny?'

'Yes, luv?'

'Are there such things as blue mice?'

'Not while you're sober, dear.'

'I think. . . I'm owed a drink, then. Is there any brandy left?'

Nanny came in, uncorking the flask.

'I topped it up at the party. Of course, it's only shopbought stuff, you couldn't-'

Agnes's left hand snatched it and poured it down her throat. Then she coughed so hard that some of it went up her nose.

'Hang on, hang on, it's not that weak,' said Nanny.

Agnes plonked the flask down on the kitchen table.

'Right,' she said, and her voice sounded quite different to Nanny. 'My name is Perdita and I'm taking over this body right now.'

 

 

Hodgesaargh noticed the smell of burnt wood as he ambled back to the mews but put it down to the bonfire in the courtyard. He'd left the party early. No one had wanted to talk about hawks.

The smell was very strong when he looked in on the birds and saw the little flame in the middle of the floor. He stared at it for a second, then picked up a water bucket and threw it.

The flame continued to flicker gently on a bare stone that was awash with water.

Hodgesaargh looked at the birds. They were watching it with interest; normally they'd be frantic in the presence of fire.

Hodgesaargh was never one to panic. He watched it for a while, and then took a piece of wood and gently touched it to the flame. The fire leapt on to the wood and went on burning.

The wood didn't even char.

He found another twig and brushed it against the flame, which slid easily from one to the other. There was one flame. It was clear there wasn't going to be two.

Half the bars in the window had been burned away, and there was some scorched wood at the end of the mews, where the old nestboxes had been. Above it, a few stars shone through rags of mist over a charred hole in the roof.

Something had burned here, Hodgesaargh saw.

Fiercely, by the look of it. But also in a curiously local way, as if all the heat had been somehow contained. . .

He reached towards the flame dancing on the end of the stick. It was warm, but . . . not as hot as it should be.

Now it was on his finger. It tingled. As he waved it around, the head of every bird turned to watch it.

By its light, he poked around in the charred remains of the nestboxes. In the ashes were bits of broken eggshell.

Hodgesaargh picked them up and carried them into the crowded little room at the end of the mews which served as workshop and bedroom. He balanced the flame on a saucer. In here, where it was quieter, he could hear it making a slight sizzling noise.

In the dim glow he looked along the one crowded bookshelf over his bed and pulled down a huge ragged volume on the cover of which someone had written, centuries ago, the word 'Burds'.

The book was a huge ledger. The spine had been cut and widened inexpertly several times so that more pages could be pasted in.

The falconers of Lancre knew a lot about birds. The kingdom was on a main migratory route between the Hub and the Rim. The hawks had brought down many strange species over the centuries and the falconers had, very painstakingly, taken notes. The pages were thick with drawings and closely spaced writing, the entries copied and re-copied and updated over the years. The occasional feather carefully glued to a page had added to the thickness of the thing.

No one had ever bothered with an index, but some past falconer had considerately arranged many of the entries into alphabetical order.

Hodgesaargh glanced again at the flame burning steadily in its saucer, and then, handling the crackling pages with care, turned to 'F'.

After some browsing, he eventually found what he was looking for under 'P'.

Back in the mews, in the deepest shadow, something cowered.

 

 

There were three shelves of books in Agnes's cottage. By witch standards, that was a giant library.

Two very small blue figures lay on top of the books, watching the scene with interest.

Nanny Ogg backed away, waving the poker.

'It's all right,' said Agnes. 'It's me again, Agnes Nitt, but . . . She's here but.. . I'm sort of holding on. Yes! Yes! All right! All right, just shut up, will y- Look, it's my body, you're just a figment of my imagina- Okay! Okayl Perhaps it's not quite so clear c- Let me just talk to Nanny, will you?'

'Which one are you now?' said Nanny Ogg.

'I'm still Agnes, of course.' She rolled her eyes up. 'All right! I'm Agnes currently being advised by Perdita, who is also me. In a way. And I'm not too fat, thank you so very much!'

'How many of you are there in there?' said Nanny.

'What do you mean, "room for ten"?' shouted Agnes. 'Shut up! Listen, Perdita says there were vampires at the party. The Magpyr family, she says. She can't understand how we acted. They were putting a kind of . . . 'fluence over everyone. Including me, which is why she was able to break thr- Yes, all right, I'm telling it, thank you!'

'Why not her, then?' said Nanny.

'Because she's got a mind of her own! Nanny, can you remember anything they actually said?'

'Now you come to ' mention it, no. But they seemed nice enough people.'

'And you remember talking to Igor?'

'Who's Igor?'

The tiny blue figures watched, fascinated, for the next halfhour.

Nanny sat back at the end of it and stared at the ceiling for a while.

'Why should we believe her?' she said eventually.

'Because she's me.'

'They do say that inside every fat girl is a thin girl and-' Nanny began.

'Yes,' said Agnes bitterly. 'I've heard it. Yes. She's the thin girl. I'm the lot of chocolate.'

Nanny leaned towards Agnes's ear and raised her voice. 'How're you gettin' on in there? Everything all right, is it? Treatin' you all right, is she?'

'Haha, Nanny. Very funny.'

'They were saying all this stuff about drinkin' blood and killin' people and everyone was just noddin' and sayin', 'Well, well, how very fascinatin"?'

'Yes!'

'And eatin' garlic?'

'Yes!'

'That can't be right, can it?'

'I don't know, perhaps we used the wrong sort of garlic!'

Nanny rubbed her chin, torn between the vampiric revelation and prurient curiosity about Perdita.

'How does Perdita work, then?' she said.

Agnes sighed. 'Look, you know the part of you that wants to do all the things you don't dare do, and thinks the thoughts you don't dare think?'

Nanny's face stayed blank. Agnes floundered. 'Like . . . maybe . . . rip off all your clothes and run naked in the rain?' she hazarded.

'Oh, yes. Right,' said Nanny.

'Well . . . I suppose Perdita is that part of me.'

'Really? I've always been that part of me,' said Nanny. 'The important thing is to remember where you left your clothes.'

Agnes remembered too late that Nanny Ogg was in many ways a very uncomplicated personality.

'Mind you, I think I know what you mean,' Nanny went on in a more thoughtful voice. 'There's times when I've wanted to do things and stopped meself . . .' She shook her head. 'But . . . vampires . . . Verence wouldn't be so stupid as to send an invitation to vampires, would he?' She paused for thought. 'Yes, he would. Prob'ly think of it as offering the hand of friendship.'

She stood up. 'Right, they won't have left yet. Let's get straight to the jelly. You get extra garlic and a few stakes, I'll round up Shawn and Jason and the lads.'

'It won't work, Nanny. Perdita saw what they can do. The moment you get near them you'll forget all about it. They do something to your mind, Nanny.'

Nanny hesitated. 'Can't say I know that much about vampires,' she said.

'Perdita thinks they can tell what you're thinking, too.'

'Then this is Esme's type of stuff,' said Nanny. 'Messing with minds and so on. It's meat and drink to her.'

'Nanny, they were talking about staying! We have to do something!'

'Well, where is she?' Nanny almost wailed. 'Esme ought to be sortin' this out!'

'Maybe they've got to her first?'

'You don't think so, do you?' said Nanny, now looking quite panicky. 'I can't think about a vampire getting his teeth into Esme.'

'Don't worry, dog doesn't eat dog.' It was Perdita who blurted it out, but it was Agnes who got the blow. It wasn't a ladylike slap of disapproval. Nanny Ogg had reared some strapping sons; the Ogg forearm was a power in its own right.

When Agnes looked up from the hearthrug Nanny was rubbing some life back into her hand. She gave Agnes a solemn look.

'We'll say no more about that, shall we?' she commanded. 'I ain't gen'rally given to physicality of that nature but it saves a lot of arguing. Now, we're goin' back to the castle. We're going to sort this out right now.'

 

 

Hodgesaargh shut the book and looked at the flame. It was true, then. There'd even been a picture of one just like it in the book, painstakingly drawn by another royal falconer two hundred years before. He wrote that he'd found the thing up on the high meadows, one spring. It'd burned for three years and then he'd lost it somewhere.

If you looked at it closely, you could even see the detail. It was not exactly a flame. It was more like a bright feather . . .

Well, Lancre was on one of the main migration routes, for birds of all sorts. It was only a matter of time.

So . . . the new hatchling was around. They needed time to grow, it said in the book. Odd that it should lay an egg here, because it said in the book that it always hatched in the burning deserts of Klatch.

He went and looked at the birds in the mews. They were still very alert.

Yes, it all made sense. It had flown in here, among the comfort of other birds, and laid its egg, just like it said it did in the book, and then it had burned itself up to hatch the new bird.

If Hodgesaargh had a fault, it lay in his rather utilitarian view of the bird world. There were birds that you hunted, and there were birds you hunted with. Oh, there were other sorts, tweeting away in the bushes, but they didn't really count. It occurred to him that if ever there was a bird you could hunt with, it'd be the phoenix.

Oh, yes. It'd be weak, and young, and it wouldn't have gone far.

Hmm . . . birds tended to think the same way, after all.

It would have helped if there was one picture in the book. In fact, there were several, all carefully drawn by ancient falconers who claimed it was a firebird they'd seen.

Apart from the fact that they all had wings and a beak, no two were remotely alike. One looked very much like a heron. Another looked like a goose. One, and he scratched his head about this, appeared to be a sparrow. Bit of a puzzle, he decided, and left it at that and selected a drawing that looked at least slightly foreign.

He glanced at the bird gloves hanging on their hooks. He was good at rearing young birds. He could get them eating out of his hand. Later on, of course, they just ate his hand.

Yes. Catch it young and train it to the wrist. It'd have to be a Champion hunting bird.

Hodgesaargh couldn't imagine a phoenix as quarry. For one thing, how could you cook it?

. .. and in the darkest corner of the mews, something hopped on to a perch . . .

 

 

Once again Agnes had to run to keep up as Nanny Ogg strode into the courtyard, elbows pumping

furiously. The old lady marched up to a group of men standing around one of the barrels and grabbed two of them, spilling their drinks. Had it not been Nanny Ogg, this would have been a challenge equal to throwing down a glove or, in slightly less exalted circles, smashing a bottle on the edge of a bar.

But the men looked sheepish and one or two of the others in the circle even scuffled their feet and made an attempt to hide their pints behind their backs.

'Jason? Darren? You come along of me,' Nanny commanded. 'We're after vampires, right? Any sharp stakes around here?'

'No, Mum,' said Jason, Lancre's only blacksmith. Then he raised his hand. 'But ten minutes ago the cook come out and said, did anyone want all these nibbly things that someone had mucked up with garlic and I et 'em, Mum.'

Nanny sniffed and then took a step back, fanning her hand in front of her face. 'Yeah, that should do it all right,' she said. 'If I give you the signal, you're to burp hugely, understand?'

'I don't think it'll work, Nanny,' said Agnes, as boldly as she dared.

'I don't see why, it's nearly knocking me down.'

'I told you, you won't get close enough, even if it'll work at all. Perdita could feel it. It's like being drunk.'

'I'll be ready for 'em this time,' said Nanny. 'I've learned a thing or two from Esme.'

'Yes, but she's-' Agnes was going to say 'better at them than you', but changed it to 'not here . . .'

'That's as may be, but I'd rather face 'em now than explain to Esme that I didn't. Come on.'

Agnes followed the Oggs, but very uneasily. She wasn't sure how far she trusted Perdita.

A few guests had departed, but the castle had laid on a pretty good feast and Ramtop people at any social level were never ones to pass up a laden table.

Nanny glanced at the crowd and grabbed Shawn, who was passing with a tray.

'Where's the vampires?'

'What, Mum?'

'That Count . . . Magpie. . .'

'Magpyr,' said Agnes.

'Him,' said Nanny.

'He's not a . . . he's gone up to . . . the solar, Mum. They all have- What's that smell of garlic, Mum?'

'It's your brother. All right, let's keep going.'

The solar was right at the top of the keep. It was old, cold and draughty. Verence had put glass in the huge windows, at his queen's insistence, which just meant that now the huge room attracted the more cunning, insidious kind of draught. But it was the royal room – not as public as the great hall, but the place where the King received visitors when he was being formally informal.

The Nanny Ogg expeditionary force corkscrewed up the spiral staircase. She advanced across the good yet threadbare carpet to the group seated around the fire.

She took a deep breath.

'Ah, Mrs Ogg,' said Verence, desperately. 'Do join us.'

Agnes looked sideways at Nanny, and saw her face contort into a strange smile.

The Count was sitting in the big chair by the fire, with Vlad standing behind him. They both looked very handsome, she thought. Compared to them Verence, in his clothes that never seemed to fit right and permanently harassed expression, looked out of place.

'The Count was just explaining how Lancre will become a duchy of his lands in Uberwald,' said Verence. 'But we'll still be referred to as a kingdom, which I think is very reasonable of him, don't you agree?'

'Very handsome suggestion,' said Nanny.

'There will be taxes, of course,' said the Count. 'Not onerous. We don't want blood – figuratively speaking!' He beamed at the joke.

'Seems reasonable to me,' said Nanny.

'It is, isn't it?' said the Count. 'I knew it would work out so well. And I am so pleased, Verence, to see your essential modem attitude. People have quite the wrong idea about vampires, you see. Are we fiendish killers?' He beamed at them. 'Well, yes, of course we are. But only when necessary. Frankly, we could hardly hope to rule a country if we went around killing everyone all the time, could we? There'd be none left to rule, for one thing!' There was polite laughter, loudest of all from the Count.

It made perfect sense to Agnes. The Count was clearly a fair-minded man. Anyone who didn't think so deserved to die.

'And we are only human,' said the Countess. 'Well . . . in fact, not only human. But if you prick us do we not bleed? Which always seems such a waste.'

They've got you again, said a voice in her mind.

Vlad's head jerked up. Agnes felt him staring at her.

'We are, above all, up to date,' said the Count. 'And we do like what you've done to this castle, I must say.'

'Oh, those torches back home!' said the Countess, rolling her eyes. 'And some of the things in the dungeons, well, when I saw them I nearly died of shame. So . . . fifteen centuries ago. If one is a vampire then one is,' she gave a deprecating little laugh, 'a vampire. Coffins, yes, of course, but there's no point in skulking around as if you're ashamed of what you are, is there? We all have . . . needs.'

You're all standing around like rabbits in front of a fox! Perdita raged in the caverns of Agnes's brain.

'Oh!’  said the Countess, clapping her hands together. 'I see you have a pianoforte!'

It stood under a shroud in a corner of the room where it had stood for four months now. Verence had ordered it because he'd heard they were very modern, but the only person in the kingdom who'd come close to mastering it was Nanny Ogg who would, as she put it, come up occasionally for a tinkle on the ivories.[11] Then it had been covered over on the orders of Magrat and the palace rumour was that Verence had got an earbashing for buying what was effectively a murdered elephant.

'Lacrimosa would so like to play for you,' the Countess commanded.

'Oh, Mother,' said Lacrimosa.

'I'm sure we should love it,' said Verence. Agnes wouldn't have noticed the sweat running down his face if Perdita hadn't pointed it out: He's trying to fight it, she said. Aren't you glad you've got me?

There was some bustling while a wad of sheet music was pulled out of the piano stool and the young lady sat down to play. She glared at Agnes before beginning. There was some sort of chemistry there, although it was the sort that results in the entire building being evacuated.

It's a racket, said the Perdita within, after the first few bars. Everyone's looking as though it's wonderful but it's a din!

Agnes concentrated. The music was beautiful but if she really paid attention, with Perdita nudging her, it wasn't really there at all. It sounded like someone playing scales, badly and angrily.

I can say that at any time, she thought. Any time I want, I can just wake up.

Everyone else applauded politely. Agnes tried to, but found that her left hand was suddenly on strike. Perdita was getting stronger in her left arm.

Vlad was beside her so quickly that she wasn't even aware that he'd moved.

'You are a . . . fascinating woman, Miss Nitt,' he said. 'Such lovely hair, may I say? But who is Perdita?'

'No one, really,' Agnes mumbled. She fought against the urge to bunch her left hand into a fist. Perdita was screaming at her again.

Vlad stroked a strand of her hair. It was, she knew, good hair. It wasn't simply big hair, it was enormous hair, as if she was trying to counterbalance her body. It was glossy, it never split, and was extremely well behaved except for a tendency to eat combs.

'Eat combs?' said Vlad, coiling the hair around his finger.

'Yes, it-'

He can see what you're thinking.

Vlad looked puzzled again, like someone trying to make out some faint noise.

'You . . . can resist, can't you?' he said. 'I was watching you when Lacci was playing the piano and losing. Do you have any vampire blood in you?'

'What? No!'

'It could be arranged, haha.' He grinned. It was the sort of grin that Agnes supposed was called infectious but, then, so was measles. It filled her immediate future. Something was pouring over her like a pink fluffy cloud saying: it's all right, everything is fine, this is exactly right . . .

'Look at Mrs Ogg there,' said Vlad. 'Grinning like a pumpkin, ain't she? And she is apparently one of the more powerful witches in the mountains. It's almost distressing, don't you think?'

Tell him you know he can read minds, Perdita commanded.

And again, the puzzled, quizzical look.

'You can-' Agnes began.

'No, not exactly. Just people,' said Vlad. 'One learns, one learns. One picks things up.' He flung himself down on a sofa, one leg over the arm, and stared thoughtfully at her.

'Things will be changing, Agnes Nitt,' he said. 'My father is right. Why lurk in dark castles? Why be ashamed? We're vampires. Or, rather, vampyres. Father's a bit keen on the new spelling. He says it indicates a clean break with a stupid and superstitious past. In any case, it's not our fault. We were born vampires.'

'I thought you became–'

'–vampires by being bitten? Dear me, no. Oh, we can turn people into vampires, it's an easy technique, but what would be the point? When you eat . . . now what is it you eat? Oh yes, chocolate . . . you don't want to turn it into another Agnes Nitt, do you? Less chocolate to go around.' He sighed. 'Oh dear, superstition, superstition everywhere we turn. Isn't it true that we've been here at least ten minutes and your neck is quite free of anything except a small amount of soap you didn't wash off?'

Agnes's hand flew to her throat.

'We notice these things,' said Vlad. 'And now we're here to notice them. Oh, Father is powerful in his way, and quite an advanced thinker, but I don't think even he is aware of the possibilities. I can't tell you how good it is to be out of that place, Miss Nitt. The werewolves . . . oh dear, the werewolves . . . Marvellous people, it goes without saying, and of course the Baron has a certain rough style, but really . . . give them a good deer hunt, a warm spot in front of the fire and a nice big bone and the rest of the world can go hang. We have done our best, we really have. No one has done more than Father to bring our part of the country into the Century of the Fruitbat '

'It's nearly over-' Agnes began.

'Perhaps that's why he's so keen,' said Vlad. 'The place is just full of . . . well, remnants. I mean . . . centaurs? Really! They've got no business surviving. They're out of place. And frankly all the lower races are just as bad. The trolls are stupid, the dwarfs are devious, the pixies are evil and the gnomes stick in your teeth. Time they were gone. Driven out. We have great hopes of Lancre.' He looked around disdainfully. 'After some redecoration.'

Agnes looked back at Nanny and her sons. They were listening quite contentedly to the worst music since Shawn Ogg's bagpipes had been dropped down the stairs.

'And . . . you're taking our country?' she said. 'Just like that?'

Vlad gave her another smile, stood up, and walked towards her. 'Oh, yes. Bloodlessly. Well . . . metaphorically. You really are quite remarkable, Miss Nitt. The Uberwald girls are so sheep-like. But you . . . you're concealing something from me. Everything I feel tells me you're quite under my power – and yet you're not.' He chuckled. 'This is delightful. . .'

Agnes felt her mind unravelling. The pink fog was blowing through her head . . .

. . . and looming out of it, deadly and mostly concealed, was the iceberg of Perdita.

As Agnes withdrew into the pinkness she felt the tingle spread down her arms and legs. It was not pleasant. It was like sensing someone standing right behind you and then feeling them take one step forward.

Agnes would have pushed him away. That is, Agnes would have dithered and tried to talk her way out of things, but if push had come to shove then she'd have pushed hard. But Perdita struck, and when her hand was halfway around she turned it palm out and curled her fingers to bring her nails into play . . .

He caught her wrist, his hand moving in a blur.

'Well done,' he said, laughing.

His other hand shot out and caught her other arm as it swung.

'I like a woman with spirit!'

However, he had run out of hands, and Perdita still had a knee in reserve. Vlad's eyes crossed and he made that small sound best recorded as 'ghni . . .'

'Magnificent!' he croaked as he folded up.

Perdita pulled herself away and ran over to Nanny Ogg, grabbing the woman's arm.

'Nanny, we are leaving!'

'Are we, dear?' said Nanny calmly, not making a move.

'And Jason and Darren too!'

Perdita didn't read as much as Agnes. She thought books were bor-ing. But now she really needed to know: what did you use against vampires?

Holy symbols! Agnes prompted from within.

Perdita looked around desperately. Nothing in the room looked particularly holy. Religion, apart from its use as a sort of cosmic registrar, had never caught on in Lancre.

'Daylight is always good, my dear,' said the Countess, who must have caught the edge of her thought. 'Your uncle always had big windows and easily twitched aside curtains, didn't he, Count?'

'Yes indeed,' said the Count.

'And when it came to running water, he always kept the moat flowing perfectly, didn't he?'

'Fed from a mountain stream, I think,' said the Count.

'And, for a vampire, he always seemed to have so many ornamental items around the castle that could be bent or broken into the shape of some religious symbol, as I recall.'

'He certainly did. A vampire of the old school.'

'Yes.' The Countess gave her husband a smile. 'The stupid school.' She turned to Perdita and looked her up and down. 'So I think you will find we are here to stay, my dear. Although you do seem to have made an impression on my son. Come here, girl. Let me have a good look at you.'

Even cushioned inside her own head Agnes felt the weight of the vampire's will hit Perdita like an iron bar, pushing her down. Like the other end of a seesaw, Agnes rose.

'Where's Magrat? What have you done with her?' she said.

'Putting the baby to bed, I believe,' said the Countess, raising her eyebrows. 'A lovely child.'

'Granny Weatherwax is going to hear about this, and you'll wish you'd never been born . . . or un-born or reborn or whatever you are!'

'We look forward to meeting her,' said the Count calmly. 'But here we are, and I don't seem to see this famous lady with us. Perhaps you should go and fetch her? You could take your friends. And when you see her, Miss Nitt, you can tell her that there is no reason why witches and vampires should fight.'

Nanny Ogg stirred. Jason shifted in his seat. Agnes pulled them upright and towards the stairs.

'We'll be back!' she shouted.

The Count nodded.

'Good,' he said. 'We are famous for our hospitality.'

 

 

It was still dark when Hodgesaargh set out. If you were hunting a phoenix, he reasoned, the dark was probably the best time. Light showed up better in the darkness.

He'd packed a portable wire cage after considering the charred bars of the window, and he'd also spent some time on the glove.

It was basically a puppet, made of yellow cloth with some purple and blue rags tacked on. It was not, he conceded, very much like the drawing of the phoenix, but in his experience birds weren't choosy observers.

Newly hatched birds were prepared to accept practically anything as their parent. Anyone who'd hatched eggs under a broody hen knew that

ducklings could be made to think they were chicks, and poor William the buzzard was a case in point.

The fact that a young phoenix never saw its parent and therefore didn't know what it was supposed to look like might be a drawback in getting its trust, but this was unknown territory and Hodgesaargh was prepared to try anything. Like bait, for example. He'd packed meat and grain, although the drawing certainly suggested a hawklike bird, but in case it needed to eat inflammable materials as well he also put in a bag of mothballs and a pint of fish oil. Nets were out of the question, and bird lime was not to be thought of. Hodgesaargh had his pride. Anyway, they probably wouldn't work.

Since anything might be worth trying, he'd also adapted a duck lure, trying to achieve a sound described by alongdead falconer as 'like unto the cry of a buzzard yet of a lower pitch'. He wasn't too happy about the result but, on the other hand, maybe a young phoenix didn't know what a phoenix was meant to sound like, either. It might work, and if he didn't try it he'd always be wondering.

He set out.

Soon a cry like a duck in a power dive was heard among the damp, dark hills.

 

 

The pre-dawn light was grey on the horizon and a shower of sleet had made the leaves sparkle when Granny Weatherwax left her cottage. There had been so much to do.

What she'd chosen to take with her was slung in a sack tied across her back with string. She'd left the broomstick in the corner by the fire.

She wedged the door open with a stone and then, without once looking back, strode off through the woods.

Down in the villages, the cocks crowed in response to a sunrise hidden somewhere beyond the clouds.

An hour later, a broomstick settled gently on the lawn. Nanny Ogg alighted and hurried to the back door.

Her foot kicked something holding it open. She glared at the stone as if it was something dangerous, and then edged round it and into the gloom of the cottage.

She came out a few minutes later, looking worried.

Her next move was towards the water butt. She broke the film of ice with her hand and pulled out a piece, looked at it for a moment and then tossed it away.

People often got the wrong idea about Nanny Ogg, and she took care to see that they did. One thing they often got wrong was the idea that she never thought further than the bottom of the glass.

Up in a nearby tree a magpie chattered at her. She threw a stone at it.

Agnes arrived half an hour later. She preferred to go on foot whenever possible. She suspected that she overhung too much.

Nanny Ogg was sitting on a chair just inside the door, smoking her pipe. She took it out of her mouth and nodded.

'She's gorn,' she said.

'Gone? Just when we need her?' said Agnes. 'What do you mean?'

'She ain't here,' Nanny expanded.

'Perhaps she's just out?' said Agnes.

'Gorn,' said Nanny. 'These past two hours, if I'm any judge.'

'How do you know that?'

Once – probably even yesterday – Nanny would have alluded vaguely to magical powers. It was a measure of her concern that, today, she got right to the jelly.

'First thing she does in the mornings, rain or shine, is wash her face in the water butt,' she said. 'Someone broke the ice two hours ago. You can see where it's frozed over again.'

'Oh, is that all?' said Agnes. 'Well, perhaps she's got business-'

'You come and see,' said Nanny, standing up.

The kitchen was spotless. Every flat surface had been scrubbed. The fireplace had been swept-and a new fire laid.

Most of the cottage's smaller contents had been laid out on the table. There were three cups, three plates, three knives, a cleaver, three forks, three spoons, two ladles, a pair of scissors and three candlesticks. A wooden box was packed with needles and thread and pins . . .

If it was possible for anything to be polished, it had been. Someone had even managed to buff up a shine on the old pewter candlesticks.

Agnes felt the little knot of tension grow inside her. Witches didn't own much. The cottage owned things. They were not yours to take away.

This looked like an inventory.

Behind her, Nanny Ogg was opening and shutting drawers in the ancient dresser.

'She's left it all neat,' Nanny said. 'She's even chipped all the rust off the kettle. The larder's all bare except for some hobnailed cheese and suicide biscuits. It's the same in the bedroom. Her "I ATE'NT DEAD" card is hanging behind the door. And the guzunda's so clean you could eat your tea out of it, if the fancy took you that way. And she's taken the box out of the dresser.'

'What box?'

'Oh, she keeps stuff in it,' said Nanny. 'Memororabililia.'

'Mem-?'

'You know . . . keepsakes and whatnot. Stuff that's hers-'

'What's this?' said Agnes, holding up a green glass ball.

'Oh, Magrat passed that on to her,' said Nanny, lifting up a corner of the rug and peering under it. 'It's a float our Wayne brought back from the seaside once. It's a buoy for the fishing nets.'

'I didn't know buoys had glass balls,' said Agnes.

She groaned inwardly, and felt the blush unfold. But Nanny hadn't noticed. It was then she realized how really serious this was. Nanny would normally leap on such a gift like a cat on a feather. Nanny could find an innuendo in 'Good morning.' She could certainly find one in 'innuendo'. And 'buoys with glass balls' should have lasted her all week. She'd be accosting total strangers and saying, 'You'll never guess what Agnes Nitt said. . .'

She ventured 'I said-'

'Dunno much about fishing, really,' said Nanny. She straightened up, biting her thumbnail thoughtfully. 'Something's wrong with all this,' she said. 'The box . . . she wasn't going to leave anything behind...'

'Granny wouldn't go, would she?' said Agnes nervously. 'I mean, not actually leave. She's always here.'

'Like I told you last night, she's been herself lately,' said Nanny vaguely. She sat down in the rocking chair.

'You mean she's not been herself, don't you?' said Agnes.

'I knows exactly what I means, girl. When she's herself she snaps at people and sulks and makes herself depressed. Ain't you ever heard of taking people out of themselves? Now shut up, 'cos I'm thinkin'.'

Agnes looked down at the green ball in her hands. A glass fishing float, five hundred miles from the sea. An ornament, like a shell. Not a crystal ball. You could use it like a crystal ball but it wasn't a crystal ball . . . and she knew why that was important.

Granny was a very traditional witch. Witches hadn't always been popular. There might even be times – there had been times, long ago – when it was a good idea not to advertise what you were, and that was why all these things on the table didn't betray their owner at all. There was no need for that any more, there hadn't been in Lancre for hundreds of years, but some habits get passed down in the blood.

In fact things now worked the other way. Being a witch was an honourable trade in the mountains, but only the young ones invested in real crystal balls and coloured knives and dribbly candles. The old ones . . . they stuck with simple kitchen cutlery, fishing floats, bits of wood, whose very ordinariness subtly advertised their status. Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple-corer.

A sound she hadn't been hearing stopped abruptly, and the silence echoed.

Nanny glanced up.

'Clock's stopped,' she said.

'It's not even telling the right time,' said Agnes, turning to look at it.

'Oh, she just kept it for the tick,' said Nanny.

Agnes put down the glass ball.

'I'm going to look around some more,' she said.

She'd learned to look around when she visited someone's home, because in one way it was a piece of clothing and had grown to fit their shape. It might show not just what they'd been doing, but what they'd been thinking. You might be visiting someone who expected you to know everything about everything, and in those circumstances you took every advantage you could get.

Someone had told her that a witch's cottage was her second face. Come to think of it, it had been Granny.

It should be easy to read this place. Granny's thoughts had the strength of hammer blows and they'd pounded her personality into the walls. If her cottage had been any more organic it would have had a pulse.

Agnes wandered through to the dank little scullery. The copper washpot had been scoured. A fork and a couple of shining spoons lay beside it, along with the washboard and scrubbing brush. The slop bucket gleamed, although the fragments of a broken cup in the bottom said that the recent intensive housework hadn't been without its casualties.

She pushed open the door into the old goat shed. Granny was not keeping goats at the moment, but her home-made beekeeping equipment was neatly laid out on a bench. She'd never needed much. If you needed smoke and a veil to deal with your bees, what was the point of being a witch?

Bees...

A moment later she was out in the garden, her ear pressed against a beehive.

There were no bees flying this early in the day, but the sound inside was a roar.

'They'll know,' said a voice behind her. Agnes stood up so quickly she bumped her head on the hive roof.

'But they won't say,' Nanny added. 'She'd have told 'em. Well done for thinkin' about 'em, though.'

Something chattered at them from a nearby branch. It was a magpie.

'Good morning, Mister Magpie,' said Agnes automatically.

'Bugger off, you bastard,' said Nanny, and reached down for a stick to throw. The bird swooped off to the other side of the clearing.

'That's bad luck,' said Agnes.

'It will be if I get a chance to aim,' said Nanny. 'Can't stand those maggoty-pies.'

' "One for sorrow," said Agnes, watching the bird hop along a branch.

'I always take the view there's prob'ly going to be another one along in a minute,' said Nanny, dropping a stick.

' "Two for joy"?' said Agnes.

'It's "two for mirth".'

'Same thing, I suppose.'

'Dunno about that,' said Nanny. 'I was joyful when our Jason was born, but I can't say I was laughin' at the time. Come on, let's have another look.'

Two more magpies landed on the cottage's antique thatch.

'That's "three for a girl-"' said Agnes nervously.

' "Three for a funeral" is what I learned,' said Nanny. 'But there's lots of magpie rhymes. Look, you take her broomstick and have a look over towards the mountains, and I'll-'

'Wait,' said Agnes.

Perdita was screaming at her to pay attention. She listened.

Threes...

Three spoons. Three knives. Three cups.

The broken cup thrown away.

She stood still, afraid that if she moved or breathed something awful would happen.

The clock had stopped . . .

'Nanny?'

Nanny Ogg was wise enough to recognize that something was happening and didn't waste time on daft questions.

'Yes?' she said.

'Go in and tell me what time the clock stopped at, will you?'

Nanny nodded and trotted off.

The tension in Agnes's head stretched out thin and made a noise like a plucked string. She was amazed that the whine from it couldn't be heard all round the garden. If she moved, if she tried to force things, it'd snap.

Nanny returned.

'Three o'clock?' said Agnes, before she opened her mouth.

'Just after.'

'How much after?'

'Two or three minutes. . .'

'Two or three?'

'Three, then.'

The three magpies landed together on another tree and chased one another through the branches, chattering loudly.

'Three minutes after three,' said Agnes, and felt the tension ease and the words form. 'Threes, Nanny. She was thinking in threes. There was another candlestick out in the goat shed, and some cutlery too. But she only put out threes.'

'Some things were in ones and twos,' said Nanny, but her voice was edged with doubt.

'Then she'd only got one or two of them,' said Agnes. 'There were more spoons and things out in the scullery that she'd missed. I mean that for some reason she wasn't putting out more than three.'

'I know for a fact she's got four cups,' said Nanny.

'Three,' said Agnes. 'She must've broken one. The bits are in the slop bucket.'

Nanny Ogg stared at her. 'She's not clumsy, as a rule,' she mumbled. She looked to Agnes as though she was trying to avoid some huge and horrible thought.

A gust shook the trees. A few drops of rain spattered across the garden.

'Let's get inside,' Agnes suggested.

Nanny shook her head. 'It's chillier in there than out here,' she said. Something skimmed across the leaves and landed on the lawn. It was a fourth magpie. ' "Four for a birth,"' she added, apparently to herself. 'That'd be it, sure enough. I hoped she wouldn't realize, but you can't get anything past Esme. I'll tan young Shawn's hide for him when I get home[ He swore he'd delivered that invite!'

'Perhaps she took it away with her?'

'No! If she'd got it she'd have been there last night, you can bet on it!' snapped Nanny.

'What wouldn't she realize?' said Agnes.

'Magrat's daughter!'

'What? Well, I should think she would realize! You can't hide a baby! Everyone in the kingdom knows about it.'

'I mean Magrat's got a daughter! She's a mother!' said Nanny.

'Well, yes! That's how it works! So?'

They were shouting at one another, and they both realized it at the same time,

It was raining harder now. Drips were flying off Agnes's hat every time she moved her head.

Nanny recovered a little. 'All right, I s'pose between us we've got enough sense to get in out of the rain.'

'And at least we can light the fire,' said Agnes as they stepped into the chill of the kitchen. 'She's left it all laid-'

'No!'

'There's no need to shout again!'

'Look, don't light the fire, right?' said Nanny. 'Don't touch anything more than you have to!'

'I could easily get more kindling in, and-'

'Be told! That fire wasn't laid for you to light! And leave that door alone!'

Agnes stopped in the act of pushing away the stone.

'Be sensible, Nanny, the rain and leaves are blowing in!'

'Let 'em!'