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Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 12 - Witches Abroad.txt：源码内容

Terry Pratchett
Witches Abroad
A Discworld Novel
This is the Discworld, which travels through space on the back of four elephants which themselves stand on the shell of Great A'Tuin, the sky turtle.
Once upon a time such a universe was considered unusual and, possibly, impossible.
But then ... it used to be so simple, once upon a time.
Because the universe was full of ignorance all around and the scientist panned through it like a prospector crouched over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of unreason, the sand of uncertainty and the little whiskery eight-legged swimming things of superstition.
Occasionally he would straighten up and say things like 'Hurrah, I've discovered Boyle's Third Law.' And everyone knew where they stood. But the trouble was that ignorance became more interesting, especially big fascinating ignorance about huge and important things like matter and creation, and people stopped patiently building their little houses of rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started getting interested in the chaos itself - partly because it was a lot easier to be an expert on chaos, but mostly because it made really good patterns that you could put on a t-shirt.
And instead of getting on with proper science* scientists suddenly went around saying how impossible it was to know anything, and that there wasn't really anything you could call reality to know anything about, and how
* Like finding that bloody butterfly whose flapping wings cause all these storms we've been having lately and getting it to stop.
all this was tremendously exciting, and incidentally did you know there were possibly all these little universes all over the place but no-one can see them because they are all curved in on themselves? Incidentally, don't you think this is a rather good t-shirt?
Compared to all this, a large turtle with a world on its back is practically mundane. At least it doesn't pretend it doesn't exist, and no-one on the Discworld ever tried to prove it didn't exist in case they turned out to be right and found themselves suddenly floating in empty space. This is because the Discworld exists right on the edge of reality. The least little things can break through to the other side. So, on the Discworld, people take things seriously.
Like stories.
Because stories are important.
People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.
Stories exist independently of their players. If you know that, the knowledge is power.
Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time. And they have evolved. The weakest have died and the strongest have survived and they have grown fat on the retelling . . . stories, twisting and blowing through the darkness.
And their very existence overlays a faint but insistent pattern on the chaos that is history. Stories etch grooves deep enough for people to follow in the same way that water follows certain paths down a mountainside. And every time fresh actors tread the path of the story, the groove runs deeper.
This is called the theory of narrative causality and it means that a story, once started, takes a shape. It picks up all the vibrations of all the other workings of that story that have ever been.
This is why history keeps on repeating all the time.
So a thousand heroes have stolen fire from the gods.
A thousand wolves have eaten grandmother, a thousand princesses have been kissed. A million unknowing actors have moved, unknowing, through the pathways of story.
It is now impossible for the third and youngest son of any king, if he should embark on a quest which has so far claimed his older brothers, not to succeed.
Stories don't care who takes part in them. All that matters is that the story gets told, that the story repeats. Or, if you prefer to think of it like this: stories are a parasitical life form, warping lives in the service only of the story itself.*
It takes a special kind of person to fight back, and become the bicarbonate of history.
Once upon a time . . .
Grey hands gripped the hammer and swung it, striking the post so hard that it sank a foot into the soft earth.
Two more blows and it was fixed immovably.
From the trees around the clearing the snakes and birds watched silently. In the swamp the alligators drifted like patches of bad-assed water.
Grey hands took up the crosspiece and fixed it in place, tying it with creepers, pulling them so tight that they creaked.
She watched him. And then she took up a fragment of mirror and tied it to the top of the post.
* And people are wrong about urban myths. Logic and reason say that these are fictional creations, retold again and again by people who are hungry for evidence of weird coincidence, natural justice and so on. They aren't. They keep on happening all the time, everywhere, as the stories bounce back and forth across the universe. At any one time hundreds of dead grandmothers are being whisked away on the roof-racks of stolen cars and loyal alsatians are choking on the fingers of midnight burglars. And they're not confined to any one world. Hundreds of female Mercurian jivpts turn four tiny eyes on their rescuers and say, 'My brood-husband will be livid - it was his travel module.' Urban myths are alive.
'The coat,' she said.
He took up the coat and fitted it over the crosspiece. The pole wasn't long enough, so that the last few inches of sleeve draped emptily.
'And the hat,' she said.
It was tall, and round, and black. It glistened.
The piece of mirror gleamed between the darkness of the hat and the coat.
'Will it work?' he said.
'Yes,' she said. 'Even mirrors have their reflection. We got to fight mirrors with mirrors.' She glared up through the trees to a slim white tower in the distance. 'We've got to find her reflection.'
'It'll have to reach out a long way, then.'
'Yes. We need all the help we can get.'
She looked around the clearing.
She had called upon Mister Safe Way, Lady Bon Anna, Hotaloga Andrews and Stride Wide Man. They probably weren't very good gods.
But they were the best she'd been able to make.
This is a story about stories.
Or what it really means to be a fairy godmother.
But it's also, particularly, about reflections and mirrors.
All across the multiverse there are backward tribes* who distrust mirrors and images because, they say, they steal a bit of a person's soul and there's only so much of a person to go around. And the people who wear more clothes say this is just superstition, despite the fact that other people who spend their lives appearing in images of one sort or another seem to develop a thin quality. It's put down to over-work and, tellingly, over-exposure instead.
Just superstition. But a superstition doesn't have to be wrong.
* Considered backward, that is, by people who wear more clothes than they do.
A mirror can suck up a piece of soul. A mirror can contain the reflection of the whole universe, a whole skyful of stars in a piece of silvered glass no thicker than a breath.
Know about mirrors and you nearly know everything.
Look into the mirror . . .
. . . further . . .
... to an orange light on a cold mountaintop, thousands of miles from the vegetable warmth of that swamp . . .
Local people called it the Bear Mountain. This was because it was a bare mountain, not because it had a lot of bears on it. This caused a certain amount of profitable confusion, though; people often strode into the nearest village with heavy duty crossbows, traps and nets and called haughtily for native guides to lead them to the bears. Since everyone locally was making quite a good living out of this, what with the sale of guide books, maps of bear caves, ornamental cuckoo-clocks with bears on them, bear walking-sticks and cakes baked in the shape of a bear, somehow no-one had time to go and correct the spelling.*
It was about as bare as a mountain could be.
Most of the trees gave out about halfway to the top, only a few pines hanging on to give an effect very similar to die couple of pathetic strands teased across his scalp by a baldie who won't own up.
It was a place where witches met.
Tonight a fire gleamed on the very crest of the hill. Dark figures moved in the flickering light.
* Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy Seriph of Al-Ybi was once cursed by a badly-educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Ybi are renowned for being unusually short and bad-tempered.
The moon coasted across a lacework of clouds. Finally, a tall, pointy-hatted figure said, 'You mean everyone brought potato salad?'
There was one Ramtop witch who was not attending the sabbat. Witches like a night out as much as anyone else but, in this case, she had a more pressing appointment. And it wasn't the kind of appointment you can put off easily.
Desiderata Hollow was making her will.
When Desiderata Hollow was a girl, her grandmother had given her four important pieces of advice to guide her young footsteps on the unexpectedly twisting pathway of life.
They were:
Never trust a dog with orange eyebrows,
Always get the young man's name and address,
Never get between two mirrors,
And always wear completely clean underwear every day because you never knew when you were going to be knocked down and killed by a runaway horse and if people found you had unsatisfactory underwear on, you'd die of shame.
And then Desiderata grew up to become a witch. And one of the minor benefits of being a witch is that you know exactly when you're going to die and can wear what underwear you like.*
That had been eighty years earlier, when the idea of knowing exactly when you were going to die had seemed quite attractive because secretly, of course, you knew you were going to live forever.
That was then.
And this was now.
Forever didn't seem to last as long these days as once it did.
* Which explains a lot about witches.
Another log crumbled to ash in the fireplace. Desiderata hadn't bothered to order any fuel for the winter. Not much point, really.
And then, of course, there was this other thing . . .
She'd wrapped it up carefully into a long, slim package. Now she folded up the letter, addressed it, and pushed it under the string. Job done.
She looked up. Desiderata had been blind for thirty years, but this hadn't been a problem. She'd always been blessed, if that was the word, with second sight. So when the ordinary eyes gave out you just trained yourself to see into the present, which anyway was easier than the future. And since the eyeball of the occult didn't depend on light, you saved on candles. There was always a silver lining, if you knew where to look. In a manner of speaking.
There was a mirror on the wall in front of her.
The face in it was not her own, which was round and pink.
It was the face of a woman who was used to giving orders. Desiderata wasn't the sort to give orders. Quite the reverse, in fact.
The woman said, 'You are dying, Desiderata.'
'I am that, too.'
'You've grown old. Your sort always do. Your power is nearly gone.'
'That's a fact, Lilith,' said Desiderata mildly.
'So your protection is withdrawing from her.'
' 'Fraid so,' said Desiderata.
'So now it's just me and the evil swamp woman. And I will win.'
'That's how it seems, I'm afraid.'
'You should have found a successor.'
'Never had the time. I'm not the planning sort, you know.'
The face in the mirror got closer, as if the figure had moved a little nearer to its side of the mirror.
'You've lost, Desiderata Hollow.'
'So it goes.' Desiderata got to her feet, a little unsteadily, and picked up a cloth.
The figure seemed to be getting angry. It clearly felt that people who had lost ought to look downcast, and not as if they were enjoying a joke at your expense.
'Don't you understand what losing means?'
'Some people are very clear about that,' said Desiderata. 'Goodbye, m'lady.' She hung the cloth over the mirror.
There was an angry intake of breath, and then silence.
Desiderata stood as if lost in thought.
Then she raised her head, and said: 'Kettle boiled just now. Would you like a cup of tea?'
No, THANK YOU, said a voice right behind her.
'How long have you been waiting?'
FOREVER.
'Not keeping you, am I?'
IT'S A QUIET NIGHT.
'I'm making a cup of tea. I think there's one biscuit left.'
NO, THANK YOU.
'If you feel peckish, it's in the jar on the mantelpiece. That's genuine Klatchian pottery, you know. Made by a genuine Klatchian craftsman. From Klatch,' she added.
INDEED?
'I used to get about a lot in my younger days.'
YES?
'Great times.' Desiderata poked the fire. 'It was the job, you see. Of course, I expect it's very much the same for you.'
YES.
'I never knew when I was going to be called out. Well, of course you'd know about that, wouldn't you. Kitchens, mainly. It always seemed to be kitchens. Balls sometimes, but generally it was kitchens.' She picked up the kettle and poured the boiling water into the teapot on the hearth.
INDEED.
'I used to grant their wishes.'
Death looked puzzled.
WHAT? You MEAN LIKE . . . FITTED CUPBOARDS? NEW SINKS? THAT KIND OF THING?
'No, no. The people.' Desiderata sighed. 'It's a big responsibility, fairy godmothering. Knowing when to stop, I mean. People whose wishes get granted often don't turn out to be very nice people. So should you give them what they want - or what they need?'
Death nodded politely. From his point of view, people got what they were given.
'Like this Genua thing - ' Desiderata began.
Death looked up sharply.
GENUA?
'You know it? Well, of course you would.'
I ... KNOW EVERYWHERE, OF COURSE.
Desiderata's expression softened. Her inner eyes were looking elsewhere.
'There were two of us. Godmothers go in twos, you know. Me and Lady Lilith? There's a lot of power in godmothering. It's like being part of history. Anyway, the girl was born, out of wedlock but none the worse for that, it wasn't as if they couldn't have married, they just never got round to it... and Lilith wished for her to have beauty and power and marry a prince. Hah! And she's been working on that ever since. What could I do? You can't argue with wishes like that. Lilith knows the power of a story. I've done the best I could, but Lilith's got the power. I hear she runs the city now. Changing a whole country just to make a story work! And now it's too late anyway. For me. So I'm handing on the responsibility. That's how it goes, with fairy godmothering. No-one ever wants to be a fairy godmother. Except Lilith, of course. Got a bee in her bonnet about it. So I'm sending someone else. I may have left things too late.'
Desiderata was a kindly soul. Fairy godmothers develop a very deep understanding about human nature, which makes the good ones kind and the bad ones powerful.
She was not someone to use extreme language, but it was possible to be sure that when she deployed a mild term like 'a bee in her bonnet' she was using it to define someone whom she believed to be several miles over the madness horizon and accelerating.
She poured out the tea.
'That's the trouble with second sight,' she said. 'You can see what's happenin', but you don't know what it means. I've seen the future. There's a coach made out of a pumpkin. And that's impossible. And there's coachmen made out of mice, which is unlikely. And there's a clock striking midnight, and something about a glass slipper. And it's all going to happen. Because that's how stories have to work. And then I thought: I knows some people who make stories work their, way.'
She sighed again. 'Wish I was going to Genua,' she said. 'I could do with the warmth. And it's Fat Tuesday coming up. Always went to Genua for Fat Tuesday in the old days.'
There was an expectant silence.
Then Death said, YOU SURELY ARE NOT ASKING ME TO GRANT A WISH ?
'Hah! No-one grants a fairy godmother's wishes.' Desiderata had that inward look again, her voice talking to herself. 'See? I got to get the three of them to Genua. Got to get 'em there because I've seen 'em there. Got to be all three. And that ain't easy, with people like them. Got to use headology. Got to make 'em send 'emselves. Tell Esme Weatherwax she's got to go somewhere and she won't go out of contrariness, so tell her she's not to go and she'll run there over broken glass. That's the thing about the Weatherwaxes, see. They don't know how to be beaten.'
Something seemed to strike her as funny.
'But one of 'em's going to have to learn.'
Death said nothing. From where he sat, Desiderata reflected, losing was something that everyone learned.
She drained her tea. Then she stood up, put on her pointy hat with a certain amount of ceremony, and hobbled out of the back door.
There was a deep trench dug under the trees a little way from the house, down into which someone had thoughtfully put a short ladder. She climbed in and, with some difficulty, heaved the ladder on to the leaves. Then she lay down. She sat up.
'Mr Chert the troll down at the sawmill does a very good deal on coffins, if you don't mind pine.'
I SHALL DEFINITELY BEAR IT IN MIND.
'I got Hurker the poacher to dig the hole out for me,' she said conversationally, 'and he's goin' to come along and fill it in on his way home. I believe in being neat. Take it away, maestro.'
WHAT? OH. A FIGURE OF SPEECH.
He raised his scythe.
Desiderata Hollow went to her rest.
'Well,' she said, 'that was easy. What happens now?'
And this is Genua. The magical kingdom. The diamond city. The fortunate country.
In the centre of the city a woman stood between two mirrors, watching herself reflected all the way to infinity.
The mirrors were themselves in the centre of an octagon of mirrors, open to the sky on the highest tower of the palace. There were so many reflections, in fact, that it was only with extreme difficulty that you could tell where the mirrors ended and the real person began.
Her name was Lady Lilith de Tempscire, although she had answered to many others in the course of a long and eventful life. And that was something you learned to do early on, she'd found. If you wanted to get anywhere in this world - and she'd decided, right at the start, that she wanted to get as far as it was possible to go - you wore names lightly, and you took power anywhere you found it. She had buried three husbands, and at least two of them had been already dead.
And you moved around a lot. Because most people didn't move around much. Change countries and your name and, if you had the right manner, the world was your mollusc. For example, she'd had to go a mere hundred miles to become a Lady.
She'd go to any lengths now . . .
The two main mirrors were set almost, but not quite, facing one another, so that Lilith could see over her shoulder and watch her images curve away around the universe inside the mirror.
She could feel herself pouring into herself, multiplying itself via the endless reflections.
When Lilith sighed and strode out from the Space between the mirrors the effect was startling. Images of Lilith hung in the air behind her for a moment, like three-dimensional shadows, before fading.
So ... Desiderata was dying. Interfering old baggage. She deserved death. She'd never understood the kind of power she'd had. She was one of those people afraid to do good for fear of doing harm, who took it all so seriously that they'd constipate themselves with moral anguish before granting the wish of a single ant.
Lilith looked down and out over the city. Well, there were no barriers now. The stupid voodoo woman in the swamp was a mere distraction, with no understanding.
Nothing stood in the way of what Lilith liked more than anything else.
A happy ending.
Up on the mountain, the sabbat had settled down a bit. Artists and writers have always had a rather exaggerated idea about what goes on at a witches' sabbat. This comes from spending too much time in small rooms with the curtains drawn, instead of getting out in the healthy fresh air.
For example, there's the dancing around naked. In the average temperate climate there are very few nights when anyone would dance around at midnight with no clothes on, quite apart from the question of stones, thistles, and sudden hedgehogs.
Then there's all that business with goat-headed gods. Most witches don't believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don't believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.
And there's the food and drink - the bits of reptile and so on. In fact, witches don't go for that sort of thing. The worst you can say about the eating habits of the older type of witch is that they tend to like ginger biscuits dipped in tea with so much sugar in it that the spoon won't move and will drink it out of the saucer if they think it's too hot. And do so with appreciative noises more generally associated with the cheaper type of plumbing system. Legs of toad and so on might be better than this.
Then there's the mystic ointments. By sheer luck, the artists and writers are on firmer ground here. Most witches are elderly, which is when ointments start to have an attraction, and at least two of those present tonight were wearing Granny Weatherwax's famous goose-grease-and-sage chest liniment. This didn't make you fly and see visions, but it did prevent colds, if only because the distressing smell that developed around about the second week kept everyone else so far away you couldn't catch anything from them.
And finally there's sabbats themselves. Your average witch is not, by nature, a social animal as far as other witches are concerned. There's a conflict of dominant personalities. There's a group of ringleaders without a ring. There's the basic unwritten rule of witchcraft, which is 'Don't do what you will, do what I say.' The natural size of a coven is one. Witches only get together when they can't avoid it.
Like now.
The conversation, given Desiderata's absence, had naturally turned to the increasing shortage of witches.*
'What, no-one?' said Granny Weatherwax.
'No-one,' said Gammer Brevis.
'I call that terrible,' said Granny. 'That's disgustin'.'
'Eh?' said Old Mother Dismass.
'She calls it disgusting!' shouted Gammer Brevis.
'Eh?'
'There's no girl to put forward! To take Desiderata's place!'
'Oh.'
The implications of this sank in.
'If anyone doesn't want their crusts I'll 'ave 'em,' said Nanny Ogg.
'We never had this sort of thing in my young days,' said Granny. 'There was a dozen witches this side of the mountain alone. Of course, that was before all this' - she made a face - 'making your own entertainment. There's far too much of this making your own entertainment these days. We never made our own entertainment when I was a girl. We never had time.'
'Tempers fuggit,' said Nanny Ogg.
'What?'
'Tempers fuggit. Means that was then and this is now,' said Nanny.
'I don't need no-one to tell me that, Gytha Ogg. I know when now is.'
'You got to move with the times.'
'I don't see why. Don't see why we - '
'So I reckon we got to shift the boundaries again,' said Gammer Brevis.
'Can't do that,' said Granny Weatherwax promptly.
* Desiderata had sent a note via Old Mother Dismass asking to be excused on account of being dead. Second sight enables you to keep a very tight rein on your social engagements.
'I'm doing four villages already. The broomstick hardly has time to cool down.'
'Well, with Mother Hollow passing on, we're definitely short handed,' said Gammer Brevis. 'I know she didn't do a lot, what with her other work, but she was there. That's what it's all about. Being there. There's got to be a local witch.'
The four witches stared gloomily at the fire. Well, three of them did. Nanny Ogg, who tended to look on the cheerful side, made toast.
'They've got a wizard in, down in Creel Springs,' said Gammer Brevis. 'There wasn't anyone to take over when old Granny Hopliss passed on, so they sent off to Ankh-Morpork for a wizard. An actual wizard. With a staff. He's got a shop there and everything, with a brass sign on the door. It says "Wizard".'
The witches sighed.
'Mrs Singe passed on,' said Gammer Brevis. 'And Gammer Peavey passed on.'
'Did she? Old Mabel Peavey?' said Nanny Ogg, through a shower of crumbs. 'How old was she?'
'One hundred and nineteen,' said Gammer Brevis. 'I said to her, "You don't want to go climbing mountains at your age" but she wouldn't listen.'
'Some people are like that,' said Granny. 'Stubborn as mules. Tell them they mustn't do something and they won't stop till they've tried it.'
'I actually heard her very last words,' said Gammer.
'What did she say?' said Granny.
'As I recall, "oh bugger",' said Gammer.
'It's the way she would have wanted to go,' said Nanny Ogg. The other witches nodded.
'You know ... we could be looking at the end of witchcraft in these parts,' said Gammer Brevis.
They stared at the fire again.
'I don't 'spect anyone's brought any marshmallows?' said Nanny Ogg, hopefully.
Granny Weatherwax looked at her sister witches. Gammer Brevis she couldn't stand; the old woman taught school on the other side of the mountain, and had a nasty habit of being reasonable when provoked. And Old Mother Dismass was possibly the most useless sibyl in the history of oracular revelation. And Granny really couldn't be having at all with Nanny Ogg, who was her best friend.
'What about young Magrat?' said Old Mother Dismass innocently. 'Her patch runs right alongside Desiderata's. Maybe she could take on a bit extra?'
Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg exchanged glances.
'She's gone funny in the head,' said Granny.
'Now, come on, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg. ' 'Well, I call it funny,' said Granny. 'You can't tell me that saying all that stuff about relatives isn't going funny in the head."
'She didn't say that,' said Nanny. 'She said she wanted to relate to herself.'
'That's what I said,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'I told her: Simplicity Garlick was your mother, Araminta Garlick was your granny. Yolande Garlick is your aunt and you're your . , . you're your me.'
She sat back with the satisfied look of someone who has solved everything anyone could ever want to know about a personal identity crisis.
'She wouldn't listen,' she added.
Gammer Brevis wrinkled her forehead.
'Magrat?' she said. She tried to get a mental picture of the Ramtops' youngest witch and recalled - well, not a face, just a slightly watery-eyed expression of hopeless goodwill wedged between a body like a maypole and hair like a haystack after a gale. A relentless doer of good works. A worrier. The kind of person who rescued small lost baby birds and cried when they died, which is the function kind old Mother Nature usually reserves for small lost baby birds.
'Doesn't sound like her,' she said.
'And she said she wanted to be more self-assertive,' said Granny.
'Nothing wrong with being self-assertive,' said Nanny. 'Self-asserting's what witching's all about.'
'I never said there was anything wrong with it,' said Granny. 'I told her there was nothing wrong with it. You can be as self-assertive as you like, I said, just so long as you do what you're told.'
'Rub this on and it'll clear up in a week or two,' said Old Mother Dismass.
The other three witches watched her expectantly, in case there was going to be anything else. It became clear that there wasn't.
'And she's running - what's that she's running, Gytha?' said Granny. -
'Self-defence classes,' said Nanny.
'But she's a witch,' Gammer Brevis pointed out.
'I told her that,' said Granny Weatherwax, who had walked nightly without fear in the bandit-haunted forests of the mountains all her life in the certain knowledge that the darkness held nothing more terrible than she was. 'She said that wasn't the point. Wasn't the point. That's what she said.'
'No-one goes to them, anyway,' said Nanny Ogg.
'I thought she was going to get married to the king,' said Gammer Brevis.
'Everyone did,' said Nanny. 'But you know Magrat. She tends to be open to Ideas. Now she says she refuses to be a sex object.'
They all thought about this. Finally Gammer Brevis said, slowly, in the manner of one surfacing from the depths of fascinated cogitation, 'But she's never been a sex object.'
'I'm pleased to say I don't even know what a sex object is,' said Granny Weatherwax firmly.
'I do,' said Nanny Ogg.
They looked at her.
'Our Shane brought one home from foreign parts once.'
They carried on looking at her.
'It was brown and fat and had beads on and a face and two holes for the string.'
This didn't seem to avert their gaze.
'Well, that's what he said it was,' said Nanny.
'I think you're talking about a fertility idol,' said Gammer Brevis helpfully.
Granny shook her head.
'Doesn't sound much like Magrat to me - ' she began.
'You can't tell me that's worth tuppence,' said Old Mother Dismass, from whatever moment of time she was currently occupying.
No-one was ever quite sure which it was.
It was an occupational hazard for those gifted with second sight. The human mind isn't really designed to be sent rocketing backwards and forwards along the great freeway of time and can become, as it were, detached from its anchorage, seeing randomly into the past and the future and only occasionally into the present. Old Mother Dismass was temporally unfocused. This meant that if you spoke to her in August she was probably listening to you in March. It was best just to say something now and hope she'd pick it up next time her mind was passing through.
Granny waved her hands experimentally in front of Old Mother Dismass's unseeing eyes.
'She's gone again,' she said.
'Well, if Magrat can't take it on there's Millie Hopgood from over Slice way,' said Gammer Brevis. 'She's a hardworking girl. Mind you, she's got a worse squint than Magrat.'
'Nothing wrong with that. A squint looks good on a witch,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'But you have to know how to use it,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Old Gertie Simmons used to have a squint and she was always putting the evil influence on the end of her own nose. We can't have people thinkin' that if you upsets a witch she curses and mutters and then her own nose drops off.'
They all stared at the fire again.
'I suppose Desiderata wouldn't have chosen her own successor?' said Gammer Brevis.
'Can't go doin' that,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'That's not how we do things in these parts.'
'Yes, but Desiderata didn't spend much time in these parts. It was the job. She was always going off to foreign parts.'
'I can't be having with foreign parts,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'You've been to Ankh-Morpork,' said Nanny mildly. 'That's foreign.'
'No it's not. It's just a long way off. That's not the same as foreign. Foreign's where they gabble at you in heathen lingo and eat foreign muck and worship, you know, objects,' said Granny Weatherwax, goodwill diplomat. 'Foreign can be quite close to, if you're not careful. Huh,' she added witheringly. 'Yes, she could bring back just about anything from foreign parts.'
'She brought me back a nice blue and white plate once,' said Nanny Ogg.
'That's a point,' said Gammer Brevis. 'Someone'd better go and see to her cottage. She had quite a lot of good stuff there. It'd be dreadful to think of some thief getting in there and having a rummage.'
'Can't imagine any thief'd want to break into a witch's - ' Granny began, and then stopped abruptly.
'Yes,' she said meekly. 'Good idea. I'll see to it directly.'
'No, I'll see to it,' said Nanny Ogg, who'd also had time to work something out. 'It's right on my way home. No problem.'
'No, you'll be wanting to get home early,' said Granny. 'Don't you bother yourself. It'd be no trouble.'
'Oh, it won't be any trouble at all,' said Nanny.
'You don't want to go tiring yourself out at your age,' said Granny Weatherwax.
They glared at one another.
'I really don't see that it matters,' said Gammer Brevis. 'You might as well go together rather than fight about it.'
'I'm a bit busy tomorrow,' said Granny. 'How about after lunch?'
'Right,' said Nanny Ogg. 'We'll meet at her cottage. Right after lunch.'
'We had one once but the bit you unscrew fell off and got lost,' said Old Mother Dismass.
Hurker the poacher shovelled the last of the earth into the hole. He felt he ought to say a few words.
'Well, that's about it, then,' he said.
She'd definitely been one of the better witches, he thought, as he wandered back to the cottage in the pre-dawn gloom. Some of the other ones - while of course being wonderful human beings, he added to himself hurriedly, as fine a bunch of women as you could ever hope to avoid - were just a bit overpowering. Mistress Hollow had been a listening kind of person.
On the kitchen table was a long package, a small pile of coins, and an envelope.
He opened the envelope, although it was not addressed to him.
Inside was a smaller envelope, and a note.
The note said: I'm watching you, Albert Hurker. Deliver the packige and the envlope and if you dare take a peek inside something dretful will happen to you. As a profesional Good Farey Godmother I aint allowed to curse anyone but I Predict it would probly involve bein bittern by an enraged wolf and your leg going green and runny and dropping off, dont arsk me how I know anyway you carnt because, I am dead. All the best, Desiderata.
He picked up the package with his eyes shut.
Light travels slowly in the Discworld's vast magical field, which means that time does too. As Nanny Ogg would put it, when it's teatime in Genua it's Tuesday over here . . .
In fact it was dawn in Genua. Lilith sat in her tower, using a mirror, sending her own image out to scan the world. She was searching.
Wherever there was a sparkle on a wave crest, wherever there was a sheet of ice, wherever there was a mirror or a reflection then Lilith knew she could see out. You didn't need a magic mirror. Any mirror would do, if you knew how to use it. And Lilith, crackling with the power of a million images, knew that very well.
There was just a nagging doubt. Presumably Desiderata would have got rid of it. Her sort were like that. Conscientious. And presumably it would be to that stupid girl with the watery eyes who sometimes visited the cottage, the one with all the cheap jewellery and the bad taste in clothes. She looked just the type.
But Lilith wanted to be sure. She hadn't got where she was today without being sure.
In puddles and windows all over Lancre, the face of Lilith appeared momentarily and then moved on ...
And now it was dawn in Lancre. Autumn mists rolled through the forest.
Granny Weatherwax pushed open the cottage door. It wasn't locked. The only visitor Desiderata had been expecting wasn't the sort to be put off by locks.
'She's had herself buried round the back,' said a voice behind her. It was Nanny Ogg.
Granny considered her next move. To point out that Nanny had deliberately come early, so as to search the cottage by herself, then raised questions about Granny's own presence. She could undoubtedly answer them, given enough time. On the whole, it was probably best just to get on with things.
'Ah,' she said, nodding. 'Always very neat in her ways, was Desiderata.'
'Well, it was the job,' said Nanny Ogg, pushing past her and eyeing the room's contents speculatively. 'You got to be able to keep track of things, in a job like hers. By gor', that's a bloody enormous cat.'
'It's a lion,' said Granny Weatherwax, looking at the stuffed head over the fireplace.
'Must've hit the wall at a hell of a speed, whatever it was,' said Nanny Ogg.
'Someone killed it,' said Granny Weatherwax, surveying the room.
'Should think so,' said Nanny. 'If I'd seen something like that eatin' its way through the wall I'd of hit it myself with the poker.'
There was of course no such thing as a typical witch's cottage, but if there was such a thing as a non-typical witch's cottage, then this was certainly it. Apart from various glassy-eyed animal heads, the walls were covered in bookshelves and water-colour pictures. There was a spear in the umbrella stand. Instead of the more usual earthenware and china on the dresser there were foreign-looking brass pots and fine blue porcelain. There wasn't a dried herb anywhere in the place but there were a great many books, most of them filled with Desiderata's small, neat handwriting. A whole table was covered with what were probably maps, meticulously drawn.
Granny Weatherwax didn't like maps. She felt instinctively that they sold the landscape short.
'She certainly got about a bit,' said Nanny Ogg, picking up a carved ivory fan and flirting coquettishly.*
'Well, it was easy for her,' said Granny, opening a few drawers. She ran her fingers along the top of the mantelpiece and looked at them critically.
* Nanny Ogg didn't know what a coquette was, although she could probably hazard a guess.
'She could have found time to go over the place with a duster,' she said vaguely. 'I wouldn't go and die and leave my place in this state.'
'I wonder where she left . . . you know . . . "?' said Nanny, opening the door of the grandfather clock and peering inside.
'Shame on you, Gytha Ogg,' said Granny. 'We're not here to look for that.'
'Of course not. I was just wondering . . .' Nanny Ogg tried to stand on tiptoe surreptitiously, in order to see on top of the dresser.
'Gytha! For shame! Go and make us a cup of tea!'
'Oh, all right.'
Nanny Ogg disappeared, muttering, into the scullery. After a few seconds there came the creaking of a pump handle.
Granny Weatherwax sidled towards a chair and felt quickly under the cushion.
There was a clatter from the next room. She straightened up hurriedly.
'I shouldn't think it'd be under the sink, neither,' she shouted.
Nanny Ogg's reply was inaudible.
Granny waited a moment, and then crept rapidly over to the big chimney. She reached up and felt cautiously around.
'Looking for something, Esme?' said Nanny Ogg behind her.
'The soot up here is terrible,' said Granny, standing up quickly. 'Terrible soot there is.'
'It's not up there, then?' said Nanny Ogg sweetly.
'Don't know what you're talking about.'
'You don't have to pretend. Everyone knows she must have had one,' said Nanny Ogg. 'It goes with the job. It practic'ly is the job.'
'Well . . . maybe I just wanted a look at it,' Granny admitted. 'Just hold it a while. Not use it. You wouldn't catch me using one of those things. I only ever saw it once or twice. There ain't many of 'em around these days.'
Nanny Ogg nodded. 'You can't get the wood,' she said.
'You don't think she's been buried with it, do you?'
'Shouldn't think so. I wouldn't want to be buried with it. Thing like that, it's a bit of a responsibility. Anyway, it wouldn't stay buried. A thing like that wants to be used. It'd be rattling around your coffin the whole time. You know the trouble they are.'
She relaxed a bit. 'I'll sort out the tea things,' she said. 'You light the fire.'
She wandered back into the scullery.
Granny Weatherwax reached along the mantelpiece for the matches, and then realized that there wouldn't be any. Desiderata had always said she was much too busy not to use magic around the house. Even her laundry did itself.
Granny disapproved of magic for domestic purposes, but she was annoyed. She also wanted her tea.
She threw a couple of logs into the fireplace and glared at them until they burst into flame out of sheer embarrassment.
It was then that her eye was caught by the shrouded mirror.
'Coverin' it over?' she murmured. 'I didn't know old Desiderata was frightened of thunderstorms.'
She twitched aside the cloth.
She stared.
Very few people in the world had more self-control than Granny Weatherwax. It was as rigid as a bar of cast iron. And about as flexible.
She smashed the mirror.
Lilith sat bolt upright in her tower of mirrors. Her?
The face was different, of course. Older. It had been a long time. But eyes don't change, and witches always look at the eyes.
Her!
Magrat Garlick, witch, was also standing in front of a mirror. In her case it was totally unmagical. It was also still in one piece, but there had been one or two close calls.
She frowned at her reflection, and then consulted the small, cheaply-woodcut leaflet that had arrived the previous day.
She mouthed a few words under her breath, straightened up, extended her hands in front of her, punched the air vigorously and said: 'HAAAAiiiiieeeeeeehgh! Um.'
Magrat would be the first to admit that she had an open mind. It was as open as a field, as open as the sky. No mind could be more open widiout special surgical implements. And she was always waiting for something to fill it up.
What it was currently filling up with was the search for inner peace and cosmic harmony and the true essence of Being.
When people say 'An idea came to me' it isn't just a metaphor. Raw inspirations, tiny particles of self-contained thought, are sleeting through the cosmos all the time. They get drawn to heads like Magrat's in the same way that water runs into a hole in the desert.
It was all due to her mother's lack of attention to spelling, she speculated. A caring parent would have spelled Margaret correctly. And then she could have been a Peggy, or a Maggie - big, robust names, full of reliability. There wasn't much you could do with a Magrat. It sounded like something that lived in a hole in a river bank and was always getting flooded out.
She considered changing it, but knew in her secret heart that this would not work. Even if she became a Chloe or an Isobel on top she'd still be a Magrat underneath.
But it would be nice to try. It'd be nice not to be a Magrat, even for a few hours.
It's thoughts like this that start people on the road to Finding Themselves. And one of the earliest things Magrat had learned was that anyone Finding Themselves would be unwise to tell Granny Weatherwax, who thought that female emancipation was a women's complaint that shouldn't be discussed in front of men.
Nanny Ogg was more sympathetic but had a tendency to come out with what Magrat thought of as double-intenders, although in Nanny Ogg's case they were generally single entendres and proud of it.
In short, Magrat had despaired of learning anything at all from her senior witches, and was casting her net further afield. Much further afield. About as far afield as a field could be.
It's a strange thing about determined seekers-after-wisdom that, no matter where they happen to be, they'll always seek that wisdom which is a long way off. Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is.*
* Hence, for example, the Way of Mrs Cosmopolite, very popular among young people who live in the hidden valleys above the snowline in the high Ramtops. Disdaining the utterances of their own saffron-clad, prayer-wheel-spinning elders, they occasionally travel all the way to No. 3 Quirm Street in flat and foggy Ankh-Morpork, to seek wisdom at the feet of Mrs Marietta Cosmopolite, a seamstress. No-one knows the reason for this apart from the aforesaid attractiveness of distant wisdom, since they can't understand a word she says or, more usually, screams at them. Many a bald young monk returns to his high fastness to meditate on the strange mantra vouchsafed to him, such as 'Push off you!' and 'If I see one more of you little orange devils peering in at me he'll feel the edge of my hand, all right?' and 'Why are you buggers all coming round here staring at my feet?' They have even developed a special branch of martial arts based on their experiences, where they shout incomprehensibly at one another and then hit their opponent with a broom.
Currently Magrat was finding herself through the Path of The Scorpion, which offered cosmic harmony, inner one-ness and the possibility of knocking an attacker's kidneys out through his ears. She'd sent off for it.
There were problems. The author, Grand Master Lobsang Dibbler, had an address in Ankh-Morpork. This did not seem like a likely seat of cosmic wisdom. Also, although he'd put in lots of stuff about the Way not being used for aggression and only to be used for cosmic wisdom, this was in quite small print between enthusiastic drawings of people hitting one another with rice flails and going 'Hai!' Later on you learned how to cut bricks in half with your hand and walk over red hot coals and other cosmic things.
Magrat thought that Ninja was a nice name for a girl.
She squared up to herself in the mirror again.
There was a knock at the door. Magrat went and opened it.
'Hai?' she said.
Hurker the poacher took a step backwards. He was already rather shaken. An angry wolf had trailed him part of the way through the forest.
'Um,' he said. He leaned forward, his shock changing to concern. 'Have you hurt your head, Miss?'
She looked at him in incomprehension. Then realization dawned. She reached up and took off the headband with the chrysanthemum pattern on it, without which it is almost impossible to properly seek cosmic wisdom by twisting an opponent's elbows through 360 degrees.
'No,' she said. 'What do you want?'
'Got a package for you,' said Hurker, presenting it.
It was about two feet long, and very thin.
'There's a note,' said Hurker helpfully. He shuffled around as she unfolded it, and tried to read it over her shoulder.
'It's private,' said Magrat.
'Is it?' said Hurker, agreeably.
'Yes!'
'I was tole you'd give me a penny for delivering it,' said the poacher. Magrat found one in her purse.
'Money forges the chains which bind the labouring classes,' she warned, handing it over. Hurker, who had never thought of himself as a labouring class in his life, but who was prepared to listen to almost any amount of gibberish in exchange for a penny, nodded innocently.
'And I hope your head gets better, Miss,' he said.
When Magrat was left alone in her kitchen-cum-dojo she unwrapped the parcel. It contained one slim white rod.
She looked at the note again. It said, 'I niver had time to Trane a replaysment so youll have to Do. You must goe to the city of Genua. I would of done thys myself only cannot by reason of bein dead. Ella Saturday muste NOTTE marry the prins. PS This is importent.'
She looked at her reflection in the mirror.
She looked down at the note again.
'PSPS Tell those 2 Olde Biddys they are Notte to come with Youe, they will onlie Ruine everythin.'
There was more.
'PSPSPS It has tendincy to resett to pumpkins but you will gett the hange of it in noe time.'
Magrat looked at the mirror again. And then down at the wand.
One minute life is simple, and then suddenly it stretches away full of complications.
'Oh, my,' she said. 'I'm a fairy godmother!'
Granny Weatherwax was still standing staring at the crazily-webbed fragments when Nanny Ogg ran in.
'Esme Weatherwax, what have you done? That's bad luck, that is ... Esme?'
'Her? Her?'
'Are you all right?'
Granny Weatherwax screwed up her eyes for a moment, and then shook her head as if trying to dislodge an unthinkable thought.
'What?'
'You've gone all pale. Never seen you go all pale like that before.'
Granny slowly removed a fragment of glass from her hat.
'Well... bit of a turn, the glass breaking like that. . .' she mumbled.
Nanny looked at Granny Weatherwax's hand. It was bleeding. Then she looked at Granny Weatherwax's face, and decided that she'd never admit that she'd looked at Granny Weatherwax's hand.
'Could be a sign,' she said, randomly selecting a safe topic. 'Once someone dies, you get that sort of thing. Pictures fallin' off walls, clocks stopping . . . great big wardrobes falling down the stairs . . . that sort of thing.'
'I've never believed in that stuff, it's . . . what do you mean, wardrobes falling down the stairs?' said Granny. She was breathing deeply. If it wasn't well known that Granny Weatherwax was tough, anyone might have thought she had just had the shock of her life and was practically desperate to take part in a bit of ordinary everyday bickering.
'That's what happened after my Great-Aunt Sophie died,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Three days and four hours and six minutes to the very minute after she died, her wardrobe fell down the stairs. Our Darren and our Jason were trying to get it round the bend and it sort of slipped, just like that. Uncanny. Weeell, I wasn't going to leave it there for her Agatha, was I, only ever visited her mum on Hogswatchday, and it was me that nursed Sophie all the way through to the end - '
Granny let the familiar, soothing litany of Nanny Ogg's family feud wash over her as she groped for the teacups.
The Oggs were what is known as an extended family - in fact not only extended but elongated, protracted and persistent. No normal sheet of paper could possibly trace their family tree, which in any case was more like a mangrove thicket. And every single branch had a low-key, chronic vendetta against every other branch, based on such well-established causes celebres as What Their Kevin Said About Our Stan At Cousin Di's Wedding and Who Got The Silver Cutlery That Auntie Em Promised Our Doreen Was To Have After She Died, I'd Like To Know, Thank You Very Much, #You Don't Mind.
Nanny Ogg, as undisputed matriarch, encouraged all sides indiscriminately. It was the nearest thing she had to a hobby.
The Oggs contained, in just one family, enough feuds to keep an entire Ozark of normal hillbillies going for a century.
And sometimes this encouraged a foolish outsider to join in and perhaps make an uncomplimentary remark about one Ogg to another Ogg. Whereupon every single Ogg would turn on him, every part of the family closing up together like the parts of a well-oiled, blue-steeled engine to deal instant merciless destruction to the interloper.
Ramtop people believed that the Ogg feud was a blessing. The thought of them turning their immense energy on the world in general was a terrible one. Fortunately, there was no-one an Ogg would rather fight than another Ogg. It was family.
Odd things, families, when you came to think of it...
'Esme? You all right?'
'What?'
'You've got them cups rattling like nobody's business! And tea all over the tray.'
Granny looked down blankly at the mess, and rallied as best she could.
'Not my damn fault if the damn cups are too small,' she muttered.
The door opened.
'Morning, Magrat,' she added, without looking around. 'What're you doing here?'
It was something about the way the hinges creaked. Magrat could even open a door apologetically.
The younger witch sidled speechlessly into the room, face beetroot red, arms held behind her back.
'We'd just popped in to sort out Desiderata's things, as our duty to a sister witch,' said Granny loudly.
'And not to look for her magic wand,' said Nanny.
'Gytha Ogg!'
Nanny Ogg looked momentarily guilty, and then hung her head.
'Sorry, Esme.'
Magrat brought her arms around in front of her.
'Er,' she said, and blushed further.
'You found it!' said Nanny.
'Uh, no,' said Magrat, not daring to look Granny in the eyes. 'Desiderata gave it to ... me.'
The silence crackled and hummed.
'She gave it to you? said Granny Weatherwax.
'Uh. Yes.'
Nanny and Granny looked at one another.
'Well!' said Nanny.
'She does know you, doesn't she?' demanded Granny, turning back to Magrat.
'I used to come over here quite often to look at her books,' Magrat confessed. 'And . . . and she liked to cook foreign food and no-one else round here would eat it, so I'd come up to keep her company.'
'Ah-hal Curryin' favour!' snapped Granny.
'But I never thought she'd leave me the wand,' said Magrat. 'Really I didn't!'
'There's probably some mistake,' said Nanny Ogg kindly. 'She probably wanted you to give it to one of us.'
'That'll be it, right enough,' said Granny. 'She knew you were good at running errands and so on. Let's have a look at it.'
She held out her hand.
Magrat's knuckles tightened on the wand.
'. . . she gave it me . . .' she said, in a tiny voice.
'Her mind was definitely wandering towards the end,' said Granny.
'. . . she gave it me . . .'
'Fairy godmotherin's a terrible responsibility,' said Nanny. 'You got to be resourceful and flexible and tactful and able to deal with complicated affairs of the heart and stuff. Desiderata would have known that.'
'. . . yes, but she gave it me . . .'
'Magrat Garlick, as senior witch I command you to give me the wand,' said Granny. 'They cause nothing but trouble!'
'Hold on, hold on,' said Nanny. 'That's going a bit far-'
'. . . no . . .' said Magrat.
'Anyway, you ain't senior witch,' said Nanny. 'Old Mother Dismass is older'n you.'
'Shut up. Anyway, she's non compost mental,' said Granny.
'. . . you can't order me. Witches are non-hierarchical . . .' said Magrat.
'That is wanton behaviour, Magrat Garlick!'
'No it's not,' said Nanny Ogg, trying to keep the peace. 'Wanton behaviour is where you go around without wearing any - '
She stopped. Both of the older witches watched a small piece of paper fall out of Magrat's sleeve and zigzag down to the floor. Granny darted forward and snatched it up.
'Aha!' she said triumphantly. 'Let's see what Desiderata really said ..."
Her lips moved as she read the note. Magrat tried to wind herself up tighter.
A couple of muscles flickered on Granny's face. Then, calmly, she screwed up the note.
'Just as I thought,' she said, 'Desiderata says we are to give Magrat all the help we can, what with her being young and everything. Didn't she, Magrat?'
Magrat looked up into Granny's face.
You could call her out, she thought. The note was very clear. . . well, the bit about the older witches was, anyway . . . and you could make her read it aloud. It's as plain as day. Do you want to be third witch forever? And then the flame of rebellion, burning in a very unfamiliar hearth, died.
'Yes,' she muttered hopelessly, 'something like that.'
'It says it's very important we go to some place somewhere to help someone marry a prince,' said Granny.
'It's Genua,' said Magrat. 'I looked it up in Desiderata's books. And we've got to make sure she doesn't marry a prince.'
'A fairy godmother stopping a girl from marryin" a prince?' said Nanny. 'Sounds a bit... contrary."
'Should be an easy enough wish to grant, anyway,' said Granny. 'Millions of girls don't marry a prince.'
Magrat made an effort.
'Genua really is a long way away,' she said.
'I should 'ope so,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'The last thing we want is foreign parts up close.'
'I mean, there'll be a lot of travelling,' said Magrat wretchedly. 'And you're . . . not as young as you were.'
There was a long, crowded silence.
'We start tomorrow,' said Granny Weatherwax firmly.
'Look,' said Magrat desperately, 'why don't I go by myself?'
' 'Cos you ain't experienced at fairy godmothering,' said Granny Weatherwax.
This was too much even for Magrat's generous soul.
'Well, nor are you,' she said.
'That's true,' Granny conceded. 'But the point is ... the point is ... the point is we've not been experienced for a lot longer than you.'
'We've got a lot of experience of not having any experience,' said Nanny Ogg happily.
"That's what counts every time,' said Granny.
There was only one small, speckled mirror in Granny's house. When she got home, she buried it at the bottom of the garden.
'There,' she said. 'Now trying spyin' on me.'
It never seemed possible to people that Jason Ogg, master blacksmith and farrier, was Nanny Ogg's son. He didn't look as if he could possibly have been born, but as if he must have been constructed. In a shipyard. To his essentially slow and gentle nature genetics had seen fit to add muscles that should have gone to a couple of bullocks, arms like treetrunks, and legs like four beer barrels stacked in twos.
To his glowing forge were brought the stud stallions, the red-eyed and foam-flecked kings of the horse nation, the soup-plate-hoofed beasts that had kicked lesser men through walls. But Jason Ogg knew the secret of the mystic Horseman's Word, and he would go alone into the forge, politely shut the door, and lead the creature out again after half an hour, newly shod and strangely docile.*
Behind his huge brooding shape clustered the rest of Nanny Ogg's endless family and a lot of other townsfolk who, seeing some interesting activity involving witches, couldn't resist the opportunity for what was known in the Ramtops as a good oggle.
'We'm off then, our Jason,' said Nanny Ogg. 'They do say the streets in foreign parts are paved with gold. I could prob'ly make my fortune, eh?'
Jason's hairy brow creased in intense thought.
'Us could do with a new anvil down forge,' he volunteered.
* Granny Weatherwax had once pressed him about this, and since there are no secrets from a witch, he'd shyly replied, 'Well, ma'am, what happens is, I gets hold of 'un and smacks 'un between the eyes with hammer before 'un knows what's 'appening, and then I whispers in his ear, I sez, "Cross me, you bugger, and I'll have thy goolies on t'anvil, thou knows I can."'
'If I come back rich, you won't never have to go down the forge ever again,' said Nanny.
Jason frowned.
'But I likes t'forge,' he said, slowly.
Nanny looked momentarily taken aback. 'Well, then -then you shall have an anvil made of solid silver.'
'Wunt be no good, ma. It'd be too soft,' said Jason.
'If I brings you back an anvil made of solid silver you shall have an anvil made of solid silver, my lad, whether you likes it or not!'
Jason hung his huge head. 'Yes, mum,' he said.
'You see to it that someone comes in to keep the house aired every day reg'lar,' said Nanny. 'I want a fire lit in that grate every morning.'
'Yes, mum.'
'And everyone's to go in through the back door, you hear? I've put a curse on the front porch. Where's those girls got to with my luggage?' She scurried off, a small grey bantam scolding a flock of hens.
Magrat listened to all this with interest. Her own preparations had consisted of a large sack containing several changes of clothes to accommodate whatever weather foreign parts might suffer from, and a rather smaller one containing a number of useful-looking books from Desiderata Hollow's cottage. Desiderata had been a great note-taker, and had filled dozens of little books with neat writing and chapter headings like 'With Wand and Broomstick Across the Great Nef Desert'.
What she had never bothered to do, it seemed, was write down any instructions for the wand. As far as Magrat knew, you waved it and wished.
Along the track to her cottage, several unanticipated pumpkins bore witness to this as an unreliable strategy. One of them still thought it was a stoat.
Now Magrat was left alone with Jason, who shuffled his feet.
He touched his forelock. He'd been brought up to be
respectful to women, and Magrat fell broadly into this category.
'You will look after our mum, won't you, Mistress Garlick?' he said, a hint of worry in his voice. 'She'm acting awful strange.'
Magrat patted him gently on the shoulder.
'This sort of thing happens all the time,' she said. 'You know, after a woman's raised a family and so on, she wants to start living her own life.'
'Whose life she bin living, then?'
Magrat gave him a puzzled look. She hadn't questioned the wisdom of the thought when it had first arrived in her head.
'You see, what it is,' she said, making an explanation up as she went along, 'there comes a time in a woman's life when she wants to find herself.'
'Why dint she start looking here?' said Jason plaintively. 'I mean, I ain't wanting to talk out of turn, Miss Garlick, but we was looking to you to persuade her and Mistress Weatherwax not to go.'
'I tried,' said Magrat. 'I really did. I said, you don't want to go, I said. Anno domini, I said. Not as young as you used to be, I said. Silly to go hundreds of miles just for something like this, especially at your age.'
Jason put his head on one side. Jason Ogg wouldn't end up in the finals of the All-Discworld uptake speed trials, but he knew his own mother.
'You said all that to our mum?' he said.
'Look, don't worry,' said Magrat, 'I'm sure no harm can- '
There was a crash somewhere over their heads. A few autumn leaves spiralled gently towards the ground.
'Bloody tree . . . who put that bloody tree there?' came a voice from on high.
'That'll be Granny,' said Magrat.
It was one of the weak spots of Granny Weatherwax's otherwise well-developed character that she'd never bothered to get the hang of steering things. It was alien to her nature. She took the view that it was her job to move and the rest of the world to arrange itself so that she arrived at her destination. This meant that she occasionally had to climb down trees she'd never climbed up. This she did now, dropping the last few feet and daring anyone to comment.
'Well, now we're all here,' said Magrat brightly.
It didn't work. Granny Weatherwax's eyes focused immediately somewhere around Magrat's knees.
'And what do you think you're wearing?' she said.
'Ah. Um. I thought ... I mean, it gets cold up there . . . what with the wind and everything,' Magrat began. She had been dreading this, and hating herself for being so weak. After all, they were practical. The idea had come to her one night. Apart from anything else, it was almost impossible to do Air Lobsang Dibbler's cosmic harmony death kicks when your legs kept getting tangled in a skirt.
'Trousers?'
'They're not exactly the same as ordinary - '
'And there's men 'ere lookin',' said Granny. 'I think it's shameful!'
'What is?' said Nanny Ogg, coming up behind her.
'Magrat Garlick, standin' there bifurcated,' said Granny, sticking her nose in the air.
'Just so long as she got the young man's name and address,' said Nanny Ogg amiably.
'Nanny!' said Magrat.
'I think they look quite comfy,' Nanny went on. 'A bit baggy, though.'
'I don't 'old with it,' said Granny. 'Everyone can see her legs.'
'No they can't,' said Nanny. 'The reason being, the material is in the way.'
'Yes, but they can see where her legs are,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'That's silly. That's like saying everyone's naked under their clothes,' said Magrat.
'Magrat Garlick, may you be forgiven,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'Well, it's true!'
'I'm not,' said Granny flatly, 'I got three vests on.'
She looked Nanny up and down; Gytha Ogg, too, had made sartorial preparations for foreign parts. Granny Weatherwax could find little to disapprove of, although she made an effort.
'And will you look at your hat,' she mumbled. Nanny, who had known Esme Weatherwax for seventy years, merely grinned.
'All the go, ain't it?' she said. 'Made by Mr Vernissage over in Slice. It's got willow reinforcing all the way up to the point and eighteen pockets inside. Can stop a blow with a hammer, this hat. And how about these?'
Nanny raised the hem of her skirt. She was wearing new boots. As boots, Granny Weatherwax could find nothing to complain of in them. They were of proper witch construction, which is to say that a loaded cart could have run over them without causing a dent in the dense leather. As boots, the only thing wrong with them was the colour.
'Red?' said Granny. 'That's no colour for a witch's boots!'
'I likes 'em,' said Nanny.
Granny sniffed. 'You can please yourself, I'm sure,' she said. 'I'm sure in foreign parts they goes in for all sorts of outlandish things. But you know what they say about women who wear red boots.'
'Just so long as they also say they've got dry feet,' said Nanny cheerfully. She put her door key into Jason's hand.
'I'll write you letters if you promise to find someone to read them to you,' she said.
'Yes, mum. What about the cat, mum?' said Jason.
'Oh, Greebo's coming with us,' said Nanny Ogg.
'What? But he's a cat!' snapped Granny Weatherwax. 'You can't take cats with you! I'm not going travellin' with no cat! It's bad enough travellin' with trousers and provocative boots!'
'He'll miss his mummy if he's left behind, won't he,' crooned Nanny Ogg, picking up Greebo. He hung limply, like a bag of water gripped around the middle.
To Nanny Ogg Greebo was still the cute little kitten that chased balls of wool around the floor.
To the rest of the world he was an enormous tomcat, a parcel of incredibly indestructible life forces in a skin that looked less like a fur than a piece of bread that had been left in a damp place for a fortnight. Strangers often took pity on him because his ears were non-existent and his face looked as though a bear had camped on it. They could not know that this was because Greebo, as a matter of feline pride, would attempt to fight or rape absolutely anything, up to and including a four-horse logging wagon. Ferocious dogs would whine and hide under the stairs when Greebo sauntered down the street. Foxes kept away from the village. Wolves made a detour.
'He's an old softy really,' said Nanny.
Greebo turned upon Granny Weatherwax a yellow-eyed stare of self-satisfied malevolence, such as cats always reserve for people who don't like them, and purred. Greebo was possibly the only cat who could snigger in purr.
'Anyway,' said Nanny, 'witches are supposed to like cats.'
'Not cats like him, they're not.'
'You're just not a cat person, Esme,' said Nanny, cuddling Greebo tightly.
Jason Ogg pulled Magrat aside.
'Our Scan read to me in the almanac where there's all these fearsome wild beasts in foreign parts,' he whispered.
'Huge hairy things that leap out on travellers, it said. I'd hate to think what'd happen if they leapt out on mum and Granny.'
Magrat looked up into his big red face.
'You will see no harm comes to them, won't you,' said Jason.
'Don't you worry,' she said, hoping that he needn't. 'I'll do my best.'
Jason nodded. 'Only it said in the almanac that some of them were nearly extinct anyway,' he said.
The sun was well up when the three witches spiralled into the sky. They had been delayed for a while because of the intractability of Granny Weatherwax's broomstick, the starting of which always required a great deal of galloping up and down. It never seemed to get the message until it was being shoved through the air at a frantic running speed. Dwarf engineers everywhere had confessed themselves totally mystified by it. They had replaced the stick and the bristles dozens of times.
When it rose, eventually, it was to a chorus of cheers.
The tiny kingdom of Lancre occupied little more than a wide ledge cut into the side of the Ramtop mountains. Behind it, knife-edge peaks and dark winding valleys climbed into the massive backbone of the central ranges.
In front, the land dropped abruptly to the Sto plains, a blue haze of woodlands, a broader expanse of ocean and, somewhere in the middle of it all, a brown smudge known as Ankh-Morpork.
A skylark sang, or at least started to sing. The rising point of Granny Weatherwax's hat right underneath it completely put it off the rhythm.
'I ain't going any higher,' she said.
'If we go high enough we might be able to see where we're going,' said Magrat.
'You said you looked at Desiderata's maps,' said Granny.
'It looks different from up here, though,' said Magrat. 'More . . . sticking up. But I think we go ... that way.'
'You sure?'
Which was the wrong question to ask a witch. Especially if the person doing the asking was Granny Weatherwax.
'Positive,' said Magrat.
Nanny Ogg looked up at the high peaks.
'There's a lot of big mountains that way,' she said.
They rose tier on tier, speckled with snow, trailing endless pennants of ice crystals high overhead. No-one ski'd in the high Ramtops, at least for more than a few feet and a disappearing scream. No-one ran up them wearing dirndls and singing. They were not nice mountains. They were the kind of mountains where winters went for their summer holidays.
"There's passes and things through them,' said Magrat uncertainly.
'Bound to be,' said Nanny.
You can use two mirrors like this, if you know the way of it: you set them so that they reflect each other. For if images can steal a bit of you, then images of images can amplify you, feeding you back on yourself, giving you power. . .
And your image extends forever, in reflections of reflections of reflections, and every image is the same, all the way around the curve of light.
Except that it isn't.
Mirrors contain infinity.
Infinity contains more things than you think.
Everything, for a start.
Including hunger.
Because there's a million billion images and only one soul to go around.
Mirrors give plenty, but they take away lots.
Mountains unfolded to reveal more mountains. Clouds gathered, heavy and grey.
'I'm sure we're going the right way,' said Magrat. Freezing rock stretched away. The witches flew along a maze of twisty little canyons, all alike.
'Yeah,' said Granny.
'Well, you won't let me fly high enough,' said Magrat.
'It's going to snow like blazes in a minute,' said Nanny Ogg.
It was early evening. Light was draining out of the high valleys like custard.
'I thought . . . there'd be villages and things,' said Magrat, 'where we could buy interesting native produce and seek shelter in rude huts.'
'You wouldn't even get trolls up here,' said Granny.
The three broomsticks glided down into a bare valley, a mere notch in the mountain side.
'And it's bloody cold,' said Nanny Ogg. She grinned. 'Why're they called rude huts, anyway?'
Granny Weatherwax climbed off her broomstick and looked at the rocks around her. She picked up a stone and sniffed it. She wandered over to a heap of scree that looked like any other heap of scree to Magrat, and prodded it.
'Hmm,' she said.
A few snow crystals landed on her hat.
'Well, well,' she said.
'What're you doing, Granny?' said Magrat.
'Cogitatin'.'
Granny walked to the valley's steep side and strolled along it, peering at the rock. Nanny Ogg joined her.
'Up here?' said Nanny.
'I reckon.'
' 'S a bit high for 'em, ain't it?'
'Little devils get everywhere. Had one come up in my kitchen once,' said Granny.' "Following a seam", he said.'
'They're buggers for that,' said Nanny.
'Would you mind telling me,' said Magrat, 'what you're doing? What's so interesting about heaps of stones?'
The snow was falling faster now.
'They ain't stones, they're spoil,' said Granny. She reached a flat wall of ice-covered rock, no different in Magrat's eyes from the rock available in a range of easy-to-die-on sizes everywhere in the mountains, and paused as if listening.
Then she stood back, hit the rock sharply with her broomstick, and spake thusly:
'Open up, you little sods!'
Nanny Ogg kicked the rock. It made a hollow boom.
'There's people catching their death of cold out here!' she added.
Nothing happened for a while. Then a section of rock swung in a few inches. Magrat saw the glint of a suspicious eye.
'Yes?'
'Dwarfs?' said Magrat.
Granny Weatherwax leaned down until her nose was level with the eye.
'My name,' she said, 'is Granny Weatherwax.'
She straightened up again, her face glowing with self-satisfaction.
'Who's that, then?' said a voice from somewhere below the eye. Granny's expression froze.
Nanny Ogg nudged her partner.
'We must be more'n fifty miles away from home,' she said. 'They might not have heard of you in these parts.'
Granny leaned down again. Accumulated snowflakes cascaded off her hat.
'I ain't blaming you,' she said, 'but I know you'll have a King in there, so just you go and tell him Granny Weatherwax is here, will you?'
'He's very busy,' said the voice. 'We've just had a bit of trouble.'
'Then I'm sure he don't want any more,' said Granny.
The invisible speaker appeared to give this some consideration.
'We put writing on the door,' it said sulkily. 'In invisible runes. It's really expensive, getting proper invisible runes done.'
'I don't go around readin' doors,' said Granny.
The speaker hesitated.
'Weatherwax, did you say?'
'Yes. With a W. As in "witch".'
The door slammed. When it was shut, there was barely a visible crack in the rock.
The snow was falling fast now. Granny Weatherwax jiggled up and down a bit to keep warm.
'That's foreigners for you,' she said, to the frozen world in general.
'I don't think you can call dwarfs foreigners,' said Nanny Ogg.
'Don't see why not,' said Granny. 'A dwarf who lives a long way off has got to be foreign. That's what foreign means.'
'Yeah? Funny to think of it like that,' said Nanny.
They watched the door, their breath forming three little clouds in the darkening air. Magrat peered at the stone door.
'I didn't see any invisible runes,' she said.
' 'Corse not,' said Nanny. 'That's 'cos they're invisible.'
'Yeah,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'Don't be daft.'
The door swung open again.
'I spoke to the King,' said the voice.
'And what did he say?' said Granny expectantly.
'He said, "Oh, no! Not on top of everything else!"'
Granny beamed. 'I knew 'e would have heard of me,' she said.
In the same way that there are a thousand Kings of the Gypsies, so there are a thousand Kings of the Dwarfs. The term means something like 'senior engineer'. There aren't
any Queens of the Dwarfs. Dwarfs are very reticent about revealing their sex, which most of them don't consider to be very important compared to things like metallurgy and hydraulics.
This king was standing in the middle of a crowd of shouting miners. He* looked up at the witches with the expression of a drowning man looking at a drink of water.
'Are you really any good?' he said.
Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax looked at one another.
'I think 'e's talking to you, Magrat,' said Granny.
'Only we've had a big fall in gallery nine,' said the King. 'It looks bad. A very promising vein of gold-bearing quartz is irretrievably trapped.'
One of the dwarfs beside him muttered something.
'Oh, yeah. And some of the lads,' said the King vaguely. 'And then you turn up. So the way I look at it, it's probably fate.'
Granny Weatherwax shook the snow off her. hat and looked around.
She was impressed, despite herself. You didn't often see proper dwarf halls these days. Most dwarfs were off earning big money in the cities down in the lowlands, where it was much easier to be a dwarf - for one thing, you didn't have to spend most of your time underground hitting your thumb with a hammer and worrying about fluctuations in the international metal markets. Lack of respect for tradition, that was the trouble these days. And take trolls. There were more trolls in Ankh-Morpork now than in the whole mountain range. Granny Weatherwax had nothing against trolls but she felt instinctively that if more trolls stopped wearing suits and walking upright, and went back to living under bridges and jumping out
* Many of the more traditional dwarf tribes have no female pronouns, like 'she' or 'her'. It follows that the courtship of dwarfs is an incredibly tactful affair.
and eating people as nature intended, then the world would be a happier place.
'You'd better show us where the problem is,' she said. 'Lots of rocks fallen down, have they?'
'Pardon?' said the King.
It's often said that eskimos have fifty words for snow.*
This is not true.
It's also said that dwarfs have two hundred words for rock.
They don't. They have no words for rock, in the same way that fish have no words for water. They do have words for igneous rock, sedimentary rock, metamorphic rock, rock underfoot, rock dropping on your helmet from above, and rock which looked interesting and which they could have sworn they left here yesterday. But what they don't have is a word meaning 'rock'. Show a dwarf a rock and he sees, for example, an inferior piece of crystalline sulphite of barytes.
Or, in this case, about two hundred tons of lowgrade shale. When the witches arrived at the disaster site dozens of dwarfs were working feverishly to prop the cracked roof and cart away the debris. Some of them were in tears.
'It's terrible . . . terrible,' muttered one of them. 'A terrible thing.'
Magrat lent him her handkerchief. He blew his nose noisily.
'Could mean a big slippage on the fault line and then we've lost the whole seam,' he said, shaking his head. Another dwarf patted him on the back.
'Look on the bright side,' he said. 'We can always drive a horizontal shaft off gallery fifteen. We're bound to pick it up again, don't you worry.'
* Well, not often. Not on a daily basis, anyway. At least, not everywhere. But probably in some cold countries people say, 'Hey, those eskimos! What a people! Fifty words for snow! Can you believe that? Amazing!' quite a lot.
L
'Excuse me,' said Magrat, 'there are dwarfs behind all that stuff, are there?'
'Oh, yes,' said the King. His tone suggested that this was merely a regrettable side-effect of the disaster, because getting fresh dwarfs was only a matter of time whereas decent gold-bearing rock was a finite resource.
Granny Weatherwax inspected the rockfall critically.
'We shall have to have everyone out of here,' she said. 'This is goin' to have to be private."
'I know how it is,' said the King. 'Craft secrets, I expect?'
'Something like that,' said Granny.
The King shooed the other dwarfs out of the tunnel, leaving the witches alone in the lantern light. A few bits of rock fell out of the ceiling.
'Hmm,' said Granny.
'You've gone and done it now,' said Nanny Ogg.
'Anything's possible if you set your mind to it,' said Granny vaguely.
'Then you'd better set yours good and hard, Esme. If the Creator had meant us to shift rocks by witchcraft, he wouldn't have invented shovels. Knowing when to use a shovel is what being a witch is all about. And put down that wheelbarrow, Magrat. You don't know nothing about machinery.'
'All right, then,' said Magrat. 'Why don't we try the wand?'
Granny Weatherwax snorted. 'Hah! Here? Whoever heard of a fairy godmother in a mine?'
'If I was stuck behind a load of rocks under a mountain I'd want to hear of one,' said Magrat hotly.
Nanny Ogg nodded. 'She's got a point there, Esme. There's no rule about where you fairy godmother.'
'I don't trust that wand,' said Granny. 'It looks wizardly to me.'
'Oh, come on,' said Magrat, 'generations of fairy godmothers have used it.'
Granny flung her hands in the air.
'All right, all right, all right,' she snapped. 'Go ahead! Make yourself look daft!'
Magrat took the wand out of her bag. She'd been dreading this moment.
It was made of some sort of bone or ivory; Magrat hoped it wasn't ivory. There had been markings on it once, but generations of plump fairy godmotherly hands had worn them almost smooth. Various gold and silver rings were set into the wand. Nowhere were there any instructions. Not so much as a rune or a sigil anywhere on its length indicated what you were supposed to do with it.
'I think you're supposed to wave it,' said Nanny Ogg. 'I'm pretty sure it's something like that.'
Granny Weatherwax folded her arms. 'That's not proper witching,' she said.
Magrat gave the wand an experimental wave. Nothing happened.
'Perhaps you have to say something?' said Nanny.
Magrat looked panicky.
'What do fairy godmothers say?' she wailed.
'Er,' said Nanny, 'dunno.'
'Huh!' said Granny.
Nanny Ogg sighed. 'Didn't Desiderata tell you anything?
'Nothing!'
Nanny shrugged.
'Just do your best, then,' she said.
Magrat stared at the pile of rocks. She shut her eyes. She took a deep breath. She tried to make her mind a serene picture of cosmic harmony. It was all very well for monks to go on about cosmic harmony, she reflected, when they were nicely tucked away on snowy mountains with only yetis to worry about. They never tried seeking inner peace with Granny Weatherwax glaring at them.
She waved the wand in a vague way and tried to put pumpkins out of her mind.
She felt the air move. She heard Nanny gasp.
She said, 'Has anything happened?'
After a while Nanny Ogg said, 'Yeah. Sort of. I hope they're hungry, that's all.'
And Granny Weathenvax said, "That's fairy godmother-ing, is it?'
Magrat opened her eyes.
There was still a heap, but it wasn't rock any more.
'There's a, wait for it, there's a bit of a squash in here,' said Nanny.
Magrat opened her eyes wider.
'Still pumpkins?'
'Bit of a squash. Squash,' said Nanny, in case anyone hadn't got it.
The top of the heap moved. A couple of small pumpkins rolled down almost to Magrat's feet, and a small dwarfish face appeared in the hole.
It stared down at the witches.
Eventually Nanny Ogg said, 'Everything all right?'
The dwarf nodded. Its attention kept turning to the pile of pumpkins that filled the tunnel from floor to ceiling.
'Er, yes,' it said. 'Is dad there?'
'Dad?'
"The King.'
'Oh.' Nanny Ogg cupped her hands around her mouth and turned to face up the tunnel. 'Hey, King!'
The dwarfs appeared. They looked at the pumpkins, too. The King stepped forward and stared up into the face of his son.
'Everything all right, son?'
'It's all right, dad. No faulting or anything.'
The King sagged with relief. Then, as an afterthought, he added, 'Everyone all right?'
'Fine, dad.'
'I was quite worried for a time there. Thought we might have hit a section of conglomerate or something.'
'Just a patch of loose shale, dad.'
'Good.' The King looked at the heap again. He scratched his beard. 'Can't help noticing you seem to have struck pumpkin.'
'I thought it was an odd kind of sandstone, dad.'
The King walked back to the witches.
'Can you turn anything into anything?' he said hopefully.
Nanny Ogg looked sideways at Magrat, who was still staring at the wand in a sort of shock.
'I think we only do pumpkins at the moment,' she said cautiously.
The King looked a little disappointed.
'Well, then,' he said, 'if there's anything I can do for you ladies ... a cup of tea or something . . .'
Granny Weatherwax stepped forward. 'I was just thinking something like that myself,' she said.
The King beamed.
'Only more expensive,' said Granny.
The King stopped beaming.
Nanny Ogg sidled up to Magrat, who was shaking the wand and staring at it.
'Very clever,' she whispered. 'Why'd you think of pumpkins?'
'I didn't!'
'Don't you know how to work it?'
'No! I thought you just had to, you know, want something to happen!'
'There's probably more to it than just wishing,' said Nanny, as sympathetically as possible. 'There generally is.'
Some time around dawn, in so far as dawn happened in the mines, the witches were led to a river somewhere deep in the mountains, where a couple of barges were moored. A small boat was pulled up to a stone jetty.
'This'll take you right through the mountains,' said the King. 'I think it goes all the way to Genua, to tell the truth.' He took a large basket off an attendant dwarf. 'And we've packed you some lovely food,' he said.
'Are we going to go all the way in a boat?' said Magrat. She gave the wand a few surreptitious flourishes. 'I'm not good at boats.'
'Listen,' said Granny, climbing aboard, 'the river knows its way out of the mountains, which is more than we do. We can use the brooms later on, where the landscape's acting a bit more sensible.'
'And we can have a bit of a rest,' said Nanny, sitting back.
Magrat looked at the two older witches, who were making themselves comfortable in the stern like a couple of hens settling down on a nest.
'Do you know how to row a boat?' she said.
'We don't have to,' said Granny.
Magrat nodded gloomily. Then a tiny bit of self-assertion flashed a fin.
'I don't think I do, too,' she ventured.
'That's all right,' said Nanny. 'If we sees you doing anything wrong, we'll be sure to tell you. Cheerio, your kingship.'
Magrat sighed, and picked up the oars.
'The flat bits go in the water,' said Granny helpfully.
The dwarfs waved. The boat drifted out into midstream, moving slowly in a circle of lantern light. Magrat found that all she really had to do was keep it pointing the right way in the current.
She heard Nanny say: 'Beats me why they're always putting invisible runes on their doors. I mean, you pays some wizard to put invisible runes on your door, and how do you know you've got value for money?'
She heard Granny say: 'No problem there. If you can't see 'em, you know you've got proper invisible runes.'
She heard Nanny say: 'Ah, that'd be it. Right, let's see what we've got for lunch.' There was a rustling noise.
'Well, well, well.'
'What is it, Gytha?'
'Pumpkin.'
'Pumpkin what?'
'Pumpkin nothing. Just pumpkin pumpkin.'
'Well, I suppose they've got a lot of pumpkin,' said Magrat. 'You know how it is at the end of the summer, there's always so much in the garden. I'm always at my wits' end to think of new types of chutney and pickles to use it all up - '
In the dim light she could see Granny's face which seemed to be suggesting that if Magrat was at her wits' end, it was a short stroll.
'I,' said Granny, 'have never made a pickle in my life.'
'But you like pickles,' said Magrat. Witches and pickles went together like - she hesitated before the stomach-curdling addition of peaches and cream, and mentally substituted 'things that went together very well'. The sight of Nanny Ogg's single remaining tooth at work on a pickled onion could bring tears to the eyes.
'I likes 'em fine,' said Granny. 'I gets 'em given to me.'
'You know,' said Nanny, investigating the recesses of the basket, 'whenever I deals with dwarfs, the phrase "Duck's arse" swims across my mind.'
'Mean little devils. You should see the prices they tries to charge me when I takes my broom to be repaired,' said Granny.
'Yes, but you never pay," said Magrat.
'That's not the point,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'They shouldn't be allowed to charge that sort of money. That's thievin', that is.'
'I don't see how it can be thieving if you don't pay anyway," Magrat persisted.
'I never pay for anything,' said Granny. 'People never let me pay. I can't help it if people gives me things the whole time, can P When I walks down the street people are always running out with cakes they've just baked, and fresh beer, and old clothes that've hardly been worn at all. "Oh, Mistress Weatherwax, pray take this basket of eggs", they say. People are always very kind. Treat people right an' they'll treatyou right. That's respect. Not having to pay,' she finished, sternly, 'is what bein' a witch is all about.'
'Here, what's this?' said Nanny, pulling out a small packet. She unwrapped the paper and revealed several hard brown discs.
'My word,' said Granny Weatherwax, 'I take it all back. That's the famous dwarf bread, that is. They don't give that to just anyone.'
Nanny tapped it on the edge of the boat. It made a noise very similar to the kind of noise you get when a wooden ruler is held over the edge of a desk and plucked; a sort of hollow boioioing sound.
'They say it never goes stale even if you stores it for years,' said Granny.
'It'd keep you going for days and days,' said Nanny Ogg-
Magrat reached across, took one of the flat loaves, tried to break it, and gave up.
'You're supposed to eat it?' she said.
'Oh, I don't think it's for eating,' said Nanny. 'It's more for sort of - '
' - keeping you going,' said Granny. 'They say that - '
She stopped.
Above the noise of the river and the occasional drip of water from the ceiling they could all hear, now, the steady slosh-slosh of another craft heading towards them.
'Someone's following us!' hissed Magrat.
Two pale glows appeared at the edge of the lamplight. Eventually they turned out to be the eyes of a small grey creature, vaguely froglike, paddling towards them on a log.
It reached the boat. Long clammy fingers grabbed the side, and a lugubrious face rose level with Nanny Ogg's.
' 'ullo,' it said. 'It'sss my birthday.'
All three of them stared at it for a while. Then Granny Weatherwax picked up an oar and hit it firmly over the head. There was a splash, and a distant cursing.
'Horrible little bugger,' said Granny, as they rowed on. 'Looked like a troublemaker to me.'
'Yeah,' said Nanny Ogg. 'It's the slimy ones you have to watch out for.'
'I wonder what he wanted?' said Magrat.
After half an hour the boat drifted out through a cave mouth and into a narrow gorge between cliffs. Ice glistened on the walls, and there were drifts of snow on some of the outcrops.
Nanny Ogg looked around guilelessly, and then fumbled somewhere in the depths of her many skirts and produced a small bottle. There was a glugging noise.
'I bet there's a fine echo here,' she said, after a while.
'Oh no you don't,' said Granny firmly.
'Don't what?'
'Don't sing That Song.'
'Pardon, Esme?'
'I ain't going,' said Granny, 'if you insists on singing That Song.'
'What song would that be?' said Nanny innocently.
'You know the song to whom I am referring,' said Granny icily. 'You always get drunk and let me down and sing it.'
'Can't recall any song like that, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg meekly.
'The one,' said Granny, 'about the rodent that can't -that can't ever be persuaded to care about anything.'
'Oh,' said Nanny, beaming as light dawned, 'you mean The Hedgehog Can Never Be Bugg- '
'That's the one!'
'But it's traditional,' said Nanny. 'Anyway, in foreign parts people won't know what the words mean.'
'They will the way you sings them,' said Granny. 'The way you sings them, creatures what lives on the bottoms of ponds'd know what they mean.'
Magrat looked over the side of the boat. Here and there the ripples were edged with white. The current was running a bit faster, and there were lumps of ice in it.
'It's only a folk song, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg.
'Hah!' said Granny Weatherwax. 'I should just say it is a folk song! I knows all about folk songs. Hah! You think you're listenin' to a nice song about . . . about cuckoos and fiddlers and nightingales and whatnot, and then it turns out to be about . . . about something else entirely,' she added darkly. 'You can't trust folk songs. They always sneak up on you.'
Magrat fended them off a rock. An eddy spun them around slowly.
'I know one about two little bluebirds,' said Nanny Ogg.
'Um,' said Magrat.
'They may start out by being bluebirds, but I bet they ends up some kind of mettyfor,' said Granny.
'Er, Granny,' said Magrat.
'It was bad enough Magrat telling me about maypoles and what's behind 'em,' said Granny. She added, wistfully, 'I used to enjoy looking at a maypole of a spring morning.'
'I think the river's getting a bit sort of rough,' said Magrat.
'I don't see why people can't just let things be,' said Granny.
'I mean really quite rough, really . . .' said Magrat, pushing them away from a jagged rock.
'She's right, you know,' said Nanny Ogg. 'It's a bit on the choppy side.'
Granny looked over Magrat's shoulder at the river ahead. It had a cut-off look, such as might be associated with, for example, an imminent waterfall. The boat was now surging along. There was a muted roar.
'They never said anything about a waterfall,' she said.
'I 'spect they thought we'd find out for ourselves,' said Nanny Ogg, gathering up her possessions and hauling
Greebo out of the bottom of the boat by the scruff of his neck. 'Very sparin' with information, your average dwarf. Thank goodness witches float. Anyway, they knew we'd got the brooms.'
'You've got brooms,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'How'm I supposed to get mine started in a boat? Can't run up and down, can I? And stop movin' about like that, you'll have us all over - '
'Get your foot out of the way, Esme - '
The boat rocked violently.
Magrat rose to the occasion. She pulled out the wand, just as a wavelet washed over the boat.
'Don't worry,' she said, 'I'll use the wand. I think I've got the hang of it now - '
'No!' screamed Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg together.
There was a large, damp noise. The boat changed shape. It also changed colour. It became a cheery sort of orange.
'Pumpkins!' screamed Nanny Ogg, as she was gently tipped into the water. 'More bloody pumpkins!'
Lilith sat back. The ice around the river hadn't been that good as a mirror, but it had been good enough.
Well. A wishy-washy overgrown girl more suitable to the attentions of a fairy godmother than to being one, and a little old washerwoman-type who got drunk and sang songs. And a wand the stupid girl didn't know how to use.
It was annoying. More than that, it was demeaning. Surely Desiderata and Mrs Gogol could have achieved something better than this. You derived status by the strength of your enemies.
Of course, there was her. After all this time . . .
Of course. She approved of that. Because there would have to be three of them. Three was an important number for stories. Three wishes, three princes, three billy goats, three guesses . . . three witches. The maiden, the mother and the . . . other one. That was one of the oldest stories of all.
Esme Weatherwax had never understood stories. She'd never understood how real reflections were. If she had, she'd probably have been ruling the world by now.
'You're always looking in mirrors!' said a petulant voice. 'I hate it when you're always looking in mirrors!'
The Duc sprawled in a chair in one corner, all black silk and well-turned legs. Lilith would not normally allow anyone inside the nest of mirrors but it was, technically, his castle. Besides, he was too vain and stupid to know what was going on. She'd seen to that. At least, she'd thought she had. Lately, he seemed to be picking things up. . .
'I don't know why you have to do that,' he whined. 'I thought magic was just a matter of pointing and going whoosh.'
Lilith picked up her hat, and glanced at a mirror as she adjusted it.
'This way's safer,' she said. 'It's self-contained. When you use mirror magic, you don't have to rely on anyone except yourself. That's why no-one's ever conquered the world with magic . . . yet. They try to take it from . . . other places. And there's always a price. But with mirrors, you're beholden to no-one but your own soul.'
She lowered the veil from the hat brim. She preferred the privacy of a veil, outside the security of the mirrors.
'I hate mirrors,' muttered the Duc.
'That's because they tell you the truth, my lad.'
'It's cruel magic, then.'
Lilith tweaked the veil into a fetching shape.
'Oh, yes. With mirrors, all the power is your own. There's nowhere else it can come from,' she said.
'The swamp woman gets it from the swamp,' said the Duc.
'Ha! And it'll claim her one day. She doesn't understand what she's doing.'
'And you do?'
She felt a pang of pride. He was actually resenting her! She really had done a good job there.
'I understand stories,' she said. 'That's all I need.'
'But you haven't brought me the girl,' said the Duc. 'You promised me the girl. And then it'll be all over and I can sleep in a real bed and I won't need any more reflecting magic -'
But even a good job can go too far.
'You've had your fill of magic?' said Lilith sweetly. 'You'd like me to stop? It would be the easiest thing in the world. I found you in the gutter. Would you like me to send you back?'
His face became a mask of panic.
'I didn't mean that! I just meant . . . well, then everything will be real. Just one kiss, you said. I can't see why that's so hard to arrange.'
'The right kiss at the right time,' said Lilith. 'It has to be at the right time, otherwise it won't work.' She smiled. He was trembling, partly out of lust, mainly out of terror, and slightly out of heredity.
'Don't worry,' she said. 'It can't not happen.'
'And these witches you showed me?'
'They're just . . . part of the story. Don't worry about them. The story will just absorb them. And you'll get her because of stories. Won't that be nice? And now . . . shall we go? I expect you've got some ruling to do?'
He picked up the inflexion. It was an order. He stood up, extended an arm to take hers, and together they went down to the palace's audience chamber.
Lilith was proud of the Duc. Of course, there was his embarrassing little nocturnal problem, because his morphic field weakened when he slept, but that wasn't yet a major difficulty. And there was the trouble with mirrors, which showed him as he really was, but that was easily overcome by banning all mirrors save hers. And then there were his eyes. She couldn't do anything about the eyes. There was practically no magic that could do anything about someone's eyes. All she had been able to come up with there were the smoked glasses.
Even so, he was a triumph. And he was so grateful. She'd been good for him.
She'd made a man of him, for a start.
Some way downriver from the waterfall, which was the second highest anywhere on the Disc and had been discovered in the Year of the Revolving Crab by the noted explorer Guy de Yoyo,* Granny Weatherwax sat in front of a small fire with a towel around her shoulders and steamed.
'Still, look on the bright side,' said Nanny Ogg. 'At least I was holding my broom and you at the same time. And Magrat had hers. Otherwise we'd all be looking at the waterfall from underneath.'
'Oh, good. A silver lining,' said Granny, her eyes glinting evilly.
'Bit of an adventure, really,' said Nanny, grinning encouragingly. 'One day we'll look back on this and laugh.'
'Oh, good,' said Granny.
Nanny dabbed at the claw marks on her arm. Greebo, with a cat's true instinct for self-preservation, had clawed his way up his mistress and taken a flying leap to safety from the top of her head. Now he was curled up by the fire, dreaming cat dreams.
A shadow passed over them. It was Magrat, who had been combing the riverbanks.
'I think I've got nearly everything,' she said as she landed.'Here's Granny's broomstick. And. . .oh, yes. . .
* Of course, lots of dwarfs, trolls, native people, trappers, hunters and the merely badly lost had discovered it on an almost daily basis for thousands of years. But they weren't explorers and didn't count.
the wand.' She gave a brave little smile. 'Little pumpkins were bobbing to the surface. That's how I found it.'
'My word, that was lucky,' said Nanny Ogg encouragingly. 'Hear that, Esme? We shan't be wanting for food, at any rate.'
'And I've found the basket with the dwarf bread in it,' said Magrat, 'although I'm afraid it might be spoilt.'
'It won't be, take it from me,' said Nanny Ogg. 'You can't spoil dwarf bread. Well, well,' she said, sitting down again. 'We've got quite a little picnic, haven't we ... and a nice bright fire and . . . and a nice place to sit and . . . I'm sure there's lots of poor people in places like Howondaland and suchlike who'd give anything to be here right now . . .'
'If you don't stop being so cheerful, Gytha Ogg, I shall give you such a ding around the ear with the flat of my hand,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'You sure you're not catching a chill?' said Nanny Ogg.
'I'm dryin' out,' said Granny Weatherwax, 'from the inside.'
'Look, I'm really sorry,' said Magrat. 'I said I was sorry.'
Not that she was quite certain what for, she told herself. The boat wasn't her idea. She hadn't put the waterfall there. She hadn't even been in a position to see it coming. She'd turned the boat into a pumpkin, but she hadn't meant to. It could have happened to anyone.
'I managed to save Desiderata's notebooks, too,' she said.
'Well, that's a blessing,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Now we know where we're lost.'
She looked around. They were through the worst of the mountains, but there were still peaks around and high meadows stretching to the snowline. From somewhere in the distance came the clonking of goat bells.
Magrat unfolded a map. It was creased, damp, and the pencil had run. She pointed cautiously to a smudged area.
'I think we're here,' she said.
'My word,' said Nanny Ogg, whose grasp of the principles of cartography was even shakier than Granny's. 'Amazing how we can all fit on that little bit of paper.'
'I think perhaps it would be a good idea at the moment if we just followed the river,' said Magrat. 'Without in any way going on it,' she added quickly.
'I suppose you didn't find my bag?' said Granny Weatherwax. 'It had pers'nal items in.'
'Probably sank like a stone,' said Nanny Ogg.
Granny Weatherwax stood up like a general who's just had news that his army has come second.
'Come on,' she said. 'Where to next, then?'
What was next was forest - dark and ferociously coniferous. The witches flew over it in silence. There were occasional, isolated cottages half-hidden in the trees. Here and there a crag loomed over the sylvanian gloom, shrouded in mist even in mid-afternoon. Once or twice they flew past castles, if that's what you could call them; they didn't look built, more extruded from the landscape.
It was the kind of landscape that had a particular type of story attached to it, featuring wolves and garlic and frightened women. A dark and thirsty story, a story that flapped wings against the moon . . .
'Der flabberghast,' muttered Nanny.
'What's that?' said Magrat.
'It's foreign for bat.'
'I've always liked bats,' said Magrat. 'In general.'
The witches found that, by unspoken agreement, they were flying closer together.
'I'm getting hungry,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'And don't no-one mention pumpkin.'
"There's dwarf bread,' said Nanny.
'There's always the dwarf bread,' said Granny. 'I fancy something cooked this year, thank you all the same.'
They flew past another castle, occupying the entire summit of a crag.
'What we need is a nice little town or something,' said Magrat.
'But the one down there will have to do,' said Granny.
They looked down at it. It wasn't so much a town as a huddle of houses, clustering together against the trees. It looked as cheerless as an empty hearth, but the shadows of the mountains were already speeding across the forest and something about the landscape tacitly discouraged night-time flying.
'Can't see many people about,' said Granny.
'Maybe they turn in early in these parts,' said Nanny Ogg.
'It's hardly even sunset,' said Magrat. 'Perhaps we ought to go up to that castle?'
They all looked at the castle.
'No-o-o,' said Granny slowly, speaking for all of them. 'We know our place.'
So they landed, instead, in what was presumably the town square. A dog barked, somewhere behind the buildings. A shutter banged closed.
' Very friendly,' said Granny. She walked over to a larger building that had a sign, unreadable under the grime, over the door. She gave the woodwork a couple of thumps.
'Open up!' she said.
'No, no, you don't say that,' said Magrat. She shouldered her way past, and tapped on the door. 'Excuse me! Bona fide travellers!'
'Bona what?' said Nanny.
'That's what you need to say,' said Magrat. 'Any inn has got to open up for bona fide travellers and give them succour.'
'Has it?' said Nanny, with interest. 'That sounds like a thing worth knowing.'
The door remained shut.
'Let me 'ave a go,' said Nanny. 'I know some foreign lingo.'
She hammered on the door.
'Openny vous, gunga din, chop-chop, pretty damn quick,' she said.
Granny Weatherwax listened carefully.
'That's speaking foreign, is it?'
'My grandson Shane is a sailor,' said Nanny Ogg. 'You'd be amazed, the words he learns about foreign parts.'
'I expects I would,' said Granny. 'And I 'opes they works better for him.'
She thumped on the door again. And this time it opened, very slowly. A pale face peered around it.
'Excuse me - ' Magrat began.
Granny pushed the door open. The face's owner had been leaning on it; they could hear the scrape of his boots over the floor as he was shoved gently backwards.
'Blessings be on this house,' Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people's minds on what other things might be on this house, and reminded them about any fresh cakes, newly-baked bread or bundles of useful old clothing that might have temporarily escaped their minds.
It looked like one of the other things had been on this house already.
It was an inn, of sorts. The three witches had never seen such a cheerless place in their lives. But it was quite crowded. A score or more pale-faced people watched them solemnly from benches around the walls.
Nanny Ogg sniffed.
'Cor,' she said. 'Talk about garlic!' And, indeed, bunches of it hung from every beam. 'You can't have too much garlic, I always say. I can see I'm going to like it here.'
She nodded to a white-faced man behind the bar.
'Gooden day, big-feller mine host! Trois beers pour favour avec us, silver plate.'
'What's a silver plate got to do with it?' demanded Granny.
'It's foreign for please,' said Nanny.
'I bet it isn't really,' said Granny. 'You're just making it up as you goes along.'
The innkeeper, who worked on the fairly simple principle that anyone walking through the door wanted something to drink, drew three beers.
'See?' said Nanny, triumphantly.
'I don't like the way everyone's looking at us,' said Magrat, as Nanny babbled on to the perplexed man in her very own esperanto. 'A man over there grinned at me.'
Granny Weatherwax sat down on a bench, endeavouring to position herself so that as small an amount of her body as possible was in contact with the wood, in case being foreign was something you could catch.
'There,' said Nanny, bustling up with a tray, 'nothing to it. I just cussed at him until he understood.'
'It looks horrible,' said Granny.
'Garlic sausage and garlic bread,' said Nanny. 'My favourite.'
'You ought to have got some fresh vegetables,' said Magrat the dietitian.
'I did. There's some garlic,' said Nanny happily, cutting a generous slice of eye-watering sausage. 'And I think I definitely saw something like pickled onions on one of the shelves.'
'Yes? Then we're going to need at least two rooms for tonight,' said Granny sternly.
'Three,' said Magrat, very quickly.
She risked another look around the room. The silent villagers were staring at them intently, with a look she could only describe to herself as a sort of hopeful sadness. Of course, anyone who spent much time in the company of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg got used to being stared at; they were the kind of people that filled every space from edge to edge. And probably people in these parts didn't often see strangers, what with the thick forests and all. And the sight of Nanny Ogg eating a sausage with extreme gusto would even outrank her pickled onion number as major entertainment anywhere.
Even so ... the way people were staring . . .
Outside, deep in the trees, a wolf howled.
The assembled villagers shivered in unison, as though they had been practising. The landlord muttered something to them. They got up, reluctantly, and filed out of the door, trying to keep together. An old lady laid her hand on Magrat's shoulder for a moment, shook her head sadly, sighed, and then scuttled away. But Magrat was used to this, too. People often felt sorry for her when they saw her in Granny's company.
Eventually the landlord lurched across to them with a lighted torch, and motioned them to follow him.
'How did you make him understand about the beds?' said Magrat.
'I said, "Hey mister, jigajig toot sweet all same No. 3",' said Nanny Ogg.
Granny Weatherwax tried this under her breath, and nodded.
'Your lad Shane certainly gets around a bit, doesn't he,' she remarked.
'He says it works every time,' said Nanny Ogg.
In fact there were only two rooms, up a long, winding and creaky stairway. And Magrat got one to herself. Even the landlord seemed to want it that way. He'd been very attentive.
She wished he hadn't been so keen to bar the shutters, though. Magrat liked to sleep with a window open. As it was, it was too dark and stuffy.
Anyway, she thought, I am the fairy godmother. The others are just accompanying me.
She peered hopelessly at herself in the room's tiny cracked mirror and then lay and listened to them on the far side of the paper-thin wall.
'What're you turning the mirror to the wall for, Esme?'
'I just don't like 'em, staring like that.'
'They only stares if you're staring at 'em, Esme.'
Silence, and then: 'Eh, what's this round thing for, then?'
'I reckon it's supposed to be a pillow, Esme.'
'Hah! 7 don't call it a pillow. And there's no proper blankets, even. What'd you say this thing's called?'
'I think it's called a duvit, Esme.'
' We call them an eiderdown where I come from. Hah!'
There was a respite. Then:
'Have you brushed your tooth?'
And another pause. Then:
'Oo, you haven't half got cold feet, Esme.'
'No, they ain't. They're lovely and snug.'
And another silence. Then:
'Boots! Your boots! You've got your boots on!'
'I should just think I 'ave got my boots on, Gytha Ogg.'
'And your clothes! You haven't even undressed!'
'You can't be too careful in foreign parts. There could be all sorts out there, a-creepin' around.'
Magrat snuggled under the - what was it? - duvit, and turned over. Granny Weatherwax appeared to need one hour's sleep a night, whereas Nanny Ogg would snore on a fence rail.
'Gytha? Gytha! GYTHA!'
'Wha'?'
'Are you awake?'
' 'M now . . .'
'I keep 'earing a noise!'
'. . . so do I . . .'
Magrat dozed for a while.
'Gytha? GYTHA!'
L
'. . . wha' now? . . .'
'I'm sure someone rattled our shutters!'
'. . . not at our time of life . . . now g' back t' slee'. . .'
The air in the room was getting hotter and stuffier by the minute. Magrat got out of bed, unbolted the shutters and flung them back dramatically.
There was a grunt, and a distant thud of something hitting the ground.
The full moon streamed in. She felt a lot better for that, and got back into bed.
It seemed no time at all before the voice from next door woke her again.
'Gytha Ogg, what are you doing?'
'I'm 'aving a snack.'
'Can't you sleep?'
'Just can't seem to be able to get off, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Can't imagine why.'
'Here, that's garlic sausage you're eating! I'm actually sharing a bed with someone eating garlic sausage.'
'Hey, that's mine! Give it back - '
Magrat was aware of booted footsteps in the pit of the night, and the sound of a shutter being swung back in the next room.
She thought she heard a faint 'oof and another muted thud.
'I thought you liked garlic, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg's resentful voice.
'Sausage is all right in its place, and its place ain't in bed. And don't you say a word. Now move over. You keep taking all the duvit.'
After a while the velvet silence was broken by Granny's deep and resonant snore. Shortly afterwards it was joined by the genteel snoring of Nanny, who had spent far more time sleeping in company than Granny and had evolved a more accommodating nasal orchestra. Granny's snore would have cut logs.
Magrat folded the horrible round hard pillow over her ears and burrowed under the bedclothes.
Somewhere on the chilly ground, a very large bat was trying to get airborne again. It had already been stunned twice, once by a carelessly opened shutter and once by a ballistic garlic sausage, and wasn't feeling very well at all. One more setback, it was thinking, and it's back off to the castle. Besides, it'd be sunrise soon.
Its red eyes glinted as it looked up at Magrat's open window. It tensed -
A paw landed on it.
The bat looked around.
Greebo had not had a very good night. He had investigated the whole place with regard to female cats, and found none. He had prowled among the middens, and drawn a blank. People in this town didn't throw the garbage away. They ate it.
He'd trotted into the woods and found some wolves and had sat and grinned at them until they got uncomfortable and went away.
Yes, it had been a very uneventful night. Until now.
The bat squirmed under his claw. It seemed to Greebo's small cat brain that it was trying to change its shape, and he wasn't having any of that from a mouse with wings on.
Especially now, when he had someone to play with.
Genua was a fairytale city. People smiled and were joyful the livelong day. Especially if they wanted to see another livelong day.
Lilith made certain of that. Of course, people had probably thought they were happy in the days before she'd seen to it that the Duc replaced the old Baron, but it was a random, untidy happiness, which was why it was so easy for her to move in.
But it wasn't a way of life. There was no pattern to it.
One day they'd thank her.
Of course, there were always a few difficult ones. Sometimes, people just didn't know how to act. You did your best for them, you ruled their city properly, you ensured that their lives were worthwhile and full of happiness every hour of the day and then, for no reason at all, they turned on you.
Guards lined the audience chamber. And there was an audience. Technically, of course, it was the ruler who gave the audience, but Lilith liked to see people watching. One pennyworth of example was worth a pound of punishment.
There wasn't a lot of crime in Genua these days. At least, not what would be considered crime elsewhere. Things like theft were easily dealt with and hardly required any kind of judicial process. Far more important, in Lilith's book, were crimes against narrative expectation. People didn't seem to know how they should behave.
Lilith held a mirror up to Life, and chopped all the bits off Life that didn't fit...
The Duc lounged bonelessly on his throne, one leg dangling over the armrest. He'd never got the hang of chairs.
'And what has this one done?' he said, and yawned. Opening his mouth wide was something he was good at, at least.
A little old man cowered between two guards.
There's always someone willing to be a guard, even in places like Genua. Besides, you got a really smart uniform, with blue trousers and a red coat and a high black hat with a cockade in it.
'But I... I can't whistle,' quavered the old man. 'I... I didn't know it was compulsory . . .'
'But you are a toymaker,' said the Duc. 'Toymakers whistle and sing the whole day long.' He glanced at Lilith. She nodded.
'I don't know any . . . s-songs,' said the toymaker. 'I never got taught s--songs. Just how to make toys. I was 'prenticed at making toys. Seven years before the little hammer, man and boy . . .'
'It says here,' said the Duc, making a creditable impersonation of someone reading the charge sheet in front of him, 'that you don't tell the children stories.'
'No-one ever told me about telling . . . s-stories,' said the toymaker. 'Look, I just make toys. Toys. That's all I'm good at. Toys. I make good t-toys. I'm just a t-toymaker.'
'You can't be a good toymaker if you don't tell stories to the children,' said Lilith, leaning forward.
The toymaker looked up at the veiled face.
'Don't know any,' he said.
'You don't know any?
'I could t-tell 'em how to make toys,' the old man quavered.
Lilith sat back. It was impossible to see her expression under the veil.
'I think it would be a good idea if the People's Guards here took you away,' she said, 'to a place where you will certainly learn to sing. And possibly, after a while, you might even whistle. Won't that be nice?'
The old Baron's dungeons had been disgusting. Lilith had had them repainted and refurnished. With a lot of mirrors.
When the audience was over one member of the crowd slipped out through the palace kitchens. The guards on the side gate didn't try to stop her. She was a very important person in the small compass of their lives.
'Hello, Mrs Pleasant.'
She stopped, reached into her basket and produced a couple of roast chicken legs.
'Just tryin' a new peanut coating,' she said. 'Would value your opinions, boys.'
They took them gratefully. Everyone liked to see Mrs Pleasant. She could do things with a chicken that would almost make it glad it had been killed.
'And now I'm just going out to get some herbs,' she said.
They watched her as she went like a fat, determined arrow in the direction of the market place, which was right on the edge of the river. Then they ate the chicken legs.
Mrs Pleasant bustled among the market stalls; and she took great care to bustle. Even in Genua there were always people ready to tell a tale. Especially in Genua. She was a cook, so she bustled. And made sure she stayed fat and was, fortunately, naturally jolly. She made sure she had floury arms at all times. If she felt under suspicion, she'd say things like 'Lawks!' She seemed to be getting away with it so far.
She looked for the sign. And there it was. Perched up on die roof pole of a stall that was otherwise stacked with cages of hens, gazoots, Wheely cranes and other fowl, was a black cockerel. The voodoo doctor was In.
Even as her eye found it the cockerel's head turned to look at her.
Set a little way back from the rest of the stalls was a small tent, similar to many around the market. A cauldron bubbled in front of it on a charcoal fire. There were bowls beside it, and a ladle, and beside them a plate with coins on it. There were quite a lot of coins; people paid for Mrs Gogol's cooking whatever diey thought it was worth, and the plate was hardly big enough.
The thick liquid in the cauldron was an unappetizing brown. Mrs Pleasant helped herself to a bowlful, and waited. Mrs Gogol had certain talents.
After a while a voice from the tent said, 'What's new, Mrs Pleasant?'
'She's shut up the toymaker,' said Mrs Pleasant, to the air in general. 'And yesterday it was old Devereaux the innkeeper for not being fat and not having a big red face. That's four times this month.'
'You come in, Mrs Pleasant.'
It was dark and hot inside the tent. There was another fire in there, and another pot. Mrs Gogol was hunched over it, stirring. She motioned the cook to a pair of bellows.
'Blow up the coals a tad, and we'll see what's what,' she said.
Mrs Pleasant obeyed. She didn't use magic herself, other than that necessary to get a roux to turn or bread to rise, but she respected it in others. Especially in the likes of Mrs Gogol.
The charcoal blazed white. The thick liquid in the pot began to churn. Mrs Gogol peered into the steam.
' What're you doing, Mrs Gogol?' said the cook anxiously.
'Trying to see what's goin' to happen,' said the voodoo woman. The voice dropped into the rolling growl of the psychically gifted.
Mrs Pleasant squinted into the roiling mass.
'Someone's going to be eatin' shrimp?' she said helpfully.
'Ye see that bit of okra?' said Mrs Gogol. 'Ye see the way the crab legs keep coming up just there?'
'You never were one to stint the crab meat,' said Mrs Pleasant.
'See the way the bubbles is so thick by the okuh leaves? See the way it all spirals around that purple onion?'
'I see it! I see it!' said Mrs Pleasant.
'And you know what that means?'
'Means it's going to taste real/me[?]!'
'Sure,' said Mrs Gogol, kindly. 'And it means some people's coming.'
'Wow! How many?'
Mrs Gogol dipped a spoon into the seething mass and tasted it.
'Three people,' she said. She smacked her lips thoughtfully. 'Women.'
She dipped the spoon again.
'Have a taste,' she said. 'There's a cat, too. Ye can tell by the sassafras.' She smacked her lips. 'Grey. One eye.'
She explored the cavity of a tooth with her tongue. 'The ... left one.'
Mrs Pleasant's jaw dropped.
'They'll find you before they find me,' said Mrs Gogol. 'You lead 'em here.'
Mrs Pleasant stared at Mrs Gogol's grim smile and then back down at the mixture in the pot.
'They coming all this way for a taste?' she said.
'Sure.' Mrs Gogol sat back. 'You been to see the girl in the white house?'
Mrs Pleasant nodded. 'Young Embers,' shesaid. 'Yeah. When I can. When the Sisters are out at the palace. They got her real scared, Mrs Gogol.'
She looked down at the pot again, and back up to Mrs Gogol.
'Can you really see - ?'
'I expect you've got things to marinate?' said Mrs Gogol.
'Yeah. Yeah.' Mrs Pleasant backed out, but with reluctance. Then she halted. Mrs Pleasant, at rest, was not easily moved again until she wanted to be.
'That Lilith woman says she can see the whole world in mirrors,' she said, in slightly accusing tones.
Mrs Gogol shook her head.
'All anyone gets in a mirror is themselves,' she said. 'But what you gets in a good gumbo is everything.'
Mrs Pleasant nodded. This was a well-known fact. She couldn't dispute it.
Mrs Gogol shook her head sadly when the cook had gone. A voodoo woman was reduced to all sorts of stratagems in order to appear knowing, but she felt slightly ashamed of letting an honest woman believe that she could see the future in a pot of gumbo. Because all you could see in a pot of Mrs Gogol's gumbo was that the future certainly contained a very good meal.
She'd really seen it in a bowl of jambalaya she'd prepared earlier.
Magrat lay with the wand under her pillow. She wobbled gently between sleep and wakefulness.
Certainly she was the best person for the wand. There was no doubt about that. Sometimes - and she hardly dared give the thought headroom, when she was under the same roof as Granny Weatherwax - she really wondered about the others' commitment to witchcraft. Half the time they didn't seem to bother.
Take medicine, for example. Magrat knew she was much better than them at herbs. She'd inherited several large books on the subject from Goodie Whemper, her predecessor in the cottage, and had essayed a few tentative notes of her own as well. She could tell people things about the uses of Devil's Bit Scabious that would interest them so much they'd rush off, presumably to look for someone else to tell. She could fractionally distil, and double-distil, and do things that meant sitting up all night watching the colour of the flame under the retort. She worked at it.
Whereas Nanny just tended to put a hot poultice on everything and recommend a large glass of whatever the patient liked best on the basis that since you were going to be ill anyway you might as well get some enjoyment out of it. (Magrat forbade her patients alcohol, because of what it did to the liver; if they didn't know what it did to the liver, she spent some time telling them.)
And Granny . . . she just gave people a bottle of coloured water and told them they felt a lot better.
And what was so annoying was that they often did.
Where was the witchcraft in that?
With a wand, though, things could be different. You could help people a lot with a wand. Magic was there to make life better. Magrat knew this in the pink fluttering boudoir of her heart.
She dipped under the surface of sleep again.
And there was an odd dream. She never mentioned it to anyone afterwards because, well, you didn't. Not things like that.
But she thought she'd got up in the night, awakened by the silence, to get some more air. And as she passed the mirror she saw a movement in it.
It wasn't her face. It looked a lot like Granny Weather-wax. It smiled at her - a much nicer and friendlier smile than she'd ever got from Granny, Magrat recalled - and then vanished, the cloudy silver surface closing over it.
She hurried back to bed and awoke to the sound of a brass band, engaged in unrelenting oompah. People were shouting and laughing.
Magrat got dressed quickly, went out into the corridor, and knocked on the door of the older witches. There was no reply. She tried the handle.
After she'd rattled it a couple of times there was a thump as the chair wedged under the handle on the other side, the better to deter ravishers, burglars and other nocturnal intruders, fell over.
Granny Weatherwax's boots protruded from under the covers at one end of the bed. Nanny Ogg's bare feet, Nanny being something of a night-time revolver, were beside them. Faint snores rattled the jug on the washbasin; these were no longer the full-nosed roars of a quick forty-winks catnapper, but the well-paced growls of someone who intends to make a night of it.
Magrat knocked on the sole of Granny's boot.
'Hey, wake up! Something's going on.'