A DISCWORLD® NOVEL
1Quaffing is like drinking, but you spill more.
2Whatever that was. He’d never found anyone prepared to explain it to him. But it was definitely something a feudal lord ought to have and, he was pretty sure, it needed regular exercise. He imagined it was some kind of large hairy dog. He was definitely going to get one, and damn well exercise it.
3Written by wizards, who are celibate and get some pretty funny ideas around four o’clock in the morning.
4She did nothing, although sometimes when she saw him in the village she’d smile in a faint, puzzled way. After three weeks of this the suspense was too much for him and he took his own life; in fact he took it all the way across the continent, where he became a reformed character and never went home again.
5All of them, unfortunately, unprintable.
6The vermine is a small black and white furry creature, much famed for its pelt. It is a more careful relative of the lemming; it only throws itself over small pebbles.
7They worked. Witches’ remedies generally did, regardless of the actual form of delivery.
8A killing insult in Dwarfish, but here used as a term of endearment. It means ‘lawn ornament’.
9In a manner of speaking.
10Someone has to do it. It’s all very well calling for eye of newt, but do you mean Common, Spotted or Great Crested? Which eye, anyway? Will tapioca do just as well? If we substitute egg white will the spell a) work b) fail or c) melt the bottom out of the cauldron? Goodie Whemper’s curiosity about such things was huge and insatiable.11
11Nearly insatiable. It was probably satiated in her last flight to test whether a broomstick could survive having its bristles pulled out one by one in mid-air. According to the small black raven she had trained as a flight recorder, the answer was almost certainly no.
12Witches never curtsy.
13No-one knows why men say things like this. Any minute now he is probably going to say he likes a girl with spirit.
14They always do, everywhere. No-one sees them arrive. The logical explanation is that the franchise includes the stall, the paper hat and a small gas-powered time machine.
15Involving a red hot poker, a privy, ten pounds of live eels, a three mile stretch of frozen river, a butt of wine, a couple of tulip bulbs, a number of poisoned eardrops, an oyster and a large man with a mallet. King Murune didn’t make friends easily.
16Possibly the first attempt at the in-flight refuelling of a broomstick.
17An explanation may be needed at this point. The Librarian of the magic library at Unseen University, the Disc’s premier college of wizardry, had been turned into an orang-utan some years previously by a magical accident in that accident-prone academy, and since then had strenuously resisted all well-meaning efforts to turn him back. For one thing, longer arms and prehensile toes made getting around the higher shelves a whole lot easier, and being an ape meant you didn’t have to bother with all this angst business. He had also been rather pleased to find that his new body, although looking deceptively like a rubber sack full of water, gave him three times the strength and twice the reach of his old one.
18The Shades is an ancient part of Ankh-Morpork considered considerably more unpleasant and disreputable than the rest of the city. This always amazes visitors.
19Ankh-Morpork’s enviable system of licensed criminals owes much to the current Patrician, Lord Vetinari. He reasoned that the only way to police a city of a million inhabitants was to recognize the various gangs and robber guilds, give them professional status, invite the leaders to large dinners, allow an acceptable level of street crime and then make the guild leaders responsible for enforcing it, on pain of being stripped of their new civic honours along with large areas of their skins. It worked. Criminals, it turned out, made a very good police force; unauthorized robbers soon found, for example, that instead of a night in the cells they could now expect an eternity at the bottom of the river.
However, there was the problem of apportioning the crime statistics, and so there arose a complex system of annual budgeting, chits and allowances to see that a) the members could make a reasonable living and b) no citizen was robbed or assaulted more than an agreed number of times. Many foresighted citizens in fact arranged to get an acceptable minimum of theft, assault, etc, over at the beginning of the financial year, often in the privacy and comfort of their own homes, and thus be able to walk the streets quite safely for the rest of the year. It all ticked over extremely peacefully and efficiently, demonstrating once again that compared to the Patrician of Ankh, Machiavelli could not have run a whelk stall.
20Because of the way time was recorded among the various states, kingdoms and cities. After all, when over an area of a hundred square miles the same year is variously the Year of the Small Bat, and Anticipated Monkey, the Hunting Cloud, Fat Cows, Three Bright Stallions and at least nine numbers recording the time since21 assorted kings, prophets, and strange events were either crowned, born or happened, and each year has a different number of months, and some of them don’t have weeks, and one of them refuses to accept the day as a measure of time, the only thing it is possible to be sure of is that good sex doesn’t last long enough.22
21The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.
22Except for the Zabingo tribe of the Great Nef, of course.
23The observant will realize that this was because the king was already seated there. It was not because the man had used the phrase ‘commence to start’ in cold blood. But it ought to have been.
24Like Bognor.
25At least, of supervising the loading. Actual physical assistance was a little difficult because he had, the day before, slipped on something and broken his leg.
26There is a school of thought that says that witches and wizards can never go home. They went, though, just the same.
Cover
About the Book
Introducing Discworld
Title Page
Wyrd Sisters
Footnotes
About the Author
Also by Terry Pratchett
Copyright
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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www.transworldbooks.co.uk
Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz Ltd
Corgi edition published 1989
Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett 1988
Terry Pratchett has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Discworld® and Unseen University® are trademarks registered by Terry Pratchett
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781407034621
ISBN 9780552134606
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
THE WIND HOWLED. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain-lashed hills.
The night was as black as the inside of a cat. It was the kind of night, you could believe, on which gods moved men as though they were pawns on the chessboard of fate. In the middle of this elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like the madness in a weasel’s eye. It illuminated three hunched figures. As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: ‘When shall we three meet again?’
There was a pause.
Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: ‘Well, I can do next Tuesday.’
Through the fathomless deeps of space swims the star turtle Great A’Tuin, bearing on its back the four giant elephants who carry on their shoulders the mass of the Discworld. A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past.
Exactly why this should be may never be known. Possibly the Creator of the universe got bored with all the usual business of axial inclination, albedos and rotational velocities, and decided to have a bit of fun for once.
It would be a pretty good bet that the gods of a world like this probably do not play chess and indeed this is the case. In fact no gods anywhere play chess. They haven’t got the imagination. Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god’s idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
Magic glues the Discworld together – magic generated by the turning of the world itself, magic wound like silk out of the underlying structure of existence to suture the wounds of reality.
A lot of it ends up in the Ramtop Mountains, which stretch from the frozen lands near the Hub all the way, via a lengthy archipelago, to the warm seas which flow endlessly into space over the Rim.
Raw magic crackles invisibly from peak to peak and earths itself in the mountains. It is the Ramtops that supply the world with most of its witches and wizards. In the Ramtops the leaves on the trees move even when there is no breeze. Rocks go for a stroll of an evening.
Even the land, at times, seems alive . . .
At times, so does the sky.
The storm was really giving it everything it had. This was its big chance. It had spent years hanging around the provinces, putting in some useful work as a squall, building up experience, making contacts, occasionally leaping out on unsuspecting shepherds or blasting quite small oak trees. Now an opening in the weather had given it an opportunity to strut its hour, and it was building up its role in the hope of being spotted by one of the big climates.
It was a good storm. There was quite effective projection and passion there, and critics agreed that if it would only learn to control its thunder it would be, in years to come, a storm to watch.
The woods roared their applause and were full of mists and flying leaves.
On nights such as these the gods, as has already been pointed out, play games other than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings. It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end . . .
And a coach came hurtling along the rough forest track, jerking violently as the wheels bounced off tree roots. The driver lashed at the team, the desperate crack of his whip providing a rather neat counterpoint to the crash of the tempest overhead.
Behind – only a little way behind, and getting closer – were three hooded riders.
On nights such as this, evil deeds are done. And good deeds, of course. But mostly evil, on the whole.
On nights such as this, witches are abroad.
Well, not actually abroad. They don’t like the food and you can’t trust the water and the shamans always hog the deckchairs. But there was a full moon breasting the ragged clouds and the rushing air was full of whispers and the very broad hint of magic.
In their clearing above the forest the witches spoke thus:
‘I’m babysitting on Tuesday,’ said the one with no hat but a thatch of white curls so thick she might have been wearing a helmet. ‘For our Jason’s youngest. I can manage Friday. Hurry up with the tea, luv. I’m that parched.’
The junior member of the trio gave a sigh, and ladled some boiling water out of the cauldron into the teapot.
The third witch patted her hand in a kindly fashion.
‘You said it quite well,’ she said. ‘Just a bit more work on the screeching. Ain’t that right, Nanny Ogg?’
‘Very useful screeching, I thought,’ said Nanny Ogg hurriedly. ‘And I can see Goodie Whemper, maysherestinpeace, gave you a lot of help with the squint.’
‘It’s a good squint,’ said Granny Weatherwax.
The junior witch, whose name was Magrat Garlick, relaxed considerably. She held Granny Weatherwax in awe. It was known throughout the Ramtop Mountains that Mss Weatherwax did not approve of anything very much. If she said it was a good squint, then Magrat’s eyes were probably staring up her own nostrils.
Unlike wizards, who like nothing better than a complicated hierarchy, witches don’t go in much for the structured approach to career progression. It’s up to each individual witch to take on a girl to hand the area over to when she dies. Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least with other witches, and they certainly don’t have leaders.
Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn’t have.
Magrat’s hands shook slightly as they made the tea. Of course, it was all very gratifying, but it was a bit nerve-racking to start one’s working life as village witch between Granny and, on the other side of the forest, Nanny Ogg. It’d been her idea to form a local coven. She felt it was more, well, occult. To her amazement the other two had agreed or, at least, hadn’t disagreed much.
‘An oven?’ Nanny Ogg had said. ‘What’d we want to join an oven for?’
‘She means a coven, Gytha,’ Granny Weatherwax had explained. ‘You know, like in the old days. A meeting.’
‘A knees up?’ said Nanny Ogg hopefully.
‘No dancing,’ Granny had warned. ‘I don’t hold with dancing. Or singing or getting over-excited or all that messing about with ointments and similar.’
‘Does you good to get out,’ said Nanny happily.
Magrat had been disappointed about the dancing, and was relieved that she hadn’t ventured one or two other ideas that had been on her mind. She fumbled in the packet she had brought with her. It was her first sabbat, and she was determined to do it right.
‘Would anyone care for a scone?’ she said.
Granny looked hard at hers before she bit. Magrat had baked bat designs on it. They had little eyes made of currants.
The coach crashed through the trees at the forest edge, ran on two wheels for a few seconds as it hit a stone, righted itself against all the laws of balance, and rumbled on. But it was going slower now. The slope was dragging at it.
The coachman, standing upright in the manner of a charioteer, pushed his hair out of his eyes and peered through the murk. No-one lived up here, in the lap of the Ramtops themselves, but there was a light ahead. By all that was merciful, there was a light there.
An arrow buried itself in the coach roof behind him.
* * *
Meanwhile King Verence, monarch of Lancre, was making a discovery.
Like most people – most people, at any rate, below the age of sixty or so – Verence hadn’t exercised his mind much about what happened to you when you died. Like most people since the dawn of time, he assumed it all somehow worked out all right in the end.
And, like most people since the dawn of time, he was now dead.
He was in fact lying at the bottom of one of his own stairways in Lancre Castle, with a dagger in his back.
He sat up, and was surprised to find that while someone he was certainly inclined to think of as himself was sitting up, something very much like his body remained lying on the floor.
It was a pretty good body, incidentally, now he came to see it from outside for the first time. He had always been quite attached to it although, he had to admit, this did not now seem to be the case.
It was big and well-muscled. He’d looked after it. He’d allowed it a moustache and long-flowing locks. He’d seen it got plenty of healthy outdoor exercise and lots of red meat. Now, just when a body would have been useful, it had let him down. Or out.
On top of that, he had to come to terms with the tall, thin figure standing beside him. Most of it was hidden in a hooded black robe, but the one arm which extended from the folds to grip a large scythe was made of bone.
When one is dead, there are things one instinctively recognizes.
HALLO.
Verence drew himself up to his full height, or what would have been his full height if that part of him to which the word ‘height’ could have been applied was not lying stiff on the floor and facing a future in which only the word ‘depth’ could be appropriate.
‘I am a king, mark you,’ he said.
WAS, YOUR MAJESTY.
‘What?’ Verence barked.
I SAID WAS. IT’S CALLED THE PAST TENSE. YOU’LL SOON GET USED TO IT.
The tall figure tapped its calcareous fingers on the scythe’s handle. It was obviously upset about something.
If it came to that, Verence thought, so am I. But the various broad hints available in his present circumstances were breaking through even the mad brain stupidity that made up most of his character, and it was dawning on him that whatever kingdom he might currently be in, he wasn’t king of it.
‘Are you Death, fellow?’ he ventured.
I HAVE MANY NAMES.
‘Which one are you using at present?’ said Verence, with a shade more deference. There were people milling around them; in fact, quite a few people were milling through them, like ghosts.
‘Oh, so it was Felmet,’ the king added vaguely, looking at the figure lurking with obscene delight at the top of the stairs. ‘My father said I should never let him get behind me. Why don’t I feel angry?’
GLANDS, said Death shortly. ADRENALIN AND SO FORTH. AND EMOTIONS. YOU DON’T HAVE THEM. ALL YOU HAVE NOW IS THOUGHT.
The tall figure appeared to reach a decision.
THIS IS VERY IRREGULAR, he went on, apparently to himself. HOWEVER, WHO AM I TO ARGUE?
‘Who indeed.’
WHAT?
‘I said, who indeed.’
SHUT UP.
Death stood with his skull on one side, as though listening to some inner voice. As his hood fell away the late king noticed that Death resembled a polished skeleton in every way but one. His eye sockets glowed sky blue. Verence wasn’t frightened, however; not simply because it is difficult to be in fear of anything when the bits you need to be frightened with are curdling several yards away, but because he had never really been frightened of anything in his life, and wasn’t going to start now. This was partly because he didn’t have the imagination, but he was also one of those rare individuals who are totally focused in time.
Most people aren’t. They live their lives as a sort of temporal blur around the point where their body actually is – anticipating the future, or holding on to the past. They’re usually so busy thinking about what happens next that the only time they ever find out what is happening now is when they come to look back on it. Most people are like this. They learn how to fear because they can actually tell, down at the subconscious level, what is going to happen next. It’s already happening to them.
But Verence had always lived only for the present. Until now, anyway.
Death sighed.
I SUPPOSE NO-ONE MENTIONED ANYTHING TO YOU? he hazarded.
‘Say again?’
NO PREMONITIONS? STRANGE DREAMS? MAD OLD SOOTHSAYERS SHOUTING THINGS AT YOU IN THE STREET?
‘About what? Dying?’
NO, I SUPPOSE NOT. IT WOULD BE TOO MUCH TO EXPECT, said Death sourly. THEY LEAVE IT ALL TO ME.
‘Who do?’ said Verence, mystified.
FATE. DESTINY. ALL THE REST OF THEM. Death laid a hand on the king’s shoulder. THE FACT IS, I’M AFRAID, YOU’RE DUE TO BECOME A GHOST.
‘Oh.’ He looked down at his . . . body, which seemed solid enough. Then someone walked through him.
DON’T LET IT UPSET YOU.
Verence watched his own stiff corpse being carried reverentially from the hall.
‘I’ll try,’ he said.
GOOD MAN.
‘I don’t think I will be up to all that business with the white sheets and the chains, though,’ he said. ‘Do I have to walk around moaning and screaming?’
Death shrugged. DO YOU WANT TO? he said.
‘No.’
THEN I SHOULDN’T BOTHER, IF I WERE YOU. Death pulled an hour-glass from the recesses of his dark robe and inspected it closely.
AND NOW I REALLY MUST BE GOING, he said. He turned on his heel, put his scythe over his shoulder and started to walk out of the hall through the wall.
‘I say? Just hold on there!’ shouted Verence, running after him.
Death didn’t look back. Verence followed him through the wall; it was like walking through fog.
‘Is that all?’ he demanded. ‘I mean, how long will I be a ghost? Why am I a ghost? You can’t just leave me like this.’ He halted and raised an imperious, slightly transparent finger. ‘Stop! I command you!’
Death shook his head gloomily, and stepped through the next wall. The king hurried after him with as much dignity as he could still muster, and found Death fiddling with the girths of a large white horse standing on the battlements. It was wearing a nosebag.
‘You can’t leave me like this!’ he repeated, in the face of the evidence.
Death turned to him.
I CAN, he said. YOU’RE UNDEAD, YOU SEE. GHOSTS INHABIT A WORLD BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE DEAD. IT’S NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY. He patted the king on the shoulder. DON’T WORRY, he said, IT WON’T BE FOR EVER.
‘Good.’
IT MAY SEEM LIKE FOR EVER.
‘How long will it really be?’
UNTIL YOU HAVE FULFILLED YOUR DESTINY, I ASSUME.
‘And how will I know what my destiny is?’ said the king, desperately.
CAN’T HELP THERE. I’M SORRY.
‘Well, how can I find out?’
THESE THINGS GENERALLY BECOME APPARENT, I UNDERSTAND, said Death, and swung himself into the saddle.
‘And until then I have to haunt this place.’ King Verence stared around at the draughty battlements. ‘All alone, I suppose. Won’t anyone be able to see me?’
OH, THE PSYCHICALLY INCLINED. CLOSE RELATIVES. AND CATS, OF COURSE.
‘I hate cats.’
Death’s face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant.
I SEE, he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat-haters. YOU LIKE GREAT BIG DOGS, I IMAGINE.
‘As a matter of fact, I do.’ The king stared gloomily at the dawn. His dogs. He’d really miss his dogs. And it looked like such a good hunting day.
He wondered if ghosts hunted. Almost certainly not, he imagined. Or ate, or drank either for that matter, and that was really depressing. He liked a big noisy banquet and had quaffed1 many a pint of good ale. And bad ale, come to that. He’d never been able to tell the difference till the following morning, usually.
He kicked despondently at a stone, and noted gloomily that his foot went right through it. No hunting, drinking, carousing, no wassailing, no hawking . . . It was dawning on him that the pleasures of the flesh were pretty sparse without the flesh. Suddenly life wasn’t worth living. The fact that he wasn’t living it didn’t cheer him up at all.
SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO BE GHOSTS, said Death.
‘Hmm?’ said Verence, gloomily.
IT’S NOT SUCH A WRENCH, I ASSUME. THEY CAN SEE HOW THEIR DESCENDANTS GET ON. SORRY? IS SOMETHING THE MATTER?
But Verence had vanished into the wall.
DON’T MIND ME, WILL YOU, said Death, peevishly. He looked around him with a gaze that could see through time and space and the souls of men, and noted a landslide in distant Klatch, a hurricane in Howandaland, a plague in Hergen.
BUSY, BUSY, he muttered, and spurred his horse into the sky.
Verence ran through the walls of his own castle. His feet barely touched the ground – in fact, the unevenness of the floor meant that at times they didn’t touch the ground at all.
As a king he was used to treating servants as if they were not there, and running through them as a ghost was almost the same. The only difference was that they didn’t stand aside.
Verence reached the nursery, saw the broken door, the trailed sheets . . .
Heard the hoofbeats. He reached the window, saw his own horse go full tilt through the open gateway in the shafts of the coach. A few seconds later three horsemen followed it. The sound of hooves echoed for a moment on the cobbles and died away.
The king thumped the sill, his fist going several inches into the stone.
Then he pushed his way out into the air, disdaining to notice the drop, and half flew, half ran down across the courtyard and into the stables.
It took him a mere twenty seconds to learn that, to the great many things a ghost cannot do, should be added the mounting of a horse. He did succeed in getting into the saddle, or at least in straddling the air just above it, but when the horse finally bolted, terrified beyond belief by the mysterious things happening behind its ears, Verence was left sitting astride five feet of fresh air.
He tried to run, and got about as far as the gateway before the air around him thickened to the consistency of tar.
‘You can’t,’ said a sad, old voice behind him. ‘You have to stay where you were killed. That’s what haunting means. Take it from me. I know.’
* * *
Granny Weatherwax paused with a second scone halfway to her mouth.
‘Something comes,’ she said.
‘Can you tell by the pricking of your thumbs?’ said Magrat earnestly. Magrat had learned a lot about witchcraft from books.
‘The pricking of my ears,’ said Granny. She raised her eyebrows at Nanny Ogg. Old Goodie Whemper had been an excellent witch in her way, but far too fanciful. Too many flowers and romantic notions and such.
The occasional flash of lightning showed the moorland stretching down to the forest, but the rain on the warm summer earth had filled the air with mist wraiths.
‘Hoofbeats?’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘No-one would come up here this time of night.’
Magrat peered around timidly. Here and there on the moor were huge standing stones, their origins lost in time, which were said to lead mobile and private lives of their own. She shivered.
‘What’s to be afraid of?’ she managed.
‘Us,’ said Granny Weatherwax, smugly.
The hoofbeats neared, slowed. And then the coach rattled between the furze bushes, its horses hanging in their harnesses. The driver leapt down, ran around to the door, pulled a large bundle from inside and dashed towards the trio.
He was halfway across the damp peat when he stopped and stared at Granny Weatherwax with a look of horror.
‘It’s all right,’ she whispered, and the whisper cut through the grumbling of the storm as clearly as a bell.
She took a few steps forward and a convenient lightning flash allowed her to look directly into the man’s eyes. They had the peculiarity of focus that told those who had the Know that he was no longer looking at anything in this world.
With a final jerking movement he thrust the bundle into Granny’s arms and toppled forward, the feathers of a crossbow bolt sticking out of his back.
Three figures moved into the firelight. Granny looked up into another pair of eyes, which were as chilly as the slopes of Hell.
Their owner threw his crossbow aside. There was a glimpse of chain mail under his sodden cloak as he drew his sword.
He didn’t flourish it. The eyes that didn’t leave Granny’s face weren’t the eyes of one who bothers about flourishing things. They were the eyes of one who knows exactly what swords are for. He reached out his hand.
‘You will give it to me,’ he said.
Granny twitched aside the blanket in her arms and looked down at a small face, wrapped in sleep.
She looked up.
‘No,’ she said, on general principles.
The soldier glanced from her to Magrat and Nanny Ogg, who were as still as the standing stones of the moor.
‘You are witches?’ he said.
Granny nodded. Lightning skewered down from the sky and a bush a hundred yards away blossomed into fire. The two soldiers behind the man muttered something, but he smiled and raised a mailed hand.
‘Does the skin of witches turn aside steel?’ he said.
‘Not that I’m aware,’ said Granny, levelly. ‘You could give it a try.’
One of the soldiers stepped forward and touched the man’s arm gingerly.
‘Sir, with respect, sir, it’s not a good idea—’
‘Be silent.’
‘But it’s terrible bad luck to—’
‘Must I ask you again?’
‘Sir,’ said the man. His eyes caught Granny’s for a moment, and reflected hopeless terror.
The leader grinned at Granny, who hadn’t moved a muscle.
‘Your peasant magic is for fools, mother of the night. I can strike you down where you stand.’
‘Then strike, man,’ said Granny, looking over his shoulder. ‘If your heart tells you, strike as hard as you dare.’
The man raised his sword. Lightning speared down again and split a stone a few yards away, filling the air with smoke and the stink of burnt silicon.
‘Missed,’ he said smugly, and Granny saw his muscles tense as he prepared to bring the sword down.
A look of extreme puzzlement crossed his face. He tilted his head sideways and opened his mouth, as if trying to come to terms with a new idea. His sword dropped out of his hand and landed point downwards in the peat. Then he gave a sigh and folded up, very gently, collapsing in a heap at Granny’s feet.
She gave him a gentle prod with her toe. ‘Perhaps you weren’t aware of what I was aiming at,’ she whispered. ‘Mother of the night, indeed!’
The soldier who had tried to restrain the man stared in horror at the bloody dagger in his hand, and backed away.
‘I-I-I couldn’t let. He shouldn’t of. It’s – it’s not right to,’ he stuttered.
‘Are you from around these parts, young man?’ said Granny.
He dropped to his knees. ‘Mad Wolf, ma’am,’ he said. He stared back at the fallen captain. ‘They’ll kill me now!’ he wailed.
‘But you did what you thought was right,’ said Granny.
‘I didn’t become a soldier for this. Not to go round killing people.’
‘Exactly right. If I was you, I’d become a sailor,’ said Granny thoughtfully. ‘Yes, a nautical career. I should start as soon as possible. Now, in fact. Run off, man. Run off to sea where there are no tracks. You will have a long and successful life, I promise.’ She looked thoughtful for a moment, and added, ‘At least, longer than it’s likely to be if you hang around here.’
He pulled himself upward, gave her a look compounded of gratitude and awe, and ran off into the mist.
‘And now perhaps someone will tell us what this is all about?’ said Granny, turning to the third man.
To where the third man had been.
There was the distant drumming of hooves on the turf, and then silence.
Nanny Ogg hobbled forward.
‘I could catch him,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’
Granny shook her head. She sat down on a rock and looked at the child in her arms. It was a boy, no more than two years old, and quite naked under the blanket. She rocked him vaguely and stared at nothing.
Nanny Ogg examined the two corpses with the air of one for whom laying-out holds no fears.
‘Perhaps they were bandits,’ said Magrat tremulously.
Nanny shook her head.
‘A strange thing,’ she said. ‘They both wear this same badge. Two bears on a black and gold shield. Anyone know what that means?’
‘It’s the badge of King Verence,’ said Magrat.
‘Who’s he?’ said Granny Weatherwax.
‘He rules this country,’ said Magrat.
‘Oh. That king,’ said Granny, as if the matter was hardly worth noting.
‘Soldiers fighting one another. Doesn’t make sense,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Magrat, you have a look in the coach.’
The youngest witch poked around inside the body-work and came back with a sack. She upended it, and something thudded on to the turf.
The storm had rumbled off to the other side of the mountain now, and the watery moon shed a thin gruel of light over the damp moorland. It also gleamed off what was, without any doubt, an extremely important crown.
‘It’s a crown,’ said Magrat. ‘It’s got all spiky bits on it.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Granny.
The child gurgled in its sleep. Granny Weatherwax didn’t hold with looking at the future, but now she could feel the future looking at her.
She didn’t like its expression at all.
King Verence was looking at the past, and had formed pretty much the same view.
‘You can see me?’ he said.
‘Oh, yes. Quite clearly, in fact,’ said the newcomer.
Verence’s brows knotted. Being a ghost seemed to require considerably more mental effort than being alive; he’d managed quite well for forty years without having to think more than once or twice a day, and now he was doing it all the time.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’re a ghost, too.’
‘Well spotted.’
‘It was the head under your arm,’ said Verence, pleased with himself. ‘That gave me a clue.’
‘Does it bother you? I can put it back on if it bothers you,’ said the old ghost helpfully. He extended his free hand. ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Champot, King of Lancre.’
‘Verence. Likewise.’ He peered down at the old king’s features and added, ‘Don’t seem to recall seeing your picture in the Long Gallery . . .’
‘Oh, all that was after my time,’ said Champot dismissively.
‘How long have you been here, then?’
Champot reached down and rubbed his nose. ‘About a thousand years,’ he said, his voice tinged with pride. ‘Man and ghost.’
‘A thousand years!’
‘I built this place, in fact. Just got it nicely decorated when my nephew cut my head off while I was asleep. I can’t tell you how much that upset me.’
‘But . . . a thousand years . . .’ Verence repeated, weakly.
Champot took his arm. ‘It’s not that bad,’ he confided, as he led the unresisting king across the courtyard. ‘Better than being alive, in many ways.’
‘They must be bloody strange ways, then!’ snapped Verence. ‘I liked being alive!’
Champot grinned reassuringly. ‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to get used to it!’
‘You’ve got a strong morphogenic field,’ said Champot. ‘I can tell. I look for these things. Yes. Very strong, I should say.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I was never very good with words, you know,’ said Champot. ‘I always found it easier to hit people with something. But I gather it all boils down to how alive you were. When you were alive, I mean. Something called—’ he paused – ‘animal vitality. Yes, that was it. Animal vitality. The more you had, the more you stay yourself, as it were, if you’re a ghost. I expect you were one hundred per cent alive, when you were alive,’ he added.
Despite himself, Verence felt flattered. ‘I tried to keep myself busy,’ he said. They had strolled through the wall into the Great Hall, which was now empty. The sight of the trestle tables triggered an automatic reaction in the king.
‘How do we go about getting breakfast?’ he said.
Champot’s head looked surprised.
‘We don’t,’ he said. ‘We’re ghosts.’
‘But I’m hungry!’
‘You’re not, you know. It’s just your imagination.’
There was a clattering from the kitchens. The cooks were already up and, in the absence of any other instructions, were preparing the castle’s normal breakfast menu. Familiar smells were wafting up from the dark archway that led to the kitchens.
Verence sniffed.
‘Sausages,’ he said dreamily. ‘Bacon. Eggs. Smoked fish.’ He stared at Champot. ‘Black pudding,’ he whispered.
‘You haven’t actually got a stomach,’ the old ghost pointed out. ‘It’s all in the mind. Just force of habit. You just think you’re hungry.’
‘I think I’m ravenous.’
‘Yes, but you can’t actually touch anything, you see,’ Champot explained gently. ‘Nothing at all.’
Verence lowered himself gently on to a bench, so that he did not drift through it, and sank his head in his hands. He’d heard that death could be bad. He just hadn’t realized how bad.
He wanted revenge. He wanted to get out of this suddenly horrible castle, to find his son. But he was even more terrified to find that what he really wanted, right now, was a plate of kidneys.
A damp dawn flooded across the landscape, scaled the battlements of Lancre Castle, stormed the keep and finally made it through the casement of the solar.
Duke Felmet stared out gloomily at the dripping forest. There was such a lot of it. It wasn’t, he decided, that he had anything against trees as such, it was just that the sight of so much of them was terribly depressing. He kept wanting to count them.
‘Indeed, my love,’ he said.
The duke put those who met him in mind of some sort of lizard, possibly the type that lives on volcanic islands, moves once a day, has a vestigial third eye and blinks on a monthly basis. He considered himself to be a civilized man more suited to the dry air and bright sun of a properly-organized climate.
On the other hand, he mused, it might be nice to be a tree. Trees didn’t have ears, he was pretty sure of this. And they seemed to manage without the blessed state of matrimony. A male oak tree – he’d have to look this up – a male oak tree just shed its pollen on the breeze and all the business with the acorns, unless it was oak apples, no, he was pretty sure it was acorns, took place somewhere else . . .
‘Yes, my precious,’ he said.
Yes, trees had got it all worked out. Duke Felmet glared at the forest roof. Selfish bastards.
‘Certainly, my dear,’ he said.
‘What?’ said the duchess.
The duke hesitated, desperately trying to replay the monologue of the last five minutes. There had been something about him being half a man, and . . . infirm on purpose? And he was sure there had been a complaint about the coldness of the castle. Yes, that was probably it. Well, those wretched trees could do a decent day’s work for once.
‘I’ll have some cut down and brought in directly, my cherished,’ he said.
Lady Felmet was momentarily speechless. This was by way of being a calendar event. She was a large and impressive woman, who gave people confronting her for the first time the impression that they were seeing a galleon under full sail; the effect was heightened by her unfortunate belief that red velvet rather suited her. However, it didn’t set off her complexion. It matched it.
The duke often mused on his good luck in marrying her. If it wasn’t for the engine of her ambition he’d be just another local lord, with nothing much to do but hunt, drink and exercise his droit de seigneur.2 Instead, he was now just a step away from the throne, and might soon be monarch of all he surveyed.
Provided that all he surveyed was trees.
He sighed.
‘Cut what down?’ said Lady Felmet, icily.
‘Oh, the trees,’ said the duke.
‘What have trees got to do with it?’
‘Well . . . there are such a lot of them,’ said the duke, with feeling.
‘Don’t change the subject!’
‘Sorry, my sweet.’
‘What I said was, how could you have been so stupid as to let them get away? I told you that servant was far too loyal. You can’t trust someone like that.’
‘No, my love.’
‘You didn’t by any chance consider sending someone after them, I suppose?’
‘Bentzen, my dear. And a couple of guards.’
‘Oh.’ The duchess paused. Bentzen, as captain of the duke’s personal bodyguard, was as efficient a killer as a psychotic mongoose. He would have been her choice. It annoyed her to be temporarily deprived of a chance to fault her husband, but she rallied quite well.
‘He wouldn’t have needed to go out at all, if only you’d listened to me. But you never do.’
‘Do what, my passion?’
The duke yawned. It had been a long night. There had been a thunderstorm of quite unnecessarily dramatic proportions, and then there had been all that messy business with the knives.
It has already been mentioned that Duke Felmet was one step away from the throne. The step in question was at the top of the flight leading to the Great Hall, down which King Verence had tumbled in the dark only to land, against all the laws of probability, on his own dagger.
It had, however, been declared by his own physician to be a case of natural causes. Bentzen had gone to see the man and explained that falling down a flight of steps with a dagger in your back was a disease caused by unwise opening of the mouth.
In fact it had already been caught by several members of the king’s own bodyguard who had been a little bit hard of hearing. There had been a minor epidemic.
The duke shuddered. There were details about last night that were both hazy and horrible.
He tried to reassure himself that all the unpleasantness was over now, and he had a kingdom. It wasn’t much of one, apparently being mainly trees, but it was a kingdom and it had a crown.
If only they could find it.
Lancre Castle was built on an outcrop of rock by an architect who had heard about Gormenghast but hadn’t got the budget. He’d done his best, though, with a tiny confection of cut-price turrets, bargain basements, buttresses, crenellations, gargoyles, towers, courtyards, keeps and dungeons; in fact, just about everything a castle needs except maybe reasonable foundations and the kind of mortar that doesn’t wash away in a light shower.
The castle leaned vertiginously over the racing white water of the Lancre river, which boomed darkly a thousand feet below. Every now and again a few bits fell in.
Small as it was, though, the castle contained a thousand places to hide a crown.
The duchess swept out to find someone else to berate, and left Lord Felmet looking gloomily at the landscape. It started to rain.
It was on this cue that there came a thunderous knocking at the castle door. It seriously disturbed the castle porter, who was playing Cripple Mister Onion with the castle cook and the castle’s Fool in the warmth of the kitchen.
He growled and stood up. ‘There is a knocking without,’ he said.
‘Without what?’ said the Fool.
‘Without the door, idiot.’
The Fool gave him a worried look. ‘A knocking without a door?’ he said suspiciously. ‘This isn’t some kind of Zen, is it?’
When the porter had grumbled off in the direction of the gatehouse the cook pushed another farthing into the kitty and looked sharply over his cards at the Fool.
‘What’s a Zen?’ he said.
The Fool’s bells tinkled as he sorted through his cards. Without thinking, he said: ‘Oh, a sub-sect of the Turnwise Klatch philosophical system of Sumtin, noted for its simple austerity and the offer of personal tranquillity and wholeness achieved through meditation and breathing techniques; an interesting aspect is the asking of apparently nonsensical questions in order to widen the doors of perception.’
‘How’s that again?’ said the cook suspiciously. He was on edge. When he’d taken the breakfast up to the Great Hall he’d kept getting the feeling that something was trying to take the tray out of his hands. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, this new duke had sent him back for . . . He shuddered. Oatmeal! And a runny boiled egg! The cook was too old for this sort of thing. He was set in his ways. He was a cook in the real feudal tradition. If it didn’t have an apple in its mouth and you couldn’t roast it, he didn’t want to serve it.
The Fool hesitated with a card in his hand, suppressed his panic and thought quickly.
‘I’faith, nuncle,’ he squeaked, ‘thou’t more full of questions than a martlebury is of mizzensails.’
The cook relaxed.
‘Well, OK,’ he said, not entirely satisfied. The Fool lost the next three hands, just to be on the safe side.
The porter, meanwhile, unfastened the hatch in the wicket gate and peered out.
‘Who dost knock without?’ he growled.
The soldier, drenched and terrified though he was, hesitated.
‘Without? Without what?’ he said.
‘If you’re going to bugger about, you can bloody well stay without all day,’ said the porter calmly.
‘No! I must see the duke upon the instant!’ shouted the guard. ‘Witches are abroad!’
The porter was about to come back with, ‘Good time of year for it’, or ‘Wish I was, too’, but stopped when he saw the man’s face. It wasn’t the face of a man who would enter into the spirit of the thing. It was the look of someone who had seen things a decent man shouldn’t wot of . . .
* * *
‘Witches?’ said Lord Felmet.
‘Witches!’ said the duchess.
In the draughty corridors, a voice as faint as the wind in distant keyholes said, with a note of hope, ‘Witches!’
The psychically inclined . . .
‘It’s meddling, that’s what it is,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘And no good will come of it.’
‘It’s very romantic,’ said Magrat breathily, and heaved a sigh.
‘Goochy goo,’ said Nanny Ogg.
‘Anyway,’ said Magrat, ‘you killed that horrid man!’
‘I never did. I just encouraged . . . things to take their course.’ Granny Weatherwax frowned. ‘He didn’t have no respect. Once people lose their respect, it means trouble.’
‘Izzy wizzy wazzy, den.’
‘That other man brought him out here to save him!’ shouted Magrat. ‘He wanted us to keep him safe! It’s obvious! It’s destiny!’
‘Oh, obvious,’ said Granny. ‘I’ll grant you it’s obvious. Trouble is, just because things are obvious doesn’t mean they’re true.’
She weighed the crown in her hands. It felt very heavy, in a way that went beyond mere pounds and ounces.
‘Yes, but the point is—’ Magrat began.
‘The point is,’ said Granny, ‘that people are going to come looking. Serious people. Serious looking. Pull-down-the-walls and burn-off-the-thatch looking. And—’
‘Howsa boy, den?’
‘—And, Gytha, I’m sure we’ll all be a lot happier if you’d stop gurgling like that!’ Granny snapped. She could feel her nerves coming on. Her nerves always played up when she was unsure about things. Besides, they had retired to Magrat’s cottage, and the decor was getting to her, because Magrat believed in Nature’s wisdom and elves and the healing power of colours and the cycle of the seasons and a lot of other things Granny Weatherwax didn’t have any truck with.
‘You’re not after telling me how to look after a child,’ snapped Nanny Ogg mildly. ‘And me with fifteen of my own?’
‘I’m just saying that we ought to think about it,’ said Granny.
The other two watched her for some time.
‘Well?’ said Magrat.
Granny’s fingers drummed on the edge of the crown. She frowned.
‘First, we’ve got to take him away from here,’ she said, and held up a hand. ‘No, Gytha, I’m sure your cottage is ideal and everything, but it’s not safe. He’s got to be somewhere away from here, a long way away, where no-one knows who he is. And then there’s this.’ She tossed the crown from hand to hand.
‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said Magrat. ‘I mean, you just hide it under a stone or something. That’s easy. Much easier than babies.’
‘It ain’t,’ said Granny. ‘The reason being, the country’s full of babies and they all look the same, but I don’t reckon there’s many crowns. They have this way of being found, anyway. They kind of call out to people’s minds. If you bunged it under a stone up here, in a week’s time it’d get itself discovered by accident. You mark my words.’
‘It’s true, is that,’ said Nanny Ogg, earnestly. ‘How many times have you thrown a magic ring into the deepest depths of the ocean and then, when you get home and have a nice bit of turbot for your tea, there it is?’
They considered this in silence.
‘Never,’ said Granny irritably. ‘And nor have you. Anyway, he might want it back. If it’s rightfully his, that is. Kings set a lot of store by crowns. Really, Gytha, sometimes you say the most—’
‘I’ll just make some tea, shall I?’ said Magrat brightly, and disappeared into the scullery.
The two elderly witches sat on either side of the table in polite and prickly silence. Finally Nanny Ogg said, ‘She done it up nice, hasn’t she? Flowers and everything. What are them things on the walls?’
‘Sigils,’ said Granny sourly. ‘Or some such.’
‘Fancy,’ said Nanny Ogg, politely. ‘And all them robes and wands and things too.’
‘Modern,’ said Granny Weatherwax, with a sniff. ‘When I was a gel, we had a lump of wax and a couple of pins and had to be content. We had to make our own enchantment in them days.’
‘Ah, well, we’ve all passed a lot of water since then,’ said Nanny Ogg sagely. She gave the baby a comforting jiggle.
forbidden