They didn't look like Ponder Stibbons. He'd lost most of his robe and, of his hat, only the brim remained. Most of his face was covered in mud, and there was a multicoloured bruise over one eye.
"Did they do that to you?"
"Well, the mud and the torn clothes is just from, you know, the forest. And we've run into-"
"Ook."
"-over elves a few times. But this is when the Librarian hit me."
"Oook."
"Thank goodness," Ponder added. "Knocked me cold. Otherwise I'd be like the others."
A foreboding of a conversation to come swept over Magrat.
"What others?" she snapped.
"Are you alone?"
"What others?"
"Have you any idea what's been happening?"
Magrat thought about the castle, and the town.
"I might be able to hazard a guess," she said.
Ponder shook his head.
"It's worse than that," he said.
"What others?" said Magrat.
"I think there's definitely been a cross-continuum break-through, and I'm sure there's a difference in energy levels."
"But what others?" Magrat insisted.
Ponder Stibbons glanced nervously at the surrounding forest.
"Let's get off the path. There's a lot more elves back there."
Ponder disappeared into the undergrowth. Magrat followed him, and found a second wizard propped against a tree like a ladder. He had a huge smile creasing his face.
"The Bursar," said Ponder. "I think we may have overdone the dried frog pills a bit." He raised his voice. "How . . . are . . . you . . . doing . . . sir?"
"Why, I'll have a little of the roast weasel, if you would be so good," said the Bursar, beaming happily at nothing.
"Why's he gone so stiff?" said Magrat. "We think it's some kind of side effect," said Ponder. "Can't you do anything about it?"
"What, and have nothing to cross streams on?"
"Call again tomorrow, baker, and we'll have a crusty one!" said the Bursar.
"Besides, he seems quite happy," said Ponder. "Are you a warrior, miss?"
"What?" said Magrat. "Well, I mean, the armour and everything . . ." Magrat looked down. She was still holding the sword. The helmet kept falling over her eyes, but she'd padded it a bit with a scrap of wedding dress.
"I . . . er . . . yes. Yes, that's right. That's what I am," she said. "Absolutely. Yes."
"Here for the wedding, I expect. Like us."
"That's right. Definitely here for the wedding. That's true." She changed her grip on the sword. "Now tell me what happened," she said. "Paying particular attention to what happened to the others."
"Well . . ." Ponder absentmindedly picked up a corner of his torn robe and began to screw it up in his fingers. "We all went to see this Entertainment, you see. A play. You know. Acting? And, and it was very funny. There were all these yokels in their big boots and everything, straw wigs and everything, clumping around pretending to be lords and ladies and everything, and getting it all wrong. It was very funny. The Bursar laughed at them a lot. Mind you, he's been laughing at trees and rocks, too. But everyone was having fun. And then . . . and then . . ."
"I want to know everything," said Magrat. "Well . . . well . . . then there was this bit I can't really remember. It was something to do with the acting, I think. I mean, suddenly . . . suddenly it all seemed real. Do you know what I mean?"
"No."
"There was this chap with a red nose and bandy legs and he was playing the Queen of the Fairies or something and suddenly he was still him but. . . everything felt. . . everything round me just vanished, there was just the actors . . . and there was this hill . . . I mean, they must have been good, because I really believed . . . I think at some point I remember someone asking us to clap our hands . . . and everyone was looking very strange and there was this singing and it was wonderful and . . . and . . ."
"Oook."
"Then the Librarian hit me," said Ponder simply.
"Why?"
"Best if he tells it in his own words," said Ponder.
"Oook ook eek. Ook! Ook!"
"Cough, Julia! Over the bender!" said the Bursar.
"I didn't understand what the Librarian said," said Magrat.
"Um. We were all present at an interdimensional rip," said Ponder. "Caused by belief. The play was the last little thing that opened it up. There must have been a very delicate area of instability very close. It's hard to describe, but if you had a rubber sheet and some lead weights I could demonstrate-"
"You're trying to tell me those . . . things exist because people believe in them?"
"Oh, no. I imagine they exist anyway. They're here because people believe in them here."
"Ook."
"He ran off with us. They shot an arrow at him."
"Eeek."
"But it just made him itch."
"Ook."
"Normally he's as gentle as a lamb. Really he is."
"Ook."
"But he can't abide elves. They smell wrong to him."
The Librarian flared his nostrils.
Magrat didn't know much about jungles, but she thought about apes in trees, smelling the rank of the tiger. Apes never admired the sleek of the fur and the bum of the eye, because they were too well aware of the teeth of the
mouth.
"Yes," she said, "I expect they would. Dwarfs and trolls hate them, too. But I think they don't hate them as much as I do."
"You can't fight them all," said Ponder. "They're swarming like bees up there. There's flying ones, too. The Librarian says they made people get fallen trees and things and push those, you know, those stones down? There were some stones on the hill. They attacked them. Don't know why."
"Did you see any witches at the Entertainment?" said Magrat.
"Witches, witches . . ." muttered Ponder.
"You couldn't have missed them," said Magrat. "There'd be a thin one glaring at everyone and a small fat one cracking nuts and laughing a lot. And they'd be talking to each other very loudly. And they'd both have tall pointy hats."
"Can't say I noticed them," said Ponder.
"Then they couldn't have been there," said Magrat. "Being noticed is what being a witch is all about." She was about to add that she'd never been good at it, but didn't. Instead she said: "I'm going on up there."
"You'll need an army, miss. I mean, you'd have been in trouble just now if the Librarian hadn't been up in the trees."
"But I haven't got an army. So I'm going to have to try by myself, aren't I?"
This time Magrat managed to spur the horse into a gallop.
Ponder watched her go.
"You know, folksongs have got a lot to answer for," he said to the night air.
"Oook."
"She's going to get utterly killed."
"Oook."
"Hello, Mr. Flowerpot, two pints of eels if you would be so good."
"Of course, it could be her destiny, or one of those sort of things."
"Oook."
"Millennium hand and shrimp."
Ponder Stibbons looked embarrassed.
"Anyone want to follow her?"
"Oook."
"Whoops, there he goes with his big clock."
"Was that a 'yes'?"
"Oook."
"Not yours, his."
"Flobby wobbly, here comes our jelly."
"I think that probably counts as a 'yes'," said Ponder, reluctantly.
"Oook?"
"I've got a lovely new vest."
"But look," said Ponder, "the graveyards are full of people who rushed in bravely but unwisely."
"Ook."
"What'd he say?" said the Bursar, passing briefly through reality on his way somewhere else.
"I think he said, 'Sooner or later the graveyards are full of everybody,'" said Ponder. "Oh, blast. Come on."
"Yes indeedy," said the Bursar, "hands up the mittens, Mr. Bosun!"
"Oh, shut up."
* * *
Magrat dismounted and let the horse go.
She knew she was near the Dancers now. Collared light flickered in the sky.
She wished she could go home.
The air was colder here, far too cold for a midsummer night. As she plodded onward, flakes of snow swirled in the breeze and turned to rain.
Ridcully materialized inside the castle, and then clung on to a pillar for support until he got his breath back. Transmigration always made blue spots appear in front of his eyes.
No one noticed him. The castle was in turmoil. Not everyone had run home. Armies had marched across Lancre many times over the last few thousand years, and the recollection of the castle's thick safe walls had been practically engraved in the folk memory. Run to the castle. And now it held most of the little country's population.
Ridcully blinked. People were milling around and being harangued by a small young man in loose-fitting chain-mail and one arm in a sling, who seemed to be the only person
with any grip on things.
When he was certain he could walk straight, Ridcully
headed toward him.
"What's going on, young-" he began, and then stopped.
Shawn Ogg looked around.
"The scheming minx!" said Ridcully, to the air in general. '"Oh, go back and get it then,' she said, and I fell right for it! Even if I could cut the mustard again I don't know where we were!"
"Sir?" said Shawn.
Ridcully shook himself. "What's happening?" he said.
"I don't know!" said Shawn, who was almost in tears. "I think we're being attacked by elves! Nothing anyone's telling me's making any sense! Somehow they arrived during the Entertainment! Or something!"
Ridcully looked around at the frightened, bewildered people.
"And Miss Magrat's gone out to fight them alone!" Ridcully looked perplexed.
"Who's Miss Magrat?"
"She's going to be queen! The bride! You know? Magrat Garlick?"
Ridcully's mind could digest one fact at a time.
"What's she gone out for?"
"They captured the king!"
"Did you know they've got Esme Weatherwax as well?"
"What, Granny Weatherwax?"
"I came back to rescue her," said Ridcully, and then realized that this sounded either nonsense or cowardly.
Shawn was too upset to notice. "I just hope they're not collecting witches," he said. "They'll need our mum to get the complete set."
"They ain't got me, then," said Nanny Ogg, behind him.
"Mum? How did you get in?"
"Broomstick. You'd better get some people with bows up on the roof. I came down that way. So can others."
"What're we going to do, Mum?"
"There's bands of elves all over the place," said Nanny, "and there's a big glow over the Dancers-"
"We must attack them!" shouted Casanunda. "Give 'em a taste of cold steel!"
"Good man, that dwarf!" said Ridcully. "That's right! I'll get my crossbow!"
"There's too many of them," said Nanny flatly.
"Granny and Miss Magrat are out there, Mum," said Shawn. "Miss Magrat came over all strange and put on armour and went out to fight all of them!"
"But the hills are crawling with elves," said Nanny. "It's a double helping of hell with extra devils. Certain death."
"It's certain death anyway," said Ridcully. "That's the thing about Death, certainty."
"We'd have no chance at all," said Nanny.
"Actually, we'd have one chance," said Ridcully. "I don't understand all this continuinuinuum stuff, but from what young Stibbons says it means that everything has to happen somewhere, d'y'see, so that means it could happen here. Even if it's a million to one chance, ma'am."
"That's all very well," said Nanny, "but what you're saying is, for every Mr. Ridcully that survives tonight's work,
999,999 are going to get killed?"
"Yes, but I'm not bothered about those other buggers," said Ridcully. "They can look after themselves. Serve 'em right for not inviting me to their weddings."
"What?"
"Nothing."
Shawn was hopping from one foot to the other. "We ought to be fighting 'em. Mum!"
"Look at everyone!" said Nanny. "They're dog tired and wet and confused! That's not an army!"
"Mum, Mum, Mum!"
"What?"
"I'll pussike 'em up, Mum! That's what you have to do before troops go into battle. Mum! I read about that in books! You can take a rabble of thingy and make the right kind of speech and pussike them up and turn 'em into a terrible fighting force. Mum!"
"They look terrible anyway!"
"I mean terrible like fierce. Mum!"
Nanny Ogg looked at the hundred or so Lancre subjects. The thought of them managing to fight anyone at all took some getting used to.
"You been studyin' this, Shawn?" she inquired. "I've got five years' worth of Bows and Ammo, Mum," said Shawn reproachfully.
"Give it a try, then. If you think it'll work." Trembling with excitement, Shawn climbed on to a table, drew his sword with his good hand, and banged it on the planks until people were silent. He made a speech.
He pointed out that their king had been captured and their prospective queen had gone out to save him. He pointed out their responsibility as loyal subjects. He pointed out that other people currently not here but at home hiding under the bed would, after the glorious victory, wish they'd been there too instead of under the aforesaid bed which they were hiding under, you know, the bed he'd just mentioned. In fact it was better that there were so few here to face the enemy, because that meant that there would be a higher percentage of honour per surviving head. He used the word "glory" three times. He said that in times to come people would look back on this day, whatever the date was, and proudly show their scars, at least those who'd survived would show their scars, and be very proud and probably have drinks bought for them. He advised people to imitate the action of the Lancre Reciprocating Fox and stiffen some sinews while leaving them flexible enough so's they could move their arms and legs, in fact, probably it'd be better to relax them a bit now and stiffen them properly when the time came. He suggested that Lancre expected everyone to do their duty. And urn. And uh. Please?
The silence that followed was broken by Nanny Ogg, who said, "They're probably considering it a bit, Shawn. Why don't you take Mr. Wizard here up to his room and help him with his crossbow?"
She nodded meaningfully in the direction of the stairs.
Shawn wavered, but not for long. He'd seen the glint in his mother's eye.
When he'd gone. Nanny climbed up on the same table.
"Well," she said, "it's like this. If you go out there you may have to face elves. But if you stops here, you definitely have to face me. Now, elves is worse than me, I'll admit. But I'm persistent."
Weaver put up a tentative hand.
"Please, Mrs. Ogg?"
"Yes, Weaver?"
"What exactly is the action of the Reciprocating Fox?"
Nanny scratched her ear.
"As I recall," she said, "its back legs go like this but its front legs go like this."
"No, no, no," said Quamey the storekeeper. "It's its tail that goes like that. Its legs go like this."
"That's not reciprocating, that's just oscillating," said someone. "You're thinking of the Ring-tailed Ocelot."
Nanny nodded.
"That's settled, then," she said.
"Hold on, I'm not sure-"
"Yes, Mr. Quamey?"
"Oh . . . well. . ."
"Good, good," said Nanny, as Shawn reappeared. "They was just saying, our Shawn, how they was swayed by your speech. Really pussiked up."
"Cor!"
"They're ready to follow you into the jaws of hell itself, I expect," said Nanny.
Someone put up their hand.
"Are you coming too, Mrs. Ogg?"
"I'll just stroll along behind," said Nanny.
"Oh. Well. Maybe as far as the jaws of hell, then."
"Amazing," said Casanunda to Nanny, as the crowd filed reluctantly toward the armoury.
"You just got to know how to deal with people."
"They'll follow where an Ogg leads?"
"Not exactly," said Nanny, "but if they know what's good for 'em they'll go where an Ogg follows."
Magrat stepped out from under the trees, and the moor land lay ahead of her.
A whirlpool of cloud swirled over the Dancers, or at least, over the place where the Dancers had been. She could make out one or two stones by the flickering light, lying on their side or rolled down the slope of the hill.
The hill itself glowed. Something was wrong with the landscape. It curved where it shouldn't curve. Distances weren't right. Magrat remembered a woodcut shoved in as a place marker in one of her old books. It showed the face of an old crone but, if you stared at it, you saw it was also the head of a young woman; a nose became a neck, an eyebrow became a necklace. The images seesawed back and forth. And like everyone else, she'd squinted herself silly trying to see them both at the same time.
The landscape was doing pretty much the same thing. What was a hill was also at the same time a vast snowbound panorama. Lancre and the land of the elves were trying to occupy the same space.
The intrusive country wasn't having it all its own way. Lancre was fighting back.
There was a circle of tents just on the cusp of the warring landscapes, like a beachhead on an alien shore. They were brightly collared. Everything about the elves was beautiful, until the image tilted, and you saw it from the other side. . .
Something was happening. Several elves were on horseback, and more horses were being led between the tents.
It looked as though they were breaking camp.
The Queen sat on a makeshift throne in her tent. She sat with her elbow resting on one arm of the throne and her fingers curling pensively around her mouth.
There were other elves seated in a semicircle, except that "seated" was a barely satisfactory word. They lounged; elves could make themselves at home on a wire. And here there was more lace and velvet and fewer feathers, although it was hard to know if it meant that these were aristocrats-elves seemed to wear whatever they felt like wearing, confident of looking absolutely stunning[42].
Every one of them watched the Queen, and was a mirror of her moods. When she smiled, they smiled. When she said something she thought was amusing, they laughed.
Currently the object of her attention was Granny Weatherwax.
"What is happening, old woman?" she said.
"It ain't easy, is it?" said Granny. "Thought it would be easy, didn't you?"
"You've done some magic, haven't you? Something is fighting us."
"No magic," said Granny. "No magic at all. It's just that you've been away too long. Things change. The land belongs to humans now."
"That can't be the case," said the Queen. "Humans take. They plough with iron. They ravage the land."
"Some do, I'll grant you that. Others put back more'n they take. They put back love. They've got soil in their bones. They tell the land what it is. That's what humans are for. Without humans, Lancre'd just be a bit of ground with green bits on it. They wouldn't even know they're trees. We're all down here together, madam — us and the land. It's not just land anymore, it's a country. It's like a horse that's been broken and shod or a dog that's been tamed. Every time people put a plough in the soil or planted a seed they took the land further away from you," said Granny. "Things change."
Verence sat beside the Queen. His pupils were tiny pinpoints; he smiled faintly, permanently, in a way very reminiscent of the Bursar.
"Ah. But when we are married," said the Queen, "the land must accept me. By your own rules. I know how it works. There's more to being a king than wearing a crown. The king and the land are one. The king and the queen are one. And I shall be queen."
She smiled at Granny. There was an elf on either side of her and. Granny knew, at least one behind her. Elves were not given to introspection; if she moved without permission, she'd die.
"What you shall be is something I have yet to decide," said the Queen. She held up an exquisitely thin hand and curled the thumb and forefinger into a ring, which she held up to her eye.
"And now someone comes," she said, "with armour that doesn't fit and a sword she cannot use and an axe she can hardly even lift, because it is so romantic, is it not? What is her name?"
"Magrat Garlick," said Granny.
"She is a mighty enchantress, is she?"
"She's good with herbs."
The Queen laughed.
"I could kill her from here."
"Yes," said Granny, "but that wouldn't be much fun, would it? Humiliation is the key."
The Queen nodded.
"You know, you think very much like an elf."
"I think it will soon be dawn," said Granny. "A fine day. Clear light."
"Not soon enough," The Queen stood up. She glanced at King Verence for a moment, and changed. Her dress went from red to silver, catching the torchlight like glittering fish scales. Her hair unraveled and reshaped itself, became corn blond. And a subtle ripple of alterations flowed across her face before she said, "What do you think?"
She looked like Magrat. Or, at least, like Magrat wished she looked and maybe as Verence always thought of her. Granny nodded. As one expert to another, she recognized accomplished nastiness when she saw it.
"And you're going to face her like that," she said.
"Certainly. Eventually. At the finish. But don't feel sorry for her. She's only going to die. Would you like me to show you what you might have been?"
"No."
"I could do it easily. There are other times than this. I could show you grandmother Weatherwax."
"No."
"It must be terrible, knowing that you have no friends. That no one will care when you die. That you never touched a heart."
"Yes."
"And I'm sure you think about it. . . in those long evenings when there's no company but the ticking of the clock and the coldness of the room and you open the box and look at-"
The Queen waved a hand vaguely as Granny tried to break free.
"Don't kill her," she said. "She is much more fun alive."
Magrat stuck the sword in the mud and hefted the battleaxe.
Woods pressed in on either side. The elves would have to come this way There looked like hundreds of them and there was only one Magrat Garlick.
She knew there was such a thing as heroic odds. Songs and ballads and stories and poems were full of stories about one person single-handedly taking on and defeating a vast number of enemies.
Only now was it dawning on her that the trouble was that they were songs and ballads and stories and poems because they dealt with things that were, not to put too fine a point on it, untrue.
She couldn't, now she had time to think about it, ever remember an example from history.
In the woods to one side of her an elf raised its bow and took careful aim.
A twig snapped behind it. It turned.
The Bursar beamed. "Whoopsy daisy, old trouser, my bean's all runny."
The elf swung the bow.
A pair of prehensile feet dropped out of the greenery, gripped it by the shoulders, and pulled it upward sharply. There was a crack as its head hit the underside of a branch.
"Oook."
"Move right along!"
On the other side of the path another elf took aim. And then its world flowed away from it. . .
This is the inside of the mind of an elf:
Here are the normal five senses but they are all subordinate to the sixth sense. There is no formal word for it on the Discworld, because the force is so weak that it is only ever encountered by observant blacksmiths, who call it the Love of Iron. Navigators might have discovered it were it not that the Disc's standing magical field is much more reliable. But bees sense it, because bees sense everything. Pigeons navigate by it. And everywhere in the multiverse elves use it to know exactly where they are.
It must be hard for humans, forever floundering through inconvenient geography. Humans are always slightly lost. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them.
Elves are never lost at all. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them.
Elves have absolute position. The flow of the silvery force dimly outlines the landscape. Creatures generate small amounts of it themselves, and become perceptible in the flux. Their muscles crackle with it, their minds buzz with it. For those who learn how, even thoughts can be read by the tiny local changes in the flow.
For an elf, the world is something to reach out and take. Except for the terrible metal that drinks the force and deforms the flux universe like a heavy weight on a rubber sheet and blinds them and deafens them and leaves them rudderless and more alone than most humans could ever be. . .
The elf toppled forward.
Ponder Stibbons lowered the sword.
Almost everyone else would not have thought much about it. But Ponder's wretched fate was to look for patterns in an uncaring world.
"But I hardly touched him," he said, to no one except himself.
"-And I kissed her in the shrubbery where the nightingales sing it, you bastards! Two, three!"
They didn't know where they were. They didn't know where they'd been. They were not fully certain who they were. But the Lancre Morris Men had reached some sort of state now where it was easier to go on than stop. Singing attracted elves, but singing also fascinated them . . .
The dancers whirled and hopped, gyrated and skipped along the paths. They pranced through isolated hamlets, where elves left whoever they were torturing to draw closer in the light of the burning buildings. . .
"'With a WACK foladiddle-di-do, sing too-rah-li-ay!'"
Six sticks did their work, right on the beat.
"Where're we goin', Jason?"
"I reckon we've gone down Slippery Hollow and're circling back toward the town," said Jason, hopping past Baker. "Keep goin'. Carter!"
"The rain's got in the keys, Jason!"
"Don't matter! They don't know the difference! It's good enough for folk music!"
"I think I broke my stick on that last one, Jason!"
"Just you keep dancing, Tinker! Now, lads . . . how about Gathering Peasecods? We might as well get some practice in, since we're here . . ."
"There's some people up ahead," said Tailor, as he skipped past, "I can see torches an' that."
"Human, two, three, or more elves?"
"Dunno!"
Jason spun and danced back.
"Is that you, our Jason?"
Jason cackled as the voice echoed among the dripping trees.
"It's our mam! And our Shawn. And — and lots of people! We've made it, lads!"
"Jason," said Carter.
"Yes?"
"I ain't sure I can stop!"
The Queen examined her face in a mirror attached to the tent pole.
"Why?" said Granny. "What is it you see?"
"Whatever I want to see," said the Queen. "You know that. And now . . . let us ride to the castle. Tie her hands together. But leave her legs free."
It rained again, gently, although around the stones it turned to sleet. The water dripped off Magrat's hair and temporarily unraveled the tangles.
Mist coiled out from among the trees where summer and winter fought.
Magrat watched the elven court mount up. She made out the figure of Verence, moving like a puppet. And Granny Weatherwax, tied behind the Queen's horse by a long length of rope.
The horses splashed through the mud. They had silver bells on their harness, dozens of them.
The elves in the castle, the night of ghosts and shadows, all of this was just a hard knot in her memory. But the jingling of the bells was like a nailfile rubbed across her teeth.
The Queen halted the procession a few yards away.
"Ah, the brave girl," she said. "Come to save her fiance, all alone? How sweet. Someone kill her."
An elf spurred its horse forward, and raised its sword. Magrat gripped the battleaxe.
Somewhere behind her a bowstring slammed against wood. The elf jerked. So did one behind it. The arrow kept going, curving a little as it passed over one of the fallen Dancers.
Then Shawn Ogg's ragbag army charged out from under the trees, except for Ridcully, who was feverishly trying to rewind his crossbow.
The Queen did not look surprised.
"And there's only about a hundred of them," she said. "What do you think, Esme Weatherwax? A valiant last stand? It's so beautiful, isn't it? I love the way humans think. They think like songs."
"You get down off that horse!" Magrat shouted.
The Queen smiled at her.
Shawn felt it. Ridcully felt it. Ponder felt it. The glamour swept over them.
Elves feared iron, but they didn't need to go near it.
You couldn't fight elves, because you were so much more worthless than them. It was right that you should be so worthless. And they were so beautiful. And you weren't. You were always the one metaphorically picked last for any team, even after the fat kid with one permanently blocked runny nostril; you were always the one who wasn't told the rules until you'd lost, and then wasn't told the new rules; you were the one who always knew that everything interesting was happening to other people. All those hot self-consuming feelings were rolled together. You couldn't fight an elf. Someone as useless as you, as stolid as you, as human as you, could never win; the universe wasn't built like that—
Hunters say that, just sometimes, an animal will step out of the bushes and stand there waiting for the spear . . .
Magrat managed to half-raise the axe, and then her hand slumped to her side. She looked down. The correct attitude of a human before an elf was one of shame. She had shouted so coarsely at something as beautiful as an elf. . .
The Queen dismounted and walked over to her.
"Don't touch her," said Granny.
The Queen nodded.
"You can resist," she said. "But you see, it doesn't matter. We can take Lancre without a fight. There is nothing you can do about it. Look at the brave little army, standing like sheep. Humans are so enthusiastic."
Granny looked at her boots.
"You can't rule while I'm alive," she said.
"There's no trickery here," said the Queen. "No silly women with bags of sweets."
"You noticed that, did you?" said Granny. "Gytha meant well, I expect. Daft old biddy. Mind if I sit down?"
"Of course you may," said the Queen. "You are an old woman now, after all."
She nodded to the elves. Granny subsided gratefully on to a rock, her hands still tied behind her.
"That's the thing about witchcraft," she said. "It doesn't exactly keep you young, but you do stay old for longer. Whereas you, of course, do not age," she added.
"Indeed, we do not."
"But I suspect you may be capable of being reduced."
The Queen's smile didn't vanish, but it did freeze, as smiles do when their owner is not certain about what has just been said and isn't sure what to say next.
"You meddled in a play," said Granny. "I believe you don't realize what you've done. Plays and books . . . you've got to keep an eye on the buggers. They'll turn on you. I mean to see that they do." She nodded amicably at an elf covered in woad and badly tanned skins. "Ain't that so, Fairy Peaseblossom?"
The Queen's brows knotted.
"But that is not his name," she said.
Granny Weatherwax gave the Queen a bright smile.
"We shall see," she said. "There's a lot more humans these days, and lots of them live in cities, and they don't know much about elves one way or another. And they've got iron in their heads. You're too late."
"No. Humans always need us," said the Queen.
"They don't. Sometimes they want you. That's different. But all you can give 'em is gold that melts away in the morning."
"There are those who would say that gold for one night is enough."
"No."
"Better than iron, you stupid old hag, you stupid child who has grown older and done nothing and been nothing."
"No. It's just soft and shiny. Pretty to look at and no damn use at all," said Granny, her voice still quite calm and level. "But this is a real world, madam. That's what I had to learn. And real people in it. You got no right to 'em. People've got enough to cope with just being people. They don't need you swanking around with your shiny hair and shiny eyes and shiny gold, going sideways through life, always young, always singing, never learning."
"You didn't always think like this."
"That was a long time ago. And, my lady, old I may be, and hag I may be, but stupid I ain't. You're no kind of goddess. I ain't against gods and goddesses, in their place. But they've got to be the ones we make ourselves. Then we can take 'em to bits for the parts when we don't need 'em anymore, see? And elves far away in fairyland, well, maybe that's something people need to get 'emselves through the iron times. But I ain't having elves here. You make us want what we can't have and what you give us is worth nothing and what you take is everything and all there is left for us is the cold hillside, and emptiness, and the laughter of the elves."
She took a deep breath. "So bugger off."
"Make us, old woman."
"I thought you'd say that."
"We don't want the world. Just this little kingdom will do. And we will take it, whether it wants us or not."
"Over my dead body, madam."
"If that is a condition."
The Queen lashed out mentally, like a cat.
Granny Weatherwax winced, and leaned backward for a moment.
"Madam?"
"Yes?" said the Queen.
"There aren't any rules, are there?"
"Rules? What are rules?" said the Queen.
"I thought so," said Granny. "Gytha Ogg?"
Nanny managed to turn her head.
"Yes, Esme?"
"My box. You know. The one in the dresser. You'll know what to do."
Granny Weatherwax smiled. The Queen swayed sideways, as if she'd been slapped.
"You have learned," she said.
"Oh, yes. You know I never entered your circle. I could see where it led. So I had to learn. All my life. The hard way. And the hard way's pretty hard, but not so hard as the easy way. I learned. From the trolls and the dwarfs and from people. Even from pebbles."
The Queen lowered her voice.
"You will not be killed," she whispered. "I promise you that. You'll be left alive, to dribble and gibber and soil yourself and wander from door to door for scraps. And they'll say: there goes the mad old woman."
"They say that now," said Granny Weatherwax. "They think I can't hear."
"But inside," said the Queen, ignoring this, "inside I'll keep just a part of you which looks out through your eyes and knows what you've become.
"And there will be none to help," said the Queen. She was closer now, her eyes pinpoints of hatred. "No charity for the mad old woman. You'll see what you have to eat to stay alive. And we'll be with you all the time inside your head, just to remind you. You could have been the great one, there was so much you could have done. And inside you'll know it, and you'll plead all the dark night long for the silence of the elves."
The Queen wasn't expecting it. Granny Weatherwax's hand shot out, pieces of rope falling away from it, and slapped her across the face.
"You threaten me with that?" she said. "Me? Who am becoming old?"
The elf woman's hand rose slowly to the livid mark across her cheek. The elves raised their bows, waiting for an order.
"Go back," said Granny. "You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you. You're right. I'm older. You've lived longer than me but I'm older than you. And better'n you. And, madam, that ain't hard."
The Queen struck wildly.
The rebounded force of the mental blow knocked Nanny Ogg to her knees. Granny Weatherwax blinked.
"A good one," she croaked. "But still I stand, and still I'll not kneel. And still I have strength-"
An elf keeled over. This time the Queen swayed.
"Oh, and I have no time for this," she said, and snapped her fingers.
There was a pause. The Queen glanced around at her elves.
"They can't fire," said Granny. "And you wouldn't want that, would you? So simple an end?"
"You can't be holding them! You have not that much power!"
"Do you want to find out how much power I have, madam? Here, on the grass of Lancre?"
She stepped forward. Power crackled in the air. The Queen had to step back.
"My own turf?" said Granny
She slapped the Queen again, almost gently.
"What's this?" said Granny Weatherwax. "Can't you resist me? Where's your power now, madam? Gather your power, madam!"
"You foolish old crone!"
It was felt by every living creature for a mile around. Small things died. Birds spiraled out of the sky Elves and humans alike dropped to the ground, clutching their heads.
And in Granny Weatherwax's garden the bees rose out of their hives.
They emerged like steam, colliding with one another in their rush to get airborne. The deep gunship hum of the drones underpinned the frantic roars of the workers.
But, louder than the drones, was the piccolo piping of the queens.
The swarms spiraled up over the clearing, circled once, and then broke and headed away. Others joined them, out of backyard steps and hollow trees, blackening the sky.
After a while, order became apparent in the great circling cloud. The drones flew on the wings, throbbing like bombers. The workers were a cone made up of thousands of tiny bodies. And at its tip, a hundred queens flew.
The fields lay silent after the arrow-shaped swarm of swarms had gone.
Flowers stood alone and uncourted. Nectar flowed undrunk. Blossoms were left to go fertilize themselves.
The bees headed toward the Dancers.
Granny Weatherwax dropped to her knees, clutching at her head.
"No-"
"Oh, but yes," said the Queen.
Esme Weatherwax raised her hands. The fingers were curled tightly with effort and pain.
Magrat found she could move her eyes. The rest of her felt weak and useless, even with chain-mail and the breast-plates. So this was it. She could feel the ghost of Queen Ynci laughing scornfully from a thousand years ago. She'd not give up. Magrat was just another one of those dozens of simpering stiff women who'd just hung around in long dresses, ensuring the royal succession—
Bees poured down out of the sky.
Granny Weatherwax turned her face toward Magrat.
Magrat heard the voice clearly in her head.
"You want to be queen?"
And she was free.
She felt the weariness drop away from her and it also felt as though pure Queen Ynci poured out of the helmet.
More bees rained down, covering the slumped figure of the old witch.
The Queen turned, and her smile froze as Magrat straightened up, stepped forward and, with hardly a thought in her head, raised the battleaxe and brought it around in one long sweep.
The Queen moved faster. Her hand snaked out and gripped Magrat's wrist.
"Oh yes," she said, grinning into Magrat's face. "Really?
You think so?"
She twisted. The axe dropped from Magrat's fingers.
"And you wanted to be a witch?"
Bees were a brown fog, hiding the elves — too small to hit, impervious to glamour, but determined to kill.
Magrat felt the bone scrape.
"The old witch is finished," said the Queen, forcing Magrat down. "I won't say she wasn't good. But she wasn't good enough. And you certainly aren't."
Slowly and inexorably, Magrat was forced downward. "Why don't you try some magic?" said the Queen. Magrat kicked. Her foot caught the Queen on the knee, and she heard a crack. As she staggered back Magrat launched herself forward and caught her around the waist, bearing her to the ground.
She was amazed at the lightness. Magrat was skinny enough, but the Queen seemed to have no weight at all. "Why," she said, pulling herself up until the Queen's face was level with hers, "you're nothing. It's all in the mind, isn't it? Without the glamour, you're-"
—an almost triangular face, a tiny mouth, the nose hardly existing at all, but eyes larger than human eyes and now focused on Magrat in pinpoint terror.
"Iron," whispered the Queen. Her hands gripped Magrat's arms. There was no strength there. An elfs strength lay in persuading others they were weak.
Magrat could feel her desperately trying to enter her mind, but it wasn't working. The helmet—
—was lying several feet away, in the mud.
She just had time to wish she hadn't noticed that before the Queen attacked again, exploding into her uncertainty like a nova.
She was nothing. She was insignificant. She was so worthless and unimportant that even something completely worthless and exhaustively unimportant would consider her beneath contempt. In laying hands upon the Queen she truly deserved an eternity of pain. She had no control of her body. She did not deserve any. She did not deserve a thing.
The disdain sleeted over her, tearing the planetary body of Magrat Garlick to pieces.
She'd never be any good. She'd never be beautiful, or intelligent, or strong. She'd never be anything at all.
Self-confidence? Confidence in what? The eyes of the Queen were all she could see. All she wanted to do was lose herself in them . . .
And the ablation of Magrat Garlick roared on, tearing at the strata of her soul. . . . . . exposing the core.
She bunched up a fist and hit the Queen between the eyes. There was a moment of terminal perplexity before the Queen screamed, and Magrat hit her again. Only one queen in a hive! Slash! Stab! They rolled over, landing in the mud. Magrat felt something sting her leg, but she ignored it. She took no notice of the noise around her, but she did find the battleaxe under her hand as the two of them landed in a peat puddle. The elf scrabbled at her but this time without strength, and Magrat managed to push herself to her knees and raise the axe —
—and then noticed the silence.
It flowed over the Queen's elves and Shawn Ogg's makeshift army as the glamour faded.
There was a figure silhouetted against the setting moon.
Its scent carried on the dawn breeze.
It smelled of lions' cages and leaf mold.
"He's back," said Nanny Ogg. She glanced sideways and saw Ridcully, his face glowing, raising his crossbow.
"Put it down," she said.
"Will you look at the horns on that thing-"
"Put it down."
"But-"
"It'd go right through him. Look, you can see that tree through him. He's not really here. He can't get past the doorway. But he can send his thoughts."
"But I can smell—"
"If he was really here, we wouldn't still be standing up." The elves parted as the King walked through. His hind legs hadn't been designed for bipedal walking; the knees were the wrong way round and the hooves were overlarge.
"Did they do that to you?"
"Well, the mud and the torn clothes is just from, you know, the forest. And we've run into-"
"Ook."
"-over elves a few times. But this is when the Librarian hit me."
"Oook."
"Thank goodness," Ponder added. "Knocked me cold. Otherwise I'd be like the others."
A foreboding of a conversation to come swept over Magrat.
"What others?" she snapped.
"Are you alone?"
"What others?"
"Have you any idea what's been happening?"
Magrat thought about the castle, and the town.
"I might be able to hazard a guess," she said.
Ponder shook his head.
"It's worse than that," he said.
"What others?" said Magrat.
"I think there's definitely been a cross-continuum break-through, and I'm sure there's a difference in energy levels."
"But what others?" Magrat insisted.
Ponder Stibbons glanced nervously at the surrounding forest.
"Let's get off the path. There's a lot more elves back there."
Ponder disappeared into the undergrowth. Magrat followed him, and found a second wizard propped against a tree like a ladder. He had a huge smile creasing his face.
"The Bursar," said Ponder. "I think we may have overdone the dried frog pills a bit." He raised his voice. "How . . . are . . . you . . . doing . . . sir?"
"Why, I'll have a little of the roast weasel, if you would be so good," said the Bursar, beaming happily at nothing.
"Why's he gone so stiff?" said Magrat. "We think it's some kind of side effect," said Ponder. "Can't you do anything about it?"
"What, and have nothing to cross streams on?"
"Call again tomorrow, baker, and we'll have a crusty one!" said the Bursar.
"Besides, he seems quite happy," said Ponder. "Are you a warrior, miss?"
"What?" said Magrat. "Well, I mean, the armour and everything . . ." Magrat looked down. She was still holding the sword. The helmet kept falling over her eyes, but she'd padded it a bit with a scrap of wedding dress.
"I . . . er . . . yes. Yes, that's right. That's what I am," she said. "Absolutely. Yes."
"Here for the wedding, I expect. Like us."
"That's right. Definitely here for the wedding. That's true." She changed her grip on the sword. "Now tell me what happened," she said. "Paying particular attention to what happened to the others."
"Well . . ." Ponder absentmindedly picked up a corner of his torn robe and began to screw it up in his fingers. "We all went to see this Entertainment, you see. A play. You know. Acting? And, and it was very funny. There were all these yokels in their big boots and everything, straw wigs and everything, clumping around pretending to be lords and ladies and everything, and getting it all wrong. It was very funny. The Bursar laughed at them a lot. Mind you, he's been laughing at trees and rocks, too. But everyone was having fun. And then . . . and then . . ."
"I want to know everything," said Magrat. "Well . . . well . . . then there was this bit I can't really remember. It was something to do with the acting, I think. I mean, suddenly . . . suddenly it all seemed real. Do you know what I mean?"
"No."
"There was this chap with a red nose and bandy legs and he was playing the Queen of the Fairies or something and suddenly he was still him but. . . everything felt. . . everything round me just vanished, there was just the actors . . . and there was this hill . . . I mean, they must have been good, because I really believed . . . I think at some point I remember someone asking us to clap our hands . . . and everyone was looking very strange and there was this singing and it was wonderful and . . . and . . ."
"Oook."
"Then the Librarian hit me," said Ponder simply.
"Why?"
"Best if he tells it in his own words," said Ponder.
"Oook ook eek. Ook! Ook!"
"Cough, Julia! Over the bender!" said the Bursar.
"I didn't understand what the Librarian said," said Magrat.
"Um. We were all present at an interdimensional rip," said Ponder. "Caused by belief. The play was the last little thing that opened it up. There must have been a very delicate area of instability very close. It's hard to describe, but if you had a rubber sheet and some lead weights I could demonstrate-"
"You're trying to tell me those . . . things exist because people believe in them?"
"Oh, no. I imagine they exist anyway. They're here because people believe in them here."
"Ook."
"He ran off with us. They shot an arrow at him."
"Eeek."
"But it just made him itch."
"Ook."
"Normally he's as gentle as a lamb. Really he is."
"Ook."
"But he can't abide elves. They smell wrong to him."
The Librarian flared his nostrils.
Magrat didn't know much about jungles, but she thought about apes in trees, smelling the rank of the tiger. Apes never admired the sleek of the fur and the bum of the eye, because they were too well aware of the teeth of the
mouth.
"Yes," she said, "I expect they would. Dwarfs and trolls hate them, too. But I think they don't hate them as much as I do."
"You can't fight them all," said Ponder. "They're swarming like bees up there. There's flying ones, too. The Librarian says they made people get fallen trees and things and push those, you know, those stones down? There were some stones on the hill. They attacked them. Don't know why."
"Did you see any witches at the Entertainment?" said Magrat.
"Witches, witches . . ." muttered Ponder.
"You couldn't have missed them," said Magrat. "There'd be a thin one glaring at everyone and a small fat one cracking nuts and laughing a lot. And they'd be talking to each other very loudly. And they'd both have tall pointy hats."
"Can't say I noticed them," said Ponder.
"Then they couldn't have been there," said Magrat. "Being noticed is what being a witch is all about." She was about to add that she'd never been good at it, but didn't. Instead she said: "I'm going on up there."
"You'll need an army, miss. I mean, you'd have been in trouble just now if the Librarian hadn't been up in the trees."
"But I haven't got an army. So I'm going to have to try by myself, aren't I?"
This time Magrat managed to spur the horse into a gallop.
Ponder watched her go.
"You know, folksongs have got a lot to answer for," he said to the night air.
"Oook."
"She's going to get utterly killed."
"Oook."
"Hello, Mr. Flowerpot, two pints of eels if you would be so good."
"Of course, it could be her destiny, or one of those sort of things."
"Oook."
"Millennium hand and shrimp."
Ponder Stibbons looked embarrassed.
"Anyone want to follow her?"
"Oook."
"Whoops, there he goes with his big clock."
"Was that a 'yes'?"
"Oook."
"Not yours, his."
"Flobby wobbly, here comes our jelly."
"I think that probably counts as a 'yes'," said Ponder, reluctantly.
"Oook?"
"I've got a lovely new vest."
"But look," said Ponder, "the graveyards are full of people who rushed in bravely but unwisely."
"Ook."
"What'd he say?" said the Bursar, passing briefly through reality on his way somewhere else.
"I think he said, 'Sooner or later the graveyards are full of everybody,'" said Ponder. "Oh, blast. Come on."
"Yes indeedy," said the Bursar, "hands up the mittens, Mr. Bosun!"
"Oh, shut up."
* * *
Magrat dismounted and let the horse go.
She knew she was near the Dancers now. Collared light flickered in the sky.
She wished she could go home.
The air was colder here, far too cold for a midsummer night. As she plodded onward, flakes of snow swirled in the breeze and turned to rain.
Ridcully materialized inside the castle, and then clung on to a pillar for support until he got his breath back. Transmigration always made blue spots appear in front of his eyes.
No one noticed him. The castle was in turmoil. Not everyone had run home. Armies had marched across Lancre many times over the last few thousand years, and the recollection of the castle's thick safe walls had been practically engraved in the folk memory. Run to the castle. And now it held most of the little country's population.
Ridcully blinked. People were milling around and being harangued by a small young man in loose-fitting chain-mail and one arm in a sling, who seemed to be the only person
with any grip on things.
When he was certain he could walk straight, Ridcully
headed toward him.
"What's going on, young-" he began, and then stopped.
Shawn Ogg looked around.
"The scheming minx!" said Ridcully, to the air in general. '"Oh, go back and get it then,' she said, and I fell right for it! Even if I could cut the mustard again I don't know where we were!"
"Sir?" said Shawn.
Ridcully shook himself. "What's happening?" he said.
"I don't know!" said Shawn, who was almost in tears. "I think we're being attacked by elves! Nothing anyone's telling me's making any sense! Somehow they arrived during the Entertainment! Or something!"
Ridcully looked around at the frightened, bewildered people.
"And Miss Magrat's gone out to fight them alone!" Ridcully looked perplexed.
"Who's Miss Magrat?"
"She's going to be queen! The bride! You know? Magrat Garlick?"
Ridcully's mind could digest one fact at a time.
"What's she gone out for?"
"They captured the king!"
"Did you know they've got Esme Weatherwax as well?"
"What, Granny Weatherwax?"
"I came back to rescue her," said Ridcully, and then realized that this sounded either nonsense or cowardly.
Shawn was too upset to notice. "I just hope they're not collecting witches," he said. "They'll need our mum to get the complete set."
"They ain't got me, then," said Nanny Ogg, behind him.
"Mum? How did you get in?"
"Broomstick. You'd better get some people with bows up on the roof. I came down that way. So can others."
"What're we going to do, Mum?"
"There's bands of elves all over the place," said Nanny, "and there's a big glow over the Dancers-"
"We must attack them!" shouted Casanunda. "Give 'em a taste of cold steel!"
"Good man, that dwarf!" said Ridcully. "That's right! I'll get my crossbow!"
"There's too many of them," said Nanny flatly.
"Granny and Miss Magrat are out there, Mum," said Shawn. "Miss Magrat came over all strange and put on armour and went out to fight all of them!"
"But the hills are crawling with elves," said Nanny. "It's a double helping of hell with extra devils. Certain death."
"It's certain death anyway," said Ridcully. "That's the thing about Death, certainty."
"We'd have no chance at all," said Nanny.
"Actually, we'd have one chance," said Ridcully. "I don't understand all this continuinuinuum stuff, but from what young Stibbons says it means that everything has to happen somewhere, d'y'see, so that means it could happen here. Even if it's a million to one chance, ma'am."
"That's all very well," said Nanny, "but what you're saying is, for every Mr. Ridcully that survives tonight's work,
999,999 are going to get killed?"
"Yes, but I'm not bothered about those other buggers," said Ridcully. "They can look after themselves. Serve 'em right for not inviting me to their weddings."
"What?"
"Nothing."
Shawn was hopping from one foot to the other. "We ought to be fighting 'em. Mum!"
"Look at everyone!" said Nanny. "They're dog tired and wet and confused! That's not an army!"
"Mum, Mum, Mum!"
"What?"
"I'll pussike 'em up, Mum! That's what you have to do before troops go into battle. Mum! I read about that in books! You can take a rabble of thingy and make the right kind of speech and pussike them up and turn 'em into a terrible fighting force. Mum!"
"They look terrible anyway!"
"I mean terrible like fierce. Mum!"
Nanny Ogg looked at the hundred or so Lancre subjects. The thought of them managing to fight anyone at all took some getting used to.
"You been studyin' this, Shawn?" she inquired. "I've got five years' worth of Bows and Ammo, Mum," said Shawn reproachfully.
"Give it a try, then. If you think it'll work." Trembling with excitement, Shawn climbed on to a table, drew his sword with his good hand, and banged it on the planks until people were silent. He made a speech.
He pointed out that their king had been captured and their prospective queen had gone out to save him. He pointed out their responsibility as loyal subjects. He pointed out that other people currently not here but at home hiding under the bed would, after the glorious victory, wish they'd been there too instead of under the aforesaid bed which they were hiding under, you know, the bed he'd just mentioned. In fact it was better that there were so few here to face the enemy, because that meant that there would be a higher percentage of honour per surviving head. He used the word "glory" three times. He said that in times to come people would look back on this day, whatever the date was, and proudly show their scars, at least those who'd survived would show their scars, and be very proud and probably have drinks bought for them. He advised people to imitate the action of the Lancre Reciprocating Fox and stiffen some sinews while leaving them flexible enough so's they could move their arms and legs, in fact, probably it'd be better to relax them a bit now and stiffen them properly when the time came. He suggested that Lancre expected everyone to do their duty. And urn. And uh. Please?
The silence that followed was broken by Nanny Ogg, who said, "They're probably considering it a bit, Shawn. Why don't you take Mr. Wizard here up to his room and help him with his crossbow?"
She nodded meaningfully in the direction of the stairs.
Shawn wavered, but not for long. He'd seen the glint in his mother's eye.
When he'd gone. Nanny climbed up on the same table.
"Well," she said, "it's like this. If you go out there you may have to face elves. But if you stops here, you definitely have to face me. Now, elves is worse than me, I'll admit. But I'm persistent."
Weaver put up a tentative hand.
"Please, Mrs. Ogg?"
"Yes, Weaver?"
"What exactly is the action of the Reciprocating Fox?"
Nanny scratched her ear.
"As I recall," she said, "its back legs go like this but its front legs go like this."
"No, no, no," said Quamey the storekeeper. "It's its tail that goes like that. Its legs go like this."
"That's not reciprocating, that's just oscillating," said someone. "You're thinking of the Ring-tailed Ocelot."
Nanny nodded.
"That's settled, then," she said.
"Hold on, I'm not sure-"
"Yes, Mr. Quamey?"
"Oh . . . well. . ."
"Good, good," said Nanny, as Shawn reappeared. "They was just saying, our Shawn, how they was swayed by your speech. Really pussiked up."
"Cor!"
"They're ready to follow you into the jaws of hell itself, I expect," said Nanny.
Someone put up their hand.
"Are you coming too, Mrs. Ogg?"
"I'll just stroll along behind," said Nanny.
"Oh. Well. Maybe as far as the jaws of hell, then."
"Amazing," said Casanunda to Nanny, as the crowd filed reluctantly toward the armoury.
"You just got to know how to deal with people."
"They'll follow where an Ogg leads?"
"Not exactly," said Nanny, "but if they know what's good for 'em they'll go where an Ogg follows."
Magrat stepped out from under the trees, and the moor land lay ahead of her.
A whirlpool of cloud swirled over the Dancers, or at least, over the place where the Dancers had been. She could make out one or two stones by the flickering light, lying on their side or rolled down the slope of the hill.
The hill itself glowed. Something was wrong with the landscape. It curved where it shouldn't curve. Distances weren't right. Magrat remembered a woodcut shoved in as a place marker in one of her old books. It showed the face of an old crone but, if you stared at it, you saw it was also the head of a young woman; a nose became a neck, an eyebrow became a necklace. The images seesawed back and forth. And like everyone else, she'd squinted herself silly trying to see them both at the same time.
The landscape was doing pretty much the same thing. What was a hill was also at the same time a vast snowbound panorama. Lancre and the land of the elves were trying to occupy the same space.
The intrusive country wasn't having it all its own way. Lancre was fighting back.
There was a circle of tents just on the cusp of the warring landscapes, like a beachhead on an alien shore. They were brightly collared. Everything about the elves was beautiful, until the image tilted, and you saw it from the other side. . .
Something was happening. Several elves were on horseback, and more horses were being led between the tents.
It looked as though they were breaking camp.
The Queen sat on a makeshift throne in her tent. She sat with her elbow resting on one arm of the throne and her fingers curling pensively around her mouth.
There were other elves seated in a semicircle, except that "seated" was a barely satisfactory word. They lounged; elves could make themselves at home on a wire. And here there was more lace and velvet and fewer feathers, although it was hard to know if it meant that these were aristocrats-elves seemed to wear whatever they felt like wearing, confident of looking absolutely stunning[42].
Every one of them watched the Queen, and was a mirror of her moods. When she smiled, they smiled. When she said something she thought was amusing, they laughed.
Currently the object of her attention was Granny Weatherwax.
"What is happening, old woman?" she said.
"It ain't easy, is it?" said Granny. "Thought it would be easy, didn't you?"
"You've done some magic, haven't you? Something is fighting us."
"No magic," said Granny. "No magic at all. It's just that you've been away too long. Things change. The land belongs to humans now."
"That can't be the case," said the Queen. "Humans take. They plough with iron. They ravage the land."
"Some do, I'll grant you that. Others put back more'n they take. They put back love. They've got soil in their bones. They tell the land what it is. That's what humans are for. Without humans, Lancre'd just be a bit of ground with green bits on it. They wouldn't even know they're trees. We're all down here together, madam — us and the land. It's not just land anymore, it's a country. It's like a horse that's been broken and shod or a dog that's been tamed. Every time people put a plough in the soil or planted a seed they took the land further away from you," said Granny. "Things change."
Verence sat beside the Queen. His pupils were tiny pinpoints; he smiled faintly, permanently, in a way very reminiscent of the Bursar.
"Ah. But when we are married," said the Queen, "the land must accept me. By your own rules. I know how it works. There's more to being a king than wearing a crown. The king and the land are one. The king and the queen are one. And I shall be queen."
She smiled at Granny. There was an elf on either side of her and. Granny knew, at least one behind her. Elves were not given to introspection; if she moved without permission, she'd die.
"What you shall be is something I have yet to decide," said the Queen. She held up an exquisitely thin hand and curled the thumb and forefinger into a ring, which she held up to her eye.
"And now someone comes," she said, "with armour that doesn't fit and a sword she cannot use and an axe she can hardly even lift, because it is so romantic, is it not? What is her name?"
"Magrat Garlick," said Granny.
"She is a mighty enchantress, is she?"
"She's good with herbs."
The Queen laughed.
"I could kill her from here."
"Yes," said Granny, "but that wouldn't be much fun, would it? Humiliation is the key."
The Queen nodded.
"You know, you think very much like an elf."
"I think it will soon be dawn," said Granny. "A fine day. Clear light."
"Not soon enough," The Queen stood up. She glanced at King Verence for a moment, and changed. Her dress went from red to silver, catching the torchlight like glittering fish scales. Her hair unraveled and reshaped itself, became corn blond. And a subtle ripple of alterations flowed across her face before she said, "What do you think?"
She looked like Magrat. Or, at least, like Magrat wished she looked and maybe as Verence always thought of her. Granny nodded. As one expert to another, she recognized accomplished nastiness when she saw it.
"And you're going to face her like that," she said.
"Certainly. Eventually. At the finish. But don't feel sorry for her. She's only going to die. Would you like me to show you what you might have been?"
"No."
"I could do it easily. There are other times than this. I could show you grandmother Weatherwax."
"No."
"It must be terrible, knowing that you have no friends. That no one will care when you die. That you never touched a heart."
"Yes."
"And I'm sure you think about it. . . in those long evenings when there's no company but the ticking of the clock and the coldness of the room and you open the box and look at-"
The Queen waved a hand vaguely as Granny tried to break free.
"Don't kill her," she said. "She is much more fun alive."
Magrat stuck the sword in the mud and hefted the battleaxe.
Woods pressed in on either side. The elves would have to come this way There looked like hundreds of them and there was only one Magrat Garlick.
She knew there was such a thing as heroic odds. Songs and ballads and stories and poems were full of stories about one person single-handedly taking on and defeating a vast number of enemies.
Only now was it dawning on her that the trouble was that they were songs and ballads and stories and poems because they dealt with things that were, not to put too fine a point on it, untrue.
She couldn't, now she had time to think about it, ever remember an example from history.
In the woods to one side of her an elf raised its bow and took careful aim.
A twig snapped behind it. It turned.
The Bursar beamed. "Whoopsy daisy, old trouser, my bean's all runny."
The elf swung the bow.
A pair of prehensile feet dropped out of the greenery, gripped it by the shoulders, and pulled it upward sharply. There was a crack as its head hit the underside of a branch.
"Oook."
"Move right along!"
On the other side of the path another elf took aim. And then its world flowed away from it. . .
This is the inside of the mind of an elf:
Here are the normal five senses but they are all subordinate to the sixth sense. There is no formal word for it on the Discworld, because the force is so weak that it is only ever encountered by observant blacksmiths, who call it the Love of Iron. Navigators might have discovered it were it not that the Disc's standing magical field is much more reliable. But bees sense it, because bees sense everything. Pigeons navigate by it. And everywhere in the multiverse elves use it to know exactly where they are.
It must be hard for humans, forever floundering through inconvenient geography. Humans are always slightly lost. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them.
Elves are never lost at all. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them.
Elves have absolute position. The flow of the silvery force dimly outlines the landscape. Creatures generate small amounts of it themselves, and become perceptible in the flux. Their muscles crackle with it, their minds buzz with it. For those who learn how, even thoughts can be read by the tiny local changes in the flow.
For an elf, the world is something to reach out and take. Except for the terrible metal that drinks the force and deforms the flux universe like a heavy weight on a rubber sheet and blinds them and deafens them and leaves them rudderless and more alone than most humans could ever be. . .
The elf toppled forward.
Ponder Stibbons lowered the sword.
Almost everyone else would not have thought much about it. But Ponder's wretched fate was to look for patterns in an uncaring world.
"But I hardly touched him," he said, to no one except himself.
"-And I kissed her in the shrubbery where the nightingales sing it, you bastards! Two, three!"
They didn't know where they were. They didn't know where they'd been. They were not fully certain who they were. But the Lancre Morris Men had reached some sort of state now where it was easier to go on than stop. Singing attracted elves, but singing also fascinated them . . .
The dancers whirled and hopped, gyrated and skipped along the paths. They pranced through isolated hamlets, where elves left whoever they were torturing to draw closer in the light of the burning buildings. . .
"'With a WACK foladiddle-di-do, sing too-rah-li-ay!'"
Six sticks did their work, right on the beat.
"Where're we goin', Jason?"
"I reckon we've gone down Slippery Hollow and're circling back toward the town," said Jason, hopping past Baker. "Keep goin'. Carter!"
"The rain's got in the keys, Jason!"
"Don't matter! They don't know the difference! It's good enough for folk music!"
"I think I broke my stick on that last one, Jason!"
"Just you keep dancing, Tinker! Now, lads . . . how about Gathering Peasecods? We might as well get some practice in, since we're here . . ."
"There's some people up ahead," said Tailor, as he skipped past, "I can see torches an' that."
"Human, two, three, or more elves?"
"Dunno!"
Jason spun and danced back.
"Is that you, our Jason?"
Jason cackled as the voice echoed among the dripping trees.
"It's our mam! And our Shawn. And — and lots of people! We've made it, lads!"
"Jason," said Carter.
"Yes?"
"I ain't sure I can stop!"
The Queen examined her face in a mirror attached to the tent pole.
"Why?" said Granny. "What is it you see?"
"Whatever I want to see," said the Queen. "You know that. And now . . . let us ride to the castle. Tie her hands together. But leave her legs free."
It rained again, gently, although around the stones it turned to sleet. The water dripped off Magrat's hair and temporarily unraveled the tangles.
Mist coiled out from among the trees where summer and winter fought.
Magrat watched the elven court mount up. She made out the figure of Verence, moving like a puppet. And Granny Weatherwax, tied behind the Queen's horse by a long length of rope.
The horses splashed through the mud. They had silver bells on their harness, dozens of them.
The elves in the castle, the night of ghosts and shadows, all of this was just a hard knot in her memory. But the jingling of the bells was like a nailfile rubbed across her teeth.
The Queen halted the procession a few yards away.
"Ah, the brave girl," she said. "Come to save her fiance, all alone? How sweet. Someone kill her."
An elf spurred its horse forward, and raised its sword. Magrat gripped the battleaxe.
Somewhere behind her a bowstring slammed against wood. The elf jerked. So did one behind it. The arrow kept going, curving a little as it passed over one of the fallen Dancers.
Then Shawn Ogg's ragbag army charged out from under the trees, except for Ridcully, who was feverishly trying to rewind his crossbow.
The Queen did not look surprised.
"And there's only about a hundred of them," she said. "What do you think, Esme Weatherwax? A valiant last stand? It's so beautiful, isn't it? I love the way humans think. They think like songs."
"You get down off that horse!" Magrat shouted.
The Queen smiled at her.
Shawn felt it. Ridcully felt it. Ponder felt it. The glamour swept over them.
Elves feared iron, but they didn't need to go near it.
You couldn't fight elves, because you were so much more worthless than them. It was right that you should be so worthless. And they were so beautiful. And you weren't. You were always the one metaphorically picked last for any team, even after the fat kid with one permanently blocked runny nostril; you were always the one who wasn't told the rules until you'd lost, and then wasn't told the new rules; you were the one who always knew that everything interesting was happening to other people. All those hot self-consuming feelings were rolled together. You couldn't fight an elf. Someone as useless as you, as stolid as you, as human as you, could never win; the universe wasn't built like that—
Hunters say that, just sometimes, an animal will step out of the bushes and stand there waiting for the spear . . .
Magrat managed to half-raise the axe, and then her hand slumped to her side. She looked down. The correct attitude of a human before an elf was one of shame. She had shouted so coarsely at something as beautiful as an elf. . .
The Queen dismounted and walked over to her.
"Don't touch her," said Granny.
The Queen nodded.
"You can resist," she said. "But you see, it doesn't matter. We can take Lancre without a fight. There is nothing you can do about it. Look at the brave little army, standing like sheep. Humans are so enthusiastic."
Granny looked at her boots.
"You can't rule while I'm alive," she said.
"There's no trickery here," said the Queen. "No silly women with bags of sweets."
"You noticed that, did you?" said Granny. "Gytha meant well, I expect. Daft old biddy. Mind if I sit down?"
"Of course you may," said the Queen. "You are an old woman now, after all."
She nodded to the elves. Granny subsided gratefully on to a rock, her hands still tied behind her.
"That's the thing about witchcraft," she said. "It doesn't exactly keep you young, but you do stay old for longer. Whereas you, of course, do not age," she added.
"Indeed, we do not."
"But I suspect you may be capable of being reduced."
The Queen's smile didn't vanish, but it did freeze, as smiles do when their owner is not certain about what has just been said and isn't sure what to say next.
"You meddled in a play," said Granny. "I believe you don't realize what you've done. Plays and books . . . you've got to keep an eye on the buggers. They'll turn on you. I mean to see that they do." She nodded amicably at an elf covered in woad and badly tanned skins. "Ain't that so, Fairy Peaseblossom?"
The Queen's brows knotted.
"But that is not his name," she said.
Granny Weatherwax gave the Queen a bright smile.
"We shall see," she said. "There's a lot more humans these days, and lots of them live in cities, and they don't know much about elves one way or another. And they've got iron in their heads. You're too late."
"No. Humans always need us," said the Queen.
"They don't. Sometimes they want you. That's different. But all you can give 'em is gold that melts away in the morning."
"There are those who would say that gold for one night is enough."
"No."
"Better than iron, you stupid old hag, you stupid child who has grown older and done nothing and been nothing."
"No. It's just soft and shiny. Pretty to look at and no damn use at all," said Granny, her voice still quite calm and level. "But this is a real world, madam. That's what I had to learn. And real people in it. You got no right to 'em. People've got enough to cope with just being people. They don't need you swanking around with your shiny hair and shiny eyes and shiny gold, going sideways through life, always young, always singing, never learning."
"You didn't always think like this."
"That was a long time ago. And, my lady, old I may be, and hag I may be, but stupid I ain't. You're no kind of goddess. I ain't against gods and goddesses, in their place. But they've got to be the ones we make ourselves. Then we can take 'em to bits for the parts when we don't need 'em anymore, see? And elves far away in fairyland, well, maybe that's something people need to get 'emselves through the iron times. But I ain't having elves here. You make us want what we can't have and what you give us is worth nothing and what you take is everything and all there is left for us is the cold hillside, and emptiness, and the laughter of the elves."
She took a deep breath. "So bugger off."
"Make us, old woman."
"I thought you'd say that."
"We don't want the world. Just this little kingdom will do. And we will take it, whether it wants us or not."
"Over my dead body, madam."
"If that is a condition."
The Queen lashed out mentally, like a cat.
Granny Weatherwax winced, and leaned backward for a moment.
"Madam?"
"Yes?" said the Queen.
"There aren't any rules, are there?"
"Rules? What are rules?" said the Queen.
"I thought so," said Granny. "Gytha Ogg?"
Nanny managed to turn her head.
"Yes, Esme?"
"My box. You know. The one in the dresser. You'll know what to do."
Granny Weatherwax smiled. The Queen swayed sideways, as if she'd been slapped.
"You have learned," she said.
"Oh, yes. You know I never entered your circle. I could see where it led. So I had to learn. All my life. The hard way. And the hard way's pretty hard, but not so hard as the easy way. I learned. From the trolls and the dwarfs and from people. Even from pebbles."
The Queen lowered her voice.
"You will not be killed," she whispered. "I promise you that. You'll be left alive, to dribble and gibber and soil yourself and wander from door to door for scraps. And they'll say: there goes the mad old woman."
"They say that now," said Granny Weatherwax. "They think I can't hear."
"But inside," said the Queen, ignoring this, "inside I'll keep just a part of you which looks out through your eyes and knows what you've become.
"And there will be none to help," said the Queen. She was closer now, her eyes pinpoints of hatred. "No charity for the mad old woman. You'll see what you have to eat to stay alive. And we'll be with you all the time inside your head, just to remind you. You could have been the great one, there was so much you could have done. And inside you'll know it, and you'll plead all the dark night long for the silence of the elves."
The Queen wasn't expecting it. Granny Weatherwax's hand shot out, pieces of rope falling away from it, and slapped her across the face.
"You threaten me with that?" she said. "Me? Who am becoming old?"
The elf woman's hand rose slowly to the livid mark across her cheek. The elves raised their bows, waiting for an order.
"Go back," said Granny. "You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you. You're right. I'm older. You've lived longer than me but I'm older than you. And better'n you. And, madam, that ain't hard."
The Queen struck wildly.
The rebounded force of the mental blow knocked Nanny Ogg to her knees. Granny Weatherwax blinked.
"A good one," she croaked. "But still I stand, and still I'll not kneel. And still I have strength-"
An elf keeled over. This time the Queen swayed.
"Oh, and I have no time for this," she said, and snapped her fingers.
There was a pause. The Queen glanced around at her elves.
"They can't fire," said Granny. "And you wouldn't want that, would you? So simple an end?"
"You can't be holding them! You have not that much power!"
"Do you want to find out how much power I have, madam? Here, on the grass of Lancre?"
She stepped forward. Power crackled in the air. The Queen had to step back.
"My own turf?" said Granny
She slapped the Queen again, almost gently.
"What's this?" said Granny Weatherwax. "Can't you resist me? Where's your power now, madam? Gather your power, madam!"
"You foolish old crone!"
It was felt by every living creature for a mile around. Small things died. Birds spiraled out of the sky Elves and humans alike dropped to the ground, clutching their heads.
And in Granny Weatherwax's garden the bees rose out of their hives.
They emerged like steam, colliding with one another in their rush to get airborne. The deep gunship hum of the drones underpinned the frantic roars of the workers.
But, louder than the drones, was the piccolo piping of the queens.
The swarms spiraled up over the clearing, circled once, and then broke and headed away. Others joined them, out of backyard steps and hollow trees, blackening the sky.
After a while, order became apparent in the great circling cloud. The drones flew on the wings, throbbing like bombers. The workers were a cone made up of thousands of tiny bodies. And at its tip, a hundred queens flew.
The fields lay silent after the arrow-shaped swarm of swarms had gone.
Flowers stood alone and uncourted. Nectar flowed undrunk. Blossoms were left to go fertilize themselves.
The bees headed toward the Dancers.
Granny Weatherwax dropped to her knees, clutching at her head.
"No-"
"Oh, but yes," said the Queen.
Esme Weatherwax raised her hands. The fingers were curled tightly with effort and pain.
Magrat found she could move her eyes. The rest of her felt weak and useless, even with chain-mail and the breast-plates. So this was it. She could feel the ghost of Queen Ynci laughing scornfully from a thousand years ago. She'd not give up. Magrat was just another one of those dozens of simpering stiff women who'd just hung around in long dresses, ensuring the royal succession—
Bees poured down out of the sky.
Granny Weatherwax turned her face toward Magrat.
Magrat heard the voice clearly in her head.
"You want to be queen?"
And she was free.
She felt the weariness drop away from her and it also felt as though pure Queen Ynci poured out of the helmet.
More bees rained down, covering the slumped figure of the old witch.
The Queen turned, and her smile froze as Magrat straightened up, stepped forward and, with hardly a thought in her head, raised the battleaxe and brought it around in one long sweep.
The Queen moved faster. Her hand snaked out and gripped Magrat's wrist.
"Oh yes," she said, grinning into Magrat's face. "Really?
You think so?"
She twisted. The axe dropped from Magrat's fingers.
"And you wanted to be a witch?"
Bees were a brown fog, hiding the elves — too small to hit, impervious to glamour, but determined to kill.
Magrat felt the bone scrape.
"The old witch is finished," said the Queen, forcing Magrat down. "I won't say she wasn't good. But she wasn't good enough. And you certainly aren't."
Slowly and inexorably, Magrat was forced downward. "Why don't you try some magic?" said the Queen. Magrat kicked. Her foot caught the Queen on the knee, and she heard a crack. As she staggered back Magrat launched herself forward and caught her around the waist, bearing her to the ground.
She was amazed at the lightness. Magrat was skinny enough, but the Queen seemed to have no weight at all. "Why," she said, pulling herself up until the Queen's face was level with hers, "you're nothing. It's all in the mind, isn't it? Without the glamour, you're-"
—an almost triangular face, a tiny mouth, the nose hardly existing at all, but eyes larger than human eyes and now focused on Magrat in pinpoint terror.
"Iron," whispered the Queen. Her hands gripped Magrat's arms. There was no strength there. An elfs strength lay in persuading others they were weak.
Magrat could feel her desperately trying to enter her mind, but it wasn't working. The helmet—
—was lying several feet away, in the mud.
She just had time to wish she hadn't noticed that before the Queen attacked again, exploding into her uncertainty like a nova.
She was nothing. She was insignificant. She was so worthless and unimportant that even something completely worthless and exhaustively unimportant would consider her beneath contempt. In laying hands upon the Queen she truly deserved an eternity of pain. She had no control of her body. She did not deserve any. She did not deserve a thing.
The disdain sleeted over her, tearing the planetary body of Magrat Garlick to pieces.
She'd never be any good. She'd never be beautiful, or intelligent, or strong. She'd never be anything at all.
Self-confidence? Confidence in what? The eyes of the Queen were all she could see. All she wanted to do was lose herself in them . . .
And the ablation of Magrat Garlick roared on, tearing at the strata of her soul. . . . . . exposing the core.
She bunched up a fist and hit the Queen between the eyes. There was a moment of terminal perplexity before the Queen screamed, and Magrat hit her again. Only one queen in a hive! Slash! Stab! They rolled over, landing in the mud. Magrat felt something sting her leg, but she ignored it. She took no notice of the noise around her, but she did find the battleaxe under her hand as the two of them landed in a peat puddle. The elf scrabbled at her but this time without strength, and Magrat managed to push herself to her knees and raise the axe —
—and then noticed the silence.
It flowed over the Queen's elves and Shawn Ogg's makeshift army as the glamour faded.
There was a figure silhouetted against the setting moon.
Its scent carried on the dawn breeze.
It smelled of lions' cages and leaf mold.
"He's back," said Nanny Ogg. She glanced sideways and saw Ridcully, his face glowing, raising his crossbow.
"Put it down," she said.
"Will you look at the horns on that thing-"
"Put it down."
"But-"
"It'd go right through him. Look, you can see that tree through him. He's not really here. He can't get past the doorway. But he can send his thoughts."
"But I can smell—"
"If he was really here, we wouldn't still be standing up." The elves parted as the King walked through. His hind legs hadn't been designed for bipedal walking; the knees were the wrong way round and the hooves were overlarge.