"Who cares?" said Magrat, dropping the broomstick. "I don't have to bother with that sort of thing anymore."
She turned, clutched at her dress, and ran. She became a figure outlined against the sunset.
"You daft old besom, Esme," said Nanny Ogg. "Just because she's getting wed."
"You know what she'd say if we told her," said Granny Weatherwax. "She'd get it all wrong. The Gentry. Circles. She'd say it was . . . nice. Best for her if she's out of it."
"They ain't been active for years and years," said Nanny. "We'll need some help. I mean . . . when did you last go up to the Dancers?"
"You know how it is," said Granny "When it's so quiet. . . you don't think about 'em."
"We ought to have kept 'em cleared."
"True."
"We better get up there first thing tomorrow," said Nanny Ogg.
"Yes."
"Better bring a sickle, too."
There isn't much of the kingdom of Lancre where you could drop a football and not have it roll away from you. Most of it is moor land and steeply forested hillside, giving way to sharp and ragged mountains where even trolls wouldn't go and valleys so deep that they have to pipe the sunlight in.
There was an overgrown path up to the moor land where the Dancers stood, even though it was only a few miles from the town. Hunters tracked up there sometimes, but only by accident. It wasn't that the hunting was bad but, well — there were the stones.
Stone circles were common enough everywhere in the mountains. Druids built them as weather computers and since it was always cheaper to build a new 33-MegaLith circle than upgrade an old slow one there were generally plenty of ancient ones around.
No druids ever came near the Dancers.
The stones weren't shaped. They weren't even positioned in any particularly significant way. There wasn't any of that stuff about the sun striking the right stone at dawn on the right day. Someone had just dragged eight red rocks into a rough circle.
But the weather was different. People said that, if it started to rain, it always began to fall inside the circle a few seconds after it had started outside, as if the rain was coming from further away. If clouds crossed the sun, it'd be a moment or two before the light faded inside the circle.
William Scrope is going to die in a couple of minutes. It has to be said that he shouldn't have been hunting deer out of season, and especially not the fine stag he was tracking, and certainly not a fine stag of the Ramtop Red species, which is officially endangered although not as endangered, right now, as William Scrope.
It was ahead of him, pushing through the bracken, making so much noise that a blind man could have tracked it.
Scrope waded through after it.
Mist was still hanging around the stones, not in a blanket but in long raggedy strings.
The stag reached the circle now, and stopped. It trotted back and forth once or twice, and then looked up at Scrope.
He raised the crossbow.
The stag turned, and leapt between the stones.
There were only confused impressions from then on. The first was of—
—distance. The circle was a few yards across, it shouldn't suddenly appear to contain so much distance.
And the next was of—
—speed. Something was coming out of the circle, a white dot growing bigger and bigger.
He knew he'd aimed the bow. But it was whirled out of his hands as the thing struck, and suddenly there was only the sensation of—
—peace.
And the brief remembrance of pain.
William Scrope died.
William Scrope looked through his hands at the crushed bracken. The reason that it was crushed was that his own body was sprawled upon it.
His newly deceased eyes surveyed the landscape.
There are no delusions for the dead. Dying is like waking up after a really good party, when you have one or two seconds of innocent freedom before you recollect all the things you did last night which seemed so logical and hilarious at the time, and then you remember the really amazing thing you did with a lampshade and two balloons, which had them in stitches, and now you realise you're going to have to look a lot of people in the eye today and you're sober now and so are they but you can both remember.
"Oh," he said.
The landscape flowed around the stones. It was all so obvious now, when you saw it from the outside. . .
Obvious. No walls, only doors. No edges, only comers—
WILLIAM SCROPE.
"Yes?"
IF YOU WOULD PLEASE STEP THIS WAY.
"Are you a hunter?"
I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES.
Death grinned hopefully. Scrope's post-physical brow furrowed.
"What? Like . . . sherry, custard . . . that sort of thing?"
Death sighed. Metaphors were wasted on people. Sometimes he felt that no one took him seriously enough.
I TAKE AWAY PEOPLE'S LIVES IS WHAT I MEAN, he said testily.
"Where to?"
WE SHALL HAVE TO SEE, WON'T WE?
William Scrope was already fading into the mist.
"That thing that got me-"
YES?
"I thought they were extinct!"
"NO. THEY JUST WENT AWAY.
"Where to?"
Death extended a bony digit.
OVER THERE.
Magrat hadn't originally intended to move into the palace before the wedding, because people would talk. Admittedly a dozen people lived in the palace, which had a huge number of rooms, but she'd still be under the same roof, and that was good enough. Or bad enough.
That was before. Now her blood was sizzling. Let people talk. She had a pretty good idea which people they'd be, too. Which person, anyway. Witch person. Hah. Let them talk all they liked.
She got up early and packed her possessions, such as they were. It wasn't exactly her cottage, and most of the furniture went with it. Witches came and went, but witches' cottages went on for ever, usually with the same thatch they started with.
But she did own the set of magical knives, the mystic collared cords, the assorted grails and crucibles, and a box full of rings, necklaces, and bracelets heavy with the hermetic symbols of a dozen religions. She tipped them all into a sack.
Then there were the books. Goodie Whemper had been something of a bookworm among witches. There were almost a dozen. She hesitated about the books, and finally she let them stay on the shelves.
There was the statutory pointy hat. She'd never liked it anyway, and had always avoided wearing it. Into the sack with it.
She looked around wild-eyed until she spotted the small cauldron in the inglenook. That'd do. Into the sack with that, and then tie the neck with string.
On the way up to the palace she crossed the bridge over Lancre Gorge and tossed the sack into the river.
It bobbed for a moment in the strong current, and then sank.
She'd secretly hoped for a string of multicoloured bubbles, or even a hiss. But it just sank. Just as if it wasn't anything very important.
Another world, another castle. . .
The elf galloped over the frozen moat, steam billowing from its black horse and from the thing it carried over its neck.
It rode up the steps and into the hall itself, where the Queen sat amidst her dreams. . .
"My lord Lankin?"
"A stag!"
It was still alive. Elves were skilled at leaving things alive, often for weeks.
"From out of the circle?"
"Yes, lady!"
"It's weakening. Did I not tell you?"
"How long? How long?"
"Soon. Soon. What went through the other way?"
The elf tried to avoid her face.
"Your . . . pet, lady."
"No doubt it won't go far." The Queen laughed. "No doubt it will have an amusing time. . ."
It rained briefly at dawn.
There's nothing nastier to walk through than shoulder-high wet bracken. Well, there is. There are an uncountable number of things nastier to walk through, especially if they're shoulder-high. But here and now, thought Nanny Ogg, it was hard to think of more than one or two.
They hadn't landed inside the Dancers, of course. Even birds detoured rather than cross that airspace. Migrating spiders on gossamer threads floating half a mile up curved around it. Clouds split in two and flowed around it.
Mist hung around the stones. Sticky, damp mist.
Nanny hacked vaguely at the clinging bracken with her sickle.
"You there, Esme?" she muttered.
Granny Weatherwax's head rose from a clump of bracken a few feet away.
"There's been things going on," she said, in a cold and deliberate tone.
"Like what?"
"All the bracken and weeds is trampled around the stones. I reckon someone's been dancing."
Nanny Ogg gave this the same consideration as would a nuclear physicist who'd just been told that someone was banging two bits of sub-critical uranium together to keep warm.
"They never," she said.
"They have. And another thing. . ." It was hard to imagine what other thing there could be, but Nanny Ogg said "Yes?" anyway.
"Someone got killed up here."
"Oh, no," moaned Nanny Ogg. "Not inside the circle too."
"Nope. Don't be daft. It was outside. A tall man. He had one leg longer'n the other. And a beard. He was probably a hunter."
"How'd you know all that?"
"I just trod on 'im."
The sun rose through the mists.
The morning rays were already caressing the ancient stones of Unseen University, premier college of wizardry, five hundred miles away.
Not that many wizards were aware of this. For roost of the wizards of Unseen University their lunch was the first meal of the day. They were not, by and large, breakfast people. The Archchancellor and the Librarian were the only two who knew what the dawn looked like from the front, and they tended to have the entire campus to themselves for several hours.
The Librarian was always up early because he was an orang-utan, and they are naturally early risers, although in his case he didn't bellow a few times to keep other males off his territory. He just unlocked the Library and fed the books.
And Mustrum Ridcully, the current Archchancellor, liked to wander around the sleepy buildings, nodding to the servants and leaving little notes for his subordinates, usually designed for no other purpose than to make it absolutely clear that he was up and attending to the business of the day while they were still fast asleep[5].
Today, however, he had something else on his mind. More or less literally.
It was round. There was healthy growth all around it. He could swear it hadn't been there yesterday.
He turned his head this way and that, squinting at the reflection in the mirror of the other mirror he was holding above his head.
The next member of staff to wake up after Ridcully and the Librarian was the Bursar; not because he was a naturally early riser, but because by around ten o'clock the Archchancellor's very limited supply of patience came to an end and he would stand at the bottom of the stairs and shout:
"Bursaaar!"
—until the Bursar appeared.
In fact it happened so often that the Bursar, a natural neurovore[6], frequently found that he'd got up and dressed himself in his sleep several minutes before the bellow. On this occasion he was upright and fully clothed and halfway to the door before his eyes snapped open.
Ridcully never wasted time on small talk. It was always large talk or nothing.
"Yes, Archchancellor?" said the Bursar, glumly.
The Archchancellor removed his hat.
"What about this, then?" he demanded.
"Um, um, um . . . what, Archchancellor?"
"This, man! This!"
Close to panic, the Bursar stared desperately at the top of Ridcully's head.
"The what? Oh. The bald spot?"
"I have not got a bald spot!"
"Um, then-"
"I mean it wasn't there yesterday!"
"Ah. Well. Um." At a certain point something always snapped inside the Bursar, and he couldn't stop himself. "Of course these things do happen and my grandfather always swore by a mixture of honey and horse manure, he rubbed it on every day-"
"I'm not going bald!"
A tic started to dance across the Bursar's face. The words started to come out by themselves, without the apparent intervention of his brain.
"-and then he got this device with a glass rod and, and, and you rubbed it with a silk cloth and-"
"I mean it's ridiculous! My family have never gone bald, except for one of my aunts!"
"-and, and, and then he'd collect morning dew and wash his head, and, and, and-"
Ridcully subsided. He was not an unkind man.
"What're you taking for it at the moment?" he murmured.
"Dried, dried, dried, dried," stuttered the Bursar.
"The old dried frog pills, right?"
"R-r-r-r."
"Left-hand pocket?"
"R-r-r-r."
"OK. . . right. . . swallow. . ."
They stared at one another for a moment.
The Bursar sagged.
"M-m-much better now, Archchancellor, thank you."
"Something's definitely happening. Bursar. I can feel it in my water."
"Anything you say, Archchancellor."
"Bursar?"
"Yes, Archchancellor?"
"You ain't a member of some secret society or somethin', are you?"
"Me? No, Archchancellor."
"Then it'd be a damn good idea to take your underpants off your head."
"Know him?" said Granny Weatherwax.
Nanny Ogg knew everyone in Lancre, even the forlorn thing on the bracken.
"It's William Scrope, from over Slice way," she said. "One of three brothers. He married that Palliard girl, remember? The one with the air-cooled teeth?"
"I hope the poor woman's got some respectable black clothes," said Granny Weatherwax.
"Looks like he's been stabbed," said Nanny. She turned the body over, gently but firmly. Corpses as such didn't worry her. Witches generally act as layers-out of the dead as well as midwives; there were plenty of people in Lancre for whom Nanny Ogg's face had been the first and last thing they'd ever seen, which had probably made all the bit in the middle seem quite uneventful by comparison.
"Right through," she said. "Stabbed right through. Blimey who'd do a thing like that?"
Both the witches turned to look at the stones.
"I don't know what, but I knows where it come from," said Granny.
Now Nanny Ogg could see that the bracken all around the stones was indeed well trodden down, and quite brown.
"I'm going to get to the bottom of this," said Granny.
"You'd better not go into-"
"I knows exactly where I should go, thank you."
There were eight stones in the Dancers. Three of them had names. Granny walked around the ring until she reached the one known as the Piper.
She removed a hatpin from among the many that riveted her pointy hat to her hair and held it about six inches from the stone. Then she let it go, and watched what happened.
She went back to Nanny.
"There's still power there," she said. "Not much, but the ring is holding."
"But who'd be daft enough to come up here and dance around the stones?" said Nanny Ogg, and then, as a treacherous thought drifted across her mind, she added, "Magrat's been away with us the whole time."
"We shall have to find out," said Granny, setting her face in a grim smile. "Now help me up with the poor man."
Nanny Ogg bent to the task.
"Coo, he's heavy. We could've done with young Magrat up here."
"No. Flighty," said Granny Weatherwax. "Head easily turned."
"Nice girl, though."
"But soppy. She thinks you can lead your life as if fairy stories work and folk songs are really true. Not that I don't wish her every happiness."
"Hope she does all right as queen," said Nanny.
"We taught her everything she knows," said Granny Weatherwax.
"Yeah," said Nanny Ogg, as they disappeared into the bracken. "D'you think. . . maybe. . . ?"
"What?"
"D'you think maybe we ought to have taught her everything we know?"
"It'd take too long."
"Yeah, right."
It took a while for letters to get as far as the Archchancellor. The post tended to be picked up from the University gates by anyone who happened to be passing, and then left lying on a shelf somewhere or used as a pipe lighter or a bookmark or, in the case of the Librarian, as bedding.
This one had only taken two days, and was quite intact apart from a couple of cup rings and a bananary fingerprint. It arrived on the table along with the other post while the faculty were at breakfast. The Dean opened it with a spoon.
"Anyone here know where Lancre is?" he said.
"Why?" said Ridcully, looking up sharply.
"Some king's getting married and wants us to come."
"Oh dear, oh dear," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "Some tinpot king gets wed and he wants us to come?"
"It's up in the mountains," said the Archchancellor, quietly "Good trout fishin' in those parts, as I recall. My word. Lancre. Good grief. Hadn't thought about the place in years. You know, there's glacier lakes up there where the fish've never seen a rod. Lancre. Yes."
"And it's far too far," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
Ridcully wasn't listening. "And there's deer. Thousands of head of deer. And elk. Wolves all over the place. Mountain lions too, I shouldn't wonder. I heard that Ice Eagles have been seen up there again, too."
His eyes gleamed.
"There's only half a dozen of 'em left," he said.
Mustrum Ridcully did a lot for rare species. For one thing, he kept them rare.
"It's the back of beyond," said the Dean. "Right off the edge of the map."
"Used to stay with my uncle up there, in the holidays," said Ridcully, his eyes misty with distance. "Great days I had up there. Great days. The summers up there . . . and the sky's a deeper blue than anywhere else, it's very . . . and the grass. . . and. . ."
He returned abruptly from the landscapes of memory.
"Got to go, then," he said. "Duty calls. Head of state gettin' married. Important occasion. Got to have a few wizards there. Look of the thing. Nobblyess obligay."
"Well, I'm not going," said the Dean. "It's not natural, the countryside. Far too many trees. Never could stand it."
"The Bursar could do with an outing," said Ridcully. "Seems a bit jumpy just lately, can't imagine why." He leaned forward to look along the High Table. "Bursaaar!"
The Bursar dropped his spoon into his oatmeal.
"See what I mean?" said Ridcully. "Bundle o' nerves the whole time. I WAS SAYING YOU COULD DO WITH SOME FRESH AIR, BURSAR." He nudged the Dean heavily. "Hope he's not going off his rocker, poor fella," he said, in what he chose to believe was a whisper. "Spends too much time indoors, if you get my drift."
The Dean, who went outdoors about once a month, shrugged his shoulders.
"I EXPECT YOU'D LIKE A LITTLE TIME AWAY FROM THE UNIVERSITY, EH?" said the Archchancellor, nodding and grimacing madly. "Peace and quiet? Healthy country livin'?"
"I, I, I, I should like that very much, Archchancellor," said the Bursar, hope rising in his face like an autumn mushroom.
"Good man. Good man. You shall come with me," said Ridcully, beaming.
The Bursar's expression froze.
"Got to be someone else, too," said Ridcully. "Volunteers, anyone?"
The wizards, townies to a man, bent industriously over their food. They always bent industriously over their food in any case, but this time they were doing it to avoid catching Ridcully's eye.
"What about the Librarian?" said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, throwing a random victim to the wolves.
There was a sudden babble of relieved agreement.
"Good choice," said the Dean. "Just the thing for him. Countryside. Trees. And. . . and. . . trees."
"Mountain air," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
"Yes, he's been looking peaky lately," said the Reader in Invisible Writings[7].
"It'd be a real treat for him," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
"Home away from home, I expect," said the Dean. "Trees all over the place."
They all looked expectantly at the Archchancellor.
"He doesn't wear clothes," said Ridcully. "And he goes 'ook' all the time."
"He does wear the old green robe thing," said the Dean.
"Only when he's had a bath."
Ridcully rubbed his beard. In fact he quite liked the Librarian, who never argued with him and always kept himself in shape, even if that shape was a pear shape. It was the right shape for an orang-utan.
The thing about the Librarian was that no one noticed he was an orang-utan anymore, unless a visitor to the University happened to point it out. In which case someone would say, "Oh, yes. Some kind of magical accident, wasn't it? Pretty sure it was something like that. One minute human, next minute an ape. Funny thing, really . . . can't remember what he looked like before. I mean, he must have been human, I suppose. Always thought of him as an ape, really. It's more him."
And indeed it had been an accident among the potent and magical books of the University library that had as it were bounced the Librarian's genotype down the evolutionary tree and back up a different branch, with the significant difference that now he could hang on to it upside down with his feet.
"Oh, all right," said the Archchancellor. "But he's got to wear something during the ceremony,' if only for the sake of the poor bride."
There was a whimper from the Bursar.
All the wizards turned toward him.
His spoon landed on the floor with a small thud. It was wooden. The wizards had gently prevented him from having metal cutlery since what was now known as the Unfortunate Incident At Dinner.
"A-a-a-a," gurgled the Bursar, trying to push himself away from the table.
"Dried frog pills," said the Archchancellor. "Someone fish 'em out of his pocket."
Wizards didn't rush this. You could find anything in a wizard's pocket-peas, unreasonable things with legs, small experimental universes, anything. . .
The Reader in Invisible Writings craned to see what had unglued his colleague.
"Here, look at his porridge," he said.
There was a perfect round depression in the oatmeal.
"Oh dear, another crop circle," said the Dean.
The wizards relaxed.
"Damn things turning up everywhere this year," said the Archchancellor. He hadn't taken his hat off to eat the meal. This was because it was holding down a poultice of honey and horse manure and a small mouse-powered electrostatic generator he'd got those clever young fellas in the High Energy Magic research building to knock together for him, clever fellas they were, one day he might even understand half of what they were always gabblin' on about. . .
In the meantime, he'd keep his hat on.
"Particularly strong, too," said the Dean. "The gardener told me yesterday they're playing merry hell with the cabbages."
"I thought them things only turned up out in fields and things," said Ridcully. "Perfectly normal natural phenomenon."
"If there is a suitably high flux level, the inter-continuum pressure can probably overcome quite a high base reality quotient," said the Reader in Invisible Writings.
The conversation stopped. Everyone turned to look at this most wretched and least senior member of the staff.
The Archchancellor glowered.
"I don't even want you to begin to start explainin' that," he said. "You're probably goin' to go on about the universe bein' a rubber sheet with weights on it again, right?"
"Not exactly a-"
"And the word 'quantum' is hurryin' toward your lips again," said Ridcully.
"Well, the-"
"And 'continuinuinuum' too, I expect," said Ridcully.
The Reader in Invisible Writings, a young wizard whose name was Ponder Stibbons, sighed deeply.
"No, Archchancellor, I was merely pointing out-"
"It's not wormholes again, is it?"
Stibbons gave up. Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red rag to a bu-was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it.
It was very hard, being a reader in Invisible Writings.
"I reckon you'd better come too," said Ridcully.
"Me, Archchancellor?"
"Can't have you skulking around the place inventing millions of other universes that're too small to see and all the rest of that continuinuinuum stuff," said Ridcully. "Anyway, I shall need someone to carry my rods and crossbo — my stuff," he corrected himself.
Stibbons stared at his plate. It was no good arguing. What he had really wanted out of life was to spend the next hundred years of it in the University, eating big meals and not moving much in between them. He was a plump young man with a complexion the colour of something that lives under a rock. People were always telling him to make something of his life, and that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to make a bed of it.
"But, Archchancellor," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, "it's still too damn far."
"Nonsense," said Ridcully. "They've got that new turnpike open all the way to Sto Helit now. Coaches every Wednesday, reg'lar. Bursaaar! Oh, give him a dried frog pill, someone . . . Mr. Stibbons, if you could happen to find yourself in this universe for five minutes, go and arrange some tickets. There. All sorted out, right?"
Magrat woke up.
And knew she wasn't a witch anymore. The feeling just crept over her, as part of the normal stock-taking that any body automatically does in the first seconds of emergence from the pit of dreams: arms: 2, legs: 2, existential dread: 58%, randomised guilt: 94%, witchcraft level: 00.00.
The point was, she couldn't remember ever being anything else. She'd always been a witch. Magrat Garlick, third witch, that was what she was. The soft one.
She knew she'd never been much good at it. Oh, she could do some spells and do them quite well, and she was good at herbs, but she wasn't a witch in the bone like the old ones. They made sure she knew it.
Well, she'd just have to learn queening. At least she was the only one in Lancre. No one'd be looking over her shoulder the whole time, saying things like "You ain't holding that sceptre right'."
Right. . .
Someone had stolen her clothes in the night.
She got up in her nightshirt and hopped over the cold flagstones to the door. She was halfway there when it opened of its own accord.
She recognised the small dark girl that came in, barely visible behind a stack of linen. Most people in Lancre knew everyone else.
"Millie Chillum?"
The linen bobbed a curtsy.
"Yes'm?"
Magrat lifted up part of the stack.
"It's me, Magrat," she said. "Hello."
"Yes'm." Another bob.
"What's up with you, Millie?"
"Yes'm." Bob, bob.
"I said it's me. You don't have to look at me like that."
"Yes'm."
The nervous bobbing continued. Magrat found her own knees beginning to jerk in sympathy but as it were behind the beat, so that as she was bobbing down she overtook the girl bobbing up.
"If you say 'yes'm' again, it will go very hard with you," she managed, as she went past.
"Y-right, your majesty, m'm."
Faint light began to dawn.
"I'm not queen yet, Millie. And you've known me for twenty years," panted Magrat, on the way up.
"Yes'm. But you're going to be queen. So me mam told me I was to be respectful," said Millie, still curtsying nervously
"Oh. Well. All right, then. Where are my clothes?"
"Got 'em here, your pre-majesty."
"They're not mine. And please stop going up and down all the time. I feel a bit sick."
"The king ordered 'em from Sto Helit special, m'm."
"Did he, eh? How long ago?"
"Dunno, m'm."
He knew I was coming home, thought Magrat. How? What's going on here?
There was a good deal more lace than Magrat was used to, but that was, as it were, the icing on the cake. Magrat normally wore a simple dress with not much underneath it except Magrat. Ladies of quality couldn't get away with that kind of thing. Millie had been provided with a sort of technical diagram, but it wasn't much help.
They studied it for some time.
"This is a standard queen outfit, then?"
"Couldn't say, m'm. I think his majesty just sent 'em a lot of money and said to send you everything." They spread out the bits on the floor.
"Is this the pantoffle?"
Outside, on the battlements, the guard changed. In fact he changed into his gardening apron and went off to hoe the beans. Inside, there was considerable sartorial discussion.
"I think you've got it up the wrong way, m'm. Which bit's the farthingale?"
"Says here Insert Tabbe A into Slotte B. Can't find slotte B."
"These're like saddlebags. I'm not wearing these. And this thing?"
"A ruff, m'm. Um. They're all the rage in Sto Helit, my brother says."
"You mean they make people angry? And what's this?"
"Brocade, I think."
"It's like cardboard. Do I have to wear this sort of thing every day?"
"Don't know, I'm sure, m'm."
"But Verence just trots around in leather gaiters and an old jacket!"
"Ah, but you're queen. Queens can't do that sort of thing. Everyone knows that, m'm. It's all right for kings to go wandering around with their arse half out their trous-"
She rammed her hand over her mouth.
"It's all right," said Magrat. "I'm sure even kings have . . . tops to their legs just like everyone else. Just go on with what you were saying."
Millie had gone bright red.
"I mean, I mean, I mean, queens has got to be ladylike," she managed. "The king got books about it. Etti-quetty and stuff."
Magrat surveyed herself critically in the mirror.
"It really suits you, your soon-going-to-be-majesty," said Millie.
Magrat turned this way and that.
"My hair's a mess," she said, after a while.
"Please m'm, the king said he's having a hairdresser come all the way from Ankh-Morpork, m'm. For the wedding."
Magrat patted a tress into place. It was beginning to dawn on her that being a queen was a whole new life.
"My word," she said. "And what happens now?"
"Dunno, m'm."
"What's the king doing?"
"Oh, he had breakfast early and buggered off over to Slice to show old Muckloe how to breed his pigs out of a book."
"So what do I do? What's my job?"
Millie looked puzzled although this did not involve much of a change in her general expression.
"Dunno, m'm. Reigning, I suppose. Walking around in the garden. Holding court. Doin' tapestry. That's very popular among queens. And then. . . er. . . later on there's the royal succession. . ."
"At the moment," said Magrat firmly, "we'll have a go at the tapestry."
Ridcully was having difficulty with the Librarian.
"I happen to be your Archchancellor, sir!"
"Oook."
"You'll like it up there! Fresh air! Bags of trees! More woods than you can shake a stick at!"
"Oook!"
"Come down this minute!"
"Oook!"
"The books'll be quite safe here during the holidays. Good grief, it's hard enough to get students to come in here at the best of times-"
"Oook!"
Ridcully glared at the Librarian, who was hanging by his toes from the top shelf of Parazoology Ba to Mn.
'Oh, well," he said, his voice suddenly low and cunning, "it's a great shame, in the circumstances. They've got a pretty good library in Lancre castle, I heard. Well, they call it a library — it's just a lot of old books. Never had a catalogue near 'em, apparently."
"Oook?"
"Thousands of books. Someone told me there's incunibles, too. Shame, really, you not wanting to see them." Ridcully's voice could have greased axles.
"Oook?"
"But I can see your mind is quite made up. So I shall be going. Farewell."
Ridcully paused outside the Library door, counting under his breath. He'd reached "three" when the Librarian knuckled through at high speed, caught by the incunibles.
"So that'll be four tickets, then?" said Ridcully.
Granny Weatherwax set about finding out what had been happening around the stones in her own distinctive way.
People underestimate bees.
Granny Weatherwax didn't. She had half a dozen hives of them and knew, for example, there is no such creature as an individual bee. But there is such a creature as a swarm, whose component cells are just a bit more mobile than those of, say, the common whelk. Swarms see everything and sense a lot more, and they can remember things for years, although their memory tends to be external and built out of wax. A honeycomb is a hive's memory — the placement of egg cells, pollen cells, queen cells, honey cells, different types of honey, are all part of the memory array.
And then there are the big fat drones. People think all they do is hang around the hive all year, waiting for those few brief minutes when the queen even notices their existence, but that doesn't explain why they've got more sense organs than the roof of the CIA building.
Granny didn't really keep bees. She took some old wax every year, for candles, and the occasional pound of honey that the hives felt they could spare, but mainly she had them for someone to talk to.
For the first time since she'd returned home, she went to the hives.
And stared.
Bees were boiling out of the entrances. The thrum of wings filled the normally calm little patch behind the raspberry bushes. Brown bodies zipped through the air like horizontal hail.
She wished she knew why.
Bees were her one failure. There wasn't a mind in Lancre she couldn't Borrow. She could even see the world through the eyes of earthworms[9] But a swarm, a mind made up of thousands of mobile parts, was beyond her. It was the toughest test of all. She'd tried over and over again to ride on one, to see the world through ten thousand pairs of multifaceted eyes all at once, and all she'd ever got was a migraine and an inclination to make love to flowers.
But you could tell a lot from just watching bees. The activity, the direction, the way the guard bees acted. . .
They were acting extremely worried.
So she went for a lie down, as only Granny Weatherwax knew how.
Nanny Ogg tried a different way, which didn't have much to do with witchcraft but did have a lot to do with her general Oggishness.
She sat for a while in her spotless kitchen, drinking rum and smoking her foul pipe and staring at the paintings on the wall. They had been done by her youngest grandchildren in a dozen shades of mud, most of them of blobby stick figures with the word GRAN blobbily blobbed in underneath in muddy blobby letters.
In front of her the cat Greebo, glad to be home again, lay on his back with all four paws in the air, doing his celebrated something-found-in-the-gutter impersonation.
Finally Nanny got up and ambled thoughtfully down to Jason Ogg's smithy.
A smithy always occupied an important position in the villages, doing the duty of town hall, meeting room, and general clearing house for gossip. Several men were lounging around in it now, filling in time between the normal Lancre occupations of poaching and watching the women do the work.
"Jason Ogg, I wants a word with you."
The smithy emptied like magic. It was probably something in Nanny Ogg's tone of voice. But Nanny reached out and grabbed one man by the arm as he tried to go past at a sort of stumbling crouch.
"I'm glad I've run into you, Mr. Quarney," she said. "Don't rush off. Store doing all right, is it?"
Lancre's only storekeeper gave her the look a threelegged mouse gives an athletic cat. Nevertheless, he tried.
"Oh, terrible bad, terrible bad business is right now, Mrs. Ogg."
"Same as normal, eh?"
Mr. Quarney's expression was pleading. He knew he wasn't going to get out without something, he just wanted to know what it was.
"Well, now," said Nanny, "you know the widow Scrope, lives over in Slice?"
Quarney's mouth opened.
"She's not a widow," he said. "She-"
"Bet you half a dollar?" said Nanny.
Quarney's mouth stayed open, and around it the rest of his face recomposed itself in an expression of fascinated horror.
"So she's to be allowed credit, right, until she gets the farm on its feet," said Nanny, in the silence. Quarney nodded mutely.
"That goes for the rest of you men listening outside the door," said Nanny, raising her voice. "Dropping a cut of meat on her doorstep once a week wouldn't come amiss, eh? And she'll probably want extra help come harvest. I knows I can depend on you all. Now, off you go. . ."
They ran for it, leaving Nanny Ogg standing triumphantly in the doorway.
Jason Ogg looked at her hopelessly, a fifteen-stone man reduced to a four-year-old boy.
"Jason?"
"I got to do this bit of brazing for old-"
"So," said Nanny, ignoring him, "what's been happening in these parts while we've been away, my lad?"
Jason poked at the fire distractedly with an iron bar.
"Oh, well, us had a big whirlwind on Hogswatchnight and one of Mother Peason's hens laid the same egg three times, and old Poorchick's cow gave birth to a seven-headed snake, and there was a rain of frogs over in Slice-"
"Been pretty normal, then," said Nanny Ogg. She refilled her pipe in a casual but meaningful way.
"All very quiet, really," said Jason. He pulled the bar out of the fire, laid it on the anvil, and raised his hammer.
"I'll find out sooner or later, you know," said Nanny Ogg.
Jason didn't turn his head, but his hammer stopped in mid-air.
"I always does, you know," said Nanny Ogg.
The iron cooled from the colour of fresh straw to bright red.
"You knows you always feels better for telling your old mum," said Nanny Ogg.
The iron cooled from red to spitting black. But Jason, ' used all day to the searing heat of a forge, seemed to be uncomfortably warm.
"I should beat it up before it gets cold," said Nanny Ogg.
"Weren't my fault. Mum! How could I stop 'em?"
Nanny sat back in the chair, smiling happily
"What them would these be, my son?"
"That young Diamanda and that Perdita and that girl with the red hair from over in Bad Ass and them others. I says to old Peason, I says you'd have something to say, I tole'em Mistress Weatherwax'd get her knic — would definitely be sarcastic when she found out," said Jason. "But they just laughs. They said they could teach 'emselves witching."
Nanny nodded. Actually, they were quite right. You could teach yourself witchcraft. But both the teacher and the pupil had to be the right kind of person.
"Diamanda?" she said. "Don't recall the name."
"Really she's Lucy Tockley," said Jason. "She says Diamanda is more. . . more witchy."
"Ah. The one that wears the big floppy felt hat?"
"Yes, Mum."
"She's the one that paints her nails black, too?"
"Yes, Mum."
"Old Tockley sent her off to school, didn't he?"
"Yes, Mum. She came back while you was gone."
"Ah."
Nanny Ogg lit her pipe from the forge. Floppy hat and black nails and education. Oh, dear.
"How many of these gels are there, then?" she said.
"Bout half a dozen. But they'm good at it. Mum."
"Yeah?"
"And it ain't as if they've been doing anything bad."
Nanny Ogg stared reflectively at the glow in the forge.
There was a bottomless quality to Nanny Ogg's silences. And also a certain directional component. Jason was quite clear that the silence was being aimed at him.
He always fell for it. He tried to fill it up.
"And that Diamanda's been properly educated," he said. "She knows some lovely words."
Silence.
"And I knows you've always said there weren't enough young girls interested in learnin' witching these days," said Jason. He removed the iron bar and hit it a few times, for the look of the thing.
More silence flowed in Jason's direction.
"They goes and dances up in the mountains every full moon."
Nanny Ogg removed her pipe and inspected the bowl carefully.
"People do say," said Jason, lowering his voice, "that they dances in the altogether."
"Altogether what?" said Nanny Ogg.
"You know. Mum. In the nudd."
"Cor. There's a thing. Anyone see where they go?"
"Nah. Weaver the thatcher says they always gives him the slip."
"Jason?"
"Yes, Mum?"
"They bin dancin' around the stones."
Jason hit his thumb.
There were a number of gods in the mountains and forests of Lancre. One of them was known as Heme the Hunted. He was a god of the chase and the hunt. More or less.
Most gods are created and sustained by belief and hope. Hunters danced in animal skins and created gods of the chase, who tended to be hearty and boisterous with the tact of a tidal wave. But they are not the only gods of hunting. The prey has an occult voice too, as the blood pounds and the hounds bay. Heme was the god of the chased and the hunted and all small animals whose ultimate destiny is to be an abrupt damp squeak.
He was about three feet high with rabbit ears and very small horns. But he did have an extremely good turn of speed, and was using it to the full as he tore madly through the woods.
"They're coming! They're coming! They're all coming back!"
"Who are?" said Jason Ogg. He was holding his thumb in the water trough.
Nanny Ogg sighed.
"Them." she said. "You know. Them. We ain't certain, but. . ."
"Who's Them?"
Nanny hesitated. There were some things you didn't tell ordinary people. On the other hand, Jason was a blacksmith, which meant he wasn't ordinary. Blacksmiths had to keep secrets. And he was family; Nanny Ogg had had an adventurous youth and wasn't very good at counting, but she was pretty certain he was her son.
She turned, clutched at her dress, and ran. She became a figure outlined against the sunset.
"You daft old besom, Esme," said Nanny Ogg. "Just because she's getting wed."
"You know what she'd say if we told her," said Granny Weatherwax. "She'd get it all wrong. The Gentry. Circles. She'd say it was . . . nice. Best for her if she's out of it."
"They ain't been active for years and years," said Nanny. "We'll need some help. I mean . . . when did you last go up to the Dancers?"
"You know how it is," said Granny "When it's so quiet. . . you don't think about 'em."
"We ought to have kept 'em cleared."
"True."
"We better get up there first thing tomorrow," said Nanny Ogg.
"Yes."
"Better bring a sickle, too."
There isn't much of the kingdom of Lancre where you could drop a football and not have it roll away from you. Most of it is moor land and steeply forested hillside, giving way to sharp and ragged mountains where even trolls wouldn't go and valleys so deep that they have to pipe the sunlight in.
There was an overgrown path up to the moor land where the Dancers stood, even though it was only a few miles from the town. Hunters tracked up there sometimes, but only by accident. It wasn't that the hunting was bad but, well — there were the stones.
Stone circles were common enough everywhere in the mountains. Druids built them as weather computers and since it was always cheaper to build a new 33-MegaLith circle than upgrade an old slow one there were generally plenty of ancient ones around.
No druids ever came near the Dancers.
The stones weren't shaped. They weren't even positioned in any particularly significant way. There wasn't any of that stuff about the sun striking the right stone at dawn on the right day. Someone had just dragged eight red rocks into a rough circle.
But the weather was different. People said that, if it started to rain, it always began to fall inside the circle a few seconds after it had started outside, as if the rain was coming from further away. If clouds crossed the sun, it'd be a moment or two before the light faded inside the circle.
William Scrope is going to die in a couple of minutes. It has to be said that he shouldn't have been hunting deer out of season, and especially not the fine stag he was tracking, and certainly not a fine stag of the Ramtop Red species, which is officially endangered although not as endangered, right now, as William Scrope.
It was ahead of him, pushing through the bracken, making so much noise that a blind man could have tracked it.
Scrope waded through after it.
Mist was still hanging around the stones, not in a blanket but in long raggedy strings.
The stag reached the circle now, and stopped. It trotted back and forth once or twice, and then looked up at Scrope.
He raised the crossbow.
The stag turned, and leapt between the stones.
There were only confused impressions from then on. The first was of—
—distance. The circle was a few yards across, it shouldn't suddenly appear to contain so much distance.
And the next was of—
—speed. Something was coming out of the circle, a white dot growing bigger and bigger.
He knew he'd aimed the bow. But it was whirled out of his hands as the thing struck, and suddenly there was only the sensation of—
—peace.
And the brief remembrance of pain.
William Scrope died.
William Scrope looked through his hands at the crushed bracken. The reason that it was crushed was that his own body was sprawled upon it.
His newly deceased eyes surveyed the landscape.
There are no delusions for the dead. Dying is like waking up after a really good party, when you have one or two seconds of innocent freedom before you recollect all the things you did last night which seemed so logical and hilarious at the time, and then you remember the really amazing thing you did with a lampshade and two balloons, which had them in stitches, and now you realise you're going to have to look a lot of people in the eye today and you're sober now and so are they but you can both remember.
"Oh," he said.
The landscape flowed around the stones. It was all so obvious now, when you saw it from the outside. . .
Obvious. No walls, only doors. No edges, only comers—
WILLIAM SCROPE.
"Yes?"
IF YOU WOULD PLEASE STEP THIS WAY.
"Are you a hunter?"
I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES.
Death grinned hopefully. Scrope's post-physical brow furrowed.
"What? Like . . . sherry, custard . . . that sort of thing?"
Death sighed. Metaphors were wasted on people. Sometimes he felt that no one took him seriously enough.
I TAKE AWAY PEOPLE'S LIVES IS WHAT I MEAN, he said testily.
"Where to?"
WE SHALL HAVE TO SEE, WON'T WE?
William Scrope was already fading into the mist.
"That thing that got me-"
YES?
"I thought they were extinct!"
"NO. THEY JUST WENT AWAY.
"Where to?"
Death extended a bony digit.
OVER THERE.
Magrat hadn't originally intended to move into the palace before the wedding, because people would talk. Admittedly a dozen people lived in the palace, which had a huge number of rooms, but she'd still be under the same roof, and that was good enough. Or bad enough.
That was before. Now her blood was sizzling. Let people talk. She had a pretty good idea which people they'd be, too. Which person, anyway. Witch person. Hah. Let them talk all they liked.
She got up early and packed her possessions, such as they were. It wasn't exactly her cottage, and most of the furniture went with it. Witches came and went, but witches' cottages went on for ever, usually with the same thatch they started with.
But she did own the set of magical knives, the mystic collared cords, the assorted grails and crucibles, and a box full of rings, necklaces, and bracelets heavy with the hermetic symbols of a dozen religions. She tipped them all into a sack.
Then there were the books. Goodie Whemper had been something of a bookworm among witches. There were almost a dozen. She hesitated about the books, and finally she let them stay on the shelves.
There was the statutory pointy hat. She'd never liked it anyway, and had always avoided wearing it. Into the sack with it.
She looked around wild-eyed until she spotted the small cauldron in the inglenook. That'd do. Into the sack with that, and then tie the neck with string.
On the way up to the palace she crossed the bridge over Lancre Gorge and tossed the sack into the river.
It bobbed for a moment in the strong current, and then sank.
She'd secretly hoped for a string of multicoloured bubbles, or even a hiss. But it just sank. Just as if it wasn't anything very important.
Another world, another castle. . .
The elf galloped over the frozen moat, steam billowing from its black horse and from the thing it carried over its neck.
It rode up the steps and into the hall itself, where the Queen sat amidst her dreams. . .
"My lord Lankin?"
"A stag!"
It was still alive. Elves were skilled at leaving things alive, often for weeks.
"From out of the circle?"
"Yes, lady!"
"It's weakening. Did I not tell you?"
"How long? How long?"
"Soon. Soon. What went through the other way?"
The elf tried to avoid her face.
"Your . . . pet, lady."
"No doubt it won't go far." The Queen laughed. "No doubt it will have an amusing time. . ."
It rained briefly at dawn.
There's nothing nastier to walk through than shoulder-high wet bracken. Well, there is. There are an uncountable number of things nastier to walk through, especially if they're shoulder-high. But here and now, thought Nanny Ogg, it was hard to think of more than one or two.
They hadn't landed inside the Dancers, of course. Even birds detoured rather than cross that airspace. Migrating spiders on gossamer threads floating half a mile up curved around it. Clouds split in two and flowed around it.
Mist hung around the stones. Sticky, damp mist.
Nanny hacked vaguely at the clinging bracken with her sickle.
"You there, Esme?" she muttered.
Granny Weatherwax's head rose from a clump of bracken a few feet away.
"There's been things going on," she said, in a cold and deliberate tone.
"Like what?"
"All the bracken and weeds is trampled around the stones. I reckon someone's been dancing."
Nanny Ogg gave this the same consideration as would a nuclear physicist who'd just been told that someone was banging two bits of sub-critical uranium together to keep warm.
"They never," she said.
"They have. And another thing. . ." It was hard to imagine what other thing there could be, but Nanny Ogg said "Yes?" anyway.
"Someone got killed up here."
"Oh, no," moaned Nanny Ogg. "Not inside the circle too."
"Nope. Don't be daft. It was outside. A tall man. He had one leg longer'n the other. And a beard. He was probably a hunter."
"How'd you know all that?"
"I just trod on 'im."
The sun rose through the mists.
The morning rays were already caressing the ancient stones of Unseen University, premier college of wizardry, five hundred miles away.
Not that many wizards were aware of this. For roost of the wizards of Unseen University their lunch was the first meal of the day. They were not, by and large, breakfast people. The Archchancellor and the Librarian were the only two who knew what the dawn looked like from the front, and they tended to have the entire campus to themselves for several hours.
The Librarian was always up early because he was an orang-utan, and they are naturally early risers, although in his case he didn't bellow a few times to keep other males off his territory. He just unlocked the Library and fed the books.
And Mustrum Ridcully, the current Archchancellor, liked to wander around the sleepy buildings, nodding to the servants and leaving little notes for his subordinates, usually designed for no other purpose than to make it absolutely clear that he was up and attending to the business of the day while they were still fast asleep[5].
Today, however, he had something else on his mind. More or less literally.
It was round. There was healthy growth all around it. He could swear it hadn't been there yesterday.
He turned his head this way and that, squinting at the reflection in the mirror of the other mirror he was holding above his head.
The next member of staff to wake up after Ridcully and the Librarian was the Bursar; not because he was a naturally early riser, but because by around ten o'clock the Archchancellor's very limited supply of patience came to an end and he would stand at the bottom of the stairs and shout:
"Bursaaar!"
—until the Bursar appeared.
In fact it happened so often that the Bursar, a natural neurovore[6], frequently found that he'd got up and dressed himself in his sleep several minutes before the bellow. On this occasion he was upright and fully clothed and halfway to the door before his eyes snapped open.
Ridcully never wasted time on small talk. It was always large talk or nothing.
"Yes, Archchancellor?" said the Bursar, glumly.
The Archchancellor removed his hat.
"What about this, then?" he demanded.
"Um, um, um . . . what, Archchancellor?"
"This, man! This!"
Close to panic, the Bursar stared desperately at the top of Ridcully's head.
"The what? Oh. The bald spot?"
"I have not got a bald spot!"
"Um, then-"
"I mean it wasn't there yesterday!"
"Ah. Well. Um." At a certain point something always snapped inside the Bursar, and he couldn't stop himself. "Of course these things do happen and my grandfather always swore by a mixture of honey and horse manure, he rubbed it on every day-"
"I'm not going bald!"
A tic started to dance across the Bursar's face. The words started to come out by themselves, without the apparent intervention of his brain.
"-and then he got this device with a glass rod and, and, and you rubbed it with a silk cloth and-"
"I mean it's ridiculous! My family have never gone bald, except for one of my aunts!"
"-and, and, and then he'd collect morning dew and wash his head, and, and, and-"
Ridcully subsided. He was not an unkind man.
"What're you taking for it at the moment?" he murmured.
"Dried, dried, dried, dried," stuttered the Bursar.
"The old dried frog pills, right?"
"R-r-r-r."
"Left-hand pocket?"
"R-r-r-r."
"OK. . . right. . . swallow. . ."
They stared at one another for a moment.
The Bursar sagged.
"M-m-much better now, Archchancellor, thank you."
"Something's definitely happening. Bursar. I can feel it in my water."
"Anything you say, Archchancellor."
"Bursar?"
"Yes, Archchancellor?"
"You ain't a member of some secret society or somethin', are you?"
"Me? No, Archchancellor."
"Then it'd be a damn good idea to take your underpants off your head."
"Know him?" said Granny Weatherwax.
Nanny Ogg knew everyone in Lancre, even the forlorn thing on the bracken.
"It's William Scrope, from over Slice way," she said. "One of three brothers. He married that Palliard girl, remember? The one with the air-cooled teeth?"
"I hope the poor woman's got some respectable black clothes," said Granny Weatherwax.
"Looks like he's been stabbed," said Nanny. She turned the body over, gently but firmly. Corpses as such didn't worry her. Witches generally act as layers-out of the dead as well as midwives; there were plenty of people in Lancre for whom Nanny Ogg's face had been the first and last thing they'd ever seen, which had probably made all the bit in the middle seem quite uneventful by comparison.
"Right through," she said. "Stabbed right through. Blimey who'd do a thing like that?"
Both the witches turned to look at the stones.
"I don't know what, but I knows where it come from," said Granny.
Now Nanny Ogg could see that the bracken all around the stones was indeed well trodden down, and quite brown.
"I'm going to get to the bottom of this," said Granny.
"You'd better not go into-"
"I knows exactly where I should go, thank you."
There were eight stones in the Dancers. Three of them had names. Granny walked around the ring until she reached the one known as the Piper.
She removed a hatpin from among the many that riveted her pointy hat to her hair and held it about six inches from the stone. Then she let it go, and watched what happened.
She went back to Nanny.
"There's still power there," she said. "Not much, but the ring is holding."
"But who'd be daft enough to come up here and dance around the stones?" said Nanny Ogg, and then, as a treacherous thought drifted across her mind, she added, "Magrat's been away with us the whole time."
"We shall have to find out," said Granny, setting her face in a grim smile. "Now help me up with the poor man."
Nanny Ogg bent to the task.
"Coo, he's heavy. We could've done with young Magrat up here."
"No. Flighty," said Granny Weatherwax. "Head easily turned."
"Nice girl, though."
"But soppy. She thinks you can lead your life as if fairy stories work and folk songs are really true. Not that I don't wish her every happiness."
"Hope she does all right as queen," said Nanny.
"We taught her everything she knows," said Granny Weatherwax.
"Yeah," said Nanny Ogg, as they disappeared into the bracken. "D'you think. . . maybe. . . ?"
"What?"
"D'you think maybe we ought to have taught her everything we know?"
"It'd take too long."
"Yeah, right."
It took a while for letters to get as far as the Archchancellor. The post tended to be picked up from the University gates by anyone who happened to be passing, and then left lying on a shelf somewhere or used as a pipe lighter or a bookmark or, in the case of the Librarian, as bedding.
This one had only taken two days, and was quite intact apart from a couple of cup rings and a bananary fingerprint. It arrived on the table along with the other post while the faculty were at breakfast. The Dean opened it with a spoon.
"Anyone here know where Lancre is?" he said.
"Why?" said Ridcully, looking up sharply.
"Some king's getting married and wants us to come."
"Oh dear, oh dear," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "Some tinpot king gets wed and he wants us to come?"
"It's up in the mountains," said the Archchancellor, quietly "Good trout fishin' in those parts, as I recall. My word. Lancre. Good grief. Hadn't thought about the place in years. You know, there's glacier lakes up there where the fish've never seen a rod. Lancre. Yes."
"And it's far too far," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
Ridcully wasn't listening. "And there's deer. Thousands of head of deer. And elk. Wolves all over the place. Mountain lions too, I shouldn't wonder. I heard that Ice Eagles have been seen up there again, too."
His eyes gleamed.
"There's only half a dozen of 'em left," he said.
Mustrum Ridcully did a lot for rare species. For one thing, he kept them rare.
"It's the back of beyond," said the Dean. "Right off the edge of the map."
"Used to stay with my uncle up there, in the holidays," said Ridcully, his eyes misty with distance. "Great days I had up there. Great days. The summers up there . . . and the sky's a deeper blue than anywhere else, it's very . . . and the grass. . . and. . ."
He returned abruptly from the landscapes of memory.
"Got to go, then," he said. "Duty calls. Head of state gettin' married. Important occasion. Got to have a few wizards there. Look of the thing. Nobblyess obligay."
"Well, I'm not going," said the Dean. "It's not natural, the countryside. Far too many trees. Never could stand it."
"The Bursar could do with an outing," said Ridcully. "Seems a bit jumpy just lately, can't imagine why." He leaned forward to look along the High Table. "Bursaaar!"
The Bursar dropped his spoon into his oatmeal.
"See what I mean?" said Ridcully. "Bundle o' nerves the whole time. I WAS SAYING YOU COULD DO WITH SOME FRESH AIR, BURSAR." He nudged the Dean heavily. "Hope he's not going off his rocker, poor fella," he said, in what he chose to believe was a whisper. "Spends too much time indoors, if you get my drift."
The Dean, who went outdoors about once a month, shrugged his shoulders.
"I EXPECT YOU'D LIKE A LITTLE TIME AWAY FROM THE UNIVERSITY, EH?" said the Archchancellor, nodding and grimacing madly. "Peace and quiet? Healthy country livin'?"
"I, I, I, I should like that very much, Archchancellor," said the Bursar, hope rising in his face like an autumn mushroom.
"Good man. Good man. You shall come with me," said Ridcully, beaming.
The Bursar's expression froze.
"Got to be someone else, too," said Ridcully. "Volunteers, anyone?"
The wizards, townies to a man, bent industriously over their food. They always bent industriously over their food in any case, but this time they were doing it to avoid catching Ridcully's eye.
"What about the Librarian?" said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, throwing a random victim to the wolves.
There was a sudden babble of relieved agreement.
"Good choice," said the Dean. "Just the thing for him. Countryside. Trees. And. . . and. . . trees."
"Mountain air," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
"Yes, he's been looking peaky lately," said the Reader in Invisible Writings[7].
"It'd be a real treat for him," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
"Home away from home, I expect," said the Dean. "Trees all over the place."
They all looked expectantly at the Archchancellor.
"He doesn't wear clothes," said Ridcully. "And he goes 'ook' all the time."
"He does wear the old green robe thing," said the Dean.
"Only when he's had a bath."
Ridcully rubbed his beard. In fact he quite liked the Librarian, who never argued with him and always kept himself in shape, even if that shape was a pear shape. It was the right shape for an orang-utan.
The thing about the Librarian was that no one noticed he was an orang-utan anymore, unless a visitor to the University happened to point it out. In which case someone would say, "Oh, yes. Some kind of magical accident, wasn't it? Pretty sure it was something like that. One minute human, next minute an ape. Funny thing, really . . . can't remember what he looked like before. I mean, he must have been human, I suppose. Always thought of him as an ape, really. It's more him."
And indeed it had been an accident among the potent and magical books of the University library that had as it were bounced the Librarian's genotype down the evolutionary tree and back up a different branch, with the significant difference that now he could hang on to it upside down with his feet.
"Oh, all right," said the Archchancellor. "But he's got to wear something during the ceremony,' if only for the sake of the poor bride."
There was a whimper from the Bursar.
All the wizards turned toward him.
His spoon landed on the floor with a small thud. It was wooden. The wizards had gently prevented him from having metal cutlery since what was now known as the Unfortunate Incident At Dinner.
"A-a-a-a," gurgled the Bursar, trying to push himself away from the table.
"Dried frog pills," said the Archchancellor. "Someone fish 'em out of his pocket."
Wizards didn't rush this. You could find anything in a wizard's pocket-peas, unreasonable things with legs, small experimental universes, anything. . .
The Reader in Invisible Writings craned to see what had unglued his colleague.
"Here, look at his porridge," he said.
There was a perfect round depression in the oatmeal.
"Oh dear, another crop circle," said the Dean.
The wizards relaxed.
"Damn things turning up everywhere this year," said the Archchancellor. He hadn't taken his hat off to eat the meal. This was because it was holding down a poultice of honey and horse manure and a small mouse-powered electrostatic generator he'd got those clever young fellas in the High Energy Magic research building to knock together for him, clever fellas they were, one day he might even understand half of what they were always gabblin' on about. . .
In the meantime, he'd keep his hat on.
"Particularly strong, too," said the Dean. "The gardener told me yesterday they're playing merry hell with the cabbages."
"I thought them things only turned up out in fields and things," said Ridcully. "Perfectly normal natural phenomenon."
"If there is a suitably high flux level, the inter-continuum pressure can probably overcome quite a high base reality quotient," said the Reader in Invisible Writings.
The conversation stopped. Everyone turned to look at this most wretched and least senior member of the staff.
The Archchancellor glowered.
"I don't even want you to begin to start explainin' that," he said. "You're probably goin' to go on about the universe bein' a rubber sheet with weights on it again, right?"
"Not exactly a-"
"And the word 'quantum' is hurryin' toward your lips again," said Ridcully.
"Well, the-"
"And 'continuinuinuum' too, I expect," said Ridcully.
The Reader in Invisible Writings, a young wizard whose name was Ponder Stibbons, sighed deeply.
"No, Archchancellor, I was merely pointing out-"
"It's not wormholes again, is it?"
Stibbons gave up. Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red rag to a bu-was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it.
It was very hard, being a reader in Invisible Writings.
"I reckon you'd better come too," said Ridcully.
"Me, Archchancellor?"
"Can't have you skulking around the place inventing millions of other universes that're too small to see and all the rest of that continuinuinuum stuff," said Ridcully. "Anyway, I shall need someone to carry my rods and crossbo — my stuff," he corrected himself.
Stibbons stared at his plate. It was no good arguing. What he had really wanted out of life was to spend the next hundred years of it in the University, eating big meals and not moving much in between them. He was a plump young man with a complexion the colour of something that lives under a rock. People were always telling him to make something of his life, and that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to make a bed of it.
"But, Archchancellor," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, "it's still too damn far."
"Nonsense," said Ridcully. "They've got that new turnpike open all the way to Sto Helit now. Coaches every Wednesday, reg'lar. Bursaaar! Oh, give him a dried frog pill, someone . . . Mr. Stibbons, if you could happen to find yourself in this universe for five minutes, go and arrange some tickets. There. All sorted out, right?"
Magrat woke up.
And knew she wasn't a witch anymore. The feeling just crept over her, as part of the normal stock-taking that any body automatically does in the first seconds of emergence from the pit of dreams: arms: 2, legs: 2, existential dread: 58%, randomised guilt: 94%, witchcraft level: 00.00.
The point was, she couldn't remember ever being anything else. She'd always been a witch. Magrat Garlick, third witch, that was what she was. The soft one.
She knew she'd never been much good at it. Oh, she could do some spells and do them quite well, and she was good at herbs, but she wasn't a witch in the bone like the old ones. They made sure she knew it.
Well, she'd just have to learn queening. At least she was the only one in Lancre. No one'd be looking over her shoulder the whole time, saying things like "You ain't holding that sceptre right'."
Right. . .
Someone had stolen her clothes in the night.
She got up in her nightshirt and hopped over the cold flagstones to the door. She was halfway there when it opened of its own accord.
She recognised the small dark girl that came in, barely visible behind a stack of linen. Most people in Lancre knew everyone else.
"Millie Chillum?"
The linen bobbed a curtsy.
"Yes'm?"
Magrat lifted up part of the stack.
"It's me, Magrat," she said. "Hello."
"Yes'm." Another bob.
"What's up with you, Millie?"
"Yes'm." Bob, bob.
"I said it's me. You don't have to look at me like that."
"Yes'm."
The nervous bobbing continued. Magrat found her own knees beginning to jerk in sympathy but as it were behind the beat, so that as she was bobbing down she overtook the girl bobbing up.
"If you say 'yes'm' again, it will go very hard with you," she managed, as she went past.
"Y-right, your majesty, m'm."
Faint light began to dawn.
"I'm not queen yet, Millie. And you've known me for twenty years," panted Magrat, on the way up.
"Yes'm. But you're going to be queen. So me mam told me I was to be respectful," said Millie, still curtsying nervously
"Oh. Well. All right, then. Where are my clothes?"
"Got 'em here, your pre-majesty."
"They're not mine. And please stop going up and down all the time. I feel a bit sick."
"The king ordered 'em from Sto Helit special, m'm."
"Did he, eh? How long ago?"
"Dunno, m'm."
He knew I was coming home, thought Magrat. How? What's going on here?
There was a good deal more lace than Magrat was used to, but that was, as it were, the icing on the cake. Magrat normally wore a simple dress with not much underneath it except Magrat. Ladies of quality couldn't get away with that kind of thing. Millie had been provided with a sort of technical diagram, but it wasn't much help.
They studied it for some time.
"This is a standard queen outfit, then?"
"Couldn't say, m'm. I think his majesty just sent 'em a lot of money and said to send you everything." They spread out the bits on the floor.
"Is this the pantoffle?"
Outside, on the battlements, the guard changed. In fact he changed into his gardening apron and went off to hoe the beans. Inside, there was considerable sartorial discussion.
"I think you've got it up the wrong way, m'm. Which bit's the farthingale?"
"Says here Insert Tabbe A into Slotte B. Can't find slotte B."
"These're like saddlebags. I'm not wearing these. And this thing?"
"A ruff, m'm. Um. They're all the rage in Sto Helit, my brother says."
"You mean they make people angry? And what's this?"
"Brocade, I think."
"It's like cardboard. Do I have to wear this sort of thing every day?"
"Don't know, I'm sure, m'm."
"But Verence just trots around in leather gaiters and an old jacket!"
"Ah, but you're queen. Queens can't do that sort of thing. Everyone knows that, m'm. It's all right for kings to go wandering around with their arse half out their trous-"
She rammed her hand over her mouth.
"It's all right," said Magrat. "I'm sure even kings have . . . tops to their legs just like everyone else. Just go on with what you were saying."
Millie had gone bright red.
"I mean, I mean, I mean, queens has got to be ladylike," she managed. "The king got books about it. Etti-quetty and stuff."
Magrat surveyed herself critically in the mirror.
"It really suits you, your soon-going-to-be-majesty," said Millie.
Magrat turned this way and that.
"My hair's a mess," she said, after a while.
"Please m'm, the king said he's having a hairdresser come all the way from Ankh-Morpork, m'm. For the wedding."
Magrat patted a tress into place. It was beginning to dawn on her that being a queen was a whole new life.
"My word," she said. "And what happens now?"
"Dunno, m'm."
"What's the king doing?"
"Oh, he had breakfast early and buggered off over to Slice to show old Muckloe how to breed his pigs out of a book."
"So what do I do? What's my job?"
Millie looked puzzled although this did not involve much of a change in her general expression.
"Dunno, m'm. Reigning, I suppose. Walking around in the garden. Holding court. Doin' tapestry. That's very popular among queens. And then. . . er. . . later on there's the royal succession. . ."
"At the moment," said Magrat firmly, "we'll have a go at the tapestry."
Ridcully was having difficulty with the Librarian.
"I happen to be your Archchancellor, sir!"
"Oook."
"You'll like it up there! Fresh air! Bags of trees! More woods than you can shake a stick at!"
"Oook!"
"Come down this minute!"
"Oook!"
"The books'll be quite safe here during the holidays. Good grief, it's hard enough to get students to come in here at the best of times-"
"Oook!"
Ridcully glared at the Librarian, who was hanging by his toes from the top shelf of Parazoology Ba to Mn.
'Oh, well," he said, his voice suddenly low and cunning, "it's a great shame, in the circumstances. They've got a pretty good library in Lancre castle, I heard. Well, they call it a library — it's just a lot of old books. Never had a catalogue near 'em, apparently."
"Oook?"
"Thousands of books. Someone told me there's incunibles, too. Shame, really, you not wanting to see them." Ridcully's voice could have greased axles.
"Oook?"
"But I can see your mind is quite made up. So I shall be going. Farewell."
Ridcully paused outside the Library door, counting under his breath. He'd reached "three" when the Librarian knuckled through at high speed, caught by the incunibles.
"So that'll be four tickets, then?" said Ridcully.
Granny Weatherwax set about finding out what had been happening around the stones in her own distinctive way.
People underestimate bees.
Granny Weatherwax didn't. She had half a dozen hives of them and knew, for example, there is no such creature as an individual bee. But there is such a creature as a swarm, whose component cells are just a bit more mobile than those of, say, the common whelk. Swarms see everything and sense a lot more, and they can remember things for years, although their memory tends to be external and built out of wax. A honeycomb is a hive's memory — the placement of egg cells, pollen cells, queen cells, honey cells, different types of honey, are all part of the memory array.
And then there are the big fat drones. People think all they do is hang around the hive all year, waiting for those few brief minutes when the queen even notices their existence, but that doesn't explain why they've got more sense organs than the roof of the CIA building.
Granny didn't really keep bees. She took some old wax every year, for candles, and the occasional pound of honey that the hives felt they could spare, but mainly she had them for someone to talk to.
For the first time since she'd returned home, she went to the hives.
And stared.
Bees were boiling out of the entrances. The thrum of wings filled the normally calm little patch behind the raspberry bushes. Brown bodies zipped through the air like horizontal hail.
She wished she knew why.
Bees were her one failure. There wasn't a mind in Lancre she couldn't Borrow. She could even see the world through the eyes of earthworms[9] But a swarm, a mind made up of thousands of mobile parts, was beyond her. It was the toughest test of all. She'd tried over and over again to ride on one, to see the world through ten thousand pairs of multifaceted eyes all at once, and all she'd ever got was a migraine and an inclination to make love to flowers.
But you could tell a lot from just watching bees. The activity, the direction, the way the guard bees acted. . .
They were acting extremely worried.
So she went for a lie down, as only Granny Weatherwax knew how.
Nanny Ogg tried a different way, which didn't have much to do with witchcraft but did have a lot to do with her general Oggishness.
She sat for a while in her spotless kitchen, drinking rum and smoking her foul pipe and staring at the paintings on the wall. They had been done by her youngest grandchildren in a dozen shades of mud, most of them of blobby stick figures with the word GRAN blobbily blobbed in underneath in muddy blobby letters.
In front of her the cat Greebo, glad to be home again, lay on his back with all four paws in the air, doing his celebrated something-found-in-the-gutter impersonation.
Finally Nanny got up and ambled thoughtfully down to Jason Ogg's smithy.
A smithy always occupied an important position in the villages, doing the duty of town hall, meeting room, and general clearing house for gossip. Several men were lounging around in it now, filling in time between the normal Lancre occupations of poaching and watching the women do the work.
"Jason Ogg, I wants a word with you."
The smithy emptied like magic. It was probably something in Nanny Ogg's tone of voice. But Nanny reached out and grabbed one man by the arm as he tried to go past at a sort of stumbling crouch.
"I'm glad I've run into you, Mr. Quarney," she said. "Don't rush off. Store doing all right, is it?"
Lancre's only storekeeper gave her the look a threelegged mouse gives an athletic cat. Nevertheless, he tried.
"Oh, terrible bad, terrible bad business is right now, Mrs. Ogg."
"Same as normal, eh?"
Mr. Quarney's expression was pleading. He knew he wasn't going to get out without something, he just wanted to know what it was.
"Well, now," said Nanny, "you know the widow Scrope, lives over in Slice?"
Quarney's mouth opened.
"She's not a widow," he said. "She-"
"Bet you half a dollar?" said Nanny.
Quarney's mouth stayed open, and around it the rest of his face recomposed itself in an expression of fascinated horror.
"So she's to be allowed credit, right, until she gets the farm on its feet," said Nanny, in the silence. Quarney nodded mutely.
"That goes for the rest of you men listening outside the door," said Nanny, raising her voice. "Dropping a cut of meat on her doorstep once a week wouldn't come amiss, eh? And she'll probably want extra help come harvest. I knows I can depend on you all. Now, off you go. . ."
They ran for it, leaving Nanny Ogg standing triumphantly in the doorway.
Jason Ogg looked at her hopelessly, a fifteen-stone man reduced to a four-year-old boy.
"Jason?"
"I got to do this bit of brazing for old-"
"So," said Nanny, ignoring him, "what's been happening in these parts while we've been away, my lad?"
Jason poked at the fire distractedly with an iron bar.
"Oh, well, us had a big whirlwind on Hogswatchnight and one of Mother Peason's hens laid the same egg three times, and old Poorchick's cow gave birth to a seven-headed snake, and there was a rain of frogs over in Slice-"
"Been pretty normal, then," said Nanny Ogg. She refilled her pipe in a casual but meaningful way.
"All very quiet, really," said Jason. He pulled the bar out of the fire, laid it on the anvil, and raised his hammer.
"I'll find out sooner or later, you know," said Nanny Ogg.
Jason didn't turn his head, but his hammer stopped in mid-air.
"I always does, you know," said Nanny Ogg.
The iron cooled from the colour of fresh straw to bright red.
"You knows you always feels better for telling your old mum," said Nanny Ogg.
The iron cooled from red to spitting black. But Jason, ' used all day to the searing heat of a forge, seemed to be uncomfortably warm.
"I should beat it up before it gets cold," said Nanny Ogg.
"Weren't my fault. Mum! How could I stop 'em?"
Nanny sat back in the chair, smiling happily
"What them would these be, my son?"
"That young Diamanda and that Perdita and that girl with the red hair from over in Bad Ass and them others. I says to old Peason, I says you'd have something to say, I tole'em Mistress Weatherwax'd get her knic — would definitely be sarcastic when she found out," said Jason. "But they just laughs. They said they could teach 'emselves witching."
Nanny nodded. Actually, they were quite right. You could teach yourself witchcraft. But both the teacher and the pupil had to be the right kind of person.
"Diamanda?" she said. "Don't recall the name."
"Really she's Lucy Tockley," said Jason. "She says Diamanda is more. . . more witchy."
"Ah. The one that wears the big floppy felt hat?"
"Yes, Mum."
"She's the one that paints her nails black, too?"
"Yes, Mum."
"Old Tockley sent her off to school, didn't he?"
"Yes, Mum. She came back while you was gone."
"Ah."
Nanny Ogg lit her pipe from the forge. Floppy hat and black nails and education. Oh, dear.
"How many of these gels are there, then?" she said.
"Bout half a dozen. But they'm good at it. Mum."
"Yeah?"
"And it ain't as if they've been doing anything bad."
Nanny Ogg stared reflectively at the glow in the forge.
There was a bottomless quality to Nanny Ogg's silences. And also a certain directional component. Jason was quite clear that the silence was being aimed at him.
He always fell for it. He tried to fill it up.
"And that Diamanda's been properly educated," he said. "She knows some lovely words."
Silence.
"And I knows you've always said there weren't enough young girls interested in learnin' witching these days," said Jason. He removed the iron bar and hit it a few times, for the look of the thing.
More silence flowed in Jason's direction.
"They goes and dances up in the mountains every full moon."
Nanny Ogg removed her pipe and inspected the bowl carefully.
"People do say," said Jason, lowering his voice, "that they dances in the altogether."
"Altogether what?" said Nanny Ogg.
"You know. Mum. In the nudd."
"Cor. There's a thing. Anyone see where they go?"
"Nah. Weaver the thatcher says they always gives him the slip."
"Jason?"
"Yes, Mum?"
"They bin dancin' around the stones."
Jason hit his thumb.
There were a number of gods in the mountains and forests of Lancre. One of them was known as Heme the Hunted. He was a god of the chase and the hunt. More or less.
Most gods are created and sustained by belief and hope. Hunters danced in animal skins and created gods of the chase, who tended to be hearty and boisterous with the tact of a tidal wave. But they are not the only gods of hunting. The prey has an occult voice too, as the blood pounds and the hounds bay. Heme was the god of the chased and the hunted and all small animals whose ultimate destiny is to be an abrupt damp squeak.
He was about three feet high with rabbit ears and very small horns. But he did have an extremely good turn of speed, and was using it to the full as he tore madly through the woods.
"They're coming! They're coming! They're all coming back!"
"Who are?" said Jason Ogg. He was holding his thumb in the water trough.
Nanny Ogg sighed.
"Them." she said. "You know. Them. We ain't certain, but. . ."
"Who's Them?"
Nanny hesitated. There were some things you didn't tell ordinary people. On the other hand, Jason was a blacksmith, which meant he wasn't ordinary. Blacksmiths had to keep secrets. And he was family; Nanny Ogg had had an adventurous youth and wasn't very good at counting, but she was pretty certain he was her son.