"You see," she said, waving her hands vaguely, "them stones. . . the Dancers . . . see, in the old days . . . see, once upon a time. . ."
She stopped, and tried again to explain the essentially fractal nature of reality.
"Like . . . there's some places that're thinner than others, where the old doorways used to be, well, not doorways, never exactly understood it myself, not doorways as such, more places where the world is thinner . . . Anyway, the thing is, the Dancers . . . are a kind of fence . . . we, well, when I say we I mean thousands of years ago . . . I mean, but they're not just stones, they're some kind of thunderbolt iron but . . . there's things like tides, only not with water, it's when worlds get closer together'n you can nearly step between 'em . . . anyway, if people've been hangin' around the stones, playin' around . . . then They'll be back, if we're not careful."
"What They?"
"That's the whole trouble," said Nanny, miserably. "If I tells you, you'll get it all wrong. They lives on the other side of the Dancers."
Her son stared at her. Then a faint grin of realisation wandered across his face.
"Ah," he said. "I knows. I heard them wizards down in Ankh is always accidentally rippin' holes in this fabric o' reality they got down there, and you get them horrible things coming out o' the Dungeon Dimensions. Huge buggers with dozens o' eyeballs and more legs'n a Morris team." He gripped his No. 5 hammer. "Don't you worry. Mum. If they starts poppin' out here, we'll soon-"
"No, it ain't like that," said Nanny "Those live outside. But Them lives. . . over there."
Jason looked completely lost.
Nanny shrugged. She'd have to tell someone, sooner or later.
"The Lords and Ladies," she said.
"Who're they?"
Nanny looked around. But, after all, this was a forge. There had been a forge here long before there was a castle, long before there was even a kingdom. There were horseshoes everywhere. Iron had entered the very walls. It wasn't just a place of iron, it was a place where iron died and was reborn. If you couldn't speak the words here, you couldn't speak 'em anywhere.
Even so, she'd rather not.
"You know," she said. "The Fair Folk. The Gentry. The Shining Ones. The Star People. You know."
"What?"
Nanny put her hand on the anvil, just in case, and said the word.
Jason's frown very gently cleared, at about the same speed as a sunrise.
"Them?" he said. "But aren't they nice and-?"
'"See?" said Nanny. "I told you you'd get it wrong!"
"How much?" said Ridcully.
The coachman shrugged.
"Take it or leave it," he said.
"I'm sorry, sir," said Ponder Stibbons. "It's the only coach."
"Fifty dollars each is daylight robbery!"
"No," said the coachman patiently. "Daylight robbery," he said, in the authoritative tones of the experienced, "is when someone steps out into the road with an arrow pointing at us and then all his friends swings down from the rocks and trees and take away all our money and things. And then there's nighttime robbery, which is like daytime robbery except they set fire to the coach so's they can see what they're about. Twilight robbery, now, your basic twilight robbery is-"
"Are you saying," said Ridcully, "that getting robbed is included in the price?"
"Bandits' Guild," said the coachman. "Forty dollars per head, see. It's a kind of flat rate."
"What happens if we don't pay it?" said Ridcully.
"You end up flat."
The wizards went into a huddle.
"We've got a hundred and fifty dollars," said Ridcully. "We can't get any more out of the safe because the Bursar ate the key yesterday"
"Can I try an idea, sir?" said Ponder.
"All right."
Ponder gave the coachman a bright smile.
"Pets travel free?" he suggested.
"Oook?"
Nanny Ogg's broomstick skimmed a few feet above the forest paths, cornering so fast that her boots scraped through the leaves. She leapt off at Granny Weather-wax's cottage so quickly that she didn't switch it off, and it kept going until it stuck in the privy.
The door was open.
"Cooee?"
Nanny glanced into the scullery, and then thumped up the small narrow staircase.
Granny Weatherwax was stretched rigid on her bed. Her face was grey, her skin was cold.
People had discovered her like this before, and it always caused embarrassment. So now she reassured visitors but tempted fate by always holding, in her rigid hands, a small handwritten sign which read:
I ATE'NT DEAD.
The window was propped open with a piece of wood.
"Ah," said Nanny, far more for her own benefit than for anyone else's, "I sees you're out. I'll, I'll, I'll just put the kettle on, shall I, and wait 'til you comes back?"
Esme's skill at Borrowing unnerved her. It was all very well entering the minds of animals and such, but too many witches had never come back. For several years Nanny had put out lumps of fat and bacon rind for a bluetit that she was sure was old Granny Postalute, who'd gone out Borrowing one day and never came back. Insofar as a witch could consider things uncanny. Nanny Ogg considered it uncanny.
She went back down to the scullery and lowered a bucket down the well, remembering to fish the newts out this time before she boiled the kettle.
Then she watched the garden.
After a while a small shape flittered across it, heading for the upstairs window.
Nanny poured out the tea. She carefully took one spoonful of sugar out of the sugar basin, tipped the rest of the sugar into her cup, put the spoonful back in the basin, put both cups on a tray, and climbed the stairs.
Granny Weatherwax was sitting up in her bed.
Nanny looked around.
There was a large bat hanging upside down from a beam.
Granny Weatherwax rubbed her ears.
"Shove the po under it, will you, Gytha?" she mumbled. "They're a devil for excusing themselves on the carpet."
Nanny unearthed the shyest article of Granny Weatherwax's bedroom crockery and moved it across the rug with her foot.
"I brought you a cup of tea," she said.
"Good job, too. Mouth tastes of moths," said Granny.
"Thought you did owls at night?" said Nanny.
"Yeah, but you ends up for days trying to twist your head right round," said Granny. "At least bats always faces the same way. Tried rabbits first off, but you know what they are for remembering things. Anyway, you know what they thinks about the whole time. They're famous for it."
"Grass."
"Right."
"Find out anything?" said Nanny
"Half a dozen people have been going up there. Every full moon!" said Granny. "Gels, by the shape of them. You only see silhouettes, with bats."
"You done well there," said Nanny, carefully. "Girls from round here, you reckon?"
"Got to be. They ain't using broomsticks."
Nanny Ogg sighed.
"There's Agnes Nitt, old Threepenny's daughter," she said. "And the Tockley girl. And some others."
Granny Weatherwax looked at her with her mouth open.
"I asked our Jason," she said. "Sorry."
The bat burped. Granny genteelly covered her hand with her mouth.
"I'm a silly old fool, ain't I?" she said, after a while.
"No, no," said Nanny. "Borrowing's a real skill. You're really good at it."
"Prideful, that's what I am. Once upon a time I'd of thought of asking people, too, instead of fooling around being a bat."
"Our Jason wouldn't have told you. He only told me 'cos I would've made 'is life a living hell if he didn't," said Nanny Ogg. "That's what a mother's for."
"I'm losing my touch, that's what it is. Getting old, Gytha."
"You're as old as you feel, that's what I always say."
"That's what I mean."
Nanny Ogg looked worried.
"Supposing Magrat'd been here," said Granny. "She'd see me being daft."
"Well, she's safe in the castle," said Nanny. "Learning how to be queen."
"At least the thing about queening," said Granny, "is that no one notices if you're doing it wrong. It has to be right 'cos it's you doing it."
"S'funny, royalty," said Nanny. "It's like magic. You take some girl with a bum like two pigs in a blanket and a head full of air and then she marries a king or a prince or someone and suddenly she's this radiant right royal princess. It's a funny old world."
"I ain't going to kowtow to her, mind," said Granny.
"You never kowtow to anyone anyway," said Nanny Ogg patiently. "You never bowed to the old king. You barely gives young Verence a nod. You never kowtows to anyone ever, anyway."
"That's right!" said Granny. "That's part of being a witch, that is."
Nanny relaxed a bit. Granny being an old woman made her uneasy. Granny in her normal state of barely controlled anger was far more her old self.
Granny stood up.
"Old Toekley's girl, eh?"
"That's right."
"Her mother was a Keeble, wasn't she? Fine woman, as I recall."
"Yeah, but when she died the old man sent her off to Sto Lat to school."
"Don't hold with schools," said Granny Weatherwax. "They gets in the way of education. All them books. Books? What good are they? There's too much reading these days. We never had time to read when we was young, I know that."
"We were too busy makin' our own entertainment."
"Right. Come on — we ain't got much time."
"What d'you mean?"
"It's not just the girls. There's something out there, too. Some kind of mind, movin' around."
Granny shivered. She'd been aware of it in the same way that a skilled hunter, moving through the hills, is aware of another hunter — by the silences where there should have been noise, by the trampling of a stem, by the anger of the bees.
Nanny Ogg had never liked the idea of Borrowing, and Magrat had always refused even to give it a try. The old witches on the other side of the mountain had too much trouble with inconvenient in-body experiences to cope with the out-of-body kind. So Granny was used to having the mental dimension to herself.
There was a mind moving around in the kingdom, and Granny Weatherwax didn't understand it.
She Borrowed. You had to be careful. It was like a drug. You could ride the minds of animals and birds, but never bees, steering them gently, seeing through their eyes. Granny Weatherwax had many times flicked through the channels of consciousness around her. It was, to her, part of the heart of witchcraft. To see through other eyes . . .
. . . through the eyes of gnats, seeing the slow patterns of time in the fast pattern of one day, their minds travelling rapidly as lightning . . .
. . . to listen with the body of a beetle, so that the world is a three-dimensional pattern of vibrations . . .
. . . to see with the nose of a dog, all smells now colours . . .
But there was a price. No one asked you to pay it, but the very absence of demand was a moral obligation. You tended not to swat. You dug lightly. You fed the dog. You paid. You cared; not because it was kind or good, but because it was right. You left nothing but memories, you took nothing but experience.
But this other roving intelligence . . . it'd go in and out of another mind like a chainsaw, taking, taking, taking. She could sense the shape of it, the predatory shape, all cruelty and cool unkindness; a mind full of intelligence, that'd use other living things and hurt them because it was fun.
She could put a name to a mind like that.
Elf.
Branches thrashed high in the trees.
Granny and Nanny strode through the forest. At least, Granny Weatherwax strode. Nanny Ogg scurried.
"The Lords and Ladies are trying to find a way," said Granny. "And there's something else. Something's already come through. Some kind of animal from the other side. Scrope chased a deer into the circle and the thing must have been there, and they always used to say something can come through if something goes the other way-"
"What thing?"
"You know what a bat's eyesight is like. Just a big shape is all it saw. Something killed old Scrope. It's still around. Not an . . . not one o' the Lords and Ladies," said Granny, "but something from El . . . that place."
Nanny looked at the shadows. There are a lot of shadows in a forest at night.
•"Ain't you scared?" she said.
Granny cracked her knuckles.
"No. But I hope it is."
"Ooo, it's true what they say. You're a prideful one, Esmerelda Weatherwax."
"Who says that?"
"Well, you did. Just now."
"I wasn't feeling well."
Other people would probably say: I wasn't myself. But Granny Weatherwax didn't have anyone else to be.
The two witches hurried on through the gale.
From the shelter of a thorn thicket, the unicorn watched them go.
Diamanda Tockley did indeed wear a floppy black velvet hat. It had a veil, too.
Perdita Nitt, who had once been merely Agnes Nitt before she got witchcraft, wore a black hat with a veil too, because Diamanda did. Both of them were seventeen. And she wished she was naturally skinny, like Diamanda, but if you can't be skinny you can at least look unhealthy. So she wore so much thick white make-up in order to conceal her naturally rosy complexion that if she turned around suddenly her face would probably end up on the back of her head.
They'd done the Raising of the Cone of Power, and some candle magic, and some scrying. Now Diamanda was showing them how to do the cards.
She said they contained the distilled wisdom of the Ancients. Perdita had found herself treacherously wondering who these Ancients were — they clearly weren't the same as old people, who were stupid, Diamanda said, but she wasn't quite clear why they were wiser than, say, modem people.
Also, she didn't understand what the Feminine Principle was. And she wasn't too clear about this Inner Self business. She was coming to suspect that she didn't have one.
And she wished she could do her eyes like Diamanda did.
And she wished she could wear heels like Diamanda did.
Amanita DeVice had told her that Diamanda slept in a real coffin.
She wished she had the nerve to have a dagger-and-skull tattoo on her arm like Amanita did, even if it was only in ordinary ink and she had to wash it off every night in case her mother saw it.
A tiny, nasty voice from Perdita's inner self suggested that Amanita wasn't a good choice of name.
Or Perdita, for that matter.
And it said that maybe Perdita shouldn't meddle with things she didn't understand.
The trouble was, she knew, that this meant nearly everything.
She wished she could wear black lace like Diamanda did.
Diamanda got results.
Perdita wouldn't have believed it. She'd always known about witches, of course. They were old women who dressed like crows, except for Magrat Garlick, who was frankly mental and always looked as if she was going to burst into tears. Perdita remembered Magrat bringing a guitar to a Hogswatchnight party once and singing wobbly folk songs with her eyes shut in a way that suggested that she really believed in them. She hadn't been able to play, but this was all right because she couldn't sing, either. People had applauded because, well, what else could you do?
But Diamanda had read books. She knew about stuff. Raising power at the stones, for one thing. It really worked.
Currently she was showing them the cards.
The wind had got up again tonight. It rattled the shutters and made soot fall down the chimney. It seemed to Perdita that it had blown all the shadows into the comers of the room—
"Are you paying attention, sister?" said Diamanda coldly.
That was another thing. You had to call one another 'sister,' out of fraternity.
"Yes, Diamanda," she said, meekly.
"This is the Moon," Diamanda repeated, "for those who weren't paying attention." She held up the card. "And what do we see here — you, Muscara?"
"Um . . . it's got a picture of the moon on it?" said Muscara (nee Susan) in a hopeful voice.
"Of course it's not the moon. It's a nonmimetic convention, not tied to a conventional referencing system, actually," said Diamanda.
"Ah."
A gust rocked the cottage. The door burst open and slammed back against the wall, giving a glimpse of cloud-wracked sky in which a non-mimetic convention was showing a crescent.
Diamanda waved a hand. There was a brief flash of octarine light. The door jerked shut. Diamanda smiled in what Perdita thought of as her cool, knowing way.
She placed the card on the black velvet cloth in front of her.
Perdita looked at it gloomily It was all very pretty, the cards were coloured like little pasteboard jewels, and they had interesting names. But that little traitor voice whispered: how the hell can they know what the future holds? Cardboard isn't very bright.
On the other hand, the coven was helping people . . . more or less. Raising power and all that sort of thing. Oh dear, supposing she asks me?
Perdita realized that she was feeling worried. Something was wrong. It had just gone wrong. She didn't know what it was, but it had gone wrong now. She looked up.
"Blessings be upon this house," said Granny Weatherwax.
In much the same tone of voice have people said, "Eat hot lead, Kincaid," and, "I expect you're wondering after all that excitement whether I've got any balloons and lampshades left."
Diamanda's mouth dropped open.
" 'Ere, you're doing that wrong. You don't want to muck about with a hand like that," said Nanny Ogg helpfully, looking over her shoulder. "You've got a Double Onion there."
"Who are you?
Suddenly they were there. Perdita thought: one minute there's shadows, the next minute they were there, solid as anything.
"What's all the chalk on the floor, then?" said Nanny Ogg. "You've got all chalk on the floor. And heathen writing. Not that I've got anything against heathens," she added. She appeared to think about it. "I'm practic'ly one," she added further, "but I don't write on the floor. What'd you want to write all on the floor for?" She nudged Perdita. "You'll never get the chalk out," she said, "it gets right into the grain."
"Um, it's a magic circle," said Perdita. "Um, hello, Mrs. Ogg. Um. It's to keep bad influences away . . ."
Granny Weatherwax leaned forward slightly.
"Tell me, my dear," she said to Diamanda, "do you think it's working?"
She leaned forward further.
Diamanda leaned backward.
And then slowly leaned forward again.
They ended up nose to nose.
"Who's this?" said Diamanda, out of the comer of her mouth.
"Um, it's Granny Weatherwax," said Perdita. "Um. She's a witch, um. . ."
"What level?" said Diamanda.
Nanny Ogg looked around for something to hide behind. Granny Weatherwax's eyebrow twitched.
"Levels, eh?" she said. "Well, I suppose I'm level one."
"Just starting?" said Diamanda.
"Oh dear. Tell you what," said Nanny Ogg quietly to Perdita, "if we was to turn the table over, we could probably hide behind it, no problem."
But to herself she was thinking: Esme can never resist a challenge. None of us can. You ain't a witch if you ain't got self-confidence. But we're not getting any younger. It's like being a hired swordfighter, being a top witch. You think you're good, but you know there's got to be someone younger, practicing every day, polishing up their craft, and one day you're walkin' down the road and you hears this voice behind you sayin': go for your toad, or similar.
Even for Esme. Sooner or later, she'll come up against someone faster on the craftiness than she is.
"Oh, yes," said Granny, quietly "Just starting. Every day, just starting."
Nanny Ogg thought: but it won't be today.
"You stupid old woman," said Diamanda, "you don't frighten me. Oh, yes. I know all about the way you old ones frighten superstitious peasants, actually. Muttering and squinting. It's all in the mind. Simple psychology. It's not real witchcraft."
"I'll, er, I'll just go into the scullery and, er, see if I can fill any buckets with water, shall I?" said Nanny Ogg, to no one in particular.
"I 'spect you'd know all about witchcraft," said Granny Weatherwax.
"I'm studying, yes," said Diamanda.
Nanny Ogg realized that she had removed her own hat and was biting nervously at the brim.
"I 'spect you're really good at it," said Granny Weatherwax.
"Quite good," said Diamanda.
"Show me."
She is good, thought Nanny Ogg. She's been facing down Esme's stare for more'n a minute. Even snakes generally give up after a minute.
If a fly had darted through the few inches of space between their stares it would have flashed into flame in the air.
"I learned my craft from Nanny Gripes," said Granny Weatherwax, "who learned it from Goody Heggety, who got it from Nanna Plumb, who was taught it by Black Aliss, who-"
"So what you're saying is," said Diamanda, loading the words into the sentence like cartridges in a chamber, "that no one has actually learned anything new?"
The silence that followed was broken by Nanny Ogg saying: "Bugger, I've bitten right through the brim. Right through."
"I see, said Granny Weatherwax.
"Look," said Nanny Ogg hurriedly, nudging the trembling Perdita, "right through the lining and everything. Two dollars and curing his pig that hat cost me. That's two dollars and a pig cure I shan't see again in a hurry."
"So you can just go away, old woman," said Diamanda. "But we ought to meet again," said Granny Weatherwax.
The old witch and the young witch weighed one another up.
"Midnight?" said Diamanda.
"Midnight? Nothing special about midnight. Practically anyone can be a witch at midnight," said Granny Weatherwax. "How about noon?"
"Certainly. What are we fighting for?" said Diamanda.
"Fighting? We ain't fighting. We're just showing each other what we can do. Friendly like," said Granny Weatherwax.
She stood up.
"I'd better be goin'," she said. "Us old people need our sleep, you know how it is."
"And what does the winner get?" said Diamanda. There was just a trace of uncertainty in her voice now. It was very faint, on the Richter scale of doubt it was probably no more than a plastic teacup five miles away falling off a low shelf onto a carpet, but it was there.
"Oh, the winner gets to win," said Granny Weatherwax. "That's what it's all about. Don't bother to see us out. You didn't see us in."
The door slammed back.
"Simple psychokinesis," said Diamanda.
"Oh, well. That's all right then," said Granny Weatherwax, disappearing into the night. "Explains it all, that does."
There used to be such simple directions, back in the days before they invented parallel universes — Up and Down, Right and Left, Backward and Forward, Past and Future . . .
But normal directions don't work in the multiverse, which has far too many dimensions for anyone to find their way so new ones have to be invented so that the way can be found.
Like: East of the Sun, West of the Moon.
Or: Behind the North Wind.
Or: At the Back of Beyond.
Or: There and Back Again.
Or: Beyond the Fields We Know.
And sometimes there's a short cut. A door or a gate. Some standing stones, a tree cleft by lightning, a filing cabinet.
Maybe just a spot on some moor land somewhere . . .
A place where there is very nearly here.
Nearly, but not quite. There's enough leakage to make pendulums swing and psychics get nasty headaches, to give a house a reputation for being haunted, to make the occasional pot hurl across a room. There's enough leakage to make the drones fly guard.
Oh, yes. The drones.
There are things called drone assemblies. Sometimes, on fine summer days, the drones from hives for miles around will congregate in some spot, and fly circles in the air, buzzing like tiny early warning systems, which is what they are.
Bees are sensible. It's a human word. But bees are creatures of order, and programmed into their very genes is a hatred of chaos.
If some people once knew where such a spot was, if they had experience of what happens when here and there become entangled, then they might — if they knew how — mark such a spot with certain stones.
In the hope that enough daft buggers would take it as a warning, and keep away.
"Well, what'd you think?" said Granny, as the witches hurried home.
"The little fat quiet one's got a bit of natural talent," said Nanny Ogg. "I could feel it. The rest of 'em are just along for the excitement, to my mind. Playing at witches. You know, ooh-jar boards and cards and wearing black lace gloves with no fingers to 'em and paddlin' with the occult."
"I don't hold with paddlin' with the occult," said Granny firmly. "Once you start paddlin' with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you're believing in gods. And then you're in touble."
"But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg.
"That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em."
Granny Weatherwax slowed to a walk.
"What about her?" she said.
"What exactly about her do you mean?" — "You felt the power there?"
"Oh, yeah. Made my hair stand on end."
"Someone gave it to her, and I know who. Just a slip of a gel with a head full of wet ideas out of books, and suddenly she's got the power and don't know how to deal with it. Cards! Candles! That's not witchcraft, that's just party games. Paddlin' with the occult. Did you see she'd got black fingernails?"
"Well, mine ain't so clean-"
"I mean painted."
"I used to paint my toenails red when I was young," said Nanny, wistfully.
"Toenails is different. So's red. Anyway," said Granny, "you only did it to appear allurin'."
"It worked, too."
"Hah!"
They walked along in silence for a bit.
"I felt a lot of power there," Nanny Ogg said, eventually.
"Yes. I know."
"A lot."
"Yes."
"I'm not saying you couldn't beat her," said Nanny quickly. "I'm not saying that. But I don't reckon I could, and it seemed to me it'd raise a bit of a sweat even on you. You'll have to hurt her to beat her."
"I'm losin' my judgment, aren't I?"
"Oh, I-"
"She riled me, Gytha. Couldn't help myself. Now I've got to duel with a gel of seventeen, and if I wins I'm a wicked bullyin' old witch, and if I loses . . ."
She kicked up a drift of old leaves.
"Can't stop myself, that's my trouble."
Nanny Ogg said nothing.
"And I loses my temper over the least little-"
"Yes, but-"
"I hadn't finished talkin'."
"Sorry, Esme."
A bat fluttered by. Granny nodded to it.
"Heard how Magrat's getting along?" she said, in a tone of voice which forced casualness embraced like a corset.
"Settling in fine, our Shawn says."
"Right."
They reached a crossroads; the white dust glowed very faintly in the moonlight. One way led into Lancre, where Nanny Ogg lived. Another eventually got lost in the forest, became a footpath, then a track, and eventually reached Granny Weatherwax's cottage.
"When shall we . . . two . . . meet again?" said Nanny
Ogg.
"Listen," said Granny Weatherwax. "She's well out of it, d'you hear? She'll be a lot happier as a queen!"
"I never said nothing," said Nanny Ogg mildly.
"I know you never! I could hear you not saying anything! You've got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn't dead!"
"See you about eleven o'clock, then?"
"Right!"
The wind got up again as Granny walked along the track to her cottage.
She knew she was on edge. There was just too much to do. She'd got Magrat sorted out, and Nanny could look after herself, but the Lords and the Ladies . . . she hadn't counted on them.
The point was . . .
The point was that Granny Weatherwax had a feeling she was going to die. This was beginning to get on her nerves.
Knowing the time of your death is one of those strange bonuses that comes with being a true magic user. And, on the whole, it is a bonus.
Many a wizard has passed away happily drinking the last of his wine cellar and incidentally owing very large sums of money.
Granny Weatherwax had always wondered how it felt, what it was that you suddenly saw looming up. And what it turned out to be was a blankness.
People think that they live life as a moving dot travelling from the Past into the Future, with memory streaming out behind them like some kind of mental cometary tail. But memory spreads out in front as well as behind. It's just that most humans aren't good at dealing with it, and so it arrives as premonitions, forebodings, intuitions, and hunches. Witches are good at dealing with it, and to suddenly find a blank where these tendrils of the future should be has much the same effect on a witch as emerging from a cloud bank and seeing a team of sherpas looking down on him does on an airline pilot.
She'd got a few days, and then that was it. She'd always expected to have a bit of time to herself, get the garden in order, have a good clean up around the place so that whatever witch took over wouldn't think she'd been a sloven, pick out a decent burial plot, and then spend some time sitting out in the rocking chair, doing nothing at all except looking at the trees and thinking about the past. Now . . . no chance.
And other things were happening. Her memory seemed to be playing up. Perhaps this is what happened. Perhaps you just drained away toward the end, like old Nanny Gripes, who ended up putting the cat on the stove and the kettle out for the night.
Granny shut the door behind her and lit a candle.
There was a box in the dresser drawer. She opened it on the kitchen table and took out the carefully folded piece of paper. There was a pen and ink in there, too.
After some thought, she picked up where she had left off:
. . . and to my friend Gytha Ogg I leave my bedde and the rag rugge the smith in Bad Ass made for me, and the matchin jug and basin and wosiname sett she always had her eye on, and my broomstick what will be Right as Rain with a bit of work.
To Magrat Garlick I leave the Contentes elsewhere in this box, my silver tea service with the milk jug in the shape of a humorous cow what is an Heir Loom, also the Clocke what belonged to my mother, but I charge her alwayes to keep it wound, for when the clocke stops-
There was a noise outside.
If anyone else had been in the room with her Granny Weatherwax would have thrown open the door boldly, but she was by herself. She picked up the poker very carefully, moved surprisingly soundlessly to the door given the nature of her boots, and listened intently.
There was something in the garden.
It wasn't much of a garden. There were the Herbs, and the soft fruit bushes, a bit of lawn and, of course, the beehives. And it was open to the woods. The local wildlife knew better than to invade a witch's garden.
Granny opened the door carefully.
The moon was setting. Pale silver light turned the world into monochrome.
There was a unicorn on the lawn. The stink of it hit her.
Granny advanced, holding the poker in front of her. The unicorn backed away, and pawed at the ground.
Granny saw the future plain. She already knew the when. Now she was beginning to apprehend the how.
"So," she said, under her breath, "I knows where you came from. And you can damn well get back there."
The thing made a feint at her, but the poker swung toward it.
"Can't stand the iron, eh? Well, just you trot back to your mistress and tell her that we know all about iron in Lancre. And I knows about her. She's to keep away, understand? This is my place!"
Then it was moonlight. Now it was day.
There was quite a crowd in what passed for Lancre's main square. Not much happened in Lancre anyway, and a duel between witches was a sight worth seeing.
Granny Weatherwax arrived at a quarter to noon. Nanny Ogg was waiting on a bench by the tavern. She had a towel around her neck, and was carrying a bucket of water in which floated a sponge.
"What's that for?" said Granny.
"Half time. And I done you a plate of oranges."
She held up the plate. Granny snorted.
"You look as if you could do with eating something, anyway," said Nanny. "You don't look as if you've had anything today. . ."
She glanced down at Granny's boots, and the grubby hem of her long black dress. There were scraps of bracken and bits of heather caught on it.
"You daft old besom!" she hissed. "What've you been doing!"
"I had to-"
"You've been up at the Stones, haven't you! Trying to hold back the Gentry."
"Of course," said Granny. Her voice wasn't faint. She wasn't swaying. But her voice wasn't faint and she wasn't swaying. Nanny Ogg could see, because Granny Weatherwax's body was in the grip of Granny Weatherwax's mind.
"Someone's got to," she added.
"You could have come and asked me!"
"You'd have talked me out of it."
Nanny Ogg leaned forward.
"You all right, Esme?"
"Fine! I'm fine! Nothing wrong with me, all right?"
"Have you had any sleep at all?" she said.
"Well-"
"You haven't, have you? And then you think you can just stroll down here and confound this girl, just like that?"
"I don't know," said Granny Weatherwax.
Nanny Ogg looked hard at her.
"You don't, do you?" she said, in a softer tone of voice. "Oh, well . . . you better sit down here, before you fall down. Suck an orange. They'll be here in a few minutes."
"No she won't," said Granny "She'll be late."
"How d'you know?"
"No good making an entrance if everyone isn't there to see you, is it? That's headology."
In fact the young coven arrived at twenty past twelve, and took up station on the steps of the market pentangle on the other side of the square.
"Look at 'em," said Granny Weatherwax. "All in black, again."
"Well, we wear black too," said Nanny Ogg the reasonable.
"Only 'cos it's respectable and serviceable," said Granny morosely. "Not because it's romantic. Hah. The Lords and Ladies might as well be here already."
After some eye contact. Nanny Ogg ambled across the square and met Perdita in the middle. The young would-be witch looked worried under her makeup. She held a black lace handkerchief in her hands, and was twisting it nervously.
"Morning, Mrs. Ogg," she said.
"Afternoon, Agnes."
"Um. What happens now?"
Nanny Ogg took out her pipe and scratched her ear with it.
"Dunno. Up to you, I suppose."
"Diamanda says why does it have to be here and now?"
"So's everyone can see," said Nanny Ogg. "That's the point, ain't it? Nothing hole and comer about it. Everyone's got to know who's best at witchcraft. The whole town. Everyone sees the winner win and the loser lose. That way there's no argument, eh?"
Perdita glanced toward the tavern. Granny Weatherwax had dozed off.
"Quietly confident," said Nanny Ogg, crossing her fingers behind her back.
"Um, what happens to the loser?" said Perdita.
"Nothing, really," said Nanny Ogg. "Generally she leaves the place. You can't be a witch if people've seen you beat."
"Diamanda says she doesn't want to hurt the old lady too much," said Perdita. "Just teach her a lesson."
"That's nice. Esme's a quick learner."
"Um. I wish this wasn't happening, Mrs. Ogg."
"That's nice."
"Diamanda says Mistress Weatherwax has got a very impressive stare, Mrs. Ogg."
"That's nice."
"So the test is . . . just staring, Mrs. Ogg."
Nanny put her pipe in her mouth.
"You mean the old first-one-to-blink-or-look-away challenge?"
"Um, yes."
"Right." Nanny thought about it, and shrugged. "Right. But we'd better do a magic circle first. Don't want anyone else getting hurt, do we?"
"Do you mean using Skorhian Runes or the Triple Invocation octogram?" said Perdita.
Nanny Ogg put her head on one side.
"Never heard of them things, dear," she said. "I always does a magic circle like this . . ."
She sidled crabwise away from the fat girl, dragging one toe in the dust. She edged around in a rough circle about fifteen feet across, still dragging her boot, until she backed into Perdita.
"Sorry. There. Done it."
"That's a magic circle?"
"Right. People can come to harm else. All kinds of magic zipping around the place when witches fight."
"But you didn't chant or anything."
"No?"
"There has to be a chant, doesn't there?"
"Dunno. Never done one."
"Oh."
"I could sing you a comic song if you likes," said Nanny helpfully.
"Um, no. Um." Perdita had never heard Nanny sing, but news gets around.
"I like your black lace hanky," said Nanny, not a bit abashed. "Very good for not showing the bogies."
Perdita stared at the circle as though hypnotized. "Um. Shall we start, then?"
"Right."
Nanny Ogg scurried back to the bench and elbowed Granny in the ribs.
"Wake up!"
Granny opened an eye.
"I weren't asleep, I was just resting me eyes."
"All you've got to do is stare her down!"
"At least she knows about the importance of the stare, then. Hah! Who does she think she is? I've been staring at people all my life!"
"Yes, that's what's bothering me — aaahh . . . who's Nona's little boy, then?"
The rest of the Ogg clan had arrived.
Granny Weatherwax personally disliked young Pewsey. She disliked all small children, which is why she got on with them so well. In Pewsey's case, she felt that no one should be allowed to wander around in just a vest even if they were four years old. And the child had a permanently runny nose and ought to be provided with a handkerchief or, failing that, a cork.
Nanny Ogg, on the other hand, was instant putty in the hands of any grandchild, even one as sticky as Pewsey
"Want sweetie," growled Pewsey, in that curiously deep voice some young children have.
"Just in a moment, my duck, I'm talking to the lady," Nanny Ogg fluted.
"Want sweetie now."
"Bugger off, my precious, Nana's busy right this minute."
Pewsey pulled hard on Nanny Ogg's skirts.
"Now sweetie now!"
Granny Weatherwax leaned down until her impressive nose was about level with Pewsey's gushing one.
"If you don't go away," she said gravely, "I will personally rip your head off and fill it with snakes."
"There!" said Nanny Ogg. "There's lots of poor children in Klatch that'd be grateful for a curse like that."
Pewsey's little face, after a second or two of uncertainty, split into a pumpkin grin.
"Funny lady," he said.
"Tell you what," said Nanny, patting Pewsey on the head and then absentmindedly wiping her hand on her dress, "you see them young ladies on the other side of the square? They've got lots of sweeties."
Pewsey waddled off.
"That's germ warfare, that is," said Granny Weatherwax.
"Come on," said Nanny. "Our Jason's put a couple of chairs in the circle. You sure you're all right?"
"I'll do."
Perdita Nitt traipsed across the road again.
"Er . . . Mrs. Ogg?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Er. Diamanda says you don't understand, she says they won't be trying to outstare one another . . ."
Magrat was bored. She'd never been bored when she was a witch. Permanently bewildered and overworked yes, but not bored.
She kept telling herself it'd probably be better when she really was queen, although she couldn't quite see how.
In the meantime she wandered aimlessly through the castle's many rooms, the swishing of her dress almost unheard above the background roar of the turbines of tedium:
—humdrumhumdrumhumdrum-
She'd spent the whole morning trying to learn to do tapestry, because Millie assured her that's what queens did, and the sampler with its message "Gods bless this House" was even now lying forlornly on her chair.
In the Long Gallery were huge tapestries of ancient battles, done by previous bored regal incumbents; it was amazing how all the fighters had been persuaded to stay still long enough. And she'd looked at the many, many paintings of the queens themselves, all of them pretty, all of them well-dressed according to the fashion of their times, and all of them bored out of their tiny well-shaped skulls.
Finally she went back to the solar. This was the big room on top of the main tower. In theory, it was there to catch the sun. It did. It also caught the wind and the rain. It was a sort of drift net for anything the sky happened to throw.
She yanked on the bellpull that in theory summoned a servant. Nothing happened. After a couple of further pulls, and secretly glad of the exercise, she went down to the kitchen. She would have liked to spend more time there. It was always warm and there was generally someone to talk to. But nobblyess obligay — queens had to live Above Stairs.
Below Stairs there was only Shawn Ogg, who was cleaning the oven of the huge iron stove and reflecting that this was no job for a military man.
"Where's everyone gone?"
Shawn leapt up, banging his head on the stove. "Ow! Sorry, miss! Um! Everyone's . . . everyone's down in the square, miss. I'm only here because Mrs. Scorbic said she'd have my hide if I didn't get all the yuk off."
"What's happening in the square, then?"
"They say there's a couple of witches having a real set-to, miss."
"What? Not your mother and Granny Weatherwax!"
"Oh no, miss. Some new witch."
"In Lancre? A new witch?"
"I think that's what Mum said."
"I'm going to have a look."
"Oh, I don't think that'd be a good idea, miss," said Shawn.
Magrat drew herself up regally.
"We happen to be Queen," she said. "Nearly. So you don't tell one one can't do things, or one'll have you cleaning the privies!"
"But I does clean the privies," said Shawn, in a reasonable voice. "Even the garderobe-"
"And that's going to go, for a start," said Magrat, shuddering. "One's seen it."
"Doesn't bother me, miss, it'll give me Wednesday afternoons free," said Shawn, "but what I meant was, you'll have to wait till I've gone down to the armoury to fetch my horn for the fanfare."
"One won't need a fanfare, thank you very much."
"But you got to have a fanfare, miss."
"One can blow my own trumpet, thank you."
"Yes, miss."
"Miss what?"
"Miss Queen."
"And don't you forget it."
Magrat arrived at as near to a run as was possible in the queen outfit, which ought to have had castors.
She stopped, and tried again to explain the essentially fractal nature of reality.
"Like . . . there's some places that're thinner than others, where the old doorways used to be, well, not doorways, never exactly understood it myself, not doorways as such, more places where the world is thinner . . . Anyway, the thing is, the Dancers . . . are a kind of fence . . . we, well, when I say we I mean thousands of years ago . . . I mean, but they're not just stones, they're some kind of thunderbolt iron but . . . there's things like tides, only not with water, it's when worlds get closer together'n you can nearly step between 'em . . . anyway, if people've been hangin' around the stones, playin' around . . . then They'll be back, if we're not careful."
"What They?"
"That's the whole trouble," said Nanny, miserably. "If I tells you, you'll get it all wrong. They lives on the other side of the Dancers."
Her son stared at her. Then a faint grin of realisation wandered across his face.
"Ah," he said. "I knows. I heard them wizards down in Ankh is always accidentally rippin' holes in this fabric o' reality they got down there, and you get them horrible things coming out o' the Dungeon Dimensions. Huge buggers with dozens o' eyeballs and more legs'n a Morris team." He gripped his No. 5 hammer. "Don't you worry. Mum. If they starts poppin' out here, we'll soon-"
"No, it ain't like that," said Nanny "Those live outside. But Them lives. . . over there."
Jason looked completely lost.
Nanny shrugged. She'd have to tell someone, sooner or later.
"The Lords and Ladies," she said.
"Who're they?"
Nanny looked around. But, after all, this was a forge. There had been a forge here long before there was a castle, long before there was even a kingdom. There were horseshoes everywhere. Iron had entered the very walls. It wasn't just a place of iron, it was a place where iron died and was reborn. If you couldn't speak the words here, you couldn't speak 'em anywhere.
Even so, she'd rather not.
"You know," she said. "The Fair Folk. The Gentry. The Shining Ones. The Star People. You know."
"What?"
Nanny put her hand on the anvil, just in case, and said the word.
Jason's frown very gently cleared, at about the same speed as a sunrise.
"Them?" he said. "But aren't they nice and-?"
'"See?" said Nanny. "I told you you'd get it wrong!"
"How much?" said Ridcully.
The coachman shrugged.
"Take it or leave it," he said.
"I'm sorry, sir," said Ponder Stibbons. "It's the only coach."
"Fifty dollars each is daylight robbery!"
"No," said the coachman patiently. "Daylight robbery," he said, in the authoritative tones of the experienced, "is when someone steps out into the road with an arrow pointing at us and then all his friends swings down from the rocks and trees and take away all our money and things. And then there's nighttime robbery, which is like daytime robbery except they set fire to the coach so's they can see what they're about. Twilight robbery, now, your basic twilight robbery is-"
"Are you saying," said Ridcully, "that getting robbed is included in the price?"
"Bandits' Guild," said the coachman. "Forty dollars per head, see. It's a kind of flat rate."
"What happens if we don't pay it?" said Ridcully.
"You end up flat."
The wizards went into a huddle.
"We've got a hundred and fifty dollars," said Ridcully. "We can't get any more out of the safe because the Bursar ate the key yesterday"
"Can I try an idea, sir?" said Ponder.
"All right."
Ponder gave the coachman a bright smile.
"Pets travel free?" he suggested.
"Oook?"
Nanny Ogg's broomstick skimmed a few feet above the forest paths, cornering so fast that her boots scraped through the leaves. She leapt off at Granny Weather-wax's cottage so quickly that she didn't switch it off, and it kept going until it stuck in the privy.
The door was open.
"Cooee?"
Nanny glanced into the scullery, and then thumped up the small narrow staircase.
Granny Weatherwax was stretched rigid on her bed. Her face was grey, her skin was cold.
People had discovered her like this before, and it always caused embarrassment. So now she reassured visitors but tempted fate by always holding, in her rigid hands, a small handwritten sign which read:
I ATE'NT DEAD.
The window was propped open with a piece of wood.
"Ah," said Nanny, far more for her own benefit than for anyone else's, "I sees you're out. I'll, I'll, I'll just put the kettle on, shall I, and wait 'til you comes back?"
Esme's skill at Borrowing unnerved her. It was all very well entering the minds of animals and such, but too many witches had never come back. For several years Nanny had put out lumps of fat and bacon rind for a bluetit that she was sure was old Granny Postalute, who'd gone out Borrowing one day and never came back. Insofar as a witch could consider things uncanny. Nanny Ogg considered it uncanny.
She went back down to the scullery and lowered a bucket down the well, remembering to fish the newts out this time before she boiled the kettle.
Then she watched the garden.
After a while a small shape flittered across it, heading for the upstairs window.
Nanny poured out the tea. She carefully took one spoonful of sugar out of the sugar basin, tipped the rest of the sugar into her cup, put the spoonful back in the basin, put both cups on a tray, and climbed the stairs.
Granny Weatherwax was sitting up in her bed.
Nanny looked around.
There was a large bat hanging upside down from a beam.
Granny Weatherwax rubbed her ears.
"Shove the po under it, will you, Gytha?" she mumbled. "They're a devil for excusing themselves on the carpet."
Nanny unearthed the shyest article of Granny Weatherwax's bedroom crockery and moved it across the rug with her foot.
"I brought you a cup of tea," she said.
"Good job, too. Mouth tastes of moths," said Granny.
"Thought you did owls at night?" said Nanny.
"Yeah, but you ends up for days trying to twist your head right round," said Granny. "At least bats always faces the same way. Tried rabbits first off, but you know what they are for remembering things. Anyway, you know what they thinks about the whole time. They're famous for it."
"Grass."
"Right."
"Find out anything?" said Nanny
"Half a dozen people have been going up there. Every full moon!" said Granny. "Gels, by the shape of them. You only see silhouettes, with bats."
"You done well there," said Nanny, carefully. "Girls from round here, you reckon?"
"Got to be. They ain't using broomsticks."
Nanny Ogg sighed.
"There's Agnes Nitt, old Threepenny's daughter," she said. "And the Tockley girl. And some others."
Granny Weatherwax looked at her with her mouth open.
"I asked our Jason," she said. "Sorry."
The bat burped. Granny genteelly covered her hand with her mouth.
"I'm a silly old fool, ain't I?" she said, after a while.
"No, no," said Nanny. "Borrowing's a real skill. You're really good at it."
"Prideful, that's what I am. Once upon a time I'd of thought of asking people, too, instead of fooling around being a bat."
"Our Jason wouldn't have told you. He only told me 'cos I would've made 'is life a living hell if he didn't," said Nanny Ogg. "That's what a mother's for."
"I'm losing my touch, that's what it is. Getting old, Gytha."
"You're as old as you feel, that's what I always say."
"That's what I mean."
Nanny Ogg looked worried.
"Supposing Magrat'd been here," said Granny. "She'd see me being daft."
"Well, she's safe in the castle," said Nanny. "Learning how to be queen."
"At least the thing about queening," said Granny, "is that no one notices if you're doing it wrong. It has to be right 'cos it's you doing it."
"S'funny, royalty," said Nanny. "It's like magic. You take some girl with a bum like two pigs in a blanket and a head full of air and then she marries a king or a prince or someone and suddenly she's this radiant right royal princess. It's a funny old world."
"I ain't going to kowtow to her, mind," said Granny.
"You never kowtow to anyone anyway," said Nanny Ogg patiently. "You never bowed to the old king. You barely gives young Verence a nod. You never kowtows to anyone ever, anyway."
"That's right!" said Granny. "That's part of being a witch, that is."
Nanny relaxed a bit. Granny being an old woman made her uneasy. Granny in her normal state of barely controlled anger was far more her old self.
Granny stood up.
"Old Toekley's girl, eh?"
"That's right."
"Her mother was a Keeble, wasn't she? Fine woman, as I recall."
"Yeah, but when she died the old man sent her off to Sto Lat to school."
"Don't hold with schools," said Granny Weatherwax. "They gets in the way of education. All them books. Books? What good are they? There's too much reading these days. We never had time to read when we was young, I know that."
"We were too busy makin' our own entertainment."
"Right. Come on — we ain't got much time."
"What d'you mean?"
"It's not just the girls. There's something out there, too. Some kind of mind, movin' around."
Granny shivered. She'd been aware of it in the same way that a skilled hunter, moving through the hills, is aware of another hunter — by the silences where there should have been noise, by the trampling of a stem, by the anger of the bees.
Nanny Ogg had never liked the idea of Borrowing, and Magrat had always refused even to give it a try. The old witches on the other side of the mountain had too much trouble with inconvenient in-body experiences to cope with the out-of-body kind. So Granny was used to having the mental dimension to herself.
There was a mind moving around in the kingdom, and Granny Weatherwax didn't understand it.
She Borrowed. You had to be careful. It was like a drug. You could ride the minds of animals and birds, but never bees, steering them gently, seeing through their eyes. Granny Weatherwax had many times flicked through the channels of consciousness around her. It was, to her, part of the heart of witchcraft. To see through other eyes . . .
. . . through the eyes of gnats, seeing the slow patterns of time in the fast pattern of one day, their minds travelling rapidly as lightning . . .
. . . to listen with the body of a beetle, so that the world is a three-dimensional pattern of vibrations . . .
. . . to see with the nose of a dog, all smells now colours . . .
But there was a price. No one asked you to pay it, but the very absence of demand was a moral obligation. You tended not to swat. You dug lightly. You fed the dog. You paid. You cared; not because it was kind or good, but because it was right. You left nothing but memories, you took nothing but experience.
But this other roving intelligence . . . it'd go in and out of another mind like a chainsaw, taking, taking, taking. She could sense the shape of it, the predatory shape, all cruelty and cool unkindness; a mind full of intelligence, that'd use other living things and hurt them because it was fun.
She could put a name to a mind like that.
Elf.
Branches thrashed high in the trees.
Granny and Nanny strode through the forest. At least, Granny Weatherwax strode. Nanny Ogg scurried.
"The Lords and Ladies are trying to find a way," said Granny. "And there's something else. Something's already come through. Some kind of animal from the other side. Scrope chased a deer into the circle and the thing must have been there, and they always used to say something can come through if something goes the other way-"
"What thing?"
"You know what a bat's eyesight is like. Just a big shape is all it saw. Something killed old Scrope. It's still around. Not an . . . not one o' the Lords and Ladies," said Granny, "but something from El . . . that place."
Nanny looked at the shadows. There are a lot of shadows in a forest at night.
•"Ain't you scared?" she said.
Granny cracked her knuckles.
"No. But I hope it is."
"Ooo, it's true what they say. You're a prideful one, Esmerelda Weatherwax."
"Who says that?"
"Well, you did. Just now."
"I wasn't feeling well."
Other people would probably say: I wasn't myself. But Granny Weatherwax didn't have anyone else to be.
The two witches hurried on through the gale.
From the shelter of a thorn thicket, the unicorn watched them go.
Diamanda Tockley did indeed wear a floppy black velvet hat. It had a veil, too.
Perdita Nitt, who had once been merely Agnes Nitt before she got witchcraft, wore a black hat with a veil too, because Diamanda did. Both of them were seventeen. And she wished she was naturally skinny, like Diamanda, but if you can't be skinny you can at least look unhealthy. So she wore so much thick white make-up in order to conceal her naturally rosy complexion that if she turned around suddenly her face would probably end up on the back of her head.
They'd done the Raising of the Cone of Power, and some candle magic, and some scrying. Now Diamanda was showing them how to do the cards.
She said they contained the distilled wisdom of the Ancients. Perdita had found herself treacherously wondering who these Ancients were — they clearly weren't the same as old people, who were stupid, Diamanda said, but she wasn't quite clear why they were wiser than, say, modem people.
Also, she didn't understand what the Feminine Principle was. And she wasn't too clear about this Inner Self business. She was coming to suspect that she didn't have one.
And she wished she could do her eyes like Diamanda did.
And she wished she could wear heels like Diamanda did.
Amanita DeVice had told her that Diamanda slept in a real coffin.
She wished she had the nerve to have a dagger-and-skull tattoo on her arm like Amanita did, even if it was only in ordinary ink and she had to wash it off every night in case her mother saw it.
A tiny, nasty voice from Perdita's inner self suggested that Amanita wasn't a good choice of name.
Or Perdita, for that matter.
And it said that maybe Perdita shouldn't meddle with things she didn't understand.
The trouble was, she knew, that this meant nearly everything.
She wished she could wear black lace like Diamanda did.
Diamanda got results.
Perdita wouldn't have believed it. She'd always known about witches, of course. They were old women who dressed like crows, except for Magrat Garlick, who was frankly mental and always looked as if she was going to burst into tears. Perdita remembered Magrat bringing a guitar to a Hogswatchnight party once and singing wobbly folk songs with her eyes shut in a way that suggested that she really believed in them. She hadn't been able to play, but this was all right because she couldn't sing, either. People had applauded because, well, what else could you do?
But Diamanda had read books. She knew about stuff. Raising power at the stones, for one thing. It really worked.
Currently she was showing them the cards.
The wind had got up again tonight. It rattled the shutters and made soot fall down the chimney. It seemed to Perdita that it had blown all the shadows into the comers of the room—
"Are you paying attention, sister?" said Diamanda coldly.
That was another thing. You had to call one another 'sister,' out of fraternity.
"Yes, Diamanda," she said, meekly.
"This is the Moon," Diamanda repeated, "for those who weren't paying attention." She held up the card. "And what do we see here — you, Muscara?"
"Um . . . it's got a picture of the moon on it?" said Muscara (nee Susan) in a hopeful voice.
"Of course it's not the moon. It's a nonmimetic convention, not tied to a conventional referencing system, actually," said Diamanda.
"Ah."
A gust rocked the cottage. The door burst open and slammed back against the wall, giving a glimpse of cloud-wracked sky in which a non-mimetic convention was showing a crescent.
Diamanda waved a hand. There was a brief flash of octarine light. The door jerked shut. Diamanda smiled in what Perdita thought of as her cool, knowing way.
She placed the card on the black velvet cloth in front of her.
Perdita looked at it gloomily It was all very pretty, the cards were coloured like little pasteboard jewels, and they had interesting names. But that little traitor voice whispered: how the hell can they know what the future holds? Cardboard isn't very bright.
On the other hand, the coven was helping people . . . more or less. Raising power and all that sort of thing. Oh dear, supposing she asks me?
Perdita realized that she was feeling worried. Something was wrong. It had just gone wrong. She didn't know what it was, but it had gone wrong now. She looked up.
"Blessings be upon this house," said Granny Weatherwax.
In much the same tone of voice have people said, "Eat hot lead, Kincaid," and, "I expect you're wondering after all that excitement whether I've got any balloons and lampshades left."
Diamanda's mouth dropped open.
" 'Ere, you're doing that wrong. You don't want to muck about with a hand like that," said Nanny Ogg helpfully, looking over her shoulder. "You've got a Double Onion there."
"Who are you?
Suddenly they were there. Perdita thought: one minute there's shadows, the next minute they were there, solid as anything.
"What's all the chalk on the floor, then?" said Nanny Ogg. "You've got all chalk on the floor. And heathen writing. Not that I've got anything against heathens," she added. She appeared to think about it. "I'm practic'ly one," she added further, "but I don't write on the floor. What'd you want to write all on the floor for?" She nudged Perdita. "You'll never get the chalk out," she said, "it gets right into the grain."
"Um, it's a magic circle," said Perdita. "Um, hello, Mrs. Ogg. Um. It's to keep bad influences away . . ."
Granny Weatherwax leaned forward slightly.
"Tell me, my dear," she said to Diamanda, "do you think it's working?"
She leaned forward further.
Diamanda leaned backward.
And then slowly leaned forward again.
They ended up nose to nose.
"Who's this?" said Diamanda, out of the comer of her mouth.
"Um, it's Granny Weatherwax," said Perdita. "Um. She's a witch, um. . ."
"What level?" said Diamanda.
Nanny Ogg looked around for something to hide behind. Granny Weatherwax's eyebrow twitched.
"Levels, eh?" she said. "Well, I suppose I'm level one."
"Just starting?" said Diamanda.
"Oh dear. Tell you what," said Nanny Ogg quietly to Perdita, "if we was to turn the table over, we could probably hide behind it, no problem."
But to herself she was thinking: Esme can never resist a challenge. None of us can. You ain't a witch if you ain't got self-confidence. But we're not getting any younger. It's like being a hired swordfighter, being a top witch. You think you're good, but you know there's got to be someone younger, practicing every day, polishing up their craft, and one day you're walkin' down the road and you hears this voice behind you sayin': go for your toad, or similar.
Even for Esme. Sooner or later, she'll come up against someone faster on the craftiness than she is.
"Oh, yes," said Granny, quietly "Just starting. Every day, just starting."
Nanny Ogg thought: but it won't be today.
"You stupid old woman," said Diamanda, "you don't frighten me. Oh, yes. I know all about the way you old ones frighten superstitious peasants, actually. Muttering and squinting. It's all in the mind. Simple psychology. It's not real witchcraft."
"I'll, er, I'll just go into the scullery and, er, see if I can fill any buckets with water, shall I?" said Nanny Ogg, to no one in particular.
"I 'spect you'd know all about witchcraft," said Granny Weatherwax.
"I'm studying, yes," said Diamanda.
Nanny Ogg realized that she had removed her own hat and was biting nervously at the brim.
"I 'spect you're really good at it," said Granny Weatherwax.
"Quite good," said Diamanda.
"Show me."
She is good, thought Nanny Ogg. She's been facing down Esme's stare for more'n a minute. Even snakes generally give up after a minute.
If a fly had darted through the few inches of space between their stares it would have flashed into flame in the air.
"I learned my craft from Nanny Gripes," said Granny Weatherwax, "who learned it from Goody Heggety, who got it from Nanna Plumb, who was taught it by Black Aliss, who-"
"So what you're saying is," said Diamanda, loading the words into the sentence like cartridges in a chamber, "that no one has actually learned anything new?"
The silence that followed was broken by Nanny Ogg saying: "Bugger, I've bitten right through the brim. Right through."
"I see, said Granny Weatherwax.
"Look," said Nanny Ogg hurriedly, nudging the trembling Perdita, "right through the lining and everything. Two dollars and curing his pig that hat cost me. That's two dollars and a pig cure I shan't see again in a hurry."
"So you can just go away, old woman," said Diamanda. "But we ought to meet again," said Granny Weatherwax.
The old witch and the young witch weighed one another up.
"Midnight?" said Diamanda.
"Midnight? Nothing special about midnight. Practically anyone can be a witch at midnight," said Granny Weatherwax. "How about noon?"
"Certainly. What are we fighting for?" said Diamanda.
"Fighting? We ain't fighting. We're just showing each other what we can do. Friendly like," said Granny Weatherwax.
She stood up.
"I'd better be goin'," she said. "Us old people need our sleep, you know how it is."
"And what does the winner get?" said Diamanda. There was just a trace of uncertainty in her voice now. It was very faint, on the Richter scale of doubt it was probably no more than a plastic teacup five miles away falling off a low shelf onto a carpet, but it was there.
"Oh, the winner gets to win," said Granny Weatherwax. "That's what it's all about. Don't bother to see us out. You didn't see us in."
The door slammed back.
"Simple psychokinesis," said Diamanda.
"Oh, well. That's all right then," said Granny Weatherwax, disappearing into the night. "Explains it all, that does."
There used to be such simple directions, back in the days before they invented parallel universes — Up and Down, Right and Left, Backward and Forward, Past and Future . . .
But normal directions don't work in the multiverse, which has far too many dimensions for anyone to find their way so new ones have to be invented so that the way can be found.
Like: East of the Sun, West of the Moon.
Or: Behind the North Wind.
Or: At the Back of Beyond.
Or: There and Back Again.
Or: Beyond the Fields We Know.
And sometimes there's a short cut. A door or a gate. Some standing stones, a tree cleft by lightning, a filing cabinet.
Maybe just a spot on some moor land somewhere . . .
A place where there is very nearly here.
Nearly, but not quite. There's enough leakage to make pendulums swing and psychics get nasty headaches, to give a house a reputation for being haunted, to make the occasional pot hurl across a room. There's enough leakage to make the drones fly guard.
Oh, yes. The drones.
There are things called drone assemblies. Sometimes, on fine summer days, the drones from hives for miles around will congregate in some spot, and fly circles in the air, buzzing like tiny early warning systems, which is what they are.
Bees are sensible. It's a human word. But bees are creatures of order, and programmed into their very genes is a hatred of chaos.
If some people once knew where such a spot was, if they had experience of what happens when here and there become entangled, then they might — if they knew how — mark such a spot with certain stones.
In the hope that enough daft buggers would take it as a warning, and keep away.
"Well, what'd you think?" said Granny, as the witches hurried home.
"The little fat quiet one's got a bit of natural talent," said Nanny Ogg. "I could feel it. The rest of 'em are just along for the excitement, to my mind. Playing at witches. You know, ooh-jar boards and cards and wearing black lace gloves with no fingers to 'em and paddlin' with the occult."
"I don't hold with paddlin' with the occult," said Granny firmly. "Once you start paddlin' with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you're believing in gods. And then you're in touble."
"But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg.
"That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em."
Granny Weatherwax slowed to a walk.
"What about her?" she said.
"What exactly about her do you mean?" — "You felt the power there?"
"Oh, yeah. Made my hair stand on end."
"Someone gave it to her, and I know who. Just a slip of a gel with a head full of wet ideas out of books, and suddenly she's got the power and don't know how to deal with it. Cards! Candles! That's not witchcraft, that's just party games. Paddlin' with the occult. Did you see she'd got black fingernails?"
"Well, mine ain't so clean-"
"I mean painted."
"I used to paint my toenails red when I was young," said Nanny, wistfully.
"Toenails is different. So's red. Anyway," said Granny, "you only did it to appear allurin'."
"It worked, too."
"Hah!"
They walked along in silence for a bit.
"I felt a lot of power there," Nanny Ogg said, eventually.
"Yes. I know."
"A lot."
"Yes."
"I'm not saying you couldn't beat her," said Nanny quickly. "I'm not saying that. But I don't reckon I could, and it seemed to me it'd raise a bit of a sweat even on you. You'll have to hurt her to beat her."
"I'm losin' my judgment, aren't I?"
"Oh, I-"
"She riled me, Gytha. Couldn't help myself. Now I've got to duel with a gel of seventeen, and if I wins I'm a wicked bullyin' old witch, and if I loses . . ."
She kicked up a drift of old leaves.
"Can't stop myself, that's my trouble."
Nanny Ogg said nothing.
"And I loses my temper over the least little-"
"Yes, but-"
"I hadn't finished talkin'."
"Sorry, Esme."
A bat fluttered by. Granny nodded to it.
"Heard how Magrat's getting along?" she said, in a tone of voice which forced casualness embraced like a corset.
"Settling in fine, our Shawn says."
"Right."
They reached a crossroads; the white dust glowed very faintly in the moonlight. One way led into Lancre, where Nanny Ogg lived. Another eventually got lost in the forest, became a footpath, then a track, and eventually reached Granny Weatherwax's cottage.
"When shall we . . . two . . . meet again?" said Nanny
Ogg.
"Listen," said Granny Weatherwax. "She's well out of it, d'you hear? She'll be a lot happier as a queen!"
"I never said nothing," said Nanny Ogg mildly.
"I know you never! I could hear you not saying anything! You've got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn't dead!"
"See you about eleven o'clock, then?"
"Right!"
The wind got up again as Granny walked along the track to her cottage.
She knew she was on edge. There was just too much to do. She'd got Magrat sorted out, and Nanny could look after herself, but the Lords and the Ladies . . . she hadn't counted on them.
The point was . . .
The point was that Granny Weatherwax had a feeling she was going to die. This was beginning to get on her nerves.
Knowing the time of your death is one of those strange bonuses that comes with being a true magic user. And, on the whole, it is a bonus.
Many a wizard has passed away happily drinking the last of his wine cellar and incidentally owing very large sums of money.
Granny Weatherwax had always wondered how it felt, what it was that you suddenly saw looming up. And what it turned out to be was a blankness.
People think that they live life as a moving dot travelling from the Past into the Future, with memory streaming out behind them like some kind of mental cometary tail. But memory spreads out in front as well as behind. It's just that most humans aren't good at dealing with it, and so it arrives as premonitions, forebodings, intuitions, and hunches. Witches are good at dealing with it, and to suddenly find a blank where these tendrils of the future should be has much the same effect on a witch as emerging from a cloud bank and seeing a team of sherpas looking down on him does on an airline pilot.
She'd got a few days, and then that was it. She'd always expected to have a bit of time to herself, get the garden in order, have a good clean up around the place so that whatever witch took over wouldn't think she'd been a sloven, pick out a decent burial plot, and then spend some time sitting out in the rocking chair, doing nothing at all except looking at the trees and thinking about the past. Now . . . no chance.
And other things were happening. Her memory seemed to be playing up. Perhaps this is what happened. Perhaps you just drained away toward the end, like old Nanny Gripes, who ended up putting the cat on the stove and the kettle out for the night.
Granny shut the door behind her and lit a candle.
There was a box in the dresser drawer. She opened it on the kitchen table and took out the carefully folded piece of paper. There was a pen and ink in there, too.
After some thought, she picked up where she had left off:
. . . and to my friend Gytha Ogg I leave my bedde and the rag rugge the smith in Bad Ass made for me, and the matchin jug and basin and wosiname sett she always had her eye on, and my broomstick what will be Right as Rain with a bit of work.
To Magrat Garlick I leave the Contentes elsewhere in this box, my silver tea service with the milk jug in the shape of a humorous cow what is an Heir Loom, also the Clocke what belonged to my mother, but I charge her alwayes to keep it wound, for when the clocke stops-
There was a noise outside.
If anyone else had been in the room with her Granny Weatherwax would have thrown open the door boldly, but she was by herself. She picked up the poker very carefully, moved surprisingly soundlessly to the door given the nature of her boots, and listened intently.
There was something in the garden.
It wasn't much of a garden. There were the Herbs, and the soft fruit bushes, a bit of lawn and, of course, the beehives. And it was open to the woods. The local wildlife knew better than to invade a witch's garden.
Granny opened the door carefully.
The moon was setting. Pale silver light turned the world into monochrome.
There was a unicorn on the lawn. The stink of it hit her.
Granny advanced, holding the poker in front of her. The unicorn backed away, and pawed at the ground.
Granny saw the future plain. She already knew the when. Now she was beginning to apprehend the how.
"So," she said, under her breath, "I knows where you came from. And you can damn well get back there."
The thing made a feint at her, but the poker swung toward it.
"Can't stand the iron, eh? Well, just you trot back to your mistress and tell her that we know all about iron in Lancre. And I knows about her. She's to keep away, understand? This is my place!"
Then it was moonlight. Now it was day.
There was quite a crowd in what passed for Lancre's main square. Not much happened in Lancre anyway, and a duel between witches was a sight worth seeing.
Granny Weatherwax arrived at a quarter to noon. Nanny Ogg was waiting on a bench by the tavern. She had a towel around her neck, and was carrying a bucket of water in which floated a sponge.
"What's that for?" said Granny.
"Half time. And I done you a plate of oranges."
She held up the plate. Granny snorted.
"You look as if you could do with eating something, anyway," said Nanny. "You don't look as if you've had anything today. . ."
She glanced down at Granny's boots, and the grubby hem of her long black dress. There were scraps of bracken and bits of heather caught on it.
"You daft old besom!" she hissed. "What've you been doing!"
"I had to-"
"You've been up at the Stones, haven't you! Trying to hold back the Gentry."
"Of course," said Granny. Her voice wasn't faint. She wasn't swaying. But her voice wasn't faint and she wasn't swaying. Nanny Ogg could see, because Granny Weatherwax's body was in the grip of Granny Weatherwax's mind.
"Someone's got to," she added.
"You could have come and asked me!"
"You'd have talked me out of it."
Nanny Ogg leaned forward.
"You all right, Esme?"
"Fine! I'm fine! Nothing wrong with me, all right?"
"Have you had any sleep at all?" she said.
"Well-"
"You haven't, have you? And then you think you can just stroll down here and confound this girl, just like that?"
"I don't know," said Granny Weatherwax.
Nanny Ogg looked hard at her.
"You don't, do you?" she said, in a softer tone of voice. "Oh, well . . . you better sit down here, before you fall down. Suck an orange. They'll be here in a few minutes."
"No she won't," said Granny "She'll be late."
"How d'you know?"
"No good making an entrance if everyone isn't there to see you, is it? That's headology."
In fact the young coven arrived at twenty past twelve, and took up station on the steps of the market pentangle on the other side of the square.
"Look at 'em," said Granny Weatherwax. "All in black, again."
"Well, we wear black too," said Nanny Ogg the reasonable.
"Only 'cos it's respectable and serviceable," said Granny morosely. "Not because it's romantic. Hah. The Lords and Ladies might as well be here already."
After some eye contact. Nanny Ogg ambled across the square and met Perdita in the middle. The young would-be witch looked worried under her makeup. She held a black lace handkerchief in her hands, and was twisting it nervously.
"Morning, Mrs. Ogg," she said.
"Afternoon, Agnes."
"Um. What happens now?"
Nanny Ogg took out her pipe and scratched her ear with it.
"Dunno. Up to you, I suppose."
"Diamanda says why does it have to be here and now?"
"So's everyone can see," said Nanny Ogg. "That's the point, ain't it? Nothing hole and comer about it. Everyone's got to know who's best at witchcraft. The whole town. Everyone sees the winner win and the loser lose. That way there's no argument, eh?"
Perdita glanced toward the tavern. Granny Weatherwax had dozed off.
"Quietly confident," said Nanny Ogg, crossing her fingers behind her back.
"Um, what happens to the loser?" said Perdita.
"Nothing, really," said Nanny Ogg. "Generally she leaves the place. You can't be a witch if people've seen you beat."
"Diamanda says she doesn't want to hurt the old lady too much," said Perdita. "Just teach her a lesson."
"That's nice. Esme's a quick learner."
"Um. I wish this wasn't happening, Mrs. Ogg."
"That's nice."
"Diamanda says Mistress Weatherwax has got a very impressive stare, Mrs. Ogg."
"That's nice."
"So the test is . . . just staring, Mrs. Ogg."
Nanny put her pipe in her mouth.
"You mean the old first-one-to-blink-or-look-away challenge?"
"Um, yes."
"Right." Nanny thought about it, and shrugged. "Right. But we'd better do a magic circle first. Don't want anyone else getting hurt, do we?"
"Do you mean using Skorhian Runes or the Triple Invocation octogram?" said Perdita.
Nanny Ogg put her head on one side.
"Never heard of them things, dear," she said. "I always does a magic circle like this . . ."
She sidled crabwise away from the fat girl, dragging one toe in the dust. She edged around in a rough circle about fifteen feet across, still dragging her boot, until she backed into Perdita.
"Sorry. There. Done it."
"That's a magic circle?"
"Right. People can come to harm else. All kinds of magic zipping around the place when witches fight."
"But you didn't chant or anything."
"No?"
"There has to be a chant, doesn't there?"
"Dunno. Never done one."
"Oh."
"I could sing you a comic song if you likes," said Nanny helpfully.
"Um, no. Um." Perdita had never heard Nanny sing, but news gets around.
"I like your black lace hanky," said Nanny, not a bit abashed. "Very good for not showing the bogies."
Perdita stared at the circle as though hypnotized. "Um. Shall we start, then?"
"Right."
Nanny Ogg scurried back to the bench and elbowed Granny in the ribs.
"Wake up!"
Granny opened an eye.
"I weren't asleep, I was just resting me eyes."
"All you've got to do is stare her down!"
"At least she knows about the importance of the stare, then. Hah! Who does she think she is? I've been staring at people all my life!"
"Yes, that's what's bothering me — aaahh . . . who's Nona's little boy, then?"
The rest of the Ogg clan had arrived.
Granny Weatherwax personally disliked young Pewsey. She disliked all small children, which is why she got on with them so well. In Pewsey's case, she felt that no one should be allowed to wander around in just a vest even if they were four years old. And the child had a permanently runny nose and ought to be provided with a handkerchief or, failing that, a cork.
Nanny Ogg, on the other hand, was instant putty in the hands of any grandchild, even one as sticky as Pewsey
"Want sweetie," growled Pewsey, in that curiously deep voice some young children have.
"Just in a moment, my duck, I'm talking to the lady," Nanny Ogg fluted.
"Want sweetie now."
"Bugger off, my precious, Nana's busy right this minute."
Pewsey pulled hard on Nanny Ogg's skirts.
"Now sweetie now!"
Granny Weatherwax leaned down until her impressive nose was about level with Pewsey's gushing one.
"If you don't go away," she said gravely, "I will personally rip your head off and fill it with snakes."
"There!" said Nanny Ogg. "There's lots of poor children in Klatch that'd be grateful for a curse like that."
Pewsey's little face, after a second or two of uncertainty, split into a pumpkin grin.
"Funny lady," he said.
"Tell you what," said Nanny, patting Pewsey on the head and then absentmindedly wiping her hand on her dress, "you see them young ladies on the other side of the square? They've got lots of sweeties."
Pewsey waddled off.
"That's germ warfare, that is," said Granny Weatherwax.
"Come on," said Nanny. "Our Jason's put a couple of chairs in the circle. You sure you're all right?"
"I'll do."
Perdita Nitt traipsed across the road again.
"Er . . . Mrs. Ogg?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Er. Diamanda says you don't understand, she says they won't be trying to outstare one another . . ."
Magrat was bored. She'd never been bored when she was a witch. Permanently bewildered and overworked yes, but not bored.
She kept telling herself it'd probably be better when she really was queen, although she couldn't quite see how.
In the meantime she wandered aimlessly through the castle's many rooms, the swishing of her dress almost unheard above the background roar of the turbines of tedium:
—humdrumhumdrumhumdrum-
She'd spent the whole morning trying to learn to do tapestry, because Millie assured her that's what queens did, and the sampler with its message "Gods bless this House" was even now lying forlornly on her chair.
In the Long Gallery were huge tapestries of ancient battles, done by previous bored regal incumbents; it was amazing how all the fighters had been persuaded to stay still long enough. And she'd looked at the many, many paintings of the queens themselves, all of them pretty, all of them well-dressed according to the fashion of their times, and all of them bored out of their tiny well-shaped skulls.
Finally she went back to the solar. This was the big room on top of the main tower. In theory, it was there to catch the sun. It did. It also caught the wind and the rain. It was a sort of drift net for anything the sky happened to throw.
She yanked on the bellpull that in theory summoned a servant. Nothing happened. After a couple of further pulls, and secretly glad of the exercise, she went down to the kitchen. She would have liked to spend more time there. It was always warm and there was generally someone to talk to. But nobblyess obligay — queens had to live Above Stairs.
Below Stairs there was only Shawn Ogg, who was cleaning the oven of the huge iron stove and reflecting that this was no job for a military man.
"Where's everyone gone?"
Shawn leapt up, banging his head on the stove. "Ow! Sorry, miss! Um! Everyone's . . . everyone's down in the square, miss. I'm only here because Mrs. Scorbic said she'd have my hide if I didn't get all the yuk off."
"What's happening in the square, then?"
"They say there's a couple of witches having a real set-to, miss."
"What? Not your mother and Granny Weatherwax!"
"Oh no, miss. Some new witch."
"In Lancre? A new witch?"
"I think that's what Mum said."
"I'm going to have a look."
"Oh, I don't think that'd be a good idea, miss," said Shawn.
Magrat drew herself up regally.
"We happen to be Queen," she said. "Nearly. So you don't tell one one can't do things, or one'll have you cleaning the privies!"
"But I does clean the privies," said Shawn, in a reasonable voice. "Even the garderobe-"
"And that's going to go, for a start," said Magrat, shuddering. "One's seen it."
"Doesn't bother me, miss, it'll give me Wednesday afternoons free," said Shawn, "but what I meant was, you'll have to wait till I've gone down to the armoury to fetch my horn for the fanfare."
"One won't need a fanfare, thank you very much."
"But you got to have a fanfare, miss."
"One can blow my own trumpet, thank you."
"Yes, miss."
"Miss what?"
"Miss Queen."
"And don't you forget it."
Magrat arrived at as near to a run as was possible in the queen outfit, which ought to have had castors.