Granny turned around.
"Of course not! It didn't happen. But the point is, it might have happened. You can't say 'if this didn't happen then that would have happened' because you don't know everything that might have happened. You might think something'd be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can't say 'If only I'd . . . ' because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you'll never know. You've gone past. So there's no use thinking about it.
So I don't."
"The Trousers of Time," said Ridcully, moodily. He picked a fragment off the crumbling stonework and dropped it into the water. It went plunk, as is so often the case.
"What?"
"That's the sort of thing they go on about in the High Energy Magic building. And they call themselves wizards! You should hear them talk. The buggers wouldn't know a magic sword if it bit them on the knee. That's young wizards today. Think they bloody invented magic."
"Yes? You should see the girls that want to be witches these days," said Granny Weatherwax. "Velvet hats and black lipstick and lacy gloves with no fingers to 'em. Cheeky, too."
They were side by side now, watching the river.
"Trousers of Time," said Ridcully. "One of you goes down one leg, one of you goes down the other. And there's all these continuinuinuums all over the place. When I was a lad there was just one decent universe and this was it, and all you had to worry about was creatures breaking through from the Dungeon Dimensions, but at least there was this actual damn universe and you knew where you stood. Now it turns out there's millions of the damn things. And there's this damn cat they've discovered that you can put in a box and it's dead and alive at the same time. Or something. And they all run around saying marvellous, marvellous, hooray, here comes another quantum. Ask 'em to do a decent levitation spell and they look at you as if you've started to dribble. You should hear young Stibbons talk. Went on about me not inviting me to my own wedding. Me!"
From the side of the gorge a kingfisher flashed, hit the water with barely a ripple, and ricocheted away with something silver and wriggly in its beak.
"Kept going on about everything happening at the same time," Ridcully went on morosely. "Like there's no such thing as a choice. You just decide which leg you're heading for. He says that we did get married, see. He says all the things that might have been have to be. So there's thousands of me out there who never became a wizard, just like there's thousands of you who, oh, answered letters. Hah! To them, we're something that might have been. Now, d'you call that proper thinking for a growing lad? When I started wizarding, old 'Tudgy' Spold was Archchancellor, and if any young wizard'd even mentioned that sort of daft thing, he'd feel a staff across his backside. Hah!"
Somewhere far below, a frog plopped off a stone. "Mind you, I suppose we've all passed a lot of water since then."
It dawned gently on Ridcully that the dialogue had become a monologue. He turned to Granny, who was staring round-eyed at the river as if she'd never seen water before.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid," she said.
"I beg your pardon? I was only-"
"Not you. I wasn't talking to you. Stupid! I've been stupid. But I ain't been daft! Hah! And I thought it was my memory going! And it was, too. It was going and fetching!"
"What?"
"I was getting scared! Me! And not thinking clear!
Except I was thinking clear!"
"What!"
"Never mind! Well, I won't say this hasn't been . . . nice," said Granny. "But I've got to get back. Do the thing with the fingers again. And hurry."
Ridcully deflated a little.
"Can't," he said.
"You did it just now."
"That's the point. I wasn't joking when I said I couldn't do it again. It takes a lot out of you, transmigration."
"You used to be able to do it all the time, as I recall," said Granny. She risked a smile. "Our feet hardly touched the ground."
"I was younger then. Now, once is enough." Granny's boots creaked as she turned and started to walk quickly back toward the town. Ridcully lumbered after her.
"What's the hurry?"
"Got important things to do," said Granny, without turning around. "Been letting everyone down."
"Some people might say this is important."
"No. It's just personal. Personal's not the same as important. People just think it is."
"You're doing it again!"
"What?"
"I don't know what the other future would have been like," said Ridcully, "but I for one would have liked to give it a try."
Granny paused. Her mind was crackling with relief. Should she tell him about the memories? She opened her mouth to do so, and then thought again. No. He'd get soppy.
"I'd have been crabby and bad-tempered," she said, instead.
"That goes without saying."
"Hah! And what about you? I'd have put up with all your womanizing and drunkenness, would I?"
Ridcully looked bewildered.
"What womanizing?"
"We're talking about what might have been."
"But I'm a wizard! We hardly ever womanize. There's laws about it. Well. . . rules. Guidelines, anyway."
"But you wouldn't have been a wizard then."
"And I'm hardly ever drunk."
"You would have been if you'd been wedded to me."
He caught up with her.
"Even young Ponder doesn't think like this," he said. "You've made up your mind that it would have been dreadful, have you?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Why'd you think?"
"I asked you!"
"I'm too busy for this," said Granny. "Like I said, personal ain't the same as important. Make yourself useful, Mr. Wizard. You know it's circle time, don't you?"
Ridcully's hand touched the brim of his hat.
"Oh, yes."
"And you know what that means?"
"They tell me it means that the walls between realities get weaker. The circles are . . . what's the word Stibbons uses? Isoresons. They connect levels of, oh, something daft . . . similar levels of reality. Which is bloody stupid. You'd be able to walk from one universe to another."
"Ever tried it?"
"No!"
"A circle is a door half open. It doesn't need much to open it up all the way. Even belief'll do it. That's why they put the Dancers up, years ago. We got the dwarfs to do it. Thunderbolt iron, those stones. There's something special about 'em. They've got the love of iron. Don't ask me how it works. Elves hate it even more than ordinary iron. It . . . upsets their senses, or something. But minds can get through. . ."
"Elves? Everyone knows elves don't exist anymore. Not proper elves. I mean, there's a few folk who say they're elves-"
"Oh, yeah. Elvish ancestry. Elves and humans breed all right, as if that's anything to be proud of. But you just get a race o'skinny types with pointy ears and a tendency to giggle and burn easily in sunshine. I ain't talking about them. There's no harm in them. I'm talking about real wild elves, what we ain't seen here for-"
The road from the bridge to the town curved between high banks, with the forest crowding in on either side and in places even meeting overhead. Thick ferns, already curling like green breakers, lined the clay banks.
They rustled.
The unicorn leapt on the road.
Thousands of universes, twisting together like a rope being plaited from threads . . .
There's bound to be leakages, a sort of mental equivalent of the channel breakthrough on a cheap hi-fi that gets you the news in Swedish during quiet bits in the music. Especially if you've spent your life using your mind as a receiver.
Picking up the thoughts of another human being is very hard, because no two minds are on the same, er, wavelength.
But somewhere out there, at the point where the parallel universes tangle, are a million minds just like yours. For a very obvious reason.
Granny Weatherwax smiled.
Millie Chillum and the king and one or two hangers-on were clustered around the door to Magrat's room when Nanny Ogg arrived.
"What's happening?"
"I know she's in there," said Verence, holding his crown in his hands in the famous At'-Senor-Mexican-Bandits-Have-Raided-Our-Village position. "Millie heard her shout go away and I think she threw something at the door."
Nanny Ogg nodded sagely.
"Wedding nerves," she said. "Bound to happen."
"But we're all going to attend the Entertainment," said Verence. "She really ought to attend the Entertainment."
"Well, I dunno," said Nanny. "Seeing our Jason and the rest of 'em prancing about in straw wigs . . . I mean, they mean well, but it's not something a young — a fairly young — girl has to see on the night before her nuptials. You asked her to unlock the door?"
"I did better than that," said Verence. "I instructed her to. That was right, wasn't it? If even Magrat won't obey me, I'm a poor lookout as king."
"Ah," said Nanny, after a moment's slow consideration. "You've not entirely spent a lot of time in female company, have you? In a generalized sort of way?"
"Well, I-"
The crown spun in Verence's nervous fingers. Not only had the bandits invaded the village, but the Magnificent Seven had decided to go bowling instead.
"Tell you what," said Nanny, patting him on the back,
"you go and preside over the Entertainment and hobnob with the other nobs. I'll see to Magrat, don't you worry. I've been a bride three times, and that's only the official score."
"Yes, but she should-"
"I think if we go easy on the 'shoulds,'" said Nanny, "we might all make it to the wedding. Now, off you all go."
"Someone ought to stay here," said Verence. "Shawn will be on guard, but-"
"No one's going to invade, are they?" said Nanny. "Let me sort this out."
"Well. . . if you're sure . . ."
"Go on!"
Nanny Ogg waited until she heard them go down the main staircase. After a while a rattle of coaches and general shouting suggested that the wedding party was leaving, minus the bride-to-be.
She counted to a hundred, under her breath.
Then:
"Magrat?"
"Go away!"
"I know how it is," said Nanny. "I was a bit worried on the night before my wedding." She refrained from adding:
because there was a reasonable chance Jason would turn up as an extra guest.
"I am not worried! I am angry!"
"Why?"
"You know!"
Nanny took off her hat and scratched her head.
"You've got me there," she said.
"And he knew. I know he knew, and I know who told him," said the muffled voice behind the door. "It was all arranged. You must all have been laughing!"
Nanny frowned at the impassive woodwork.
"Nope," she said. "Still all at sea this end."
"Well, I'm not saying anymore."
"Everyone's gone to the Entertainment," said Nanny Ogg.
No reply.
"And later they'll be back." A further absence of dialogue.
"Then there'll be carousing and jugglers and fellas that put weasels down their trousers," said Nanny. Silence.
"And then it'll be tomorrow, and then what're you going to do?"
Silence.
"You can always go back to your cottage. No one's moved in. Or you can stop along of me, if you like. But you'll have to decide, d'you see, because you can't stay locked in there."
Nanny leaned against the wall.
"I remember years ago my granny telling me about Queen Amonia, well, I say queen, but she never was queen except for about three hours because of what I'm about to unfold, on account of them playing hide-and-seek at the wedding party and her hiding in a big heavy old chest in some attic and the lid slamming shut and no one finding her for seven months, by which time you could definitely say the wedding cake was getting a bit stale."
Silence.
"Well, if you ain't telling me, I can't hang around all night," said Nanny. "It'll all be better in the morning, you'll see."
Silence.
"Why don't you have an early night?" said Nanny. "Our Shawn'll do you a hot drink if you ring down. It's a bit nippy out here, to tell you the truth. It's amazing how these old stone places hang on to the chill."
Silence.
"So I'll be off then, shall I?" said Nanny, to the unyielding silence. "Not doing much good here, I can see that. Sure you don't want to talk?"
Silence.
"Stand before your god, bow before your king, and kneel before your man. Recipe for a happy life, that is," said Nanny, to the world in general. "Well, I'm going away now. Tell you what, I'll come back early tomorrow, help you get ready, that sort of thing. How about it?"
Silence.
"So that's all sorted out then," said Nanny. "Cheerio." She waited a full minute. By rights, by the human mechanics of situations like this, the bolts should have been drawn back and Magrat should have peeped out into the corridor, or possibly even called out to her. She did not.
Nanny shook her head. She could think of at least three ways of getting into the room, and only one of them involved going through the door. But there was a time and a place for witchcraft, and this wasn't it. Nanny Ogg had led a long and generally happy life by knowing when not to be a witch, and this was one of those times.
She went down the stairs and out of the castle. Shawn was standing guard at the main gate, surreptitiously practicing karate chops on the evening air. He stopped and looked embarrassed as Nanny Ogg approached.
"Wish I was going to the Entertainment, Mum."
"I daresay the king will be very generous to you come payday on account of your duty," said Nanny Ogg. "Remind me to remind him."
"Aren't you going?"
"Well, I'm . . . I'm just going for a stroll into town," said Nanny. "I expect Esme went with 'em, did she?"
"Couldn't say, Mum."
"Just a few things I got to do."
She hadn't gone much further before a voice behind her said, "Ello, oh moon of my delight."
"You do sneak up on people, Casanunda."
"I've arranged for us to have dinner at the Goat and Bush," said the dwarf Count.
"Ooo, that's a horrible expensive place," said Nanny Ogg. "Never eaten there."
"They've got some special provisions in, what with the wedding and all the gentry here," said Casanunda. "I've made special arrangements."
These had been quite difficult.
Food as an aphrodisiac was not a concept that had ever caught on in Lancre, apart from Nanny Ogg's famous Carrot and Oyster Pie[32]. As far as the cook at the Goat and Bush was concerned, food and sex were only linked in certain humorous gestures involving things like cucumbers. He'd never heard of chocolate, banana skins, avocado and ginger, marshmallow and the thousand other foods people had occasionally employed to drive an A-to-B freeway through the rambling pathways of romance. Casanunda had spent a busy ten minutes sketching out a detailed menu, and quite a lot of money had changed hands.
He'd arranged a careful romantic candlelit supper. Casanunda had always believed in the art of seduction.
Many tall women accessible by stepladder across the continent had reflected how odd it was that the dwarfs, a race to whom the aforesaid art of seduction consisted in the main part of tactfully finding out what sex, underneath all that leather and chain-mail, another dwarf was, had generated someone like Casanunda.
It was as if Eskimos had produced a natural expert in the care and attention of rare tropical plants. The great pent up waters of dwarfish sexuality had found a leak at the bottom of the dam-small, but with enough power to drive a dynamo.
Everything that his fellow dwarfs did very occasionally as nature demanded he did all the time, sometimes in the back of a sedan chair and once upside down in a tree — but, and this is important, with care and attention to detail that was typically dwarfish. Dwarfs would spend months working on an exquisite piece of jewellery, and for broadly similar reasons Casanunda was a popular visitor to many courts and palaces, for some strange reason generally while the local lord was away. He also had a dwarfish ability with locks, always a useful talent for those awkward moments sur la boudoir.
And Nanny Ogg was an attractive lady, which is not the same as being beautiful. She fascinated Casanunda. She was an incredibly comfortable person to be around, partly because she had a mind so broad it could accommodate three football fields and a bowling alley.
* * *
"I wish I had my crossbow," muttered Ridcully. "With that head on my wall I'd always have a place to hang my hat."
The unicorn tossed its head and pawed the ground. Steam rose from its flanks.
"I ain't sure that would work," said Granny. "You sure you've got no whoosh left in them fingers of yours?"
"I could create an illusion," said the wizard. "That's not hard."
"It wouldn't work. The unicorn is an elvish creature. Magic don't work on 'em. They see through illusions. They ought to, they're good enough at 'em. How about the bank? Reckon you could scramble up it?"
They both glanced at the banks. They were red clay, slippery as priests.
"Let's walk backward," said Granny. "Slowly."
"How about its mind? Can you get in?"
"There's someone in there already. The poor thing's her pet. It obeys only her."
The unicorn walked after them, trying to watch both of them at the same time.
"What shall we do when we come to the bridge?"
"You can still swim, can't you?"
"The river's a long way down."
"But there's a deep pool there. Don't you remember? You dived in there once. One moonlit night. . ."
"I was young and foolish then."
"Well? You're old and foolish now."
"I thought unicorns were more . . . fluffy."
"See clear! Don't let the glamour get you! See what's in front of your eyes! It's a damn great horse with a horn on the end!" said Granny.
The unicorn pawed the ground.
Granny's feet scraped the bridge.
"Got here by accident, can't get back," she said. "Ifn there'd been one of us it'd be charging by now. We're about halfway across the bridge-"
"Lot of snow runoff in that river," said Ridcully, doubtfully
"Oh, yes," said Granny "See you at the weir."
And she was gone.
The unicorn, which had been trying to decide between targets, was left with Ridcully.
It could count up to one.
It lowered its head.
Ridcully had never liked horses, animals which seemed to him to have only the weakest possible grip on sanity
As the unicorn charged, he vaulted the parapet and dropped, without much aerodynamic grace, into the icy waters of the Lancre.
The Librarian liked the stage. He was always in the front seat on the first night of a new production at any of Ankh's theatres, his prehensile abilities allowing him to clap twice as hard as anyone else or, if necessary, hurl peanut shells.
And he was feeling let down. There were hardly any books in the castle, except for serious volumes on etiquette and animal breeding and estate management. As a rule, royalty doesn't read much.
He wasn't expecting to be amazed at the Entertainment. He'd peered behind the bit of sacking that was doing service as a dressing room, and seen half a dozen heavily built men arguing with one another. This did not bode well for an evening of thespianic splendor, although there was always the possibility that one of them might hit another one in the face with a custard pie[33].
He had managed to get the three of them seats in the front row. This wasn't according to the rules of precedence, but it was amazing how everyone squeezed up to make room. He'd also found some peanuts. No one ever knew how he managed that.
"Oook?"
"No, thank you," said Ponder Stibbons. "They give me wind."
"Oook?"
"I like to listen to a man who likes to talk! Whoops! Sawdust and treacle! Put that in your herring and smoke it!"
"I don't think he wants one," said Ponder.
The curtain went up, or at least was pulled aside by Carter the baker.
The Entertainment began.
The Librarian watched in deepening gloom. It was amazing. Normally he quite liked a badly acted play, provided enough confectionery stayed airborne, but these people weren't even good at bad acting. Also, no one seemed to be on the point of throwing anything.
He fished a peanut out of the bag and rolled it in his fingers, while staring intently at the left ear of Tailor the other weaver.
And felt his hair rise. This is very noticeable on an orang-utan.
He glanced up at the hill behind the erratic actors, and growled under his breath.
"Oook?"
Ponder nudged him.
"Quiet!" he hissed. "They're getting the hang of it. . ."
There was an echo to the voice of the one in the straw wig.
"What'd she say?" said Ponder.
"Oook!"
"How'd she do that? That's good makeup, that-"
Ponder fell silent.
Suddenly the Librarian felt very alone.
Everyone else in the audience had their gaze fastened firmly on the turf stage.
He moved a hand up and down in front of Stibbons's face.
The air was wavering over the hill, and the grass on its side moved in a way that made the ape's eyes ache.
"Oook?"
Over the hill, between the little stones, it began to snow.
"Oook?"
Alone in her room, Magrat unpacked the wedding dress.
And that was another thing.
She ought to have been involved in the dress, at least. She was going to — would have been the one wearing it, after all. There should have been weeks of choosing the material, and fittings, and changing her mind, and changing the material, and changing the pattern, and more fittings . . .
. . . although of course she was her own woman and didn't need that kind of thing at all. . .
. . . but she should have had the choice.
It was white silk, with a tasteful amount of lace. Magrat knew she wasn't much up on the language of dressmaking. She knew what things were, she just didn't know the names. All those ruches and pleats and gores and things.
She held the dress against her and gave it a critical examination.
There was a small mirror against the wall.
After a certain amount of internal tussling Magrat gave in and tried the dress on. It wasn't as if she'd be wearing it tomorrow. If she never did try it on, she'd always wonder if it had fitted.
It fitted. Or, rather, it didn't fit but in a flattering way. Whatever Verence had paid, it had been worth it. The dressmaker had done cunning things with the material, so that it went in where Magrat went straight up and down and billowed out where Magrat didn't.
The veil had silk flowers on the headband.
I'm not going to start crying again, Magrat told herself. I'm going to stay angry. I'm going to wind up the anger until it's thick enough to become rage, and when they come back I shall—
—what?
She could try being icy. She could sweep majestically past them . . . this was a good dress for that . . . and that'd teach them.
And then what? She couldn't stay here, not with everyone knowing. And they'd find out. About the letter. News went around Lancre faster than turpentine through a sick donkey.
She'd have to go away. Perhaps find somewhere where there were no witches and start up again, although at the moment her feelings about witches were such that she'd prefer practically any other profession, insofar as there were other professions for an ex-witch.
Magrat stuck out her chin. The way she felt now, with the bile bubbling like a hot spring, she'd create a new profession. One that with any luck didn't involve men and meddling old women.
And she'd keep that damn letter, just to remind her. All the time she'd wondered how Verence was able to have things arranged weeks before she got back, and it was as simple as this. How they must have laughed . . .
* * *
It occurred briefly to Nanny Ogg that she really should be somewhere else, but at her time of life invitations to intimate candlelit suppers were not a daily occurrence. There had to be a time when you stopped worrying about the rest of the world and cared a little for yourself. There had to be a time for a quiet, inner moment.
"This is damn good wine," she said, picking up another bottle. "What did you say it's called?" She peered at the label. "Chateau Maison? Chat-eau . . . that's foreign for cat's water, you know, but that's only their way, I know it ain't real cat's water. Real cat's water is sharper." She hammered the cork into the bottle with the end of her knife, then stuck her finger over the neck and gave it a vigorous shaking "to mix the goodness in."
"But I don't hold with drinking it out of ladies' boots," she said. "I know it's supposed to be the thing to do, but I can't see what's so wonderful about walking home with your boots full of wine. Ain't you hungry? If you don't want that bit of gristle, I'll eat it. anymore of them lobsters? Never had lobster before. And that mayonnaise. And them little eggs stuffed with stuff. Mind you, that bramble jam tasted of fish, to my mind."
"'S caviar," murmured Casanunda.
He was sitting with his chin on his hand, watching her in rapt infatuation.
He was, he was surprised to find, enjoying himself immensely while not horizontal.
He knew how this sort of dinner was supposed to go. It was one of the basic weapons in the seducer's armoury. The amoratrix was plied with fine wines and expensive yet light dishes. There was much knowing eye contact across the table, and tangling of feet underneath it. There was much pointed eating of pears and bananas and so on. And thus the ship of temptation steered, gently yet inexorably, to a good docking.
And then there was Nanny Ogg.
Nanny Ogg appreciated fine wine in her very own way. It would never have occurred to Casanunda that anyone would top up white wine with port merely because she'd reached the end of the bottle.
As for the food . . . well, she enjoyed that, too. Casanunda had never seen that elbow action before. Show Nanny Ogg a good dinner and she went at it with knife, fork, and rammer. Watching her eat a lobster was a particular experience he would not forget in a hurry. They'd be picking bits of claw out of the woodwork for weeks.
And the asparagus . . . he might actually try to forget Nanny Ogg putting away asparagus, but he suspected the memory would come creeping back.
It must be a witch thing, he told himself. They're always very clear about what they want. If you climbed cliffs and braved rivers and skied down mountains to bring a box of chocolates to Gytha Ogg, she'd have the nougat centres out of the bottom layer even before you got your crampons off. That's it. Whatever a witch does, she does one hundred percent.
Hubba, hubba!
"Ain't you going to eat all those prawns? Just push the plate this way, then."
He had tried a little footsie to keep his hand in, as it were, but an accidental blow on the ankle from one of Nanny's heavy iron-nailed boots had put a stop to that.
And then there had been the gypsy violinist. At first Nanny had complained about people playin' the fiddle while she was trying to concentrate on her eatin', but between courses she'd snatched it off the man, thrown the bow into a bowl of camellias, retuned the instrument to something approaching a banjo, and had given Casanunda three rousing verses of what, him being foreign, she chose to call Il Porcupine Nil Sodomy Est.
Then she'd drunk more wine.
What also captivated Casanunda was the way Nanny Ogg's face became a mass of cheerful horizontal lines when she laughed, and Nanny Ogg laughed a lot.
In fact Casanunda was finding, through the faint haze of wine, that he was actually having fun.
"I take it there is no Mr. Ogg?" he said, eventually.
"Oh, yes, there's a Mr. Ogg," said Nanny. "We buried him years ago. Well, we had to. He was dead."
"It must be very hard for a woman living all alone?"
"Dreadful," said Nanny Ogg, who had never prepared a meal or wielded a duster since her eldest daughter had been old enough to do it for her, and who had at least four meals cooked for her every day by various terrified daughters-in-law.
"It must be especially lonely at night," said Casanunda, out of habit as much as anything else.
"Well, there's Greebo," said Nanny "He keeps my feet warm."
"Greebo-"
"The cat. I say, do you think there's any pudding?"
Later, she asked for a doggy bottle.
Mr. Brooks the beekeeper ladled some greenish, foul smelling liquid out of the saucepan that was always simmering in his secret hut, and filled his squirter.
There was a wasps' nest in the garden wall. It'd be a mortuary by morning.
That was the thing about bees. They always guarded the entrance to the hive, with their lives if necessary. But wasps were adept at finding the odd chink in the woodwork around the back somewhere and the sleek little devils'd be in and robbing the hive before you knew it. Funny. The bees in the hive'd let them do it, too. They guarded the entrance, but if a wasp found another way in, they didn't know what to do.
He gave the plunger a push. A stream of liquid bubbled out and left a smoking streak on the floor.
Wasps looked pretty enough. But if you were for bees, you had to be against wasps.
There seemed to be some sort of party going on in the hall. He vaguely remembered getting an invitation but, on the whole, that sort of thing never really caught his imagination. And especially now. Things were wrong. None of the hives showed any signs of swarming. Not one.
As he passed the hives in the dusk he heard the humming. You got that, on a warm night. Battalions of bees stood at the hive entrance, fanning the air with their wings to keep the brood cool. But there was also the roar of bees circling the hive.
They were angry, and on guard.
There was a series of small weirs just on the borders of Lancre. Granny Weatherwax hauled herself up on to the damp woodwork, and squelched to the bank where she emptied her boots.
After a while a pointy wizard's hat drifted downriver, and rose to reveal a pointy wizard underneath it. Granny lent a hand to help Ridcully out of the water.
"There," she said, "bracing, wasn't it? Seemed to me you could do with a cold bath."
Ridcully tried to clean some mud out of his ear. He glared at Granny.
"Why aren't you wet?"
"I am."
"No you're not. You're just damp. I'm wet through. How can you float down a river and just be damp?"
"I dries out quick."
Granny Weatherwax glared up the rocks. A short distance away the steep road ran on to Lancre, but there were other, more private ways known to her among the trees,
"So," she said, more or less to herself. "She wants to stop me going there, does she? Well, we'll see about that."
"Going where?" said Ridcully.
"Ain't sure," said Granny. "All I know is, if she don't want me to go there, that's where I'm going. But I hadn't bargained on you tumin' up and having a rush of blood to the heart. Come on."
Ridcully wrung out his robe. A lot of the sequins had come off. He removed his hat and unscrewed the point.
Headgear picks up morphic vibrations. Quite a lot of trouble had once been caused in Unseen University by a former Archchancellor's hat, which had picked up too many magical vibrations after spending so much time on wizardly heads and had developed a personality of its very own. Ridcully had put a stop to this by having his own hat made to particular specifications by an Ankh-Morpork firm of completely insane hatters.
It was not a normal wizard hat. Few wizards have ever made much use of the pointy bit, except maybe to keep the odd pair of socks in it. But Ridcully's hat had small cupboards. It had surprises. It had four telescopic legs and a roll of oiled silk in the brim that extended downward to make a small but serviceable tent, and a patent spirit stove just above it. It had inner pockets with three days' supply of iron rations. And the tip unscrewed to dispense an adequate supply of spirituous liquors for use in emergencies, such as when Ridcully was thirsty.
Ridcully waved the small pointed cup at Granny.
"Brandy?" he said.
"What have you got on your head?"
Ridcully felt his pate gingerly.
"Urn . . ."
"Smells like honey and horse apples to me. And what's that thing?"
Ridcully lifted the small cage off his head. There was a small treadmill in it, in a complex network of glass rods. A couple of feeding bowls were visible. And there was a small, hairy and currently quite wet mouse.
"Oh, it's something some of the young wizards came up with," said Ridcully diffidently "I said I'd . . . try it out for them. The mouse hair rubs against the glass rods and there's sparks, don't'y'know, and . . . and . . ."
Granny Weatherwax looked at the Archchancellor's somewhat grubby hair and raised an eyebrow.
"My word," she said. "What will they think of next?"
"Don't really understand how it works, Stibbons is the man for this sort of thing, I thought I'd help them out. . ."
"Lucky you were going bald, eh?"
In the darkness of her sickroom Diamanda opened her eyes, if they were her eyes. There was a pearly sheen to them. The song was as yet only on the threshold of hearing. And the world was different. A small part of her mind was still Diamanda, and looked out through the mists of enchantment. The world was a pattern of fine silver lines, constantly moving, as though everything was coated with filigree. Except where there was iron. There the lines were crushed and tight and bent. There, the whole world was invisible. Iron distorted the world. Keep away from iron.
She slipped out of bed, using the edge of the blanket to grasp the door handle, and opened the door.
Shawn Ogg was standing very nearly to attention.
Currently he was guarding the castle and Seeing How Long He Could Stand On One Leg.
Then it occurred to him that this wasn't a proper activity for a martial artist, and he turned it into No. 19, the Flying Chrysanthemum Double Drop Kick.
After a while he realized that he had been hearing something. It was vaguely rhythmical, and put him in mind of a grasshopper chirruping. It was coming from inside the castle.
He turned carefully, keeping alert in case the massed armies of Foreign Parts tried to invade while his back was turned.
This needed working out. He wasn't on guard from things inside the castle, was he? "On guard" meant things outside. That was the point of castles. That's why you had all the walls and things. He'd got the big poster they gave away free with Jane's All the World's Siege Weapons. He knew what he was talking about.
Shawn was not the quickest of thinkers, but his thoughts turned inexorably to the elf in the dungeon. But that was locked up. He'd locked the door himself. And there was iron all over the place, and Mum had been very definite about the iron.
Nevertheless. . .
He was methodical about it. He raised the drawbridge and dropped the portcullis and peered over the wall for good measure, but there was just the dusk and the night breeze.
He could feel the sound now. It seemed to be coming out of the stone, and had a saw-toothed edge to it that grated on his nerves.
It couldn't have got out, could it? No, it stood to reason. People hadn't gone around building dungeons you could get out of.
The sound swung back and forth across the scale.
Shawn leaned his rusty pike against the wall and drew his sword. He knew how to use it. He practiced for ten minutes every day, and it was one sorry hanging sack of straw when he'd finished with it.
He slipped into the keep by the back door and sidled along the passages toward the dungeon. There was no one else around. Of course, everyone was at the Entertainment. And they'd be back any time now, carousing all over the place.
The castle felt big, and old, and cold.
Any time now.
Bound to.
The noise stopped.
Shawn peered around the comer. There were the steps, there was the open doorway to the dungeons.
"Stop!" shouted Shawn, just in case.
The sound echoed off the stones.
"Stop! Or . . . or . . . or . . . Stop!"
He eased his way down the steps and looked through the
archway
"I warn you! I'm learning the Path of the Happy Jade
Lotus!"
There was the door to the cell, standing ajar. And a
white-clad figure next to it. Shawn blinked. "Aren't you Miss Tockley?"
She smiled at him. Her eyes glowed in the dim light. "You're wearing chain-mail, Shawn," she said. "What, miss?" He glanced at the open door again. "That's terrible. You must take it off, Shawn. How can
you hear with all that stuff around your ears?"
Shawn was aware of the empty space behind him. But
he daren't look around.
"I can hear fine, miss," he said, trying to ease himself around so that his back was against a wall.
"But you can't hear truly," said Diamanda, drifting forward. "The iron makes you deaf."
Shawn was not yet used to thinly clad young women approaching him with a dreamy look on their faces. He fervently wished he could take the Path of the Retreating Back.
He glanced sideways.
There was a tall skinny shape outlined in the open cell doorway. It was standing very carefully, as if it wanted to keep as far away from its surroundings as possible.
Diamanda was smiling at him in a funny way.
He ran.
Somehow, the woods had changed. Ridcully was certain that in his youth they'd been full of bluebells and primroses and — and bluebells and whatnot and so on. Not bloody great briars all over the place. They snagged at his robe and once or twice some tree-climbing equivalent knocked his hat off.
What made it worse was that Esme Weatherwax seemed to avoid all of them.
"How do you manage that?"
"I just know where I am all the time," said Granny.
"Well? I know where I am, too."
"No you don't. You just happen to be present. That's not the same."
"Well, do you happen to know where a proper path is?"
"This is a short cut."
"Between two places where you're not lost, d'you mean?"
"I keep tellin' you, I ain't lost! I'm . . . directionally challenged."
"Hah!"
But it was a fact about Esme Weatherwax, he had to admit. She might be lost, and he had reason to suspect this was the case now, unless there were in this forest two trees with exactly the same arrangement of branches and a strip of his robe caught on one of them, but she did have a quality that in anyone not wearing a battered pointy hat and an antique black dress might have been called poise. Absolute poise. It would be hard to imagine her making an awkward movement unless she wanted to.
He'd seen that years ago, although of course at the time he'd just been amazed at the way her shape fitted perfectly into the space around it. And—
He'd got caught up again.
"Wait a minute!"
"Entirely the wrong sort of clothes for the country!"
"I wasn't expecting a hike through the woods! This is ceremonial damn costume!"
"Take it off, then."
"Then how will anyone know I'm a wizard?"
"I'll be sure to tell them!"
Granny Weatherwax was getting rattled. She was also, despite everything that she'd said, getting lost. But the point was that you couldn't get lost between the weir at the bottom of the Lancre rapids and Lancre town itself. It was uphill all the way Besides, she'd walked through the local forests all her life. They were her forests.
She was pretty sure they'd passed the same tree twice. There was a bit of Ridcully's robe hanging on it.
It was like getting lost in her own garden.
She was also sure she'd seen the unicorn a couple of times. It was tracking them. She'd tried to get into its mind. She might as well have tried to climb an ice wall.
It wasn't as if her own mind was tranquil. But now at least she knew she was sane.
When the walls between the universes are thin, when the parallel strands of If bunch together to pass through the Now, then certain things leak across. Tiny signals, perhaps, but audible to a receiver skilled enough.
In her head were the faint, insistent thoughts of a thousand Esme Weatherwaxes.
Magrat wasn't sure what to pack. Most of her original clothes seemed to have evaporated since she'd been in the castle, and it was hardly good manners to take the ones Verence had bought for her. The same applied to the engagement ring. She wasn't sure if you were allowed to keep it.
She glared at herself in the mirror.
She'd have to stop thinking like this. She seemed to have spent her whole life trying to make herself small, trying to be polite, apologizing when people walked over her, trying to be good-mannered. And what had happened? People had treated her as if she was small and polite and good-mannered.
She'd stick the, the, the damn letter on the mirror, so they'd all know why she'd gone.
She'd a damn good mind to go off to one of the cities and become a courtesan.
Whatever that was.
And then she heard the singing.
It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful sound Magrat had ever heard. It flowed straight through the ears and into the hindbrain, into the blood, into the bone . . .
A silk camisole dropped from her fingers on to the floor.
She wrenched at the door, and a tiny part of her mind still capable of rational thought remembered about the key.
The song filled the passageway. She gripped some folds of the wedding dress to make running easier and hurried toward the stairs . . .
Something bulleted out of another doorway and bore her to the floor.
It was Shawn Ogg. Through the chromatic haze she could see his worried face peering out from its hood of rusty—
—iron.
The song changed while staying the same. The complex harmonies, the fascinating rhythm did not alter but suddenly grated, as if she was hearing the song through different ears.
She was dragged into the doorway.
"Are you all right. Miss Queen?"
"What's happening?"
"Dunno, Miss Queen. But I think we've got elves."
"Elves?"
"And they've got Miss Tockley. Um. You know you took the iron away-"
"Of course not! It didn't happen. But the point is, it might have happened. You can't say 'if this didn't happen then that would have happened' because you don't know everything that might have happened. You might think something'd be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can't say 'If only I'd . . . ' because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you'll never know. You've gone past. So there's no use thinking about it.
So I don't."
"The Trousers of Time," said Ridcully, moodily. He picked a fragment off the crumbling stonework and dropped it into the water. It went plunk, as is so often the case.
"What?"
"That's the sort of thing they go on about in the High Energy Magic building. And they call themselves wizards! You should hear them talk. The buggers wouldn't know a magic sword if it bit them on the knee. That's young wizards today. Think they bloody invented magic."
"Yes? You should see the girls that want to be witches these days," said Granny Weatherwax. "Velvet hats and black lipstick and lacy gloves with no fingers to 'em. Cheeky, too."
They were side by side now, watching the river.
"Trousers of Time," said Ridcully. "One of you goes down one leg, one of you goes down the other. And there's all these continuinuinuums all over the place. When I was a lad there was just one decent universe and this was it, and all you had to worry about was creatures breaking through from the Dungeon Dimensions, but at least there was this actual damn universe and you knew where you stood. Now it turns out there's millions of the damn things. And there's this damn cat they've discovered that you can put in a box and it's dead and alive at the same time. Or something. And they all run around saying marvellous, marvellous, hooray, here comes another quantum. Ask 'em to do a decent levitation spell and they look at you as if you've started to dribble. You should hear young Stibbons talk. Went on about me not inviting me to my own wedding. Me!"
From the side of the gorge a kingfisher flashed, hit the water with barely a ripple, and ricocheted away with something silver and wriggly in its beak.
"Kept going on about everything happening at the same time," Ridcully went on morosely. "Like there's no such thing as a choice. You just decide which leg you're heading for. He says that we did get married, see. He says all the things that might have been have to be. So there's thousands of me out there who never became a wizard, just like there's thousands of you who, oh, answered letters. Hah! To them, we're something that might have been. Now, d'you call that proper thinking for a growing lad? When I started wizarding, old 'Tudgy' Spold was Archchancellor, and if any young wizard'd even mentioned that sort of daft thing, he'd feel a staff across his backside. Hah!"
Somewhere far below, a frog plopped off a stone. "Mind you, I suppose we've all passed a lot of water since then."
It dawned gently on Ridcully that the dialogue had become a monologue. He turned to Granny, who was staring round-eyed at the river as if she'd never seen water before.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid," she said.
"I beg your pardon? I was only-"
"Not you. I wasn't talking to you. Stupid! I've been stupid. But I ain't been daft! Hah! And I thought it was my memory going! And it was, too. It was going and fetching!"
"What?"
"I was getting scared! Me! And not thinking clear!
Except I was thinking clear!"
"What!"
"Never mind! Well, I won't say this hasn't been . . . nice," said Granny. "But I've got to get back. Do the thing with the fingers again. And hurry."
Ridcully deflated a little.
"Can't," he said.
"You did it just now."
"That's the point. I wasn't joking when I said I couldn't do it again. It takes a lot out of you, transmigration."
"You used to be able to do it all the time, as I recall," said Granny. She risked a smile. "Our feet hardly touched the ground."
"I was younger then. Now, once is enough." Granny's boots creaked as she turned and started to walk quickly back toward the town. Ridcully lumbered after her.
"What's the hurry?"
"Got important things to do," said Granny, without turning around. "Been letting everyone down."
"Some people might say this is important."
"No. It's just personal. Personal's not the same as important. People just think it is."
"You're doing it again!"
"What?"
"I don't know what the other future would have been like," said Ridcully, "but I for one would have liked to give it a try."
Granny paused. Her mind was crackling with relief. Should she tell him about the memories? She opened her mouth to do so, and then thought again. No. He'd get soppy.
"I'd have been crabby and bad-tempered," she said, instead.
"That goes without saying."
"Hah! And what about you? I'd have put up with all your womanizing and drunkenness, would I?"
Ridcully looked bewildered.
"What womanizing?"
"We're talking about what might have been."
"But I'm a wizard! We hardly ever womanize. There's laws about it. Well. . . rules. Guidelines, anyway."
"But you wouldn't have been a wizard then."
"And I'm hardly ever drunk."
"You would have been if you'd been wedded to me."
He caught up with her.
"Even young Ponder doesn't think like this," he said. "You've made up your mind that it would have been dreadful, have you?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Why'd you think?"
"I asked you!"
"I'm too busy for this," said Granny. "Like I said, personal ain't the same as important. Make yourself useful, Mr. Wizard. You know it's circle time, don't you?"
Ridcully's hand touched the brim of his hat.
"Oh, yes."
"And you know what that means?"
"They tell me it means that the walls between realities get weaker. The circles are . . . what's the word Stibbons uses? Isoresons. They connect levels of, oh, something daft . . . similar levels of reality. Which is bloody stupid. You'd be able to walk from one universe to another."
"Ever tried it?"
"No!"
"A circle is a door half open. It doesn't need much to open it up all the way. Even belief'll do it. That's why they put the Dancers up, years ago. We got the dwarfs to do it. Thunderbolt iron, those stones. There's something special about 'em. They've got the love of iron. Don't ask me how it works. Elves hate it even more than ordinary iron. It . . . upsets their senses, or something. But minds can get through. . ."
"Elves? Everyone knows elves don't exist anymore. Not proper elves. I mean, there's a few folk who say they're elves-"
"Oh, yeah. Elvish ancestry. Elves and humans breed all right, as if that's anything to be proud of. But you just get a race o'skinny types with pointy ears and a tendency to giggle and burn easily in sunshine. I ain't talking about them. There's no harm in them. I'm talking about real wild elves, what we ain't seen here for-"
The road from the bridge to the town curved between high banks, with the forest crowding in on either side and in places even meeting overhead. Thick ferns, already curling like green breakers, lined the clay banks.
They rustled.
The unicorn leapt on the road.
Thousands of universes, twisting together like a rope being plaited from threads . . .
There's bound to be leakages, a sort of mental equivalent of the channel breakthrough on a cheap hi-fi that gets you the news in Swedish during quiet bits in the music. Especially if you've spent your life using your mind as a receiver.
Picking up the thoughts of another human being is very hard, because no two minds are on the same, er, wavelength.
But somewhere out there, at the point where the parallel universes tangle, are a million minds just like yours. For a very obvious reason.
Granny Weatherwax smiled.
Millie Chillum and the king and one or two hangers-on were clustered around the door to Magrat's room when Nanny Ogg arrived.
"What's happening?"
"I know she's in there," said Verence, holding his crown in his hands in the famous At'-Senor-Mexican-Bandits-Have-Raided-Our-Village position. "Millie heard her shout go away and I think she threw something at the door."
Nanny Ogg nodded sagely.
"Wedding nerves," she said. "Bound to happen."
"But we're all going to attend the Entertainment," said Verence. "She really ought to attend the Entertainment."
"Well, I dunno," said Nanny. "Seeing our Jason and the rest of 'em prancing about in straw wigs . . . I mean, they mean well, but it's not something a young — a fairly young — girl has to see on the night before her nuptials. You asked her to unlock the door?"
"I did better than that," said Verence. "I instructed her to. That was right, wasn't it? If even Magrat won't obey me, I'm a poor lookout as king."
"Ah," said Nanny, after a moment's slow consideration. "You've not entirely spent a lot of time in female company, have you? In a generalized sort of way?"
"Well, I-"
The crown spun in Verence's nervous fingers. Not only had the bandits invaded the village, but the Magnificent Seven had decided to go bowling instead.
"Tell you what," said Nanny, patting him on the back,
"you go and preside over the Entertainment and hobnob with the other nobs. I'll see to Magrat, don't you worry. I've been a bride three times, and that's only the official score."
"Yes, but she should-"
"I think if we go easy on the 'shoulds,'" said Nanny, "we might all make it to the wedding. Now, off you all go."
"Someone ought to stay here," said Verence. "Shawn will be on guard, but-"
"No one's going to invade, are they?" said Nanny. "Let me sort this out."
"Well. . . if you're sure . . ."
"Go on!"
Nanny Ogg waited until she heard them go down the main staircase. After a while a rattle of coaches and general shouting suggested that the wedding party was leaving, minus the bride-to-be.
She counted to a hundred, under her breath.
Then:
"Magrat?"
"Go away!"
"I know how it is," said Nanny. "I was a bit worried on the night before my wedding." She refrained from adding:
because there was a reasonable chance Jason would turn up as an extra guest.
"I am not worried! I am angry!"
"Why?"
"You know!"
Nanny took off her hat and scratched her head.
"You've got me there," she said.
"And he knew. I know he knew, and I know who told him," said the muffled voice behind the door. "It was all arranged. You must all have been laughing!"
Nanny frowned at the impassive woodwork.
"Nope," she said. "Still all at sea this end."
"Well, I'm not saying anymore."
"Everyone's gone to the Entertainment," said Nanny Ogg.
No reply.
"And later they'll be back." A further absence of dialogue.
"Then there'll be carousing and jugglers and fellas that put weasels down their trousers," said Nanny. Silence.
"And then it'll be tomorrow, and then what're you going to do?"
Silence.
"You can always go back to your cottage. No one's moved in. Or you can stop along of me, if you like. But you'll have to decide, d'you see, because you can't stay locked in there."
Nanny leaned against the wall.
"I remember years ago my granny telling me about Queen Amonia, well, I say queen, but she never was queen except for about three hours because of what I'm about to unfold, on account of them playing hide-and-seek at the wedding party and her hiding in a big heavy old chest in some attic and the lid slamming shut and no one finding her for seven months, by which time you could definitely say the wedding cake was getting a bit stale."
Silence.
"Well, if you ain't telling me, I can't hang around all night," said Nanny. "It'll all be better in the morning, you'll see."
Silence.
"Why don't you have an early night?" said Nanny. "Our Shawn'll do you a hot drink if you ring down. It's a bit nippy out here, to tell you the truth. It's amazing how these old stone places hang on to the chill."
Silence.
"So I'll be off then, shall I?" said Nanny, to the unyielding silence. "Not doing much good here, I can see that. Sure you don't want to talk?"
Silence.
"Stand before your god, bow before your king, and kneel before your man. Recipe for a happy life, that is," said Nanny, to the world in general. "Well, I'm going away now. Tell you what, I'll come back early tomorrow, help you get ready, that sort of thing. How about it?"
Silence.
"So that's all sorted out then," said Nanny. "Cheerio." She waited a full minute. By rights, by the human mechanics of situations like this, the bolts should have been drawn back and Magrat should have peeped out into the corridor, or possibly even called out to her. She did not.
Nanny shook her head. She could think of at least three ways of getting into the room, and only one of them involved going through the door. But there was a time and a place for witchcraft, and this wasn't it. Nanny Ogg had led a long and generally happy life by knowing when not to be a witch, and this was one of those times.
She went down the stairs and out of the castle. Shawn was standing guard at the main gate, surreptitiously practicing karate chops on the evening air. He stopped and looked embarrassed as Nanny Ogg approached.
"Wish I was going to the Entertainment, Mum."
"I daresay the king will be very generous to you come payday on account of your duty," said Nanny Ogg. "Remind me to remind him."
"Aren't you going?"
"Well, I'm . . . I'm just going for a stroll into town," said Nanny. "I expect Esme went with 'em, did she?"
"Couldn't say, Mum."
"Just a few things I got to do."
She hadn't gone much further before a voice behind her said, "Ello, oh moon of my delight."
"You do sneak up on people, Casanunda."
"I've arranged for us to have dinner at the Goat and Bush," said the dwarf Count.
"Ooo, that's a horrible expensive place," said Nanny Ogg. "Never eaten there."
"They've got some special provisions in, what with the wedding and all the gentry here," said Casanunda. "I've made special arrangements."
These had been quite difficult.
Food as an aphrodisiac was not a concept that had ever caught on in Lancre, apart from Nanny Ogg's famous Carrot and Oyster Pie[32]. As far as the cook at the Goat and Bush was concerned, food and sex were only linked in certain humorous gestures involving things like cucumbers. He'd never heard of chocolate, banana skins, avocado and ginger, marshmallow and the thousand other foods people had occasionally employed to drive an A-to-B freeway through the rambling pathways of romance. Casanunda had spent a busy ten minutes sketching out a detailed menu, and quite a lot of money had changed hands.
He'd arranged a careful romantic candlelit supper. Casanunda had always believed in the art of seduction.
Many tall women accessible by stepladder across the continent had reflected how odd it was that the dwarfs, a race to whom the aforesaid art of seduction consisted in the main part of tactfully finding out what sex, underneath all that leather and chain-mail, another dwarf was, had generated someone like Casanunda.
It was as if Eskimos had produced a natural expert in the care and attention of rare tropical plants. The great pent up waters of dwarfish sexuality had found a leak at the bottom of the dam-small, but with enough power to drive a dynamo.
Everything that his fellow dwarfs did very occasionally as nature demanded he did all the time, sometimes in the back of a sedan chair and once upside down in a tree — but, and this is important, with care and attention to detail that was typically dwarfish. Dwarfs would spend months working on an exquisite piece of jewellery, and for broadly similar reasons Casanunda was a popular visitor to many courts and palaces, for some strange reason generally while the local lord was away. He also had a dwarfish ability with locks, always a useful talent for those awkward moments sur la boudoir.
And Nanny Ogg was an attractive lady, which is not the same as being beautiful. She fascinated Casanunda. She was an incredibly comfortable person to be around, partly because she had a mind so broad it could accommodate three football fields and a bowling alley.
* * *
"I wish I had my crossbow," muttered Ridcully. "With that head on my wall I'd always have a place to hang my hat."
The unicorn tossed its head and pawed the ground. Steam rose from its flanks.
"I ain't sure that would work," said Granny. "You sure you've got no whoosh left in them fingers of yours?"
"I could create an illusion," said the wizard. "That's not hard."
"It wouldn't work. The unicorn is an elvish creature. Magic don't work on 'em. They see through illusions. They ought to, they're good enough at 'em. How about the bank? Reckon you could scramble up it?"
They both glanced at the banks. They were red clay, slippery as priests.
"Let's walk backward," said Granny. "Slowly."
"How about its mind? Can you get in?"
"There's someone in there already. The poor thing's her pet. It obeys only her."
The unicorn walked after them, trying to watch both of them at the same time.
"What shall we do when we come to the bridge?"
"You can still swim, can't you?"
"The river's a long way down."
"But there's a deep pool there. Don't you remember? You dived in there once. One moonlit night. . ."
"I was young and foolish then."
"Well? You're old and foolish now."
"I thought unicorns were more . . . fluffy."
"See clear! Don't let the glamour get you! See what's in front of your eyes! It's a damn great horse with a horn on the end!" said Granny.
The unicorn pawed the ground.
Granny's feet scraped the bridge.
"Got here by accident, can't get back," she said. "Ifn there'd been one of us it'd be charging by now. We're about halfway across the bridge-"
"Lot of snow runoff in that river," said Ridcully, doubtfully
"Oh, yes," said Granny "See you at the weir."
And she was gone.
The unicorn, which had been trying to decide between targets, was left with Ridcully.
It could count up to one.
It lowered its head.
Ridcully had never liked horses, animals which seemed to him to have only the weakest possible grip on sanity
As the unicorn charged, he vaulted the parapet and dropped, without much aerodynamic grace, into the icy waters of the Lancre.
The Librarian liked the stage. He was always in the front seat on the first night of a new production at any of Ankh's theatres, his prehensile abilities allowing him to clap twice as hard as anyone else or, if necessary, hurl peanut shells.
And he was feeling let down. There were hardly any books in the castle, except for serious volumes on etiquette and animal breeding and estate management. As a rule, royalty doesn't read much.
He wasn't expecting to be amazed at the Entertainment. He'd peered behind the bit of sacking that was doing service as a dressing room, and seen half a dozen heavily built men arguing with one another. This did not bode well for an evening of thespianic splendor, although there was always the possibility that one of them might hit another one in the face with a custard pie[33].
He had managed to get the three of them seats in the front row. This wasn't according to the rules of precedence, but it was amazing how everyone squeezed up to make room. He'd also found some peanuts. No one ever knew how he managed that.
"Oook?"
"No, thank you," said Ponder Stibbons. "They give me wind."
"Oook?"
"I like to listen to a man who likes to talk! Whoops! Sawdust and treacle! Put that in your herring and smoke it!"
"I don't think he wants one," said Ponder.
The curtain went up, or at least was pulled aside by Carter the baker.
The Entertainment began.
The Librarian watched in deepening gloom. It was amazing. Normally he quite liked a badly acted play, provided enough confectionery stayed airborne, but these people weren't even good at bad acting. Also, no one seemed to be on the point of throwing anything.
He fished a peanut out of the bag and rolled it in his fingers, while staring intently at the left ear of Tailor the other weaver.
And felt his hair rise. This is very noticeable on an orang-utan.
He glanced up at the hill behind the erratic actors, and growled under his breath.
"Oook?"
Ponder nudged him.
"Quiet!" he hissed. "They're getting the hang of it. . ."
There was an echo to the voice of the one in the straw wig.
"What'd she say?" said Ponder.
"Oook!"
"How'd she do that? That's good makeup, that-"
Ponder fell silent.
Suddenly the Librarian felt very alone.
Everyone else in the audience had their gaze fastened firmly on the turf stage.
He moved a hand up and down in front of Stibbons's face.
The air was wavering over the hill, and the grass on its side moved in a way that made the ape's eyes ache.
"Oook?"
Over the hill, between the little stones, it began to snow.
"Oook?"
Alone in her room, Magrat unpacked the wedding dress.
And that was another thing.
She ought to have been involved in the dress, at least. She was going to — would have been the one wearing it, after all. There should have been weeks of choosing the material, and fittings, and changing her mind, and changing the material, and changing the pattern, and more fittings . . .
. . . although of course she was her own woman and didn't need that kind of thing at all. . .
. . . but she should have had the choice.
It was white silk, with a tasteful amount of lace. Magrat knew she wasn't much up on the language of dressmaking. She knew what things were, she just didn't know the names. All those ruches and pleats and gores and things.
She held the dress against her and gave it a critical examination.
There was a small mirror against the wall.
After a certain amount of internal tussling Magrat gave in and tried the dress on. It wasn't as if she'd be wearing it tomorrow. If she never did try it on, she'd always wonder if it had fitted.
It fitted. Or, rather, it didn't fit but in a flattering way. Whatever Verence had paid, it had been worth it. The dressmaker had done cunning things with the material, so that it went in where Magrat went straight up and down and billowed out where Magrat didn't.
The veil had silk flowers on the headband.
I'm not going to start crying again, Magrat told herself. I'm going to stay angry. I'm going to wind up the anger until it's thick enough to become rage, and when they come back I shall—
—what?
She could try being icy. She could sweep majestically past them . . . this was a good dress for that . . . and that'd teach them.
And then what? She couldn't stay here, not with everyone knowing. And they'd find out. About the letter. News went around Lancre faster than turpentine through a sick donkey.
She'd have to go away. Perhaps find somewhere where there were no witches and start up again, although at the moment her feelings about witches were such that she'd prefer practically any other profession, insofar as there were other professions for an ex-witch.
Magrat stuck out her chin. The way she felt now, with the bile bubbling like a hot spring, she'd create a new profession. One that with any luck didn't involve men and meddling old women.
And she'd keep that damn letter, just to remind her. All the time she'd wondered how Verence was able to have things arranged weeks before she got back, and it was as simple as this. How they must have laughed . . .
* * *
It occurred briefly to Nanny Ogg that she really should be somewhere else, but at her time of life invitations to intimate candlelit suppers were not a daily occurrence. There had to be a time when you stopped worrying about the rest of the world and cared a little for yourself. There had to be a time for a quiet, inner moment.
"This is damn good wine," she said, picking up another bottle. "What did you say it's called?" She peered at the label. "Chateau Maison? Chat-eau . . . that's foreign for cat's water, you know, but that's only their way, I know it ain't real cat's water. Real cat's water is sharper." She hammered the cork into the bottle with the end of her knife, then stuck her finger over the neck and gave it a vigorous shaking "to mix the goodness in."
"But I don't hold with drinking it out of ladies' boots," she said. "I know it's supposed to be the thing to do, but I can't see what's so wonderful about walking home with your boots full of wine. Ain't you hungry? If you don't want that bit of gristle, I'll eat it. anymore of them lobsters? Never had lobster before. And that mayonnaise. And them little eggs stuffed with stuff. Mind you, that bramble jam tasted of fish, to my mind."
"'S caviar," murmured Casanunda.
He was sitting with his chin on his hand, watching her in rapt infatuation.
He was, he was surprised to find, enjoying himself immensely while not horizontal.
He knew how this sort of dinner was supposed to go. It was one of the basic weapons in the seducer's armoury. The amoratrix was plied with fine wines and expensive yet light dishes. There was much knowing eye contact across the table, and tangling of feet underneath it. There was much pointed eating of pears and bananas and so on. And thus the ship of temptation steered, gently yet inexorably, to a good docking.
And then there was Nanny Ogg.
Nanny Ogg appreciated fine wine in her very own way. It would never have occurred to Casanunda that anyone would top up white wine with port merely because she'd reached the end of the bottle.
As for the food . . . well, she enjoyed that, too. Casanunda had never seen that elbow action before. Show Nanny Ogg a good dinner and she went at it with knife, fork, and rammer. Watching her eat a lobster was a particular experience he would not forget in a hurry. They'd be picking bits of claw out of the woodwork for weeks.
And the asparagus . . . he might actually try to forget Nanny Ogg putting away asparagus, but he suspected the memory would come creeping back.
It must be a witch thing, he told himself. They're always very clear about what they want. If you climbed cliffs and braved rivers and skied down mountains to bring a box of chocolates to Gytha Ogg, she'd have the nougat centres out of the bottom layer even before you got your crampons off. That's it. Whatever a witch does, she does one hundred percent.
Hubba, hubba!
"Ain't you going to eat all those prawns? Just push the plate this way, then."
He had tried a little footsie to keep his hand in, as it were, but an accidental blow on the ankle from one of Nanny's heavy iron-nailed boots had put a stop to that.
And then there had been the gypsy violinist. At first Nanny had complained about people playin' the fiddle while she was trying to concentrate on her eatin', but between courses she'd snatched it off the man, thrown the bow into a bowl of camellias, retuned the instrument to something approaching a banjo, and had given Casanunda three rousing verses of what, him being foreign, she chose to call Il Porcupine Nil Sodomy Est.
Then she'd drunk more wine.
What also captivated Casanunda was the way Nanny Ogg's face became a mass of cheerful horizontal lines when she laughed, and Nanny Ogg laughed a lot.
In fact Casanunda was finding, through the faint haze of wine, that he was actually having fun.
"I take it there is no Mr. Ogg?" he said, eventually.
"Oh, yes, there's a Mr. Ogg," said Nanny. "We buried him years ago. Well, we had to. He was dead."
"It must be very hard for a woman living all alone?"
"Dreadful," said Nanny Ogg, who had never prepared a meal or wielded a duster since her eldest daughter had been old enough to do it for her, and who had at least four meals cooked for her every day by various terrified daughters-in-law.
"It must be especially lonely at night," said Casanunda, out of habit as much as anything else.
"Well, there's Greebo," said Nanny "He keeps my feet warm."
"Greebo-"
"The cat. I say, do you think there's any pudding?"
Later, she asked for a doggy bottle.
Mr. Brooks the beekeeper ladled some greenish, foul smelling liquid out of the saucepan that was always simmering in his secret hut, and filled his squirter.
There was a wasps' nest in the garden wall. It'd be a mortuary by morning.
That was the thing about bees. They always guarded the entrance to the hive, with their lives if necessary. But wasps were adept at finding the odd chink in the woodwork around the back somewhere and the sleek little devils'd be in and robbing the hive before you knew it. Funny. The bees in the hive'd let them do it, too. They guarded the entrance, but if a wasp found another way in, they didn't know what to do.
He gave the plunger a push. A stream of liquid bubbled out and left a smoking streak on the floor.
Wasps looked pretty enough. But if you were for bees, you had to be against wasps.
There seemed to be some sort of party going on in the hall. He vaguely remembered getting an invitation but, on the whole, that sort of thing never really caught his imagination. And especially now. Things were wrong. None of the hives showed any signs of swarming. Not one.
As he passed the hives in the dusk he heard the humming. You got that, on a warm night. Battalions of bees stood at the hive entrance, fanning the air with their wings to keep the brood cool. But there was also the roar of bees circling the hive.
They were angry, and on guard.
There was a series of small weirs just on the borders of Lancre. Granny Weatherwax hauled herself up on to the damp woodwork, and squelched to the bank where she emptied her boots.
After a while a pointy wizard's hat drifted downriver, and rose to reveal a pointy wizard underneath it. Granny lent a hand to help Ridcully out of the water.
"There," she said, "bracing, wasn't it? Seemed to me you could do with a cold bath."
Ridcully tried to clean some mud out of his ear. He glared at Granny.
"Why aren't you wet?"
"I am."
"No you're not. You're just damp. I'm wet through. How can you float down a river and just be damp?"
"I dries out quick."
Granny Weatherwax glared up the rocks. A short distance away the steep road ran on to Lancre, but there were other, more private ways known to her among the trees,
"So," she said, more or less to herself. "She wants to stop me going there, does she? Well, we'll see about that."
"Going where?" said Ridcully.
"Ain't sure," said Granny. "All I know is, if she don't want me to go there, that's where I'm going. But I hadn't bargained on you tumin' up and having a rush of blood to the heart. Come on."
Ridcully wrung out his robe. A lot of the sequins had come off. He removed his hat and unscrewed the point.
Headgear picks up morphic vibrations. Quite a lot of trouble had once been caused in Unseen University by a former Archchancellor's hat, which had picked up too many magical vibrations after spending so much time on wizardly heads and had developed a personality of its very own. Ridcully had put a stop to this by having his own hat made to particular specifications by an Ankh-Morpork firm of completely insane hatters.
It was not a normal wizard hat. Few wizards have ever made much use of the pointy bit, except maybe to keep the odd pair of socks in it. But Ridcully's hat had small cupboards. It had surprises. It had four telescopic legs and a roll of oiled silk in the brim that extended downward to make a small but serviceable tent, and a patent spirit stove just above it. It had inner pockets with three days' supply of iron rations. And the tip unscrewed to dispense an adequate supply of spirituous liquors for use in emergencies, such as when Ridcully was thirsty.
Ridcully waved the small pointed cup at Granny.
"Brandy?" he said.
"What have you got on your head?"
Ridcully felt his pate gingerly.
"Urn . . ."
"Smells like honey and horse apples to me. And what's that thing?"
Ridcully lifted the small cage off his head. There was a small treadmill in it, in a complex network of glass rods. A couple of feeding bowls were visible. And there was a small, hairy and currently quite wet mouse.
"Oh, it's something some of the young wizards came up with," said Ridcully diffidently "I said I'd . . . try it out for them. The mouse hair rubs against the glass rods and there's sparks, don't'y'know, and . . . and . . ."
Granny Weatherwax looked at the Archchancellor's somewhat grubby hair and raised an eyebrow.
"My word," she said. "What will they think of next?"
"Don't really understand how it works, Stibbons is the man for this sort of thing, I thought I'd help them out. . ."
"Lucky you were going bald, eh?"
In the darkness of her sickroom Diamanda opened her eyes, if they were her eyes. There was a pearly sheen to them. The song was as yet only on the threshold of hearing. And the world was different. A small part of her mind was still Diamanda, and looked out through the mists of enchantment. The world was a pattern of fine silver lines, constantly moving, as though everything was coated with filigree. Except where there was iron. There the lines were crushed and tight and bent. There, the whole world was invisible. Iron distorted the world. Keep away from iron.
She slipped out of bed, using the edge of the blanket to grasp the door handle, and opened the door.
Shawn Ogg was standing very nearly to attention.
Currently he was guarding the castle and Seeing How Long He Could Stand On One Leg.
Then it occurred to him that this wasn't a proper activity for a martial artist, and he turned it into No. 19, the Flying Chrysanthemum Double Drop Kick.
After a while he realized that he had been hearing something. It was vaguely rhythmical, and put him in mind of a grasshopper chirruping. It was coming from inside the castle.
He turned carefully, keeping alert in case the massed armies of Foreign Parts tried to invade while his back was turned.
This needed working out. He wasn't on guard from things inside the castle, was he? "On guard" meant things outside. That was the point of castles. That's why you had all the walls and things. He'd got the big poster they gave away free with Jane's All the World's Siege Weapons. He knew what he was talking about.
Shawn was not the quickest of thinkers, but his thoughts turned inexorably to the elf in the dungeon. But that was locked up. He'd locked the door himself. And there was iron all over the place, and Mum had been very definite about the iron.
Nevertheless. . .
He was methodical about it. He raised the drawbridge and dropped the portcullis and peered over the wall for good measure, but there was just the dusk and the night breeze.
He could feel the sound now. It seemed to be coming out of the stone, and had a saw-toothed edge to it that grated on his nerves.
It couldn't have got out, could it? No, it stood to reason. People hadn't gone around building dungeons you could get out of.
The sound swung back and forth across the scale.
Shawn leaned his rusty pike against the wall and drew his sword. He knew how to use it. He practiced for ten minutes every day, and it was one sorry hanging sack of straw when he'd finished with it.
He slipped into the keep by the back door and sidled along the passages toward the dungeon. There was no one else around. Of course, everyone was at the Entertainment. And they'd be back any time now, carousing all over the place.
The castle felt big, and old, and cold.
Any time now.
Bound to.
The noise stopped.
Shawn peered around the comer. There were the steps, there was the open doorway to the dungeons.
"Stop!" shouted Shawn, just in case.
The sound echoed off the stones.
"Stop! Or . . . or . . . or . . . Stop!"
He eased his way down the steps and looked through the
archway
"I warn you! I'm learning the Path of the Happy Jade
Lotus!"
There was the door to the cell, standing ajar. And a
white-clad figure next to it. Shawn blinked. "Aren't you Miss Tockley?"
She smiled at him. Her eyes glowed in the dim light. "You're wearing chain-mail, Shawn," she said. "What, miss?" He glanced at the open door again. "That's terrible. You must take it off, Shawn. How can
you hear with all that stuff around your ears?"
Shawn was aware of the empty space behind him. But
he daren't look around.
"I can hear fine, miss," he said, trying to ease himself around so that his back was against a wall.
"But you can't hear truly," said Diamanda, drifting forward. "The iron makes you deaf."
Shawn was not yet used to thinly clad young women approaching him with a dreamy look on their faces. He fervently wished he could take the Path of the Retreating Back.
He glanced sideways.
There was a tall skinny shape outlined in the open cell doorway. It was standing very carefully, as if it wanted to keep as far away from its surroundings as possible.
Diamanda was smiling at him in a funny way.
He ran.
Somehow, the woods had changed. Ridcully was certain that in his youth they'd been full of bluebells and primroses and — and bluebells and whatnot and so on. Not bloody great briars all over the place. They snagged at his robe and once or twice some tree-climbing equivalent knocked his hat off.
What made it worse was that Esme Weatherwax seemed to avoid all of them.
"How do you manage that?"
"I just know where I am all the time," said Granny.
"Well? I know where I am, too."
"No you don't. You just happen to be present. That's not the same."
"Well, do you happen to know where a proper path is?"
"This is a short cut."
"Between two places where you're not lost, d'you mean?"
"I keep tellin' you, I ain't lost! I'm . . . directionally challenged."
"Hah!"
But it was a fact about Esme Weatherwax, he had to admit. She might be lost, and he had reason to suspect this was the case now, unless there were in this forest two trees with exactly the same arrangement of branches and a strip of his robe caught on one of them, but she did have a quality that in anyone not wearing a battered pointy hat and an antique black dress might have been called poise. Absolute poise. It would be hard to imagine her making an awkward movement unless she wanted to.
He'd seen that years ago, although of course at the time he'd just been amazed at the way her shape fitted perfectly into the space around it. And—
He'd got caught up again.
"Wait a minute!"
"Entirely the wrong sort of clothes for the country!"
"I wasn't expecting a hike through the woods! This is ceremonial damn costume!"
"Take it off, then."
"Then how will anyone know I'm a wizard?"
"I'll be sure to tell them!"
Granny Weatherwax was getting rattled. She was also, despite everything that she'd said, getting lost. But the point was that you couldn't get lost between the weir at the bottom of the Lancre rapids and Lancre town itself. It was uphill all the way Besides, she'd walked through the local forests all her life. They were her forests.
She was pretty sure they'd passed the same tree twice. There was a bit of Ridcully's robe hanging on it.
It was like getting lost in her own garden.
She was also sure she'd seen the unicorn a couple of times. It was tracking them. She'd tried to get into its mind. She might as well have tried to climb an ice wall.
It wasn't as if her own mind was tranquil. But now at least she knew she was sane.
When the walls between the universes are thin, when the parallel strands of If bunch together to pass through the Now, then certain things leak across. Tiny signals, perhaps, but audible to a receiver skilled enough.
In her head were the faint, insistent thoughts of a thousand Esme Weatherwaxes.
Magrat wasn't sure what to pack. Most of her original clothes seemed to have evaporated since she'd been in the castle, and it was hardly good manners to take the ones Verence had bought for her. The same applied to the engagement ring. She wasn't sure if you were allowed to keep it.
She glared at herself in the mirror.
She'd have to stop thinking like this. She seemed to have spent her whole life trying to make herself small, trying to be polite, apologizing when people walked over her, trying to be good-mannered. And what had happened? People had treated her as if she was small and polite and good-mannered.
She'd stick the, the, the damn letter on the mirror, so they'd all know why she'd gone.
She'd a damn good mind to go off to one of the cities and become a courtesan.
Whatever that was.
And then she heard the singing.
It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful sound Magrat had ever heard. It flowed straight through the ears and into the hindbrain, into the blood, into the bone . . .
A silk camisole dropped from her fingers on to the floor.
She wrenched at the door, and a tiny part of her mind still capable of rational thought remembered about the key.
The song filled the passageway. She gripped some folds of the wedding dress to make running easier and hurried toward the stairs . . .
Something bulleted out of another doorway and bore her to the floor.
It was Shawn Ogg. Through the chromatic haze she could see his worried face peering out from its hood of rusty—
—iron.
The song changed while staying the same. The complex harmonies, the fascinating rhythm did not alter but suddenly grated, as if she was hearing the song through different ears.
She was dragged into the doorway.
"Are you all right. Miss Queen?"
"What's happening?"
"Dunno, Miss Queen. But I think we've got elves."
"Elves?"
"And they've got Miss Tockley. Um. You know you took the iron away-"