Verence reached the nursery, saw the broken door, the trailed sheets . . .
Heard the hoofbeats. He reached the window, saw his own horse go full tilt through the open gateway in the shafts of the coach. A few seconds later three horsemen followed it. The sound of hooves echoed for a moment on the cobbles and died away.
The king thumped the sill, his fist going several inches into the stone.
Then he pushed his way out into the air, disdaining to notice the drop, and half flew, half ran down across the courtyard and into the stables.
It took him a mere twenty seconds to learn that, to the great many things a ghost cannot do, should be added the mounting of a horse. He did succeed in getting into the saddle, or at least in straddling the air just above it, but when the horse finally bolted, terrified beyond belief by the mysterious things happening behind its ears, Verence was left sitting astride five feet of fresh air.
He tried to run, and got about as far as the gateway before the air around him thickened to the consistency of tar.
‘You can’t,’ said a sad, old voice behind him. ‘You have to stay where you were killed. That’s what haunting means. Take it from me. I know.’
* * *
Granny Weatherwax paused with a second scone halfway to her mouth.
‘Something comes,’ she said.
‘Can you tell by the pricking of your thumbs?’ said Magrat earnestly. Magrat had learned a lot about witchcraft from books.
‘The pricking of my ears,’ said Granny. She raised her eyebrows at Nanny Ogg. Old Goodie Whemper had been an excellent witch in her way, but far too fanciful. Too many flowers and romantic notions and such.
The occasional flash of lightning showed the moorland stretching down to the forest, but the rain on the warm summer earth had filled the air with mist wraiths.
‘Hoofbeats?’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘No-one would come up here this time of night.’
Magrat peered around timidly. Here and there on the moor were huge standing stones, their origins lost in time, which were said to lead mobile and private lives of their own. She shivered.
‘What’s to be afraid of?’ she managed.
‘Us,’ said Granny Weatherwax, smugly.
The hoofbeats neared, slowed. And then the coach rattled between the furze bushes, its horses hanging in their harnesses. The driver leapt down, ran around to the door, pulled a large bundle from inside and dashed towards the trio.
He was halfway across the damp peat when he stopped and stared at Granny Weatherwax with a look of horror.
‘It’s all right,’ she whispered, and the whisper cut through the grumbling of the storm as clearly as a bell.
She took a few steps forward and a convenient lightning flash allowed her to look directly into the man’s eyes. They had the peculiarity of focus that told those who had the Know that he was no longer looking at anything in this world.
With a final jerking movement he thrust the bundle into Granny’s arms and toppled forward, the feathers of a crossbow bolt sticking out of his back.
Three figures moved into the firelight. Granny looked up into another pair of eyes, which were as chilly as the slopes of Hell.
Their owner threw his crossbow aside. There was a glimpse of chain mail under his sodden cloak as he drew his sword.
He didn’t flourish it. The eyes that didn’t leave Granny’s face weren’t the eyes of one who bothers about flourishing things. They were the eyes of one who knows exactly what swords are for. He reached out his hand.
‘You will give it to me,’ he said.
Granny twitched aside the blanket in her arms and looked down at a small face, wrapped in sleep.
She looked up.
‘No,’ she said, on general principles.
The soldier glanced from her to Magrat and Nanny Ogg, who were as still as the standing stones of the moor.
‘You are witches?’ he said.
Granny nodded. Lightning skewered down from the sky and a bush a hundred yards away blossomed into fire. The two soldiers behind the man muttered something, but he smiled and raised a mailed hand.
‘Does the skin of witches turn aside steel?’ he said.
‘Not that I’m aware,’ said Granny, levelly. ‘You could give it a try.’
One of the soldiers stepped forward and touched the man’s arm gingerly.
‘Sir, with respect, sir, it’s not a good idea—’
‘Be silent.’
‘But it’s terrible bad luck to—’
‘Must I ask you again?’
‘Sir,’ said the man. His eyes caught Granny’s for a moment, and reflected hopeless terror.
The leader grinned at Granny, who hadn’t moved a muscle.
‘Your peasant magic is for fools, mother of the night. I can strike you down where you stand.’
‘Then strike, man,’ said Granny, looking over his shoulder. ‘If your heart tells you, strike as hard as you dare.’
The man raised his sword. Lightning speared down again and split a stone a few yards away, filling the air with smoke and the stink of burnt silicon.
‘Missed,’ he said smugly, and Granny saw his muscles tense as he prepared to bring the sword down.
A look of extreme puzzlement crossed his face. He tilted his head sideways and opened his mouth, as if trying to come to terms with a new idea. His sword dropped out of his hand and landed point downwards in the peat. Then he gave a sigh and folded up, very gently, collapsing in a heap at Granny’s feet.
She gave him a gentle prod with her toe. ‘Perhaps you weren’t aware of what I was aiming at,’ she whispered. ‘Mother of the night, indeed!’
The soldier who had tried to restrain the man stared in horror at the bloody dagger in his hand, and backed away.
‘I-I-I couldn’t let. He shouldn’t of. It’s – it’s not right to,’ he stuttered.
‘Are you from around these parts, young man?’ said Granny.
He dropped to his knees. ‘Mad Wolf, ma’am,’ he said. He stared back at the fallen captain. ‘They’ll kill me now!’ he wailed.
‘But you did what you thought was right,’ said Granny.
‘I didn’t become a soldier for this. Not to go round killing people.’
‘Exactly right. If I was you, I’d become a sailor,’ said Granny thoughtfully. ‘Yes, a nautical career. I should start as soon as possible. Now, in fact. Run off, man. Run off to sea where there are no tracks. You will have a long and successful life, I promise.’ She looked thoughtful for a moment, and added, ‘At least, longer than it’s likely to be if you hang around here.’
He pulled himself upward, gave her a look compounded of gratitude and awe, and ran off into the mist.
‘And now perhaps someone will tell us what this is all about?’ said Granny, turning to the third man.
To where the third man had been.
There was the distant drumming of hooves on the turf, and then silence.
Nanny Ogg hobbled forward.
‘I could catch him,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’
Granny shook her head. She sat down on a rock and looked at the child in her arms. It was a boy, no more than two years old, and quite naked under the blanket. She rocked him vaguely and stared at nothing.
Nanny Ogg examined the two corpses with the air of one for whom laying-out holds no fears.
‘Perhaps they were bandits,’ said Magrat tremulously.
Nanny shook her head.
‘A strange thing,’ she said. ‘They both wear this same badge. Two bears on a black and gold shield. Anyone know what that means?’
‘It’s the badge of King Verence,’ said Magrat.
‘Who’s he?’ said Granny Weatherwax.
‘He rules this country,’ said Magrat.
‘Oh. That king,’ said Granny, as if the matter was hardly worth noting.
‘Soldiers fighting one another. Doesn’t make sense,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Magrat, you have a look in the coach.’
The youngest
witch poked around inside the body-work and came back with a sack. She upended it, and something thudded on to the turf.
The storm had rumbled off to the other side of the mountain now, and the watery moon shed a thin gruel of light over the damp moorland. It also gleamed off what was, without any doubt, an extremely important crown.
‘It’s a crown,’ said Magrat. ‘It’s got all spiky bits on it.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Granny.
The child gurgled in its sleep. Granny Weatherwax didn’t hold with looking at the future, but now she could feel the future looking at her.
She didn’t like its expression at all.
King Verence was looking at the past, and had formed pretty much the same view.
‘You can see me?’ he said.
‘Oh, yes. Quite clearly, in fact,’ said the newcomer.
Verence’s brows knotted. Being a ghost seemed to require considerably more mental effort than being alive; he’d managed quite well for forty years without having to think more than once or twice a day, and now he was doing it all the time.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’re a ghost, too.’
‘Well spotted.’
‘It was the head under your arm,’ said Verence, pleased with himself. ‘That gave me a clue.’
‘Does it bother you? I can put it back on if it bothers you,’ said the old ghost helpfully. He extended his free hand. ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Champot, King of Lancre.’
‘Verence. Likewise.’ He peered down at the old king’s features and added, ‘Don’t seem to recall seeing your picture in the Long Gallery . . .’
‘Oh, all that was after my time,’ said Champot dismissively.
‘How long have you been here, then?’
Champot reached down and rubbed his nose. ‘About a thousand years,’ he said, his voice tinged with pride. ‘Man and ghost.’
‘A thousand years!’
‘I built this place, in fact. Just got it nicely decorated when my nephew cut my head off while I was asleep. I can’t tell you how much that upset me.’
‘But . . . a thousand years . . .’ Verence repeated, weakly.
Champot took his arm. ‘It’s not that bad,’ he confided, as he led the unresisting king across the courtyard. ‘Better than being alive, in many ways.’
‘They must be bloody strange ways, then!’ snapped Verence. ‘I liked being alive!’
Champot grinned reassuringly. ‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to get used to it!’
‘You’ve got a strong morphogenic field,’ said Champot. ‘I can tell. I look for these things. Yes. Very strong, I should say.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I was never very good with words, you know,’ said Champot. ‘I always found it easier to hit people with something. But I gather it all boils down to how alive you were. When you were alive, I mean. Something called—’ he paused – ‘animal vitality. Yes, that was it. Animal vitality. The more you had, the more you stay yourself, as it were, if you’re a ghost. I expect you were one hundred per cent alive, when you were alive,’ he added.
Despite himself, Verence felt flattered. ‘I tried to keep myself busy,’ he said. They had strolled through the wall into the Great Hall, which was now empty. The sight of the trestle tables triggered an automatic reaction in the king.
‘How do we go about getting breakfast?’ he said.
Champot’s head looked surprised.
‘We don’t,’ he said. ‘We’re ghosts.’
‘But I’m hungry!’
‘You’re not, you know. It’s just your imagination.’
There was a clattering from the kitchens. The cooks were already up and, in the absence of any other instructions, were preparing the castle’s normal breakfast menu. Familiar smells were wafting up from the dark archway that led to the kitchens.
Verence sniffed.
‘Sausages,’ he said dreamily. ‘Bacon. Eggs. Smoked fish.’ He stared at Champot. ‘Black pudding,’ he whispered.
‘You haven’t actually got a stomach,’ the old ghost pointed out. ‘It’s all in the mind. Just force of habit. You just think you’re hungry.’
‘I think I’m ravenous.’
‘Yes, but you can’t actually touch anything, you see,’ Champot explained gently. ‘Nothing at all.’
Verence lowered himself gently on to a bench, so that he did not drift through it, and sank his head in his hands. He’d heard that death could be bad. He just hadn’t realized how bad.
He wanted revenge. He wanted to get out of this suddenly horrible castle, to find his son. But he was even more terrified to find that what he really wanted, right now, was a plate of kidneys.
A damp dawn flooded across the landscape, scaled the battlements of Lancre Castle, stormed the keep and finally made it through the casement of the solar.
Duke Felmet stared out gloomily at the dripping forest. There was such a lot of it. It wasn’t, he decided, that he had anything against trees as such, it was just that the sight of so much of them was terribly depressing. He kept wanting to count them.
‘Indeed, my love,’ he said.
The duke put those who met him in mind of some sort of lizard, possibly the type that lives on volcanic islands, moves once a day, has a vestigial third eye and blinks on a monthly basis. He considered himself to be a civilized man more suited to the dry air and bright sun of a properly-organized climate.
On the other hand, he mused, it might be nice to be a tree. Trees didn’t have ears, he was pretty sure of this. And they seemed to manage without the blessed state of matrimony. A male oak tree – he’d have to look this up – a male oak tree just shed its pollen on the breeze and all the business with the acorns, unless it was oak apples, no, he was pretty sure it was acorns, took place somewhere else . . .
‘Yes, my precious,’ he said.
Yes, trees had got it all worked out. Duke Felmet glared at the forest roof. Selfish bastards.
‘Certainly, my dear,’ he said.
‘What?’ said the duchess.
The duke hesitated, desperately trying to replay the monologue of the last five minutes. There had been something about him being half a man, and . . . infirm on purpose? And he was sure there had been a complaint about the coldness of the castle. Yes, that was probably it. Weil, those wretched trees could do a decent day’s work for once.
‘I’ll have some cut down and brought in directly, my cherished,’ he said.
Lady Felmet was momentarily speechless. This was by way of being a calendar event. She was a large and impressive woman, who gave people confronting her for the first time the impression that they were seeing a galleon under full sail; the effect was heightened by her unfortunate belief that red velvet rather suited her. However, it didn’t set off her complexion. It matched it.
The duke often mused on his good luck in marrying her. If it wasn’t for the engine of her ambition he’d be just another local lord, with nothing much to do but hunt, drink and exercise his droit de seigneur.2 Instead, he was now just a step away from the throne, and might soon be monarch of all he surveyed.
Provided that all he surveyed was trees.
He sighed.
‘Cut what down?’ said Lady Felmet, icily.
‘Oh, the trees,’ said the duke.
‘What have trees got to do with it?’
‘Well . . . there are such a lot of them,’ said the duke, with feeling.
‘Don’t change the subject!’
‘Sorry, my sweet.’
‘What I said was, how could you have been so stupid as to let them get away? I told you that servant was far too loyal. You can’t trust someone like that.’
‘No, my love.’
‘You didn’t by any chance consider sending someone after them, I suppose?’
‘Bentzen, my dear. And a couple of guards.’
‘Oh.’ The duchess paused. Bentzen, as captain of the duke’s personal bodyguard, was as efficient a k
iller as a psychotic mongoose. He would have been her choice. It annoyed her to be temporarily deprived of a chance to fault her husband, but she rallied quite well.
‘He wouldn’t have needed to go out at all, if only you’d listened to me. But you never do.’
‘Do what, my passion?’
The duke yawned. It had been a long night. There had been a thunderstorm of quite unnecessarily dramatic proportions, and then there had been all that messy business with the knives.
It has already been mentioned that Duke Felmet was one step away from the throne. The step in question was at the top of the flight leading to the Great Hall, down which King Verence had tumbled in the dark only to land, against all the laws of probability, on his own dagger.
It had, however, been declared by his own physician to be a case of natural causes. Bentzen had gone to see the man and explained that falling down a flight of steps with a dagger in your back was a disease caused by unwise opening of the mouth.
In fact it had already been caught by several members of the king’s own bodyguard who had been a little bit hard of hearing. There had been a minor epidemic.
The duke shuddered. There were details about last night that were both hazy and horrible.
He tried to reassure himself that all the unpleasantness was over now, and he had a kingdom. It wasn’t much of one, apparently being mainly trees, but it was a kingdom and it had a crown.
If only they could find it.
Lancre Castle was built on an outcrop of rock by an architect who had heard about Gormenghast but hadn’t got the budget. He’d done his best, though, with a tiny confection of cut-price turrets, bargain basements, buttresses, crenellations, gargoyles, towers, courtyards, keeps and dungeons; in fact, just about everything a castle needs except maybe reasonable foundations and the kind of mortar that doesn’t wash away in a light shower.
The castle leaned vertiginously over the racing white water of the Lancre river, which boomed darkly a thousand feet below. Every now and again a few bits fell in.
Small as it was, though, the castle contained a thousand places to hide a crown.
The duchess swept out to find someone else to berate, and left Lord Felmet looking gloomily at the landscape. It started to rain.
It was on this cue that there came a thunderous knocking at the castle door. It seriously disturbed the castle porter, who was playing Cripple Mister Onion with the castle cook and the castle’s Fool in the warmth of the kitchen.
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