Do you want to bet the rest of your life? Isn’t this what you wanted anyway? Isn’t it what you came here hoping for? Really?
Verence was looking at her with some concern.
‘Is it the witching?’ he said. ‘You don’t have to give that up entirely, of course. I’ve got a great respect for witches. And you can be a witch queen, although I think that means you have to wear rather revealing clothes and keep cats and give people poisoned apples. I read that somewhere. The witching’s a problem, is it?’
‘No,’ Magrat mumbled, ‘it’s not that … um … did you mention a crown?’
‘You’ve got to have a crown,’ said Verence. ‘Queens do. I looked it up.’
Her brain cut in again. Queen Magrat, it suggested. It held up the mirror of the imagination …
‘You’re not upset, are you?’ said Verence.
‘What? Oh. No. Me? No.’
‘Good. That’s all sorted out, then. I think that just about covers everything, don’t you?’
‘Um—’
Verence rubbed his hands together.
‘We’re doing some marvellous things with legumes,’ he said, as if he hadn’t just completely rearranged Magrat’s life without consulting her. ‘Beans, peas … you know. Nitrogen fixers. And marl and lime, of course. Scientific husbandry. Come and look at this.’
He bounced away enthusiastically.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘we could really make this kingdom work.’
Magrat trailed after him.
So that was all settled, then. Not a proposal, just a statement. She hadn’t been quite sure how the moment would be, even in the darkest hours of the night, but she’d had an idea that roses and sunsets and bluebirds might just possibly be involved. Clover had not figured largely. Beans and other leguminous nitrogen fixers were not a central feature.
On the other hand Magrat was, at the core, far more practical than most people believed who saw no further than her vague smile and collection of more than three hundred pieces of occult jewellery, none of which worked.
So this was how you got married to a king. It all got arranged for you. There were no white horses. The past flipped straight into the future, carrying you with it.
Perhaps that was normal. Kings were busy people. Magrat’s experience of marrying them was limited.
‘Where are we going?’ she said.
The old rose garden.’
Ah … well, this was more like it.
Except that there weren’t any roses. The walled garden had been stripped of its walks and arbours and was now waist high in green stalks with white flowers. Bees were furiously at work in the blossoms.
‘Beans?’ said Magrat.
‘Yes! A specimen crop. I keep bringing the farmers up here to show them,’ said Verence. He sighed. ‘They nod and mumble and smile but I’m afraid they just go off and do the same old things.’
‘I know,’ said Magrat. ‘The same thing happened when I tried to give people lessons in natural childbirth.’
Verence raised an eyebrow. Even to him the thought of Magrat giving lessons in childbirth to the fecund and teak-faced women of Lancre was slightly unreal.
‘Really? How had they been having babies before?’ he said.
‘Oh, any old way,’ said Magrat.
They looked at the little buzzing bean field.
‘Of course, when you’re queen, you won’t need to—’ Verence began.
It happened softly, almost like a kiss, as light as the touch of sunlight.
There was no wind, only a sudden heavy calmness that made the ears pop.
The stems bent and broke, and lay down in a circle.
The bees roared, and fled.
The three witches arrived at the standing stone together.
They didn’t even bother with explanations. There were some things you know.
‘In the middle of my bloody herbs!’ said Granny Weatherwax.
‘On the palace garden!’ said Magrat.
‘Poor little mite! And he was holding it up to show me, too!’ said Nanny Ogg.
Granny Weatherwax paused.
‘What’re you talking about, Gytha Ogg?’ she said.
‘Our Pewsey was growing mustard-and-cress on a flannel for his Nan,’ said Nanny Ogg, patiently. ‘He shows it to me, right enough, and just as I bends down and – splat! Crop circle!’
‘This,’ said Granny Weatherwax, ‘is serious. It’s been years since they’ve been as bad as this. We all know what it means, don’t we. What we’ve got—’
‘Um,’ said Magrat.
‘—to do now is—’
‘Excuse me,’ said Magrat. There were some things you had to be told.
‘Yes?’
‘I don’t know what it means,’ said Magrat. ‘I mean, old Goodie Whemper—’
‘—maysherestinpeace—’ the older witches chorused.
‘—told me once that the circles were dangerous, but she never said anything about why.’
The older witches shared a glance.
‘Never told you about the Dancers?’ said Granny Weatherwax.
‘Never told you about the Long Man?’ said Nanny Ogg.
‘What Dancers? You mean those old stones up on the moor?’
‘All you need to know right now,’ said Granny Weatherwax, ‘is that we’ve got to put a stop to Them.’
‘What Them?’
Granny radiated innocence …
‘The circles, of course,’ she said.
‘Oh, no,’ said Magrat. ‘I can tell by the way you said it. You said Them as though it was some sort of curse. It wasn’t just a them, it was a them with a capital The.’
The old witches looked awkward again.
‘And who’s the Long Man?’ said Magrat.
‘We do not,’ said Granny, ‘ever talk about the Long Man.’
‘No harm in telling her about the Dancers, at any rate,’ mumbled Nanny Ogg.
‘Yes, but … you know … I mean … she’s Magrat,’ said Granny.
‘What’s that meant to mean?’ Magrat demanded.
‘You probably won’t feel the same way about Them, is what I am saying,’ said Granny.
‘We’re talking about the—’ Nanny Ogg began.
‘Don’t name ’em!’
‘Yeah, right. Sorry.’
‘Mind you, a circle might not find the Dancers,’ said Granny. ‘We can always hope. Could be just random.’
‘But if one opens up inside the—’ said Nanny Ogg.
Magrat snapped.
‘You just do this on purpose! You talk in code the whole time! You always do this! But you won’t be able to when I’m queen!’
That stopped them.
Nanny Ogg put her head on one side.
‘Oh?’ she said. ‘Young Verence popped the question, then?’
‘Yes!’
‘When’s the happy event?’ said Granny Weatherwax, icily.
‘Two weeks’ time,’ said Magrat. ‘Midsummer Day.’
‘Bad choice, bad choice,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Shortest night o’ the year—’
‘Gytha Ogg!’
‘And you’ll be my subjects,’ said Magrat, ignoring this. ‘And you’ll have to curtsy and everything!’
She knew as soon as she said it that it was stupid, but anger drove her on.
Granny Weatherwax’s eyes narrowed.
‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘We will, will we?’
‘Yes, and if you don’t,’ said Magrat, ‘you can get thrown in prison.’
‘My word,’ said Granny. ‘Deary deary me. I wouldn’t like that. I wouldn’t like that at all.’
All three of them knew that the castle dungeons, which in any case had never been its most notable feature, were now totally unused. Verence II was the most amiable monarch in the history of Lancre. His subjects regarded him with the sort of good-natured contempt that is the fate of all those who work quietly and conscientiously for the public good. Besides, Verence would rather cut his own leg off tha
n put a witch in prison, since it’d save trouble in the long run and probably be less painful.
‘Queen Magrat, eh?’ said Nanny Ogg, trying to lighten the atmosphere a bit. ‘Cor. Well, the old castle could do with a bit of lightening up—’
‘Oh, it’ll lighten up all right,’ said Granny.
‘Well, anyway, I don’t have to bother with this sort of thing,’ said Magrat. ‘Whatever it is. It’s your business. I just shan’t have time, I’m sure.’
‘I’m sure you can please yourself, your going-to-be-majesty,’ said Granny Weatherwax.
‘Hah!’ said Magrat. ‘I can! You can jol— you can damn well find another witch for Lancre! All right? Another soppy girl to do all the dreary work and never be told anything and be talked over the head of the whole time. I’ve got better things to do!’
‘Better things than being a witch?’ said Granny.
Magrat walked into it.
‘Yes!’
‘Oh, dear,’ murmured Nanny.
‘Oh. Well, then I expect you’ll be wanting to be off,’ said Granny, her voice like knives. ‘Back to your palace, I’ll be bound.’
‘Yes!’
Magrat picked up her broomstick.
Granny’s arm shot out very fast and grabbed the handle.
‘Oh, no,’ she said, ‘you don’t. Queens ride around in golden coaches and whatnot. Each to their own. Brooms is for witches.’
‘Now come on, you two,’ began Nanny Ogg, one of nature’s mediators. ‘Anyway, someone can be a queen and a w—’
‘Who cares?’ said Magrat, dropping the broomstick. ‘I don’t have to bother with that sort of thing any more.’
She turned, clutched at her dress, and ran. She became a figure outlined against the sunset.
‘You daft old besom, Esme,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Just because she’s getting wed.’
‘You know what she’d say if we told her,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘She’d get it all wrong. The Gentry. Circles. She’d say it was … nice. Best for her if she’s out of it.’
‘They ain’t been active for years and years,’ said Nanny. ‘We’ll need some help. I mean … when did you last go up to the Dancers?’
‘You know how it is,’ said Granny. ‘When it’s so quiet … you don’t think about ’em.’
‘We ought to have kept ’em cleared.’
‘True.’
‘We better get up there first thing tomorrow,’ said Nanny Ogg.
‘Yes.’
‘Better bring a sickle, too.’
There isn’t much of the kingdom of Lancre where you could drop a football and not have it roll away from you. Most of it is moorland and steeply-forested hillside, giving way to sharp and ragged mountains where even trolls wouldn’t go and valleys so deep that they have to pipe the sunlight in.
There was an overgrown path up to the moorland where the Dancers stood, even though it was only a few miles from the town. Hunters tracked up there sometimes, but only by accident. It wasn’t that the hunting was bad but, well—
—there were the stones.
Stone circles were common enough everywhere in the mountains. Druids built them as weather computers and since it was always cheaper to build a new 33-MegaLith circle than upgrade an old slow one there were generally plenty of ancient ones around.
No druids ever came near the Dancers.
The stones weren’t shaped. They weren’t even positioned in any particularly significant way. There wasn’t any of that stuff about the sun striking the right stone at dawn on the right day. Someone had just dragged eight red rocks into a rough circle.
But the weather was different. People said that, if it started to rain, it always began to fall inside the circle a few seconds after it had started outside, as if the rain was coming from further away. If clouds crossed the sun, it’d be a moment or two before the light faded inside the circle.
William Scrope is going to die in a couple of minutes. It has to be said that he shouldn’t have been hunting deer out of season, and especially not the fine stag he was tracking, and certainly not a fine stag of the Ramtop Red species, which is officially endangered although not as endangered, right now, as William Scrope.
It was ahead of him, pushing through the bracken, making so much noise that a blind man could have tracked it.
Scrope waded through after it.
Mist was still hanging around the stones, not in a blanket but in long raggedy strings.
The stag reached the circle now, and stopped. It trotted back and forth once or twice, and then looked up at Scrope.
He raised the crossbow.
The stag turned, and leapt between the stones.
There were only confused impressions from then on. The first was of—
—distance. The circle was a few yards across, it shouldn’t suddenly appear to contain so much distance.
And the next was of—
—speed. Something was coming out of the circle, a white dot growing bigger and bigger.
He knew he’d aimed the bow. But it was whirled out of his hands as the thing struck, and suddenly there was only the sensation of—
—peace.
And the brief remembrance of pain.
William Scrope died.
William Scrope looked through his hands at the crushed bracken. The reason that it was crushed was that his own body was sprawled upon it.
His newly-deceased eyes surveyed the landscape.
There are no delusions for the dead. Dying is like waking up after a really good party, when you have one or two seconds of innocent freedom before you recollect all the things you did last night which seemed so logical and hilarious at the time, and then you remember the really amazing thing you did with a lampshade and two balloons, which had them in stitches, and now you realize you’re going to have to look a lot of people in the eye today and you’re sober now and so are they but you can both remember.
‘Oh,’ he said.
The landscape flowed around the stones. It was all so obvious now, when you saw it from the outside …
Obvious. No walls, only doors. No edges, only corners—
WILLIAM SCROPE.
‘Yes?’
IF YOU WOULD PLEASE STEP THIS WAY.
‘Are you a hunter?’
I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES.
Death grinned hopefully. Scrope’s post-physical brow furrowed.
‘What? Like … sherry, custard … that sort of thing?’
Death sighed. Metaphors were wasted on people. Sometimes he felt that no-one took him seriously enough.
I TAKE AWAY PEOPLE’S LIVES IS WHAT I MEAN, he said testily.
‘Where to?’
WE SHALL HAVE TO SEE, WON’T WE?
William Scrope was already fading into the mist.
‘That thing that got me—’
YES?
‘I thought they were extinct!’
NO. THEY JUST WENT AWAY.
‘Where to?’
Death extended a bony digit.
OVER THERE.
Magrat hadn’t originally intended to move into the palace before the wedding, because people would talk. Admittedly a dozen people lived in the palace, which had a huge number of rooms, but she’d still be under the same roof, and that was good enough. Or bad enough.
That was before. Now her blood was sizzling. Let people talk. She had a pretty good idea which people they’d be, too. Which person, anyway. Witch person. Hah. Let them talk all they liked.
She got up early and packed her possessions, such as they were. It wasn’t exactly her cottage, and most of the furniture went with it. Witches came and went, but witches’ cottages went on for ever, usually with the same thatch they started with.
But she did own the set of magical knives, the mystic coloured cords, the assorted grails and crucibles, and a box full of rings, necklaces and bracelets heavy with the hermetic symbols of a dozen religions. She tipped them all into a sack.
Then there were
the books. Goodie Whemper had been something of a bookworm among witches. There were almost a dozen. She hesitated about the books, and finally she let them stay on the shelves.
There was the statutory pointy hat. She’d never liked it anyway, and had always avoided wearing it. Into the sack with it.
She looked around wild-eyed until she spotted the small cauldron in the inglenook. That’d do. Into the sack with that, and then tie the neck with string.
On the way up to the palace she crossed the bridge over Lancre Gorge and tossed the sack into the river.
It bobbed for a moment in the strong current, and then sank.
She’d secretly hoped for a string of multi-coloured bubbles, or even a hiss. But it just sank. Just as if it wasn’t anything very important.
Another world, another castle …
The elf galloped over the frozen moat, steam billowing from its black horse and from the thing it carried over its neck.
It rode up the steps and into the hall itself, where the Queen sat amidst her dreams …
‘My lord Lankin?’
‘A stag!’
It was still alive. Elves were skilled at leaving things alive, often for weeks.
‘From out of the circle?’
‘Yes, lady!’
‘It’s weakening. Did I not tell you?’
‘How long? How long?’
‘Soon. Soon. What went through the other way?’
The elf tried to avoid her face.
‘Your … pet, lady.’
‘No doubt it won’t go far,’ The Queen laughed. ‘No doubt it will have an amusing time …’
It rained briefly at dawn.
There’s nothing nastier to walk through than shoulder-high wet bracken. Well, there is. There are an uncountable number of things nastier to walk through, especially if they’re shoulder-high. But here and now, thought Nanny Ogg, it was hard to think of more than one or two.
They hadn’t landed inside the Dancers, of course. Even birds detoured rather than cross that airspace. Migrating spiders on gossamer threads floating half a mile up curved around it. Clouds split in two and flowed around it.
Mist hung around the stones. Sticky, damp mist.
Nanny hacked vaguely at the clinging bracken with her sickle.
‘You there, Esme?’ she muttered.
Granny Weatherwax’s head rose from a clump of bracken a few feet away.
‘There’s been things going on,’ she said, in a cold and deliberate tone.
Lords And Ladies Page 3