Lords And Ladies tds-14

by Terry David John Pratchett

  "A ruff, m'm. Um. They're all the rage in Sto Helit, my brother says."

  "You mean they make people angry? And what's this?"

  "Brocade, I think."

  "It's like cardboard. Do I have to wear this sort of thing every day?"

  "Don't know, I'm sure, m'm."

  "But Verence just trots around in leather gaiters and an old jacket!"

  "Ah, but you're queen. Queens can't do that sort of thing. Everyone knows that, m'm. It's all right for kings to go wandering around with their arse half out their trous-"

  She rammed her hand over her mouth.

  "It's all right," said Magrat. "I'm sure even kings have . . . tops to their legs just like everyone else. Just go on with what you were saying."

  Millie had gone bright red.

  "I mean, I mean, I mean, queens has got to be ladylike," she managed. "The king got books about it. Etti-quetty and stuff."

  Magrat surveyed herself critically in the mirror.

  "It really suits you, your soon-going-to-be-majesty," said Millie.

  Magrat turned this way and that.

  "My hair's a mess," she said, after a while.

  "Please m'm, the king said he's having a hairdresser come all the way from Ankh-Morpork, m'm. For the wedding."

  Magrat patted a tress into place. It was beginning to dawn on her that being a queen was a whole new life.

  "My word," she said. "And what happens now?"

  "Dunno, m'm."

  "What's the king doing?"

  "Oh, he had breakfast early and buggered off over to Slice to show old Muckloe how to breed his pigs out of a book."

  "So what do I do? What's my job?"

  Millie looked puzzled although this did not involve much of a change in her general expression.

  "Dunno, m'm. Reigning, I suppose. Walking around in the garden. Holding court. Doin' tapestry. That's very popular among queens. And then. . . er. . . later on there's the royal succession. . ."

  "At the moment," said Magrat firmly, "we'll have a go at the tapestry."

  Ridcully was having difficulty with the Librarian.

  "I happen to be your Archchancellor, sir!"

  "Oook."

  "You'll like it up there! Fresh air! Bags of trees! More woods than you can shake a stick at!"

  "Oook!"

  "Come down this minute!"

  "Oook!"

  "The books'll be quite safe here during the holidays. Good grief, it's hard enough to get students to come in here at the best of times-"

  "Oook!"

  Ridcully glared at the Librarian, who was hanging by his toes from the top shelf of Parazoology Ba to Mn.

  'Oh, well," he said, his voice suddenly low and cunning, "it's a great shame, in the circumstances. They've got a pretty good library in Lancre castle, I heard. Well, they call it a library — it's just a lot of old books. Never had a catalogue near 'em, apparently."

  "Oook?"

  "Thousands of books. Someone told me there's incunibles, too. Shame, really, you not wanting to see them." Ridcully's voice could have greased axles.

  "Oook?"

  "But I can see your mind is quite made up. So I shall be going. Farewell."

  Ridcully paused outside the Library door, counting under his breath. He'd reached "three" when the Librarian knuckled through at high speed, caught by the incunibles.

  "So that'll be four tickets, then?" said Ridcully.

  Granny Weatherwax set about finding out what had been happening around the stones in her own distinctive way.

  People underestimate bees.

  Granny Weatherwax didn't. She had half a dozen hives of them and knew, for example, there is no such creature as an individual bee. But there is such a creature as a swarm, whose component cells are just a bit more mobile than those of, say, the common whelk. Swarms see everything and sense a lot more, and they can remember things for years, although their memory tends to be external and built out of wax. A honeycomb is a hive's memory — the placement of egg cells, pollen cells, queen cells, honey cells, different types of honey, are all part of the memory array.

  And then there are the big fat drones. People think all they do is hang around the hive all year, waiting for those few brief minutes when the queen even notices their existence, but that doesn't explain why they've got more sense organs than the roof of the CIA building.

  Granny didn't really keep bees. She took some old wax every year, for candles, and the occasional pound of honey that the hives felt they could spare, but mainly she had them for someone to talk to.

  For the first time since she'd returned home, she went to the hives.

  And stared.

  Bees were boiling out of the entrances. The thrum of wings filled the normally calm little patch behind the raspberry bushes. Brown bodies zipped through the air like horizontal hail.

  She wished she knew why.

  Bees were her one failure. There wasn't a mind in Lancre she couldn't Borrow. She could even see the world through the eyes of earthworms[9] But a swarm, a mind made up of thousands of mobile parts, was beyond her. It was the toughest test of all. She'd tried over and over again to ride on one, to see the world through ten thousand pairs of multifaceted eyes all at once, and all she'd ever got was a migraine and an inclination to make love to flowers.

  But you could tell a lot from just watching bees. The activity, the direction, the way the guard bees acted. . .

  They were acting extremely worried.

  So she went for a lie down, as only Granny Weatherwax knew how.

  Nanny Ogg tried a different way, which didn't have much to do with witchcraft but did have a lot to do with her general Oggishness.

  She sat for a while in her spotless kitchen, drinking rum and smoking her foul pipe and staring at the paintings on the wall. They had been done by her youngest grandchildren in a dozen shades of mud, most of them of blobby stick figures with the word GRAN blobbily blobbed in underneath in muddy blobby letters.

  In front of her the cat Greebo, glad to be home again, lay on his back with all four paws in the air, doing his celebrated something-found-in-the-gutter impersonation.

  Finally Nanny got up and ambled thoughtfully down to Jason Ogg's smithy.

  A smithy always occupied an important position in the villages, doing the duty of town hall, meeting room, and general clearing house for gossip. Several men were lounging around in it now, filling in time between the normal Lancre occupations of poaching and watching the women do the work.

  "Jason Ogg, I wants a word with you."

  The smithy emptied like magic. It was probably something in Nanny Ogg's tone of voice. But Nanny reached out and grabbed one man by the arm as he tried to go past at a sort of stumbling crouch.

  "I'm glad I've run into you, Mr. Quarney," she said. "Don't rush off. Store doing all right, is it?"

  Lancre's only storekeeper gave her the look a threelegged mouse gives an athletic cat. Nevertheless, he tried.

  "Oh, terrible bad, terrible bad business is right now, Mrs. Ogg."

  "Same as normal, eh?"

  Mr. Quarney's expression was pleading. He knew he wasn't going to get out without something, he just wanted to know what it was.

  "Well, now," said Nanny, "you know the widow Scrope, lives over in Slice?"

  Quarney's mouth opened.

  "She's not a widow," he said. "She-"

  "Bet you half a dollar?" said Nanny.

  Quarney's mouth stayed open, and around it the rest of his face recomposed itself in an expression of fascinated horror.

  "So she's to be allowed credit, right, until she gets the farm on its feet," said Nanny, in the silence. Quarney nodded mutely.

  "That goes for the rest of you men listening outside the door," said Nanny, raising her voice. "Dropping a cut of meat on her doorstep once a week wouldn't come amiss, eh? And she'll probably want extra help come harvest. I knows I can depend on you all. Now, off you go. . ."

  They ran for it, leaving Nanny Ogg standing tri
umphantly in the doorway.

  Jason Ogg looked at her hopelessly, a fifteen-stone man reduced to a four-year-old boy.

  "Jason?"

  "I got to do this bit of brazing for old-"

  "So," said Nanny, ignoring him, "what's been happening in these parts while we've been away, my lad?"

  Jason poked at the fire distractedly with an iron bar.

  "Oh, well, us had a big whirlwind on Hogswatchnight and one of Mother Peason's hens laid the same egg three times, and old Poorchick's cow gave birth to a seven-headed snake, and there was a rain of frogs over in Slice-"

  "Been pretty normal, then," said Nanny Ogg. She refilled her pipe in a casual but meaningful way.

  "All very quiet, really," said Jason. He pulled the bar out of the fire, laid it on the anvil, and raised his hammer.

  "I'll find out sooner or later, you know," said Nanny Ogg.

  Jason didn't turn his head, but his hammer stopped in mid-air.

  "I always does, you know," said Nanny Ogg.

  The iron cooled from the colour of fresh straw to bright red.

  "You knows you always feels better for telling your old mum," said Nanny Ogg.

  The iron cooled from red to spitting black. But Jason, ' used all day to the searing heat of a forge, seemed to be uncomfortably warm.

  "I should beat it up before it gets cold," said Nanny Ogg.

  "Weren't my fault. Mum! How could I stop 'em?"

  Nanny sat back in the chair, smiling happily

  "What them would these be, my son?"

  "That young Diamanda and that Perdita and that girl with the red hair from over in Bad Ass and them others. I says to old Peason, I says you'd have something to say, I tole'em Mistress Weatherwax'd get her knic — would definitely be sarcastic when she found out," said Jason. "But they just laughs. They said they could teach 'emselves witching."

  Nanny nodded. Actually, they were quite right. You could teach yourself witchcraft. But both the teacher and the pupil had to be the right kind of person.

  "Diamanda?" she said. "Don't recall the name."

  "Really she's Lucy Tockley," said Jason. "She says Diamanda is more. . . more witchy."

  "Ah. The one that wears the big floppy felt hat?"

  "Yes, Mum."

  "She's the one that paints her nails black, too?"

  "Yes, Mum."

  "Old Tockley sent her off to school, didn't he?"

  "Yes, Mum. She came back while you was gone."

  "Ah."

  Nanny Ogg lit her pipe from the forge. Floppy hat and black nails and education. Oh, dear.

  "How many of these gels are there, then?" she said.

  "Bout half a dozen. But they'm good at it. Mum."

  "Yeah?"

  "And it ain't as if they've been doing anything bad."

  Nanny Ogg stared reflectively at the glow in the forge.

  There was a bottomless quality to Nanny Ogg's silences. And also a certain directional component. Jason was quite clear that the silence was being aimed at him.

  He always fell for it. He tried to fill it up.

  "And that Diamanda's been properly educated," he said. "She knows some lovely words."

  Silence.

  "And I knows you've always said there weren't enough young girls interested in learnin' witching these days," said Jason. He removed the iron bar and hit it a few times, for the look of the thing.

  More silence flowed in Jason's direction.

  "They goes and dances up in the mountains every full moon."

  Nanny Ogg removed her pipe and inspected the bowl carefully.

  "People do say," said Jason, lowering his voice, "that they dances in the altogether."

  "Altogether what?" said Nanny Ogg.

  "You know. Mum. In the nudd."

  "Cor. There's a thing. Anyone see where they go?"

  "Nah. Weaver the thatcher says they always gives him the slip."

  "Jason?"

  "Yes, Mum?"

  "They bin dancin' around the stones."

  Jason hit his thumb.

  There were a number of gods in the mountains and forests of Lancre. One of them was known as Heme the Hunted. He was a god of the chase and the hunt. More or less.

  Most gods are created and sustained by belief and hope. Hunters danced in animal skins and created gods of the chase, who tended to be hearty and boisterous with the tact of a tidal wave. But they are not the only gods of hunting. The prey has an occult voice too, as the blood pounds and the hounds bay. Heme was the god of the chased and the hunted and all small animals whose ultimate destiny is to be an abrupt damp squeak.

  He was about three feet high with rabbit ears and very small horns. But he did have an extremely good turn of speed, and was using it to the full as he tore madly through the woods.

  "They're coming! They're coming! They're all coming back!"

  "Who are?" said Jason Ogg. He was holding his thumb in the water trough.

  Nanny Ogg sighed.

  "Them." she said. "You know. Them. We ain't certain, but. . ."

  "Who's Them?"

  Nanny hesitated. There were some things you didn't tell ordinary people. On the other hand, Jason was a blacksmith, which meant he wasn't ordinary. Blacksmiths had to keep secrets. And he was family; Nanny Ogg had had an adventurous youth and wasn't very good at counting, but she was pretty certain he was her son.

  "You see," she said, waving her hands vaguely, "them stones. . . the Dancers . . . see, in the old days . . . see, once upon a time. . ."

  She stopped, and tried again to explain the essentially fractal nature of reality.

  "Like . . . there's some places that're thinner than others, where the old doorways used to be, well, not doorways, never exactly understood it myself, not doorways as such, more places where the world is thinner . . . Anyway, the thing is, the Dancers . . . are a kind of fence . . . we, well, when I say we I mean thousands of years ago . . . I mean, but they're not just stones, they're some kind of thunderbolt iron but . . . there's things like tides, only not with water, it's when worlds get closer together'n you can nearly step between 'em . . . anyway, if people've been hangin' around the stones, playin' around . . . then They'll be back, if we're not careful."

  "What They?"

  "That's the whole trouble," said Nanny, miserably. "If I tells you, you'll get it all wrong. They lives on the other side of the Dancers."

  Her son stared at her. Then a faint grin of realisation wandered across his face.

  "Ah," he said. "I knows. I heard them wizards down in Ankh is always accidentally rippin' holes in this fabric o' reality they got down there, and you get them horrible things coming out o' the Dungeon Dimensions. Huge buggers with dozens o' eyeballs and more legs'n a Morris team." He gripped his No. 5 hammer. "Don't you worry. Mum. If they starts poppin' out here, we'll soon-"

  "No, it ain't like that," said Nanny "Those live outside. But Them lives. . . over there."

  Jason looked completely lost.

  Nanny shrugged. She'd have to tell someone, sooner or later.

  "The Lords and Ladies," she said.

  "Who're they?"

  Nanny looked around. But, after all, this was a forge. There had been a forge here long before there was a castle, long before there was even a kingdom. There were horseshoes everywhere. Iron had entered the very walls. It wasn't just a place of iron, it was a place where iron died and was reborn. If you couldn't speak the words here, you couldn't speak 'em anywhere.

  Even so, she'd rather not.

  "You know," she said. "The Fair Folk. The Gentry. The Shining Ones. The Star People. You know."

  "What?"

  Nanny put her hand on the anvil, just in case, and said the word.

  Jason's frown very gently cleared, at about the same speed as a sunrise.

  "Them?" he said. "But aren't they nice and-?"

  '"See?" said Nanny. "I told you you'd get it wrong!"

  "How much?" said Ridcully.

  The coachman shrugged.
r />   "Take it or leave it," he said.

  "I'm sorry, sir," said Ponder Stibbons. "It's the only coach."

  "Fifty dollars each is daylight robbery!"

  "No," said the coachman patiently. "Daylight robbery," he said, in the authoritative tones of the experienced, "is when someone steps out into the road with an arrow pointing at us and then all his friends swings down from the rocks and trees and take away all our money and things. And then there's nighttime robbery, which is like daytime robbery except they set fire to the coach so's they can see what they're about. Twilight robbery, now, your basic twilight robbery is-"

  "Are you saying," said Ridcully, "that getting robbed is included in the price?"

  "Bandits' Guild," said the coachman. "Forty dollars per head, see. It's a kind of flat rate."

  "What happens if we don't pay it?" said Ridcully.

  "You end up flat."

  The wizards went into a huddle.

  "We've got a hundred and fifty dollars," said Ridcully. "We can't get any more out of the safe because the Bursar ate the key yesterday"

  "Can I try an idea, sir?" said Ponder.

  "All right."

  Ponder gave the coachman a bright smile.

  "Pets travel free?" he suggested.

  "Oook?"

  Nanny Ogg's broomstick skimmed a few feet above the forest paths, cornering so fast that her boots scraped through the leaves. She leapt off at Granny Weather-wax's cottage so quickly that she didn't switch it off, and it kept going until it stuck in the privy.

  The door was open.

  "Cooee?"

  Nanny glanced into the scullery, and then thumped up the small narrow staircase.

  Granny Weatherwax was stretched rigid on her bed. Her face was grey, her skin was cold.

  People had discovered her like this before, and it always caused embarrassment. So now she reassured visitors but tempted fate by always holding, in her rigid hands, a small handwritten sign which read:

  I ATE'NT DEAD.

  The window was propped open with a piece of wood.

  "Ah," said Nanny, far more for her own benefit than for anyone else's, "I sees you're out. I'll, I'll, I'll just put the kettle on, shall I, and wait 'til you comes back?"

  Esme's skill at Borrowing unnerved her. It was all very well entering the minds of animals and such, but too many witches had never come back. For several years Nanny had put out lumps of fat and bacon rind for a bluetit that she was sure was old Granny Postalute, who'd gone out Borrowing one day and never came back. Insofar as a witch could consider things uncanny. Nanny Ogg considered it uncanny.