'But we're not witches!'
'Why do you look like them, then? Tie their hands, lads.'
'Yes, excuse me, but we're not really witches!'
The captain of the guard looked from face to face. His gaze took in the pointy hats, the disordered hair smelling of damp haystacks, the sickly green complexions and the herd of warts. Guard captain for the duke wasn't a job that offered long-term prospects for those who used initiative. Three witches had been called for, and these seemed to fit the bill.
The captain never went to the theatre. When he was on the rack of adolescence he'd been badly frightened by a Punch and Judy show, and since then had taken pains to avoid any organised entertainment and had kept away from anywhere where crocodiles could conceivably be expected. He'd spent the last hour enjoying a quiet drink in the guardroom.
'I said tie their hands, didn't I?' he snapped.
'Shall we gag them as well, cap'n?'
'But if you'd just listen, we're with the theatre—'
'Yes,' said the captain, shuddering. 'Gag them.'
'Please . . .'
The captain leaned down and stared at three pairs of frightened eyes. He was trembling.
'That,' he said, 'is the last time you'll eat anyone's sausage.'
He was aware that now the soldiers were giving him odd looks as well. He coughed and pulled himself together.
'Very well then, my theatrical witches,' he said. 'You've done your show, and now it's time for your applause.' He nodded to his men.
'Clap them in chains,' he said.
Three other witches sat in the gloom behind the stage, staring vacantly into the darkness. Granny Weatherwax had picked up a copy of the script, which she peered at from time to time, as if seeking ideas.
' "Divers alarums and excursions",' she read, uncertainly.
'That means lots of terrible happenings,' said Magrat. 'You always put that in plays.'
'Alarums and what?' said Nanny Ogg, who hadn't been listening.
'Excursions,' said Magrat patiently.
'Oh.' Nanny Ogg brightened a bit. 'The seaside would be nice,' she said.
'Do shut up, Gytha,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'They're not for you. They're only for divers, like it says. Probably so they can recover from all them alarums.'
'We can't let this happen,' said Magrat, quickly and loudly. 'If this gets about, witches'll always be old hags with green blusher.'
'And meddlin' in the affairs of kings,' said Nanny. 'Which we never do, as is well known.'
'It's not the meddlin' I object to,' said Granny Weatherwax, her chin on her hand. 'It's the evil meddling.'
'And the unkindness to animals,' muttered Magrat. 'All that stuff about eye of dog and ear of toad. No-one uses that kind of stuff.'
Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg carefully avoided one another's faces.
'Drabe!' said Nanny Ogg bitterly.
'Witches just aren't like that,' said Magrat. 'We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it's wicked of them to say we don't. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.'
The other two looked at her with a certain amount of surprised admiration. She blushed, although not greenly, and looked at her knees.
'Goodie Whemper did a recipe,' she confessed. 'It's quite easy. What you do is, you get some lead, and you—'
'I don't think that would be appropriate,' said Granny carefully, after a certain amount of internal struggle. 'It could give people the wrong idea.'
'But not for long,' said Nanny wistfully.
'No, we can't be having with that sort of thing,' said Granny, a little more firmly this time. 'We'd never hear the last of it.'
'Why don't we just change the words?' said Magrat. 'When they come back on stage we could just put the 'fluence on them so they forget what they're saying, and give them some new words.'
'I suppose you're an expert at theatre words?' said Granny sarcastically. 'They'd have to be the proper sort, otherwise people would suspect.'
'Shouldn't be too difficult,' said Nanny Ogg dismissively. 'I've been studyin' it. You go tumpty-tumpty-tumpty.'
Granny gave this some consideration.
'There's more to it than that, I believe,' she said. 'Some of those speeches were very good. I couldn't understand hardly any of it.'
'There's no trick to it at all,' Nanny Ogg insisted. 'Anyway, half of them are forgetting their lines as it is. It'll be easy.'
'We could put words in their mouths?' said Magrat.
Nanny Ogg nodded. 'I don't know about new words,' she said. 'But we can make them forget these words.'
They both looked at Granny Weatherwax. She shrugged.
'I suppose it's worth a try,' she conceded.
'Witches as yet unborn will thank us for it,' said Magrat ardently.
'Oh, good,' said Granny.
'At last! What are you three playing at? We've been looking for you everywhere!'
The witches turned to see an irate dwarf trying to loom over them.
'Us?' said Magrat. 'But we're not in—'
'Oh yes you are, remember, we put it in last week. Act Two, Downstage, around the cauldron. You haven't got to say anything. You're symbolising occult forces at work. Just be as wicked as you can. Come on, there's good lads. You've done well so far.'
Hwel slapped Magrat on the bottom. 'Good complexion you've got mere, Wilph,' he said encouragingly. 'But for goodness' sake use a bit more padding, you're still the wrong shape. Fine warts there, Billem. I must say,' he added, standing back, 'you look as nasty a bunch of hags as a body might hope to clap eyes on. Well done. Shame about the wigs. Now run along. Curtain up in one minute. Break a leg.'
He gave Magrat another ringing slap on her rump, slightly hurting his hand, and hurried off to shout at someone else.
None of the witches dared to speak. Magrat and Nanny Ogg found themselves instinctively turning towards Granny.
She sniffed. She looked up. She looked around. She looked at the brightly lit stage behind her. She brought her hands together with a clap that echoed around the castle, and then rubbed them together.
'Useful,' she said grimly. 'Let's do the show right here.' Nanny squinted sullenly after Hwel. 'Break your own leg,' she muttered.
Hwel stood in the wings and gave the signal for the curtains. And for the thunder.
It didn't come.
'Thunder!' he hissed, in a voice heard by half the audience. 'Get on with it!'
A voice from behind the nearest pillar wailed, 'I went and bent the thunder, Hwel! It just goes clonk-clonk!'
Hwel stood silent for a moment, counting. The company watched him, awestruck but not, unfortunately, thunderstruck.
At last he raised his fists to the open sky and said, 'I wanted a storm! Just a storm. Not even a big storm. Any storm. Now I want to make myself absolutely CLEAR! I have had ENOUGH! I want thunder right NOW!'
The stab of lightning that answered him turned the multi-hued shadows of the castle into blinding white and searing black. It was followed by a roll of thunder, on cue.
It was the loudest noise Hwel had ever heard. It seemed to start inside his head and work its way outwards.
It went on and on, shaking every stone in the castle. Dust rained down. A distant turret broke away with balletic slowness and, tumbling end over end, dropped gently into the hungry depths of the gorge.
When it finished it left a silence that rang like a bell.
Hwel looked up at the sky. Great black clouds were blowing across the castle, blotting out the stars.
The storm was back.
It had spent ages learning its craft. It had spent years lurking in distant valleys. It had practised for hours in front of a glacier. It had studied the great storms of the past. It had honed its art to perfection. And now, tonight, with what it could see was clearly an appreciative audience waiting for it, it was going to take them by, well . . . tempest.
Hwel smiled. Perhaps the gods did listen, after all. He wished he'
d asked for a really good wind machine as well.
He gestured frantically at Tomjon.
'Get on with it!'
The boy nodded, and launched into his main speech.
'And now our domination is complete—'
Behind him on the stage the witches bent over the cauldron.
'It's just tin, this one,' hissed Nanny. 'And it's full of all yuk.'
'And the fire is just red paper,' whispered Magrat. 'It looked so real from up there, it's just red paper! Look, you can poke it—'
'Never mind,' said Granny. 'Just look busy, and wait until I say.'
As the Evil King and the Good Duke began the exchange that was going to lead to the exciting Duel Scene they became uncomfortably aware of activity behind them, and occasional chuckles from the audience. After a totally inappropriate burst of laughter Tomjon risked a sideways glance.
One of the witches was taking their fire to bits. Another one was trying to clean the cauldron. The third one was sitting with her arms folded, glaring at him.
'The very soil cries out at tyranny—' said Wimsloe, and then caught the expression on Tomjon's face and followed his gaze. His voice trailed into silence.
' "And calls me forth for vengeance",' prompted Tomjon helpfully.
'B-but—' whispered Wimsloe, trying to point surreptitiously with his dagger.
'I wouldn't be seen dead with a cauldron like this,' said Nanny Ogg, in a whisper loud enough to carry to the back of the courtyard. 'Two days' work with a scourer and a bucket of sand, is this.'
' "And calls me forth for vengeance" ' hissed Tomjon. Out of the tail of his eye he saw Hwel in the wings, frozen in an attitude of incoherent rage.
'How do they make it flicker?' said Magrat.
'Be quiet, you two,' said Granny. 'You're upsetting people.' She raised her hat to Wimsloe. 'Go ahead, young man. Don't mind us.'
'Wha?' said Wimsloe.
'Aha, it calls you forth for vengeance, does it?' said Tomjon. in desperation. 'And the heavens cry revenge, too, I expect.'
On cue, the storm produced a thunderbolt that blew the top off another tower . . .
The duke crouched in his seat, his face a panorama of fear. He extended what had once been a finger.
'There they are,' he breathed. 'That's them. What are they doing in my play? Who said they could be in my play?'
The duchess, who was less inclined to deal in rhetorical questions, beckoned to the nearest guard.
On stage Tomjon was sweating under the load of the script. Wimsloe was incoherent. Now Gumridge, who was playing the part of the Good Duchess in a wig of flax, had lost the thread as well.
'Aha, thou callst me an evil king, though thou wisperest it so none save I may hear it,' Tomjon croaked. 'And thou hast summoned the guard, possibly by some most secret signal, owing nought to artifice of lips or tongue.'
A guard came on crabwise, still stumbling from Hwel's shove. He stared at Granny Weatherwax.
'Hwel says what the hell's going on?' he hissed.
'What was that?' said Tomjon. 'Did I hear you say / come, my lady?'
'Get these people off, he says!'
Tomjon advanced to the front of the stage.
'Thou babblest, man. See how I dodge thy tortoise spear. I said, see how I dodge thy tortoise spear. Thy spear, man. You're holding it in thy bloody hand, for goodness' sake.'
The guard gave him a desperate, frozen grin.
Tomjon hesitated. Three other actors around him were staring fixedly at the witches. Looming up in front of him with all the inevitability of a tax demand was a sword fight during which, it was beginning to appear, he would have to parry his own wild thrusts and stab himself to death.
He turned to the three witches. His mouth opened.
For the first time in his life his awesome memory let him down. He could think of nothing to say.
Granny Weatherwax stood up. She advanced to the edge of the stage. The audience held its breath. She held up a hand.
'Ghosts of the mind and all device away, I bid the Truth to have—' she hesitated – 'its tumpty-tumpty day.'
Tomjon felt the chill engulf him. The others, too, jolted into life.
Up from out of the depths of their blank minds new words rushed, words red with blood and revenge, words that had echoed among the castle's stones, words stored in silicon, words that would have themselves heard, words that gripped their mouths so tightly that an attempt not to say them would result in a broken jaw.
'Do you fear him now?' said Gumridge. 'And he so mazed with drink? Take his dagger, husband – you are a blade's width from the kingdom.'
'I dare not,' Wimsloe said, trying to look in astonishment at his own lips.
'Who will know?' Gumridge waved a hand towards the audience. He'd never act so well again. 'See, there is only eyeless night. Take the dagger now, take the kingdom tomorrow. Have a stab at it, man.'
Wimsloe's hand shook.
'I have it, wife,' he said. 'Is this a dagger I see before me?'
'Of course it's a bloody dagger. Come on, do it now. The weak deserve no mercy. We'll say he fell down the stairs.'
'But people will suspect!'
'Are there no dungeons? Are there no pilliwinks? Possession is nine parts of the law, husband, when what you possess is a knife.'
Wimsloe drew his arm back.
'I cannot! He has been kindness itself to me!'
'And you can be Death itself to him . . .'
Dafe could hear the voices a long way off. He adjusted his mask, checked the deathliness of his appearance in the mirror, and peered at the script in the empty backstage gloom.
'Cower Now, Brief Mortals,' he said. 'I Am Death, 'Gainst Who – 'Gainst Who—'
WHOM.
'Oh, thanks,' said the boy distractedly. ' 'Gainst Whom No Lock May Hold—'
WILL HOLD.
'Will Hold Nor Fasten'd Portal Bar, Here To – to – to'
HERE TO TAKE MY TALLY ON THIS NIGHT OF KINGS.
Dafe sagged.
'You're so much better at it,' he moaned. 'You've got the right voice and you can remember the words.' He turned around. 'It's only three lines and Hwel will . . . have . . . my . . . guts . . . for.'
He froze. His eyes widened and became two saucers of fear as Death snapped his fingers in front of the boy's rigid face.
FORGET, he commanded, and turned and stalked silently towards the wings.
His eyeless skull took in the line of costumes, the waxy debris of the makeup table. His empty nostrils snuffed up the mixed smells of mothballs, grease and sweat.
There was something here, he thought, that nearly belonged to the gods. Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflects the landscape. And yet . . . and yet . . .
Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things, you might think they would want to escape from – hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated.
He was here for a very particular and precise purpose. There was a soul to be claimed. There was no time for inconsequentialities. But what was time, after all?
His feet did an involuntary little clicking dance across the stones. Alone, in the grey shadows, Death tapdanced.
— THE NEXT NIGHT IN YOUR DRESSING ROOM THEY HANG A STAR —
He pulled himself together, adjusted his scythe, and waited silently for his cue.
He'd never missed one yet.
He was going to get out there and slay them.
'And you can be Death itself to him. Now!' Death entered, his feet clicking across the stage. COWER NOW, BRIEF MORTALS, he said, FOR I AM DEATH, 'GAINST WHOM NO . . . NO . . . 'GAINST WHOM . . .
He hesitated. He hesitated, for the very first time in the eternity of his existence.
For although the Death of the Discworld was used to dealing with people by the millio
n, at the same time every death was intimate and personal.
Death was seldom seen except by those of an occult persuasion and his clients themselves. The reason that no-one else saw him was that the human brain is clever enough to edit sights too horrible for it to cope with, but the problem here was that several hundred people were in fact expecting to see Death at this point, and were therefore seeing him.
Death turned slowly and stared back at hundreds of watching eyes.
Even in the grip of the truth Tomjon recognised a fellow actor in distress, and fought for mastery of his lips.
' ". . . lock will hold . . ." ' he whispered, through teeth fixed in a grimace.
Death gave him a manic grin of stagefright.
WHAT? he whispered, in a voice like an anvil being hit with a small lead hammer.
' ". . . lock will hold, nor fasten'd portal . . .",' said Tomjon encouragingly.
. . . LOCK WILL HOLD NOR FASTEN'D PORTAL . . . UH . . . repeated Death desperately, watching his lips.
' ". . . bar! . . ." '
BAR.
'No, I cannot do it!' said Wimsloe. 'I will be seen! Down there in the hall, someone watches!'
'There is no-one!'
'I feel the stare!'
'Dithering idiot! Must I put it in for you? See, his foot is upon the top stair!'
Wimsloe's face contorted with fear and uncertainty. He drew back his hand.
'No!'
The scream came from the audience. The duke was half-risen from his seat, his tortured knuckles at his mouth. As they watched he lurched forward between the shocked people.
'No! I did not do it! It was not like that! You cannot say it was like that! You were not there!' He stared at the upturned faces around him, and sagged.
'Nor was I,' he giggled. 'I was asleep at the time, you know. I remember it quite well. There was blood on the counterpane, there was blood on the floor, I could not wash off the blood, but these are not proper subjects for the inquiry. I cannot allow the discussion of national security. It was just a dream, and when I awoke, he'd be alive tomorrow. And tomorrow it wouldn't have happened because it was not done. And tomorrow you can say I did not know. And tomorrow you can say I had no recollection. What a noise he made in falling! Enough to wake the dead . . . who would have thought he had so much blood in him? . . .' By now he had climbed on to the stage, and grinned brightly at the assembled company.
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