I daresay the armour and swords is in the carts.
She detected a twinge of doubt, and set out to quell it instantly. There isn’t any other reason for him to come, stands to reason. We got the spell exactly right. Except for the ingredients. And most of the poetry. And it probably wasn’t the right time. And Gytha took most of it home for the cat, which couldn’t of been proper.
But he’s on his way. What can’t speak, can’t lie.
‘Best put the cloth over it when you’ve done, Esme,’ said Nanny. ‘I always get worried someone’ll peer in at me when I’m having my bath.’
‘He’s on his way,’ said Granny, the satisfaction in her voice so strong you could have ground corn with it. She dropped the black velvet bag over the ball.
‘It’s a long road,’ said Nanny. ‘There’s many a slip twixt dress and drawers. There could be bandits.’
‘We shall watch over him,’ said Granny.
‘That’s not right. If he’s going to be king he ought to be able to fight his own battles,’ said Magrat.
‘We don’t want him to go wasting his strength,’ said Nanny primly. ‘We want him good and fresh for when he gets here.’
‘And then, I hope, we shall leave him to fight his battles in his own way,’ said Magrat.
Granny clapped her hands together in a businesslike fashion.
‘Quite right,’ she said. ‘Provided he looks like winning.’
They had been meeting at Nanny Ogg’s cottage. Magrat made an excuse to tarry after Granny left, around dawn, allegedly to help Nanny with tidying up.
‘Whatever happened to not meddling?’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know, Nanny.’
‘It’s not proper meddling,’ said Nanny awkwardly. ‘Just helping matters along.’
‘Surely you can’t really think that!’
Nanny sat down and fidgeted with a cushion.
‘Well, see, all this not meddling business is fine in the normal course of things,’ she said. ‘Not meddling is easy when you don’t have to. And then I’ve got the family to think about. Our Jason’s been in a couple of fights because of what people have been saying. Our Shawn was thrown out of the army. The way I see it, when we get the new king in, he should owe us a few favours. It’s only fair.’
‘But only last week you were saying—’ Magrat stopped, shocked at this display of pragmatism.
‘A week is a long time in magic,’ said Nanny. ‘Fifteen years, for one thing. Anyway, Esme is determined and I’m in no mood to stop her.’
‘So what you’re saying,’ said Magrat, icily, ‘is that this “not meddling” thing is like taking a vow not to swim. You’ll absolutely never break it unless of course you happen to find yourself in the water?’
‘Better than drowning,’ Nanny said.
She reached up to the mantelpiece and took down a clay pipe that was like a small tar pit. She lit it with a spill from the remains of the fire, while Greebo watched her carefully from his cushion.
Magrat idly lifted the hood from the ball and glared at it.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that I will never really understand about witchcraft. Just when I think I’ve got a grip on it, it changes.’
‘We’re all just people.’ Nanny blew a cloud of blue smoke at the chimney. ‘Everyone’s just people.’
‘Can I borrow the crystal?’ said Magrat suddenly.
‘Feel free,’ said Nanny. She grinned at Magrat’s back. ‘Had a row with your young man?’ she said.
‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Haven’t seen him around for weeks.’
‘Oh, the duke sent him to—’ Magrat stopped, and went on —’sent him away for something or other. Not that it bothers me at all, either way.’
‘So I see. Take the ball, by all means.’
Magrat was glad to get back home. No-one was about on the moors at night anyway, but over the last couple of months things had definitely been getting worse. On top of the general suspicion of witches, it was dawning on the few people in Lancre who had any dealings with the outside world that a) either more things had been happening than they had heard about before or b) time was out of joint. It wasn’t easy to prove, but the few traders who came along the mountain tracks after the winter seemed to be rather older than they should have been. Unexplained happenings were always more or less expected in the Ramtops because of the high magical potential, but several years disappearing overnight was a bit of a first.
She locked the door, fastened the shutters, and carefully laid the green glass globe on the kitchen table.
She concentrated …
He looked safe enough, but he was tossing and turning in his sleep.
Magrat wondered what it was like, spending your whole life doing something you didn’t want to do. Like being dead, she considered, only worse, the reason being, you were alive to suffer it.
She considered the Fool to be weak, badly led and sorely in need of some backbone. And she was longing for him to get back, so she could look forward to never seeing him again.
Gretalina and Mellias
The Mage Wars
The following day, in some nameless village in the middle of an endless sea of cabbages, he let Tomjon play Old Miskin in
Hwel didn’t consider himself old. His father had still been digging three tons of ore a day at the age of two hundred.
known
But all the right ingredients were there, weren’t they? Tradition was full of people giving evil rulers a well-justified seeing to. Witches were always a draw. The apparition of Death was particularly good, with some lovely lines. Mix them all together … and they seemed to cancel out, become a mere humdrum way of filling the stage for a couple of hours.
Late at night, when the cast was asleep, Hwel would sit up in one of the carts and feverishly rewrite. He rearranged scenes, cut lines,
When the inspirations were sleeting fast he even tried changing the style. In the morning the early risers grew accustomed to finding discarded experiments decorating the grass around the carts, like extremely literate mushrooms.
Tomjon kept one of the strangest:...
’
‘It could, you know. If I could just get it right.’
‘You’re absolutely sure about the ghost, are you?’ said Tomjon. The way he threw the line away made it clear that he wasn’t.
‘There’s nothing wrong with the ghost,’ snapped Hwel. ‘The scene with the ghost is the best I’ve done.’
‘I was just wondering if this is the right play for it, that’s all.’
‘The ghost stays. Now let’s get on, boy.’
——
Two days later, with the Ramtops a blue and white wall that was beginning to dominate the Hubward horizon, the company was attacked. There wasn’t much drama; they had just manhandled the lattys across a ford and were resting in the shade of a grove of trees, which suddenly fruited robbers.