Shawn’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he considered this. Then he shook himself free of Magrat’s grasp and listened at the door.
The singing had stopped. For a moment Magrat thought she heard footsteps outside the door, hurrying away.
“Well, Miss Queen, our mum and Mistress Weatherwax was up at the Dancers-”
Magrat listened.
Finally she said, “And where’s everyone now?”
“Dunno, miss. All gone to the Entertainment . . . but they ought to’ve been back by now.”
“Where’s the Entertainment?”
“Dunno, miss. Miss?”
“Yes?”
“Why’ve you got your wedding dress on?”
“Never you mind.”
“It’s unlucky for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the wedding,” said Shawn, taking refuge in run-of-the-mill idiocies to relieve his terror.
“It will be for him if I see him first,” snarled Magrat.
“Miss?”
“Yes?”
“I’m feared about what’s happened to everyone. Our Jason said they’d be back in an hour or so, and that was hours ago.”
“But there’s almost a hundred guests and everyone from the town, practically. Elves couldn’t do anything to them.”
“They wouldn’t have to, miss.” Shawn went to the unglazed window. “Look, miss. I can drop down on to the granary in the stable yard from here. It’s thatch, I’ll be all right. Then I can sneak around the kitchens and out by the little gate by the hubward tower with military precision.”
“What for?”
“To get help, miss.”
“But you don’t know if there’s any help to get.”
“Can you think of anything else, miss?”
She couldn’t.
“It’s very . . . brave of you, Shawn,” said Magrat.
“You stay here and you’ll be right as rain,” said Shawn. “Tell you what. . . How about if I lock the door and take the key with me? Then even if they sing at you they can’t get you to open the door.”
Magrat nodded.
Shawn tried to smile. “Wish we had another suit of mail,” he said. “But it’s all in the armoury.”
“I’ll be fine,” said Magrat. “Off you go, then.”
Shawn nodded. He waited for a moment on the window ledge, and then dropped into the darkness.
Magrat pushed the bed against the door and sat on it.
It occurred to her that she should have gone as well. But that would mean leaving the castle empty, and that didn’t feel right.
Besides, she was scared.
There was one candle in the room, and that was half burned down. When it was gone, there’d be nothing but the moonlight. Magrat had always liked moonlight. Up to now.
It was quiet outside. There should be the noises of the town.
It crept over her that letting Shawn go away with a key to the door was not a wholly sensible thing, because if they caught him they could open-
There was a scream, which went on for a long time.
And then the night rolled back in again.
After a few minutes there was a scrabbling at the lock, such as might be made by someone trying to manipulate a key held in several thicknesses of cloth, so as not to come into contact with the iron.
The door began to open, and wedged up against the bed.
“Will you not step outside, lady?”
The door creaked again.
“Will you not come dance with us, pretty lady?”
The voice had strange harmonics and an echo that buzzed around the inside of the head for several seconds after the last word had been spoken.
The door burst open.
Three figures slid into the room. One looked up the bed, and the others poked into dark comers. Then one of them crossed to the window and looked out.
The crumbling wall stretched down to the thatched roof entirely unoccupied.
The figure nodded to two more shapes in the courtyard, its blond hair glowing in the moonlight.
One of them pointed up, to where a figure, its long white dress billowing in the breeze, was climbing up the wall of the keep.
The elf laughed. This was going to be more enjoyable than it’d suspected.
Magrat pulled herself over the windowsill and collapsed, panting, on the floor. Then she staggered across to the door, which was missing its key. But there were two heavy wooden bars, which she slotted into place.
There was a wooden shutter for the window.
They’d never let her get away with it again. She’d been expecting an arrow but . . . no, something as simple as that wouldn’t have been enough fun.
She glared at the darkness. So . . . there was this room. She didn’t even know which one it was. She found a candlestick and a bundle of matches and, after some scrabbling, got it lit.
There were some boxes and cases piled by the bed. So . . . a guest room.
The thoughts trickled through the silence of her brain, one after another.
She wondered if they’d sing to her, and if she could stand it again. Maybe if you knew what to expect. . .
There was a gentle tap at the door.
“We have your friends downstairs, lady. Come dance with me.”
Magrat stared desperately around the room.
It was as featureless as guest bedrooms everywhere. Jug and basin on a stand, the horrible garderobe alcove inadequately concealed behind a curtain, the bed which had a few bags and bundles tossed on it, a battered chair with all the varnish gone and a small square of carpet made grey with age and ground-in dust.
The door rattled. “Let me in, sweet lady.”
The window was no escape this time. There was the bed to hide under, and that’d work for all of two seconds, wouldn’t it?
Her eye was drawn by some kind of horrible magic back to the room’s garderobe, lurking behind its curtain.
Magrat lifted the lid. The shaft was definitely wide enough to admit a body. Garderobes were notorious in that respect. Several unpopular kings had met their end, as it were, in the garderobe, at the hands of an assassin with good climbing ability, a spear, and a fundamental approach to politics.
Something hit the door hard.
“Lady, shall I sing to you?”
Magrat reached a decision.
It was the hinges that gave way eventually, the rusty bolts finally losing their grip on the stone.
The alcove’s half-drawn curtain moved in the breeze.
The elf smiled, strode to the curtain, and pulled it aside.
The oak lid was up.
The elf looked down.
Magrat rose up behind it like a white ghost and hit it hard across the back of the neck with the chair, which shattered.
The elf tried to turn and keep its balance, but there was still enough chair left in Magrat’s hands for her to catch it on the desperate upswing. It toppled backward, flailed at the lid, and only succeeded in pulling it shut behind it. Magrat ‘ heard a thump and a scream of rage as it dropped into the noisome darkness. It’d be too much to hope that the fall would kill it. After all, it’d land in something soft.
“Not just high,” said Magrat to herself, “but stinking.”
Hiding under the bed is only good for about two seconds, but sometimes two seconds is enough.
She let go of the chair. She was shaking. But she was still alive, and that felt good. That’s the thing about being alive. You’re alive to enjoy it.
Magrat peered out into the passage.
She had to move. She picked up a stricken chair leg for the little comfort that it gave, and ventured out.
There was a scream again, from the direction of the Great Hall.
Magrat looked the other way, toward the Long Gallery She ran. There had to be a way out, somewhere, some gate, some window . . .
Some enterprising monarch had glazed the windows some time ago. The moonlight shone through in big silver blocks, interspersed with squares of deep shadow.
Magrat ran from light to shade, light to shade, down the endless room. Monarch after monarch flashed past, like a speeded-up film. King after king, all whiskers and crowns and beards. Queen after queen, all corsages and stiff bodices and Lappet-faced wowhawks and small dogs and-
Some shape, some trick of moonlight, some expression on a painted face somehow cut through her terror and caught her eye. That was a portrait she’d never seen before. She’d never walked down this far. The idiot vapidity of the assembled queens had depressed her. But this one . . .
This one, somehow, reached out to her.
She stopped.
It couldn’t have been done from life. In the days of this queen, the only paint known locally was a sort of blue, and generally used on the body But a few generations ago King Lully I had been a bit of a historian and a romantic. He’d researched what was known of the early days of Lancre, and where actual evidence had been a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed self-evident wisdom[34] and extrapolated from associated sources.[35]