He’d commissioned the portrait of Queen Ynci the Short-Tempered, one of the founders of the kingdom.
She had a helmet with wings and a spike on it and a mass of black hair plaited into dreadlocks with blood as a setting lotion. She was heavily made-up in the woad-and-blood-and-spirals school of barbarian cosmetics. She had a 42 D-cup breastplate and shoulder pads with spikes. She had knee pads with spikes on, and spikes on her sandals, and a rather short skirt in the fashionable tartan and blood motif. One hand rested nonchalantly on a double-headed battle axe with a spike on it, the other caressed the hand of a captured enemy warrior. The rest of the captured enemy warrior was hanging from various pine trees in the background. Also in the picture was Spike, her favourite war pony, of the now extinct Lancre hill breed which was the same general shape and disposition as a barrel of gunpowder, and her war chariot, which picked up the popular spiky theme. It had wheels you could shave with.
Magrat stared.
They’d never mentioned this.
They’d told her about tapestries, and embroidery, and farthingales, and how to shake hands with lords. They’d never told her about spikes.
There was a sound at the end of the gallery, from back the way she’d come. She grabbed her skirts and ran.
There were footsteps behind her, and laughter.
Left down the cloisters, then along the dark passage above the kitchens, and past the-
A shape moved in the shadows. Teeth flashed. Magrat raised the chair leg, and stopped in mid-strike.
“Greebo?”
Nanny Ogg’s cat rubbed against her legs. His hair was flat against his body. This unnerved Magrat even more. This was Greebo, undisputed king of Lancre’s cat population and father of most of it, in whose presence wolves trod softly and bears climbed trees. He was frightened.
“Come here, you bloody idiot!”
She grabbed him by the scruff of his scarred neck and ran on, while Greebo gratefully sank his claws into her arm to the bone[36] and scrambled up to her shoulder.
She must be somewhere near the kitchen now, because that was Greebo’s territory. This was an unknown and shadowy area, terror incognita, where the flesh of carpets and the plaster pillars ran out and the stone bone of the castle showed through.
She was sure there were footsteps behind her, very fast and light.
If she hurried around the next comer-
In her arms, Greebo tensed like a spring. Magrat stopped.
Around the next comer-
Without her apparently willing it, the hand holding the broken wood came up, moving slowly back.
She stepped to the comer and stabbed in one movement. There was a triumphant hiss which turned into a screech as the wood scraped down the side of the waiting elfs neck. It reeled away Magrat bolted for the nearest doorway, weeping in panic, and wrenched at the handle. It swung open. She darted through, slammed the door, flailed in the dark for the bars, felt them clonk home, and collapsed on to her knees.
Something hit the door outside.
After a while Magrat opened her eyes, and then wondered if she really had opened her eyes, because the darkness was no less dark. There was a feeling of space in front of her. There were all sorts of things in the castle, old hidden rooms, anything . . . there could be a pit there, there could be anything. She fumbled for the doorframe, guided herself upright, and then groped cautiously in the general direction of the wall.
There was a shelf. This was a candle. And this was a bundle of matches.
So, she insisted above her own heartbeat, this was a room that got used recently. Most people in Lancre still used tinderboxes. Only the king could afford matches all the way from Ankh-Morpork. Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg got them too, but they didn’t buy them. They got given them. It was easy to get given things, if you were a witch.
Magrat lit the stub of candle, and turned to see what kind of room she’d scuttled into.
Oh, no . . .
“Well, well,” said Ridcully “There’s a familiar tree.”
“Shut up.”
“I thought someone said we just had to walk up hill,” said Ridcully.
“Shut up.”
“I remember once when we were in these woods you let
“me-”
“Shut up.”
Granny Weatherwax sat down on a stump.
“We’re being mazed,” she said. “Someone’s playing tricks on us.”
“I remember a story once,” said Ridcully, “where these two children were lost in the woods and a lot of birds came and covered them with leaves.” Hope showed in his voice like a toe peeking out from under a crinoline.
“Yes, that’s just the sort of bloody stupid thing a bird would think of,” said Granny. She rubbed her head.
“She’s doing it,” she said. “It’s an elvish trick. Leading travellers astray. She’s mucking up my head. My actual head. Oh, she’s good. Making us go where she wants. Making us go round in circles. Doing it to me.”
“Maybe you’ve got your mind on other things,” said Ridcully, not quite giving up hope.
“Course I’ve got my mind on other things, with you falling over all the time and gabbling a lot of nonsense,” said Granny. “If Mr. Cleverdick Wizard hadn’t wanted to dredge up things that never existed in the first place I wouldn’t be here, I’d be in the centre of things, knowing what’s going on.” She clenched her fists.
“Well, you don’t have to be,” said Ridcully. “It’s a fine night. We could sit here and-”
“You’re falling for it too,” said Granny. “All that dreamy-weamy, eyes-across-a-crowded-room stuff. Can’t imagine how you keep your job as head wizard.”
“Mainly by checking my bed carefully and makin’ sure someone else has already had a slice of whatever it is I’m eating,” said Ridcully, with disarming honesty. “There’s not much to it, really. Mainly it’s signin’ things and having a good shout-”
Ridcully gave up.
“Anyway, you looked pretty surprised when you saw me,” he said. “Your face went white.”
“Anyone’d go white, seeing a full-grown man standing there looking like a sheep about to choke,” said Granny.
“You really don’t let up, do you?” said Ridcully. “Amazing. You don’t give an inch.”
Another leaf drifted past.
Ridcully didn’t move his head.
“You know,” he said, his voice staying quite level, “either autumn comes really early in these parts, or the birds here are the ones out of that story I mentioned, or someone’s in the tree above us.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Yes, because I’ve been paying attention while you were dodging the traffic in Memory Lane,” said Granny. “There’s at least five of ’em, and they’re right above us. How’s those magic fingers of yours?”
“I could probably manage a fireball.”
“Wouldn’t work. Can you carry us out of here?”
“Not both of us.”
“Just you?”
“Probably, but I’m not going to leave you.”
Granny rolled her eyes. “It’s true, you know,” she said. “All men are swains. Push off, you soft old bugger. They’re not intending to kill me. At least, not yet. But they don’t hardly know nothing about wizards and they’ll chop you down without thinking.”
“Now who’s being soft?”
“I don’t want to see you dead when you could be doin’ something useful.”
“Running away isn’t useful.”
“It’s going to be a lot more useful than staying here.”
“I’d never forgive myself if I went.”
“And I’d never forgive you if you stayed, and I’m a lot more unforgiving than you are,” said Granny. “When it’s all over, try to find Gytha Ogg. Tell her to look in my old box. She’ll know what’s in there. And if you don’t go now-”
An arrow hit the stump beside Ridcully.
“The buggers are firing at me!” he shouted. “If I had my crossbow-”
“I should go and get it, then,” said Granny.
“Right! I’ll be back instantly!”
Ridcully vanished. A moment later several lumps of castle masonry dropped out of the space he had just occupied.
“That’s him out of the way, then,” said Granny, to no one in particular.
She stood up, and gazed around at the trees.
“All right,” she said, “here I am. I ain’t running. Come and get me. Here I am. All of me.”
Magrat calmed down. Of course it existed. Every castle had one. And of course this one was used. There was a trodden path through the dust to the rack a few feet away from the door, where a few suits of unravelling chain-mail hung on a rack, next to the pikes.
Shawn probably came in here every day.
It was the armoury.
Greebo hopped down from Magrat’s shoulders and wandered off down the cobwebbed avenues, in his endless search for anything small and squeaky.
Magrat followed him, in a daze.
The kings of Lancre had never thrown anything away. At least, they’d never thrown anything away if it was possible to kill someone with it.