‘Fancy that.’
‘I am, in fact, a witch.’
This did not make the impression she had hoped. The guards exchanged glances.
‘Fair enough,’ said one. ‘I’ve always wondered what it was like to kiss a witch. Around here they do say you gets turned into a frog.’
The other guard nudged him. ‘I reckon, then,’ he said, in the slow, ripe tones of one who thinks that what he is about to say next is going to be incredibly funny, ‘you kissed one years ago.’
The brief guffaw was suddenly interrupted when Magrat was flung against the wall and treated to a close up view of the guard’s nostrils.
‘Now listen to me, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘You ain’t the first witch we’ve had down here, if witch you be, but you could be lucky and walk out again. If you are nice to us, d’you see?’
There was a shrill, short scream from somewhere nearby.
‘That, you see,’ said the guard, ‘was a witch having it the hard way. You could do us all a favour, see? Lucky you met us, really.’
His questing hand stopped its wandering. ‘What’s this?’ he said to Magrat’s pale face. ‘A knife? A knife? I reckon we’ve got to take that very seriously, don’t you, Hron?’
‘You got to tie her hands and gag her,’ said Hron hurriedly.
‘They can’t do no magic if they can’t speak or wave their hands about . . .’
‘You can take your hands off her!’
All three stared down the passage at the Fool. He was jingling with rage.
‘Let her go this minute!’ he shouted. ‘Or I’ll report you!’
‘Oh, you’ll report us, will you?’ said Hron. ‘And will anyone listen to you, you earwax-coloured little twerp?’
‘This is a witch we have here,’ said the other guard. ‘So you can go and tinkle somewhere else.’ He turned back to Magrat. ‘I like a girl with spirit,’ he said, incorrectly as it turned out.
The Fool advanced with the bravery of the terminally angry.
‘I told you to let her go,’ he repeated.
Hron drew his sword and winked at his companion.
Magrat struck. It was an unplanned, instinctive blow, its stopping power considerably enhanced by the weight of rings and bangles; her arm whirred around in an arc that connected with her captor’s jaw and spun him twice before he folded up in a heap with a quiet little sigh, and incidentally with several symbols of occult significance embossed on his cheek.
Hron gaped at him, and then looked at Magrat. He raised his sword at about the same moment that the Fool cannoned into him, and the two men went down in a struggling heap Like most small men the Fool relied on the initial mad rush to secure an advantage and was at a loss for a follow-through and it would probably have gone hard with him if Hron hadn’t suddenly become aware that a breadknife was pressed to his neck.
‘Let go of him,’ said Magrat, pushing her hair out of her eyes.
He stiffened. ‘You’re wondering whether I really would cut your throat,’ panted Magrat. ‘I don’t know either. Think of the fun we could have together, finding out.’
She reached down with her other hand and hauled the Few to his feet by his collar.
‘Where did that scream come from?’ she said, without taking her eyes off the guard.
‘It was down this way. They’ve got her in the torture dungeon and I don’t like it, it’s going too far, and I couldn’t get in and I came to look for someone—’
‘Well, you’ve found me,’ said Magrat.
‘You,’ she said to Hron, ‘will stay here. Or run away, for all I care. But you won’t follow us.’
He nodded, and stared after them as they hurried down the passage. ‘The door’s locked,’ said the Fool. ‘There’s all sorts of noises, but the door’s locked.’
‘Well, it’s a dungeon, isn’t it?’
‘They’re not supposed to lock from the inside!’
It was, indeed, unbudgeable. Silence came from the other side – a busy, thick silence that crawled through the cracks and spilled out into the passage, a kind of silence that is worse than screams.
The Fool hopped from one foot to the other as Magrat explored the door’s rough surface.
‘Are you really a witch?’ he said. ‘They said you were a witch, are you really? You don’t look like a witch, you look very . . . that is . . .’He blushed. ‘Not like a, you know, crone at all, but absolutely beautiful . . .’ His voice trailed into silence . . .
I am totally in control of the situation, Magrat told herself. I never thought I would be, but I am thinking absolutely clearly.
And she realised, in an absolutely clear way, that her padding had slipped down to her waist, her head felt as though a family of unhygienic birds had been nesting in it, and her eyeshadow had not so much run as sprinted. Her dress was torn in several places, her legs were scratched, her arms were bruised, and for some reason she felt on top of the world.
‘I think you’d better stand back, Verence,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure how this is going to work.’
There was a sharp intake of breath.
‘How did you know my name?’
Magrat sized up the door. The oak was old, centuries old, but she could sense just a little sap under a surface varnished by the years into something that was nearly as tough as stone. Normally what she had in mind would require a day’s planning and a bagful of exotic ingredients. At least, so she’d always believed. Now she was prepared to doubt it.
If you could conjure demons out of washtubs, you could do anything.
She became aware that the Fool had spoken.
‘Oh, I expect I heard it somewhere,’ she said vaguely.
‘I shouldn’t think so, I never use it,’ said the Fool. ‘I mean, it’s not a popular name with the duke. It was me mam, you see. They like to name you after kings, I suppose. My grandad said I had no business having a name like that and he said I shouldn’t go around—’
Magrat nodded. She was looking around the dank tunnel with a professional’s eye.
It wasn’t a promising place. The old oak planks had been down here in the darkness all these years, away from the clock of the seasons . . .
On the other hand . . . Granny had said that somehow all trees were one tree, or something like that. Magrat thought she understood it, although she didn’t know exactly what it meant. And it was springtime up there. The ghost of life that still lived in the wood must know that. Or if it had forgotten, it must be told.
She put her palms flat on the door again and shut her eyes, tried to think her way out through the stone, out of the castle, and into the thin, black soil of the mountains, into the air, into the sunlight . . .
The Fool was merely aware that Magrat was standing very still. Then her hair stood out from her head, gently, and there was a smell of leafmould.
And then, without warning, the hammer that can drive a marshmallow-soft toadstool through six inches of solid pavement or an eel across a thousand miles of hostile ocean to a particular pond in an upland field, struck up through her and into the door.
She stepped back carefully, her mind stunned, fighting against a desperate urge to bury her toes into the rock and put forth leaves. The Fool caught her, and the shock nearly knocked him over.
Magrat sagged against the faintly jingling body, and felt triumphant. She had done it! And with no artificial aids! If only the others could have seen this . . .
‘Don’t go near it,’ she mumbled. ‘I think I gave it rather . . . a lot.’ The Fool was still holding her toastrack body in his arms and was too overcome to utter a word, but she still got a reply.
‘I reckon you did,’ said Granny Weatherwax, stepping out of the shadows. ‘I never would have thought of it myself.’
Magrat peered at her.
‘You’ve been here all the time?’
‘Just a few minutes.’ Granny glanced at the door. ‘Good technique,’ she said, ‘but it’s old wood. Been in a fire, too, I reckon. Lot of iron nails and stuff in there. Can’t see it working, I’d have tried the stones if it was me, but—’
She was interrupted by a soft ‘pop’.
There was another, and then a whole series of them together, like a shower of meringues.
Behind her, very gently, the door was breaking into leaf.
Granny stared at it for a few seconds, and then met Magrat’s terrified gaze.
‘Run!’ she yelled.
They grabbed the Fool and scurried into the shelter of a convenient buttress.