‘Yes, and over Skund way the trees talk to you and walk around of night,’ said Nanny. ‘Without even asking permission. Very poor organisation.’
‘Not really good organisation, like we’ve got here?’ said Magrat.
Granny stood up purposefully.
‘I’m going home,’ she said.
There are thousands of good reasons why magic doesn’t rule the world. They’re called witches and wizards. Magrat reflected, as she followed the other two back to the road.
It was probably some wonderful organisation on the part of Nature to protect itself. It saw to it that everyone with any magical talent was about as ready to co-operate as a she-bear with toothache, so all that dangerous power was safely dissipated as random bickering and rivalry. There were differences in style, of course. Wizards assassinated each other in draughty corridors, witches just cut one another dead in the street. And they were all as self-centred as a spinning top. Even when they help other people, she thought, they’re secretly doing it for themselves. Honestly, they’re just like big children.
Except for me, she thought smugly.
‘She’s very upset, isn’t she,’ said Magrat to Nanny Ogg.
‘Ah, well,’ said Nanny. ‘There’s the problem, see. The more you get used to magic, the more you don’t want to use it. The more it gets in your way. I expect, when you were just starting out, you learned a few spells from Goodie Whemper, maysherestinpeace, and you used them all the time, didn’t you?’
‘Well, yes. Everyone does.’
‘Well-known fact,’ agreed Nanny. ‘But when you get along in the Craft, you learn that the hardest magic is the sort you don’t use at all.’
Magrat considered the proposition cautiously. ‘This isn’t some kind of Zen, is it?’ she said.
‘Dunno. Never seen one.’
‘When we were in the dungeons, Granny said something about trying the rocks. That sounded like pretty hard magic.’
‘Well, Goodie wasn’t much into rocks,’ said Nanny. ‘It’s not really hard. You just prod their memories. You know, of the old days. When they were hot and runny.’
She hesitated, and her hand flew to her pocket. She gripped the lump of castle stone and relaxed.
Thought I’d forgotten it, for a minute there,’ she said, lifting it out. ‘You can come out now.’
He was barely visible in the brightness of day, a mere shimmer in the air under the trees. King Verence blinked. He wasn’t used to daylight.
‘Esme,’ said Nanny. ‘There’s someone to see you.’
Granny turned slowly and squinted at the ghost.
‘I saw you in the dungeon, didn’t I?’ she said. ‘Who’re you?’
‘Verence, King of Lancre,’ said the ghost, and bowed. ‘Do I have the honour of addressing Granny Weatherwax, doyenne of witches?’
It has already been pointed out that just because Verence came from a long line of kings didn’t mean that he was basically stupid, and a year without the distractions of the flesh had done wonders as well. Granny Weatherwax considered herself totally unsusceptible to buttering up, but the king was expertly applying the equivalent of the dairy surplus of quite a large country. Bowing was a particularly good touch.
A muscle twitched at the corner of Granny’s mouth. She gave a stiff little bow in return, because she wasn’t quite sure what ‘doyenne’ meant.
‘I’m her,’ she conceded.
‘You can get up now,’ she added, regally.
King Verence remained kneeling, about two inches above the actual ground.
‘I crave a boon,’ he said urgently.
‘Here, how did you get out of the castle?’ said Granny.
‘The esteemed Nanny Ogg assisted me,’ said the king. ‘I reasoned, if I am anchored to the stones of Lancre, then I can also go where the stones go. I am afraid I indulged in a little trickery to arrange matters. Currently I am haunting her apron.’
‘Not the first, either,’ said Granny, automatically.
‘Esme!’
‘And I beg you, Granny Weatherwax, to restore my son to the throne.’
‘Restore?’
‘You know what I mean. He is in good health?’
Granny nodded. ‘The last time we Looked at him, he was eating an apple,’ she said.
‘It is his destiny to be King of Lancre!’
‘Yes, well. Destiny is tricky, you know,’ said Granny.
‘You will not help?’
Granny looked wretched. ‘It’s meddling, you see,’ she said. ‘It always goes wrong if you meddle in politics. Like, once you start, you can’t stop. Fundamental rule of magic, is that. You can’t go around messing with fundamental rules.’
‘You’re not going to help?’
‘Well . . . naturally, one day, when your lad is a bit older . . .’
‘Where is he now?’ said the king, coldly.
The witches avoided one another’s faces.
‘We saw him safe out of the country, you see,’ said Granny awkwardly.
‘Very good family,’ Nanny Ogg put in quickly.
‘What kind of people?’ said the king. ‘Not commoners, I trust?’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Granny with considerable firmness as a vision of Vitoller floated across her imagination. ‘Not common at all. Very uncommon. Er.’
Her eyes implored Magrat for help.
They were Thespians,’ said Magrat firmly, her voice radiating such approval that the king found himself nodding automatically.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Good.’
‘Were they?’ whispered Nanny Ogg. ‘They didn’t look it.’
‘Don’t show your ignorance, Gytha Ogg,’ sniffed Granny. She turned back to the ghost of the king. ‘Sorry about that, your majesty. It’s just her showing off. She don’t even know where Thespia is.’
‘Wherever it is, I hope that they know how to school a man in the arts of war,’ said Verence. ‘I know Felmet. In ten years he’ll be dug in here like a toad in a stone.’
The king looked from witch to witch. ‘What kind of kingdom will he have to come back to? I hear what the kingdom is becoming, even now. Will you watch it change, over the years, become shoddy and mean?’ The king’s ghost faded.
His voice hung in the air, faint as a breeze.
‘Remember, good sisters,’ he said, ‘the land and the king are one.’
And he vanished.
The embarrassed silence was broken by Magrat blowing her nose.
‘One what?’ said Nanny Ogg.
‘We’ve got to do something,’ said Magrat, her voice choked with emotion. ‘Rules or no rules!’
‘It’s very vexing,’ said Granny, quietly.
‘Yes, but what are you going to do?’ she said.
‘Reflect on things,’ said Granny. ‘Think about it all.’
‘You’ve been thinking about it for a year,’ Magrat said.
‘One what? Are one what?’ said Nanny Ogg.
‘It’s no good just reacting,’ said Granny. ‘You’ve got to—’
A cart came bouncing and rumbling along the track from Lancre. Granny ignored it.
‘—give these things careful consideration.’
‘You don’t know what to do, do you?’ said Magrat.
‘Nonsense. I—’
‘There’s a cart coming, Granny.’
Granny Weatherwax shrugged. ‘What you youngsters don’t realise—’ she began.
Witches never bothered with elementary road safety. Such traffic as there was on the roads of Lancre either went around them or, if this was not possible, waited until they moved out of the way. Granny Weatherwax had grown up knowing this for a fact; the only reason she didn’t die knowing that it wasn’t was that Magrat, with rather better reflexes, dragged her into the ditch.
It was an interesting ditch. There were jiggling corkscrew things in it which were direct descendants of things which had been in the primordial soup of creation. Anyone who thought that ditchwater was dull could have spent an instructive half-hour in that ditch with a powerful microscope. It also had nettles in it, and now it had Granny Weatherwax.
She struggled up through the weeds, incoherent with rage, and rose from the ditch like Venus Anadyomene, only older and with more duckweed.
‘T-t-t,’ she said, pointing a shaking finger at the disappearing cart.
‘It was young Nesheley from over Inkcap way,’ said Nanny Ogg, from a nearby bush. ‘His family were always a bit wild. Of course, his mother was a Whipple.’
‘He ran us down!’ said Granny.
‘You could have got out of the way,’ said Magrat.
‘Get out of the way?’ said Granny. ‘We’re witches! People get out of our way!’ She squelched on to the track, her finger still pointing at the distant cart. ‘By Hoki, I’ll make him wish he’d never been born—’
‘He was quite a big baby, I recall,’ said the bush. ‘His mother had a terrible time.’
‘It’s never happened to me before, ever,’ said Granny, still twanging like a bowstring. ‘I’ll teach him to run us down as though, as though, as though we was ordinary people!’
‘He already knows,’ said Magrat. ‘Just help me get Nanny out of this bush, will you?’
‘I’ll turn his-‘
‘People haven’t got any respect any more, that’s what it is,’ said Nanny, as Magrat helped her with the thorns. ‘It’s all due to the king being one, I expect.’
‘We’re witches!’ screamed Granny, turning her face towards the sky and shaking her fists.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Magrat. ‘The harmonious balance of the universe and everything. I think Nanny’s a bit tired.’