Equal Rites Read online

Page 11

  And so it was that, a week later, Granny locked the cottage door and hung the key on its nail in the privy. The goats had been sent to stay with a sister witch further along the hills, who had also promised to keep an Eye on the cottage. Bad Ass would just have to manage without a witch for a while.

  Granny was vaguely aware that you didn't find the Unseen University unless it wanted you to, and the only place to start looking was the town of Ohulan Cutash, a sprawl of a hundred or so houses about fifteen miles away. It was where you went to once or twice a year if you were a really cosmopolitan Bad Assian: Granny had only been once before in her entire life and hadn't approved of it at all. It had smelt all wrong, she'd got lost, and she distrusted city folk with their flashy ways.

  They got a lift on the cart that came out periodically with metal for the smithy. It was gritty, but better than walking, especially since Granny had packed their few possessions in a large sack. She sat on it for safety.

  Esk sat cradling the staff and watching the woods go by. When they were several miles outside the village she said, “I thought you told me plants were different in forn parts. ”

  “So they are. ”

  “These trees look just the same. ”

  Granny regarded them disdainfully.

  “Nothing like as good,” she said.

  In fact she was already feeling slightly panicky. Her promise to accompany Esk to Unseen University had been made without thinking, and Granny, who picked up what little she knew of the rest of the Disc from rumour and the pages of her Almanack, was convinced that they were heading into earthquakes, tidal waves, plagues and massacres, many of them diverse or even worse. But she was determined to see it through. A witch relied too much on words ever to go back on them.

  She was wearing serviceable black, and concealed about her person were a number of hatpins and a breadknife. She had hidden their small store of money, grudgingly advanced by Smith, in the mysterious strata of her underwear. Her skirt pockets jingled with lucky charms, and a freshly-forged horseshoe, always a potent preventative in time of trouble, weighed down her handbag. She felt about as ready as she ever would be to face the world.

  The track wound down between the mountains. For once the sky was clear, the high Ramtops standing out crisp and white like the brides of the sky (with their trousseaux stuffed with thunderstorms) and the many little streams that bordered or crossed the path flowed sluggishly through strands of meadowsweet and go-fasterroot.

  By lunchtime they reached the suburb of Ohulan (it was too small to have more than one, which was just an inn and a handful of cottages belonging to people who couldn't stand the pressures of urban life) and a few minutes later the cart deposited them in the town's main, indeed its only, square.

  It turned out to be market day.

  Granny Weatherwax stood uncertainly on the cobbles, holding tightly to Esk's shoulder as the crowd swirled around them. She had heard that lewd things could happen to country women who were freshly arrived in big cities, and she gripped her handbag until her knuckles whitened. If any male stranger had happened to so much as nod at her it would have gone very hard indeed for him.

  Esk's eyes were sparkling. The square was a jigsaw of noise and colour and smell. On one side of it were the temples of the Disc's more demanding deities, and weird perfumes drifted out to join with the reeks of commerce in a complex ragrug of fragrances. There were stalls filled with enticing curiosities that she itched to investigate.

  Granny let the both of them drift with the crowd. The stalls were puzzling her as well. She peered among them, although never for one minute relaxing her vigilance against pickpockets, earthquakes and traffickers in the erotic, until she spied something vaguely familiar.

  There was a small covered stall, black draped and musty, that had been wedged into a narrow space between two houses. Inconspicuous though it was, it nevertheless seemed to be doing a very busy trade. Its customers were mainly women, of all ages, although she did notice a few men. They all had one thing in common, though. No one approached it directly. They all sort of strolled almost past it, then suddenly ducked under its shady canopy. A moment later and they would be back again, hand just darting away from bag or pocket, competing for the world's Most Nonchalant Walk title so effectively that a watcher might actually doubt what he or she had just seen.

  It was quite amazing that a stall so many people didn't know was there should be quite so popular.

  “What's in there?” said Esk. “What's everyone buying?”

  “Medicines,” said Granny firmly.

  “There must be a lot of very sick people in towns,” said Esk gravely.

  Inside, the stall was a mass of velvet shadows and the herbal scent was thick enough to bottle. Granny poked a few bundles of dry leaves with an expert finger. Esk pulled away from her and tried to read the scrawled labels on the bottles in front of her. She was expert at most of Granny's preparations, but she didn't recognise anything here. The names were quite amusing, like Tiger Oil, Maiden's Prayer and Husband's Helper, and one or two of the stoppers smelled like Granny's scullery after she had done some of her secret distillations.

  A shape moved in the stall's dim recesses and a brown wrinkled hand slid lightly on to hers.

  “Can I assist you, missy?” said a cracked voice, in tones of syrup of figs, “Is it your fortune you want telling, or is it your future you want changing, maybe?”

  “She's with me,” snapped Granny, spinning around, “and your eyes are betraying you, Hilta Goatfounder, if you can't tell her age. ”

  The shape in front of Esk bent forward.

  “Esme Weatherwax?” it asked.

  “The very same,” said Granny. “Still selling thunder drops and penny wishes, Hilta? How goes it?”

  “All the better for seeing you,” said the shape. “What brings you down from the mountains, Esme? And this child - your assistant, perhaps?”

  “What's it you're selling, please?” asked Esk. The shape laughed.

  “Oh, things to stop things that shouldn't be and help things that should, love,” it said. “Let me just close up, my dears, and I will be right with you. ”

  The shape bustled past Esk in a nasal kaleidoscope of fragrances and buttoned up the curtains at the front of the stall. Then the drapes at the back were thrown up, letting in the afternoon sunlight.

  “Can't stand the dark and fug myself,” said Hilta Goatfounder, “but the customers expect it. You know how it is. ”

  “Yes,” Esk nodded sagely. “Headology. ”

  Hilts, a small fat woman wearing an enormous hat with fruit on it, glanced from her to Granny and grinned.

  “That's the way of it,” she agreed. “Will you take some tea?”

  They sat on bales of unknown herbs in the private corner made by the stall between the angled walls of the houses, and drank something fragrant and green out of surprisingly delicate cups. Unlike Granny, who dressed like a very respectable raven, Hilts Goatfounder was all lace and shawls and colours and earrings and so many bangles that a mere movement of her arms sounded like a percussion section falling off a cliff. But Esk could see the likeness.

  It was hard to describe. You couldn't imagine them curtseying to anyone.

  “So,” said Granny, “how goes the life?”

  The other witch shrugged, causing the drummers to lose their grip again, just when they had nearly climbed back up.

  “Like the hurried lover, it comes and goe-” she began, and stopped at Granny's meaningful glance at Esk.

  “Not bad, not bad,” she amended hurriedly. “The council have tried to run me out once or twice, you know, but they all have wives and somehow it never quite happens. They say I'm not the right sort, but I say there'd be many a family in this town a good deal bigger and poorer if it wasn't for Madame Goatfounder's Pennyroyal Preventives. I know who comes into my shop, I do. I remember who buys buckeroo drops and ShoNuff Ointment, I
do. Life isn't bad. And how is it up in your village with the funny name?”

  “Bad Ass,” said Esk helpfully. She picked a small clay pot off the counter and sniffed at its contents.

  “It is well enough,” conceded Granny. “The handmaidens of nature are ever in demand. ”

  Esk sniffed again at the powder, which seemed to be pennyroyal with a base she couldn't quite identify, and carefully replaced the lid. While the two women exchanged gossip in a kind of feminine code, full of eye contact and unspoken adjectives, she examined the other exotic potions on display. Or rather, not on display. In some strange way they appeared to be artfully half-hidden, as if Hilts wasn't entirely keen to sell.

  “I don't recognise any of these,” she said, half to herself. “What do they give to people?”

  “Freedom,” said Hilts, who had good hearing. She turned back to Granny. “How much have you taught her?”

  “Not that much,” said Granny. “There's power there, but what kind I'm not sure. Wizard power, it might be. ”

  Hilts turned around very slowly and looked Esk up and down.

  “Ah,” she said, “That explains the staff. I wondered what the bees were talking about. Well, well. Give me your hand, child. ”

  Esk held out her hand. Hilta's fingers were so heavy with rings it was like dipping into a sack of walnuts.

  Granny sat upright, radiating disapproval, as Hilts began to inspect Esk's palm.

  “I really don't think that is necessary,” she said sternly. “Not between us. ”

  “You do it, Granny,” said Esk, “in the village. I've seen you. And teacups. And cards. ”

  Granny shifted uneasily. “Yes, well,” she said. “It's all according. You just hold their hand and people do their own fortune-telling. But there's no need to go around believing it, we'd all be in trouble if we went around believing everything. ”

  “The Powers That Be have many strange qualities, and puzzling and varied are the ways in which they make their desires known in this circle of firelight we call the physical world,” said Hilts solemnly. She winked at Esk.

  “Well, really,” snapped Granny.

  “No, straight up,” said Hilts. “It's true. ”

  “Hmph. ”

  “I see you going upon a long journey,” said Hilts.

  “Will I meet a tall dark stranger?” said Esk, examining her palm. “Granny always says that to women, she says -”

  “No,” said Hilts, while Granny snorted. “But it will be a very strange journey. You'll go a long way while staying in the same place. And the direction will be a strange one. It will be an exploration. ”

  “You can tell all that from my hand?”

  “Well, mainly I'm just guessing,” said Hilts, sitting back and reaching for the teapot /the lead drummer, who had climbed halfway back, fell on to the toiling cymbalists/. She looked carefully at Esk and added, “A female wizard, eh?”

  “Granny is taking me to Unseen University,” said Esk.

  Hilta raised her eyebrows. “Do you know where it is?”

  Granny frowned. “Not in so many words,” she admitted. “I was hoping you could give me more explicit directions, you being more familiar with bricks and things. ”