Lords and Ladies Read online

Page 5

  But the weather was different. People said that, if it started to rain, it always began to fall inside the circle a few seconds after it had started outside, as if the rain was coming from further away. If clouds crossed the sun, itd be a moment or two before the light faded inside the circle.

  William Scrope is going to die in a couple of minutes. It has to be said that he shouldnt have been hunting deer out of season, and especially not the fine stag he was tracking, and certainly not a fine stag of the Ramtop Red species, which is officially endangered although not as endangered, right now, as William Scrope.

  It was ahead of him, pushing through the bracken, making so much noise that a blind man could have tracked it.

  Scrope waded through after it.

  Mist was still hanging around the stones, not in a blanket but in long raggedy strings.

  The stag reached the circle now, and stopped. It trotted back and forth once or twice, and then looked up at Scrope.

  He raised the crossbow.

  The stag turned, and leapt between the stones.

  There were only confused impressions from then on. The first was of-

  -distance. The circle was a few yards across, it shouldnt suddenly appear to contain so much distance.

  And the next was of-

  -speed. Something was coming out of the circle, a white dot growing bigger and bigger.

  He knew hed aimed the bow. But it was whirled out of his hands as the thing struck, and suddenly there was only the sensation of-

  -peace.

  And the brief remembrance of pain.

  William Scrope died.

  William Scrope looked through his hands at the crushed bracken. The reason that it was crushed was that his own body was sprawled upon it.

  His newly deceased eyes surveyed the landscape.

  There are no delusions for the dead. Dying is like waking up after a really good party, when you have one or two seconds of innocent freedom before you recollect all the things you did last night which seemed so logical and hilarious at the time, and then you remember the really amazing thing you did with a lampshade and two balloons, which had them in stitches, and now you realise youre going to have to look a lot of people in the eye today and youre sober now and so are they but you can both remember.

  “Oh,” he said.

  The landscape flowed around the stones. It was all so obvious now, when you saw it from the outside. . .

  Obvious. No walls, only doors. No edges, only comers-

  WILLIAM SCROPE.

  “Yes?”

  IF YOU WOULD PLEASE STEP THIS WAY.

  “Are you a hunter?”

  I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES.

  Death grinned hopefully. Scropes post-physical brow furrowed.

  “What? Like . . . sherry, custard . . . that sort of thing?”

  Death sighed. Metaphors were wasted on people. Sometimes he felt that no one took him seriously enough.

  I TAKE AWAY PEOPLES LIVES IS WHAT I MEAN, he said testily.

  “Where to?”

  WE SHALL HAVE TO SEE, WONT WE?

  William Scrope was already fading into the mist.

  “That thing that got me-”

  YES?

  “I thought they were extinct!”

  "NO. THEY JUST WENT AWAY.

  “Where to?”

  Death extended a bony digit.

  OVER THERE.

  Magrat hadnt originally intended to move into the palace before the wedding, because people would talk. Admittedly a dozen people lived in the palace, which had a huge number of rooms, but shed still be under the same roof, and that was good enough. Or bad enough.

  That was before. Now her blood was sizzling. Let people talk. She had a pretty good idea which people theyd be, too. Which person, anyway. Witch person. Hah. Let them talk all they liked.

  She got up early and packed her possessions, such as they were. It wasnt exactly her cottage, and most of the furniture went with it. Witches came and went, but witches cottages went on for ever, usually with the same thatch they started with.

  But she did own the set of magical knives, the mystic collared cords, the assorted grails and crucibles, and a box full of rings, necklaces, and bracelets heavy with the hermetic symbols of a dozen religions. She tipped them all into a sack.

  Then there were the books. Goodie Whemper had been something of a bookworm among witches. There were almost a dozen. She hesitated about the books, and finally she let them stay on the shelves.

  There was the statutory pointy hat. Shed never liked it anyway, and had always avoided wearing it. Into the sack with it.

  She looked around wild-eyed until she spotted the small cauldron in the inglenook. Thatd do. Into the sack with that, and then tie the neck with string.

  On the way up to the palace she crossed the bridge over Lancre Gorge and tossed the sack into the river.

  It bobbed for a moment in the strong current, and then sank.

  Shed secretly hoped for a string of multicoloured bubbles, or even a hiss. But it just sank. Just as if it wasnt anything very important.

  Another world, another castle. . .

  The elf galloped over the frozen moat, steam billowing from its black horse and from the thing it carried over its neck.

  It rode up the steps and into the hall itself, where the Queen sat amidst her dreams. . .

  “My lord Lankin?”

  “A stag!”

  It was still alive. Elves were skilled at leaving things alive, often for weeks.

  “From out of the circle?”

  “Yes, lady!”

  “Its weakening. Did I not tell you?”

  “How long? How long?”

  “Soon. Soon. What went through the other way?”

  The elf tried to avoid her face.

  “Your . . . pet, lady. ”

  “No doubt it wont go far. ” The Queen laughed. “No doubt it will have an amusing time. . . ”

  It rained briefly at dawn.

  Theres nothing nastier to walk through than shoulder-high wet bracken. Well, there is. There are an uncountable number of things nastier to walk through, especially if theyre shoulder-high. But here and now, thought Nanny Ogg, it was hard to think of more than one or two.

  They hadnt landed inside the Dancers, of course. Even birds detoured rather than cross that airspace. Migrating spiders on gossamer threads floating half a mile up curved around it. Clouds split in two and flowed around it.

  Mist hung around the stones. Sticky, damp mist.

  Nanny hacked vaguely at the clinging bracken with her sickle.

  “You there, Esme?” she muttered.

  Granny Weatherwaxs head rose from a clump of bracken a few feet away.

  “Theres been things going on,” she said, in a cold and deliberate tone.

  “Like what?”

  “All the bracken and weeds is trampled around the stones. I reckon someones been dancing. ”

  Nanny Ogg gave this the same consideration as would a nuclear physicist whod just been told that someone was banging two bits of sub-critical uranium together to keep warm.

  “They never,” she said.

  “They have. And another thing. . . ” It was hard to imagine what other thing there could be, but Nanny Ogg said “Yes?” anyway.

  “Someone got killed up here. ”

  “Oh, no,” moaned Nanny Ogg. “Not inside the circle too. ”

  “Nope. Dont be daft. It was outside. A tall man. He had one leg longern the other. And a beard. He was probably a hunter. ”

  “Howd you know all that?”

  “I just trod on im. ”

  The sun rose through the mists.

  The morning rays were already caressing the ancient stones of Unseen University, premier college of wizardry, five hundred miles away.

  Not that many wizards were aware of this. For roost of the wizards of Unseen University their lunch was the firs
t meal of the day. They were not, by and large, breakfast people. The Archchancellor and the Librarian were the only two who knew what the dawn looked like from the front, and they tended to have the entire campus to themselves for several hours.

  The Librarian was always up early because he was an orang-utan, and they are naturally early risers, although in his case he didnt bellow a few times to keep other males off his territory. He just unlocked the Library and fed the books.

  And Mustrum Ridcully, the current Archchancellor, liked to wander around the sleepy buildings, nodding to the servants and leaving little notes for his subordinates, usually designed for no other purpose than to make it absolutely clear that he was up and attending to the business of the day while they were still fast asleep. [5]

  Today, however, he had something else on his mind. More or less literally.

  It was round. There was healthy growth all around it. He could swear it hadnt been there yesterday.

  He turned his head this way and that, squinting at the reflection in the mirror of the other mirror he was holding above his head.

  The next member of staff to wake up after Ridcully and the Librarian was the Bursar; not because he was a naturally early riser, but because by around ten oclock the Archchancellors very limited supply of patience came to an end and he would stand at the bottom of the stairs and shout:

  “Bursaaar!”

  -until the Bursar appeared.

  In fact it happened so often that the Bursar, a natural neurovore,[6] frequently found that hed got up and dressed himself in his sleep several minutes before the bellow. On this occasion he was upright and fully clothed and halfway to the door before his eyes snapped open.

  Ridcully never wasted time on small talk. It was always large talk or nothing.

  “Yes, Archchancellor?” said the Bursar, glumly.

  The Archchancellor removed his hat.

  “What about this, then?” he demanded.

  “Um, um, um . . . what, Archchancellor?”

  “This, man! This!”

  Close to panic, the Bursar stared desperately at the top of Ridcullys head.

  “The what? Oh. The bald spot?”

  “I have not got a bald spot!”

  “Um, then-”

  “I mean it wasnt there yesterday!”

  “Ah. Well. Um. ” At a certain point something always snapped inside the Bursar, and he couldnt stop himself. “Of course these things do happen and my grandfather always swore by a mixture of honey and horse manure, he rubbed it on every day-”

  “Im not going bald!”

  A tic started to dance across the Bursars face. The words started to come out by themselves, without the apparent intervention of his brain.

  “-and then he got this device with a glass rod and, and, and you rubbed it with a silk cloth and-”

  “I mean its ridiculous! My family have never gone bald, except for one of my aunts!”

  “-and, and, and then hed collect morning dew and wash his head, and, and, and-”

  Ridcully subsided. He was not an unkind man.

  “Whatre you taking for it at the moment?” he murmured.

  “Dried, dried, dried, dried,” stuttered the Bursar.

  “The old dried frog pills, right?”

  “R-r-r-r. ”

  “Left-hand pocket?”

  “R-r-r-r. ”

  “OK. . . right. . . swallow. . . ”

  They stared at one another for a moment.

  The Bursar sagged.

  “M-m-much better now, Archchancellor, thank you. ”

  “Somethings definitely happening. Bursar. I can feel it in my water. ”

  “Anything you say, Archchancellor. ”

  “Bursar?”

  “Yes, Archchancellor?”

  “You aint a member of some secret society or somethin, are you?”