High over the Circle Sea Rincewind was feeling a bit of an idiot.
   This happens to everyone sooner or later.
   For example, in a tavern someone jogs your elbow and you turn around quickly and give a mouthful of abuse to, you become slowly aware, the belt buckle of a man who, it turns out, was probably hewn rather than born.
   Or a little car runs into the back of yours and you rush out to show a bunch of fives to the driver who, it becomes apparent as he goes on unfolding more body like some horrible conjuring trick, must have been sitting on the back seat.
   Or you might be leading your mutinous colleagues to the captain's cabin and you hammer on the door and he sticks his great head out with a cutlass in either hand and you say 'We're taking over the ship, you scum, and the lads are right with me!' and he says 'What lads?' and you suddenly feel a great emptiness behind you and you say 'Um ...'
   In other words, it's the familiar hot sinking feeling experienced by everyone who has let the waves of their own anger throw them far up on the beach of retribution, leaving them, in the poetic language of the everyday, up shit creek.
   Rincewind was still angry and humiliated and so forth, but these emotions had died down a bit and something of his normal character had reasserted itself. It was not very pleased to find itself on a few threads of blue and gold wool high above the phosphorescent waves.
   He'd been heading for Ankh-Morpork. He tried to remember why.
   Of course, it was where it had all started. Perhaps it was the presence of the University, which was so heavy with magic it lay like a cannonball on the incontinence blanket of the Universe, stretching reality very thin. Ankh was where things started, and finished.
   It was also his home, such as it was, and it called to him.
   It has already been indicated that Rincewind appeared to have a certain amount of rodent in his ancestry, and in times of stress he felt an overpowering urge to make a run for his burrow.
   He let the carpet drift for a while on the air currents while dawn, which Creosote would probably have referred to as pink-fingered, made a ring of fire around the edge of the Disc. It spread its lazy light over a world that was subtly different.
   Rincewind blinked. There was a weird light. No, now he came to think about it, not weird but wyrd, which was much weirder. It was like looking at the world through a heat haze, but a haze that had a sort of life of its own. It danced and stretched, and gave more than a hint that it wasn't just an optical illusion but that it was reality itself that was being tensed and distended, like a rubber balloon trying to contain too much gas.
   The wavering was greatest in the direction of Ankh-Morpork, where flashes and fountains of tortured air indicated that the struggle hadn't abated. A similar column hung over Al Khali, and then Rincewind realised that it wasn't the only one.
   Wasn't that a tower over in Quirm, where the Circle Sea opened on to the great Rim Ocean? And there were others.
   It had all gone critical. Wizardry was breaking up. Goodbye to the University, the levels, the Orders; deep in his heart, every wizard knew that the natural unit of wizardry was one wizard. The towers would multiply and fight until there was one tower left, and then the wizards would fight until there was one wizard.
   By then, he'd probably fight himself.
   The whole edifice that operated as the balance wheel of magic was falling to bits. Rincewind resented that, deeply. He'd never been any good at magic, but that wasn't the point. He knew where he fitted. It was right at the bottom, but at least he fitted. He could look up and see the whole delicate machine ticking away, gently, browsing off the natural magic generated by the turning of the Disc.
   All he had was nothing, but that was something, and now it had been taken away.
   Rincewind turned the carpet until it was facing the distant gleam that was Ankh-Morpork, which was a brilliant speck in the early morning light, and a part of his mind that wasn't doing anything else wondered why it was so bright. There also seemed to be a full moon, and even Rincewind, whose grasp of natural philosophy was pretty vague, was sure there had been one of those only the other day.
   Well, it didn't matter. He'd had enough. He wasn't going to try to understand anything any more. He was going home.
   Except that wizards can never go home.
   This is one of the ancient and deeply meaningful sayings about wizards and it says something about most of them that they have never been able to work out what it means. Wizards aren't allowed to have wives but they are allowed to have parents, and many of them go back to the old home town for Hogswatch Night or Soul Cake Thursday, for a bit of a sing­song and the heart-warming sight of all their boyhood bullies hurriedly avoiding them in the street.
   It's rather like the other saying they've never been able to understand, which is that you can't cross the same river twice. Experiments with a long-legged wizard and a small river say you can cross the same river thirty, thirty-five times a minute.
   Wizards don't like philosophy very much. As far as they are concerned, one hand clapping makes a noise like 'cl'.
   In this particular case, though, Rincewind couldn't go home because it actually wasn't there any more. There was a city straddling the river Ankh, but it wasn't one he'd ever seen before; it was white and clean and didn't smell like a privy full of dead herrings.
   He landed in what had once been the Plaza of Broken Moons, and also in a state of some shock. There were fountains. There had been fountains before, of course, but they had oozed rather than played and they had looked like thin soup. There were milky flagstones underfoot, with little glittery bits in. And, although the sun was sitting on the horizon like half a breakfast grapefruit, there was hardly anyone around. Normally Ankh was permanently crowded, the actual shade of the sky being a mere background detail.
   Smoke drifted over the city in long greasy coils from the crown of boiling air above the University. It was the only movement, apart from the fountains.
   Rincewind had always been rather proud of the fact that he always felt alone, even in the teeming city, but it was even worse being alone when he was by himself.
   He rolled up the carpet and slung it over one shoulder and padded through the haunted streets towards the University.
   The gates hung open to the wind. Most of the build­ing looked half ruined by misses and ricochets. The tower of sourcery, far too high to be real, seemed to be unscathed. Not so the old Tower of Art. Half the magic aimed at the tower next door seemed to have rebounded on it. Parts of it had melted and started to run; some parts glowed, some parts had crystallised, a few parts seemed to have twisted partly out of the normal three dimensions. It made you feel sorry even for stone that it should have to undergo such treatment. In fact nearly everything had happened to the tower except actual collapse. It looked so beaten that possibly even gravity had given up on it.
   Rincewind sighed, and padded around the base of the tower towards the Library.
   Towards where the Library had been.
   There was the arch of the doorway, and most of the walls were still standing, but a lot of the roof had fallen in and everything was blackened by soot.
   Rincewind stood and stared for a long time.
   Then he dropped the carpet and ran, stumbling and sliding through the rubble that half-blocked the door­way. The stones were still warm underfoot. Here and there the wreckage of a bookcase still smouldered.
   Anyone watching would have seen Rincewind dart backwards and forwards across the shimmering heaps, scrabbling desperately among them, throwing aside charred furniture, pulling aside lumps of fallen roof with less than superhuman strength.
   They would have seen him pause once or twice to get his breath back, then dive in again, cutting his hands on shards of half-molten glass from the dome of the roof. They would have noticed that he seemed to be sobbing.
   Eventually his questing fingers touched something warm and soft.
   The frantic wizard heaved a charred roof beam aside, scrabbled through a drift of fallen tiles and peered down.
   There, half squashed by the beam and baked brown by the fire, was a large bunch of overripe, squashy bananas.
   He picked one up, very carefully, and sat and watched it for sometime until the end fell off.
   Then he ate it.
 
   'We shouldn't have let him go like that,' said Conina.
   'How could we have stopped him, oh, beauteous doe­eyed eaglet?'
   'But he may do something stupid!'
   'I should think that is very likely,' said Creosote primly.
   'While we do something clever and sit on a baking beach with nothing to eat or drink, is that it?'
   'You could tell me a story,' said Creosote, trembling slightly.
   'Shut up.'
   The Seriph ran his tongue over his lips.
   'I suppose a quick anecdote is out of the question?' he croaked.
   Conina sighed. 'There's more to life than narrative, you know.'
   'Sorry. I lost control a little, there.'
   Now that the sun was well up the crushed-shell beach glowed like a salt flat. The sea didn't look any better by daylight. It moved like thin oil.
   Away on either side the beach stretched in long, excruciatingly flat curves, supporting nothing but a few clumps of withered dune grass which lived off the moisture in the spray. There was no sign of any shade.
   'The way I see it,' said Conina, 'this is a beach, and that means sooner or later we'll come to a river, so all we have to do is keep walking in one direction.'
   'And yet, delightful snow on the slopes of Mount Eritor, we do not know which one.'
   Nijel sighed, and reached into his bag.
   'Erm,' he said, 'excuse me. Would this be any good? I stole it. Sorry.'
   He held out the lamp that had been in the treasury.
   'It's magic, isn't it?' he said hopefully. 'I've heard about them, isn't it worth a try?'
   Creosote shook his head.
   'But you said your grandfather used it to make his fortune!' said Conina.
   'A lamp,' said the Seriph, 'he used a lamp. Not this lamp. No, the real lamp was a battered old thing, and one day this wicked pedlar came round offering new lamps for old and my great­grandmother gave it to him for this one. The family kept it in the vault as a sort of memorial to her. A truly stupid woman. It doesn't work, of course.'
   'You tried it?'
   'No, but he wouldn't have given it away if it was any good, would he?'
   'Give it a rub,' said Conina. 'It can't do any harm.'
   'I wouldn't,' warned Creosote.
   Nijel held the lamp gingerly. It had a strangely sleek look, as if someone had set out to make a lamp that could go fast.
   He rubbed it.
   The effects were curiously unimpressive. There was a half-hearted pop and a puff of wispy smoke near Nijel's feet. A line appeared in the beach several feet away from the smoke. It spread quickly to outline a square of sand, which vanished.
   A figure barrelled out of the beach, jerked to a stop, and groaned.
   It was wearing a turban, an expensive tan, a small gold medallion, shiny shorts and advanced running shoes with curly toes.
   It said, 'I want to get this absolutely straight. Where am I?'
   Conina recovered first.
   'It's a beach,' she said.
   'Yah,' said the genie. 'What I mean was, which lamp? What world?'
   'Don't you know?'
   The creature took the lamp out of Nijel's unresisting grasp.
   'Oh, this old thing,' he said. 'I'm on time share. Two weeks every August but, of course, usually one can never get away.'
   'Got a lot of lamps, have you?' said Nijel.
   'I am somewhat over-committed on lamps,' the genie agreed. 'In fact I am thinking of diversifying into rings. Rings are looking big at the moment. There's a lot of movement in rings. Sorry, people; what can I do you for?’ The last phrase was turned in that special voice which people use for humorous self-parody, in the mistaken hope that it will make them sound less like a prat.
   'We-’ Conina began.
   'I want a drink,' snapped Creosote. 'And you are supposed to say that my wish is your command.'
   'Oh, absolutely no-one says that sort of thing any more,' said the genie, and produced a glass out of nowhere. He treated Creosote to a brilliant smile lasting a small percentage of one second.
   'We want you to take us across the sea to Ankh-Morpork,' said Conina firmly.
   The genie looked blank. Then he pulled a very thick book[21] from the empty air and consulted it.
   'It sounds a really neat concept,' he said eventually. 'Let's do lunch next Tuesday, okay?'
   'Do what?'
   'I'm a little energetic right now.'
   'You're a little-?' Conina began.
   'Great,' said the genie, sincerely, and glanced at his wrist. 'Hey, is that the time?' He vanished.
   The three of them looked at the lamp in thoughtful silence, and then Nijel said, 'Whatever happened to, you know, the fat guys with the baggy trousers and I Hear And Obey O Master?'
   Creosote snarled. He'd just drunk his drink. It had turned out to be water with bubbles in it and a taste like warm flatirons.
   'I'm bloody well not standing for it,' snarled Conina. She snatched the lamp from his hand and rubbed it as if she was sorry she wasn't holding a handful of emery cloth.
   The genie reappeared at a different spot, which still managed to be several feet away from the weak explosion and obligatory cloud of smoke.
   He was now holding something curved and shiny to his ear, and listening intently. He looked hurriedly at Conina's angry face and contrived to suggest, by waggling his eyebrows and waving his free hand urgently, that he was currently and inconveniently tied up by irksome matters which, regretfully, prevented him giving her his full attention as of now but, as soon as he had disentangled himself from this importunate person, she could rest assured that her wish, which was certainly a wish of tone and brilliance, would be his command.
   'I shall smash the lamp,' she said quietly.
   The genie flashed her a smile and spoke hastily into the thing he was cradling between his chin and his shoulder.
   'Fine,' he said. 'Great. It's a slice, believe me. Have your people call my people. Stay beyond, okay? Bye.' He lowered the instrument. 'Bastard,' he said vaguely.
   'I really shall smash the lamp,' said Conina.
   'Which lamp is this?' said the genie hurriedly.
   'How many have you got?' said Nijel. 'I always thought genies had just the one.'
   The genie explained wearily that in fact he had several lamps. There was a small but well-appointed lamp where he lived during the week, another rather unique lamp in the country, a carefully restored peasant rushlight in an unspoilt wine­growing district near Quirm, and just recently a set of derelict lamps in the docks area of Ankh-Morpork that had great potential, once the smart crowd got there, to become the occult equivalent of a suite of offices and a wine bar.
   They listened in awe, like fish who had inadvertently swum into a lecture on how to fly.
   'Who are your people the other people have got to call?' said Nijel, who was impressed, although he didn't know why or by what.
   'Actually, I don't have any people yet,' said the genie, and gave a grimace that was definitely upwardly-mobile at the corners. 'But I will.'
   'Everyone shut up,' said Conina firmly, 'and you, take us to Ankh-Morpork.'
   'I should, if I were you,' said Creosote. 'When the young lady's mouth looks like a letter box, it's best to do what she says.'
   The genie hesitated.
   'I'm not very deep on transport,' he said.
   'Learn,' said Conina. She was tossing the lamp from hand to hand.
   'Teleportation is a major headache,' said the genie, looking desperate. 'Why don't we do lun-’
   'Right, that's it,' said Conina. 'Now I just need a couple of big flat rocks-’
   'Okay, okay. Just hold hands, will you? I'll give it my best shot, but this could be one big mistake-'
   The astro-philosophers of Krull once succeeded in proving conclusively that all places are one place and that the distance between them is an illusion, and this news was an embarrassment to all thinking philosophers because it did not explain, among other things, signposts. After years of wrangling the whole thing was then turned over to Ly Tin Wheedle, arguably the Disc's greatest philosopher[22], who after some thought proclaimed that although it was indeed true that all places were one place, that place was very large.
   And so psychic order was restored. Distance is, however, an entirely subjective phenomenon and creatures of magic can adjust it to suit themselves.
   They are not necessarily very good at it.
 
   Rincewind sat dejectedly in the blackened ruins of the Library, trying to put his finger on what was wrong with them.
   Well, everything, for a start. It was unthinkable that the Library should be burned. It was the largest accumulation of magic on the Disc. It underpinned wizardry. Every spell ever used was written down in it somewhere. Burning them was, was, was ...
   There weren't any ashes. Plenty of wood ashes, lots of chains, lots of blackened stone, lots of mess. But thousands of books don't burn easily. They would leave bits of cover and piles of feathery ash. And there wasn't any.
   Rincewind stirred the rubble with his toe.
   There was only the one door into the Library. Then there were the cellars - he could see the stairs down to them, choked with garbage - but you couldn't hide all the books down there. You couldn't teleport them out either, they would be resistant to such magic; anyone who tried something like that would end up wearing his brains outside his hat.
   There was an explosion overhead. A ring of orange fire formed about halfway up the tower of sourcery, ascended quickly and soared off towards Quirm.
   Rincewind slid around on his makeshift seat and stared up at the Tower of Art. He got the distinct impression that it was looking back at him. It was totally without windows, but for a moment he thought he saw a movement up among the crumbling turrets.
   He wondered how old the tower really was. Older than the University, certainly. Older than the city, which had formed about it like scree around a mountain. Maybe older than geography. There had been a time when the continents were different, Rincewind understood, and then they'd sort of shuffled more comfortably together like puppies in a basket. Perhaps the tower had been washed up on the waves of rock, from somewhere else. Maybe it had been there before' the Disc itself, but Rincewind didn't like to consider that, because it raised uncomfortable questions about who built it and what for.
   He examined his conscience.
   It said: I'm out of options. Please yourself.
   Rincewind stood up and brushed the dust and ash off his robe, removing quite a lot of the moulting red plush as well. He removed his hat, made a preoccupied attempt at straightening the point, and replaced it on his head.
   Then he walked unsteadily towards the Tower of Art.
   There was a very old and quite small door at the base. He wasn't at all surprised when it opened as he approached.
 
   'Strange place,' said Nijel. 'Funny curve to the walls.'
   'Where are we?' said Conina.
   'And is there any alcohol?' said Creosote. 'Probably not,' he added.
   'And why is it rocking?' said Conina. 'I've never been anywhere with metal walls before.' She sniffed. 'Can you smell oil?' she added, suspiciously.
   The genie reappeared, although this time without the smoke and erratic trapdoor effects. It was noticeable that he tried to keep as far away from Conina as politely possible.
   'Everyone okay?' he said.
   'Is this Ankh?' she said. 'Only when we wanted to go there, we rather hoped you’d put us somewhere with a door.'
   'You're on your way,' said the genie.
   'In what?'
   Something about the way in which the spirit hesitated caused Nijel's mind to leap a tall conclusion from a standing start. He looked down at the lamp in his hands.
   He gave it an experimental jerk. The floor shook.
   'Oh, no,' he said. 'It's physically impossible.'
   'We're in the lamp?' said Conina.
   The room trembled again as Nijel tried to look down the spout.
   'Don't worry about it,' said the genie. 'In fact, don't think about it if possible.'
   He explained - although 'explained' is probably too positive a word, and in this case really means failed to explain but at some length - that it was perfectly possible to travel across the world in a small lamp being carried by one of the party, the lamp itself moving because it was being carried by one of the people inside it,
   because of a) the fractal nature of reality, which meant that everything could be thought of as being inside everything else and b) creative public relations. The trick relied on the laws of physics failing to spot the flaw until the journey was complete.
   'In the circumstances it is best not to think about it, yuh?' said the genie.
   'Like not thinking about pink rhinoceroses,' said Nijel, and gave an embarrassed laugh as they stared at him.
   'It was a sort of game we had,' he said. 'You had to avoid thinking of pink rhinoceroses.' He coughed. 'I didn't say it was a particularly good game.'
   He squinted down the spout again.
   'No,' said Conina, 'not very.'
   'Uh,' said the genie, 'Would anyone like coffee? Some sounds? A quick game of Significant Quest?'[23]
   'Drink?' said Creosote.
   'White wine?'
   'Foul muck.'
   The genie looked shocked.
   'Red is bad for -’ it began.
   '- but any port in a storm,' said Creosote hurriedly. 'Or sauterne, even. But no umbrella in it.' It dawned on the Seriph that this wasn't the way to talk to the genie. He pulled himself together a bit. 'No umbrella, by the Five Moons of Nasreem. Or bits of fruit salad or olives or curly straws or ornamental monkeys, I command thee by the Seventeen Siderites of Sarudin '
   'I'm not an umbrella person,' said the genie sulkily.
   'It's pretty sparse in here,' said Conina, 'Why don't you furnish it?'
   'What I don't understand,' said Nijel, 'is, if we're all in the lamp I'm holding, then the me in the lamp is holding a smaller lamp and in that lamp-’
   The genie waved his hands urgently.
   'Don't talk about it!' he commanded. 'Please!'
   Nijel's honest brow wrinkled. 'Yes, but,' he said, 'is there a lot of me, or what?'
   'It's all cyclic, but stop drawing attention to it, yuh? ... Oh, shit.'
   There was the subtle, unpleasant sound of the universe suddenly catching on.
 
   It was dark in the tower, a solid core of antique darkness that had been there since the dawn of time and resented the intrusion of the upstart daylight that nipped in around Rincewind.
   He felt the air move as the door shut behind him and the dark poured back, filling up the space where the light had been so neatly that you couldn't have seen the join even if the light had still been there.
   The interior of the tower smelled of antiquity, with a slight suspicion of raven droppings.
   It took a great deal of courage to stand there in that dark. Rincewind didn't have that much, but stood there anyway.
   Something started to snuffle around his feet, and Rincewind stood very still. The only reason he didn't move was for fear of treading on something worse.
   Then a hand like an old leather glove touched his, very gently, and a voice said: 'Oook.'
   Rincewind looked up.
   The dark yielded, just once, to a vivid flash of light. And Rincewind saw.
   The whole tower was lined with books. They were squeezed on every step of the rotting spiral staircase that wound up inside. They were piled up on the floor, although something about the way in which they were piled suggested that the word 'huddled' would be more appropriate. They had lodged -all right, they had perched - on every crumbling ledge.
   They were observing him, in some covert way that had nothing to do with the normal six senses. Books are pretty good at conveying meaning, not necessarily their own personal meanings of course, and Rincewind grasped the fact that they were trying to tell him something.
   There was another flash. He realised that it was magic from the sourcerer's tower, reflected down from the distant hole that led on to the roof.
   At least it enabled him to identify Wuffles, who was wheezing at his right foot. That was a bit of a relief. Now if he could just put a name to the soft, repetitive slithering noise near his left ear ...
   There was a further obliging flash, which found him looking directly into the little yellow eyes of the Patrician, who was clawing patiently at the side of his glass jar. It was a gentle, mindless scrabbling, as if the little lizard wasn't particularly trying to get out but was just vaguely interested in seeing how long it would take to wear the glass away.
   Rincewind looked down at the pear-shaped bulk of the Librarian.
   'There's thousands of them,' he whispered, his voice being sucked away and silenced by the massed ranks of books. 'How did you get them all in here?'
   'Oook oook.'
   'They what?'
   'Oook,’ repeated the Librarian, making vigorous flapping motions with his bald elbows.
   'Fly?'
   'Oook.'
   'Can they do that?'
   'Oook,’ nodded the Librarian.
   'That must have been pretty impressive. I'd like to see that one day.'
   'Oook.'
   Not every book had made it. Most of the important grimoires had got out but a seven-volume herbal had lost its index to the flames and many a trilogy was mourning for its lost volume. Quite a few books had scorch marks on their bindings; some had lost their cov­ers, and trailed their stitching unpleasantly on the floor.
   A match flared, and pages rippled uneasily around the walls. But it was only the Librarian, who lit a candle and shambled across the floor at the base of a menacing shadow big enough to climb skyscrapers. He had set up a rough table against one wall and it was covered with arcane tools, pots of rare adhesives and a bookbinder's vice which was already holding a stricken folio. A few weak lines of magic fire crawled across it.
   The ape pushed the candlestick into Rincewind's hand, picked up a scalpel and a pair of tweezers, and bent low over the trembling book. Rincewind went pale.
   'Um,' he said, 'er, do you mind if I go away? I faint at the sight of glue.'
   The Librarian shook his head and jerked a pre­occupied thumb towards a tray of tools.
   'Oook,' he commanded. Rincewind nodded miser­ably, and obediently handed him a pair of long-nosed scissors. The wizard winced as a couple of damaged pages were snipped free and dropped to the floor.
   'What are you doing to it?' he managed.
   'Oook.'
   'An appendectomy? Oh.'
   The ape jerked his thumb again, without looking up. Rincewind fished a needle and thread out of the ranks on the tray and handed them over. There was silence broken only by the scritching sound of thread being pulled through paper until the Librarian straightened up and said:
   'Oook.'
   Rincewind pulled out his handkerchief and mopped the ape's brow.
   'Oook.'
   'Don't mention it. Is it - going to be all right?'
   The Librarian nodded. There was also a general,
   almost inaudible sigh of relief from the tier of books above them.
   Rincewind sat down. The books were frightened. In fact they were terrified. The presence of the sourcerer made their spines creep, and the pressure of their atten­tion closed in around him like a vice.
   'All right,' he mumbled, 'but what can I do about it?'
   'Oook.' The Librarian gave Rincewind a look that would have been exactly like a quizzical look over the top of a pair of half-moon spectacles, if he had been wearing any, and reached for another broken book.
   'I mean, you know I'm no good at magic.'
   'Oook.'
   'The sourcery that's about now, it's terrible stuff. I mean, it's the original stuff, from right back in the dawn of time. Or around breakfast, at any rate.'
   'Oook.'
   'It'll destroy everything eventually, won't it?'
   'Oook.'
   'It's about time someone put a stop to this sourcery, right?'
   'Oook.'
   'Only it can't be me, you see. When I came here I thought I could do something, but that tower! It's so big! It must be proof against all magic! If really powerful wizards won't do anything about it, how can I?'
   'Oook,’ agreed the Librarian, sewing a ruptured spine.
   'So, you see, I think someone else can save the world this time. I'm no good at it.'
   The ape nodded, reached across and lifted Rince­wind's hat from his head.
   'Hey!'
   The Librarian ignored him, picked up a pair of shears.
   'Look, that's my hat, if you don't mind don't you dare do that to my-’
   He leapt across the floor and was rewarded with a thump across the side of the head, which would have astonished him if he'd had time to think about it; the Librarian might shuffle around the place like a good­-natured wobbly balloon, but underneath that oversized skin was a framework of superbly-cantilevered bone and muscle that could drive a fistful of calloused knuckles through a thick oak plank. Running into the Librarian's arm was like hitting a hairy iron bar.
   Wuffles started to bounce up and down, yelping with excitement.
   Rincewind screamed a hoarse, untranslatable yell of fury, bounced off the wall, snatched up a fallen rock as a crude club, kicked forward and stopped dead.
   The Librarian was crouched in the centre of the floor with the shears touching-but not yet cutting-the hat.
   And he was grinning at Rincewind.
   They stood like a frozen tableau for some seconds. Then the ape dropped the shears, flicked several imaginary flecks of dust off the hat, straightened the point, and placed it on Rincewind's head.
   A few shocked moments after this Rincewind realised that he was holding up, at arm's length, a very large and extremely heavy rock. He managed to force it away on one side before it recovered from the shock and remem­bered to fall on him.
   'I see,' he said, sinking back against the wall and rub­bing his elbows. And all that's supposed to tell me something, is it? A moral lesson, let Rincewind confront his true self, let him work out what he's really prepared to fight for. Eh? Well, it was a very cheap trick. And I've news for you. If you think it worked-’ he snatched the hat brim - 'if you think it worked. If you think I've. You've got another thought. Listen, it's. If you think.'
   His voice stuttered into silence. Then he shrugged.
   'All right. But when you get down to it, what can I actually do?'
   The Librarian replied with an expansive gesture that indicated, as clearly as if he had said 'oook', that Rincewind was a wizard with a hat, a library of magical books and a tower. This could be regarded as every­thing a magical practitioner could need. An ape, a small terrier with halitosis and a lizard in a jar were optional extras.
   Rincewind felt a slight pressure on his foot. Wuffles, who was extremely slow on the uptake, had fastened his toothless gums on the toe of Rincewind's boot and was giving it a vicious suck.
   He picked the little dog up by the scruff of its neck and the bristly stub that, for the want of a better word, it called its tail, and gently lifted it sideways.
   'Okay,' he said. 'You'd better tell me what's been happening here.'
 
   From the Carrack Mountains, overlooking the vast cold Sto Plain in the middle of which Ankh-Morpork sprawled like a bag of dropped groceries, the view was particularly impressive. Mishits and ricochets from the magical battle were expanding outwards and upwards, in a bowl-shaped cloud of curdled air at the heart of which strange lights flashed and sparkled.
   The roads leading away from it were packed with refugees, and every inn and wayside tavern was crowded out. Or nearly every one.
   No-one seemed to want to stop at the rather pleasant little pub nestling among trees just off the road to Quirm. It wasn't that they were frightened to go inside, it was just that, for the moment, they weren't being allowed to notice it.
   There was a disturbance in the air about half a mile away and three figures dropped out of nowhere into a thicket of lavender.
   They lay supine in the sunshine among the broken, fragrant branches, until their sanity came back. Then Creosote said, 'Where are we, do you suppose?'
   'It smells like someone's underwear drawer,' said Conina.
   'Not mine,' said Nijel, firmly.
   He eased himself up gently and added, 'Has anyone seen the lamp?'
   'Forget it. It's probably been sold to build a wine-bar,' said Conina.
   Nijel scrabbled around among the lavender stems until his hands found something small and metallic.
   'Got it!' he declared.
   'Don't rub it!' said the other two, in harmony. They were too late anyway, but that didn't much matter, because all that happened when Nijel gave it a cautious buff was the appearance of some small smoking red letters in mid-air.
   ' 'Hi",' Nijel read aloud. ' "Do not put down the lamp, because your custom is important to us. Please leave a wish after the tone and, very shortly, it will be our command. In the meantime, have a nice eternity." ' He added, 'You know, I think he's a bit over-committed.'
   Conina said nothing. She was staring out across the plains to the broiling storm of magic. Occasionally some of it would detach and soar away to some distant tower. She shivered, despite the growing heat of the day.
   'We ought to get down there as soon as possible,' she said. 'It's very important.'
   'Why?' said Creosote. One glass of wine hadn't really restored him to his former easygoing nature.
   Conina opened her mouth, and - quite unusually for her - shut it again. There was no way to explain that every gene in her body was dragging her onwards, telling her that she should get involved; visions of swords and spiky balls on chains kept invading the hairdressing salons of her consciousness.
   Nijel, on the other hand, felt no such pounding. All he had to drive him onwards was imagination, but he did have enough of that to float a medium-sized war galley. He looked towards the city with what would have been, but for his lack of chin, an expression of setjawed determination.
   Creosote realised that he was outnumbered.
   'Do they have any drink down there?' he said.
   'Lots,' said Nijel.
   'That might do for a start,' the Seriph conceded. 'All right, lead on, O peach-breasted daughter of-’
   And no poetry.'
   They untangled themselves from the thicket and walked down the hillside until they reached the road which, before very long, went past the aforementioned tavern or, as Creosote persisted in calling it, caravanserai.
   They hesitated about going in. It didn't seem to welcome visitors. But Conina, who by breeding and upbringing tended to skulk around the back of buildings, found four horses tethered in the yard.
   They considered them carefully.
   'It would be stealing,' said Nijel, slowly.
   Conina opened her mouth to agree and the words 'Why not?' slid past her lips. She shrugged.
   'Perhaps we should leave some money-’ Nijel suggested.
   'Don't look at me,' said Creosote.
   '- or maybe write a note and leave it under the bridle. Or something. Don't you think?'
   By way of an answer Conina vaulted up on to the largest horse, which by the look of it belonged to a soldier. Weaponry was slung all over it.
   Creosote hoisted himself uneasily on to the second horse, a rather skittish bay, and sighed.
   'She's got that letter-box look,' he said. 'I should do what she says.'
   Nijel regarded the other two horses suspiciously. One of them was very large and extremely white, not the off-white which was all that most horses could manage, but a translucent, ivory white tone which Nijel felt an unconscious urge to describe as 'shroud'. It also gave him a distinct impression that it was more intelligent than he was.
   He selected the other one. It was a bit thin, but docile, and he managed to get on after only two tries.
   They set off.
   The sound of their hoofbeats barely penetrated the gloom inside the tavern. The innkeeper moved like someone in a dream. He knew he had customers, he'd even spoken to them, he could even see them sitting round a table by the fire, but if asked to describe who he'd talked to and what he had seen he'd have been at a loss. This is because the human brain is remarkably good at shutting out things it doesn't want to know. His could currently have shielded a bank vault.
   And the drinks! Most of them he'd never heard of, but strange bottles kept appearing on the shelves above the beer barrels. The trouble was that whenever he tried to think about it, his thoughts just slid away ...
   The figures around the table looked up from their cards.
   One of them raised a hand. It's stuck on the end of his arm and it's got five fingers, the innkeeper's mind said. It must be a hand.
   One thing the innkeeper's brain couldn't shut out was the sound of the voices. This one sounded as though someone was hitting a rock with a roll of sheet lead.
   BAR PERSON.
   The innkeeper groaned faintly. The thermic lances of horror were melting their way steadily through the steel door of his mind.
   LET ME SEE, NOW. THAT'S A - WHAT WAS IT AGAIN
   'A Bloody Mary.' This voice made a simple drinks order sound like the opening of hostilities.
   OH, YES. AND
   'Mine was a small egg none,' said Pestilence.
   AN EGG NOW.
   'With a cherry in it.'
   GOOD, lied the heavy voice. AND THAT'LL BE A SMALL PORT WINE FOR ME AND, the speaker glanced across the table at the fourth member of the quartet and sighed, YOU'D BETTER BRING ANOTHER BOWL OF PEANUTS.
   About three hundred yards down the road the horse thieves were trying to come to terms with a new experience.
   'Certainly a smooth ride,' Nijel managed eventually.
   'And a lovely - a lovely view,' said Creosote, his voice lost in the slipstream.
   'But I wonder,' said Nijel, 'if we have done exactly the right thing.'
   'We're moving, aren't we?' demanded Conina. 'Don't be petty.'
   'It's just that, well, looking at cumulus clouds from above is-’
   'Shut up.'
   'Sorry.'
   'Anyway, they're stratus. Cumulus at most.'
   'Right,' said Nijel miserably.
   'Does it make any difference?’ said Creosote, who was lying flat on his horse's neck with his eyes shut.
   'About a thousand feet.'
   'Oh.'
   'Could be seven hundred and fifty,' conceded Conina.
   'Ah.'

 The tower of sourcery trembled. Coloured smoke rolled through its vaulted rooms and shining corridors. In the big room at the very tip, where the air was thick and greasy and tasted of burning tin, many wizards had passed out with the sheer mental effort of the battle. But enough remained. They sat in a wide circle, locked in concentration.
   It was just possible to see the shimmering in the air as the raw sourcery swirled out of the staff in Coin's hand and into the centre of the octogram.
   Outlandish shapes appeared for a brief instant and vanished. The very fabric of reality was being put through the wringer in there.
   Carding shuddered, and turned away in case he saw anything he really couldn't ignore.
   The surviving senior wizards had a simulacrum of the Disc hovering in front of them. As Carding looked at it again the little red glow over the city of Quirm flared and went out.
   The air creaked.
   'There goes Quirm,' murmured Carding.
   'That just leaves Al Khali,' said one of the others.
   'There's some clever power there.'
   Carding nodded glumly. He'd quite liked Quirm, which was a -had been a pleasant little city overlooking the Rim Ocean.
   He dimly recalled being taken there, once, when he was small. For a moment he gazed sadly into the past. It had wild geraniums, he recalled, filling the sloping cobbled streets with their musky fragrance.
   'Growing out of the walls,' he said out loud. 'Pink. They were pink.'
   The other wizards looked at him oddly. One or two, of a particularly paranoid frame of mind even for wizards, glanced suspiciously at the walls.
   'Are you all right?' said one of them.
   'Um?' said Carding, 'Oh. Yes, Sorry. Miles away.'
   He turned back to look at Coin, who was sitting off to one side of the circle with the staff across his knees. The boy appeared to be asleep. Perhaps he was. But Carding knew in the tormented pit of his soul that the staff didn't sleep. It was watching him, testing his mind.
   It knew. It even knew about the pink geraniums.
   'I never wanted it to be like this,' he said softly. 'All we really wanted was a bit of respect.'
   'Are you sure you’re all right?'
   Carding nodded vaguely. As his colleagues resumed their concentration he glanced sideways at them.
   Somehow, all his old friends had gone. Well, not friends. A wizard never had friends, at least not friends who were wizards. It needed a different word. Ah yes, that was it. Enemies. But a very decent class of enemies. Gentlemen. The cream of their profession. Not like these people, for all that they seemed to have risen in the craft since the sourcerer had arrived.
   Other things besides the cream floated to the top, he reflected sourly.
   He turned his attention to Al Khali, probing with his mind, knowing that the wizards there were almost certainly doing the same, seeking constantly for a point of weakness.
   He thought: am I a point of weakness? Spelter tried to tell me something. It was about the staff. A man should lean on his staff, not the other way around ... it's steering him, leading him ... I wish I'd listened to Spelter ... this is wrong, I'm a point of weakness ...
   He tried again, riding the surges of power, letting them carry his mind into the enemy tower. Even Abrim was making use of sourcery, and Carding let himself modulate the wave, insinuating himself past the defences erected against him.
   The image of the interior of the Al Khali tower appeared, focused ...
   ... the Luggage trundled along the glowing corridors. It was exceedingly angry now. It had been awoken from hibernation, it had been scorned, it had been briefly attacked by a variety of mythological and now extinct lifeforms, it had a headache and now, as it entered the Great Hall, it detected the hat. The horrible hat, the cause of everything it was currently suffering. It advanced purposefully ...
   Carding, testing the resistance of Abrim's mind, felt the man's attention waver. For a moment he saw through the enemy's eyes, saw the squat oblong cantering across the stone. For a moment Abrim attempted to shift his concentration and then, no more able to help himself than is a cat when it sees something small and squeaky run across the floor, Carding struck.
   Not much. It didn't need much. Abrim's mind was attempting to balance and channel huge forces, and it needed hardly any pressure to topple it from its position.
   Abrim extended his hands to blast the Luggage, gave the merest beginnings of a scream, and imploded.
   The wizards around him thought they saw him grow impossibly small in a fraction of a second and vanish, leaving a black after-image ...
   The more intelligent of them started to run ...
   And the magic he had been controlling surged back out and flooded free in one great, randomised burst that blew the hat to bits, took out the entire lower levels of the tower and quite a large part of what remained of the city.
   So many wizards in Ankh had been concentrating on the hall that the sympathetic resonance blew them across the room. Carding ended up on his back, his hat over his eyes.
   They hauled him out and dusted him off and carried him to Coin and the staff, amid cheers - although some of the older wizards forbore to cheer. But he didn't seem to pay any attention.
   He stared sightlessly down at the boy, and then slowly raised his hands to his ears.
   'Can't you hear them?' he said.
   The wizards fell silent. Carding still had power, and the tone of his voice would have quelled a thunderstorm.
   Coin's eyes glowed.
   'I hear nothing,' he said.
   Carding turned to the rest of the wizards.
   'Can't you hear them?'
   They shook their heads. One of them said, 'Hear what, brother?'
   Carding smiled, and it was a wide, mad smile. Even Coin took a step backwards.
   'You'll hear them soon enough,' he said. 'You've made a beacon. You'll all hear them. But you won't hear them for long.' He pushed aside the younger wizards who were holding his arms and advanced on Coin.
   'You're pouring sourcery into the world and other things are coming with it,' he said. 'Others have given them a pathway but you've given them an avenue!'
   He sprang forward and snatched the black staff out of Coin's hands and swung it up in the air to smash it against the wall.
   Carding went rigid as the staff struck back. Then his skin began to blister ...
   Most of the wizards managed to turn their heads away. A few -and there are always a few like that watched in obscene fascination.
   Coin watched, too. His eyes widened in wonder. One hand went to his mouth. He tried to back away. He couldn't.

   'They're cumulus.'
   'Marvellous,' said Nijel weakly.

   WEIGHT DOESN'T COME INTO IT. MY STEED HAS CARRIED ARMIES. MY STEED HAS CARRIED CITIES. YEA, HE HATH CARRIED ALL THINGS IN THEIR DUE TIME, said Death. BUT HE'S NOT GOING TO CARRY YOU THREE.
   'Why not?'
   IT'S A MATTER OF THE LOOK OF THE THING.
   'It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it,' said War testily, 'the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse.'
   'Perhaps you could ask them to wait for us?' said Pestilence, his voice sounding like something dripping out of the bottom of a coffin.
   I HAVE THINGS TO ATTEND TO, said Death. He made a little clicking noise with his teeth. I'M SURE YOU'LL MANAGE. YOU NORMALLY DO.
   War watched the retreating horse.
   'Sometimes he really gets on my nerves. Why is he always so keen to have the last word?' he said.
   'Force of habit, l suppose.'
   They turned back to the tavern. Neither spoke for some time, and then War said, 'Where's Famine?'
   'Went to find the kitchen.'
   'Oh.' War scuffed one armoured foot in the dust, and thought about the distance to Ankh. It was a very hot afternoon. The Apocralypse could jolly well wait.
   'One for the road?' he suggested.
   'Should we?' said Pestilence, doubtfully. 'I thought we were expected. l mean, l wouldn't like to disappoint people.'
   'We've got time for a quick one, I'm sure,' War insisted. 'Pub clocks are never right. We've got bags of time. All the time in the world.'

   Carding slumped forward and thudded on the shining white floor. The staff rolled out of his hands and upended itself.
   Coin prodded the limp body with his foot.
   'I did warn him,' he said. 'I told him what would happen if he touched it again. What did he mean, them?'
   There was an outbreak of coughing and a consider­able inspection of fingernails.
   'What did he mean?' Coin demanded.
   Ovin Hakardly, lecturer in Lore, once again found that the wizards around him were parting like morning mist. Without moving he appeared to have stepped for­ward. His eyes swivelled backwards and forwards like trapped animals.
   'Er,' he said. He waved his thin hands vaguely. 'The world, you see, that is, the reality in which we live, in fact, it can be thought of as, in a manner of speaking, a rubber sheet.' He hesitated, aware that the sentence was not going to appear in anyone's book of quotable quotes.
   'In that,' he added hurriedly, 'it is distorted, uh, distended by the presence of magic in any degree and, if I may make a point here, too much magical potentiality, if foregathered in one spot, forces our reality, um, down­wards, although of course one should not take the term literally (because in no sense do I seek to suggest a phys­ical dimension) and it has been postulated that a sufficient exercise of magic can, shall we say, um, break through the actuality at its lowest point and offer, perhaps, a pathway to the inhabitants or, if I may use a more correct term, denizens of the lower plane (which is called by the loose-tongued the Dungeon Dimensions) who, because perhaps of the difference in energy levels, are naturally attracted to the brightness of this world. Our world.'
   There was the typical long pause which usually followed Hakardly's speeches, while everybody men­tally inserted commas and stitched the fractured clauses together.
   Coin's lips moved silently for a while. 'Do you mean magic attracts these creatures?' he said eventually.
   His voice was quite different now. It lacked its former edge. The staff hung in the air above the prone body of Carding, rotating slowly. The eyes of every wizard in the place were on it.
   'So it appears,' said Hakardly. 'Students of such things say their presence is heralded by a coarse susurra­tion.'
   Coin looked uncertain.
   'They buzz,' said one of the other wizards helpfully.
   The boy knelt down and peered closely at Carding.
   'He's very still,' he said cautiously. 'Is anything bad happening to him?'
   'It may be,' said Hakardly, guardedly. 'He's dead.'
   'I wish he wasn't.'
   'It is a view, I suspect, which he shares.'
   'But I can help him,' said Coin. He held out his hands and the staff glided into them. If it had a face, it would have smirked.
   When he spoke next his voice once again had the cold distant tones of someone speaking in a steel room.
   'If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize,' he said.
   'Sorry?' said Hakardly. 'You've lost me there.'
   Coin turned on his heel and strode back to his chair.
   'We can fear nothing,' he said, and it sounded more like a command. 'What of these Dungeon Dimensions? If they should trouble us, away with them! A true wizard will fear nothing! Nothing!'
   He jerked to his feet again and strode to the simulacrum of the world. The image was perfect in every detail, down to a ghost of Great A'Tuin paddling slowly through the interstellar deeps a few inches above the floor.
   Coin waved his hand through it disdainfully.
   'Ours is a world of magic,' he said. 'And what can be found in it that can stand against us?'
   Hakardly thought that something was expected of him.
   'Absolutely no-one,' he said. 'Except for the gods, of course.'
   There was a dead silence.
   'The gods?' said Coin quietly.
   'Well, yes. Certainly. We don't challenge the gods. They do their job, we do ours. No sense in-’
   'Who rules the Disc? Wizards or gods?'
   Hakardly thought quickly.
   'Oh, wizards. Of course. But, as it were, under the gods.'
   When one accidentally puts one boot in a swamp it is quite unpleasant. But not as unpleasant as pushing down with the other boot and hearing that, too, disappear with a soft sucking noise. Hakardly pressed on.
   'You see, wizardry is more-’
   'Are we not more powerful than the gods, then?' said Coin.
   Some of the wizards at the back of the crowd began to shuffle their feet.
   'Well. Yes and no,' said Hakardly, up to his knees in it now.
   The truth was that wizards tended to be somewhat nervous about the gods. The beings who dwelt on Cori Celesti had never made their feelings plain on the subject of ceremonial magic, which after all had a certain godness about it, and wizards tended to avoid the whole subject. The trouble with gods was that if they didn't like something they didn't just drop hints, so common sense suggested that it was unwise to put the gods in a position where they had to decide.
   'There seems to be some uncertainty?' said Coin.
   'If I may counsel-’ Hakardly began.
   Coin waved a hand. The walls vanished. The wizards stood at the top of the tower of sourcery, and as one man their eyes turned to the distant pinnacle of Cori Celesti, home of the gods.
   'When you've beaten everyone else, there's only the gods left to fight,' said Coin. 'Have any of you seen the gods?'
   There was a chorus of hesitant denials.
   'I will show them to you.'

   'You've got room for another one in there, old son,' said War.
   Pestilence swayed unsteadily. 'I'm sure we should be getting along,' he muttered, without much conviction.
   'Oh, go on.'
   'Just a half, then. And then we really must be going.'
   War slapped him on the back, and glared at Famine.
   'And wed better have another fifteen bags of peanuts,' he added.
   'Oook,' the Librarian concluded.
   'Oh,' said Rincewind. 'It's the staff that's the problem, then.'
   'Oook.'
   'Hasn't anyone tried to take it away from him?'
   'Oook.'
   'What happened to them, then?'
   'Eeek.'
   Rincewind groaned.
   The Librarian had put his candle out because the presence of the naked flame was unsettling the books, but now that Rincewind had grown accustomed to the dark, he realised it wasn't dark at all. The soft octarine glow from the books filled the inside of the tower with something that, while it wasn't exactly light, was a blackness you could see by. Now and again the ruffle of stiff pages floated down from the gloom.
   'So, basically, there's no way our magic could defeat him, isn't that right?'
   The Librarian cooked disconsolate agreement and continued to spin around gently on his bottom.
   'Pretty pointless, then. It may have struck you that I am not exactly gifted in the magical department? I mean, any duel is going to go on the lines of "Hallo, I'm Rincewind" closely followed by bazaam!'
   'Oook.'
   'Basically, what you're saying is that I'm on my own.'
   'Oook.'
   'Thanks.'
   By their own faint glow Rincewind regarded the books that had stacked themselves around the inner walls of the ancient tower.
   He sighed, and marched briskly to the door, but slowed down noticeably as he reached it.
   'I'll be off, then,' he said.
   'Oook.'
   'To face who knows what dreadful perils,' Rincewind added. 'To lay down my life in the service of mankind-’
   'Eeek.'
   'All right, bipeds-’
   'Woof.'
   '- and quadrapeds, all right.' He glanced at the Patrician's jamjar, a beaten man.
   'And lizards,' he added. 'Can I go now?'

   A gale was howling down out of a clear sky as Rincewind toiled towards the tower of sourcery. Its high white doors were shut so tightly it was barely possible to see their outline in the milky surface of the stone.
   He hammered on it for a bit, but nothing much happened. The doors seemed to absorb the sound.
   'Fine thing,' he muttered to himself, and remembered the carpet. It was lying where he had left it, which was another sign that Ankh had changed. In the thieving days before the sourcerer nothing stayed for long where you left it. Nothing printable, anyway.
   He rolled it out on the cobbles so that the golden dragons writhed against the blue ground, unless of course the blue dragons were flying against a golden sky.
   He sat down.
   He stood up.
   He sat down again and hitched up his robe and, with some effort, unrolled one of his socks. Then he replaced his boot and wandered around for a bit until he found, among the rubble, a half-brick. He inserted the half-brick into the sock and gave the sock a few thoughtful swings.
   Rincewind had grown up in Morpork. What a Morpork citizen liked to have on his side in a fight was odds of about twenty to one, but failing that a sockful of half-brick and a dark alley to lurk in was generally considered a better bet than any two magic swords you cared to name.
   He sat down again.
   'Up,' he commanded.
   The carpet did not respond. Rincewind peered at the pattern, then lifted a corner of the carpet and tried to make out if the underside was any better.
   'All right,' he conceded, 'down. Very, very carefully. Down.'

   'Sheep,' slurred War. 'It was sheep.' His helmeted head hit the bar with a clang. He raised it again. 'Sheep.'
   'Nonono,' said Famine, raising a thin finger unsteadily. 'Some other domess ... dummist ... tame animal. Like pig. Heifer. Kitten? Like that. Not sheep.'
   'Bees,' said Pestilence, and slid gently out of his seat.
   'O-kay,' said War, ignoring him, 'right. Once again, then. From the top.' He rapped the side of his glass for the note.
   'We are poor little ... unidentified domesticated animals ... that have lost our way ...' he quavered.
   'Baabaabaa,' muttered Pestilence, from the floor.
   War shook his head. 'It isn't the same, you know,' he said. 'Not without him. He used to come in beautifully on the bass.'
   'Baabaabaa,' Pestilence repeated.
   'Oh, shut up,' said War, and reached uncertainly for a bottle.

   The gale buffeted the top of the tower, a hot, unpleasant wind that whispered with strange voices and rubbed the skin like fine sandpaper.
   In the centre of it Coin stood with the staff over his head. As dust filled the air the wizards saw the lines of magic force pouring from it.
   They curved up to form a vast bubble that expanded until it must have been larger than the city. And shapes appeared in it. They were shifting and indistinct, wavering horribly like visions in a distorting mirror, no more substantial than smoke rings or pictures in the clouds, but they were dreadfully familiar.
   There, for a moment, was the fanged snout of Offler. There, clear for an instant in the writhing storm, was Blind lo, chief of the gods, with his orbiting eyes.
   Coin muttered soundlessly and the bubble began to contract. It bulged and jerked obscenely as the things inside fought to get out, but they could not stop the contraction.
   Now it was bigger than the University grounds.
   Now it was taller than the tower.
   Now it was twice the height of a man, and smoke grey.
   Now it was an iridescent pearl, the size of ... well, the size of a large pearl.
   The gale had gone, replaced by a heavy, silent calm. The very air groaned with the strain. Most of the wizards were flat on the floor, pressed there by the unleashed forces that thickened the air and deadened sound like a universe of feathers, but every one of them could hear his own heart beating loud enough to smash the tower.
   'Look at me,' Coin commanded.
   They turned their eyes upwards. There was no way they could disobey.
   He held the glistening thing in one hand. The other held the staff, which had smoke pouring from its ends.
   'The gods,' he said. 'Imprisoned in a thought. And perhaps they were never more than a dream.'
   His voice become older, deeper. 'Wizards of Unseen University,' it said, 'have I not given you absolute dominion?'
   Behind. them the carpet rose slowly over the side of the tower, with Rincewind trying hard to keep his balance. His eyes were wide with the sort of terror that comes naturally to anyone standing on a few threads and several hundred feet of empty air.
   He lurched off the hovering thing and on to the tower, swinging the loaded sock around his head in wide, dangerous sweeps.
   Coin saw him reflected in the astonished stares of the assembled wizards. He turned carefully and watched the wizard stagger erratically towards him.
   'Who are you?' he said.
   'I have come,' said Rincewind thickly, 'to challenge the sourcerer. Which one is he?'
   He surveyed the prostrate wizardry, hefting the half-brick in one hand.
   Hakardly risked a glance upwards and made frantic eyebrow movements at Rincewind who, even at the best of times, wasn't much good at interpreting non-verbal communication. This wasn't the best of times.
   'With a sock?' said Coin. 'What good is a sock?'
   The arm holding the staff rose. Coin looked down at it in mild astonishment.
   'No, stop,' he said. 'I want to talk to this man.' He stared at Rincewind, who was swaying back and forth under the influence of sleeplessness, horror and the after-effects of an adrenaline overdose.
   'Is it magical?' he said, curiously. 'Perhaps it is the sock of an Archchancellor? A sock of force?'
   Rincewind focused on it.
   'I don't think so,' he said. 'I think I bought it in a shop or something. Um. I've got another one somewhere.'
   'But in the end it has something heavy?'
   'Um. Yes,' said Rincewind. He added, 'It's a half-­brick.'
   'But it has great power.'
   'Er. You can hold things up with it. If you had another one, you’d have a brick.' Rincewind spoke slowly. He was assimilating the situation by a kind of awful osmosis, and watching the staff turn ominously in the boy's hand.
   'So. It is a brick of ordinariness, within a sock. The whole becoming a weapon.'
   'Um. Yes.'
   'How does it work?'
   'Um. You swing it, and then you. Hit something with it. Or sometimes the back of your hand, sometimes.'
   'And then perhaps it destroys a whole city?’ said Coin.
   Rincewind stared into Coin's golden eyes, and then at his sock. He had pulled it on and off several times a year for years. It had darns he'd grown to know and lo-well, know. Some of them had whole families of darns of their own. There were a number of descriptions that could be applied to the sock, but slayer-of-cities wasn't among them.
   'Not really,' he said at last. 'It sort of kills people but leaves buildings standing.'
   Rincewind's mind was operating at the speed of conti­nental drift. Parts of it were telling him that he was confronting the sourcerer, but they were in direct conflict with other parts. Rincewind had heard quite a lot about the power of the sourcerer, the staff of the sourcerer, the wickedness of the sourcerer and so on. The only thing no-one had mentioned was the age of the sourcerer.
   He glanced towards the staff.
   'And what does that do?' he said slowly.
   And the staff said, You must kill this man.
   The wizards, who had been cautiously struggling upright, flung themselves flat again.
   The voice of the hat had been bad enough, but the voice of the staff was metallic and precise; it didn't sound as though it was offering advice but simply stating the way the future had to be. It sounded quite impossible to ignore.
   Coin half-raised his arm, and hesitated.
   'Why?' he said.
   You do not disobey me.
   'You don't have to,' said Rincewind hurriedly. 'It's only a thing.'
   'I do not see why I should hurt him,' said Coin. 'He looks so harmless. Like an angry rabbit.'
   He defies us.
   'Not me,' said Rincewind, thrusting the arm with the sock behind his back and trying to ignore the bit about the rabbit.
   'Why should I do everything you tell me?' said Coin to the staff. 'I always do everything you tell me, and it doesn't help people at all.'
   People must fear you. Have I taught you nothing?
   'But he looks so funny, He's got a sock,' said Coin.
   He screamed, and his arm jerked oddly. Rincewind's hair stood on end.
   You will do as you are commanded.
   'I won't'.
   You know what happens to boys who are bad.
   There was a crackle and a smell of scorched flesh. Coin dropped to his knees.
   'Here, hang on a minute-’ Rincewind began.
   Coin opened his eyes. They were gold still, but flecked with brown.
   Rincewind swung his sock around in a wide humming arc that connected with the staff halfway along its length. There was a brief explosion of brick dust and burnt wool and the staff spun out of the boy's hand. Wizards scattered as it tumbled end over end across the floor.
   It reached the parapet, bounced upwards and shot over the edge.
   But, instead of falling, it steadied itself in the air, spun in its own length and sped back again trailing octarine sparks and making a noise like a buzzsaw.
   Rincewind pushed the stunned boy behind him, threw away the ravaged sock and whipped his hat off, flailing wildly as the staff bored towards him. It caught him on the side of the head, delivering a shock that almost welded his teeth together and toppled him like a thin and ragged tree.
   The staff turned again in mid-air, glowing red-hot now, and swept back for another and quite definitely final run.
   Rincewind struggled up on his elbows and watched in horrified fascination as it swooped through the chilly air which, for some reason he didn't understand, seemed to be full of snowflakes.
   And became tinged with purple, blotched with blue. Time slowed and ground to a halt like an underwound phonograph.
   Rincewind looked up at the tall black figure that had appeared a few feet away.
   It was, of course, Death.
   He turned his glowing eyesockets towards Rincewind and said, in a voice like the collapse of undersea chasms, GOOD AFTERNOON.
   He turned away as if he had completed all necessary business for the time being, stared at the horizon for a while, and started to tap one foot idly. It sounded like a bagful of maracas.
   'Er,' said Rincewind.
   Death appeared to remember him. I'M SORRY? he said politely.
   'I always wondered how it was going to be,' said Rincewind.
   Death took an hourglass out from the mysterious folds of his ebon robes and peered at it.
   DID YOU? he said, vaguely.
   'I suppose I can't complain,' said Rincewind virtuously. 'I've had a good life. Well, quite good.' He hesitated. 'Well, not all that good. I suppose most people would call it pretty awful.' He considered it further. 'I would,' he added, half to himself.
   WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, MAN?
   Rincewind was nonplussed. 'Don't you make an appearance when a wizard is about to die?'
   OF COURSE. AND I MUST SAY YOU PEOPLE ARE GIVING ME A BUSY DAY
   'How do you manage to be in so many places at the same time?'
   GOOD ORGANISATION.
   Time returned. The staff, which had been hanging in the air a few feet away from Rincewind, started to scream forward again.
   And there was a metallic thud as Coin caught it onehandedly in mid-flight.
   The staff uttered a noise like a thousand fingernails dragging across glass. It thrashed wildly up and down, flailing at the arm that held it, and bloomed into evil green flame along its entire length.
   So. At the last, you fail me.
   Coin groaned but held on as the metal under his fingertips went red, then white.
   He thrust the arm out in front of him, and the force streaming from the staff roared past him and drew sparks from his hair and whipped his robe up into weird and unpleasant shapes. He screamed and whirled the staff round and smashed it on the parapet, leaving a long bubbling line in the stone.
   Then he threw it away. It clattered against the stones and rolled to a halt, wizards scattering out of its path.
   Coin sagged to his knees, shaking.
   'I don't like killing people,' he said. 'I'm sure it can't be right.'
   'Hold on to that thought,' said Rincewind fervently.
   'What happens to people after they're dead?' said Coin.
   Rincewind glanced up at Death.
   'I think this one's for you,' he said.
   HE CANNOT SEE OR HEAR ME, said Death, UNTIL HE WANTS TO. There was a little clinking noise. The staff was rolling back towards Coin, who looked down at it in horror.
   Pick me up.
   'You don't have to,' said Rincewind again.
   You cannot resist me. You cannot defeat yourself, said the staff.
   Coin reached out very slowly, and picked it up.
   Rincewind glanced at his sock. It was a stub of burnt wool, its brief career as a weapon of war having sent it beyond the help of any darning needle.
   Now kill him.
   Rincewind held his breath. The watching wizards held their breath. Even Death, who had nothing to hold but his scythe, held it tensely.
   'No,' said Coin.
   You know what happens to boys who are bad.
   Rincewind saw the sourcerer's face go pale.
   The staff's voice changed. Now it wheedled.
   Without me, who would there be to tell you what to do?
   'That is true,' said Coin slowly.
   See what you have achieved.
   Coin stared slowly around at the frightened faces.
   'I am seeing,' he said.
   I taught you everything I know.
   'I am thinking,' said Coin, 'that you do not know enough.'
   Ingrate! Who gave you your destiny?
   'You did,' said the boy. He raised his head.
   'I realise that I was wrong,' he added, quietly.
   Good -
   'I did not throw you far enough!'
   Coin got to his feet in one movement and swung the staff over his head. He stood still as a statue, his hand lost in a ball of light that was the colour of molten cop­per. It turned green, ascended through shades of blue, hovered in the violet and then seared into pure octarine.
   Rincewind shaded his eyes against the glare and saw Coin's hand, still whole, still gripping tight, with beads of molten metal glittering between his fingers.
   He slithered away, and bumped into Hakardly. The old wizard was standing like a statue, with his mouth open.
   'What'll happen?' said Rincewind.
   'He'll never beat it,' said Hakardly hoarsely. 'It's his. It's as strong as him. He's got the power, but it knows how to channel it.'
   'You mean they'll cancel each other out?'
   'Hopefully.'
   The battle was hidden in its own infernal glow. Then the floor began to tremble.
   'They're drawing on everything magical,' said Hakardly. 'We'd better leave the tower.'
   'Why?'
   'I imagine it will vanish soon enough.'
   And, indeed, the white flagstones around the glow looked as though they were unravelling and disappear­ing into it.
   Rincewind hesitated.
   'Aren't we going to help him?' he said.
   Hakardly stared at him, and then at the iridescent tableau. His mouth opened and shut once or twice.
   'I'm sorry', he said.
   'Yes, but just a bit of help on his side, you've seen what that thing is like-'
   'I'm sorry."
   'He helped you.' Rincewind turned on the other wizards, who were scurrying away. 'All of you. He gave you what you wanted, didn't he?'
   'We may never forgive him,' said Hakardly.
   Rincewind groaned.
   'What will be left when it's all over?' he said. 'What will be left?'
   Hakardly looked down.
   'I'm sorry,' he repeated.
   The octarine light had grown brighter and was beginning to turn black around the edge. It wasn't the black that is merely the opposite of light, though; it was the grainy, shifting blackness that glows beyond the glare and has no business in any decent reality. And it buzzed.
   Rincewind did a little dance of uncertainty as his feet, legs, instincts and incredibly well-developed sense of self­-preservation overloaded his nervous system to the point where, just as it was on the point of fusing, his conscience finally got its way.
   He leapt into the fire and reached the staff.
   The wizards fled. Several of them levitated down from the tower.
   They were a lot more perspicacious than those that used the stairs because, about thirty seconds later, the tower vanished.
   The snow continued to fall around a column of blackness, which buzzed.
   And the surviving wizards who dared to look back saw, tumbling slowly down the sky, a small object trailing flames behind it. It crashed into the cobbles, where it smouldered for a bit before the thickening snow put it out.
   Pretty soon it became just a small mound.
   A little while later a squat figure swung itself across the courtyard on its knuckles, scrabbled in the snow, and hauled the thing out.
   It was, or rather it had been, a hat. Life had not been kind to it. A large part of the wide brim had been burned off, the point was entirely gone, and the tarnished silver letters were almost unreadable. Some of them had been torn off in any case. Those that were left spelled out: WIZD.
   The Librarian turned around slowly. He was entirely alone, except for the towering column of burning blackness and the steadily falling flakes.
   The ravaged campus was empty. There were a few other pointy hats that had been trampled by terrified feet, and no other sign that people had been there.
   All the wizards were wazards.

 'War?'
   'Wazzat?'
   'Wasn't there,' Pestilence groped for his glass, 'something?'
   'Wazzat?'
   'We ought to be ... there's something we ought to be doing,' said Famine.
   'S'right. Got an appointment.'
   'The-’ Pestilence gazed reflectively into his drink. 'Thingy.'
   They stared gloomily at the bar counter. The innkeeper had long ago fled. There were several bottles still unopened.
   'Okra,' said Famine, eventually. 'That was it.'
   'Nah.'
   'The Apos ... the Apostrophe,' said War, vaguely.
   They shook their heads. There was a lengthy pause.
   'What does "apocrustic" mean?' said Pestilence, gazing intently into some inner world.
   'Astringent,' said War, 'I think.'
   'It's not that, then?'
   'Shouldn't think so,' said Famine, glumly.
   There was another long, embarrassed silence.
   'Better have 'nother drink,' said War, pulling himself together.
   'S'right.'
 
   About fifty miles away and several thousand feet up, Conina at last managed to control her stolen horse and brought it to a gentle trot on the empty air, displaying some of the most determined nonchalance the Disc had ever seen.
   'Snow?' she said.
   Clouds were roaring soundlessly from the direction of the Hub. They were fat and heavy and shouldn't be moving so fast. Blizzards trailed beneath them, covering the landscape like a sheet.
   It didn't look like the kind of snow that whispers down gently in the pit of the night and in the morning turns the landscape into a glittering wonderland of uncommon and ethereal beauty. It looked like the kind of snow that intends to make the world as bloody cold as possible.
   'Bit late in the year,' said Nijel. He glanced downwards, and then immediately closed his eyes.
   Creosote watched in delighted astonishment. 'Is that how it happens?' he said. 'I've only heard about it in stories. I thought it sprouted out of the ground somehow. Bit like mushrooms, I thought.'
   'Those clouds aren't right,' said Conina.
   'Do you mind if we go down now?' said Nijel weakly. 'Somehow it didn't look so bad when we were moving.'
   Conina ignored this. 'Try the lamp,' she commanded. 'I want to know about this.'
   Nijel fumbled in his pack and produced the lamp.
   The voice of the genie sounded rather tinny and far off, and said: 'If you would care to relax a little ... trying to connect you.' There then followed some tinkly little music, the kind that perhaps a Swiss chalet would make if you could play it, before a trapdoor outlined itself in the air and the genie himself appeared. He looked around him, and then at them.
   'Oh, wow,' he said.
   'Something's happening to the weather,' said Conina. ,Why?,
   'You mean you don't know?' said the genie.
   'We're asking you, aren't we?'
   'Well, I'm no judge, but it rather looks like the Apocralypse, yuh?'
   'What?'
   The genie shrugged. 'The gods have vanished, okay?' he said. 'And according to, you know, legend, that means-’
   'The Ice Giants,' said Nijel, in a horrified whisper.
   'Speak up,' said Creosote.
   'The Ice Giants,' Nijel repeated loudly, with a trace of irritation. 'The gods keep them imprisoned, see. At the Hub. But at the end of the world they'll break free at last, and ride out on their dreadful glaciers and regain their ancient domination, crushing out the flames of civilisation until the world lies naked and frozen under the terrible cold stars until Time itself freezes over. Or something like that, apparently.'
   'But it isn't time for the Apocralypse,' said Conina desperately. 'I mean, a dreadful ruler has to arise, there must be a terrible war, the four dreadful horsemen have to ride, and then the Dungeon Dimensions will break into the world-’She stopped, her face nearly as white as the snow.
   'Being buried under a thousand-foot ice sheet sounds awfully like it, anyway,' said the genie. He reached forward and snatched his lamp out of Nijel's hands.
   'Mucho apologies,' he said, 'but it's time to liquidise my assets in this reality. See you around. Or something.' He vanished up to the waist, and then with a faint last cry of 'Shame about lunch', disappeared entirely.
   The three riders peered through the veils of driving snow towards the Hub.
   'It may be my imagination,' said Creosote, 'but can either of you hear a sort of creaking and groaning?'
   'Shut up,' said Conina distractedly.
   Creosote leaned over and patted her hand.
   'Cheer up,' he said, 'it's not the end of the world.' He thought about this statement for a bit, and then added, 'Sorry. Just a figure of speech.'
   'What are we going to do?' she wailed.
   Nijel drew himself up.
   'I think,' he said, 'that we should go and explain.'
   They turned towards him with the kind of expression normally reserved for messiahs or extreme idiots.
   'Yes,' he said, with a shade more confidence. 'We should explain.'
   'Explain to the Ice Giants?' said Conina.
   'Yes.'
   'Sorry,' said Conina, 'have I got this right? You think we should go and find the terrifying Ice Giants and sort of tell them that there are a lot of warm people out here who would rather they didn't sweep across the world crushing everyone under mountains of ice, and could they sort of reconsider things? Is that what you think we should do?'
   'Yes. That's right. You've got it exactly.'
   Conina and Creosote exchanged glances. Nijel remained sitting proudly in the saddle, a faint smile on his face.
   'Is your geese giving you trouble?' said the Seriph.
   'Geas,' said Nijel calmly. 'It's not giving me trouble, it's just that I must do something brave before I die.'
   'That's it though,' said Creosote. 'That's the whole rather sad point. You'll do something brave, and then you'll die.'
   'What alternative have we got?' said Nijel.
   They considered this.
   'I don't think I'm much good at explaining,' said Conina, in a small voice.
   'I am,' said Nijel, firmly. 'I'm always having to explain.'
 
   The scattered particles of what had been Rincewind's mind pulled themselves together and drifted up through the layers of dark unconsciousness like a three-day corpse rising to the surface.
   It probed its most recent memories, in much the same way that one might scratch a fresh scab.
   He could recall something about a staff, and a pain so intense that it appeared to insert a chisel between every cell in his body and hammer on it repeatedly.
   He remembered the staff fleeing, dragging him after it. And then there had been that dreadful bit where Death had appeared and reached past him, and the staff had twisted and become suddenly alive and Death had said, IPSLORE THE RED, I HAVE YOU NOW.
   And now there was this.
   By the feel of it Rincewind was lying on sand. It was very cold.
   He took the risk of seeing something horrible and opened his eyes.
   The first thing he saw was his left arm and, surprisingly, his hand. It was its normal grubby self. He had expected to see a stump.
   It seemed to be night-time. The beach, or whatever it was, stretched on towards a line of distant low mountains, under night sky frosted with a million white stars.
   A little closer to him there was a rough line in the silvery sand. He lifted his head slightly and saw the scatter of molten droplets. They were octiron, a metal so intrinsically magical that no forge on the Disc could even warm it up.
   'Oh,' he said. 'We won, then.'
   He flopped down again.
   After a while his right hand came up automatically and patted the top of his head. Then it patted the sides of his head. Then it began to grope, with increasing urgency, in the sand around him.
   Eventually it must have communicated its concern to the rest of Rincewind, because he pulled himself upright and said, 'Oh, bugger.'
   There seemed to be no hat anywhere. But he could see a small white shape lying very still in the sand a little way away and, further off -
   A column of daylight.
   It hummed and swayed in the air, a three-dimensional hole into somewhere else. Occasional flurries of snow blew out of it. He could see skewed images in the light, that might be buildings or landscapes warped by the weird curvature. But he couldn't see them very clearly, because of the tall, brooding shadows that surrounded it.
   The human mind is an astonishing thing. It can operate on several levels at once. And, in fact, while Rincewind had been wasting his intellect in groaning and looking for his hat, an inner part of his brain had been observing, assessing, analysing and comparing.
   Now it crept up to his cerebellum, tapped it on the shoulder, thrust a message into its hand and ran for it.
   The message ran something like this: I hope I find me well. The last trial of magic has been too much for the tortured fabric of reality. It has opened a hole. I am in the Dungeon Dimensions. And the things in front of me are ... the Things. It has been nice knowing me.
   The particular thing nearest Rincewind was at least twenty feet high. It looked like a dead horse that had been dug up after three months and then introduced to a range of new experiences, at least one of which had included an octopus.
   It hadn't noticed Rincewind. It was too busy concentrating on the light.
   Rincewind crawled back to the still body of Coin and nudged it gently.
   'Are you alive?' he said. 'If you're not, I'd prefer it if you didn't answer.'
   Coin rolled over and stared up at him with puzzled eyes. After a while he said, 'I remember-’
   'Best not to,' said Rincewind.
   The boy's hand groped vaguely in the sand beside him.
   'It isn't here any more,' said Rincewind, quietly. The hand stopped its searching.
   Rincewind helped Coin to sit up. He looked blankly at the cold silver sand, then at the sky, then at the distant Things, and then at Rincewind.
   'I don't know what to do,' he said.
   'No harm in that. I've never known what to do,' said Rincewind with hollow cheerfulness. 'Been completely at a loss my whole life.' He hesitated. 'I think it's called being human, or something.'
   'But I've always known what to do!'
   Rincewind opened his mouth to say that he'd seen some of it, but changed his mind. Instead he said, 'Chin up. Look on the bright side. It could be worse.'
   Coin took another look around.
   'In what respect, exactly?' he said, his voice a shade more normal.
   Um.'
   'What is this place?'
   'It's a sort of other dimension. The magic broke through and we went with it, I think.'
   'And those things?'
   They regarded the Things.
   'I think they're Things. They're trying to get back through the hole,' said Rincewind. 'It isn't easy. Energy levels, or something. I remember we had a lecture on them once. Er.'
   Coin nodded, and reached out a thin pale hand towards Rincewind's forehead.
   'Do you mind-?' he began.
   Rincewind shuddered at the touch. 'Mind what?' he said.
   - if I have a look in your head?
   'Aargh.'
   It's rather a mess in here. No wonder you can't find things.
   'Ergh.'
   You ought to have a clear out.
   'Oogh.'
   Ah.'
   Rincewind felt the presence retreat. Coin frowned.
   'We can't let them get through,' he announced. 'They have horrible powers. They're trying to will the hole bigger, and they can do it. They've been waiting to break into our world for-’ he frowned -’ians?'
   'Aeons,' said Rincewind.
   Coin opened his other hand, which had been tightly clenched, and showed Rincewind the small grey pearl.
   'Do you know what this is?' he said.
   'No. What is it?'
   'I--can't remember. But we should put it back.'
   'Okay. Just use sourcery. Blow them to bits and let's go home.'
   'No. They live on magic. It'd only make them worse. I can't use magic.'
   'Are you sure?' said Rincewind.
   'I'm afraid your memory was very clear on the subject.'
   'Then what shall we do?'
   'I don't know!'
   Rincewind thought about this and then, with an air of finality, started to take off his last sock.
   'No half-bricks,' he said, to no-one in particular. 'Have to use sand.'
   'You're going to attack them with a sockful of sand?'
   'No. I'm going to run away from them. The sockful of sand is for when they follow.'
 
   People were returning to Al Khali, where the ruined tower was a smoking heap of stones. A few brave souls turned their attention to the wreckage, on the basis that there might be survivors who could be rescued or looted or both.
   And, among the rubble, the following conversation might have been heard:
   'There's something moving under here!'
   'Under that? By the two beards of Imtal, you are mishearing. It must weigh a ton.'
   'Over here, brothers!'
   And then sounds of much heaving would have been heard, and then:
   'It's a box!'
   'It could be treasure, do you think?'
   'It's growing legs, by the Seven Moons of Nasreem!'
   'Five moons-’
   'Where'd it go? Where'd it go?'
   'Never mind about that, it's not important. Let's get this straight, according to the legend it was five moons-'
   In Klatch they take their mythology seriously. It's only real life they don't believe.
 
   The three horsepersons sensed the change as they descended through the heavy snowclouds at the Hub end of the Sto Plain. There was a sharp scent in the air.
   'Can't you smell it?' said Nijel, 'I remember it when I was a boy, when you lay in bed on that first morning in winter, and you could sort of taste it in the air and-’
   The clouds parted below them and there, filling the high plains country from end to end, were the herds of the Ice Giants.
   They stretched for miles in every direction, and the thunder of their stampede filled the air.
   The bull glaciers were in the lead, bellowing their vast creaky calls and throwing up great sheets of earth as they ploughed relentlessly forward. Behind them pressed the great mass of cows and their calves, skimming over land already ground down to the bedrock by the leaders.
   They bore as much resemblance to the familiar glaciers the world thought it knew as a lion dozing in the shade bears to three hundred pounds of wickedly coordinated muscle bounding towards you with its mouth open.
   '... and ... and ... when you went to the window,' Nijel's mouth, lacking any further input from his brain, ran down.
   Moving, jostling ice packed the plain, roaring forward under a great cloud of clammy steam. The ground shook as the leaders passed below, and it was obvious to the onlookers that whoever was going to stop this would need more than a couple of pounds of rock salt and a shovel.
   'Go on, then,' said Conina, 'explain. I think you'd better shout.
   Nijel looked distractedly at the herd.
   'I think I can see some figures,' said Creosote helpfully. 'Look, on top of the leading ... things.'
   Nijel peered through the snow. There were indeed beings moving around on the backs of the glaciers. They were human, or humanoid, or at least humanish. They didn't look very big.
   That turned out to be because the glaciers themselves were very big, and Nijel wasn't very good at perspective. As the horses flew lower over the leading glacier, a huge bull heavily crevassed and scarred by moraine, it became apparent that one reason why the Ice Giants were known as the Ice Giants was because they were, well, giants.
   The other was that they were made of ice.
   A figure the size of a large house was crouched at the crest of the bull, urging it to greater efforts by means of a spike on a long pole. It was craggy, in fact it was more nearly faceted, and glinted green and blue in the light; there was a thin band of silver in its snowy locks, and its eyes were tiny and black and deep set, like lumps of coal.[24]
   There was a splintering crash ahead as the leading glaciers smacked into a forest. Birds rattled up in panic. Snow and splinters rained down around Nijel as he galloped on the air alongside the giant.
   He cleared his throat.
   'Erm,’ he said, 'excuse me?'
   Ahead of the boiling surf of earth, snow and smashed timber a herd of caribou was running in blind panic, their rear hooves a few feet from the tumbling mess.
   Nijel tried again.
   'I say?' he shouted.
   The giant's head turned towards him.
   'Vot you want?' it said. 'Go avay, hot person.'
   'Sorry, but is this really necessary?'
   The giant looked at him in frozen astonishment. It turned around slowly and regarded the rest of the herd, which seemed to stretch all the way to the Hub. It looked at Nijel again.
   'Yarss,' it said, 'I tink so. Otherwise, why ve do it?'
   'Only there's a lot of people out there who would prefer you not to, you see', said Nijel, desperately. A rock spire loomed briefly ahead of the glacier, rocked for a second and then vanished.
   He added, Also children and small furry animals.'
   'They vill suffer in the cause of progress. Now is the time ve reclaim the world,' rumbled the giant. 'Whole vorld of ice. According to inevitability of history and triumph of thermo­dynamics.'
   'Yes, but you don't have to,' said Nijel.
   'Ve vant to,' said the giant. 'The gods are gone, ve throw off shackles of outmoded superstition.'
   'Freezing the whole world solid doesn't sound very progressive to me,' said Nijel.
   'Ve like it.'
   'Yes, yes,' said Nijel, in the maniacally glazed tones of one who is trying to see all sides of the issue and is certain that a solution will be found if people of goodwill will only sit around a table and discuss things rationally like sensible human beings. 'But is this the right time? Is the world ready for the triumph of ice?'
   'It bloody veil better be,' said the giant, and swung his glacier prod at Nijel. It missed the horse but caught him full in the chest, lifting him clean out of the saddle and flicking him on to the glacier itself. He spun, spreadeagled, down its freezing flanks, was carried some way by the boil of debris, and rolled into the slush of ice and mud between the speeding walls.
   He staggered to his feet, and peered hopelessly into the freezing fog. Another glacier bore down directly on him.
   So did Conina. She leaned over as her horse swept down out of the fog, caught Nijel by his leather barbar­ian harness, and swung him up in front of her.
   As they rose again he wheezed, 'Cold-hearted bastard. I really thought I was getting somewhere for a moment there. You just can't talk to some people.'
   The herd breasted another hill, scraping off quite a lot of it, and the Sto Plain, studded with cities, lay helpless before it.
 
   Rincewind sidled towards the nearest Thing, holding Coin with one hand and swinging the loaded sock in the other.
   'No magic, right?' he said.
   'Yes,' said the boy.
   'Whatever happens, you musn't use magic?'
   'That's it. Not here. They haven't got much power here, if you don't use magic. Once they break through, though ...'
   His voice trailed away.
   'Pretty awful,' Rincewind nodded.
   'Terrible,' said Coin.
   Rincewind sighed. He wished he still had his hat. He'd just have to do without it.
   All right,' he said. 'When I shout, you make a run for the light. Do you understand? No looking back or any­thing. No matter what happens.'
   'No matter what?' said Coin uncertainly.
   'No matter what.' Rincewind gave a brave little smile. 'Especially no matter what you hear.'
   He was vaguely cheered to see Coin's mouth become an 'O' of terror.
   'And then,' he continued, 'when you get back to the other side-’
   'What shall I do?'
   Rincewind hesitated. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Any­thing you can. As much magic as you like. Anything. Just stop them. And ... um ...'
   'Yes?'
   Rincewind gazed up at the Thing, which was still star­ing into the light.
   'If it ... you know ... if anyone gets out of this, you know, and everything is all right after all, sort of thing, Id like you to sort of tell people I sort of stayed here. Perhaps they could sort of write it down somewhere. I mean, I wouldn't want a statue or anything,' he added virtuously.
   After a while he added, 'I think you ought to blow your nose.'
   Coin did so, on the hem of his robe, and then shook Rincewind's hand solemnly.
   'If ever you ...' he began, 'that is, you're the first ... it's been a great ... you see, I never really ...' His voice trailed off, and then he said, 'I just wanted you to know that.'
   'There was something else I was trying to say,' said Rincewind, letting go of the hand. He looked blank for a moment, and then added, 'Oh, yes. It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.'
   'I'll try and remember,' said Coin.
   'It's very important,' Rincewind repeated, almost to himself. 'And now I think you'd better run.'
   Rincewind crept closer to the Thing. This particular one had chicken legs, but most of the rest of it was mercifully hidden in what looked like folded wings.
   It was, he thought, time for a few last words. What he said now was likely to be very important. Perhaps they would be words that would be remembered, and handed down, and maybe even carved deeply in slabs of granite.
   Words without too many curly letters in, therefore.
   'I really wish I wasn't here,' he muttered.
   He hefted the sock, whirled it once or twice, and smashed the Thing on what he hoped was its kneecap.
   It gave a shrill buzz, spun wildly with its wings creaking open, lunged vaguely at Rincewind with its vulture head and got another sockful of sand on the upswing.
   Rincewind looked around desperately as the Thing staggered back, and saw Coin still standing where he had left him. To his horror he saw the boy begin to walk towards him, hands raised instinctively to fire the magic which, here, would doom both of them.
   'Run away, you idiot!' he screamed, as the Thing began to gather itself for a counter-attack. From out of nowhere he found the words, 'You know what happens to boys who are bad!'
   Coin went pale, turned and ran towards the light. He moved as though through treacle, fighting against the entropy slope. The distorted image of the world turned inside out hovered a few feet away, then inches, wavering uncertainly ...

A tentacle curled around his leg, tumbling him forward.
   He flung his hands out as he fell, and one of them touched snow. It was immediately grabbed by something else that felt like a warm, soft leather glove, but under the gentle touch was a grip as tough as tempered steel and it tugged him forward, also dragging whatever it was that had caught him.
   Light and grainy dark flicked around him and suddenly he was sliding over cobbles slicked with ice.
   The Librarian let go his hold and stood over Coin with a length of heavy wooden beam in his hand. For a moment the ape reared against the darkness, the shoulder, elbow and wrist of his right arm unfolding in a poem of applied leverage, and in a movement as unstoppable as the dawn of intelligence brought it down very heavily. There was a squashy noise and an offended screech, and the burning pressure on Coin's leg vanished.
   The dark column wavered. There were squeals and thumps coming from it, distorted by distance.
   Coin struggled to his feet and started to run back into the dark, but this time the Librarian's arm blocked his path.
   'We can't just leave him in there!'
   The ape shrugged.
   There was another crackle from the dark, and then a moment of almost complete silence.
   But only almost complete. Both of them thought they heard, a long way off but very distinct, the sound of running feet fading into the distance.
   They found an echo in the outside world. The ape glanced around, and then pushed Coin hurriedly to one side as something squat and battered and with hundreds of little legs barrelled across the stricken courtyard and, without so much as pausing in its stride, leapt into the disappearing darkness, which flickered for one last time and vanished.
   There was a sudden flurry of snow across the air where it had been.
   Coin wrenched free of the Librarian's grip and ran into the circle, which was already turning white. His feet scuffed up a sprinkle of fine sand.
   'He didn't come out!' he said.
   'Oook,' said the Librarian, in a philosophic manner.
   'I thought he'd come out. You know, just at the last minute.'
   'Oook?'
   Coin looked closely at the cobbles, as if by mere concentration he could change what he saw. 'Is he dead?'
   'Gook,' observed the Librarian, contriving to imply that Rincewind was in a region where even things like time and space were a bit iffy, and that it was probably not very useful to speculate as to his exact state at this point in time, if indeed he was at any point in time at all, and that, all in all, he might even turn up tomorrow or, for that matter, yesterday, and finally that if there was any chance at all of surviving then Rincewind almost certainly would.
   'Oh,' said Coin.
   He watched the Librarian shuffle around and head back for the Tower of Art, and a desperate loneliness overcame him.
   'I say!' he yelled.
   'Gook?'
   'What should I do now?'
   'Gook?'
   Coin waved vaguely at the desolation.
   'You know, perhaps I could do something about all this?', he said in a voice tilting on the edge of terror. 'Do you think that would be a good idea? I mean, I could help people. I'm sure you’d like to be human again, wouldn't you?'
   The Librarian's everlasting smile hoisted itself a little further up his face, just enough to reveal his teeth.
   'Okay, perhaps not,' said Coin hurriedly, 'but there's other things I could do, isn't there?'
   The Librarian gazed at him for some time, then dropped his eyes to the boy's hand. Coin gave a guilty start, and opened his fingers.
   The ape caught the little silver ball neatly before it hit the ground and held it up to one eye. He sniffed it, shook it gently, and listened to it for a while.
   Then he wound up his arm and flung it away as hard as possible.
   'What-’ Coin began, and landed full length in the snow when the Librarian pushed him over and dived on top of him.
   The ball curved over at the top of its arc and tumbled down, its perfect path interrupted suddenly by the ground. There was a sound like a harp string breaking, a brief babble of incomprehensible voices, a rush of hot wind, and the gods of the Disc were free.
   They were very angry.
 
   'There is nothing we can do, is there?' said Creosote.
   'No,' said Conina.
   'The ice is going to win, isn't it?' said Creosote.
   'Yes,' said Conina.
   'No,' said Nijel.
   He was trembling with rage, or possibly with cold, and was nearly as pale as the glaciers that rumbled past below them.
   Conina sighed. 'Well, just how do you think-’ she began.
   'Take me down somewhere a few minutes ahead of them,' said Nijel.
   'I really don't see how that would help.'
   'I wasn't asking your opinion,' said Nijel, quietly. 'Just do it. Put me down a little way ahead of them so I've got a while to get sorted out.'
   'Get what sorted out?'
   Nijel didn't answer.
   'I said,' said Conina, 'get what-’
   'Shut up!'
   'I don't see why-’
   'Look,' said Nijel, with the patience that lies just short of axe-murdering. 'The ice is going to cover the whole world, right? Everyone's going to die, okay? Except for us for a little while, I suppose, until these horses want their, their, their oats or the lavatory or whatever, which isn't much use to us except maybe Creosote will just about have time to write a sonnet or something about how cold it is all of a sudden, and the whole of human history is about to be scraped up and in these circum­stances I would like very much to make it completely clear that I am not about to be argued with, is that abso­lutely understood?'
   He paused for breath, trembling like a harpstring.
   Conina hesitated. Her mouth opened and shut a few times, as though she was considering arguing, and then she thought better of it.
   They found a small clearing in a pine forest a mile or two ahead of the herd, although the sound of it was clearly audible and there was a line of steam above the trees and the ground was dancing like a drumtop.
   Nijel strolled to the middle of the clearing and made a few practice swings with his sword. The others watched him thoughtfully.
   'If you don't mind,' whispered Creosote to Conina, 'I'll be off. It's at times like this that sobriety loses its attractions and I'm sure the end of the world will look a lot better through the bottom of a glass, if it's all the same to you. Do you believe in Paradise, o peach­cheeked blossom?'
   'Not as such, no.'
   'Oh,' said Creosote. 'Well, in that case we probably won't be seeing each other again.' He sighed. 'What a waste. All this was just because of a geas. Um. Of course, if by some unthinkable chance-’
   'Goodbye,' said Conina.
   Creosote nodded miserably, wheeled the horse and disappeared over the treetops.
   Snow was shaking down from the branches around the clearing. The thunder of the approaching glaciers filled the air.
   Nijel started when she tapped him on the shoulder, and dropped his sword.
   'What are you doing here?' he snapped, fumbling desperately in the snow.
   'Look, I'm not prying or anything,' said Conina meekly, 'but what exactly do you have in mind?'
   She could see a rolling heap of bulldozed snow and soil bearing down on them through the forest, the mind-numbing sound of the leading glaciers now over­laid with the rhythmic snapping of tree trunks. And, advancing implacably above the treeline, so high that the eye mistook them at first for sky, the blue-green prows.
   'Nothing,' said Nijel, 'nothing at all. We've just got to re­sist them, that's all there is to it. That's what we're here for.'
   'But it won't make any difference,' she said.
   'It will to me. If we're going to die anyway, Iii rather die like this. Heroically.'
   'Is it heroic to die like this?' said Conina.
   'I think it is,' he said, 'and when it comes to dying, there's only one opinion that matters.'
   'Oh.'
   A couple of deer blundered into the clearing, ignored the humans in their blind panic, and rocketed away.
   'You don't have to stay,' said Nijel. 'I've got this geas, you see.'
   Conina looked at the backs of her hands.
   'I think I should,' she said, and added, 'You know, I thought maybe, you know, if we could just get to know one another better-’
   'Mr and Mrs Harebut, was that what you had in mind?' he said bluntly.
   Her eyes widened. 'Well-’ she began.
   'Which one did you intend to be?' he said.
   The leading glacier smashed into the clearing just behind its bow wave, its top lost in a cloud of its own cre­ation.
   At exactly the same time the trees opposite it bent low as a hot wind blew from the Rim. It was loaded with voices - petulant, bickering voices - and tore into the clouds like a hot iron into water.
   Conina and Nijel threw themselves down into snow which turned to warm slush under them. Something like a thunderstorm crashed overhead, filled with shout­ing and what they at first thought were screams although, thinking about them later, they seemed more like angry arguments. It went on for a long time, and then began to fade in the direction of the Hub.
   Warm water flooded down the front of Nijel's vest. He lifted himself cautiously, and then nudged Conina.
   Together they scrambled through the slush and mud to the top of the slope, climbed through a logjam of smashed timber and boulders, and stared at the scene.
   The glaciers were retreating, under a cloud stuffed with lightning. Behind them the landscape was a net­work of lakes and pools.
   'Did we do that?' said Conina.
   'It would be nice to think so, wouldn't it?' said Nijel.
   'Yes, but did-’ she began.
   'Probably not. Who knows? Let's just find a horse,' he said.
 
   'The Apogee,' said War, 'or something. I'm pretty sure.'
   They had staggered out of the inn and were sitting on a bench in the afternoon sunshine. Even War had been persuaded to take off some of his armour.
   'Dunno,' said Famine, 'Don't think so.'
   Pestilence shut his crusted eyes and leaned back against the warm stones.
   'I think,' he said, 'it was something about the end of the world.'
   War sat and thoughtfully scratched his chin. He hic­cuped.
   'What, the whole world?' he said.
   'I reckon.'
   War gave this some further consideration. 'I reckon we're well out of it, then,' he said.
 
   People were returning to Ankh-Morpork, which was no longer a city of empty marble but was once again its old self, sprawling as randomly and colourfully as a pool of vomit outside the all-night takeaway of History.
   And the University had been rebuilt, or had rebuilt itself, or in some strange way had never been unbuilt; every strand of ivy, every rotting casement, was back in place. The sourcerer had offered to replace everything as good as new, all wood sparkling, all stone unstained, but the Librarian had been very firm on the subject. He wanted everything replaced as good as old.
   The wizards came creeping back with the dawn, in ones or twos, scuttling for their old rooms, trying to avoid one another's gaze, trying to remember a recent past that was already becoming unreal and dream-like.
   Conina and Nijel arrived around breakfast time and, out of kindness, found a livery stable for War's horse.[25] It was Conina who insisted that they look for Rincewind at the University, and who, therefore, first saw the books.
   They were flying out of the Tower of Art, spiralling around the University buildings and swooping through the door of the reincarnated Library. One or two of the more impudent grimoires were chasing sparrows, or hovering hawk-like over the quad.
   The Librarian was leaning against the doorway, watching his charges with a benevolent eye. He wag­gled his eyebrows at Conina, the nearest he ever got to a conventional greeting.
   'Is Rincewind here?' she said.
   'Oook.'
   'Sorry?'
   The ape didn't answer but took them both by the hand and, walking between them like a sack between two poles, led them across the cobbles to the tower.
   There were a few candles alight inside, and they saw Coin seated on a stool. The Librarian bowed them into his presence like an ancient retainer in the oldest family of all, and withdrew.
   Coin nodded at them. 'He knows when people don't understand him,' he said. 'Remarkable, isn't he?'
   'Who are you?' said Conina.
   'Coin,' said Coin.
   Are you a student here?'
   'I'm learning quite a lot, I think.'
   Nijel was wandering around the walls, giving them the occasional prod. There had to be some good reason why they didn't fall down, but if there was it didn't lie in the realms of civil engineering.
   'Are you looking for Rincewind?' said Coin.
   Conina frowned. 'How did you guess that?'
   'He told me some people would come looking for him.'
   Conina relaxed. 'Sorry,' she said, 'we've had a bit of a trying time. I thought perhaps it was magic, or something. He's all right, isn't he? I mean, what's been happening? Did he fight the sourcerer?'
   'Oh, yes. And he won. It was very ... interesting. I saw it all. But then he had to go,' said Coin, as though reciting.
   'What, just like that?' said Nijel.
   'Yes.'
   'I don't believe it,' said Conina. She was beginning to crouch, her knuckles whitening.
   'It is true,' said Coin. 'Everything I say is true. It has to be.'
   'I want to-’ Conina began, and Coin stood up, extended a hand and said, 'Stop.'
   She froze. Nijel stiffened in mid-frown.
   'You will leave,' said Coin, in a pleasant, level voice, 'and you will ask no more questions. You will be totally satisfied. You have all your answers. You will live happily ever after. You will forget hearing these words. You will go now.'
   They turned slowly and woodenly, like puppets, and trooped to the door. The Librarian opened it for them, ushered them through and shut it behind them.
   Then he stared at Coin, who sagged back on to the stool.
   'All right, all right,' said the boy, 'but it was only a little magic. I had to. You said yourself people had to forget.'
   'Oook?'
   'I can't help it! It's too easy to change things!' He clutched his head. 'I've only got to think of something! I can't stay, everything I touch goes wrong, it's like trying to sleep on a heap of eggs! This world is too thin! Please tell me what to do!'
   The Librarian spun around on his bottom a few times, a sure sign of deep thought.
   Exactly what he said is not recorded, but Coin smiled, nodded, shook the Librarian's hand, and opened his own hands and drew them up and around him and stepped into another world. It had a lake in, and some distant mountains, and a few pheasants watching him suspiciously from under the trees. It was the magic all sourcerers learned, eventually.
   Sourcerers never become part of the world. They merely wear it for a while.
   He looked back, halfway across the turf, and waved at the Librarian. The ape gave him an encouraging nod.
   And then the bubble shrank inside itself, and the last sourcerer vanished from this world and into a world of his own.
 
   Although it has nothing much to do with the story, it is an interesting fact that, about five hundred miles away, a small flock, or rather in this case a herd, of birds were picking their way cautiously through the trees. They had heads like a flamingo, bodies like a turkey, and legs like a Sumo wrestler; they walked in a jerky, bobbing fashion, as though their heads were attached to their feet by elastic bands. They belonged to a species unique even among Disc fauna, in that their prime means of defence was to cause a predator to laugh so much that they could run away before it recovered. Rincewind would have been vaguely satisfied to know that they were geas.
 
   Custom was slow in the Mended Drum. The troll chained to the doorpost sat in the shade and reflectively picked someone out of his teeth.
   Creosote was singing softly to himself. He had discovered beer and wasn't having to pay for it, because the coinage of compliments - rarely employed by the swains of Ankh - was having an astonishing effect on the landlord's daughter. She was a large, good-natured girl, with a figure that was the colour and, not to put too fine a point on it, the same shape as unbaked bread. She was intrigued. No-one had ever referred to her breasts as jewelled melons before.
   Absolutely,' said the Seriph, sliding peacefully off his bench, 'no doubt about it.' Either the big yellow sort or the small green ones with huge warty veins, he told himself virtuously.
   'And what was that about my hair?' she said encouragingly, hauling him back and refilling his glass.
   'Oh.' The Seriph's brow wrinkled. 'Like a goat of flocks that grazes on the slopes of Mount Wossname, and no mistake. And as for your ears,' he added quickly, 'no pink-hued shells that grace the sea-kissed sands of-’
   'Exactly how like a flock of goats?' she said.
   The Seriph hesitated. He'd always considered it one of his best lines. Now it was meeting Ankh-Morpork's famous literal-­mindedness head-on for the first time. Strangely enough, he felt rather impressed.
   'I mean, in size, shape or smell?' she went on.
   'I think,' said the Seriph, 'that perhaps the phrase I had in mind was exactly not like a flog of gits.'
   'Ah?' The girl pulled the flagon towards her.
   And I think perhaps I would like another drink,' he said indistinctly, 'and then - and then-’ He looked sideways at the girl, and took the plunge. Are you much of a raconteur?'
   'What?'
   He licked his suddenly dry lips. 'I mean, do you know many stories?' he croaked.
   'Oh, yes. Lots.'
   'Lots?' whispered Creosote. Most of his concubines only knew the same old one or two.
   'Hundreds. Why, do you want to hear one?'
   'What, now?'
   'If you like. It's not very busy in here.'
   Perhaps I did die, Creosote thought. Perhaps this is Paradise. He took her hands. 'You know,' he said, 'it's ages since I've had a good narrative. But I wouldn't want you to do anything you don't want to.'
   She patted his arm. What a nice old gentleman, she thought. Compared to some we get in here.
   'There's one my granny used to tell me. I know it backwards,' she said.
   Creosote sipped his beer and watched the wall in a warm glow. Hundreds, he thought. And she knows some of them backwards.
   She cleared her throat, and said, in a sing-song voice that made Creosote's pulse fuse. 'There was a man and he had eight sons-’
 
   The Patrician sat by his window, writing. His mind was full of fluff as far as the last week or two was concerned, and he didn't like that much.
   A servant had lit a lamp to dispel the twilight, and a few early evening moths were orbiting it. The Patrician watched them carefully. For some reason he felt very uneasy in the presence of glass but that, as he stared fixedly at the insects, wasn't what bothered him most.
   What bothered him was that he was fighting a terrible urge to catch them with his tongue.
   And Wuffles lay on his back at his master's feet, and barked in his dreams.
 
   Lights were going on all over the city, but the last few strands of sunset illuminated the gargoyles as they helped one another up the long climb to the roof.
   The Librarian watched them from the open door, while giving himself a philosophic scratch. Then he turned and shut out the night.
   It was warm in the Library. It was always warm in the Library, because the scatter of magic that produced the glow also gently cooked the air.
   The Librarian looked at his charges approvingly, made his last rounds of the slumbering shelves, and then dragged his blanket underneath his desk, ate a goodnight banana, and fell asleep.
   Silence gradually reclaimed the Library. Silence drifted around the remains of a hat, heavily battered and frayed and charred around the edges, that had been placed with some ceremony in a niche in the wall. No matter how far a wizard goes, he will always come back for his hat.
   Silence filled the University in the same way that air fills a hole. Night spread across the Disk like plum jam, or possibly blackberry preserve.
   But there would be a morning. There would always be another morning.
 
   THE END

 Notes

1
   Like rhinestones, but different river. When it comes to glittering objects, wizards have all the taste and self-control of a deranged magpie.
2
   A magical accident in the Library, which as has already been indicated is not a place for your average rubber-stamp-and-Dewey¬decimal employment, had some time ago turned the Librarian into an orang-utan. He had since resisted all efforts to turn him back. He liked the handy long arms, the prehensile toes and the right to scratch himself in public, but most of all he liked the way all the big questions of existence had suddenly resolved themselves into a vague interest in where his next banana was coming from. It wasn't that he was unaware of the despair and nobility of the human condition. It was just that as far as he was concerned you could stuff it.
3
   The furrow left by the fleeing gargoyles caused the University's head gardener to bite through his rake and led to the famous quotation: 'How do you get a lawn like this? You mows it and you rolls it for five hundred years and then a bunch of bastards walks across it.'
4
   In most old libraries the books are chained to the shelves to prevent them being damaged by people. In the Library of Unseen University, of course, it's more or less the other way about.
5
   At least, by anyone who wanted to wake up the same shape, or even the same species, as they went to bed.
6
   The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it.
7
   This was because Gritoller had swallowed the jewels for safe keeping.
8
   The Ankh-Morpork Merchants' Guild publication Wellcome to Ankh-Morporke, Citie of One Thousand Surprises describes the area of Old Morpork known as The Shades as "a folklorique network of old alleys and picturesque streets, wherre exitment and romans lurkes arounde everry corner and much may be heard the traditinal street cries of old time also the laughing visages of the denuizens as they goe about their business private." In other words, you have been warned.
9
   The study of genetics on the Disc had failed at an early stage, when wizards tried the experimental crossing of such well known subjects as fruit flies and sweet peas. Unfortunately they didn't quite grasp the fundamentals, and the resultant offspring - a sort of green bean thing that buzzed - led a short sad life before being eaten by a passing spider.
10
   The overwhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit.
11
   Wizards' tastes in the matter of puns are about the same as their taste in glittery objects.
12
   Of course, Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure in any case. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.
13
   No-one ever had the courage to ask him what he did there.
14
   Or up, or obliquely. The layout of the Library of Unseen University was a topographical nightmare, the sheer presence of so much stored magic twisting dimensions and gravity into the kind of spaghetti that would make M. C. Escher go for a good lie down, or possibly sideways.
15
   The Hashishim, who derived their name from the vast quantities of hashish they consumed, were unique among vicious killers in being both deadly and, at the same time, inclined to giggle, groove to interesting patterns of light and shade on their terrible knife blades and, in extreme cases, fall over.
16
   Although, possibly, quicker. And only licensed to carry fourteen people.
17
   In a truly magical universe everything has its opposite. For example, there's anti-light. That's not the same as darkness, because darkness is merely the absence of light. Anti-light is what you get if you pass through darkness and out the other side. On the same basis, a state of knurdness isn't like sobriety. By comparison, sobriety is like having a bath in cotton wool. Knurdness strips away all illlusion, all the comforting pink fog in which people normally spend their lives, and lets them see and think clearly for the first time ever. Then, after they've screamed a bit, they make sure they never get knurd again.
18
    For a description of the chimera we shall turn to Broomfog's famous bestiary Anima Unnaturale: "It have thee legges of an mermade, the hair of an tortoise, the teeth of an fowel, and the winges of an snake. Of course, I have only my worde for it, the beast having the breathe of an furnace and the temperament of an rubber balloon in a hurricane."
19
   Of course, wizards often killed one another by ordinary, non¬magical means, but this was perfectly allowable and death by assassination was considered natural causes for a wizard.
20
   All right. But you've got the general idea.
21
   It was a Fullomyth, an invaluable aid for all whose business is with the arcane and hermetic. It contained lists of things that didn't exist and, in a very significant way, weren't important. Some of its pages could only be read after midnight, or by strange and improbable illuminations. There were descriptions of underground constellations and wines as yet unfermented. For the really up-to-the-epoch occultist, who could afford the version bound in spider skin, there was even an insert showing the London Underground with the three stations they never dare show on the public maps.
22
   He always argued that he was.
23
   Very popular among gods, demi-gods, daemons and other supernatural creatures, who feel at home with questions like 'What is It all About?' and 'Where will It all End?'
24
   Although this was the only way in which they resembled the idols built, in response to ancient and unacknowledged memories, by children in snowy weather; it was extremely unlikely that this Ice Giant would be a small mound of grubby ice with a carrot in it by the morning.
25
   Which wisely decided not to fly again, was never claimed, and lived out the rest of its days as the carriage horse of an elderly lady. What War did about this is unrecorded; it is pretty certain that he got another one.

(Starring Three Witches, also kings, daggers, crowns, storms, dwarfs, cats, ghosts, spectres, apes, bandits, demons, forests, heirs, jesters, tortures, trolls, turntables, general rejoicing and drivers alarums.)
 
   The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain-lashed hills.
   The night was as black as the inside of a cat. It was the kind of night, you could believe, on which gods moved men as though they were pawns on the chessboard of fate. In the middle of this elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like the madness in a weasel's eye. It illuminated three hunched figures. As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: 'When shall we three meet again?'
   There was a pause.
   Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: 'Well, I can do next Tuesday.'
 
   Through the fathomless deeps of space swims the star turtle Great A'Tuin, bearing on its back the four giant elephants who carry on their shoulders the mass of the Discworld. A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past.
   Exactly why this should be may never be known. Possibly the Creator of the universe got bored with all the usual business of axial inclination, albedos and rotational velocities, and decided to have a bit of fun for once.
   It would be a pretty good bet that the gods of a world like this probably do not play chess and indeed this is the case. In fact no gods anywhere play chess. They haven't got the imagination. Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
   Magic glues the Discworld together – magic generated by the turning of the world itself, magic wound like silk out of the underlying structure of existence to suture the wounds of reality.
   A lot of it ends up in the Ramtop Mountains, which stretch from the frozen lands near the Hub all the way, via a lengthy archipelago, to the warm seas which flow endlessly into space over the Rim.
   Raw magic crackles invisibly from peak to peak and earths itself in the mountains. It is the Ramtops that supply the world with most of its witches and wizards. In the Ramtops the leaves on the trees move even when there is no breeze. Rocks go for a stroll of an evening.
   Even the land, at times, seems alive . . .
 
   At times, so does the sky.
   The storm was really giving it everything it had. This was its big chance. It had spent years hanging around the provinces, putting in some useful work as a squall, building up experience, making contacts, occasionally leaping out on unsuspecting shepherds or blasting quite small oak trees. Now an opening in the weather had given it an opportunity to strut its hour, and it was building up its role in the hope of being spotted by one of the big climates.
   It was a good storm. There was quite effective projection and passion there, and critics agreed that if it would only learn to control its thunder it would be, in years to come, a storm to watch.
   The woods roared their applause and were full of mists and flying leaves.
   On nights such as these the gods, as has already been pointed out, play games other than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings. It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end . . .
   And a coach came hurtling along the rough forest track, jerking violently as the wheels bounced off tree roots. The driver lashed at the team, the desperate crack of his whip providing a rather neat counterpoint to the crash of the tempest overhead.
   Behind – only a little way behind, and getting closer -were three hooded riders.
   On nights such as this, evil deeds are done. And good deeds, of course. But mostly evil, on the whole.
 
   On nights such as this, witches are abroad.
   Well, not actually abroad. They don't like the food and you can't trust the water and the shamans always hog the deckchairs. But there was a full moon breasting the ragged clouds and the rushing air was full of whispers and the very broad hint of magic.
   In their clearing above the forest the witches spoke thus:
   'I'm babysitting on Tuesday,' said the one with no hat but a thatch of white curls so thick she might have been wearing a helmet. 'For our Jason's youngest. I can manage Friday. Hurry up with the tea, luv. I'm that parched.'
   The junior member of the trio gave a sigh, and ladled some boiling water out of the cauldron into the teapot.
   The third witch patted her hand in a kindly fashion.
   'You said it quite well,' she said. 'Just a bit more work on the screeching. Ain't that right, Nanny Ogg?'
   'Very useful screeching, I thought,' said Nanny Ogg hurriedly. 'And I can see Goodie Whemper, maysherestinpeace, gave you a lot of help with the squint.'
   'It's a good squint,' said Granny Weatherwax.
   The junior witch, whose name was Magrat Garlick, relaxed considerably. She held Granny Weatherwax in awe. It was known throughout the Ramtop Mountains that Mss Weatherwax did not approve of anything very much. If she said it was a good squint, then Magrat's eyes were probably staring up her own nostrils.
   Unlike wizards, who like nothing better than a complicated hierarchy, witches don't go in much for the structured approach to career progression. It's up to each individual witch to take on a girl to hand the area over to when she dies. Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least with other witches, and they certainly don't have leaders.
   Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn't have.
   Magrat's hands shook slightly as they made the tea. Of course, it was all very gratifying, but it was a bit nerve-racking to start one's working life as village witch between Granny and, on the other side of the forest, Nanny Ogg. It'd been her idea to form a local coven. She felt it was more, well, occult. To her amazement the other two had agreed or, at least, hadn't disagreed much.
   'An oven?' Nanny Ogg had said. 'What'd we want to join an oven for?'
   'She means a coven, Gytha,' Granny Weatherwax had explained. 'You know, like in the old days. A meeting.'
   'A knees up?' said Nanny Ogg hopefully.
   'No dancing,' Granny had warned. 'I don't hold with dancing. Or singing or getting over-excited or all that messing about with ointments and similar.'
   'Does you good to get out,' said Nanny happily.
   Magrat had been disappointed about the dancing, and was relieved that she hadn't ventured one or two other ideas that had been on her mind. She fumbled in the packet she had brought with her. It was her first sabbat, and she was determined to do it right.
   'Would anyone care for a scone?' she said.
   Granny looked hard at hers before she bit. Magrat had baked bat designs on it. They had little eyes made of currants.
 
   The coach crashed through the trees at the forest edge, ran on two wheels for a few seconds as it hit a stone, righted itself against all the laws of balance, and rumbled on. But it was going slower now. The slope was dragging at it.
   The coachman, standing upright in the manner of a charioteer, pushed his hair out of his eyes and peered through the murk. No-one lived up here, in the lap of the Ramtops themselves, but there was a light ahead. By all that was merciful, there was a light there.
   An arrow buried itself in the coach roof behind him.
 
   Meanwhile King Verence, monarch of Lancre, was making a discovery.
   Like most people – most people, at any rate, below the age of sixty or so – Verence hadn't exercised his mind much about what happened to you when you died. Like most people since the dawn of time, he assumed it all somehow worked out all right in the end.
   And, like most people since the dawn of time, he was now dead.
   He was in fact lying at the bottom of one of his own stairways in Lancre Castle, with a dagger in his back.
   He sat up, and was surprised to find that while someone he was certainly inclined to think of as himself was sitting up, something very much like his body remained lying on the floor.
   It was a pretty good body, incidentally, now he came to see it from outside for the first time. He had always been quite attached to it although, he had to admit, this did not now seem to be the case.
   It was big and well-muscled. He'd looked after it. He'd allowed it a moustache and long-flowing locks. He'd seen it got plenty of healthy outdoor exercise and lots of red meat. Now, just when a body would have been useful, it had let him down. Or out.
   On top of that, he had to come to terms with the tall, thin figure standing beside him. Most of it was hidden in a hooded black robe, but the one arm which extended from the folds to grip a large scythe was made of bone.
   When one is dead, there are things one instinctively recognises.
   HALLO.
   Verence drew himself up to his full height, or what would have been his full height if that part of him to which the word 'height' could have been applied was not lying stiff on the floor and facing a future in which only the word 'depth' could be appropriate.
   'I am a king, mark you,' he said.
   WAS, YOUR MAJESTY.
   'What?' Verence barked.
   I SAID WAS. IT'S CALLED THE PAST TENSE. YOU'LL SOON GET USED TO IT.
   The tall figure tapped its calcareous fingers on the scythe's handle. It was obviously upset about something.
   If it came to that, Verence thought, so am I. But the various broad hints available in his present circumstances were breaking through even the mad brave stupidity that made up most of his character, and it was dawning on him that whatever kingdom he might currently be in, he wasn't king of it.
   'Are you Death, fellow?' he ventured.
   I HAVE MANY NAMES.
   'Which one are you using at present?' said Verence, with a shade more deference. There were people milling around them; in fact, quite a few people were milling through them, like ghosts.
   'Oh, so it was Felmet,' the king added vaguely, looking at the figure lurking with obscene delight at the top of the stairs. 'My father said I should never let him get behind me. Why don't I feel angry?'
   GLANDS, said Death shortly. ADRENALIN AND SO FORTH. AND EMOTIONS. YOU DON'T HAVE THEM. ALL YOU HAVE NOW IS THOUGHT.
   The tall figure appeared to reach a decision.
   THIS IS VERY IRREGULAR, he went on, apparently to himself. HOWEVER, WHO AM I TO ARGUE?
   'Who indeed.'
   WHAT?
   'I said, who indeed.'
   SHUT UP.
   Death stood with his skull on one side, as though listening to some inner voice. As his hood fell away the late king noticed that Death resembled a polished skeleton in every way but one. His eye sockets glowed sky blue. Verence wasn't frightened, however; not simply because it is difficult to be in fear of anything when the bits you need to be frightened with are curdling several yards away, but because he had never really been frightened of anything in his life, and wasn't going to start now. This was partly because he didn't have the imagination, but he was also one of those rare individuals who are totally focused in time.
   Most people aren't. They live their lives as a sort of temporal blur around the point where their body actually is – anticipating the future, or holding on to the past. They're usually so busy thinking about what happens next that the only time they ever find out what is happening now is when they come to look back on it. Most people are like this. They learn how to fear because they can actually tell, down at the subconscious level, what is going to happen next. It's already happening to them.
   But Verence had always lived only for the present. Until now, anyway.
   Death sighed.
   I SUPPOSE NO-ONE MENTIONED ANYTHING TO YOU? he hazarded.
   'Say again?'
   NO PREMONITIONS? STRANGE DREAMS? MAD OLD SOOTHSAYERS SHOUTING THINGS AT YOU IN THE STREET?
   'About what? Dying?'
   NO, I SUPPOSE NOT. IT WOULD BE TOO MUCH TO EXPECT, said Death sourly. THEY LEAVE IT ALL TO ME.
   'Who do?' said Verence, mystified.
   FATE. DESTINY. ALL THE REST OF THEM. Death laid a hand on the king's shoulder. THE FACT IS, I'M AFRAID, YOU'RE DUE TO BECOME A GHOST.
   'Oh.' He looked down at his ... body, which seemed solid enough. Then someone walked through him.
   DON'T LET IT UPSET YOU.
   Verence watched his own stiff corpse being carried reverentially from the hall.
   'I'll try,' he said.
   GOOD MAN.
   'I don't think I will be up to all that business with the white sheets and the chains, though,' he said. 'Do I have to walk around moaning and screaming?'
   Death shrugged. DO YOU WANT TO? he said.
   'No.'
   THEN I SHOULDN'T BOTHER, IF I WERE YOU. Death pulled an hour-glass from the recesses of his dark robe and inspected it closely.
   AND NOW I REALLY MUST BE GOING, he said. He turned on his heel, put his scythe over his shoulder and started to walk out of the hall through the wall.
   'I say? Just hold on there!' shouted Verence, running after him.
   Death didn't look back. Verence followed him through the wall; it was like walking through fog.
   'Is that all?' he demanded. 'I mean, how long will I be a ghost? Why am I a ghost? You can't just leave me like this.' He halted and raised an imperious, slightly transparent finger. 'Stop! I command you!'
   Death shook his head gloomily, and stepped through the next wall. The king hurried after him with as much dignity as he could still muster, and found Death fiddling with the girths of a large white horse standing on the battlements. It was wearing a nosebag.
   'You can't leave me like this!' he repeated, in the face of the evidence.
   Death turned to him.
   I CAN, he said. YOU'RE UNDEAD, YOU SEE. GHOSTS INHABIT A WORLD BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE DEAD. IT'S NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY. He patted the king on the shoulder. DON'T WORRY, he said, IT WON'T BE FOREVER.
   'Good.'
   IT MAY SEEM LIKE FOREVER.
   'How long will it really be?'
   UNTIL YOU HAVE FULFILLED YOUR DESTINY, I ASSUME.
   'And how will I know what my destiny is?' said the king, desperately.
   CAN'T HELP THERE. I'M SORRY.
   'Well, how can I find out?'
   THESE THINGS GENERALLY BECOME APPARENT, I UNDERSTAND, said Death, and swung himself into the saddle.
   'And until then I have to haunt this place.' King Verence stared around at the draughty battlements. 'All alone, I suppose. Won't anyone be able to see me?'
   OH, THE PSYCHICALLY INCLINED. CLOSE RELATIVES. AND CATS, OF COURSE.
   'I hate cats.'
   Death's face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant.
   I SEE, he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat-haters. YOU LIKE GREAT BIG DOGS, I IMAGINE.
   'As a matter of fact, I do.' The king stared gloomily at the dawn. His dogs. He'd really miss his dogs. And it looked like such a good hunting day.
   He wondered if ghosts hunted. Almost certainly not, he imagined. Or ate, or drank either for that matter, and that was really depressing. He liked a big noisy banquet and had quaffed[1] many a pint of good ale. And bad ale, come to that. He'd never been able to tell the difference till the following morning, usually.
   He kicked despondently at a stone, and noted gloomily that his foot went right through it. No hunting, drinking, carousing, no wassailing, no hawking . . . It was dawning on him that the pleasures of the flesh were pretty sparse without the flesh. Suddenly life wasn't worth living. The fact that he wasn't living it didn't cheer him up at all.
   SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO BE GHOSTS, said Death.
   'Hmm?' said Verence, gloomily.
   IT'S NOT SUCH A WRENCH, I ASSUME. THEY CAN SEE HOW THEIR DESCENDANTS GET ON. SORRY? IS SOMETHING THE MATTER?
   But Verence had vanished into the wall.
   DON'T MIND ME, WILL YOU, said Death, peevishly. He looked around him with a gaze that could see through time and space and the souls of men, and noted a landslide in distant Klatch, a hurricane in Howandaland, a plague in Hergen.
   BUSY, BUSY, he muttered, and spurred his horse into the sky.
   Verence ran through the walls of his own castle. His feet barely touched the ground – in fact, the unevenness of the floor meant that at times they didn't touch the ground at all.
   As a king he was used to treating servants as if they were not there, and running through them as a ghost was almost the same. The only difference was that they didn't stand aside.
   Verence reached the nursery, saw the broken door, the trailed sheets . . .
   Heard the hoofbeats. He reached the window, saw his own horse go full tilt through the open gateway in the shafts of the coach. A few seconds later three horsemen followed it. The sound of hooves echoed for a moment on the cobbles and died away.
   The king thumped the sill, his fist going several inches into the stone.
   Then he pushed his way out into the air, disdaining to notice the drop, and half flew, half ran down across the courtyard and into the stables.
   It took him a mere twenty seconds to learn that, to the great many things a ghost cannot do, should be added the mounting of a horse. He did succeed in getting into the saddle, or at least in straddling the air just above it, but when the horse finally bolted, terrified beyond belief by the mysterious things happening behind its ears, Verence was left sitting astride five feet of fresh air.
   He tried to run, and got about as far as the gateway before the air around him thickened to the consistency of tar.
   'You can't,' said a sad, old voice behind him. 'You have to stay where you were killed. That's what haunting means. Take it from me. I know.'
 
   Granny Weatherwax paused with a second scone halfway to her mouth.
   'Something comes,' she said.
   'Can you tell by the pricking of your thumbs?' said Magrat earnestly. Magrat had learned a lot about witchcraft from books.
   'The pricking of my ears,' said Granny. She raised her eyebrows at Nanny Ogg. Old Goodie Whemper had been an excellent witch in her way, but far too fanciful. Too many flowers and romantic notions and such.
   The occasional flash of lightning showed the moorland stretching down to the forest, but the rain on the warm summer earth had filled the air with mist wraiths.
   'Hoofbeats?' said Nanny Ogg. 'No-one would come up here this time of night.'
   Magrat peered around timidly. Here and there on the moor were huge standing stones, their origins lost in time, which were said to lead mobile and private lives of their own. She shivered.
   'What's to be afraid of?' she managed.
   'Us,' said Granny Weatherwax, smugly.
   The hoofbeats neared, slowed. And then the coach rattled between the furze bushes, its horses hanging in their harnesses. The driver leapt down, ran around to the door, pulled a large bundle from inside and dashed towards the trio.
   He was halfway across the damp peat when he stopped and stared at Granny Weatherwax with a look of horror.
   'It's all right,' she whispered, and the whisper cut through the grumbling of the storm as clearly as a bell.
   She took a few steps forward and a convenient lightning flash allowed her to look directly into the man's eyes. They had the peculiarity of focus that told those who had the Know that he was no longer looking at anything in this world.
   With a final jerking movement he thrust the bundle into Granny's arms and toppled forward, the feathers of a crossbow bolt sticking out of his back.
   Three figures moved into the firelight. Granny looked up into another pair of eyes, which were as chilly as the slopes of Hell.
   Their owner threw his crossbow aside. There was a glimpse of chain mail under his sodden cloak as he drew his sword.
   He didn't flourish it. The eyes that didn't leave Granny's face weren't the eyes of one who bothers about flourishing things. They were the eyes of one who knows exactly what swords are for. He reached out his hand.
   'You will give it to me,' he said.
   Granny twitched aside the blanket in her arms and looked down at a small face, wrapped in sleep.
   She looked up.
   'No,' she said, on general principles.
   The soldier glanced from her to Magrat and Nanny Ogg, who were as still as the standing stones of the moor.
   'You are witches?' he said.
   Granny nodded. Lightning skewered down from the sky and a bush a hundred yards away blossomed into fire. The two soldiers behind the man muttered something, but he smiled and raised a mailed hand.
   'Does the skin of witches turn aside steel?' he said.
   'Not that I'm aware,' said Granny, levelly. 'You could give it a try.'
   One of the soldiers stepped forward and touched the man's arm gingerly.
   'Sir, with respect, sir, it's not a good idea—'
   'Be silent.'
   'But it's terrible bad luck to—'
   'Must I ask you again?'
   'Sir,' said the man. His eyes caught Granny's for a moment, and reflected hopeless terror.
   The leader grinned at Granny, who hadn't moved a muscle.
   'Your peasant magic is for fools, mother of the night. I can strike you down where you stand.'
   'Then strike, man,' said Granny, looking over his shoulder. 'If your heart tells you, strike as hard as you dare.'
   The man raised his sword. Lightning speared down again and split a stone a few yards away, filling the air with smoke and the stink of burnt silicon.
   'Missed,' he said smugly, and Granny saw his muscles tense as he prepared to bring the sword down.
   A look of extreme puzzlement crossed his face. He tilted his head sideways and opened his mouth, as if trying to come to terms with a new idea. His sword dropped out of his hand and landed point downwards in the peat. Then he gave a sigh and folded up, very gently, collapsing in a heap at Granny's feet.
   She gave him a gentle prod with her toe. 'Perhaps you weren't aware of what I was aiming at,' she whispered. 'Mother of the night, indeed!'
   The soldier who had tried to restrain the man stared in horror at the bloody dagger in his hand, and backed away.
   'I-I-I couldn't let. He shouldn't of. It's – it's not right to,' he stuttered.
   'Are you from around these parts, young man?' said Granny.
   He dropped to his knees. 'Mad Wolf, ma'am,' he said. He stared back at the fallen captain. 'They'll kill me now!' he wailed.
   'But you did what you thought was right,' said Granny.
   'I didn't become a soldier for this. Not to go round killing people.'
   'Exactly right. If I was you, I'd become a sailor,' said Granny thoughtfully. 'Yes, a nautical career. I should start as soon as possible. Now, in fact. Run off, man. Run off to sea where there are no tracks. You will have a long and successful life, I promise.' She looked thoughtful for a moment, and added, 'At least, longer than it's likely to be if you hang around here.'
   He pulled himself upward, gave her a look compounded of gratitude and awe, and ran off into the mist.
   'And now perhaps someone will tell us what this is all about?' said Granny, turning to the third man.
   To where the third man had been.
   There was the distant drumming of hooves on the turf, and then silence.
   Nanny Ogg hobbled forward.
   'I could catch him,' she said. 'What do you think?'
   Granny shook her head. She sat down on a rock and looked at the child in her arms. It was a boy, no more than two years old, and quite naked under the blanket. She rocked him vaguely and stared at nothing.
   Nanny Ogg examined the two corpses with the air of one for whom laying-out holds no fears.
   'Perhaps they were bandits,' said Magrat tremulously.
   Nanny shook her head.
   'A strange thing,' she said. 'They both wear this same badge. Two bears on a black and gold shield. Anyone know what that means?'
   'It's the badge of King Verence,' said Magrat.
   'Who's he?' said Granny Weatherwax.
   'He rules this country,' said Magrat.
   'Oh. That king,' said Granny, as if the matter was hardly worth noting.
   'Soldiers fighting one another. Doesn't make sense,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Magrat, you have a look in the coach.'
   The youngest witch poked around inside the bodywork and came back with a sack. She upended it, and something thudded on to the turf.
   The storm had rumbled off to the other side of the mountain now, and the watery moon shed a thin gruel of light over the damp moorland. It also gleamed off what was, without any doubt, an extremely important crown.
   'It's a crown,' said Magrat. 'It's got all spiky bits on it.'
   'Oh, dear,' said Granny.
   The child gurgled in its sleep. Granny Weatherwax didn't hold with looking at the future, but now she could feel the future looking at her.
   She didn't like its expression at all.
   King Verence was looking at the past, and had formed pretty much the same view.
   'You can see me?' he said.
   'Oh, yes. Quite clearly, in fact,' said the newcomer.
   Verence's brows knotted. Being a ghost seemed to require considerably more mental effort than being alive; he'd managed quite well for forty years without having to think more than once or twice a day, and now he was doing it all me time.
   'Ah,' he said. 'You're a ghost, too.'
   'Well spotted.'
   'It was the head under your arm,' said Verence, pleased with himself. 'That gave me a clue.'
   'Does it bother you? I can put it back on if it bothers you,' said the old ghost helpfully. He extended his free hand. 'Pleased to meet you. I'm Champot, King of Lancre.'
   'Verence. Likewise.' He peered down at the old king's features and added, 'Don't seem to recall seeing your picture in the Long Gallery . . .'
   'Oh, all that was after my time,' said Champot dismissively.
   'How long have you been here, then?'
   Champot reached down and rubbed his nose. 'About a thousand years,' he said, his voice tinged with pride. 'Man and ghost.'
   'A thousand years!'
   'I built this place, in fact. Just got it nicely decorated when my nephew cut my head off while I was asleep. I can't tell you how much that upset me.'
   'But . . . a thousand years . . .' Verence repeated, weakly.
   Champot took his arm. 'It's not that bad,' he confided, as he led the unresisting king across the courtyard. 'Better than being alive, in many ways.'
   'They must be bloody strange ways, then!' snapped Verence. 'I liked being alive!'
   Champot grinned reassuringly. 'You'll soon get used to it,' he said.
   'I don't want to get used to it!'
   'You've got a strong morphogenic field,' said Champot. 'I can tell. I look for these things. Yes. Very strong, I should say.'
   'What's that?'
   'I was never very good with words, you know,' said Champot. 'I always found it easier to hit people with something. But I gather it all boils down to how alive you were. When you were alive, I mean. Something called—' he paused – 'animal vitality. Yes, that was it. Animal vitality. The more you had, the more you stay yourself, as it were, if you're a ghost. I expect you were one hundred per cent alive, when you were alive,' he added.
   Despite himself, Verence felt flattered. 'I tried to keep myself busy,' he said. They had strolled through the wall into the Great Hall, which was now empty. The sight of the trestle tables triggered an automatic reaction in the king.
   'How do we go about getting breakfast?' he said.
   Champot's head looked surprised.
   'We don't,' he said. 'We're ghosts.'
   'But I'm hungry!'
   'You're not, you know. It's just your imagination.'
   There was a clattering from the kitchens. The cooks were already up and, in the absence of any other instructions, were preparing the castle's normal breakfast menu. Familiar smells were wafting up from the dark archway that led to the kitchens.
   Verence sniffed.
   'Sausages,' he said dreamily. 'Bacon. Eggs. Smoked fish.' He stared at Champot. 'Black pudding,' he whispered.
   'You haven't actually got a stomach,' the old ghost pointed out. 'It's all in the mind. Just force of habit. You just think you're hungry.'
   'I think I'm ravenous.'
   'Yes, but you can't actually touch anything, you see,' Champot explained gently. 'Nothing at all.'
   Verence lowered himself gently on to a bench, so that he did not drift through it, and sank his head in his hands. He'd heard that death could be bad. He just hadn't realised how bad.
   He wanted revenge. He wanted to get out of this suddenly horrible castle, to find his son. But he was even more terrified to find that what he really wanted, right now, was a plate of kidneys.
 
   A damp dawn flooded across the landscape, scaled the battlements of Lancre Castle, stormed the keep and finally made it through the casement of the solar.
   Duke Felmet stared out gloomily at the dripping forest. There was such a lot of it. It wasn't, he decided, that he had anything against trees as such, it was just that the sight of so much of them was terribly depressing. He kept wanting to count them.
   'Indeed, my love,' he said.
   The duke put those who met him in mind of some sort of lizard, possibly the type that lives on volcanic islands, moves once a day, has a vestigial third eye and blinks on a monthly basis. He considered himself to be a civilised man more suited to the dry air and bright sun of a properly-organised climate.
   On the other hand, he mused, it might be nice to be a tree. Trees didn't have ears, he was pretty sure of this. And they seemed to manage without the blessed state of matrimony. A male oak tree – he'd have to look this up – a male oak tree just shed its pollen on the breeze and all the business with the acorns, unless it was oak apples, no, he was pretty sure it was acorns, took place somewhere else . . .
   'Yes, my precious,' he said.
   Yes, trees had got it all worked out. Duke Felmet glared at the forest roof. Selfish bastards.
   'Certainly, my dear,' he said.
   'What?' said the duchess.
   The duke hesitated, desperately trying to replay the monologue of the last five minutes. There had been something about him being half a man, and . . . infirm on purpose? And he was sure there had been a complaint about the coldness of the castle. Yes, that was probably it. Well, those wretched trees could do a decent day's work for once.
   'I'll have some cut down and brought in directly, my cherished,' he said.
   Lady Felmet was momentarily speechless. This was by way of being a calendar event. She was a large and impressive woman, who gave people confronting her for the first time the impression that they were seeing a galleon under full sail; the effect was heightened by her unfortunate belief that red velvet rather suited her. However, it didn't set off her complexion. It matched it.
   The duke often mused on his good luck in marrying her. If it wasn't for the engine of her ambition he'd be just another local lord, with nothing much to do but hunt, drink and exercise his droit de seigneur[2].
   Instead, he was now just a step away from the throne, and might soon be monarch of all he surveyed.
   Provided that all he surveyed was trees. He sighed.
   'Cut what down?' said Lady Felmet, icily.
   'Oh, the trees,' said the duke.
   'What have trees got to do with it?'
   'Well. . . there are such a lot of them,' said the duke, with feeling.
   'Don't change the subject!'
   'Sorry, my sweet.'
   'What I said was, how could you have been so stupid as to let them get away? I told you that servant was far too loyal. You can't trust someone like that.'
   'No, my love.'
   'You didn't by any chance consider sending someone after them, I suppose?'
   'Bentzen, my dear. And a couple of guards.'
   'Oh.' The duchess paused. Bentzen, as captain of the duke's personal bodyguard, was as efficient a killer as a psychotic mongoose. He would have been her choice. It annoyed her to be temporarily deprived of a chance to fault her husband, but she rallied quite well.
   'He wouldn't have needed to go out at all, if only you'd listened to me. But you never do.'
   'Do what, my passion?'
   The duke yawned. It had been a long night. There had been a thunderstorm of quite unnecessarily dramatic proportions, and then there had been all that messy business with the knives.
   It has already been mentioned that Duke Felmet was one step away from the throne. The step in question was at the top of the flight leading to the Great Hall, down which King Verence had tumbled in the dark only to land, against all the laws of probability, on his own dagger.
   It had, however, been declared by his own physician to be a case of natural causes. Bentzen had gone to see the man and explained that falling down a flight of steps with a dagger in your back was a disease caused by unwise opening of the mouth.
   In fact it had already been caught by several members of the king's own bodyguard who had been a little bit hard of hearing. There had been a minor epidemic.
   The duke shuddered. There were details about last night that were both hazy and horrible.
   He tried to reassure himself that all the unpleasantness was over now, and he had a kingdom. It wasn't much of one, apparently being mainly trees, but it was a kingdom and it had a crown.
   If only they could find it.
   Lancre Castle was built on an outcrop of rock by an architect who had heard about Gormenghast but hadn't got the budget. He'd done his best, though, with a tiny confection of cut-price turrets, bargain basements, buttresses, crenellations, gargoyles, towers, courtyards, keeps and dungeons; in fact, just about everything a castle needs except maybe reasonable foundations and the kind of mortar that doesn't wash away in a light shower.
   The castle leaned vertiginously over the racing white water of the Lancre river, which boomed darkly a thousand feet below. Every now and again a few bits fell in.
   Small as it was, though, the castle contained a thousand places to hide a crown.
   The duchess swept out to find someone else to berate, and left Lord Felmet looking gloomily at the landscape. It started to rain.
   It was on this cue that there came a thunderous knocking at the castle door. It seriously disturbed the castle porter, who was playing Cripple Mister Onion with the castle cook and the castle's Fool in the warmth of the kitchen.
   He growled and stood up. 'There is a knocking without,' he said.
   'Without what?' said the Fool.
   'Without the door, idiot.'
   The Fool gave him a worried look. 'A knocking without a door?' he said suspiciously. 'This isn't some kind of Zen, is it?'
   When the porter had grumbled off in the direction of the gatehouse the cook pushed another farthing into the kitty and looked sharply over his cards at the Fool.
   'What's a Zen?' he said.
   The Fool's bells tinkled as he sorted through his cards. Without thinking, he said: 'Oh, a sub-sect of the Turnwise Klatch philosophical system of Sumtin, noted for its simple austerity and the offer of personal tranquillity and wholeness achieved through meditation and breathing techniques; an interesting aspect is the asking of apparently nonsensical questions in order to widen the doors of perception.'
   'How's that again?' said the cook suspiciously. He was on edge. When he'd taken the breakfast up to the Great Hall he'd kept getting the feeling that something was trying to take the tray out of his hands. And as if that wasn't bad enough, this new duke had sent him back for . . . He shuddered. Oatmeal! And a runny boiled egg! The cook was too old for this sort of thing. He was set in his ways. He was a cook in the real feudal tradition. If it didn't have an apple in its mouth and you couldn't roast it, he didn't want to serve it.
   The Fool hesitated with a card in his hand, suppressed his panic and thought quickly.
   'I'faith, nuncle,' he squeaked, 'thou't more full of questions than a martlebury is of mizzensails.'
   The cook relaxed.
   'Well, okay,' he said, not entirely satisfied. The Fool lost the next three hands, just to be on the safe side.
   The porter, meanwhile, unfastened the hatch in the wicket gate and peered out.
   'Who dost knock without?' he growled.
   The soldier, drenched and terrified though he was, hesitated.
   'Without? Without what?' he said.
   'If you're going to bugger about, you can bloody well stay without all day,' said the porter calmly.
   'No! I must see the duke upon the instant!' shouted the guard. 'Witches are abroad!'
   The porter was about to come back with, 'Good time of year for it', or 'Wish I was, too', but stopped when he saw the man's face. It wasn't the face of a man who would enter into the spirit of the thing. It was the look of someone who had seen things a decent man shouldn't wot of . . .
 
   'Witches?' said Lord Felmet. 'Witches!' said the duchess.
   In the draughty corridors, a voice as faint as the wind in distant keyholes said, with a note of hope, 'Witches!'
   The psychically inclined ...

 'It's meddling, that's what it is,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'And no good will come of it.'
   'It's very romantic,' said Magrat breathily, and heaved a sigh.
   'Goochy goo,' said Nanny Ogg.
   'Anyway,' said Magrat, 'you killed that horrid man!'
   'I never did. I just encouraged . . . things to take their course.' Granny Weatherwax frowned. 'He didn't have no respect. Once people lose their respect, it means trouble.'
   'Izzy wizzy wazzy, den.' ,
   'That other man brought him out here to save him!' shouted Magrat. 'He wanted us to keep him safe! It's obvious! It's destiny!'
   'Oh, obvious,' said Granny. 'I'll grant you it's obvious. Trouble is, just because things are obvious doesn't mean they're true.'
   She weighed the crown in her hands. It felt very heavy, in a way that went beyond mere pounds and ounces.
   'Yes, but the point is—' Magrat began.
   'The point is,' said Granny, 'that people are going to come looking. Serious people. Serious looking. Pull-down-the-walls and burn-off-the-thatch looking. And—'
   'Howsa boy, den?'
   '—And, Gytha , I'm sure we'll all be a lot happier if you'd stop gurgling like that!' Granny snapped. She could feel her nerves coming on. Her nerves always played up when she was unsure about things. Besides, they had retired to Magrat's cottage, and the decor was getting to her, because Magrat believed in Nature's wisdom and elves and the healing power of colours and the cycle of the seasons and a lot of other things Granny Weatherwax didn't have any truck with.
   'You're not after telling me how to look after a child,' snapped Nanny Ogg mildly. 'And me with fifteen of my own?'
   'I'm just saying that we ought to think about it,' said Granny.
   The other two watched her for some time. 'Well?' said Magrat.
   Granny's fingers drummed on the edge of the crown. She frowned.
   'First, we've got to take him away from here,' she said, and held up a hand. 'No, Gytha, I'm sure your cottage is ideal and everything, but it's not safe. He's got to be somewhere away from here, a long way away, where no-one knows who he is. And then there's this.' She tossed the crown from hand to hand.
   'Oh, that's easy,' said Magrat. 'I mean, you just hide it under a stone or something. That's easy. Much easier than babies.'
   'It ain't,' said Granny. The reason being, the country's full of babies and they all look the same, but I don't reckon there's many crowns. They have this way of being found, anyway. They kind of call out to people's minds. If you bunged it under a stone up here, in a week's time it'd get itself discovered by accident. You mark my words.'
   'It's true, is that,' said Nanny Ogg, earnestly. 'How many times have you thrown a magic ring into the deepest depths of the ocean and then, when you get home and have a nice bit of turbot for your tea, there it is?'
   They considered this in silence.
   'Never,' said Granny irritably. 'And nor have you. Anyway, he might want it back. If it's rightfully his, that is. Kings set a lot of store by crowns. Really, Gytha, sometimes you say the most—'
   'I'll just make some tea, shall I?' said Magrat brightly, and disappeared into the scullery.
   The two elderly witches sat on either side of the table in polite and prickly silence. Finally Nanny Ogg said, 'She done it up nice, hasn't she? Flowers and everything. What are them things on the walls?'
   'Sigils,' said Granny sourly. 'Or some such.'
   'Fancy,' said Nanny Ogg, politely. 'And all them robes and wands and things too.'
   'Modern,' said Granny Weatherwax, with a sniff. 'When I was a gel, we had a lump of wax and a couple of pins and had to be content. We had to make our own enchantment in them days.'
   'Ah, well, we've all passed a lot of water since then,' said Nanny Ogg sagely. She gave the baby a comforting jiggle.
   Granny Weatherwax sniffed. Nanny Ogg had been married three times and ruled a tribe of children and grandchildren all over the kingdom. Certainly, it was not actually forbidden for witches to get married. Granny had to concede that, but reluctantly. Very reluctantly. She sniffed again, disapprovingly; this was a mistake.
   'What's that smell?' she snapped.
   'Ah,' said Nanny Ogg, carefully repositioning the baby. 'I expect I'll just go and see if Magrat has any clean rags, shall I?'
   And now Granny was left alone. She felt embarrassed, as one always does when left alone in someone else's room, and fought the urge to get up and inspect the books on the shelf over the sideboard or examine the mantelpiece for dust. She turned the crown round and round in her hands. Again, it gave the impression of being bigger and heavier than it actually was.
   She caught sight of the mirror over the mantelpiece and looked down at the crown. It was tempting. It was practically begging her to try it for size. Well, and why not? She made sure that the others weren't around and then, in one movement, whipped off her hat and placed the crown on her head.
   It seemed to fit. Granny drew herself up proudly, and waved a hand imperiously in the general direction of the hearth.
   'Jolly well do this,' she said. She beckoned arrogantly at the grandfather clock. 'Chop his head off, what ho,' she commanded. She smiled grimly.
   And froze as she heard the screams, and the thunder of horses, and the deadly whisper of arrows and the damp, solid sound of spears in flesh. Charge after charge echoed across her skull. Sword met shield, or sword, or bone -relentlessly. Years streamed across her mind in the space of a second. There were times when she lay among the dead, or hanging from the branch of a tree; but always there were hands that would pick her up again, and place her on a velvet cushion ...
   Granny very carefully lifted the crown off her head – it was an effort, it didn't like it much – and laid it on the table.
   'So that's being a king for you, is it?' she said softly. 'I wonder why they all want the job?'
   'Do you take sugar?' said Magrat, behind her.
   'You'd have to be a born fool to be a king,' said Granny.
   'Sorry?'
   Granny turned. 'Didn't see you come in,' she said. 'What was it you said?'
   'Sugar in your tea?'
   'Three spoons,' said Granny promptly. It was one of the few sorrows of Granny Weatherwax's life that, despite all her efforts, she'd arrived at the peak of her career with a complexion like a rosy apple and all her teeth. No amount of charms could persuade a wart to take root on her handsome if slightly equine features, and vast intakes of sugar only served to give her boundless energy. A wizard she'd consulted had explained it was on account of her having a metabolism, which at least allowed her to feel vaguely superior to Nanny Ogg, who she suspected had never even seen one.
   Magrat dutifully dug out three heaped ones. It would be nice, she thought wistfully, if someone could say 'thank you' occasionally.
   She became aware that the crown was staring at her.
   'You can feel it, can you?' said Granny. 'I said, didn't I? Crowns call out!'
   'It's horrible.'
   'No, no. It's just being what it is. It can't help it.'
   'But it's magic!'
   'It's just being what it is,' Granny repeated.
   'It's trying to get me to try it on,' said Magrat, her hand hovering.
   'It does that, yes.'
   'But I shall be strong,' said Magrat.
   'So I should think,' said Granny, her expression suddenly curiously wooden. 'What's Gytha doing?'
   'She's giving the baby a wash in the sink,' said Magrat vaguely. 'How can we hide something like this? What'd happen if we buried it really deeply somewhere?'
   'A badger'd dig it up,' said Granny wearily. 'Or someone'd go prospecting for gold or something. Or a tree'd tangle its roots around it and then be blown over in a storm, and then someone'd pick it up and put it on—'
   'Unless they were as strong-minded as us,' Magrat pointed out.
   'Unless that, of course,' said Granny, staring at her finger-nails. Though the thing with crowns is, it isn't the putting them on that's the problem, it's the taking them off.'
   Magrat picked it up and turned it over in her hands.
   'It's not as though it even looks much like a crown,' she said.
   'You've seen a lot, I expect,' said Granny. 'You'd be an expert on them, naturally.'
   'Seen a fair few. They've got a lot more jewels on them, and cloth bits in the middle,' said Magrat defiantly. 'This is just a thin little thing—'
   'Magrat Garlick!'
   'I have. When I was being trained up by Goodie Whemper—'
   '—may sherestinpeace—'
   '—maysherestinpeace, she used to take me over to Razorback or into Lancre whenever the strolling players were in town. She was very keen on the theatre. They've got more crowns than you can shake a stick at although, mind—' she paused – 'Goodie did say they're made of tin and paper and stuff. And just glass for the jewels. But they look more realler than this one. Do you think that's strange?'
   'Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact,' said Granny. 'But I don't hold with encouraging it. What do they stroll about playing, then, in these crowns?'
   'You don't know about the theatre?' said Magrat.
   Granny Weatherwax, who never declared her ignorance of anything, didn't hesitate. 'Oh, yes,' she said. 'It's one of them style of things, then, is it?'
   'Goodie Whemper said it held a mirror up to life,' said Magrat. 'She said it always cheered her up.'
   'I expect it would,' said Granny, striking out. 'Played properly, at any rate. Good people, are they, these theatre players?'
   'I think so.'
   'And they stroll around the country, you say?' said Granny thoughtfully, looking towards the scullery door.
   'All over the place. There's a troupe in Lancre now, I heard. I haven't been because, you know.' Magrat looked down. ' 'Tis not right, a woman going into such places by herself.'
   Granny nodded. She thoroughly approved of such sentiments so long as there was, of course, no suggestion that they applied to her.
   She drummed her fingers on Magrat's tablecloth.
   'Right,' she said. 'And why not? Go and tell Gytha to wrap the baby up well. It's a long time since I heard a theatre played properly.'
   Magrat was entranced, as usual. The theatre was no more than some lengths of painted sacking, a plank stage laid over a few barrels, and half a dozen benches set out in the village square. But at the same time it had also managed to become The Castle, Another Part of the Castle, The Same Part A Little Later, The Battlefield and now it was A Road Outside the City. The afternoon would have been perfect if it wasn't for Granny Weatherwax.
   After several piercing glares at the three-man orchestra to see if she could work out which instrument the theatre was, the old witch had finally paid attention to the stage, and it was beginning to become apparent to Magrat that there were certain fundamental aspects of the theatre that Granny had not yet grasped.
   She was currently bouncing up and down on her stool with rage.
   'He's killed him,' she hissed. 'Why isn't anyone doing anything about it? He's killed him! And right up there in front of everyone!'
   Magrat held on desperately to her colleague's arm as she struggled to get to her feet.
   'It's all right,' she whispered. 'He's not dead!'
   'Are you calling me a liar, my girl?' snapped Granny. 'I saw it all!'
   'Look, Granny, it's not really real, d'you see?'
   Granny Weatherwax subsided a little, but still grumbled under her breath. She was beginning to feel that things were trying to make a fool of her.
   Up on the stage a man in a sheet was giving a spirited monologue. Granny listened intently for some minutes, and then nudged Magrat in the ribs.
   'What's he on about now?' she demanded.
   'He's saying how sorry he was that the other man's dead,' said Magrat, and in an attempt to change the subject added hurriedly, 'There's a lot of crowns, isn't there?'
   Granny was not to be distracted. 'What'd he go and kill him for, then?' she said.
   'Well, it's a bit complicated—' said Magrat, weakly.
   'It's shameful!' snapped Granny. 'And the poor dead thing still lying there!'
   Magrat gave an imploring look to Nanny Ogg, who was masticating an apple and studying the stage with the glare of a research scientist.
   'I reckon,' she said slowly, 'I reckon it's all just pretendin'. Look, he's still breathing.'
   The rest of the audience, who by now had already decided that this commentary was all part of the play, stared as one man at the corpse. It blushed.
   'And look at his boots, too,' said Nanny critically. 'A real king'd be ashamed of boots like that.'
   The corpse tried to shuffle its feet behind a cardboard bush.
   Granny, feeling in some obscure way that they had scored a minor triumph over the purveyors of untruth and artifice, helped herself to an apple from the bag and began to take a fresh interest. Magrat's nerves started to unknot, and she began to settle down to enjoy the play. But not, as it turned out, for very long. Her willing suspension of disbelief was interrupted by a voice saying:
   'What's this bit?'
   Magrat sighed. 'Well,' she hazarded, 'he thinks that he is the prince, but he's really the other king's daughter, dressed up as a man.'
   Granny subjected the actor to a long analytical stare.
   'He is a man,' she said. 'In a straw wig. Making his voice squeaky.'
   Magrat shuddered. She knew a little about the conventions of the theatre. She had been dreading this bit. Granny Weatherwax had Views.
   'Yes, but,' she said wretchedly, 'it's the Theatre, see. All the women are played by men.'
   'Why?'
   'They don't allow no women on the stage,' said Magrat in a small voice. She shut her eyes.
   In fact, there was no outburst from the seat on her left. She risked a quick glance.
   Granny was quietly chewing the same bit of apple over and over again, her eyes never leaving the action.
   'Don't make a fuss, Esme,' said Nanny, who also knew about Granny's Views. 'This is a good bit. I reckon I'm getting the hang of it.'
   Someone tapped Granny on the shoulder and a voice said, 'Madam, will you kindly remove your hat?'
   Granny turned around very slowly on her stool, as though propelled by hidden motors, and subjected the interrupter to a hundred kilowatt diamond-blue stare. The man wilted under it and sagged back on to his stool, her face following him all the way down.
   'No,' she said.
   He considered the options. 'All right,' he said.
   Granny turned back and nodded to the actors, who had paused to watch her.
   'I don't know what you're staring at,' she growled. 'Get on with it.'
   Nanny Ogg passed her another bag.
   'Have a humbug,' she said.
   Silence again filled the makeshift theatre except for the hesitant voices of the actors, who kept glancing at the bristling figure of Granny Weatherwax, and the sucking sounds of a couple of boiled humbugs being relentlessly churned from cheek to cheek.
   Then Granny said, in a piercing voice that made one actor drop his wooden sword, 'There's a man over on the side there whispering to them!'
   'He's a prompter,' said Magrat. 'He tells them what to say.'
   'Don't they know?'
   'I think they're forgetting,' said Magrat sourly. 'For some reason.'
   Granny nudged Nanny Ogg.
   'What's going on now?' she said. 'Why're all them kings and people up there?'
   'It's a banquet, see,' said Nanny Ogg authoritatively. 'Because of the dead king, him in the boots, as was, only now if you look, you'll see he's pretending to be a soldier, and everyone's making speeches about how good he was and wondering who killed him.'
   'Are they?' said Granny, grimly. She cast her eyes along the cast, looking for the murderer.
   She was making up her mind.
   Then she stood up.
   Her black shawl billowed around her like the wings of an avenging angel, come to rid the world of all that was foolishness and pretence and artifice and sham. She seemed somehow a lot bigger than normal. She pointed an angry finger at the guilty party.
   'He done it!' she shouted triumphantly. 'We all seed 'im! He done it with a dagger!'

   The audience filed out, contented. It had been a good play on the whole, they decided, although not very easy to follow. But it had been a jolly good laugh when all the kings had run off, and the woman in black had jumped up and did all the shouting. That alone had been well worth the ha'penny admission.
   The three witches sat alone on the edge of the stage.
   'I wonder how they get all them kings and lords to come here and do this?' said Granny, totally unabashed. 'I'd have thought they'd been too busy. Ruling and similar.'
   'No,' said Magrat, wearily. 'I still don't think you quite understand.'
   'Well, I'm going to get to the bottom of it,' snapped Granny. She got back on to the stage and pulled aside the sacking curtains.
   'You!' she shouted. 'You're dead!'
   The luckless former corpse, who was eating a ham sandwich to calm his nerves, fell backwards off his stool.
   Granny kicked a bush. Her boot went right through it.
   'See?' she said to the world in general in a strangely satisfied voice. 'Nothing's real! It's all just paint, and sticks and paper at the back.'
   'May I assist you, good ladies?'
   It was a rich and wonderful voice, with every diphthong gliding beautifully into place. It was a golden brown voice. If the Creator of the multiverse had a voice, it was a voice such as this. If it had a drawback, it was that it wasn't a voice you could use, for example, for ordering coal. Coal ordered by this voice would become diamonds.
   It apparently belonged to a large fat man who had been badly savaged by a moustache. Pink veins made a map of quite a large city on his cheeks; his nose could have hidden successfully in a bowl of strawberries. He wore a ragged jerkin and holey tights with an aplomb that nearly convinced you that his velvet-and-vermine robes were in the wash just at the moment. In one hand he held a towel, with which he had clearly been removing the make-up that still greased his features.
   'I know you,' said Granny. 'You done the murder.' She looked sideways at Magrat, and admitted, grudgingly, 'Leastways, it looked like it.'
   'So glad. It is always a pleasure to meet a true connoisseur. Olwyn Vitoller, at your service. Manager of this band of vagabonds,' said the man and, removing his moth-eaten hat, he treated her to a low bow. It was less an obeisance than an exercise in advanced topology.
   The hat swerved and jerked through a series of complex arcs, ending up at the end of an arm which was now pointing in the direction of the sky. One of his legs, meanwhile, had wandered off behind him. The rest of his body sagged politely until his head was level with Granny's knees.
   'Yes, well,' said Granny. She felt that her clothes had grown a bit larger and much hotter.
   'I thought you was very good, too,' said Nanny Ogg. 'The way you shouted all them words so graciously. I could tell you was a king.'
   'I hope we didn't upset things,' said Magrat.
   'My dear lady,' said Vitoller. 'Could I begin to tell you how gratifying it is for a mere mummer to learn that his audience has seen behind the mere shell of greasepaint to the spirit beneath?'
   'I expect you could,' said Granny. 'I expect you could say anything, Mr Vitoller.'
   He replaced his hat and their eyes met in the long and calculating stare of one professional weighing up another. Vitoller broke first, and tried to pretend he hadn't been competing.
   'And now,' he said, 'to what do I owe this visit from three such charming ladies?'
   In fact he'd won. Granny's mouth fell open. She would not have described herself as anything much above 'handsome, considering'. Nanny, on the other hand, was as gummy as a baby and had a face like a small dried raisin. The best you could say for Magrat was that she was decently plain and well-scrubbed and as flat-chested as an ironing board with a couple of peas on it, even if her head was too well stuffed with fancies. Granny could feel something, some sort of magic at work. But not the kind she was used to.
   It was Vitoller's voice. By the mere process of articulation it transformed everything it talked about.
   Look at the two of them, she told herself, primping away like a couple of ninnies. Granny stopped her hand in the process of patting her own iron-hard bun, and cleared her throat meaningfully.
   'We'd like to talk to you, Mr Vitoller.' She indicated the actors, who were dismantling the set and staying well out of her way, and added in a conspiratorial whisper, 'Somewhere private.'
   'Dear lady, but of a certain,' he said. 'Currently I have lodgings in yonder esteemed watering hole.'
   The witches looked around. Eventually Magrat risked, 'You mean in the pub?'
   It was cold and draughty in the Great Hall of Lancre Castle, and the new chamberlain's bladder wasn't getting any younger. He stood and squirmed under the gaze of Lady Felmet.
   'Oh, yes,' he said. 'We've got them all right. Lots.'
   'And people don't do anything about them?' said the duchess.
   The chamberlain blinked. 'I'm sorry?' he said.
   'People tolerate them?'
   'Oh, indeed,' said the chamberlain happily. 'It's considered good luck to have a witch living in your village. My word, yes.'
   'Why?'
   The chamberlain hesitated. The last time he had resorted to a witch it had been because certain rectal problems had turned the privy into a daily torture chamber, and the jar of ointment she had prepared had turned the world into a nicer place.
   'They smooth out life's little humps and bumps,' he said.
   'Where I come from, we don't allow witches,' said the duchess sternly. 'And we don't propose to allow them here. You will furnish us with their addresses.'
   'Addresses, ladyship?'
   'Where they live. I trust your tax gatherers know where to find them?'
   'Ah,' said the chamberlain, miserably.
   The duke leaned forward on his throne.
   'I trust,' he said, 'that they do pay taxes?'
   'Not, exactly pay taxes, my lord,' said the chamberlain.
   There was silence. Finally the duke prompted, 'Go on, man.'
   'Well, it's more that they don't pay, you see. We never felt, that is, the old king didn't think... Well, they just don't.'
   The duke laid a hand on his wife's arm.
   'I see,' he said coldly. 'Very well. You may go.'
   The chamberlain gave him a brief nod of relief and scuttled crabwise from the hall.
   'Well!' said the duchess.
   'Indeed.'
   'That was how your family used to run a kingdom, was it? You had a positive duty to kill your cousin. It was clearly in the interests of the species,' said the duchess. 'The weak don't deserve to survive.'
   The duke shivered. She would keep on reminding him. He didn't, on the whole, object to killing people, or at least ordering them to be killed and then watching it happen. But killing a kinsman rather stuck in the throat or – he recalled – the liver.
   'Quite so,' he managed. 'Of course, there would appear to be many witches, and it might be difficult to find the three that were on the moor.'
   'That doesn't matter.'
   'Of course not.'
   'Put matters in hand.'
   'Yes, my love.'
   Matters in hand. He'd put matters in hand all right. If he closed his eyes he could see the body tumbling down the steps. Had there been a hiss of shocked breath, down in the darkness of the hall? He'd been certain they were alone. Matters in hand! He'd tried to wash the blood off his hand. If he could wash the blood off, he told himself, it wouldn't have happened. He'd scrubbed and scrubbed. Scrubbed till he screamed.

   Granny wasn't at home in public houses. She sat stiffly to attention behind her port-and-lemon, as if it were a shield against the lures of the world.
   Nanny Ogg, on the other hand, was enthusiastically downing her third drink and, Granny thought sourly, was well along that path which would probably end up with her usual dancing on the table, showing her petticoats and singing 'The Hedgehog Can Never be Buggered at All'.
   The table was covered with copper coins. Vitoller and his wife sat at either end, counting. It was something of a race.
   Granny considered Mrs Vitoller as she snatched farthings from under her husband's fingers. She was an intelligent-looking woman, who appeared to treat her husband much as a sheepdog treats a favourite lamb. The complexities of the marital relationship were known to Granny only from a distance, in the same way that an astronomer can view the surface of a remote and alien world, but it had already occurred to her that a wife to Vitoller would have to be a very special woman with bottomless reserves of patience and organisational ability and nimble fingers.
   'Mrs Vitoller,' she said eventually, 'may I make so bold as to ask if your union has been blessed with fruit?'
   The couple looked blank.
   'She means—' Nanny Ogg began.
   'No, I see,' said Mrs Vitoller, quietly. 'No. We had a little girl once.'
   A small cloud hung over the table. For a second or two Vitoller looked merely human-sized, and much older. He stared at the small pile of cash in front of him.
   'Only, you see, there is this child,' said Granny, indicating the baby in Nanny Ogg's arms. 'And he needs a home.'
   The Vitollers stared. Then the man sighed.
   'It is no life for a child,' he said. 'Always moving. Always a new town. And no room for schooling. They say that's very important these days.' But his eyes didn't look away.
   Mrs Vitoller said, 'Why does he need a home?'
   'He hasn't got one,' said Granny. 'At least, not one where he would be welcome.'
   The silence continued. Then Mrs Vitoller said, 'And you, who ask this, you are by way of being his—?'
   'Godmothers,' said Nanny Ogg promptly. Granny was slightly taken aback. It never would have occurred to her.
   Vitoller played abstractly with the coins in front of him. His wife reached out across the table and touched his hand, and there was a moment of unspoken communion. Granny looked away. She had grown expert at reading faces, but there were times when she preferred not to.
   'Money is, alas, tight—' Vitoller began.
   'But it will stretch,' said his wife firmly.
   'Yes. I think it will. We should be happy to take care of him.'
   Granny nodded, and fished in the deepest recesses of her cloak. At last she produced a small leather bag, which she tipped out on to the table. There was a lot of silver, and even a few tiny gold coins.
   'This should take care of—' she groped – 'nappies and suchlike. Clothes and things. Whatever.'
   'A hundred times over, I should think,' said Vitoller weakly. 'Why didn't you mention this before?'
   'If I'd had to buy you, you wouldn't be worth the price.'
   'But you doh't know anything about us!' said Mrs Vitoller.
   'We don't, do we?' said Granny, calmly. 'Naturally we'd like to hear how he gets along. You could send us letters and suchlike. But it would not be a good idea to talk about all this after you've left, do you see? For the sake of the child.'
   Mrs Vitoller looked at the two old women.
   'There's something else here, isn't there?' she said. 'Something big behind all this?'
   Granny hesitated, and then nodded.
   'But it would do us no good at all to know it?'
   Another nod.
   Granny stood up as several actors came in, breaking the spell. Actors had a habit of filling all the space around them.
   'I have other things to see to,' she said. 'Please excuse me.'
   'What's his name?' said Vitoller.
   'Tom,' said Granny, hardly hesitating.
   'John,' said Nanny. The two witches exchanged glances. Granny won.
   'Tom John,' she said firmly, and swept out.
   She met a breathless Magrat outside the door.
   'I found a box,' she said. 'It had all the crowns and things in. So I put it in, like you said, right underneath everything.'
   'Good,' said Granny.
   'Our crown looked really tatty compared to the others!'
   'It just goes to show, doesn't it,' said Granny. 'Did anyone see you?'
   'No, everyone was too busy, but—' Magrat hesitated, and blushed.
   'Out with it, girl.'
   'Just after that a man came up and pinched my bottom.' Magrat went a deep crimson and slapped her hand over her mouth.
   'Did he?' said Granny. 'And then what?'
   'And then, and then—'
   'Yes?'
   'He said, he said—'
   'What did he say?'
   'He said, "Hallo, my lovely, what are you doing tonight?" '
   Granny ruminated on this for a while and then she said, 'Old Goodie Whemper, she didn't get out and about much, did she?'
   'It was her leg, you know,' said Magrat.
   'But she taught you all the midwifery and everything?'
   'Oh, yes, that,' said Magrat. 'I done lots.'
   'But—' Granny hesitated, groping her way across unfamiliar territory – 'she never talked about what you might call the previous.'
   'Sorry?'
   'You know,' said Granny, with an edge of desperation in her voice. 'Men and such.'
   Magrat looked as if she was about to panic. 'What about them?'
   Granny Weatherwax had done many unusual things in her time, and it took a lot to make her refuse a challenge. But this time she gave in.
   'I think,' she said helplessly, 'that it might be a good idea if you have a quiet word with Nanny Ogg one of these days. Fairly soon.'
   There was a cackle of laughter from the window behind them, a chink of glasses, and a thin voice raised in song: —with a giraffe, If you stand on a stool. But the hedgehog—' Granny stopped listening. 'Only not just now,' she added.

The troupe got under way a few hours before sunset, their four carts lurching off down the road that led towards the Sto plains and the big cities. Lancre had a town rule that all mummers, mountebanks and other potential criminals were outside the gates by sundown; it didn't offend anyone really because the town had no walls to speak of, and no-one much minded if people nipped back in again after dark. It was the look of the thing that counted.
   The witches watched from Magrat's cottage, using Nanny Ogg's ancient green crystal ball.
   'It's about time you learned how to get sound on this thing,' Granny muttered. She gave it a nudge, filling the image with ripples.
   'It was very strange,' said Magrat. 'In those carts. The things they had! Paper trees, and all kinds of costumes, and—' she waved her hands – 'there was this great big picture of forn parts, with all temples and things all rolled up. It was beautiful.'
   Granny grunted.
   'I thought it was amazing the way all those people became kings and things, didn't you? It was like magic.'
   'Magrat Garlick, what are you saying? It was just paint and paper. Anyone could see that.'
   Magrat opened her mouth to speak, ran the ensuing argument through her head, and shut it again.
   'Where's Nanny?' she said.
   'She's lying out on the lawn,' said Granny. 'She felt a bit poorly.' And from outside came the sound of Nanny Ogg being poorly at the top of her voice.
   Magrat sighed.
   'You know,' she said, 'if we are his godmothers, we ought to have given him three gifts. It's traditional.'
   'What are you talking about, girl?'
   'Three good witches are supposed to give the baby three gifts. You know, like good looks, wisdom and happiness.' Magrat pressed on defiantly. 'That's how it used to be done in the old days.'
   'Oh, you mean gingerbread cottages and all that,' said Granny dismissively. 'Spinning wheels and pumpkins and pricking your finger on rose thorns and similar. I could never be having with all that.'
   She polished the ball reflectively.
   'Yes, but—' Magrat said. Granny glanced up at her. That was Magrat for you. Head full of pumpkins. Everyone's fairy godmother, for two pins. But a good soul, underneath it all. Kind to small furry animals. The sort of person who worried about baby birds falling out of nests.
   'Look, if it makes you any happier,' she muttered, surprised at herself. She waved her hands vaguely over the image of the departing carts. 'What's it to be – wealth, beauty?'
   'Well, money isn't everything, and if he takes after his father he'll be handsome enough,' Magrat said, suddenly serious. 'Wisdom, do you think?'
   'That's something he'll have to learn for himself,' said Granny.
   'Perfect eyesight? A good singing voice?' From the lawn outside came Nanny Ogg's cracked but enthusiastic voice telling the night sky that A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End.
   'Not important,' said Granny loudly. 'You've got to think headology, see? Not muck about with all this beauty and. wealth business. That's not important.'
   She turned back to the ball and gestured half-heartedly. 'You'd better go and get Nanny, then, seeing as there should be three of us.'
   Nanny was helped in, eventually, and had to have things explained to her.
   'Three gifts, eh?' she said. 'Haven't done one of them things since I was a gel, it takes me back – what're you doing?'
   Magrat was bustling around the room, lighting candles.
   'Oh, we've got to create the right magical ambience,' she explained. Granny shrugged, but said nothing, even in the face of the extreme provocation. All witches did their magic in their own way, and this was Magrat's house.
   'What're we going to give him, then?' said Nanny.
   'We was just discussing it,' said Granny.
   'I know what he'll want,' said Nanny. She made a suggestion, which was received in frozen silence.
   'I don't see what use that would be,' said Magrat, eventually. 'Wouldn't it be rather uncomfortable?'
   'He'll thank us when he grows up, you mark my words,' said Nanny. 'My first husband, he always said—'
   'Something a bit less physical is generally the style of things,' interrupted Granny, glaring at Nanny Ogg. 'There's no need to go and spoil everything, Gytha. Why do you always have to—'
   'Well, at least I can say that I—' Nanny began.
   Both voices faded to a mutter. There was a long edgy silence.
   'I think,' said Magrat, with brittle brightness, 'that perhaps it would be a good idea if we all go back to our little cottages and do it in our own way. You know. Separately. It's been a long day and we're all rather tired.'
   'Good idea,' said Granny firmly, and stood up. 'Come, Nanny Ogg,' she snapped. 'It's been a long day and we're all rather tired.'
   Magrat heard them bickering as they wandered down the path.
   She sat rather sadly amidst the coloured candles, holding a small bottle of extremely thaumaturgical incense that she had ordered from a magical supplies emporium in faraway Ankh-Morpork. She had been rather looking forward to trying it. Sometimes, she thought, it would be nice if people could be a bit kinder . . .
   She stared at the ball.
   Well, she could make a start.
   'He will make friends easily,' she whispered. It wasn't much, she knew, but it was something she'd never been able to get the hang of.
   Nanny Ogg, sitting alone in her kitchen with her huge tomcat curled up on her lap, poured herself a nightcap and through the haze tried to remember the words of verse seventeen of the Hedgehog song. There was something about goats, she recalled, but the details eluded her. Time abraded memory.
   She toasted the invisible presence.
   'A bloody good memory is what he ought to have,' she said.
   'He'll always remember the words.'
   And Granny Weatherwax, striding home alone through the midnight forest, wrapped her shawl around her and considered. It had been a long day, and a trying one. The theatre had been the worst part. All people pretending to be other people, things happening that weren't real, bits of countryside you could put your foot through... Granny liked to know where she stood, and she wasn't certain she stood for that sort of thing. The world seemed to be changing all the time.
   It didn't use to change so much. It was bewildering.
   She walked quickly through the darkness with the frank stride of someone who was at least certain that the forest, on this damp and windy night, contained strange and terrible things and she was it.
   'Let him be whoever he minks he is,' she said. 'That's all anybody could hope for in this world.'
   Like most people, witches are unfocused in time. The difference is that they dimly realise it, and make use of it. They cherish the past because part of them is still living there, and they can see the shadows the future casts before it.
   Granny could feel the shape of the future, and it had knives in it.
 
   It began at five the next morning. Four men rode through the woods near Granny's cottage, tethered the horses out of earshot, and crept very cautiously through the mists.
   The sergeant in charge was not happy in his work. He was a Ramtops man, and wasn't at all certain about how you went about arresting a witch. He was pretty certain, though, that the witch wouldn't like the idea. He didn't like the idea of a witch not liking the idea.
   The men were Ramtoppers as well. They were following him very closely, ready to duck behind him at the first sign of anything more unexpected than a tree.
   Granny's cottage was a fungoid shape in the mist. Her unruly herb garden seemed to move, even in the still air. It contained plants seen nowhere else in the mountains, their roots and seeds traded across five thousand miles of the Discworld, and the sergeant could swear that one or two blooms turned towards him. He shuddered.
   'What now, sarge?'
   'We – we spread out,' he said. 'Yes. We spread out, That's what we do.'
   They moved carefully through the bracken. The sergeant crouched behind a handy log, and said, 'Right. Very good. You've got the general idea. Now let's spread out again, and this time we spread out separately.'
   The men grumbled a bit, but disappeared into the mist. The sergeant gave them a few minutes to take up positions, then said, 'Right. Now we—'
   He paused.
   He wondered whether he dared shout, and decided against it.
   He stood up. He removed his helmet, to show respect, and sidled through the damp grass to the back door. He knocked, very gently.
   After a wait of several seconds he clamped his helmet back on his head, said, 'No-one in. Blast', and started to stride away.
   The door opened. It opened very slowly, and with the maximum amount of creak. Simple neglect wouldn't have caused that depth of groan; you'd need careful work with hot water over a period of weeks. The sergeant stopped, and then turned round very slowly while contriving to move as few muscles as possible.
   He had mixed feelings about the fact that there was nothing in the doorway. In his experience, doors didn't just open themselves.
   He cleared his throat nervously.
   Granny Weatherwax, right by his ear, said, 'That's a nasty cough you've got there. You did right in coming to me.'
   The sergeant looked up at her with an expression of mad gratitude. He said, 'Argle.'
   'She did what?' said the duke.
   The sergeant stared fixedly at an area a few inches to the right of the duke's chair.
   'She give me a cup of tea, sir,' he said.
   'And what about your men?'
   'She give them one too, sir.'
   The duke rose from his chair and put his arms around the sergeant's rusting chain mail shoulders. He was in a bad mood. He had spent half the night washing his hands. He kept thinking that something was whispering in his ear. His breakfast oatmeal had been served up too salty and roasted with an apple in it, and the cook had hysterics in the kitchen. You could tell the duke was extremely annoyed. He was polite. The duke was the kind of man who becomes more and more agreeable as his temper drains away, until the point is reached where the words 'Thank you so much' have the cutting edge of a guillotine.
   'Sergeant,' he said, walking the man slowly across the floor.
   'Sir?'
   'I'm not sure I made your orders clear, sergeant,' said the duke, in snake tones.
   'Sir?'
   'I mean, it is possible I may have confused you. I meant to say "Bring me a witch, in chains if necessary", but perhaps what I really said was "Go and have a cup of tea". Was this in fact the case?'
   The sergeant wrinkled his forehead. Sarcasm had not hitherto entered his life. His experience of people being annoyed with him generally involved shouting and occasional bits of wood.
   'No, sir,' he said.
   'I wonder why, then, you did not in fact do this thing that I asked?'
   'Sir?'
   'I expect she said some magic words, did she? I've heard about witches,' said the duke, who had spent the night before reading, until his bandaged hands shook too much, some of the more excitable works on the subject[3].
   'I imagine she offered you visions of unearthly delight? Did she show you—' the duke shuddered – 'dark fascinations and forbidden raptures, the like of which mortal men should not even think of, and demonic secrets that took you to the depths of man's desires?'
   The duke sat down and fanned himself with his handkerchief.
   'Are you all right, sir?' said the sergeant.
   'What? Oh, perfectly, perfectly.'
   'Only you've gone all red.'
   'Don't change the subject, man,' snapped the duke, pulling himself together a bit. 'Admit it – she offered you hedonistic and licentious pleasures known only to those who dabble in the carnal arts, didn't she?'
   The sergeant stood to attention and stared straight ahead.
   'No, sir,' he said, in the manner of one speaking the truth come what may. 'She offered me a bun.'
   'A bun?'
   'Yes, sir. It had currants in it.'
   Felmet sat absolutely still while he fought for internal peace. Finally, all he could manage was, 'And what did your men do about this?'
   'They had a bun too, sir. All except young Roger, who isn't allowed fruit, sir, on account of his trouble.'
   The duke sagged back on the window seat and put his hand over his eyes. I was born to rule down on the plains, he thought, where it's all flat and there isn't all this weather and everything and there are people who don't appear to be made of dough. He's going to tell me what this Roger had.
   'He had a biscuit, sir.'
   The duke stared out at the trees. He was angry. He was extremely angry. But twenty years of marriage to Lady Felmet had taught him not simply to control his emotions but to control his instincts as well, and not so much as the twitching of a muscle indicated the workings of his mind. Besides, arising out of the black depths of his head was an emotion that, hitherto, he had little time for. Curiosity was flashing a fin.
   The duke had managed quite well for fifty years without finding a use for curiosity. It was not a trait much encouraged in aristocrats. He had found certainty was a much better bet. However, it occurred to him that for once curiosity might have its uses.
   The sergeant was standing in the middle of the floor with the stolid air of one who is awaiting a word of command, and who is quite prepared so to wait until continental drift budges him from his post. He had been in the undemanding service of the kings of Lancre for many years, and it showed. His body was standing to attention. Despite all his efforts his stomach stood at ease.
   The duke's gaze fell on the Fool, who was sitting on his stool by the throne. The hunched figure looked up, embarrassed, and gave his bells a half-hearted shake.
   The duke reached a decision. The way to progress, he'd found, was to find weak spots. He tried to shut away the thought that these included such things as a king's kidneys at the top of a dark stairway, and concentrated on the matter in hand.
   ... hand. He'd scrubbed and scrubbed, but it seemed to have no effect. Eventually he'd gone down to the dungeons and borrowed one of the torturer's wire brushes, and scrubbed and scrubbed with that, too. That had no effect, either. It made it worse. The harder he scrubbed, the more blood there was. He was afraid he might go mad . . .
   He wrestled the thought to the back of his mind. Weak spots. That was it. The Fool looked all weak spot.
   'You may go, sergeant.'
   'Sir,' said the sergeant, and marched out stiffly.
   'Fool?'
   'Marry, sir—' said the Fool nervously, and gave his hated mandolin a quick strum.
   The duke sat down on the throne.
   'I am already extremely married,' he said. 'Advise me, my Fool.'
   'I'faith, nuncle—' said the Fool.
   'Nor am I thy nuncle. I feel sure I would have remembered,' said Lord Felmet, leaning down until the prow of his nose was a few inches from the Fool's stricken face. 'If you preface your next remark with nuncle, i'faith or marry, it will go hard with you.'
   The Fool moved his lips silently, and then said, 'How do you feel about Prithee?'
   The duke knew when to allow some slack. 'Prithee I can live with,' he said. 'So can you. But no capering.' He grinned encouragingly. 'How long have you been a Fool, boy?'
   'Prithee, sirrah—'
   'The sirrah,' said the duke, holding up a hand, 'on the whole, I think not.'
   'Prithee, sirra – sir,' said the Fool, and swallowed nervously. 'All my life, sir. Seventeen years under the bladder, man and boy. And my father before me. And my nuncle at the same time as him. And my grandad before them. And his-'
   'Your whole family have been Fools?'
   'Family tradition, sir,' said the Fool. 'Prithee, I mean.'
   The duke smiled again, and the Fool was too worried to notice how many teeth it contained.
   'You come from these parts, don't you?' said the duke.
   'Ma – Yes, sir.'
   'So you would know all about the native beliefs and so on?'
   'I suppose so, sir. Prithee.'
   'Good. Where do you sleep, my Fool?'
   'In the stables, sir.'
   'From now on you may sleep in the corridor outside my room,' said the duke beneficently.
   'Gosh!'
   'And now,' said the duke, his voice dripping across the Fool like treacle over a pudding, 'tell me about witches...'
 
   That night the Fool slept on good royal flagstones in the whistling corridor above the Great Hall instead of the warm stuffy straw of the stables.
   'This is foolish,' he told himself. 'Marry, but is it foolish enough!'
   He dozed off fitfully, into some sort of dream where a vague figure kept trying to attract his attention, and was only dimly aware of the voices of Lord and Lady Felmet on the other side of the door.
   'It's certainly a lot less draughty,' said the duchess grudgingly.
   The duke sat back in the armchair and smiled at his wife.
   'Well?' she demanded. 'Where are the witches?'
   'The chamberlain would appear to be right, beloved. The witches seem to have the local people in thrall. The sergeant of the guard came back empty-handed.' Handed . . . he came down heavily on the importunate thought.
   'You must have him executed,' she said promptly. 'To make an example to the others.'
   'A course of action, my dear, which ultimately results in us ordering the last soldier to cut his own throat as an example to himself. By the way,' he added mildly, 'there would appear to be somewhat fewer servants around the place. You know I would not normally interfere—'
   'Then don't,' she snapped. 'Housekeeping is under my control. I cannot abide slackness.'
   'I'm sure you know best, but—'
   'What of these witches? Will you stand idly by and let trouble seed for thg future? Will you let these witches defy you? What of the crown?'
   The duke shrugged. 'No doubt it ended in the river,' he said.
   'And the child? He was given to the witches? Do they do human sacrifice?'
   'It would appear not,' said the duke. The duchess looked vaguely disappointed.
   'These witches,' said the duke. 'Apparently, they seem to cast a spell on people.'
   'Well, obviously—'
   'Not like a magic spell. They seem to be respected. They do medicine and so on. It's rather strange. The mountain people seem to be afraid of them and proud of them at the same time, It might be a little difficult to move against them.'
   'I could come to believe,' said the duchess darkly, 'that they have cast a glamour over you as well.'
   In fact the duke was intrigued. Power was always darkly fascinating, which was why he had married the duchess in the first place. He stared fixedly at the fire.
   'In fact.' said the duchess, who recognised the malign smile, 'you like it, don't you? The thought of the danger. I remember when we were married; all that business with the knotted rope—'
   She snapped her fingers in front of the duke's glazed eyes, He sat up.
   'Not at all!' he shouted.
   'Then what will you do?'
   'Wait.'
   'Waif?'
   'Wait, and consider. Patience is a virtue.' The duke sat back. The smile he smiled could have spent a million years sitting on a rock. And then, just below one eye, he started to twitch. Blood was oozing between the bandages on his hand.
 
   Once again the full moon rode the clouds.
   Granny Weatherwax milked and fed the goats, banked me fire put a cloth over the minor and pulled her broomstick out from behind the door. She went out, locked the back door behind her, and hung the key on its nail in the privy.
   This was quite sufficient. Only once, in the entire history of witchery in the Ramtops, had a thief broken into a witch's cottage. The witch concerned visited the most terrible punishment on him[4].
   Granny sat on the broom and muttered a few words, but without much conviction. After a further couple of tries she got off, fiddled with the binding, and had another go. There was a suspicion of glitter from one end of the stick, which quickly died away.
   'Drat,' she said, under her breath.
   She looked around carefully, in case anyone was watching. In fact it was only a hunting badger who, hearing the thumping of running feet, poked its head out from the bushes and saw Granny hurtling down the path with the broomstick held stiff-armed beside her. At last the magic caught, and she managed to vault clumsily on to it before it trundled into the night sky as gracefully as a duck with one wing missing.
   From above the trees came a muffled curse against all dwarfish mechanics.
   Most witches preferred to live in isolated cottages with the traditional curly chimneys and weed-grown thatch. Granny Weatherwax approved of this; it was no good being a witch unless you let people know.
   Nanny Ogg didn't care much about what people knew and even less for what they thought, and lived in a new, knick-knack crammed cottage in the middle of Lancre town itself and at the heart of her own private empire. Various daughters and daughters-in-law came in to cook and clean on a sort of rota. Every
   flat surface was stuffed with ornaments brought back by far-travelling members of the family. Sons and grandsons kept the logpile stacked, the roof shingled, the chimney swept; the drinks cupboard was always full, the pouch by her rocking chair always stuffed with tobacco. Above the hearth was a huge pokerwork sign saying 'Mother'. No tyrant in the whole history of the world had ever achieved a domination so complete.
   Nanny Ogg also kept a cat, a huge one-eyed grey torn called Greebo who divided his time between sleeping, eating and fathering the most enormous incestuous feline tribe. He opened his eye like a yellow window into Hell when he heard Granny's broomstick land awkwardly on the back lawn. With the instinct of his kind he recognised Granny as an inveterate cat-hater and oozed gently under a chair.
   Magrat was already seated primly by the fire.
   It is one of the few unbendable rules of magic that its practitioners cannot change their own appearance for any length of time. Their bodies develop a kind of morphic inertia and gradually return to their original shape. But Magrat tried. Every morning her hair was long, thick and blond, but by the evening it had always returned to its normal worried frizz. To ameliorate the effect she had tried to plait violets and cowslips in it. The result was not all she had hoped. It gave the impression that a window box had fallen on her head.
   'Good evening,' said Granny.
   'Well met by moonlight,' said Magrat politely. 'Merry meet. A star shines on—'
   'Wotcha,' said Nanny Ogg. Magrat winced.
   Granny sat down and started removing the pins that nailed her tall hat to her bun. Finally the sight of Magrat dawned on her.
   'Magrat!'
   The young witch jumped, and clamped her knuckly hands to the virtuous frontage of her gown.
   'Yes?' she quavered.
   'What have you got on your lap?'
   'It's my familiar,' she said defensively.
   'What happened to that toad you had?'
   'It wandered off,' muttered Magrat. 'Anyway, it wasn't very good.'
   Granny sighed. Magrat's desperate search for a reliable familiar had been going on for some time, and despite the love and attention she lavished on them they all seemed to have some terrible flaw, such as a tendency to bite, get trodden on or, in extreme cases, metamorphose.
   'That makes fifteen this year,' said Granny. 'Not counting the horse. What's this one?'
   'It's a rock,' chuckled Nanny Ogg.
   'Well, at least it should last,' said Granny.
   The rock extended a head and gave her a look of mild amusement.
   'It's a tortoyse,' said Magrat. 'I bought it down in Sheep-ridge market. It's incredibly old and knows many secrets, the man said.'
   'I know that man,' said Granny. 'He's the one who sells goldfish that tarnish after a day or two.'
   'Anyway, I shall call him Lightfoot,' said Magrat, her voice warm with defiance. 'I can if I want.'
   'Yes, yes, all right, I'm sure,' said Granny. 'Anyway, how goes it, sisters? It is two months since last we met.'
   'It should be every new moon,' said Magrat sternly. 'Regular.'
   'It was our Grame's youngest's wedding,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Couldn't miss it.'
   'And I was up all night with a sick goat,' said Granny Weatherwax promptly.
   'Yes, well,' said Magrat doubtfully. She rummaged in her bag. 'Anyway, if we're going to start, we'd better light the candles.'
   The senior witches exchanged a resigned glance.
   'But we got this lovely new lamp our Tracie sent me,' said Nanny Ogg innocently. 'And I was going to poke up the fire a bit.'
   'I have excellent night vision, Magrat,' said Granny sternly. 'And you've been reading them funny books. Grimmers.'
   'Grimoires—'
   'You ain't going to draw on the floor again, neither,' warned Nanny Ogg. 'It took our Dreen days to clean up all those wossnames last time—'
   'Runes,' said Magrat. There was a look of pleading in her eyes. 'Look, just one candle?'
   'All right,' said Nanny Ogg, relenting a bit. 'If it makes you feel any better. Just the one, mind. And a decent white one. Nothing fancy.'
   Magrat sighed. It probably wasn't a good idea to bring out the rest of the contents of her bag.
   'We ought to get a few more here,' she said sadly. 'It's not right, a coven of three.'
   'I didn't know we was still a coven. No-one told me we was still a coven,' sniffed Granny Weatherwax. 'Anyway, there's no-one else this side of the mountain, excepting old Gammer Dismass, and she doesn't get out these days.'
   'But a lot of young girls in my village . . .' said Magrat. 'You know. They could be keen.'
   'That's not how we do it, as well you know,' said Granny disapprovingly. 'People don't go and find witchcraft, it comes and finds them.'
   'Yes, yes,' said Magrat. 'Sorry.'
   'Right,' said Granny, slightly mollified. She'd never mastered the talent for apologising, but she appreciated it in other people.
   'What about this new duke, then,' said Nanny, to lighten the atmosphere.
   Granny sat back. 'He had some houses burned down in Bad Ass,' she said. 'Because of taxes.'
   'How horrible,' said Magrat.
   'Old Kind Verence used to do that,' said Nanny. 'Terrible temper he had.'
   'He used to let people get out first, though,' said Granny.
   'Oh yes,' said Nanny, who was a staunch royalist. 'He could be very gracious like that. He'd pay for them to be rebuilt, as often as not. If he remembered.'
   'And every Hogswatchnight, a side of venison. Regular,' said Granny wistfully.
   'Oh, yes. Very respectful to witches, he was,' added Nanny Ogg. 'When he was out hunting people, if he met me in the woods, it was always off with his helmet and "I hope I finds you well, Mistress Ogg" and next day he'd send his butler down with a couple of bottles of something. He was a proper king.'
   'Hunting people isn't really right, though,' said Magrat.
   'Well, no,' Granny Weatherwax conceded. 'But it was only if they'd done something bad. He said they enjoyed it really. And he used to let them go if they gave him a good run,'
   'And then there was that great hairy thing of his,' said Nanny Ogg.
   There was a perceptible change in the atmosphere. It became warmer, darker, filled at the corners with the shadows of unspoken conspiracy.
   'Ah,' said Granny Weatherwax distantly. 'His droit de seigneur.'
   'Needed a lot of exercise,' said Nanny Ogg, staring at the fire.
   'But next day he'd send his housekeeper round with a bag of silver and a hamper of stuff for the wedding,' said Granny. 'Many a couple got a proper start in life thanks to that.'
   'Ah,' agreed Nanny. 'One or two individuals, too.'
   'Every inch a king,' said Granny.
   'What are you talking about?' said Magrat suspiciously. 'Did he keep pets?'
   The two witches surfaced from whatever deeper current they had been swimming in. Granny Weatherwax shrugged.
   'I must say,' Magrat went on, in severe tones, 'if you think so much of the old king, you don't seem very worried about him being killed. I mean, it was a pretty suspicious accident.'
   'That's kings for you,' said Granny. 'They come and go, good and bad. His father poisoned the king we had before.'
   'That was old Thargum,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Had a big red beard, I recall. He was very gracious too, you know.'
   'Only now no-one must say Felmet killed the king,' said Magrat.
   'What?' said Granny.
   'He had some people executed in Lancre, the other day for saying it,' Magrat went on. 'Spreading malicious lies, he said. He said anyone saying different will see the inside of his dungeons, only not for long. He said Verence died of natural causes.'
   'Well, being assassinated is natural causes for a king,' said Granny. 'I don't see why he's so sheepish about it. When old Thargum was killed they stuck his head on a pole, had a big bonfire and everyone in the palace got drunk for a week.'
   'I remember,' said Nanny. 'They carried his head all round the villages to show he was dead. Very convincing, I thought. Specially for him. He was grinning. I think it was the way he would have liked to go.'
   'I think we might have to keep an eye on this one, though,' said Granny. 'I think he might be a bit clever. That's not a good thing, in a king. And I don't think he knows how to show respect.'
   'A man came to see me last week to ask if I wanted to pay any taxes,' said Magrat. 'I told him no.'
   'He came to see me, too,' said Nanny Ogg. 'But our Jason and our Wane went out and tole him we didn't want to join.'
   'Small man, bald, black cloak?' said Granny thoughtfully.
   'Yes,' said the other two.
   'He was hanging about in my raspberry bushes,' said Granny. 'Only, when I went out to see what he wanted, he ran away.'
   'Actually, I gave him tuppence,' said Magrat. 'He said he was going to be tortured, you see, if he didn't get witches to pay their taxes ...'
 
   Lord Felmet looked carefully at the two coins in his lap.
   Then he looked at his tax gatherer.
   'Well?' he said.
   The tax gatherer cleared his throat.
   'Well, sir, you see. I explained about the need to employ a standing army, ekcetra, and they said why, and I said because of bandits, ekcetra, and they said bandits never bothered them.'
   'And civil works?'
   'Ah. Yes. Well, I pointed out the need to build and maintain bridges, ekcetra.'
   'And?'
   'They said they didn't use them.'
   'Ah,' said the duke knowledgeably. 'They can't cross running water.'
   'Not sure about that, sir. I think witches cross anything they like.'
   'Did they say anything else?' said the duke.
   The tax gatherer twisted the hem of his robe distractedly.
   'Well, sir. I mentioned how taxes help to maintain the King's Peace, sir ... '
   'And?'
   'They said the king should maintain his own peace, sir. And then they gave me a look.'
   'What sort of look?'
   The duke sat with his thin face cupped in one hand. He was fascinated.
   'It's sort of hard to describe,' said the taxman. He tried to avoid Lord Felmet's gaze, which was giving him the distinct impression that the tiled floor was fleeing away in all directions and had already covered several acres. Lord Felmet's fascination was to him what a pin is to a Purple Emperor.
   'Try,' the duke invited.
   The taxman blushed.
   'Well,' he said. 'It ... wasn't nice.'
   Which demonstrates that the tax gatherer was much better at figures than words. What he would have said, if embarrassment, fear, poor memory and a complete lack of any kind of imagination hadn't conspired against it, was:
   'When I was a little boy, and staying with my aunt, and she had told me not to touch the cream, ekcetra, and she had put it on a high shelf in the pantry, and I got a stool and went after it when she was out anyway, and she'd come back and I didn't know, and I couldn't reach the bowl properly and it smashed on the floor, and she opened the door and glared at me: it was that look. But the worst thing was, they knew it.'
   'Not nice,' said the duke.
   'No, sir.'
   The duke drummed the fingers of his left hand on the arm of his throne. The tax gatherer coughed again.
   'You're – you're not going to force me to go back, are you?' he said.
   'Um?' said the duke. He waved a hand irritably. 'No, no,' he said. 'Not at all. Just call in at the torturer on your way out. See when he can fit you in.'
   The taxman gave him a look of gratitude, and bobbed a bow.
   'Yes, sir. At once, sir. Thank you, sir. You're very—'
   'Yes, yes,' said Lord Felmet, absently. 'You may go.'
   The duke was left alone in the vastness of the hall. It was raining again. Every once in a while a piece of plaster smashed down on the tiles, and there was a crunching from the walls as they settled still further. The air smelled of old cellars.
   Gods, he hated this kingdom.
   It was so small, only forty miles long and maybe ten miles wide, and nearly all of it was cruel mountains with ice-green slopes and knife-edge crests, or dense huddled forests. A kingdom like that shouldn't be any trouble.
   What he couldn't quite fathom was this feeling that it had depth. It seemed to contain far too much geography.
   He rose and paced the floor to the balcony, with its unrivalled view of trees. It struck him that the trees were also looking back at him.
   He could feel the resentment. But that was odd, because the people themselves hadn't objected. They didn't seem to object to anything very much. Verence had been popular enough, in his way. There'd been quite a turnout for the funeral; he recalled the lines of solemn faces. Not stupid faces. By no means stupid. Just preoccupied, as though what kings did wasn't really very important.
   He found that almost as annoying as trees. A jolly good riot, now, that would have been more – more appropriate. One could have ridden out and hanged people, there would have been the creative tension so essential to the proper development of the state. Back down on the plains, if you kicked people they kicked back. Up here, when you kicked people they moved away and just waited patiently for your leg to fall off. How could a king go down in history ruling a people like that? You couldn't oppress them any more than you could oppress a mattress.
   He had raised taxes and burned a few villages on general principles, just to show everyone who they were dealing with. It didn't seem to have any effect.
   And then there were these witches. They haunted him.
   'Fool!'
   The Fool, who had been having a quiet doze behind the throne, awoke in terror.
   'Yes!'
   'Come hither, Fool.'
   The Fool jingled miserably across the floor.
   'Tell me, Fool, does it always rain here?'
   'Marry, nuncle—'
   'Just answer the question,' said Lord Felmet, with iron patience.
   'Sometimes it stops, sir. To make room for the snow. And sometimes we get some right squand'ring orgulous fogs,' said the Fool.
   'Orgulous?' said the duke, absently.
   The Fool couldn't stop himself. His horrified ears heard his mouth blurt out: 'Thick, my lord. From the Latatian orgulum, a soup or broth.'
   But the duke wasn't listening. Listening to the prattle of underlings was not, in his experience, particularly worthwhile.
   'I am bored, Fool.'
   'Let me entertain you, my lord, with many a merry quip and lightsome jest.'
   'Try me.'
   The Fool licked his dry lips. He hadn't actually expected this. King Verence had been happy enough just to give him a kick, or throw a bottle at his head. A real king.
   'I'm waiting. Make me laugh.'
   The Fool took the plunge.
   'Why, sirrah,' he quavered, 'why may a caudled fillhorse be deemed the brother to a hiren candle in the night?'
   The duke frowned. The Fool felt it better not to wait.
   'Withal, because a candle may be greased, yet a fillhorse be without a fat argier,' he said and, because it was part of the joke, patted Lord Felmet lightly with his balloon on a stick and twanged his mandolin.
   The duke's index finger tapped an abrupt tattoo on the arm of the throne.
   'Yes?' he said. 'And then what happened?'
   'That, er, was by way of being the whole thing,' said the Fool, and added, 'My grandad thought it was one of his best.'
   'I daresay he told it differently,' said the duke. He stood up. 'Summon my huntsmen. I think I shall ride out on the chase. And you can come too.'
   'My lord, I cannot ride!'
   For the first time that morning Lord Felmet smiled.
   'Capital!' he said. 'We will give you a horse that can't be ridden. Ha. Ha.'
   He looked down at his bandages. And afterwards, he told himself, I'll get the armourer to send me up a file.
 

A year went past. The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had tried all passing at the same time, and it hadn't worked.
   Tomjon sat under Hwel's rickety table, watching his father as he walked up and down between the lattys, waving one arm and talking. Vitoller always waved his arms when he spoke; if you tied his hands behind his back he would be dumb.
   'All right,' he was saying, 'how about The King's Brides?'
   'Last year,' said the voice of Hwel.
   'All right, then. We'll give them Mallo, the Tyrant of Klatch,' said Vitoller, and his larynx smoothly changed gear as his voice became a great rolling thing that could rattle the windows across the width of the average town square. ' "In blood I came, And by blood rule, That none will dare assay these walls of blood—" '
   'We did it the year before,' said Hwel calmly. 'Anyway, people are fed up with kings. They want a bit of a chuckle.'
   'They are not fed up with my kings,' said Vitoller. 'My dear boy, people do not come to the theatre to laugh, they come to Experience, to Learn, to Wonder—'
   'To laugh,' said Hwel, flatly. 'Have a look at this one.'
   Tomjon heard the rustle of paper and the creak of wicker-work as Vitoller lowered his weight on to a props basket.
   'A Wizard of Sons,' Vitoller read. 'Or, Please Yourself:
   Hwel stretched his legs under the table and dislodged Tomjon. He hauled the boy out by one ear.
   'What's this?' said Vitoller. 'Wizards? Demons? Imps? Merchants?'
   'I'm rather pleased with Act II, Scene IV,' said Hwel, propelling the toddler towards the props box. 'Comic Washing Up with Two Servants.'
   'Any death-bed scenes?' said Vitoller hopefully.
   'No-o,' said Hwel. 'But I can do you a humorous monologue in Act III.'
   'A humorous monologue!'
   'All right, there's room for a soliloquy in the last act,' said Hwel hurriedly. 'I'll write one tonight, no problem.'
   'And a stabbing,' said Vitoller, getting to his feet. 'A foul murder. That always goes down well.'
   He strode away to organise the setting up of the stage.
   Hwel sighed, and picked up his quill. Somewhere behind the sacking walls was the town of Hangdog, which had somehow allowed itself to be built in a hollow perched in the nearly sheer walls of a canyon. There was plenty of flat ground in the Ramtops. The problem was that nearly all of it was vertical.
   Hwel didn't like the Ramtops, which was odd because it was traditional dwarf country and he was a dwarf. But he'd been banished from his tribe years ago, not only because of his claustrophobia but also because he had a tendency to daydream. It was felt by the local dwarf king that this is not a valuable talent for someone who is supposed to swing a pickaxe without forgetting what he is supposed to hit with it, and so Hwel had been given a very small bag of gold, the tribe's heartfelt best wishes, and a firm goodbye.
   It had happened that Vitoller's strolling players had been passing through at the time, and the dwarf had ventured one small copper coin on a performance of The Dragon of the Plains. He had watched it without a muscle moving in his face, gone back to his lodgings, and in the morning had knocked on Vitoller's latty with the first draft of King Under the Mountain. It wasn't in fact very good, but Vitoller had been perceptive enough to see that inside the hairy bullet head was an imagination big enough to bestride the world and so, when the strolling players strolled off, one of them was running to keep up . . .
   Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one.
   Some people are even more unfortunate. They get them all.
   Such a one was Hwel. Enough inspirations to equip a complete history of the performing arts poured continuously into a small heavy skull designed by evolution to do nothing more spectacular than be remarkably resistant to axe blows.
   He licked his quill and looked bashfully around the camp. No-one was watching. He carefully lifted up the Wizard and revealed another stack of paper.
   It was another potboiler. Every page was stained with sweat and the words themselves scrawled across the manuscript in a trellis of blots and crossings-out and tiny scribbled insertions. Hwel stared at it for a moment, alone in a world that consisted of him, the next blank page and the shouting, clamouring voices that haunted his dreams.
   He began to write.
   Free of Hwel's never-too-stringent attention. Tomjon pushed open the lid of the props hamper and, in the methodical way of the very young, began to unpack the crowns.
   The dwarf stuck out his tongue as he piloted the errant quill across the ink-speckled page. He'd found room for the star-crossed lovers, the comic gravediggers and me hunchback king. It was the cats and the roller skates that were currently giving him trouble . . .
   A gurgle made him look up.
   'For goodness sake, lad,' he said. 'It hardly fits. Put it back.'
 
   The Disc rolled into winter.
   Winter in the Ramtops could not honestly be described as a magical frosty wonderland, each twig laced with confections of brittle ice. Winter in the Ramtops didn't mess about; it was a gateway straight through to the primeval coldness that lived before the creation of the world. Winter in the Ramtops was several yards of snow, the forests a mere collection of shadowy green tunnels under the drifts. Winter meant the coming of the lazy wind, which couldn't be bothered to blow around people and blew right through them instead. The idea that Winter could actually be enjoyable would never have occurred to Ramtop people, who had eighteen different words for snow[5].
   The ghost of King Verence prowled the battlements, bereft and hungry, and stared out across his beloved forests and waited his chance.
   It was a winter of portents. Comets sparkled against the chilled skies at night. Clouds shaped mightily like whales and dragons drifted over the land by day. In the village of Razorback a cat gave birth to a two-headed kitten, but since Greebo, by dint of considerable effort, was every male ancestor for the last thirty generations this probably wasn't all that portentous.
   However, in Bad Ass a cockerel laid an egg and had to put up with some very embarrassing personal questions. In Lancre town a man swore he'd met a man who had actually seen with his own eyes a tree get up and walk. There was a short sharp shower of shrimps. There were odd lights in the sky. Geese walked backwards. Above all of this flared the great curtains of cold fire that were the Aurora Coriolis, the Hublights, whose frosty tints illuminated and coloured the midnight snows.
   There was nothing the least unusual about any of this. The Ramtops, which as it were lay across the Disc's vast magical standing wave like an iron bar dropped innocently across a pair of subway rails, were so saturated with magic that it was constantly discharging itself into the environment. People would wake up in the middle of the night, mutter, 'Oh, it's just another bloody portent', and go back to sleep.
   Hogswatchnight came round, marking the start of another year. And, with alarming suddenness, nothing happened.
   The skies were clear, the snow deep and crisped like icing sugar.
   The freezing forests were silent and smelled of tin. The only things that fell from the sky were the occasional fresh showers of snow.
   A man walked across the moors from Razorback to Lancre town without seeing a single marshlight, headless dog, strolling tree, ghostly coach or comet, and had to be taken in by a tavern and given a drink to unsteady his nerves.
   The stoicism of the Ramtoppers, developed over the years as a sovereign resistance to the thaumaturgical chaos, found itself unable to cope with the sudden change. It was like a noise which isn't heard until it stops.
   Granny Weatherwax heard it now as she lay snug under a pile of quilts in her freezing bedroom. Hogswatchnight is, traditionally, the one night of the Disc's long year when witches are expected to stay at home, and she'd had an early night in the company of a bag of apples and a stone hotwater bottle. But something had awoken her from her doze.
   An ordinary person would have crept downstairs, possibly armed with a poker. Granny simply hugged her knees and let her mind wander.
   It hadn't been in the house. She could feel the small, fast minds of mice, and the fuzzy minds of her goats as they lay in their cosy flatulence in the outhouse. A hunting owl was a sudden dagger of alertness as it glided over the rooftops.
   Granny concentrated harder, until her mind was full of the tiny chittering of the insects in the thatch and the woodworm in the beams. Nothing of interest there.
   She snuggled down and let herself drift out into the forest, which was silent except for the occasional muffled thump as snow slid off a tree. Even in midwinter the forest was full of life, usually dozing in burrows or hibernating in the middle of trees.
   All as usual. She spread herself further, to the high moors and secret passes where the wolves ran silently over the frozen crust; she touched their minds, sharp as knives. Higher still, and there was nothing in the snowfields but packs of vermine[6].
   Everything was as it should be, with the exception that nothing was right. There was something – yes, there was something alive out there, something young and ancient and . . .
   Granny turned over the feeling in her mind. Yes. That was it. Something forlorn. Something lost. And . . .
   Feelings were never simple, Granny knew. Strip them away and there were others underneath . . .
   Something that, if it didn't stop feeling lost and forlorn very soon, was going to get angry.
   And still she couldn't find it. She could feel the tiny minds of chrysalises down under the frozen leafmould. She could sense the earthworms, which had migrated below the frost line. She could even sense a few people, who were hardest of all – human minds were thinking so many thoughts all at the same time that they were nearly impossible to locate; it was like trying to nail fog to the wall.
   Nothing there. Nothing there. The feeling was all around her, and there was nothing to cause it. She'd gone down about as far as she could, to the smallest creature in the kingdom, and there was nothing there.
   Granny Weatherwax sat up in bed, lit a candle and reached for an apple. She glared at her bedroom wall.
   She didn't like being beaten. There was something out there, something drinking in magic, something growing, something dial seemed so alive it was all around the house, and she couldn't find it.
   She reduced the apple to its core and placed it carefully in the tray of the candlestick. Then she blew out the candle.
   The cold velvet of the night slid back into the room.
   Granny had one last try. Perhaps she was looking in the wrong way . . .
   A moment later she was lying on the floor with the pillow clasped around her head.
   And to think she had expected it to be small . . .
 
   Lancre Castle shook. It wasn't a violent shaking, but it didn't need to be, the construction of the castle being such that it swayed slightly even in a gentle breeze. A small turret toppled slowly into the depths of the misty canyon.
   The Fool lay on his flagstones and shivered in his sleep. He appreciated the honour, if it was an honour, but sleeping in the corridor always made him dream of the Fools' Guild, behind whose severe grey walls he had trembled his way through seven years of terrible tuition. The flagstones were slightly softer than the beds there, though.
   A few feet away a suit of armour jingled gently. Its pike vibrated in its mailed glove until, swishing through the night air like a swooping bat, it slid down and shattered the flagstone by the Fool's ear.
   The Fool sat up and realised he was still shivering. So was the floor.
   In Lord Felmet's room the shaking sent cascades of dust down from the ancient four-poster. He awoke from a dream that a great beast was tramping around the castle, and decided with horror that it might be true.
   A portrait of some long-dead king fell off the wall. The duke screamed.
   The Fool stumbled in, trying to keep his balance on a floor that was now heaving like the sea, and the duke staggered out of bed and grabbed the little man by his jerkin.
   'What's happening?' he hissed. 'Is it an earthquake?'
   'We don't have them in these parts, my lord,' said the Fool, and was knocked aside as a chaise-longue drifted slowly across the carpet.
   The duke dashed to the window, and looked out at the forests in the moonlight. The white-capped trees shook in the still night air.
   A slab of plaster crashed on to the floor. Lord Felmet spun around and this time his grip lifted the Fool a foot off the floor.
   Among the very many luxuries the duke had dispensed with in his life was that of ignorance. He liked to feel he knew what was going on. The glorious uncertainties of existence held no attraction for him.
   'It's the witches, isn't it?' he growled, his left cheek beginning to twitch like a landed fish. They're out there, aren't they? They're putting an Influence on the castle, aren't they?'
   'Marry, nuncle—' the Fool began.
   'They run this country, don't they?'
   'No, my lord, they've never—'
   'Who asked you?'
   The Fool was trembling with fear in perfect anti-phase to the castle, so that he was the only thing that now appeared to be standing perfectly still.
   'Er, you did, my lord,' he quavered.
   'Are you arguing with me?'
   'No, my lord!'
   'I thought so. You're in league with them, I suppose?'
   'My lord!' said the Fool, really shocked.
   'You're all in league, you people!' the duke snarled. 'The whole bunch of you! You're nothing but a pack of ringleaders!'
   He flung the Fool aside and thrust the tall windows open, striding out into the freezing night air. He glared out over the sleeping kingdom.
   'Do you all hear me?' he screamed. 'I am the king!'
   The shaking stopped, catching the duke off-balance. He steadied himself quickly, and brushed the plaster dust off his nightshirt.
   'Right, then,' he said.
   But this was worse. Now the forest was listening. The words he spoke vanished into a great vacuum of silence.
   There was something out there. He could feel it. It was strong enough to shake the castle, and now it was watching him, listening to him.
   The duke backed away, very carefully, fumbling behind him for the window catch. He stepped carefully into the room, shut the windows and hurriedly pulled the curtains across.
   'I am the king,' he repeated, quietly. He looked at the Fool, who felt that something was expected of him.
   The man is my lord and master, he thought. I have eaten his salt, or whatever all that business was. They told me at Guild school that a Fool should be faithful to his master until the very end, after all others have deserted him. Good or bad doesn't come into it. Every leader needs his Fool. There is only loyalty. That's the whole thing. Even if he is clearly three-parts bonkers, I'm his Fool until one of us dies.
   To his horror he realised the duke was weeping.
   The Fool fumbled in his sleeve and produced a rather soiled red and yellow handkerchief embroidered with bells. The duke took it with an expression of pathetic gratitude and blew his nose. Then he held it away from him and gazed at it with demented suspicion.
   'Is this a dagger I see before me?' he mumbled.
   'Um. No, my lord. It's my handkerchief, you see. You can sort of tell the difference if you look closely. It doesn't have as many sharp edges.'
   'Good fool,' said the duke, vaguely.
   Totally mad, the Fool thought. Several bricks short of a bundle. So far round the twist you could use him to open wine bottles.
   'Kneel beside me, my Fool.'
   The Fool did so. The duke laid a soiled bandage on his shoulder.
   'Are you loyal, Fool?' he said. 'Are you trustworthy?'
   'I swore to follow my lord until death,' said the Fool hoarsely.
   The duke pressed his mad face close to the Fool, who looked up into a pair of bloodshot eyes.
   'I didn't want to,' he hissed conspiratorially. 'They made me do it. I didn't want—'
   The door swung open. The duchess filled the doorway. In fact, she was nearly the same shape.
   'Leonal!' she barked.
   The Fool was fascinated by what happened to the duke's eyes. The mad red flame vanished, was sucked backwards, and was replaced by the hard blue stare he had come to recognise. It didn't mean, he realised, that the duke was any less mad. Even the coldness of his sanity was madness in a way. The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.
   Lord Felmet looked up calmly.
   'Yes, my dear?'
   'What is the meaning of all this?' she demanded.
   'Witches, I suspect,' said Lord Felmet.
   'I really don't think—' the Fool began. Lady Felmet's glare didn't merely silence him, it almost nailed him to the wall.
   'That is clearly apparent,' she said. 'You are an idiot.'
   'A Fool, my lady.'
   'As well,' she added, and turned back to her husband.
   'So,' she said, smiling grimly. 'Still they defy you?'
   The duke shrugged. 'How should I fight magic?' he said.
   'With words,' said the Fool, without thinking, and was instantly sorry. They were both staring at him.
   'What?' said the duchess.
   The Fool dropped his mandolin in his embarrassment.
   'In – in the Guild,' said the Fool, 'we learned that words can be more powerful even than magic.'
   'Clown!' said the duke. 'Words are just words. Brief syllables. Sticks and stones may break my bones—' he paused, savouring the thought – 'but words can never hurt me.'
   'My lord, there are such words that can,' said the Fool. 'Liar! Usurper! Murderer!'
   The duke jerked back and gripped the arms of the throne, wincing.
   'Such words have no truth,' said the Fool, hurriedly.
   'But they can spread like fire underground, breaking out to burn—'
   'It's true! It's true!' screamed the duke. 'I hear them, all the time!' He leaned forward. 'It's the witches!' he hissed.
   'Then, then, then they can be fought with other words,' said the Fool, 'Words can fight even witches,'
   'What words?' said the duchess, thoughtfully.
   The Fool shrugged. 'Crone. Evil eye. Stupid old woman.'
   The duchess raised one thick eyebrow.
   'You are not entirely an idiot, are you,' she said. 'You refer to rumour.'
   'Just so, my lady.' The Fool rolled his eyes. What had he got himself into?
   'It's the witches,' whispered the duke, to no-one in particular. 'We must tell the world about the witches. They're evil. They make it come back, the blood. Even sandpaper doesn't work.'
   There was another tremor as Granny Weatherwax hurried along the narrow, frozen pathways in the forest. A lump of snow slipped off a tree branch and poured over her hat.
   This wasn't right, she knew. Never mind about the -whatever it was – but it was unheard of for a witch to go out on Hogswatchnight. It was against all tradition. No-one knew why, but that wasn't the point.
   She came out on to the moorland and pounded across the brittle heather, which had been scoured of snow by the wind. There was a crescent moon near the horizon, and its pale glow lit up the mountains that towered over her. It was a different world up there, and one even a witch would rarely venture into; it was a landscape left over from the frosty birth of the world, all green ice and knife-edge ridges and deep, secret valleys. It was a landscape never intended for human beings – not hostile, any more than a brick or cloud is hostile, but terribly, terribly uncaring.
   Except that, this time, it was watching her. A mind quite unlike any other she had ever encountered was giving her a great deal of its attention. She glared up at the icy slopes, half expecting to see a mountainous shadow move against the stars.
   'Who are you?' she shouted. 'What do you want?'
   Her voice bounced and echoed among the rocks. There was a distant boom of an avalanche, high among the peaks.
   On the crest of the moor, where in the summer partridges lurked among the bushes like small whirring idiots, was a standing stone. It stood roughly where the witches' territories met, although the boundaries were never formally marked out.
   The stone was about the same height as a tall man, and made of bluish tinted rock. It was considered intensely magical because, although there was only one of it, no-one had ever been able to count if, if it saw anyone looking at it speculatively, it shuffled behind them. It was the most self-effacing monolith ever discovered.
   It was also one of the numerous discharge points for the magic that accumulated in the Ramtops. The ground around it for several yards was bare of snow, and steamed gently.
   The stone began to edge away, and watched her suspiciously from behind a tree.
   She waited for ten minutes until Magrat came hurrying up the path from Mad Stoat, a village whose good-natured inhabitants were getting used to ear massage and flower-based homeopathic remedies for everything short of actual decapitation[7].
   She was out of breath, and wore only a shawl over a nightdress that, if Magrat had anything to reveal, would have been very revealing.
   'You felt it too?' she said.
   Granny nodded. 'Where's Gytha?' she said.
   They looked down the path that led to Lancre town, a huddle of lights in the snowy gloom.
 
   There was a party going on. Light poured out into the street. A line of people were winding in and out of Nanny Ogg's house, from inside which came occasional shrieks of laughter and the sounds of breaking glass and children grizzling. It was clear that family life was being experienced to its limits in that house. The two witches stood uncertainly in the street.
   'Do you think we should go in?' said Magrat diffidently. 'It's not as though we were invited. And we haven't brought a bottle.'
   'Sounds to me as if there's a deal too many bottles in there already,' said Granny Weatherwax disapprovingly. A man staggered out of the doorway, burped, bumped into Granny, said, 'Happy Hogswatchnight, missus,' glanced up at her face and sobered up instantly.
   'Mss,' snapped Granny.
   'I am most frightfully sorry—' he began.
   Granny swept imperiously past him. 'Come, Magrat,' she commanded.
   The din inside hovered around the pain threshold. Nanny Ogg got around the Hogswatchnight tradition by inviting the whole village in, and the air in the room was already beyond the reach of pollution controls. Granny navigated through the press of bodies by the sound of a cracked voice explaining to the world at large that, compared to an unbelievable variety of other animals, the hedgehog was quite fortunate.
   Nanny Ogg was sitting in a chair by the fire with a quart mug in one hand, and was conducting the reprise with a cigar. She grinned when she saw Granny's face.
   'What ho, my old boiler,' she screeched above the din. 'See you turned up, then. Have a drink. Have two. Wotcher, Magrat. Pull up a chair and call the cat a bastard.'
   Greebo, who was curled up in the inglenook and watching the festivities with one slit yellow eye, flicked his tail once or twice.
   Granny sat down stiffly, a ramrod figure of decency.
   'We're not staying,' she said, glaring at Magrat, who was tentatively reaching out towards a bowl of peanuts. 'I can see you're busy. We just wondered whether you might have noticed – anything. Tonight. A little while ago.'
   Nanny Ogg wrinkled her forehead.
   'Our Darron's eldest was sick,' she said. 'Been at his dad's beer.'
   'Unless he was extremely ill,' said Granny, 'I doubt if it was what I was referring to.' She made a complex occult sign in the air, which Nanny totally ignored.
   'Someone tried to danee on the table,' she said. 'Fell into our Reet's pumpkin dip. We had a good laugh.'
   Granny waggled her eyebrows and placed a meaningful finger alongside her nose.
   'I was alluding to things of a different nature,' she hinted darkly.
   Nanny Ogg peered at her.
   'Something wrong with your eye, Esme?' she hazarded.
   Granny Weatherwax sighed.
   'Extremely worrying developments of a magical tendency are even now afoot,' she said loudly.
   The room went quiet. Everyone stared at the witches, except for Darron's eldest, who took advantage of the opportunity to continue his alcoholic experiments. Then, swiftly as they had fled, several dozen conversations hurriedly got back into gear.
   'It might be a good idea if we can go and talk somewhere more private,' said Granny, as the comforting hubbub streamed over them again.
   They ended up in the washhouse, where Granny tried to give an account of the mind she had encountered.
   'It's out there somewhere, in the mountains and the high forests,' she said. 'And it is very big.'
   'I thought it was looking for someone,' said Magrat. 'It put me in mind of a large dog. You know, lost. Puzzled.'
   Granny thought about this. Now she came to think of it . . .
   'Yes,' she said. 'Something like that. A big dog.'
   'Worried,' said Magrat.
   'Searching,' said Granny.
   'And getting angry,' said Magrat.
   'Yes,' said Granny, staring fixedly at Nanny.
   'Could be a troll,' said Nanny Ogg. 'I left best part of a pint in there, you know,' she added reproachfully.
   'I know what a troll's mind feels like, Gytha,' said Granny. She didn't snap the words out. In fact it was the quiet way she said them that made Nanny hesitate.
   'They say there's really big trolls up towards the Hub,' said Nanny slowly. 'And ice giants, and big hairy woss-names that live above the snowline. But you don't mean anything like that, do you?'
   'No.'
   'Oh.'
   Magrat shivered. She told herself that a witch had absolute control over her own body, and the goosepimples under her tun nightdress were just a figment of her own imagination. The trouble was, she had an excellent imagination.
   Nanny Ogg sighed.
   'We'd better have a look, then,' she said, and took the lid off the copper.
   Nanny Ogg never used her washhouse., since all her washing was done by the daughers-in-law, a tribe of grey-faced, subdued women whose names she never bothered to remember. It had become, therefore, a storage place for dried-up old bulbs, burnt-out cauldrons and fermenting jars of wasp jam. No fire had been lit under the copper for ten years. Its bricks were crumbling, and rare ferns grew around the firebox. The water under the lid was inky black and, according to rumour, bottomless; the Ogg grandchildren were encouraged to believe that monsters from the dawn of time dwelt in its depths, since Nanny believed that a bit of thrilling and pointless terror was an essential ingredient of the magic of childhood.
   In summer she used it as a beer cooler.
   'It'll have to do. I think perhaps we should join hands,' she said. 'And you, Magrat, make sure the door's shut.'
   'What are you going to try?' said Granny. Since they were on Nanny's territory, the choice was entirely up to her.
   'I always say you can't go wrong with a good Invocation,' said Nanny. 'Haven't done one for years.'
   Granny Weatherwax frowned. Magrat said, 'Oh, but you can't. Not here. You need a cauldron, and a magic sword. And an octogram. And spices, and all sorts of stuff.'
   Granny and Nanny exchanged glances.
   'It's not her fault,' said Granny. 'It's all them grimmers she was bought.' She turned to Magrat.
   'You don't need none of that,' she said. 'You need head-ology.' She looked around the ancient washroom.
   'You just use whatever you've got,' she said.
   She picked up the bleached copper stick, and weighed it thoughtfully in her hand.