Page 31
She slipped out of bed, using the edge of the blanket to grasp the door handle, and opened the door.
Shawn Ogg was standing very nearly to attention.
Currently he was guarding the castle and Seeing How Long He Could Stand On One Leg.
Then it occurred to him that this wasnt a proper activity for a martial artist, and he turned it into No. 19, the Flying Chrysanthemum Double Drop Kick.
After a while he realized that he had been hearing something. It was vaguely rhythmical, and put him in mind of a grasshopper chirruping. It was coming from inside the castle.
He turned carefully, keeping alert in case the massed armies of Foreign Parts tried to invade while his back was turned.
This needed working out. He wasnt on guard from things inside the castle, was he? “On guard” meant things outside. That was the point of castles. Thats why you had all the walls and things. Hed got the big poster they gave away free with Janes All the Worlds Siege Weapons. He knew what he was talking about.
Shawn was not the quickest of thinkers, but his thoughts turned inexorably to the elf in the dungeon. But that was locked up. Hed locked the door himself. And there was iron all over the place, and Mum had been very definite about the iron.
Nevertheless. . .
He was methodical about it. He raised the drawbridge and dropped the portcullis and peered over the wall for good measure, but there was just the dusk and the night breeze.
He could feel the sound now. It seemed to be coming out of the stone, and had a saw-toothed edge to it that grated on his nerves.
It couldnt have got out, could it? No, it stood to reason. People hadnt gone around building dungeons you could get out of.
The sound swung back and forth across the scale.
Shawn leaned his rusty pike against the wall and drew his sword. He knew how to use it. He practiced for ten minutes every day, and it was one sorry hanging sack of straw when hed finished with it.
He slipped into the keep by the back door and sidled along the passages toward the dungeon. There was no one else around. Of course, everyone was at the Entertainment. And theyd be back any time now, carousing all over the place.
The castle felt big, and old, and cold.
Any time now.
Bound to.
The noise stopped.
Shawn peered around the comer. There were the steps, there was the open doorway to the dungeons.
“Stop!” shouted Shawn, just in case.
The sound echoed off the stones.
“Stop! Or . . . or . . . or . . . Stop!”
He eased his way down the steps and looked through the
archway
"I warn you! Im learning the Path of the Happy Jade
Lotus!"
There was the door to the cell, standing ajar. And a
white-clad figure next to it. Shawn blinked. “Arent you Miss Tockley?”
She smiled at him. Her eyes glowed in the dim light. “Youre wearing chain-mail, Shawn,” she said. “What, miss?” He glanced at the open door again. "Thats terrible. You must take it off, Shawn. How can
you hear with all that stuff around your ears?"
Shawn was aware of the empty space behind him. But
he darent look around.
“I can hear fine, miss,” he said, trying to ease himself around so that his back was against a wall.
“But you cant hear truly,” said Diamanda, drifting forward. “The iron makes you deaf. ”
Shawn was not yet used to thinly clad young women approaching him with a dreamy look on their faces. He fervently wished he could take the Path of the Retreating Back.
He glanced sideways.
There was a tall skinny shape outlined in the open cell doorway. It was standing very carefully, as if it wanted to keep as far away from its surroundings as possible.
Diamanda was smiling at him in a funny way.
He ran.
Somehow, the woods had changed. Ridcully was certain that in his youth theyd been full of bluebells and primroses and - and bluebells and whatnot and so on. Not bloody great briars all over the place. They snagged at his robe and once or twice some tree-climbing equivalent knocked his hat off.
What made it worse was that Esme Weatherwax seemed to avoid all of them.
“How do you manage that?”
“I just know where I am all the time,” said Granny.
“Well? I know where I am, too. ”
“No you dont. You just happen to be present. Thats not the same. ”
“Well, do you happen to know where a proper path is?”
“This is a short cut. ”
“Between two places where youre not lost, dyou mean?”
“I keep tellin you, I aint lost! Im . . . directionally challenged. ”
“Hah!”
But it was a fact about Esme Weatherwax, he had to admit. She might be lost, and he had reason to suspect this was the case now, unless there were in this forest two trees with exactly the same arrangement of branches and a strip of his robe caught on one of them, but she did have a quality that in anyone not wearing a battered pointy hat and an antique black dress might have been called poise. Absolute poise. It would be hard to imagine her making an awkward movement unless she wanted to.
Hed seen that years ago, although of course at the time hed just been amazed at the way her shape fitted perfectly into the space around it. And-
Hed got caught up again.
“Wait a minute!”
“Entirely the wrong sort of clothes for the country!”
“I wasnt expecting a hike through the woods! This is ceremonial damn costume!”
“Take it off, then. ”
“Then how will anyone know Im a wizard?”
“Ill be sure to tell them!”
Granny Weatherwax was getting rattled. She was also, despite everything that shed said, getting lost. But the point was that you couldnt get lost between the weir at the bottom of the Lancre rapids and Lancre town itself. It was uphill all the way Besides, shed walked through the local forests all her life. They were her forests.
She was pretty sure theyd passed the same tree twice. There was a bit of Ridcullys robe hanging on it.
It was like getting lost in her own garden.
She was also sure shed seen the unicorn a couple of times. It was tracking them. Shed tried to get into its mind. She might as well have tried to climb an ice wall.
It wasnt as if her own mind was tranquil. But now at least she knew she was sane.
When the walls between the universes are thin, when the parallel strands of If bunch together to pass through the Now, then certain things leak across. Tiny signals, perhaps, but audible to a receiver skilled enough.
In her head were the faint, insistent thoughts of a thousand Esme Weatherwaxes.
Magrat wasnt sure what to pack. Most of her original clothes seemed to have evaporated since shed been in the castle, and it was hardly good manners to take the ones Verence had bought for her. The same applied to the engagement ring. She wasnt sure if you were allowed to keep it.
She glared at herself in the mirror.
Shed have to stop thinking like this. She seemed to have spent her whole life trying to make herself small, trying to be polite, apologizing when people walked over her, trying to be good-mannered. And what had happened? People had treated her as if she was small and polite and good-mannered.
Shed stick the, the, the damn letter on the mirror, so theyd all know why shed gone.
Shed a damn good mind to go off to one of the cities and become a courtesan.
Whatever that was.
And then she heard the singing.
It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful sound Magrat had ever heard. It flowed straight through the ears and into the hindbrain, into the blood, into the bone . . .
A silk camisole dropped from her fingers on to the floor.
She wren
ched at the door, and a tiny part of her mind still capable of rational thought remembered about the key.
The song filled the passageway. She gripped some folds of the wedding dress to make running easier and hurried toward the stairs . . .
Something bulleted out of another doorway and bore her to the floor.
It was Shawn Ogg. Through the chromatic haze she could see his worried face peering out from its hood of rusty-
-iron.
The song changed while staying the same. The complex harmonies, the fascinating rhythm did not alter but suddenly grated, as if she was hearing the song through different ears.
She was dragged into the doorway.
“Are you all right. Miss Queen?”
“Whats happening?”
“Dunno, Miss Queen. But I think weve got elves. ”
“Elves?”
“And theyve got Miss Tockley. Um. You know you took the iron away-”
“What are you talking about, Shawn?”
Shawns face was white.
“That one down the dungeons started singing, and theyd put their mark on her, so shes doing what they want-”
“Shawn!”
“And Mum said they dont kill you, if they can help it. Not right away. Youre much more fun if youre not dead. ”
Magrat stared at him.
“I had to run away! She was trying to get my hood off! I had to leave her, miss! You understand, miss?”
“Elves?”
“You got to hold on to something iron, miss! They hate iron!”
She slapped his face, hurting her fingers on the mail.
“Youre gabbling, Shawn!”
“Theyre out there, miss! I heard the drawbridge go down! Theyre out there and were in here and they dont kill you, they keep you alive-”
“Stand to attention, soldier!”
It was all she could think of. It seemed to work. Shawn pulled himself together.
“Look,” said Magrat, “everyone knows there really arent any elves any mo . . . ” Her voice faded. Her eyes narrowed. “Everyone but Magrat Garlick knows different, yes?”
Shawn shook. Magrat grabbed his shoulders.
“Me mum and Mistress Weatherwax said you wasnt to know!” Shawn wailed. “They said it was witch business!”
“And where are they now, when theyve got some witch business to mind?” said Magrat. “I dont see them, do you? Are they behind the door? No! Are they under the bed? How strange, theyre not . . . theres just me, Shawn Ogg. And if you dont tell me everything you know right now Ill make you regret the day I was born. ”
Shawns Adams apple bobbed up and down as he considered this. Then he shook himself free of Magrats grasp and listened at the door.
The singing had stopped. For a moment Magrat thought she heard footsteps outside the door, hurrying away.
“Well, Miss Queen, our mum and Mistress Weatherwax was up at the Dancers-”
Magrat listened.
Finally she said, “And wheres everyone now?”
“Dunno, miss. All gone to the Entertainment . . . but they ought tove been back by now. ”
“Wheres the Entertainment?”
“Dunno, miss. Miss?”
“Yes?”
“Whyve you got your wedding dress on?”
“Never you mind. ”
“Its unlucky for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the wedding,” said Shawn, taking refuge in run-of-the-mill idiocies to relieve his terror.
“It will be for him if I see him first,” snarled Magrat.
“Miss?”
“Yes?”
“Im feared about whats happened to everyone. Our Jason said theyd be back in an hour or so, and that was hours ago. ”