“So you’ll be having a huge dram,” said the old pixie. “And then we’ll be finding you a sword.”
“I’ve never used a sword,” said Verence, trying to pull himself into a sitting position. “I—I believe violence is the last resort…”
“Ach, weel, so long as ye’ve brung yer bucket and spade,” said Big Aggie’s man. “Now you just drink up, kingie. Ye’ll soon see things differently.”
The vampires glided easily over the moonlit clouds. There was no weather up here and, to Agnes’s surprise, no chill either.
“I thought you turned into bats!” she shouted to Vlad.
“Oh, we could if we wanted to,” he laughed. “But that’s a bit too melodramatic for Father. He says we should not conform to crass stereotypes.”
A girl glided alongside them. She looked rather like Lacrimosa; that is, she looked like someone who admired the way Lacrimosa looked and so had tried to look like her. I bet she’s not a natural brunette, said Perdita. And if I used that much mascara I’d at least try not to look like Harry the Happy Panda.
“This is Morbidia,” said Vlad. “Although she’s been calling herself Tracy lately, to be cool. Mor—Tracy, this is Agnes.”
“What a good name!” said Morbidia. “How clever of you to come up with it! Vlad, everyone wants to stop off at Escrow. Can we?”
“It’s my real—” Agnes began, but her words were carried away on the wind.
“I thought we were going to the castle,” said Vlad.
“Yes, but some of us haven’t fed for days and that old woman was hardly even a snack and the Count won’t allow us to feed in Lancre yet and he says it’ll be all right and it’s not much out of our way.”
“Oh. Well, if Father says…”
Morbidia swooped away.
“We haven’t been to Escrow for weeks,” said Vlad. “It’s a pleasant little town.”
“You’re going to feed there?” said Agnes.
“It’s not what you think.”
“You don’t know what I think.”
“I can guess, though.” He smiled at her. “I wonder if Father said yes because he wants you to see? It’s so easy to be frightened of what you don’t know. And then, perhaps, you could be a sort of ambassador. You could tell Lancre what life under the Magpyrs is really like.”
“People being dragged out of their beds, blood on the walls, that sort of thing?”
“There you go again, Agnes. It’s most unfair. Once people find out you’re a vampire they act as if you’re some kind of monster.”
They curved gently through the night air.
“Father’s rather proud of his work in Escrow,” said Vlad. “I think you’ll be impressed. And then perhaps I could dare hope—”
“No.”
“I’m really being rather understanding about this, Agnes.”
“You attacked Granny Weatherwax! You bit her.”
“Symbolically. To welcome her into the family.”
“Oh really? Oh, that makes it all better, does it? And she’ll be a vampire?”
“Certainly. A good one, I suspect. But that’s only horrifying if you think being a vampire is a bad thing. We don’t. You’ll come to see that we’re right, in time,” said Vlad. “Yes, Escrow would be good for you. For us. We shall see what can be done…”
Agnes stared.
He does smile nicely… He’s a vampire! All right, but apart from that— Oh, apart from that, eh? Nanny would tell you to make the most of it. That might work for Nanny, but can you imagine kissing that? Yes, I can. I will admit, he does smile nicely, and he looks good in those waistcoats, but look at what he is—Do you notice? Notice what? There’s something different about him. He’s just trying to get around us, that’s all. No…there’s something…new…
“Father says Escrow is a model community,” said Vlad. “It shows what happens if ancient enmity is put aside and humans and vampires learn to live in peace. Yes. It’s not far now. Escrow is the future.”
A low ground mist drifted between the trees, curling up in little tongues as the mule’s hooves disturbed it. Rain dripped off the twigs. There was even a bit of sullen thunder now, not the outgoing sort that cracks the sky but the other sort, which hangs around the horizons and gossips nastily with other storms.
Mightily Oats had tried a conversation with himself a few times, but the problem with a conversation was that the other person had to join in. Occasionally he heard a snore from behind him. When he looked around, the wowhawk on her shoulder flapped its wings in his face.
Sometimes the snoring would stop with a grunt, and a hand would tap him on a shoulder and point out a direction which looked like every other direction.
It did so now.
“What’s that you’re singing?” Granny demanded.
“I wasn’t singing very loudly.”
“What’s it called?”
“It’s called ‘Om Is in His Holy Temple.’”
“Nice tune,” said Granny.
“It keeps my spirits up,” Oats admitted. A wet twig slapped his face. After all, he thought, I may have a vampire behind me, however good she is.
“You take comfort from it, do you?”
“I suppose so.”
“Even that bit about ‘smiting evil with thy sword’? That’d worry me, if I was an Omnian. Do you get just a little sort of tap for a white lie but minced up for murder? That’s the sort of thing that’d keep me awake o’ nights.”
“Well, actually…I shouldn’t be singing it at all, to be honest. The Convocation of Ee struck it from the songbook as being incompatible with the ideals of modern Omnianism.”
“That line about crushing infidels?”
“That’s the one, yes.”
“You sung it anyway, though.”
“It’s the version my grandmother taught me,” said Oats.
“She was keen on crushing infidels?”
“Well, mainly I think she was in favor of crushing Mrs. Ahrim next door, but you’ve got the right idea, yes. She thought the world would be a better place with a bit more crushing and smiting.”
“Prob’ly true.”
“Not as much smiting and crushing as she’d like, though, I think,” said Oats. “A bit judgmental, my grandmother.”
“Nothing wrong with that. Judging is human.”
“We prefer to leave it ultimately to Om,” said Oats and, out here in the dark, that statement sounded lost and all alone.
“Bein’ human means judgin’ all the time,” said the voice behind him. “This and that, good and bad, making choices every day…that’s human.”
“And are you so sure you make the right decisions?”
“No. But I do the best I can.”
“And hope for mercy, eh?”
The bony finger prodded him in the back.
“Mercy’s a fine thing, but judgin’ comes first. Otherwise you don’t know what you’re bein’ merciful about. Anyway, I always heard you Omnians were keen on smitin’ and crushin’.”
“Those were…different days. We use crushing arguments now.”
“And long pointed debates, I suppose?”
“Well, there are two sides to every question…”
“What do you do when one of ’em’s wrong?” The reply came back like an arrow.
“I meant that we are enjoined to see things from the other person’s point of view,” said Oats, patiently.
“You mean that from the point of view of a torturer, torture is all right?”
“Mistress Weatherwax, you are a natural disputant.”
“No I ain’t!”
“You’d certain enjoy yourself at the Synod, anyway. They’ve been known to argue for days about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.”
He could almost feel Granny’s mind working. At last she said, “What size pin?”
“I don’t know that, I’m afraid.”
“Well, if it’s an ordinary household pin, then there’ll be sixteen.”
&nb
sp; “Sixteen angels?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps they like dancing.”
The mule picked its way down a bank. The mist was getting thicker here.
“You’ve counted sixteen?” said Oats eventually.
“No, but it’s as good an answer as any you’ll get. And that’s what your holy men discuss, is it?”
“Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example.”
“And what do they think? Against it, are they?”
“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”
“Nope.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that—”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes—”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things…”
Granny’s voice trailed off. Oats let the mule walk on for a few minutes, and then a snort told him that Granny had awoken again.
“You strong in your faith, then?” she said, as if she couldn’t leave things alone.
Oats sighed. “I try to be.”
“But you read a lot of books, I’m thinking. Hard to have faith, ain’t it, when you read too many books.”
Oats was glad she couldn’t see his face. Was the old woman reading his mind through the back of his head?
“Yes,” he said.
“Still got it, though?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have anything.”
He waited for a while, and then tried a counterattack.
“You’re not a believer yourself, then, Mistress Weatherwax?”
There was a few moments’ silence as the mule picked its way over the mossy tree roots. Oats thought he heard, behind them, the sound of a horse, but then it was lost in the sighing of the wind.
“Oh, I reckon I believes in tea, sunrises, that sort of thing,” said Granny.
“I was referring to religion.”
“I know a few gods in these parts, if that’s what you mean.”
Oats sighed. “Many people find faith a great solace,” he said. He wished he was one of them.
“Good.”
“Really? Somehow I thought you’d argue.”
“It’s not my place to tell ’em what to believe, if they act decent.”
“But it’s not something that you feel drawn to, perhaps, in the darker hours?”
“No. I’ve already got a hot water bottle.”
The wowhawk fluttered its wings. Oats stared into the damp, dark mist. Suddenly he was angry.
“And that’s what you think religion is, is it?” he said, trying to keep his temper.
“I gen’rally don’t think about it at all,” said the voice behind him.
It sounded fainter. He felt Granny clutch his arm to steady herself…
“Are you all right?” he said.
“I wish this creature would go faster…I ain’t entirely myself.”
“We could stop for a rest?”
“No! Not far now! Oh, I’ve been so stupid…”
The thunder grumbled. He felt her grip lessen, and heard her hit the ground.
Oats leapt down. Granny Weatherwax was lying awkwardly on the moss, her eyes closed. He took her wrist. There was a pulse there, but it was horribly weak. She felt icy cold.
When he patted her face she opened her eyes.
“If you raise the subject of religion at this point,” she wheezed, “I’ll give you such a hidin’…” Her eyes shut again.
Oats sat down to get his breath back. Icy cold…yes, there was something cold about all of her, as though she always pushed heat away. Any kind of warmth.
He heard the sound of the horse again, and the faint jingle of a harness. It stopped a little way away.
“Hello?” said Oats, standing up. He strained to see the rider in the darkness, but there was just a dim shape farther along the track.
“Are you following us? Hello?”
He took a few steps and made out the horse, head bowed against the rain. The rider was just a darker shadow in the night.
Suddenly awash with dread, Oats ran and slithered back to Granny’s silent form. He struggled out of his drenched coat and put it over her, for whatever good that would do, and looked around desperately for anything that could make a fire. Fire, that was the thing. It brought life and drove away the darkness.
But the trees were tall firs, dripping wet with dank bracken underneath among the black trunks. There was nothing that would burn here.
He fished hurriedly in his pocket and found a waxed box with his last few matches in it. Even a few dry twigs or a tuft of grass would do, anything that’d dry out another handful of twigs…
Rain oozed through his shirt. The air was full of water.
Oats hunched over so that his hat kept the drips off, and pulled out the Book of Om for the comfort that it brought. In times of trouble, Om would surely show the way—
…I’ve already got a hot water bottle…
“Damn you,” he said, under his breath.
He opened the book at random, struck a match and read:
“…and in that time, in the land of the Cyrinites, there was a multiplication of camels…”
The match hissed out.
No help there, no clue. He tried again.
“…and looked upon Gul-Arah, and the lamentation of the desert, and rode then to…”
Oats remembered the vampire’s mocking smile. What words could you trust? He struck the third match with shaking hands and flicked the book open again and read, in the weak dancing light:
“…and Brutha said to Simony, ‘Where there is darkness we will make a great light…’”
The match died. And there was darkness.
Granny Weatherwax groaned. At the back of his mind, Oats thought he could hear the sounds of hooves, slowly approaching.
Oats knelt in the mud and tried a prayer, but there was no answering voice from the sky. There never had been. He’d been told never to expect one. That wasn’t how Om worked anymore. Alone of all the gods, he’d been taught, Om delivered the answers straight into the depths of the head. Since the prophet Brutha, Om was the silent god. That’s what they said.
If you didn’t have faith, then you weren’t anything. There was just the dark.
He shuddered in the gloom. Was the god silent, or was there no one to speak?
He tried praying again, more desperately this time, fragments of childish prayer, losing control of the words and even of their direction, so that they tumbled out and soared away into the universe addressed simply to The Occupier.
The rain dripped off his hat.
He knelt and waited in the wet darkness, and listened to his own mind, and remembered, and took out the Book of Om once more.
And made a great light.
The coach thundered through pine trees by a lake, struck a tree root, lost a wheel and skidded to a halt on its side as the horses bolted.
Igor picked himself up, lurched to the coach and raised a door.
“Thorry about that,” he said. “I’m afraid thith alwayth happenth when the marthter ithn’t on board. Everyone all right down there?”
A hand grabbed him by the throat.
“You could have warned us!” Nanny growled. “We were thrown all over the place! Where the hell are we? Is this Slake?”
A match flared and Igor lit a torch.
“We’re near the cathle,” he said. r />
“Whose?”
“The Magpyrth.”
“We’re near the vampires’ castle?”
“Yeth. I think the old marthter did thomething to the road here. The wheelth alwayth come off, ath thure ath eggth ith eggth. Bringth in the vithitorth, he thed.”
“It didn’t occur to you to mention it?” said Nanny, climbing out and giving Magrat a hand.
“Thorry. It’th been a buthy day…”
Nanny took the torch. The flames illuminated a crude sign nailed to a tree.
“‘Don’t go near the Castle!!’” Nanny read. “Nice of them to put an arrow pointing the way to it, too.”
“Oh, the marthter did that,” said Igor. “Otherwithe people wouldn’t notice it.”
Nanny peered into the gloom. “And who’s in the castle now?”
“A few thervantth.”
“Will they let us in?”
“That’th not a problem.” Igor fished in his noisome shirt and pulled out a very big key on a string.
“We going to go into their castle?” said Magrat.
“Looks like it’s the only place around,” said Nanny Ogg. heading up the track. “The coach is wrecked. We’re miles from anywhere else. Do you want to keep the baby out all night? A castle’s a castle. It’ll have locks. All the vampires are in Lancre. And—”
“Well?”
“It’s what Esme would’ve done. I feels it in my blood.”
A little way off something howled. Nanny looked at Igor.
“Werewolf?” she said.
“That’th right.”
“Not a good idea to hang around, then.”
She pointed to a sign painted on a rock.
“‘Don’t take thiƒ quickeƒt route to the Caƒtle,’” she read aloud. “You’ve got to admire a mind like that. Definitely a student of human nature.”
“Won’t there be a lot of ways in?” said Magrat, as they walked past a sign that said: DON’T GO NERE THE COACH PARK, 20 YDS. ON LEFT.
“Igor?” said Nanny.
“Vampireth uthed to fight amongtht themthelveth,” said Igor. “There’th only one way in.”
“Oh, all right, if we must,” said Magrat, “You take the rocker, and the used nappy bag. And the teddies. And the thing that goes round and round and plays noises when she pulls the string—”