Lords And Ladies

'Who are?' said Jason Ogg. He was holding his thumb in the water trough.

Nanny Ogg sighed.

'Them.' she said. 'You know. Them. We ain't certain, but. . .'

'Who's Them?'

Nanny hesitated. There were some things you didn't tell ordinary people. On the other hand, Jason was a blacksmith, which meant he wasn't ordinary. Blacksmiths had to keep secrets. And he was family; Nanny Ogg had had an adventurous youth and wasn't very good at counting, but she was pretty certain he was her son.

'You see,' she said, waving her hands vaguely, 'them stones. . . the Dancers . . . see, in the old days . . . see, once upon a time. . .'

She stopped, and tried again to explain the essentially fractal nature of reality.

'Like . . . there's some places that're thinner than others, where the old doorways used to be, well, not doorways, never exactly understood it myself, not doorways as such, more places where the world is thinner . . . Anyway, the thing is, the Dancers . . . are a kind of fence . . . we, well, when I say we I mean thousands of years ago . . . I mean, but they're not just stones, they're some kind of thunderbolt iron but . . . there's things like tides, only not with water, it's when worlds get closer together'n you can nearly step between 'em . . . anyway, if people've been hangin' around the stones, playin' around . . . then They'll be back, if we're not careful.'

'What They?'

'That's the whole trouble,' said Nanny, miserably. 'If I tells you, you'll get it all wrong. They lives on the other side of the Dancers.'

Her son stared at her. Then a faint grin of realisation wandered across his face.

'Ah,' he said. 'I knows. I heard them wizards down in Ankh is always accidentally rippin' holes in this fabric o' reality they got down there, and you get them horrible things coming out o' the Dungeon Dimensions. Huge buggers with dozens o' eyeballs and more legs'n a Morris team.' He gripped his No. 5 hammer. 'Don't you worry. Mum. If they starts poppin' out here, we'll soon-'

'No, it ain't like that,' said Nanny 'Those live outside. But Them lives. . . over there.'

Jason looked completely lost.

Nanny shrugged. She'd have to tell someone, sooner or later.

'The Lords and Ladies,' she said.

'Who're they?'

Nanny looked around. But, after all, this was a forge. There had been a forge here long before there was a castle, long before there was even a kingdom. There were horseshoes everywhere. Iron had entered the very walls. It wasn't just a place of iron, it was a place where iron died and was reborn. If you couldn't speak the words here, you couldn't speak 'em anywhere.

Even so, she'd rather not.

'You know,' she said. 'The Fair Folk. The Gentry. The Shining Ones. The Star People. You know.'

'What?'

Nanny put her hand on the anvil, just in case, and said the word.

Jason's frown very gently cleared, at about the same speed as a sunrise.

'Them?' he said. 'But aren't they nice and-?'

''See?' said Nanny. 'I told you you'd get it wrong!'

'How much?' said Ridcully.

The coachman shrugged.

'Take it or leave it,' he said.

'I'm sorry, sir,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'It's the only coach.'

'Fifty dollars each is daylight robbery!'

'No,' said the coachman patiently. 'Daylight robbery,' he said, in the authoritative tones of the experienced, 'is when someone steps out into the road with an arrow pointing at us and then all his friends swings down from the rocks and trees and take away all our money and things. And then there's nighttime robbery, which is like daytime robbery except they set fire to the coach so's they can see what they're about. Twilight robbery, now, your basic twilight robbery is-'

'Are you saying,' said Ridcully, 'that getting robbed is included in the price?'

'Bandits' Guild,' said the coachman. 'Forty dollars per head, see. It's a kind of flat rate.'

'What happens if we don't pay it?' said Ridcully.

'You end up flat.'

The wizards went into a huddle.

'We've got a hundred and fifty dollars,' said Ridcully. 'We can't get any more out of the safe because the Bursar ate the key yesterday'

'Can I try an idea, sir?' said Ponder.

'All right.'

Ponder gave the coachman a bright smile.

'Pets travel free?' he suggested.

'Oook?'

Nanny Ogg's broomstick skimmed a few feet above the forest paths, cornering so fast that her boots scraped through the leaves. She leapt off at Granny Weather-wax's cottage so quickly that she didn't switch it off, and it kept going until it stuck in the privy.

The door was open.

'Cooee?'

Nanny glanced into the scullery, and then thumped up the small narrow staircase.

Granny Weatherwax was stretched rigid on her bed. Her face was grey, her skin was cold.

People had discovered her like this before, and it always caused embarrassment. So now she reassured visitors but tempted fate by always holding, in her rigid hands, a small handwritten sign which read:

I ATE'NT DEAD.

The window was propped open with a piece of wood.

'Ah,' said Nanny, far more for her own benefit than for anyone else's, 'I sees you're out. I'll, I'll, I'll just put the kettle on, shall I, and wait 'til you comes back?'

Esme's skill at Borrowing unnerved her. It was all very well entering the minds of animals and such, but too many witches had never come back. For several years Nanny had put out lumps of fat and bacon rind for a bluetit that she was sure was old Granny Postalute, who'd gone out Borrowing one day and never came back. Insofar as a witch could consider things uncanny. Nanny Ogg considered it uncanny.

She went back down to the scullery and lowered a bucket down the well, remembering to fish the newts out this time before she boiled the kettle.

Then she watched the garden.

After a while a small shape flittered across it, heading for the upstairs window.

Nanny poured out the tea. She carefully took one spoonful of sugar out of the sugar basin, tipped the rest of the sugar into her cup, put the spoonful back in the basin, put both cups on a tray, and climbed the stairs.

Granny Weatherwax was sitting up in her bed.

Nanny looked around.

There was a large bat hanging upside down from a beam.

Granny Weatherwax rubbed her ears.

'Shove the po under it, will you, Gytha?' she mumbled. 'They're a devil for excusing themselves on the carpet.'

Nanny unearthed the shyest article of Granny Weatherwax's bedroom crockery and moved it across the rug