Lords And Ladies

'I think I broke my stick on that last one, Jason!'

'Just you keep dancing, Tinker! Now, lads . . . how about Gathering Peasecods? We might as well get some practice in, since we're here . . .'

'There's some people up ahead,' said Tailor, as he skipped past, 'I can see torches an' that.'

'Human, two, three, or more elves?'

'Dunno!'

Jason spun and danced back.

'Is that you, our Jason?'

Jason cackled as the voice echoed among the dripping trees.

'It's our mam! And our Shawn. And — and lots of people! We've made it, lads!'

'Jason,' said Carter.

'Yes?'

'I ain't sure I can stop!'

The Queen examined her face in a mirror attached to the tent pole.

'Why?' said Granny. 'What is it you see?'

'Whatever I want to see,' said the Queen. 'You know that. And now . . . let us ride to the castle. Tie her hands together. But leave her legs free.'

It rained again, gently, although around the stones it turned to sleet. The water dripped off Magrat's hair and temporarily unraveled the tangles.

Mist coiled out from among the trees where summer and winter fought.

Magrat watched the elven court mount up. She made out the figure of Verence, moving like a puppet. And Granny Weatherwax, tied behind the Queen's horse by a long length of rope.

The horses splashed through the mud. They had silver bells on their harness, dozens of them.

The elves in the castle, the night of ghosts and shadows, all of this was just a hard knot in her memory. But the jingling of the bells was like a nailfile rubbed across her teeth.

The Queen halted the procession a few yards away.

'Ah, the brave girl,' she said. 'Come to save her fiance, all alone? How sweet. Someone kill her.'

An elf spurred its horse forward, and raised its sword. Magrat gripped the battleaxe.

Somewhere behind her a bowstring slammed against wood. The elf jerked. So did one behind it. The arrow kept going, curving a little as it passed over one of the fallen Dancers.

Then Shawn Ogg's ragbag army charged out from under the trees, except for Ridcully, who was feverishly trying to rewind his crossbow.

The Queen did not look surprised.

'And there's only about a hundred of them,' she said. 'What do you think, Esme Weatherwax? A valiant last stand? It's so beautiful, isn't it? I love the way humans think. They think like songs.'

'You get down off that horse!' Magrat shouted.

The Queen smiled at her.

Shawn felt it. Ridcully felt it. Ponder felt it. The glamour swept over them.

Elves feared iron, but they didn't need to go near it.

You couldn't fight elves, because you were so much more worthless than them. It was right that you should be so worthless. And they were so beautiful. And you weren't. You were always the one metaphorically picked last for any team, even after the fat kid with one permanently blocked runny nostril; you were always the one who wasn't told the rules until you'd lost, and then wasn't told the new rules; you were the one who always knew that everything interesting was happening to other people. All those hot self-consuming feelings were rolled together. You couldn't fight an elf. Someone as useless as you, as stolid as you, as human as you, could never win; the universe wasn't built like that—

Hunters say that, just sometimes, an animal will step out of the bushes and stand there waiting for the spear . . .

Magrat managed to half-raise the axe, and then her hand slumped to her side. She looked down. The correct attitude of a human before an elf was one of shame. She had shouted so coarsely at something as beautiful as an elf. . .

The Queen dismounted and walked over to her.

'Don't touch her,' said Granny.

The Queen nodded.

'You can resist,' she said. 'But you see, it doesn't matter. We can take Lancre without a fight. There is nothing you can do about it. Look at the brave little army, standing like sheep. Humans are so enthusiastic.'

Granny looked at her boots.

'You can't rule while I'm alive,' she said.

'There's no trickery here,' said the Queen. 'No silly women with bags of sweets.'

'You noticed that, did you?' said Granny. 'Gytha meant well, I expect. Daft old biddy. Mind if I sit down?'

'Of course you may,' said the Queen. 'You are an old woman now, after all.'

She nodded to the elves. Granny subsided gratefully on to a rock, her hands still tied behind her.

'That's the thing about witchcraft,' she said. 'It doesn't exactly keep you young, but you do stay old for longer. Whereas you, of course, do not age,' she added.

'Indeed, we do not.'

'But I suspect you may be capable of being reduced.'

The Queen's smile didn't vanish, but it did freeze, as smiles do when their owner is not certain about what has just been said and isn't sure what to say next.

'You meddled in a play,' said Granny. 'I believe you don't realize what you've done. Plays and books . . . you've got to keep an eye on the buggers. They'll turn on you. I mean to see that they do.' She nodded amicably at an elf covered in woad and badly tanned skins. 'Ain't that so, Fairy Peaseblossom?'

The Queen's brows knotted.

'But that is not his name,' she said.

Granny Weatherwax gave the Queen a bright smile.

'We shall see,' she said. 'There's a lot more humans these days, and lots of them live in cities, and they don't know much about elves one way or another. And they've got iron in their heads. You're too late.'

'No. Humans always need us,' said the Queen.

'They don't. Sometimes they want you. That's different. But all you can give 'em is gold that melts away in the morning.'

'There are those who would say that gold for one night is enough.'

'No.'

'Better than iron, you stupid old hag, you stupid child who has grown older and done nothing and been nothing.'

'No. It's just soft and shiny. Pretty to look at and no damn use at all,' said Granny, her voice still quite calm and level. 'But this is a real world, madam. That's what I had to learn. And real people in it. You got no right to 'em. People've got enough to cope with just being people. They don't need you swanking around with your shiny hair and shiny eyes and shiny gold, going sideways through life, always young, always singing, never learning.'

'You didn't always think like this.'

'That was a long time ago. And, my lady, old I may be, and hag I may be, but stupid I ain't. You're no kind of goddess. I ain't against gods and goddesses, in their place. But they've got to be the ones we make ourselves. Then we can take 'em to bits for the parts when we don't need 'em anymore, see? And elves far away in fairyland, well, maybe that's something people need to get 'emselves through the iron times. But I ain't having elves here. You make us want what we can't have and what you give us is worth nothing and what you take is everything and