Lords And Ladies

—speed. Something was coming out of the circle, a white dot growing bigger and bigger.

He knew he'd aimed the bow. But it was whirled out of his hands as the thing struck, and suddenly there was only the sensation of—

—peace.

And the brief remembrance of pain.

William Scrope died.

William Scrope looked through his hands at the crushed bracken. The reason that it was crushed was that his own body was sprawled upon it.

His newly deceased eyes surveyed the landscape.

There are no delusions for the dead. Dying is like waking up after a really good party, when you have one or two seconds of innocent freedom before you recollect all the things you did last night which seemed so logical and hilarious at the time, and then you remember the really amazing thing you did with a lampshade and two balloons, which had them in stitches, and now you realise you're going to have to look a lot of people in the eye today and you're sober now and so are they but you can both remember.

'Oh,' he said.

The landscape flowed around the stones. It was all so obvious now, when you saw it from the outside. . .

Obvious. No walls, only doors. No edges, only comers—

WILLIAM SCROPE.

'Yes?'

IF YOU WOULD PLEASE STEP THIS WAY.

'Are you a hunter?'

I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES.

Death grinned hopefully. Scrope's post-physical brow furrowed.

'What? Like . . . sherry, custard . . . that sort of thing?'

Death sighed. Metaphors were wasted on people. Sometimes he felt that no one took him seriously enough.

I TAKE AWAY PEOPLE'S LIVES IS WHAT I MEAN, he said testily.

'Where to?'

WE SHALL HAVE TO SEE, WON'T WE?

William Scrope was already fading into the mist.

'That thing that got me-'

YES?

'I thought they were extinct!'

'NO. THEY JUST WENT AWAY.

'Where to?'

Death extended a bony digit.

OVER THERE.

Magrat hadn't originally intended to move into the palace before the wedding, because people would talk. Admittedly a dozen people lived in the palace, which had a huge number of rooms, but she'd still be under the same roof, and that was good enough. Or bad enough.

That was before. Now her blood was sizzling. Let people talk. She had a pretty good idea which people they'd be, too. Which person, anyway. Witch person. Hah. Let them talk all they liked.

She got up early and packed her possessions, such as they were. It wasn't exactly her cottage, and most of the furniture went with it. Witches came and went, but witches' cottages went on for ever, usually with the same thatch they started with.

But she did own the set of magical knives, the mystic collared cords, the assorted grails and crucibles, and a box full of rings, necklaces, and bracelets heavy with the hermetic symbols of a dozen religions. She tipped them all into a sack.

Then there were the books. Goodie Whemper had been something of a bookworm among witches. There were almost a dozen. She hesitated about the books, and finally she let them stay on the shelves.

There was the statutory pointy hat. She'd never liked it anyway, and had always avoided wearing it. Into the sack with it.

She looked around wild-eyed until she spotted the small cauldron in the inglenook. That'd do. Into the sack with that, and then tie the neck with string.

On the way up to the palace she crossed the bridge over Lancre Gorge and tossed the sack into the river.

It bobbed for a moment in the strong current, and then sank.

She'd secretly hoped for a string of multicoloured bubbles, or even a hiss. But it just sank. Just as if it wasn't anything very important.

Another world, another castle. . .

The elf galloped over the frozen moat, steam billowing from its black horse and from the thing it carried over its neck.

It rode up the steps and into the hall itself, where the Queen sat amidst her dreams. . .

'My lord Lankin?'

'A stag!'

It was still alive. Elves were skilled at leaving things alive, often for weeks.

'From out of the circle?'

'Yes, lady!'

'It's weakening. Did I not tell you?'

'How long? How long?'

'Soon. Soon. What went through the other way?'

The elf tried to avoid her face.

'Your . . . pet, lady.'

'No doubt it won't go far.' The Queen laughed. 'No doubt it will have an amusing time. . .'

It rained briefly at dawn.

There's nothing nastier to walk through than shoulder-high wet bracken. Well, there is. There are an uncountable number of things nastier to walk through, especially if they're shoulder-high. But here and now, thought Nanny Ogg, it was hard to think of more than one or two.

They hadn't landed inside the Dancers, of course. Even birds detoured rather than cross that airspace. Migrating spiders on gossamer threads floating half a mile up curved around it. Clouds split in two and flowed around it.

Mist hung around the stones. Sticky, damp mist.

Nanny hacked vaguely at the clinging bracken with her sickle.

'You there, Esme?' she muttered.

Granny Weatherwax's head rose from a clump of bracken a few feet away.

'There's been things going on,' she said, in a cold and deliberate tone.

'Like what?'

'All the bracken and weeds is trampled around the stones. I reckon someone's been dancing.'

Nanny Ogg gave this the same consideration as would a nuclear physicist who'd just been told that someone was banging two bits of sub-critical uranium together to keep warm.

'They never,' she said.