Lords And Ladies

'They have. And another thing. . .' It was hard to imagine what other thing there could be, but Nanny Ogg said 'Yes?' anyway.

'Someone got killed up here.'

'Oh, no,' moaned Nanny Ogg. 'Not inside the circle too.'

'Nope. Don't be daft. It was outside. A tall man. He had one leg longer'n the other. And a beard. He was probably a hunter.'

'How'd you know all that?'

'I just trod on 'im.'

The sun rose through the mists.

The morning rays were already caressing the ancient stones of Unseen University, premier college of wizardry, five hundred miles away.

Not that many wizards were aware of this. For roost of the wizards of Unseen University their lunch was the first meal of the day. They were not, by and large, breakfast people. The Archchancellor and the Librarian were the only two who knew what the dawn looked like from the front, and they tended to have the entire campus to themselves for several hours.

The Librarian was always up early because he was an orang-utan, and they are naturally early risers, although in his case he didn't bellow a few times to keep other males off his territory. He just unlocked the Library and fed the books.

And Mustrum Ridcully, the current Archchancellor, liked to wander around the sleepy buildings, nodding to the servants and leaving little notes for his subordinates, usually designed for no other purpose than to make it absolutely clear that he was up and attending to the business of the day while they were still fast asleep[5].

Today, however, he had something else on his mind. More or less literally.

It was round. There was healthy growth all around it. He could swear it hadn't been there yesterday.

He turned his head this way and that, squinting at the reflection in the mirror of the other mirror he was holding above his head.

The next member of staff to wake up after Ridcully and the Librarian was the Bursar; not because he was a naturally early riser, but because by around ten o'clock the Archchancellor's very limited supply of patience came to an end and he would stand at the bottom of the stairs and shout:

'Bursaaar!'

—until the Bursar appeared.

In fact it happened so often that the Bursar, a natural neurovore[6] , frequently found that he'd got up and dressed himself in his sleep several minutes before the bellow. On this occasion he was upright and fully clothed and halfway to the door before his eyes snapped open.

Ridcully never wasted time on small talk. It was always large talk or nothing.

'Yes, Archchancellor?' said the Bursar, glumly.

The Archchancellor removed his hat.

'What about this, then?' he demanded.

'Um, um, um . . . what, Archchancellor?'

'This, man! This!'

Close to panic, the Bursar stared desperately at the top of Ridcully's head.

'The what? Oh. The bald spot?'

'I have not got a bald spot!'

'Um, then-'

'I mean it wasn't there yesterday!'

'Ah. Well. Um.' At a certain point something always snapped inside the Bursar, and he couldn't stop himself. 'Of course these things do happen and my grandfather always swore by a mixture of honey and horse manure, he rubbed it on every day-'

'I'm not going bald!'

A tic started to dance across the Bursar's face. The words started to come out by themselves, without the apparent intervention of his brain.

'-and then he got this device with a glass rod and, and, and you rubbed it with a silk cloth and-'

'I mean it's ridiculous! My family have never gone bald, except for one of my aunts!'

'-and, and, and then he'd collect morning dew and wash his head, and, and, and-'

Ridcully subsided. He was not an unkind man.

'What're you taking for it at the moment?' he murmured.

'Dried, dried, dried, dried,' stuttered the Bursar.

'The old dried frog pills, right?'

'R-r-r-r.'

'Left-hand pocket?'

'R-r-r-r.'

'OK. . . right. . . swallow. . .'

They stared at one another for a moment.

The Bursar sagged.

'M-m-much better now, Archchancellor, thank you.'

'Something's definitely happening. Bursar. I can feel it in my water.'

'Anything you say, Archchancellor.'

'Bursar?'

'Yes, Archchancellor?'

'You ain't a member of some secret society or somethin', are you?'

'Me? No, Archchancellor.'

'Then it'd be a damn good idea to take your underpants off your head.'

'Know him?' said Granny Weatherwax.

Nanny Ogg knew everyone in Lancre, even the forlorn thing on the bracken.

'It's William Scrope, from over Slice way,' she said. 'One of three brothers. He married that Palliard girl, remember? The one with the air-cooled teeth?'

'I hope the poor woman's got some respectable black clothes,' said Granny Weatherwax.

'Looks like he's been stabbed,' said Nanny. She turned the body over, gently but firmly. Corpses as such didn't worry her. Witches generally act as layers-out of the dead as well as midwives; there were plenty of people in Lancre for whom Nanny Ogg's face had been the first and last thing they'd ever seen, which had probably made all the bit in the middle seem quite uneventful by comparison.

'Right through,' she said. 'Stabbed right through. Blimey who'd do a thing like that?'

Both the witches turned to look at the stones.

'I don't know what, but I knows where it come from,' said Granny.

Now Nanny Ogg could see that the bracken all around the stones was indeed well trodden down, and quite brown.

'I'm going to get to the bottom of this,' said Granny.

'You'd better not go into-'

'I knows exactly where I should go, thank you.'

There were eight stones in the Dancers. Three of them had names. Granny walked around the ring until she reached the one known as the Piper.

She removed a hatpin from among the many that riveted her pointy hat to her hair and held it about six inches from the stone. Then she let it go, and watched what happened.

She went back to Nanny.

'There's still power there,' she said. 'Not much, but the ring is holding.'

'But who'd be daft enough to come up here and dance around the stones?' said Nanny Ogg, and then, as a treacherous thought drifted across her mind, she added, 'Magrat's been away with us the whole time.'