Wyrd Sisters (19 page)

His voice hung in the air, faint as a breeze.

‘Remember, good sisters,' he said, ‘the land and the king are one.'

And he vanished.

The embarrassed silence was broken by Magrat blowing her nose.

‘One what?' said Nanny Ogg.

‘We've got to do something,' said Magrat, her voice choked with emotion. ‘Rules or no rules!'

‘It's very vexing,' said Granny, quietly.

‘Yes, but what are you going to do?' she said.

‘Reflect on things,' said Granny. ‘Think about it all.'

‘You've been thinking about it for a year,' Magrat said.

‘One what? Are one what?' said Nanny Ogg.

‘It's no good just reacting,' said Granny. ‘You've got to—'

A cart came bouncing and rumbling along the track from Lancre. Granny ignored it.

‘—give these things careful consideration.'

‘You don't know what to do, do you?' said Magrat.

‘Nonsense. I—'

‘There's a cart coming, Granny.'

Granny Weatherwax shrugged. ‘What you youngsters don't realize—' she began.

Witches never bothered with elementary road safety. Such traffic as there was on the roads of Lancre either went around them or, if this was not possible, waited until they moved out of the way. Granny Weatherwax had grown up knowing this for a fact; the only reason she didn't die knowing that it wasn't was that Magrat, with rather better reflexes, dragged her into the ditch.

It was an interesting ditch. There were jiggling corkscrew things in it which were direct descendants of things which had been in the primordial soup of creation. Anyone who thought that ditchwater was dull could have spent an instructive half-hour in that ditch with a powerful microscope. It also had nettles in it, and now it had Granny Weatherwax.

She struggled up through the weeds, incoherent with rage, and rose from the ditch like Venus Anadyomene, only older and with more duckweed.

‘T-t-t,' she said, pointing a shaking finger at the disappearing cart.

‘It was young Nesheley from over Inkcap way,' said Nanny Ogg, from a nearby bush. ‘His family were always a bit wild. Of course, his mother was a Whipple.'

‘He ran us down!' said Granny.

‘You could have got out of the way,' said Magrat.

‘
Get out of the way?
' said Granny. ‘We're witches! People get out of
our
way!' She squelched on to the track, her finger still pointing at the distant cart. ‘By Hoki, I'll make him wish he'd never been born—'

‘He was quite a big baby, I recall,' said the bush. ‘His mother had a terrible time.'

‘It's never happened to me before, ever,' said Granny, still twanging like a bowstring. ‘I'll teach him to run us down as though, as though, as though we was ordinary people!'

‘He already knows,' said Magrat. ‘Just help me get Nanny out of this bush, will you?'

‘I'll turn his—'

‘People haven't got any respect any more, that's what it is,' said Nanny, as Magrat helped her with the thorns. ‘It's all due to the king being one, I expect.'

‘We're witches!' screamed Granny, turning her face towards the sky and shaking her fists.

‘Yes, yes,' said Magrat. ‘The harmonious balance of the universe and everything. I think Nanny's a bit tired.'

‘What've I been doing all this time?' said Granny, with a rhetorical flourish that would have made even Vitoller gasp.

‘Not a lot,' said Magrat.

‘Laughed at! Laughed at! On my own roads! In my own country!' screamed Granny. ‘That just about does it! I'm not taking ten more years of this! I'm not taking another
day
of it!'

The trees around her began to sway and the dust from the road sprang up into writhing shapes that tried to swirl out of her way. Granny Weatherwax extended one long arm and at the end of it unfolded one long finger and from the tip of its curving nail there was a brief flare of octarine fire.

Half a mile down the track all four wheels fell off the cart at once.

‘Lock up a witch, would he?' Granny shouted at the trees.

Nanny struggled to her feet.

‘We'd better grab her,' she whispered to Magrat. The two of them leapt at Granny and forced her arms down to her sides.

‘I'll bloody well show him what a witch could do!' she yelled.

‘Yes, yes, very good, very
good
,' said Nanny. ‘Only perhaps not just now and not just like this, eh?'

‘Wyrd sisters, indeed!' Granny yelled. ‘I'll make his—'

‘Hold her a minute, Magrat,' said Nanny Ogg, and rolled up her sleeve.

‘It can be like this with the highly-trained ones,' she said, and brought her plam round in a slap that lifted both witches off their feet. On such a flat, final note the universe might have ended.

At the conclusion of the breathless silence which followed Granny Weatherwax said, ‘Thank you.'

She adjusted her dress with some show of dignity, and added, ‘But I meant it. We'll meet tonight at the stone and do what must be done. Ahem.'

She reset the pins in her hat and set off unsteadily in the direction of her cottage.

‘Whatever happened to the rule about not meddling
in politics?' said Magrat, watching her retreating back.

Nanny Ogg massaged some life back into her fingers.

‘By Hoki, that woman's got a jaw like an anvil,' she said. ‘What was that?'

‘I said, what about this rule about not meddling?' said Magrat.

‘Ah,' said Nanny. She took the girl's arm. ‘The thing is,' she explained, ‘as you progress in the Craft, you'll learn there is another rule. Esme's obeyed it all her life.'

‘And what's that?'

‘When you break rules, break ‘em good and hard,' said Nanny, and grinned a set of gums that were more menacing than teeth.

The duke smiled out over the forest.

‘It works,' he said. ‘The people mutter against the witches. How do you do it, Fool?'

‘Jokes, nuncle. And gossip. People are halfway ready to believe it anyway. Everyone respects the witches. The point is that no-one actually likes them very much.'

Friday afternoon, he thought. I'll have to get some flowers. And my best suit, the one with the silver bells. Oh gosh.

‘This is very pleasing. If it goes on like this, Fool, you shall have a knighthood.'

This was no. 302, and the Fool knew better than to let a feed line go hungry. ‘Marry, nuncle,' he said wearily, ignoring the spasm of pain that crawled across the duke's face, ‘if'n I had a Knighthood (Night Hood), why, it would keep my ears Warm in Bedde; i'faith, if many a Knight is a Fool, why, should a—'

‘Yes, yes, all right,' snapped Lord Felmet. In fact he was feeling much better already. His porridge hadn't been oversalted this evening, and there was a decently empty feel about the castle. There were no more voices on the cusp of hearing.

He sat down on the throne. It felt really comfortable for the first time.

The duchess sat beside him, her chin on her hand, watching the Fool intently. This bothered him. He thought he knew where he stood with the duke, it was just a matter of hanging on until his madness curved back to the cheerful stage, but the duchess genuinely frightened him.

‘It seems that words are extremely powerful,' she said.

‘Indeed, lady.'

‘You must have made a lengthy study.'

The Fool nodded. The power of words had sustained him through the hell of the Guild. Wizards and witches used words as if they were tools to get things done, but the Fool reckoned that words were things in their own right.

‘Words can change the world,' he said.

Her eyes narrowed.

‘So you have said before. I remain unconvinced. Strong men change the world,' she said. ‘Strong men and their deeds. Words are just like marzipan on a cake. Of course you think words are important. You are weak, you have nothing else.'

‘Your ladyship is wrong.'

The duchess's fat hand drummed impatiently on the arm of her throne.

‘You had better,' she said, ‘be able to substantiate that comment.'

‘Lady, the duke wishes to chop down the forests, is this not so?'

‘The trees talk about me,' whispered Lord Felmet. ‘I hear them whisper when I go riding. They tell lies about me!'

The duchess and the Fool exchanged glances.

‘But,' the Fool continued, ‘this policy has met with fanatical opposition.'

‘What?'

‘People don't like it.'

The duchess exploded. ‘What does that matter?' she roared. ‘We rule! They will do what we say or they will be pitilessly executed!'

The Fool bobbed and capered and waved his hands in a conciliatory fashion.

‘But, my love, we will run out of people,' murmured the duke.

‘No need, no need!' said the Fool desperately. ‘You don't have to do that at all! What you do is, you—' he paused for a moment, his lips moving quickly – ‘you embark upon a far-reaching and ambitious plan to expand the agricultural industry, provide long-term employment in the sawmills, open new land for development, and reduce the scope for banditry.'

This time the duke looked baffled. ‘How will I do that?' he said.

‘Chop down the forests.'

‘But you said—'

‘Shut up, Felmet,' said the duchess. She subjected the Fool to another long, thoughtful stare.

‘Exactly how,' she said, eventually, ‘does one go about knocking over the houses of people one does not like?'

‘Urban clearance,' said the Fool.

‘I was thinking of burning them down.'

‘
Hygienic
urban clearance,' the Fool added promptly.

‘And sowing the ground with salt.'

‘Marry, I suspect that is hygienic urban clearance and a programme of environmental improvements. It might be a good idea to plant a few trees as well.'

‘No more trees!' shouted Felmet.

‘Oh, it's all right. They won't survive. The important thing is to have planted them.'

‘But I also want us to raise taxes,' said the duchess.

‘Why, nuncle—'

‘And I am not your nuncle.'

‘N'aunt?' said the Fool.

‘No.'

‘Why . . . prithee . . . you need to finance your ambitious programme for the country.'

‘Sorry?' said the duke, who was getting lost again.

‘He means that chopping down trees costs money,' said the duchess. She smiled at the Fool. It was the first time he had ever seen her look at him as if he was other than a disgusting little cockroach. There was still a large element of cockroach in her glance, but it said: good little cockroach, you have learned a trick.

‘Intriguing,' she said. ‘But can your words change the past?'

The Fool considered this.

‘More easily, I think,' he said. ‘Because the past is what people remember, and memories are words. Who knows how a king behaved a thousand years ago? There is only recollection, and stories. And plays, of course.'

‘Ah, yes. I saw a play once,' said Felmet. ‘Bunch of funny fellows in tights. A lot of shouting. The people liked it.'

‘You tell me history is what people are told?' said the duchess.

The Fool looked around the throne room and found King Gruneberry the Good (906–967).

‘
Was
he?' he said, pointing. ‘Who knows, now? What was he good
at
? But he will be Gruneberry the Good until the end of the world.'

The duke was leaning forward in his throne, his eyes gleaming.

‘I want to be a
good
ruler,' he said. ‘I want people to like me. I would like people to remember me fondly.'

‘Let us assume,' said the duchess, ‘that there were other matters, subject to controversy. Matters of historical record that had . . . been clouded.'

‘I didn't do it, you know,' said the duke, quickly. ‘He slipped and fell. That was it. Slipped and fell. I wasn't even there. He attacked me. It was self-defence.' His voice fell to a mumble. ‘I have no recollection of it at this time,' he murmured. He rubbed his dagger hand, although the word was becoming inappropriate.

‘Be quiet, husband,' snapped the duchess. ‘I know you didn't do it. I wasn't there with you, you may recall. It was I who didn't hand you the dagger.' The duke shuddered again.

‘And now, Fool,' said Lady Felmet. ‘I was saying, I believe, that perhaps there are matters that should be
properly recorded
.'

‘Marry, that you were not there at the time?' said the Fool, brightly.

It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone's mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.
If words were sweet little lambs, then the Fool watched them bound cheerfully away into the flame-thrower of the duchess's glare.

‘Not
where
?' she said.

‘Anywhere,' said the Fool hastily.

‘Stupid man! Everyone is somewhere.'

‘I mean, you were everywhere but at the top of the stairs,' said the Fool.

‘Which stairs?'

‘Any stairs,' said the Fool, who was beginning to sweat. ‘I distinctly remember not seeing you!'

The duchess eyed him for a while.

‘So long as you remember it,' she said. The duchess rubbed her chin, which made an audible rasping noise.

‘Reality is only weak words, you say. Therefore, words are reality. But how can words become history?'

‘It was a very good play, the play that I saw,' said Felmet dreamily. ‘There were fights, and no-one really died. Some very good speeches, I thought.'

There was another sandpapery sound from the duchess.

‘Fool?' she said.

‘Lady?'

‘Can you write a play? A play that will go around the world, a play that will be remembered long after rumour has died?'