Wyrd Sisters Part 17

"Do shut up, Leonal," she said. "I think within these four walls we can dispense with that sort of thing."

"Who told her? Did you tell her?"

"And calm down. No one told her. She's a witch, for goodness sake, they find out about these things. Second glance, or something."

"Sight," said Nanny.

"Which you will not possess much longer, my good woman, unless you tell us who else knows and indeed, a.s.sist us on a number of other matters," said the d.u.c.h.ess grimly. "And you will do so, believe me. I am skilled in these things."

Granny glanced around the dungeon. It was beginning to get crowded. King Verence was bursting with such angry vitality that he was very nearly apparent, and was furiously trying to get a grip on a knife. But there were others behind-wavering, broken shapes, not exactly ghosts but memories, implanted in the very substances of the walls themselves by sheer pain and terror.

"My own dagger! The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! They killed me with my own dagger," said the ghost of King Verence silently, raising his transparent arms and imploring the netherworld in general to witness this ultimate humiliation. "Give me strength..."

"Yes," said Nanny. "It's worth a try."

"And now we will commence," said the d.u.c.h.ess.

"What?" said the guard.

"I SAID," said Magrat, "I've come to sell my lovely apples. Don't you listen?"

"There's not a sale on, is there?" The guard was extremely nervous since his colleague had been taken off to the infirmary. He hadn't taken the job in order to deal with this sort of thing.

It dawned on him.

"You're not a witch, are you?" he said, fumbling awkwardly with his pike.

"Of course not. Do I look like one?"

The guard looked at her occult bangles, her lined cloak, her trembling hands and her face. The face was particularly worrying. Magrat had used a lot of powder to make her face pale and interesting. It combined with the lavishly applied mascara to give the guard the impression that he was looking at two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl. He found his fingers wanted to make a sign to ward off the evil eyeshadow.

"Right," he said uncertainly. His mind was grinding through the problem. She was a witch. Just lately there'd been a lot of gossip about witches being bad for your health. He'd been told not to let witches pa.s.s, but no one had said anything about apple sellers. Apple sellers were not a problem. It was witches that were the problem. She'd said she was an apple seller and he wasn't about to doubt a witch's word.

Feeling happy with this application of logic, he stood to one side and gave an expansive wave.

"Pa.s.s, apple seller," he said.

"Thank you," said Magrat sweetly. "Would you like an apple?"

"No, thanks. I haven't finished the one the other witch gave me." His eyes rolled. "Not a witch. Not a witch, an apple seller. An apple seller. She ought to know."

"How long ago was this?"

"Just a few minutes..."

Granny Weatherwax was not lost. She wasn't the kind of person who ever became lost. It was just that, at the moment, while she knew exactly where SHE SHE was, she didn't know the position of anywhere else. Currently she had arrived in the kitchens again, precipitating a breakdown in the cook, who was trying to roast some celery. The fact that several people had tried to buy apples from her wasn't improving her temper. was, she didn't know the position of anywhere else. Currently she had arrived in the kitchens again, precipitating a breakdown in the cook, who was trying to roast some celery. The fact that several people had tried to buy apples from her wasn't improving her temper.

Magrat found her way to the Great Hall, empty and deserted at this time of day except for a couple of guards who were playing dice. They wore the tabards of Felmet's own personal bodyguard, and stopped their game as soon as she appeared.

"Well, well," said one, leering. "Come to keep us company, have you, my pretty."*

"I was looking for the dungeons," said Magrat, to whom the words "s.e.xual hara.s.sment" were a mere collection of syllables.

"Just fancy," said one of the guards, winking at the other. "I reckon we can help you there." They got up and stood either side of her; she was aware of two chins you could strike matches on and an overpowering smell of stale beer. Frantic signals from outlying portions of her mind began to break down her iron-hard conviction that bad things only happened to bad people.

They escorted her down several flights of steps into a maze of dank, arched pa.s.sageways as she sought hurriedly for some polite way of disengaging herself.

"I should warn you," she said, "I am not, as I may appear, a simple apple seller."

"Fancy that."

"I am, in fact, a witch."

This did not make the impression she had hoped. The guards exchanged glances.

"Fair enough," said one. "I've always wondered what it was like to kiss a witch. Around here they do say you gets turned into a frog."

The other guard nudged him. "I reckon, then," he said, in the slow, ripe tones of one who thinks that what he is about to say next is going to be incredibly funny, "you kissed one years ago."

The brief guffaw was suddenly interrupted when Magrat was flung against the wall and treated to a close up view of the guard's nostrils.

"Now listen to me, sweetheart," he said. "You ain't the first witch we've had down here, if witch you be, but you could be lucky and walk out again. If you are nice to us, d'you see?"

There was a shrill, short scream from somewhere nearby.

"That, you see," said the guard, "was a witch having it the hard way. You could do us all a favor, see? Lucky you met us, really."

His questing hand stopped its wandering. "What's this?" he said to Magrat's pale face. "A knife? A knife? I reckon we've got to take that very seriously, don't you, Hron?"

"You got to tie her hands and gag her," said Hron hurriedly. "They can't do no magic if they can't speak or wave their hands about..."

"You can take your hands off her!"

All three stared down the pa.s.sage at the Fool. He was jingling with rage.

"Let her go this minute!" he shouted. "Or I'll report you!"

"Oh, you'll report us, will you?" said Hron. "And will anyone listen to you, you earwax-colored little twerp?"

"This is a witch we have here," said the other guard. "So you can go and tinkle somewhere else." He turned back to Magrat. "I like a girl with spirit," he said, incorrectly as it turned out.

The Fool advanced with the bravery of the terminally angry.

"I told you to let her go," he repeated.

Hron drew his sword and winked at his companion.

Magrat struck. It was an unplanned, instinctive blow, its stopping power considerably enhanced by the weight of rings and bangles; her arm whirred around in an arc that connected with her captor's jaw and spun him twice before he folded up in a heap with a quiet little sigh, and incidentally with several symbols of occult significance enbossed on his cheek.

Hron gaped at him, and then looked at Magrat. He raised his sword at about the same moment that the Fool cannoned into him, and the two men went down in a struggling heap. Like most small men the Fool relied on the initial mad rush to secure an advantage and was at a loss for a follow-through, and it would probably have gone hard with him if Hron hadn't suddenly become aware that a breadknife was pressed to his neck.

"Let go of him," said Magrat, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

He stiffened. "You're wondering whether I really would cut your throat," panted Magrat. "I don't know either. Think of the fun we could have together, finding out."

She reached down with her other hand and hauled the Fool to his feet by his collar.

"Where did that scream come from?" she said, without taking her eyes off the guard.

"It was down this way. They've got her in the torture dungeon and I don't like it, it's going too far, and I couldn't get in and I couldn't get in and I came to look for someone-"

"Well, you've found me," said Magrat.

"You," she said to Hron, "will stay here. Or run away, for all I care. But you won't follow us."

He nodded, and stared after them as they hurried down the pa.s.sage. "The door's locked," said the Fool. "There's all sorts of noises, but the door's locked."

"Well, it's a dungeon, isn't it?"

"They're not supposed to lock from the inside!"

It was, indeed, unbudgeable. Silence came from the other side-a busy, thick silence that crawled through the cracks and spilled out into the pa.s.sage, a kind of silence that is worse than screams.

The Fool hopped from one foot to the other as Magrat explored the door's rough surface.

"Are you really a witch?" he said. "They said you were a witch, are you really? You don't look like a witch, you look very, that is..." He blushed. "Not like a, you know, crone at all, but absolutely beautiful..." His voice trailed into silence...

I am totally in control of the situation, Magrat told herself. I never thought I would be, but I am thinking absolutely clearly.

And she realized, in an absolutely clear way, that her padding had slipped down to her waist, her head felt as though a family of unhygienic birds had been nesting in it, and her eyeshadow had not so much run as sprinted. Her dress was torn in several places, her legs were scratched, her arms were bruised, and for some reason she felt on top of the world.

"I think you'd better stand back, Verence," she said. "I'm not sure how this is going to work."

There was a sharp intake of breath.

"How did you know my name?"

Magrat sized up the door. The oak was old, centuries old, but she could sense just a little sap under a surface varnished by the years into something that was nearly as tough as stone. Normally what she had in mind would require a day's planning and a bagful of exotic ingredients. At least, so she'd always believed. Now she was prepared to doubt it. If you could conjure demons out of washtubs, you could do anything.

She became aware that the Fool had spoken.

"Oh, I expect I heard it somewhere," she said vaguely.

"I shouldn't think so, I never use it," said the Fool. "I mean, it's not a popular name with the duke. It was me mam, you see. They like to name you after kings, I suppose. My grandad said I had no business having a name like that and he said I shouldn't go around-"

Magrat nodded. She was looking around the dank tunnel with a professional's eye.

It wasn't a promising place. The old oak planks had been down here in the darkness all these years, away from the clock of the seasons...

On the other hand...Granny had said that somehow all trees were one tree, or something like that. Magrat thought she understood it, although she didn't know exactly what it meant. And it was springtime up there. The ghost of life that still lived in the wood must know that. Or if it had forgotten, it must be told.

She put her palms flat on the door again and shut her eyes, tried to think her way out through the stone, out of the castle, and into the thin, black soil of the mountains, into the air, into the sunlight...

The Fool was merely aware that Magrat was standing very still. Then her hair stood out from her head, gently, and there was a smell of leaf mold.

And then, without warning, the hammer that can drive a marshmallow-soft toadstool through six inches of solid pavement or an eel across a thousand miles of hostile ocean to a particular pond in an upland field, struck up through her and into the door.

She stepped back carefully, her mind stunned, fighting against a desperate urge to bury her toes into the rock and put forth leaves. The Fool caught her, and the shock nearly knocked him over.

Magrat sagged against the faintly jingling body, and felt triumphant. She had done it! And with no artificial aids! If only the others could have seen this...

"Don't go near it," she mumbled. "I think I gave it rather...a lot." The Fool was still holding her toastrack body in his arms and was too overcome to utter a word, but she still got a reply.

"I reckon you did," said Granny Weatherwax, stepping out of the shadows. "I never would have thought of it myself."

Magrat peered at her.

"You've been here all the time?"

"Just a few minutes." Granny glanced at the door. "Good technique," she said, "but it's old wood. Been in a fire, too, I reckon. Lot of iron nails and stuff in there. Can't see it working, I'd have tried the stones if it was me, but-"

She was interrupted by a soft "pop."

There was another, and then a whole series of them together, like a shower of meringues.

Behind her, very gently, the door was breaking into leaf.

Granny stared at it for a few seconds, and then met Magrat's terrified gaze.

"Run!" she yelled.

They grabbed the Fool and scurried into the shelter of a convenient b.u.t.tress.

The door gave a warning creak. Several of its planks twisted in vegetable agony and there was a shower of rock splinters when nails were expelled like thorns from a wound, ricocheting off the stonework. The Fool ducked as part of the lock whirred over his head and smashed into the opposite wall.

The lower parts of the planks extended questing white roots, which slithered across the damp stone to the nearest crack and began to auger in. Knotholes bulged, burst and thrust out branches which hit the stones of the doorway and tumbled them aside. And all the time there was a low groan, the sound of the cells of the wood trying to contain the surge of raw life pounding through them.

"If it had been me me," said Granny Weatherwax, as part of the ceiling caved in further along the pa.s.sage, "I wouldn't have done it like that. Not that I'm objecting, mind you," she said, as Magrat opened her mouth. "It's a reasonable job. I think you might have overdone it a bit, that's all."

"Excuse me," said the Fool.

"I can't do rocks," said Magrat.

"Well, no, rocks is an acquired taste-"