In her own cottage a few miles away the witch Agnes Nitt was in two minds about her new pointy hat. Agnes was generally in two minds about anything.
As she tucked in her hair and observed herself critically in the mirror she sang a song. She sang in harmony. Not, of course, with her reflection in the glass, because
that
kind of heroine will sooner or later end up singing a duet with Mr. Bluebird and other forest creatures and then there’s nothing for it but a flamethrower.
She simply sang in harmony with herself. Unless she concentrated it was happening more and more these days. Perdita had rather a reedy voice, but she insisted on joining in.
Those who are inclined to casual cruelty say that inside a fat girl is a thin girl and a lot of chocolate. Agnes’s thin girl was Perdita.
She wasn’t sure how she’d acquired the invisible passenger. Her mother had told her that when she was small she’d been in the habit of blaming accidents and mysteries, such as the disappearance of a bowl of cream or the breaking of a prized jug, on “the other little girl.”
Only now did she realize that indulging this sort of thing wasn’t a good idea when, despite yourself, you’ve got a bit of natural witchcraft in your blood. The imaginary friend had simply grown up and had never gone away and had turned out to be a pain.
Agnes disliked Perdita, who was vain, selfish and vicious, and Perdita hated going around inside Agnes, whom she regarded as a fat, pathetic, weak-willed blob that people would walk all over were she not so steep.
Agnes told herself she’d simply invented the name Perdita as some convenient label for all those thoughts and desires she knew she shouldn’t have, as a name for that troublesome little commentator that lives on everyone’s shoulder and sneers. But sometimes she thought Perdita had created Agnes for something to pummel.
Agnes tended to obey rules. Perdita didn’t. Perdita thought that not obeying rules was somehow
cool
. Agnes though that rules like “Don’t fall into this huge pit of spikes” were there for a purpose. Perdita thought, to take an example at random, that things like table manners were a stupid and repressive idea. Agnes, on the other hand, was against being hit by flying bits of other people’s cabbage.
Perdita thought a witch’s hat was a powerful symbol of authority. Agnes thought that a dumpy girl should not wear a tall hat, especially with black. It made her look as though someone had dropped a licorice-flavored ice-cream cone.
The trouble was that although Agnes was right, so was Perdita. The pointy hat carried a lot of weight in the Ramtops. People talked to the hat, not to the person wearing it. When people were in serious trouble they went to a witch.
*
You had to wear black, too.
Perdita
liked black. Perdita thought black was cool. Agnes thought that black wasn’t a good color for the circumferentially challenged…oh, and that “cool” was a dumb word only used by people whose brains wouldn’t fill a spoon.
Magrat Garlick hadn’t worn black and had probably never in her life said “cool” except when commenting on the temperature.
Agnes stopped examining her pointiness in the mirror and looked around the cottage that had been Magrat’s and was now hers, and sighed. Her gaze took in the expensive, gold-edged card on the mantelpiece.
Well, Magrat had certainly retired now, and had gone off to be Queen and if there was ever any doubt about that then there could be no doubt today. Agnes was puzzled at the way Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax still talked about her, though. They were proud (more or less) that she’d married the King, and agreed that it was the right kind of life for her, but while they never actually articulated the thought it hung in the air over their heads in flashing mental colors:
Magrat had settled for second prize.
Agnes had almost burst out laughing when she first realized this, but you wouldn’t be able to argue with them. They wouldn’t even see that there
could
be an argument.
Granny Weatherwax lived in a cottage with a thatch so old there was quite a sprightly young tree growing in it, and got up and went to bed alone, and washed in the rain barrel. And Nanny Ogg was the most
local
person Agnes had ever met. She’d gone off to foreign parts, yes, but she always carried Lancre with her, like a sort of invisible hat. But they took it for granted that they were top of every tree, and the rest of the world was there for them to tinker with.
Perdita thought that being a queen was just about the best thing you could be.
Agnes though the best thing you could be was far away from Lancre, and good second best would be to be alone in your own head.
She adjusted the hat as best she could and left the cottage.
Witches never locked their doors. They never needed to.
As she stepped out into the moonlight, two magpies landed on the thatch.
The current activities of the witch Granny Weatherwax would have puzzled a hidden observer.
She peered at the flagstones just inside her back door and lifted the old rag rug in front of it with her toe.
Then she walked to the front door, which was never used, and did the same thing there. She also examined the cracks around the edges of the doors.
She went outside. There had been a sharp frost during the night, a spiteful little trick by the dying winter, and the drifts of leaves that still hung on in the shadows were crisp. In the harsh air she poked around in the flowerpots and bushes by the front door.
Then she went back inside.
She had a clock. Lancrastrians liked clocks, although they didn’t bother much about actual
time
in any length much shorter than an hour. If you needed to boil an egg, you sang fifteen verses of “Where Has All the Custard Gone?” under your breath. But the tick was a comfort on long evenings.
Finally she sat down in her rocking chair and glared at the doorway.
Owls were hooting in the forest when someone came running up the path and hammered on the door.
Anyone who hadn’t heard about Granny’s iron self-control, which you could bend a horseshoe round, might just have thought they heard her give a tiny sigh of relief.
“Well, it’s about time—” she began.
The excitement up at the castle was just a distant hum down here in the mews. The hawks and falcons sat hunched on their perches, lost in some inner world of stoop and updraft. There was the occasional clink of a chain or flutter of a wing.
Hodgesaargh the falconer was getting ready in the tiny room next door when he felt the change in the air. He stepped out into a silent mews. The birds were all awake, alert,
expectant
. Even King Henry the eagle, who Hodgesaargh would only go near at the moment when he was wearing full plate armor, was peering around.
You got something like this when there was a rat in the place, but Hodgesaargh couldn’t see one. Perhaps it had gone.
For tonight’s event he’d selected William the buzzard, who could be depended upon. All Hodgesaargh’s birds could be depended upon, but more often than not they could be depended upon to viciously attack him on sight. William, however, thought that she was a chicken, and she was usually safe in company.
But even William was paying a lot of attention to the world, which didn’t often happen unless she’d seen some corn.
Odd, thought Hodgesaargh. And that was all.
The birds went on staring up, as though the roof simply was not there.
Granny Weatherwax lowered her gaze to a red, round and worried face.
“Here, you’re not—” She pulled herself together. “You’re the Wattley boy from over in Slice, aren’t you!”
“Y’g’t…” The boy leaned against the doorjamb and fought for breath. “You g’t—”
“Just take deep breaths. You want a drink of water?”
“You g’t t’—”
“Yes, yes, all right. Just
breathe
…”
The boy gulped air a few times.
“You got to come to Mrs. Ivy and her baby missus!”
The words came out in one quick stream.
Granny grabbed her hat from its peg by the door and pulled her broomstick out of its lodging in the thatch.
“I thought old Mrs. Patternoster was seeing to her,” she said, ramming her hatpins into place with the urgency of a warrior preparing for sudden battle.
“She says it’s all gone wrong, miss!”
Granny was already running down her garden path.
There was a small drop on the other side of the clearing, with a twenty-foot fall to a bend in the track. The broom hadn’t fired by the time she reached it but she ran on, swinging a leg over the bristles as it plunged.
The magic caught halfway down and her boots dragged across the dead bracken as the broom soared up into the night.
The road wound over the mountains like a dropped ribbon. Up here there was always the sound of the wind.
The highwayman’s horse was a big black stallion. It was also quite possibly the only horse with a ladder strapped behind the saddle.
This was because the highwayman’s name was Casanunda, and he was a dwarf. Most people thought of dwarfs as reserved, cautious, law-abiding and very reticent on matters of the heart and other vaguely connected organs, and this was indeed true of almost all dwarfs. But genetics rolls strange dice on the green baize of life and somehow the dwarfs had produced Casanunda, who preferred fun to money and devoted to women all the passion that other dwarfs reserved for gold.
He also regarded laws as useful things and he obeyed them when it was convenient. Casanunda despised highwaymanning, but it got you out in the fresh air of the countryside which was very good for you, especially when the nearby towns were lousy with husbands carrying a grudge and a big stick.
The trouble was that no one on the road took him seriously. He could stop the coaches all right, but people tended to say, “What? I say, it’s a lowwayman. What’s up? A bit short, are you? Hur, hur, hur,” and he would be forced to shoot them in the knee.
He blew on his hands to warm them, and looked up at the sound of an approaching coach.
He was about to ride out of his meager hiding place in the thicket when he saw the
other
highwayman trot out from the wood opposite.
The coach came to a halt. Casanunda couldn’t hear what transpired, but the highwayman rode around to one of the doors and leaned down to speak to the occupants…
…and a hand reached out and plucked him off his horse and into the coach.
It rocked on its springs for a while, and then the door burst open and the highwayman tumbled out and lay still on the road.
The coach moved on…
Casanunda waited a little while and then rode down to the body. His horse stood patiently while he untied the ladder and dismounted.
He could tell the highwayman was stone dead. Living people are expected to have some blood in them.
The coach stopped at the top of a rise a few miles farther on, before the road began the long winding fall toward Lancre and the plains.
The four passengers got out and walked to the start of the drop.
The clouds were rolling in behind them but here the air was frosty clear, and the view stretched all the way to the Rim under the moonlight. Down below, scooped out of the mountains, was the little kingdom.
“Gateway to the world,” said the Count de Magpyr.
“And entirely undefended,” said his son.
“On the contrary. Possessed of some extremely effective de-fenses,” said the Count. He smiled in the night. “At least…until now…”
“Witches should be on our side,” said the Countess.
“She will be soon, at any rate,” said the Count. “A most…interesting woman. An interesting family. Uncle used to talk about her grandmother. The Weatherwax women have always had one foot in shadow. It’s in the blood. And most of their power comes from denying it. However,” and his teeth shone as he grinned in the dark, “she will soon find out on which side her bread is buttered.”
“Or her gingerbread is gilded,” said the Countess.
“Ah, yes. How nicely put. That’s the penalty for being a Weatherwax woman, of course. When they get older they start to hear the clang of the big oven door.”
“I’ve heard she’s pretty tough, though,” said the Count’s son. “A very sharp mind.”
“Let’s kill her!” said the Count’s daughter.
“Really, Lacci dear, you can’t kill everything.”
“I don’t see why not.”
“No. I rather like the idea of her being…useful. And she sees everything in black and white. That’s always a trap for the powerful. Oh yes. A mind like that is so easily…led. With a little help.”
There was a whir of wings under the moonlight and something bi-colored landed on the Count’s shoulder.
“And this…” said the Count, stroking the magpie and then letting it go. He pulled a square of white card from an inner pocket of his jacket. Its edge gleamed briefly. “Can you believe it? Has this sort of thing ever happened before? A new world order indeed…”
“Do you have a handkerchief, sir?” said the Countess. “Give it to me, please. You have a few specks…”
She dabbed at his chin and pushed the bloodstained handkerchief back into his pocket.
“There,” she said.
“There are other witches,” said the son, like someone turning over a mouthful that was proving rather tough to chew.
“Oh yes. I hope we will meet them. They could be entertaining.”
The coach went on.
Back in the mountains, the man who had tried to rob the coach managed to get to his feet, which seemed for a moment to be caught in something. He rubbed his neck irritably and looked around for his horse, which he found standing behind some rocks a little way away.
When he tried to lay a hand on the bridle it passed straight through the leather and the horse’s neck, like smoke. The creature reared up and galloped madly away.
It was not, the highwayman thought muzzily, going to be a good night. Well, he’d be damned if he’d lose a horse as well as some wages. Who the hell were those people? He couldn’t quite remember what had happened in the carriage, but it hadn’t been enjoyable.
The highwayman was of that simple class of men who, having been hit by someone bigger than them, finds someone smaller than them for the purposes of retaliation. Someone else was going to suffer tonight, he vowed. He’d get another horse, at least.
And, on cue, he heard the sound of hoofbeats on the wind. He drew his sword and stepped out into the road.
“Stand and deliver!”
The approaching horse halted obediently a few feet away. This was not going to be such a bad night after all, he thought. It really was a magnificent creature, more of a warhorse than an everyday hack. It was so pale that it shone in the light of the occasional star and, by the look of it, there was silver on its harness.
The rider was heavily wrapped up against the cold.
“Your money or your life!” said the highwayman.
I’m sorry?
“Your money,” said the highwayman, “or your life. Which part of this don’t you understand?”
Oh, I see. Well, I have a small amount of money.
A couple of coins landed on the frosty road. The highwayman scrabbled for them but could not pick them up, a fact that only added to his annoyance.
“It’s your life, then!”
The mounted figure shook its head. I think not. I really do.
It pulled a long curved stick out of a holster. The highwayman had assumed it was a lance, but now a curved blade sprang out and glittered blue along its edges.
I must say that you have an amazing persistence of vitality, said the horseman. It was no so much a voice, more an echo inside the head. If not a presence of mind.
“Who are you?”
I’m Death, said Death. And I really am not here to take your money. Which part of this don’t you understand?