Lords and Ladies (Discworld #14)

Lords and Ladies (Discworld #14) Page 42

“Whatever I want to see,” said the Queen. “You know that. And now . . . let us ride to the castle. Tie her hands together. But leave her legs free.”

It rained again, gently, although around the stones it turned to sleet. The water dripped off Magrat's hair and temporarily unraveled the tangles.

Mist coiled out from among the trees where summer and winter fought.

Magrat watched the elven court mount up. She made out the figure of Verence, moving like a puppet. And Granny Weatherwax, tied behind the Queen's horse by a long length of rope.

The horses splashed through the mud. They had silver bells on their harness, dozens of them.

The elves in the castle, the night of ghosts and shadows, all of this was just a hard knot in her memory. But the jingling of the bells was like a nailfile rubbed across her teeth.

The Queen halted the procession a few yards away.

“Ah, the brave girl,” she said. “Come to save her fiance, all alone? How sweet. Someone kill her.”

An elf spurred its horse forward, and raised its sword. Magrat gripped the battleaxe.

Somewhere behind her a bowstring slammed against wood. The elf jerked. So did one behind it. The arrow kept going, curving a little as it passed over one of the fallen Dancers.

Then Shawn Ogg's ragbag army charged out from under the trees, except for Ridcully, who was feverishly trying to rewind his crossbow.

The Queen did not look surprised.

“And there's only about a hundred of them,” she said. “What do you think, Esme Weatherwax? A valiant last stand? It's so beautiful, isn't it? I love the way humans think. They think like songs.”

“You get down off that horse!” Magrat shouted.

The Queen smiled at her.

Shawn felt it. Ridcully felt it. Ponder felt it. The glamour swept over them.

Elves feared iron, but they didn't need to go near it.

You couldn't fight elves, because you were so much more worthless than them. It was right that you should be so worthless. And they were so beautiful. And you weren't. You were always the one metaphorically picked last for any team, even after the fat kid with one permanently blocked runny nostril; you were always the one who wasn't told the rules until you'd lost, and then wasn't told the new rules; you were the one who always knew that everything interesting was happening to other people. All those hot self-consuming feelings were rolled together. You couldn't fight an elf. Someone as useless as you, as stolid as you, as human as you, could never win; the universe wasn't built like that-

Hunters say that, just sometimes, an animal will step out of the bushes and stand there waiting for the spear . . .

Magrat managed to half-raise the axe, and then her hand slumped to her side. She looked down. The correct attitude of a human before an elf was one of shame. She had shouted so coarsely at something as beautiful as an elf. . .

The Queen dismounted and walked over to her.

“Don't touch her,” said Granny.

The Queen nodded.

“You can resist,” she said. “But you see, it doesn't matter. We can take Lancre without a fight. There is nothing you can do about it. Look at the brave little army, standing like sheep. Humans are so enthusiastic.”

Granny looked at her boots.

“You can't rule while I'm alive,” she said.

“There's no trickery here,” said the Queen. “No silly women with bags of sweets.”

“You noticed that, did you?” said Granny. “Gytha meant well, I expect. Daft old biddy. Mind if I sit down?”

“Of course you may,” said the Queen. “You are an old woman now, after all.”

She nodded to the elves. Granny subsided gratefully on to a rock, her hands still tied behind her.

“That's the thing about witchcraft,” she said. “It doesn't exactly keep you young, but you do stay old for longer. Whereas you, of course, do not age,” she added.

“Indeed, we do not.”

“But I suspect you may be capable of being reduced.”

The Queen's smile didn't vanish, but it did freeze, as smiles do when their owner is not certain about what has just been said and isn't sure what to say next.

“You meddled in a play,” said Granny. “I believe you don't realize what you've done. Plays and books . . . you've got to keep an eye on the buggers. They'll turn on you. I mean to see that they do.” She nodded amicably at an elf covered in woad and badly tanned skins. “Ain't that so, Fairy Peaseblossom?”

The Queen's brows knotted.

“But that is not his name,” she said.

Granny Weatherwax gave the Queen a bright smile.

“We shall see,” she said. “There's a lot more humans these days, and lots of them live in cities, and they don't know much about elves one way or another. And they've got iron in their heads. You're too late.”

“No. Humans always need us,” said the Queen.

“They don't. Sometimes they want you. That's different. But all you can give 'em is gold that melts away in the morning.”

“There are those who would say that gold for one night is enough.”

“No.”

“Better than iron, you stupid old hag, you stupid child who has grown older and done nothing and been nothing.”

“No. It's just soft and shiny. Pretty to look at and no damn use at all,” said Granny, her voice still quite calm and level. “But this is a real world, madam. That's what I had to learn. And real people in it. You got no right to 'em. People've got enough to cope with just being people. They don't need you swanking around with your shiny hair and shiny eyes and shiny gold, going sideways through life, always young, always singing, never learning.”

“You didn't always think like this.”

“That was a long time ago. And, my lady, old I may be, and hag I may be, but stupid I ain't. You're no kind of goddess. I ain't against gods and goddesses, in their place. But they've got to be the ones we make ourselves. Then we can take 'em to bits for the parts when we don't need 'em anymore, see? And elves far away in fairyland, well, maybe that's something people need to get 'emselves through the iron times. But I ain't having elves here. You make us want what we can't have and what you give us is worth nothing and what you take is everything and all there is left for us is the cold hillside, and emptiness, and the laughter of the elves.”

She took a deep breath. “So bugger off.”

“Make us, old woman.”

“I thought you'd say that.”

“We don't want the world. Just this little kingdom will do. And we will take it, whether it wants us or not.”

“Over my dead body, madam.”

“If that is a condition.”

The Queen lashed out mentally, like a cat.

Granny Weatherwax winced, and leaned backward for a moment.

“Madam?”

“Yes?” said the Queen.

“There aren't any rules, are there?”

“Rules? What are rules?” said the Queen.

“I thought so,” said Granny. “Gytha Ogg?”

Nanny managed to turn her head.

“Yes, Esme?”

“My box. You know. The one in the dresser. You'll know what to do.”

Granny Weatherwax smiled. The Queen swayed sideways, as if she'd been slapped.

“You have learned,” she said.

“Oh, yes. You know I never entered your circle. I could see where it led. So I had to learn. All my life. The hard way. And the hard way's pretty hard, but not so hard as the easy way. I learned. From the trolls and the dwarfs and from people. Even from pebbles.”

The Queen lowered her voice.

“You will not be killed,” she whispered. “I promise you that. You'll be left alive, to dribble and gibber and soil yourself and wander from door to door for scraps. And they'll say: there goes the mad old woman.”

“They say that now,” said Granny Weatherwax. “They think I can't hear.”

“But inside,” said the Queen, ignoring this, "inside I'll keep just a part of you which looks out through your eyes and knows what you've become.

“And there will be none to help,” said the Queen. She was closer now, her eyes pinpoints of hatred. “No charity for the mad old woman. You'll see what you have to eat to stay alive. And we'll be with you all the time inside your head, just to remind you. You could have been the great one, there was so much you could have done. And inside you'll know it, and you'll plead all the dark night long for the silence of the elves.”

The Queen wasn't expecting it. Granny Weatherwax's hand shot out, pieces of rope falling away from it, and slapped her across the face.

“You threaten me with that?” she said. “Me? Who am becoming old?”

The elf woman's hand rose slowly to the livid mark across her cheek. The elves raised their bows, waiting for an order.

“Go back,” said Granny. “You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you. You're right. I'm older. You've lived longer than me but I'm older than you. And better'n you. And, madam, that ain't hard.”

The Queen struck wildly.

The rebounded force of the mental blow knocked Nanny Ogg to her knees. Granny Weatherwax blinked.

“A good one,” she croaked. “But still I stand, and still I'll not kneel. And still I have strength-”

An elf keeled over. This time the Queen swayed.

“Oh, and I have no time for this,” she said, and snapped her fingers.

There was a pause. The Queen glanced around at her elves.

“They can't fire,” said Granny. “And you wouldn't want that, would you? So simple an end?”

“You can't be holding them! You have not that much power!”

“Do you want to find out how much power I have, madam? Here, on the grass of Lancre?”

She stepped forward. Power crackled in the air. The Queen had to step back.

“My own turf?” said Granny

She slapped the Queen again, almost gently.

“What's this?” said Granny Weatherwax. “Can't you resist me? Where's your power now, madam? Gather your power, madam!”

“You foolish old crone!”

It was felt by every living creature for a mile around. Small things died. Birds spiraled out of the sky Elves and humans alike dropped to the ground, clutching their heads.

And in Granny Weatherwax's garden the bees rose out of their hives.

They emerged like steam, colliding with one another in their rush to get airborne. The deep gunship hum of the drones underpinned the frantic roars of the workers.

But, louder than the drones, was the piccolo piping of the queens.

The swarms spiraled up over the clearing, circled once, and then broke and headed away. Others joined them, out of backyard steps and hollow trees, blackening the sky.

After a while, order became apparent in the great circling cloud. The drones flew on the wings, throbbing like bombers. The workers were a cone made up of thousands of tiny bodies. And at its tip, a hundred queens flew.

The fields lay silent after the arrow-shaped swarm of swarms had gone.

Flowers stood alone and uncourted. Nectar flowed undrunk. Blossoms were left to go fertilize themselves.