Terry David John Pratchett. Equal Rites
сторінка №3
...t the old woman waved the breadknife at her."First things first. Stand up. Face me."
Esk did so, puzzled. Granny stuck the knife in the breadboard and shook
her head.
"Drat it," she said to the world at large. "I don't know what way they
have of it, there should be some kind of ceremony if I know wizards, they
always have to complicate things . . . ."
"What do you mean?"
Granny seemed to ignore her, but crossed to the dark corner by the
dresser.
"Probably you should have one foot in a bucket of cold porridge and one
glove on and all that kind of stuff," she went on. "I didn't want to do
this, but They're forcing my hand."
"What are you talking about, Granny?"
The old witch yanked the staff out of its shadow and waved it vaguely
at Esk.
"Here. It's yours. Take it. I just hope this is the right thing to do."
In fact the presentation of a staff to an apprentice wizard is usually
a very impressive ceremony, especially if the staff has been inherited from
an elder wage; by ancient lore there is a long and frightening ordeal
involving masks and hoods and swords and fearful oaths about people's
tongues being cut out and their entrails torn by wild birds and their ashes
scattered to the eight winds and so on. After some hours of this sort of
thing the apprentice can be admitted to the brotherhood of the Wise and
Enlightened.
There is also a long speech. By sheer coincidence Granny got the
essence of it in a nutshell.
Esk took the staff and peered at it.
"It's very nice," she said uncertainly. "The carvings are pretty.
What's it for?"
"Sit down now. And listen properly for once. On the day you were born
?"
"? and that's the shape of it."
Esk looked hard at the staff, then at Granny.
"I've got to be a wizard?"
"Yes. No. I don't know."
"That isn't really an answer, Granny," Esk said reproachfully. "Am I or
aren't I?"
"Women can't be wizards," said Granny bluntly. "It's agin nature. You
might as well have a female blacksmith."
"Actually I've watched dad at work and I don't see why-"
"Look," said Granny hurriedly, "you can't have a female wizard any more
than you can have a male witch, because-"
"I've heard of male witches," said Esk meekly.
"Warlocks!"
"I think so."
"I mean there's no male witches, only silly men," said Granny hotly.
"If men were witches, they'd be wizards. It's all down to-"she tapped her
head "-headology. How your mind works. Men's minds work different from ours,
see. Their magic's all numbers and angles and edges and what the stars are
doing, as if that really mattered. It's all power. It's all-" Granny paused,
and dredged up her favourite word to describe all she despised in wizardry,
"-jommetry."
"That's all right, then," said Esk, relieved. "I'll stay here and learn
witchery."
"Ali," said Granny gloomily, "that's all very well for you to say. I
don't think it will be as easy as that."
"But you said that men can be wizards and women can be witches and it
can't be the other way around."
"That's right."
"Well, then," said Esk triumphantly, "it's all solved, isn't it? I
can't help but be a witch."
Granny pointed to the staff. Esk shrugged.
"It's just an old stick."
Granny shook her head. Esk blinked.
"No?"
"No."
"And I can't be a witch?"
"I don't know what you can be. Hold the staff."
"What?"
"Hold the staff. Now, I've laid the fire in the grate. Light it."
"The tinderbox is-" Esk began.
"You once told me there were better ways of lighting fires. Show me."
Granny stood up. In the dimness of the kitchen she seemed to grow until
she filled it with shifting, ragged shadows, shot with menace. Her eyes
glared down at Esk.
"Show me," she commanded, and her voice had ice in it.
"But-"said Esk desperately, clutching the heavy staff to her and
knocking her stool over in her haste to back away.
"Show me."
With a scream Esk spun around. Fire flared from her fingertips and
arced across the room. The kindling exploded with a force that hurled the
furniture around the room and a ball of fierce green light spluttered on the
hearth.
Changing patterns sped across it as it spun sizzling on the stones,
which cracked and then flowed. The iron fireback resisted bravely for a few
seconds before melting like wax; it made a final appearance as a red smear
across the fireball and then vanished. A moment later the kettle went the
same way.
Just when it seemed that the chimney would follow them the ancient
hearthstone gave up, and with a final splutter the fireball sank from view.
The occasional crackle or puff of steam signaled its passage through
the earth. Apart from that there was silence, the loud hissing silence that
comes after an ear-splattering noise, and after the actinic glare the room
seemed pitch dark.
Eventually Granny crawled out from behind the table and crept as
closely as she dared to the hole, which was still surrounded by a crust of
lava. She jerked back as another cloud of superheated steam mushroomed up.
"They say there's dwarf mines under the Ramtops," she said
inconsequentially. "My, but them little buggers is in for a surprise."
She prodded the little puddle of cooling iron where the kettle had
been, and added, "Shame about the fireback. It had owls on it, you know."
She patted her singed hair gingerly with a shaking hand. "I think this
calls for a nice cup of, a nice cup of cold water."
Esk sat looking in wonder at her hand.
"That was real magic." she said at last, "And I did it."
"One type of real magic," corrected Granny. "Don't forget that. And you
don't want to do that all the time, neither. If it's in you, you've got to
learn to control it."
"Can you teach me?"
"Me? No!"
"How can I learn if no one will teach me?"
"You've got to go where they can. Wizard school."
"But you said-"
Granny paused in the act of filling a jug from the water bucket.
"Yes, yes," she snapped, "Never mind what I said, or common sense or
anything. Sometimes you just have to go the way things take you, and I
reckon you're going to wizard school one way or the other."
Esk considered this.
"You mean it's my destiny?" she said at last.
Granny shrugged. "Something like that. Probably. Who knows? "
That night, long after Esk had been sent to bed, Granny put on her hat,
lit a fresh candle, cleared the table, and pulled a small wooden box from
its secret hiding place in the dresser. It contained a bottle of ink, an
elderly quill pen, and a few sheets of paper.
Granny was not entirely happy when faced with the world of letters. Her
eyes protruded, her tongue stuck out, small beads of sweat formed on her
forehead, but the pen scratched its way across the page to the accompaniment
of the occasional quiet "drat" or "bugger the thing."
The letter read as follows, although this version lacks the candlewax,
blots, crossings-out and damp patches of the original.
To ther Hed blizzard, Unsene Universety, Greatings, I hop you ar well,
I am sending to you won Escarrina Smith, shee bath thee maekings of
wizzardery but whot may be ferther dun wyth hyr I knowe not slice is a gode
worker and clene about hyr person allso skilled in diuerse arts of thee
howse, I will send Monies wyth hyr May you liv longe and ende youre days in
pese, And oblije, Esmerelder Weatherwaxe (Mss) Wytch.
Granny held it up to the candlelight and considered it critically. It
was a good letter. She had got "diuerse" out of the Almanack, which she read
every night. It was always predicting "diuerse plagues" and "diuerse
ill-fortune". Granny wasn't entirely sure what it meant, but it was a damn
good word all the same.
Next morning Granny took some pains over her dress, selecting a black
dress with a frog and bat motif, a big velvet cloak, or at least a cloak
made of the sort of stuff velvet looks like after thirty years of heavy
wear, and the pointed hat of office which was crucified with hatpins.
Their first call was to the stonemason, to order a replacement
hearthstone. Then they called on the smith.
It was a long and stormy meeting. Esk wandered out into the orchard and
climbed up to her old place in the apple tree while from the house came her
father's shouts, her mother's wails and long silent pauses which meant that
Granny Weatherwax was speaking softly in what Esk thought of as her "just
so" voice. The old woman had a flat, measured way of speaking sometimes. It
was the kind of voice the Creator had probably used. Whether there was magic
in it, or just headology, it ruled out any possibility of argument. It made
it clear that whatever it was talking about was exactly how things should
be.
The breeze shook the tree gently. Esk sat on a branch idly swinging her
legs.
She thought about wizards. They didn't often come to Bad Ass, but there
were a fair number of stories about them. They were wise, she recalled, and
usually very old and they did powerful, complex and mysterious magics and
almost all of them had beards. They were also, without exception, men.
She was on firmer ground with witches, because she'd trailed off with
Granny to visit a couple of villages' witches further along the hills, and
anyway witches figured largely in Ramtop folklore. Witches were cunning, she
recalled, and usually very old, or at least they tried to look old, and they
did slightly suspicious, homely and organic magics and some of them had
beards. They were also, without exception, women.
There was some fundamental problem in all that which she couldn't quite
resolve. Why wouldn't?.
Cern and Gulta hurtled down the path and came to a pushing, shoving
halt under the tree. They peered up at their sister with a mixture of
fascination and scorn. Witches and wizards were objects of awe, but sisters
weren't. Somehow, knowing your own sister was learning to be a witch sort of
devalued the whole profession.
"You can't really do spells," said Cern. "Can you?"
"Course you can't," said Gulta. "What's this stick?"
Esk had left the staff leaning against the tree. Cern prodded it
cautiously.
"I don't want you to touch it," said Esk hurriedly. "Please. It's
mine."
Cern normally had all the sensitivity of a ballbearing, but his hand
stopped in mid-prod, much to his surprise.
"I didn't want to anyway," he muttered to hide his confusion. "It's
only an old stick."
"Is it true you can do spells?" asked Gulta. "We heard Granny say you
could."
"We listened at the door," added Cern.
"You said I couldn't," said Esk, airily.
"Well, can you or can't you?" said Gulta, his face reddening.
"Perhaps."
"You can't!"
Esk looked down at his face. She loved her brothers, when she reminded
herself to, in a dutiful sort of way, although she generally remembered them
as a collection of loud noises in trousers. But there was something awfully
pig-like and unpleasant about the way Gulta was staring up at her, as though
she had personally insulted him.
She felt her body start to tingle, and the world suddenly seemed very
sharp and clear.
"I can," she said.
Gulta looked from her to the staff, and his eyes narrowed. He kicked it
viciously.
"Old stick!"
He looked, she thought, exactly like a small angry pig.
Cern's screams brought Granny and his parents first to the back door
and then running down the cinder path.
Esk was perched in the fork of the apple tree, an expression of dreamy
contemplation on her face. Cern was hiding behind the tree, his face a mere
rim around a red, tonsil-vibrating bawl.
Gulta was sitting rather bewildered in a pile of clothing that no
longer fitted him, wrinkling his snout.
Granny strode up to the tree until her hooked nose was level with
Esk's.
"Turning people into pigs is not allowed," she hissed. "Even brothers."
"I didn't do it, it just happened. Anyway, you must admit it's a better
shape for him," said Esk evenly.
"What's going on?" said Smith. "Where's Gulta? What's this pig doing
here?"
"This pig", said Granny Weatherwax, "is your son."
There was a sigh from Esk's mother as she collapsed gently backwards,
but Smith was slightly less unprepared. He looked sharply from Gulta, who
had managed to untangle himself from his clothing and was now rooting
enthusiastically among the early windfalls, to his only daughter.
"She did this?"
"Yes. Or it was done through her," said Granny, looking suspiciously at
the staff.
"Oh." Smith looked at his fifth son. He had to admit that the shape
suited him. He reached out without looking and fetched the screaming Cern a
thump on the back of his head.
"Can you turn him back again?" he asked. Granny spun around and glared
the question at Esk, who shrugged.
"He didn't believe I could do magic," she said calmly.
"Yes, well, I think you've made the point," said Granny. "And now you
will turn him back, madam. This instant. Do you hear?"
"Don't want to. He was rude."
"I see."
Esk gazed down defiantly. Granny glared up sternly. Their wills clanged
like cymbals and the air between them thickened. But Granny had spent a
lifetime bending recalcitrant creatures to her bidding and, while Esk was a
surprisingly strong opponent, it was obvious that she would give in before
the end of the paragraph.
"Oh, all right," she whined. "I don't know why anyone would bother
turning him into a pig when he was doing such a good job of it all by
himself."
She didn't know where the magic had come from, but she mentally faced
that way and made a suggestion. Gulta reappeared, naked, with an apple in
his mouth.
"Awts aughtning?" he said.
Granny spun around on Smith.
"Now will you believe me?" she snapped. "Do you really think she's
supposed to settle down here and forget all about magic? Can you imagine her
poor husband if she marries?"
"But you always said it was impossible for women to be wizards," said
Smith. He was actually rather impressed. Granny Weatherwax had never been
known to turn anyone into anything.
"Never mind that now," said Granny, calming down a bit. "She needs
training. She needs to know how to control. For pity's sake put some clothes
on that child."
"Gulta, get dressed and stop grizzling," said his father, and turned
back to Granny.
"You said there was some sort of teaching place?" he hazarded.
"The Unseen University, yes. It's for training wizards."
"And you know where it is?"
"Yes," lied Granny, whose grasp of geography was slightly worse than
her knowledge of sub-atomic physics.
Smith looked from her to his daughter, who was sulking.
"And they'll make a wizard of her?" he said.
Granny sighed.
"I don't know what they'll make of her," she said.
She sealed it with candle-wax and put it on the dresser. She could
leave it for the carrier to take when she went into the village tomorrow, to
see about a new kettle.
And so it was that, a week later, Granny locked the cottage door and
hung the key on its nail in the privy. The goats had been sent to stay with
a sister witch further along the hills, who had also promised to keep an Eye
on the cottage. Bad Ass would just have to manage without a witch for a
while.
Granny was vaguely aware that you didn't find the Unseen University
unless it wanted you to, and the only place to start looking was the town of
Ohulan Cutash, a sprawl of a hundred or so houses about fifteen miles away.
It was where you went to once or twice a year if you were a really
cosmopolitan Bad Assian: Granny had only been once before in her entire life
and hadn't approved of it at all. It had smelt all wrong, she'd got lost,
and she distrusted city folk with their flashy ways.
They got a lift on the cart that came out periodically with metal for
the smithy. It was gritty, but better than walking, especially since Granny
had packed their few possessions in a large sack. She sat on it for safety.
Esk sat cradling the staff and watching the woods go by. When they were
several miles outside the village she said, "I thought you told me plants
were different in forn parts."
"So they are."
"These trees look just the same."
Granny regarded them disdainfully.
"Nothing like as good," she said.
In fact she was already feeling slightly panicky. Her promise to
accompany Esk to Unseen University had been made without thinking, and
Granny, who picked up what little she knew of the rest of the Disc from
rumour and the pages of her Almanack, was convinced that they were heading
into earthquakes, tidal waves, plagues and massacres, many of them diverse
or even worse. But she was determined to see it through. A witch relied too
much on words ever to go back on them.
She was wearing serviceable black, and concealed about her person were
a number of hatpins and a breadknife. She had hidden their small store of
money, grudgingly advanced by Smith, in the mysterious strata of her
underwear. Her skirt pockets jingled with lucky charms, and a freshly-forged
horseshoe, always a potent preventative in time of trouble, weighed down her
handbag. She felt about as ready as she ever would be to face the world.
The track wound down between the mountains. For once the sky was clear,
the high Ramtops standing out crisp and white like the brides of the sky
(with their trousseaux stuffed with thunderstorms) and the many little
streams that bordered or crossed the path flowed sluggishly through strands
of meadowsweet and go-fasterroot.
By lunchtime they reached the suburb of Ohulan (it was too small to
have more than one, which was just an inn and a handful of cottages
belonging to people who couldn't stand the pressures of urban life) and a
few minutes later the cart deposited them in the town's main, indeed its
only, square.
It turned out to be market day.
Granny Weatherwax stood uncertainly on the cobbles, holding tightly to
Esk's shoulder as the crowd swirled around them. She had heard that lewd
things could happen to country women who were freshly arrived in big cities,
and she gripped her handbag until her knuckles whitened. If any male
stranger had happened to so much as nod at her it would have gone very hard
indeed for him.
Esk's eyes were sparkling. The square was a jigsaw of noise and colour
and smell. On one side of it were the temples of the Disc's more demanding
deities, and weird perfumes drifted out to join with the reeks of commerce
in a complex ragrug of fragrances. There were stalls filled with enticing
curiosities that she itched to investigate.
Granny let the both of them drift with the crowd. The stalls were
puzzling her as well. She peered among them, although never for one minute
relaxing her vigilance against pickpockets, earthquakes and traffickers in
the erotic, until she spied something vaguely familiar.
There was a small covered stall, black draped and musty, that had been
wedged into a narrow space between two houses. Inconspicuous though it was,
it nevertheless seemed to be doing a very busy trade. Its customers were
mainly women, of all ages, although she did notice a few men. They all had
one thing in common, though. No one approached it directly. They all sort of
strolled almost past it, then suddenly ducked under its shady canopy. A
moment later and they would be back again, hand just darting away from bag
or pocket, competing for the world's Most Nonchalant Walk title so
effectively that a watcher might actually doubt what he or she had just
seen.
It was quite amazing that a stall so many people didn't know was there
should be quite so popular.
"What's in there?" said Esk. "What's everyone buying?"
"Medicines," said Granny firmly.
"There must be a lot of very sick people in towns," said Esk gravely.
Inside, the stall was a mass of velvet shadows and the herbal scent was
thick enough to bottle. Granny poked a few bundles of dry leaves with an
expert finger. Esk pulled away from her and tried to read the scrawled
labels on the bottles in front of her. She was expert at most of Granny's
preparations, but she didn't recognise anything here. The names were quite
amusing, like Tiger Oil, Maiden's Prayer and Husband's Helper, and one or
two of the stoppers smelled like Granny's scullery after she had done some
of her secret distillations.
A shape moved in the stall's dim recesses and a brown wrinkled hand
slid lightly on to hers.
"Can I assist you, missy?" said a cracked voice, in tones of syrup of
figs, "Is it your fortune you want telling, or is it your future you want
changing, maybe?"
"She's with me," snapped Granny, spinning around, "and your eyes are
betraying you, Hilta Goatfounder, if you can't tell her age."
The shape in front of Esk bent forward.
"Esme Weatherwax?" it asked.
"The very same," said Granny. "Still selling thunder drops and penny
wishes, Hilta? How goes it?"
"All the better for seeing you," said the shape. "What brings you down
from the mountains, Esme? And this child-your assistant, perhaps?"
"What's it you're selling, please?" asked Esk. The shape laughed.
"Oh, things to stop things that shouldn't be and help things that
should, love," it said. "Let me just close up, my dears, and I will be right
with you."
The shape bustled past Esk in a nasal kaleidoscope of fragrances and
buttoned up the curtains at the front of the stall. Then the drapes at the
back were thrown up, letting in the afternoon sunlight.
"Can't stand the dark and fug myself," said Hilta Goatfounder, "but the
customers expect it. You know how it is."
"Yes," Esk nodded sagely. "Headology."
Hilts, a small fat woman wearing an enormous hat with fruit on it,
glanced from her to Granny and grinned.
"That's the way of it," she agreed. "Will you take some tea?"
They sat on bales of unknown herbs in the private corner made by the
stall between the angled walls of the houses, and drank something fragrant
and green out of surprisingly delicate cups. Unlike Granny, who dressed like
a very respectable raven, Hilts Goatfounder was all lace and shawls and
colours and earrings and so many bangles that a mere movement of her arms
sounded like a percussion section falling off a cliff. But Esk could see the
likeness.
It was hard to describe. You couldn't imagine them curtseying to
anyone.
"So," said Granny, "how goes the life?"
The other witch shrugged, causing the drummers to lose their grip
again, just when they had nearly climbed back up.
"Like the hurried lover, it comes and goe-" she began, and stopped at
Granny's meaningful glance at Esk.
"Not bad, not bad," she amended hurriedly. "The council have tried to
run me out once or twice, you know, but they all have wives and somehow it
never quite happens. They say I'm not the right sort, but I say there'd be
many a family in this town a good deal bigger and poorer if it wasn't for
Madame Goatfounder's Pennyroyal Preventives. I know who comes into my shop,
I do. I remember who buys buckeroo drops and ShoNuff Ointment, I do. Life
isn't bad. And how is it up in your village with the funny name?"
"Bad Ass," said Esk helpfully. She picked a small clay pot off the
counter and sniffed at its contents.
"It is well enough," conceded Granny. "The handmaidens of nature are
ever in demand."
Esk sniffed again at the powder, which seemed to be pennyroyal with a
base she couldn't quite identify, and carefully replaced the lid. While the
two women exchanged gossip in a kind of feminine code, full of eye contact
and unspoken adjectives, she examined the other exotic potions on display.
Or rather, not on display. In some strange way they appeared to be artfully
half-hidden, as if Hilts wasn't entirely keen to sell.
"I don't recognise any of these," she said, half to herself. "What do
they give to people?"
"Freedom," said Hilts, who had good hearing. She turned back to Granny.
"How much have you taught her?"
"Not that much," said Granny. "There's power there, but what kind I'm
not sure. Wizard power, it might be."
Hilts turned around very slowly and looked Esk up and down.
"Ah," she said, "That explains the staff. I wondered what the bees were
talking about. Well, well. Give me your hand, child."
Esk held out her hand. Hilta's fingers were so heavy with rings it was
like dipping into a sack of walnuts.
Granny sat upright, radiating disapproval, as Hilts began to inspect
Esk's palm.
"I really don't think that is necessary," she said sternly. "Not
between us."
"You do it, Granny," said Esk, "in the village. I've seen you. And
teacups. And cards."
Granny shifted uneasily. "Yes, well," she said. "It's all according.
You just hold their hand and people do their own fortune-telling. But
there's no need to go around believing it, we'd all be in trouble if we went
around believing everything."
"The Powers That Be have many strange qualities, and puzzling and
varied are the ways in which they make their desires known in this circle of
firelight we call the physical world," said Hilts solemnly. She winked at
Esk.
"Well, really," snapped Granny.
"No, straight up," said Hilts. "It's true."
"Hmph."
"I see you going upon a long journey," said Hilts.
"Will I meet a tall dark stranger?" said Esk, examining her palm.
"Granny always says that to women, she says-"
"No," said Hilts, while Granny snorted. "But it will be a very strange
journey. You'll go a long way while staying in the same place. And the
direction will be a strange one. It will be an exploration."
"You can tell all that from my hand?"
"Well, mainly I'm just guessing," said Hilts, sitting back and reaching
for the teapot (the lead drummer, who had climbed halfway back, fell on to
the toiling cymbalists). She looked carefully at Esk and added, "A female
wizard, eh?"
"Granny is taking me to Unseen University," said Esk.
Hilta raised her eyebrows. "Do you know where it is?"
Granny frowned. "Not in so many words," she admitted. "I was hoping you
could give me more explicit directions, you being more familiar with bricks
and things."
"They say it has many doors, but the ones in this world are in the city
of Ankh-Morpork," said Hilta. Granny looked blank. "On the Circle Sea,"
Hilta added. Granny's look of polite enquiry persisted. "Five hundred miles
away," said Hilta.
"Oh," said Granny.
She stood up and brushed an imaginary speck of dust off her dress.
"We'd better be going, then," she added.
Hilta laughed. Esk quite liked the sound. Granny never laughed, she
merely let the corners of her mouth turn up, but Hilta laughed like someone
who had thought hard about Life and had seen the joke.
"Start tomorrow, anyway," she said. "I've got room at home, you can
stay with me, and tomorrow you'll have the light."
"We wouldn't want to presume," said Granny.
"Nonsense. Why not have a look around while I pack up the stall?"
Ohulan was the market town for a wide sprawling countryside and the
market day didn't end at sunset. Instead, torches flared at every booth and
stall and light blared forth from the open doorways of the inns. Even the
temples put out coloured lamps to attract nocturnal worshippers.
Hilta moved through the crowd like a slim snake through dry grass, her
entire stall and stock reduced to a surprisingly small bundle on her back,
and her jewellery rattling like a sackful of flamenco dancers. Granny
stumped along behind her, her feet aching from the unaccustomed prodding of
the cobbles.
And Esk got lost.
It took some effort, but she managed it. It involved ducking between
two stalls and then scurrying down a side alley. Granny had warned her at
length about the unspeakable things that lurked in cities, which showed that
the old woman was lacking in a complete understanding of headology, since
Esk was- now determined to see one or two of them for herself.
In fact, since Ohulan was quite barbaric and uncivilised the only
things that went on after dark to any degree were a little thievery, some
amateurish trading in the courts of lust, and drinking until you fell over
or started singing or both.
According to the standard poetic instructions one should move through a
fair like the white swan at evening moves o'er the bay, but because of
certain practical difficulties Esk settled for moving through the crowds
like a small dodgem car, bumping from body to body with the tip of the staff
waving a yard above her head. It caused some heads to turn, and not only
because it had hit them; wizards occasionally passed through the town and it
was the first time anyone had seen one four feet tall with long hair.
Anyone watching closely would have noticed strange things happening as
she passed by.
There was, for example, the man with three upturned cups who was
inviting a small crowd to explore with him the exciting world of chance and
probability as it related to the position of a small dried pea. He was
vaguely aware of a small figure watching him solemnly for a few moments, and
then a sackful of peas cascaded out of every cup he picked up. Within
seconds he was knee-deep in legumes. He was a lot deeper in trouble he
suddenly owed everyone a lot of money.
There was a small and wretched monkey that for years had shuffled
vaguely at the end of a chain while its owner played something dreadful on a
pipe-organ. It suddenly turned, narrowed its little red eyes, bit its keeper
sharply in the leg, snapped its chain and had it away over the rooftops with
the night's takings in a tin cup. History is silent about what they were
spent on.
A boxful of marzipan ducks on a nearby stall came to life and whirred
past the stallholder to land, quacking happily, in the river (where, by
dawn, they had all melted: that's natural selection for your.
The stall itself sidled off down an alley and was never seen again.
Esk, in fact, moved through the fair more like an arsonist moves
through a hayfield or a neutron bounces through a reactor, poets
notwithstanding, and the hypothetical watcher could have detected her random
passage by tracing the outbreaks of hysteria and violence. But, like all
good catalysts, she wasn't actually involved in the processes she initiated,
and by the time all the non-hypothetical potential watchers took their eyes
off them she had been buffeted somewhere else.
She was also beginning to tire. While Granny Weatherwax approved of
night on general principles, she certainly didn't hold with promiscuous
candlelight-if she had any reading to do after dark she generally persuaded
the owl to come and sit on the back of her chair, and read through its eyes.
So Esk expected to go to bed around sunset, and that was long past.
There was a doorway ahead of her that looked friendly. Cheerful sounds
were sliding out on the yellow light, and pooling on the cobbles. With the
staff still radiating random magic like a demon lighthouse she headed for
it, weary but determined.
The landlord of The Fiddler's Riddle considered himself to be a man of
the world, and this was right, because he was too stupid to be really cruel,
and too lazy to be really mean and although his body had been around quite a
lot his mind had never gone further than the inside of his own head.
He wasn't used to being addressed by sticks. Especially when they spoke
in a small piping voice, and asked for goat's milk.
Cautiously, aware that everyone in the inn was looking at him and
grinning, he pulled himself across the bar top until he could see down. Esk
stared up at him. Look 'em right in the eye, Granny had always said: focus
your power on 'em, stare 'em out, no one can outstare a witch, 'cept a goat,
of course.
The landlord, whose name was Skiller, found himself looking directly
down at a small child who seemed to be squinting.
"What?" he said.
"Milk," said the child, still focussing furiously. "You get it out of
goats. You know?"
Skiller sold only beer, which his customers claimed he got out of cats.
No self-respecting goat would have endured the smell in the Fiddler's
Riddle.
"We haven't got any," he said. He looked hard at the staff and his
eyebrows met conspiratorially over his nose.
"You could have a look," said Esk.
Skiller eased himself back across the bar, partly to avoid the gaze,
which was causing his eyes to water in sympathy, and partly because a
horrible suspicion was congealing in his mind.
Even second-rate barmen tend to resonate with the beer they serve, and
the vibrations coming from the big barrels behind him no longer had the
twang of hop and head. They were broadcasting an altogether more lactic
note.
He turned a tap experimentally, and watched a thin stream of milk
curdle in the drip bucket.
The staff still poked up over the edge of the counter, like a
periscope. He could swear that it was staring at him too.
"Don't waste it," said a voice. "You'll be grateful for it one day."
It was the same tone of voice Granny used when Esk was less than
enthusiastic about a plateful of nourishing sallet greens, boiled yellow
until the last few vitamins gave in, but to Skiller's hypersensitive ears it
wasn't an injunction but a prediction. He shivered. He didn't know where he
would have to be to make him grateful for a drink of ancient beer and
curdled milk. He'd rather be dead first.
Perhaps he would be dead first.
He very carefully wiped a nearly clean mug with his thumb and filled it
from the tap. He was aware that a large number of his guests were quietly
leaving. No one liked magic, especially n the hands of a woman. You never
could tell what they might take it into their heads to do next.
"Your milk," he said, adding, "Miss."
"I've got some money," Esk said. Granny had always told her: always be
ready to pay and you won't have to, people always like you to feel good
about them, it's all headology.
"No, wouldn't dream of it," said Skiller hastily. He leaned over the
bar. "If you could see, er, your way clear to turning the rest back, though?
Not much call for milk in these parts."
He sidled along a little way. Esk had leaned the staff against the bar
while she drank her milk, and it was making him uncomfortable.
Esk looked at him over a moustache of cream.
"I didn't turn it into milk, I just knew it would be milk because I
wanted milk," she said. "What did you think it was?"
"Er. Beer."
Esk thought about this. She vaguely remembered trying beer once, and it
had tasted sort of second-hand. But she could recall something which
everyone in Bad Ass reckoned was much better than beer. It was one of
Granny's most guarded recipes. It was good for you, because there was only
fruit in it, plus lots of freezing and boiling and careful testing of little
drops with a lighted flame.
Granny would put a very small spoonful in her milk if it was a really
cold night. It had to be a wooden spoon, on account of what it did to metal.
She concentrated. She could picture the taste in her mind, and with the
little skills that she was beginning to accept but couldn't understand she
found she could take the taste apart into little coloured shapes ?.
Skiller's thin wife came out of their back room to see why it had all
gone so quiet, and he waved her into shocked silence as Esk stood swaying
very slightly with her eyes closed and her lips moving .
? little shapes that you didn't need went back into the great pool of
shapes, and then you found the extra ones you needed and put them together,
and then there was a sort of hook thing which meant that they would turn
anything suitable into something just like them, and then ?.
Skiller turned very carefully and regarded the barrel behind him. The
smell of the room had changed, he could feel the pure gold sweating gently
out of that ancient woodwork.
With some care he took a small glass from his store under the counter
and let a few splashes of the dark golden liquid escape from the tap. He
looked at it thoughtfully in the lamplight,
turned the glass around methodically, sniffed it a few times, and
tossed its contents back in one swallow.
His face remained unchanged, although his eyes went moist and his
throat wobbled somewhat. His wife and Esk watched him as a thin beading of
sweat broke out on his forehead. Ten seconds passed, and he was obviously
out to break some heroic record. There may have been steam curling out of
his ears, but that could have been a rumour. His fingers drummed a strange
tattoo on the bartop.
At last he swallowed, appeared to reach a decision, turned solemnly to
Esk, and said, "Hwarl,ish finish saaarghs ishghs oorgsh?"
His brow wrinkled as he ran the sentence past his mind again and made a
second attempt.
"Aargh argh shaah gok?"
He gave up.
"Bharrgsh nargh!"
His wife snorted and took the glass out of his unprotesting hand. She
sniffed it. She looked at the barrels, all ten of them. She met his unsteady
eye. In a private paradise for two they soundlessly calculated the selling
price of six hundred gallons of triple-distilled white mountain peach brandy
and ran out of numbers.
Mrs Skiller was quicker on the uptake than her husband. She bent down
and smiled at Esk, who was too tired to squint back. It wasn't a
particularly good smile, because Mrs Skiller didn't get much practice.
"How did you get here, little girl?" she said, in a voice that
suggested gingerbread cottages and the slamming of big stove doors.
"I got lost from Granny."
"And where's Granny now, dear? " Clang went the oven doors again; it
was going to be a tough night for all wanderers in metaphorical forests.
"Just somewhere, I expect."
"Would you like to go to sleep in a big feather bed, all nice and
warm?"
Esk looked at her gratefully, even while vaguely realizing that the
woman had a face just like an eager ferret, and nodded.
You're right. It's going to take more than a passing woodchopper to
sort this out.
Granny, meanwhile, was two streets away. She was also, by the standards
of other people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she
was, it was just that everywhere else didn't.
It has already been mentioned that it is much harder to detect a human
mind than, say, the mind of a fox. The human mind, seeing this as some kind
of a slur, wants to know why. This is why.
Animal minds are simple, and therefore sharp. Animals never spend time
dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits
they've missed. The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed
to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, /c/ run away from, and /d)
rocks. This frees the mind from unnecessary thoughts and gives it a cutting
edge where it matters. Your normal animal, in fact, never tries to walk and
chew gum at the same time.
The average human, on the other hand, thinks about all sorts of things
around the clock, on all sorts of levels, with interruptions from dozens of
biological calendars and timepieces. There's thoughts about to be said, and
private thoughts, and real thoughts, and thoughts about thoughts, and a
whole gamut of subconscious thoughts. To a telepath the human head is a din.
It is a railway terminus with all the Tannoys talking at once. It is a
complete FM waveband-and some of those stations aren't reputable, they're
outlawed pirates on forbidden seas who play late-night records with limbic
lyrics.
Granny, trying to locate Esk by mind magic alone, was trying to find a
straw in a haystack.
She was not succeeding, but enough blips of sense reached her through
the heterodyne wails of a thousand brains all thinking at once to convince
her that the world was, indeed, as silly as she had always believed it was.
She met Hilta at the corner of the street. She was carrying her
broomstick, the better to conduct an aerial search (with great stealth,
however; the men of Ohulan were right behind Stay Long Ointment but drew the
line at flying women). She was distraught.
"Not so much as a hint of her," said Granny.
"Have you been down to the river? She might have fallen in!"
"Then she'd have just fallen out again. Anyway, she can swim. I think
she's hiding, drat her."
"What are we going to do?"
Granny gave her a withering look. "Hilta Goatfounder, I'm ashamed of
you, acting like a cowin. Do I look worried?"
Hilta peered at her.
"You do. A bit. Your lips have gone all thin."
"I'm just angry, that's all."
"Gypsies always come here for the fair, they might have taken her."
Granny was prepared to believe anything about city folk but here she
was on firmer ground.
"Then they're a lot dafter than I'd give them credit for," she snapped.
"Look, she's got the staff."
"What good would that do?" said Hilta, who was close to tears.
"I don't think you've understood anything I've told you," said Granny
severely. "All we need to do is go back to your place and wait."
"What for?"
"The screams or the bangs or the fireballs or whatever," Granny said
vaguely.
"That's heartless!"
"Oh, I expect they've got it coming to them. Come on, you go on ahead
and put the kettle on."
Hilta gave her a mystified look, then climbed on her broom and rose
slowly and erratically into the shadows among the chimneys. If broomsticks
were cars, this one would be a split window Morris Minor.
Granny watched her go, then stumped along the wet streets after her.
She was determined that they wouldn't get her up in one of those things.
Esk lay in the big, fluffy and slightly damp sheets of the spare bed in
the attic room of the Riddle. She was tired, but couldn't sleep. The bed was
too chilly, for one thing. She wondered uneasily if she dared try to warm it
up, but thought better of it. She couldn't seem to get the hang of fire
spells, no matter how carefully she experimented. They either didn't work at
all or worked only too well. The woods around the cottage were becoming
treacherous with the holes left by disappearing fireballs; at least, if the
wizardry thing didn't work then Granny said she'd have a fine future as a
privy builder or well sinker.
She turned over and tried to ignore the bed's faint smell of mushrooms.
Then she reached out in the darkness until her hand found the staff, propped
against the bedhead. Mrs Skiller had been quite insistent about taking it
downstairs, but Esk had hung on like grim death. It was the only thing in
the world she was absolutely certain belonged to her.
The varnished surface with its strange carvings felt oddly comforting.
Esk went to sleep, and dreamed bangles, and strange packages, and mountains.
And distant stars above the mountains, and a cold desert where strange
creatures lurched across the dry sand and stared at her through insect eyes
?.
There was a creak on the stairs. Then another. Then a silence, the sort
of choking, furry silence made by someone standing as still as possible.
The door swung open. Skiller made a blacker shadow against the
candlelight on the stairs, and there was a faintly whispered conversation
before he tiptoed as silently as he could towards the bedhead. The staff
slipped sideways as his first cautious grope dislodged it, but he caught it
quickly and let his breath out very slowly.
So he hardly had enough left to scream with when the staff moved in his
hands. He felt the scaliness, the coil and muscle of it ?.
Esk sat bolt upright in time to see Skiller roll backwards down the
steep stairladder, still flailing desperately at something quite invisible
that coiled around his arms. There was another scream from below as he
landed on his wife.
The staff clattered to the floor and lay surrounded by a faint octarine
glow.
Esk got out of the bed and padded across the floor. There was a
terrible cursing; it sounded unhealthy. She peered around the door and
looked down on the face of Mrs Skiller.
"Give me that staff!"
Esk reached down behind her and gripped the polished wood. "No," she
said. "It's mine."
"It's not the right sort of thing for little girls," snapped the
barman's wife.
"It belongs to me," said Esk, and quietly closed the door. She listened
for a moment to the muttering from below and tried to think of what to do
next. Turning the couple into something would probably only cause a fuss
and, anyway, she wasn't quite certain how to do it.
The fact was the magic only really worked when she wasn't thinking
about it. Her mind seemed to get in the way.
She padded across the room and pushed open the tiny window. The strange
night-time smells of civilization drifted in-the damp smell of streets, the
fragrance of garden flowers, the distant hint of an overloaded privy. There
were wet tiles outside.
As Skiller started back up the stairs she pushed the staff out on to
the roof and crawled after it, steadying herself on the carvings above the
window. The roof dipped down to an outhouse and she managed to stay at least
vaguely upright as she half-slid, half-scrambled down the uneven tiles. A
six-foot drop on to a stack of old barrels, a quick scramble down the
slippery wood, and she was trotting easily across the inn yard.
As she kicked up the street mists she could hear the sounds of argument
coming from the Riddle.
Skiller rushed past his wife and laid a hand on the tap of the nearest
barrel. He paused, and then wrenched it open.
The smell of peach brandy filled the room, sharp as knives. He shut off
the flow and relaxed.
"Afraid it would turn into something nasty?" asked his wife. He nodded.
"If you hadn't been so clumsy-"she began.
"I tell you it bit me!"
"You could have been a wizard and we wouldn't have to bother with all
this. Have you got no ambition?"
Skiller shook his head. "I reckon it takes more than a staff to make a
wizard," he said. "Anyway, I heard where it said wizards aren't allowed to
get married, they're not even allowed to-" He hesitated.
"To what? Allowed to what?"
Skiller writhed. "Well. You know. Thing."
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," said Mrs Skiller
briskly.
"No, I suppose not."
He followed her reluctantly out of the darkened bar-room. It seemed to
him that perhaps wizards didn't have such a bad life, at that.
He was proved right when the following morning revealed that the ten
barrels of peach brandy had, indeed, turned into something nasty.
Esk wandered aimlessly through the grey streets until she reached
Ohulan's tiny river docks. Broad flat-bottomed barges bobbed gently against
the wharves, and one or two of them curled wisps of smoke from friendly
stovepipes. Esk clambered easily on to the nearest, and used the staff to
lever up the oilcloth that covered most of it.
A warm smell, a mixture of lanolin and midden, drifted up. The barge
was laden with wool.
It's silly to go to sleep on an unknown barge, not knowing what strange
cliffs may be drifting past when you awake, not knowing that bargees
traditionally get an early start (setting out before the sun is barely up),
not knowing what new horizons might greet one on the morrow ?.
You know that. Esk didn't.
Esk awoke to the sound of someone whistling. She lay quite still,
reeling the evening's events across her mind until she remembered why she
was here, and then rolled over very carefully and raised the oilcloth a
fraction.
Here she was, then. But "here" had moved.
"This is what they call sailing, then," she said, watching the far bank
glide past, "It doesn't seem very special."
It didn't occur to her to start worrying. For the first eight years of
her life the world had been a particularly boring place and now that it was
becoming interesting Esk wasn't about to act ungrateful.
The distant whistler was joined by a barking dog. Esk lay back in the
wool and reached out until she found the animal's mind, and Borrowed it
gently. From its inefficient and disorganised brain she learned that there
were at least four people on this barge, and many more on the others that
were strung out in line with it on the river. Some of them seemed to be
children.
She let the animal go and looked out at the scenery again for a long
time-the barge was passing between high orange cliffs now, banded with so
many colours of rock it looked as though some hungry God had made the
all-time record club sandwich-and tried to avoid the next thought. But it
persisted, arriving in her mind like the unexpected limbo dancer under the
lavatory door of Life. Sooner or later she would have to go out. It wasn't
her stomach that was pressing the point, but her bladder brooked no delay.
Perhaps if she
The oilcloth over her head was pulled aside swiftly and a big bearded
head beamed down at her.
"Well, well," it said. "What have we here, then? A stowaway, yesno?"
Esk gave it a stare. "Yes," she said. There seemed no sense in denying
it. "Could you help me out please?"
"Aren't you afraid I shall throw you to the-the pike?" said the head.
It noticed her perplexed look. "Big freshwater fish," it added helpfully.
"Fast. Lot of teeth. Pike."
The thought hadn't occurre...