Terry David John Pratchett. Equal Rites
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...d to her at all. "No," she said truthfully."Why? Will you?"
"No. Not really. There's no need to be frightened."
"I'm not."
"Oh." A brown arm appeared, attached to the head by the normal
arrangements, and helped her out of her nest in the fleeces.
Esk stood on the deck of the barge and looked around. The sky was bluer
than a biscuit barrel, fitting neatly over a broad valley through which the
river ran as sluggishly as a planning inquiry.
Behind her the Ramtops still acted as a hitching rail for clouds, but
they no longer dominated as they had done for as long as Esk had known them.
Distance had eroded them.
"Where's this?" she said, sniffing the new smells of swamp and sedge.
"The Upper Valley of the River Ankh, " said her captor. "What do you
think of it?"
Esk looked up and down the river. It was already much wider than it had
been at Ohulan.
"I don't know. There's certainly a lot of it. Is this your ship?"
"Boat," he corrected. He was taller than her father, although not quite
so old, and dressed like a gypsy. Most of his teeth had turned gold, but Esk
decided it wasn't the time to ask why. He had the kind of real deep tan that
rich people spend ages trying to achieve with expensive holidays and bits of
tinfoil, when really all you need to do to obtain one is work your arse off
in the open air every day. His brow crinkled.
"Yes, it's mine," he said, determined to regain the initiative. "And
what are you doing on it, I would like to know? Running away from home,
yesno? If you were a boy I'd say are you going to seek your fortune?"
"Can't girls seek their fortune?"
"I think they're supposed to seek a boy with a fortune," said the man,
and gave a Zoo-carat grin. He extended a brown hand, heavy with rings. "Come
and have some breakfast."
"I'd actually like to use your privy," she said. His mouth dropped
open.
"This is a barge, yesno?"
"Yes?"
"That means there's only the river." He patted her hand. "Don't worry,"
he added. "It's quite used to it."
Granny stood on the wharf, her boot tap-tap-tapping on the wood. The
little man who was the nearest thing Ohulan had to a dockmaster was being
treated to the full force of one of her stares, and was visibly wilting. Her
expression wasn't perhaps as vicious as thumbscrews, but it did seem to
suggest that thumbscrews were a real possibility.
"They left before dawn, you say," she said.
"Yes-ss," he said. "Er. I didn't know they weren't supposed to."
"Did you see a little girl on board?" Tap-tap went her boot.
"Um. No. I'm sorry." He brightened. "They were Zoons," he said; "If the
child was with them she won't come to harm. You can always trust a Zoon,
they say. Very keen on family life."
Granny turned to Hilta, who was fluttering like a bewildered butterfly,
and raised her eyebrows.
"Oh, yes," Hilta trilled. "The Zoons have a very good name."
"Mmph," said Granny. She turned on her heel and stumped back towards
the centre of the town. The dockmaster sagged as though a coathanger had
just been removed from his shirt.
Hilta's lodgings were over a herbalist's and behind a tannery, and
offered splendid views of the rooftops of Ohulan. She liked it because it
offered privacy, always appreciated by, as she put it, "my more discerning
clients who prefer to make their very special purchases in an atmosphere of
calm where discretion is forever the watchword".
Granny Weatherwax looked around the sitting room with barelyconcealed
scorn. There were altogether too many tassels, bead curtains, astrological
charts and black cats in the place. Granny couldn't abide cats. She sniffed.
"Is that the tannery?" she said accusingly.
"Incense," said Hilta. She rallied bravely in the face of Granny's
scorn. "The customers appreciate it," she said. "It puts them in the right
frame of mind. You know how it is."
"I would have thought one could carry out a perfectly respectable
business, Hilta, without resorting to parlour tricks," said Granny, sitting
down and beginning the long and tricky business of removing her hatpins.
"It's different in towns," said Hilta. "One has to move with the
times."
"I'm sure I don't know why. Is the kettle on?" Granny reached across
the table and took the velvet cover off Hilta's crystal ball, a sphere of
quartz as big as her head.
"Never could get the hang of this damn silicon stuff," she said. "A
bowl of water with a drop of ink in it was good enough when I was a girl.
Let's see, now ?"
She peered into the dancing heart of the ball, trying to use it to
focus her mind on the whereabouts of Esk. A crystal was a tricky thing to
use at the best of times, and usually staring into it meant that the one
thing the future could be guaranteed to hold was a severe migraine. Granny
distrusted them, considering them to smack of wizardry; for two pins, it
always seemed to her, the wretched thing would suck your mind out like a
whelk from a shell.
"Damn thing's all sparkly," she said, huffing on it and wiping it with
her sleeve. Hilta peered over her shoulder.
"That's not sparkle, that means something," she said slowly.
"What?"
"I'm not sure. Can I try? It's used to me." Hilta pushed a cat off the
other chair and leaned forward to peer into the glass depths.
"Mnph. Feel free," said Granny, "but you won't find-"
"Wait. Something's coming through."
"Looks all sparkly from here," Granny insisted. "Little silver lights
all floating around, like in them little snowstorm-in-abottle toys. Quite
pretty, really."
"Yes, but look beyond the flakes ?"
Granny looked.
This was what she saw.
The viewpoint was very high up and a wide swathe of country lay below
her, blue with distance, through which a broad river wriggled like a drunken
snake. There were silver lights floating in the foreground but they were, in
a manner of speaking, just a few flakes in the great storm of lights that
turned in a great lazy spiral, like a geriatric tornado with a bad attack of
snow, and funnelled down, down to the hazy landscape. By screwing up her
eyes Granny could just make out some dots on the river.
Occasionally some sort of lighting would sparkle briefly inside the
gently turning funnel of motes.
Granny blinked and looked up. The room seemed very dark.
"Odd sort of weather," she said, because she couldn't really think of
anything better. Even with her eyes shut the glittering motes still danced
across her vision.
"I don't think it's weather," said Hilta. "I don't actually think
people can see it, but the crystal shows it. I think it's magic, condensing
out of the air."
"Into the staff?"
"Yes. That's what a wizard's staff does. It sort of distils magic."
Granny risked another glance at the crystal.
"Into Esk," she said, carefully.
"Yes."
"There looks like quite a lot of it."
"Yes."
Not for the first time, Granny wished she knew more about how wizards
worked their magic. She had a vision of Esk filling up with magic, until
every tissue and pore was bloated with the stuff. Then it would start
leaking-slowly at first, arcing to ground in little bursts, but then
building up to a great discharge of occult potentiality. It could do all
kinds of damage.
"Drat," she said. "I never did like that staff."
"At least she's heading towards the University place," said Hilta.
"They'll know what to do."
"That's as may be. How far down river do you reckon they are?"
"Twenty miles or so. Those barges only go at walking pace. The Zoons
aren't in any hurry."
"Right." Granny stood up, her jaw set defiantly. She reached for her
hat and picked up her sack of possessions.
"Reckon I can walk faster than a barge," she said. "The river's all
bendy but I can go in straight lines."
"You're going to walk after her?" said Hilta, aghast. "But there's
forests and wild animals!"
"Good, I could do with getting back to civilisation. She needs me. That
staff is taking over. I said it would, but did anyone listen?"
"Did they?" said Hilta, still trying to work out what Granny meant by
getting back to civilisation.
"No," said Granny coldly.
His name was Amschat B'hal Zoon. He lived on the raft with his three
wives and three children. He was a Liar.
What always annoyed the enemies of the Zoon tribe was not simply their
honesty, which was infuriatingly absolute, but their total directness of
approach. The Zoons had never heard about a euphemism, and wouldn't
understand what to do with it if they had one, except that they would
certainly have called it "a nice way of saying something nasty".
Their rigid adherence to the truth was apparently not enjoined on them
by a god, as is usually the case, but appeared to have a genetic base. The
average Zoon could no more tell a lie than breathe underwater and, in fact,
the very concept was enough to upset them considerably; telling a Lie meant
no less than totally altering the universe.
This was something of a drawback to a trading race and so, over the
millennia, the elders of the Zoon studied this strange power that everyone
else had in such abundance and decided that they should possess it too.
Young men who showed faint signs of having such a talent were
encouraged, on special ceremonial occasions, to bend the Truth ever further
on a competitive basis. The first recorded Zoon proto-lie was: "Actually my
grandfather is quite tall," but eventually they got the hang of it and the
office of tribal Liar was instituted.
It must be understood that while the majority of Zoon cannot lie they
have great respect for any Zoon who can say that the world is other than it
is, and the Liar holds a position of considerable eminence. He represents
his tribe in all his dealings with the outside world, which the average Zoon
long ago gave up trying to understand. Zoon tribes are very proud of their
Liars.
Other races get very annoyed about all this. They feel that the Zoon
ought to have adopted more suitable titles, like "diplomat" or "public
relations officer". They feel they are poking fun at the whole thing.
"Is all that true?" said Esk suspiciously, looking around the barge's
crowded cabin.
"No," said Amschat firmly. His junior wife, who was cooking porridge
over a tiny ornate stove, giggled. His three children watched Esk solemnly
over the edge of the table.
"Don't you ever tell the truth?"
"Do you?" Amschat grinned his goldmine grin, but his eyes were not
smiling. "Why do I find you on my fleeces? Amschat is no kidnapper. There
will be people at home who will worry, yesno?"
"I expect Granny will come looking for me," said Esk, "but I don't
think she will worry much. Just be angry, I expect. Anyway, I'm going to
Ankh-Morpork. You can put me off the ship-"
"-boat-"
"-if you like. I don't mind about the pike."
"I can't do that," said Amschat.
"Was that a lie?"
"No! There is wild country around us, robbers and-things."
Esk nodded brightly. "That's settled, then," she said. "I don't mind
sleeping in the fleeces. And I can pay my way. I can do-" She hesitated; her
unfinished sentence hung like a little curl of crystal in the air while
discretion made a successful bid for control of her tongue. "-helpful
things," she finished lamely.
She was aware that Amschat was looking slightly sideways at his senior
wife, who was sewing by the stove. By Zoon tradition she wore nothing but
black. Granny would have thoroughly approved.
"What sort of helpful things?" he asked. "Washing and sweeping, yesno?"
"If you like," said Esk, "or distillation using the bifold or triple
alembic, the making of varnishes, glazes, creams, zuumchats and punes, the
rendering of waxes, the manufacture of candles, the proper selection of
seeds, roots and cuttings, and most preparations from the Eighty Marvellous
Herbs; I can spin, card, rett, Hallow and weave on the hand, frame, harp and
Noble looms and I can knit if people start the wool on for me, I can read
soil and rock, do carpentry up to the three-way mortise and tenon, predict
weather by means of beastsign and skyreck, make increase in bees, brew five
types of mead, make dyes and mordants and pigments, including a fast blue, I
can do most types of whitesmithing, mend boots, cure and fashion most
leathers, and if you have any goats I can look after them. I like goats."
Amschat looked at her thoughtfully. She felt she was expected to
continue.
"Granny never likes to see people sitting around doing nothing," she
offered. "She always says a girl who is good with her hands will never want
for a living," she added, by way of further explanation.
"Or a husband, I expect," nodded Amschat, weakly.
"Actually, Granny had a lot to say about that-"
"I bet she did," said Amschat. He looked at the senior wife, who nodded
almost imperceptibly.
"Very well," he said. "If you can make yourself useful you can stay.
And can you play a musical instrument?"
Esk returned his steady gaze, not batting an eyelid. "Probably."
And so Esk, with the minimum of difficulty and only a little regret,
left the Ramtops and their weather and joined the Zoons on their great
trading journey down the Ankh.
There were at least thirty barges with at least one sprawling Zoon
family on each, and no two vessels appeared to be carrying the same cargo;
most of them were strung together, and the Zoons simply hauled on the cable
and stepped on to the next deck if they fancied a bit of socialising.
Esk set up home in the fleeces. It was warm, smelled slightly of
Granny's cottage and, much more important, meant that she was undisturbed.
She was getting a bit worried about magic.
It was definitely getting out of control. She wasn't doing magic, it
was just happening around her. And she sensed that people probably wouldn't
be too happy if they knew.
It meant that if she washed up she had to clatter and splash at length
to conceal the fact that the dishes were cleaning themselves. If she did
some darning she had to do it on some private part of the deck to conceal
the fact that the edges of the hole ravelled themselves together as if . . .
as if by magic. Then she woke up on the second day of her voyage to find
that several of the fleeces around the spot where she had hidden the staff
had combed, carded and spun themselves into neat skeins during the night.
She put all thoughts of lighting fires out of her head.
There were compensations, though. Every sluggish turn of the great
brown river brought new scenes. There were dark stretches hemmed in with
deep forest, through which the barges traveled in the dead centre of the
river with the men armed and the women below-except for Esk, who sat
listening with interest to the snortings and sneezings that followed them
through the bushes on the banks. There were stretches of farmland. There
were several towns much larger than Ohulan. There were even some mountains,
although they were old and flat and not young and frisky like her mountains.
Not that she was homesick, exactly, but sometimes she felt like a boat
herself, drifting on the edge of an infinite rope but always attached to an
anchor.
The barges stopped at some of the towns. By tradition only the men went
ashore, and only Amschat, wearing his ceremonial Lying hat, spoke to
non-Zoons. Esk usually went with him. He tried hinting that she should obey
the unwritten rules of Zoon life and stay afloat, but a hint was to Esk what
a mosquito bite was to the average rhino because she was already learning
that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite
them so that they don't apply to you.
Anyway, it seemed to Amschat that when Esk was with him he always got a
very good price. There was something about a small child squinting
determinedly at them from behind his legs that made even market-hardened
merchants hastily conclude their business.
In fact, it began to worry him. When a market broker in the walled town
of Zemphis offered him a bag of ultramarines in exchange for a hundred
fleeces a voice from the level of his pockets said: "They're not
ultramarines."
"Listen to the child!" said the broker, grinning. Amschat solemnly held
one of the stones to his eye.
"I am listening," he said, "and they do indeed look like ultramarines.
They have the glit and shimmy."
Esk shook her head. "They're just spircles," she said. She said it
without thinking, and regretted it immediately as both men turned to stare
at her.
Amschat turned the stone over in his palm. Putting the chameleon
spircle stones into a box with some real gems so that they appeared to
change their hue was a traditional trick, but these had the true inner blue
fire. He looked up sharply at the broker. Amschat had been finely trained in
the art of the Lie. He recognised the subtle signs, now that he came to
think about it.
"There seems to be a doubt," he said, "but 'tis easily resolved, we
need only take them to the assayer in Pine Street because the world knows
that spircles will dissolve in hypactic fluid, yesno?"
The broker hesitated. Amschat had changed position slightly, and the
set of his muscles suggested that any sudden movement on the broker's part
would see him flat in the dust. And that damn child was squinting at him as
though she could see through to the back of his mind. His nerve broke.
"I regret this unfortunate dispute," he said. "I had accepted the
stones as ultramarines in good faith but rather than cause disharmony
between us I will ask you to accept them as-as a gift, and for the fleeces
may I offer this roseatte of the first sorting?"
He took a small red stone from a tiny velvet pouch. Amschat hardly
looked at it but, without taking his eyes off the man, passed it down to
Esk. She nodded.
When the merchant had hurried off Amschat took Esk's hand and
half-dragged her to the assayer's stall, which was little more than a niche
in the wall. The old man took the smallest of the blue stones, listened to
Amschat's hurried explanation, poured out a saucerful of hypactic fluid and
dropped the stone in. It frothed into nothingness.
"Very interesting," he said. He took another stone in a tweezer and
examined it under a glass.
"They are indeed spircles, but remarkably fine specimens in their own
right," he concluded. "They are by no means worthless, and I for example
would be prepared to offer you-is there something wrong with the little
girl's eyes?"
Amschat nudged Esk, who stopped trying out another Look.
"-I would offer you, shall we say, two zats of silver?"
"Shall we say five?" said Amschat pleasantly.
"And I would like to keep one of the stones," said Esk. The old man
threw up his hands.
"But they are mere curios!" he said. "Of value only to a collector!"
"A collector may yet sell them to an unsuspecting purchaser as finest
roseattes or ultramarines," said Amschat, "especially if he was the only
assayer in town."
The assayer grumbled a bit at this, but at last they settled on three
zats and one of the spircles on a thin silver chain for Esk.
When they were out of earshot Amschat handed her the tiny silver coins
and said: "These are yours. You have earned them. But-" he hunkered down so
that his eyes were on a level with hers, "-you must tell me how you knew the
stones were false."
He looked worried, but Esk sensed that he wouldn't really like the
truth. Magic made people uncomfortable. He wouldn't like it if she said
simply: spircles are spircles and ultramarines are ultramarines, and though
you may think they look the same that is because most people don't use their
eyes in the right way. Nothing can entirely disguise its true nature.
Instead she said: "The dwarves mine spircles near the village where I
was born, and you soon learn to see how they bend light in a funny way."
Amschat looked into her eyes for some time. Then he shrugged.
"Okay," he said. "Fine. Well, I have some further business here. Why
don't you buy yourself some new clothes, or something? I'd warn you against
unscrupulous traders but, somehow, I don't know, I don't think you will have
any trouble."
Esk nodded. Amschat strode off through the market place. At the first
corner he turned, looked at her thoughtfully, and then disappeared among the
crowds.
Well, that's the end of sailing, Esk told herself. He's not quite sure
but he's going to be watching me now and before I know what's happening the
staff will be taken away and there'll be all sorts of trouble. Why does
everyone get so upset about magic?
She gave a philosophical sigh and set about exploring the possibilities
of the town.
There was the question of the staff, though. Esk had rammed it deep
among the fleeces, which were not going to be unloaded yet. If she went back
for it people would start asking questions, and she didn't know the answers.
She found a convenient alleyway and scuttled down it until a deep
doorway gave her the privacy she required.
If going back was out of the question then only one thing remained. She
held out a hand and closed her eyes.
She knew exactly what she wanted to do-it lay in front of her eyes. The
staff mustn't come flying through the air, wrecking the barge and drawing
attention to itself. All she wanted, she told herself, was for there to be a
slight change in the way the world was organised. It shouldn't be a world
where the staff was in the fleeces, it should be a world where it was in her
hand. A tiny change, an infinitesimal alteration to the Way Things Were.
If Esk had been properly trained in wizardry she would have known that
this was impossible. All wizards knew how to move things about, starting
with protons and working upwards, but the important thing about moving
something from A to Z, according to basic physics, was that at some point it
should pass through the rest of the alphabet. The only way one could cause
something to vanish at A and appear at Z would be to shuffle the whole of
Reality sideways. The problems this would cause didn't bear thinking about.
Esk, of course, had not been trained, and it is well known that a vital
ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be
done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a halfbrick in
the path of the bicycle of history.
As Esk tried to work out how to move the staff the ripples spread out
in the magical ether, changing the Discworld in thousands of tiny ways. Most
went entirely unnoticed. Perhaps a few grains of sand lay on their beaches
in a slightly different position, or the occasional leaf hung on its tree in
a marginally different way. But then the wavefront of probability struck the
edge of Reality and rebounded like the slosh off the side of the pond which,
meeting the laggard ripples coming the other way, caused small but important
whirlpools in the very fabric of existence. You can have whirlpools in the
fabric of existence, because it is a very strange fabric.
Esk was completely ignorant of all this, of course, but was quite
satisfied when the staff dropped out of thin air into her hand.
It felt warm.
She looked at it for some time. She felt that she ought to do something
about it; it was too big, too distinctive, too inconvenient. It attracted
attention.
"If I'm taking you to Ankh-Morpork," she said thoughtfully, "You've got
to go in disguise."
A few late flickers of magic played around the staff, and then it went
dark.
Eventually Esk solved the immediate problem by finding a stall in the
main Zemphis marketplace that sold broomsticks, buying the largest, carrying
it back to her doorway, removing the handle and ramming the staff deep into
the birch twigs. It didn't seem right to treat a noble object in this way,
and she silently apologised to it.
It made a difference, anyway. No one looked twice at a small girl
carrying a broom.
She bought a spice pasty to eat while exploring (the stallholder
carelessly shortchanged her, and only realised later that he had
inexplicably handed over two silver pieces; also, rats mysteriously got in
and ate all his stock during the night, and his grandmother was struck by
lightning).
The town was smaller than Ohulan, and very different because it lay on
the junction of three trade routes quite apart from the river itself. It was
built around one enormous square which was a cross between a permanent
exotic traffic jam and a tent village. Camels kicked mules, mules kicked
horses, horses kicked camels and they all kicked humans; there was a riot of
colours, a din of noise, a nasal orchestration of smells and the steady,
heady sound of hundreds of people working hard at making money.
One reason for the bustle was that over large parts of the continent
other people preferred to make money without working at all, and since the
Disc had yet to develop a music recording industry they were forced to fall
back on older, more traditional forms of banditry.
Strangely enough these often involved considerable effort. Rolling
heavy rocks to the top of cliffs for a decent ambush, cutting down trees to
block the road, and digging a pit lined with spikes while still keeping a
wicked edge on a dagger probably involved a much greater expenditure of
thought and muscle than more socially-acceptable professions but,
nevertheless, there were still people misguided enough to endure all this,
plus long nights in uncomfortable surroundings, merely to get their hands on
perfectly ordinary large boxes of jewels.
So a town like Zemphis was the place where caravans split, mingled and
came together again, as dozens of merchants and travellers banded together
for protection against the socially disadvantaged on the trails ahead. Esk,
wandering unregarded amidst the bustle, learned all this by the simple
method of finding someone who looked important and tugging on the hem of his
coat.
This particular man was counting bales of tobacco and would have
succeeded but for the interruption.
"What?"
"I said, what happening here?"
The man meant to say: "Push off and bother someone else." He meant to
give her a light cuff about the head. So he was astonished to find himself
bending down and talking seriously to a small, grubby-faced child holding a
large broomstick (which also, it seemed to him later, was in some
indefinable way paying attention).
He explained about the caravans. The child nodded.
"People all get together to travel?"
"Precisely."
"Where to?"
"All sorts of places. Sto Lat, Pseudopolis . . . Ankh-Morpork, of
course . . . ."
"But the river goes there," said Esk, reasonably. "Barges. The Zoons."
"Ah, yes," said the merchant, "but they charge high prices and they
can't carry everything and, anyway, no one trusts them much."
"But they're very honest!"
"Huh, yes," he said. "But you know what they say: never trust an honest
man." He smiled knowingly.
"Who says that?"
"They do. You know. People," he said, a certain uneasiness entering his
voice.
"Oh," said Esk. She thought about it. "They must be very silly," she
said primly. "Thank you, anyway."
He watched her wander off and got back to his counting. A moment later
there was another tug at his coat.
"Fiftysevenfiftysevenfiftysevenwell?" he said, trying not to lose his
place.
"Sorry to bother you again," said Esk, "but those bale things ?."
"What about them fiftysevenfiftysevenfiftyseven?"
"Well, are they supposed to have little white worm things in them?"
"Fiftysev-what?" The merchant lowered his slate and stared at Esk,
"What little worms?"
"Wriggly ones. White," added Esk, helpfully. "All sort of burrowing
about in the middle of the bales."
"You mean tobacco threadworm?" He looked wild-eyed at the stack of
bales being unloaded by, now he came to think about it, a vendor with the
nervous look of a midnight sprite who wants to get away before you find out
what fairy gold turns into in the morning. "But he told me these had been
well stored and-how do you know, anyway? "
The child had disappeared among the crowds. The merchant looked hard at
the spot where she had been. He looked hard at the vendor, who was grinning
nervously. He looked hard at the sky. Then took his sampling knife out of
his pocket, stared at it for a moment, appeared to reach a decision, and
sidled towards the nearest bale.
Esk, meanwhile, had by random eavesdropping found the caravan being
assembled for Ankh-Morpork. The trail boss was sitting at a table made up of
a plank across two barrels.
He was busy.
He was talking to a wizard.
Seasoned travellers know that a party setting out to cross possibly
hostile country should have a fair number of swords in it but should
definitely have a wizard in case there is any need for magic arts and, even
if these do not become necessary, for lighting fires. A wizard of the third
rank or above does not expect to pay for the privilege of joining the party.
Rather, he expects to be paid. Delicate negotiations were even now coming to
a conclusion.
"Fair enough, Master Treatle, but what of the young man?" said the
trail boss, one Adab Gander, an impressive figure in a trollhide jerkin,
rakishly floppy hat and a leather kilt. "He's no wizard, I can see."
"He is in training," said Treatle- a tall skinny wizard whose robes
declared him to be a mage of the Ancient and Truly Original Brothers of the
Silver Star, one of the eight orders of wizardry.
"Then no wizard he," said Gander. "I know the rules, and you're not a
wizard unless you've got a staff. And he hasn't."
"Even now he travels to the Unseen University for that small detail,"
said Treatle loftily. Wizards parted with money slightly less readily than
tigers parted with their teeth.
Gander looked at the lad in question. He had met a good many wizards in
his time and considered himself a good judge and he had to admit that this
boy looked like good wizard material. In other words, he was thin, gangling,
pale from reading disturbing books in unhealthy rooms, and had watery eyes
like two lightly-poached eggs. It crossed Gander's mind that one must
speculate in order to accumulate.
All he needs to get right to the top, he thought, is a bit of a
handicap. Wizards are martyrs to things like asthma and flat feet, it
somehow seems to give them their drive.
"What's your name, lad?" he said, as kindly as possible.
"Sssssssssssssss" said the boy. His Adam's apple bobbed like a captive
balloon. He turned to his companion, full of mute appeal.
"Simon," said Trestle.
"-imon," agreed Simon, thankfully.
"Can you cast fireballs or whirling spells, such as might be hurled
against an enemy?"
Simon looked sideways at Trestle.
"Nnnnnnnnnn" he ventured.
"My young friend follows higher magic than the mere hurling of
sorceries," said the wizard.
"-o," said Simon.
Gander nodded.
"Well," he said, "maybe you will indeed be a wizard, lad. Maybe when
you have your fine staff you'll consent to travel with me one time, yes? I
will make an investment in you, yes?"
"Just nod," said Gander, who was not naturally a cruel man.
Simon nodded gratefully. Treatle and Gander exchanged nods and then the
wizard strode off, with his apprentice trailing behind under a weight of
baggage.
Gander looked down at the list in front of him and carefully crossed
out "wizard".
A small shadow fell across the page. He glanced up and gave an
involuntary start.
"Well?" he said coldly.
"I want to go to Ankh-Morpork," said Esk, "please. I've got some
money."
"Go home to your mother, child."
"No, really. I want to seek my fortune."
Gander sighed. "Why are you holding that broomstick?" he said.
Esk looked at it as though she had never seen it before.
"Everything's got to be somewhere," she said.
"Just go home, my girl," said Gander. "I'm not taking any runaways to
Ankh-Morpork. Strange things can happen to little girls in big cities."
Esk brightened. "What sort of strange things?"
"Look, I said go home, right? Now!"
He picked up his chalk and went on ticking off items on his slate,
trying to ignore the steady gaze that seemed to be boring through the top of
his head.
"I can be helpful," said Esk, quietly.
Gander threw down the chalk and scratched his chin irritably.
"How old are you?" he said.
"Nine."
"Well, Miss nine-years-old, I've got two hundred animals and a hundred
people that want to go to Ankh, and half of them hate the other half, and
I've not got enough people who can fight, and they say the roads are pretty
bad and the bandits are getting really cheeky up in the Paps and the trolls
are demanding a bigger bridge toll this year and there's weevils in the
supplies and I keep getting these headaches and where, in all this, do I
need you?"
"Oh," said Esk. She looked around the crowded square. "Which one of
these roads goes to Ankh, then?"
"The one over there, with the gate."
"Thank you," she said gravely. "Goodbye. I hope you don't have any more
trouble and your head gets better."
"Right," said Gander uncertainly. He drummed his fingers on the
tabletop as he watched Esk walk away in the direction of the Ankh road. A
long, winding road. A road haunted by thieves and gnolls. A road that
wheezed through high mountain passes and crawled, panting, over deserts.
"Oh bugger," he said, under his breath. "Hey! You!"
Granny Weatherwax was in trouble.
First of all, she decided, she should never have allowed Hilta to talk
her into borrowing her broomstick. It was elderly, erratic, would fly only
at night and even then couldn't manage a speed much above a trot.
Its lifting spells had worn so thin that it wouldn't even begin to
operate until it was already moving at a fair lick. It was, in fact, the
only broomstick ever to need bump-starting.
And it was while Granny Weatherwax, sweating and cursing, was running
along a forest path holding the damn thing at shoulder height for the tenth
time that she had found the bear trap.
The second problem was that a bear had found it first. In fact this
hadn't been too much of a problem because Granny, already in a bad temper,
hit it right between the eyes with the broomstick and it was now sitting as
far away from her as it was possible to get in a pit, and trying to think
happy thoughts.
It was not a very comfortable night and the morning wasn't much better
for the party of hunters who, around dawn, peered over the edge of the pit.
"About time, too," said Granny. "Get me out."
The startled heads withdrew and Granny could hear a hasty whispered
conversation. They had seen the hat and broomstick.
Finally a bearded head reappeared, rather reluctantly, as if the body
it was attached to was being pushed forward.
"Um," it began, "look, mother-"
"Im not a mother," snapped Granny. "I'm certainly not your mother, if
you ever had mothers, which I doubt. If I was your mother I'd have run away
before you were born."
"It's only a figure of speech," said the head reproachfully.
"It's a damned insult is what it is!"
There was another whispered conversation.
"If I don't get out," said Granny in ringing tones, "there will be
Trouble. Do you see my hat, eh? Do you see it?"
The head reappeared.
"That's the whole point, isn't it?" it said. "I mean, what will there
be if we let you out? It seems less risky all round if we just sort of fill
the pit in. Nothing personal, you understand."
Granny realized what it was that was bothering her about the head.
"Are you kneeling down?" she said accusingly. "You're not, are you!
You're dwarves!"
Whisper, whisper.
"Well, what about it?" asked the head defiantly. "Nothing wrong with
that, is there? What have you got against dwarves?"
"Do you know how to repair broomsticks?"
"Magic broomsticks?"
"Yes!"
Whisper, whisper.
"What if we do?"
"Well, we could come to some arrangement ?"
The dwarf halls rang to the sound of hammers, although mainly for
effect. Dwarves found it hard to think without the sound of hammers, which
they found soothing, so well-off dwarves in the clerical professions paid
goblins to hit small ceremonial anvils, just to maintain the correct
dwarvish image.
The broomstick lay between two trestles. Granny Weatherwax sat on a
rock outcrop while a dwarf half her height, wearing an apron that was a mass
of pockets, walked around the broom and occasionally poked it.
Eventually he kicked the bristles and gave a long intake of breath, a
sort of reverse whistle, which is the secret sign of craftsmen across the
universe and means that something expensive is about to happen.
"Weellll," he said. "I could get the apprentices in to look at this, I
could. It's an education in itself. And you say it actually managed to get
airborne?"
"It flew like a bird," said Granny.
The dwarf lit a pipe. "I should very much like to see that bird," he
said reflectively. "I should imagine it's quite something to watch, a bird
like that."
"Yes, but can you repair it?" said Granny. "I'm in a hurry."
The dwarf sat down, slowly and deliberately.
"As for repair," he said, "well, I don't know about repair. Rebuild,
maybe. Of course, it's hard to get the bristles these days even if you can
find people to do the proper binding, and the spells need-"
"I don't want it rebuilt, I just want it to work properly," said
Granny.
"It's an early model, you see," the dwarf plugged on. "Very tricky,
those early models. You can't get the wood-"
He was picked up bodily until his eyes were level with Granny's.
Dwarves, being magical in themselves as it were, are quite resistant to
magic but her expression looked as though she was trying to weld his
eyeballs to the back of his skull.
"Just repair it," she hissed. "Please?"
"What, make a bodge job?" said the dwarf, his pipe clattering to the
floor.
"Yes."
"Patch it up, you mean? Betray my training by doing half a job?"
"Yes," said Granny. Her pupils were two little black holes.
"Oh," said the dwarf. "Right, then."
Gander the trail boss was a worried man.
They were three mornings out from Zemphis, making good time, and were
climbing now towards the rocky pass through the mountains known as the Paps
of Scilla (there were eight of them; Gander often wondered who Scilla had
been, and whether he would have liked her/.
A party of gnolls had crept up on them during the night. The nasty
creatures, a variety of stone goblin, had slit the throat of a guard and
must have been poised to slaughter the entire party. Only?.
Only no one knew quite what had happened next. The screams had woken
them up, and by the time people had puffed up the fires and Treatle the
wizard had cast a blue radiance over the campsite the surviving gnolls were
distant, spidery shadows, running as if all the legions of Hell were after
them.
Judging by what had happened to their colleagues, they were probably
right. Bits of gnolls hung from the nearby rocks, giving them a sort of
jolly, festive air. Gander wasn't particularly sorry about that-gnolls liked
to capture travellers and practise hospitality of the
red-hot-knife-and-bludgeon kind-but he was nervous of being in the same area
as Something that went through a dozen wiry and wickedly armed gnolls like a
spoon through a lightly-boiled egg but left no tracks.
In fact the ground was swept clean.
It had been a very long night, and the morning didn't seem to be an
improvement. The only person more than half-awake was Esk, who had slept
through the whole thing under one of the wagons and had complained only of
odd dreams.
Still, it was a relief to get away from that macabre sight. Gander
considered that gnolls didn't look any better inside than out. He hated
their guts.
Esk sat on Treatle's wagon, talking to Simon who was steering
inexpertly while the wizard caught up with some sleep behind them.
Simon did everything inexpertly. He was really good at it. He was one
of those tall lads apparently made out of knees, thumbs and elbows. Watching
him walk was a strain, you kept waiting for the strings to snap, and when he
talked the spasm of agony on his face if he spotted an S or W looming ahead
in the sentence made people instinctively say them for him. It was worth it
for the grateful look which spread across his acned face like sunrise on the
moon.
At the moment his eyes were streaming with hayfever.
"Did you want to be a wizard when you were a little boy?"
Simon shook his head. "I just www-"
"-wanted-"
"-tto find out how things www-"
"-worked?-"
"Yes. Then someone in my village told the University and Mmaster
T-Treatle was sent to bring me. I shall be a www-"
"-wizard-"
"-one day. Master Treatle says I have an exceptional grasp of
ththeory." Simon's damp eyes misted over and an expression almost of bliss
drifted across his ravaged face.
"He t-tells me they've got thousands of b-books in the library at
Unseen University," he said, in the voice of a man in love. "More bbooks
than anyone could read in a lifetime."
"I'm not sure I like books," said Esk conversationally. "How can paper
know things? My granny says books are only good if the paper is thin."
"No, that's not right," said Simon urgently. "Books are full of www" he
gulped air and gave her a pleading look.
"-words?-"said Esk, after a moment's thought.
"-yes, and they can change th-things. Th-that's wuwuw, that
wuwuwwhha-whha-"
"-what-"
"-I must f-find. I know it's th-there, somewhere in all the old books.
They ssss-"
"-say
"there's no new spells but I know that it's there somewhere, hiding,
the wwwwwuwu-"
"-words-"
"yes, that no wiwiwi-"
"-Wizard?-"said Esk, her face a frown of concentration.
"Yes, has ever found." His eyes closed and he smiled a beatific smile
and added, "The Words that Will change the World."
"What?"
"Eh?" said Simon, opening his eyes in time to stop the oxen wandering
off the track.
"You said all those wubbleyous!"
"Idid?"
"I heard you! Try again."
Simon took a deep breath. "The worworwor-the wuwuw-" he said. "The
wowowoo-" he continued.
"It's no good, it's gone," he said. "It happens sometimes, if I don't
think about it. Master Treatle says I'm allergic to something."
"Allergic to double-yous?"
"No, sisssisi-"
"-silly-" said Esk, generously.
"-there's sososo-"
"-something-"
"-in the air, p-pollen maybe, or g-grass dust. Master Treatle has tried
to find the cause of it but no magic seems to h-help it."
They were passing through a narrow pass of orange rock. Simon looked at
it disconsolately.
"My granny taught me some hayfever cures," Esk said. "We could try
those."
Simon shook his head. It looked touch and go whether it would fall off.
"Tried everything," he said. "Fine wwiwwi-magician I'd make, eh, can't
even sss-utter the wowo-name."
"I could see where that would be a problem," said Esk. She watched the
scenery for a while, marshalling a train of thought.
"Is it, er, possible for a woman to be, you know, a wizard? " she said
eventually.
Simon stared at her. She gave him a defiant look.
His throat strained. He was trying to find a sentence that didn't start
with a W. In the end he was forced to make concessions.
"A curious idea," he said. He thought some more, and started to laugh
until Esk's expression warned him.
"Rather funny, really," he added, but the laughter in his face faded
and was replaced by a puzzled look. "Never really tthought about it,
before."
"Well? Can they?" You could have shaved with Esk's voice.
"Of course they can't. It is self-evident, child. Simon, return to your
studies."
Treatle pushed aside the curtain that led into the back of the wagon
and climbed out on to the seat board.
The look of mild panic took up its familiar place on Simon's face. He
gave Esk a pleading glance as Treatle took the reins from his hands, but she
ignored him.
"Why not? What's so self-evident?"
Treatle turned and looked down at her. He hadn't really paid much
attention before, she was simply just another figure around the campfires.
He was the Vice-Chancellor of Unseen University, and quite used to
seeing vague scurrying figures getting on with essential but unimportant
jobs like serving his meals and dusting his rooms. He was stupid, yes, in
the particular way that very clever people can be stupid, and maybe he had
all the tact of an avalanche and was as selfcentred as a tornado, but it
would never have occurred to him that children were important enough to be
unkind to.
From long white hair to curly boots, Treatle was a wizard's wizard. He
had the appropriate long bushy eyebrows, spangled robe and patriarchal beard
that was only slightly spoiled by the yellow nicotine stains (wizards are
celibate but, nevertheless, enjoy a good cigar.
"It will all become clear to you when you grow up," he said. "It's an
amusing idea, of course, a nice play on words. A female wizard! You might as
well invent a male witch!"
"Warlocks," said Esk.
"Pardon me?"
"My granny says men can't be witches," said Esk. "She says if men tried
to be witches they'd be wizards."
"She sounds a very wise woman," said Treatle.
"She says women should stick to what they're good at," Esk went on.
"Very sensible of her."
"She says if women were as good as men they'd be a lot better!"
Treatle laughed.
"She's a witch," said Esk, and added in her mind: there, what do you
think of that, Mr so-called cleverwizard?
"My dear good young lady, am I supposed to be shocked? I happen to have
a great respect for witches."
Esk frowned. He wasn't supposed to say that.
"You have?"
"Yes indeed. I happen to believe that witchcraft is a fine career, for
a woman. A very noble calling."
"You do? I mean, it is?"
"Oh yes. Very useful in rural districts for, for people who are -having
babies, and so forth. However, witches are not wizards. Witchcraft is
Nature's way of allowing women access to the magical fluxes, but you must
remember it is not high magic."
"I see. Not high magic," said Esk grimly.
"Oh, no. Witchcraft is very suitable for helping people through life,
of course, but-"
"I expect women aren't really sensible enough to be wizards," said Esk.
"I expect that's it, really."
"I have nothing but the highest respect for women," said Treatle, who
hadn't noticed the fresh edge to Esk's tone. "They are without parallel
when, when-"
"For having babies and so forth?"
"There is that, yes," the wizard conceded generously. "But they can be
a little unsettling at times. A little too excitable. High magic requires
great clarity of thought, you see, and women's talents do not lie in that
direction. Their brains tend to overheat. I am sorry to say there is only
one door into wizardry and that is the main gate at Unseen University and no
woman has ever passed through it."
"Tell me," said Esk, "what good is high magic, exactly?"
Treatle smiled at her.
"High magic, my child," he said, "can give us everything we want."
"Oh."
"So put all this wizard nonsense out of your head, all right?" Treatle
gave her a benevolent smile. "What is your name, child?"
"Eskarina."
"And why do you go to Ankh, my dear?"
"I thought I might seek my fortune," muttered Esk, "but I think perhaps
girls don't have fortunes to seek. Are you sure wizards give people what
they want?"
"Of course. That is what high magic is for."
"I see."
The whole caravan was travelling only a little faster than walking
pace. Esk jumped down, pulled the staff from its temporary hiding place
among the bags and pails on the side of the wagon, and ran back along the
line of carts and animals. Through her tears she caught a glimpse of Simon
peering from the back of the wagon, an open book in his hands. He gave her a
puzzled smile and started to say something, but she ran on and veered off
the track.
Scrubby whinbushes scratched her legs as she scrambled up a clay bank
and then she was running free across a barren plateau, hemmed in by the
orange cliffs.
She didn't stop until she was good and lost but the anger still burned
brightly. She had been angry before, but never like this; normally anger was
like the red flame you got when the forge was first lit, all glow and
sparks, but this anger was different-it had the bellows behind it, and had
narrowed to the tiny bluewhite flame that cuts iron.
It made her body tingle. She had to do something about it or burst.
Why was it that, when she heard Granny ramble on about witchcraft she
longed for the cutting magic of wizardry, but whenever she heard Treatle
speak in his high-pitched voice she would fight to the death for witchcraft?
She'd be both, or none at all. And the more they intended to stop her, the
more she wanted it.
She'd be a witch and a wizard too. And she would show them.
Esk sat down under a low-spreading juniper b...
