Kingdoms wobble, crowns topple and knives flash on the magical Discworld as the statutory three witches meddle in royal politics.
But Granny Weatherwax and her fellow coven members find it's all a lot more difficult than playwrights would have you believe...
Everything you'd expect is here -- hunchbacked kings, lost crowns and disguised heirs. And they are joined by things you haven't heard of yet, like a stage-struck thunderstorm and the first recorded instance of the in-flight refuelling of a broomstick. Through it all the wyrd sisters battle against frightful odds to put the rightful king on the throne.
At least, that's what they think...
Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin.
* * *
As the cauldron bubbled an eldrich voice shrieked: "When shall we three meet again?"
There was a pause.
Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: "Well, I can do next Tuesday."
* * *
Through the fathomless deeps of space swims the star turtle Great A-Tuin, bearing on its back the four giant elephants who carry on their shoulders the mass of the Discworld. A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past.
* * *
In fact no gods anywhere play chess. They haven't got the imagination. They prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
* * *
On nights such as these the gods, as has already been pointed out, play games other than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings. It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end...
* * *
On nights such as this, witches are abroad.
Well, not actually abroad. They don't like the food and you can't trust the water and the shamans always hog the deckchairs.
* * *
It was known throughout the Ramtop Mountains that Mss Weatherwax did not approve of anything very much. If she said i was a good squint, then Magrat's eyes were probably staring up her own nostrils.
* * *
Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least with other witches, and they certainly don't have leaders.
Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn't have.
* * *
Like most people -- most people, at any rate, below the age of sixty or so -- Verence hadn't exercised his mind much about what happened to you when you died. Like most people since the dawn of time, he assumed it all somehow worked out all right in the end.
And, like most people since the dawn of time, he was now dead.
* * *
Verence drew himself up to his full height, or what would have been his full height if that part of him to which the word "height" could have been applied was not lying stiff on the floor and facing a future in which only the word "depth" could be appropriate.
* * *
Verence: "I don't think I will be up to all that business with the white sheets and the chains, though. Do I have to walk around moaning and screaming?"
Death: DO YOU WANT TO?
Verence: "No."
Death: THEN I SHOULDN'T BOTHER, IF I WERE YOU.
* * *
Death: DON'T WORRY, IT WON'T BE FOREVER.
Verence: "Good."
Death: IT MAY SEEM LIKE FOREVER.
* * *
[Verence] liked a big noisy banquet and had quaffed many a pint of good ale. And bad ale, come to that. He'd never been able to tell the diffference till the following morning, usually.
* * *
Quaffing is like drinking, but you spill more.
* * *
It was dawning on him that the pleasures of the flesh were pretty sparse without the flesh. Suddenly life wasn't worth living. The fact that he wasn't living it didn't cheer him up at all.
* * *
Nanny Ogg: "Hoofbeats? No-one would come up here this time of night."
Magrat: "What's to be afraid of?"
Granny Weatherwax: "Us."
* * *
Magrat: "It's the badge of King Verence."
Granny Weatherwax: "Who's he?"
Magrat: "He rules this country."
Granny Weatherwax: "Oh. That king."
* * *
Verence: "Ah. You're a ghost, too."
Champot: "Well spotted."
Verence: "It was the head under your arm. That gave me a clue."
Champot: "Does it bother you? I can put it back on if it bothers you."
* * *
Lady Felmet was momentarily speechless. This was by way of being a calendar event.
* * *
The duke often mused on his good luck in marrying her. If it wasn't for the engine of her ambition he'd be just another local lord, with nothing much to do but hunt, drink, and exercise his droit de seigneur.
[Footnote: Whatever that was. He'd never found anyone prepared to explain it to him.But it was definitely something a feudal lord ought to have and, he was pretty sure, it needed regular exercise. He imagined it was some kind of large hairy dog. he was definitely going to get one, and damn well exercise it.]
* * *
It has already been mentioned that Duke Felmet was one step away from the throne. The step in question was at the top of the flight leading to the Great Hall, down which King Verence had tumbled in the dark only to land, against all the laws of probability, on his own dagger.
It had, however, been declared by his own physician to be a case of natural causes. Bentzen had gone to see the man and explained that falling down a flight of steps with a dagger in your back was a disease caused by unwise opening of the mouth.
* * *
Lancre Castle was built on an outcrop of rock by an architect who had heard about Gormenghast but hadn't got the budget. He'd done his best, though, with a tiny confection of cut-price turrets, bargain basements, buttresses, crenellations, gargoyles, towers, courtyards, keeps and dungeons; in fact, just about everything a castle needs except maybe reasonable foundations and the kind of mortar that doesn't wash away in a light shower.
* * *
He was a cook in the real feudal tradition. If it didn't have an apple in its mouth and you couldn't roast it, he didn't want to serve it.
* * *
It was one of the few sorrows of Granny Weatherwax's life that, despite all her efforts, she'd arrived at the peak of her career with a complexion like a rosy apple and all her teeth. No amount of charms could persuade a wart to take root on her handsome if slightly equine features, and vast intakes of sugar only served to give her boundless energy.
* * *
"Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact."
* * *
"There's a [theater] troupe in Lancre now, I heard. I haven't been because, you know." Magrat looked down. "'Tis not right, a woman going into such places by herself."
Granny nodded. She thoroughly approved of such sentiments so long as there was, of course, no suggestion that they applied to her.
* * *
It was a rich and wonderful voice, with every diphthong gliding beautifully into place. It was a golden brown voice. If the Creator of the multiverse had a voice, it was a voice such as this. If it had a drawback, it was that it wasn't a voice you could use, for example, for ordering coal. Coal ordered by this voice would become diamonds.
* * *
"Oh, indeed," said the chamberlain happily. "It's considered good luck to have a witch living in your village. My word, yes."
"Why?"
The chamberlain hesitated. The last time he had resorted to a witch it had been because certain rectal problems had turned the privy into a daily torture chamber, and the jar of ointment she had prepared had turned the world into a nicer place.
"They smooth out life's little humps and bumps," he said.
* * *
Nanny Ogg ... was enthusiastically downing her third drink and, Granny thought sourly, was well along that path which would probably end up with her usual dancing on the table, showing her petticoats and singing "The Hedgehog Can Never be Buggered at All".
* * *
Vitoller played abstractly with the coins in front of him. His wife reached out across the table and touched his hand, and there was a moment of unspoken communion. Granny looked away. She had grown expert at reading faces, but there were times when she preferred not to.
* * *
Granny nodded, and fished in the deepest recesses of her cloak. At last she produced a small leather bag, which she tipped out on to the table. There was a lot of silver, and even a few gold coins.
"That should take care of--" she groped-- "nappies and suchlike. Clothes and things. Whatever."
"A hundred times over, I should think," said Vitoller weakly. "Why didn't you mention this before?"
"If I'd had to buy you, you wouldn't be worth the price."
* * *
Lancre had a town rule that all mummers, mountebanks and other potential criminals were outside the gates by sundown; it didn't offend anyone really because the town had no walls to speak of, and no-one much minded if people nipped back in again after dark. It was the look of the thing that counted.
* * *
"Where's Nanny?" [Magrat] said.
"She's lying out on the lawn," said Granny. "She felt a bit poorly." And from outside came the sound of Nanny Ogg being poorly at the top of her voice.
* * *
"What're we going to give him, then?" said Nanny.
"We was just discussing it," said Granny.
"I know what he'll want," said Nanny. She made a suggestion, which was received in frozen silence.
"I don't see what use that would be," said Magrat, eventually. "Wouldn't it be rather uncomfortable?"
"He'll thank us when he grows up, you mark my words," said Nanny.
-- Magical gifts that the Grimm Brothers never considered
(yes, it is what you think it is)
* * *
[Granny Weatherwax] walked quickly through the darkness with the frank stride of someone who was at least certain that the forest, on this damp and windy night, contained strange and terrible things and she was it.
* * *
The sergeant in charge was not happy in his work. He was a Ramtops man, and wasn't at all certain about how you went about arresting a witch. He was pretty certain, though, that the witch wouldn't like the idea. He didn't like the idea of a witch not liking the idea.
* * *
"What now, sarge?"
"We-- we spread out," he said. "Yes. We spread out, That's what we do."
They moved carefully through the bracken. The sergeant crouched behind a handy log, and said, "Right. Very good. You've got the general idea. Now let's spread out again, and this time we spread out separately."
* * *
The door opened. It opened very slowly, and with the maximum amount of creak. Simple neglect wouldn't have caused that depth of groan; you'd need careful work with hot water over a period of weeks.
* * *
"I've heard about witches," said the duke, who had spent the night before reading ... some of the more excitable works on the subject. [Footnote: Written by wizards, who are celibate and get some pretty funny ideas around four o'clock in the morning.]
* * *
Duke: "Admit it -- she offered you hedonistic and licentious pleasure known only to those who dabble in the carnal arts, didn't she?"
Sergeant: "No, sir. She offered me a bun."
* * *
Duke: "Fool?"
Fool: "Marry, sir--"
Duke: "I am already extremely married. Advise me, my Fool."
Fool: "I'faith, nuncle--"
Duke: "Nor am I thy nuncle. I feel sure I would have remembered. If you preface your next remark with nuncle, i'faith or marry, it will go hard on you."
Fool: "How do you feel about Prithee?"
Duke: "Prithee I can live with."
* * *
The sergeant wrinkled his forehead. Sarcasm had not hitherto entered his life. His experience of people being annoyed with him generally involved shouting and occasional bits of wood.
* * *
The duke had managed quite well for fifty years without finding a use for curiosity. It was not a trait much encouraged in aristocrats.
* * *
[The sergeant] had been in the undemanding service of the kings of Lancre for many years, and it showed. His body was standing to attention. Despite all his efforts his stomach stood at ease.
* * *
Only once, in the entire history of witchery on the Ramtops, had a thief broken into a witch's cottage. The witch concerned visited the most terrible punishment on him.
[Footnote: She did nothing, although sometimes when she saw him in the village she'd smile in a faint, puzzled way. After three weeks of this the suspense was too much for him and he took his own life; in fact he took it all the way across the continent, where he became a reformed character and never went home again.]
-- Headology at work
* * *
Nanny Ogg ... lived in a new, knick-knack cottage in the middle of Lancre town itself and at the heart of her own private empire. Various daughters and daughters-in-law came in to cook and clean on a sort of rota. Every flat surface was stuffed with ornaments brought back by far-travelling members of the family. Sons and grandsons kept the logpile stacked, the roof shingled, the chimny swept; the drinks cupboard was always full, the pouch by her rocking chair always stuffed with tobacco. Above the hearth was a huge pokerwork sign saying "Mother". No tyrant in the whole history of the world had ever achieved a domination so complete.
* * *
Nanny Ogg also kept a cat, a huge one-eyed grey tom called Greedo who divided his time between sleeping, eating and fathering the most enormous incestuous feline tribe.
* * *
Every morning [Magrat's] hair was long, thick, and blond, but by the evening it had always returned to its normal worried frizz. To ameliorate the effect she had tried to plait violets and cowslips in it. The result was not all she had hoped. It gave the impression that a window box had fallen on her head.
* * *
Nanny Ogg: "And then there was that great hairy thing of his."
Granny Weatherwax: "Ah. His droit de seigneur."
Nanny Ogg: "Needed a lot of exercise."
Granny Weatherwax: "But next day he'd send his housekeeper round with a bag of silver and a hamper of stuff for the wedding. Many a couple got a proper start in life thanks to that."
Nanny Ogg: "Ah. One or two individuals, too."
Granny Weatherwax: "Every inch a king."
Magrat: "What are you talking about? Did he keep pets?"
-- Wink-wink-nudge-nudge-saynomore...
* * *
Magrat: "Only now no-one must say Felmet killed the king."
Granny Weatherwax: "What?"
Magrat: "He had some people executed in Lancre the other day for saying it. Spreading malicious lies, he said. He said anyone saying different will see the inside of his dungeons, only not for long. He said Verence died of natural causes."
Granny Weatherwax: "Well, being assassinated is natural causes for a king. I don't see why he's so sheepish about it."
* * *
Back down on the plains, if you kicked people they kicked back. Up here, when you kicked people they moved away and just waited patiently for your leg to fall off.
* * *
"I am bored, Fool."
"Let me entertain you, my lord, with many a merry quip and lightsome jest."
"Try me."
The Fool licked his dry lips. He hadn't actually expected this. King Verence had been happy enough just to give him a kick, or throw a bottle at his head. A real king.
* * *
A year went past. The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had tried all passing at the same time, and it hadn't worked.
* * *
Vitoller always waved his arms when he spoke; if you tied his hands behind his back he would be dumb.
* * *
There was plenty of flat ground in the Ramtops. The problem was that nearly all of it was vertical.
* * *
The dwarf stuck out his tongue as he piloted the errant quill across the ink-speckled page. He'd found room for the star-crossed lovers, the comic gravediggers and the hunchback king. It was the cats and the roller skates that were currently giving him trouble...
-- Andrew Lloyd Webber makes it look so easy
* * *
The idea that Winter could actually be enjoyable would never have occurred to Ramtop people, who had eighteen different words for snow. [Footnote: All of them, unfortunately, unprintable.]
* * *
In the village of Razorback a cat gave birth to a two-headed kitten, but since Greebo, by dint of considerable effort, was every male ancestor for the last thirty generations this probably wasn't all that portentous.
* * *
The Ramtops... were so saturated with magic that it was constantly discharging itself into the environment. People would wake up in the middle of the night, mutter, "Oh, it's just another bloody portent", and go back to sleep.
* * *
The vermine is a small black and white furry creature, much famed for its pelt. It is a more careful relative of the lemming; it only throws itself over small pebbles.
* * *
Felmet: "Is this a dagger I see before me?"
Fool: "Um. No, my lord. It's my handkerchief, you see. You can sort of tell the difference if you look closely. It doesn't have as many sharp edges."
* * *
The door swung open. The duchess filled the doorway. In fact, she was nearly the same shape.
* * *
The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.
* * *
...it was unheard of for a witch to go out on Hogswatchnight. It was against all tradition. No-one knew why, but that wasn't the point.
* * *
She waited for ten minutes until Magrat came hurrying up the path from Mad Stoat, a village whose good-natured inhabitants were getting used to ear massage and flower-based homeopathic remedies for everything short of actual decapitation.
* * *
She was out of breath, and wore only a shawl over a nightdress that, if Magrat had anything to reveal, would have been very revealing.
* * *
Magrat shivered. She told herself that a witch had absolute control over her own body, and the goosepimples under her thin nightdress were just a figment of her own imagination. The trouble was, she had an excellent imagination.
* * *
The water under the lid was inky black and, according to rumour, bottomless; the Ogg grandchildren were encouraged to believe that monsters from the dawn of time dwelt in its depths, since Nanny believed that a bit of thrilling and pointless terror was an essential ingredient of the magic of childhood.
In summer she used it as a beer cooler.
* * *
Granny Weatherwax: "We conjure and abjure thee by means of this -- sharp and terrible copper stick."
Magrat: "See how we scatter... rather old washing soda and some extremely hard soap flakes in thy honor. Really, Nanny, I don't think--"
Granny Weatherwax: "Silence! Now you, Gytha."
Nanny Ogg: "And I invoke and bind thee with the balding scrubbing brush of Art and the washboard of Protection."
-- Sometimes you have to make do with what's available
* * *
[Granny Weatherwax] didn't much care for demons in any case ... But protocol dictated that the host witch had the choice, and Nanny quite liked demons, who were male, or apparently so.
* * *
Demon: "My name is unpronounceable in your tongue, woman."
Granny Weatherwax: "I'll be the judge of that. Don't you call me woman."
Demon: "Very well. My name is WxrtHltl-jwlpklz."
Nanny Ogg: "Where were you when the vowels were handed out? Behind the door?"
* * *
Granny Weatherwax: "We have the sword of Art and the octogram of Protection, I warn you."
Demon: "Please yourself. They look like a washboard and a copper stick to me."
* * *
Tradition said that there could only be three questions. Granny tried to formulate one that couldn't be deliberately misunderstood. Then she decided that this was playing the wrong kind of game.
"What the hell's going on?" she said carefully. "And no mucking about trying to wriggle out of it, otherwise I'll boil you."
* * *
Granny Weatherwax: "Oh. Yes. Run along. Thank you."
Demon: "You wouldn't mind banishing me, would you?"
Granny Weatherwax: "What?"
Demon: "Only I'd feel better for being properly banished. 'Run along' lacks that certain something."
Granny Weatherwax: "Oh. Well, if it gives you any pleasure. Magrat!"
Magrat: "Yes?"
Granny Weatherwax: "Do the honours, will you?"
Magrat: "Certainly. Right. Okay. Um. Begone, foul fiend, unto the blackest pit..."
* * *
Like most Ramtoppers Granny lived her life via the back door. There were only three times in your life when it was proper to come through the front door, and you were carried every time.
* * *
Occupying the metterforical stalls were a rabble of rabits, weasels, vermine, badgers, foxes, and miscellaneous creatures who, despite the fact that they live their entire lives in a bloody atmosphere of hunter and hunted, killing or killed by claw, talon and tooth, are generally referred to as woodland folk.
* * *
No, things like crowns had a troublesome effect on clever folk; it was best to leave all the reigning to the kind of people whose eyebrows met in the middle when they tried to think. In a funny sort of way, they were much better at it.
* * *
She stamped inside, and tried to slam the door. It stuck once or twice, which rather spoiled the effect.
* * *
"I reckon them witches did you a bad turn, missus," said the dwarf. "You know. Changelings and whatnot. There used to be a lot of that sort of thing. My great-great-grandmother said it was done to us, once. The fairies swapped a human and a dwarf. We never realised until he started banging his head on things, they say--"
* * *
Now [Verence] haunted -- how he hated the word -- the Long Gallery, where paintings of long-dead kings looked down at him from the dusty shadows. He would have felt a lot more kindly towards them if he hadn't met a number of them gibbering in various parts of the premises.
* * *
...instead of the mindless animal self-absorption that passes for secret wisdom in the creatures, Greebo radiated genuine intelligence. He also radiated a small that would have knocked over a wall and caused sinus trouble in a dead fox.
* * *
He'd never had a Plan before, or at least one that went much further than "Let's find something and kill it."
* * *
The singing wasn't particularly good. The only word the singer appeared to know was "la," but she was making it work hard.
* * *
The Fool held his breath. On long nights on the hard flagstones he had dreamed of women like [Magrat]. Although, if he really thought about it, not much like her; they were better endowed around the chest, their noses weren't so red and pointed, and their hair tended to flow more. But the Fool's libido was bright enough to tell the difference between the impossible and the conceivably attainable, and hurredly cut in some filter circuits.
* * *
An urgent voice at the back of her mind said: You should run away now, like a timid gazelle; this is the accepted action in these circumstances.
Common sense intervened. In her most optimistic moments Magrat would not have compared herself to a gazelle, timid or otherwise. Besides, it added, the basic snag about running away like a timid gazelle was that in all probability she would easily outdistance him.
* * *
Uncommon sense ... pointed out that few demons tinkled pathetically and appeared to be quite so breathless.
* * *
[Magrat] felt an overpowering urge to curse. She knew a great many curses. Goodie Whemper had been really imaginative in that department; even the creatures of the forest used to go past her cottage at a dead run.
She couldn't find a single one that fully expressed her feelings.
"Oh, bugger," she said.
* * *
Nanny Ogg: "[Magrat] doesn't seem to be her normal self."
Granny Weatherwax: "Yes. Could be an improvement."
* * *
Magrat stood up and pulled herself together, giving the impression that some bits had to come quite a long way.
* * *
There was another silence while they stared at one another, nose to nose, but this silence was a whole quantum level of animosity higher than the last one; you could have roasted a turkey in the heat of this silence.
* * *
Goodie Whemper had, in fact, been a research wich.
[Footnote: Someone has to do it. It's all very well calling for eye of newt, but do you mean Common, Spotted, or Great Crested? Which eye, anyway? Will tapioca do just as well?]
* * *
Goodie Whemper's curiosity about [magic] was huge and insatiable.
[Footnote: Nearly insatiable. It was probably satiated in her last flight to test whether a broomstick could survive having its bristles pulled out one by one in mid-air. According to the small black raven she had trained as a flight recorder, the answer was almost certainly no.]
* * *
First, she had to find out his name. The old peel-the-apple trick should do that. You just peeled an apple, getting one length of peel, and threw the peel behind you; it'd land in the shape of his name. Millions of girls had tried it and had inevitably been disappointed, unless the loved one was called Scscs.
* * *
Goodie Whemper's tiny handwriting went on for two pages of detailed botanical instructions which, if carefully followed, resulted in the kind of love potion that had to be kept in a tightly-stoppered jar at the bottom of a bucket of iced water.
* * *
Greebo was one of [Nanny Ogg's] blind spots. While intellectually she would concede that he was indeed a fat, cunning, evil-smelling multiple rapist, she nevertheless instinctively pictured him as the small fluffy kitten he had been decades before. The fact that he had once chased a female wolf up a tree and seriously surprised a she-bear who had been innocently digging for roots didn't stop her worrying that something bad might happen to him.
* * *
It was generally considered by everyone else in the kingdom that the only thing that might slow Greebo down was a direct meteorite strike.
* * *
[Nanny Ogg] gave the guards a nod as she went through. It didn't occur to either of them to stop her because witches, like beekeepers and big gorillas, went where they liked. In any case, an elderly lady banging a bowl with a spoon was probably not the spearhead of an invasion force.
* * *
Life as a castle guard in Lancre was extremely boring. One of them, leaning on his spear as Nanny went past, wished there could be some excitement in his job. He will shortly learn the error of his ways.
* * *
Lancre is a poor kingdom, and over the centuries the chain mail of the palace guards has had to be handed down from one generation to another, often on the end of a long stick.
* * *
Felmet: "Quite comfortable, are we?"
Nanny Ogg: "Apart from these stocks, you mean?"
Felmet: "I im impervious to your foul blandishments. I scorn your devious wiles. You are to be tortured, I'll have you know."
Duchess: "And then you will be burned."
Nanny Ogg: "Okay."
Duchess: "Okay?"
Nanny Ogg: "Well, it's bloody freezing down here."
* * *
Duchess: "This insouciance gives you pleasure, but soon you will laugh on the other side of your face!"
Nanny Ogg: "It's only got this side."
* * *
Verence: "I thought witches could do magic."
Nanny Ogg: "Young man, you will oblige me by shutting up."
Verence: "Madam! I am a king!"
Nanny Ogg: "You are also dead, so I wouldn't aspire to hold any opinions if I was you."
* * *
There was no gainsaying that tone of voice. It spoke to him across the years, from his days in the nursery. Its echoes told him that if he didn't eat it all up he would be sent straight to bed.
* * *
[Magrat had] dug out a startlingly green dress that was designed to be both revealing and clinging, and would have been if Magrat had anything to display or cling to, so she'd shoved a couple of rolled-up stockings down the front in an effort to make good the more obvious deficiencies.
* * *
Her neck, fingers and arms between them carried enough silverware to make a full-sized dinner service...
* * *
She drew herself up and turned this way and that. The clusters of amulets, magical jewellery and occult bangles on various parts of her body jingled together; any enemy wouldn't only have to be blind to fail to notice that a witch was approaching, he'd have to be deaf as well.
* * *
There was the white-handled knife, used in the preparation of magical ingredients. There was the black-handled knife, used in the magical workings themselves; Magrat had carved so many runes into its handle it was in constant danger of falling in half.
* * *
During his adult life he'd been afraid of no man, beast or combination of the two, but Nanny's voice brought back old memories of schoolroom and nursery, of life under strict orders given by stern ladies in long skirts...
* * *
"A man could go far, knowing his rights like you do," said Granny. "But right now he should go home."
* * *
"I am a harmless old seller of apples," [Granny Weatherwax] said, in a voice more appropriate for the opening of hostilities in a middle-range war.
* * *
"I know you, Champett Poldy," [Granny Weatherwax] said. "I recall I laid out your grandad and I brought you into the world. ... I gave you your first good hiding in this valley of tears and by all the gods if you cross me now I will give you your last."
There was a soft metallic noise as the spear fell out of the man's fearful fingers. Granny reached and gave the trembling man a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
"But don't worry about it," she added. "Have an apple."
* * *
Hurting old ladies in cold blood wasn't [the Fool's] cup of tea, and actually hurting witches in blood of any temperature whatsoever failed to be an entire twelve-course banquet.
* * *
Magrat had used a lot of powder to make her face pale and interesting. It combined with the lavishly applied mascara to give the guard the impression that he was looking at two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl. He found his fingers wanted to make a sign to ward off the evil eyeshadow.
* * *
[The guard had] been told not to let witches pass, but no-one had said anything about apple sellers. Apple sellers were not a problem. It was witches that were the problem. She'd said she was an apple seller and he wasn't about to doubt a witch's word.
* * *
Granny Weatherwax was not lost. She wasn't the kind of person who ever became lost. It was just that, at the moment, while she knew exactly where she was, she didn't know the position of anywhere else.
* * *
"Well, well," said one, leering. "Come to keep us company, you have, my pretty."
"I was looking for the dungeons," said Magrat, to whom the term "sexual harassment" were a mere collection of syllables.
* * *
"You're wondering whether I really would cut your throat," panted Magrat. "I don't know either. Think of the fun we could have together, finding out."
* * *
[The guards] got up and stood either side of her; she was aware of two chins you could strike matches on and an overpowering smell of stale beer. Frantic signals from outlying portions of her mind began to break down her iron-hard conviction that bad things only happened to bad people.
* * *
The Fool advanced with the bravery of the terminally angry.
* * *
Magrat struck. It was an unplanned, instinctive blow, its stopping power considerably enhanced by the weight of rings and bangles; her arm whirred around in an arc that connected with her captor's jaw and spun him twice before he folded up in a heap with a quiet little sigh, and incidentally with several symbols of occult significance embossed on his cheek.
* * *
[Magrat] realised, in an absolutely clear way, that her padding had slipped down to her waist, her head felt as though a family of unhygienic birds had been nesting in it, and her eyeshadow had not so much run as sprinted.
* * *
"There were screams," said the Fool, who couldn't help feeling they weren't taking things seriously enough.
"I daresay," said Granny, pushing the Fool aside and stepping over a writhing taproot. "If anyone locked me in a dungeon, there'd be screams."
* * *
"The dead shouldn't kill the living," she said. "It could be a dangerous wossname, precedent. We'd all be outnumbered, for one thing."
* * *
Most of the [dungeon] furniture had been overturned and scattered across the floor; it didn't look as though any of it had been designed to be the last word in comfort.
* * *
"How about tonight?" said the Fool.
"Oh, no," said Magrat. "I'm very busy tonight." She had intended to curl up with a hot milk drink and Goodie Whemper's notebooks on experimental astrology, but instinct told her that any suitor should have an uphill struggle put in front of him, just to make him keener.
-- A lesson every man had to learn the hard way
* * *
Civil disobedience was new to Lancre, but its inhabitants had already mastered some of its more elementary manifestations, viz, the jerking of rakes and sickles in the air with simple up-and-down motions accompanied by grimaces and cries of "Gerrh!"
* * *
Several sellers of hot meat pies and sausages in a bun had appeared from nowhere and were doing a brisk trade. [Footnote: They always do, everywhere. No-one sees them arrive. The logical explaination is that the franchise includes the stall, the paper hat and a small gas-powered time machine.]
* * *
"Smile and wave," commanded the duke.
Granny raised one hand in a vague motion and produced a brief rictus that had nothing whatsoever to do with humour. Then she scowled and nudged Nanny Ogg, who was waving and mugging like a maniac.
* * *
Magrat looked up guiltily. She had been deep in conversation with the Fool, although it was the kind of conversation where both parties spend a lot of time looking at their feet and picking at their fingernails. Ninety per cent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarassment.
* * *
There are thousands of good reasons why magic doesn't rule the world. They're called witches and wizards, Magrat reflected...
* * *
"I ain't despairing, I'm thinking," said Granny. "Go away."
Nanny Ogg raised her eyebrows at Magrat in a warning fashion. They backed off to a suitable distance although, with Granny in her present mood, the next universe might not be far enough...
* * *
[Nature] saw to it that everyone with any magical talent was about as ready to co-operate as a she-bear with toothache, so all that dangerous power was safely dissipated as random bickering and rivalry. There were differences in style, of course. Wizards assassinated each other in draughty corridors, witches just cut one another dead in the street.
* * *
Nanny Ogg: "...when you get along in the Craft, you learn that the hardest magic is the sort you don't use at all."
Magrat: "This isn't some kind of Zen, is it?"
Nanny Ogg: "Dunno. Never seen one."
* * *
Granny Weatherwax considered herself totally unsusceptible to buttering up, but the king was expertly applying the equivalent of the dairy surplus of quite a large country.
* * *
Granny Weatherwax: "Here, how did you get out of the castle?"
Verence: "The esteemed Nanny Ogg assisted me. I reasoned, if I am anchored to the stones of Lancre, then I can also go where the stones go. I am afraid I indulged in a little trickery to arrange matters. Currently I am haunting her apron."
Granny Weatherwax: "Not the first, either."
* * *
Verence: "Where is [my son] now?"
Granny Weatherwax: "We saw him safe out of the country, you see."
Nanny Ogg: "Very good family."
Verence: "What kind of people? Not commoners, I trust?"
Granny Weatherwax: "Absolutely not. Not common at all. Very uncommon. Er."
* * *
Magrat: "They were Thespians."
Verence: "Oh. Good."
Nanny Ogg: "Were they? They didn't look it."
Granny Weatherwax: "Don't show your ignorance, Gytha Ogg. Sorry about that, your majesty. It's just her showing off. She don't even know where Thespia is."
* * *
Witches never bothered with elementary road safety. Such traffic as there was on the roads of Lancre either went around them or, if this was not possible, waited until they moved out of the way.
* * *
She struggled up through the weeds, incoherent with rage, and rose from the ditch like Venus Anadyomene, only older and with more duckweed.
* * *
Granny Weatherwax: "He ran us down!"
Magrat: "You could have got out of the way."
Granny Weatherwax: "Get out of the way? We're witches! People get out of our way!"
-- Now Granny's pissed...
* * *
Granny Weatherwax: "I'll teach him to run us down as though, as though, as though we was ordinary people!"
Magrat: "He already knows."
* * *
Magrat: "...what about this rule about not meddling?"
Nanny Ogg: "Ah. The thing is, as you progress in the Craft, you'll learn there is another rule. Esme's obeyed it all her life."
Magrat: "And what's that?"
Nanny Ogg: "When you break rules, break 'em good and hard."
* * *
Duchess: "Exactly how does one go about knocking over the houses of people one does not like?"
Fool: "Urban clearance."
Duchess: "I was thinking of burning them down."
Fool: "Hygienic urban clearance."
* * *
"Be quiet, husband," snapped the duchess. "I know you didn't do it. I wasn't there with you, you may recall. It was I who didn't hand you the dagger."
* * *
It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone's mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.
* * *
[The storm] had spent a fortnight understudying a famous anticyclone over the Circle Sea, turning up every day, hanging around in the cold front, grateful for a chance to uproot the occasional tree or whirl a farmhouse to any available emerald city of its choice.
* * *
If weather was people, this storm would be filling in time wearing a cardboard hat in a hamburger hell.
* * *
Her face was pale. It might also have been drawn; if so, then it was by a very neurotic artist.
* * *
Eventually Granny said, "Well, Magrat. You know all about the coven business. We might as well do it right. What do we do next?"
Magrat hesitated. She wasn't up to suggesting dancing naked.
* * *
Granny Weatherwax sighed. "Each to her own, I suppose. I'm blowed if I'll let a ball of shiny rock tell me what to do."
"Yes, bugger all that." said Nanny. "Let's curse somebody."
* * *
"Who's a good boy, den?" said the Fool. "Wowsa wowsa whoosh."
This intrigued Greebo. The only other person who had ever spoken to him like this was Nanny Ogg; everyone else addressed him as "Yarrgeroffoutofityahbarstard."
* * *
"But you can't put the old king back on the throne," said Magrat. "Ghosts can't rule. You'd never get the crown to stay on. It'd drop through."
* * *
Nanny Ogg: "She turned a pumpkin into a royal coach once."
Granny Weatherwax: "Showy. That's no help to anyone, turning up at a ball smelling like a pie. And that business with the glass slipper. Dangerous, to my mind."
Nanny Ogg: "But the biggest thing she ever did was to send a whole palace to sleep for a hundred years until ... Can't remember. Was there rose bushes involved, or was it spinning wheels in that one? I think some princess had to finger..."
-- Fractured fairy tales
* * *
Greebo's grin gradually faded, until there was nothing left but the cat. This was nearly as spooky as the opposite way around.
* * *
The Fool was vaguely aware that you could tell which direction the Hub lay by seeing which side of the trees the moss grew on. A quick inspection of the nearby trunks indicated that, in defiance of all normal geography, the Hub lay everywhere.
* * *
...Granny saw every flight simply as a straight line from A to B and was unable to get alongside the idea that other users of the air might have any rights whatsoever; the flight migration patterns of an entire continent had been changed because of that simple fact. High-speed evolution among local birds had developed a generation that flew on their backs, so that they could keep a watchful eye on the skies.
* * *
Granny's implicit belief that everything should get out of her way extended to other witches, very tall trees and, on occassion, mountains.
* * *
...[Magrat] reflected that there was possibly something complimentary in the way Granny Weatherwax resolutely refused to consider other people's problems. It implied that, in her considerable opinion, they were quite capable of sorting them out by themselves.
* * *
What Magrat had achieved was a mere adjustment of the mental processes, from a bewildered and slightly frightened woman gliding inexorably towards the inhospitable ground to a clearheaded, optimistic and positive thinking woman who had really got it together, was taking full responsibility for her own life and in general knew where she was coming from although, unfortunately, where she was heading had not changed in any way. But she felt a lot better about it.
* * *
Magrat: "Did I land on you?"
Fool: "Someone did."
Magrat: "You?"
Fool: "You!"
Magrat: "What are you doing here?"
Fool: "Marry, I was walking along the ground. A lot of people do, you know. I mean, I know it's been done before. It's not original. It probably lacks imagination but, well, it's always been good enough for me."
* * *
Fool: "Rain, yes, hail, yes, even lumps of rock. Fish and small frogs, okay. Women, no, up till now. Is it going to happen again?"
Magrat: "You've got a bloody hard head."
Fool: "Modesty forbids me to comment."
* * *
Granny Weatherwax: "Did you bring something to drink?"
Nanny Ogg: "Certainly. You said."
Granny Weatherwax: "Well?"
Nanny Ogg: "I drank it, didn't I?"
* * *
Fools were expected to be bad at juggling, especially if juggling inherently funny items like custard pies, flaming torches or extremely sharp cleavers.
* * *
He'd seen the surviving assassins, foppish, giggling young men in black silk, as sharp as knives underneath; he'd seen priests, their fantastic costumes only slightly marred by the long rubber sacrificial aprons they wore for major services.
* * *
...[the Fool] realised for the first time that the uniform he was wearing had been carefully and meticulously designed for no other purpose than making its wearer look like a complete and utter pillock.
* * *
"It's just that, well, when you're a witch you don't think about other people. I mean, you think about them, but you don't actually think about their feelings, if you see what I mean. At least, not unless you think about it."
* * *
Magrat: "But you don't even like being a Fool!"
Fool: "I hate it. But that's got nothing to do with it. If I've got to be a Fool, I'll do it properly."
Magrat: "That's really stupid."
Fool: "Foolish, I'd prefer."
* * *
Ahead of her she made out Granny Weatherwax dropping like a stone, one hand clutching her hat, the other trying to prevent gravity from seeing up her skirts.
* * *
Granny Weatherwax: "A witch doesn't know the meaning of the word 'failure', Gytha."
Nanny Ogg: "Esme?"
Granny Weatherwax: "What?"
Nanny Ogg: "It means 'lack of success'."
* * *
"Over there," said said. "I definitely heard it this time. Something like 'cock-a-doo-arrgh'."
* * *
It is almost impossible to convey the sudden passage of fifteen years and two months in words.
It's a lot easier in pictures, when you just use a calendar with lots of pages blowing off... Or the sun becomes a fiery streak across the sky, and days and nights flicker past jerkily like a bad zoetrope, and the fashions visible in the clothes shop across the road whip on and off faster than a lunchtime stripper with five pubs to do.
* * *
The kiss lasted more than fifteen years.
Not even frogs can manage that.
* * *
Magrat: "You were telling me how much you hated the whole Guild and everything!"
Fool: "Well, yes. But I still have to do it. I gave my word."
Magrat: "Just when we were getting to know one another! You're pathetic."
Fool: "I'd only be pathetic if I broke my word."
* * *
Fool: "I said I'm sorry. I couldn't see you again before I go, could I?"
Magrat: "I shall be washing my hair."
Fool: "When?"
Magrat: "Whenever!"
* * *
Hour gongs were being struck all across the city and night-watchmen were proclaiming that it was indeed midnight and also that, in the face of all the evidence, all was well. Many of them got as far as the end of the sentence before being mugged.
* * *
...now, with the snow melt swelling the flow, many of the low-rent districts on the Morpork side were flooded, if you can use that word for a liquid you could pick up in a net.
* * *
This sort of thing happened every year and would have caused havoc with the drains and sewage systems, so it is just as well that the city didn't have very many.
* * *
All the Disc it is but an Theater, ane alle men and wymmen are but Players. Except Those who selle popcorn.
* * *
Tomjon: "What's the time?"
Hwel: "It's after midnight. And you know what your father said about going to bed late."
Tomjon: "I'm not. I'm getting up early. Getting up early is very healthy. And now I'm going out for a very healthy drink."
* * *
"You know, Hwel, I reckon responsible behaviour is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins."
* * *
Drinking in the Drum has been likened to diving in a swamp, except that in a swamp the alligators don't pick your pockets first.
* * *
...ninety-nine brows crinkled with the effort of working out whether the newcomers fell into category A, people to be frightened of or B, people to frighten.
* * *
Cosmopolitan as they were, the people of Morpork had a breezy, no-nonsense approach to the non-human races, i.e., hit them over the head with a brick and throw them in the river.
* * *
...it is very difficult to be racially prejudiced against creatures seven feet tall who can bite through walls, at least for very long.
* * *
By the time that the table had slid into another table and overturned a couple of benches there was enough impetus to start the night's overdue brawl, especially since the big man had a few friends with him. ... they hit whoever happened to be nearest, on general principles. this is absolutely correct etiquette for a tavern brawl.
* * *
The Shades is an ancient part of Ankh-Morpork considerably more unpleasant and disreputable than the rest of the city. This always amazes visitors.
* * *
Tomjon: "What about dwarf bars?"
Hwel: "You'd hate it. Besides, you'd run out of headroom."
Tomjon: "Low dives, are they?"
* * *
Hwel: "Look at it like this -- how long do you think you could sing about gold?"
Tomjon: "'It's yellow and it goes clink and you can buy things with it.' Four seconds, I think."
Hwel: "Right. Five hours of it gets a bit repetitive. Anyway, you'd get thrown out for being too creative."
* * *
For some reason his fellow [dwarf] expatriates, who at home did nothing more objectionable than mine a bit of iron ore and hunt small creatures, felt impelled, once in the big city, to wear chain mail underwear, go around with axes in their belts, and call themselves names like Timkin Rumbleguts.
* * *
And no-one could beat a city dwarf when it came to quaffing. Sometimes they missed their mouths altogether.
* * *
They squinted into the alley, once again revealing themselves as newcomers to the city.
* * *
...compared to the Patrician of Ankh, Machiavelli could not have run a whelk stall.
* * *
"There must be a hundred silver dollars in here," moaned Boggis, waving a purse. "I mean, that's not my league. That's not my class. I can't handle that sort of money. You've got to be in the Guild of Lawyers or something to steal that much."
* * *
Fool: "Is there a tavern open around here?"
Tomjon: "See all those tavern signs?"
Fool: "Yes. Gosh. There's hundreds."
Tomjon: "Right. See the one at the end, with the blue and white sign?"
Fool: "Yes. I think so."
Tomjon: "Well, as far as I know, that's the only one around here that's ever closed."
* * *
He wasn't very good at quaffing. Too much of the drink actually landed in his mouth.
Judging by the taste in it, some incontinent creature of the night had also scored a direct hit.
* * *
"All right, all right. 'Whole grain wheat and lentils too, In the cauldron seethe and stew'? What happened to the toad?"
"Please, Granny. You're slowing it down. You know Goodie was against all unnecessary cruelty. Vegetable protein is a perfectly acceptable substitute."
* * *
Vitoller: "I'll miss you, laddie. I don't mind telling you. You've been like a son to me. How old are you, exactly? I never did know."
Hwel: "A hundred and two."
Vitoller: "You've been like a father to me, then."
* * *
"A magic sword is important," said Magrat. "You've got to have one. We could make him one," she added wistfully, "out of thunderbolt iron. I've got a spell for that. You take some thunderbolt iron," she said uncertainly, "and then you make a sword out of it."
* * *
Magrat: "If he's going to be king he ought to be able to fight his own battles."
Nanny Ogg: "We don't want him to go wasting his strength. We want him good and fresh for when he gets here."
Magrat: "And then, I hope, we shall leave him to fight his battles in his own way."
Granny Weatherwax: "Quite right. Provided he looks like winning."
* * *
The calender of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.
* * *
Unexpected happenings were more or less expected in the Ramtops because of the high magical potential, but several years disappearing overnight was a bit of a first.
* * *
Magrat: "So what you're saying is that this 'not meddling' thing is like taking a vow not to swim. You'll absolutely never break it unless of course you happen to find yourself in the water?"
Nanny Ogg: "Better than drowning."
* * *
[Magrat] considered the Fool to be weak, badly led and sorely in need of some backbone. And she was longing for him to get back, so she could look forward to never seeing him again.
* * *
It would be nice to say that the leader of the robbers was a black-bearded, swaggering brute, with a red headscarf and one gold earring and a chin you could clean pots with. Actually, it would be practically compulsory. And, in fact, this was so. Hwel thought the wooden leg was overdoing it, but the man had obviously studied the role.
* * *
"Well now," said the bandit chief. "What have we here, and do they have any money?"
"We're actors," said Tomjon.
"That ought to answer both questions," said Hwel.
* * *
"He didn't take any notice!" whispered Tomjon.
"A born critic," said the dwarf.
* * *
There was the kind of big, empty silence made by an environment that not only doesn't have any people in it, but doesn't need them either.
* * *
Tomjon: "You said the mountains were honeycombed with dwarf mines. You said a dwarf could tell wherever he was in the mountains."
Hwel: "Underground, I said. It's all a matter of strata and rock formations. Not on the surface. All the landscape gets in the way."
Tomjon: "We could dig you a hole."
* * *
Tomjon: "We are lost, aren't we."
Hwel: "Certainly not."
Tomjon: "Where are we, then?"
Hwel: "The mountains. Perfectly clear on any atlas."
* * *
Magrat: "Meat is extremely bad for the digestive system. If you could see inside your colon you'd be horrified."
Hwel: "I think I would."
* * *
"Did you know that an adult male carries up to five pounds of undigested red meat in his intestines at all times?" said Magrat, whose informative lectures on nutrition had been known to cause whole families to hide in the cellar until she went away.
* * *
[Nanny Ogg] fumbled in her apron pocket for her tobacco pouch.
"Has anyone got a light?" she inquired.
A couple of actors produced bundles of matches. Nanny nodded and put the pouch away.
"Good," she said. "Now, has anyone got any tobacco?"
* * *
Tomjon looked around Lancre town. It seemed peaceful enough. It didn't look like the kind of place likely to turn actors out at nightfall. It needed the population.
* * *
The Fool waited in the meadow with the lake. He stared wistfully at the sky and wondered where the hell Magrat was. This was, she said, their place; the fact that a few dozen cows also shared it at the moment didn't appear to make any difference.
* * *
"This is the capital city of the kingdom," said Nanny Ogg. "Well-designed streets, you'll notice."
"Streets?" said Tomjon.
"Street," corrected Granny. "Also houses in quite good repair, stone's throw from river--"
"Throw?"
"Drop," Nanny conceded.
-- Welcome to Lancre
* * *
"You've got it exactly spot on about that dreadful accident," said the duke. "You might almost have been there. Ha. Ha."
"You weren't, were you?" said Lady Felmet, leaning forward and glaring at the dwarf.
"I just used my imagination," said Hwel hurriedly. The duchess glared at him, suggesting that his imagination could consider itself lucky it wasn't being dragged off to the courtyard to explain itself to four angry wild horses and a length of chain.
* * *
Magrat: "Don't you want to die nobly for a just cause?"
Fool: "I'd much rather live quietly for one."
* * *
Magrat: "When's this play going to be, then?"
Fool: "Marry, I'm sure I'm not allowed to tell you. The duke said to me, he said, don't tell the witches that it's tomorrow night."
Magrat: "I shouldn't, then."
Fool: "At eight o'clock."
Magrat: "I see."
Fool: "But meet for sherry beforehand at seven-thirty, i'faith."
* * *
"Actors," said Granny, witheringly. "As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more."
* * *
"Wotcha, jinglebells," said Nanny, elbowing the man in the ribs. "I hope you haven't been keeping our girl here up late o'nights!"
"Nanny!" said Magrat, shocked. The Fool gave the terrified, ingratiating rictus of young men everywhere when confronted by importunate elderly women commenting on their intimately personal lives.
* * *
The castle was full of people standing around in that polite, sheepish way affected by people who see each other all day and are now seeing each other again in unusual social circumstances, like an office party.
* * *
"What are you?"
"We're hags, Hwel!"
"What kind of hags?"
"We're black and midnight hags!"
"What kind of black and midnight hags?"
"Evil black and midnight hags!"
"Are you scheming?"
"Yeah!"
"Are you secret?"
"Yeah!"
"What-are-you?"
"We're scheming evil secret black and midnight hags!"
"Right!"
-- Shakespearian pep rally
* * *
"I'd like to know if I could compare you to a summer's day. Because -- well, June 12th was quite nice, and..."
* * *
"So I set fire to a few cottages. But everyone does that. It's good for the building industry, anyway."
* * *
Words were indeed insubstantial. They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.
* * *
Whoever wrote this Theatre knew about the uses of magic. Even I believe what's happening, and I know there's no truth in it.
This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That's why everything is exactly the wrong way round.
* * *
Genuine anger was one of the world's great creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.
* * *
Granny Weatherwax: "'Divers alarums and excursions'."
Magrat: "That means lots of terrible happenings. You always put that in plays."
Nanny Ogg: "Alarums and what?"
Magrat: "Excursions."
Nanny Ogg: "Oh. The seaside would be nice."
Granny Weatherwax: "Do shut up, Gytha. They're not for you. They're only for divers, like it says. Probably so they can recover from all them alarums."
* * *
"It's not the meddlin' I object to," said Granny Weatherwax, her chin on her hand. "It's the evil meddling."
"And the unkindness to animals," muttered Magrat. "All that stuff about eye of dog and ear of toad. No-one uses that kind of stuff."
Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg carefully avoided one another's faces.
* * *
"Witches just aren't like that," said Magrat. "We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it's wicked of them to say we don't. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead."
* * *
"Some of those speeches were very good. I couldn't understand hardly any of it."
* * *
The storm was back.
It had spent ages learning its craft. It had spent years lurking in distant valleys. It had practised for hours in front of a glacier. It had studied the great storms of the past. It had honed its art to perfection. And now, tonight, with what it could see was clearly an appreciative audience waiting for it, it was going to take them by, well... tempest.
* * *
Looming up in front of him with all the inevitability of a tax demand was a sword fight during which, it was beginning to appear, he would have to parry his own wild thrusts and stab himself to death.
* * *
Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things, you might think they would want to escape from -- hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in.
* * *
Verence/Tomjon: "I was bloody King of Lancre!"
Duchess: "In which case you are the alleged victim. And unable to speak for the prosecution. It is against all precedent."
Verence/Tomjon: "You were there! You saw it all!"
Death: I SUSPECT I WOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AN APPROPRIATE WITNESS.
* * *
"Thank goodness that's over," [the Fool] said, as Magrat pushed her way through the actors and clasped him to what could charitably be called her bosom. It struck the Fool that he had never looked a bosom squarely in the face, at least since he was a baby, and it was particularly cruel of the world to save the experience until after he was dead.
* * *
"You've got to admit he was real royalty," said Nanny Ogg, eventually. "It only goes to show, royalty goes eccentric far better than the likes of you and me."
* * *
"It's a trick dagger. Actors probably can't be trusted with real ones."
* * *
The guards shifted uneasily.
"We seen where [witches] turn people into newts," said one.
"And then shipwreck them."
"Yeah, and alarum the divers."
"Yeah."
"We ought to talk about this. We ought to get extra for witches."
* * *
She froze, like a rabbit that has just seen a stoat and knows, without any doubt, that it is the last stoat that it will ever see.
* * *
[Death] was used to people claiming that they were not dead, because death always came as a shock, and a lot of people had some trouble getting over it. But people claiming they were dead with every breath in their body was a new and unsettling experience.
* * *
"Be a king. It's a good job. It seems there's a lot of competition, at any rate."
* * *
Tomjon: "What do I do next?"
Hwel: "I don't know. Do you want me to write an acceptance speech?"
Tomjon: "I told you. I don't want to be king!"
Hwel: "Could be a problem with the acceptance speech, then."
* * *
Hwel: "Have you really thought about this? Being king is a great role."
Tomjon: "But it's the only one you get to play!"
* * *
This was not going to rate among the hundred most exciting coven meetings of all time. If Mussorgsky had seen them, the night on the bare mountain would have been over by teatime.
* * *
Tomjon left the stage to thunderous applause at the concluding act of The Troll of Ankh. A hundred people would go home tonight wondering whether trolls were really as bad as they had hitherto thought although, of course, this wouldn't actually stop them disliking them in any way whatsoever.
* * *
[Magrat had] always felt that it should be possible to come to some sort of arrangement with creatures like mice so that all available food was rationed in the best interest of all parties. This was a very humanitarian outlook, which is to say that it was not a view shared by mice, and therefore her moonlit kitchen was alive.
* * *
The duchess was not asleep. She was currently halfway down the castle wall on a rope of knotted sheets, having spent the previous day gradually chipping away the mortar around the bars of her window although, in truth, you could hack your way out of the average Lancre Castle wall with a piece of cheese.
* * *
The weak banded together can be pretty despicable, but it dawned on the duchess that an alliance of the strong can be more of an immediate problem.
* * *
Magrat: "You told everyone they were brothers and that Verence was the older!"
Granny Weatherwax: "That's right."
Magrat: "And you let everyone believe that--"
Granny Weatherwax: "We're bound to be truthful. But there's no call to be honest."
* * *
Magrat knew she had lost. You always lose against Granny Weatherwax, the only interest was in seeing exactly how.
* * *
"Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around."