Lords And Ladies Part 33

Mr. Brooks the beekeeper ladled some greenish, foul-smelling liquid out of the saucepan that was always simmering in his secret hut, and filled his squirter.

There was a wasps' nest in the garden wall. It'd be a mortuary by morning.

That was the thing about bees. They always guarded the entrance to the hive, with their lives if necessary. But wasps were adept at finding the odd c.h.i.n.k in the woodwork around the back somewhere and the sleek little devils'd be in and robbing the hive before you knew it. Funny. The bees in the hive'd let them do it, too. They guarded the entrance, but if a wasp found another way in, they didn't know what to do.

He gave the plunger a push. A stream of liquid bubbled out and left a smoking streak on the floor.

Wasps looked pretty enough. But if you were for bees, you had to be against wasps.

There seemed to be some sort of party going on in the hall. He vaguely remembered getting an invitation but, on the whole, that sort of thing never really caught his imagination. And especially now. Things were wrong. None of the hives showed any signs of swarming. Not one.

As he pa.s.sed the hives in the dusk he heard the humming. You got that, on a warm night. Battalions of bees stood at the hive entrance, fanning the air with their wings to keep the brood cool. But there was also the roar of bees circling the hive.

They were angry, and on guard.

There was a series of small weirs just on the borders of Lancre. Granny Weatherwax hauled herself up on to the damp woodwork, and squelched to the bank where she emptied her boots.

After a while a pointy wizard's hat drifted downriver, and rose to reveal a pointy wizard underneath it. Granny lent a hand to help Ridcully out of the water.

"There," she said, "bracing, wasn't it? Seemed to me you could do with a cold bath."

Ridcully tried to clean some mud out of his ear. He glared at Granny.

"Why aren't you wet?"

"I am."

"No you're not. You're just damp. I'm wet through. How can you float down a river and just be damp?"

"I dries out quick."

Granny Weatherwax glared up the rocks. A short distance away the steep road ran on to Lancre, but there were other, more private ways known to her among the trees.

"So," she said, more or less to herself. "She wants to stop me going there, does she? Well, we'll see about that."

"Going where?" said Ridcully.

"Ain't sure," said Granny. "All I know is, if she don't want me to go there, that's where I'm going. But I hadn't bargained on you turnin' up and having a rush of blood to the heart. Come on."

Ridcully wrung out his robe. A lot of the sequins had come off. He removed his hat and unscrewed the point.

Headgear picks up morphic vibrations. Quite a lot of trouble had once been caused in Unseen University by a former Archchancellor's hat, which had picked up too many magical vibrations after spending so much time on wizardly heads and had developed a personality of its very own. Ridcully had put a stop to this by having his own hat made to particular specifications by an Ankh-Morpork firm of completely insane hatters.

It was not a normal wizard hat. Few wizards have ever made much use of the pointy bit, except maybe to keep the odd pair of socks in it. But Ridcully's hat had small cupboards. It had surprises. It had four telescopic legs and a roll of oiled silk in the brim that extended downward to make a small but serviceable tent, and a patent spirit stove just above it. It had inner pockets with three days' supply of iron rations. And the tip unscrewed to dispense an adequate supply of spirituous liquors for use in emergencies, such as when Ridcully was thirsty.

Ridcully waved the small pointed cup at Granny.

"Brandy?" he said.

"What have have you got on your head?" you got on your head?"

Ridcully felt his pate gingerly.

"Um..."

"Smells like honey and horse apples to me. And what's that that thing?" thing?"

Ridcully lifted the small cage off his head. There was a small treadmill in it, in a complex network of gla.s.s rods. A couple of feeding bowls were visible. And there was a small, hairy and currently quite wet mouse.

"Oh, it's something some of the young wizards came up with," said Ridcully diffidently. "I said I'd...try it out for them. The mouse hair rubs against the gla.s.s rods and there's sparks, don't'y'know, and...and..."

Granny Weatherwax looked at the Archchancellor's somewhat grubby hair and raised an eyebrow.

"My word," she said. "What will they think of next?"

"Don't really understand how it works, Stibbons is the man for this sort of thing, I thought I'd help them out..."

"Lucky you were going bald, eh?"

In the darkness of her sickroom Diamanda opened her eyes, if they were her her eyes. There was a pearly sheen to them. eyes. There was a pearly sheen to them.

The song was as yet only on the threshold of hearing.

And the world was different. A small part of her mind was still Diamanda, and looked out through the mists of enchantment. The world was a pattern of fine silver lines, constantly moving, as though everything was coated with filigree. Except where there was iron. There the lines were crushed and tight and bent. There, the whole world was invisible. Iron distorted the world. Keep away from iron.

She slipped out of bed, using the edge of the blanket to grasp the door handle, and opened the door.

Shawn Ogg was standing very nearly to attention.

Currently he was guarding the castle and Seeing How Long He Could Stand On One Leg.

Then it occurred to him that this wasn't a proper activity for a martial artist, and he turned it into No. 19, the Flying Chrysanthemum Double Drop Kick.

After a while he realized that he had been hearing something. It was vaguely rhythmical, and put him in mind of a gra.s.shopper chirruping. It was coming from inside the castle.

He turned carefully, keeping alert in case the ma.s.sed armies of Foreign Parts tried to invade while his back was turned.

This needed working out. He wasn't on guard from things inside the castle, was he? "On guard" meant things outside. That was the point of castles. That's why you had all the walls and things. He'd got the big poster they gave away free with Jane's All the World's Siege Weapons Jane's All the World's Siege Weapons. He knew what he was talking about.

Shawn was not the quickest of thinkers, but his thoughts turned inexorably to the elf in the dungeon. But that was locked up. He'd locked the door himself. And there was iron all over the place, and Mum had been very definite about the iron.

Nevertheless...

He was methodical about it. He raised the drawbridge and dropped the portcullis and peered over the wall for good measure, but there was just the dusk and the night breeze.

He could feel feel the sound now. It seemed to be coming out of the stone, and had a saw-toothed edge to it that grated on his nerves. the sound now. It seemed to be coming out of the stone, and had a saw-toothed edge to it that grated on his nerves.

It couldn't have got out, could it? No, it stood to reason. People hadn't gone around building dungeons you could get out of.

The sound swung back and forth across the scale.

Shawn leaned his rusty pike against the wall and drew his sword. He knew how to use it. He practiced for ten minutes every day, and it was one sorry hanging sack of straw when he'd he'd finished with it. finished with it.

He slipped into the keep by the back door and sidled along the pa.s.sages toward the dungeon. There was no one else around. Of course, everyone was at the Entertainment. And they'd be back any time now, carousing all over the place.

The castle felt big, and old, and cold.

Any time now.

Bound to.

The noise stopped.

Shawn peered around the corner. There were the steps, there was the open doorway to the dungeons.

"Stop!" shouted Shawn, just in case.

The sound echoed off the stones.

"Stop! Or...or...or...Stop!"

He eased his way down the steps and looked through the archway.

"I warn you! I'm learning the Path of the Happy Jade Lotus!"

There was the door to the cell, standing ajar. And a white-clad figure next to it.

Shawn blinked.

"Aren't you Miss Tockley?"

She smiled at him. Her eyes glowed in the dim light.

"You're wearing chain-mail, Shawn," she said.

"What, miss?" He glanced at the open door again.

"That's terrible. You must take it off, Shawn. How can you hear with all that stuff around your ears?"

Shawn was aware of the empty s.p.a.ce behind him. But he daren't look around.

"I can hear fine, miss," he said, trying to ease himself around so that his back was against a wall.

"But you can't hear truly truly," said Diamanda, drifting forward. "The iron makes you deaf."

Shawn was not yet used to thinly clad young women approaching him with a dreamy look on their faces. He fervently wished he could take the Path of the Retreating Back.

He glanced sideways.

There was a tall skinny shape outlined in the open cell doorway. It was standing very carefully, as if it wanted to keep as far away from its surroundings as possible.

Diamanda was smiling at him in a funny way.

He ran.

Somehow, the woods had changed. Ridcully was certain that in his youth they'd been full of bluebells and primroses and-and bluebells and whatnot and so on. Not b.l.o.o.d.y great briars all over the place. They snagged at his robe and once or twice some tree-climbing equivalent knocked his hat off.

What made it worse was that Esme Weatherwax seemed to avoid all of them.

"How do you manage that?"

"I just know where I am all the time," said Granny.

"Well? I know where I I am, too." am, too."

"No you don't. You just happen to be present. That's not the same."

"Well, do you happen to know where a proper path is?"

"This is a short cut."

"Between two places where you're not lost, d'you mean?"

"I keep tellin' tellin' you, I ain't lost! I'm...directionally challenged." you, I ain't lost! I'm...directionally challenged."

"Hah!"

But it was a fact about Esme Weatherwax, he had to admit. She might be lost, and he had reason to suspect this was the case now, unless there were in this forest two trees with exactly the same arrangement of branches and and a strip of his robe caught on one of them, but she did have a quality that in anyone not wearing a battered pointy hat and an antique black dress might have been called poise. Absolute poise. It would be hard to imagine her making an awkward movement unless she wanted to. a strip of his robe caught on one of them, but she did have a quality that in anyone not wearing a battered pointy hat and an antique black dress might have been called poise. Absolute poise. It would be hard to imagine her making an awkward movement unless she wanted to.

He'd seen that years ago, although of course at the time he'd just been amazed at the way her shape fitted perfectly into the s.p.a.ce around it. And- He'd got caught up again again.

"Wait a minute!"