Equal Rites Part 9

Granny regarded them disdainfully.

"Nothing like as good," she said.

In fact she was already feeling slightly panicky. Her promise to accompany Esk to Unseen University had been made without thinking, and Granny, who picked up what little she knew of the rest of the Disc from rumor and the pages of her Almanack Almanack, was convinced that they were heading into earthquakes, tidal waves, plagues and ma.s.sacres, many of them diuerse or even worse. But she was determined to see it through. A witch relied too much on words ever to go back on them.

She was wearing serviceable black, and concealed about her person were a number of hatpins and a breadknife. She had hidden their small store of money, grudgingly advanced by Smith, in the mysterious strata of her underwear. Her skirt pockets jingled with lucky charms, and a freshly forged horseshoe, always a potent preventative in time of trouble, weighed down her handbag. She felt about as ready as she ever would be to face the world.

The track wound down between the mountains. For once the sky was clear, the high Ramtops standing out crisp and white like the brides of the sky (with their trousseaux stuffed with thunderstorms) and the many little streams that bordered or crossed the path flowed sluggishly through strands of meadowsweet and go-faster-root.

By lunchtime they reached the suburb of Ohulan (it was too small to have more than one, which was just an inn and a handful of cottages belonging to people who couldn't stand the pressures of urban life) and a few minutes later the cart deposited them in the town's main, indeed its only, square.

It turned out to be market day.

Granny Weatherwax stood uncertainly on the cobbles, holding tightly to Esk's shoulder as the crowd swirled around them. She had heard that lewd things could happen to country women who were freshly arrived in big cities, and she gripped her handbag until her knuckles whitened. If any male stranger had happened to so much as nod at her it would have gone very hard indeed for him.

Esk's eyes were sparkling. The square was a jigsaw of noise and color and smell. On one side of it were the temples of the Disc's more demanding deities, and weird perfumes drifted out to join with the reeks of commerce in a complex ragrug of fragrances. There were stalls filled with enticing curiosities that she itched to investigate.

Granny let the both of them drift with the crowd. The stalls were puzzling her as well. She peered among them, although never for one minute relaxing her vigilance against pickpockets, earthquakes and traffickers in the erotic, until she spied something vaguely familiar.

There was a small covered stall, black draped and musty, that had been wedged into a narrow s.p.a.ce between two houses. Inconspicuous though it was, it nevertheless seemed to be doing a very busy trade. Its customers were mainly women, of all ages, although she did notice a few men. They all had one thing in common, though. No one approached it directly. They all sort of strolled almost past it, then suddenly ducked under its shady canopy. A moment later and they would be back again, hand just darting away from bag or pocket, competing for the world's Most Nonchalant Walk t.i.tle so effectively that a watcher might actually doubt what he or she had just seen.

It was quite amazing that a stall so many people didn't know was there should be quite so popular.

"What's in there?" said Esk. "What's everyone buying?"

"Medicines," said Granny firmly.

"There must be a lot of very sick people in towns," said Esk gravely.

Inside, the stall was a ma.s.s of velvet shadows and the herbal scent was thick enough to bottle. Granny poked a few bundles of dry leaves with an expert finger. Esk pulled away from her and tried to read the scrawled labels on the bottles in front of her. She was expert at most of Granny's preparations, but she didn't recognize anything here. The names were quite amusing, like Tiger Oil, Maiden's Prayer and Husband's Helper, and one or two of the stoppers smelled like Granny's scullery after she had done some of her secret distillations.

A shape moved in the stall's dim recesses and a brown wrinkled hand slid lightly on to hers.

"Can I a.s.sist you, missy?" said a cracked voice, in tones of syrup of figs, "Is it your fortune you want telling, or is it your future you want changing, maybe?"

"She's with me," snapped Granny, spinning around, "and your eyes are betraying you, Hilta Goatfounder, if you can't tell her age."

The shape in front of Esk bent forward.

"Esme Weatherwax?" it asked.

"The very same," said Granny. "Still selling thunder drops and penny wishes, Hilta? How goes it?"

"All the better for seeing you," said the shape. "What brings you down from the mountains, Esme? And this child-your a.s.sistant, perhaps?"

"What's it you're selling, please?" asked Esk. The shape laughed.

"Oh, things to stop things that shouldn't be and help things that should, love," it said. "Let me just close up, my dears, and I will be right with you."

The shape bustled past Esk in a nasal kaleidoscope of fragrances and b.u.t.toned up the curtains at the front of the stall. Then the drapes at the back were thrown up, letting in the afternoon sunlight.

"Can't stand the dark and fug myself," said Hilta Goat founder, "but the customers expect it. You know how it is."

"Yes," Esk nodded sagely. "Headology."

Hilta, a small fat woman wearing an enormous hat with fruit on it, glanced from her to Granny and grinned.

"That's the way of it," she agreed. "Will you take some tea?"

They sat on bales of unknown herbs in the private corner made by the stall between the angled walls of the houses, and drank something fragrant and green out of surprisingly delicate cups. Unlike Granny, who dressed like a very respectable raven, Hilta Goatfounder was all lace and shawls and colors and earrings and so many bangles that a mere movement of her arms sounded like a percussion section falling off a cliff. But Esk could see the likeness.

It was hard to describe. You couldn't imagine them curtseying to anyone.

"So," said Granny, "how goes the life?"

The other witch shrugged, causing the drummers to lose their grip again, just when they had nearly climbed back up.

"Like the hurried lover, it comes and goe-" she began, and stopped at Granny's meaningful glance at Esk.

"Not bad, not bad," she amended hurriedly. "The council have tried to run me out once or twice, you know, but they all have wives and somehow it never quite happens. They say I'm not the right sort, but I say there'd be many a family in this town a good deal bigger and poorer if it wasn't for Madame Goatfounder's Pennyroyal Preventives. I know who comes into my shop, I do. I remember who buys buckeroo drops and ShoNuff Ointment, I do. Life isn't bad. And how is it up in your village with the funny name?"

"Bad a.s.s," said Esk helpfully. She picked a small clay pot off the counter and sniffed at its contents.

"It is well enough," conceded Granny. "The handmaidens of nature are ever in demand."

Esk sniffed again at the powder, which seemed to be pennyroyal with a base she couldn't quite identify, and carefully replaced the lid. While the two women exchanged gossip in a kind of feminine code, full of eye contact and unspoken adjectives, she examined the other exotic potions on display. Or rather, not on display. In some strange way they appeared to be artfully half-hidden, as if Hilta wasn't entirely keen to sell.

"I don't recognize any of these," she said, half to herself. "What do they give to people?"

"Freedom," said Hilta, who had good hearing. She turned back to Granny. "How much have you taught her?"

"Not that that much," said Granny. "There's power there, but what kind I'm not sure. Wizard power, it might be." much," said Granny. "There's power there, but what kind I'm not sure. Wizard power, it might be."

Hilta turned around very slowly and looked Esk up and down.

"Ah," she said, "That explains the staff. I wondered what the bees were talking about. Well, well. Give me your hand, child."

Esk held out her hand. Hilta's fingers were so heavy with rings it was like dipping into a sack of walnuts.

Granny sat upright, radiating disapproval, as Hilta began to inspect Esk's palm.

"I really don't think that is necessary," she said sternly. "Not between us."

"You do it, Granny," said Esk, "in the village. I've seen you. And teacups. And cards." do it, Granny," said Esk, "in the village. I've seen you. And teacups. And cards."

Granny s.h.i.+fted uneasily. "Yes, well," she said. "It's all according. You just hold their hand and people do their own fortune-telling. But there's no need to go around believing believing it, we'd all be in trouble if we went around it, we'd all be in trouble if we went around believing believing everything." everything."

"The Powers That Be have many strange qualities, and puzzling and varied are the ways in which they make their desires known in this circle of firelight we call the physical world," said Hilta solemnly. She winked at Esk.

"Well, really," snapped Granny.

"No, straight up," said Hilta. "It's true."

"Hmph."

"I see you going upon a long journey," said Hilta.

"Will I meet a tall dark stranger?" said Esk, examining her palm. "Granny always says that to women, she says-"

"No," said Hilta, while Granny snorted. "But it will be a very strange journey. You'll go a long way while staying in the same place. And the direction will be a strange one. It will be an exploration."

"You can tell all that from my hand?"

"Well, mainly I'm just guessing," said Hilta, sitting back and reaching for the teapot (the lead drummer, who had climbed halfway back, fell on to the toiling cymbalists). She looked carefully at Esk and added, "A female wizard, eh?"

"Granny is taking me to Unseen University," said Esk.

Hilta raised her eyebrows. "Do you know where it is?"

Granny frowned. "Not in so many words," she admitted. "I was hoping you could give me more explicit directions, you being more familiar with bricks and things."

"They say it has many doors, but the ones in this world are in the city of Ankh-Morpork," said Hilta. Granny looked blank. "On the Circle Sea," Hilta added. Granny's look of polite inquiry persisted. "Five hundred miles away," said Hilta.

"Oh," said Granny.

She stood up and brushed an imaginary speck of dust off her dress.

"We'd better be going, then," she added.

Hilta laughed. Esk quite liked the sound. Granny never laughed, she merely let the corners of her mouth turn up, but Hilta laughed like someone who had thought hard about Life and had seen the joke.

"Start tomorrow, anyway," she said. "I've got room at home, you can stay with me, and tomorrow you'll have the light."

"We wouldn't want to presume," said Granny.

"Nonsense. Why not have a look around while I pack up the stall?"

Ohulan was the market town for a wide sprawling countryside and the market day didn't end at sunset. Instead, torches flared at every booth and stall and light blared forth from the open doorways of the inns. Even the temples put out colored lamps to attract nocturnal wors.h.i.+ppers.

Hilta moved through the crowd like a slim snake through dry gra.s.s, her entire stall and stock reduced to a surprisingly small bundle on her back, and her jewelry rattling like a sackful of flamenco dancers. Granny stumped along behind her, her feet aching from the unaccustomed prodding of the cobbles.

And Esk got lost.

It took some effort, but she managed it. It involved ducking between two stalls and then scurrying down a side alley. Granny had warned her at length about the unspeakable things that lurked in cities, which showed that the old woman was lacking in a complete understanding of headology, since Esk was now determined to see one or two of them for herself.

In fact, since Ohulan was quite barbaric and uncivilized the only things that went on after dark to any degree were a little thievery, some amateurish trading in the courts of l.u.s.t, and drinking until you fell over or started singing or both.

According to the standard poetic instructions one should move through a fair like the white swan at evening moves o'er the bay, but because of certain practical difficulties Esk settled for moving through the crowds like a small dodgem car, b.u.mping from body to body with the tip of the staff waving a yard above her head. It caused some heads to turn, and not only because it had hit them; wizards occasionally pa.s.sed through the town and it was the first time anyone had seen one four feet tall with long hair.

Anyone watching closely would have noticed strange things happening as she pa.s.sed by.

There was, for example, the man with three upturned cups who was inviting a small crowd to explore with him the exciting world of chance and probability as it related to the position of a small dried pea. He was vaguely aware of a small figure watching him solemnly for a few moments, and then a sackful of peas cascaded out of every cup he picked up. Within seconds he was knee-deep in legumes. He was a lot deeper in trouble-he suddenly owed everyone a lot of money.

There was a small and wretched monkey that for years had shuffled vaguely at the end of a chain while its owner played something dreadful on a pipe-organ. It suddenly turned, narrowed its little red eyes, bit its keeper sharply in the leg, snapped its chain and had it away over the rooftops with the night's takings in a tin cup. History is silent about what they were spent on.

A boxful of marzipan ducks on a nearby stall came to life and whirred past the stallholder to land, quacking happily, in the river (where, by dawn, they had all melted: that's natural selection for you).

The stall itself sidled off down an alley and was never seen again.

Esk, in fact, moved through the fair more like an arsonist moves through a hayfield or a neutron bounces through a reactor, poets notwithstanding, and the hypothetical watcher could have detected her random pa.s.sage by tracing the outbreaks of hysteria and violence. But, like all good catalysts, she wasn't actually involved in the processes she initiated, and by the time all the non-hypothetical potential watchers took their eyes off them she had been buffeted somewhere else.

She was also beginning to tire. While Granny Weatherwax approved of night on general principles, she certainly didn't hold with promiscuous candlelight-if she had any reading to do after dark she generally persuaded the owl to come and sit on the back of her chair, and read through its eyes. So Esk expected to go to bed around sunset, and that was long past.

There was a doorway ahead of her that looked friendly. Cheerful sounds were sliding out on the yellow light, and pooling on the cobbles. With the staff still radiating random magic like a demon lighthouse she headed for it, weary but determined.

The landlord of The Fiddler's Riddle considered himself to be a man of the world, and this was right, because he was too stupid to be really cruel, and too lazy to be really mean and although his body had been around quite a lot his mind had never gone further than the inside of his own head.

He wasn't used to being addressed by sticks. Especially when they spoke in a small piping voice, and asked for goat's milk.

Cautiously, aware that everyone in the inn was looking at him and grinning, he pulled himself across the bar top until he could see down. Esk stared up at him. Look 'em right in the eye, Granny had always said: focus your power on 'em, stare 'em out, no one can outstare a witch, 'cept a goat, of course.

The landlord, whose name was Skiller, found himself looking directly down at a small child who seemed to be squinting.

"What?" he said.

"Milk," said the child, still focusing furiously. "You get it out of goats. You know?"

Skiller sold only beer, which his customers claimed he got out of cats. No self-respecting goat would have endured the smell in The Fiddler's Riddle.

"We haven't got any," he said. He looked hard at the staff and his eyebrows met conspiratorially over his nose.

"You could have a look," said Esk.

Skiller eased himself back across the bar, partly to avoid the gaze, which was causing his eyes to water in sympathy, and partly because a horrible suspicion was congealing in his mind.

Even second-rate barmen tend to resonate with the beer they serve, and the vibrations coming from the big barrels behind him no longer had the tw.a.n.g of hop and head. They were broadcasting an altogether more lactic note.

He turned a tap experimentally, and watched a thin stream of milk curdle in the drip bucket.

The staff still poked up over the edge of the counter, like a periscope. He could swear that it was staring at him too.

"Don't waste it," said a voice. "You'll be grateful for it one day."

It was the same tone of voice Granny used when Esk was less than enthusiastic about a plateful of nouris.h.i.+ng sallet greens, boiled yellow until the last few vitamins gave in, but to Skiller's hypersensitive ears it wasn't an injunction but a prediction. He s.h.i.+vered. He didn't know where he would have to be to make him grateful for a drink of ancient beer and curdled milk. He'd rather be dead first.