Legends-Volume 3 Stories by the Masters of Modern Fantasy Page 24

  My beloved did not move the blade from Sulis’ throat, but said, “Of course I love you, Breda. We will be married, and all of Nabban will lie at your feet. You will never be cold or lonely again.” He leaned forward, and I could feel the beautiful long muscles of his back tense beneath my hand. He hesitated when he heard the click of the glass ball as it fell to the tiles and rattled away.

  “What…?” he asked, then straightened suddenly, grabbing at the spot at his waist where the claw had pricked him. I took a few staggering steps and fell, weeping. Behind me, Tellarin began to wheeze, then to choke. I heard his knife clatter to the stone.

  I could not look, but the sound of his last rattling breaths will never leave me.

  * * *

  Now that I am old, I know that this secretive keep will be the place I die. When I have breathed my last, I suppose they will bury me on the headland beside my mother and Lord Sulis.

  After that long night beneath the castle had ended, the Heron King, as the Lake People called my stepfather, came to resemble once more the man he had been. He reigned over the High Keep for many more years, and gradually even my own brawling, jealous folk acknowledged him as their ruler, although the kingship did not outlive Sulis himself.

  My own mark on the world will be even smaller.

  I never married, and my brother Aelfric died of a fall from his horse without fathering any children, so although the Lake People still squabble over who should carry the standard and spear of the Great Thane, none of my blood will ever lead them again. Nor, I expect, will anyone stay on in the great castle that Lord Sulis rebuilt after I am dead—there are few enough left of our household now, and those who stay only do so for love of me. When I am gone, I doubt any will remain even to tend our graves.

  I cannot say why I chose to keep this bleak place as my home, any more than I could say why I chose my stepfather’s life over that of my beautiful, deceitful Tellarin. Because I feared to build something on blood that should have been founded on something better, I suppose. Because love does not do sums, but instead makes choices, and then gives its all.

  Whatever the reasons, I have made those choices.

  After he carried me out of the depths and back to daylight, my stepfather scarcely ever mentioned that dreadful night again. He was still distant to the end of his days, still full of shadows, but at times I thought I sensed a peace in him that he had not had before. Why that might be, I could not say.

  As he lay at last on his deathbed, breath growing fainter and fainter, I sat by his side for hours of every day and spoke to him of all that happened in the High Keep, talking of the rebuilding, which still continued, and of the tenants, and the herds, as if at any moment he might rise to resume his stewardship. But we both knew he would not.

  When the last moment came, there was a kind of quiet expectancy on his face—no fear, but something more difficult to describe. As he strained for his final breath of air, I suddenly remembered something I had read in his book, and realized that I had made a mistake on that night so long ago.

  “… She will show me the Way of Black Fire or there is no other Hope,” he had written. “Either she will answer, or Death.”

  He had not meant that he would kill her if she did not give him what he needed. He had meant that if she could not help him find an answer, then he would have to wait until death came for him before he could learn the truth.

  And now he would finally receive an answer to the question that had tormented him for so long.

  * * *

  Whatever that answer might be, Sulis did not return to share it with me. Now I am an old, old woman, and I will find it soon enough myself. It is strange, perhaps, but I find I do not much care. In one year with Tellarin, in those months of fierce love, I lived an entire lifetime. Since then I have lived another one, a long, slow life whose small pleasures have largely balanced the moments of suffering. Surely two lives are enough for anyone—who needs the endless span of the immortals? After all, as the burning man made clear, an eternity of pain would be no gift.

  And now that I have told my tale, even the ghosts that sometimes still startle me awake at midnight seem more like ancient friends than things to be feared.

  I have made my choices.

  I think I am content.

  DISCWORLD

  Terry Pratchett

  THE COLOUR OF MAGIC (1983)

  THE LIGHT FANTASTIC (1988)

  EQUAL RITES (1988)

  MORT (1989)

  SOURCERY (1989)

  WYRD SISTERS (1990)

  PYRAMIDS (1990)

  GUARDS! GUARDS! (1991)

  ERIC (1991)

  MOVING PICTURES (1992)

  REAPER MAN (1992)

  WITCHES ABROAD (1994)

  SMALL GODS (1994)

  LORDS AND LADIES (1994)

  INTERESTING TIMES (1995)

  SOUL MUSIC (1995)

  MASKERADE (1995)

  MEN AT ARMS (1996)

  FEET OF CLAY (1996)

  HOGFATHER (1996)

  JINGO (1997)

  Discworld is a flat world supported by four elephants standing on top of a huge turtle swimming endlessly through space. Using this classic mythological concept as his starting point, Pratchett cheerfully lampoons a vast range of targets—Shakespeare, Creationism theory, heroic fantasy, etc., etc.—and ventures into such far-flung realms as ancient Egypt, the Aztec Empire, and Renaissance Italy for further raw material. When he is not satirizing historical periods or cultures, Pratchett allows much of the action to center around Ankh-Morpork, a melting pot of a fantasy city that’s a mix of Renaissance Florence, Victorian London, and present-day New York.

  The series uses fantasy as a fairground mirror, reflecting back at us a distorted but recognizable image of twentieth-century concerns. (For example, equal-opportunity and affirmative-action laws take on new dimensions when you’ve got vampires, werewolves, and zombies among your citizens.…)

  The books can be roughly divided into four groups:

  In the Rincewind series (The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Sourcery, Eric, Interesting Times), the protagonist is an incompetent, cowardly (or very clear-thinking) magician who is constantly trying to escape some danger only to run into something ten times worse. However unfortunate his misadventures become, in the end he manages to triumph and to restore Discworld to a semblance of order, as order is understood there. The primary satiric target of these books is heroic fantasy, complete with all the genre staples—trolls, wizards, and similar fauna. Sourcery, for example, is a parody of the Lovecraftian netherworlds; Eric is a spoof of the Faustian deal-with-the devil theme.

  The Granny Weatherwax group (Equal Rites, Wyrd Systers, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade) introduces one of the most popular characters in the series, a witch of iron constitution, steel morals, and reinforced-concrete pride who takes charge in any situation; like a Western hero, she’s technically a bad witch who does good. A rewriting of The Phantom of the Opera forms the basis for Maskerade, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream is lampooned in Lords and Ladies with Shakespeare’s more genteel fairies replaced by haughty, vicious elves from Celtic folklore.

  The four books composing the Death series (Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music, Hogfather) follow the trials of Death, a humorless entity who secretly harbors a soft spot for humanity, and whose inability to understand these same humans creates real pathos. In Mort, Death takes a vacation, leaving his even more softhearted apprentices to carry on while he’s gone. Reaper Man follows Death when he becomes—temporarily—mortal, and learns what humanity really means.

  The City Watch books (Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay) combine fantasy with elements of the police-procedural mystery novel, with appropriately lively results. Guards! Guards! finds the grubby but honest Ankh-Morpork Night Watch battling a dragon who wants to assassinate the city’s Patrician and install a new puppet ruler. Men at Arms tracks a serial killer running amok with Discworld’s only gun (designed by Discworld�
��s equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci).

  The stand-alone novel Pyramids injects some modern thinking into a version of Egypt of the Pharaohs. Moving Pictures uses the Discworld toolbox to examine the real magic of the movies. Small Gods provides a darkly humorous look at the rise of a religion whose one “truth” is that the Discworld is actually spherical instead of flat.

  In “The Sea and Little Fishes” Pratchett offers a new adventure of Granny Weatherwax, a highly competitive spirit who believes that “coming in second” is another term for losing.…

  THE SEA AND LITTLE FISHES

  Terry Pratchett

  Trouble began, and not for the first time, with an apple.

  There was a bag of them on Granny Weatherwax’s bleached and spotless table. Red and round, shiny and fruity, if they’d known the future they should have ticked like bombs.

  “Keep the lot, old Hopcroft said I could have as many as I wanted,” said Nanny Ogg. She gave her sister witch a sidelong glance. “Tasty, a bit wrinkled, but a damn good keeper.”

  “He named an apple after you?” said Granny. Each word was an acid drop on the air.

  “’Cos of my rosy cheeks,” said Nanny Ogg. “An’ I cured his leg for him after he felt off that ladder last year. An’ I made him up some jollop for his bald head.”

  “It didn’t work, though,” said Granny. “That wig he wears, that’s a terrible thing to see on a man still alive.”

  “But he was pleased I took an interest.”

  Granny Weatherwax didn’t take her eyes off the bag. Fruit and vegetables grew famously in the mountains’ hot summers and cold winters. Percy Hopcroft was the premier grower and definitely a keen man when it came to sexual antics among the horticulture with a camel-hair brush.

  “He sells his apple trees all over the place,” Nanny Ogg went on. “Funny, eh, to think that pretty soon thousands of people will be having a bite of Nanny Ogg.”

  “Thousands more,” said Granny, tartly. Nanny’s wild youth was an open book, although only available in plain covers.

  “Thank you, Esme.” Nanny Ogg looked wistful for a moment, and then opened her mouth in mock concern. “Oh, you ain’t jealous, are you, Esme? You ain’t begrudging me my little moment in the sun?”

  “Me? Jealous? Why should I be jealous? It’s only an apple. It’s not as if it’s anything important.”

  “That’s what I thought. It’s just a little frippery to humor an old lady,” said Nanny. “So how are things with you, then?”

  “Fine. Fine.”

  “Got your winter wood in, have you?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Good,” said Nanny. “Good.”

  They sat in silence. On the windowpane a butterfly, awoken by the unseasonable warmth, beat a little tattoo in an effort to reach the September sun.

  “Your potatoes … got them dug, then?” said Nanny.

  “Yes.”

  “We got a good crop off ours this year.”

  “Good.”

  “Salted your beans, have you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I expect you’re looking forward to the Trials next week?”

  “Yes.”

  “I expects you’ve been practicing?”

  “No.”

  It seemed to Nanny that, despite the sunlight, the shadows were deepening in the corners of the room. The very air itself was growing dark. A witch’s cottage gets sensitive to the moods of its occupant. But she plunged on. Fools rush in, but they are laggards compared to little old ladies with nothing left to fear.

  “You coming over to dinner on Sunday?”

  “What’re you havin’?”

  “Pork.”

  “With apple sauce?”

  “Yes—”

  “No,” said Granny.

  There was a creaking behind Nanny. The door had swung open. Someone who wasn’t a witch would have rationalized this, would have said that of course it was only the wind. And Nanny Ogg was quite prepared to go along with this, but would have added: Why was it only the wind, and how come the wind had managed to lift the latch?

  “Oh, well, can’t sit here chatting all day,” she said, standing up quickly. “Always busy at this time of year, ain’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I’ll be off, then.”

  “Goodbye.”

  The wind blew the door shut again as Nanny hurried off down the path.

  It occurred to her that, just possibly, she might have gone a bit too far. But only a bit.

  The trouble with being a witch—at least, the trouble with being a witch as far as some people were concerned—was that you got stuck out here in the country. But that was fine by Nanny. Everything she wanted was out here. Everything she’d ever wanted was here, although in her youth she’d run out of men a few times. Foreign parts were all right to visit but they weren’t really serious. They had interestin’ new drinks and the grub was fun, but foreign parts was where you went to do what might need to be done and then you came back here, a place that was real. Nanny Ogg was happy in small places.

  Of course, she reflected as she crossed the lawn, she didn’t have this view out of her window. Nanny lived down in the town, but Granny could look out across the forest and over the plains and all the way to the great round horizon of the Discworld.

  A view like that, Nanny reasoned, could probably suck your mind right out of your head.

  They’d told her the world was round and flat, which was common sense, and went through space on the back of four elephants standing on the shell of a turtle, which didn’t have to make sense. It was all happening Out There somewhere, and it could continue to do so with Nanny’s blessing and disinterest so long as she could live in a personal world about ten miles across, which she carried around with her.

  But Esme Weatherwax needed more than this little kingdom could contain. She was the other kind of witch.

  And Nanny saw it as her job to stop Granny Weatherwax getting bored. The business with the apples was petty enough, a spiteful little triumph when you got down to it, but Esme needed something to make every day worthwhile and if it had to be anger and jealousy then so be it. Granny would now scheme for some little victory, some tiny humiliation that only the two of them would ever know about, and that’d be that. Nanny was confident that she could deal with her friend in a bad mood, but not when she was bored. A witch who is bored might do anything.

  People said things like “we had to make our own amusements in those days” as if this signaled some kind of moral worth, and perhaps it did, but the last thing you wanted a witch to do was get bored and start making her own amusements, because witches sometimes had famously erratic ideas about what was amusing. And Esme was undoubtedly the most powerful witch the mountains had seen for generations.

  Still, the Trials were coming up, and they always set Esme Weatherwax all right for a few weeks. She rose to competition like a trout to a fly.

  Nanny Ogg always looked forward to the Witch Trials. You got a good day out and of course there was a big bonfire. Whoever heard of a Witch Trial without a good bonfire afterward?

  And afterward you could roast potatoes in the ashes.

  * * *

  The afternoon melted into the evening, and the shadows in corners and under stools and tables crept out and ran together.

  Granny rocked gently in her chair as the darkness wrapped itself around her. She had a look of deep concentration.

  The logs in the fireplace collapsed into the embers, which winked out one by one.

  The night thickened.

  The old clock ticked on the mantelpiece and, for some length of time, there was no other sound.

  There came a faint rustling. The paper bag on the table moved and then began to crinkle like a deflating balloon. Slowly, the still air filled with a heavy smell of decay.

  After a while the first maggot crawled out.

  * * *

  Nanny Ogg was back home and just pouring a pint of beer when there was a knock. She put d
own the jug with a sigh, and went and opened the door.

  “Oh, hello, ladies. What’re you doing in these parts? And on such a chilly evening, too?”

  Nanny backed into the room, ahead of three more witches. They wore the black cloaks and pointy hats traditionally associated with their craft, although this served to make each one look different. There is nothing like a uniform for allowing one to express one’s individuality. A tweak here and a tuck there are little details that scream all the louder in the apparent, well, uniformity.

  Gammer Beavis’ hat, for example, had a very flat brim and a point you could clean your ear with. Nanny liked Gammer Beavis. She might be a bit too educated, so that sometimes it overflowed out of her mouth, but she did her own shoe repairs and took snuff and, in Nanny Ogg’s small worldview, things like this meant that someone was All Right.

  Old Mother Dismass’s clothes had that disarray of someone who, because of a detached retina in her second sight, was living in a variety of times all at once. Mental confusion is bad enough in normal people, but much worse when the mind has an occult twist. You just had to hope it was only her underwear she was wearing on the outside.

  It was getting worse, Nanny knew. Sometimes her knock would be heard on the door a few hours before she arrived. Her footprints would turn up several days later.

  Nanny’s heart sank at the sight of the third witch, and it wasn’t because Letice Earwig was a bad women. Quite the reverse, in fact. She was considered to be decent, well-meaning, and kind, at least to less-aggressivs animals and the cleaner sort of children. And she would always do you a good turn. The trouble was, though, that she would do you a good turn for your own good even if a good turn wasn’t what was good for you. You ended up mentally turned the other way, and that wasn’t good.

  And she was married. Nanny had nothing against witches being married. It wasn’t as if there were rules. She herself had had many husbands, and had even been married to three of them. But Mr. Earwig was a retired wizard with a suspiciously large amount of gold, and Nanny suspected that Letice did witchcraft as something to keep herself occupied, in much the same way that other women of a certain class might embroider kneelers for the church or visit the poor.