Thought I'd forgotten it, for a minute there,' she said, lifting it out. 'You can come out now.'

He was barely visible in the brightness of day, a mere shimmer in the air under the trees. King Verence blinked. He wasn't used to daylight.

'Esme,' said Nanny. 'There's someone to see you.'

Granny turned slowly and squinted at the ghost.

'I saw you in the dungeon, didn't I?' she said. 'Who're you?'

'Verence, King of Lancre,' said the ghost, and bowed. 'Do I have the honour of addressing Granny Weatherwax, doyenne of witches?'

It has already been pointed out that just because Verence came from a long line of kings didn't mean that he was basically stupid, and a year without the distractions of the flesh had done wonders as well. 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. Bowing was a particularly good touch.

A muscle twitched at the corner of Granny's mouth. She gave a stiff little bow in return, because she wasn't quite sure what 'doyenne' meant.

'I'm her,' she conceded.

'You can get up now,' she added, regally.

King Verence remained kneeling, about two inches above the actual ground.

'I crave a boon,' he said urgently.

'Here, how did you get out of the castle?' said Granny.

'The esteemed Nanny Ogg assisted me,' said the king. '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.'

'Not the first, either,' said Granny, automatically.

'Esme!'

'And I beg you, Granny Weatherwax, to restore my son to the throne.'

'Restore?'

'You know what I mean. He is in good health?'

Granny nodded. 'The last time we Looked at him, he was eating an apple,' she said.

'It is his destiny to be King of Lancre!'

'Yes, well. Destiny is tricky, you know,' said Granny.

'You will not help?'

Granny looked wretched. 'It's meddling, you see,' she said. 'It always goes wrong if you meddle in politics. Like, once you start, you can't stop. Fundamental rule of magic, is that. You can't go around messing with fundamental rules.'

'You're not going to help?'

'Well . . . naturally, one day, when your lad is a bit older . . .'

'Where is he now?' said the king, coldly.

The witches avoided one another's faces.

'We saw him safe out of the country, you see,' said Granny awkwardly.

'Very good family,' Nanny Ogg put in quickly.

'What kind of people?' said the king. 'Not commoners, I trust?'

'Absolutely not,' said Granny with considerable firmness as a vision of Vitoller floated across her imagination. 'Not common at all. Very uncommon. Er.'

Her eyes implored Magrat for help.

They were Thespians,' said Magrat firmly, her voice radiating such approval that the king found himself nodding automatically.

'Oh,' he said. 'Good.'

'Were they?' whispered Nanny Ogg. 'They didn't look it.'

'Don't show your ignorance, Gytha Ogg,' sniffed Granny. She turned back to the ghost of the king. 'Sorry about that, your majesty. It's just her showing off. She don't even know where Thespia is.'

'Wherever it is, I hope that they know how to school a man in the arts of war,' said Verence. 'I know Felmet. In ten years he'll be dug in here like a toad in a stone.'

The king looked from witch to witch. 'What kind of kingdom will he have to come back to? I hear what the kingdom is becoming, even now. Will you watch it change, over the years, become shoddy and mean?' The king's ghost faded.

His voice hung in the air, faint as a breeze.

'Remember, good sisters,' he said, 'the land and the king are one.'

And he vanished.

The embarrassed silence was broken by Magrat blowing her nose.

'One what?' said Nanny Ogg.

'We've got to do something,' said Magrat, her voice choked with emotion. 'Rules or no rules!'

'It's very vexing,' said Granny, quietly.

'Yes, but what are you going to do?' she said.

'Reflect on things,' said Granny. 'Think about it all.'

'You've been thinking about it for a year,' Magrat said.

'One what? Are one what?' said Nanny Ogg.

'It's no good just reacting,' said Granny. 'You've got to—'

A cart came bouncing and rumbling along the track from Lancre. Granny ignored it.

'—give these things careful consideration.'

'You don't know what to do, do you?' said Magrat.

'Nonsense. I—'

'There's a cart coming, Granny.'

Granny Weatherwax shrugged. 'What you youngsters don't realise—' she began.

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. Granny Weatherwax had grown up knowing this for a fact; the only reason she didn't die knowing that it wasn't was that Magrat, with rather better reflexes, dragged her into the ditch.

It was an interesting ditch. There were jiggling corkscrew things in it which were direct descendants of things which had been in the primordial soup of creation. Anyone who thought that ditchwater was dull could have spent an instructive half-hour in that ditch with a powerful microscope. It also had nettles in it, and now it had Granny Weatherwax.

She struggled up through the weeds, incoherent with rage, and rose from the ditch like Venus Anadyomene, only older and with more duckweed.

'T-t-t,' she said, pointing a shaking finger at the disappearing cart.

'It was young Nesheley from over Inkcap way,' said Nanny Ogg, from a nearby bush. 'His family were always a bit wild. Of course, his mother was a Whipple.'

'He ran us down!' said Granny.

'You could have got out of the way,' said Magrat.

'Get out of the way?' said Granny. 'We're witches! People get out of our way!' She squelched on to the track, her finger still pointing at the distant cart. 'By Hoki, I'll make him wish he'd never been born—'

'He was quite a big baby, I recall,' said the bush. 'His mother had a terrible time.'

'It's never happened to me before, ever,' said Granny, still twanging like a bowstring. 'I'll teach him to run us down as though, as though, as though we was ordinary people!'

'He already knows,' said Magrat. 'Just help me get Nanny out of this bush, will you?'

'I'll turn his-'

'People haven't got any respect any more, that's what it is,' said Nanny, as Magrat helped her with the thorns. 'It's all due to the king being one, I expect.'

'We're witches!' screamed Granny, turning her face towards the sky and shaking her fists.

'Yes, yes,' said Magrat. 'The harmonious balance of the universe and everything. I think Nanny's a bit tired.'

'What've I been doing all this time?' said Granny, with a rhetorical flourish that would have made even Vitoller gasp.

'Not a lot,' said Magrat.

'Laughed at! Laughed at! On my own roads! In my own country!' screamed Granny. 'That just about does it! I'm not taking ten more years of this! I'm not taking another day of it!'

The trees around her began to sway and the dust from the road sprang up into, writhing shapes that tried to swirl out of her way. Granny Weatherwax extended one long arm and at the end of it unfolded one long finger and from the rip of its curving nail there was a brief flare of octarine fire.

Half a mile down the track all four wheels fell off the cart at once.

'Lock up a witch, would he?' Granny shouted at the trees.

Nanny struggled to her feet.

'We'd better grab her,' she whispered to Magrat. The two of them leapt at Granny and forced her arms down to her sides.

'I'll bloody well show him what a witch could do!' she yelled.

'Yes, yes, very good, very good,' said Nanny. 'Only perhaps not just now and not just like this, eh?'

'Wyrd sisters, indeed!' Granny yelled. 'I'll make his—'

'Hold her a minute, Magrat,' said Nanny Ogg, and rolled up her sleeve.

'It can be like this with the highly-trained ones,' she said, and brought her palm round in a slap that lifted both witches off their feet. On such a flat, final note the universe ought have ended.

At the conclusion of the breathless silence which followed Granny Weatherwax said, 'Thank you.'

She adjusted her dress with some show of dignity, and added, 'But I meant it. We'll meet tonight at the stone and do what must be done. Ahem.'

She reset the pins in her hat and set off unsteadily in the direction of her cottage.

'Whatever happened to the rule about not meddling in politics?' said Magrat, watching her retreating back.

Nanny Ogg massaged some life back into her fingers.

'By Hoki, that woman's got a jaw like an anvil,' she said 'What was that?'

'I said, what about this rule about not meddling?' said Magrat.

'Ah,' said Nanny. She took the girl's arm. 'The thing is,' she explained, 'as you progress in the Craft, you'll learn there is another rule. Esme's obeyed it all her life.'

'And what's that?'

'When you break rules, break 'em good and hard,' said Nanny, and grinned a set of gums that were more menacing than teeth.

The duke smiled out over the forest.

'It works,' he said. 'The people mutter against the witches. How do you do it, Fool?'

'Jokes, nuncle. And gossip. People are halfway ready to believe it anyway. Everyone respects the witches. The point is that no-one actually likes them very much.'

Friday afternoon, he thought. I'll have to get some flowers. And my best suit, the one with the silver bells. Oh gosh.

'This is very pleasing. If it goes on like this, Fool, you shall have a knighthood.'

This was no.302, and the Fool knew better than to let a feed line go hungry. 'Marry, nuncle,' he said wearily, ignoring the spasm of pain that crawled across the duke's face, 'if n I had a Knighthood (Night Hood), why, it would keep my ears Warm in Bedde; i'faith, if many a Knight is a Fool, why, should a—'

'Yes, yes, all right,' snapped Lord Felmet. In fact he was feeling much better already. His porridge hadn't been oversalted this evening, and there was a decently empty feel about the castle. There were no more voices on the cusp of hearing.

He sat down on the throne. It felt really comfortable for the first time . . .

The duchess sat beside him, her chin on her hand, watching the Fool intently. This bothered him. He thought he knew where he stood with the duke, it was just a matter of hanging on until his madness curved back to the cheerful stage, but the duchess genuinely frightened him.

'It seems that words are extremely powerful,' she said.

'Indeed, lady.'

'You must have made a lengthy study.'

The Fool nodded. The power of words had sustained him through the hell of the Guild. Wizards and witches used words as if they were tools to get things done, but the Fool reckoned that words were things in their own right.

'Words can change the world,' he said.

Her eyes narrowed.

'So you have said before. I remain unconvinced. Strong men change the world,' she said. 'Strong men and their deeds. Words are just like marzipan on a cake. Of course you think words are important. You are weak, you have nothing else.'

'Your ladyship is wrong.'

The duchess's fat hand drummed impatiently on the arm of her throne.

'You had better,' she said, 'be able to substantiate that comment.'

'Lady, the duke wishes to chop down the forests, is this not so?'

'The trees talk about me,' whispered Lord Felmet. 'I hear them whisper when I go riding. They tell lies about me!'

The duchess and the Fool exchanged glances.