Carpe Jugulum (18 page)

So she screamed.

That
was a talent. Being in two minds wasn’t a talent, it was merely an affliction. But Agnes’s vocal range could melt earwax at the top of the scale.

She started high and saw that she’d judged right. Just after the point where bats and woodworm fell out of the rafters, and dogs barked down in the town, Vlad clapped his hands over his ears.

Agnes gulped for breath.

“Another step and I’ll do it louder!” she shouted.

The Count picked up Granny Weatherwax as though she were a toy.

“I’m sure you will,” he said. “And sooner or later you
will
run out of breath. Vlad, she followed you home, you may keep her, but she’s your responsibility. You have to feed her and clean out her cage.”

The younger vampire approached cautiously.

“Look, you’re really not being sensible,” he hissed.

“Good!”

And then he was beside her. But Perdita had been expecting this even if Agnes hadn’t, and as he arrived her elbow was already well into its thrust and caught him in the stomach before he could stop it.

She strode forward as he doubled up, noting that inability to learn was a vampire trait that was hard to shake off.

The Count laid Granny Weatherwax on the table.

“Igor!” he shouted. “Where are you, you stupid—

“Yeth, marthter?”

The Count spun around.

“Why do you
always
turn up behind me like that!”

“The old Count alwayth…ecthpected it of me, marthter. It’th a profethional thing.”

“Well, stop it.”

“Yeth, marthter.”

“And the ridiculous voice, too. Go and ring the dinner gong.”

“Yeth, marrrtthhter.”

“And I’ve told you before about that walk!” the Count shouted, as Igor limped across the hall. “It’s not even amusing!”

Igor walked past Agnes lisping nastily under his breath.

Vlad caught up with Agnes as she strode toward the table, and she was slightly glad because she didn’t know what she’d do when she got there.

“You must go,” he panted. “I wouldn’t have let him hurt you, of course, but father can get…testy.”

“Not without Granny.”

A faint voice in her head said: Leave…me…

That wasn’t me,
Perdita volunteered.
I think that was her.

Agnes stared at the prone body. Granny Weatherwax looked a lot smaller when she was unconscious.

“Would you like to stay to dinner?” said the Count.

“You’re going to…after all this talk, you’re going to…suck her blood?”

“We
are
vampires, Miss Nitt. It’s a vampire thing. A little…sacrament, shall we say.”

”

“How can you? She’s an old lady!”

He spun around and was suddenly standing too close to her.

“The idea of a younger aperitif is attractive, believe me,” he said. “But Vlad would sulk. Anyway, blood develops…character, just like your old wines. She won’t be killed. Not as such. At her time of life I should welcome a little immortality.”

“But she hates vampires!”

“This may present her with a problem when she comes around, since she will be a rather subservient one. Oh dear…” The Count reached down and picked up Oats from under the table by one arm. “What a bloodless performance. I remember Omnians when they were full of certainty and fire and led by men who were courageous and unforgiving, albeit quite unbelievably insane. How they would despair of all this milk and water stuff. Take him away with you, please.”

“Shall I see you again tomorrow?” said Vlad, proving to Agnes that males of every species could possess a stupidity gene.

“You won’t be able to turn her into a vampire!” she said, ignoring him.

“She won’t be able to help it,” said the Count. “It’s in the blood, if we choose to put it there.”

“She’ll resist.”

“That would be worth seeing.”

The Count dropped Oats onto the floor again.

“Now go away, Miss Nitt. Take your soggy priest. Tomorrow, well, you can have your old witch back. But she’ll be ours. There’s a hierarchy. Everyone knows that…who knows anything about vampires.”

Behind him Oats was being sick.

Agnes thought of the hollow-eyed people now working in the castle. No one deserved that.

She grabbed the priest by the back of his jacket and held him like a bag.

“
Goodbye
, Miss Nitt,” said the Count.

She hauled the limp Oats to the main doors. Now it was raining hard outside, great heavy unmerciful rain slanting out of the sky like steel rods. She kept close to the wall for the slight shelter that this gave and propped him up under the gush from a gargoyle.

He shuddered. “Oh, that poor old woman,” he moaned, slumping forward so that a flattened star of rain poured off his head.

“Yes,” said Agnes. The other two had run off. They’d shared a thought—and Perdita had too. They’d all felt the shock as Granny set her mind free and…well, the baby was even
called
Esme, wasn’t she? But…she couldn’t have imagined Granny’s voice in her head. She had to be somewhere close…

“I really made a terrible mess of it, didn’t I,” said Oats.

“Yes,” said Agnes, vaguely. No, lending her
self
to the baby did have a sort of
rightness
to it, a folklore touch, a romantic ring, and that’s why Nanny and Magrat would probably believe it and that was why Granny wouldn’t do it. Granny had no romance in her soul, Agnes thought. But she
did
have a very good idea of how to manipulate the romance in other people.

So…where else was she?
Something
had happened. She’d put the essence of herself somewhere for safety, and no matter what she’d told the Count she couldn’t have put it very far away. It had to be in something alive, but if it was in a human the owner wouldn’t even know it—

“If only I’d used the right exorcism—” Oats mumbled.

“Wouldn’t have worked,” said Agnes sharply. “I don’t think they’re very religious vampires.”

“It’s probably only once in his life that a priest gets a chance like this…”

“You were just the wrong person,” said Agnes. “If a pamphlet had been the right thing to scare them away, then you’d have been the very best man for the job.”

She stared down at Oats. So did Perdita.

“Brother Melchio is going to get very abrupt about this,” he said, pulling himself to his feet. “Oh, look at me, all covered in mud. Er…why
are
you looking at me like that?”

“Oh…just an odd thought. The vampires still don’t affect your head?”

“What do you mean?”

“They don’t affect your mind? They don’t know what you’re thinking?”

“Hah! Most of the time even
I
don’t know what I’m thinking,” said Oats miserably.

“Really?” said Agnes.
Really?
said Perdita.

“He was right,” mumbled Oats, not listening. “I’ve let everyone down, haven’t I? I should have stayed in the college and taken that translating post.”

There wasn’t even any thunder and lightning with the rain. It was just hard and steady and grim.

“But I’m…ready to have another go,” said Oats.

“You are? Why?”

“Did not Kazrin return three times into the valley of Mahag, and wrest the cup of Hiread from the soldiers of the Oolites while they slept?”

“Did he?”

“Yes. I’m…I’m sure of it. And did not Om say to the Prophet Brutha, ‘I will be with you in dark places’?”

“I imagine he did.”

“Yes, he did. He must have done.”

“And,” said Agnes, “on that basis you’d go back in?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because if I didn’t, what use am I? What use am I anyway?”

“I don’t think we’d survive a second time,” said Agnes. “They let us go this time because it was the cruel thing to do. Dang!
I’ve
got to decide what to do now, and it shouldn’t be
me
. I’m the maiden, for goodness’ sake!” She saw his expression and added, for reasons she’d find hard to explain at the moment, “A technical term for the junior member of a trio of witches. I shouldn’t have to
decide
things. Yes, I know it’s better than making the tea!”

“Er…I didn’t say anything about making the tea—”

“No, sorry, that was someone else. What is it she wants me to
do
?”

Especially since now you think you know where she’s hiding,
said Perdita.

There was a creak, and they heard the hall doors open. Light spilled out, shadows danced in the mist raised by the driving rain, there was a splash and the doors shut again. As they closed, there was the sound of laughter.

Agnes hurried to the bottom of the steps, with the priest squelching along beside her.

There was already a wide and muddy puddle at this end of the courtyard. Granny Weatherwax lay in it, her dress torn, her hair uncoiling from its rock-hard bun.

There was blood on her neck.

“They didn’t even lock her in a cell or something,” said Agnes, steaming with rage. “They just threw her like…like a meat bone!”

“I suppose they think she
is
locked up now, the poor soul,” said Oats. “Let’s get her undercover, at least…”

“Oh…yes…of course.”

Agnes took hold of Granny’s legs, and was amazed that someone so thin could be so heavy.

“Perhaps there’d be someone in the village?” said Oats, staggering under his end of the load.

“Not a good idea,” said Agnes.

“Oh, but surely—”

“What would you say to them? ‘This is Granny, can we leave her here, oh, and when she wakes up she’ll be a vampire’?”

“Ah.”

“It’s not as though people are that happy to see her anyway, unless they’re ill…”

Agnes peered around through the rain.

“Come on, let’s go around to the stables and the mews, there’s sheds and things…”

King Verence opened his eyes. Water was pouring down the window of his bedroom. There was no light but that which crept in under the door, and he could just make out the shapes of his two guards, nodding in their seats.

A windowpane tinkled. One of the Uberwaldians went and opened the window, looked out into the wild night, found nothing of interest and shuffled back to his seat.

Everything felt very…pleasant. It seemed to Verence that he was lying in a nice warm bath, which was very relaxing and comfortable. The cares of the world belonged to someone else. He bobbed like happy flotsam on the warm sea of life.

He could hear very faint voices, apparently coming from somewhere below his pillow.

“Rikt, gi’ tae yon helan bigjobs?”

“Ach, fashit keel!”

“Hyup?”

“Nach oona whiel ta’ tethra…yin, tan, TETRA!”

“Hyup! Hyup!”

Something rustled on the floor. The chair of one man jerked up into the air and bobbed at speed to the window.

“Hyup!” The chair and its occupant crashed through the glass.

The other guard managed to get to his feet, but something was growing in the air in front of him. To Verence, an alumnus of the Fools’ Guild, it looked very much like a very tall human pyramid made up of very small acrobats.

“Hup! Hup!”

“Hyup!”

“Hup!”

It grew level with the guard’s face. The single figure at the top yelled: “What ya lookin’ a’, chymie? Ha’ a wee tastie!” and launched itself directly at a point between the man’s eyes. There was a little cracking noise, and the man keeled over backward.

“Hup! Hup!”

“Hyup!”

The living pyramid dissolved to floor level. Verence heard tiny pattering feet and suddenly there was a small heavily tattooed man, in a blue pointy hat, standing on his chin.

“Seyou, kingie! Awa’ echt ta’ branoch, eh?”

“Well done,” Verence murmured. “How long have you been a hallucination?
Jolly
good.”

“Ken ye na’ saggie, ye spargit?”

“That’s the way,” said Verence dreamily.

“Auchtahelweit!”

“Hyup! Hyup!”

Verence felt himself lifted off the bed. Hundreds of little hands passed him from one to the other and he was glided through the window and out into the void.

It was a sheer wall and, he told himself dreamily, he had no business drifting down it so slowly, to cries of “Ta ya! Ta me! Hyup!” Tiny hands caught his collar, his nightshirt, his bed-socks…

“Good show,” he murmured, as he slid gently to the ground and then, six inches above ground level, was carried off into the night.

There was a light burning in the rain. Agnes hammered on the door, and the wet wood gave away to the slightly better vision of Hodgesaargh the falconer.

“We’ve got to come in!” she said.

“Yes, Miss Nitt.”

He stood back obediently as they carried Granny into the little room.

“She been hurt, miss?”

“You
do
know there’s vampires in the castle?” said Agnes.

“Yes, miss?” said Hodgesaargh. His voice suggested that he’d just been told a fact, and he was waiting with polite interest to be told whether this was a good fact or a bad fact.

“They bit Granny Weatherwax. We need to let her lie down somewhere.”

“There’s my bed, miss.”

It was small and narrow, designed for people who went to sleep because they were tired.

“She might bleed on it a bit,” said Agnes.

“Oh, I bleed on it all the time,” said Hodgesaargh cheerfully. “And on the floor. I’ve got any amount of bandages and ointment, if that will be any help.”

“Well, it won’t do any harm,” said Agnes. “Er…Hodgesaargh, you
do
know vampires suck people’s blood, do you?”

“Yes, miss? They’ll have to queue up behind the birds for mine, then.”

“It doesn’t worry you?”

“Mrs. Ogg made me a huge tub of ointment, miss.”

That seemed to be that. Provided they didn’t touch his birds, Hodgesaargh didn’t much mind who ran the castle. For hundreds of years the falconers had simply got on with the important things, like falconry, which needed a lot of training, and left the kinging to amateurs.

“She’s soaking wet,” said Oats. “At least let’s wrap her up in a blanket or something.”

“And you’ll need some rope, said Agnes.

“Rope?”

“She’ll wake up.”

“You mean…we ought to tie her up?”

“If a vampire wants to turn you into a vampire, what happens?”

Oats’s hands clasped his turtle pendant for comfort as he tried to remember. “I…think they put something in the blood,” he said. “I think if they want to turn you into a vampire you get turned. That’s all there is to it. I don’t think you can fight it when it’s in the blood. You can’t say you don’t want to join. I don’t think it’s a power you can resist.”

“She’s good at resisting,” said Agnes.

“That good?” said Oats.