The Shepherd's Crown (5 page)

NO, THERE ISN’T, I’M AFRAID. WE ARE ALL FLOATING IN THE WINDS OF TIME. BUT YOUR CANDLE, MISTRESS WEATHERWAX, WILL FLICKER FOR SOME TIME BEFORE IT GOES OUT – A LITTLE REWARD FOR A LIFE WELL LIVED. FOR I CAN SEE THE BALANCE AND YOU HAVE LEFT THE WORLD MUCH BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT, AND IF YOU ASK ME,
said Death,
NOBODY COULD DO ANY BETTER THAN THAT . . .

There was no light, no point of reference except for the two tiny blue pinpricks sparkling in the eye sockets of Death himself.

‘Well, the journey was worth taking and I saw many wonderful things on the way, including you, my reliable friend. Shall we go now?’

MADAM, WE’VE ALREADY GONE.

In the early morning light, in a village pond near Slice, bubbles came to the surface,
followed by Miss Tick, witch-finder. There was no one there to observe this remarkable occurrence, apart from her mule, Joseph, grazing steadily on the river bank. Of course, she told herself sadly as she picked up her towel, they all leave me alone these days.

She sighed. It was such a shame when old customs disappeared. A good witch-ducking was something she had liked doing in the bad old days
– she had even
trained
for it. All those swimming lessons, and practice with knots at the Quirm College for Young Ladies. She had been able to defeat the mobs under water if necessary. Or at least work at breaking her own record for untying the simple knots they all thought worked on the nasty witch.

Now, a bit of pond-dipping had become more like a hobby, and she had a nasty feeling that others
were copying her after she passed through their villages. She’d even heard talk of a swimming club being started in one small hamlet over by Ham-on-Rye.
^fn2

Miss Tick picked up her towel to dry herself off and went back to her small caravan, gave Joseph his breakfast nosebag and put the kettle on. She settled down under the trees to have her snap – bread and dripping, a thank-you the day before
from a farmer’s wife for an afternoon’s knowledge of reading. Miss Tick had smiled as she left because the eyes of the rather elderly woman had been sparkling – ‘Now,’ she had said, ‘I can see what’s in those letters Alfred gets, especially the ones that smell of lavender.’ Miss Tick wondered if it might be a good idea to get moving soon. Before Alfred got another letter anyway.

Her stomach filled,
ready for the day ahead, she sensed an uneasiness in the air, so there was nothing for it but to make a shamble.

A shamble is a witch’s aid to inner concentration and always has to be made right there and then, when needed, to catch the moment. It could be made of pretty much anything, but had to include something alive. An egg would do, though most witches would prefer to save the egg for dinner,
in case it exploded on them. Miss Tick dug in her pockets. A woodlouse, a dirty handkerchief, an old sock, an ancient conker, a stone with a hole in it, and a toadstool which Miss Tick couldn’t quite identify and so couldn’t risk eating. She expertly strung them all together with a bit of string and a spare length of knicker elastic.

Then she
pulled
at the threads. But there
was
something wrong.
With a
twang
that reverberated around the clearing, the tangle of objects threw itself into the air and spun, twisting and turning.

‘Well, that’s going to complicate things,’ Miss Tick groaned.

Just across the woods from Granny Weatherwax’s cottage, Nanny Ogg nearly dropped a flagon of her best home-made cider on her cat, Greebo. She kept her flagons of cider in the shady spring by her cottage.
The tomcat considered a growl, but after one look at his mistress he tried to be a good boy, for the normally cheerful face of Nanny Ogg was like thunder this morning.

And he heard her mutter, ‘It should have been me.’

In Genua, on a royal visit with her husband Verence, Queen Magrat of Lancre, former witch, discovered that even though she might think she had retired from magic, magic had not
retired from her. She shuddered as the shock wave was carried across the world like a tsunami, an intimation that things were going to be . . . otherwise.

In Boffo’s Novelty and Joke Emporium in Ankh-Morpork, all the whoopee cushions trumpeted in a doleful harmony; while over in Quirm, Agnes Nitt, both witch and singer, woke with the sinking feeling known to many that she might have made a fool
of herself at the previous evening’s first-night party.
^fn3
It certainly still seemed to be going on behind her eyeballs. Then she suddenly heard her inner Perdita wail . . .

Over in the great city of Ankh-Morpork, at Unseen University, Ponder Stibbons had just finished a lengthy breakfast when he entered the basement of the High Energy Magic Building. He stopped and gaped in amazement. In front
of him, Hex was calculating at a speed that Ponder had never seen before. And he hadn’t even entered a question yet! Or pulled the Great Big Lever. The ant tubes that the ants crawled through to make their calculations were blurred with their motion. Was that . . . was that an
ant crash
by the cogwheel?

Ponder tapped a question into Hex: What do you know that I don’t? Please, Hex.

There was
a scuffling in the anthills and the answer spat out:
Practically everything
.

Ponder rephrased his question more carefully with the requisite number of IF and BEFORE clauses. It was wordy and complicated, a huge ask for a wizard with only one meal in him, and no one else would have understood what Ponder even meant, but after a big hiccough of ants, Hex shot out:
We are dealing with the death of Granny Weatherwax.

And then Ponder went to see the Archchancellor, Mustrum Ridcully, who would definitely want to hear this news . . .

In the Oblong Office of the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari watched amazed as his
Times
crossword filled itself in . . .

High above the Ramtops, in the monastery of Oi Dong, the Abbot of the History Monks licked his mystic pencil and made a note
of it . . .

The cat called You purred like a kind of feline windmill.

And in the travelling now, Eskarina, a woman who had once been a wizard, held the hand of her son and knew sorrow . . .

But in a world shimmering just the other side of the Disc, a world where dreams could become real – where those who lived there liked to creep through to other worlds and hurt and destroy and steal and poison
– an elf lord by the name of Peaseblossom felt a powerful quiver shoot through the air, as a spider might feel a prey land on his web.

He rubbed his hands in glee. A barrier has gone, he whispered to himself. They will be weak . . .

Back on the Chalk the kelda of the Wee Free Men watched her fire flicker and thought, The witch of witches is away to the fair lands.

‘Mind how ye go, Hag o’ hags.
Ye’ll be sore missed.’ She sighed then called to her husband, the Big Man of the clan. ‘Rob, I’m afeared for oor big wee hag. She is going to ha’ need of ye. Gae to her, Rob. Take a few of the lads and get ye awa’ to her.’

Jeannie bustled into her chamber to fetch her cauldron. The edges of oor world will nae be as strong, she said to herself. I need to ken what may be comin’ oor way . . .

And far away, in some place unthinkable, a white horse was being unsaddled by a figure with a scythe with, it must be said, some sorrow.

^fn1
Granny’s soap was like her advice: strong and sharp and it stung a bit at the time, but it worked.

^fn2
A popular idea among the young lads, since they felt that everyone – and ‘everyone’ definitely included the young ladies – should swim without their clothes.

^fn3
Though Agnes does have the very handy excuse that if she behaves badly, it might not be
Agnes
doing the Devil-Amongst-the-Pictsies dance on the table, but her other personality, Perdita, who is much more outgoing and, incidentally, a lot thinner.

CHAPTER 3

An Upside-down World

IN A SMALL
cottage in a little hamlet on the rolling fields of the sheep-haunted Chalk, Tiffany Aching had her sleeves rolled up and was sweating just as much as the mother-to-be – a young girl only a few years older than she herself was – who was leaning on her. Tiffany had already helped more than fifty babies into the world, plus lots and lots of lambs, and was
generally held to be an expert midwife.

Unfortunately, Miss Milly Standish’s mother and several other women of varying ages, who had all claimed to be relatives and asserted their right to a place in the very small room, thought they were experts themselves and were generously telling Tiffany what she was doing wrong.

Already one or two of them had given her old-fashioned advice, wrong advice
and possibly dangerous advice, but Tiffany kept her calm, tried not to shout at anybody and concentrated on dealing with the fact that Milly was having twins. She hoped that people couldn’t hear her teeth grinding.

It was always going to be a difficult birth with two boisterous babies fighting one another to be the first out. But Tiffany was focused on the new lives, and she would
not
allow Mr
Death a place in this room. Another sweating push from the young mother, and first one and then another baby came yelling into the world to be handed to their grandmother and a neighbour.

‘Two lads! How wonderful!’ said Old Mother Standish with a distinct note of satisfaction.

Tiffany wiped her hands, mopped her brow and continued to look after the mother while the crowd cooed over the new arrivals.
And then she noticed something. There was another child in that capacious young woman. Yes, a third baby was arriving, hardly noticed because of the battling brothers ahead of it.

Just then, Tiffany looked down and in a slight greenish-yellow haze saw a cat, pure white and as aloof as a duchess, staring at her. It was Granny Weatherwax’s cat, You – Tiffany knew the cat well, having given her
to Granny Weatherwax herself only a few years ago. To her horror one of the older ladies went to shoo You away. Tiffany almost screamed.

‘Ladies, that cat belongs to Granny Weatherwax,’ she said sharply. ‘It might not be a good idea to make a
very senior
witch angry.’

Suddenly the gaggle backed away. Even here on the Chalk, the name of Mistress Weatherwax worked a treat. Her reputation had spread
far and wide, further and wider than Granny Weatherwax had been in the habit of travelling herself – the dwarfs over in Sto Plains even had a name for her that translated as ‘Go Around the Other Side of the Mountain’.

But Tiffany, sweating again, wondered why Granny’s cat was
here
. Usually You would be hanging around Granny Weatherwax’s cottage back in Lancre, not all the way down here on the
Chalk. Witches saw omens everywhere, of course. So was it some kind of omen? Something to do with what Jeannie had said? Not for the first time, she wondered how it was that cats seemed to be able to be in one place one moment, and then
almost at the same time
, reappear somewhere else.
^fn1

There was a cry of pain from the young mother and Tiffany gritted her teeth and turned her attention back
to the job in hand. Witches do the task that is in front of them and what was in front of her right at that moment was a struggling young mother and another small head.

‘One big push, Milly, please. You’re having triplets.’

Milly groaned.

‘Another one. A small one,’ said Tiffany cheerfully, as a girl child arrived, unscathed, quite pretty for a newborn and small. She handed the baby girl to
another relative, and then reality was back again.

As Tiffany began clearing up, she noticed – because noticing was the ground state of her being as a witch – that there was a lot more cooing over the two boys than there was for their sister. It was always good to recognize those things and put them away and keep them in mind, so that a little trouble wouldn’t, one day, become a larger trouble.

The ladies had produced the family groaning chair for Milly, so that she could sit in state to receive the congratulations of the throng. They were also busy congratulating each other, nodding sagely about the advice given which had, clearly, been the
right
advice since here was the evidence. Two strapping boys! Oh, and a little girl.

Bottles were opened, and a child was fetched and told to go
across the fields to find Dad, who was working on the barley with
his
dad. Mum was beaming, especially since young Milly was very soon to be
Mrs
Robinson, because Mum had put her foot down very, very hard about that and made certain that young Mister Robinson was definitely going to do his duty by her girl. There hadn’t been a problem about this; this was the country after all, where boy would
meet girl, as Milly had met her beau at Hogswatch, and nature would eventually take its course, right up until the moment when the girl’s mother would notice the bump. She would then tell her husband and her husband, over a convivial pint of beer, would have a word with the boy’s father, who would then talk to the boy. And usually it worked.