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November 13 - December 15, 2022
It would have been more impressive if they’d all agreed on one before, but as it was it sounded as though every single small warrior had a battle cry of his very own and would fight anyone who tried to take it away from him.
being quite unaware that only those with their feet on rock can build castles in the air.
And so the sons and daughters of Lancre went off into the world, carved out careers, climbed the various ladders of achievement, and always remembered to send money home.
There are many kinds of vampires. Indeed, it is said that there are as many kinds of vampires as there are types of disease.* And they’re not just human (if vampires are human).
There are dozens of ways to dispatch them, quite apart from the stake through the heart, which also works on normal people so if you have any stakes left over you don’t have to waste them. Classically, they spent the day in some coffin somewhere, with no guard other than an elderly hunchback who doesn’t look all that spry and should succumb to quite a small mob. Yet just one can keep a whole community in a state of sullen obedience . . .
“An evolutionary cul-de-sac, Lacci. A marooned survivor on the seas of progress.”
It had “older brother” harmonics on every syllable.
Most people thought of dwarfs as reserved, cautious, law-abiding and very reticent on matters of the heart and other vaguely connected organs, and this was indeed true of almost all dwarfs. But genetics rolls strange dice on the green baize of life and somehow the dwarfs had produced Casanunda,
“There are other witches,” said the son, like someone turning over a mouthful that was proving rather tough to chew. “Oh yes. I hope we will meet them. They could be entertaining.”
The highwayman was of that simple class of men who, having been hit by someone bigger than them, finds someone smaller than them for the purposes of retaliation. Someone else was going to suffer tonight, he vowed. He’d get another horse, at least.
I MUST SAY THAT YOU HAVE AN AMAZING PERSISTENCE OF VITALITY, said the horseman. It was not so much a voice, more an echo inside the head. IF NOT A PRESENCE OF MIND.
“I haven’t seen her around much at all, lately,” said Agnes. “She’s got something on her mind, I think.” Nanny narrowed her eyes. “You think so?” she said, adding to herself: you’re getting good, miss.
“It’s just that ever since we heard about the birth,” Agnes waved a plump hand to indicate the general high-cholesterol celebration around them, “she’s been so . . . stretched, sort of. Twanging.”
“I certainly notice you always fiddle around with your pipe when you’re thinking thoughts you don’t much like,”
Through a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke Nanny reflected that Agnes read books. All the witches who’d lived in her cottage were bookish types. They thought you could see life through books but you couldn’t, the reason being that the words got in the way.
stabbing all uncommunicative gossips.
“So the King sent down to the Omnian mission in Ohulan to send us up a priest, apparently,”
In fact no one had turned up to the small introductory service that Mightily Oats had organized that afternoon, but since he had announced one he had gone ahead with it anyway, singing a few cheerful hymns to his own accompaniment on the small portable harmonium and then preaching a very short sermon to the wind and the sky.
He was a bit uneasy about the mirror, to be honest. Mirrors had led to one of the Church’s innumerable schisms, one side saying that since they encouraged vanity they were bad, and the other saying that since they reflected the goodness of Om they were holy. Oats had not quite formed his own opinion, being by nature someone who tries to see something in both sides of every question, but at least the mirrors helped him get his complicated clerical collar on straight.
What a place! What a dump. He’d had a short walk after the service, and every path seemed to end in a cliff or a sheer drop. Never had he seen such a vertical country. Things had rustled at him in the bushes, and he’d got his shoes muddy. As for the people he’d met . . . well, simple ignorant country folk, salt of the earth, obviously, but they’d just stared at him carefully from a distance, as if they were waiting for something to happen to him and didn’t care to be too close to him when it did.
if you wished the light to be seen you had to take it into dark places. And this was certainly a dark place.
A full moon could only wane, a new moon could only wax, but a half moon, balancing so precariously between light and dark . . . well, it could do anything.
Witches always lived on the edges of things. She felt the tingle in her hands. It was not just from the frosty air. There was an edge somewhere. Something was beginning.
Between the light and the dark . . . well, sometimes that’s where you had to be.
“Do you know who you’re here for?” THAT IS NOT MY CHOICE. ON THE VERY EDGE YOU WILL ALWAYS FIND SOME UNCERTAINTY.
“Repent? Me? Cheek! I can’t start repenting at my time of life. I’d never get any work done. Anyway,” she added, “I ain’t sorry for most of it.”
“They set fire to people!” said Nanny. “I think I read somewhere that they used to, yes,” said Agnes, panting with the effort of keeping up. “But that was a long time ago, Nanny! The ones I saw in Ankh-Morpork just handed out leaflets and preached in a big tent and sang rather dreary songs—”
anything that worked, either.
Shawn and a troll and was unlikely to be a serious
Granny Weatherwax says you make your own right time. They’re the royal family. All they need to do is walk down the stairs and it’d be the right time. They’re doing it wrong.
“Oh, witches never reservups,” said Nanny. “They just come.”
That was the worst part about being good—it caught you coming and going.
very few people will argue with a hat of authority.
Inside Agnes, Perdita made a face at him.
“Hah,” said Nanny Ogg, who could haughtily turn her back on people while looking them in the eye.
It’s all right . . . as witches we believe in religious toleration . . .” “That’s right,” said Nanny Ogg. “But only for the right religions, so you watch your step!”
The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.
Supposing there was justice for all, after all? For every unheeded beggar, every harsh word, every neglected duty, every slight . . . every choice . . . Because that was the point, wasn’t it? You had to choose. You might be right, you might be wrong, but you had to choose, knowing that the rightness or wrongness might never be clear or even that you were deciding between two sorts of wrong, that there was no right anywhere. And always, always, you did it by yourself. You were the one there, on the edge, watching and listening. Never any tears, never any apology, never any regrets . . . You
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She’d done things and been places, and found ways to turn anger outward that had surprised even her. She’d faced down others far more powerful than she was, if only she’d allowed them to believe it. She’d given up so much, but she’d earned a lot
The reward for toil had been more toil. If you dug the best ditches, they gave you a bigger shovel.
She’d never, ever asked for anything in return. And the trouble with not asking for anything in return was that sometimes you didn’t get it.
There was something . . . sort of damp about him, the kind of helpless hopelessness that made people angry rather than charitable, the total certainty that if the whole world was a party he’d still find the kitchen.
Agnes cursed the fact that she had grown up with an invisible enemy.
Carpe Jugulum,’” read Agnes aloud. “That’s . . . well, Carpe Diem is ‘Seize the Day,’ so this means—” “‘Go for the Throat,’”
He’s gone an’ invited some bigwigs from Uberwald, that’s what he’s done. Oh, deary deary me. Vampires and werewolves, werewolves and vampires. We’ll all be murdered in one another’s beds.”
“Well, well, well . . . so our king invited vampires, eh?”
Not many people ever tasted Nanny Ogg’s homemade brandy; it was technically impossible. Once it encountered the warmth of the human mouth it immediately turned into fumes.
“I bet if I asked him, Verence’d tell me to mind my own business. O’ course, he wouldn’t put it quite like that,” she added, since she knew the King had no suicidal tendencies. “He’d prob’ly use the word ‘respect’ two or three times at least. But it’d mean the same thing in the end.”
In fact there are many things everyone knows about vampires, without really taking into account that perhaps the vampires know them by now, too.
“Either there’s a lot of vampires in these parts or we’re doing something wrong,” said Agnes flatly. “I’ve always said you can’t have too much garlic,” said Nanny. “Everyone else disagrees, Nanny.”
