Equal Rites (Discworld, #3; Witches, #1)

by Terry Pratchett

He came walking through the thunderstorm and you could tell he was a wizard, partly because of the long cloak and carven staff but mainly because the raindrops were stopping several feet from his head, and steaming.

There was a village tucked in a narrow valley between steep woods. It wasn’t a large village, and wouldn’t have shown up on a map of the mountains. It barely showed up on a map of the village.

“What is the name of this place, sir?” said the wizard. The blacksmith shrugged. “Bad Ass,” he said. “Bad—?” “Ass,” repeated the blacksmith, his tone defying anyone to make something of it. The wizard considered this. “A name with a story behind it,” he said at last,

“Granny.” “What?” “Do you know how wizards like to be buried?” “Yes!” “Well, how?” Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Reluctantly.”

“We’re going to see old Weatherwax.” “But you don’t have to come.” “Because you’ll just slow us down and probably cry anyway.” Esk looked down at them solemnly. She didn’t cry a lot, it never seemed to achieve much. “If you don’t want me to come then I’ll come,” she said. This sort of thing passes for logic among siblings. “Oh, we want you to come,” said Gulta quickly. “Very pleased to hear it,” said Esk, dropping on to the packed snow.

“If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly,” said Granny, fleeing into aphorisms, the last refuge of an adult under siege.

“I’ve heard of male witches,” said Esk meekly. “Warlocks!” “I think so.”

Hilta laughed like someone who had thought hard about Life and had seen the joke.

“Reckon I can walk faster than a barge,” she said. “The river’s all bendy but I can go in straight lines.” “You’re going to walk after her?” said Hilta, aghast. “But there’s forests and wild animals!” “Good, I could do with getting back to civilization. She needs me. That staff is taking over. I said it would, but did anyone listen?” “Did they?” said Hilta, still trying to work out what Granny meant by getting back to civilization. “No,” said Granny coldly.

One reason for the bustle was that over large parts of the continent other people preferred to make money without working at all, and since the Disc had yet to develop a music recording industry they were forced to fall back on older, more traditional forms of banditry.

The lodgings were on the top floor next to the well-guarded premises of a respectable dealer in stolen property because, as Granny had heard, good fences make good neighbors.

Granny was even wondering about the possibility of acquiring slightly larger premises with a bit of garden and sending for her goats. The smell might be a problem, but the goats would just have to put up with it.

gods were always demanding that their followers acted other than according to their true natures, and the human fallout this caused made plenty of work for witches.

“It must be quite interesting, reading books,” said Esk. “Sort of. Can’t you read, Esk?” The astonishment in his voice stung her. “I expect so,” she said defiantly. “I’ve never tried.”

Granny wasn’t sure on this point—either some special dried monkey turds from a llamassary or some dried llama turds from a monastery,

“Hallo! Esk, isn’t it? H-how d-did you get h-here?” It was Simon, standing there with a book under each arm. Esk blushed. “Granny won’t tell me,” she said. “I think it’s something to do with men and women.” Simon looked at her blankly. Then he grinned. Esk thought about the question a second time.

“I look at it all like this,” he said. “Before I heard him talk, I was like everyone else. You know what I mean? I was confused and uncertain about all the little details of life. But now,” he brightened up, “while I’m still confused and uncertain it’s on a much higher plane, d’you see, and at least I know I’m bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.” Treatle nodded. “I hadn’t looked at it like that,” he said, “but you’re absolutely right. He’s really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance. There’s so much about the universe we don’t know.” They both savored the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were ignorant of only ordinary things.

The light was misty and actinic, the sort of light to make Steven Spielberg reach for his copyright lawyer.

Somebody laughed. It was the sort of laugh— Basically, it was p’ch’zarni’chiwkov. This epiglottis-throttling word is seldom used on the Disc except by highly paid stunt linguists and, of course, the tiny tribe of the K’turni, who invented it. It has no direct synonym, although the Cumhoolie word “squernt” (“the feeling upon finding that the previous occupant of the privy has used all the paper”) begins to approach it in general depth of feeling. The closest translation is as follows: the nasty little sound of a sword being unsheathed right behind one at just the point when one thought one had disposed of one’s enemies —although K’turni speakers say that this does not convey the cold sweating, heart-stopping, gut-freezing sense of the original. It was that kind of laugh.

“There’s a sort of jetty thing down here somewhere, unless I’m lost.” There was the sound of a heavy body blundering wetly into a bush, and then a splash. “I’ve found the river, anyway.”