"Oggham?" said the dwarf.

"My family has been in these, how shall I put it, in these parts for a very long time," said Nanny.

"Knowing you is a real education, Mrs. Ogg," said Casanunda.

"Everyone says that. Just shove the crowbar down the side of the stone, will you? I've always wanted an excuse to go down there."

"What is down there?"

"Well, it leads into Lancre Caves. They run everywhere, I've heard. Even up to Copperhead. There's supposed to be an entrance in the castle, but I've never found it. But mainly they lead to the world of the elves."

"I thought the Dancers led to the world of the elves?"

"This is the other world of the elves."

"I thought they only had one."

"They don't talk about this one."

"And you want to go into it?"

"Yes."

"You want to find elves?"

"That's right. Now, are you going to stand here all night, or are you going to crowbar that stone?" She gave him a nudge. "There's gold down there, you know."

"Oh, yes, thanks very much," said Casanunda sarcastically. "That's speciesist, that is. Just because I am . . . vertically disadvantaged, you're trying to get round me with gold, yes? Dwarfs are just a lot of appetites on legs, that's what you think. Hah!"

Nanny sighed.

"Oh, all right," she said. "Tell you what. . . when we get back home, I'll bake you some proper dwarf bread, how about that?"

Casanunda's face split into a disbelieving grin.

"Real dwarf bread?"

"Yes. I reckon I've still got the recipe, and anyway it's been weeks since I emptied out the cat box.[40]"

"Well, all right-."

Casanunda rammed one end of the crowbar under the stone and pulled on it with dwarfish strength. After a moment's resistance the stone swung up.

There were steps below, thick with earth and old roots.

Nanny started down them without a look back, and then realized that the dwarf wasn't following.

"What's the matter?"

"Never liked dark and enclosed spaces much."

"What? You're a dwarf."

"Born a dwarf, born a dwarf. But I even get nervous when I'm hiding in wardrobes. That's a bit of a drawback in my line of work."

"Don't be daft. I'm not scared."

"You're not me."

"Tell you what — I'll bake 'em with extra gravel."

"Ooh . . . you're a temptress, Mrs. Ogg."

"And bring the torches."

The caves were dry, and warm. Casanunda trotted along after Nanny, anxious to stay in the torchlight.

"You haven't been down here before?"

"No, but I know the way."

After a while Casanunda began to feel better. The caves were better than wardrobes. For one thing, you weren't tripping over shoes all the time, and there probably wasn't much chance of a sword-wielding husband opening the door.

In fact, he began to feel happy.

The words rose unbidden into his head, from somewhere in the back pocket of his genes.

"Hiho, hiho-"

Nanny Ogg grinned in the darkness.

The tunnel opened into a cavern. The torchlight picked up the suggestion of distant walls.

"This it?" said Casanunda, gripping the crowbar.

"No. This is something else. We . . . know about this place. It's mythical."

"It's not real?"

"Oh, it's real. And mythical."

The torch flared. There were hundreds of dust-covered slabs ranged around the cavern in a spiral; at the centre of the spiral was a huge bell, suspended from a rope that disappeared into the darkness of the ceiling. Just under the hanging bell was one pile of silver coins and one pile of gold coins.

"Don't touch the money," said Nanny "'Ere, watch this, my dad told me about this, it's a good trick."

She reached out and tapped the bell very gently, causing a faint ting.

Dust cascaded off the nearest slab. What Casanunda had thought was just a carving sat up, in a creaky way. It was an armed warrior. Since he'd sat up he almost certainly was alive, but he looked as though he'd gone from life to rigor mortis without passing through death on the way.

He focused deepset eyes on Nanny Ogg.

"What bloody tyme d'you call thys, then?"

"Not time yet," said Nanny.

"What did you goe and bang the bell for? I don't know, I haven't had a wynke of sleep for two hundred years, some sodde alwayes bangs the bell. Go awaye."

The warrior lay back.

"It's some old king and his warriors," whispered Nanny, as they hurried away. "Some kind of magical sleep, I'm told. Some old wizard did it. They're supposed to wake up for some final battle when a wolf eats the sun."

"Those wizards, always smoking something," said Casanunda.

"Could be. Go right here. Always go right."

"We're walking in a circle?"

"A spiral. We're right under the Long Man now."

"No, that can't be right," said Casanunda. "We climbed down a hole under the Long Man . . . hold on . . . you mean we're in the place where we started and it's a different place?"

"You're getting the hang of this, I can see that."

They followed the spiral.

Which, at length, brought them to a door, of sorts.

The air was hotter here. Red light glowed from side passages.

Two massive stones had been set up against a rock wall, with a third stone across them. Animal skins hung across the crude entrance thus formed; wisps of steam curled around them.

"They got put up at the same time as the Dancers," said Nanny, conversationally. "Only the hole here's vertical, so they only needed three. Might as well leave your crowbar here and take your boots off if they've got nails in 'em."

"These boots were stitched by the finest shoemaker in Ankh-Morpork," said Casanunda, "and one day I shall pay him."

Nanny pulled aside the skins.

Steam billowed out.

There was darkness inside, thick and hot as treacle and smelling of a fox's locker room. As Casanunda followed Nanny Ogg he sensed unseen figures in the reeking air, and heard the silence of murmured conversations suddenly curtailed. At one point he thought he saw a bowl of red hot stones, and then a shadowy hand moved across them and upturned a ladle, hiding them in steam.

This can't be inside the Long Man, he told himself. That's an earthworks, this is a long tent of skins.

They can't both be the same thing.

He realized he was dripping with sweat.

Two torches became visible as the steam swirled, their light hardly more than a red tint to the darkness. But they were enough to show a huge sprawled figure lying by another bowl of hot stones.

It looked up. Antlers moved in the damp, clinging heat.

"Ah. Mrs. Ogg."

The voice was like chocolate.

"Y'lordship," said Nanny.

"I suppose it is too much to expect you to kneel?"

"Yes indeed, y'honor," said Nanny, grinning.

"You know, Mrs. Ogg, you have a way of showing respect to your god that would make the average atheist green with envy," said the dark figure. It yawned.

"Thank you, y'grace."

"No one even dances for me now. Is that too much to ask?"

"Just as you say, y'lordship."

"You witches don't believe in me anymore."

"Right again, your homishness."

"Ah, little Mrs. Ogg — and how, having got in here, do you possibly think you are going to get out?" said the slumped one.

"Because I have iron," said Nanny, her voice suddenly sharp.

"Of course you have not, little Mrs. Ogg. No iron can enter this realm."

"I have the iron that goes everywhere," said Nanny.

She took her hand out of her apron pocket, and held up a horseshoe.

Casanunda heard scuffles around him, as the hidden elves fought to get out of the way More steam hissed up as a brazier of hot stones was overturned.

"Take it away!"

"I'll take it away when I go," said Nanny. "Now you listen to me. She's making trouble again. You've got to put a stop to it. Fair's fair. We're not having all the Old Trouble again."

"Why should I do that?"

"You want her to be powerful, then?"

There was a snort.

"You can't ever rule again, back in the world," said Nanny. "There's too much music. There's too much iron."

"Iron rusts."

"Not the iron in the head."

The King snorted.

"Nevertheless . . . even that. . . one day . . ."

"One day." Nanny nodded. "Yes. I'll drink to that. One day. Who knows? One day. Everyone needs 'one day.' But it ain't today. D'you see? So you come on out and balance things up. Otherwise, this is what I'll do. I'll get 'em to dig into the Long Man with iron shovels, y'see, and they'll say, why, it's just an old earthworks, and pensioned-off wizards and priests with nothin' better to do will pick over the heaps and write dull old books about burial traditions and such-like, and that'll be another iron nail in your coffin. And I'd be a little bit sorry about that, 'cos you know I've always had a soft spot for you. But I've got kiddies, y'see, and they don't hide under the stairs because they're frit of the thunder, and they don't put milk out for the elves, and they don't hurry home because of the night, and before we go back to them dark old ways I'll see you nailed."

The words sliced through the air.

The homed man stood up. And further up. His antlers touched the roof.

Casanunda's mouth dropped open.

"So you see," said Nanny, subsiding, "not today. One day, maybe. You just stay down here and sweat it out 'til One Day. But not today."

"I. . . will decide."

"Very good. You decide. And I'll be getting along."

The homed man looked down at Casanunda.

"What are you staring at, dwarf?"

Nanny Ogg nudged Casanunda.

"Go on, answer the nice gentleman."

Casanunda swallowed.

"Blimey," he said, "you don't half look like your picture."

In a narrow little valley a few miles away a party of elves had found a nest of young rabbits which, in conjunction with a nearby antheap, kept them amused for a while.

Even the meek and blind and voiceless have gods.

Heme the Hunted, god of the chased, crept through the bushes and wished fervently that gods had gods.

The elves had their backs to him as they hunkered down to watch closely.

Heme the Hunted crawled under a clump of bramble, tensed, and sprang.

He sank his teeth in an elfs calf until they met, and was flung away as it screamed and turned.

He dropped and ran.

That was the problem. He wasn't built to fight, there was not an ounce of predator in him. Attack and run, that was the only option.

And elves could run faster.

He bounced over logs and skidded through drifts of leaves, aware even as his vision fogged that elves were overtaking him on either side, pacing him, waiting for him to . . .

The leaves exploded. The little god was briefly aware of a fanged shape, all arms and vengeance. Then there were a couple of disheveled humans, one of them waving an iron bar around its head.

Heme didn't wait to see what happened next. He dived through the apparition's legs and ran on, but a distant war-cry echoed in his long, floppy ears:

"Why, certainly, I'll have your whelk! How do we do it? Volume!"

Nanny Ogg and Casanunda walked in silence back to the cave entrance and the flight of steps. Finally, as they stepped out into the night air, the dwarf said, "Wow."

"It leaks out even up here," said Nanny. "Very mackko place, this."

"But I mean, good grief-"

"He's brighter than she is. Or more lazy," said Nanny. "He's going to wait it out."

"But he was-"

"They can look like whatever they want, to us," said Nanny. "We see the shape we've given 'em." She let the rock drop back, and dusted off her hands.

"But why should he want to stop her?"

"Well, he's her husband, after all. He can't stand her. It's what you might call an open marriage."

"Wait what out?" said Casanunda, looking around to see if there were anymore elves.

"Oh, you know," said Nanny, waving a hand. "All this iron and books and clockwork and universities and reading and suchlike. He reckons it'll all pass, see. And one day it'll all be over, and people'll look up at the skyline at sunset and there he'll be."

Casanunda found himself turning to look at the sunset beyond the mound, half-imagining the huge figure outlined against the afterglow.

"One day he'll be back," said Nanny softly "When even the iron in the head is rusty"

Casanunda put his head on one side. You don't move around among a different species for most of your life without learning to read a lot of their body language, especially since it's in such large print.

"You won't entirely be sorry, eh?" he said.

"Me? I don't want 'em back! They're untrustworthy and cruel and arrogant parasites and we don't need 'em one bit."

"Bet you half a dollar?"

Nanny was suddenly flustered.

"Don't you look at me like that! Esme's right. Of course she's right. We don't want elves anymore. Stands to reason."

"Esme's the short one, is she?"

"Hah, no, Esme's the tall one with the nose. You know her."

"Right, yes."

"The short one is Magrat. She's a kind-hearted soul and a bit soft. Wears flowers in her hair and believes in songs, I reckon she'd be off dancing with the elves quick as a wink, her."

More doubts were entering Magrat's life. They concerned crossbows, for one thing. A crossbow is a very useful and usable weapon designed for speed and convenience and deadliness in the hands of the inexperienced, like a faster version of an out-of-code TV dinner. But it is designed to be used once, by someone who has somewhere safe to duck while they reload. Otherwise it is just so much metal and wood with a piece of string on it.

Then there was the sword. Despite Shawn's misgivings, Magrat did in theory know what you did with a sword. You tried to stick it into the enemy by a vigorous arm motion, and the enemy tried to stop you. She was a little uncertain about what happened next. She hoped you were allowed another go.

She was also having doubts about her armour. The helmet and the breastplate were OK, but the rest of it was chain-mail. And, as Shawn Ogg knew, chain-mail from the point of view of an arrow can be thought of as a series of loosely connected holes.

The rage was still there, the pure fury still gripped her at the core. But there was no getting away from the fact that the heart it gripped was surrounded by the rest of Magrat Garlick, spinster of this parish and likely to remain so.

There were no elves visible in the town, but she could see where they had been. Doors hung off their hinges. The place looked as though it had been visited by Genghiz Cohen[41].

Now she was on the track that led to the stones. It was wider than it had been; the horses and carriages had churned it on the way up, and the fleeing people had turned it into a mire on the way down.

She knew she was being watched, and it almost came as a relief when three elves stepped out from under the trees before she'd even lost sight of the castle.

The middle one grinned.

"Good evening, girl," it said. "My name is Lord Lankin, and you will curtsy when you talk to me."

The tone suggested that there was absolutely no possibility that she would disobey She felt her muscles strain to comply.

Queen Ynci wouldn't have obeyed . . .

"I happen to be practically the queen," she said.

It was the first time she'd looked an elf in the face when she was in any condition to notice details. This one was currently wearing high cheekbones and hair tied in a ponytail; it wore odds and ends of rags and lace and fur, confident in the knowledge that anything would look good on an elf.

It wrinkled its perfect nose at her.

"There is only one Queen in Lancre," it said. "And you are, most definitely, not her."

Magrat tried to concentrate.

"Where is she, then?" she said.

The other two raised their bows.

"You are looking for the Queen? Then we will take you to her," Lankin stated. "And, lady, should you be inclined to make use of that nasty iron bow there are more archers hidden in the trees." There was indeed a rustling in the trees on one side of the track, but it was followed by a thump. The elves looked disconcerted.

"Get out of my way," said Magrat.

"I think you have a very wrong idea," said the elf. Its smile widened, but vanished when there was another sylvan crash from the other side of the track.

"We felt you coming all the way up the track," said the elf. "The brave girl off to rescue her lover! Oh, the romance! Take her."

A shadow rose up behind the two armed elves, took a head in either hand, and banged them together.

The shadow stepped forward over their bodies and, as Lankin turned, caught it with one roundarm punch that picked it up and slammed it into a tree.

Magrat drew her sword.

Whatever this was, it looked worse than elves. It was muddy and hairy and almost troll-like in its build, and it reached out for the bridle with an arm that seemed to extend for ever. She raised the sword—

"Oook?"

"Put the sword down, please, miss!"

The voice came from somewhere behind her, but it sounded human and worried. Elves never sounded worried.

"Who are you?" she said, without turning around. The monster in front of her gave her a big, yellow-toothed grin.

"Um, I'm Ponder Stibbons. A wizard. And he's a wizard, too."

"He's got no clothes on!"

"I could get him to have a bath, if you like," said Ponder, slightly hysterically. "He always puts on an old green dressing gown when he's had a bath."

Magrat relaxed a bit. No one who sounded like that could be much of a threat, except to themselves.

"Whose side are you on, Mr. Wizard?"

"How many are there?"

"Oook?"

"When I get off this horse," said Magrat, "it'll bolt. So can you ask your . . . friend to let go of the bridle? He'll be hurt."

"Oook?"

"Um. Probably not."

Magrat slid off. The horse, relieved of the presence of iron, bolted. For about two yards.

"Oook."

The horse was struggling to get back on its feet.

Magrat blinked.

"Um, he's just a bit annoyed at the moment," said Ponder. "One of the . . . elves . . . shot him with an arrow."

"But they do that to control people!"

"Um. He's not a person."

"Oook!"

"Genetically, I mean."

Magrat had met wizards before. Occasionally one visited Lancre, although they didn't stay very long. There was something about the presence of Granny Weatherwax that made them move on.

They didn't look like Ponder Stibbons. He'd lost most of his robe and, of his hat, only the brim remained. Most of his face was covered in mud, and there was a multicoloured bruise over one eye.

"Did they do that to you?"

"Well, the mud and the torn clothes is just from, you know, the forest. And we've run into-"

"Ook."

"-over elves a few times. But this is when the Librarian hit me."

"Oook."

"Thank goodness," Ponder added. "Knocked me cold. Otherwise I'd be like the others."

A foreboding of a conversation to come swept over Magrat.

"What others?" she snapped.

"Are you alone?"

"What others?"

"Have you any idea what's been happening?"

Magrat thought about the castle, and the town.

"I might be able to hazard a guess," she said.

Ponder shook his head.

"It's worse than that," he said.

"What others?" said Magrat.

"I think there's definitely been a cross-continuum break-through, and I'm sure there's a difference in energy levels."

"But what others?" Magrat insisted.

Ponder Stibbons glanced nervously at the surrounding forest.

"Let's get off the path. There's a lot more elves back there."

Ponder disappeared into the undergrowth. Magrat followed him, and found a second wizard propped against a tree like a ladder. He had a huge smile creasing his face.

"The Bursar," said Ponder. "I think we may have overdone the dried frog pills a bit." He raised his voice. "How . . . are . . . you . . . doing . . . sir?"

"Why, I'll have a little of the roast weasel, if you would be so good," said the Bursar, beaming happily at nothing.

"Why's he gone so stiff?" said Magrat. "We think it's some kind of side effect," said Ponder. "Can't you do anything about it?"

"What, and have nothing to cross streams on?"

"Call again tomorrow, baker, and we'll have a crusty one!" said the Bursar.

"Besides, he seems quite happy," said Ponder. "Are you a warrior, miss?"

"What?" said Magrat. "Well, I mean, the armour and everything . . ." Magrat looked down. She was still holding the sword. The helmet kept falling over her eyes, but she'd padded it a bit with a scrap of wedding dress.

"I . . . er . . . yes. Yes, that's right. That's what I am," she said. "Absolutely. Yes."

"Here for the wedding, I expect. Like us."

"That's right. Definitely here for the wedding. That's true." She changed her grip on the sword. "Now tell me what happened," she said. "Paying particular attention to what happened to the others."

"Well . . ." Ponder absentmindedly picked up a corner of his torn robe and began to screw it up in his fingers. "We all went to see this Entertainment, you see. A play. You know. Acting? And, and it was very funny. There were all these yokels in their big boots and everything, straw wigs and everything, clumping around pretending to be lords and ladies and everything, and getting it all wrong. It was very funny. The Bursar laughed at them a lot. Mind you, he's been laughing at trees and rocks, too. But everyone was having fun. And then . . . and then . . ."

"I want to know everything," said Magrat. "Well . . . well . . . then there was this bit I can't really remember. It was something to do with the acting, I think. I mean, suddenly . . . suddenly it all seemed real. Do you know what I mean?"

"No."

"There was this chap with a red nose and bandy legs and he was playing the Queen of the Fairies or something and suddenly he was still him but. . . everything felt. . . everything round me just vanished, there was just the actors . . . and there was this hill . . . I mean, they must have been good, because I really believed . . . I think at some point I remember someone asking us to clap our hands . . . and everyone was looking very strange and there was this singing and it was wonderful and . . . and . . ."

"Oook."

"Then the Librarian hit me," said Ponder simply.

"Why?"

"Best if he tells it in his own words," said Ponder.

"Oook ook eek. Ook! Ook!"

"Cough, Julia! Over the bender!" said the Bursar.

"I didn't understand what the Librarian said," said Magrat.

"Um. We were all present at an interdimensional rip," said Ponder. "Caused by belief. The play was the last little thing that opened it up. There must have been a very delicate area of instability very close. It's hard to describe, but if you had a rubber sheet and some lead weights I could demonstrate-"

"You're trying to tell me those . . . things exist because people believe in them?"

"Oh, no. I imagine they exist anyway. They're here because people believe in them here."

"Ook."

"He ran off with us. They shot an arrow at him."

"Eeek."

"But it just made him itch."

"Ook."

"Normally he's as gentle as a lamb. Really he is."

"Ook."

"But he can't abide elves. They smell wrong to him."

The Librarian flared his nostrils.

Magrat didn't know much about jungles, but she thought about apes in trees, smelling the rank of the tiger. Apes never admired the sleek of the fur and the bum of the eye, because they were too well aware of the teeth of the

mouth.

"Yes," she said, "I expect they would. Dwarfs and trolls hate them, too. But I think they don't hate them as much as I do."

"You can't fight them all," said Ponder. "They're swarming like bees up there. There's flying ones, too. The Librarian says they made people get fallen trees and things and push those, you know, those stones down? There were some stones on the hill. They attacked them. Don't know why."

"Did you see any witches at the Entertainment?" said Magrat.

"Witches, witches . . ." muttered Ponder.

"You couldn't have missed them," said Magrat. "There'd be a thin one glaring at everyone and a small fat one cracking nuts and laughing a lot. And they'd be talking to each other very loudly. And they'd both have tall pointy hats."

"Can't say I noticed them," said Ponder.

"Then they couldn't have been there," said Magrat. "Being noticed is what being a witch is all about." She was about to add that she'd never been good at it, but didn't. Instead she said: "I'm going on up there."

"You'll need an army, miss. I mean, you'd have been in trouble just now if the Librarian hadn't been up in the trees."

"But I haven't got an army. So I'm going to have to try by myself, aren't I?"

This time Magrat managed to spur the horse into a gallop.

Ponder watched her go.

"You know, folksongs have got a lot to answer for," he said to the night air.

"Oook."

"She's going to get utterly killed."

"Oook."

"Hello, Mr. Flowerpot, two pints of eels if you would be so good."

"Of course, it could be her destiny, or one of those sort of things."

"Oook."

"Millennium hand and shrimp."

Ponder Stibbons looked embarrassed.

"Anyone want to follow her?"

"Oook."

"Whoops, there he goes with his big clock."

"Was that a 'yes'?"

"Oook."

"Not yours, his."

"Flobby wobbly, here comes our jelly."

"I think that probably counts as a 'yes'," said Ponder, reluctantly.

"Oook?"

"I've got a lovely new vest."

"But look," said Ponder, "the graveyards are full of people who rushed in bravely but unwisely."

"Ook."

"What'd he say?" said the Bursar, passing briefly through reality on his way somewhere else.

"I think he said, 'Sooner or later the graveyards are full of everybody,'" said Ponder. "Oh, blast. Come on."

"Yes indeedy," said the Bursar, "hands up the mittens, Mr. Bosun!"

"Oh, shut up."

* * *

Magrat dismounted and let the horse go.

She knew she was near the Dancers now. Collared light flickered in the sky.

She wished she could go home.

The air was colder here, far too cold for a midsummer night. As she plodded onward, flakes of snow swirled in the breeze and turned to rain.

Ridcully materialized inside the castle, and then clung on to a pillar for support until he got his breath back. Transmigration always made blue spots appear in front of his eyes.

No one noticed him. The castle was in turmoil. Not everyone had run home. Armies had marched across Lancre many times over the last few thousand years, and the recollection of the castle's thick safe walls had been practically engraved in the folk memory. Run to the castle. And now it held most of the little country's population.

Ridcully blinked. People were milling around and being harangued by a small young man in loose-fitting chain-mail and one arm in a sling, who seemed to be the only person

with any grip on things.

When he was certain he could walk straight, Ridcully

headed toward him.

"What's going on, young-" he began, and then stopped.

Shawn Ogg looked around.

"The scheming minx!" said Ridcully, to the air in general. '"Oh, go back and get it then,' she said, and I fell right for it! Even if I could cut the mustard again I don't know where we were!"

"Sir?" said Shawn.

Ridcully shook himself. "What's happening?" he said.

"I don't know!" said Shawn, who was almost in tears. "I think we're being attacked by elves! Nothing anyone's telling me's making any sense! Somehow they arrived during the Entertainment! Or something!"

Ridcully looked around at the frightened, bewildered people.

"And Miss Magrat's gone out to fight them alone!" Ridcully looked perplexed.

"Who's Miss Magrat?"

"She's going to be queen! The bride! You know? Magrat Garlick?"

Ridcully's mind could digest one fact at a time.

"What's she gone out for?"

"They captured the king!"

"Did you know they've got Esme Weatherwax as well?"

"What, Granny Weatherwax?"

"I came back to rescue her," said Ridcully, and then realized that this sounded either nonsense or cowardly.

Shawn was too upset to notice. "I just hope they're not collecting witches," he said. "They'll need our mum to get the complete set."

"They ain't got me, then," said Nanny Ogg, behind him.

"Mum? How did you get in?"

"Broomstick. You'd better get some people with bows up on the roof. I came down that way. So can others."

"What're we going to do, Mum?"