"Are you really an outrageous liar?"

"No."

"Why are you trying to rob coaches, then?"

"I am afraid I was waylaid by bandits."

"But it says here," said Ridcully, "that you are a finest swordsman."

"I was outnumbered."

"How many of them were there?"

"Three million."

"Hop in," said Ridcully

Casanunda threw his stepladder into the coach and then peered into the gloom.

"Is that an ape asleep in there?"

"Yes."

The Librarian opened one eye.

"What about the smell?"

"He won't mind."

"Hadn't you better apologize to the coachman?" said

Ponder.

"No, but I could kick him again harder if he likes."

"And that's the Bursar," said Ridcully, pointing to Exhibit B, who was sleeping the sleep of the near-terminally overdosed on dried frog pills. "Hey, Bursar? Bursssaaar? No, he's out like a light. Just push him under the seat. Can you play Cripple Mr. Onion?"

"Not very well."

"Capital!"

Half an hour later Ridcully owed the dwarf $8,000.

"But I put it on my visiting card," Casanunda pointed out. "Outrageous liar. Right there."

"Yes, but I thought you were lying!"

Ridcully sighed and, to Ponder's amazement, produced a bag of coins from some inner recess. They were large coins and looked suspiciously realistic and golden.

Casanunda might have been a libidinous soldier of fortune by profession but he was a dwarf by genetics, and there are some things dwarfs know.

"Hmm," he said. "You don't have "outrageous liar" on your visiting card, by any chance?"

"No!" said Ridcully excitedly

"It's just that I can recognize chocolate money when I see it."

"You know," said Ponder, as the coach jolted along a canyon, "this reminds me of that famous logical puzzle."

"What logical puzzle?" said the Archchancellor. "Well," said Ponder, gratified at the attention, "it appears that there was this man, right, who had to choose between going through two doors, apparently, and the guard on one door always told the truth and the guard on the other door always told a lie, and the thing was, behind one door was certain death, and behind the other door was freedom, and he didn't know which guard was which, and he could only ask them one question and so: what did he ask?"

The coach bounced over a pothole. The Librarian turned over in his sleep.

"Sounds like Psychotic Lord Hargon of Quirm to me," said Ridcully, after a while.

"That's right," said Casanunda. "He was a devil for jokes like that. How many students can you get in an Iron Maiden, that kind of thing."

"So this was at his place, then, was it?" said Ridcully.

"What? I don't know," said Ponder.

"Why not? You seem to know all about it."

"I don't think it was anywhere. It's a puzzle."

"Hang on," said Casanunda, "I think I've worked it out. One question, right?"

"Yes," said Ponder, relieved.

"And he can ask either guard?"

"Yes."

"Oh, right. Well, in that case he goes up to the smallest guard and says, Tell me which is the door to freedom if you don't want to see the colour of your kidneys and incidentally I'm walking through it behind you, so if you're trying for the Mr. Clever Award just remember who's going through it first.'"

"No, no, no!"

"Sounds logical to me," said Ridcully "Very good thinking."

"But you haven't got a weapon!"

"Yes I have. I wrested it from the guard while he was considering the question," said Casanunda.

"Clever," said Ridcully. "Now that, Mr. Stibbons, is logical thought. You could learn a lot from this man-"

"-dwarf-"

"-sorry, dwarf. He doesn't go on about parasite universes all the time."

"Parallel!" snapped Ponder, who had developed a very strong suspicion that Ridcully was getting it wrong on purpose.

"Which ones are the parasite ones, then?"

"There aren't any! I mean, there aren't any, Archchancellor[15]. Parallel universes, I said. Universes where things didn't happen like-" He hesitated. "Well, you know that girl?"

"What girl?"

"The girl you wanted to marry?"

"How'd you know that?"

"You were talking about her just after lunch."

"Was I? More fool me. Well, what about her?"

"Well. . . in a way, you did marry her," said Ponder.

Ridcully shook his head. "Nope. Pretty certain I didn't. You remember that sort of thing."

"Ah, but not in this universe-"

The Librarian opened one eye.

"You suggestin' I nipped into some other universe to get married?" said Ridcully.

"No! I mean, you got married in that universe and not in this universe," said Ponder.

"Did I? What? A proper ceremony and everything?"

"Yes!"

"Hmm." Ridcully stroked his beard. "You sure?"

"Certain, Archchancellor."

"My word! I never knew that."

Ponder felt he was getting somewhere.

"So-"

"Yes?"

"Why don't I remember it?"

Ponder had been ready for this.

"Because the you in the other universe is different from the you here," he said. "It was a different you that got married. He's probably settled down somewhere. He's probably a great-grandad by now."

"He never writes, I know that," said Ridcully "And the bastard never invited me to the wedding."

"Who?"

"Him."

"But he's you!"

"Is he? Huh! You'd think I'd think of me, wouldn't you? What a bastard!"

It wasn't that Ridcully was stupid. Truly stupid wizards have the life expectancy of a glass hammer. He had quite a powerful intellect, but it was powerful like a locomotive, and ran on rails and was therefore almost impossible to steer.

There are indeed such things as parallel universes, although parallel is hardly the right word — universes swoop and spiral around one another like some mad weaving machine or a squadron of Yossarians with middle-ear trouble.

And they branch. But, and this is important, not all the time. The universe doesn't much care if you tread on a butterfly. There are plenty more butterflies. Gods might note the fall of a sparrow but they don't make any effort to catch them.

Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland? In fifty years', thirty years', ten years' time the world will be very nearly back on its old course. History always has a great weight of inertia.

Almost always . . .

At circle time, when the walls between this and that are thinner, when there are all sorts of strange leakages

. . . Ah, then choices are made, then the universe can be sent careening down a different leg of the well-known Trousers of Time.

But there are also stagnant pools, universes cut off from past and future. They have to steal pasts and futures from other universes; their only hope is to batten on to the dynamic universes as they pass through the fragile period, as remora fish hang on to a passing shark. These are the parasite universes and, when the crop circles burst like raindrops, they have their chance . . .

* * *

Lancre castle was far bigger than it needed to be. It wasn't as if Lancre could have been bigger at one time; inhospitable mountains crowded it on three sides, and a more or less sheer drop occupied where the fourth side would have been if a sheer drop hadn't been there. As far as anyone knew, the mountains didn't belong to anyone. They were just mountains. The castle rambled everywhere. No one even knew how far the cellars went.

These days everyone lived in the turrets and halls near the gate.

"I mean, look at the crenellations," said Magrat.

"What, m'm?"

"The cut-out bits on top of the walls. You could hold off an army here."

"That's what a castle's for, isn't it, m'm?"

Magrat sighed. "Can we stop the 'm'm', please? It makes you sound uncertain."

"Mm, m'm?"

"I mean, who is there to fight up here? Not even trolls could come over the mountains, and anyone coming up the road is asking for a rock on the head. Besides, you only have to cut down Lancre bridge."

"Dunno, m'm. Kings've got to have castles, I s'pose."

"Don't you ever wonder about anything, you stupid girl?"

"What good does that do, m'm?"

I called her a stupid girl, thought Magrat. Royalty is rubbing off on me.

"Oh, well," she said, "where've we got to?"

"We're going to need two thousand yards of the blue chintz material with the little white flowers," said Millie.

"And we haven't even measured half the windows yet," said Magrat, rolling up the tape measure.

She looked down the length of the Long Gallery. The thing about it, the thing that made it so noticeable, the first thing anyone noticed about it, was that it was very long. It shared certain distinctive traits with the Great Hall and the Deep Dungeons. Its name was a perfectly accurate description. And it would be, as Nanny Ogg would say, a bugger to carpet.

"Why? Why a castle in Lancre?" she said, mainly to herself, because talking to Millie was like talking to yourself. "We've never fought anyone. Apart from outside the tavern on a Saturday night."

"Couldn't say, I'm sure, m'm," said Millie.

Magrat sighed.

"Where's the king today?"

"He's opening Parliament, m'm."

"Hah! Parliament!"

Which had been another of Verence's ideas. He'd tried to introduce Ephebian democracy to Lancre, giving the vote to everyone, or at least everyone "who be of good report and who be male and hath forty years and owneth a house[16] worth more than three and a half goats a year," because there's no sense in being stupid about things and giving the vote to people who were poor or criminal or insane or female, who'd only use it irresponsibly. It worked, more or less, although the Members of Parliament only turned up when they felt like it and in any case no one ever wrote anything down and, besides, no one ever disagreed with whatever Verence said because he was King. What's the point of having a king, they thought, if you have to rule yourself? He should do his job, even if he couldn't spell properly. No one was asking him to thatch roofs or milk cows, were they?

"I'm bored, Millie. Bored, bored, bored. I'm going for a walk in the gardens."

"Shall I fetch Shawn with the trumpet?"

"Not if you want to live."

Not all the gardens had been dug up for agricultural experiments. There was, for example, the herb garden. To Magrat's expert eye it was a pretty poor herb garden, since it just contained plants that flavoured food. And at that Mrs. Scorbic's repertoire stopped short at mint and sage. There wasn't a sprig of vervain or yarrow or Old Man's Trousers anywhere in it.

And there was the famous maze or, at least, it would be a famous maze. Verence had planted it because he'd heard that stately castles should have a maze and everyone agreed that, once the bushes were a bit higher than their current height of about one foot, it would indeed be a very famous maze and people would be able to get lost in it without having to shut their eyes and bend down.

Magrat drifted disconsolately along the gravel path, her huge wide dress leaving a smooth trail.

There was a scream from the other side of the hedge, but Magrat recognized the voice. There were certain traditions in Lancre castle which she had learned.

"Good morning, Hodgesaargh," she said.

The castle falconer appeared around the comer, dabbing at his face with a handkerchief. On his other arm, claws gripping like a torture instrument, was a bird. Evil red eyes glared at Magrat over a razor-sharp beak.

"I've got a new hawk," said Hodgesaargh proudly. "It's a Lancre crowhawk. They've never been tamed before. I'm taming it. I've already stopped it pecking myooooow-"

He flailed the hawk madly against the wall until it let go of his nose.

Strictly speaking, Hodgesaargh wasn't his real name. On the other hand, on the basis that someone's real name is the name they introduce themselves to you by, he was definitely Hodgesaargh.

This was because the hawks and falcons in the castle mews were all Lancre birds and therefore naturally possessed of a certain "sod you" independence of mind. After much patient breeding and training Hodgesaargh had managed to get them to let go of someone's wrist, and now he was working on stopping them viciously attacking the person who had just been holding them, i.e., invariably Hodgesaargh. He was nevertheless a remarkably optimistic and good-natured man who lived for the day when his hawks would be the finest in the world. The hawks lived for the day when they could eat his other ear.

"I can see you're doing very well," said Magrat. "You don't think, do you, that they might respond better to cruelty?"

"Oh, no, miss," said Hodgesaargh, "you have to be kind. You have to build up a bond, you see. If they don't trust you theyaaaagh-"

"I'll just leave you to get on with it then, shall I?" said Magrat, as feathers filled the air.

Magrat had been gloomily unsurprised to learn that there was a precise class and gender distinction in falconry — Verence, being king, was allowed a gyrfalcon, whatever the hell that was, any earls in the vicinity could fly a peregrine, and priests were allowed sparrowhawks. Commoners were just about allowed a stick to throw[17]. Magrat found herself wondering what Nanny Ogg would be allowed — a small chicken on a spring, probably.

There was no specific falcon for a witch but, as a queen, the Lancre rules of falconry allowed her to fly the wowhawk or Lappet-faced Worrier. It was small and short sighted and preferred to walk everywhere. It fainted at the sight of blood. And about twenty wowhawks could kill a pigeon, if it was a sick pigeon. She'd spent an hour with one on her wrist. It had wheezed at her, and eventually it had dozed off upside down.

But at least Hodgesaargh had a job to do. The castle was full of people doing jobs. Everyone had something useful to do except Magrat. She just had to exist. Of course, everyone would talk to her, provided she talked to them first. But she was always interrupting something important. Apart from ensuring the royal succession, which Verence had sent off for a book about, she—

"You just keep back there, girl. You don't want to come no further," said a voice. Magrat bridled.

"Girl? One happens to be very nearly of the royal blood by marriage!"

"Maybe, but the bees don't know that," said the voice. Magrat stopped.

She'd stepped out beyond what were the gardens from the point of view of the royal family and into what were the gardens from the point of view of everyone else — beyond the world of hedges and topiary and herb gardens and into the world of old sheds, piles of flowerpots, compost and, just here, beehives.

One of the hives had the lid off. Beside it, in the middle of a brown cloud, smoking his special bee pipe, was Mr. Brooks.

"Oh," she said, "it's you, Mr. Brooks." Technically, Mr. Brooks was the Royal Beekeeper. But the relationship was a careful one. For one thing, although most of the staff were called by their last names Mr. Brooks shared with the cook and the butler the privilege of an honorific. Because Mr. Brooks had secret powers. He knew all about honey flows and the mating of queens. He knew about swarms, and how to destroy wasps' nests. He got the general respect shown to those, like witches and blacksmiths, whose responsibilities are not entirely to the world of the humdrum and everyday-people who, in fact, know things that others don't about things that others can't fathom. And he was generally found doing something fiddly with the hives, ambling across the kingdom in pursuit of a swarm, or smoking his pipe in his secret shed which smelled of old honey and wasp poison. You didn't offend Mr. Brooks, not unless you wanted swarms in your privy while he sat cackling in his shed.

He carefully replaced the lid on the hive and walked away. A few bees escaped from the gaping holes in his beekeeping veil.

"Afternoon, your ladyship," he conceded.

"Hello, Mr. Brooks. What've you been doing?"

Mr. Brooks opened the door of his secret shed, and rummaged about inside.

"They're late swarming," said the beekeeper. "I was just checking up on 'em. Fancy a cup of tea, girl?"

You couldn't stand on ceremony with Mr. Brooks. He treated everyone as an equal, or more often as a slight inferior; it probably came of ruling thousands, every day and at least she could talk to him. Mr. Brooks had always seemed to her as close to a witch as it was possible to be while still being male.

The shed was stuffed full of bits of hive, mysterious torture instruments for extracting honey, old jars, and a small stove on which a grubby teapot steamed next to a huge saucepan.

He took her silence for acceptance, and poured out two mugs.

"Is it herbal?" she quavered.

"Buggered if I know. It's just brown leaves out of a tin."

Magrat looked uncertainly into a mug which pure tannin was staining brown. But she rallied. One thing you had to do when you were queen, she knew, was Put Commoners at their Ease. She cast around for some easeful question.

"It must be very interesting, being a beekeeper," she said.

"Yes. It is."

"One's often wondered-"

"What?"

"How do you actually milk them?"

The unicorn prowled through the forest. It felt blind, and out of place. This wasn't a proper land. The sky was blue, not flaming with all the colours of the aurora. And time was passing. To a creature not born subject to time, it was a sensation not unakin to falling.

It could feel its mistress inside its head, too. That was worse even than the passing of time.

In short, it was mad.

Magrat sat with her mouth open.

"I thought queens were born," she said.

"Oh, no," said Mr. Brooks. "There ain't no such thing as a queen egg. The bees just decides to feed one of 'em up as a queen. Feeds 'em royal jelly"

"What happens if they don't?"

"Then it just becomes an ordinary worker, your ladyship," said Mr. Brooks, with a suspiciously republican grin.

Lucky for it, Magrat thought.

"So they have a new queen, and then what happens to the old one?"

"Usually the old girl swarms," said Mr. Brooks. "Pushes off and takes some of the colony with her. I must've seen a thousand swarms, me. Never seen a Royal swarm, though."

"What's a Royal swarm?"

"Can't say for sure. It's in some of the old bee books. A swarm of swarms. It's something to see, they say." The old ' beekeeper looked wistful for a moment.

'"Course," he went on, righting himself, "the real fun starts if the weather's bad and the ole queen can't swarm, right?" He moved his hand in a sly circular motion. "What happens then is, the two queens — that's the old queen, right? And the new queen — the two queens start astalkin' one another among the combs, with the rain adrummin' on the roof of the hive, and the business of the hive agoin' on all around them," Mr. Brooks moved his hands graphically, and Magrat leaned forward, "all among the combs, the drones all hummin', and all the time they can sense one another, 'cos they can tell, see, and then they spots one another and-"

"Yes? Yes?" said Magrat, leaning forward.

"Slash! Stab!"

Magrat hit her head on the wall of the hut.

"Can't have more'n one queen in a hive," said Mr. Brooks calmly.

Magrat looked out at the hives. She'd always liked the look of beehives, up until now.

"Many's the time I've found a dead queen in front of the hive after a spell of wet weather," said Mr. Brooks, happily. "Can't abide another queen around the place, you know. And it's a right old battle, too. The old queen's more cunnin'. But the new queen, she's really got everything to fight for."

"Sorry?"

"If she wants to be mated."

"Oh."

"But it gets really interestin' in the autumn," said Mr. Brooks. "Hive don't need any dead weight in the winter, see, and there's all these drones hangin' around not doing anything, so the workers drag all the drones down to the hive entrance, see, and they bite their-"

"Stop! This is horrible!" said Magrat. "I thought beekeeping was, well, nice."

"Of course, that's around the time of year when the bees wear out," said Mr. Brooks. "What happens is, see, your basic bee, why, it works 'til it can't work no more, and you'll see a lot of old workers acrawlin' around in front of the hive 'cos-"

"Stop it! Honestly, this is too much. I'm queen, you know. Almost."

"Sorry, miss," said Mr. Brooks. "I thought you wanted to know a bit about beekeeping."

"Yes, but note this!"

Magrat swept out.

"Oh, I dunno," said Mr. Brooks. "Does you good to get close to Nature."

He shook his head cheerfully as she disappeared among the hedges.

"Can't have more than one queen in a hive," he said. "Slash! Stab! Hehheh!" From somewhere in the distance came the scream of Hodgesaargh as nature got close to him.

Crop circles opened everywhere.

Now the universes swung into line. They ceased their boiling spaghetti dance and, to pass through this chicane of history, charged forward neck and neck in their race across the rubber sheet of incontinent Time.

At such time, as Ponder Stibbons dimly perceived, they had an effect on one another — shafts of reality crackled back and forward as the universes jostled for position.

If you were someone who had trained their mind to be the finest of receivers, and were running it at the moment with the gain turned up until the knob broke, you might pick up some very strange signals indeed . . .

The clock ticked.

Granny Weatherwax sat in front of the open box, reading. Occasionally she stopped and closed her eyes and pinched her nose.

Not knowing the future was bad enough, but at least she understood why. Now she was getting flashes of deja vu. It had been going on all week. But they weren't her deja vus. She was getting them for the first time, as it were — flashes of memory that couldn't have existed. Couldn't have existed. She was Esme Weatherwax, sane as a brick, always had been, she'd never been—

There was a knock at the door.

She blinked, glad to be free of those thoughts. It took her a second or two to focus on the present. Then she folded up the paper, slipped it into its envelope, pushed the envelope back into its bundle, put the bundle into the box, locked the box with a small key which she hung over the fireplace, and walked to the door. She did a last-minute check to make sure she hadn't absentmindedly taken all her clothes off, or something, and opened it.

"Evenin'," said Nanny Ogg, holding out a bowl with a cloth over it, "I've brung you some-"

Granny Weatherwax was looking past her.

"Who're these people?" she said.

The three girls looked embarrassed.

"See, they came round my house and said-" Nanny Ogg began.

"Don't tell me. Let me guess," said Granny. She strode out, and inspected the trio.

"Well, well, well," she said. "My word. My word. Three girls who want to be witches, am I right?" Her voice went falsetto. "'Oh, please, Mrs. Ogg, we has seen the error of our ways, we want to learn proper witchcraft." Yes?"

"Yes. Something like that," said Nanny. "But-"

"This is witchcraft," said Granny Weatherwax. "It's not. . . it's not a game of conkers. Oh, deary, deary me."

She walked along the very short row of trembling girls.

"What's your name, girl?"

"Magenta Frottidge, ma'am."

"I bet that's not what your mum calls you?"

Magenta looked at her feet.

"She calls me Violet, ma'am."

"Well, it's a better colour than magenta," said Granny. "Want to be a bit mysterious, eh? Want to make folks feel you got a grip on the occult? Can you do magic? Your friend taught you anything, did she? Knock my hat off."

"What, ma'am?"

Granny Weatherwax stood back, and turned around.

"Knock it off. I ain't trying to stop you. Go on."

Magenta-shading-to-Violet shaded to pink.

"Er . . . I never got the hang of the psycho-thingy . . ."

"Oh, dear. Well, just let's see what the rest can do . . . Who're you, girl?"

"Amanita, ma'am."

"Such a pretty name. Let's see what you can do."

Amanita looked around nervously.

"I, er, don't think I can while you're watching me-" she began.

"That's a shame. What about you, on the end?"

"Agnes Nitt," said Agnes, who was much faster on the uptake than the other two and saw that there was no point in pushing Perdita.

"Go on, then. Try."

Agnes concentrated.

"Oh, deary, deary me," said Granny. "And my hat's still on. Show them, Gytha."

Nanny Ogg sighed, picked up a piece of fallen branch, and hurled it at Granny's hat. Granny caught the stick in mid-air.

"But, but — you said we had to use magic-" Amanita began.

"No, I didn't," said Granny.

"But anyone could have done that," said Magenta. ' "Yes, but that's not the point," said Granny. "The point is that you didn't." She smiled, which was unusual for her. "Look, I don't want to be nasty to you. You're young. The world's full of things you could be doing. You don't want to be witches. Not if you knew what it means. Now just go away. Go home. Don't try the paranormal until you know what's normal. Go on. Run along."

"But that's just trickery! That's what Diamanda said! You just use words and trickery-" Magenta protested.

Granny raised a hand.

In the trees, the birds stopped singing.

"Gytha?"

Nanny Ogg gripped her own hat brim defensively.

"Esme, listen, this hat cost me two whole dollars-"

The boom echoed through the woods.

Bits of hat lining zigzagged gently out of the sky.

Granny pointed her finger at the girls, who tried to lean out of the way.

"Now," she said, "why don't you go and see to your friend? She was beat. She probably ain't very happy. That's no time to go leaving people."

They still stared at her. Her finger seemed to fascinate them.

"I just asked you to go home. Perfectly reasonable voice. Do you want me to shout?"

They turned and ran.

Nanny Ogg glumly pushed her hand through the stricken hat brim.

"It took me ages to get that pig cure together," she mumbled. "You need eight types of leaves. Willow leaves, tansy leaves, Old Man's Trousers leaves . . . I was collecting 'em all day. It's not as though leaves grow on trees-"

Granny Weatherwax watched the disappearing girls.

Nanny Ogg paused. Then she said: "Takes you back, eh? I remember when I was fifteen, standing in front of old Biddy Spective, and she said in that voice of hers, 'You want to be a what and I was that frightened I near widd-"

"I never stood in front of no one," said Granny Weatherwax distantly. "I camped on old Nanny Gripes' garden until she promised to tell me everything she knew. Hah. That took her a week and I had the afternoons free."

"You mean you weren't Chosen?"

"Me? No. I chose," said Granny. The face she turned to Nanny Ogg was one she wouldn't forget in a hurry, although she might try. "I chose, Gytha Ogg. And I want that you should know this right now. Whatever happens. I ain't never regretted anything. Never regretted one single thing. Right?"

"If you say so, Esme."

What is magic?

There is the wizards' explanation, which comes in two forms, depending on the age of the wizard. Older wizards talk about candles, circles, planets, stars, bananas, chants, runes, and the importance of having at least four good meals every day. Younger wizards, particularly the pale ones who spend most of their time in the High Energy Magic building[18], chatter at length about fluxes in the morphic nature of the universe, the essentially impermanent quality of even the most apparently rigid time-space framework, the implausibility of reality, and so on: what this means is that they have got hold of something hot and are gabbling the physics as they go along . . .

It was almost midnight. Diamanda ran up the hill toward the Dancers, the briars and heather tearing at her dress. The humiliation banged back and forth in her skull. Stupid malicious old women! And stupid people, too! She'd won. According to the rules, she'd won! But everyone had laughed at her.

That stung. The recollection of those stupid faces, all grinning. And everyone supporting those horrible old women, who had no idea about the meaning of witchcraft and what it could become.

She'd show them.

Ahead of her, the Dancers were dark against the moonlit clouds.

Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck.

She was going to have an early night. It had been a busy day