Equal Rites

had mothers, which I doubt. If I was your mother I’d have run away before you were born.”
    “It’s only a figure of speech,” said the head reproachfully.
    “It’s a damned insult is what it is!”
    There was another whispered conversation.
    “If I don’t get out,” said Granny in ringing tones, “there will be Trouble. Do you see my hat, eh? Do you see it?”
    The head reappeared.
    “That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” it said. “I mean, what will there be if we let you out? It seems less risky all around if we just sort of fill the pit in. Nothing personal, you understand.”
    Granny realized what it was that was bothering her about the head.
    “Are you kneeling down?” she said accusingly. “You’re not, are you! You’re dwarves!”
    Whisper, whisper.
    “Well, what about it?” asked the head defiantly. “Nothing wrong with that, is there? What have you got against dwarves?”
    “Do you know how to repair broomsticks?”
    “Magic broomsticks?”
    “Yes!”
    Whisper, whisper.
    “What if we do?”
    “Well, we could come to some arrangement…”

    The dwarf halls rang to the sound of hammers, although mainly for effect. Dwarves found it hard to think without the sound of hammers, which they found soothing, so well-off dwarves in the clerical professions paid goblins to hit small ceremonial anvils, just to maintain the correct dwarvish image.
    The broomstick lay between two trestles. Granny Weatherwax sat on a rock outcrop while a dwarf half her height, wearing an apron that was a mass of pockets, walked around the broom and occasionally poked it.
    Eventually he kicked the bristles and gave a long intake of breath, a sort of reverse whistle, which is the secret sign of craftsmen across the universe and means that something expensive is about to happen.
    “Weellll,” he said. “I could get the apprentices in to look at this, I could. It’s an education in itself. And you say it actually managed to get airborne?”
    “It flew like a bird,” said Granny.
    The dwarf lit a pipe. “I should very much like to see that bird,” he said reflectively. “I should imagine it’s quite something to watch, a bird like that.”
    “Yes, but can you repair it?” said Granny. “I’m in a hurry.”
    The dwarf sat down, slowly and deliberately.
    “As for repair ,” he said, “well, I don’t know about repair . Rebuild, maybe. Of course, it’s hard to get the bristles these days even if you can find people to do the proper binding, and the spells need—”
    “I don’t want it rebuilt, I just want it to work properly,” said Granny.
    “It’s an early model, you see,” the dwarf plugged on. “Very tricky, those early models. You can’t get the wood—”
    He was picked up bodily until his eyes were level with Granny’s. Dwarves, being magical in themselves as it were, are quite resistant to magic but her expression looked as though she was trying to weld his eyeballs to the back of his skull.
    “Just repair it,” she hissed. “Please?”
    “What, make a bodge job?” said the dwarf, his pipe clattering to the floor.
    “Yes.”
    “Patch it up, you mean? Betray my training by doing half a job?”
    “Yes,” said Granny. Her pupils were two little black holes.
    “Oh,” said the dwarf. “Right, then.”

    Gander the trail boss was a worried man.
    They were three mornings out from Zemphis, making good time, and were climbing now toward the rocky pass through the mountains known as the Paps of Scilla (there were eight of them; Gander often wondered who Scilla had been, and whether he would have liked her).
    A party of gnolls had crept up on them during the night. The nasty creatures, a variety of stone goblin, had slit the throat of a guard and must have been poised to slaughter the entire party. Only…
    Only no one knew quite what had happened next. The screams had woken them up, and by the time people had puffed up the fires and Treatle the wizard had cast a blue radiance over the campsite the surviving gnolls were distant, spidery shadows, running as if all the legions of Hell were after them.
    Judging by what had happened to their colleagues, they were probably right. Bits of gnolls hung from the nearby rocks, giving them a sort of jolly, festive air. Gander wasn’t particularly sorry about that—gnolls liked to capture travelers and practice hospitality of the red-hot-knife-and-bludgeon kind—but he was nervous of being in the same area as Something that went through a