Lords and Ladies

dried, dried,” stuttered the Bursar.
    “The old dried frog pills, right?”
    “R-r-r-r.”
    “Left-hand pocket?”
    “R-r-r-r.”
    “OK…right…swallow…”
    They stared at one another for a moment.
    The Bursar sagged.
    “M-m-much better now, Archchancellor, thank you.”
    “Something’s definitely happening, Bursar. I can feel it in my water.”
    “Anything you say, Archchancellor.”
    “Bursar?”
    “Yes, Archchancellor?”
    “You ain’t a member of some secret society or somethin’, are you?”
    “Me? No, Archchancellor.”
    “Then it’d be a damn good idea to take your underpants off your head.”

    “Know him?” said Granny Weatherwax.
    Nanny Ogg knew everyone in Lancre, even the forlorn thing on the bracken.
    “It’s William Scrope, from over Slice way,” she said. “One of three brothers. He married that Palliard girl, remember? The one with the air-cooled teeth?”
    “I hope the poor woman’s got some respectable black clothes,” said Granny Weatherwax.
    “Looks like he’s been stabbed,” said Nanny. She turned the body over, gently but firmly. Corpses as such didn’t worry her. Witches generally act as layers-out of the dead as well as midwives; there were plenty of people in Lancre for whom Nanny Ogg’s face had been the first and last thing they’d ever seen, which had probably made all the bit in the middle seem quite uneventful by comparison.
    “Right through,” she said. “Stabbed right through. Blimey. Who’d do a thing like that?”
    Both the witches turned to look at the stones.
    “I don’t know what , but I knows where it come from,” said Granny.
    Now Nanny Ogg could see that the bracken all around the stones was indeed well trodden down, and quite brown.
    “I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” said Granny.
    “You’d better not go into—”
    “I knows exactly where I should go, thank you.”
    There were eight stones in the Dancers. Three of them had names. Granny walked around the ring until she reached the one known as the Piper.
    She removed a hatpin from among the many that riveted her pointy hat to her hair and held it about six inches from the stone. Then she let it go, and watched what happened.
    She went back to Nanny.
    “There’s still power there,” she said. “Not much, but the ring is holding.”
    “But who’d be daft enough to come up here and dance around the stones?” said Nanny Ogg, and then, as a treacherous thought drifted across her mind, she added, “Magrat’s been away with us the whole time.”
    “We shall have to find out,” said Granny, setting her face in a grim smile. “Now help me up with the poor man.”
    Nanny Ogg bent to the task.
    “Coo, he’s heavy. We could’ve done with young Magrat up here.”
    “No. Flighty,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Head easily turned.”
    “Nice girl, though.”
    “But soppy. She thinks you can lead your life as if fairy stories work and folk songs are really true. Not that I don’t wish her every happiness.”
    “Hope she does all right as queen,” said Nanny.
    “We taught her everything she knows,” said Granny Weatherwax.
    “Yeah,” said Nanny Ogg, as they disappeared into the bracken. “D’you think…maybe…?”
    “What?”
    “D’you think maybe we ought to have taught her everything we know?”
    “It’d take too long.”
    “Yeah, right.”

    It took a while for letters to get as far as the Archchancellor. The post tended to be picked up from the University gates by anyone who happened to be passing, and then left lying on a shelf somewhere or used as a pipe lighter or a bookmark or, in the case of the Librarian, as bedding.
    This one had only taken two days, and was quite intact apart from a couple of cup rings and a bananary fingerprint. It arrived on the table along with the other post while the faculty were at breakfast. The Dean opened it with a spoon.
    “Anyone here know where Lancre is?” he said.
    “Why?” said Ridcully, looking up sharply.
    “Some king’s getting married and wants us to come.”
    “Oh dear, oh dear,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Some tinpot king gets wed and he wants us to come?”
    “It’s up in the mountains,” said the Archchancellor, quietly. “Good trout fishin’ in those parts, as I recall. My word. Lancre. Good grief. Hadn’t thought about the place in years. You know, there’s glacier lakes up there where the fish’ve never seen a rod. Lancre. Yes.”
    “And it’s far too far,” said