Wyrd Sisters

find his son, and the other was to get his revenge on the duke. But not by killing him, he’d decided, even if he could find a way, because an eternity in that giggling idiot’s company would lend a new terror to death.
    He sat under a painting of Queen Bemery (670-722), whose rather stern good looks he would have felt a whole lot happier about if he hadn’t seen her earlier that morning walking through the wall.
    Verence tried to avoid walking through walls. A man had his dignity.
    He became aware that he was being watched.
    He turned his head.
    There was a cat sitting in the doorway, subjecting him to a slow blink. It was a mottled gray and extremely fat…
    No. It was extremely big . It was covered with so much scar tissue that it looked like a fist with fur on it. Its ears were a couple of perforated stubs, its eyes two yellow slits of easy-going malevolence, its tail a twitching series of question marks as it stared at him.
    Greebo had heard that Lady Felmet had a small white female cat and had strolled up to pay his respects.
    Verence had never seen an animal with so much built-in villainy. He didn’t resist as it waddled across the floor and tried to rub itself against his legs, purring like a waterfall.
    “Well, well,” said the king, vaguely. He reached down and made an effort to scratch it behind the two ragged bits on top of its head. It was a relief to find someone else besides another ghost who could see him, and Greebo, he couldn’t help feeling, was a distinctly unusual cat. Most of the castle cats were either pampered pets or flat-eared kitchen and stable habitués who generally resembled the very rodents they lived on. This cat, on the other hand, was its own animal. All cats give that impression, of course, but instead of the mindless animal self-absorption that passes for secret wisdom in the creatures, Greebo radiated genuine intelligence. He also radiated a smell that would have knocked over a wall and caused sinus trouble in a dead fox.
    Only one type of person kept a cat like this.
    The king tried to hunker down, and found he was sinking slightly into the floor. He pulled himself together and drifted upward. Once a man allowed himself to go native in the ethereal world there would be no hope for him, he felt.
    Only close relatives and the psychically inclined, Death had said. There weren’t many of either in the castle. The duke qualified under the first heading, but his relentless self-interest made him about as psychically useful as a carrot. As for the rest, only the cook and the Fool seemed to qualify, but the cook spent a lot of his time weeping in the pantry because he wasn’t being allowed to roast anything more bloody than a parsnip and the Fool was already such a bundle of nerves that Verence had given up his attempts to get through.
    A witch, now. If a witch wasn’t psychically inclined, then he, King Verence, was a puff of wind. He had to get a witch into the castle. And then…
    He’d got a plan. In fact, it was more than that; it was a Plan. He spent months over it. He hadn’t got anything else to do, except think. Death had been right about that. All that ghosts had were thoughts, and although thoughts in general had always been alien to the king the absence of any body to distract him with its assorted humors had actually given him the chance to savor the joys of cerebration. He’d never had a Plan before, or at least one that went much further than “Let’s find something and kill it.” And here, sitting in front of him washing itself, was the key.
    “Here, pussy,” he ventured. Greebo gave him a penetrating yellow stare.
    “Cat,” the king amended hastily, and backed away, beckoning. For a moment it seemed that the cat wouldn’t follow and then, to his relief, Greebo stood up, yawned, and padded toward him. Greebo didn’t often see ghosts, and was vaguely interested in this tall, bearded man with the see-through body.
    The king led him along a dusty side corridor and toward a lumber room crammed with crumbling tapestries and portraits of long-dead kings. Greebo examined it critically, and then sat down in the middle of the dusty floor, looking at the king expectantly.
    “There’s plenty of mice and things in here, d’you see,” said Verence. “And the rain blows in through the broken window. Plus there’s all these tapestries to sleep on.
    “Sorry,” the king added, and turned to the door.
    This was what he had been working on all these months.