Wyrd Sisters

surprise.
    “I don’t think we need go that far,” sniffed Granny. “ Asking for help .”
    “Very bad practice,” nodded Nanny Ogg.
    “But you asked a demon to help you,” said Magrat.
    “No, we didn’t,” said Granny.
    “Right. We didn’t.”
    “We ordered it to assist.”
    “S’right.”
    Granny Weatherwax stretched out her legs and looked at her boots. They were good strong boots, with hobnails and crescent-shaped scads; you couldn’t believe a cobbler had made them, someone had laid down a sole and built up from there.
    “I mean, there’s that witch over Skund way,” she said. “Sister Whosis, wossname, her son went off to be a sailor—you know, Gytha, her who sniffs and puts them antimassacres on the backs of chairs soon as you sits down—”
    “Grodley,” said Nanny Ogg. “Sticks her little finger out when she drinks her tea and drops her Haitches all the time.”
    “Yes. Hwell. I haven’t hlowered myself to talk to her hever since that business with the gibbet, you recall. I daresay she’d just love to come snooping haround here, running her fingers over heverything and sniffling, telling us how to do things. Oh, yes. Help . We’d all be in a fine to-do if we went around helping all the time.”
    “Yes, and over Skund way the trees talk to you and walk around of night,” said Nanny. “Without even asking permission. Very poor organization.”
    “Not really good organization, like we’ve got here?” said Magrat.
    Granny stood up purposefully.
    “I’m going home,” she said.
    There are thousands of good reasons why magic doesn’t rule the world. They’re called witches and wizards, Magrat reflected, as she followed the other two back to the road.
    It was probably some wonderful organization on the part of Nature to protect itself. It saw to it that everyone with any magical talent was about as ready to cooperate as a she-bear with toothache, so all that dangerous power was safely dissipated as random bickering and rivalry. There were differences in style, of course. Wizards assassinated each other in drafty corridors, witches just cut one another dead in the street. And they were all as self-centered as a spinning top. Even when they help other people, she thought, they’re secretly doing it for themselves. Honestly, they’re just like big children.
    Except for me, she thought smugly.
    “She’s very upset, isn’t she,” said Magrat to Nanny Ogg.
    “Ah, well,” said Nanny. “There’s the problem, see. The more you get used to magic, the more you don’t want to use it. The more it gets in your way. I expect, when you were just starting out, you learned a few spells from Goodie Whemper, maysherestinpeace, and you used them all the time, didn’t you?”
    “Well, yes. Everyone does.”
    “Well-known fact,” agreed Nanny. “But when you get along in the Craft, you learn that the hardest magic is the sort you don’t use at all.”
    Magrat considered the proposition cautiously. “This isn’t some kind of Zen, is it?” she said.
    “Dunno. Never seen one.”
    “When we were in the dungeons, Granny said something about trying the rocks. That sounded like pretty hard magic.”
    “Well, Goodie wasn’t much into rocks,” said Nanny. “It’s not really hard. You just prod their memories. You know, of the old days. When they were hot and runny.”
    She hesitated, and her hand flew to her pocket. She gripped the lump of castle stone and relaxed.
    “Thought I’d forgotten it, for a minute,” she said, lifting it out. “You can come out now.”
    He was barely visible in the brightness of day, a mere shimmer in the air under the trees. King Verence blinked. He wasn’t used to daylight.
    “Esme,” said Nanny. “There’s someone to see you.”
    Granny turned slowly and squinted at the ghost.
    “I saw you in the dungeon, didn’t I?” she said. “Who’re you?”
    “Verence, King of Lancre,” said the ghost, and bowed. “Do I have the honor of addressing Granny Weatherwax, doyenne of witches?”
    It has already been pointed out that just because Verence came from a long line of kings didn’t mean that he was basically stupid, and a year without the distractions of the flesh had done wonders as well. Granny Weatherwax considered herself totally unsusceptible to buttering up, but the king was expertly applying the equivalent of the dairy surplus of quite a large country. Bowing was a particularly good touch.
    A muscle twitched at the corner of