Lords And Ladies

For an elf, the world is something to reach out and take. Except for the terrible metal that drinks the force and deforms the flux universe like a heavy weight on a rubber sheet and blinds them and deafens them and leaves them rudderless and more alone than most humans could ever be. . .

The elf toppled forward.

Ponder Stibbons lowered the sword.

Almost everyone else would not have thought much about it. But Ponder's wretched fate was to look for patterns in an uncaring world.

"But I hardly touched him," he said, to no one except himself.

"-And I kissed her in the shrubbery where the nightingales sing it, you bastards! Two, three!"

They didn't know where they were. They didn't know where they'd been. They were not fully certain who they were. But the Lancre Morris Men had reached some sort of state now where it was easier to go on than stop. Singing attracted elves, but singing also fascinated them . . .

The dancers whirled and hopped, gyrated and skipped along the paths. They pranced through isolated hamlets, where elves left whoever they were torturing to draw closer in the light of the burning buildings. . .

"'With a WACK foladiddle-di-do, sing too-rah-li-ay!'"

Six sticks did their work, right on the beat.

"Where're we goin', Jason?"

"I reckon we've gone down Slippery Hollow and're circling back toward the town," said Jason, hopping past Baker. "Keep goin'. Carter!"

"The rain's got in the keys, Jason!"

"Don't matter! They don't know the difference! It's good enough for folk music!"

"I think I broke my stick on that last one, Jason!"

"Just you keep dancing, Tinker! Now, lads . . . how about Gathering Peasecods? We might as well get some practice in, since we're here . . ."

"There's some people up ahead," said Tailor, as he skipped past, "I can see torches an' that."

"Human, two, three, or more elves?"

"Dunno!"

Jason spun and danced back.

"Is that you, our Jason?"

Jason cackled as the voice echoed among the dripping trees.

"It's our mam! And our Shawn. And – and lots of people! We've made it, lads!"

"Jason," said Carter.

"Yes?"

"I ain't sure I can stop!"

The Queen examined her face in a mirror attached to the tent pole.

"Why?" said Granny. "What is it you see?"

"Whatever I want to see," said the Queen. "You know that. And now . . . let us ride to the castle. Tie her hands together. But leave her legs free."

It rained again, gently, although around the stones it turned to sleet. The water dripped off Magrat's hair and temporarily unraveled the tangles.

Mist coiled out from among the trees where summer and winter fought.

Magrat watched the elven court mount up. She made out the figure of Verence, moving like a puppet. And Granny Weatherwax, tied behind the Queen's horse by a long length of rope.

The horses splashed through the mud. They had silver bells on their harness, dozens of them.

The elves in the castle, the night of ghosts and shadows, all of this was just a hard knot in her memory. But the jingling of the bells was like a nailfile rubbed across her teeth.

The Queen halted the procession a few yards away.

"Ah, the brave girl," she said. "Come to save her fiance, all alone? How sweet. Someone kill her."

An elf spurred its horse forward, and raised its sword. Magrat gripped the battleaxe.

Somewhere behind her a bowstring slammed against wood. The elf jerked. So did one behind it. The arrow kept going, curving a little as it passed over one of the fallen Dancers.

Then Shawn Ogg's ragbag army charged out from under the trees, except for Ridcully, who was feverishly trying to rewind his crossbow.

The Queen did not look surprised.

"And there's only about a hundred of them," she said. "What do you think, Esme Weatherwax? A valiant last stand? It's so beautiful, isn't it? I love the way humans think. They think like songs."

"You get down off that horse!" Magrat shouted.

The Queen smiled at her.

Shawn felt it. Ridcully felt it. Ponder felt it. The glamour swept over them.

Elves feared iron, but they didn't need to go near it.

You couldn't fight elves, because you were so much more worthless than them. It was right that you should be so worthless. And they were so beautiful. And you weren't. You were always the one metaphorically picked last for any team, even after the fat kid with one permanently blocked runny nostril; you were always the one who wasn't told the rules until you'd lost, and then wasn't told the new rules; you were the one who always knew that everything interesting was happening to other people. All those hot self-consuming feelings were rolled together. You couldn't fight an elf. Someone as useless as you, as stolid as you, as human as you, could never win; the universe wasn't built like that–