The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld Read online

  *

  ‘If we’re going to die anyway, I’d rather die like this. Heroically,’ [said Nijel.]

  ‘Is it heroic to die like this?’ said Conina.

  ‘I think it is,’ he said, ‘and when it comes to dying, there’s only one opinion that matters.’

  †Although, possibly, quicker. And only licensed to carry fourteen people.

  WITCHES are not by nature gregarious, and they certainly don’t have leaders. Granny Weatherwax was the most highly regarded of the leaders they didn’t have. But even she found that meddling in royal politics was a lot more difficult than certain playwrights would have you believe…

  Granny Weatherwax paused with a second scone halfway to her mouth.

  ‘Something comes,’ she said.

  ‘Can you tell by the pricking of your thumbs?’ said Magrat earnestly. Magrat had learned a lot about witchcraft from books.

  ‘The pricking of my ears,’ said Granny.

  *

  ‘I didn’t become a soldier for this. Not to go round killing people.’

  *

  ‘If I was you, I’d become a sailor,’ said Granny thoughtfully. ‘Yes, a nautical career. I should start as soon as possible. Now, in fact. Run off, man. Run off to sea where there are no tracks. You will have a long and successful life, I promise.’ She looked thoughtful for a moment, and added, ‘At least, longer than it’s likely to be if you hang around here.’

  *

  Lancre Castle was built on an outcrop of rock by an architect who had heard about Gormenghast but hadn’t got the budget. He’d done his best, though, with a tiny confection of cut-price turrets, bargain basements, buttresses, crenellations, gargoyles, towers, courtyards, keeps and dungeons; in fact, just about everything a castle needs except maybe reasonable foundations and the kind of mortar that doesn’t wash away in a light shower.

  *

  ‘There is a knocking without,’ the porter said.

  ‘Without what?’ said the Fool.

  ‘Without the door, idiot.’

  The Fool gave him a worried look. ‘A knocking without a door?’ he said suspiciously. ‘This isn’t some kind of Zen, is it?’

  *

  ‘How many times have you thrown a magic ring into the deepest depths of the ocean and then, when you get home and have a nice bit of turbot for your tea, there it is?’

  They considered this in silence.

  ‘Never,’ said Granny irritably. ‘And nor have you.’

  *

  It was one of the few sorrows of Granny Weatherwax’s life that, despite all her efforts, she’d arrived at the peak of her career with a complexion like a rosy apple and all her teeth. No amount of charms could persuade a wart to take root on her handsome if slightly equine features, and vast intakes of sugar only served to give her boundless energy.

  *

  Granny explains her view on the proposition that replicas can be more convincing than the real thing:

  ‘Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things.’

  The best you could say for Magrat was that she was decently plain and well-scrubbed and as flat-chested as an ironing board with a couple of peas on it.

  *

  The duke has sent some guards to arrest a witch. They come back empty-handed.

  ‘Admit it - she offered you hedonistic and licentious pleasures known only to those who dabble in the carnal arts, didn’t she?’

  ‘No, sir. She offered me a bun.’

  ‘A bun?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It had currants in it.’

  Felmet sat absolutely still while he fought for internal peace. Finally, all he could manage was, ‘And what did your men do about this?’

  ‘They had a bun too, sir. All except young Roger, who isn’t allowed fruit, sir, on account of his trouble. He had a biscuit, sir.’

  *

  ‘Fool?’

  ‘Marry, sir—’ said the Fool nervously.

  ‘I am already extremely married. Advise me, my Fool.’

  ‘I’ faith, nuncle—’ said the Fool.

  ‘Nor am I thy nuncle. I feel sure I would have remembered,’ said Lord Felmet, leaning down until the prow of his nose was a few inches from the Fool’s stricken face. ‘If you preface your next remark with nuncle, i’ faith or marry, it will go hard with you.’

  ‘How do you feel about Prithee?’

  The duke knew when to allow some slack. ‘Prithee I can live with,’ he said. ‘So can you.’

  *

  Magrat tried. Every morning her hair was long, thick and blond, but by the evening it had always returned to its normal worried frizz. To ameliorate the effect she had tried to plait violets and cowslips in it. The result was not all she had hoped. It gave the impression that a window box had fallen on her head.

  *

  The Fool fumbled in his sleeve and produced a rather soiled red and yellow handkerchief embroidered with bells. The duke took it with an expression of pathetic gratitude and blew his nose. Then he held it away from him and gazed at it with demented suspicion.

  ‘Is this a dagger I see before me?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Um. No, my lord. It’s my handkerchief, you see. You can sort of tell the difference if you look closely. It doesn’t have as many sharp edges.’

  *

  On the crest of the moor … was a standing stone …

  The stone was about the same height as a tall man, and made of a bluish tinted rock. It was considered intensely magical because, although there was only one of it, no one had ever been able to count it.

  *

  Granny, Nanny and Magrat have summoned a demon.

  ‘Who’re you?’ said Granny, bluntly.

  ‘My name is unpronounceable in your tongue, woman,’ it said.

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ warned Granny.

  ‘Very well. My name is WxrtHltl-jwlpklz,’ said the demon smugly.

  ‘We haven’t got time to bandy legs with you all night,’ said Granny.

  Magrat blurted out, ‘You know the Fool, who lives up at the castle?’ …

  ‘It’s a steady job,’ said Nanny. ‘I’ll grant you that.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Granny. ‘A man who tinkles all day. No kind of husband for anyone, I’d say’

  *

  Nanny Ogg was also out early. She hadn’t been able to get any sleep anyway, and besides, she was worried about Greebo. Greebo was one of her few blind spots. While intellectually she would concede that he was indeed a fat, cunning, evil-smelling multiple rapist, she nevertheless instinctively pictured him as the small fluffy kitten he had been decades before. The fact that he had once chased a female wolf up a tree and seriously surprised a she-bear who had been innocently digging for roots didn’t stop her worrying that something bad might happen to him. It was generally considered by everyone else in the kingdom that the only thing that might slow Greebo down was a direct meteorite strike.

  *

  The books said that the old-time witches had sometimes danced in their shifts. Magrat had wondered about how you danced in shifts. Perhaps there wasn’t room for them all to dance at once, she’d thought.

  *

  Nanny Ogg is being held captive in a torture chamber.

  The duchess leaned forward until her big red face was inches away from Nanny’s nose.

  ‘This insouciance gives you pleasure,’ she hissed, ‘but soon you will laugh on the other side of your face!’

  ‘It’s only got this side,’ said Nanny.

  The duchess fingered a tray of implements lovingly. ‘We shall see,’ she said, picking up a pair of pliers.

  *

  ‘It’s gone too far this time,’ said a peasant. ‘All this burning and taxing and now this. I blame you witches. It’s got to stop. I know my rights.’

  ‘What rights are they?’ said Granny.

  ‘Dunnage, cowhage-in-ordinary, badinage, leftovers, scrommidge, clary and spunt,’ said the peasant promptly. ‘And acornage, every other year, and t
he right to keep two-thirds of a goat on the common. Until he set fire to it. It was a bloody good goat, too.’

  *

  Hour gongs were being struck all across the city and nightwatchmen were proclaiming that it was indeed midnight and also that, in the face of all the evidence, all was well. Many of them got as far as the end of the sentence before being mugged.

  *

  The River Ankh, the cloaca of half a continent, was already pretty wide and silt laden when it reached the city’s outskirts. By the time it left it didn’t so much flow as exude. Owing to the accretion of the mud of centuries the bed of the river was in fact higher than some of the low lying areas and now, with the snow melt swelling the flow, many of the low-rent districts on the Morpork side were flooded, if you can use that word for a liquid you could pick up in a net.

  *

  ‘You know, Hwel, I reckon responsible behaviour is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.’

  *

  Vitoller shifted uneasily. ‘I already owe Chrystophrase the Troll more than I should.’

  ‘He’s the one that has people’s limbs torn off!’ said Tomjon.

  ‘How much do you owe him?’ said Hwel.

  ‘An arm and a leg.’

  *

  The dwarf playwright Hwel is leaving actor-manager Vitoller’s company.

  ‘I’ll miss you, laddie. I don’t mind telling you. You’ve been like a son to me. How old are you, exactly? I never did know.’

  ‘A hundred and two.’

  You’ve been like a father to me, then,’ Vitoller said.

  *

  ‘When’s this play going to be, then?’ Magrat said, moving closer.

  ‘Marry, I’m sure I’m not allowed to tell you,’ said the Fool. ‘The duke said to me, he said, don’t tell the witches that it’s tomorrow night.’

  ‘I shouldn’t, then,’ agreed Magrat.

  ‘At eight o’clock.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘But meet for sherry beforehand at seven-thirty, i’faith.’

  *

  Nanny … leaned towards the empty seat. ‘Walnut?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said King Verence [a ghost], waving a spectral hand. ‘They go right through me, you know.’

  BEING trained by the Assassins’ Guild in Ankfe-Morpork did not fit Teppic for the task assigned to him by fate. He inherited the throne of the desert kingdom of Djelibeybi rather earlier than he expected (his father wasn’t too happy about it either), but that was only the beginning of his problems…

  All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.

  *

  He … had also heard that only one student in fifteen actually became an assassin. He wasn’t entirely certain what happened to the other fourteen, but he was pretty sure that if you were a poor student in a school for assassins they did a bit more than throw the chalk at you, and that the school dinners had an extra dimension of uncertainty.

  *

  Djelibeybi really was a small, self-centred kingdom. Even its plagues were half-hearted. All self-respecting river kingdoms have vast supernatural plagues, but the best the Old Kingdom had been able to achieve in the last hundred years was the Plague of Frog.†

  *

  It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free.

  *

  ‘What’s your name, kiddo?’

  Teppic drew himself up. ‘Kiddo? I’ll have you know the blood of pharaohs runs in my veins!’

  The other boy looked at him unabashed, with his head on one side and a faint smile on his face.

  ‘Would you like it to stay there?’ he said.

  [My mother] died when I was young … She went for a moonlight swim in what turned out to be a crocodile.

  … Ptraci, his favourite handmaiden. She was special. Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when she stopped.

  *

  The Ankh … drained the huge silty plains all the way to the Ramtop mountains, and by the time it had passed through Ankh-Morpork, pop. one million, it could only be called a liquid because it moved faster than the land around it; being sick in it would probably make it, on average, marginally cleaner.

  *

  One of the two legends about the founding of Ankh-Morpork relates that the two orphaned brothers who built the city were in fact found and suckled by a hippopotamus.

  The other legend, not normally recounted by the citizens, is that at an even earlier time a group of wise men survived a flood sent by the gods by building a huge boat, and on this boat they took two of every type of animal then existing on the Disc. After some weeks the combined manure was beginning to weigh the boat low in the water so – the story runs – they tipped it over the side, and called it Ankh-Morpork.

  *

  ‘Cats are sacred,’ said Dios.

  ‘Long-legged cats with silver fur and disdainful expressions are, maybe,’ said Teppic. ‘I’m sure sacred cats don’t leave dead ibises under the bed. And I’m certain that sacred cats that live surrounded by endless sand don’t come indoors and do it in the king’s sandals, Dios.’

  *

  Descendants! The gods had seen fit to give him one son who charged you for the amount of breath expended in saying ‘Good morning’, and another one who worshipped geometry and stayed up all night designing aqueducts. You scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and paid you back by getting educated.

  *

  ‘Why are you here?’

  The man hung his head. T spoke blasphemy against the king.’

  ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘I dropped a rock on my foot. Now my tongue is to be torn out.’

  The dark figure nodded sympathetically.

  A priest heard you, did he?’ he said.

  ‘No. I told a priest. Such words should not go unpunished,’ said the man virtuously.

  The old king told me once that the gods gave people a sense of humour to make up for giving them sex.

  It’s a fact as immutable as the Third Law of Sod that there is no such thing as a good Grand Vizier. A predilection to cackle and plot is apparently part of the job spec.

  *

  ‘Would your sire still be honouring us with the capping-out ceremony? There’s drinks,’ Ptaclusp stuttered. ‘And a silver trowel that you can take away with you. Everyone shouts hurrah and throws their hats in the air.’

  ‘Certainly’ said Dios. ‘It will be an honour.’

  ‘And for us too, your sire,’ said Ptaclusp loyally.

  ‘I meant for you,’ said the high priest.

  *

  Pyramids are dams in the stream of time. Correctly shaped and orientated, with the proper paracosmic measurements correctly plumbed in, the temporal potential of the great mass of stone can be diverted to accelerate or reverse time over a very small area, in the same way that a hydraulic ram can be induced to pump water against the flow.

  The original builders, who were of course ancients and therefore wise, knew this very well and the whole point of a correctly built pyramid was to achieve absolute null time in the central chamber so that a dying king, tucked up there, would indeed live forever - or at least, never actually die. The time that should have passed in the chamber was stored in the bulk of the pyramid and allowed to flare off once every twenty-four hours.

  After a few aeons people forgot this and thought you could achieve the same effect by a) ritual b) pickling people and c) storing their soft inner bits in jars.

  This seldom works.

  He … liked my singing. Everyone else said it sounded like a flock of vultures who’ve just found a dead donkey.

  He knew about tortoises. They could be called a lot of things - vegetarians, patient, thoughtful, even extremely diligent and persistent sex-maniacs -but never, up until now, fast. Fast was
a word particularly associated with tortoises because they were not it.

  *

  The fastest insect is the .303 bookworm. It evolved in magical libraries, where it is necessary to eat extremely quickly to avoid being affected by the thaumic radiations. An adult .303 bookworm can eat through a shelf of books so fast that it ricochets off the wall.

  *

  Kings who hadn’t got a kingdom any more were not likely to be very popular in neighbouring countries. There had been one or two like that in Ankh-Morpork - deposed royalty, who had fled their suddenly dangerous kingdoms … carrying nothing but the clothes they stood up in and a few wagonloads of jewels. The city, of course, welcomed anyone -regardless of race, colour, class or creed - who had spending money in incredible amounts, but nevertheless the inhumation of surplus monarchs was a regular source of work for the Assassins’ Guild. There was always someone back home who wanted to be certain that deposed monarchs stayed that way. It was usually a case of heir today, gone tomorrow.

  The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn’t climb out of one.

  He pushed the food around on his plate. Some of it pushed back.

  ‘The diameter divides into the circumference, you know. It ought to be three times. But does it? No. Three point one four one and lots of other figures. There’s no end to the buggers … It tells me that the Creator used the wrong kind of circles.’

  *

  Someone was just putting a torch to the lighthouse, which was one of the More Than Seven Wonders of the World and had been built to a design by Pthagonal using the Golden Rule and the Five Aesthetic Principles. Unfortunately it had then been built in the wrong place because putting it in the right place would have spoiled the look of the harbour, but it was generally agreed by mariners to be a very beautiful lighthouse and something to look at while they were waiting to be towed off the rocks.

  *

  Ptraci didn’t just derail the train of thought, she ripped up the rails, burned the stations and melted the bridges for scrap.

  *

  It was another nice day in the high desert. It was always a nice day, if by nice you meant an air temperature like an oven and sand you could roast chestnuts on.