Lords and Ladies - Terry Pratchett [108]
Bees poured down out of the sky.
Granny Weatherwax turned her face toward Magrat.
Magrat heard the voice clearly in her head.
“You want to be queen?”
And she was free.
She felt the weariness drop away from her and it also felt as though pure Queen Ynci poured out of the helmet.
More bees rained down, covering the slumped figure of the old witch.
The Queen turned, and her smile froze as Magrat straightened up, stepped forward and, with hardly a thought in her head, raised the battleaxe and brought it around in one long sweep.
The Queen moved faster. Her hand snaked out and gripped Magrat’s wrist.
“Oh yes,” she said, grinning into Magrat’s face. “Really? You think so?”
She twisted. The axe dropped from Magrat’s fingers.
“And you wanted to be a witch?”
Bees were a brown fog, hiding the elves—too small to hit, impervious to glamour, but determined to kill.
Magrat felt the bone scrape.
“The old witch is finished,” said the Queen, forcing Magrat down. “I won’t say she wasn’t good. But she wasn’t good enough. And you certainly aren’t.”
Slowly and inexorably, Magrat was forced downward.
“Why don’t you try some magic?” said the Queen.
Magrat kicked. Her foot caught the Queen on the knee, and she heard a crack. As she staggered back Magrat launched herself forward and caught her around the waist, bearing her to the ground.
She was amazed at the lightness. Magrat was skinny enough, but the Queen seemed to have no weight at all.
“Why,” she said, pulling herself up until the Queen’s face was level with hers, “you’re nothing. It’s all in the mind, isn’t it? Without the glamour, you’re—”
—an almost triangular face, a tiny mouth, the nose hardly existing at all, but eyes larger than human eyes and now focused on Magrat in pinpoint terror.
“Iron,” whispered the Queen. Her hands gripped Magrat’s arms. There was no strength there. An elf’s strength lay in persuading others they were weak.
Magrat could feel her desperately trying to enter her mind, but it wasn’t working. The helmet—
—was lying several feet away, in the mud.
She just had time to wish she hadn’t noticed that before the Queen attacked again, exploding into her uncertainty like a nova.
She was nothing. She was insignificant. She was so worthless and unimportant that even something completely worthless and exhaustively unimportant would consider her beneath contempt. In laying hands upon the Queen she truly deserved an eternity of pain. She had no control of her body. She did not deserve any. She did not deserve a thing.
The disdain sleeted over her, tearing the planetary body of Magrat Garlick to pieces.
She’d never be any good. She’d never be beautiful, or intelligent, or strong. She’d never be anything at all.
Self-confidence? Confidence in what?
The eyes of the Queen were all she could see. All she wanted to do was lose herself in them…
And the ablation of Magrat Garlick roared on, tearing at the strata of her soul…
…exposing the core.
She bunched up a fist and hit the Queen between the eyes.
There was a moment of terminal perplexity before the Queen screamed, and Magrat hit her again.
Only one queen in a hive! Slash! Stab!
They rolled over, landing in the mud. Magrat felt something sting her leg, but she ignored it. She took no notice of the noise around her, but she did find the battleaxe under her hand as the two of them landed in a peat puddle. The elf scrabbled at her but this time without strength, and Magrat managed to push herself to her knees and raise the axe—
—and then noticed the silence.
It flowed over the Queen’s elves and Shawn Ogg’s makeshift army as the glamour faded.
There was a figure silhouetted against the setting moon.
Its scent carried on the dawn breeze.
It smelled of lions’ cages and leaf mold.
“He’s back,” said Nanny Ogg. She glanced sideways and saw Ridcully, his face glowing, raising his crossbow.
“Put it down,” she said.
“Will you look at the horns on