Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett [55]
The opposite would be someone who was poison to stories and, thought Lilith, quite the most evil creature in the world.
Well, here in Genua was one story no one could stop. It had momentum, this one. Try to stop it and it’d absorb you, make you part of its plot. She didn’t have to do a thing. The story would do it for her. And she had the comfort of knowing that she couldn’t lose. After all, she was the good one.
She strolled along the battlements and down the stairs to her own room, where the two sisters were waiting. They were good at waiting. They could sit for hours without blinking.
The Duc refused even to be in the same room as them.
Their heads turned as she came in.
She’d never given them voices. It wasn’t necessary. It was enough that they were beautiful and could be made to understand.
“Now you must go to the house,” she said. “And this is very important. Listen to me. Some people will be coming to see Ella tomorrow. You must let them do so, do you understand?”
They were watching her lips. They watched anything that moved.
“We shall need them for the story. It won’t work properly unless they try to stop it. And afterward…perhaps I will give you voices. You’ll like that, won’t you?”
They looked at one another, and then at her. And then at the cage in the corner of the room.
Lilith smiled, and reached in, and took out two white mice.
“The youngest witch might be just your type,” she said. “I shall have to see what I can do with her. And now…open…”
The broomsticks drifted through the afternoon air.
For once, the witches weren’t arguing.
The dwarfs had been a taste of home. It would have done anyone’s heart good to see the way they just sat and stared at the dwarf bread, as if consuming it with their eyes, which was the best way to consume dwarf bread. Whatever it was that had driven them to seek ruby-colored boots seemed to wear off under its down-to-earth influence. As Granny said, you could look a long way before you found anything realer than dwarf bread.
Then she’d gone off alone to talk to the head dwarf.
She wouldn’t tell the others what he’d told her, and they didn’t feel bold enough to ask. Now she flew a little ahead of them.
Occasionally she’d mutter something like “Godmothers!” or “Practicing!”
But even Magrat, who hadn’t had as much experience, could feel Genua now, as a barometer feels the air pressure. In Genua, stories came to life. In Genua, someone set out to make dreams come true.
Remember some of your dreams?
Genua nestled on the delta of the Vieux river, which was the source of its wealth. And Genua was wealthy. Genua had once controlled the river mouth and taxed its traffic in a way that couldn’t be called piracy because it was done by the city government, and therefore sound economics and perfectly all right. And the swamps and lakes back in the delta provided the crawling, swimming and flying ingredients of a cuisine that would have been world famous if, as has already been indicated, people traveled very much.
Genua was rich, lazy and unthreatened, and had once spent quite a lot of time involved in that special kind of civic politics that comes naturally to some city states. For example, once it had been able to afford the largest branch of the Assassins’ Guild outside Ankh-Morpork, and its members were so busy that you sometimes had to wait for months.*
But the Assassins had all left years ago. Some things sicken even jackals.
The city came as a shock. From a distance, it looked like a complicated white crystal growing out of the greens and browns of the swamp.
Closer to, it resolved into, firstly, an outer ring of smaller buildings, then an inner ring of large, impressive white houses and, finally, at the very center, a palace. It was tall and pretty and multi-turreted, like a toy castle or some kind of confectionery extravaganza. Every slim tower looked designed to hold a captive princess.
Magrat shivered. But then she thought of the wand. A godmother had responsibilities.
“Reminds me of another one of them Black Aliss stories,” said