'He's doing well, isn't he,' said Nanny, as Magrat helped her out of her prison.
'Isn't that the old king? Can they see him?'
'Shouldn't think so.'
King Verence staggered slightly under the weight. He was too old for such poltergeist activity; you had to be an adolescent for this . . .
'Let me just get a grip on this thing,' he said. 'Oh, damn . . .'
The knife dropped from the ghost's tenuous grasp and clattered to the floor. Granny Weatherwax stepped forward smartly and put her foot on it.
'The dead shouldn't kill the living,' she said. 'It could be a dangerous wossname, precedent. We'd all be outnumbered for one thing.'
The duchess surfaced from her terror first. There had been knives swooping through the air and exploding doors, and now these women were defying her in her own dungeons. She couldn't be sure how she was supposed to react to the supernatural items, but she had very firm ideas about how she should tackle the last one.
Her mouth opened like the gateway to a red hell. 'Guards!' she yelled, and spotted the Fool hovering near the door. 'Fool! Fetch the guards!'
'They're busy. We were just leaving,' said Granny. 'Which one of you is the duke?'
Felmet stared pink-eyed up at her from his half-crouch in the corner. A thin dribble of saliva escaped from the corner of his mouth, and he giggled.
Granny looked closer. In the centre of those streaming eyes something else looked back at her.
'I'm going to give you no cause,' she said quietly. 'But it would be better for you if you left this country. Abdicate, or whatever.'
'In favour of whom?' said the duchess icily. 'A witch?'
'I won't,' said the duke.
'What did you say?'
The duke pulled himself upright, brushed some of the dust off his clothes, and looked Granny full in the face. The coldness in the centre of his eyes was larger.
'I said I won't,' he said. 'Do you think a bit of simple conjuring would frighten me? I am the king by right of conquest, and you cannot change it. It is as simple as that, witch.'
He moved closer.
Granny stared at him. She hadn't faced anything like this before. The man was clearly mad, but at the heart of his madness was a dreadful cold sanity, a core of pure interstellar ice in the centre of the furnace. She'd thought him weak under a thin shell of strength, but it went a lot further than that. Somewhere deep inside his mind, somewhere beyond the event horizon of rationality, the sheer pressure of insanity had hammered his madness into something harder than diamond.
'If you defeat me by magic, magic will rule,' said the duke. 'And you can't do it. And any king raised with your help would be under your power. Hag-ridden, I might say. That which magic rules, magic destroys. It would destroy you, too. You know it. Ha. Ha.'
Granny's knuckles whitened as he moved closer.
'You could strike me down,' he said. 'And perhaps you could find someone to replace me. But he would have to be a fool indeed, because he would know he was under your evil eye, and if he mispleased you, why, his life would be instantly forfeit. You could protest all you wished, but he'd know he ruled with your permission. And that would make him no king at all. Is this not true?'
Granny looked away. The other witches hung back, ready to duck.
'I said, is this not true?'
'Yes,' said Granny. 'It is true . . .'
'Yes.'
'. . . but there is one who could defeat you,' said Granny slowly.
'The child? Let him come when he is grown. A young man with a sword, seeking his destiny.' The duke sneered. 'Very romantic. But I have many years to prepare. Let him try.'
Beside him King Verence's fist smashed through the air and quite failed to connect.