The Queen lowered her voice.
“You will not be killed,” she whispered. “I promise you that. You'll be left alive, to dribble and gibber and soil yourself and wander from door to door for scraps. And they'll say: there goes the mad old woman.”
“They say that now,” said Granny Weatherwax. “They think I can't hear.”
“But inside,” said the Queen, ignoring this, "inside I'll keep just a part of you which looks out through your eyes and knows what you've become.
“And there will be none to help,” said the Queen. She was closer now, her eyes pinpoints of hatred. “No charity for the mad old woman. You'll see what you have to eat to stay alive. And we'll be with you all the time inside your head, just to remind you. You could have been the great one, there was so much you could have done. And inside you'll know it, and you'll plead all the dark night long for the silence of the elves.”
The Queen wasn't expecting it. Granny Weatherwax's hand shot out, pieces of rope falling away from it, and slapped her across the face.
“You threaten me with that?” she said. “Me? Who am becoming old?”
The elf woman's hand rose slowly to the livid mark across her cheek. The elves raised their bows, waiting for an order.
“Go back,” said Granny. “You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you. You're right. I'm older. You've lived longer than me but I'm older than you. And better'n you. And, madam, that ain't hard.”
The Queen struck wildly.
The rebounded force of the mental blow knocked Nanny Ogg to her knees. Granny Weatherwax blinked.
“A good one,” she croaked. “But still I stand, and still I'll not kneel. And still I have strength-”
An elf keeled over. This time the Queen swayed.
“Oh, and I have no time for this,” she said, and snapped her fingers.
There was a pause. The Queen glanced around at her elves.
“They can't fire,” said Granny. “And you wouldn't want that, would you? So simple an end?”
“You can't be holding them! You have not that much power!”
“Do you want to find out how much power I have, madam? Here, on the grass of Lancre?”
She stepped forward. Power crackled in the air. The Queen had to step back.
“My own turf?” said Granny
She slapped the Queen again, almost gently.
“What's this?” said Granny Weatherwax. “Can't you resist me? Where's your power now, madam? Gather your power, madam!”
“You foolish old crone!”
It was felt by every living creature for a mile around. Small things died. Birds spiraled out of the sky Elves and humans alike dropped to the ground, clutching their heads.
And in Granny Weatherwax's garden the bees rose out of their hives.
They emerged like steam, colliding with one another in their rush to get airborne. The deep gunship hum of the drones underpinned the frantic roars of the workers.
But, louder than the drones, was the piccolo piping of the queens.
The swarms spiraled up over the clearing, circled once, and then broke and headed away. Others joined them, out of backyard steps and hollow trees, blackening the sky.
After a while, order became apparent in the great circling cloud. The drones flew on the wings, throbbing like bombers. The workers were a cone made up of thousands of tiny bodies. And at its tip, a hundred queens flew.
The fields lay silent after the arrow-shaped swarm of swarms had gone.