'Grodley,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Sticks her little finger out when she drinks her tea and drops her Haitches all the time.'
'Yes. Hwell. I haven't hlowered myself to talk to her hever since that business with the gibbet, you recall. I daresay she'd just love to come snooping haround here, running her fingers over heverything and sniffing, telling us how to do things. Oh. yes. Help. We'd all be in a fine to-do if we went around helping all the time.'
'Yes, and over Skund way the trees talk to you and walk around of night,' said Nanny. 'Without even asking permission. Very poor organisation.'
'Not really good organisation, like we've got here?' said Magrat.
Granny stood up purposefully.
'I'm going home,' she said.
There are thousands of good reasons why magic doesn't rule the world. They're called witches and wizards. Magrat reflected, as she followed the other two back to the road.
It was probably some wonderful organisation on the part of Nature to protect itself. It saw to it that everyone with any magical talent was about as ready to co-operate as a she-bear with toothache, so all that dangerous power was safely dissipated as random bickering and rivalry. There were differences in style, of course. Wizards assassinated each other in draughty corridors, witches just cut one another dead in the street. And they were all as self-centred as a spinning top. Even when they help other people, she thought, they're secretly doing it for themselves. Honestly, they're just like big children.
Except for me, she thought smugly.
'She's very upset, isn't she,' said Magrat to Nanny Ogg.
'Ah, well,' said Nanny. 'There's the problem, see. The more you get used to magic, the more you don't want to use it. The more it gets in your way. I expect, when you were just starting out, you learned a few spells from Goodie Whemper, maysherestinpeace, and you used them all the time, didn't you?'
'Well, yes. Everyone does.'
'Well-known fact,' agreed Nanny. 'But when you get along in the Craft, you learn that the hardest magic is the sort you don't use at all.'
Magrat considered the proposition cautiously. 'This isn't some kind of Zen, is it?' she said.
'Dunno. Never seen one.'
'When we were in the dungeons, Granny said something about trying the rocks. That sounded like pretty hard magic.'
'Well, Goodie wasn't much into rocks,' said Nanny. 'It's not really hard. You just prod their memories. You know, of the old days. When they were hot and runny.'
She hesitated, and her hand flew to her pocket. She gripped the lump of castle stone and relaxed.
. Magic's there to be ruled, not for ruling.'
Nanny nodded and then, remembering a promise, reached down and picked up a fragment of stone from the rubble on the tunnel floor.
'I thought you'd forgotten,' said the ghost of the king, by her ear.
Further down the passage the Fool was capering after Magrat.
'Can I see you again?' he said.
'Well . . . I don't know,' said Magrat, her heart singing a smug song.
'How about tonight?' said the Fool.
'Oh, no,' said Magrat. 'I'm very busy tonight.' She had intended to curl up with a hot milk drink and Goodie Whemper's notebooks on experimental astrology, but instinct told her that any suitor should have an uphill struggle put in front of him, just to make him keener.
'Tomorrow night, then?' the Fool persisted.
'I think I should be washing my hair.'
'I could get Friday night free.'
'We do a lot of work at night, you see—'