"Not just high," said Magrat to herself, "but stinking."

Hiding under the bed is only good for about two seconds, but sometimes two seconds is enough.

She let go of the chair. She was shaking. But she was still alive, and that felt good. That's the thing about being alive. You're alive to enjoy it.

Magrat peered out into the passage.

She had to move. She picked up a stricken chair leg for the little comfort that it gave, and ventured out.

There was a scream again, from the direction of the Great Hall.

Magrat looked the other way, toward the Long Gallery She ran. There had to be a way out, somewhere, some gate, some window . . .

Some enterprising monarch had glazed the windows some time ago. The moonlight shone through in big silver blocks, interspersed with squares of deep shadow.

Magrat ran from light to shade, light to shade, down the endless room. Monarch after monarch flashed past, like a speeded-up film. King after king, all whiskers and crowns and beards. Queen after queen, all corsages and stiff bodices and Lappet-faced wowhawks and small dogs and–

Some shape, some trick of moonlight, some expression on a painted face somehow cut through her terror and caught her eye. That was a portrait she'd never seen before. She'd never walked down this far. The idiot vapidity of the assembled queens had depressed her. But this one . . .

This one, somehow, reached out to her.

She stopped.

It couldn't have been done from life. In the days of this queen, the only paint known locally was a sort of blue, and generally used on the body But a few generations ago King Lully I had been a bit of a historian and a romantic. He'd researched what was known of the early days of Lancre, and where actual evidence had been a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed self-evident wisdom[34] and extrapolated from associated sources[35].

He'd commissioned the portrait of Queen Ynci the Short-Tempered, one of the founders of the kingdom.

She had a helmet with wings and a spike on it and a mass of black hair plaited into dreadlocks with blood as a setting lotion. She was heavily made-up in the woad-and-blood-and-spirals school of barbarian cosmetics. She had a 42 D-cup breastplate and shoulder pads with spikes. She had knee pads with spikes on, and spikes on her sandals, and a rather short skirt in the fashionable tartan and blood motif. One hand rested nonchalantly on a double-headed battle axe with a spike on it, the other caressed the hand of a captured enemy warrior. The rest of the captured enemy warrior was hanging from various pine trees in the background. Also in the picture was Spike, her favourite war pony, of the now extinct Lancre hill breed which was the same general shape and disposition as a barrel of gunpowder, and her war chariot, which picked up the popular spiky theme. It had wheels you could shave with.

Magrat stared.

They'd never mentioned this.

They'd told her about tapestries, and embroidery, and farthingales, and how to shake hands with lords. They'd never told her about spikes.

There was a sound at the end of the gallery, from back the way she'd come. She grabbed her skirts and ran.

There were footsteps behind her, and laughter.

Left down the cloisters, then along the dark passage above the kitchens, and past the–

A shape moved in the shadows. Teeth flashed. Magrat raised the chair leg, and stopped in mid-strike.

"Greebo?"

Nanny Ogg's cat rubbed against her legs. His hair was flat against his body. This unnerved Magrat even more. This was Greebo, undisputed king of Lancre's cat population and father of most of it, in whose presence wolves trod softly and bears climbed trees. He was frightened.

"Come here, you bloody idiot!"

She grabbed him by the scruff of his scarred neck and ran on, while Greebo gratefully sank his claws into her arm to the bone[36] and scrambled up to her shoulder.

She must be somewhere near the kitchen now, because that was Greebo's territory. This was an unknown and shadowy area, terror incognita, where the flesh of carpets and the plaster pillars ran out and the stone bone of the castle showed through.

She was sure there were footsteps behind her, very fast and light.

If she hurried around the next comer–

In her arms, Greebo tensed like a spring. Magrat stopped.

Around the next comer–

Without her apparently willing it, the hand holding the broken wood came up, moving slowly back.

She stepped to the comer and stabbed in one movement. There was a triumphant hiss which turned into a screech as the wood scraped down the side of the waiting elfs neck. It reeled away Magrat bolted for the nearest doorway, weeping in panic, and wrenched at the handle. It swung open. She darted through, slammed the door, flailed in the dark for the bars, felt them clonk home, and collapsed on to her knees.

Something hit the door outside.

After a while Magrat opened her eyes, and then wondered if she really had opened her eyes, because the darkness was no less dark. There was a feeling of space in front of her. There were all sorts of things in the castle, old hidden rooms, anything . . . there could be a pit there, there could be anything. She fumbled for the doorframe, guided herself upright, and then groped cautiously in the general direction of the wall.

There was a shelf. This was a candle. And this was a bundle of matches.

So, she insisted above her own heartbeat, this was a room that got used recently. Most people in Lancre still used tinderboxes. Only the king could afford matches all the way from Ankh-Morpork. Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg got them too, but they didn't buy them. They got given them. It was easy to get given things, if you were a witch.

Magrat lit the stub of candle, and turned to see what kind of room she'd scuttled into.

Oh, no . . .

"Well, well," said Ridcully "There's a familiar tree."

"Shut up."

"I thought someone said we just had to walk up hill," said Ridcully.

"Shut up."

"I remember once when we were in these woods you let

"me-"

"Shut up."

Granny Weatherwax sat down on a stump.

"We're being mazed," she said. "Someone's playing tricks on us."

"I remember a story once," said Ridcully, "where these two children were lost in the woods and a lot of birds came and covered them with leaves." Hope showed in his voice like a toe peeking out from under a crinoline.

"Yes, that's just the sort of bloody stupid thing a bird would think of," said Granny. She rubbed her head.

"She's doing it," she said. "It's an elvish trick. Leading travellers astray. She's mucking up my head. My actual head. Oh, she's good. Making us go where she wants. Making us go round in circles. Doing it to me."

"Maybe you've got your mind on other things," said Ridcully, not quite giving up hope.

"Course I've got my mind on other things, with you falling over all the time and gabbling a lot of nonsense," said Granny. "If Mr. Cleverdick Wizard hadn't wanted to dredge up things that never existed in the first place I wouldn't be here, I'd be in the centre of things, knowing what's going on." She clenched her fists.

"Well, you don't have to be," said Ridcully. "It's a fine night. We could sit here and-"

"You're falling for it too," said Granny. "All that dreamy-weamy, eyes-across-a-crowded-room stuff. Can't imagine how you keep your job as head wizard."

"Mainly by checking my bed carefully and makin' sure someone else has already had a slice of whatever it is I'm eating," said Ridcully, with disarming honesty. "There's not much to it, really. Mainly it's signin' things and having a good shout-"