Enchantress 2 - Warrior Duchess

It was known throughout Creel Springs village and the surrounding Buckington Groves Township that there was a new witch in town with the hands of an angel and the power of a wizard and wheels were turning in the minds of several powerful people to do something about that.

Ankh-Morpork - largest and oldest city on the Sto Plains and more populous than the next four countries combined. Ankh-Morpork is not afraid of invasion, in fact it welcomes invaders. One visit to the flesh pits of the area called The Shades and the population of the city swells by the size of each battalion that was welcomed through the city gates. The city is run by a consortium of guilds that enforce the visions of the true leader of the city, The Patrician, Havelock Vetinari. His influence in the Assassin's Guild ensures cooperation from the other guilds. Havelock was trying to find a way to draw the new witch in Lancre and his wife back to Ankh-Morepork where they can be the face of the new Tourism Guild. After all, they just saved the world, they could provide a draw to Ankh-Morepork. An idea came to mind, and he scratched out a note to H.M. King Verance II, ruler of the kingdom of Lanre and chuckled. "Handletyre!" he called for his secretary out of habit.

Instead of Tredwell Handletyre, another man entered. Medium height, medium build, indistinguishable features, unremarkable hair, Suart la Fountaine could never be picked out of a line-up, he was as indistinguishable in a crowd of men as a single brick was in a wall. The Assassins Guild sent the Patrician the perfect assistant. "Mister Handletyre is still recovering sir; may I be of assistance?"

"Of course, Mister la Fountaine, have this sent via clacks to Lancre as soon as possible," and he handed the note to Stuart. The word "clacks" was referring to the semaphore system throughout the central continent of the Disc. Huge towers with semaphore blades and illuminated at night, these towers transferred messages to the next tower in line, the operator would read the message then pass it on to the next tower, the header in the message would give the operators information on the routing of the message so that it was sent to the correct towers then passed on to the recipient. The term clacks refers to the clacking of the semaphore blades giving it the informal name "Clacks" and now instead of weeks, this note to the king of Lancre will be there in an hour.

"Yes sir, and by the way, this just came from Lancre via the clacks." La Fountaine handed Havelock Vetinari a clacks, thin brittle paper and the text was written in the blocky, tight script of the goblins who work the towers, it was from the office of the King of Lancre.

After reading the clacks Havelock said, "I'll take back that letter I gave you, no need to send it. It appears that we will be going to Lancre soon."

The Agatean Empire - The most immoral empire on the disc, the Agatean Empire is based on corruption, terrorizing their population, a huge military, and gold, lots and lots of gold. The Agatean Empire covers the counterweight continent, a land that is filled with heavy metals to provide the counterbalance for the other off center land masses. The Counterweight Continent is made up of gold, silver, lead, iron, and slavery. The emperor just turned eight years old and his voice is said to be The Word of God.

"Lung Mist," shrieked emperor Fu Ki, "what ever happened to that guy that turned into a dragon?"

"After crushing the palace guard, he left your holiness," said the Prime Minister Lung Mist

"You just let him go?" shrieked the boy.

"There was no one left to stop him your eminence."

"He was funny, he should live here and entertain me."

"We no longer know where he is, your amazingness." The prime minister was worried, normally the emperor loses interest in something after 10 minutes, he's been whining about the Dragon Wizard as he became known as for several weeks.

"Find Him And Bring Him BACK!" demanded the brat emperor.

Peregrine and Aegir Mining - A New startup consortium in the dwarven community with their eyes on Bear Mountain and not just the riches of iron and other precious metals deep below it, there's something else to make any concession worth the cost. The one problem was that it was owned by the Kingdom of Lancre and Lancre had an odd way of dealing with their natural resources. The whole of Bear Mountain was under the stewardship of the senior witch in Tallywiffle County. Olaf Peregrine reviewed the coded information he received from his brother-in-law Rifty Peregrine who was there on the ground in Lancre via Clacks. "Rifty is in good spirits," said Olaf as he read the Clacks message. "He spoke with the Stuart of the court of Lancre and he said that the mountain is in the control of witches."

Ringgold Aegir looked up from the mining report he was compiling. "So?"

"Witches are only concerned with things that go on above ground, they will give us the mountain as long as we leave the external shell to the squirrels and flowers."

"When do we move into our mountain?" snickered Reingold. When it came to mining, witches were notoriously stupid, they only care about the topsoil and what grows out of the topsoil, they have no idea what the topsoil is hiding.

"He's going to meet with Mother Marisol the head witch of Tallywiffle county tomorrow and everything should be in the bag," said Olaf as he burned the communiqué in an ashtray.

Reingold went back to his report as Olaf opened the next Clax message and cried out, "Oh Look! We've been invited to a Royal Reception at Lancre Castle, it's a wedding presentation."

"Don't you mean wedding reception or wedding ceremony or something like that?"

"No, it's a presentation, a newly married couple presents themselves to the king and queen for addition into the Lancre records. I guess it saves the couple on having to plan a big wedding ceremony."

"It should be in time to review our new mining claim," chuckled Reingold. "Send Rifty."

Granny Weatherwax - "I tell you Gytha, they knew I was watchin' down on em' the whole time," said Esmirelda "Granny" Weatherwax as she stirred her tea so hard, she nearly drilled her spoon through the bottom of the teacup. Granny is the self-proclaimed best witch on the Disc and is well over one hundred percent a "proper" witch. Her witch's hat is heavily starched and ironed into submission so that the brim can be used as a knife and is held in place with enough hat pins to fend off the Quirmian Mounted Legion. According to her friend Gytha, Granny's knees have never been more than four inches apart, and the term "straight laced" is a bit risqué for Granny.

"What makes you thinka that Esme?" asked Gytha as she tipped her hipflask of scumble into her tea. "A great horned owl sitting out in the open would cause any hinterland creature to look up."

Granny mumbled the reply into her tea.

The scent of the scumble filled the house and the fumes gave a hint as to why Gytha "Nanny" Ogg uses a wooden spoon to stir her tea. {The scumble would eat the chrome plating off her silver teaspoon} "I needs ya to speak up Esme, some of us are getting a bit deef!" she shouted with a laugh.

"I said they looked up at me and said, "Good evening Granny." They said it to me as they ran under my tree!" Granny's eyes narrowed as she delicately sipped her tea. Then she remembered a detail, "the hart had a golden eye."

"That could have been a trick of the light, there were no clouds last night and the moon was full."

{The moon is an asteroid slightly closer to the Disc than the sun and is covered on one half with silvery glowing plants which feed lunar dragons and illuminate the night sky. The other half has been burned black by the sun, as the moon rotates and completes a full revolution in a month, the full moon occurs when the luminescent side is completely visible from the Disc. The new moon occurs when the dark side faces the disc, and like the sun, occasionally an elephant must raise a foot to allow the moon to pass under him and complete its revolution around the Disc}

"No matter, I'm going to go to Creel Springs and give that new witch a piece of my mind."

"Now Esme, you have responsibilities on this side of Lancre, I'm retired now that our Jeremy's wife took over at witching, let me go see what is happening in Creel Springs before you chase off another young lass. We may get us a third for a coven!"

"Not that coven idea again..." mumbled Granny.

King and Queen of Lancre - H. M. King Verance II of Lancre may have been raised and educated a fool, but he was no one's fool. {It's true, he was raised by the Fool's Guild and was Court Jester to the previous king of Lancre until it was discovered that he A) was born without a sense of humor, and B) was the rightful heir to the throne}

His desire to democratize the Kingdom of Lancre may have stalled due to the narrow minded attitude of the populace who dare suggest that the current form of aristocratic rule works just fine. And to be honest, it does. Having run the kleptocracy out of Lancre, Verance has found that his tiny kingdom runs just fine with a tiny government.

After breakfast, while doing the dishes with his wife H. M. Queen Magrat, Crown Princess Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling, Prince Exavier, and Prince Abraam {who at one year of age watched the goings on from a highchair} the king inspected a plate he just washed before handing to his daughter to rinse {Kitchen staff costs money and how better to identify with the proletariat than by doing your own dishes?} "Dear, I am worried about the new witch that Nana Partridge selected to replace her."

Magrat, a retired witch herself, has heard a little about the new witch and immediately grew defensive. "Why? Because she has an elitist name?"

"No dear, Pommeraie de la Montesquieu is a fine name, it's just that..."

"Because she's new and inexperienced?" demanded Magrat as she dried a plate with a lot more gusto than the task called for.

"No dear, as you say, each witch must grow into her own cottage."

"Is it because she has a lot of wizarding know-how and can become any animal?"

"No dear, that actually appeals to me."

"Is it because she's a man?" asked their daughter Crown Princess Esmerelda Margaret Check Spelling.

"Hmmm yes, that's precisely it," sighed Verence. "I fear the kingdom will not put up with it."

"When dad says kingdom he usually means Granny Esme," Exavier whispered to his little brother Abraam who laughed. He laughs anytime Granny Weatherwax is mentioned.

Magrat hugged her husband from behind, "I think that is wonderful, it's the forward thinking this kingdom needs."

"And everyone else despises. Yes, I believe it is a good thing, and I think I'm going to need to protect him. I also hear that there is a new wizard in town..."

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"Oh, how beautiful! They're so cute! Thank you!" Octavia gushed as she looked at the small cage containing four young cottontail rabbits.

"We want to thank th' witch for such a beautiful healthy grandson," said Tiernan Brighid, the grandfather of the first child Nick ever delivered.

"I suggest you separate the black one from the others," said Sorcha Brighid, "he's going to be a bit randy." Sorcha is the new grandmother of Cain McCandlish. She was a bit skeptical of having a male witch delivering her daughters baby, but when Nick laid that child in her arms, happy and squalling like a banshee, Sorcha no longer had a care in the world, there was no problem with a male witch that she could think of.

"They're... fluffy," was all Nick could say about the young rabbits. "What do we do with them... I mean besides pull them out of hats."

"You raise them! Feed them proper rabbit feed and with that buck you make more rabbits. Soon they'll be big enough to eat," said Sorcha.

"Eat?" gasped Octavia still trying to sound grateful.

"Aye, in a pie or a stew, and the pelts are soft and warm. They'll make darling hats, mittens, and stockings for your babies."

"Let's see where we can put them," said Nick and they walked around back of the cottage to find that the "Critter Shed" had grown a set of cages.

"That's a fine rabbit hutch," said Tiernan Brighid. "We'll put the does here, we'll put the buck here, and when they get large enough you open this door between the cages and in a few weeks you'll have more bunnies."

"How do we know when the females are in heat?"

"Does don't go into "heat" as you call it. Don't worry, rabbits have a way to figure that out."

Nick only hoped his smile was convincing. The grateful grandparents gave Nick and Octavia a list of the rabbit's dietary requirements, mostly scraps from the kitchen cutting board, and it sounded like one of the best meals he's ever had. {Living on the streets of Ankh-Morpork as a child guarantees a diet of scraps, garbage, refuse, and beatings} Right now all he and Octavia know how to cook is eggs which they have with leftover meat that Nick smoked. They have been gifted with lots of interesting looking vegetables which are sitting in the cold cellar waiting for panic to set in and Nick or Octavia tries to cook them, but neither one knows precisely how to do that.

As he does when he knows that one of "his girls" is almost ready for childbirth, Nick keeps an eye on the messenger candle in the living room with his gold eye. From the rabbit hutch he could see through his eyepatch, the shed, and the back wall of the cottage into the living room and he saw a large, wide, dark purple candle flicker and a flame popped into existence. In another house someone lit a small purple messenger candle that Nick gave them, causing Nick's candle at home to light. It was time. "Gotta go," he said as he gave Octavia a quick kiss and dashed to the house to get ready.

He stripped naked and put everything in a pack then dashed out onto the porch and dropped the pack. As he stepped off the porch there was a flash of octarine light and there stood a beautiful, chestnut brown quarter horse. The horse nickered and picked up the pack in its teeth holding it by a strap and trotted off to the Borsen farm where Desdemona Borsen needed his help.

As Octavia spoke with Sorcha and Tiernan Brighid she began to realize how foolish her dreams were - to find a little home away from the toil and bluster of the big city and live together with Nick, to be the farmwife and cook him dinner and mend his torn clothes... she had to tell someone. "I'm sorry, you are all so kind and generous to us but... we don't know what to do with all these gifts..." that's when the tears started.

Octavia had a breakdown as Nick went off to deliver Desdemona and Uther's babies, all she could think of was him eating scraps when he lived in the gutters of Ankh-Morpork and now he is working hard to give her a beautiful home, and scraps is all she knows how to serve him. "What would your mother say if she saw you like this?" demanded Sorcha.

"My mother dropped me off at the all-night book return of a library when I was a month old."

"Ok, uhhh, you said you had a foster father. What would your father say?"

"He would say "Ook."

"Ook?"

"It means have a banana, which was his solution to everything. You would eat a banana and think of a solution. If you don't come up with a solution by the time you finish your banana, then it wasn't your problem."

"What's a banana?"

"It's a tropical fruit, dad loves them." Octavia showed Sorcha her necklace with the tiny gold banana. She wears it because it reminds her of Nick, he claimed he could see the tiny banana from a quarter mile away and now one of his beautiful eyes is ruined because of her, and the tears started again.

"Here," said Tiernan as he tossed Octavia an apple. "Eat your banana."

"Wha?" Octavia looked at the apple, it was a bit old and shriveled, it was down in the cold cellar, but a bite told her it was still delicious.

"Don't talk, eat," said Tiernan. "Your father was a wise man, he realized that we must give ourselves time to consider our problem first, then construct a logical ways of attacking the problem. We don't always need a solution, sometimes we just need a path to a solution."

Sorcha rolled her eyes, she's heard her husband carry on like a teacher before, him and his fancy fifth grade education! When Octavia finished her apple Sorcha asked her, "Did that help?"

Octavia looked defeated and she rose and walked into the kitchen and looked around. "This is so alien to me! I can find you any book ever written, ANY book, I can have a copy in your hands tomorrow, but I have no idea what any of this is," and she picked up a kitchen tool that looked like a spring on a long handle.

"That's a gravy whisk," said Sorcha.

"See? I don't know any of this!" cried Octavia slamming the whisk down.

"Dearie, newlywed life is going to be like that, how long have you been married?" said Sorcha as the woman took Octavia in her arms.

"Four weeks."

"The way I see it," said Tiernan, "is that the failure is ours. You two don't have a family upbringing and you come here to help us. Right now, it's more important for us to help you, otherwise we'll be looking for a new witch again, you won't last the winter!"

"Listen to him, he's right," said Sorcha, "we gotta give you two twenty years of Lancre upbringing. We'll start with dinner. Tiernan, go find us a nice fat chicken, I'll get some vegetables, and Octavia dear, you dear put some water on to boil."

"Ok!" said Octavia feeling excited for the first time. "How do I do that?"

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Gytha "Nanny" Ogg was dropped off at the Uther Borsen farm by her daughter-in-law. She tottered up to the front door and knocked twice singing, "Coo-ee! Just Nanny Ogg here!" Inside she could hear the sounds of a woman who completed labor, that cross between a laugh of joy and a cry of relief that it was over was unmistakable, but somehow it sounded wrong, there was a note of sorrow in her voice. Are you a witch?" called a man's voice from within.

"Yes, do you need help?"

"A little bit if you don't mind," he said. "We're upstairs."

Nanny entered the house to find two pairs of distraught grandparents who were terrified, it looked like the first grandchild for both. "Don't you worry none, Nanny Ogg is here, we'll get this right. If you go and put on a pan of warm water for the baby, I'll go help the new mother," and she headed upstairs. Inside the main bedroom she found the new mother with long wavy red hair matted with sweat, and the new father holding a newborn, but at the foot of the bed was a man wearing leaf pattern robes and an eye patch cradling another child. With two fingers he was gently rhythmically pressing the baby's chest, but it wasn't responding. Death stood over the young man's shoulder watching him work on the baby like a bystander watches a workman dig a trench.

"She had the cord around her neck," the man explained to Nanny. "Her sister Lynet is fine but this one..." Tears ran down his cheek as he whispered to the baby in his hands, "come on baby, come join us... please!"

Nanny leaned over and patted his shoulder, "It's ok luv, sometimes it happens..."

The young man turned and glared at Death, "No, not two times in a week," then he concentrated on the baby, "come on little one, you can do it, that spooky old black specter isn't here for you... we have a name waiting for you if you sing for us... come on baby, sing!" he pleaded with tears of sorrow and frustration in his eye. "Please sing for us!" he said, his voice breaking with sorrow.