Enchantress 3 - The Last Elf

"He's thinking about you today," said Virga in a disgusted tone. Virga, being community property between the witch Pommeraie de la Montesquieu {Nick} Worblehat-Stein, and his wife, the Enchantress Octavia Worblehat-Stein, has discovered that she transfers the emotions and feelings of Nick to Octavia and vice versa. Right now, Virga is as big around as Nick's cock and Octavia realized that if this walking stick was warm and throbbing, she could end up masturbating in front of Granny... it's been a long time since she and her husband had made love. The last time was just before he was shot down and kidnapped, shot down by a dwarf that is now her best friend.

Torn whether she should turn back and keep an eye on her husband or just let him go, Octavia decided on trusting him and she continued through the bookshelves and soon they stepped into an enormous room lined with red silk curtains and gold ornamentations. "You are now my trusted advisor," said Octavia to Granny. "Stand behind me to my right and occasionally I will ask you questions about what is being presented to me."

Octavia placed Virga next to the entrance to the library as a small child ran up to Octavia and knelt in front of her holding up a red silk pillow with a golden tiara encrusted with yellow diamonds. A girl dressed similarly to Octavia stepped up and carefully placed the tiara on Octavia's head. "Nǐ hǎo, wǒ de péngyǒumen," said Octavia, hoping against hope that she said, "Hello my friends" and not something horrible. "Did I say it right?"

The young woman smiled and said, "Yes, your highness, it's very good... Xièxiè." {Thank you}

"Bié kèqì?" {Your welcome?}

"Yes! Very good," smiled the young female. She was slim and pretty with a girlish figure and foreign eyes {as Granny would say} and straight black hair even darker than Octavia's if that were possible.

"Gé?" {Hug?} Octavia asked, but the girl shook her head nervously. She couldn't dare take that chance with the empress.

"No, my empress, it's not right."

"Ok, but someday we will hug like sisters. I would be honored if you and Jia come to my house where Nick and I live. We will drink tea and Jia can play with the magic dog and you and I can be sisters, if it is fine with you."

The girl looked terrified, but the little boy had a pleading look on his face. He wanted to play with the magic talking dog. When Octavia said "you and I can be sisters" the girl calmed some, she's been used so many times for so many reasons... "Yes my empress... I think we would like that."

"Ok, after court, you come home with me for a visit, and don't forget the candle I gave you." Octavia had given the girl a messenger candle to call for help any time she is hurt or feels threatened.

"Yes, my empress." And the young girl and the little boy hustled away.

"Who was that?" asked Granny.

"That was Ning and her son, Jia. She's my valet and second translator."

"She can't be more than fourteen," said Granny.

"She's eighteen, and Jia is six. When you are starving, you look younger than you are, and this country is not safe for young women. Men here are desirous of youthful women. I have to get her out of here," said Octavia as she walked across the room leading Granny. There was a fancy bench seat at one end of the room with room for three. It was gold with red silk cushions, with the ends curled up. It looked like a couch with no back.

"Sit next to me," said Octavia, and although she worded it as a request, it was an order. Octavia's voice is becoming authoritarian but not nasty. It was something that Granny approved of in witches, but this girl isn't a witch, her husband is. Granny sat primly next to Octavia as Ning came back and stood behind Octavia. A skinny man walked up to Octavia and handed her a clipboard. He was wearing a silk robe like Octavia but he was wearing a strange hat that had a flat board on top and a screen that hung down from the edges of the flat board and hid his face.

"Lung Mist, what did we say about the hats?"

"But empress, tradition!"

"New tradition, no funny hats."

"What is this empress nonsense?" hissed Granny as Lung Mist took off his hat, revealing the sad face of a skinny old man.

"This is my side job," said Octavia with an apologetic smile. "The last emperor died and since it was our fault, we had to take over and run their empire until they determine who the real next emperor is going to be." Octavia turned to Lung Mist, who was still next to her. "I want a smile. No smile, no yell, that's the rule." Lung Mist looked like he was going to cry. Yelling was the only good part of this job. She just took that away? For a smile? Finally, Lung Mist began to chuckle at the silliness of her order, and she said, "See? You look so much better. Go ahead and yell."

This was the part of his job that he really liked. Lung Mist began to yell words that were incomprehensible to Granny but as he yelled in the sing-song language of his people, the curtain at the other end of the room began to open revealing a vast hall filled with hundreds of people. Many were sitting at low tables, but many people were lined up against the wall on either side of the immense hall. "What is all this?" gasped Granny.

"The people sitting down are people that want to kill my husband and me. They are the rich landowners and politicians who want things to remain unchanged, and they want us dead."

"Why?" gasped Granny.

"We kind of ended life as they know it. We demand that they account for every dime that they collect in taxes... just like we are doing in Wægn. We demand that they treat the people that work their lands kindly. These people like to cause famines to keep their people in line, because people don't have the energy to consider overthrowing their slave masters if they're starving. We are going to stop that, and that makes the guys sitting down very angry."

"What about the people standing up?" asked Granny as Lung Mist continued to howl in his native language. Occasionally the audience would react, and Ning would lean over and whisper in Octavia's ear what the audience was saying.

"They are the farmers and peasants. They're the pawns. Most are on our side, but they can't come out and say it because their landowner will kick them off their land."

Granny soon saw what Octavia had set up, Ning was translating what the people on the floor said and whispering into Octavia's ear their words in Morporkian. Lung Mist was translating what Octavia said to those on the floor, and Ning was translating what Lung Mist said for Octavia as well. For her first case Several families were devastated because the owner of the land had kicked them off the land for allowing a parcel of land to lie fallow, a necessary option to take, it allows the land to restore the soil's natural nutrient balance, otherwise the constant growing of crops would exhaust the land. When the landowner, who was not a farmer, saw that they did not plant it, he refused to listen to the farmer's reasoning and threw several families off the land for not obeying him.

"I will speak to the landowner," said Octavia to the families through Lung Mist, "I am sure that he will agree with me that your punishment for not communicating with him adequately for the need to allow the parcels of land to lie fallow will be an adequate punishment. As your punishment, I order you back on to that land and order you to properly farm the land as I see fit."

She then turned to the landowner and said to Lung Mist, "Tell Wūgòu to approach." When the angry landowner grew near the throne, he started to speak, and Lung Mist tried to translate but Wūgòu was speaking too fast. Octavia raised a hand and quietly said, "Shut up. Remember that the members of my army come from farmers, not landowners. They will follow my orders. Now thank me for my wisdom."

"I will never say..." Suddenly the landowner felt the point of a dagger at the small of his back and he shut up.

"I give you permission to thank me for my wisdom," said Octavia, her voice was as cold as ice and the chill survived Lung Mist's translation.

Wūgòu took a deep breath and prepared to spit on the empress, but thought better of the idea and swallowed his mouthful of saliva. "I cannot, Dragon Empress." Octavia nodded her head and Wūgòu was escorted away from the throne by two soldiers.

"Wūgòu has generously donated every acre of his land to the Emperor's land bank to help end the famine," announced Lung Mist with an actual smile. "Wednesday, the emperor will determine who will manage the land, but for now, the Empress will manage it. We will hear the next case."

There was a lot of whispering on the floor as landowners and farmers began to restate their cases with each other before speaking to Octavia, the landowners realized that they outnumbered the army and this little game that this hubland-ish woman was playing will come to an end soon.

That's when the screaming started...

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Bear Mountain, Creel Springs, Lancre

"I don't like this," muttered Nick as the mule clip-clopped along the road that Octavia built.

"Relax, you're going to love this," said Nick's pal Axemir. Except for Octavia, Axemir is Nick's only friend other than Trei Metzgar, the town blacksmith. Nick is twenty-four years old {he thinks, he has no documentation to back that up} and Trei is almost three times Nick's age and is more a dad or maybe a grandfather {Nick has neither} than a friend. Axemir is 83, but for a dwarf, that's equivalent to mid-20s. When Axemir was sent to the Assassin's Guild to put a contract out on Nick, he was considered "That early eighties kid" and when Nick wasn't inhumed, Axemir's bosses said it was because Axemir was too young to properly negotiate the contract with the Assassins guild.

After what seemed like hours of clopping along, Nick finally asked, "Where did you get the horse?"

"It's a mule, his name is Dave."

"Is this Erin's mule?"

"Relax!" said Axemir. "When that crazy lady shot you down, Erin practically gave Dave to Octavia."

"I thought you were living with that crazy lady." The crazy lady in question is Eryri, a dwarf like Axemir. She and Axemir are partners in the mining project going on under the hubwise side of Bear Mountain. When he realized that he wasn't going to get much more than a grin from Axemir for his remark about living with the crazy lady Axemir, Nick eventually groaned, "I should be in Hunghung instead of Octavia."

"No, in your mood today, you'll put half of them to death. Not that it wouldn't help any, but that's not how the princess wants things to run over there. Let her set the expectations before you go have a chat with them on Wednesday." Their schedule is on Monday, the Empress meets with petitioners, on Wednesday the Emperor meets with regional governors, and on Friday, the Emperor and Empress will appear together to speak to the nation.

"What about me?" said Nick. "Don't I get a say in how my empire is run?" In reality Octavia is running the Agatean empire, Nick has a deep love for the mountainous Kingdom of Lancre and the Duchy of Wægn, and he prefers to be the duke.

"Of course not, don't be silly, you're a guy." They came to an intersection in the road and Axemir pointed out the side road. "According to Eryri and Octavia, there's a nice hot spring down that way."

Nick recognized the fairy lamps that were hanging from a rock outcropping and said, "Yeah, lots of fairies here, big sweetwood grove and a really nice hot spring back there... we're not going to stop?"

"No, we're heading on. Do you recognize any of this here?" asked Axemir.

"No, when Octavia hiked up this mountain she and I went on to the top over that way to the right, we were climbing above this, she didn't even mention this road when we talked."

"You were being held in Agatea when she uncovered this road. The road to the hot springs is all new, but this here is ancient." Then Axemir thought for a moment and called out towards the woods, "We need four volunteers. Who wants to go for a ride?"

"I do," came a muffled voice from the back of the wagon.

About a dozen fairies fluttered to attention in front of the wagon and Axemir said, "We might not be coming back this way, we could go somewhere scary," and three more fairies joined the group. In the end, Axemir picked three blonds and a brunette and said, "we have a lantern on each corner of the wagon. When we're moving, can you folks hop in a lantern and glow for us?"

The brunette saluted Axemir and said, "Shi de!"

"Wait a minute, hey buddy, you can speak Agatean?" asked Axemir.

"Uh huh," said the brunette fairy nodding his head. "Fluently."

"My buddy here might need a translator; can you go with him when he needs one?"

"Can I take my girlfriend?"

"Who is your girlfriend?" asked a surprised Axemir. He didn't realize that fairies dated.

"Them," said the brunette, pointing to all the blonds.

Meanwhile, Nick was looking in the back of the wagon for the voice he heard earlier and he soon found his dog Gaspode curled up under a horse blanket, just his nose peeking out from under the blanket. "What are you doing back here, buddy?"

"Don't tell anyone, but I'm keeping an eye on you," the little dog said as Nick lifted him up onto the seat to sit between him and Axemir. "It's a secret."

"So, you can't tell me that Octavia asked you to spy on me?"

"Nope. Sorry buddy, mum's the word, I made a promise," said Gaspode as he settled in between Nick and Axemir and looked around. "We're not going to the hot spring?"

"No, dwarves don't like hot springs," said Nick.

"Probably because it's a huge waste of dwarf power," said Axemir. From a dwarves point of view a hot spring slows down productivity especially when the youngsters like Axemir and Eryri want to go soak in the hot water {as do the old timers but with their seniority it's a forgivable sin}.

Soon they came to a crossroads with a cruciform signpost carved out of ebony stone. "These are mine marks. They're symbols that the old timers left in mines. If we go straight, there is a smooth road ahead. It goes on to the hubward side of the mountain. If we turn left here, that symbol warns of danger, we're going down to the right, and that symbol indicates a tough road, but there is a friend on the road."

"Let's try it," sighed Nick. They've been on the road since before sunup and Nick has been so distracted with his inner turmoil since being stuck in an eagle's body that he can't concentrate on anything except his own inner confusion, and he is supposed to go sit on the emperor's throne. Maybe there is a friend he doesn't know about waiting to help him.

Axemir turned the wagon to the right at the intersection and he was right, the road was rough, it snaked left and right as it ascended an almost sheer cliff, it squeezed between boulders and more than once he had to back the wagon up to make a difficult turn. Eventually the road ended up at a big roundabout at the base of a basalt cliff face, thousands of black hexagonal basalt columns clustered together to make the cliff face in an almost dizzying array of Basalt majesty.

Nick stepped off the wagon and slowly approached the cliff face as if it drew him to it. Gaspode was going to hop down, but Axemir held him back and they watched their friend approach the wall of rock. Tens of thousands of hexagonal basalt columns faced Nick, and one column was gently glowing and called him to it.

"Back before time knew what to do with itself, it was said that the dwarven race knew magic, but that's not true," said Axemir softly to Gaspode. "Elves once ruled the discworld, and when they left the discworld, the dwarves moved into the buildings and mines the elves left abandoned."

"I thought elves lived in treehouses," said Gaspode.

"Those were the dropouts. They liked to build tree houses, chew on weeds, and play sad songs on stringed instruments that they thought would turn on skinny women."

Nick approached the basalt wall that stood 300 meters tall and he and the wall recognized each other. Axemir watched Nick with concern as he continued his tale, "The elves laughed and played in the mountains, and they bathed in the wild magic that covered the discworld. Here, on Bear Mountain lived the last elven community, the Mountain Ergonians, and here under this mountain they wrote their last book, the Vanemate Rasside Jõud."

Nick reached out to that one stone hexagonal column that glowed and he grabbed it and a familiar feeling overwhelmed him, a feeling that excited and enticed every wizard on the discworld, the feeling of raw magic flowing through him. While wizards live for this feeling, Nick is not a wizard, he is a witch, he just wants to nurse injured and sick people and animals back to health. The feeling that wizards loved actually scared him. A door slid open, and the feeling beckoned Nick, and he fought against it, stepping back from the opening in the cliff face until he realized that someone needed his help, it was Octavia that was wordlessly calling for his aid and he dashed into the opening.

"NICK!" howled Gaspode. "YOU DAMN IDIOT!" and he leaped off the wagon, raced across the roundabout, and dashed into the open door that Nick ran through. Axemir had to tie up the mule before he could follow his friends through the open door.

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Imperial Palace, Hunghung City, Agatea

Octavia was frozen with fear, the landowners realized that the security wasn't enough to protect her if they all decided to attack and they were slowly rising to their feet and the army was moving even slower to provide her with a clear shot to the library and make her escape. Octavia knew that she could wipe out every one of those people that faced her with the power within her, but that would ruin everything. The Agatean empire would collapse into chaos and thousands of innocent people would die. What would Nick do? He could solve this with his gentle ways.

Most important of all, if she used her magic, would it affect the baby she was carrying? She even worried about using "kitchen magic" to prepare means but that was a spell she cast on the cottage before she was pregnant. She refrained from using any magic at all until they understood the side effects better. Octavia tried to remain as calm as she could and she whispered to Granny, "Go with Ning, go I will distract them so you can leave."

"No," whispered the slim girl, "I will I stay with you mǔqīn. {mommy}"

"I'm here for you, my love," said a soft voice in Octavia's ear, a voice she was terrified that she would never hear again. "Stand tall and show the army you aren't afraid." And it appeared that Granny Weatherwax heard Nick's voice also because she stood as Octavia did and Lung Mist came to join them, standing tall in the face of a mob of angry men.

The moment that the three women and Lung Mist stood and Octavia put her arms around Granny and Ning, a sound filled the air, a sound only heard once before on the discworld, a sound that men on other worlds would say sounded like the cries of tens of thousands of teenage girls shrieking in excitement at the opening set of the current most popular boy band. The high pitched, a multi hue shriek that filled the library of Brazeneck College and terrified the wizards of the Sto plains a year ago now rattled the Agatean palace.

Then, with a bellow and a roar, Nick appeared in full Agatean dragon form. He was magnificent, thought Octavia. His golden body shone in the bright autumn sunlight that poured through the skylights, the light reflected and glinted off his golden scales and his solid gold saber teeth. The Agatean dragon is similar to the discworld Swamp Dragons the same way a sheep is similar to a wildfire. Both consume grass, but after that, the similarity ends. Swamp Dragons are tiny, coal eating lizards whose wings are mostly ornamental, but an Agatean dragon is huge and powerful and one flap of Nick's 24 karat wings would generate a wind gust that would blow the tables and landowners out of the huge football pitch sized palace throne room. The Agatean Golden Dragon was not a fire breathing lizard. He was a massive, winged, golden, fire breathing saber-tooth tiger, but Nick hasn't tried the fire part yet.