Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett Read Free Book Online

indestructible life forces in a skin that looked less like a fur than a piece of bread that had been left in a damp place for a fortnight. Strangers often took pity on him because his ears were nonexistent and his face looked as though a bear had camped on it. They could not know that this was because Greebo, as a matter of feline pride, would attempt to fight or rape absolutely anything, up to and including a four-horse logging wagon. Ferocious dogs would whine and hide under the stairs when Greebo sauntered down the street. Foxes kept away from the village. Wolves made a detour.
    “He’s an old softy really,” said Nanny.
    Greebo turned upon Granny Weatherwax a yellow-eyed stare of self-satisfied malevolence, such as cats always reserve for people who don’t like them, and purred. Greebo was possibly the only cat who could snigger in purr.
    “Anyway,” said Nanny, “witches are supposed to like cats.”
    “Not cats like him, they’re not.”
    “You’re just not a cat person, Esme,” said Nanny, cuddling Greebo tightly.
    Jason Ogg pulled Magrat aside.
    “Our Sean read to me in the almanac where there’s all these fearsome wild beasts in foreignparts,” he whispered. “Huge hairy things that leap out on travelers, it said. I’d hate to think what’d happen if they leapt out on mum and Granny.”
    Magrat looked up into his big red face.
    “You will see no harm comes to them, won’t you,” said Jason.
    “Don’t you worry,” she said, hoping that he needn’t. “I’ll do my best.”
    Jason nodded. “Only it said in the almanac that some of them were nearly extinct anyway,” he said.
     
    The sun was well up when the three witches spiraled into the sky. They had been delayed for a while because of the intractability of Granny Weatherwax’s broomstick, the starting of which always required a great deal of galloping up and down. It never seemed to get the message until it was being shoved through the air at a frantic running speed. Dwarf engineers everywhere had confessed themselves totally mystified by it. They had replaced the stick and the bristles dozens of times.
    When it rose, eventually, it was to a chorus of cheers.
    The tiny kingdom of Lancre occupied little more than a wide ledge cut into the side of the Ramtop mountains. Behind it, knife-edge peaks and dark winding valleys climbed into the massive backbone of the central ranges.
    In front, the land dropped abruptly to the Sto plains, a blue haze of woodlands, a broader expanse of ocean and, somewhere in the middle of it all, a brown smudge known as Ankh-Morpork.
    A skylark sang, or at least started to sing. The rising point of Granny Weatherwax’s hat right underneath it completely put it off the rhythm.
    “I ain’t going any higher,” she said.
    “If we go high enough we might be able to see where we’re going,” said Magrat.
    “You said you looked at Desiderata’s maps,” said Granny.
    “It looks different from up here, though,” said Magrat. “More…sticking up. But I think we go… that way.”
    “You sure?”
    Which was the wrong question to ask a witch. Especially if the person doing the asking was Granny Weatherwax.
    “Positive,” said Magrat.
    Nanny Ogg looked up at the high peaks.
    “There’s a lot of big mountains that way,” she said.
    They rose tier on tier, speckled with snow, trailing endless pennants of ice crystals high overhead. No one ski’d in the high Ramtops, at least for more than a few feet and a disappearing scream. No one ran up them wearing dirndls and singing. They were not nice mountains. They were the kind of mountains where winters went for their summer holidays.
    “There’s passes and things through them,” said Magrat uncertainly.
    “Bound to be,” said Nanny.
     
    You can use two mirrors like this, if you know the way of it: you set them so that they reflect each other. For if images can steal a bit of you, then images of images can amplify you, feeding you back on yourself, giving you