Witches Abroad Read Free

hobbled out of the back door.
    There was a deep trench dug under the trees a little way from the house, down into which someone had thoughtfully put a short ladder. She climbed in and, with some difficulty, heaved the ladder onto the leaves. Then she lay down. She sat up.
    “Mr. Chert the troll down at the sawmill does a very good deal on coffins, if you don’t mind pine.”
    I SHALL DEFINITELY BEAR IT IN MIND .
    “I got Hurker the poacher to dig the hole out for me,” she said, conversationally, “and he’s goin’ to come along and fill it in on his way home. I believe in being neat. Take it away, maestro.”
    W HAT ? O H . A FIGURE OF SPEECH .
    He raised his scythe.
    Desiderata Hollow went to her rest.
    “Well,” she said, “that was easy. What happens now?”
     
    And this is Genua. The magical kingdom. The diamond city. The fortunate country.
    In the center of the city a woman stood between two mirrors, watching herself reflected all the way to infinity.
    The mirrors were themselves in the center of an octagon of mirrors, open to the sky on the highest tower of the palace. There were so many reflections, in fact, that it was only with extreme difficulty that you could tell where the mirrors ended and the real person began.
    Her name was Lady Lilith de Tempscire, although she had answered to many others in the course of a long and eventful life. And that was something you learned to do early on, she’d found. If you wanted to get anywhere in this world—and she’d decided, right at the start, that she wanted to get as far as it was possible to go—you wore names lightly, and you took power anywhere you found it. She had buried three husbands, and at least two of them had been already dead.
    And you moved around a lot. Because most people didn’t move around much. Change countries and your name and, if you had the right manner, the world was your mollusc. For example, she’d had to go a mere hundred miles to become a Lady.
    She’d go to any lengths now…
    The two main mirrors were set almost, but not quite, facing one another, so that Lilith could see over her shoulder and watch her images curve away around the universe inside the mirror.
    She could feel herself pouring into herself , multiplying itself via the endless reflections.
    When Lilith sighed and strode out from the space between the mirrors the effect was startling. Images of Lilith hung in the air behind her for a moment, like three-dimensional shadows, before fading.
    So…Desiderata was dying. Interfering old baggage. She deserved death. She’d never understood the kind of power she’d had. She was one of those people afraid to do good for fear of doing harm, who took it all so seriously that they’d constipate themselves with moral anguish before granting the wish of a single ant.
    Lilith looked down and out over the city. Well, there were no barriers now. The stupid voodoo woman in the swamp was a mere distraction, with no understanding.
    Nothing stood in the way of what Lilith liked more than anything else.
    A happy ending.
     
    Up on the mountain, the sabbat had settled down a bit.
    Artists and writers have always had a rather exaggerated idea about what goes on at a witches’ sabbat. This comes from spending too much time in small rooms with the curtains drawn, instead of getting out in the healthy fresh air.
    For example, there’s the dancing around naked. In the average temperate climate there are very few nights when anyone would dance around at midnight with no clothes on, quite apart from the question of stones, thistles, and sudden hedgehogs.
    Then there’s all that business with goat-headed gods. Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.
    And there’s the food and drink—the bits of reptile and so on. In fact, witches don’t go for that sort of