Wyrd Sisters

Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least not with other witches, and they certainly don't have leaders. Granny Weatherwax was the most highly regarded of the leaders they didn't have.

"Hoofbeats?" said Nanny Ogg. "No-one would come up here this time of night."
Magrat peered around timidly. Here and there on the moor were huge standing stones, their origins lost in time, which were said to lead mobile and private lives of their own. She shivered.
"What's to be afraid of?" she managed.
"Us," said Granny Weatherwax, smugly.
The witches meet

"Oh, obvious," said Granny. "I'll grant you it's obvious. Trouble is, just because things are obvious doesn't mean they're true."
Granny Weatherwax

"Where I come from, we don't allow witches," said the duchess sternly. "And we don't propose to allow them here…Put matters in hand."
"Yes, my love."
Matters in hand. He'd put matters in hand all right. If he closed his eyes he could see the body tumbling down the steps. Had there been a hiss of shocked breath, down in the darkness of the hall? He'd been certain they were alone. Matters in hand! He'd tried to wash the blood off his hand. If he could wash the blood off, he told himself, it wouldn't have happened. He'd scrubbed and scrubbed. Scrubbed till he screamed.
Duke Felmet and his wife

Nanny Ogg didn't care much about what people knew and even less for what they thought, and lived in a new, knick-knack crammed cottage in the middle of Lancre town itself and at the heart of her own private empire. Various daughters and daughters-in-law came in to cook and clean on a sort of rota. Every flat surface was stuffed with ornaments brought back by far-travelling members of the family. Sons and grandsons kept the log-pile stacked, the roof shingled, the chimney swept; the drinks cupboard was always full, the pouch by her rocking chair always stuffed with tobacco. Above the hearth was a huge pokerwork sign saying "Mother." No tyrant in the whole history of the world had ever achieved a domination so complete.
Nanny Ogg's house

And now Granny was left alone. She felt embarrassed, as one always does when left alone in someone else's room, and fought the urge to get up and inspect the books on the shelf over the sideboard or examine the mantelpiece for dust. She turned the crown round and round in her hands. Again, it gave the impression of being bigger and heavier than it actually was.
She caught sight of the mirror over the mantelpiece and looked down at the crown. It was tempting. It was practically begging her to try it for size. Well, and why not? She made sure that the others weren't around and then, in one movement, whipped off her hat and placed the crown on her head.
It seemed to fit. Granny drew herself up proudly, and waved a hand imperiously in the general direction of the hearth.
"Jolly well do this," she said. She beckoned arrogantly at the grandfather clock. "Chop his head off, what ho," she commanded. She smiled grimly.
And froze as she heard the screams, and the thunder of horses, and the deadly whisper of arrows and the damp, solid sound of spears in flesh. Charge after charge echoed across her skull. Sword met shield, or sword, or bone-- relentlessly. Years streamed across her mind in the space of a second. There were times when she lay among the dead, or hanging from the branch of a tree; but always there were hands that would pick her up again, and place her on a velvet cushion . . .
Granny very carefully lifted the crown off her head--it was an effort, it didn't like it much--and laid it on the table.
"So that's being a king for you, is it?" she said softly. "I wonder why they all want the job?"
Granny tries on the crown of Lancre

The complexities of the marital relationship were known to Granny only from a distance, in the same way that an astronomer can view the surface of a remote and alien world, but it had already occurred to her that a wife to Vitoller would have to be a very special woman with bottomless reserves of patience and organizational ability and nimble fingers.
"Mrs Vitoller," she said eventually, "may I make so bold as to ask if your union has been blessed with fruit?"
The couple looked blank.
"She means--" Nanny Ogg began.
"No, I see," said Mrs Vitoller, quietly. "No. We had a little girl once."
A small cloud hung over the table. For a second or two Vitoller looked merely human-sized, and much older. He stared at the small pile of cash in front of him.
"Only, you see, there is this child," said Granny, indicating the baby in Nanny Ogg's arms. "And he needs a home."
The Vitollers stared. Then the man sighed.
"It is no life for a child," he said. "Always moving. Always a new town. And no room for schooling. They say that's very important these days." But his eyes didn't look away.
Mrs Vitoller said, "Why does he need a home?"
"He hasn't got one," said Granny. "At least, not one where he would be welcome."
The silence continued. Then Mrs Vitoller said, "And you, who ask this, you are by way of being his--?"
"Godmothers," said Nanny Ogg promptly. Granny was slightly taken aback. It never would have occurred to her.
Vitoller played abstractly with the coins in front of him. His wife reached out across the table and touched his hand, and there was a moment of unspoken communion. Granny looked away. She had grown expert at reading faces, but there were times when she preferred not to.
"Money is, alas, tight--" Vitoller began.
"But it will stretch," said his wife firmly.
"Yes. I think it will. We should be happy to take care of him."
Granny nodded, and fished in the deepest recesses of her cloak. At last she produced a small leather bag, which she tipped out on to the table. There was a lot of silver, and even a few tiny gold coins.
"This should take care of--" she groped-- "nappies and suchlike. Clothes and things. Whatever."
"A hundred times over, I should think," said Vitoller weakly. "Why didn't you mention this before?"
"If I'd had to buy you, you wouldn't be worth the price."
Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax find a home for the baby

The door swung open. The duchess filled the doorway. In fact, she was nearly the same shape.
"Leonal!" she barked.
The Fool was fascinated by what happened to the duke's eyes. The mad red flame vanished, was sucked backwards, and was replaced by the hard blue stare he had come to recognize. It didn't mean, he realized, that the duke was any less mad. Even the coldness of his sanity was madness in a way. The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.
The fool, the Duke, and the duchess

No fire had been lit under the copper for ten years. Its bricks were crumbling, and rare ferns grew around the firebox. The water under the lid was inky black and, according to rumor, bottomless; the Ogg grandchildren were encouraged to believe that monsters from the dawn of time dwelt in its depths, since Nanny believed that a bit of thrilling and pointless terror was an essential ingredient of the magic of childhood.
Nanny Ogg's washhouse

"Look," said Granny. "What can I do about it? It's no good you coming to me. He's the new lord. This is his kingdom. I can't go meddling. It's not right to go meddling, on account of I can't interfere with people ruling. It has to sort itself out, good or bad. Fundamental rule of magic, is that. You can't go round ruling people with spells, because you'd have to use more and more spells all the time." She sat back, grateful that long-standing tradition didn't allow the Crafty and the Wise to rule. She remembered what it had felt like to wear the crown, even for a few seconds.
Lancre implores Granny to meddle

As the grumbling actors awoke from the spell and wandered back to the shafts of the lattys Vitoller beckoned to the dwarf and put his arm around his shoulders, or rather around the top of his head.
"Well?" he said. "You people know all about magic, or so it is said. What do you make of it?"
"He spends all his time around the stage, master. It's only natural that he should pick things up," said Hwel vaguely.
Vitoller leaned down.
"Do you believe that?"
"I believe I heard a voice that took my doggerel and shaped it and fired it back through my ears and straight into my heart," said Hwel simply. "I believe I heard a voice that got behind the crude shape of the words and said the things I had meant them to say, but had not the skill to achieve. Who knows where such things come from?"
Tomjon speaks his first words

"Young man," said Nanny, "you will oblige me by shutting up."
"Madam! I am a king!"
"You are also dead, so I wouldn't aspire to hold any opinions if I was you. Now just be quiet and wait, like a good boy."
Against all his instincts, the king found himself obeying. There was no gainsaying that tone of voice. It spoke to him across the years, from his days in the nursery. Its echoes told him that if he didn't eat it all up he would be sent straight to bed.
Nanny and the ghost of King Verence

"You're not a witch, are you?" he said, fumbling awkwardly with his pike.
"Of course not. Do I look like one?"
The guard looked at her occult bangles, her lined cloak, her trembling hands and her face. The face was particularly worrying. Magrat had used a lot of powder to make her face pale and interesting. It combined with the lavishly applied mascara to give the guard the impression that he was looking at two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl. He found his fingers wanted to make a sign to ward off the evil eyeshadow.
"Right," he said uncertainly. His mind was grinding through the problem. She was a witch. Just lately there'd been a lot of gossip about witches being bad for your health. He'd been told not to let witches pass, but no-one had said anything about apple sellers. Apple sellers were not a problem. It was witches that were the problem. She'd said she was an apple seller and he wasn't about to doubt a witch's word.
A guard at Lancre castle

Granny stared at him. She hadn't faced anything like this before. The man was clearly mad, but at the heart of his madness was a dreadful cold sanity, a core of pure interstellar ice in the centre of the furnace. She'd thought him weak under a thin shell of strength, but it went a lot further than that. Somewhere deep inside his mind, somewhere beyond the event horizon of rationality, the sheer pressure of insanity had hammered his madness into something harder than diamond.
'If you defeat me by magic, magic will rule," said the duke. "And you can't do it. And any king raised with your help would be under your power. Hag-ridden, I might say. That which magic rules, magic destroys. It would destroy you, too. You know it. Ha. Ha."
Granny's knuckles whitened as he moved closer.
"You could strike me down," he said. "And perhaps you could find someone to replace me. But he would have to be a fool indeed, because he would know he was under your evil eye, and if he mispleased you, why, his life would be instantly forfeit. You could protest all you wished, but he'd know he ruled with your permission. And that would make him no king at all. Is this not true?"
Granny looked away. The other witches hung back, ready to duck.
"I said, is this not true?"
"Yes," said Granny. "It is true . . ."
The witches face Duke Felmet

"Whatever happened to the rule about not meddling in politics?" said Magrat, watching her retreating back.
…
"Ah," said Nanny. She took the girl's arm. "The thing is," she explained, "as you progress in the Craft, you'll learn there is another rule. Esme's obeyed it all her life."
"And what's that?"
"When you break rules, break 'em good and hard," said Nanny, and grinned a set of gums that were more menacing than teeth.
Nanny and Magrat

"She [Black Aliss] never sent the castle to sleep," said Granny. "That's just an old wives' tale," she added, glaring at Nanny. "She just stirred up time a little. It's not as hard as people think. Everyone does it all the time. It's like rubber, is time. You can stretch it to suit yourself."
Magrat was about to say, that's not right, time is time, every second lasts a second, that's what it's for, that's its job . . .
And then she recalled weeks that had flown past and afternoons that had lasted forever. Some minutes had lasted hours, some hours had gone past so quickly she hadn't been aware they'd gone past at all . . .
"But that's just people's perception," she said. "Isn't it?"
"Oh, yes," said Granny, "of course it is. It all is. What difference does that make?"
Granny and Magrat

Magrat whirled away in the buffeting wind, clinging tightly to a broomstick which now, she feared, had about as much buoyancy as a bit of firewood. It certainly wasn't capable of sustaining a full-grown woman against the beckoning fingers of gravity.
As she plunged down towards the forest roof in a long shallow dive she reflected that there was possibly something complimentary in the way Granny Weatherwax resolutely refused to consider other people's problems. It implied that, in her considerable opinion, they were quite capable of sorting them out by themselves.
Magrat Garlick

Magrat thought: Nanny said look at him properly. I'm looking at him. He just looks the same. A sad thin little man in a ridiculous jester's outfit, he's practically a hunchback.
Then, in the same way that a few random bulges in a cloud can suddenly become a galleon or a whale in the eye of the beholder, Magrat realised that the Fool was not a little man. He was at least of average height, but he made himself small, by hunching his shoulders, bandying his legs and walking in a half-crouch that made him appear as though he was capering on the spot.
I wonder what else Gytha Ogg noticed? she thought, intrigued.
Magrat and Verence, the fool

She [Granny] looked down at a landscape of sudden death and jagged beauty, and knew it was looking back at her, as a dozing man may watch a mosquito. She wondered if it realised what she was doing. She wondered if it'd make her fall any softer, and mentally scolded herself for such softness. No, the land wasn't like that. It didn't bargain. The land gave hard, and took hard. A dog always bit deepest on the veterinary hand.
Granny flies over Lancre

Hwel snored.
In his dreams gods rose and fell, ships moved with cunning and art across canvas oceans, pictures jumped and ran together and became flickering images; men flew on wires, flew without wires, great ships of illusion fought against one another in imaginary skies, seas opened, ladies were sawn in half, a thousand special effects men giggled and gibbered. Through it all he ran with his arms open in desperation, knowing that none of this really existed or ever would exist and all he really had was a few square yards of planking, some canvas and some paint on which to trap the beckoning images that invaded his head.
Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.
Hwel the dwarf dreams

"Whatever happened to not meddling?" she [Magrat] said.
…
"Well, see, all this not meddling business is fine in the normal course of things," she said. "Not meddling is easy when you don't have to. And then I've got the family to think about. Our Jason's been in a couple of fights because of what people have been saying. Our Shawn was thrown out of the army. The way I see it, when we get the new king in, he should owe us a few favours. It's only fair."
"But only last week you were saying--" Magrat stopped, shocked at this display of pragmatism.
"A week is a long time in magic," said Nanny. "Fifteen years, for one thing. Anyway, Esme is determined and I'm in no mood to stop her."
"So what you're saying," said Magrat, icily, "is that this 'not meddling' thing is like taking a vow not to swim. You'll absolutely never break it unless of course you happen to find yourself in the water?"
"Better than drowning," Nanny said.
Nanny Ogg and Magrat

Granny subsided into unaccustomed, troubled silence, and tried to listen to the prologue. The theatre worried her. It had a magic of its own, one that didn't belong to her, one that wasn't in her control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn't belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn't know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better.
Granny Weatherwax

Granny turned slowly in her seat to look at the audience. They were staring at the performance, their faces rapt. The words washed over them in the breathless air. This was real. This was more real even than reality. This was history. It might not be true, but that had nothing to do with it.
Granny had never had much time for words. They were so insubstantial. Now she wished that she had found the time. Words were indeed insubstantial. They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.
That's us down there, she thought. Everyone knows who we really are, but the things down there are what they'll remember--three gibbering old baggages in pointy hats. All we've ever done, all we've ever been, won't exist any more.
…
Whoever wrote this Theatre knew about the uses of magic. Even I believe what's happening, and I know there's no truth in it.
Granny Weatherwax

Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world's great creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.
Granny Weatherwax

There was something here, he [Death] thought, that nearly belonged to the gods. Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflects the landscape. And yet . . . and yet . . .
Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things, you might think they would want to escape from--hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in.
Death visits the theatre

"You don't frighten me, wyrd sisters," said the duchess.
Granny stared her in the eye for a few seconds. She gave a grunt of surprise.
"You're right," she said. "We really don't, do we . . ."
"Do you think I haven't studied you? Your witchcraft is all artifice and illusion, to amaze weak minds. It holds no fears for me. Do your worst."
Granny studied her for a while.
"My worst?" she said, eventually. Magrat and Nanny Ogg shuffled gently out of her way.
The duchess laughed.
"You're clever," she said. "I'll grant you that much. And quick. Come on, hag. Bring on your toads and demons, I'll . . ."
She stopped, her mouth opening and shutting a bit without any words emerging. Her lips drew back in a rictus of terror, her eyes looked beyond Granny, beyond the world, towards something else. One knuckled hand flew to her mouth and she made a little whimpering noise. She froze, like a rabbit that has just seen a stoat and knows, without any doubt, that it is the last stoat that it will ever see.
"What have you done to her?" said Magrat, the first to dare to speak. Granny smirked.
"Headology," said Granny, and smirked. "You don't need any Black Aliss magic for it."
"Yes, but what have you done?"
"No-one becomes like she is without building walls inside their head," she said. "I've just knocked them down. Every scream. Every plea. Every pang of guilt. Every twinge of conscience. All at once. There's a little trick to it."
She gave Magrat a condescending smile. "I'll show you one day, if you like."
Magrat thought about it. "It's horrible," she said.
"Nonsense," Granny smiled terribly. "Everyone wants to know their true self. Now, she does."
Granny, Magrat, and the Duchess

"You gawping idiots!" she said. "You're so weak. You really think that people are basically decent underneath, don't you?"
The crowd on the stage backed away from the sheer force of her exultation.
"Well, I've looked underneath," said the duchess. "I know what drives people. It's fear. Sheer, deep-down fear. There's not one of you who doesn't fear me. I can make you widdle your drawers out of terror, and now I'm going to take--"
At this point Nanny Ogg hit her on the back of the head with the cauldron.
"She does go on, doesn't she?" she said conversationally, as the duchess collapsed. "She was a bit eccentric, if you ask me."
The Duchess and Nanny Ogg

"We're bound to be truthful," she said. "But there's no call to be honest."
Granny Weatherwax

Guards, Guards

The finger was a mistake. The Patrician was staring coldly at the finger. Van Pew followed his gaze, and quickly lowered the digit. The Patrician was not a man you shook a finger at unless you wanted to end up only being able to count to nine.
Van Pew meets with the Patrician

The thief shuffled out. It was always like this with the Patrician, he reflected bitterly. You came to him with a perfectly reasonable complaint. Next thing you knew, you were shuffling out backwards, bowing and scraping, simply relieved to be getting away. You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn't, he sent men to come and take it away.
Van Pew, Head of the Thieves' Guild

The Patrician disliked the word 'dictator.' It affronted him. He never told anyone what to do. He didn't have to, that was the wonderful part. A large part of his life consisted of arranging matters so that this state of affairs continued.
Of course, there were various groups seeking his overthrow, and this was right and proper and the sign of a vigorous and healthy society. No-one could call him unreasonable about the matter. Why, hadn't he founded most of them himself? And what was so beautiful was the way they spent nearly all their time bickering with one another.
Human nature, the Patrician always said, was a marvelous thing. Once you understood where its levers were.
Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork

It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable.
The Supreme Grand Master reflects

Its [the dragon's] eyes were the size of very large eyes, coloured a smouldering red and filled with an intelligence that had nothing to do with human beings. It was far older, for one thing. It was an intelligence that had already been long basted in guile and marinated in cunning by the time a group of almost-monkeys were wondering whether standing on two legs was a good career move. It wasn't an intelligence that had any truck with, or even understood, the arts of diplomacy.
It wouldn't play with you, or ask you riddles. But it understood all about arrogance and power and cruelty and if it could possibly manage it, it would burn your head off. Because it liked to.
Vimes sees the dragon

People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.
The Unseen University Library

He [Wonse] paused, and looked at them. The head assassin said later that he had looked into the eyes of many men who, obviously, were very near death, but he had never looked into eyes that were so clearly and unmistakably looking back at him from the slopes of Hell. He hoped he would never, he said, ever have to look into eyes like that again.
"I am referring," said Wonse, each word coming slowly to the surface like bubbles in some quicksand, "to the matter of … the king's … diet."
There was a terrible silence. They heard the faint rustle of wings behind them and the shadows in the corners of the hall grew darker and seemed to close in.
"Diet," said the head thief, in a hollow voice.
"Yes," said Wonse. His voice was almost a squeak. Sweat was dripping down his face. The head assassin had once head the word "rictus" and wondered when you should use it correctly to describe someone's expression, and now he knew. That was what Wonse's face had become; it was the ghastly rictus of someone trying not to hear the words his own mouth was saying.
…
"The precise nature of the meal--" the head thief began, almost choking on the words. "Are we talking about young maidens here?"
"Sheer prejudice," said Wonse. "The age is immaterial. Marital status is, of course, of importance. And social class. Something to do with the flavour, I believe." He leaned forward, and now his voice was pain-filled and urgent and, they felt, genuinely his own for the first time. "Please consider it," he hissed. "After all, just one a month! In exchange for so much! …"
…
The silence purred at them as Wonse talked. They avoided one another's faces, for fear of what they might see mirrored there. Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I'll murmur agreement, not actually say anything, I'm not as stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard…
But no-one said anything. The cowards, each man thought.
The city leaders meet.

What kept going through his [the head assassin's] mind were Wonse's last words, as he shook the secretary's limp hand. He wondered if anyone else had heard them. Unlikely … they'd been a shape rather than a sound. Wonse had simply moved his lips around them while staring fixedly at the assassin's moon-tanned face.
Help. Me.
The assassin shivered. Why him? As far as he could see there was only one kind of help he was qualified to give … He wondered what was happening to Wonse that made any alternative seem better…
The guild leaders leave the meeting

Wonse flung up his finger-spread hands in a concil-iatory fashion. "Of course, of course," he said. "But there are ways and ways, you know. Ways and ways. All the roaring and flaming, you see, you don't need it . . ."
Foolish ape! How else can I make them do my bidding ?
Wonse put his hands behind his back.
"They'll do it of their own free will," he said. "And in time, they'll come to believe it was their own idea. It'll be a tradition. Take it from me. We humans are adaptable creatures."
The dragon gave him a long, blank stare.
"In fact," said Wonse, trying to keep the trembling out of his voice, "before too long, if someone comes along and tells them that a dragon king is a bad idea, they'll kill him themselves."
The dragon blinked.
For the first time Wonse could remember, it seemed uncertain.
"I know people, you see," said Wonse, simply.
The dragon continued to pin him with its gaze.
If you are lying ... it thought, eventually.
"You know I can't. Not to you."
And they really act like this?
"Oh, yes. All the time. It's a basic human trait."
Wonse knew the dragon could read at least the upper levels of his mind. They resonated in terrible har-mony. And he could see the mighty thoughts behind the eyes in front of him.
The dragon was horrified.
"I'm sorry," said Wonse weakly. "That's just how we are. It's all to do with survival, I think."
There will be no mighty warriors sent to kill me? it thought, almost plaintively.
"I don't think so."
No heroes?
"Not any more. They cost too much."
But I will be eating people!
Wonse whimpered.
He felt the sensation of the dragon rummaging around in his mind, trying to find a clue to understanding. He half-saw, half-sensed the flicker of random images, of dragons, of the mythical age of reptiles and--and here he felt the dragon's genuine astonishment--of some of the less commendable areas of human history, which were most of it. And after the astonishment came the baffled anger. There was practically nothing the dragon could do to people that they had not, sooner or later, tried on one another, often with enthusiasm.
You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless, and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape - the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes - we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.
Wonse and the Dragon

"Please yourself," said the little man primly. "But I reckon one person a month is pretty good compared to some rulers we've had. Anyone remember Nersh the Lunatic? Or Giggling Lord Smince and his Laugh-A-Minute Dungeon?"
There was a certain amount of mumbling of the "he's got a point" variety.
"But they got overthrown!" said Colon.
"No they didn't. They were assassinated."
"Same thing," said Colon. "I mean, no-one's going to assassinate the dragon. It'd take more than a dark night and a sharp knife to see it off, I know that.''
I can see what the captain means, he thought. No wonder he always has a drink after he thinks about things. We always beat ourselves before we even start. Give any Ankh-Morpork man a big stick and he'll end up clubbing himself to death.
The citizens discuss the dragon/king's diet

"I warn you, dragon, the human spirit is--"
They never found out what it was, or at least what he thought it was, although possibly in the dark hours of a sleepless night some of them might have remembered the subsequent events and formed a pretty good and gut-churning insight, to whit, that one of the things sometimes forgotten about the human spirit is that while it is, in the right conditions, noble and brave and wonderful, it is also, when you get right down to it, only human.
The dragon/king hears a citizen dissenting

"…And you can't give me my job back."
"I can!" said Wonse. "I can, and you needn't just be captain--"
"You can't give me my job back," repeated Vimes. "It was never yours to take away. I was never an officer of the city, or an officer of the king, or an officer of the Patrician. I was an officer of the law. It might have been corrupted and bent, but it was law, of a sort. There isn't any law now except: 'you'll get burned alive if you don't watch out'. Where's the place in there for me?"
Vimes and Wonse

"If you'd thought, " added the captain sarcastically, "you'd have thought that the king is hardly going to want other dragons dead, is he? They're probably distant relatives or something. I mean, it wouldn't want us to go around killing its own kind, would it?''
"Well, sir, people do, sir," said the guard sulkily.
"Ah, well," said the captain. "That's different." He tapped the side of his helmet meaningfully. "That's 'cos we're intelligent."
The palace guards

He [Vimes] remembered hearing once about a man who, locked up in a cell for years, trained little birds and created a sort of freedom. And he thought of ancient sailors, shorn of the sea by old age and infirmity, who spent their days making big ships in little bottles.
Then he thought of the Patrician, robbed of his city, sitting cross-legged on the grey floor in the dim dungeon and recreating it around him, encouraging in miniature all the little rivalries, power struggles and factions. He thought of him as a sombre, brooding statue amid paving stones alive with slinking shadows and sudden, political death. It had probably been easier than ruling Ankh, which had larger vermin who didn't have to use both hands to carry a knife.
Vimes meets the Patrician in the dungeon

"Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself," said the Patrician, laying out the food on the cloth. "The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that."
"We all thought you had built secret tunnels and suchlike," said Vimes.
"Can't imagine why," said the Patrician. "One would have to keep on running. So inefficient. Whereas here I am at the hub of things. I hope you understand that, Vimes. Never trust any ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are that his heart isn't in the job."
Vimes and the Patrician

"They're [palace guards] bound to come in and check, though?" said Vimes hopefully.
"Oh, I don't think we should tolerate that," said the Patrician.
"How are you going to prevent them?''
Lord Vetinari gave him a pained look.
"My dear Vimes," he said, "I thought you were an observant man. Did you look at the door?"
"Of course I did," said Vimes, and added, "sir. It's bloody massive.''
"Perhaps you should have another look?''
Vimes gaped at him, and then stamped across the floor and glared at the door. It was one of the popular dread portal variety, all bars and bolts and iron spikes and massive hinges. No matter how long he looked at it, it didn't become any less massive. The lock was one of those dwarfish-made buggers that it'd take years to pick. All in all, if you had to have a symbol for something totally immovable, that door was your man. The Patrician appeared alongside him in heart-stopping silence.
"You see," he said, "it's always the case, is it not, that should a city be overtaken by violent civil unrest the current ruler is thrown into the dungeons? To a certain type of mind that is so much more satisfying than mere execution."
"Well, okay, but I don't see--" Vimes began.
"And you look at this door and what you see is a really strong cell door, yes?"
"Of course. You've only got to look at the bolts and--"
"You know, I'm really rather pleased," said Lord Vetinari quietly.
Vimes stared at the door until his eyebrows ached. And then, just as random patterns in cloud suddenly, without changing in any way, become a horse's head or a sailing ship, he saw what he'd been looking at all along.
A sense of terrifying admiration overcame him. He wondered what it was like in the Patrician's mind. All cold and shiny, he thought, all blued steel and icicles and little wheels clicking along like a huge clock. The kind of mind that would carefully consider its own downfall and turn it to advantage.
It was a perfectly normal dungeon door, but it all depended on your sense of perspective.
In this dungeon the Patrician could hold off the world.
All that was on the outside was the lock.
All the bolts and bars were on the inside.

It's [the dragon] been arrested, he thought, as he pushed his way forward. Personally I would have preferred it to drop in the sea, but it's been arrested and now we've got to deal with it or let it go free.
He felt his own feelings about the bloody thing evaporate in the face of the mob. What could you do with it? Give it a fair trial, he thought, and then exe-cute it. Not kill it. That's what heroes do out in the wilderness. You can't think like that in cities. Or rather, you can, but if you're going to then you might as well burn the whole place down right now and start again. You ought to do it ... well, by the book.
That's it. We tried everything else. Now we might as well try and do it by the book.
Anyway, he added mentally, that's a city guard up there. We've got to stick together. Nobody else will have anything to do with us.
Vimes, when Carrot arrests the dragon

A metallic noise behind him made him look around. The Patrician was holding the remains of the royal sword. As the captain watched, the man wrenched the other half of the sword out of the far wall. It was a clean break.
"Captain Vimes," he said.
"Sir?"
"That sword, if you please?"
Vimes handed it over. He couldn't, right now, think of anything else to do. He was probably due for a scorpion pit of his very own as it was.
Lord Vetinari examined the rusty blade carefully.
"How long have you had this, Captain?" he said mildly.
"Isn't mine, sir. Belongs to Lance-constable Carrot, sir."
"Lance--?"
"Me, sir, your graciousness," said Carrot, saluting.
"Ah."
The Patrician turned the blade over and over slowly, staring at it as if fascinated. Vimes felt the air thicken, as though history was clustering around this point, but for the life of him he couldn't think why. This was one of those points where the Trousers of Time bifurcated themselves, and if you weren't careful you'd go down the wrong leg--
The Patrician meets Lance-constable Carrot

"Let me give you some advice, Captain," he [the Patrician] said.
"Yes, sir?"
"It may help you make some sense of the world."
"Sir."
"I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people," said the man. "You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides"
He waved his thin hand towards the city and walked over to the window.
...
"Down there," he said, "are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no. …"
Vimes and the Patrician

A couple of women were moving purposefully among the boxes. Ladies, rather. They were far too untidy to be mere women. No ordinary women would have dreamed of looking so scruffy; you needed the complete self-confidence that comes with knowing who your great-great-great-great-grandfather was before you could wear clothes like that. But they were, Vimes noticed, incredibly good clothes, or had been once; clothes bought by one's parents, but so expensive and of such good quality that they never wore out and were handed down, like old china and silverware and gout.
…
Vimes squinted at the card as the women crunched off down the drive, carrying nets and ropes.
It said: Brenda, Lady Rodley. The Dower House, Quirm Castle, Quirm. What it meant, he realized, was that strid-ing away down the path like an animated rummage stall was the dowager Duchess of Quirm, who owned more country than you could see from a very high mountain on a very clear day. Nobby would not have approved. There seemed to be a special land of poverty that only the very, very rich could possibly afford . . .
That was how you got to be a power in the land, he thought. You never cared a toss about whatever anyone else thought and you were never, ever, uncertain about anything.
Vimes at Lady Ramkin's house

"And he [Sergeant Colon ] said something else," she said. "What was it, now? Oh, yes: 'It's a million to one chance'," said Lady Ramkin, "I think he said, 'but it might just work'.''
She smiled at him.
And then it arose and struck Vimes that, in her own special category, she was quite beautiful; this was the category of all the women, in his entire life, who had ever thought he was worth smiling at. She couldn't do worse, but then, he couldn't do better. So maybe it balanced out. She wasn't getting any younger but then, who was? And she had style and money and common-sense and self-assurance and all the things that he didn't, and she had opened her heart, and if you let her she could engulf you; the woman was a city.
And eventually, under siege, you did what Ankh-Morpork had always done--unbar the gates, let the conquerors in, and make them your own.
How did you start? She seemed to be expecting something.
He shrugged, and picked up his wine glass and sought for a phrase. One crept into his wildly resonating mind.
"Here's looking at you, kid," he said.
Vimes and Lady Ramkin

"No, but I mean, there's nothing special about having an ancient sword," said Carrot. "Or a birthmark. I mean, look at me. I've got a birthmark on my arm."
"My brother's got one, too," said Colon. "Shaped like a boat."
"Mine's more like a crown thing," said Carrot.
"Oho, that makes you a king, then," grinned Nobby. "Stands to reason."
"I don't see why. My brother's not an admiral," said Colon reasonably.
"And I've got this sword," said Carrot.
He drew it. Colon took it from his hand, and turned it over and over in the light from the flare over the Drum's door. The blade was dull and short, and notched like a saw. It was well-made and there might have been an inscription on it once, but it had long ago been worn into indecipherability by sheer use.
"It's a nice sword," he said thoughtfully. "Well-balanced."
"But not one for a king," said Carrot. "Kings' swords are big and shiny and magical and have jewels on and when you hold them up they catch the light, ting."
"Ting," said Colon. "Yes. I suppose they have to, really."
"I'm just saying you can't go round giving people thrones just because of stuff like that," said Carrot. "That's what Captain Vimes said."
"Nice job, mind," said Nobby. "Good hours, king-ing."
"Hmm?" Colon had momentarily been lost in a little world of speculation. Real kings had shiny swords, obviously. Except, except, except maybe your real real king of, like, days of yore, he would have a sword that didn't sparkle one bit but was bloody efficient at cutting things. Just a thought.
"I say kinging's a good job," Nobby repeated. "Short hours."
"Yeah. Yeah. But not long days," said Colon. He gave Carrot a thoughtful look.
"Ah. There's that, of course."
"Anyway, my father says being king's too much like hard work," said Carrot. "All the surveying and assaying and everything." He drained his pint. "It's not the kind of thing for the likes of us. Us-" he looked proudly- "guards. You all right, Sergeant?"
"Hmm? What? Oh. Yes." Colon shrugged. What about it, anyway? Maybe things turned out for the best. He finished the beer. "Best be off," he said. "What time was it?"
"About twelve o'clock," said Carrot.
"Anything else?"
Carrot gave it some thought. "And all's well?" he said.
"Right. Just testing."
"You know," said Nobby, "the way you say it, lad, you could almost believe it was true."
The Guard relaxing

Reaper Man

And it suddenly dawned on the late Windle Poons that there was no such thing as somebody else's problem, and that just when you thought the world had pushed you aside it turned out to be full of strangeness. He knew from experience that the living never found out half of what was really happening, because they were too busy being the living. The onlooker sees most of the game, he told himself.
It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane.
The late Windle Poons

Bill Door considered his options. The chicken had focused one beady eye on him. Chickens are a lot more stupid than humans, and don't have the sophisticated mental filters that prevent them seeing what is truly there. It knew where it was and who was looking at it.
He looked into its small and simple life and saw the last few seconds pouring away.
He'd never killed. He'd taken life, but only when it was finished with. There was a difference between theft and stealing by finding.
NOT THE CLEAVER, he said wearily. GIVE ME THE CHICKEN.
He turned his back for a moment, then handed the limp body to Miss Flitworth.
"Well done." she said, and went back to the kitchen.
Death/Bill Door

"Hallo, skelington."
He swivelled round.
The small child of the house was watching him with the most penetrating gaze he had ever seen.
"You are a skelington, aren't you," she said. "l can tell, because of the bones."
YOU ARE MISTAKEN, SMALL CHILD.
"You are. People turn into skelingtons when they're dead. They're not supposed to walk around afterwards."
HA. HA. HA. WILL YOU HARK AT THE CHILD.
"Why are you walking around, then?"
Bill Door looked at the old men. They appeared engrossed in the sport.
I'LL TELL YOU WHAT, he said desperately, IF YOU WILL GO AWAY, I WILL GIVE YOU A HALF-PENNY.
"I've got a skelington mask for when we go trickle-treating on Soul Cake Night," she said. "It's made of paper. You get given sweets."
Bill Door made the mistake millions of people had tried before with small children in slightly similar circumstances. He resorted to reason.
LOOK, he said, IF I WAS REALLY A SKELETON, LITTLE GIRL, I'M SURE THESE OLD GENTLEMEN HERE WOULD HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT IT.
She regarded the old men at the other end of the bench.
"They're nearly skelingtons anyway," she said. "I shouldn't think they'd want to see another one."
He gave in.
I HAVE TO ADMIT THAT YOU ARE RIGHT ON THAT POINT.
Death and a child

Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may not be able to move mountains, exactly. But it can create someone who can.

Bill Door walked back home thoughtfully.
There was a light on in the farmhouse kitchen, but he went straight to the barn, climbed the ladder to the hay-loft, and lay down.
He could put off dreaming, but he couldn't escape remembering.
He stared at the darkness.
After a while he was aware of the pattering of feet. He turned.
A stream of pale rat-shaped ghosts skipped along the roof beam above his head, fading as they ran so that soon there was nothing but the sound of the scampering.
They were followed by a . . . shape.
It was about six inches high. It wore a black robe. It held a small scythe in one skeletal paw. A bone-white nose with brittle grey whiskers protruded from the shadowy hood.
Bill Door reached out and picked it up. It didn't resist, but stood on the palm of his hand and eyed him as one professional to another.
Bill Door said: AND YOU ARE --?
The Death of Rats nodded.
SQUEAK.
I REMEMBER, said Bill Door, WHEN YOU WERE A PART OF ME.
The Death of Rats squeaked again.
Bill Door fumbled in the pockets of his overall. He'd put some of his lunch in there. Ah, yes.
I EXPECT, he said, THAT YOU COULD MURDER A PIECE OF CHEESE?
The Death of Rats took it graciously.
Bill Door remembered visiting an old man once - only once - who had spent almost his entire life locked in a cell in a tower for some alleged crime or other, and had tamed little birds for company during his life sentence. They crapped on his bedding and ate his food, but he tolerated them and smiled at their flight in and out of the high barred windows. Death had wondered, at the time, why anyone would do something like that.
I WON'T DELAY YOU, he said. I EXPECT YOU'VE GOT THINGS TO DO. RATS TO SEE. I KNOW HOW IT IS.
And now he understood.
He put the figure back on the beam, and lay down in the hay.
DROP IN ANY TIME YOU'RE PASSING.
Bill Door stared at the darkness again.
Sleep. He could feel her prowling around. Sleep, with a pocketful of dreams.
He lay in the darkness and fought back.
Death/Bill Door

"The girl's still in there," said Miss Flitworth. "Is that what he said?"
YES.
Flames curtained every upper window.
"There's got to be some way," said Miss Flitworth. "Maybe we could find a ladder--"
WE SHOULD NOT.
"What? We've got to try. We can't leave people in there!"
YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, said Bill Door. TO TINKER WITH THE FATE OF ONE INDIVIDUAL COULD DESTROY THE WHOLE WORLD.
Miss FIitworth looked at him as if he had gone mad.
"What kind of garbage is that?"
I MEAN THAT THERE IS A TIME FOR EVERYONE TO DIE.
She stared. Then she drew her hand back. and gave him a ringing slap across the face.
He was harder than she'd expected. She yelped and sucked at her knuckles.
"You leave my farm tonight, Mr. Bill Door," she growled. "Understand?" Then she turned on her heel and ran towards the pump.
Some of the men had brought long hooks to drag the burning thatch off the roof. Miss Flitworth organized a team to get a ladder up to one of the bedroom windows but, by the time a man was persuaded to climb it behind the steaming protection of a damp blanket, the top of the ladder was already smouldering.
Bill Door watched the flames.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the golden timer. The firelight glowed redly on the glass. He put it away again.
…
Bill Door reached back into his pocket and took out the timer again. Its hissing drowned out the roar of the flames.
The future flowed into the past, and there was a lot more past than there was future, but he was struck by the fact that what it flowed through all the time was now.
He replaced it carefully.
Death knew that to tinker with the fate of one individual could destroy the whole world. He knew this. The knowledge was built into him.
To Bill Door, he realized, it was so much horse elbows.
OH, DAMN, he said. And walked into the fire.
Mrs. Flitworth and Death/Bill Door

JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS A METAPHOR DOESN'T MEAN IT CAN'T BE REAL.
Death

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it's wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

LORD, WE KNOW THERE IS NO GOOD ORDER EXCEPT THAT WHICH WE CREATE...
THERE IS NO HOPE BUT US. THERE IS NO MERCY BUT US. THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST US.
ALL THINGS THAT ARE, ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION.
AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END ONE DAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS.
LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?

Small Gods

…as is generally the case around the time a prophet is expected, the Church redoubled its efforts to be holy. This was very much like the bustle you get in any large concern when the auditors are expected, but tended towards taking people suspected of being less holy and putting them to death in a hundred ingenious ways. This is considered a reliable barometer of the state of one's piety in most of the really popular religions. There's a tendency to declare that there's more backsliding around than in the national toboggan championships, that heresy must be torn out root and branch, and even arm and leg and eye and tongue, and that it's time to wipe the slate clean. Blood is generally considered very efficient for this purpose.

No matter what your skills, there was a place for you in the Citadel.
And if your skill lay in asking the wrong kinds of questions or losing the righteous kind of wars, the place might just be the furnaces of purity, or the Quisition's pits of justice.
A place for everyone. And everyone in their place.

There were things to suggest to a thinking man that the Creator of mankind had a very oblique sense of fun indeed, and to breed in his heart a rage to storm the gates of heaven.
The mugs for example. The inquisitors stopped work twice a day for coffee. Their mugs, which each man had brought from home, were grouped around the kettle on the hearth of the central furnace which incidentally heated the irons and knives.
They had legends on them like A Present From the Holy Grotto of Ossory, or To The World's Greatest Daddy.
…
And there were the postcards on the wall. It was traditional that, when an inquisitor went on holiday, he'd send back a crudely colored woodcut of the local view… And there was the pinned-up tearful message from Inquisitor First Class Ishmale "Pop" Quoom, thanking all the lads for collecting no fewer than seventy-eight obols for his retirement present and the lovely bunch of flowers for Mrs. Quoom…
And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
Vorbis loved knowing that. A man who knew that, knew everything he needed to know about people.

Brutha grew up knowing that Om's eyes were on him all the time, especially in places like the privy, and that demons assailed him on all sides and were only kept at bay by the strength of his belief and the weight of grandmother's cane, which was kept behind the door on those rare occasions when it was not being used… He knew all the Laws and the Songs. Especially the Laws.
The Omnians were a God-fearing people.
They had a great deal to fear.

"And of course, no one could possibly doubt the wisdom of a war to further the worship and glory of the Great God."
"No. None could doubt it," said Fri'it, who had walked across many a battlefield the day after a glorious victory, when you had ample time to see what winning meant. The Omnians forbade the use of all drugs. At times like that the prohibition hit hard, when you dared not go to sleep for fear of your dreams.
Drunah and Fri'it

…everyone recognized Vorbis the exquisitor. Something about him projected itself on your conscience within a few days of your arrival at the Citadel. The God was merely to be feared in the perfunctory ways of habit, but Vorbis was dreaded.

People have reality-dampers.
It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong… It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.
Because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins… They'd say "Wow!" a lot. And no one would do much work.

"You could do anything you wanted to," said Brutha.
Om looked up at Brutha.
He really believes, he thought. He doesn't know how to lie.
The strength of Brutha's belief burned in him like a flame.
And then the truth hit Om like the ground hits tortoises after an attack of eagles.
…the thing about Brutha's flame of belief was this: in all the citadels, in all the day, it was the only one the god had found.
Brutha the novice and Om

When the least they could do to you was everything, then the most they could do to you suddenly held no terror.

He remembered a story from his childhood…. It was about what happened when you died…the journey of your soul.
They said: you must walk a desert…
"What is this place?" he said hoarsely.
THIS IS NO PLACE, said Death.
…all alone…
"What is at the end of the desert?"
JUDGEMENT.
…with your beliefs…
…
The memory stole over him: a desert is what you think it is. And now, you can think clearly.
There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That's what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed.
What have I always believed?
That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.
You couldn't get that on a banner. But the desert looked better already.
Fri'it and Death

... the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different.
For sheep are stupid and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent and have to be led.

"Winners never talk about glorious victories. That's because they're the ones who see what the battlefield looks like afterwards. It's only the losers who have glorious victories."
Om

The ship smacked down…
…onto a calm sea.
The storm still raged, but only around a widening circle with the ship in the middle. The lightning, stabbing the sea, surrounded them like the bars of a cage.
…
Brutha fished his God out of the seaweed.
"You said you couldn't do anything!" he said accusingly.
"That wasn't m--" Om paused. There will be a price, he thought. It won't be cheap. It can't be cheap. The Sea Queen is a god. I've crushed a few towns in my time. Holy fire, that kind of thing. If the price isn't high, how can people respect you?
"I made arrangements," he said.
Brutha and Om

Brutha looked at a woman filling a jug from a well. It did not look like a very military act.
He was feeling that strange double feeling again. On the surface were the thoughts of Brutha, which were exactly the thoughts that the Citadel would have approved of. This was a nest of infidels and unbelievers, its very mundanity a subtle cloak for the traps of wrong thinking and heresy. It might be bright with sunlight, but in reality it was a place of shadows.
But down below were the thoughts of the Brutha that watched Brutha from the inside.
Vorbis looked wrong here. Sharp and unpleasant. And any city where potters didn't worry at all when naked, dripping wet old men came and drew triangles on their walls was a place Brutha wanted to find out more about.

Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water!… As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn't a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time…
Om reflects

Peace negotiations were not going well.
"You attacked us!" said Vorbis.
"I would call it preemptive defense," said the Tyrant. "We saw what happened to Istanzia and Betrek and Ushistan."
"They saw the truth of Om!"
"Yes," said the Tyrant. "We believe they did, eventually."
"And now they are proud members of the Empire."
"Yes," said the Tyrant. "Web believe they are. But we like to remember them as they were. Before you sent them your letters, that put the minds of men in chains."
"That set the feet of men on the right road," said Vorbis.
"Chain letters," said the Tyrant. "The Chain Letter to the Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain--the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armored men on their lawn."
Vorbis sat back.
"What is it you fear?" he said. "Here in your desert, with your…gods? Is it not that, deep in your souls, you know that your gods are as shifting as your sand?"
"Oh yes," said the Tyrant. "We know that. That's always been a point in their favor. We know about sand. And your god is a rock--and we know about rock."
Deacon Vorbis and the Tyrant

"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave" said Vorbis.
"So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water."
Deacon Vorbis and the Tyrant

These people made all these books about things, and they weren't sure. But he'd been sure, and Brother Nhumrod had been sure, and Deacon Vorbis had a sureness you could bend horseshoes around. Sureness was a rock.
Now he knew why, when Vorbis spoke about Ephebe, his face was gray with hatred and his voice was tense as a wire. If there was no truth, what was there left? And these bumbling old men spent their time kicking away the pillars of the world, and they'd nothing to replace them with but uncertainty. And they were proud of this?
Brutha listens to Didactylos the philosopher

"You shouldn't do this," said Brutha wretchedly. "All this…" His voice trailed off.
"I know about sureness," said Didactylos. Now the light, irascible tone had drained out of his voice. "I remember, before I was blind, I went to Omnia once. This was before the borders were closed, when you still let people travel. And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit. Ever seen that?"
"It has to be done," Brutha mumbled. "So the soul can be shriven and--"
"Don't know about the soul. Never been that kind of philosopher," said Didactylos. "All I know is, it was a horrible sight."
"The state of the body is not--"
"Oh, I'm not talking about the poor bugger in the pit," said the philosopher. "I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wasn't them that they were throwing just as hard as they could."
Brutha and Didactylos

He thought: the worst thing about Vorbis isn't that he's evil, but that he makes good people do evil. He turns people into things like himself. You can't help it. You catch it off him.
Brutha

Gods didn't mind atheists, if they were deep, hot, fiery atheists like Simony, who spend their whole life not believing, spend their whole life hating gods for not existing. That sort of atheism was a rock. It was nearly belief…
Brutha contemplates

"But you found water. Water in the desert."
"Nothing miraculous about that," said Om. "There's a rainy season near the coast. Flash floods. Wadis. Dried-up river beds. You get aquifers," he added.
"Sounds like a miracle to me," croaked Brutha. "Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle."
Brutha and Om in the desert.

"Anyway, there isn't anything else I can do. I couldn't just leave him [Vorbis]."
"Yes you could," said Om.
"To die in the desert?"
"Yes. It's easy. Much easier than not leaving him to die in the desert."
"No."
"This is how they do things in Ethics, is it?" said Om sarcastically.
"I don't know. It's how I'm doing it."
Brutha and Om in the desert.

Whoever had taken enough time to bury their dead had also drawn a symbol in the sand of the mound. Brutha half-expected it to be a turtle, but the desert wind had not quite eroded the crude shape of a pair of horns.
"I don't understand that," said Om. "They don't really believe I exist, but they go and put something like that on a grave."
"It's hard to explain. I think it's because they believe they exist," said Brutha. "It's because they're people, and so was he."
Brutha and Om in the desert.

"You call this philosophy?" roared Didactylos, waving his stick.
Urn cleaned pieces of the sand mold from the lever.
"Well…natural philosophy," he said.
The stick whanged down on the Moving Turtle's flanks.
"I never taught you this sort of thing!" shouted the philosopher. "Philosophy is supposed to make life better!"
"This will make it better for a lot of people," said Urn, calmly. "It will help overthrow a tyrant."
"And then?" said Didactylos.
"And then what?"
"And then you'll take it to bits, will you?" said the old man. "Smash it up? Take the wheels off? Get rid of all those spikes? Burn the plans? Yes? When it's served its purpose, yes?"
"Well--" Urn began.
"Aha!"
"Aha what? What if we do keep it? It'll be a…a deterrent to other tyrants!"
"You think tyrants won't build 'em, too?"
"Well…I can build bigger ones!" Urn shouted.
Didactylos sagged. "Yes," he said. "No doubt you can. So that's all right, then. My word. And to think I was worrying. And now…I think I'll go and have a rest somewhere…"
He looked hunched up, and suddenly old.
Didactylos and Urn

Brutha watched them go… And then he was alone again.
But he thought: Hold on. I don't have to be. I'm a bishop. At least I can watch. Om's gone and soon the world will end, so at least I might as well watch it happen.
Sandals flapping, Brutha set off toward the Place.
Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.

"Anyway, right, then he pushed through the line of guards what was holding the crowd back and stood right in front of the doors, and they weren't sure what to do about bishops, and I heard him say something like, I carried you in the desert, I believed all my life, just give me this one thing."
Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah, on Brutha.

Now Brutha could take in the scene. There was the staff of Ossory, and Abbys's cloak, and the sandals of Cena. And, supporting the dome, the massive statues of the first four prophets. He'd never seen them. He'd heard about them every day of his childhood.
And what did they mean now? They didn't mean anything. Nothing meant anything, if Vorbis was Prophet. Nothing meant anything, if the Cenobiarch was a man who'd heard nothing in the inner spaces of his own head but his own thoughts.
Brutha enters the temple

Urn pushed his way through the crowds, with Fergmen trailing behind. That was the best and the worst of civil war, at least at the start--everyone wore the same uniform. It was much easier when you picked enemies who were a different color, or at least spoke with a funny accent. You could call them "gooks" or something. It made things easier.

"We have to fight!"
"Not yet."
Simony clenched his fingers in anger.
"Look…listen… We died for lies, for centuries we died for lies." He waved a hand towards the god. "Now we've got a truth to die for!"
"No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for."
Brutha and Simony

"It's hard to explain," said Brutha. "But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave. I think…you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time."
Brutha thinks of commandments.

"That doesn't matter now," said Simony.
The flat tones of his voice made Urn follow the eyes of the crowd.
There was another iron turtle there--a proper model of a turtle, mounted on a sort of open gridwork of metal bars in which a couple of inquisitors were even now lighting a fire. And chained to the back of the turtle--
"Who's that?"
"Brutha."
"What?"
"I don't know what happened. He hit Vorbis, or didn't hit him. Or something. Enraged him anyway. Vorbis stopped the ceremony, right there and then."
Urn glanced at the deacon. Not Cenobiarch yet, so uncrowned. Among the Iams and bishops standing uncertainly in the open doorway, his bald head gleamed in the morning light.
"Come on then," said Urn.
"Come on what?"
"We can rush the steps and save him!"
"There's more of them than there are of us," said Simony.
"Well, haven't there always been? There's not magically more of them than there are of us just because they've got Brutha, are there?"
Simony grabbed his arm.
"Think logically, will you?" he said. "You're a philosopher, aren't you? Look at the crowd!"
Urn looked at the crowd.
"Well?"
"They don't like it." Simony turned. "Look, Brutha's going to die anyway. But this way it'll mean something. People don't understand, really understand, about the shape of the universe and all that stuff, but they'll remember what Vorbis did to a man. Right? We can make Brutha's death a symbol for people, don't you see?"
Urn stared at the distant figure of Brutha. It was naked, except for a loincloth.
"A symbol?" he said. His throat was dry.
"It has to be."
He remembered Didactylos saying the world was a funny place. And, he thought distantly, it really was. Here people were about to roast someone to death, but they'd left his loin-cloth, out of respectability. You had to laugh. Otherwise, you'd go mad.
"You know," he said, turning to Simony. "Now I know Vorbis is evil. He burned my city. Well, the Tsorteans do it sometimes, and we burn theirs. It's just war. It's all part of history. And he lies and cheats and claws power for himself, and lots of people do that, too. But do you know what's special? Do you know what it is?
"Of course," said Simony. "It's what he's doing to--"
"It's what he's done to you."
"What?"
"He turns other people into copies of himself."
Simony's grip was like a vice. "You're saying I'm like him?"
"Once you said you'd cut him down," said Urn. "Now you're thinking like him."
"So we rush them, then?" said Simony. "I'm sure of--maybe four hundred on our side. So I give the signal and a few hundred of us attack thousands of them? And he dies anyway and we die too? What difference does that make?"
Urns face was gray with horror now.
"You mean you don't know?" he said.
Some of the crowd looked round curiously at him.
"You don't know?" he said.
Urn and Simony

There were several dozen gods watching the beach.
…
He [Om] said, to the occult world in general, "There's people going to die down there."
A Tsortean God of the Sun did not even bother to look around.
"That's what they're for," he said.
…
"Ah, yes, said Om. "I forgot that, for a moment." He…turned to the little Goddess of Plenty.
"What's this, love? A cornucopia? Can I have a look? Thanks."
Om emptied some of the fruit out. Then he nudged the Newt God.
"If I was you, friend, I'd find something long and hefty," he said.
"Is one less than fifty-one?" said P'Tang-P'Tang.
"It's the same," said Om, firmly. He eyed the back of the Tsortean God's head.
"But you have thousands," said the Newt God. "You fight for thousands."
Om rubbed his forehead. I spent too long down there, he thought. I can't stop thinking at ground level.
"I think," he said, "I think, if you want thou