And Nightshade was stepping forward, her glamour fully restored and shining gloriously, her hair streaked silver with the moonlight, her new wings resplendent. She held herself like a queen again, her gaze slowly moving over the warriors behind her treacherous lord, and such was the power of her presence that even the Feegles paused in the frozen silence.
‘Why do you follow this . . . perfidious elf?’ the Queen demanded of the elves. ‘I am your rightful queen, and I say that you do not have to do this. There are . . . other ways.’ She spun on the spot, her velvet robes spiralling around her slim body. ‘I have learned this. And this girl’ – she pointed at Tiffany – ‘is my friend.’
Tiffany couldn’t stop what happened next.
‘Friend?’ Peaseblossom spat. ‘There are no friends for elves.’
He raised his arm and his sabre tore through Nightshade with a terrible swishing sound. The elf Queen fell, crumpling to the ground at Tiffany’s feet, where she writhed for a moment that seemed to last a lifetime, myriad faces and shapes appearing and disappearing, flickering in and out of substance, before finally lying still, a forlorn heap. Tiffany reeled back in shock. Peaseblossom had killed the Queen of the Fairies!
Worse, he had killed her friend.
Peaseblossom, revelling, turned to Tiffany, his face sharp and merciless. ‘You have no friend now!’
Suddenly the air was full of ice. ‘You killed one of your own to get to me, you cursed elf,’ Tiffany said, her voice cold, red-hot anger boiling inside her. ‘She wanted to explore a new way, an alliance of humans and elves, and now you have killed her.’
‘You stupid little girl!’ Peaseblossom taunted. ‘You think you can stand against me? What a fool you are! We elves knew well of the witch who once walked the edges of this world . . . but you, you are just a child, filled with pride because you were once lucky against a failing queen’ – he glanced contemptuously down at the little heap that had once been the Queen of Fairyland – ‘and now I will see you dead, alongside your friend.’ He spat out the last word, and his glamour snaked towards her, creeping into her head, into her thoughts.
Tiffany recoiled, a memory of Nanny Ogg’s voice suddenly saying to her: Granny Weatherwax said to me as you is the one who’s to deal with the future. An’ bein’ young means you’ve got a lot of future. Well, it looked like Granny Weatherwax might have been wrong. She didn’t have much future to come.
She had failed everyone.
She had tried to be the witch for two steadings. And let everyone down . . .
She had gone to see the King of the Elves. He had turned her away . . .
She had made a friend of Nightshade. Now the elf Queen was dead . . .
She was facing a powerful elf lord who would kill her . . .
She deserved to die . . .
She was alone . . .
Then it came to her. She did not deserve to die. And she was not alone. She never would be. Not while her land was beneath her boots. Her land. The land of the Achings.
She was Tiffany Aching. Not Granny Weatherwax, but a witch in her own right. A witch who knew exactly who she was and how she wanted to do things. Her way. And she had not failed, because she had barely begun . . .
She stood tall. Frosty. Furious. ‘You called me a country girl,’ she said, ‘and I will see to it that the country will see you dead.’
The land was speaking to her now, filling her up, throwing the glamour of the elf lord aside as though it were nothing, and the air crackled like lightning. Yes, she thought. Thunder and Lightning. The two dogs were long gone, buried in the hills alongside Granny Aching, but their strength was with her.
And she was standing firm, her feet on the turf, the murmur of the ancient ocean below swelling through her soles. Earth. Water.
She raised her arms. ‘Thunder and Lightning, I command you.’ Fire and Air. As she drew on the power of the two sheepdogs, there in the air was a flash of lightning, a rumble of thunder. The shepherd’s crown glowed golden on her breast – at the heart of it all, the soul and centre of her being – the golden light rising from the apex to surround her, protect her, add its energy to her own.
And the sky broke in half.
Never had there been such a storm. It was full of vengeance and the elves were running, or rather trying to run because the Feegles were in their way and the Wee Free Men had no liking for the elves. In the carnage and the shouting, it seemed to Tiffany that she wasn’t in charge any more. She was just a conduit for the wrath of the Chalk.
The land under her feet was trembling, shaking like a wounded animal on a leash, yearning to be free. And the shepherd’s crown was shining like a living thing in front of her.
A shepherd’s crown, not a royal one.
A crown for someone who knew where she had come from.
A crown for the lone light zigzagging through the night sky, hunting for a single lost lamb.
A crown for the shepherd who was there to herd away the predators.
A crown for the shepherd who could work with the best sheepdogs any shepherd could possibly have.
A shepherd’s crown.
And she heard again that voice: Tiffany Aching is the first among shepherds, for she puts others before herself . . .
A king of shepherds.