Mort (26 page)

‘He means it,’ she said. ‘If you don’t then everything will go wrong and he’ll drop back into Time anyway.’

All three of them turned to look at the great clock that dominated the hallway. Its pendulum blade sawed slowly through the air, cutting time into little pieces.

Mort groaned.

‘There isn’t enough time!’ he groaned. ‘I can’t do both of them in time!’

‘The master would have found time,’ observed Albert.

Mort wrenched the blade from the doorway and shook it furiously but ineffectually towards Albert, who flinched.

‘Write down the spell, then,’ he shouted. ‘And do it fast!’

He turned on his heel and stalked back into Death’s study. There was a large disc of the world in one corner, complete down to solid silver elephants standing on the back of a Great A’Tuin cast in bronze and more than a metre long. The great rivers were represented by veins of jade, the deserts by powdered diamond and the most notable cities were picked out in precious stones; Ankh-Morpork, for instance, was a carbuncle.

He plonked the two glasses down at approximate locations of their owners and flopped down in Death’s chair, glaring at them, willing them to be closer together. The chair squeaked gently as he swivelled from side to side, glowering at the little disc.

After a while Ysabell came in, treading softly.

‘Albert’s written it down,’ she said quietly, ‘I’ve checked the book. It isn’t a trick. He’s gone and locked himself in his room now and—’

‘Look at those two! I mean, will you look at them!’

‘I think you should calm down a bit, Mort.’

‘How can I calm down with, look, this one over here almost in the Great Nef, and
this
one right in Bes Pelargic and then I’ve got to get back to Sto Lat. That’s a ten thousand mile round trip however you look at it. It can’t be done.’

‘I’m sure you’ll find a way. And I’ll help.’

He looked at her for the first time and saw she was wearing her outdoor coat, the unsuitable one with the big fur collar.

‘You? What could you do?’

‘Binky can easily carry two,’ said Ysabell meekly. She waved a paper package vaguely. ‘I’ve packed us something to eat. I could – hold open doors and things.’

Mort laughed mirthlessly. T
HAT WON’T BE NECESSARY
.

‘I wish you’d stop talking like that.’

‘I can’t take passengers. You’ll slow me down.’

Ysabell sighed. ‘Look, how about this? Let’s pretend we’ve had the row and I’ve won. See? It saves a lot of effort. I actually think you might find Binky rather reluctant to go if I’m not there. I’ve fed him an awful lot of sugar lumps over the years. Now – are we going?’

Albert sat on his narrow bed, glowering at the wall. He heard the sound of hoofbeats, abruptly cut off as Binky got airborne, and muttered under his breath.

Twenty minutes passed. Expressions flitted across the old wizard’s face like cloud shadows across a hillside. Occasionally he’d whisper something to himself, like ‘I told ’em’ or ‘Never would of stood for it’ or ‘The master ought to be tole’.

Eventually he seemed to reach an agreement with himself, knelt down gingerly and pulled a battered trunk from under his bed. He opened it with difficulty and unfolded a dusty grey robe that scattered mothballs and tarnished sequins across the floor. He pulled it on, brushed off the worst of the dust, and crawled under the bed again. There was a lot of muffled cursing and the occasional chink of china, and finally Albert emerged holding a staff taller than he was.

It was thicker than any normal staff, mainly because of the carvings that covered it from top to bottom. They were actually quite indistinct, but gave the impression that if you could see them better you would regret it.

Albert brushed himself down again and examined himself critically in the washstand mirror.

Then he said, ‘Hat. No hat. Got to have a hat for the wizarding. Damn.’

He stamped out of the room and returned after a busy fifteen minutes which included a circular hole cut out of the carpet in Mort’s bedroom, the silver paper taken out from behind the mirror in Ysabell’s room, a needle and thread from the box under the sink in the kitchen and a few loose sequins scraped up from the bottom of the robe chest. The end result was not as good as he would have liked and tended to slip rakishly over one eye, but it was black and had stars and moons on it and proclaimed its owner to be, without any doubt, a wizard, although possibly a desperate one.

He felt properly dressed for the first time in two thousand years. It was a disconcerting feeling and caused him a second’s reflection before he kicked aside the rag rug beside the bed and used the staff to draw a circle on the floor.

When the tip of the staff passed it left a line of glowing octarine, the eighth colour of the spectrum, the colour of magic, the pigment of the imagination.

He marked eight points on its circumference and joined them up to form an octogram. A low throbbing began to fill the room.

Alberto Malich stepped into the centre and held the staff above his head. He felt it wake to his grip, felt the tingle of the sleeping power unfold itself slowly and deliberately, like a waking tiger. It triggered old memories of power and magic that buzzed through the cobwebbed attics of his mind. He felt alive for the first time in centuries.

He licked his lips. The throbbing had died away, leaving a strange, waiting kind of silence.

Malich raised his head and shouted one single syllable.

Blue-green fire flashed from both ends of the staff. Streams of octarine flame spouted from the eight points of the octogram and enveloped the wizard. All this wasn’t actually necessary to accomplish the spell, but wizards consider appearances are very important . . .

So are disappearances. He vanished.

Stratohemispheric winds whipped at Mort’s cloak.

‘Where are we going first?’ yelled Ysabell in his ear.

‘Bes Palargic!’ shouted Mort, the gale whirling his words away.

‘Where’s that?’

‘Agatean Empire! Counterweight Continent!’

He pointed downward.

He wasn’t forcing Binky at the moment, knowing the miles that lay ahead, and the big white horse was currently running at an easy gallop out over the ocean. Ysabell looked down at roaring green waves topped with white foam, and clung tighter to Mort.

Mort peered ahead at the cloudbank that marked the distant continent and resisted the urge to hurry Binky along with the flat of his sword. He’d never struck the horse and wasn’t at all confident about what would happen if he did. All he could do was wait.

A hand appeared under his arm, holding a sandwich.

‘There’s ham or cheese and chutney,’ she said. ‘You might as well eat, there’s nothing else to do.’

Mort looked down at the soggy triangle and tried to remember when he had last had a meal. Some time beyond the reach of a clock, anyway – he’d need a calender to calculate it. He took the sandwich.

‘Thanks,’ he said, as graciously as he could manage.

The tiny sun rolled down towards the horizon, towing its lazy daylight behind it. The clouds ahead grew, and became outlined in pink and orange. After a while he could make out the darker blur of land below them, with here and there the lights of a city.

Half an hour later he was sure he could see individual buildings. Agatean architecture inclined towards squat pyramids.

Binky lost height until his hooves were barely a few feet above the sea. Mort examined the hourglass again, and gently tugged on the reins to direct the horse towards a seaport a little Rimwards of their present course.

There were a few ships at anchor, mostly single-sailed coastal traders. The Empire didn’t encourage its subjects to go far away, in case they saw things that might disturb them. For the same reason it had built a wall around the entire country, patrolled by the Heavenly Guard whose main function was to tread heavily on the fingers of any inhabitants who felt they might like to step outside for five minutes for a breath of fresh air.

This didn’t happen often, because most of the subjects of the Sun Emperor were quite happy to live inside the Wall. It’s a fact of life that everyone is on one side or other of a wall, so the only thing to do is forget about it or evolve stronger fingers.

‘Who runs this place?’ said Ysabell, as they passed over the harbour.

‘There’s some kind of boy emperor,’ said Mort. ‘But the top man is really the Grand Vizier, I think.’

‘Never trust a Grand Vizier,’ said Ysabell wisely.

In fact the Sun Emperor didn’t. The Vizier, whose name was Nine Turning Mirrors, had some very clear views about who should run the country, e.g. that it should be him, and now the boy was getting big enough to ask questions like ‘Don’t you think the wall would look better with a few gates in it?’ and ‘Yes, but what is it like on the other side?’ he had decided that in the Emperor’s own best interests he should be painfully poisoned and buried in quicklime.

Binky landed on the raked gravel outside the low, many-roomed palace, severely rearranging the harmony of the universe.
^*10
Mort slid off his back and helped Ysabell down.

‘Just don’t get in the way, will you?’ he said urgently. ‘And don’t ask questions either.’

He ran up some lacquered steps and hurried through the silent rooms, pausing occasionally to take his bearings from the hourglass. At last he sidled down a corridor and peered through an ornate lattice into a long low room where the Court was at its evening meal.

The young Sun Emperor was sitting cross-legged at the head of the mat with his cloak of vermine and feathers spread out behind him. He looked as though he was outgrowing it. The rest of the Court was sitting around the mat in strict and complicated order of precedence, but there was no mistaking the Vizier, who was tucking into his bowl of
squishi
and boiled seaweed in a highly suspicious fashion. No one seemed to be about to die.

Mort padded along the passage, turned the corner and nearly walked into several large members of the Heavenly Guard, who were clustered around a spyhole in the paper wall and passing a cigarette from hand to hand in that palm-cupped way of soldiers on duty.

He tiptoed back to the lattice and overheard the conversation thus:

‘I am the most unfortunate of mortals, O Immanent Presence, to find such as this in my otherwise satisfactory
squishi,’
said the Vizier, extending his chopsticks.

The Court craned to see. So did Mort. Mort couldn’t help agreeing with the statement, though – the thing was a sort of blue-green lump with rubbery tubes dangling from it.

‘The preparer of food will be disciplined, Noble Personage of Scholarship,’ said the Emperor. ‘Who got the spare ribs?’

‘No, O Perceptive Father of Your People, I was rather referring to the fact that this is, I believe, the bladder and spleen of the deepwater puff eel, allegedly the most tasty of morsels to the extent that it may be eaten only by those beloved of the gods themselves or so it is written, among such company of course I do not include my miserable self.’

With a deft flick he transported it to the bowl of the Emperor, where it wobbled to a standstill. The boy looked at it for some time, and then skewered it on a chopstick.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but is it not also written by none other than the great philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle that a scholar may be ranked above princes? I seem to remember you giving me the passage to read once, O Faithful and Assiduous Seeker of Knowledge.’

The thing followed another brief arc through the air and flopped apologetically into the Vizier’s bowl. He scooped it up in a quick movement and poised it for a second service. His eyes narrowed.

‘Such may be generally the case, O Jade River of Wisdom, but specifically I cannot be ranked above the Emperor whom I love as my own son and have done ever since his late father’s unfortunate death, and thus I lay this small offering at your feet.’

The eyes of the court followed the wretched organ on its third flight across the mat, but the Emperor snatched up his fan and brought off a magnificent volley that ended back in the Vizier’s bowl with such force that it sent up a spray of seaweed.

‘
Somebody
eat it, for heaven’s sake,’ shouted Mort, totally unheard. ‘I’m in a hurry!’

‘Thou art indeed the most thoughtful of servants, O Devoted and Indeed Only Companion of My Late Father and Grandfather When They Passed Over, and therefore I decree that your reward shall be this most rare and exquisite of morsels.’

The Vizier prodded the thing uncertainly, and looked into the Emperor’s smile. It was bright and terrible. He fumbled for an excuse.

‘Alas, it would seem that I have already eaten far too much—’ he began, but the Emperor waved him into silence.

‘Doubtless it requires a suitable seasoning,’ he said, and clapped his hands. The wall behind him ripped from top to bottom and four Heavenly Guards stepped through, three of them brandishing
cando
swords and the fourth trying hurriedly to swallow a lighted dog-end.

The Vizier’s bowl dropped from his hands.

‘My most faithful of servants believes he has no space left for this final mouthful,’ said the Emperor. ‘Doubtless you can investigate his stomach to see if this true. Why has that man got smoke coming out of his ears?’

‘Anxious for action, O Sky Eminence,’ said the sergeant quickly. ‘No stopping him, I’m afraid.’

‘Then let him take his knife and— Oh, the Vizier seems to be hungry after all. Well done.’

There was absolute silence while the Vizier’s cheeks bulged rhythmically. Then he gulped.

‘Delicious,’ he said. ‘Superb. Truly the food of the gods, and now, if you will excuse me—’ He unfolded his legs and made as if to stand up. Little beads of sweat had appeared on his forehead.

‘You wish to depart?’ said the Emperor, raising his eyebrows.