Mort (7 page)

‘He doesn’t look a
bad
king,’ said Mort. ‘Why would anyone want to kill him?’

S
EE THE MAN NEXT TO HIM
? W
ITH THE LITTLE MOUSTACHE AND THE GRIN LIKE A LIZARD
? Death pointed with his scythe.

‘Yes?’

H
IS COUSIN
, T
HE
D
UKE OF
S
TO
H
ELIT
. N
OT THE NICEST OF PEOPLE
, said Death. A
HANDY MAN WITH A BOTTLE OF POISON
. F
IFTH IN LINE TO THE THRONE LAST YEAR
,
NOW SECOND IN LINE
. B
IT OF A SOCIAL CLIMBER
,
YOU MIGHT SAY
. He fumbled inside his robe and produced an hourglass in which black sand coursed between a spiked iron latticework. He gave it an experimental shake. A
ND DUE TO LIVE ANOTHER THIRTY
,
THIRTY
-
FIVE YEARS
, he said, with a sigh.

‘And he goes around killing people?’ said Mort. He shook his head. ‘There’s no justice.’

Death sighed. N
O
, he said, handing his drink to a page who was surprised to find he was suddenly holding an empty glass,
THERE’S JUST ME
.

He drew his sword, which had the same ice blue, shadow-thin blade as the scythe of office, and stepped forward.

‘I thought you used the scythe,’ whispered Mort.

K
INGS GET THE SWORD
, said Death. I
T
’
S A ROYAL WHATSNAME
,
PREROGATIVE
.

His free hand thrust its bony digits beneath his robe again and brought out King Olerve’s glass. In the top half the last few grains of sand were huddling together.

P
AY CAREFUL ATTENTION
, said Death,
YOU MAY BE ASKED QUESTIONS AFTERWARDS
.

‘Wait,’ said Mort, wretchedly. ‘It’s not fair. Can’t you stop it?’

F
AIR
? said Death. W
HO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT FAIR
?

‘Well, if the other man is such a—’

L
ISTEN
, said Death,
FAIR DOESN’T COME INTO IT
. Y
OU CAN’T TAKE SIDES
. G
OOD GRIEF
. W
HEN IT’S TIME, IT’S TIME
. T
HAT’S ALL THERE IS TO IT, BOY
.

‘Mort,’ moaned Mort, staring at the crowd.

And then he saw her. A random movement in the people opened up a channel between Mort and a slim, red-haired girl seated among a group of older women behind the king. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, being over-endowed in the freckle department and, frankly, rather on the skinny side. But the sight of her caused a shock that hotwired Mort’s hindbrain and drove it all the way to the pit of his stomach, laughing nastily.

I
T’S TIME
, said Death, giving Mort a nudge with a sharp elbow. F
OLLOW ME
.

Death walked towards the king, weighing his sword in his hand. Mort blinked, and started to follow. The girl’s eyes met his for a second and immediately looked away – then swivelled back, dragging her head around, her mouth starting to open in an ‘o’ of horror.

Mort’s backbone melted. He started to run towards the king.

‘Look out!’ he screamed. ‘You’re in great danger!’

And the world turned into treacle. It began to fill up with blue and purple shadows, like a heatstroke dream, and sound faded away until the roar of the court became distant and scritchy, like the music in someone else’s headphones. Mort saw Death standing companionably by the king, his eyes turned up towards—

—the minstrel gallery.

Mort saw the bowman, saw the bow, saw the bolt now winging through the air at the speed of a sick snail. Slow as it was, he couldn’t outrun it. It seemed like hours before he could bring his leaden legs under control, but finally he managed to get both feet to touch the floor at the same time and kicked away with all the apparent acceleration of continental drift.

As he twisted slowly through the air Death said, without rancour, I
T WON’T WORK, YOU KNOW
. I
T’S ONLY NATURAL THAT YOU SHOULD WANT TO TRY, BUT IT WON’T WORK
.

Dream-like, Mort drifted through a silent world . . .

The bolt struck. Death brought his sword around in a double-handed swing that passed gently through the king’s neck without leaving a mark. To Mort, spiralling gently through the twilight world, it looked as though a ghostly shape had dropped away.

It couldn’t be the king, because he was manifestly still standing there, looking directly at Death with an expression of extreme surprise. There was a shadowy
something
around his feet, and a long way away people were reacting with shouts and screams.

A
GOOD CLEAN JOB
, said Death. R
OYALTY ARE ALWAYS A PROBLEM
. T
HEY TEND TO WANT TO HANG ON
. Y
OUR AVERAGE PEASANT, NOW, HE CAN’T WAIT
.

‘Who the hell are you?’ said the king. ‘What are you doing here? Eh? Guards! I deman—’

The insistent message from his eyes finally battered through to his brain. Mort was impressed. King Olerve had held on to his throne for many years, and even when dead, knew how to behave.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I see. I didn’t expect to see you so soon.’

Y
OUR
M
AJESTY
, said Death, bowing,
FEW DO
.

The king looked around. It was quiet and dim in this shadow world, but outside there seemed to be a lot of excitement.

‘That’s me down there, is it?’

I
AM AFRAID SO, SIRE
.

‘Clean job. Crossbow, was it?’

Y
ES
. A
ND NOW, SIRE, IF YOU WOULD
—

‘Who did it?’ said the king. Death hesitated.

A
HIRED ASSASSIN FROM
A
NKH
-M
ORPORK
, he said.

‘Hmm. Clever. I congratulate Sto Helit. And here’s me filling myself with antidotes. No antidote to cold steel, eh? Eh?’

I
NDEED NOT, SIRE
.

‘The old rope ladder and fast horse by the drawbridge trick, eh?’

S
O IT WOULD APPEAR, SIRE
, said Death, taking the king’s shade gently by the arm. I
F IT’S ANY
CONSOLATION, THOUGH, THE HORSE NEEDS TO BE FAST
.

‘Eh?’

Death allowed his fixed grin to widen a little.

I
HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH ITS RIDER TOMORROW IN
A
NKH
, said Death. Y
OU SEE, HE ALLOWED THE DUKE TO PROVIDE HIM WITH A PACKED LUNCH
.

The king, whose eminent suitability for his job meant that he was not automatically quick on the uptake, considered this for a moment and then gave a short laugh. He noticed Mort for the first time.

‘Who’s this?’ he said. ‘He dead too?’

M
Y APPRENTICE
, said Death. W
HO WILL BE GETTING A GOOD TALKING-TO BEFORE HE’S MUCH OLDER, THE SCALLYWAG
.

‘Mort,’ said Mort automatically. The sound of their talking washed around him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the scene around them. He felt real. Death looked solid. The king looked surprisingly fit and well for someone who was dead. But the rest of the world was a mass of sliding shadows. Figures were bent over the slumped body, moving through Mort as if they were no more substantial than a mist.

The girl was kneeling down, weeping.

‘That’s my daughter,’ said the king. ‘I ought to feel sad. Why don’t I?’

E
MOTIONS GET LEFT BEHIND.
I
T’S ALL A MATTER OF GLANDS
.

‘Ah. That would be it, I suppose. She can’t see us, can she?’

No.

‘I suppose there’s no chance that I could—?’

N
ONE
, said Death.

‘Only she’s going to be queen, and if I could only let her—’

S
ORRY
.

The girl looked up and through Mort. He watched the duke walk up behind her and lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. A faint smile hovered around the man’s lips. It was the sort of smile that lies on sandbanks waiting for incautious swimmers.

I can’t make you hear me, Mort said. Don’t trust him!

She peered at Mort, screwing up her eyes. He reached out, and watched his hand pass straight through hers.

C
OME ALONG, BOY
. N
O LALLYGAGGING
.

Mort felt Death’s hand tighten on his shoulder, not in an unfriendly fashion. He turned away reluctantly, following Death and the king.

They walked out through the wall. He was halfway after them before he realized that walking through walls was impossible.

The suicidal logic of this nearly killed him. He felt the chill of the stone around his limbs before a voice in his ear said:

L
OOK AT IT THIS WAY
. T
HE WALL CAN’T BE THERE
. O
THERWISE YOU WOULDN’T BE WALKING THROUGH IT
. W
OULD YOU, BOY
?

‘Mort,’ said Mort.

W
HAT
?

‘My name is Mort. Or Mortimer,’ said Mort angrily, pushing forward. The chill fell behind him.

T
HERE
. T
HAT WASN’T SO HARD, WAS IT
?

Mort looked up and down the length of the corridor, and slapped the wall experimentally. He must have walked through it, but it felt solid enough now. Little specks of mica glittered at him.

‘How do you do that stuff?’ he said. ‘How do
I
do it? Is it magic?’

M
AGIC IS THE ONE THING IT ISN’T, BOY
. W
HEN YOU CAN DO IT BY YOURSELF, THERE WILL BE NOTHING MORE THAT
I
CAN TEACH YOU
.

The king, who was considerably more diffuse now, said, ‘It’s impressive, I’ll grant you. By the way, I seem to be fading.’

I
T’S THE MORPHOGENETIC FIELD WEAKENING
, said Death.

The king’s voice was no louder than a whisper. ‘Is that what it is?’

I
T HAPPENS TO EVERYONE
. T
RY TO ENJOY IT
.

‘How?’

Now the voice was no more than a shape in the air.

J
UST BE YOURSELF
.

At that moment the king collapsed, growing smaller and smaller in the air as the field finally collapsed into a tiny, brilliant pinpoint. It happened so quickly that Mort almost missed it. From ghost to mote in half a second, with a faint sigh.

Death gently caught the glittering thing and stowed it away somewhere under his robe.

‘What’s happened to him?’ said Mort.

O
NLY HE KNOWS
, said Death. C
OME
.

‘My granny says that dying is like going to sleep,’ Mort added, a shade hopefully.

I
WOULDN’T KNOW
. I
HAVE DONE NEITHER
.

Mort took a last look along the corridor. The big doors had been flung back and the court was spilling out. Two older women were endeavouring to comfort the princess, but she was striding ahead of them so that they bounced along behind her like a couple of fussy balloons. They disappeared up another corridor.

A
LREADY A QUEEN
, said Death, approvingly. Death liked style.

They were on the roof before he spoke again.

Y
OU TRIED TO WARN HIM
, he said, removing Binky’s nosebag.

‘Yes, sir. Sorry.’

Y
OU CANNOT INTERFERE WITH FATE
. W
HO ARE YOU TO JUDGE WHO SHOULD LIVE AND WHO SHOULD DIE
?

Death watched Mort’s expression carefully.

O
NLY THE GODS ARE ALLOWED TO DO THAT
, he added. T
O TINKER WITH THE FATE OF EVEN ONE INDIVIDUAL COULD DESTROY THE WHOLE WORLD
. D
O YOU UNDERSTAND
?

Mort nodded miserably.

‘Are you going to send me home?’ he said.

Death reached down and swung him up behind the saddle.

B
ECAUSE YOU SHOWED COMPASSION
? N
O
. I
MIGHT HAVE DONE IF YOU HAD SHOWN PLEASURE
. B
UT YOU MUST LEARN THE COMPASSION PROPER TO YOUR TRADE
.

‘What’s that?’

A
SHARP
EDGE
.

Days passed, although Mort wasn’t certain how many. The gloomy sun of Death’s world rolled regularly across the sky, but the visits to mortal space seemed to adhere to no particular system. Nor did Death visit only kings and important battles; most of the personal visits were to quite ordinary people.

Meals were served up by Albert, who smiled to himself a lot and didn’t say anything much. Ysabell kept to her room most of the time, or rode her own pony on the black moors above the cottage. The sight of her with her hair streaming in the wind would have been more impressive if she was a better horse-woman, or if the pony had been rather larger, or if her hair was the sort that streams naturally. Some hair has got it, and some hasn’t. Hers hadn’t.

When he wasn’t out on what Death referred to as
THE DUTY
Mort assisted Albert, or found jobs in the garden or stable, or browsed through Death’s extensive library, reading with the speed and omnivorousness common to those who discover the magic of the written word for the first time.

Most of the books in the library were biographies, of course.

They were unusual in one respect. They were writing themselves. People who had already died, obviously, filled their books from cover to cover, and those who hadn’t been born yet had to put up with blank pages. Those in between . . . Mort took note, marking the place and counting the extra lines, and estimated that some books were adding paragraphs at the rate of four or five every day. He didn’t recognize the handwriting.