Mort (20 page)

The Rite of AshkEnte, quite simply, summons and binds Death. Students of the occult will be aware that it can be performed with a simple incantation, three small bits of wood and 4cc of mouse blood, but no wizard worth his pointy hat would dream of doing anything so unimpressive; they knew in their hearts that if a spell didn’t involve big yellow candles, lots of rare incense, circles drawn on the floor with eight different colors of chalk and a few cauldrons around the place then it simply wasn’t worth contemplating.

The eight wizards at their stations on the points of the great ceremonial octogram swayed and chanted, their arms held out sideways so they were just touching the fingertips of the mages on either side.

But something was going wrong. True, a mist had formed in the very center of the living octogram, but it was writhing and turning in on itself, refusing to focus.

“More power!” shouted Albert. “Give it more power!”

A figure appeared momentarily in the smoke, black-robed and holding a glittering sword. Albert swore as he caught a glimpse of the pale face under the cowl; it wasn’t pale enough.

“No!” Albert yelled, ducking into the octogram and flailing at the flickering shape with his hands. “Not you, not you….”

And, in faraway Tsort, Ysabell forgot she was a lady, bunched her fist, narrowed her eyes and caught Mort squarely on the jaw. The world around her exploded….

In the kitchen of Harga’s House of Ribs the frying pan crashed to the floor, sending the cats scurrying out of the door….

In the great hall of the Unseen University everything happened at once.
*

The tremendous force the wizards had been exerting on the shadow realm suddenly had one focus. Like a reluctant cork from a bottle, like a dollop of fiery ketchup from the upturned sauce bottle of Infinity, Death landed in the octogram and swore.

Albert realized just too late that he was inside the charmed ring and made a dive for the edge. But skeletal fingers caught him by the hem of his robe.

The wizards, such of them who were still on their feet and conscious, were rather surprised to see that Death was wearing an apron and holding a small kitten.

“Why did you have”
TO SPOIL IT ALL
?

“Spoil it all? Have you seen what the lad has done?” snapped Albert, still trying to reach the edge of the ring.

Death raised his skull and sniffed the air.

The sound cut through all the other noises in the hall and forced them into silence.

It was the kind of noise that is heard on the twilight edges of dreams, the sort that you wake from in a cold sweat of mortal horror. It was the snuffling under the door of dread. It was like the snuffling of a hedgehog, but if so then it was the kind of hedgehog that crashes out of the verges and flattens lorries. It was the kind of noise you wouldn’t want to hear twice; you wouldn’t want to hear it once.

Death straightened up slowly.

I
S THIS HOW HE REPAYS MY KINDNESS
? T
O STEAL MY DAUGHTER, INSULT MY SERVANTS, AND RISK THE FABRIC OF REALITY ON A PERSONAL WHIM
? O
H, FOOLISH, FOOLISH
, I
HAVE BEEN FOOLISH TOO LONG
!

“Master, if you would just be so good as to let go of my robe—” began Albert, and the wizard noticed a pleading edge to his voice that hadn’t been there before.

Death ignored him. He snapped his fingers like a castanet and the apron around his waist exploded into brief flames. The kitten, however, he put down very carefully and gently pushed away with his foot.

D
ID I NOT GIVE HIM THE GREATEST OPPORTUNITY
?

“Exactly, master, and now if you could see your way clear—”

S
KILLS
? A
CAREER STRUCTURE
? P
ROSPECTS
? A
JOB FOR LIFE
?

“Indeed, and if you would but let go—”

The change in Albert’s voice was complete. The trumpets of command had become the piccolos of supplication. He sounded terrified, in fact, but he managed to catch Rincewind’s eye and hiss:

“My staff! Throw me my staff! While he is in the circle he is not invincible! Let me have my staff and I can break free!”

Rincewind said: “Pardon?”

O
H, MINE IS THE FAULT FOR GIVING IN TO THESE WEAKNESSES OF WHAT FOR WANT OF A BETTER WORD I SHALL CALL THE FLESH
!

“My staff, you idiot, my staff!” gibbered Albert.

“Sorry?”

W
ELL DONE, MY SERVANT, FOR CALLING ME TO MY SENSES
, said Death. L
ET US LOSE NO TIME
.

“My sta—!”

There was an implosion and an inrush of air. The candle flames stretched out like lines of fire for a moment, and then went out.

Some time passed.

Then the bursar’s voice from somewhere near the floor said, “That was very unkind, Rincewind, losing his staff like that. Remind me to discipline you severely one of these days. Anyone got a light?”

“I don’t know what happened to it! I just leaned it against the pillar here and now it’s—”

“Oook.”

“Oh,” said Rincewind.

“Extra banana ration, that ape,” said the bursar levelly. A match flared and someone managed to get a candle alight. Wizards started to pick themselves off the floor.

“Well, that was a lesson to all of us,” the bursar continued, brushing dust and candlewax off his robe. He looked up, expecting to see the statue of Alberto Malich back on its pedestal.

“Clearly even statues have feelings,” he said. “I myself recall, when I was but a first-year student, writing my name on his well, never mind. The point is, I propose here and now we replace the statue.”

Dead silence greeted this suggestion.

“With, say, an exact likeness cast in gold. Suitably embellished with jewels, as befits our great founder,” he went on brightly.

“And to make sure no students deface it in any way I suggest we then erect it in the deepest cellar,” he continued.

“And then lock the door,” he added. Several wizards began to cheer up.

“And throw away the key?” said Rincewind.

“And weld the door,” the bursar said. He had just remembered about The Mended Drum. He thought for a while and remembered about the physical fitness regime as well.

“And then brick up the doorway,” he said. There was a round of applause.

“And throw away the bricklayer!” chortled Rincewind, who felt he was getting the hang of this.

The bursar scowled at him. “No need to get carried away,” he said.

In the silence a larger than usual sand dune humped up awkwardly and then fell away to reveal Binky, blowing the sand out of his nostrils and shaking his mane.

Mort opened his eyes.

There should be a word for that brief period just after waking when the mind is full of warm pink nothing. You lie there entirely empty of thought, except for a growing suspicion that heading towards you, like a sockful of damp sand in a nocturnal alleyway, are all the recollections you’d really rather do without, and which amount to the fact that the only mitigating factor in your horrible future is the certainty that it will be quite short.

Mort sat up and put his hands on top of his head to stop it unscrewing.

The sand beside him heaved and Ysabell pushed herself into a sitting position. Her hair was full of sand and her face was grimy with pyramid dust. Some of her hair had frizzled at the tips. She stared listlessly at him.

“Did you hit me?” he said, gently testing his jaw.

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

He looked at the sky, as though it could remind him about things. He had to be somewhere, soon, he recalled. Then he remembered something else.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Any time, I assure you.” Ysabell made it to her feet and tried to brush the dirt and cobwebs off her dress.

“Are we going to rescue this princess of yours?” she said diffidently.

Mort’s own personal, internal reality caught up with him. He shot to his feet with a strangled cry, watched blue fireworks explode in front of his eyes, and collapsed again. Ysabell caught him under the shoulders and hauled him back on his feet.

“Let’s go down to the river,” she said. “I think we could all do with a drink.”

“What happened to me?”

She shrugged as best she could while supporting his weight.

“Someone used the Rite of AshkEnte. Father hates it, he says they always summon him at inconvenient moments. The part of you that was Death went and you stayed behind. I think. At least you’ve got your own voice back.”

“What time is it?”

“What time did you say the priests close up the pyramid?”

Mort squinted through streaming eyes back towards the tomb of the king. Sure enough, torchlit fingers were working on the door. Soon, according to the legend, the guardians would come to life and begin their endless patrol.

He knew they would. He remembered the knowledge. He remembered his mind feeling as cold as ice and limitless as the night sky. He remembered being summoned into reluctant existence at the moment the first creature lived, in the certain knowledge that he would outlive life until the last being in the universe passed to its reward, when it would then be his job, figuratively speaking, to put the chairs on the tables and turn all the lights off.

He remembered the loneliness.

“Don’t leave me,” he said urgently.

“I’m here,” she said. “For as long as you need me.”

“It’s midnight,” he said dully, sinking down by the Tsort and lowering his aching head to the water. Beside him there was a noise like a bath emptying as Binky also took a drink.

“Does that mean we’re too late?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

“There isn’t.”

“At least you kept your promise to Albert.”

“Yes,” said Mort, bitterly. “At least I did that.”

Nearly all the way from one side of the Disc to the other….

There should be a word for the microscopic spark of hope that you dare not entertain in case the mere act of acknowledging it will cause it to vanish, like trying to look at a photon. You can only sidle up to it, looking past it,
walking
past it, waiting for it to get big enough to face the world.

He raised his dripping head and looked towards the sunset horizon, trying to remember the big model of the Disc in Death’s study without actually letting the universe know what he was entertaining.

At times like this it can seem that eventuality is so finely balanced that merely thinking too loud can spoil everything.

He oriented himself by the thin streamers of Hublight dancing against the stars, and made an inspired guess that Sto Lat was…over there….

“Midnight,” he said aloud.

“Gone midnight now,” said Ysabell.

Mort stood up, trying not to let the delight radiate out from him like a beacon, and grabbed Binky’s harness.

“Come on,” he said. “We haven’t got much time.”

“What are you talking about?”

Mort reached down to swing her up behind him. It was a nice idea, but merely meant that he nearly pulled himself out of the saddle. She pushed him back gently and climbed up by herself. Binky skittered sideways, sensing Mort’s feverish excitement, and snorted and pawed at the sand.

“I said, what are you talking about?”

Mort turned the horse to face the distant glow of the sunset.

“The speed of night,” he said.

Cutwell poked his head over the palace battlements and groaned. The interface was only a street away, clearly visible in the octarine, and he didn’t have to imagine the sizzling. He could hear it—a nasty, saw-toothed buzz as random particles of possibility hit the interface and gave up their energy as noise. As it ground its way up the street the pearly wall swallowed the bunting, the torches and the waiting crowds, leaving only dark streets. Somewhere out there, Cutwell thought, I’m fast asleep in my bed and none of this has happened. Lucky me.

He ducked down, skidded down the ladder to the cobbles and legged it back to the main hall with the skirts of his robe flapping around his ankles. He slipped in through the small postern in the great door and ordered the guards to lock it, then grabbed his skirts again and pounded along a side passage so that the guests wouldn’t notice him.

The hall was lit with thousands of candles and crowded with Sto Plain dignitaries, nearly all of them slightly unsure why they were there. And, of course, there was the elephant.

It was the elephant that had convinced Cutwell that he had gone off the rails of sanity, but it seemed like a good idea a few hours ago, when his exasperation at the High Priest’s poor eyesight had run into the recollection that a lumber mill on the edge of town possessed said beast for the purposes of heavy haulage. It was elderly, arthritic and had an uncertain temper, but it had one important advantage as a sacrificial victim. The High Priest should be able to see it.

Half a dozen guards were gingerly trying to restrain the creature, in whose slow brain the realization had dawned that it should be in its familiar stable, with plenty of hay and water and time to dream of the hot days on the great khaki plains of Klatch. It was getting restless.

It will shortly become apparent that another reason for its growing friskiness is the fact that, in the pre-ceremony confusion, its trunk found the ceremonial chalice containing a gallon of strong wine and drained the lot. Strange hot ideas are beginning to bubble in front of its crusted eyes, of uprooted baobabs, mating fights with other bulls, glorious stampedes through native villages and other half-remembered pleasures. Soon it will start to see pink people.

Fortunately this was unknown to Cutwell, who caught the eye of the High Priest’s assistant—a forward-looking young man who had the foresight to provide himself with a long rubber apron and waders—and signaled that the ceremony should begin.

He darted back into the priest’s robing room and struggled into the special ceremonial robe the palace seamstress had made up for him, digging deep into her workbasket for scraps of lace, sequins and gold thread to produce a garment of such dazzling tastelessness that even the ArchChancellor of Unseen University wouldn’t have been ashamed to wear it. Cutwell allowed himself five seconds to admire himself in the mirror before ramming the pointy hat on his head and running back to the door, stopping just in time to emerge at a sedate pace as befitted a person of substance.

He reached the High Priest as Keli started her advance up the central aisle, flanked by maidservants who fussed around her like tugs around a liner.

Despite the drawbacks of the hereditary dress, Cutwell thought she looked beautiful. There was something about her that made him—

He gritted his teeth and tried to concentrate on the security arrangements. He had put guards at various vantage points in the hall in case the Duke of Sto Helit tried any last-minute rearrangement of the royal succession, and reminded himself to keep a special eye on the duke himself, who was sitting in the front row of seats with a strange quiet smile on his face. The duke caught Cutwell’s eye, and the wizard hastily looked away.

The High Priest held up his hands for silence. Cutwell sidled towards him as the old man turned towards the Hub and in a cracked voice began the invocation to the gods.

Cutwell let his eyes slip back towards the duke.

“Hear me, mm, O gods—”

Was Sto Helit looking up into the bat-haunted darkness of the rafters?

“—hear me, O Blind Io of the Hundred Eyes; hear me, O Great Offler of the Bird-Haunted Mouth; hear me, O Merciful Fate; hear me, O Cold, mm, Destiny; hear me, O Seven-handed Sek; hear me, O Hoki of the Woods; hear me, O—”

With dull horror Cutwell realized that the daft old fool, against all instruction, was going to mention the whole lot. There were more than nine hundred known gods on the Disc, and research theologians were discovering more every year. It could take hours. The congregation was already beginning to shuffle its feet.

Keli was standing in front of the altar with a look of fury on her face. Cutwell nudged the High Priest in the ribs, which had no noticeable effect, and then waggled his eyebrows ferociously at the young acolyte.

“Stop him!” he hissed. “We haven’t got time!”

“The gods would be displeased—”

“Not as displeased as me, and I’m
here
.”

The acolyte looked at Cutwell’s expression for a moment and decided that he’d better explain to the gods later. He tapped the High Priest on the shoulder and whispered something in his ear.

“—O Steikhegel, god of, mm, isolated cow byres; hear me, O—hello? What?”

Murmur, murmur.

“This is, mm, very irregular. Very well, we shall go straight to the, mm, Recitation of the Lineage.”

Murmur, murmur.

The High Priest scowled at Cutwell, or at least where he believed Cutwell to be.

“Oh, all right. Mm, prepare the incense and fragrances for the Shriving of the Fourfold-Path.”

Murmur, murmur.

The High Priest’s face darkened.

“I suppose, mm, a short prayer, mm, is totally out of the question?” he said acidly.

“If some people don’t get a move on,” said Keli demurely, “there is going to be trouble.”

Murmur.

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said the High Priest. “People might as well not bother with a religious, mm, ceremony at all. Fetch the bloody elephant, then.”

The acolyte gave Cutwell a frantic look and waved at the guards. As they urged their gently-swaying charge forward with shouts and pointed sticks the young priest sidled towards Cutwell and pushed something into his hand.

He looked down. It was a waterproof hat.

“Is this necessary?”

“He’s very devout,” said the acolyte. “We may need a snorkel.”

The elephant reached the altar and was forced, without too much difficulty, to kneel. It hiccupped.

“Well, where is it, then?” snapped the High Priest. “Let’s get this, mm,
farce
over with!”

Murmur went the acolyte. The High Priest listened, nodded gravely, picked up his white-handled sacrificial knife and raised it double-handed over his head. The whole hall watched, holding its breath. Then he lowered it again.

“
Where
in front of me?”

Murmur.

“I certainly don’t need your help, my lad! I’ve been sacrificing man and boy—and, mm, women and animals—for seventy years, and when I can’t use the, mm, knife you can put me to bed with a shovel!”

And he brought the blade down in a wild sweep which, by sheer luck, gave the elephant a mild flesh wound on the trunk.

The creature awoke from its pleasant reflective stupor and squealed. The acolyte turned in horror to look at two tiny bloodshot eyes squinting down the length of an enraged trunk, and cleared the altar in one standing jump.

The elephant was enraged. Vague confusing recollections flooded its aching head, of fires and shouts and men with nets and cages and spears and too many years hauling heavy tree trunks. It brought its trunk down across the altar stone and somewhat to its own surprise smashed it in two, levered the two parts into the air with its tusks, tried unsuccessfully to uproot a stone pillar and then, feeling the sudden need for a breath of fresh air, started to charge arthritically down the length of the hall.

It hit the door at a dead run, its blood loud with the call of the herd and fizzing with alcohol, and took it off at the hinges. Still wearing the frame on its shoulders it careened across the courtyard, smashed the outer gates, burped, thundered through the sleeping city and was still slowly accelerating when it sniffed the distant dark continent of Klatch on the night breeze and, tail raised, followed the ancient call of home.

Back in the hall there was dust and shouts and confusion. Cutwell pushed his hat out of his eyes and got to his hands and knees.

“Thank you,” said Keli, who had been lying underneath him. “And why did you jump on top of me?”

“My first instinct was to protect you, your Majesty.”

“Yes, instinct it may have been, but—” She started to say that maybe the elephant would have weighed less, but the sight of his big, serious and rather flushed face stopped her.

“We will talk about this later,” she said, sitting up and brushing the dust off her. “In the meantime, I think we will dispense with the sacrifice. I’m not your Majesty yet, just your Highness, and now if someone will fetch the crown—”

There was the snick of a safety catch behind them.

“The wizard will put his hands where I can see them,” said the duke.

Cutwell stood up slowly, and turned around. The duke was backed by half a dozen large serious men, the type of men whose only function in life is to loom behind people like the duke. They had a dozen large serious crossbows, whose main purpose was to appear to be on the point of going off.

The princess sprang to her feet and launched herself at her uncle, but Cutwell grabbed her.

“No,” he said, quietly. “This isn’t the kind of man who ties you up in a cellar with just enough time for the mice to eat your ropes before the flood waters rise. This is the kind of man who just kills you here and now.”

The duke bowed.

“I think it can be truly said that the gods have spoken,” he said. “Clearly the princess was tragically crushed by the rogue elephant. The people will be upset. I will personally decree a week of mourning.”

“You can’t do that, all the guests have seen—!” the princess began, nearly in tears.

Cutwell shook his head. He could see the guards moving through the crowds of bewildered guests.

“They haven’t,” he said. “You’ll be amazed at what they haven’t seen. Especially when they learn that being tragically crushed to death by rogue elephants can be catching. You can even die of it in bed.”

The duke laughed pleasantly.

“You really are quite intelligent for a wizard,” he said. “Now, I am merely proposing banishment—”

“You won’t get away with this,” said Cutwell. He thought for a bit, and added, “Well, you will probably get away with it, but you’ll feel bad about it on your deathbed and you’ll wish—”

He stopped talking. His jaw dropped.

The duke half turned to follow his gaze.

“Well, wizard? What have you seen?”

“You won’t get away with it,” said Cutwell hysterically. “You won’t even
be
here. This is going to have never happened, do you realize?”

“Watch his hands,” said the duke. “If he even moves his fingers, shoot them.”

He looked around again, puzzled. The wizard had sounded genuine. Of course, it was said wizards could see things that weren’t there….

“It doesn’t even matter if you kill me,” Cutwell babbled, “because tomorrow I’ll wake up in my own bed and this won’t have happened anyway. It’s come through the wall!”