Mort (7 page)

The horse wasn’t as fine or as fast as Binky, but it swept the miles away under its hooves and easily outdistanced a few mounted guards who, for some reason, appeared anxious to talk to Mort. Soon the shanty suburbs of Morpork were left behind and the road ran out into rich black earth country of the Sto plain, constructed over eons by the periodic flooding of the great slow Ankh that brought to the region prosperity, security and chronic arthritis.

It was also extremely boring. As the light distilled from silver to gold Mort galloped across a flat, chilly landscape, checkered with cabbage fields from edge to edge. There are many things to be said about cabbages. One may talk at length about their high vitamin content, their vital iron contribution, the valuable roughage and commendable food value. In the mass, however, they lack a certain something; despite their claim to immense nutritional and moral superiority over, say, daffodils, they have never been a sight to inspire the poet’s muse. Unless he was hungry, of course. It was only twenty miles to Sto Lat, but in terms of meaningless human experience it seemed like two thousand.

There were guards on the gates of Sto Lat, although compared to the ones that patrolled Ankh they had a sheepish, amateurish look. Mort trotted past and one of them, feeling a bit of a fool, asked him who went there.

“I’m afraid I can’t stop,” said Mort.

The guard was new to the job, and quite keen. Guarding wasn’t what he’d been led to expect. Standing around all day in chain mail with an axe on a long pole wasn’t what he’d volunteered for; he’d expected excitement and challenge and a crossbow and a uniform that didn’t go rusty in the rain.

He stepped forward, ready to defend the city against people who didn’t respect commands given by duly authorized civic employees. Mort considered the pike blade hovering a few inches from his face. There was getting to be too much of this.

“On the other hand,” he said calmly, “how would you like it if I made you a present of this rather fine horse?”

It wasn’t hard to find the entrance to the castle. There were guards there, too, and they had crossbows and a considerably more unsympathetic outlook on life and, in any case, Mort had run out of horses. He loitered a bit until they started paying him a generous amount of attention, and then wandered disconsolately away into the streets of the little city, feeling stupid.

After all this, after miles of brassicas and a backside that now felt like a block of wood, he didn’t even know why he was there. So she’d seen him even when he was invisible? Did it mean anything? Of course it didn’t. Only he kept seeing her face, and the flicker of hope in her eyes. He wanted to tell her that everything was going to be all right. He wanted to tell her about himself and everything he wanted to be. He wanted to find out which was her room in the castle and watch it all night until the light went out. And so on.

A little later a blacksmith, whose business was in one of the narrow streets that looked out on to the castle walls, glanced up from his work to see a tall, gangling young man, rather red in the face, who kept trying to walk through the walls.

Rather later than that a young man with a few superficial bruises on his head called in at one of the city’s taverns and asked for directions to the nearest wizard.

And it was later still that Mort turned up outside a peeling plaster house which announced itself on a blackened brass plaque to be the abode of Igneous Cutwell, DM (Unseen), Marster of the Infinit, Illuminartus, Wyzard to Princes, Gardian of the Sacred Portalls, If Out leave Maile with Mrs. Nugent Next Door.

Suitably impressed despite his pounding heart, Mort lifted the heavy knocker, which was in the shape of a repulsive gargoyle with a heavy iron ring in its mouth, and knocked twice.

There was a brief commotion from within, the series of hasty domestic sounds that might, in a less exalted house, have been made by, say, someone shoveling the lunch plates into the sink and tidying the laundry out of sight.

Eventually the door swung open, slowly and mysteriously.

“You’d fbetter pretend to be impreffed,” said the doorknocker conversationally, but hampered somewhat by the ring. “He does it with pulleys and a bit of ftring. No good at opening-fpells, fee?”

Mort looked at the grinning metal face. I work for a skeleton who can walk through walls, he told himself. Who am I to be surprised at anything?

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome. Wipe your feet on the doormat, it’s the bootfcraper’s day off.”

The big low room inside was dark and shadowy and smelled mainly of incense but slightly of boiled cabbage and elderly laundry and the kind of person who throws all his socks at the wall and wears the ones that don’t stick. There was a large crystal ball with a crack in it, an astrolabe with several bits missing, a rather scuffed octogram on the floor, and a stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling. A stuffed alligator is absolutely standard equipment in any properly-run magical establishment. This one looked as though it hadn’t enjoyed it much.

A bead curtain on the far wall was flung aside with a dramatic gesture and a hooded figure stood revealed.

“Beneficent constellations shine on the hour of our meeting!” it boomed.

“Which ones?” said Mort.

There was a sudden worried silence.

“Pardon?”

“Which constellations would these be?” said Mort.

“Beneficent ones,” said the figure, uncertainly. It rallied. “Why do you trouble Igneous Cutwell, Holder of the Eight Keys, Traveler in the Dungeon Dimensions, Supreme Mage of—”

“Excuse me,” said Mort, “are you really?”

“Really what?”

“Master of the thingy, Lord High Wossname of the Sacred Dungeons?”

Cutwell pushed back his hood with an annoyed flourish. Instead of the gray-bearded mystic Mort had expected he saw a round, rather plump face, pink and white like a pork pie, which it somewhat resembled in other respects. For example, like most pork pies, it didn’t have a beard and, like most pork pies, it looked basically good-humored.

“In a figurative sense,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it means no,” said Cutwell.

“But you said—”

“That was advertising,” said the wizard. “It’s a kind of magic I’ve been working on. What was it you were wanting, anyway?” He leered suggestively. “A love philter, yes? Something to encourage the young ladies?”

“Is it possible to walk through walls?” said Mort desperately. Cutwell paused with his hand already halfway to a large bottle full of sticky liquid.

“Using magic?”

“Um,” said Mort, “I don’t think so.”

“Then pick very thin walls,” said Cutwell. “Better still, use the door. The one over there would be favorite, if you’ve just come here to waste my time.”

Mort hesitated, and then put the bag of gold coins on the table. The wizard glanced at them, made a little whinnying noise in the back of his throat, and reached out. Mort’s hand shot across and grabbed his wrist.

“I’ve walked through walls,” he said, slowly and deliberately.

“Of course you have, of course you have,” mumbled Cutwell, not taking his eyes off the bag. He flicked the cork out of the bottle of blue liquid and took an absent-minded swig.

“Only before I did it I didn’t know that I could, and when I was doing it I didn’t know I was, and now I’ve done it I can’t remember how it was done. And I want to do it again.”

“Why?”

“Because,” said Mort, “if I could walk through walls I could do anything.”

“Very deep,” agreed Cutwell. “Philosophical. And the name of the young lady on the other side of this wall?”

“She’s—” Mort swallowed. “I don’t know her name. Even if there is a girl,” he added haughtily, “and I’m not saying there is.”

“Right,” said Cutwell. He took another swig, and shuddered. “Fine. How to walk through walls. I’ll do some research. It might be expensive, though.”

Mort carefully picked up the bag and pulled out one small gold coin.

“A down payment,” he said, putting it on the table.

Cutwell picked up the coin as if he expected it to go bang or evaporate, and examined it carefully.

“I’ve never seen this sort of coin before,” he said accusingly. “What’s all this curly writing?”

“It’s gold, though, isn’t it?” said Mort. “I mean, you don’t have to accept it—”

“Sure, sure, it’s gold,” said Cutwell hurriedly. “It’s gold all right. I just wondered where it had come from, that’s all.”

“You wouldn’t believe me,” said Mort. “What time’s sunset around here?”

“We normally manage to fit it in between night and day,” said Cutwell, still staring at the coin and taking little sips from the blue bottle. “About now.”

Mort glanced out of the window. The street outside already had a twilight look to it.

“I’ll be back,” he muttered, and made for the door. He heard the wizard call out something, but Mort was heading down the street at a dead run.

He started to panic. Death would be waiting for him forty miles away. There would be a row. There would be a terrible—

A
H, BOY
.

A familiar figure stepped out from the flare around a jellied eel stall, holding a plate of winkles.

T
HE VINEGAR IS PARTICULARLY PIQUANT
. H
ELP YOURSELF
, I
HAVE AN EXTRA PIN
.

But, of course, just because he was forty miles away didn’t mean he wasn’t here as well….

And in his untidy room Cutwell turned the gold coin over and over in his fingers, muttering “walls” to himself, and draining the bottle.

He appeared to notice what he was doing only when there was no more to drink, at which point his eyes focused on the bottle and, through a rising pink mist, read the label which said “Granny Weatherwax’s Ramrub Invigoratore and Passion’s Philter, Onne Spoonful Onlie before bed and that Smalle.”

“By myself?” said Mort.

C
ERTAINLY
. I
HAVE EVERY FAITH IN YOU
.

“Gosh!”

The suggestion put everything else out of Mort’s mind, and he was rather surprised to find that he didn’t feel particularly squeamish. He’d seen quite a few deaths in the last week or so, and all the horror went out of it when you knew you’d be speaking to the victim afterwards. Most of them were relieved, one or two of them were angry, but they were all glad of a few helpful words.

T
HINK YOU CAN DO IT
?

“Well, sir. Yes. I think.”

T
HAT’S THE SPIRIT
. I’
VE LEFT
B
INKY BY THE HORSETROUGH ROUND THE CORNER
. T
AKE HIM STRAIGHT HOME WHEN YOU’VE FINISHED
.

“You’re staying here, sir?”

Death looked up and down the street. His eyesockets flared.

I
THOUGHT
I
MIGHT STROLL AROUND A BIT, he said mysteriously
. I
DON’T SEEM TO FEEL QUITE RIGHT
. I
COULD DO WITH THE FRESH AIR
. He seemed to remember something, reached into the mysterious shadows of his cloak, and pulled out three hourglasses.

A
LL STRAIGHTFORWARD
, he said. E
NJOY YOURSELF
.

He turned and strode off down the street, humming.

“Um. Thank you,” said Mort. He held the hourglasses up to the light, noting the one that was on its very last few grains of sand.

“Does this mean I’m in charge?” he called, but Death had turned the corner.

Binky greeted him with a faint whinny of recognition. Mort mounted up, his heart pounding with apprehension and responsibility. His fingers worked automatically, taking the scythe out of its sheath and adjusting and locking the blade (which flashed steely blue in the night, slicing the starlight like salami). He mounted carefully, wincing at the stab from his saddlesores, but Binky was like riding a pillow. As an afterthought, drunk with delegated authority, he pulled Death’s riding cloak out of its saddlebag and fastened it by its silver brooch.

He took another look at the first hourglass, and nudged Binky with his knees. The horse sniffed the chilly air, and began to trot.

Behind them Cutwell burst out of his doorway, accelerating down the frosty street with his robes flying out behind him.

Now the horse was cantering, widening the distance between its hooves and the cobbles. With a swish of its tail it cleared the housetops and floated up into the chilly sky.

Cutwell ignored it. He had more pressing things on his mind. He took a flying leap and landed full length in the freezing waters of the horsetrough, lying back gratefully among the bobbing ice splinters. After a while the water began to steam. Mort kept low for the sheer exhilaration of the speed. The sleeping countryside roared soundlessly underneath. Binky moved at an easy gallop, his great muscles sliding under his skin as easily as alligators off a sandbank, his mane whipping in Mort’s face. The night swirled away from the speeding edge of the scythe, cut into two curling halves.

They sped under the moonlight as silent as a shadow, visible only to cats and people who dabbled in things men were not meant to wot of.

Mort couldn’t remember afterwards, but very probably he laughed.

Soon the frosty plains gave way to the broken lands around the mountains, and then the marching ranks of the Ramtops themselves raced across the world towards them. Binky put his head down and opened his stride, aiming for a pass between two mountains as sharp as goblins’ teeth in the silver light. Somewhere a wolf howled.

Mort took another look at the hourglass. Its frame was carved with oak leaves and mandrake roots, and the sand inside, even by moonlight, was pale gold. By turning the glass this way and that, he could just make out the name “Ammeline Hamstring” etched in the faintest of lines.

Binky slowed to a canter. Mort looked down at the roof of a forest, dusted with snow that was either early or very, very late; it could have been either, because the Ramtops hoarded their weather and doled it out with no real reference to the time of year.

A gap opened up beneath them. Binky slowed again, wheeled around and descended towards a clearing that was white with drifted snow. It was circular, with a tiny cottage in the exact middle. If the ground around it hadn’t been covered in snow, Mort would have noticed that there were no tree stumps to be seen; the trees hadn’t been cut down in the circle, they’d simply been discouraged from growing there. Or had moved away.

Candlelight spilled from one downstairs window, making a pale orange pool on the snow.

Binky touched down smoothly and trotted across the freezing crust without sinking. He left no hoofprints, of course.

Mort dismounted and walked towards the door, muttering to himself and making experimental sweeps with the scythe.

The cottage roof had been built with wide eaves, to shed snow and cover the logpile. No dweller in the high Ramtops would dream of starting a winter without a logpile on three sides of the house. But there wasn’t a logpile here, even though spring was still a long way off.

There was, however, a bundle of hay in a net by the door. It had a note attached, written in big, slightly shaky capitals: FOR THEE HORS.

It would have worried Mort if he’d let it. Someone was expecting him. He’d learned in recent days, though, that rather than drown in uncertainty it was best to surf right over the top of it. Anyway, Binky wasn’t worried by moral scruples and bit straight in.

It did leave the problem of whether to knock. Somehow, it didn’t seem appropriate. Supposing no one answered, or told him to go away?

So he lifted the thumb latch and pushed at the door. It swung inwards quite easily, without a creak.

There was a low-ceilinged kitchen, its beams at trepanning height for Mort. The light from the solitary candle glinted off crockery on a long dresser and flagstones that had been scrubbed and polished into iridescence. The fire in the cave-like inglenook didn’t add much light, because it was no more than a heap of white ash under the remains of a log. Mort knew, without being told, that it was the last log.

An elderly lady was sitting at the kitchen table, writing furiously with her hooked nose only a few inches from the paper. A gray cat curled on the table beside her blinked calmly at Mort.

The scythe bumped off a beam. The woman looked up.

“Be with you in a minute,” she said. She frowned at the paper. “I haven’t put in the bit about being of sound mind and body yet, lot of foolishness anyway, no one sound in mind and body would be dead. Would you like a drink?”

“Pardon?” said Mort. He recalled himself, and repeated “PARDON?”

“If you drink, that is. It’s raspberry port. On the dresser. You might as well finish the bottle.”

Mort eyed the dresser suspiciously. He felt he’d rather lost the initiative. He pulled out the hourglass and glared at it. There was a little heap of sand left.

“There’s still a few minutes yet,” said the witch, without looking up.

“How, I mean,
HOW DO YOU KNOW
?”

She ignored him, and dried the ink in front of the candle, sealed the letter with a drip of wax, and tucked it under the candlestick. Then she picked up the cat.

“Granny Beedle will be around directly tomorrow to tidy up and you’re to go with her, understand? And see she lets Gammer Nutley have the pink marble washstand, she’s had her eye on it for years.”

The cat yawped knowingly.

“I haven’t, that is, I
HAVEN’T GOT ALL NIGHT, YOU KNOW
,” said Mort reproachfully.

“You have, I haven’t, and there’s no need to shout,” said the witch. She slid off her stall and then Mort saw how bent she was, like a bow. With some difficulty she unhooked a tall pointed hat from its nail on the wall, skewered it into place on her white hair with a battery of hatpins, and grasped two walking sticks.

She tottered across the floor towards Mort, and looked up at him with eyes as small and bright as blackcurrants.

“Will I need my shawl? Shall I need a shawl, d’you think? No, I suppose not. I imagine it’s quite warm where I’m going.” She peered closely at Mort, and frowned.

“You’re rather
younger
than I imagined,” she said. Mort said nothing. Then Goodie Hamstring said, quietly, “You know, I don’t think you’re who I was expecting at all.”

Mort cleared his throat.

“Who were you expecting, precisely?” he said.

“Death,” said the witch, simply. “It’s part of the arrangement, you see. One gets to know the time of one’s death in advance, and one is guaranteed—personal attention.”

“I’m it,” said Mort.

“It?”

“The personal attention. He sent me. I work for him. No-one else would have me.” Mort paused. This was all wrong. He’d be sent home again in disgrace. His first bit of responsibility, and he’d ruined it. He could already hear people laughing at him.

The wail started in the depths of his embarrassment and blared out like a foghorn. “Only this is my first real job and it’s all gone wrong!”

The scythe fell to the floor with a clatter, slicing a piece off the table leg and cutting a flagstone in half.

Goodie watched him for some time, with her head on one side. Then she said, “I see. What is your name, young man?”

“Mort,” sniffed Mort. “Short for Mortimer.”

“Well, Mort, I expect you’ve got an hourglass somewhere about your person.”

Mort nodded vaguely. He reached down to his belt and produced the glass. The witch inspected it critically.

“Still a minute or so,” she said. “We don’t have much time to lose. Just give me a moment to lock up.”

“But you don’t understand!” Mort wailed. “I’ll mess it all up! I’ve never done this before!”

She patted his hand. “Neither have I,” she said. “We can learn together. Now pick up the scythe and try to act your age, there’s a good boy.”

Against his protestations she shooed him out into the snow and followed behind him, pulling the door shut and locking it with a heavy iron key which she hung on a nail by the door.

The frost had tightened its grip on the forest, squeezing it until the roots creaked. The moon was setting, but the sky was full of hard white stars that made the winter seem colder still. Goodie Hamstring shivered.

“There’s an old log over there,” she said conversationally. “There’s quite a good view across the valley. In the summertime, of course. I should like to sit down.”

Mort helped her through the drifts and brushed as much snow as possible off the wood. They sat down with the hourglass between them. Whatever the view might have been in the summer, it now consisted of black rocks against a sky from which little flakes of snow were now tumbling.

“I can’t believe all this,” said Mort. “I mean you sound as if you want to die.”

“There’s some things I shall miss,” she said. “But it gets thin, you know. Life, I’m referring to. You can’t trust your own body any more, and it’s time to move on. I reckon it’s about time I tried something else. Did he tell you magical folk can see him all the time?”

“No,” said Mort, inaccurately.

“Well, we can.”

“He doesn’t like wizards and witches much,” Mort volunteered.

“Nobody likes a smartass,” she said with some satisfaction. “We give him trouble, you see. Priests don’t, so he likes priests.”

“He’s never said,” said Mort.

“Ah. They’re always telling folk how much better it’s going to be when they’re dead. We tell them it could be pretty good right here if only they’d put their minds to it.”

Mort hesitated. He wanted to say: you’re wrong, he’s not like that at all, he doesn’t care if people are good or bad so long as they’re punctual. And kind to cats, he added.

But he thought better of it. It occurred to him that people needed to believe things.

The wolf howled again, so near that Mort looked around apprehensively. Another one across the valley answered it. The chorus was picked up by a couple of others in the depths of the forest. Mort had never heard anything so mournful.

He glanced sideways at the still figure of Goodie Hamstring and then, with mounting panic, at the hourglass. He sprang to his feet, snatched up the scythe, and brought it around in a two-handed swing.

The witch stood up, leaving her body behind.

“Well done,” she said. “I thought you’d missed it, for a minute, there.”

Mort leaned against a tree, panting heavily, and watched Goodie walk around the log to look at herself.

“Hmm,” she said critically. “Time has got a lot to answer for.” She raised her hand and laughed to see the stars through it.

Then she changed. Mort had seen this happen before, when the soul realized it was no longer bound by the body’s morphic field, but never under such control. Her hair unwound itself from its tight bun, changing color and lengthening. Her body straightened up. Wrinkles dwindled and vanished. Her gray woolen dress moved like the surface of the sea and ended up tracing entirely different and disturbing contours.

She looked down, giggled, and changed the dress into something leaf-green and clingy.

“What do you think, Mort?” she said. Her voice had sounded cracked and quavery before. Now it suggested musk and maple syrup and other things that set Mort’s adam’s apple bobbing like a rubber ball on an elastic band.

“…” he managed, and gripped the scythe until his knuckles went white.

She walked towards him like a snake in a four-wheel drift.

“I didn’t hear you,” she purred.

“V-v-very nice,” he said. “Is that who you were?”

“It’s who I’ve always been.”

“Oh.” Mort stared at his feet. “I’m supposed to take you away,” he said.

“I know,” she said, “but I’m going to stay.”

“You can’t do that! I mean—” he fumbled for words—“you see, if you stay you sort of spread out and get thinner, until—”

“I shall enjoy it,” she said firmly. She leaned forward and gave him a kiss as insubstantial as a mayfly’s sigh, fading as she did so until only the kiss was left, just like a Cheshire cat only much more erotic.