Mort (9 page)

Mort wasn’t sure how he got back. The sky simply changed from ice blue to sullen gray as Binky eased himself into the gap between dimensions. He didn’t land on the dark soil of Death’s estate, it was simply there, underfoot, as though an aircraft carrier had gently maneuvered itself under a jumpjet to save the pilot all the trouble of touching down.

The great horse trotted into the stableyard and halted outside the double door, swishing his tail. Mort slid off and ran for the house.

And stopped, and ran back, and filled the hayrack, and ran for the house, and stopped and muttered to himself and ran back and rubbed the horse down and checked the water bucket, and ran for the house, and ran back and fetched the horseblanket down from its hook on the wall and buckled it on. Binky gave him a dignified nuzzle.

No one seemed to be about as Mort slipped in by the back door and made his way to the library, where even at this time of night the air seemed to be made of hot dry dust. It seemed to take years to locate Princess Keli’s biography, but he found it eventually. It was a depressingly slim volume on a shelf only reachable by the library ladder, a wheeled rickety structure that strongly resembled an early siege engine.

With trembling fingers he opened it at the last page, and groaned.

“The princess’s assassination at the age of fifteen,” he read, “was followed by the union of Sto Lat with Sto Helit and, indirectly, the collapse of the city states of the central plain and the rise of—”

He read on, unable to stop. Occasionally he groaned again.

Finally he put the book back, hesitated, and then shoved it behind a few other volumes. He could still feel it there as he climbed down the ladder, shrieking its incriminating existence to the world.

There were few ocean-going ships on the Disc. No captain liked to venture out of sight of a coastline. It was a sorry fact that ships which looked from a distance as though they were going over the edge of the world weren’t in fact disappearing over the horizon, they were in fact dropping over the edge of the world.

Every generation or so a few enthusiastic explorers doubted this and set out to prove it wrong. Strangely enough, none of them had ever come back to announce the result of their researches.

The following analogy would, therefore, have been meaningless to Mort.

He felt as if he’d been shipwrecked on the
Titanic
but in the nick of time had been rescued. By the
Lusitania
.

He felt as though he’d thrown a snowball on the spur of the moment and watched the ensuing avalanche engulf three ski resorts.

He felt history unraveling all around him.

He felt he needed someone to talk to, quickly.

That had to mean either Albert or Ysabell, because the thought of explaining everything to those tiny blue pinpoints was not one he cared to contemplate after a long night. On the rare occasions Ysabell deigned to look in his direction she made it clear that the only difference between Mort and a dead toad was the color. As for Albert….

All right, not the perfect confidant; but definitely the best in a field of one.

Mort slid down the steps and threaded his way back through the bookshelves. A few hours’ sleep would be a good idea, too.

Then he heard a gasp, the brief patter of running feet, and the slam of a door. When he peered around the nearest bookcase there was nothing there except a stool with a couple of books on it. He picked one up and glanced at the name, then read a few pages. There was a damp lace handkerchief lying next to it.

Mort rose late, and hurried towards the kitchen expecting at any moment the deep tones of disapproval. Nothing happened.

Albert was at the stone sink, gazing thoughtfully at his chip pan, probably wondering whether it was time to change the fat or let it bide for another year. He turned as Mort slid into a chair.

“You had a busy time of it, then,” he said. “Gallivanting all over the place until all hours, I heard. I could do you an egg. Or there’s porridge.”

“Egg, please,” said Mort. He’d never plucked up the courage to try Albert’s porridge, which led a private life of its own in the depths of its saucepan and ate spoons.

“The master wants to see you after,” Albert added, “but he said you wasn’t to rush.”

“Oh.” Mort stared at the table. “Did he say anything else?”

“He said he hadn’t had an evening off in a thousand years,” said Albert. “He was humming. I don’t like it. I’ve never seen him like this.”

“Oh.” Mort took the plunge. “Albert, have you been here long?”

Albert looked at him over the top of his spectacles.

“Maybe,” he said. “It’s hard to keep track of outside time, boy. I bin here since just after the old king died.”

“Which king, Albert?”

“Artorollo, I think he was called. Little fat man. Squeaky voice. I only saw him the once, though.”

“Where was this?”

“In Ankh, of course.”

“What?” said Mort. “They don’t have kings in Ankh-Morpork, everyone knows that!”

“This was back a bit, I said,” said Albert. He poured himself a cup of tea from Death’s personal teapot and sat down, a dreamy look in his crusted eyes. Mort waited expectantly.

“And they was kings in those days, real kings, not like the sort you get now. They was
monarchs
,” continued Albert, carefully pouring some tea into his saucer and fanning it primly with the end of his muffler. “I mean, they was wise and fair, well, fairly wise. And they wouldn’t think twice about cutting your head off soon as look at you,” he added approvingly. “And all the queens were tall and pale and wore them balaclava helmet things—”

“Wimples?” said Mort.

“Yeah, them, and the princesses were beautiful as the day is long and so noble they, they could pee through a dozen mattresses—”

“What?”

Albert hesitated. “Something like that, anyway,” he conceded. “And there was balls and tournaments and executions. Great days.” He smiled dreamily at his memories.

“Not like the sort of days you get now,” he said, emerging from his reverie with bad grace.

“Have you got any other names, Albert?” said Mort. But the brief spell had been broken and the old man wasn’t going to be drawn.

“Oh, I know,” he snapped, “get Albert’s name and you’ll go and look him up in the library, won’t you? Prying and poking. I know you, skulking in there at all hours reading the lives of young wimmen—”

The heralds of guilt must have flourished their tarnished trumpets in the depths of Mort’s eyes, because Albert cackled and prodded him with a bony finger.

“You might at least put them back where you find ’em,” he said, “not leave piles of ’em around for old Albert to put back. Anyway, it’s not right, ogling the poor dead things. It probably turns you blind.”

“But I only—” Mort began, and remembered the damp lace handkerchief in his pocket, and shut up.

He left Albert grumbling to himself and doing the washing up, and slipped into the library. Pale sunlight lanced down from the high windows, gently fading the covers on the patient, ancient volumes. Occasionally a speck of dust would catch the light as it floated through the golden shafts, and flare like a miniature supernova.

Mort knew that if he listened hard enough he could hear the insect-like scotching of the books as they wrote themselves.

Once upon a time Mort would have found it eerie. Now it was—reassuring. It demonstrated that the universe was running smoothly. His conscience, which had been looking for the opening, gleefully reminded him that, all right, it might be running smoothly but it certainly wasn’t heading in the right direction.

He made his way through the maze of shelves to the mysterious pile of books, and found it was gone. Albert had been in the kitchen, and Mort had never seen Death himself enter the library. What was Ysabell looking for, then?

He glanced up at the cliff of shelves above him, and his stomach went cold when he thought of what was starting to happen….

There was nothing for it. He’d have to tell someone.

Keli, meanwhile, was also finding life difficult.

This was because causality had an incredible amount of inertia. Mort’s misplaced thrust, driven by anger and desperation and nascent love, had sent it down a new track but it hadn’t noticed yet. He’d kicked the tail of the dinosaur, but it would be some time before the other end realized it was time to say “ouch.”

Bluntly, the universe knew Keli was dead and was therefore rather surprised to find that she hadn’t stopped walking and breathing yet.

It showed it in little ways. The courtiers who gave her furtive odd looks during the morning would not have been able to say why the sight of her made them feel strangely uncomfortable. To their acute embarrassment and her annoyance they found themselves ignoring her, or talking in hushed voices.

The Chamberlain found he’d instructed that the royal standard be flown at half mast and for the life of him couldn’t explain why. He was gently led off to his bed with a mild nervous affliction after ordering a thousand yards of black bunting for no apparent reason.

The eerie, unreal feeling soon spread throughout the castle. The head coachman ordered the state bier to be brought out again and polished, and then stood in the stable yard and wept into his chamois leather because he couldn’t remember why. Servants walked softly along the corridors. The cook had to fight an overpowering urge to prepare simple banquets of cold meat. Dogs howled and then stopped, feeling rather stupid. The two black stallions who traditionally pulled the Sto Lat funeral cortege grew restive in their stalls and nearly kicked a groom to death.

In his castle in Sto Helit, the duke waited in vain for a messenger who had in fact set out, but had stopped halfway down the street, unable to remember what it was he was supposed to be doing.

Through all this Keli moved like a solid and increasingly more irritated ghost.

Things came to a head at lunchtime. She swept into the great hall and found no place had been set in front of the royal chair. By speaking loudly and distinctly to the butler she managed to get that rectified, then saw dishes being passed in front of her before she could get a fork into them. She watched in sullen disbelief as the wine was brought in and poured first for the Lord of the Privy Closet.

It was an unregal thing to do, but she stuck out a foot and tripped the wine waiter. He stumbled, muttered something under his breath, and stared down at the flagstones.

She leaned the other way and shouted into the ear of the Yeoman of the Pantry: “Can you see me, man? Why are we reduced to eating cold pork and ham?”

He turned aside from his hushed conversation with the Lady of the Small Hexagonal Room in the North Turret, gave her a long look in which shock made way for a sort of unfocused puzzlement, and said, “Why, yes…I can…er….”

“Your Royal Highness,” prompted Keli.

“But…yes…Highness,” he muttered. There was a heavy pause.

Then, as if switched back on, he turned his back on her and resumed his conversation.

Keli sat for a while, white with shock and anger, then pushed the chair back and stormed away to her chambers. A couple of servants sharing a quick rollup in the passage outside were knocked sideways by something they couldn’t quite see.

Keli ran into her room and hauled on the rope that should have sent the duty maid running in from the sitting room at the end of the corridor. Nothing happened for some time, and then the door was pushed open slowly and a face peered in at her.

She recognized the look this time, and was ready for it. She grabbed the maid by the shoulders and hauled her bodily into the room, slamming the door shut behind her. As the frightened woman stared everywhere but at Keli she hauled off and fetched her a stinging slap across the cheek.

“Did you feel that? Did you feel it?” she shrieked.

“But…you…” the maid whimpered, staggering backwards until she hit the bed and sitting down heavily on it.

“Look at me! Look at me when I talk to you!” yelled Keli, advancing on her. “You can see me, can’t you? Tell me you can see me or I’ll have you executed!”

The maid stared into her terrified eyes.

“I can see you,” she said, “but….”

“But what? But what?”

“Surely you’re…I heard…I thought….”

“What did you think?” snapped Keli. She wasn’t shouting any more. Her words came out like white-hot whips.

The maid collapsed into a sobbing heap. Keli stood tapping her foot for a moment, and then shook the woman gently.

“Is there a wizard in the city?” she said. “Look at me,
at
me
. There’s a wizard, isn’t there? You girls are always skulking off to talk to wizards! Where does he live?”

The woman turned a tear-stained face towards her, fighting against every instinct that told her the princess didn’t exist.

“Uh…wizard, yes…Cutwell, in Wall Street….”

Keli’s lips compressed into a thin smile. She wondered where her cloaks were kept, but cold reason told her it was going to be a damn sight easier to find them herself than try to make her presence felt to the maid. She waited, watching closely, as the woman stopped sobbing, looked around her in vague bewilderment, and hurried out of the room.

She’s forgotten me already, she thought. She looked at her hands. She seemed solid enough.

It had to be magic.

She wandered into her robing room and experimentally opened a few cupboards until she found a black cloak and hood. She slipped them on and darted out into the corridor and down the servants’ stairs.

She hadn’t been this way since she was little. This was the world of linen cupboards, bare floors and dumb-waiters. It smelled of slightly stale crusts.

Keli moved through it like an earthbound spook. She was aware of the servants’ quarters, of course, in the same way that people are aware at some level in their minds of the drains or the guttering, and she would be quite prepared to concede that although servants all looked pretty much alike they must have some distinguishing features by which their nearest and dearest could, presumably, identify them. But she was not prepared for sights like Moghedron the wine butler, whom she had hitherto seen only as a stately presence, moving like a galleon under full sail, sitting in his pantry with his jacket undone and smoking a pipe.

A couple of maids ran past her without a second glance, giggling. She hurried on, aware that in some strange way she was trespassing in her own castle.

And that, she realized, was because it wasn’t her castle at all. The noisy world around her, with its steaming laundries and chilly stillrooms, was its own world. She couldn’t own it. Possibly it owned her.

She took a chicken leg from the table in the biggest kitchen, a cavern lined with so many pots that by the light of its fires it looked like an armory for tortoises, and felt the unfamiliar thrill of theft. Theft! In her own kingdom! And the cook looked straight through her, eyes as glazed as jugged ham.

Keli ran across the stable yards and out of the back gate, past a couple of sentries whose stern gaze quite failed to notice her.

Out in the streets it wasn’t so creepy, but she still felt oddly naked. It was unnerving, being among people who were going about their own affairs and not bothering to look at one, when one’s entire experience of the world hitherto was that it revolved around one. Pedestrians bumped into one and rebounded away, wondering briefly what it was they had hit, and one several times had to scurry away out of the path of wagons.

The chicken leg hadn’t gone far to fill the hole left by the absence of lunch, and she filched a couple of apples from a stall, making a mental note to have the chamberlain find out how much apples cost and send some money down to the stallholder.

Disheveled, rather grubby and smelling slightly of horse dung, she came at last to Cutwell’s door. The knocker gave her some trouble. In her experience doors opened for you; there were special people to arrange it.

She was so distraught she didn’t even notice that the knocker winked at her.

She tried again, and thought she heard a distant crash. After some time the door opened a few inches and she caught a glimpse of a round flustered face topped with curly hair. Her right foot surprised her by intelligently inserting itself in the crack.

“I demand to see the wizard,” she announced. “Pray admit me this instant.”

“He’s rather busy at present,” said the face. “Were you after a love potion?”

“A what?”

“I’ve—we’ve got a special on Cutwell’s Shield of Passion ointment,” said the face, and winked in a startling fashion. “Provides your wild oats while guaranteeing a crop failure, if you know what I mean.”

Keli bridled. “No,” she lied coldly, “I do not.”

“Ramrub? Maidens’ Longstop? Belladonna eyedrops?”

“I demand—”

“Sorry, we’re closed,” said the face, and shut the door. Keli withdrew her foot just in time.

She muttered some words that would have amazed and shocked her tutors, and thumped on the woodwork.

The tattoo of her hammering suddenly slowed as realization dawned.

He’d seen her! He’d heard her!

She beat on the door with renewed vigor, yelling with all the power in her lungs.

A voice by her ear said, “It won’t work. He ’eef very fstubborn.”

She looked around slowly and met the impertinent gaze of the doorknocker. It waggled its metal eyebrows at her and spoke indistinctly through its wrought-iron ring.

“I am Princess Keli, heir to the throne of Sto Lat,” she said haughtily, holding down the lid on her terror. “And I don’t talk to door furniture.”

“Fwell,
I’m
just a doorknocker and I can talk to fwhoever I please,” said the gargoyle pleasantly. “And I can ftell you the fmaster iff having a trying day and duff fnot fwant to be disturbed. But you could ftry to use the magic word,” it added. “Coming from an attractiff fwoman it works nine times out of eight.”

“Magic word? What’s the magic word?”

The knocker perceptibly sneered. “Haff you been taught nothing, miss?”

She drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t really worth the effort. She felt she’d had a trying day too. Her father had personally executed a hundred enemies in battle. She should be able to manage a doorknocker.

“I have been
educated
,” she informed it with icy precision, “by some of the finest scholars in the land.”

The doorknocker did not appear to be impressed.

“Iff they didn’t teach you the magic word,” it said calmly, “they couldn’t haff fbeen all that fine.”

Keli reached out, grabbed the heavy ring, and pounded it on the door. The knocker leered at her.

“Ftreat me rough,” it lisped. “That’f the way I like it!”

“You’re disgusting!”

“Yeff. Ooo, that waff nife, do it again….”

The door opened a crack. There was a shadowy glimpse of curly hair.

“Madam, I said we’re cl—”

Keli sagged.

“
Please
help me,” she said. “Please!”

“See?” said the doorknocker triumphantly. “Sooner or later
everyone
remembers the magic word!”