Mort (12 page)

There was a murmured chorus of agreement.

Mort stared at everyone, visibly shaking. Then he turned and ran outside again.

The listeners heard hoofbeats in the yard, which grew fainter and then disappeared entirely, just as though a horse had left the face of the earth.

There was no sound inside the inn. Men tried to avoid one another’s gaze. No one wanted to be the first to admit to seeing what he thought he had just seen.

So it was left to the landlord to walk unsteadily across the room and reach out and run his fingers across the familiar, reassuring wooden surface of the door. It was solid, unbroken, everything a door should be.

Everyone had seen Mort run through it three times. He just hadn’t opened it.

Binky fought for height, rising nearly vertically with his hooves thrashing the air and his breath curling away behind him like a vapor trail. Mort hung on with knees and hands and mostly with willpower, his face buried in the horse’s mane. He didn’t look down until the air around him was freezing and thin as workhouse gravy.

Overhead the Hub Lights flickered silently across the winter sky. Below—

—an upturned saucer, miles across, silvery in the starlight. He could see lights through it. Clouds were drifting through it.

No. He watched carefully. Clouds were certainly drifting into it, and there were clouds
in
it, but the clouds inside were wispier and moving in a slightly different direction and, in fact, didn’t seem to have much to do with the clouds outside. There was something else…oh yes, the Hub Lights. They gave the night outside the ghostly hemisphere a faint green tint, but there was no sign of it under the dome.

It was like looking into a piece of another world, almost identical, that had been grafted on to the Disc. The weather was slightly different in there, and the Lights weren’t on display tonight.

And the Disc was resenting it, and surrounding it, and pushing it back into non-existence. Mort couldn’t see it growing smaller from up here, but in his mind’s ear he could hear the locust sizzle of the thing as it ground across the land, changing things back to where they should be. Reality was healing itself.

Mort knew, without even having to think about it, who was at the center of the dome. It was obvious even from here that it was centered firmly on Sto Lat.

He tried not to think what would happen when the dome had shrunk to the size of the room, and then the size of a person, and then the size of an egg. He failed.

Logic would have told Mort that here was his salvation. In a day or two the problem would solve itself; the books in the library would be right again; the world would have sprung back into shape like an elastic bandage. Logic would have told him that interfering with the process a second time around would only make things worse. Logic would have said all that, if only Logic hadn’t taken the night off too.

Light travels quite slowly on the Disc, due to the braking effect of the huge magical field, and currently that part of the Rim carrying the island of Krull was directly under the little sun’s orbit and it was, therefore, still early evening. It was also quite warm, since the Rim picks up more heat and enjoys a gentle maritime climate.

In fact Krull, with a large part of what for want of a better word must be called its coastline sticking out over the Edge, was a fortunate island. The only native Krullians who did not appreciate this were those who didn’t look where they were going or who walked in their sleep and, because of natural selection, there weren’t very many of them any more. All societies have their share of dropouts, but on Krull they never had a chance to drop back in again.

Terpsic Mims was not a dropout. He was an angler. There is a difference; angling is more expensive. But Terpsic was happy. He was watching a feather on a cork bob gently on the gentle, reed-lined waters of the Hakrull river and his mind was very nearly a blank. The only thing that could have disturbed his mood was actually catching a fish, because catching fish was the one thing about angling that he really dreaded. They were cold and slimy and panicky and got on his nerves, and Terpsic’s nerves weren’t very good.

So long as he caught nothing Terpsic Mims was one of the Disc’s happiest anglers, because the Hakrull river was five miles from his home and therefore five miles from Mrs. Gwladys Mims, with whom he had enjoyed six happy months of married life. That had been some twenty years previously.

Terpsic did not pay undue heed when another angler took up station further along the bank. Of course, some fishermen might have objected to this breach of etiquette, but in Terpsic’s book anything that reduced his chance of actually catching any of the damned things was all right by him. Out of the corner of his eye he noted that the newcomer was fly-fishing, an interesting pastime which Terpsic had rejected because one spent altogether far too much time at home making the equipment.

He had never seen fly-fishing like this before. There were wet flies, and there were dry flies, but this fly augured into the water with a saw-toothed whine and dragged the fish out backwards.

Terpsic watched in horrified fascination as the indistinct figure behind the willow trees cast and cast again. The water boiled as the river’s entire piscine population fought to get out of the way of the buzzing terror and, unfortunately, a large and maddened pike took Terpsic’s hook out of sheer confusion.

One moment he was standing on the bank, and the next he was in a green, clanging gloom, bubbling his breath away and watching his life flash before his eyes and, even in the moment of drowning, dreading the thought of watching the bit between the day of his wedding and the present. It occurred to him that Gwladys would soon be a widow, which cheered him up a little bit. In fact Terpsic had always tried to look on the bright side, and it struck him, as he sank gratefully into the silt, that from this point on his whole life could only improve….

And a hand grabbed his hair and dragged him to the surface, which was suddenly full of pain. Ghastly blue and black blotches swam in front of his eyes. His lungs were on fire. His throat was a pipe of agony.

Hands—cold hands, freezing hands, hands that felt like a glove full of dice—towed him through the water and threw him down on to the bank where, after some game attempts to get on with drowning, he was eventually bullied back into what passed for his life.

Terpsic didn’t often get angry, because Gwladys didn’t hold with it. But he felt cheated. He’d been born without being consulted, he’d been married because Gwladys and her father had seen to it, and the only major human achievement that was uniquely his had been rudely snatched away from him. A few seconds ago it had all been so simple. Now it was all complicated again.

Not that he wanted to die, of course. The gods were very firm on the subject of suicide. He just hadn’t wanted to be rescued.

Through red eyes in a mask of slime and duckweed he peered at the blurred form above him, and shouted, “Why did you have to save me?”

The answer worried him. He thought about it as he squelched all the way home. It sat at the back of his mind while Gwladys complained about the state of his clothes. It squirreled around in his head as he sat and sneezed guiltily by the fire, because being ill was another thing Gwladys didn’t hold with. As he lay shivering in bed it settled in his dreams like an iceberg. In the midst of his fever he muttered, “What did he mean, ‘
FOR LATER
’?”

Torches flared in the city of Sto Lat. Whole squads of men were charged with the task of constantly renewing them. The streets glowed. The sizzling flames pushed back shadows that had been blamelessly minding their own business every night for centuries. They illuminated ancient corners where the eyes of bewildered rats glittered in the depths of their holes. They forced burglars to stay indoors. They glowed on the night mists, forming a nimbus of yellow light that blotted out the cold high flames streaming from the Hub. But mainly they shone on the face of Princess Keli.

It was everywhere. It plastered every flat surface. Binky cantered along the glowing streets between Princess Keli on doors, walls and gable ends. Mort gaped at posters of his beloved on every surface where workmen had been able to make paste stick.

Even stranger, no one seemed to be paying them much attention. While Sto Lat’s night life was not as colorful and full of incident as that of Ankh-Morpork, in the same way that a wastepaper basket cannot compete with a municipal tip, the streets were nevertheless a-bustle with people and shrill with the cries of hucksters, gamblers, sellers of sweetmeats, pea-and-thimble men, ladies of assignation, pickpockets and the occasional honest trader who had wandered in by mistake and couldn’t now raise enough money to leave. As Mort rode through them snatches of conversation in half-a-dozen languages floated into his ears; with numb acceptance he realized he could understand every one of them.

He eventually dismounted and led the horse along Wall Street, searching in vain for Cutwell’s house. He found it only because a lump on the nearest poster was making muffled swearing noises.

He reached out gingerly and pulled aside a strip of paper.

“Fanks very much,” said the gargoyle doorknocker. “You wouldn’t credit it, would you? One minute life as normal, nexft minute a mouthful of glue.”

“Where’s Cutwell?”

“He’s gone off to the palace.” The knocker leered at him and winked a cast-iron eye. “Some men came and took all his fstuff away. Then some ovver men started pasting pictures of his girlfriend all over the place. Barftuds,” it added.

Mort colored.

“His girlfriend?”

The doorknocker, being of the demonic persuasion, sniggered at his tone. It sounded like fingernails being dragged over a file.

“Yeff,” it said. “They feemed in a bit of a hurry, if you ask me.”

Mort was already up on Binky’s back.

“I fay!” shouted the knocker at his retreating back. “I fay! Could you unftick me, boy?”

Mort tugged on Binky’s reins so hard that the horse reared and danced crazily backwards across the cobbles, then reached out and grabbed the ring of the knocker. The gargoyle looked up into his face and suddenly felt like a very frightened doorknocker indeed. Mort’s eyes glowed like crucibles, his expression was a furnace, his voice held enough heat to melt iron. It didn’t know what he could do, but felt that it would prefer not to find out.

“What did you call me?” Mort hissed.

The doorknocker thought quickly. “Fir?” it said.

“What did you ask me to do?”

“Unftick me?”

“I don’t intend to.”

“Fine,” said the doorknocker, “fine. That’s okay by me. I’ll just ftick around, then.”

It watched Mort canter off along the street and shuddered with relief, knocking itself gently in its nervousness.

“A naaaarrow sqeeeak,” said one of the hinges.

“Fut up!”

Mort passed night watchmen, whose job now appeared to consist of ringing bells and shouting the name of the Princess, but a little uncertainly, as if they had difficulty remembering it. He ignored them, because he was listening to voices inside his head which went:

She’s only met you once, you fool. Why should she bother about you?

Yes, but I did save her life.

That means it belongs to her. Not to you. Besides, he’s a wizard.

So what? Wizards aren’t supposed to—to go out with girls, they’re celebrate….

Celebrate?

They’re not supposed to youknow….

What, never any youknow at all? said the internal voice, and it sounded as if it was grinning.

It’s supposed to be bad for the magic, thought Mort bitterly.

Funny place to keep magic.

Mort was shocked. Who are you? he demanded.

I’m you, Mort. Your inner self.

Well, I wish I’d get out of my head, it’s quite crowded enough with me in here.

Fair enough, said the voice, I was only trying to help. But remember, if you ever need you, you’re always around.

The voice faded away.

Well, thought Mort bitterly, that must have been me. I’m the only one that calls me Mort.

The shock of the realization quite obscured the fact that, while Mort had been locked into the monologue, he had ridden right through the gates of the palace. Of course, people rode through the gates of the palace every day, but most of them needed the things to be opened first.

The guards on the other side were rigid with fear, because they thought they had seen a ghost. They would have been far more frightened if they had known that a ghost was almost exactly what they hadn’t seen.

The guard outside the doors of the great hall had seen it happen too, but he had time to gather his wits, or such that remained, and raise his spear as Binky trotted across the courtyard.

“Halt,” he croaked. “Halt. What goes where?”

Mort saw him for the first time.

“What?” he said, still lost in thought.

The guard ran his tongue over his dry lips, and backed away. Mort slid off Binky’s back and walked forward.

“I meant, what goes there?” the guard tried again, with a mixture of doggedness and suicidal stupidity that marked him for early promotion.

Mort caught the spear gently and lifted it out of the way of the door. As he did so the torchlight illuminated his face.

“Mort,” he said softly.

It should have been enough for any normal soldier, but this guard was officer material.

“I mean, friend or foe?” he stuttered, trying to avoid Mort’s gaze.

“Which would you prefer?” he grinned. It wasn’t quite the grin of his master, but it was a pretty effective grin and didn’t have a trace of humor in it.

The guard sagged with relief, and stood aside.

“Pass, friend,” he said.

Mort strode across the hall towards the staircase that led to the royal apartments. The hall had changed a lot since he last saw it. Portraits of Keli were everywhere; they’d even replaced the ancient and crumbling battle banners in the shadowy heights of the roof. Anyone walking through the palace would have found it impossible to go more than a few steps without seeing a portrait. Part of Mort’s mind wondered why, just as another part worried about the flickering dome that was steadily closing on the city, but most of his mind was a hot and steamy glow of rage and bewilderment and jealousy. Ysabell had been right, he thought, this must be love.

“The walk-through-walls boy!”

He jerked his head up. Cutwell was standing at the top of the stairs.

The wizard had changed a lot too, Mort thought bitterly. Perhaps not that much, though. Although he was wearing a black and white robe embroidered with sequins, although his pointy hat was a yard high and decorated with more mystic symbols than a dental chart, and although his red velvet shoes had silver buckles and toes that curled like snails, there were still a few stains on his collar and he appeared to be chewing.

He watched Mort climb the stairs towards him.

“Are you angry about something?” he said. “I started work, but I got rather tied up with other things. Very difficult, walking through—why are you looking at me like that?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I might ask you the same question. Would you like a strawberry?”

Mort glanced at the small wooden punnet in the wizard’s hands.

“In mid-winter?”

“Actually, they’re sprouts with a dash of enchantment.”

“They taste like strawberries?”

Cutwell sighed. “No, like sprouts. The spell isn’t totally efficient. I thought they might cheer the princess up, but she threw them at me. Shame to waste them. Be my guest.”

Mort gaped at him.

“She threw them at you?”

“Very accurately, I’m afraid. Very strong-minded young lady.”

Hi, said a voice in the back of Mort’s mind, it’s you again, pointing out to yourself that the chances of the princess even contemplating you know with this fellow are on the far side of remote.

Go away, thought Mort. His subconscious was worrying him. It appeared to have a direct line to parts of his body that he wanted to ignore at the moment.

“Why
are
you here?” he said aloud. “Is it something to do with all these pictures?”

“Good idea, wasn’t it?” beamed Cutwell. “I’m rather proud of it myself.”

“Excuse me,” said Mort weakly. “I’ve had a busy day. I think I’d like to sit down somewhere.”

“There’s the Throne Room,” said Cutwell. “There’s no-one in there at this time of night. Everyone’s asleep.”

Mort nodded, and then looked suspiciously at the young wizard.

“What are you doing up, then?” he said.

“Um,” said Cutwell, “um, I just thought I’d see if there was anything in the pantry.”

He shrugged.
*

Now is the time to report that Cutwell too notices that Mort, even a Mort weary with riding and lack of sleep, is somehow glowing from within and in some strange way unconnected with size is nevertheless larger than life. The difference is that Cutwell is, by training, a better guesser than other people and knows that in occult matters the obvious answer is usually the wrong one.

Mort can move absentmindedly through walls and drink neat widowmaker soberly not because he is turning into a ghost, but because he is becoming dangerously real.

In fact, as the boy stumbles while they walk along the silent corridors and steps through a marble pillar without noticing, it’s obvious that the world is becoming a pretty insubstantial place from his point of view.

“You just walked through a marble pillar,” observed Cutwell. “How did you do it?”

“Did I?” Mort looked around. The pillar looked sound enough. He poked an arm towards it, and slightly bruised his elbow.

“I could have sworn you did,” said Cutwell. “Wizards notice these things, you know.” He reached into the pocket of his robe.

“Then have you noticed the mist dome around the country?” said Mort.

Cutwell squeaked. The jar in his hand dropped and smashed on the tiles; there was the smell of slightly rancid salad dressing.

“
Already
?”

“I don’t know about already,” said Mort, “but there’s this sort of crackling wall sliding over the land and no one else seems to worry about it and—”

“How fast was it moving?”

“—it changes things!”

“You saw it? How far away is it? How fast is it moving?”

“Of course I saw it. I rode through it twice. It was like—”

“But you’re not a wizard, so why—”

“What are you doing here, anyway—”

Cutwell took a deep breath. “Everyone shut up!” he screamed.

There was silence. Then the wizard grabbed Mort’s arm. “Come on,” he said, pulling him back along the corridor. “I don’t know who you are exactly and I hope I’ve got time to find out one day but something really horrible is going to happen soon and I think you’re involved, somehow.”

“Something horrible? When?”

“That depends on how far away the interface is and how fast it’s moving,” said Cutwell, dragging Mort down a side passage. When they were outside a small oak door he let go of his arm and fumbled in his pocket again, removing a small hard piece of cheese and an unpleasantly squashy tomato.

“Hold these, will you? Thank you.” He delved again, produced a key and unlocked the door.

“It’s going to kill the princess, isn’t it?” said Mort.

“Yes,” said Cutwell, “and then again, no.” He paused with his hand on the doorhandle. “That was pretty perspicacious of you. How did you know?”

“I—” Mort hesitated.

“She told me a very strange story,” said Cutwell.

“I expect she did,” said Mort. “If it was unbelievable, it was true.”

“You’re him, are you? Death’s assistant?”

“Yes. Off duty at the moment, though.”

“Pleased to hear it.”

Cutwell shut the door behind them and fumbled for a candlestick. There was a pop, a flash of blue light and a whimper.

“Sorry,” he said, sucking his fingers. “Fire spell. Never really got the hang of it.”

“You were expecting the dome thing, weren’t you?” said Mort urgently. “What will happen when it closes in?”

The wizard sat down heavily on the remains of a bacon sandwich.

“I’m not exactly sure,” he said. “It’ll be interesting to watch. But not from inside, I’m afraid. What I
think
will happen is that the last week will never have existed.”

“She’ll suddenly die?”

“You don’t quite understand. She will have been dead for a week. All this—” he waved his hands vaguely in the air—“will not have happened. The assassin will have done his job. You will have done yours. History will have healed itself. Everything will be all right. From History’s point of view, that is. There really isn’t any other.”

Mort stared out of the narrow window. He could see across the courtyard into the glowing streets outside, where a picture of the princess smiled at the sky.

“Tell me about the pictures,” he said. “That looks like some sort of wizard thing.”

“I’m not sure if it’s working. You see, people were beginning to get upset and they didn’t know why, and that made it worse. Their minds were in one reality and their bodies were in another. Very unpleasant. They couldn’t get used to the idea that she was still alive. I thought the pictures might be a good idea but, you know, people just don’t see what their mind tells them isn’t there.”

“I could have told you that,” said Mort bitterly.

“I had the town criers out during the daytime,” Cutwell continued. “I thought that if people could come to believe in her, then this new reality could become the real one.”

“Mmmph?” said Mort. He turned away from the window. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you see—I reckoned that if enough people believed in her, they could change reality. It works for gods. If people stop believing in a god, he dies. If a lot of them believe in him, he grows stronger.”

“I didn’t know that. I thought gods were just gods.”

“They don’t like it talked about,” said Cutwell, shuffling through the heap of books and parchments on his worktable.

“Well, that might work for gods, because they’re special,” said Mort. “People are—more solid. It wouldn’t work for people.”

“That’s not true. Let’s suppose you went out of here and prowled around the palace. One of the guards would probably see you and he’d think you were a thief and he’d fire his crossbow. I mean, in his reality you’d be a thief. It wouldn’t actually be true but you’d be just as dead as if it was. Belief is powerful stuff. I’m a wizard. We know about these things. Look here.”

He pulled a book out of the debris in front of him and opened it at the piece of bacon he’d used as a bookmark. Mort looked over his shoulder, and frowned at the curly magical writing. It moved around on the page, twisting and writhing in an attempt not to be read by a non-wizard, and the general effect was unpleasant.

“What’s this?” he said.

“It’s the Book of the Magick of Alberto Malich the Mage,” said the wizard, “a sort of book of magical theory. It’s not a good idea to look too hard at the words, they resent it. Look, it says here—”

His lips moved soundlessly. Little beads of sweat sprang up on his forehead and decided to get together and go down and see what his nose was doing. His eyes watered.

Some people like to settle down with a good book. No-one in possession of a complete set of marbles would like to settle down with a book of magic, because even the individual words have a private and vindictive life of their own and reading them, in short, is a kind of mental Indian wrestling. Many a young wizard has tried to read a grimoire that is too strong for him, and people who’ve heard the screams have found only his pointy shoes with the classic wisp of smoke coming out of them and a book which is, perhaps, just a little fatter. Things can happen to browsers in magical libraries that make having your face pulled off by tentacled monstrosities from the Dungeon Dimensions seem a mere light massage by comparison.

Fortunately Cutwell had an expurgated edition, with some of the more distressing pages clamped shut (although on quiet nights he could hear the imprisoned words scritching irritably inside their prison, like a spider trapped in a matchbox; anyone who has ever sat next to someone wearing a Walkman will be able to imagine exactly what they sounded like).

“This is the bit,” said Cutwell. “It says here that even gods—”

“I’ve seen him before!”

“What?”

Mort pointed a shaking finger at the book.

“Him!”

Cutwell gave him an odd look and examined the left-hand page. There was a picture of an elderly wizard holding a book and a candlestick in an attitude of near-terminal dignity.

“That’s not part of the magic,” he said testily, “that’s just the author.”

“What does it say under the picture?”

“Er. It says ’Yff youe have enjoyed thiss Boke, youe maye be interestede yn othere Titles by—”

“No, right under the picture is what I meant!”

“That’s easy. It’s old Malich himself. Every wizard knows him. I mean, he founded the University.” Cutwell chuckled. “There’s a famous statue of him in the main hall, and during Rag Week once I climbed up it and put a—”