Mort (5 page)

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, spiraling 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 MAJESTY
, 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. AND 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 endeavoring 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.

And finally he plucked up his courage.

A
WHAT
? said Death in astonishment, sitting behind his ornate desk and turning his scythe-shaped paperknife over and over in his hands.

“An afternoon off,” repeated Mort. The room suddenly seemed to be oppressively big, with himself very exposed in the middle of a carpet about the size of a field.

B
UT WHY
? said Death. I
T CAN’T BE TO ATTEND YOUR GRANDMOTHER’S FUNERAL
, he added. I
WOULD KNOW
.

“I just want to, you know, get out and meet people,” said Mort, trying to outstare that unflinching blue gaze.

B
UT YOU MEET PEOPLE EVERY DAY
, protested Death.

“Yes, I know, only, well, not for very long,” said Mort. “I mean, it’d be nice to meet someone with a life expectancy of more than a few minutes. Sir,” he added.

Death drummed his fingers on the desk, making a sound not unlike a mouse tap-dancing, and gave Mort another few seconds of stare. He noticed that the boy seemed rather less elbows than he remembered, stood a little more upright and, bluntly, could use a word like “expectancy.” It was all that library.

A
LLRIGHT
, he said grudgingly. B
UT IT SEEMS TO ME YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED RIGHT HERE
. T
HE DUTY IS NOT ONEROUS, IS IT
?

“No, sir.”

A
ND YOU HAVE GOOD FOOD AND A WARM BED AND RECREATION AND PEOPLE YOUR OWN AGE
.

“Pardon, sir?” said Mort.

M
Y DAUGHTER
, said Death. You H
AVE MET HER
, I
BELIEVE
.

“Oh. Yes, sir.” S
HE HAS A VERY WARM PERSONALITY WHEN YOU GET TO KNOW HER
.

“I am sure she has, sir.”

N
EVERTHELESS, YOU WISH
—Death launched the words with a spin of distaste—
AN AFTERNOON OFF
?

“Yes, sir. If you please, sir.”

V
ERY WELL
. S
O BE IT
. Y
OU MAY HAVE UNTIL SUNSET
.

Death opened his great ledger, picked up a pen, and began to write. Occasionally he’d reach out and flick the beads of an abacus.

After a minute he looked up.

Y
OU’RE STILL HERE
, he said. A
ND IN YOUR OWN TIME, TOO
, he added sourly.

“Um,” said Mort, “will people be able to see me, sir?”

I
IMAGINE
so, I’
M SURE
, said Death. I
S THERE ANYTHING ELSE I MIGHT BE ABLE TO ASSIST YOU WITH BEFORE YOU LEAVE FOR THIS DEBAUCH
?

“Well, sir, there is one thing, sir, I don’t know how to get to the mortal world, sir,” said Mort desperately.

Death sighed loudly, and pulled open a desk drawer.

J
UST WALK THERE
.

Mort nodded miserably, and took the long walk to the study door. As he pulled it open Death coughed.

B
OY
! he called, and tossed something across the room.

Mort caught it automatically as the door creaked open.

The doorway vanished. The deep carpet underfoot became muddy cobbles. Broad daylight poured over him like quicksilver.

“Mort,” said Mort, to the universe at large.

“What?” said a stallholder beside him. Mort stared around. He was in a crowded marketplace, packed with people and animals. Every kind of thing was being sold from needles to (via a few itinerant prophets) visions of salvation. It was impossible to hold any conversation quieter than a shout.

Mort tapped the stallholder in the small of the back.

“Can you see me?” he demanded.

The stallholder squinted critically at him.

“I reckon so,” he said, “or someone very much like you.”

“Thank you,” said Mort, immensely relieved.

“Don’t mention it. I see lots of people every day, no charge. Want to buy any bootlaces?”

“I don’t think so,” said Mort. “What place is this?”

“You don’t know?”

A couple of people at the next stall were looking at Mort thoughtfully. His mind went into overdrive.

“My master travels a lot,” he said, truthfully. “We arrived last night, and I was asleep on the cart. Now I’ve got the afternoon off.”

“Ah,” said the stallholder. He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Looking for a good time, are you? I could fix you up.”

“I’d quite enjoy knowing where I am,” Mort conceded.

The man was taken aback.

“This is Ankh-Morpork,” he said. “Anyone ought to be able to see that. Smell it, too.”

Mort sniffed. There was a certain something about the air in the city. You got the feeling that it was air that had seen life. You couldn’t help noting with every breath that thousands of other people were very close to you and nearly all of them had armpits.

The stallholder regarded Mort critically, noting the pale face, well-cut clothes and strange presence, a sort of coiled spring effect.

“Look, I’ll be frank,” he said. “I could point you in the direction of a great brothel.”

“I’ve already had lunch,” said Mort, vaguely. “But you can tell me if we’re anywhere near, I think it’s called Sto Lat?”

“About twenty miles Hubwards, but there’s nothing there for a young man of your kidney,” said the trader hurriedly. “I know, you’re out by yourself, you want new experiences, you want excitement, romance—”

Mort, meanwhile, had opened the bag Death had given him. It was full of small gold coins, about the size of sequins.

An image formed again in his mind, of a pale young face under a head of red hair who had somehow known he was there. The unfocused feelings that had haunted his mind for the last few days suddenly sharpened to a point.

“I want,” he said firmly, “a very fast horse.”