Terry Pratchett. Soul music
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...carried meall the way up here for takeaway food?'
The ground skimmed past faster, and it crept over her that the horse
was going a lot faster now, a full gallop instead of the easy canter. A
bunching of muscle...
...and then the sky ahead of her erupted blue for a moment.
Behind her, unseen because light was standing around red with
embarrassment asking itself what had happened, a pair of hoofprints burned
in the air for a moment.
It was a landscape, hanging in space.
There was a squat little house, with a garden around it. There were
fields, and distant mountains. Susan stared at it as Binky slowed.
There was no depth. As the horse swung around for a landing, the
landscape was revealed as a mere surface, a thin shaped film of . . .
existence . . . imposed on nothingness.
She expected it to tear when the horse landed, but there was only a
faint crunch and a scatter of gravel.
Binky trotted around the house and into the stable-yard, where he stood
and waited.
Susan got off, gingerly. The ground felt solid enough under her feet.
She reached down and scratched at the gravel; there was more gravel
underneath.
She'd heard that the Tooth Fairy collected teeth. Think about it
logically . . . the only other people who collected any bits of bodies did
so for very suspicious purposes, and usually to harm or control other
people. The Tooth
Fairies must have half the children in the world under their control.
And this didn't look like the house of that sort of person.
The Hogfather apparently lived in some kind of hor-rible slaughterhouse
in the mountains, festooned with sausages and black puddings and painted a
terrible blood red.
Which suggested style. A nasty style, but at least style of a sort.
This place didn't have style of any sort.
The Soul Cake Tuesday Duck didn't apparently have any kind of a home.
Nor did Old Man Trouble or the Sandman, as far as she knew.
She walked around the house, which wasn't much larger than a cottage.
Definitely. Whoever lived here had no taste at all.
She found the front door. It was black, with a knocker in the shape of
an omega.
Susan reached for it, but the door opened by itself.
And the hall stretched away in front of her, far bigger than the
outside of the house could possibly contain. She could distantly make out a
stairway wide enough for the tap dancing finale in a musical.
There was something else wrong with the per-spective. There clearly was
a wall a long way off but, at the same time, it looked as though it was
painted in the air a mere fifteen feet or so away. It was as if distance was
optional.
There was a large clock against one wall. Its slow tick filled the
immense space.
There's a room, she thought. I remember the room of whispers.
Doors lined the hall at wide intervals. Or short intervals, if you
looked at it another way.
She tried to walk towards the nearest one, and gave up after a few
wildly teetering steps. Finally she managed to reach it by taking aim and
then shutting her eyes.
The door was at one and the same time about nor-mal human size and
immensely big. There was a highly ornate frame around it, with a skulls and
bones motif.
She pushed the door open.
This room could have housed a small town.
A small area of carpet occupied the middle dis-tance, no more than a
hectare in size. It took Susan several minutes to reach the edge.
It was a room within a room. There was a large, heavy looking desk on a
raised dais, with a leather swivel chair behind it. There was a large model
of the Discworld, on a sort of ornament made of four elephants standing on
the shell of a turtle. There were several bookshelves, the large volumes
piled in the haphazard fashion of people who're far too busy using the books
ever to arrange them properly. There was even a window, hanging in the air a
few feet above the ground.
But there were no walls. There was nothing between the edge of the
carpet and the walls of the greater room except floor, and even that was far
too precise a word for it. It didn't look like rock and it certainly wasn't
wood. It made no sound when Susan walked on it. It was simply surface, in
the purely geometrical sense.
The carpet had a skull and bones pattern.
It was also black. Everything was black, or a shade of grey. Here and
there a tint suggested a very deep purple or ocean depth blue.
In the distance, towards the walls of the greater room, the metaroom or
whatever it was, there was the suggestion of . . . something. Something was
cast-ing complicated shadows, too far away to be clearly seen.
Susan got up on to the dais.
There was something odd about the things around her. Of course, there
was everything odd about the things around her, but it was a huge major
oddness that was simply in their nature. She could ignore it. But there was
an oddness on a human level. Every-thing was just slightly wrong, as if it
had been made by someone who hadn't fully comprehended its purpose.
There was a blotter on the oversize desk but it was part of it, fused
to the surface. The drawers were just raised areas of wood, impossible to
open. Whoever had made the desk had seen desks, but hadn't understood
deskishness.
There was even some sort of desk ornament. It was just a slab of lead,
with a thread hanging down one side and a shiny round metal ball on the end
of the thread. If you raised the ball it swung down and thumped into the
lead, just once.
She didn't try to sit in the chair. There was a deep pit in the
leather.
Someone had spent a lot of time sitting there.
She glanced at the spines of the books. They were in a language she
couldn't understand.
She trekked back to the distant door, went out into the hall, and tried
the next door. A suspicion was beginning to form in her mind.
The door led to another huge room, but this one was full of shelves,
floor to distant, cloud hung ceiling. Every shelf was lined with
hourglasses.
The sand pouring from the past to the future filled the room with a
sound like surf, a noise made up of a billion small sounds.
Susan walked between the shelves. It was like being in a crowd.
Her eye was caught by a movement on a nearby shelf. In most of the
hourglasses the falling sand was a solid silver line but in this one, just
as she watched, the line vanished. The last grain of sand tumbled into the
bottom bulb.
The hourglass vanished with a small 'pop'.
A moment later another one appeared in its place, with the faintest of
'pings'.
In front of her eyes, sand began to fall...
And she was aware that this process was going on all over the room. Old
hourglasses vanished, new ones took their place.
She knew about this, too.
She reached out and picked up a glass, bit her lip thoughtfully, and
started to turn the thing upside down . . .
SQUEAK!
She spun around. The Death of Rats was on the shelf behind her. It
raised an admonitory finger.
'All right,' said Susan. She put the glass back in its place.
SQUEAK.
'No. I haven't finished looking.'
Susan set off for the door, with the rat skittering across the floor
after her.
The third room turned out to be...
...the bathroom.
Susan hesitated. You expected hourglasses in this place. You expected
the skull and bones motif. But you didn't expect the very large white
porcelain tub, on its own raised podium like a throne, with giant brass taps
and in faded blue letters just over the thing that held the plug chain the
words: C. H. Lavatory & Son, Mollymog St, Ankh Morpork.
You didn't expect the rubber duck. It was yellow.
You didn't expect the soap. It was suitably bone-white, but looked as
if it had never been used. Beside it was a bar of orange soap which
certainly had been used it was hardly more than a sliver. It smelled a lot
like the vicious stuff used at school.
The bath, though big, was a human thing. There was brown lined crazing
around the plug hole and a stain where the tap had dripped. But almost
everything else had been designed by the person who hadn't understood
deskishness, and now hadn't understood ablutionology either.
They had created a towel rail an entire athletics team could have used
for training. The black towels on it were fused to it and were quite hard.
Whoever actu-ally used the bathroom probably dried themselves on the white
and blue, very worn towel with the initials Y M R C I G B S A, A M on it.
There was even a lavatory, another fine example of C. H. Lavatory's
porcelainic art, with an embossed frieze of green and blue flowers on the
cistern. And again, like the bath and the soap, it suggested that this room
had been built by someone... and then someone else had come along afterwards
to add small details. Someone with a better knowledge of plumbing, for a
start. And someone else who understood, really understood, that towels
should be soft and capable of drying people, and soap should be capable of
bubbles.
You didn't expect any of it until you saw it. And then it was like
seeing it again.
The bald towel dropped off the rail and skipped across the floor, until
it fell away to reveal the Death of Rats.
SQUEAK?
'Oh, all right,' said Susan. 'Where do you want me to go now?'
The rat scurried to the open door and disappeared into the hall.
Susan followed it to yet another door. She turned yet another handle.
Another room within a room lay beyond. There was a tiny area of lighted
tiling in the darkness, containing the distant vision of a table, a few
chairs, a kitchen dresser-and someone. A hunched figure was sitting at the
table. As Susan cautiously approached she heard the rattle of cutlery on a
plate.
An old man was eating his supper, very noisily. In between forkfuls, he
was talking to himself with his mouth full. It was a kind of auto bad
manners.
'Snot my fault! [spray] I was against it from the start but, oh no, he
has to go and [recover piece of ballistic sausage from table] start gettin'
involved, I told him, i's'not as if you're not involved [stab unidentified
fried object], oh no, that's not his way [spray, jab fork at the air], once
you get involved like that, I said, how're you getting out, tell me that
[make temporary egg and ketchup sandwich] but, oh no-'
Susan walked around the patch of carpet. The man took no notice.
The Death of Rats shinned up the table leg and landed on a slice of
fried bread.
'Oh. It's you.'
SQUEAK.
The old man looked around.
'Where? Where?'
Susan stepped onto the carpet. The man stood up so quickly that his
chair fell over.
'Who the hells are you?'
'Could you stop pointing that sharp bacon at me?'
'I asked you a question, young woman!'
'I'm Susan.' This didn't sound enough. 'Duchess of Sto Helit,' she
added.
The man's wrinkled face wrinkled still further as he strove to
comprehend this.
Then he turned away and threw his hands up in the air.
'Oh, yes!' he bawled, to the room in general. 'That just puts the
entire tin lid on it, that does!'
He waved a finger at the Death of Rats, who leaned backwards.
'You cheating little rodent! Oh, yes! I smell a rat here!'
SQUEAK?
The shaking finger stopped suddenly. The man spun around.
'How did you manage to walk through the wall?'
'I'm sorry?' said Susan, backing away. 'I didn't know there was one.'
'What d'you call this, then, Klatchian mist?' The man slapped the air.
The hippo of memory wallowed . . .
'. . . Albert . . .' said Susan, 'right?'
Albert thumped his forehead with the palm of his hand.
'Worse and worse! What've you been telling her?'
'He didn't tell me anything except SQUEAK and I don't know what that
means,' said Susan. 'But . . . look, there's no wall here, there's just . .
.'
Albert wrenched open a drawer.
'Observe,' he said sharply. 'Hammer, right? Nail, right? Watch.'
He hammered the nail into the air about five feet up at the edge of the
tiled area. It hung there.
'Wall,' said Albert.
Susan reached out gingerly and touched the nail. It had a sticky feel,
a little like static electricity.
'Well, it doesn't feel like a wall to me,' she managed.
SQUEAK.
Albert dropped the hammer on the table.
He wasn't a small man, Susan realized. He was quite tall, but he walked
with the kind of lopsided stoop normally associated with laboratory
assistants of an Igor turn of mind.
'I give in,' he said, wagging his finger at Susan again. 'I told him no
good'd come of it. He started meddlin', and next thing a mere chit of a girl
where'd you go?'
Susan walked over to the table while Albert waved his arms in the air,
trying to find her.
There was a cheeseboard on the table, and a snuff box. And a string of
sausages.
No fresh vegetables at all. Miss Butts advocated avoiding fried foods
and eating plenty of vegetables for what she referred to as Daily Health.
She put a lot of troubles down to an absence of Daily Health. Albert looked
like the em-bodiment of them all as he scuttled around the kitchen, grabbing
at the air.
She sat in the chair as he danced past.
Albert stopped moving, and put his hand over one eye. Then he turned,
very carefully. The one visible eye was screwed up in a frantic effort of
concentration.
He squinted at the chair, his eye watering with effort.
'That's pretty good,' he said, quietly. 'All right. You're here. The
rat and the horse brought you. Damn fool things. They think it's the right
thing to do.'
'What right thing to do?' said Susan. 'And I'm not a . . . what you
said.'
Albert stared at her.
'The Master could do that,' he said at last. 'It's part of the job. I
'spect you found you could do it a long time ago, eh? Not be noticed when
you didn't want to be?'
SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats.
'What?' said Albert.
SQUEAK.
'He says to tell you,' said Albert wearily, 'that a chit of a girl
means a small girl. He thinks you may have misheard me.'
Susan hunched up in the chair.
Albert pulled up another one and sat down.
'How old are you?'
'Sixteen.'
'Oh, my.' Albert rolled his eyes. 'How long have you been sixteen?'
'Since I was fifteen, of course. Are you stupid?'
'My, my, how the time does pass,' said Albert. 'Do you know why you're
here?'
'No... but,' Susan hesitated, 'but it's got something to do with...
it's something like... I'm seeing things that people don't see, and I've met
someone who's just a story, and I know I've been here before... and all
these skulls and bones on things...'
Albert's rangy, vulture like shape loomed over her. 'Would you like a
cocoa?' he said.
It was a lot different from the cocoa at the school, which was like hot
brown water. Albert's cocoa had fat floating in it; if you turned the mug
upside down, it would be a little while before anything fell out.
'Your mum and dad,' said Albert, when she had a chocolate moustache
that was far too young for her, 'did they ever . . . explain anything to
you?'
'Miss Delcross did that in Biology,' said Susan. 'She got it wrong,'
she added.
'I mean about your grandfather,' said Albert.
'I remember things,' said Susan, 'but I can't remember them until I've
seen them. Like the bathroom. Like you.'
'Your mum and dad thought it best if you forgot,' said Albert. 'Hah!
It's in the bone! They was afraid it was going to happen and it has! You've
inherited.'
'Oh, I know about that, too,' said Susan. 'It's all about mice and
beans and things.'
Albert gave her a blank look.
'Look, I'll try to put it tactful,' he said.
Susan gave him a polite look.
'Your grandfather is Death,' said Albert. 'You know? The skeleton in
the black robe? You rode in on his horse and this is his house. Only he's...
gone away.
To think things over, or something. What I reckon's happening is you're
being sucked in. It's in the bone. You're old enough now. There's a hole and
it thinks you're the right shape. I don't like it any more than you do.'
'Death,' said Susan, flatly. 'Well, I can't say I didn't have
suspicions. Like the Hogfather and the Sandman and the Tooth Fairy?'
'Yes.'
SQUEAK.
'You expect me to believe that, do you?' said Susan, trying to summon
up her most withering scorn.
Albert glared back like someone who'd done all his withering a long
time ago.
'It's no skin off my nose what you believe, madam,' he said.
'You really mean the tall figure with the scythe and everything?'
'Yes.'
'Look, Albert,' said Susan, in the voice one uses to the simple-minded,
'even if there was a "Death" like that, and frankly it's quite ridiculous to
go anthropomorphizing a simple natural function, no one can inherit anything
from it. I know about heredity. It's all about having red hair and things.
You get it from other people. You don't get it from . . . myths and legends.
Um.'
The Death of Rats had gravitated to the cheeseboard, where he was using
his scythe to hack off a lump. Albert sat back.
'I remember when you got brought here,' he said. 'He'd kept on asking,
you see. He was curious. He likes kids. Sees a lot of them really, but . . .
not to get to know, if you see what I mean. Your mum and dad didn't want to,
but they gave in and brought you all here for tea one day just to keep him
quiet. They didn't like to do it because they thought you'd be scared and
scream the place down.
But you . . . you didn't scream. You laughed. Frightened the life out
of your dad, that did. They brought you a couple more times when he asked,
but then they got scared about what might happen and your dad put his foot
down and that was the end of it. He was about the only one who could argue
with the Master, your dad. You'd have been about four then, I think.'
Susan raised her hand thoughtfully and touched the pale lines on her
cheek.
'The Master said they were raising you according to,' Albert sneered,
'modern methods. Logic. And thinking old stuff is silly. I dunno... I
suppose they wanted to keep you away from... ideas like this...'
'I was given a ride on the horse,' said Susan, not listening to him. '
I had a bath in the big bathroom.'
'Soap all over the place,' said Albert. His face contorted into
something approaching a smile. 'I could hear the Master laughing from here.
And he made you a swing, too. Tried to, anyway. No magic or anything. With
his actual hands.'
Susan sat while memories woke and yawned and unfolded in her head.
'I remember about that bathroom now,' she said. 'It's all coming back
to me.'
'Nah, it never went away. It just got papered over.'
'He was no good at plumbing. What does Y M R C I G B S A, A-M mean?'
'Young Men's Reformed Cultists of the Ichor God Bel-Shamharoth
Association, Ankh Morpork,' said Albert. 'It's where I stay if I have to go
back down for anything. Soap and suchlike.'
'But you're not . . . a young man,' said Susan, unable to prevent
herself.
'No one argues,' he snapped. And Susan thought that was probably true.
There was some kind of wiry strength in Albert, as if his whole body was a
knuckle.
'He can make just about anything,' she said, half to herself, 'but some
things he just doesn't understand, and one of them's plumbing.'
'Right. We had to get a plumber from Ankh Morpork, hah, he said he
might be able to make it a week next Thursday, and you don't say that kind
of thing to the Master,' said Albert. 'I've never seen a bugger work so
fast. Then the Master just made him forget. He can make everyone forget,
except-' Albert stopped, and frowned.
'Seems I've got to put up with it, ' he said. 'Seems you've a right. I
expect you're tired. You can stay here. There's plenty of rooms.'
'No, I've got to get back! There'll be terrible trouble if I'm not at
school in the morning.'
'There's no Time here except what people brings with 'em. Things just
happen one after the other. Binky'll take you right back to the time you
left, if you like.
But you ought to stop here a while.'
'You said there's a hole and I'm being sucked in. I don't know what
that means.'
'You'll feel better after a sleep,' said Albert.
There was no real day or night here. That had given Albert trouble at
first.
There was just the bright landscape and, above, a black sky with stars.
Death had never got the hang of day and night. When the house had human
inhabitants it tended to keep a 26 hour day. Humans, left to themselves,
adopt a longer diurnal rhythm than the 24 hour day, so they can be reset
like a lot of little clocks at sunset. Humans have to put up with Time, but
days are a sort of personal option.
Albert went to bed whenever he remembered.
Now he sat up, with one candle alight, staring into space.
'She remembered about the bathroom,' he muttered. 'And she knows about
things she couldn't have seen. She couldn't have been told. She's got his
memory. She inherited.'
SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats. He tended to sit by the fire at nights.
'Last time he went off, people stopped dyin',' said Albert. 'But they
ain't stopped dyin' this time. And the horse went to her. She's fillin' the
hole.'
Albert glared at the darkness. When he was agitated it showed by a sort
of relentless chewing and sucking activity, as if he was trying to extract
some forgotten morsel of teatime from the recesses of a tooth. Now he was
making a noise like a hairdresser's U bend.
He couldn't remember ever having been young. It must have happened
thousands of years ago. He was seventy nine, but Time in Death's house was a
reusable resource.
He was vaguely aware that childhood was a tricky business, especially
towards the end. There was all the business with pimples and bits of your
body having a mind of their own. Running the executive arm of mortality was
certainly an extra problem.
But the point was, the horrible, inescapable point was, that someone
had to do it.
For, as has been said before, Death operated in general rather than
particular terms, just like a monarchy.
If you are a subject in a monarchy, you are ruled by the monarch. All
the time.
Waking or sleeping. Whatever you or they happen to be doing.
It's part of the general conditions of the situation. The Queen doesn't
actually have to come around to your actual house, hog the chair and the TV
remote control, and issue actual commands about how one is parched and would
enjoy a cup of tea. It all takes place automatically, like gravity. Except
that, unlike gravity, it needs someone at the top. They don't necessarily
have to do a great deal. They just have to be there. They just have to be.
'Her?' said Albert.
SQUEAK.
'She'll crack soon enough,' said Albert. 'Oh, yes. You can't be an
immortal and a mortal at the same time, it'll tear you in half. I almost
feels sorry for her.'
SQUEAK, agreed the Death of Rats.
'And that ain't the worst bit,' said Albert. 'You wait till her memory
really starts working . . .
SQUEAK.
'You listen to me,' said Albert. 'You'd better start looking for him
right away.'
Susan awoke, and had no idea what time it was.
There was a clock by the bedside, because Death knew there should be
things like bedside clocks. It had skulls and bones and the omega sign on
it, and it didn't work. There were no working clocks in the house, except
the special one in the hall. Any others got depressed and stopped, or
unwound themselves all in one go.
Her room looked as though someone had moved out yesterday. There were
hairbrushes on the dressing table, and a few odds and ends of make up. There
was even a dressing gown on the back of the door. It had a rabbit on the
pocket. The cosy effect would have been improved if it hadn't been a
skeletal one.
She had a rummage through the drawers. This must have been her mother's
room.
There was a lot of pink. Susan had nothing against pink in moderation,
but this wasn't it; she put on her old school dress.
The important thing, she decided, was to stay calm. There was always a
logical explanation for everything, even if you had to make it up.
SQEAUFF.
The Death of Rats landed on the dressing table, claws scrabbling for a
purchase.
He removed the tiny scythe from his jaws.
'I think,' said Susan carefully, 'that I would like to go home now,
thank you.'
The little rat nodded, and leapt.
It landed on the edge of the pink carpet and scurried away across the
dark floor beyond.
When Susan stepped off the carpet the rat stopped and looked around in
approval.
Once again, she felt she'd passed some sort of test.
She followed it out into the hall and then into the smoky cavern of the
kitchen.
Albert was bent over the stove.
'Morning,' he said, out of habit rather than any acknowledgement of the
time of day. 'You want fried bread with your sausages? There's porridge to
follow.'
Susan looked at the mess sizzling in the huge fryingpan. It wasn't a
sight to be seen on an empty stomach, although it could probably cause one.
Albert could make an egg wish it had never been laid.
'Haven't you got any muesli?' she said.
'Is that some kind of sausage?' said Albert suspiciously.
'It's nuts and grains.'
'Any fat in it?'
'I don't think so.'
'How're you supposed to fry it, then?'
'You don't fry it.'
'You call that breakfast?'
'It doesn't have to be fried to be breakfast,' said Susan. 'I mean, you
mentioned porridge, and you don't fry porridge-'
'Who says?'
'A boiled egg, then?'
'Hah, boiling's no good, it don't kill off all the germs.'
'BOIL ME AN EGG, ALBERT.'
As the echoes bounced across and died away, Susan wondered where the
voice had come from.
Albert's ladle tinkled on the tiles.
'Please?' said Susan.
'You did the voice,' said Albert.
'Don't bother about the egg,' said Susan. The voice had made her jaw
ache. It worried her even more than it worried Albert. After all, it was her
mouth. 'I want to go home!'
'You are home,' said Albert.
'This place? This isn't my home!'
'Yeah? What's the inscription on the big clock?'
'Too Late",' said Susan promptly.
'Where are the beehives?'
'In the orchard.'
'How many plates've we got?'
'Seven-' Susan shut her mouth firmly.
'See? It's home to part of you,' said Albert.
'Look . . . Albert,' said Susan, trying sweet reason in case it worked
any better this time round, 'maybe there is . . . someone. . . sort of . . .
in charge of things, but I'm really no one special . . . I mean . . .'
'Yeah? How come the horse knows you?'
'Yes, but I really am just a normal girl-'
'Normal girls didn't get a My Little Binky set on their third
birthday!' snapped Albert. 'Your dad took it away. The Master was very upset
about that. He was trying.'
'I mean I'm an ordinary kid!'
'Listen, ordinary kids get a xylophone. They don't just ask their
grandad to take his shirt off!'
'I mean I can't help it! That's not my fault! It's not fair!'
'Really? Oh, why didn't you say?' said Albert sourly. 'That cuts a lot
of thin ice, that does. I should just go out now, if I was you, and tell the
universe that it's not fair. I bet it'll say, oh, all right then, sorry
you've been troubled, you're let off.'
'That's sarcasm! You can't talk to me like that! You're just a
servant!'
'That's right. And so are you. So I should get started, if I was you.
The rat'll help. He mainly does rats, but the principle's the same.'
Susan sat with her mouth open.
'I'm going outside,' she snapped.
'I ain't stopping you.'
Susan stormed out through the back door, across the enormous expanses
of the outer room, past the grindstone in the yard, and into the garden.
'Huh,' she said.
If someone had told Susan that Death had a house, she would have called
them mad or, even worse, stupid. But if she'd had to imagine one, she'd have
drawn, in sensible black crayon, some towering, battlemented, Gothic
mansion. It would loom, and involve other words ending in 'oom', like gloom
and doom. There would have been thousands of windows. She'd fill odd corners
of the sky with bats. It would be impressive.
It wouldn't be a cottage. It wouldn't have a rather tasteless garden.
It wouldn't have a mat in front of the door with 'Welcome' on it.
Susan had invincible walls of common sense. They were beginning to melt
like salt in a wet wind, and that made her angry.
There was Grandfather Lezek, of course, on his little farm so poor that
even the sparrows had to kneel down to eat. He'd been a nice old chap, so
far as she could recall; a bit sheepish, now she came to think about it,
especially when her father was around.
Her mother had told Susan that her own father had been...
Now she came to think about that, she wasn't sure what her mother had
told her.
Parents were quite clever at not telling people things, even when they
used a lot of words. She'd just been left with the impression that he wasn't
around.
Now it was being suggested that he was renowned for being around all
the time.
It was like having a relative in trade.
A god, now . . . a god would be something. Lady Odile Flume, in the
fifth form, was always boasting that her great great--grandmother had once
been seduced by the god Blind to in the form of a vase of daisies, which
apparently made her a demi hemi--semi goddess. She said her mother found it
useful to get a table in restaurants. Saying you were a close relative of
Death probably would not have the same effect. You probably wouldn't even
manage a seat near the kitchen.
If it was all some kind of dream, she didn't seem at any risk of waking
up.
Anyway, she didn't believe that kind of thing. Dreams weren't like
this.
A path led from the stable yard past a vegetable garden and, descending
slightly, into an orchard of black leaved trees. Glossy black apples hung
from them. Off to one side were some white beehives.
And she knew she'd seen it all before.
There was an apple tree that was quite, quite different from the
others.
She stood and stared at it as memory flooded back.
She remembered being just old enough to see how logically stupid the
whole idea was, and he'd been standing there, anxiously waiting to see what
she'd do...
Old certainties drained away, to be replaced by new certainties.
Now she understood whose granddaughter she was.
The Mended Drum had traditionally gone in for, well, traditional pub
games, such as dominoes, darts and Stabbing People In The Back And Taking
All Their Money.
The new owner had decided to go up market. This was the only available
direction.
There had been the Quizzing Device, a three ton water driven
monstrosity based on a recently discovered design by Leonard of Quirm. It
had been a bad idea.
Captain Carrot of the Watch, who had a mind like a needle under his
open smiling face, had surreptitiously substituted a new roll of questions
like: Were you nere Vortin's Diamond Warehouse on the Nite of the 15th? and:
Who was the Third
Man Who did the Blagging At Bearhugger's Distillery Larst wee k? and
had arrested three customers before they caught on.
The owner had promised another machine any day now. The Librarian, one
of the tavern's regulars, had been collecting pennies in readiness.
There was a small stage at one end of the bar. The owner had tried a
lunch time stripper, but only once. At the sight of a large orang-utan in
the front row with a big innocent grin, a big bag of penny pieces and a big
banana the poor girl had fled. Yet another entertainment Guild had
blacklisted the Drum.
The new owner's name was Hibiscus Dunelm. It wasn't his fault. He
really wanted to make the Drum, he said, a fun place. For two pins he'd have
put stripy umbrellas outside.
He looked down at Glod.
'Just three of you?' he said.
'Yes.'
'When I agreed to five dollars, you said you had a big band.'
'Say hello, Lias.'
'My word, that is a big band.' Dunelm backed away. 'I thought,' he
said, 'just a few numbers that everyone knows? Just to provide some
ambience.'
'Ambience,' said Imp, looking around the Drum. He was familiar with the
word.
But, in a place like this, it was all lost and alone. There were only
three or four customers in at this early hour of the evening. They weren't
paying any attention to the stage.
The wall behind the stage had clearly seen action. He stared at it as
Lias patiently stacked up his stones.
'Oh, just a bit of fruit and old eggs,' said Glod. 'People probably get
a bit boisterous. I shouldn't worry about that.'
'I'm not worried about it,' said Imp.
'I should think not.'
'It's the axe marks and arrow holles I'm worried about. Gllod, we
haven't even practised! Not properlly!'
'You can play your guitar, can't you?'
'Wellll, yes, I suppose . . .'
He'd tried it out. It was easy to play. In fact, it was almost
impossible to play badly. It didn't seem to matter how he touched the
strings they still rang out the tune he had in mind. It was, in solid form,
the kind of instrument you dream about when you first start to play the one
you can play without learning. He remembered when he'd first picked up a
harp and struck the strings, confidently expecting the kind of lambent tones
the old men coaxed from them.
He'd got a discord instead. But this was the instrument he'd dreamed of
. . . 'We'll stick to numbers everyone knows,' said the dwarf. "'The
Wizard's Staff" and "Gathering Rhubarb". Stuff like that. People like songs
they can snigger along to.'
Imp looked down at the bar. It was filling up a bit now. But his
attention was drawn to a large orang utan, which had pulled up its chair
right in front of the stage and was holding a bag of fruit.
'Gllod, there's an ape watching us.'
'Well?' said Glod, unfolding a string bag.
'It's an ape.'
'This is Ankh Morpork. That's how things are here.' Glod removed his
helmet and unfolded something from inside.
'Why've you got a string bag?' said Imp.
'Fruit's fruit. Waste not, want not. If they throw eggs, try to catch
them.'
Imp slung the guitar's strap over his shoulder. He'd tried to tell the
dwarf, but what could he say: this is too easy to play?
He hoped there was a god of musicians.
And there is. There are many, one for almost every type of music.
Almost every type. But the only one due to watch over Imp that night was
Reg, god of club musicians, who couldn't pay much attention because he'd
also got three other gigs to do.
'We ready?' said Lias, picking his hammers.
The others nodded.
'Let's give 'em "The Wizard's Staff", then,' said Glod. 'That always
breaks the ice.'
'OK,' said the troll. He counted on his fingers. 'One, two . . . one,
two, many,
lots.'
The first apple was thrown seven seconds later. It was caught by Glod,
who didn't miss a note. But the first banana curved viciously and grounded
in his ear.
'Keep playing!' he hissed.
Imp obeyed, ducking a fusillade of oranges.
In the front row, the ape opened his bag and produced a very large
melon.
'Can you see any pears?' said Glod, taking a breath. 'I like pears.'
'I can see a man with a throwing axe!'
'Does it look valuable?'
An arrow vibrated in the wall by Lias's head.
It was three in the morning. Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs were
reaching the conclusion that anyone who intended to invade Ankh Morpork
probably wasn't going to do so now. And there was a good fire back in the
watch house.
'We could leave a note,' said Nobby, blowing on his fingers. 'You know?
Come back tomorrow, sort of thing?'
He looked up. A solitary horse was walking under the gate arch. A white
horse, with a sombre, black clad rider.
There was no question of 'Halt, who goes there?' The night watch walked
the streets at strange hours and had become accustomed to seeing things not
generally seen by mortal men.
Sergeant Colon touched his helmet respectfully.
'Evenin', your lordship,' he said.
'ER . . . GOOD EVENING.'
The guards watched the horse walk out of sight.
'Some poor bugger's in for it, then,' said Sergeant Colon.
'He's dedicated, you got to admit it,' said Nobby. 'Out at all hours.
Always got time for people.'
'Yeah.'
The guards stared into the velvety dark. Something not quite right,
thought Sergeant Colon.
'What's his first name?' said Nobby.
They stared some more. Then Sergeant Colon, who still hadn't quite been
able to put his finger on it, said: 'What do you mean, what's his first
name?'
'What's his first name?'
'He's Death,' said the sergeant. 'Death. That's his whole name. I mean
. . . what do you mean? . . . You mean like . . . Keith Death?'
'Well, why not?'
'He's just Death, isn't he?'
'No, that's just his job. What do his friends call him?'
'What do you mean, friends?'
'All right. Please yourself.'
'Let's go and get a hot rum.'
'I think he looks like a Leonard.'
Sergeant Colon remembered the voice. That was it. Just for a moment
there . . .
'I must be getting old,' he said. 'For a moment there I thought he
sounded like a Susan.'
'I think they saw me,' whispered Susan, as the horse rounded a corner.
The Death of Rats poked its head out of her pocket.
SQUEAK.
'I think we're going to need that raven,' said Susan. 'I mean, I...
think I understand you, I just don't know what you're saying...
Binky stopped outside a large house, set back a little from the road.
It was a slightly pretentious residence with more gables and mullions than
it should rightly have, and this was a clue to its origins: it was the kind
of house built for himself by a rich merchant when he goes respectable and
needs to do something with the loot.
'I'm not happy about this,' said Susan. 'It can't possibly work. I'm
human. I have to go to the toilet and things like that. I can't just walk
into people's houses and kill them!'
SQUEAK.
'All right, not kill. But it's not good manners, however you look at
it.'
A sign on the door said: Tradesmen to rear entrance. 'Do I count as-'
SQUEAK!
Susan normally would never have dreamed of asking. She'd always seen
herself as a person who went through the front doors of life.
The Death of Rats scuttled up the path and through the door.
'Hang on! I can't-'
Susan looked at the wood. She could. Of course she could. More memories
crystallized in front of her eyes. After all, it was only wood. It'd rot in
a few hundred years. By the measure of infinity, it hardly existed at all.
On average, considered over the lifetime of the multiverse, most things
didn't.
She stepped forward. The heavy oak door offered as much resistance as a
shadow.
Grieving relatives were clustered around the bed where, almost lost in
the pillows, was a wrinkled old man. At the foot of the bed, paying no
attention whatsoever to the keening around it, was a large, very fat, ginger
cat.
SQUEAK.
Susan looked at the hourglass. The last few grains tumbled through the
pinch.
The Death of Rats, with exaggerated caution, sneaked up behind the
sleeping cat and kicked it hard. The animal awoke, turned, flattened its
ears in terror, and leapt off the quilt.
The Death of Rats sniggered.
SNH, SNH, SNH.
One of the mourners, a pinch faced man, looked up. He peered at the
sleeper.
'That's it,' he said. 'He's gone.'
'I thought we were going to be here all day,' said the woman next to
him, standing up. 'Did you see that wretched old cat move? Animals can tell,
you know. They've got this sixth sense.'
SNH, SNH, SNH.
'Well, come on there, I know you're here somewhere,' said the corpse.
It sat up.
Susan was familiar with the idea of ghosts. But she hadn't expected it
to be like this. She hadn't expected the ghosts to be the living, but they
were merely pale sketches in the air compared to the old man sitting up in
bed. He looked solid enough, but a blue glow outlined him.
'One hundred and seven years, eh?' he cackled. 'I expect I had you
worried for a while there. Where are you?'
'Er, HERE,' said Susan.
'Female, eh?' said the old man. 'Well, well, well.'
He slid off the bed, spectral nightshirt flapping, and was suddenly
pulled up short as though he'd reached the end of a chain. This was more or
less the case; a thin line of blue light still tethered him to his late
habitation.
The Death of Rats jumped up and down on the pillow, making urgent
slashing movements with its scythe.
'Oh, sorry,' said Susan, and sliced. The blue line snapped with a high
pitched, crystalline twang.
Around them, sometimes walking through them, were the mourners.
Mourning seemed to have stopped, now the old man had died. The pinch faced
man was feeling under the mattress.
'Look at 'em,' said the old man nastily. 'Poor ole Grandad, sob, sob,
sorely missed, we won't see his like again, where did the ole bugger leave
his will?
That's my youngest son, that is. Well, if you can call a card every
Hogswatchnight a son. See his wife? Got a smile like a wave on a slop
bucket. And she ain't the worst of 'em. Relatives? You can keep 'em. I only
stayed alive out of mischief.'
A couple of people were exploring under the bed. There was a humorous
porcelain clang. The old man capered behind them, making gestures.
'Not a chance!' he chortled. 'Heh heh! It's in the cat basket! I left
all the money to the cat!'
Susan looked around. The cat was watching them anxiously from behind
the washstand.
Susan felt some response was called for.
'That was very . . . kind of you . . .' she said.
'Hah! Mangy thing! Thirteen years of sleepin' and crappin' and waiting
for the next meal to turn up? Never took half an hour's exercise in his big
fat life. Up until they find the will, anyway. Then he's going to be the
richest fastest cat in the world-'
The voice faded. So did its owner.
'What a dreadful old man,' said Susan.
She looked down at the Death of Rats, who was trying to make faces at
the cat.
'What'll happen to him?'
SQUEAK.
'Oh.' Behind them a former mourner tipped a drawer out on to the floor.
The cat was beginning to tremble.
Susan stepped out through the wall.
Clouds curled behind Binky like a wake.
'Well, that wasn't too bad. I mean, no blood or anything. And he was
very old and not very nice.'
'That's all right, then, is it?' The raven landed on her shoulder.
'What're you doing here?'
'Rat Death here said I could have a lift. I've got an appointment.'
SQUEAK.
The Death of Rats poked its nose out of the saddlebag.
'Are we a cab service?' said Susan coldly.
The rat shrugged and pushed a lifetimer into her hand.
Susan read the name etched on the glass.
'Volf Volfssonssonssonsson? Sounds a bit Hublandish to me.'
SQUEAK.
The Death of Rats clambered up Binky's mane and took up station between
the horse's ears, tiny robe flapping in the wind.
Binky cantered low over a battlefield. It wasn't a major war, just an
inter tribal scuffle. Nor were there any obvious armies the fighters seemed
to be two groups of individuals, some on horseback, who happened
coincidentally to be on the same side. Everyone was dressed in the same sort
of furs and exciting leatherwear, and Susan was at a loss to know how they
told friend from foe. People just seemed to shout a lot and swing huge
swords and battleaxes at random. On the other hand, anyone you managed to
hit instantly became your foe, so it probably all came out right in the long
run. The point was that people were dying and acts of incredibly stupid
heroism were being performed.
SQUEAK.
The Death of Rats pointed urgently downward.
'Gee . . . down.'
Binky settled on a small hillock.
'Er . . . right,' said Susan. She pulled the scythe out of its holster.
The blade sprang into life.
It wasn't hard to spot the souls of the dead. They were coming off the
battlefield arm in arm, friend and hitherto foe alike, laughing and
stumbling, straight towards her.
Susan dismounted. And concentrated.
'Er,' she said, 'ANYONE HERE BEEN KILLED AND CALLED VOLF?'
Behind her, the Death of Rats put its head in its paws.
'Er. HELLO?'
No one took any notice. The warriors trooped past. They were forming a
line on the edge of the battlefield, and appeared to be waiting for
something.
She didn't have to . . . do . . . all of them. Albert had tried to
explain, but a memory had unfolded anyway. She just had to do some,
determined by timing or historical importance, and that meant all the others
happened; all she had to do was keep the momentum going.
'You got to be more assertive,' said the raven, who had alighted on a
rock.
'That's the trouble with women in the professions. Not assertive
enough.'
'Why'd you want to come here?' she said.
'This is a battlefield, isn't it?' said the raven patiently. 'You've
got to have ravens afterwards.' Its freewheeling eyes swivelled in its head.
'Carrion regardless, as you might say.'
'You mean everyone gets eaten?'
'Part of the miracle of nature,' said the raven.
'That's horrible,' said Susan. Black birds were already circling in the
sky.
'Not really,' said the raven. 'Horses for courses, you might say.'
One side, if that's what you could call it, was fleeing the field of
battle with the others in pursuit.
The birds started to settle on what was, Susan realized with horror, an
early breakfast. Soft bits, sunny side up.
'You'd better go and look for your lad,' said the raven. 'Otherwise
he'll miss his ride.'
'What ride?'
The eyes orbited again.
'You ever learn mythology?' it said.
'No. Miss Butts says it's just made up stories with little literary
content.'
'Ah. Deary me. Can't have that, can we? Oh, well. You'll soon see. Must
rush.'
The raven leapt into the air. 'I generally try to get a seat near the
head.'
'What will I-'
And then someone started to sing. The voice swooped out of the sky like
a sudden wind. It was a rather good mezzo soprano
'Hi jo to! Ho! Hi jo to! Ho!'
And after it, mounted on a horse almost as fine as Binky, was a woman.
Very definitely. A lot of woman. She was as much woman as you could get in
one place without getting two women. She was dressed in chain mail, a shiny
46 D cup breastplate, and a helmet with horns on it.
The assembled dead cheered as the horse cantered in for a landing.
There were six other singing horsewomen plunging out of the sky behind it.
'Isn't it always the same?' said the raven, flapping away. 'You can
wait hours without seeing one and then you get seven all at once.'
Susan watched in astonishment as each rider picked up a dead warrior
and galloped up into the sky again. They disappeared abruptly a few hundred
yards up and reappeared again almost instantly for a fresh passenger. Soon
there was a busy shuttle service operating.
After a minute or two one of the women trotted her horse over to Susan
and pulled a scroll of parchment out of her breastplate.
'What ho! Says here Volf,' she said, in the brisk voice used by people
on horseback when addressing mere pedestrians. 'Volf the Lucky . . . ?'
'Er. I don't know I MEAN, I DON'T KNOW WHICH ONE HE IS,' said Susan
helplessly.
The helmeted woman leaned forward. There was something rather familiar
about her.
'Are you new?'
'Yes. I mean, YES.'
'Well, don't stand there like a big girl's blouse. Jolly well go and
fetch him, there's a good sport.'
Susan looked around wildly, and saw him at last. He wasn't very far
away. A youngish man, outlined in flickering pale blue, was visible among
the fallen.
Susan hurried over, scythe at the ready. There was a blue line
connecting the warrior to his former body.
SQUEAK! shouted the Death of Rats, jumping up and down and making
suggestive motions.
'Left hand thumb up, right hand bent at the wrist, give it some
wellie!' shouted the horned woman.
Susan swung the scythe. The line snapped.
'What happened?' said Volf. He looked down. 'That's me down there,
isn't it?' he said. He turned slowly. 'And down there. And over there. And .
. .'
He looked at the horned female warrior and brightened up.
'By Io!' he said. 'It's true? Valkyries will carry me off to the hall
of Blind lo where there is perpetual feasting and drinking?'
'Don't, I mean DON'T ASK ME,' said Susan.
The Valkyrie reached down and hauled the warrior across her saddle.
'Just keep quiet, there's a good chap,' she said.
She stared thoughtfully at Susan.
'Are you a soprano?' she said.
'Pardon?'
'Can you sing at all, gel? Only we could do with another soprano. Far
too many mezzo sopranos around these days.'
'I'm not very musical, I'm sorry.'
'Oh, well. Just a thought. Must be going.' She threw back her head. The
mighty breastplate heaved. 'Hi jo to! Ho!'
The horse reared, and galloped into the sky. Before it ...
