'Why are you looking at me like that?' he added.
'I was just trying to remember what colour your eyes were,' she said, 'because —'
'If you two have quite had enough of each other!' bellowed Albert above the roar of the sand. 'This way!'
'Brown,' said Mort to Ysabell. 'They're brown. Why?'
'Hurry up!'
'You'd better go and help him,' said Ysabell. 'He seems to be getting quite upset.'
Mort left her, his mind a sudden swamp of uneasiness, and stalked across the tiled floor to where Albert stood impatiently tapping a foot.
'What do I have to do?' he said.
'Just follow me.'
The room opened out into a series of passages, each one lined with the hourglasses. Here and there the shelves were divided by stone pillars inscribed with angular markings. Albert glanced at them occasionally; mainly he strode through the maze of sand as though he knew every turn by heart.
'Is there one glass for everyone, Albert?'
'Yes.'
'This place doesn't look big enough.'
'Do you know anything about m-dimensional topography?'
'Um. No.'
Then I shouldn't aspire to hold any opinions, if I was you,' said Albert.
He paused in front of a shelf of glasses, glanced at the paper again, ran his hand along the row and suddenly snatched up a glass. The top bulb was almost empty.
'Hold this,' he said. 'If this is right, then the other should be somewhere near. Ah. Here.'
Mort turned the two glasses around in his hands. One had all the markings of an important life, while the other one was squat and quite unremarkable.
Mort read the names. The first seemed to refer to a nobleman in the Agatean Empire regions. The second was a collection of pictograms that he recognized as originating in Turnwise Klatch.
'Over to you,' Albert sneered. The sooner you get started, the sooner you'll be finished. I'll bring Binky round to the front door.'
'Do my eyes look all right to you?' said Mort, anxiously.
'Nothing wrong with them that I can see,' said Albert. 'Bit red round the edges, bit bluer than usual, nothing special.'
Mort followed him back past the long shelves of glass, looking thoughtful. Ysabell watched him take the sword from the rack by the door and test its edge by swishing it through the air, just as Death did, and grinning mirthlessly at the satisfactory sound of the thunderclap.
She recognized the walk. He was stalking.
'Mort?' she whispered.
YES?
'Something's happening to you.'
I KNOW, said Mort. 'But I think I can control it.'
They heard the sound of hooves outside, and Albert pushed the door open and came in rubbing his hands.
'Right, lad, no time to —'
Mort swung the sword at arm's length. It scythed through the air with a noise like ripping silk and buried itself in the doorpost by Albert's ear.
ON YOUR KNEES, ALBERTO MALICH.
Albert's mouth dropped open. His eyes rolled sideways to the shimmering blade a few inches from his head, and then narrowed to tight little lines.
'You surely wouldn't dare, boy,' he said.
MORT. The syllable snapped out as fast as a whiplash and twice as vicious.
There was a pact,' said Albert, but there was the barest gnat-song of doubt in his voice. 'There was an agreement.'
'Not with me.'
'There was an agreement! Where would we be if we could not honour an agreement?'
'I don't know where I would be,' said Mort softly. BUT I KNOW WHERE YOU WOULD GO.
That's not fair!' Now it was a whine.
THERE'S NO JUSTICE. THERE'S JUST ME.
'Stop it,' said Ysabell. 'Mort, you're being silly. You can't kill anyone here. Anyway, you don't really want to kill Albert.'
'Not here. But I could send him back to the world.'
Albert went pale.
'You wouldn't!'
'No? I can take you back and leave you there. I shouldn't think you've got much time left, have you?' HAVE YOU?
'Don't talk like that,' said Albert, quite failing to meet his gaze. 'You sound like the master when you talk like that.'
'I could be a lot worse than the master,' said Mort evenly. 'Ysabell, go and get Albert's book, will you?'
'Mort, I really think you're —'
SHALL I ASK YOU AGAIN?
She fled from the room, white-faced.
Albert squinted at Mort along the length of the sword, and smiled a lop-sided, humourless smile.
'You won't be able to control it forever,' he said.
'I don't want to. I just want to control it for long enough.'
'You're receptive now, see? The longer the master is away, the more you'll become just like him. Only it'll be worse, because you'll remember all about being human and —'
'What about you, then?' snapped Mort. 'What can you remember about being human? If you went back, how much life have you got left?'
'Ninety-one days, three hours and five minutes,' said Albert promptly. 'I knew he was on my trail, see? But I'm safe here and he's not such a bad master. Sometimes I don't know what he'd do without me.'
'Yes, no one dies in Death's own kingdom. And you're pleased with that?' said Mort.
'I'm more than two thousand years old, I am. I've lived longer than anyone in the world.'
Mort shook his head.
'You haven't, you know,' he said. 'You've just stretched things out more. No one really lives here. The time in this place is just a sham. It's not real. Nothing changes. I'd rather die and see what happens next than spend eternity here.'
Albert pinched his nose reflectively. 'Yes, well, you might,' he conceded, 'but I was a wizard, you know. I was pretty good at it. They put up a statue to me, you know. But you don't live a long life as a wizard without making a few enemies, see, ones who'll . . . wait on the Other Side.'
He sniffed. They ain't all got two legs, either. Some of them ain't got legs at all. Or faces. Death don't frighten me. It's what comes after.'
'Help me, then.'
'What good will that do me?'
'One day you might need some friends on the Other Side,' said Mort. He thought for a few seconds and added, 'If I were you, it wouldn't do any harm to give my soul a bit of a last-minute polish. Some of those waiting for you might not like the taste of that.'
Albert shuddered and shut his eyes.
'You don't know about that what you talk about,' he added, with more feeling than grammar, 'else you wouldn't say that. What do you want from me?'
Mort told him.
Albert cackled.
'Just that? Just change Reality? You can't. There isn't any magic strong enough any more. The Great Spells could of done it. Nothing else. And that's it, so you might as well do as you please and the best of luck to you.'
Ysabell came back, a little out of breath, clutching the latest volume of Albert's life. Albert sniffed again. The tiny drip on the end of his nose fascinated Mort. It was always on the point of dropping off but never had the courage. Just like him, he thought.
'You can't do anything to me with the book,' said the old wizard warily.
'I don't intend to. But it strikes me that you don't get to be a powerful wizard by telling the truth all the time. Ysabell, read out what's being written.'
' "Albert looked at him uncertainly",' Ysabell read.
'You can't believe everything writ down there —'
'— "he burst out, knowing in the flinty pit of his heart that Mort certainly could",' Ysabell read.
'Stop it!'
' "he shouted, trying to put at the back of his mind the knowledge that even if Reality could not be stopped it might be possible to slow it down a little".'
HOW?
' "intoned Mort in the leaden tones of Death",' began Ysabell dutifully.
'Yes, yes, all right, you needn't bother with my bit,' snapped Mort irritably.
'Pardon me for living, I'm s
ure.'
NO ONE GETS PARDONED FOR LIVING.
'And don't talk like that to me, thank you. It doesn't frighten me,' she said. She glanced down at the book, where the moving line of writing was calling her a liar.
Tell me how, wizard,' said Mort.
'My magic's all I've got left!' wailed Albert.
'You don't need it, you old miser.'
'You don't frighten me, boy —'
LOOK INTO MY FACE AND TELL ME THAT.
Mort snapped his fingers imperiously. Ysabell bent her head over the book again.
' "Albert looked into the blue glow of those eyes and the last of his defiance drained away",' she read, ' "for he saw not just Death but Death with all the human seasonings of vengeance and cruelty and distaste, and with a terrible certainty he knew that this was the last chance and Mort would send him back into Time and hunt him down and take him and deliver him bodily into the dark Dungeon Dimensions where creatures of horror would dot dot dot dot dot",' she finished. 'It's just dots for half a page.'
That's because the book daren't even mention them,' whispered Albert. He tried to shut his eyes but the pictures in the darkness behind his eyelids were so vivid that he opened them again. Even Mort was better than that.
'All right,' he said. There is one spell. It slows down time over a little area. I'll write it down, but you'll have to find a wizard to say it.'
'I can do that.'
Albert ran a tongue like an old loafah over his dry lips.
There is a price, though,' he added. 'You must complete the Duty first.'
'Ysabell?' said Mort. She looked at the page in front of her.
'He means it,' she said. 'If you don't then everything will go wrong and he'll drop back into Time anyway.'
All three of them turned to look at the great clock that dominated the hallway. Its pendulum blade sawed slowly through the air, cutting time into little pieces.
Mort groaned.
'There isn't enough time!' he groaned. 'I can't do both of them in time!'
'The master would have found time,' observed Albert.
Mort wrenched the blade from the doorway and shook it furiously but ineffectually towards Albert, who flinched.
'Write down the spell, then,' he shouted. 'And do it fast!'
He turned on his heel and stalked back into Death's study. There was a large disc of the world in one corner, complete down to solid silver elephants standing on the back of a Great A'Tuin cast in bronze and more than a metre long. The great rivers were represented by veins of jade, the deserts by powdered diamond and the most notable cities were picked out in precious stones; Ankh-Morpork, for instance, was a carbuncle.
He plonked the two glasses down at the approximate locations of their owners and flopped down in Death's chair, glaring at them, willing them to be closer together. The chair squeaked gently as he swivelled from side to side, glowering at the little disc.
After a while Ysabell came in, treading softly.
'Albert's written it down,' she said quietly, 'I've checked the book. It isn't a trick. He's gone and locked himself in his room now and —'
'Look at these two! I mean, will you look at them!'
'I think you should calm down a bit, Mort.'
'How can I calm down with, look, this one over here almost in the Great Nef, and this one right in Bes Pelargic and then I've got to get back to Sto Lat. That's a ten thousand mile round trip however you look at it. It can't be done.'
'I'm sure you'll find a way. And I'll help.'
He looked at her for the first time and saw she was wearing her outdoor coat, the unsuitable one with the big fur collar.
'You? What could you do?'
'Binky can easily carry two,' said Ysabell meekly. She waved a paper package vaguely. 'I've packed us something to eat. I could — hold open doors and things.'
Mort laughed mirthlessly. THAT WON'T BE NECESSARY.
'I wish you'd stop talking like that.'
'I can't take passengers. You'll slow me down.'
Ysabell sighed. 'Look, how about this? Let's pretend we've had the row and I've won. See? It saves a lot of effort. I actually think you might find Binky rather reluctant to go if I'm not there. I've fed him an awful lot of sugar lumps over the years. Now — are we going?'
Albert sat on his narrow bed, glowering at the wall. He heard the sound of hoofbeats, abruptly cut off as Binky got airborne, and muttered under his breath.
Twenty minutes passed. Expressions flitted across the old wizard's face like cloud shadows across a hillside. Occasionally he'd whisper something to himself, like 'I told 'em' or 'Never would of stood for it' or 'The master ought to be tole'.
Eventually he seemed to reach an agreement with himself, knelt down gingerly and pulled a battered trunk from under his bed. He opened it with difficulty and unfolded a dusty grey robe that scattered mothballs and tarnished sequins across the floor. He pulled it on, brushed off the worst of the dust, and crawled under the bed again. There was a lot of muffled cursing and the occasional clink of china and finally Albert emerged holding a staff taller than he was.
It was thicker than any normal staff, mainly because of the carvings that covered it from top to bottom. They were actually quite indistinct, but gave the impression that if you could see them better you would regret it.
Albert brushed himself down again and examined himself critically in the washstand mirror.
Then he said, 'Hat. No hat. Got to have a hat for the wizarding. Damn.'
He stamped out of the room and returned after a busy fifteen minutes which included a circular hole cut out of the carpet in Mort's bedroom, the silver paper taken out from behind the mirror in Ysabell's room, a needle and thread from the box under the sink in the kitchen and a few loose sequins scraped up from the bottom of the robe chest. The end result was not as good as he would have liked and tended to slip rakishly over one eye, but it was black and had stars and moons on it and proclaimed its owner to be, without any doubt, a wizard, although possibly a desperate one.
He felt properly dressed for the first time in two thousand years. It was a disconcerting feeling and caused him a second's reflection before he kicked aside the rag rug beside the bed and used the staff to draw a circle on the floor.
When the tip of the staff passed it left a line of glowing octarine, the eighth colour of the spectrum, the colour of magic, the pigment of the imagination.
He marked eight points on its circumference and joined them up to form an octogram. A low throbbing began to fill the room.
Alberto Malich stepped into the centre and held the staff above his head. He felt it wake to his grip, felt the tingle of the sleeping power unfold itself slowly and deliberately, like a waking tiger. It triggered old memories of power and magic that buzzed through the cobwebbed attics of his mind. He felt alive for the first time in centuries.
He licked his lips. The throbbing had died away, leaving a strange, waiting kind of silence.
Malich raised his head and shouted one single syllable.
Blue-green fire flashed from both ends of the staff. Streams of octarine flame spouted from the eight pouits of the octogram and enveloped the wizard. All this wasn't actually necessary to accomplish the spell, but wizards consider appearances are very
important. . . .
So are disappearances. He vanished.
Stratohemispheric winds whipped at Mort's cloak.
'Where are we going first?' yelled Ysabell in his ear.
'Bes Pelargic!' shouted Mort, the gale whirling his words away.
'Where's that?'
'Agatean Empire! Counterweight Continent!'
He pointed downward.
He wasn't forcing Binky at the moment, knowing the miles that lay ahead, and the big white horse was currently running at an easy gallop out over the ocean. Ysabell looked down at roaring green waves topped with white foam, and clung tighter to Mort.
Mort peered ahead at the cloudbank that marked the distant continent and resisted
the urge to hurry Binky along with the flat of his sword. He'd never struck the horse and wasn't at all confident about what would happen if he did. All he could do was wait.
A hand appeared under his arm, holding a sandwich.
'There's ham or cheese and chutney,' she said. 'You might as well eat, there's nothing else to do.'
Mort looked down at the soggy triangle and tried to remember when he last had a meal. Some time beyond the reach of a clock, anyway — he'd need a calendar to calculate it. He took the sandwich.
'Thanks,' he said, as graciously as he could manage.
The tiny sun rolled down towards the horizon, towing its lazy daylight behind it. The clouds ahead grew, and became outlined in pink and orange. After a while he could make out the darker blur of land below them, with here and there the lights of a city.
Half an hour later he was sure he could see individual buildings. Agatean architecture inclined towards squat pyramids.
Binky lost height until his hooves were barely a few feet above the sea. Mort examined the hourglass again, and gently tugged on the reins to direct the horse towards a seaport a little Rimwards of their present course.
There were a few ships at anchor, mostly single-sailed coastal traders. The Empire didn't encourage its subjects to go far away, in case they saw things that might disturb them. For the same reason it had built a wall around the entire country, patrolled by the Heavenly Guard whose main function was to tread heavily on the fingers of any inhabitants who felt they might like to step outside for five minutes for a breath of fresh air.
This didn't happen often, because most of the subjects of the Sun Emperor were quite happy to live inside the Wall. It's a fact of life that everyone is on one side or other of a wall, so the only thing to do is forget about it or evolve stronger fingers.
'Who runs this place?' said Ysabell, as they passed over the harbour.
'There's some kind of boy emperor,' said Mort. 'But the top man is really the Grand Vizier, I think.'
'Never trust a Grand Vizier,' said Ysabell wisely.
In fact the Sun Emperor didn't. The Vizier, whose name was Nine Turning Mirrors, had some very clear views about who should run the country, e.g., that it should be him, and now the boy was getting big enough to ask questions like 'Don't you think the wall would look better with a few gates in it?' and 'Yes, but what is it like on the other side?' he had decided that in the Emperor's own best interests he should be painfully poisoned and buried in quicklime.
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