He took a look around.
Sheer sharp mountains speared up around him into a frosty sky hung with cruel stars, stars which appeared on no celestial chart in the multiverse, but right in there amongst them was a malevolent red disc. Rincewind shivered, and looked away. The land ahead of him sloped down sharply, and a dry wind whispered across the frost-cracked rocks.
It really did whisper. As grey eddies caught at his robe and tugged at his hair Rincewind thought he could hear voices, faint and far off, saying things like ‘Are you sure those were mushrooms in the stew? I feel a bit —,’ and There’s a lovely view if you lean over this —,’ and ‘Don’t fuss, it’s only a scratch —,’ and Watch where you’re pointing that bow, you nearly—’ and so on.
He stumbled down the slope, with his fingers in his ears, until he saw a sight seen by very few living men.
The ground dipped sharply until it became a vast funnel, ully a mile across, into which the whispering wind of the souls of the dead blew with a vast, echoing susurration, as though the Disc itself was breathing. But a narrow spur of rock arched out and over the hole, ending in an outcrop perhaps a hundred feet across.
There was a garden up there, with orchards and flowerbeds, and a quite small black cottage.
A little path led up to it.
Rincewind looked behind him. The shiny blue line was still there.
So was the Luggage.
It squatted on the path, watching him.
Rincewind had never got on with the Luggage, it had always given him the impression that it thoroughly disapproved of him. But just for once it wasn’t glaring at him. It had a rather pathetic look, like a dog that’s just come home after a pleasant roll in the cowpats to find that the family has moved to the next continent.
‘All right,’ said Rincewind. ‘Come on.’
It extended its legs and followed him up the path.
Somehow Rincewind had expected the garden on the outcrop to be full of dead flowers, but it was in fact well kept and had obviously been planted by someone with an eye for colour, always provided the colour was deep purple, night black or shroud white. Huge lilies perfumed the air. There was a sundial without a gnomon in the middle of a freshly-scythed lawn.
With the Luggage trailing behind him Rincewind crept along a path of marble chippings until he was at the rear of the cottage, and pushed open a door.
Four horses looked at him over the top of their nosebags. They were warm and alive, and some of the best kept beasts Rincewind had ever seen. A big white one had a stall all to itself, and a silver and black harness hung over the door. The other three were tethered in front of a hay rack on the opposite wall, as if visitors had just dropped by. They regarded Rincewind with vague animal curiosity.
The Luggage bumped into his ankle. He spun around nd hissed, ‘Push off, you!’
The Luggage backed away. It looked abashed.
Rincewind tiptoed to the far door and cautiously pushed it open. It gave onto a stone-flagged passageway, which in turn opened onto a wide entrance hall.
He crept forward with his back pressed tightly against a wall. Behind him the Luggage rose up on tiptoes and skittered along nervously.
The hall itself . . .
Well, it wasn’t the fact that it was considerably bigger than the whole cottage had appeared from the outside that worried Rincewind; the way things were these days, he’d have laughed sarcastically if anyone had said you couldn’t get a quart into a pint pot. And it wasn’t the decor, which was Early Crypt and ran heavily to black drapes.
It was the clock. It was very big, and occupied a space between two curving wooden staircases covered with carvings of things that normal men only see after a heavy session on something illegal.
It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the kind of deliberate, annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life. It was the kind of sound that suggested very pointedly that in some hypothetical hourglass, somewhere, another few grains of sand had dropped out from under you.
Needless to say, the weight on the pendulum was knife-edged and razor sharp.
Something tapped him in the small of the back. He turned angrily.
‘Look, you son of a suitcase, I told you —’
It wasn’t the Luggage. It was a young woman – silver haired, silver eyed, rather taken aback.
‘Oh,’ said Rincewind. ‘Um. Hallo?’
‘Are you alive?’ she said. It was the kind of voice associated with beach umbrellas, suntan oil and long cool drinks.
‘Well, I hope so,’ said Rincewind, wondering if his glands were having a good time wherever they were. ‘Sometimes I’m not so sure. What is this place?’
‘This is the house of Death,’ she said.
‘Ah,’ said Rincewind. He ran a tongue over his dry lips. Well, nice to meet you, I think I ought to be getting along —’
She clapped her hands. ‘Oh, you mustn’t go!’ she said. We don’t often have living people here. Dead people are so boring, don’t you think?’
‘Uh, yes,’ Rincewind agreed fervently, eyeing the doorway. ‘Not much conversation, I imagine.’
‘It’s always “When I was alive — ” and “We really knew how to breathe in my day — “,’ she said, laying a small white hand on his arm and smiling at him. They’re always so set in their ways, too. No fun at all. So formal.’
‘Stiff?’ suggested Rincewind. She was propelling him towards an archway.
‘Absolutely. What’s your name? My name is Ysabell.’
‘Um, Rincewind. Excuse me, but if this is the house of Death, what are you doing here? You don’t look dead to me.’
‘Oh, I live here.’ She looked intently at him. ‘I say, you haven’t come to rescue your lost love, have you? That always annoys daddy, he says it’s a good job he never sleeps because if he did he’d be kept awake by the tramp, tramp, tramp of young heroes coming down here to carry back a lot of silly girls, he says.’
‘Goes on a lot, does it?’ said Rincewind weakly, as they walked along a black-hung corridor.
‘All the time. I think it’s very romantic. Only when you leave, it’s very important not to look back.’
‘Why not?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps the view isn’t very good. Are you a hero, actually?’
‘Um, no. Not as such. Not at all, really. Even less than that, in fact. I just came to look for a friend of mine,’ he said wretchedly. ‘I suppose you haven’t seen him?
Little fat man, talks a lot, wears eyeglasses, funny sort of clothes?’
As he spoke he was aware that he may have missed something vital. He shut his eyes and tried to recall the last few minutes of conversation. Then it hit him like a sandbag.
‘Daddy?’
She looked down demurely. ‘Adopted, actually,’ she said. ‘He found me when I was a little girl, he says. It was all rather sad.’ She brightened. ‘But come and meet him – he’s got his friends in tonight, I’m sure hell be interested to see you. He doesn’t meet many people socially. Nor do I, actually,’ she added.
‘Sorry,’ said Rincewind. ‘Have I got it right? We’re talking about Death, yes? Tall, thin, empty eye-sockets, handy in the scythe department?’
She sighed. ‘Yes. His looks are against him, I’m afraid.’
While it was true that, as has already been indicated, Rincewind was to magic what a bicycle is to a bumblebee, he nevertheless retained one privilege available to practitioners of the art, which was that at the point of death it would be Death himself who turned up to claim him (instead of delegating the job to a lesser mythological anthropomorphic personification, as is usually the case). Owing largely to inefficiency Rincewind had consistently failed to die at the right time, and if there is one thing that Death does not like it is unpunctuality.
‘Look, I expect my friend has just wandered off somewhere,’ he said. ‘He’s always doing that, story of his life, nice to have met you, must be going —’
But she had already stopped in front of a tall door padded with purple velvet. There were voices on the other side – eldritch voices, the sort of voices that mere typography will remain totally unable to convey until someone can make a linotype machine with echo-reverb and, possibly, a typeface that looks like something said by a slug.
This is what the voices were saying:
WOULD YOU MIND EXPLAINING THAT AGAIN?