‘Are we going or are we standin’ around all night bandagin’ our heads?’ he said.
‘Yo!’ snapped the Dean.
‘Yo?’ said Reg Shoe.
‘Oook!’
‘Was that a yo?’ said the Dean, suspiciously.
‘Oook.’
‘Well … all right, then.’
Death sat on a mountaintop. It wasn’t particularly high, or bare, or sinister. No witches held naked sabbats on it; Discworld witches, on the whole, didn’t hold with taking off any more clothes than was absolutely necessary for the business in hand. No spectres haunted it. No naked little men sat on the summit dispensing wisdom, because the first thing the truly wise man works out is that sitting around on mountaintops gives you not only haemorrhoids but frostbitten haemorrhoids.
Occasionally people would climb the mountain and add a stone or two to the cairn at the top,{46} if only to prove that there is nothing really damn stupid that humans won’t do.
Death sat on the cairn and ran a stone down the blade of his scythe in long, deliberate strokes.
There was a movement of air. Three grey servants popped into existence.
One said, You think you have won?
One said, You think you have triumphed?
Death turned the stone in his hand to get a fresh surface, and brought it slowly down the length of the blade.
One said, We will inform Azrael.
One said, You are only, after all, a little Death.
Death held the blade up to the moonlight, twisting it this way and that, noting the play of light on the tiny flecks of metal on its edge.
Then he stood up, in one quick movement. The servants backed away hurriedly.
He reached out with the speed of a snake and grasped a robe, pulling its empty hood level with his eye sockets.
DO YOU KNOW WHY THE PRISONER IN THE TOWER WATCHES THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS? he said.
It said, Take your hands off me … oops …
Blue flame flared for a moment.
Death lowered his hand and looked around at the other two.
One said, You haven’t heard the last of this.
They vanished.
Death brushed a speck of ash off his robe, and then planted his feet squarely on the mountaintop. He raised the scythe over his head in both hands, and summoned all the lesser Deaths that had arisen in his absence.
After a while they streamed up the mountain in a faint black wave.
They flowed together like dark mercury.
It went on for a long time and then stopped.
Death lowered the scythe, and examined himself. Yes, all there. Once again, he was the Death, containing all the deaths of the world. Except for— For a moment he hesitated. There was one tiny area of emptiness somewhere, some fragment of his soul, something unaccounted for …
He couldn’t be quite certain what it was.
He shrugged. Doubtless he’d find out. In the meantime, there was a lot of work to be done …
He rode away.
Far off, in his den under the barn, the Death of Rats relaxed his determined grip on a beam.
Windle Poons brought both feet down heavily on a tentacle snaking out from under the tiles, and lurched off through the steam. A slab of marble smashed down, showering him with fragments. Then he kicked the wall, savagely.
There was very probably no way out now, he realised, and even if there was he couldn’t find it. Anyway, he was already inside the thing. It was shaking its own walls down in an effort to get at him. At least he could give it a really bad case of indigestion.
He headed towards an orifice that had once been the entrance to a wide passage, and dived awkwardly through it just before it snapped shut. Silver fire crackled over the walls. There was so much life here it couldn’t be contained.
There were a few trolleys still here, skittering madly across the shaking floor, as lost as Windle.
He set off along another likely-looking corridor, although most corridors he’d been down in the last one hundred and thirty years hadn’t pulsated and dripped so much.
Another tentacle thrust through the wall and tripped him up.
Of course, it couldn’t kill him. But it could make him bodiless. Like old One-Man-Bucket. A fate worse than death, probably.
He pulled himself up. The ceiling bounced down on him, flattening him against the floor.
He counted under his breath and scampered forward. Steam washed over him.
He slipped again, and thrust out his hands.
He could feel himself losing control. There were too many things to operate. Never mind the spleen, just keeping heart and lungs going was taking too much effort …
‘Topiary!’
‘What the heck do you mean?’
‘Topiary! Get it? Yo!’
‘Oook!’
Windle looked up through foggy eyes.
Ah. Obviously he was losing control of his brain, too.
A trolley came sideways out of the steam with shadowy figures clinging on to its sides. One hairy arm and one arm that was barely an arm any more reached down, picked him up bodily and dumped him into the basket. Four tiny wheels skidded on the floor, the trolley bounced off the wall, and then it righted itself and rattled away.
Windle was only vaguely aware of voices.
‘Off you go, Dean. I know you’ve been looking forward to it.’ That was the Archchancellor.
‘Yo!’
‘You’ll kill it totally? I don’t think we want it ending up at the Fresh Start Club. I don’t think it’s a joiner. That was Reg Shoe.
‘Oook!’ That was the Librarian.
‘Don’t you worry, Windle. The Dean is going to do something military, apparently,’ said Ridcully.
‘Yo! Hut!’
‘Oh, good grief.’
Windle saw the Dean’s hand float past with something glittering in it.
‘What are you going to use?’ said Ridcully, as the trolley rocketed through the steam. ‘The Seismic Reorganiser, the Attractive Point or the Incendiary Surprise?’
‘Yo,’ said the Dean, with satisfaction.
‘What, all three at once?’
‘Yo!’
‘That’s going a bit far, isn’t it? And incidentally, if you say “yo” one more time, Dean, I will personally have you thrown out of the University, pursued to the rim of the world by the finest demons that thaumaturgy can conjure up, torn into extremely small pieces, minced, turned into a mixture reminiscent of steak tartare, and turned out into a dog bowl.’
‘Y—’ The Dean caught Ridcully’s eye. ‘Yes. Yes? Oh, go on, Archchancellor. What’s the good of having mastery over cosmic balance and knowing the secrets of fate if you can’t blow something up? Please? I’ve got them all ready. You know how it upsets the inventory if you don’t use them after you’ve got them ready—’
The trolley whirred up a trembling slope and cornered on two wheels.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Ridcully. ‘If it means that much to you.’
‘Y — sorry.’
The Dean started to mutter urgently under his breath, and then screamed.
‘I’ve gone blind!’
‘Your bonsai bandage has slipped over your eyes, Dean.’
Windle groaned.
‘How are you feeling, Brother Poons?’ Reg Shoe’s ravaged features occluded Windle’s view.
‘Oh, you know,’ said Windle. ‘Could be better, could be worse.’
The trolley ricocheted off a wall and jerked away in another direction.
‘How are those spells coming along, Dean?’ said Ridcully, through gritted teeth. ‘I’m having real difficulties controlling this thing.’