“No, thank you,” Death said, a little hastily. “However, it is getting rather warm, and I must admit that I’m beginning to feel like a steamed chestnut.” He opened his hood and the front of his cloak, and Amer stared, fascinated. For Death’s head was a skull, and his body was a complete, articulated skeleton.
“Excuse me,” Amer said, “but would you mind holding your arm straight out to the side?”
Death frowned. “Like this?”
“Yes, exactly.” Amer picked up a notebook and pen and began drawing. “Now, would you move your arm in a circle? Yes, that’s fine. You see, I’m in the midst of an investigation of the relationship between the scapula and the bones of the upper arm, and. . . .”
“Please!” Death drew his cloak tightly about himself and turned away, and the white skull became suffused with a touch of pink.
“Oh, curse me!” Amer cried, and his face turned bright magenta. “When I become absorbed in an investigation, sir, I’m apt to forget everything else, including my manners. I beg your forgiveness.”
“That’s quite all right,” Death said, turning back to him. “We all have our faults. But if you’re really sorry, Master Amer, you may prove it at the price of a little more wormwood.”
“Certainly, certainly,” Amer said, filling Death’s glass again. “Are you sure you won’t sit down?”
“No, thank you,” Death said. “But perhaps you should. I’m afraid I have some rather unpleasant news for you.”
“Oh!” Amer sank into the armchair Samona had occupied earlier in the day. “Unpleasant news? What would it be?”
“Well,” Death cleared his throat and began to pace to and fro in front of the fireplace, skeletal hands clasped behind his back. “Well,” he said, “I’m afraid this may seem rather ungrateful in view of your excellent hospitality, but—well, duty is duty, and. . . Certainly you’re aware, Master Amer, that none of us can live forever.”
“Yes,” said Amer, smiling blithely but blankly.
“Well. . .that’s how it is,” Death said, with a note of exasperation in his voice. “We must all die sometime, and. . .well. . . Confound it, Amer, now’s your time.”
Amer sat in a stunned silence for a minute, and then, in a hollow voice, he said, “I see. . .”
“Master!” Willow wailed. “What’re we gonna do?”
“Well, Willow,” Amer said slowly, “it would seem as though you’re finally going to have your freedom.”
“Oh, I don’t want it, I don’t want it! Not at that price!”
“Well . . . I’m sorry, old man,” Death said gruffly, “but what must be, must be.”
“Oh, that’s all right, that’s all right,” Amer said, staring at the fire with an unwavering gaze. “But . . . isn’t that strange?”
“What?”
“Samona. For some reason, all I can think is that I should have kissed Samona—just once, without my protection drug. I never did, you know.” He turned and looked, frowning, at Death. “Now, why should I be thinking of that?”
A tear formed at the edge of the skull’s hollow eye and rolled down the hard white cheekbone. “Come, come, let’s have done with it quickly! Give me your hand.”
Amer ignored the outstretched, bony fingers, and his eyes began to wander aimlessly around the room, “But I’ve so much left to do. . . .”
“So said Caesar when I came for him, and so said Peter and so said Charlemagne. Come, cease torturing yourself!”
Amer’s wandering gaze fell on the miniature bones he had carved earlier in the day. The look of intelligence returned slowly to his eyes as, very carefully, he lifted the model bone-pile into his lap. He took a roll of fine wire from the table and began to string the little skeleton together.
“Just let me finish this,” he said. “Just one more work completed—then I’ll go.”
“All right, but be quick,” Death said, drawing back his hand. There was a note of relief in his voice.
He began to pace the floor again. “If you’d just had sense enough to keep your fingers out of magic, none of this would be necessary.”
“Why, what’s wrong with magic?” Amer fixed the collarbone in place.
“It’s not the magic, it’s the way you go about getting it that ruffles the boys upstairs.”
Amer looked up. Death spun toward him and pointed an accusing finger. “You could at least have had the good sense to guard your door! Your master would have given you as many spells as you wanted for the express purpose of keeping me out!”
Amer smiled sadly and shook his head. “But I don’t have a master.”
“It’s complete and utter carelessness! If you—What did you say?”
“I don’t have a master.”
“Indeed! And I suppose you’re not a sorcerer?”
“Quite right—I’m not.” Amer threaded the pelvis onto the spine.
“Oh?” said Death. “Then how did you come by your magic?”
“I was born with it, I think. In fact, I’m growing increasingly certain that every magic-user is conceived with the talent for it. You either have it, or you don’t—but if you do, the raw ability isn’t enough; you have to learn how to use it.” He warmed to his subject. “That’s all the witches and warlocks in the neighborhood gain by their pact with the Devil—instruction. Of course, there are many who have no power whatsoever; Satan and the older witches merely delude them into believing they’re able to work magic.” He frowned, gazing off into space. “I’ve learned, in the last few years, that there are holy men in the East who know how to work wonders, though that’s not the main purpose of their study—and they do teach those who truly wish to cultivate the life of the spirit. So their magic is gained by spiritual advancement, without condemning their souls to eternal agony in the afterlife. But I knew nothing of them, when I wished to learn.”
“Then where did you find your teacher?” Death demanded.
“I taught myself,” Amer said, stringing up a femur. “I learned by investigation and hard thought. I experimented until I found the rules by which the world operates. I win my own knowledge, sir. I don’t beg.”
“Rules” Death snapped. “What sort of rules?”
“Oh, there are many of them—the principle of equivalence, for example: for every effect you work, you will always have to pay in one way or another. Or the principle of similarity, which makes it possible for me to do something to someone—say, removing a wart—just by doing the same thing to a model of that person, once I’ve learned how to focus my thoughts properly. That’s really just an application of a larger principle, actually—a sort of rule of symbolism: ‘The symbol is the thing it represents,’ in some metaphysical way I haven’t discovered yet. I’ve reason to believe there are other worlds, other universes, in which the rules of magic don’t apply—in which the symbol is not the thing, for example.”
“Fantasy,” Death snapped.
“For us, yes. But we are no doubt fantasies for them. In this world in which an alchemist can talk to Death, the laws of magic work well enough.”
Death eyed him warily. “You haven’t sold your soul, then?”
“Not in the least,” Amer said. “Invictus.”
Death paced the hearth for a long time, wrapped in thought. Amer was twisting the last toe into place when the skull spoke again.
“It may be,” he said. “But I’ve heard the story before, and it’s almost always a lie. I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me, after all.”
Amer smiled sadly. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so hospitable,” he said. “Then you might have been willing to give me the benefit of the doubt.” He twisted a loop of wire around the little skeleton’s leg and laid it on the table.