Death comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job.
After being assured that being dead was not compulsory, Mort accepted. However, when it comes to the rather attractive Princess Keli (due to be assassinated) Mort fluffs it completely. He kills the assassin instead, thus interfering with the implacable workings of Fate.
And with Death off on a tour of mortal pleasures, it's up to Mort, a rather incompetent wizard named Cutwell, and Death's adopted and highly willful daughter to try to mend the whole future course of History before the Discworld turns around...
A farmer who neglects to sow ordinary seeds only loses the crop, whereas anyone who forgets to sow seeds of a crop that has already been harvested twelve months before risks disturbing the entire fabric of causality, not to mention acute embarassment.
* * *
"Sometimes he starts thinking so hard you has to hit him round the head to get his attention. His granny taught him to read, see. I reckon it overheated his mind."
* * *
Mort was interested in lots of things. ... there was the puzzle of why the sun came out during the day, instead of at night when the light would come in useful.
* * *
[Mort] was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe.
Which was going to be hard, because there wasn't one. The Creator had a lot of remarkably good ideas when he put the world together, but making it understandable hadn't been one of them.
* * *
...Mort came out of the tailors wearing a loose fitting brown garment of imprecise function, which had been understandably unclaimed by a previous owner and had plenty of room for him to grow, on the assumption that he would grow into a nineteen-legged elephant.
* * *
Lezek: "There's thousands of lads in the world'd be very thankful for a nice warm... garment like that, my lad."
Mort: "I could share it with them?"
* * *
The fair seemed to work like this: men looking for work stood in ragged lines in the centre of the square. Many of them sported little symbols in their hats to tell the world the kind of work they were trained in -- shepherds wore a wisp of wool, carters a hank of horsehair, interior decorators a strip of rather interesting hessian wallcovering, and so on.
* * *
Most of the stallkeepers had packed up and gone. Even the hot meat pie man had stopped crying his wares and, with no regard for personal safety, was eating one.
* * *
...clip-clop was an astonishingly inaccurate word for the kind of noise which rattled around Mort's head; clip-clop suggested a rather jolly little pony, quite possibly wearing a straw hat with holes cut out for its ears. An edge to this sound made it very clear that straw hats weren't an option.
* * *
The horse entered the square by the Hub road, steam curling off its huge damp white flanks and aparks striking up from the cobbles beneath it. It trotted proudly, like a war charger. It was definitely not wearing a straw hat.
* * *
Death: THANK YOU, BOY. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?
Mort: "Uh, Mortimer... sir. They call me Mort."
Death: WHAT A COINCIDENCE.
* * *
Lezek: "What was your job again?"
Death: I USHER SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD.
Lezek: "Ah, of course, sorry, should have guessed from the clothes. Very necessary work, very steady. Established business?"
Death: I HAVE BEEN GOING FOR SOME TIME, YES.
* * *
"But you're Death," said Mort. "You go around killing people!"
I? KILL? said Death, obviously offended. CERTAINLY NOT. PEOPLE GET KILLED, BUT THAT'S THEIR BUSINESS. I JUST TAKE OVER FROM THEN ON. AFTER ALL, IT'D BE A BLOODY STUPID WORLD IF PEOPLE GOT KILLED WITHOUT DYING, WOULDN'T IT?
* * *
"Where did you say your business was?" said Lezek. "Is it far?"
NO FURTHER THAN THE THICKNESS OF A SHADOW, aid Death. WHERE THE FIRST PRIMAL CELL WAS, THERE WAS I ALSO. WHERE MAN IS, THERE AM I. WHEN THE LAST LIFE CRAWLS UNDER FREEZING STARS, THERE WILL I BE.
"Ah," said Lezek, "you get about a bit, then."
* * *
Mort: "I'd better be going. I'll try to write you a letter."
Lezek: "There's bound to be someone passing who can read it to us."
-- Fun with illiteracy
* * *
The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expounded because, at that point, the bar closed.
* * *
Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it's the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it's just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder.
* * *
There were temples, their doors wide open, filling the streets with the sounds of gongs, cymbals, and, in the case of some of the more conservative fundamentalist religions, the brief screams of the victims.
* * *
It was crowded in the Curry Gardens on the corner of God Street and Blood Alley, but only with the cream of society -- at least, with those people who are found floating on the top and who therefore, it's wisest to call the cream.
* * *
The other diners didn't take much notice, even when Death leaned back and lit a rather fine pipe. Someone with smoke curling out of their eye sockets takes some ignorning, but everyone managed it.
* * *
Mort: "What are we going to do now?"
Death: BUY YOU SOME NEW CLOTHES.
Mort: "These were new today -- yesterday, I mean."
Death: REALLY?
Mort: "Father said the shop was famous for its budget clothing."
Death: IT CERTAINLY ADDS A NEW TERROR TO POVERTY.
* * *
They weren't mere shops, they were emporia; they had purveyors in them, and chairs, and spittoons. Most of them were open even at this time of night, because the average Ankhian trader can't sleep for thinking of the money he's not making.
* * *
The answer flowed into his mind with all the inevitability of a tax demand.
* * *
Mort had never heard the phrase "Pre-Raphaelite", which was a pity because it would have been almost the right description. However, such girls tend to be on the translucent, consumptive side, whereas this one had a slight suggestion of too many chocolates.
* * *
The smell attracted Mort's taste buds from across the room, hinting that if they got together they could really enjoy themselves.
* * *
"There could be some porridge to follow," [Albert] said, and winked, apparently to include Mort in the world porridge conspiracy.
* * *
Death: WELL, BOY, DO YOU SINCERELY WISH TO LEARN THE UTTERMOST SECRETS OF TIME AND SPACE?
Mort: "Yes, sir. I think so, sir."
Death: GOOD. THE STABLES ARE AROUND THE BACK. THE SHOVEL HANGS JUST INSIDE THE DOOR.
* * *
It is a fact that although the Death of the Discworld is, in his own words, an ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION, he long ago gave up using the traditional skeletal horses, because of the bother of having to stop all the time to wire bits back on.
* * *
Death: YOU HAVEN'T HEARD OF THE BAY OF MANTE, HAVE YOU?
Mort: "No, sir."
Death: FAMOUS SHIPWRECK THERE.
Mort: "Was there?"
Death: THERE WILL BE, IF I CAN FIND THE DAMN PLACE.
* * *
Albert: "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?"
Mort: "No, what?"
Albert: "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right."
* * *
Mort remembered the woodcut in his grandmother's almanack, between the page on planting times and the phases of the moon section, showing Death thee Great Levyller Comes to Alle Menne. He'd stared at it hundreds of times when learning his letters. It wouldn't have been half so impressive if it had been generally known that the flame-breathing horse the spectre rode was called Binky.
* * *
Mort: "I've never seen Death actually at work."
Albert: "Not many have. Not twice, at any rate."
* * *
Death: THAT'S BECAUSE TIME IS ADJUSTABLE. IT'S NOT REALLY IMPORTANT.
Mort: "I always thought it was."
Death: PEOPLE THINK IT'S IMPORTANT ONLY BECAUSE THEY INVENTED IT.
* * *
"Oh, kings," said Mort dismissively. He knew about kings. Once a year a band of strolling players, or at any rate ambling ones, came to Sheepridge and the plays they performed were invariably about kings. Kings were always killing one another, or being killed. The plots were quite complicated, involving mistaken identity, poisons, battles, long-lost sons, ghosts, witches and, usually, lots of daggers. Since it was clear that being a king was no picnic it was amazing that half the cast were apparently trying to become one. Mort's idea of palace life was a little hazy, but he imagined that no-one got much sleep.
* * *
It was one huge rock from the distant Ramtops, Death said, left there by the retreating ice in the legendary days when the Ice Giants waged war on the gods and rode their glaciers across the land in an attempt to freeze the world. ... No-one on the plains knew why they had done this; it was generally considered by the younger generation in the city of Sto Lat, the city around the rock, that it was because the place was dead boring.
* * *
IF THEY DON'T WANT TO SEE ME, THEY CERTAINLY DON'T WANT TO SEE YOU. THESE ARE ARISTOCRATS, BOY. THEY'RE GOOD AT NOT SEEING THINGS.
* * *
HIS COUSIN, THE DUKE OF STO HELIT. NOT THE NICEST OF PEOPLE, said Death. A HANDY MAN WITH A BOTTLE OF POISON. FIFTH IN LINE TO THE THRONE LAST YEAR, NOW SECOND IN LINE. BIT OF A SOCIAL CLIMBER, YOU MIGHT SAY.
* * *
King Olerve: "What are you doing here? Eh? Guards! I deman-- Oh. I see. I didn't expect to see you so soon."
Death: YOUR MAJESTY, FEW DO.
* * *
He watched the duke walk up behind her and lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. A fault smile hovered around the man's lips. It was the sort of smile that lies on sandbanks waiting for incautious swimmers.
* * *
Mort: "My granny says that dying is like going to sleep."
Death: I WOULDN'T KNOW. I HAVE DONE NEITHER.
* * *
The sight of [Ysabell] with her hair streaming in the wind would have been more impressive if she was a better horsewoman, or if the pony had been rather larger, or if her hair was the sort that streams naturally.
* * *
Mort: "Can you see me?"
Stallholder: "I reckon so, or someone very much like you."
* * *
Mort sniffed. There was a certain something about the air in the city. ... You couldn't help noting with each breath that thousands of other people were very close to you and nearly all of them had armpits.
* * *
This part of Ankh-Morpork was known as The shades, an inner-city area sorely in need either of governmental help or, for preference, a flamethrower. It couldn't be called squalid because that would be stretching the word to breaking point.
* * *
Periodically Mort would try to engage one in conversation, to find the way to a good horse dealer. The denizen would usually mutter something and hurry away, since anyone wishing to live in The Shades for longer than maybe three hours developed very specialised senses indeed and would no more hang around near Mort than a peasant would stand near a tall tree in thundry weather.
* * *
It was hard to drown in the Ankh, but easy to suffocate.
* * *
Three men had appeared behind him, as though extruded from the stonework. They had the heavy, stolid look of those thugs whose appearance in any narrative means that it's time for the hero to be menaced a bit, although not too much, because it's also obvious that they're going to be horribly surprised.
* * *
Mort swallowed. "This could be unwise," he said.
"Why?"
"Well, I won't like it, for one."
* * *
"Well, ---- me," he said. "A ----ing wizard. I hate ----ing wizards!"
"You shouldn't ---- them, then," muttered one of his henchmen, effortlessly pronouncing a row of dashes.
* * *
Eight pairs of round eyes were fixed on Mort. A ninth pair belonging to an aged grandparent of indeterminent sex weren't, because their owner had taken advantage of the interruption to get some elbow room at the communal rice bowl...
* * *
Death had said that it was an acquired taste. Mort had decided not to make the effort.
* * *
...the words entered Mort's ear in their spoken Klatchian, with all the curlicues and subtle diphthongs of a language so ancient and sophisticated that it had fifteen words meaning "assassination" before the rest of the world had caught on to the idea of bashing one another over the head with rocks...
* * *
"You're a thief?" said the father. "A murderer? To creep in thus, are you a tax-gatherer?"
* * *
"What is your wish, O foul spawn of Offler's loins?"
"Sorry?" said Mort.
"A demon brings blessing and good fortune on the man that helps it," said the man. "How may we be of assistance, O evil dogsbreath of the nether pit?"
* * *
There are many things to be said about cabbages. One may talk at length about their high vitamin content, their vital iron contribution, the valuable roughage and commendable food value. In the mass, however, they lack a certain something: despite their claim to immense nutritional and moral superiority over, say, daffodils, they have never been a sight to inspire the poet's muse. Unless he was hungry, of course.
* * *
There was a brief commotion from within, the series of hasty domestic sounds that might, in a less exalted house, have been made by, say, someone shovelling the lunch plates into the sink and tidying the laundry out of sight.
* * *
The big low room inside was dark and shadowy and smelled mainly of incense but slightly of boiled cabbage arid elderly laundry and the kind of person who throws all his socks at the wall and wears the ones that don't stick.
* * *
"That was advertising," said the wizard. "It's a kind of magic I've been working on."
* * *
Mort: "Is it possible to walk through walls?"
Cutwell: "Using magic?"
Mort: "Um, I don't think so."
Cutwell: "Then pick very thin walls."
* * *
Mort: "...if I could walk through walls I could do anything."
Cutwell: "Very deep. Philosophical. And the name of the young lady on the other side of this wall?"
* * *
[Mort had] seen quite a few deaths in the last week or so, and all the horror went out of it when you knew you'd be speaking to the victim afterwards.
* * *
"Be with you in a minute," she said. She frowned at the paper. "I haven't put in the bit about being of sound mind and body yet, lot of foolishness anyway, no-one sound in mind and body would be dead."
* * *
"What do you think, Mort?" she said. Her voice had sounded cracked and quavery before. Now it suggested musk and maple syrup and other things that set Mort's adam's apple bobbing like a rubber ball on an elastic band.
* * *
She leaned forward and gave him a kiss as insubstantial as a mayfly's sigh, fading as she did so until only the kiss was left, just like a Cheshire cat only much more erotic.
* * *
...although the Holy Listeners were so remote, many people took the extremely long and dangerous path to their temple, travelling through frozen, troll-haunted lands, fording swift icy rivers, climbing forbidding mountains, trekking across inhospitable tundra, in order to climb the narrow stairway that led into the hidden valley and seek with an open heart the secrets of being.
And the monks would cry unto them, "Keep the bloody noise down!"
* * *
Abbot: "Now, if you could give me a lift as far as the nearest village, I imagine I'm being conceived about now."
Mort: "Conceived? But you've just died!"
Abbot: "Yes, but, you see, I have what you might call a season ticket."
-- Reincarnation in action
* * *
Abbot: "Imagine toilet training fifty times."
Mort: "Nothing to look back on, I imagine."
* * *
Forget peas and mattresses -- sheer natural selection had establishedover the years that the royal families that survived longest were those whose members could distinguish an assassin in the dark by the noise he was clever enough not to make because, in court circles, there was always someone ready to cut the heir with a knife.
* * *
Screaming for the guards, she decided, was not a good idea. If there was anyone in the room then the guards must have been overpowered, or at least stunned by a large sum of money.
* * *
There were a few hesitant footsteps, a couple of thumps, and finally a clang, although the word isn't sufficient to describe the real ripe cacophony of falling metal that filled the room. It was even followed by the traditional little tinkle a couple of seconds after you thought it was all over.
* * *
"That's Binky," said the heap. "He's just trying to be friendly.I expect he'd like some hay, if you've got any."
With royal self-control, Keli said, "This is the fourth floor. It's a lady's bedroom. You'd be amazed at how many horses we don't get up here."
* * *
If Mort ever compared a girl to a summer's day, it would be followed by a thoughtful explaination of what day he had in mind and whether it was raining at the time.
* * *
"I just wondered if -- everything was all right?"
Keli's shoulders sagged.
"No," she said. "Everything's all wrong. There's a dead assassin in my bedroom. Could you please have something done about it?"
* * *
[Binky] didn't land on the dark soil of Death's estate, it was simply there, underfoot, as though an aircraft carrier had gently manoeuvred itself under a jump jet to save the pilot all the trouble of touching down.
* * *
On the rare occassions Ysabell deigned to look in his direction she made it clear that the only difference between Mort and a dead toad was the colour.
* * *
"Egg, please," said Mort. He'd never plucked up the courage to try Albert's porridge, which led a private life of its own in the depths of its saucepan and ate spoons.
* * *
"...and the princesses were beautiful as the day is long and so noble they, they could pee through a dozen mattresses--"
-- Or something similar
* * *
Bluntly, the universe knew Keli was dead and was therefore rather surprised to find that she hadn't stopped walking and breathing yet.
* * *
"I've -- we've got a special on Cutwell's Shield of Passion ointment," said the face, and winked in a startling fashion. "Provides your wild oats while guaranteeing a crop failure, if you know what I mean."
Keli bridled. "No," she lied coldly, "I do not."
* * *
Knocker: "But you could ftry to use the magic word. Coming from an attractiff fwoman it works nine times out of eight."
Keli: "Magic word? What's the magic word?"
Knocker: "Haff you been taught nothing, miss?"
Keli: "I have been educated by some of the finest scholars in the land."
Knocker: "Iff they didn't teach you the magic word, they couldn't haff fbeen all that fine."
* * *
The first pizza was created on the Disc by the Klatchian mystic Ronron "Revelation Joe" Shuwadhi, who claimed to have been given the recipe in a dream by the Creator of the Discworld Himself, who had apparently added that it was what He had intended all along.
* * *
Keli smiled. Members of the court who had seen that smile before would have hastened to drag Cutwell out of the way and into a place of safety, like the next continent...
* * *
"I'll try the Ching thing."
"You throw these yarrow sticks into the air, then."
She did. They looked at the ensuing pattern.
"Hmm," said Cutwell after a while. "Well, that's one in the fireplace, one in the cocoa mug, one in the street, shame about the window, one on the table, and one, no, two behind the dresser."
* * *
Cutwell: "Let's try the [Caroc] cards. Pick a card. Any card."
Keli: "It's Death."
Cutwell: "Ah. Well. Of course, the Death card doesn't actually mean death in all circumstances."
Keli: "You mean it doesn't mean death in those circumstances where the subject is getting over-excited and you're too embarassed to tell the truth, hmm?"
Cutwell: "Look, take another card."
Keli: "This one's Death as well."
Cutwell: "Did you put the other one back?"
Keli: "No. Shall I take another card?"
Cutwell: "May as well."
Keli: "Well, there's a coincidence!"
-- It's tough to have your fortune told when you're supposed to be dead
* * *
"You're dead," [Cutwell] said.
Keli waited. She couldn't think of any suitable reply. "I'm not" lacked a certain style, while "Is it serious?" seemed somehow too frivolous.
* * *
Cutwell: "I mean, the cards think you're dead. Your lifeline thinks you're dead. Everything and everyone thinks you're dead."
Keli: "I don't."
Cutwell: "I'm afraid your opinion doesn't count."
* * *
Keli: "What can I do?"
Cutwell: "Nothing."
Keli: "Nothing?"
Cutwell: "Well, you could certainly become a very successful burglar..."
-- Advantages of being dead
* * *
He looked back like a nocturnal rabbit trying to outstare the headlights of a sixteen-wheeled artic whose driver is a twelve-hour caffeine freak outrunning the tachometers of hell.
* * *
...the thing between Death's triumphant digits was a fly from the dawn of time. It was the fly in the primordial soup. It had bred on mammoth turds. It wasn't a fly that bangs on window panes, it was a fly that drills through walls.
* * *
[Mort'd] been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.
* * *
Mort: "I don't want to get married to anyone yet. And certainly not to you, no offence meant."
Ysabell: "I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on the Disc."
Mort: "At least I don't look like I've been eating doughnuts in a wardrobe for years."
Ysabell: "At least I walk as if my legs only had one knee each."
Mort: "My eyes aren't two juugly poached eggs."
Ysabell: "On the other hand, my ears don't look like something growing on a dead tree. What does juugly mean?"
Mort: "You know, eggs like Albert does them."
Ysabell: "With the white all sticky and runny and full of slimy bits?"
Mort: "Yes."
Ysabell: "A good word."
-- It's shameless the way they flirt
* * *
"Pray note that my chest does not appear to be a toast rack in a wet paper bag."
Mort glanced sideways at the top of Ysabell's dress, which contained enough puppy fat for two litters of Rotweilers, and forbore to comment.
* * *
"We could have a sort of hate-hate relationship."
* * *
Her body was shaking like a waterbed in an earthquake zone.
* * *
"They're very romantic," [Ysabell] said. "There's some really lovely stories. There was this girl who drank poison when her young man had died, and there was one who jumped off a cliff because her father insisted she should marry this old man, and another one drowned herself rather than submit to--"
Mort listened in astonishment. To judge by Ysabell's careful choice of reading matter, it was a matter of note for any Disc female to survive adolescence long enough to wear out a pair of stockings.
* * *
Common sense suggested that at least a few women reached their third decade without killing themselves for love, but common sense didn't seem to get even a walk-on part in these dramas.
* * *
The Disc's greatest lovers were undoubtedly Mellius and Gretelina, whose pure, passionate and soul-searing affair would have scorched the pages of History if they had not, because of some unexplained quirk of fate, had been born two hundred years apart on different continents.
* * *
Mort was already aware that love made you feel hot and cold and cruel and weak, but he hadn't realised that it could make you stupid.
* * *
Mort had imagined that Death's handwriting would either be gothic or else tombstone angular, but Death had in fact studied a classic work on graphology before selecting a style and had adopted a hand that indicated a balanced, well-adjusted personality.
* * *
People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.
* * *
It was an inn, and inside there were people having a good time, or what passed for a good time if you were a peasant who spent most of your time closely concerned with cabbages.
* * *
"What he means is, what d'you want to drink?" said a small ferret-faced man sitting by the fire, who was giving Mort the kind of look a butcher gives a field full of lambs.
* * *
They were the sort of people generally called the salt of the earth. In other words, they were hard, square and bad for your health...
* * *
"What do people like to drink here, then?"
The landlord looked sideways at his customers, a clever trick given that they were directly in front of him.
* * *
Mort sniffed his drink, and then took a sip. It tasted something like apples, something like autumn mornings, and quite a lot like the bottom of a logpile.
* * *
"You like it?" he said to Mort, in pretty much the same tone of voice people used when they said to St George, "You killed a what?"
* * *
He looked at the boy with something verging on admiration. It wasn't that he'd drunk a third of a pint of scumble in itself, it was that he was still vertical and apparently alive.
* * *
It is a fact that the best remedy for a scumble hangover is a hair of the dog, although it should more accurately be called a tooth of the shark or possibly a tread of the bulldozer.
* * *
"A lot of things come through the wall after your first drink of scumble. Green hairy things, usually."
* * *
Logic would have told Mort that here was his salvation. In a day or two the problem would solve itself; the books in the library would be right again; the world would have sprung back into shape like an elastic bandage. Logic would have told him that interfering with the process a second time around would only make things worse. Logic would have said all that, if only Logic hadn't taken the night off too.
* * *
...Krull, with a large part of what for want of a better word must be called its coastline sticking out over the Edge [of the Disc], was a fortunate island. The only native Krullians who did not appreciate this were those who didn't look where they were going or who walked in their sleep and, because of natural selection, there weren't very many of them any more. All societies have their share of dropouts, but on Krull they never had a chance to drop back in again.
* * *
...Terpsic Mims was one of the Disc's happiest anglers, because the Hakrull river was five miles from his home and therefore five miles from Mrs. Gwladys Mims, with whom he had enjoyed six happy months of married life. That had been some twenty years previously.
* * *
He had never seen fly-fishing like this before. There were wet flies, and there were dry flies, but this fly augured into the water with a saw-toothed whine and dragged the fish out backwards.
* * *
...the streets were nevertheless a-bustle with people and shrill with the cries of hucksters, gamblers, sellers of sweetmeats, pea-and-thimble men, ladies of assignation, pickpockets and the occasional honest trader who had wandered in by mistake and couldn't now raise enough money to leave.
* * *
She's only met you once, you fool. Why should she bother about you?
Yes, but I did save her life.
That means it belongs to her. Not to you.
* * *
Mort was shocked. Who are you"? he demanded.
I'm you, Mort. Your inner self.
Well, I wish I'd get out of my head, it's quite crowded enough with me in here.
* * *
...while Mort had been locked into the monologue, he had ridden right through the gates of the palace. Of course, people rode through the gates of the palace every day, but most of them needed the things to be opened first.
* * *
"I meant, what goes there?" the guard tried again, with a mixture of doggedness and suicidal stupidity that marked him for early promotion.
* * *
Cutwell: "You're him, are you? Death's assistant?"
Mort: "Yes. Off duty at the moment, though."
Cutwell: "Pleased to hear it."
* * *
"Let's suppose you went out of here and prowled around the palace. One of the guards would probably see you and he'd think you were a thief and he'd fire his crossbow. I mean, in his reality you'd be a thief. It wouldn't actually be true but you'd be just as dead as if it was. Belief is powerful stuff."
* * *
Many a young wizard had tried to read a grimoire that is too strong for him, and people who've heard the screams have found only his pointy shoes with the classic wisp of smoke coming out of them and a book that is, perhaps, just a little fatter.
* * *
It was midnight in Ankh-Morpork, but in the great twin city the only difference between night and day was, well, it was darker.
* * *
Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.
* * *
In fact some two hundred of the Patrician's guests were now staggering and kicking their way through the Serpent Dance, a quaint Morporkian folkway which consisted of getting rather drunk, holding the waist of the person in front, and then wobbling and giggling uproariously in a long crocodile that wound through as many rooms as possible, preferably ones with breakables in, while kicking one leg vaguely in time with the beat, or at least in time with some other beat.
* * *
Mort: "But if you stay here you'll die!"
Keli: "Then I shall have to show the Disc how a queen can die."
Mort: "I know how a queen can die. They die just like other people."
* * *
Keli: "I shall die nobly, like Queen Ezeriel."
Mort: "Who's she?"
Cutwell: "She lived in Klatch and she had a lot of lovers and she sat on a snake."
Keli: "She meant to! She was crossed in love!"
Cutwell: "All I can remember is that she used to take baths in asses' milk. Funny thing, history. You become a queen, reign for thirty years, make laws, declare war on people and then the only thing you get remembered for is that you smelled like yoghurt and were bitten in the--"
* * *
The rest of the crowd evaporated like dew, leaving only those heavy-set, unsympathetic-looking men who, if Wa had ever paid tax, would have gone down on his return as Essential Plant and Business Equipment.
* * *
Wa: "I know I've had lots of people murdered--"
Death: TWENTY-THREE, TO BE PRECISE.
Wa: "Is it too late to say I'm sorry?"
* * *
"I shall go," said Mort. "Until tomorrow, farewell!"
"It is tomorrow," Keli pointed out.
Mort deflated slightly.
"All right, tonight then," he said, slightly put out, and added, "I will begone!"
"Begone what?"
* * *
[The Mended Drum] was famed not for its beer, which looked like maiden's water and tasted like battery acid, but for its clientele. It was said that if you sat long enough in the Drum, then sooner or later every major hero on the Disc would steal your horse.
* * *
Every drinking place throughout the multiverse has them -- those shelves of weirdly-shaped, sticky bottles that not only contain exotically-named liquid, which is often blue or green, but also odds and ends that bottles of real drink would never stoop to contain, such as whole fruits, bits of twig and, in extreme cases, small drowned lizards.
* * *
Death: WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN?
Bartender: "How many drinks have you had?"
Death: FORTY-SEVEN.
Bartender: "Just about anything, then."
* * *
Death: YOU WANT TO TALK TO ME?
Bartender: "Yes. Sure. I'm a good listener."
Death: NO-ONE EVER WANTED TO TALK TO ME BEFORE.
Bartender: "That's a shame."
Death: THEY NEVER INVITE ME TO PARTIES, YOU KNOW.
* * *
"I serve anyone who can stand upright best out of three."
* * *
Ysabell was heavily into frills. Even the dressing table seemed to be wearing a petticoat. The whole room wasn't so much furnished as lingeried.
* * *
"What are we doing here? Do you want to find her book to see if she marries you?"
"I've read it, and she's dead," said Mort. "But only technically. I mean, not really dead."
"Good, otherwise that would be necromancy."
* * *
[Death] couldn't think of any other pleasures of the flesh or, rather, he could, but they were, well, fleshy, and he couldn't see how it would be possible to go about them without some major bodily restructuring, which he wasn't going to contemplate. Besides, humans seemed to leave off doing them as they grew older, so presumably they couldn't be that attractive.
* * *
Death began to feel that he wouldn't understand people as long as he lived.
* * *
"I've heard about boredom but I've never had a chance to try it."
"It's dreadful."
"If it comes to that, excitement isn't all it's cracked up to be."
* * *
"I don't think I ought to listen to words like that. It could be bad for my moral fibre."
* * *
"You mean you won't help?" said Mort. "Not even if you can?"
"Give the boy a prize," growled Albert. "And it's no good thinking you can appeal to my better nature under this here crusty exterior," he added, "cos my interior's pretty damn crusty too."
* * *
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards because a refusal often offends, I read somewhere."
* * *
Keeble: "What did you do for a living?"
Death: I USHERED SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I WAS THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I WAS THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I WAS THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK WOULD HOLD.
Keeble: "Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?"
* * *
He laid down his pen and gave the kind of smile that suggested he'd learned it from a book.
* * *
Death: WHAT DO YOU CALL THE FEELING OF BEING VERY SMALL AND HOT?
Keeble: "Pygmy?"
* * *
"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"
* * *
Death's face was a mask of terror. Well, it was always a mask of terror, but this time he meant it to be.
* * *
Death: BEGONE, YOU BLACK AND MIDNIGHT HAG.
Cook: "'Oo are you calling a midnight bag? Look at this. Last night it was my bedwarmer, in the morning it's a fish. I ask you--"
Death: MAY ALL THE DEMONS OF HELL REND YOUR LIVING SPIRIT IF YOU DON'T GET OUT OF THE SHOP THIS MINUTE.
Cook: "I don't know about that, but what about my bedwarmer?"
-- Death tries customer service
* * *
Keeble: "You really are Death?"
Death: YES.
Keeble: "Why didn't you say?"
Death: PEOPLE USUALLY PREFER ME NOT TO.
* * *
Mort grabbed her arms. "All right, all right," he said, as soothingly as he could manage. "I'm sure everything's okay. Just settle down, I'll go and check ... why have you got your eyes shut?"
"Mort, please put some clothes on," said Ysabell in a tight little voice.
Mort looked down.
"Sorry," he said meekly, "I didn't realise ... who put me to bed?"
"I did," she said, "but I looked the other way."
* * *
It wasn't as though people buttonholed Death to tell him another story, or clapped him on the back and said things like, "You've got time for a quick half in there, my old mate, no need to rush off home" ... It struck Mort with sudden, terrible poignancy that Death must be the loneliest creature in the universe. In the great party of Creation, he was always in the kitchen.
* * *
Mort: "What do all those symbols mean?"
Albert: "Sodomy non sapiens."
Mort: "What does that mean?"
Albert: "Means I'm buggered if I know."
* * *
The Ankh-Morpork Guild of Merchants had taken to hiring large gangs of men with ears like fists and fists like large bags of walnuts whose job it is to re-educate those misguided people who publicly fail to recognise the many attractive points of their fine city. For example the philosopher Catroaster was found floating face downwards in the river within hours of uttering the famous line, "When a man is tired of Ankh-Morpork, he is tired of ankle-deep slurry."
* * *
Harga's House of Ribs down by the docks is probably not numbered among the city's leading eateries, catering as it does for the type of beefy clientele that prefers quantity and breaks up the tables if it doesn't get it.
* * *
It was the kind of eating house that didn't need a menu. You just looked at Harga's vest.
* * *
...Cutwell had arranged for the town square's main fountain to run, if not with wine, then at least with an acceptable beer made from broccoli.
* * *
An hour ago Cutwell had thumbed through the index of The Monster Fun Grimoire and had cautiously assembled a number of common household ingredients and put a match to them.
Funny thing about eyebrows, he mused.You never really noticed them until they'd gone.
-- Homemade fireworks the Discworld way
* * *
Skateboards were an unknown invention on the Disc; if they hadn't been, Keli's trip up the aisle would have been unconstitutionally fast.
* * *
Keli: "What made you decide to become a wizard?"
Cutwell: "It's indoor work with no heavy lifting."
* * *
Now, women's clothes were not a subject that preoccupied Cutwell much -- in fact, usually when he thought about women his mental pictures seldom included any clothes at all -- but the vision in front of him really did take his breath away.
* * *
"What do you think?" she said, turning slowly. "This was worn by my mother, and my grandmother, and her mother."
"What, all together?" said Cutwell, quite prepared to believe it.
* * *
The High Priest at the Temple of Blind Io was going to be a problem. Cutwell had marked him down as a dear old soul whose expertise with the knife was so unreliable that half of the sacrifices got tired of waiting and wandered away.
* * *
Ysabell: "Pardon me for living, I'm sure."
Mort: NO-ONE GETS PARDONED FOR LIVING.
* * *
"Look, how about this? Let's pretend we've had the row and I've won. See? It saves a lot of effort."
* * *
The [hat] 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.
* * *
Blue-green fire flashed from both ends of the staff. Streams of octarine flame spouted from the eight points of the octogram and enveloped the wizard. All this wasn't actually necessary to accomplish the spell, but wizards consider appearances to be very important...
* * *
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.
* * *
Vizier: "Who are you, barbarian?"
Mort: DEATH.
Vizier: "Not my Death. Where's the Black Celestial Dragon of Fire?"
Mort: HE COULDN'T COME.
* * *
...Albert was in The Mended Drum arguing with the landlord over a yellowing bar tab that had been handed down carefully from father to son through one regicide, three civil wars, sixty-one major fires, four hundred and ninety robberies and more than fifteen thousand barroom brawls to record the fact that Alberto Malich still owed the management three copper pieces plus interest currently standing at the contents of most of the Disc's larger strongrooms, which proved once again that an Ankhian merchant with an unpaid bill has the kind of memory that would make an elephant blink...
* * *
"It's a lot of effort to go to to bury a dead king," said Mort, as they circled above one of the smaller pyramids. "They fill them full of preservative, you know, so they'll survive into the next world."
"Does it work?"
"Not noticably."
* * *
Only one creature could have duplicated the expressions on their faces, and that would be a pigeon who has heard not only that Lord Nelson has got down off his column but has also been seen buying a 12-bore repeater and a box of cartridges.
* * *
The assembled mages watched the big double doors as if they were about to explode, which shows how prescient they were, because they exploded.
* * *
The faint glow from his sword illuminated unpleasant things; Offler the Crocodile God was a cosmetics advert compared to some of the things the people of Tsort worshipped.
* * *
Ysabell: "What are they here for?"
Mort: "The Tsortean priests say they come alive when the pyramid is sealed and prowl the corridors to protect the body of the king from tomb robbers."
Ysabell: "What a horrible superstition."
Mort: "Who said anything about superstition?"
Ysabell: "They really come alive?"
Mort: "All I'll say is that when the Tsorteans put a curse on a place, they don't mess about."
* * *
There was another groan, from the other side of the cluttered room. Mort followed it to its source, stepping awkwardly over rolls of carpet, bunches of dates, crates of crockery and piles of gems. The king obviously hadn't been able to decide what he was going to leave behind on his journey, so had decided to play safe and take everything.
* * *
I COMMAND YOU. Mort's voice could have cut holes in rock.
"Father tried that tone on me for years," [Ysabell] said calmly. "Generally when he wanted me to clean my bedroom. It didn't work then, either."
* * *
[Wizards] knew in their hearts that if a spell didn't involve big yellow candles, lots of rare incense, circles drawn on the floor with eight different colours of chalk and a few cauldrons around the place then it simply wasn't worth contemplating.
* * *
In the great hall of the Unseen University everything happened at once. [Footnote: This is not precisely true. It is generally agreed by philosophers that the shortest time in which everything can happen is one thousand years.]
* * *
He remembered being summoned into reluctant existence at the moment the first creature lived, in the certain knowledge that he would outlive life until the last being in the universe passed to its reward, when it would then be his job, figuratively speaking, to put the chairs on the tables and turn all the lights off.
He remembered the loneliness.
* * *
[The elephant] was elderly, arthritic and had an uncertain temper, but it had one important advantage as a sacrificial victim. The High Priest should be able to see it.
* * *
There were more than nine hundred known gods on the Disc, and research theologians were discovering more every year.
* * *
The duke was backed by half a dozen large serious men, the type of men whose only function in life is to loom behind people like the duke.
* * *
Duke: "Clearly the princess was tragically crushed by the rogue elephant. The people will be upset. I will personally decree a week of mourning."
Keli: "You can't do that, all the guests have seen--"
Cutwell: "They haven't. You'll be amazed at what they haven't seen. Especially when they learn that being tragically crushed to death by rogue elephants can be catching. You can even die of it in bed."
* * *
"You won't get away with this," said Cutwell. He thought for a bit and added, "Well, you will probably get away with it, but you'll feel bad about it on your deathbed and you'll wish-- "
* * *
Light on the Discworld isn't like light elsewhere. It's grown up a bit, it's been around, it doesn't feel the need to rush everywhere. It knows that however fast it goes darkness always gets there first, so it takes it easy.
* * *
"Am I going to be crowned or not?" [Keli] said icily. "I've got to die a queen! It'd be terrible to be dead and common!"
* * *
Mort: "Cutwell, if this is our own reality we can arrange it the way we want, can't we?"
Cutwell: "What had you in mind?"
Mort: "You're now a priest. Name your own god."
* * *
[Cutwell] started to mutter some impressive words in a strange tongue. It was in fact a simple spell for ridding the clothing of fleas, but he thought, what the hell.
* * *
Cutwell: "Would you happen to know where we are going?"
Ysabell: "To my father's country."
Cutwell: "Have I ever met him?"
Ysabell: "I don't think so. You'd have remembered."
Cutwell: "Who is this gentleman of which we speak?"
Ysabell: "Death."
Cutwell: "Not--"
Ysabell: "Yes."
Cutwell: "Oh. Would it save time if I just jumped off now?"
* * *
Keli: "I was expecting a castle at least. Big and black, with great dark towers. Not an umbrella stand."
Cutwell: "It has got a scythe in it."
-- Welcome to Death's home
* * *
I INVITE YOU INTO MY HOME, [Death] said, I TRAIN YOU, I FEED YOU, I CLOTHE YOU, I GIVE YOU OPPORTUNITIES YOU COULD NOT DREAM OF, AND THUS YOU REPAY ME. YOU SEDUCE MY DAUGHTER FROM ME, YOU NEGLECT THE DUTY, YOU MAKE RIPPLES IN REALITY THAT WILL TAKE A CENTURY TO HEAL. YOUR ILL-TIMED ACTIONS HAVE DOOMED YOUR COMRADES TO OBLIVION. THE GODS WILL DEMAND NOTHING LESS.
ALL IN ALL, BOY, NOT A GOOD START TO YOUR FIRST JOB.
* * *
When you step off a cliff, your life takes a very definite direction.
* * *
Although the scythe isn't pre-eminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants' revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome.
* * *
Ysabell's chest rose and fell in a manner that should have made Cutwell give up magic for life.
* * *
Announcer: "The Stealer of Souls, Defeater of Empires, Swallower of Oceans, Thief of Years, The Ultimate Reality, Harvester of Mankind, the--"
Death: ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT. I CAN SEE MYSELF IN.
* * *
Death: I HAD A WORD WITH THE GODS.
Mort: "Oh. You did, did you?"
Death: YES.
Mort: "I shouldn't think they were very pleased."
Death: THE GODS ARE JUST. THEY ARE ALSO SENTIMENTALISTS.
* * *
Mort: "How do you feel about being invited to christenings?"
Death: I THINK NOT. I WASN'T CUT OUT TO BE A FATHER, AND CERTAINLY NOT A GRANDDAD. I HAVEN'T GOT THE RIGHT KIND OF KNEES.
* * *
Death grinned because, as has so often been remarked, he didn't have much option. But possibly he meant it, this time.