But Herrena was heading for the hills for a different reason. Just turnwise and rimwards of the Plains were the bare Trollbone Mountains. Herrena, who had for many years availed herself of the uniquely equal opportunities available to any woman who could make a sword sing, was trusting to her instincts.
This Rincewind, as Trymon had described him, was a rat, and rats like cover. Anyway, the mountains were a long way from Trymon and, for all that he was currently her employer, Herrena was very happy about that. There was something about his manner that made her fists itch.
Rincewind knew he ought to be panicking, but that was difficult because, although he wasn’t aware of it, emotions like panic and terror and anger are all to do with stuff sloshing around in glands and all Rincewind’s glands were still in his body.
It was difficult to be certain where his real body was, but when he looked down he could see a fine blue line trailing from what for the sake of sanity he would still call his ankle into the blackness around him, and it seemed reasonable to assume that his body was on the other end.
It was not a particularly good body, he’d be the first to admit, but one or two bits of it had sentimental value and it dawned on him that if the little blue line snapped he’d have to spend the rest of his li—his existence hanging around ouija boards pretending to be people’s dead aunties and all the other things lost souls do to pass the time.
The sheer horror of this so appalled him he hardly felt his feet touch the ground.
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, fully 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 and 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.’{24}
