UNTIL YOU HAVE FULFILLED YOUR DESTINY, I ASSUME.
'And how will I know what my destiny is?' said the king, desperately.
CAN'T HELP THERE. I'M SORRY.
'Well, how can I find out?'
THESE THINGS GENERALLY BECOME APPARENT, I UNDERSTAND,
said Death, and swung himself into the saddle.
'And until then I have to haunt this place.' King Verence stared around at the draughty battlements. 'All alone, I suppose. Won't anyone be able to see me?'
OH, THE PSYCHICALLY INCLINED. CLOSE RELATIVES. AND CATS, OF COURSE.
'I hate cats.'
Death's face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant.
I SEE,
he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat-haters.
YOU LIKE GREAT BIG DOGS, I IMAGINE.
'As a matter of fact, I do.' The king stared gloomily at the dawn. His dogs. He'd really miss his dogs. And it looked like such a good hunting day.
He wondered if ghosts hunted. Almost certainly not, he imagined. Or ate, or drank either for that matter, and that was really depressing. He liked a big noisy banquet and had quaffed
[1] many a pint of good ale. And bad ale, come to that. He'd never been able to tell the difference till the following morning, usually.
He kicked despondently at a stone, and noted gloomily that his foot went right through it. No hunting, drinking, carousing, no wassailing, no hawking . . . It was dawning on him that the pleasures of the flesh were pretty sparse without the flesh. Suddenly life wasn't worth living. The fact that he wasn't living it didn't cheer him up at all.
SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO BE GHOSTS,
said Death.
'Hmm?' said Verence, gloomily.
IT'S NOT SUCH A WRENCH, I ASSUME. THEY CAN SEE HOW THEIR DESCENDANTS GET ON. SORRY? IS SOMETHING THE MATTER?
But Verence had vanished into the wall.
DON'T MIND ME, WILL YOU,
said Death, peevishly. He looked around him with a gaze that could see through time and space and the souls of men, and noted a landslide in distant Klatch, a hurricane in Howandaland, a plague in Hergen.
BUSY, BUSY,
he muttered, and spurred his horse into the sky.
Verence ran through the walls of his own castle. His feet barely touched the ground – in fact, the unevenness of the floor meant that at times they didn't touch the ground at all.
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