SUFFICIENTLY MOLECULAR.
Ipslore relaxed a little. In a voice that was nearly normal, he said: ‘I don’t regret it, you know. I would do it all again. Children are our hope for the future.’
THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, said Death.
‘What does it contain, then?’
ME.
‘Besides you I mean!’
Death gave him a puzzled look. I’M SORRY?
The storm reached its howling peak overhead. A seagull went past backwards.
‘I meant,’ said Ipslore, bitterly, ‘what is there in this world that makes living worth while?’
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE.
‘Curse you!’
MANY HAVE, said Death, evenly.
‘How much longer do I have?’
Death pulled a large hourglass from the secret recesses of his robe. The two bulbs were enclosed in bars of black and gold, and the sand was nearly all in the bottom one.
OH, ABOUT NINE SECONDS.
Ipslore pulled himself up to his full and still impressive height, and extended the gleaming metal staff towards the child. A hand like a little pink crab reached out from the blanket and grasped it.
‘Then let me be the first and last wizard in the history of the world to pass on his staff to his eighth son,’ he said slowly and sonorously. ‘And I charge him to use it to-’
I SHOULD HURRY UP, IF I WERE YOU . . .
‘-the full,’ said Ipslore, ‘becoming the mightiest-’
The lightning screamed from the heart of the cloud, hit Ipslore on the point of his hat, crackled down his arm, flashed along the staff and struck the child.
The wizard vanished in a wisp of smoke. The staff glowed green, then white, then merely red-hot. The child smiled in his sleep.
When the thunder had died away Death reached down slowly and picked up the boy, who opened his eyes.
They glowed golden, from the inside. For the first time in what, for want of any better word, must be called his life, Death found himself looking at a stare that he found hard to return. The eyes seemed to be focused on a point several inches inside his skull.
I did not mean for that to happen, said the voice of Ipslore, from out of the empty air. Is he harmed?
No. Death tore his gaze away from that fresh, knowing smile. HE CONTAINED THE POWER. HE IS A SOURCERER: NO DOUBT HE WILL SURVIVE MUCH WORSE. AND NOW -YOU WILL COME WITH ME.
No.
YES. YOU ARE DEAD, YOU SEE. Death looked around for Ipslore’s wavering shade, and failed to find it. WHERE ARE YOU?
In the staff.
Death leaned on his scythe and sighed.