Mort thought that history was thrashing around like a steel hawser with the tension off, twanging backwards and forwards across reality in great destructive sweeps.
History isn't like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always – eventually – manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.
This is what was happening:
The misplaced stroke of Mort's scythe had cut history into two separate realities. In the city of Sto Lat Princess Keli still ruled, with a certain amount of difficulty and with the full time aid of the Royal Recogniser, who was put on the court payroll and charged with the duty of remembering that she existed. In the lands outside, though – beyond the plain, in the Ramtops, around the Circle Sea and all the way to the Rim – the traditional reality still held sway and she was quite definitely dead, the duke was king and the world was proceeding sedately according to plan, whatever that was.
The point is that both realities were true.
The sort of historical event horizon was currently about twenty miles away from the city, and wasn't yet very noticeable. That's because the – well, call it the difference in historical pressures – wasn't yet very great. But it was growing. Out in the damp cabbage fields there was a shimmer in the air and a faint sizzle, like frying grasshoppers.
People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it. Inch by inch, implacable as a glacier and far colder, the real reality was grinding back towards Sto Lat.
Mort was the first person to notice.
It had been a long afternoon. The mountaineer had held on to his icy handhold until the last moment and the executee had called Mort a lackey of the monarchist state. Only the old lady of 103, who had gone to her reward surrounded by her sorrowing relatives, had smiled at him and said he was looking a little pale.
But my legs, I suggest, could at least stop a pig in a passageway.'
'Sorry —?'
'They're not bandy,' she explained.
'Ah.'
They strolled through the lily beds, temporarily lost for words. Eventually Ysabell confronted Mort and stuck out her hand. He shook it in thankful silence.
'Enough?' she said.
'Just about.'
'Good. Obviously we shouldn't get married, if only for the sake of the children.'
Mort nodded.
They sat down on a stone seat between some neatly clipped box hedges. Death had made a pond in this corner of the garden, fed by an icy spring that appeared to be vomited into the pool by a stone lion. Fat white carp lurked in the depths, or nosed on the surface among the velvety black water lilies.
'We should have brought some breadcrumbs,' said Mort gallantly, opting for a totally non-controversial subject.
'He never comes out here, you know,' said Ysabell, watching the fish. 'He made it to keep me amused.'
'It didn't work?'
'It's not real,' she said. 'Nothing's real here. Not really real. He just likes to act like a human being. He's trying really hard at the moment, have you noticed. I think you're having an effect on him. Did you know he tried to learn the banjo once?'
'I see him as more the organ type.'
'He couldn't get the hang of it,' said Ysabell, ignoring him. 'He can't create, you see.'
'You said he created this pool.'
'It's a copy of one he saw somewhere. Everything's a copy.'
Mort shifted uneasily. Some small insect had crawled up his leg.
'It's rather sad,' he said, hoping that this was approximately the right tone to adopt.
'Yes.'