'But you were the greatest!'
Albert stopped for a moment, but did not look around.
'Was the greatest, was the greatest. And don't you try to butter me up. I ain't butterable.'
'They've got statues to you and everything,' said Mort, trying not to yawn.
'More fool them, then.' Albert reached the foot of the steps into the library proper, stamped up them and stood outlined against the candlelight from the library.
'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.'
They heard him cross the library floor as though he had a grudge against it, and slam the door behind him.
'Well,' said Mort, uncertainly.
'What did you expect?' snapped Ysabell. 'He doesn't care for anyone much except father.'
'It's just that I thought someone like him would help if I explained it properly,' said Mort. He sagged. The rush of energy that had propelled him through the long night had evaporated, filling his mind with lead. 'You know he was a famous wizard?'
That doesn't mean anything, wizards aren't necessarily nice. Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards because a refusal often offends, I read somewhere.' Ysabell stepped closer to Mort and peered at him with some concern. 'You look like something left on a plate,' she said.
led down into the velvet gloom. There were cobwebs and dust, and air that smelled as though it had been locked in a pyramid for a thousand years.
'People don't come down here very often,' said Ysabell. 'I'll lead the way.'
Mort felt something was owed.
'I must say,' he said, 'you're a real brick.'
'You mean pink, square and dumpy? You really know how to talk to a girl, my boy.'
'Mort,' said Mort automatically.
The Stack was as dark and silent as a cave deep underground. The shelves were barely far enough apart for one person to walk between them, and towered up well beyond the dome of candlelight. They were particularly eerie because they were silent. There were no more lives to write; the books slept. But Mort felt that they slept like cats, with one eye open. They were aware.
'I came down here once,' said Ysabell, whispering. 'If you go far enough along the shelves the books run out and there's clay tablets and lumps of stone and animal skins and everyone's called Ug and Zog.'
The silence was almost tangible. Mort could feel the books watching them as they tramped through the hot, silent passages. Everyone who had ever lived was here somewhere, right back to the first people that the gods had baked out of mud or whatever. They didn't exactly resent him, they were just wondering about why he was here.
'Did you get past Ug and Zog?' he hissed. There's a lot of people would be very interested to know what's there.'
'I got frightened. It's a long way and I didn't have enough candles.'
'Pity.'
Ysabell stopped so sharply that Mort cannoned into the back of her.
This would be about the right area,' she said. 'What now?'
Mort peered at the faded names on the spines.
'They don't seem to be in any order!' he moaned.
They looked up. They wandered down a couple of side alleys. They pulled a few books off the lowest shelves at random, raising pillows of dust.
'This is silly,' said Mort at last. There's millions of lives here. The chances of finding his are worse than —'