Mort (Discworld 4)

'By the Smoking Mirror of Grism, there's going to be a few changes around here!'

Those wizards who had studied history nodded uncomfortably. It would be back to the stone floors and getting up when it was still dark and no alcohol under any circumstances and memorising the true names of everything until the brain squeaked.

'What's that man doing!'

A wizard who had absent-mindedly reached for his tobacco pouch let the half-formed cigarette fall from his trembling fingers. It bounced when it hit the floor and all the wizards watched it roll with longing eyes until Albert stepped forward smartly and squashed it.

Albert spun round. Rincewind, who had been following him as a sort of unofficial adjutant, nearly walked into him.

'You! Rincething! D'yer smoke?'

'No, sir! Filthy habit!' Rincewind avoided the gaze of his superiors. He was suddenly aware that he had made some lifelong enemies, and it was no consolation to know that he probably wouldn't have them for very long.

'Right! Hold my staff. Now, you bunch of miserable back-sliders, this is going to stop, d'yer hear? First thing tomorrow, up at dawn, three times round the quadrangle and back here for physical jerks! Balanced meals! Study! Healthy exercise! And that bloody monkey goes to a circus, first thing!'

'Oook?'

Several of the older wizards shut their eyes.

'But first,' said Albert, lowering his voice, 'you'll oblige me by setting up the Rite of AshkEnte.'

'I have some unfinished business,' he added.

Mort strode through the cat-black corridors of the pyramid, with Ysabell hurrying along behind him. The faint glow from his sword illuminated unpleasant things; Offler the Crocodile God was a cosmetics advert compared to some of the things the people of Tsort worshipped. In alcoves along the way were statues of creatures apparently built of all the bits God had left over.

'What are they here for?' whispered Ysabell.

'The Tsortean priests say they come alive when the pyramid is sealed and prowl the corridors to protect the body of the king from tomb robbers,' said Mort.

'What a horrible superstition.'

'Who said anything about superstition?' said Mort absently.

'They really come alive?'

'All I'll say is that when the Tsorteans put a curse on a place, they don't mess about.'

Mort turned a corner and Ysabell lost sight of him for a heart-stopping moment. She scurried through the darkness and cannoned into him. He was examining a dog-headed bird.

'Urgh,' she said. 'Doesn't it send shivers up your spine?'

'No,' said Mort flatly.

'Why not?'

BECAUSE I AM MORT. He turned, and she saw his eyes glow like blue pinpoints.

'Stop it!'

I – CAN'T.

She tried to laugh. It didn't work. 'You're not Death,' she said. 'You're only doing his job.' DEATH is WHOEVER DOES DEATH'S JOB. The shocked pause that followed this was broken by a groan from further along the dark passage. Mort turned on his heel and hurried towards it.

He's right, thought Ysabell. Even the way he moves. . . .

But the fear of the darkness that the light was dragging towards her overcame any other doubts and she crept after him, around another corner and into what appeared, in the fitful glow from the sword, to be a cross between a treasury and a very cluttered attic.

'What's this place?' she whispered. 'I've never seen so much stuff!'