Sourcery (Discworld 5)

‘You don’t have to,’ said Rincewind hurriedly. ‘It’s only a thing.’

‘I do not see why I should hurt him,’ said Coin. ‘He looks so harmless. Like an angry rabbit.’

He defies us.

‘Not me,’ said Rincewind, thrusting the arm with the sock behind his back and trying to ignore the bit about the rabbit.

‘Why should I do everything you tell me?’ said Coin to the staff. ‘I always do everything you tell me, and it doesn’t help people at all.’

People must fear you. Have I taught you nothing?

‘But he looks so funny, He’s got a sock,’ said Coin.

He screamed, and his arm jerked oddly. Rincewind’s hair stood on end.

You will do as you are commanded.

‘I won’t’.

You know what happens to boys who are bad.

There was a crackle and a smell of scorched flesh. Coin dropped to his knees.

‘Here, hang on a minute-’ Rincewind began.

Coin opened his eyes. They were gold still, but flecked with brown.

Rincewind swung his sock around in a wide humming arc that connected with the staff halfway along its length. There was a brief explosion of brick dust and burnt wool and the staff spun out of the boy’s hand. Wizards scattered as it tumbled end over end across the floor.

It reached the parapet, bounced upwards and shot over the edge.

But, instead of falling, it steadied itself in the air, spun in its own length and sped back again trailing octarine sparks and making a noise like a buzzsaw.

Rincewind pushed the stunned boy behind him, threw away the ravaged sock and whipped his hat off, flailing wildly as the staff bored towards him. It caught him on the side of the head, delivering a shock that almost welded his teeth together and toppled him like a thin and ragged tree.

The staff turned again in mid-air, glowing red-hot now, and swept back for another and quite definitely final run.

Rincewind struggled up on his elbows and watched in horrified fascination as it swooped through the chilly air which, for some reason he didn’t understand, seemed to be full of snowflakes.

And became tinged with purple, blotched with blue. Time slowed and ground to a halt like an underwound phonograph.

Rincewind looked up at the tall black figure that had appeared a few feet away.

It was, of course, Death.

He turned his glowing eyesockets towards Rincewind and said, in a voice like the collapse of undersea chasms, GOOD AFTERNOON.

He turned away as if he had completed all necessary business for the time being, stared at the horizon for a while, and started to tap one foot idly. It sounded like a bagful of maracas.

‘Er,’ said Rincewind.

Death appeared to remember him. I’M SORRY? he said politely.

‘I always wondered how it was going to be,’ said Rincewind.

Death took an hourglass out from the mysterious folds of his ebon robes and peered at it.

DID YOU? he said, vaguely.