‘Only the other day he was running up the stairs as the clocks were striking six,’ said Sybil, calmly soaping Young Sam with a sponge shaped like a teddy bear. ‘The very last second. You wait and see.’
He wanted to sleep. He’d never felt this tired before. Vimes slumped to his knees, and then fell sideways on to the sand.
When he forced open his eyes he saw pale stars above him, and had once again the sensation that there was someone else present.
He turned his head, wincing at the stab of pain, and saw a small but brightly lit folding chair on the sand. A robed figure was reclining in it, reading a book. A scythe was stuck in the sand beside it.
A white skeletal hand turned a page.
‘You’ll be Death, then?’ said Vimes, after a while.
AH, MISTER VIMES, ASTUTE AS EVER. GOT IT IN ONE, said Death, shutting the book on his finger to keep the place.
‘I’ve seen you before.’
I HAVE WALKED WITH YOU MANY TIMES, MISTER VIMES.
‘And this is it, is it?’
HAS IT NEVER STRUCK YOU THAT THE CONCEPT OF A WRITTEN NARRATIVE IS SOMEWHAT STRANGE? said Death.
Vimes could tell when people were trying to avoid something they really didn’t want to say, and it was happening here.
‘Is it?’ he insisted. ‘Is this it? This time I die?’
COULD BE.
‘Could be? What sort of answer is that?’ said Vimes.
A VERY ACCURATE ONE. YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE, WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR VIMES EXPERIENCE. DON’T MIND ME. CARRY ON WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK.
Vimes rolled over on to his stomach, gritted his teeth and pushed himself on to his hands and knees again. He managed a few yards before slumping back down.
He heard the sound of a chair being moved. ‘Shouldn’t you be somewhere else?’ he said.
I AM, said Death, sitting down again.
‘But you’re here!’
AS WELL. Death turned a page and, for a person without breath, managed a pretty good sigh. IT APPEARS THAT THE BUTLER DID IT.
‘Did what?’
IT IS A MADE-UP STORY. VERY STRANGE. ALL ONE NEEDS DO IS TURN TO THE LAST PAGE AND THE ANSWER IS THERE. WHAT, THEREFORE, IS THE POINT OF DELIBERATEDLY NOT KNOWING?
It sounded like gibberish to Vimes, so he ignored it. Some of the aches had gone, although his head still hammered. There was an empty feeling, everywhere. He just wanted to sleep.
‘Is that clock right?’
‘I’m afraid it is, Sybil.’
‘I’ll just go outside and wait for him, then. I’ll have the book ready,’ said Lady Sybil. ‘He won’t let anything stop him, you know.’
‘I’m sure he won’t,’ said Bunty.
‘Although things can be very treacherous in the lower valley at this time of—’ her husband began, and was fried into silence by his wife’s stare.
It was six minutes to six.
‘Ob oggle oog soggle!’
It was a very little, watery sound, and came from somewhere in Vimes’s trousers. After a few moments, enough time to recollect that he had both hands and trousers, he reached down and with a struggle freed the Gooseberry from his pocket. The case was battered and the imp, when Vimes had got the flap open, was quite pale.
‘Ob ogle soggle!’
Vimes stared at it. It was a talking box. It meant something.
‘Woggle soggle lob!’
Slowly, Vimes tipped the box up. Water poured out of it.
‘You weren’t listening! I was shouting and you weren’t listening!’ the imp whined. ‘It’s five minutes to six! Read to Young Sam!’
Vimes dropped the protesting box on his chest and stared up at the pale stars.
‘Mus’ read to Young Sam,’ he murmured, and shut his eyes.
They snapped open again. ‘Got t’ read to Young Sam!’
The stars were moving. It wasn’t the sky! How could it be the sky? This was a bloody cave, wasn’t it?
He rolled over and got to his feet in one movement. There were more stars now, drifting along the walls. The vurms were moving with a purpose. Overhead they had become a glowing river.
Although they were flickering a little, the lights were also coming back on in Vimes’s head. He peered into what was now no longer blackness but merely gloom, and gloom was like daylight after the darkness that had gone before.
‘Got to read to Young Sam…’ he whispered, to a cavern of giant stalactites and stalagmites, all gleaming with water, ‘… to read to Young Sam…’
Stumbling and sliding through shallow pools, running across the occasional patch of white sand, Vimes followed the lights.
Sybil tried not to look at the worried faces of her host and hostess as she crossed their hall. The minute hand on the grandfather clock was nearly on the 12, and trembling.
She threw open the front door. There was no Sam there, and no one galloping down the road.
The clock struck the hour. She heard someone step quietly beside her.
‘Would you like me to read to the young man, madam?’ said Willikins. ‘Perhaps a man’s voice would—’
‘No, I’ll go up,’ said Sybil quietly. ‘You wait here for my husband. He won’t be long.’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘He’ll probably be quite rushed.’
‘I shall usher him up without delay, madam.’
‘He will be here, you know!’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘He will walk through walls!’
Sybil climbed the stairs as the chimes ended. The clock was a wrong clock. Of course it was!
Young Sam had been installed in the old nursery of the house, a rather sombre place full of greys and browns. There was a truly frightening rocking-horse, all teeth and mad glass eyes.
The boy was standing up in his cot. He was smiling, but it faded into puzzlement as Sybil pulled up a chair and sat down next to him.
‘Daddy has asked Mummy to read to you tonight, Sam,’ she announced brightly. ‘Won’t that be fun!’
Her heart did not sink. It could not. It was already as low as any heart could go. But it curled up and whimpered as she watched the little boy stare at her, at the door, at her again, and then throw back his head and scream.
Vimes, half limping and half running, tripped and fell into a shallow pool. He found he’d stumbled over a dwarf. A dead one. Very dead. So dead, in fact, that the dripping water had built a small stalagmite on him, and with a film of milky stone had cemented him to the rock against which he sat.
‘Got to read to Young Sam,’ Vimes told the shadowy helmet earnestly.
A little way away, on the sand, was a dwarf’s battle-axe. What was going on in Vimes’s mind was not exactly coherent thought, but he could hear faint noises up ahead and an instinct as old as thought decided there was no such thing as too much cutting power.
He picked it up. It was covered with no more than a thin coat of rust. There were other humps and mounds on the cavern floor which, now that he came to look at them, might all be—
No time! Read book!
At the end of the cavern the ground sloped up, and had been made treacherous by the dripping water. It fought back, but the axe helped. One problem at a time. Climb hill! Read book!
And then the screaming started. His son, screaming.
It filled his mind.
They will burn…