Coin watched, too. His eyes widened in wonder. One hand went to his mouth. He tried to back away. He couldn’t.
‘They’re cumulus.’
‘Marvellous,’ said Nijel weakly.
WEIGHT DOESN’T COME INTO IT. MY STEED HAS CARRIED ARMIES. MY STEED HAS CARRIED CITIES. YEA, HE HATH CARRIED ALL THINGS IN THEIR DUE TIME, said Death. BUT HE’S NOT GOING TO CARRY YOU THREE.
‘Why not?’
IT’S A MATTER OF THE LOOK OF THE THING.
‘It’s going to look pretty good, then, isn’t it,’ said War testily, ‘the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse.’
‘Perhaps you could ask them to wait for us?’ said Pestilence, his voice sounding like something dripping out of the bottom of a coffin.
I HAVE THINGS TO ATTEND TO, said Death. He made a little clicking noise with his teeth. I’M SURE YOU’LL MANAGE. YOU NORMALLY DO.
War watched the retreating horse.
‘Sometimes he really gets on my nerves. Why is he always so keen to have the last word?’ he said.
‘Force of habit, l suppose.’
They turned back to the tavern. Neither spoke for some time, and then War said, ‘Where’s Famine?’
‘Went to find the kitchen.’
‘Oh.’ War scuffed one armoured foot in the dust, and thought about the distance to Ankh. It was a very hot afternoon. The Apocralypse could jolly well wait.
‘One for the road?’ he suggested.
‘Should we?’ said Pestilence, doubtfully. ‘I thought we were expected. l mean, l wouldn’t like to disappoint people.’
‘We’ve got time for a quick one, I’m sure,’ War insisted. ‘Pub clocks are never right. We’ve got bags of time. All the time in the world.’
Carding slumped forward and thudded on the shining white floor. The staff rolled out of his hands and upended itself.
Coin prodded the limp body with his foot.
‘I did warn him,’ he said. ‘I told him what would happen if he touched it again. What did he mean, them?’
There was an outbreak of coughing and a considerable inspection of fingernails.
‘What did he mean?’ Coin demanded.
Ovin Hakardly, lecturer in Lore, once again found that the wizards around him were parting like morning mist. Without moving he appeared to have stepped forward. His eyes swivelled backwards and forwards like trapped animals.
‘Er,’ he said. He waved his thin hands vaguely. ‘The world, you see, that is, the reality in which we live, in fact, it can be thought of as, in a manner of speaking, a rubber sheet.’ He hesitated, aware that the sentence was not going to appear in anyone’s book of quotable quotes.
‘In that,’ he added hurriedly, ‘it is distorted, uh, distended by the presence of magic in any degree and, if I may make a point here, too much magical potentiality, if foregathered in one spot, forces our reality, um, downwards, although of course one should not take the term literally (because in no sense do I seek to suggest a physical dimension) and it has been postulated that a sufficient exercise of magic can, shall we say, um, break through the actuality at its lowest point and offer, perhaps, a pathway to the inhabitants or, if I may use a more correct term, denizens of the lower plane (which is called by the loose-tongued the Dungeon Dimensions) who, because perhaps of the difference in energy levels, are naturally attracted to the brightness of this world. Our world.’
There was the typical long pause which usually followed Hakardly’s speeches, while everybody mentally inserted commas and stitched the fractured clauses together.
Coin’s lips moved silently for a while. ‘Do you mean magic attracts these creatures?’ he said eventually.
His voice was quite different now. It lacked its former edge. The staff hung in the air above the prone body of Carding, rotating slowly. The eyes of every wizard in the place were on it.
‘So it appears,’ said Hakardly. ‘Students of such things say their presence is heralded by a coarse susurration.’