Hogfather - Terry Pratchett [46]
SQUEAK!
“Yes, but he’s an old man. Probably shouldn’t be in the sky at his time of life.”
Susan pulled at something half buried in the snow.
It was a red-and-white-striped candy cane.
She kicked the snow aside elsewhere and found a wooden toy soldier in the kind of uniform that would only be inconspicuous if you wore it in a nightclub for chameleons on hard drugs. Some further probing found a broken trumpet.
There was some more groaning in the darkness.
The raven cleared its throat.
“What the rat meant about this place being like a mine,” he said, “was that abandoned mines tend to creak and groan in the same way, see? No one looking after the pit props. Things fall in. Next thing you know you’re a squiggle in the sandstone. We shouldn’t hang around is what I’m saying.”
Susan walked farther in, lost in thought.
This was all wrong. The place looked as though it had been deserted for years, which couldn’t be true.
The column nearest her creaked and twisted slightly. A fine haze of ice crystals dropped from the roof.
Of course, this wasn’t exactly a normal place. You couldn’t build an ice palace this big. It was a bit like Death’s house. If he abandoned it for too long all those things that had been suspended, like time and physics, would roll over it. It would be like a dam bursting.
She turned to leave and heard the groan again. It wasn’t dissimilar to the tortured sounds being made by the ice, except that ice, afterward, didn’t moan. “Oh, me…”
There was a figure lying in a snowdrift. She’d almost missed it because it was wearing a long white robe. It was spread-eagled, as though it had planned to make snow angels and had then decided against it.
And it wore a little crown, apparently of vine leaves.
And it kept groaning.
She looked up. The roof was open here, too. But no one could have fallen that far and survived.
No one human, anyway.
He looked human and, in theory, quite young. But it was only in theory because, even by the secondhand light of the glowing snow, his face looked like someone had been sick with it.
“Are you all right?” she ventured.
The recumbent figure opened its eyes and stared straight up.
“I wish I was dead…” it moaned. A piece of ice the size of a house fell down in the far depths of the building and exploded in a shower of sharp little shards.
“You may have come to the right place,” said Susan. She grabbed the boy under his arms and hauled him out of the snow. “I think leaving would be a very good idea around now, don’t you? This place is going to fall apart.”
“Oh, me…”
She managed to get one of his arms around her neck.
“Can you walk?”
“Oh, me…”
“It might help if you stopped saying that and tried walking.”
“I’m sorry, but I seem to have…too many legs. Ow.”
Susan did her best to prop him up as, swaying and slipping, they made their way back to the exit.
“My head,” said the boy. “My head. My head. My head. Feels awful. My head. Feels like someone’s hitting it. My head. With a hammer.”
Someone was. There was a small green and purple imp sitting amid the damp curls and holding a very large mallet. It gave Susan a friendly nod and brought the hammer down again.
“Oh, me…”
“That wasn’t necessary!” said Susan.
“You telling me my job?” said the imp. “I suppose you could do it better, could you?”
“I wouldn’t do it at all!”
“Well, someone’s got to do it,” said the imp.
“He’s part. Of the. Arrangement,” said the boy.
“Yeah, see?” said the imp. “Can you hold the hammer while I go and coat his tongue with yellow gunk?”
“Get down right now!”
Susan made a grab for the creature. It leapt away, still clutching the hammer, and grabbed a pillar.
“I’m part of the arrangement, I am!” it yelled.
The boy clutched his head.
“I feel awful,” he said. “Have you got any ice?”
Whereupon, because there are conventions stronger than mere physics, the building fell in.
The collapse of the Castle of Bones was stately and impressive and seemed to go on for a long time. Pillars fell in, the slabs of the