Mort - Terry Pratchett [24]
Suitably impressed despite his pounding heart, Mort lifted the heavy knocker, which was in the shape of a repulsive gargoyle with a heavy iron ring in its mouth, and knocked twice.
There was a brief commotion from within, the series of hasty domestic sounds that might, in a less exalted house, have been made by, say, someone shoveling the lunch plates into the sink and tidying the laundry out of sight.
Eventually the door swung open, slowly and mysteriously.
“You’d fbetter pretend to be impreffed,” said the doorknocker conversationally, but hampered somewhat by the ring. “He does it with pulleys and a bit of ftring. No good at opening-fpells, fee?”
Mort looked at the grinning metal face. I work for a skeleton who can walk through walls, he told himself. Who am I to be surprised at anything?
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome. Wipe your feet on the doormat, it’s the bootfcraper’s day off.”
The big low room inside was dark and shadowy and smelled mainly of incense but slightly of boiled cabbage and elderly laundry and the kind of person who throws all his socks at the wall and wears the ones that don’t stick. There was a large crystal ball with a crack in it, an astrolabe with several bits missing, a rather scuffed octogram on the floor, and a stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling. A stuffed alligator is absolutely standard equipment in any properly-run magical establishment. This one looked as though it hadn’t enjoyed it much.
A bead curtain on the far wall was flung aside with a dramatic gesture and a hooded figure stood revealed.
“Beneficent constellations shine on the hour of our meeting!” it boomed.
“Which ones?” said Mort.
There was a sudden worried silence.
“Pardon?”
“Which constellations would these be?” said Mort.
“Beneficent ones,” said the figure, uncertainly. It rallied. “Why do you trouble Igneous Cutwell, Holder of the Eight Keys, Traveler in the Dungeon Dimensions, Supreme Mage of—”
“Excuse me,” said Mort, “are you really?”
“Really what?”
“Master of the thingy, Lord High Wossname of the Sacred Dungeons?”
Cutwell pushed back his hood with an annoyed flourish. Instead of the gray-bearded mystic Mort had expected he saw a round, rather plump face, pink and white like a pork pie, which it somewhat resembled in other respects. For example, like most pork pies, it didn’t have a beard and, like most pork pies, it looked basically good-humored.
“In a figurative sense,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“Well, it means no,” said Cutwell.
“But you said—”
“That was advertising,” said the wizard. “It’s a kind of magic I’ve been working on. What was it you were wanting, anyway?” He leered suggestively. “A love philter, yes? Something to encourage the young ladies?”
“Is it possible to walk through walls?” said Mort desperately. Cutwell paused with his hand already halfway to a large bottle full of sticky liquid.
“Using magic?”
“Um,” said Mort, “I don’t think so.”
“Then pick very thin walls,” said Cutwell. “Better still, use the door. The one over there would be favorite, if you’ve just come here to waste my time.”
Mort hesitated, and then put the bag of gold coins on the table. The wizard glanced at them, made a little whinnying noise in the back of his throat, and reached out. Mort’s hand shot across and grabbed his wrist.
“I’ve walked through walls,” he said, slowly and deliberately.
“Of course you have, of course you have,” mumbled Cutwell, not taking his eyes off the bag. He flicked the cork out of the bottle of blue liquid and took an absent-minded swig.
“Only before I did it I didn’t know that I could, and when I was doing it I didn’t know I was, and now I’ve done it I can’t remember how it was done. And I want to do it again.”
“Why?”
“Because,” said Mort, “if I could walk through walls I could do anything.”
“Very deep,” agreed Cutwell. “Philosophical. And the name of the young lady on the other side