Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett [97]
Death opened one of the smaller ones. It was full of gold coins. They had an untouched look about them. He tried the other small chest. It was also full of gold.
He’d expected something more from Miss Flitworth, although probably not even Bill Door would have known what.
He tried the large chest.
There was a layer of tissue paper. Under the paper, some white silky thing, some sort of a veil, now yellowed and brittle with age. He gave it an uncomprehending stare and laid it aside. There were some white shoes. Quite impractical for farm wear, he felt. No wonder they’d been packed away.
There was more paper; a bundle of letters tied together. He put them on top of the veil. There was never anything to be gained from observing what humans said to one another—language was just there to hide their thoughts.
And then there was, right at the bottom, a smaller box. He pulled it out and turned it over and over in his hands. Then he unclicked the little latch and lifted the lid.
Clockwork whirred.
The tune wasn’t particularly good. Death had heard all the music that had ever been written, and almost all of it had been better than this tune. It had a plinkety plonkety quality, a tinny little one-two-three rhythm.
In the musical box, over the busily spinning gears, two wooden dancers jerked around in a parody of a waltz.
Death watched them until the clockwork ran down. Then he read the inscription.
It had been a present.
Beside him, the lifetimer poured its grains into the bottom bulb. He ignored it.
When the clockwork ran down, he wound it up again. Two figures, spinning through time. And when the music stopped, all you needed was to turn the key.
When it ran down again, he sat in the silence and the dark, and reached a decision.
There were only seconds left. Seconds had meant a lot to Bill Door, because he’d had a limited supply. They meant nothing at all to Death, who’d never had any.
He left the sleeping house, mounted up, and rode away.
The journey took an instant that would have taken mere light three hundred million years, but Death travels inside that space where Time has no meaning. Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
There was company on the ride—galaxies, stars, ribbons of shining matter, streaming and eventually spiraling toward the distant goal.
Death on his pale horse moved down the darkness like a bubble on a river.
And every river flows somewhere.
And then, below, a plain. Distance was as meaningless here as time, but there was a sense of hugeness. The plain could have been a mile away, or a million miles; it was marked by long valleys or rills which flowed away to either side as he got closer.
And landed.
He dismounted, and stood in the silence. Then he went down on one knee.
Change the perspective. The furrowed landscape falls away into immense distances, curves at the edges, becomes a fingertip.
Azrael raised his finger to a face that filled the sky, lit by the faint glow of dying galaxies.
There are a billion Deaths, but they are all aspects of the one Death: Azrael, the Great Attractor, the Death of Universes, the beginning and end of time.
Most of the universe is made up of dark matter, and only Azrael knows who it is.
Eyes so big that a supernova would be a mere suggestion of a gleam on the iris turned slowly and focused on the tiny figure on the immense whorled plains of his fingertips. Beside Azrael the big Clock hung in the center of the entire web of the dimensions, and ticked onward. Stars glittered in Azrael’s eyes.
The Death of the Discworld stood up.
LORD, I ASK FOR—
Three of the servants of oblivion slid into existence alongside him.
One said, Do not listen. He stands accused of meddling.
One said, And morticide.
One said, And pride. And living with intent to survive.
One said, And siding with chaos against good order.
Azrael raised an eyebrow.
The servants drifted away from Death, expectantly.
LORD, WE