The duke crouched in his seat, his face a panorama of fear. He extended what had once been a finger.
'There they are,' he breathed. 'That's them. What are they doing in my play? Who said they could be in my play?'
The duchess, who was less inclined to deal in rhetorical questions, beckoned to the nearest guard.
On stage Tomjon was sweating under the load of the script. Wimsloe was incoherent. Now Gumridge, who was playing the part of the Good Duchess in a wig of flax, had lost the thread as well.
'Aha, thou callst me an evil king, though thou wisperest it so none save I may hear it,' Tomjon croaked. 'And thou hast summoned the guard, possibly by some most secret signal, owing nought to artifice of lips or tongue.'
A guard came on crabwise, still stumbling from Hwel's shove. He stared at Granny Weatherwax.
'Hwel says what the hell's going on?' he hissed.
'What was that?' said Tomjon. 'Did I hear you say / come, my lady?'
'Get these people off, he says!'
Tomjon advanced to the front of the stage.
'Thou babblest, man. See how I dodge thy tortoise spear. I said, see how I dodge thy tortoise spear. Thy spear, man. You're holding it in thy bloody hand, for goodness' sake.'
The guard gave him a desperate, frozen grin.
Tomjon hesitated. Three other actors around him were staring fixedly at the witches. Looming up in front of him with all the inevitability of a tax demand was a sword fight during which, it was beginning to appear, he would have to parry his own wild thrusts and stab himself to death.
He turned to the three witches. His mouth opened.
For the first time in his life his awesome memory let him down. He could think of nothing to say.
Granny Weatherwax stood up. She advanced to the edge of the stage. The audience held its breath. She held up a hand.
'Ghosts of the mind and all device away, I bid the Truth to have—' she hesitated – 'its tumpty-tumpty day.'
Tomjon felt the chill engulf him. The others, too, jolted into life.
Up from out of the depths of their blank minds new words rushed, words red with blood and revenge, words that had echoed among the castle's stones, words stored in silicon, words that would have themselves heard, words that gripped their mouths so tightly that an attempt not to say them would result in a broken jaw.
'Do you fear him now?' said Gumridge. 'And he so mazed with drink? Take his dagger, husband – you are a blade's width from the kingdom.'
'I dare not,' Wimsloe said, trying to look in astonishment at his own lips.
'Who will know?' Gumridge waved a hand towards the audience. He'd never act so well again. 'See, there is only eyeless night. Take the dagger now, take the kingdom tomorrow. Have a stab at it, man.'
Wimsloe's hand shook.
'I have it, wife,' he said. 'Is this a dagger I see before me?'
'Of course it's a bloody dagger. Come on, do it now. The weak deserve no mercy. We'll say he fell down the stairs.'
'But people will suspect!'
'Are there no dungeons? Are there no pilliwinks? Possession is nine parts of the law, husband, when what you possess is a knife.'
Wimsloe drew his arm back.
'I cannot! He has been kindness itself to me!'
'And you can be Death itself to him . . .'
Dafe could hear the voices a long way off. He adjusted his mask, checked the deathliness of his appearance in the mirror, and peered at the script in the empty backstage gloom.
'Cower Now, Brief Mortals,' he said. 'I Am Death, 'Gainst Who – 'Gainst Who—'
WHOM.
'Oh, thanks,' said the boy distractedly. ' 'Gainst Whom No Lock May Hold—'
WILL HOLD.
'Will Hold Nor Fasten'd Portal Bar, Here To – to – to'
HERE TO TAKE MY TALLY ON THIS NIGHT OF KINGS.
Dafe sagged.
'You're so much better at it,' he moaned. 'You've got the right voice and you can remember the words.' He turned around. 'It's only three lines and Hwel will . . . have . . . my . . . guts . . . for.'
He froze. His eyes widened and became two saucers of fear as Death snapped his fingers in front of the boy's rigid face.
FORGET, he commanded, and turned and stalked silently towards the wings.
His eyeless skull took in the line of costumes, the waxy debris of the makeup table. His empty nostrils snuffed up the mixed smells of mothballs, grease and sweat.
There was something here, he thought, that nearly belonged to the gods. Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflects the landscape. And yet . . . and yet . . .
Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things, you might think they would want to escape from – hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated.
He was here for a very particular and precise purpose. There was a soul to be claimed. There was no time for inconsequentialities. But what was time, after all?
His feet did an involuntary little clicking dance across the stones. Alone, in the grey shadows, Death tapdanced.
—THE NEXT NIGHT IN YOUR DRESSING ROOM THEY HANG A STAR—
He pulled himself together, adjusted his scythe, and waited silently for his cue.
He'd never missed one yet.
He was going to get out there and slay them.
'And you can be Death itself to him. Now!' Death entered, his feet clicking across the stage. COWER NOW, BRIEF MORTALS, he said, FOR I AM DEATH, 'GAINST WHOM NO . . . NO . . . 'GAINST WHOM . . .
He hesitated. He hesitated, for the very first time in the eternity of his existence.
For although the Death of the Discworld was used to dealing with people by the million, at the same time every death was intimate and personal.
Death was seldom seen except by those of an occult persuasion and his clients themselves. The reason that no-one else saw him was that the human brain is clever enough to edit sights too horrible for it to cope with, but the problem here was that several hundred people were in fact expecting to see Death at this point, and were therefore seeing him.
Death turned slowly and stared back at hundreds of watching eyes.
Even in the grip of the truth Tomjon recognised a fellow actor in distress, and fought for mastery of his lips.
' “. . . lock will hold . . .” ' he whispered, through teeth fixed in a grimace.
Death gave him a manic grin of stagefright.
WHAT? he whispered, in a voice like an anvil being hit with a small lead hammer.
' “. . . lock will hold, nor fasten'd portal . . .”,' said Tomjon encouragingly.
. . . LOCK WILL HOLD NOR FASTEN'D PORTAL . . . UH . . . repeated Death desperately, watching his lips.
' “. . . bar! . . .” '
BAR.
'No, I cannot do it!' said Wimsloe. 'I will be seen! Down there in the hall, someone watches!'
'There is no-one!'
'I feel the stare!'
'Dithering idiot! Must I put it in for you? See, his foot is upon the top stair!'
Wimsloe's face contorted with fear and uncertainty. He drew back his hand.
'No!'
The scream came from the audience. The duke was half-risen from his seat, his tortured knuckles at his mouth. As they watched he lurched forward between the shocked people.
'No! I did not do it! It was not like that! You cannot say it was like that! You were not there!' He stared at the upturned faces around him, and sagged.
'Nor was I,' he giggled. 'I was asleep at the time, you know. I remember it quite well. There was blood on the counterpane, there was blood on the floor, I could not wash off the blood, but these are not proper subjects for the inquiry. I cannot allow the discussion of national security. It was just a dream, and when I awoke, he'd be alive tomorrow. And tomorrow it wouldn't have happened because it was not done. And tomorrow you can say I did not know. And tomorrow you can say I had no recollection. What a noise he made in falling! Enough to wake the dead . . . who would have thought he had so much blood in him? . . .' By now he had climbed on to the stage, and grinned brightly at the assembled company.
'I hope that sorts it all out,' he said. 'Ha. Ha.'
In the silence that followed Tomjon opened his mouth to utter something suitable, something soothing, and found that there was nothing he could say.
But another personality stepped into him, took over his lips, and spoke thusly:
'With my own bloody dagger, you bastard! I know it was you! I saw you at the top of the stairs, sucking your thumb! I'd kill you now, except for the thought of having to spend eternity listening to your whining. I, Verence, formerly King of-'
'What testimony is this?' said the duchess. She stood in front of the stage, with half a dozen soldiers beside her.
'These are just slanders,' she added. 'And treason to boot. The rantings of mad players.'
'I was bloody King of Lancre!' shouted Tomjon.
'In which case you are the alleged victim,' said the duchess calmly. 'And unable to speak for the prosecution. It is against all precedent.'
Tomjon's body turned towards Death.
'You were there! You saw it all!'
I SUSPECT I WOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AN APPROPRIATE WITNESS.
'Therefore there is no proof, and where there is no proof there is no crime,' said the duchess. She motioned the soldiers forward.
'So much for your experiment,' she said to her husband. 'I think my way is better.'
She looked around the stage, and found the witches.
'Arrest them,' she said.
'No,' said the Fool, stepping out of the wings.
'What did you say?'
'I saw it all,' said the Fool, simply. 'I was in the Great Hall that night. You killed the king, my lord.'
'I did not!' screamed the duke. 'You were not there! I did not see you there! I order you not to be there!'
'You did not dare say this before,' said Lady Felmet.
'Yes, lady. But I must say it now.'
The duke focused unsteadily on him.
'You swore loyalty unto death, my Fool,' he hissed.
'Yes, my lord. I'm sorry.'
'You're dead.'
The duke snatched a dagger from Wimsloe's-unresisting hand, darted forward, and plunged it to the hilt into the Fool's heart. Magrat screamed.
The Fool rocked back and forth unsteadily.
'Thank goodness that's over,' he said, as Magrat pushed her way through the actors and clasped him to what could charitably be called her bosom. It struck the Fool that he had never looked a bosom squarely in the face, at least since he was a baby, and it was particularly cruel of the world to save the experience until after he was dead.
He gently moved one of Magrat's arms and pulled the despicable horned cowl from his head, and tossed it as far as possible. He didn't have to be a Fool any more or, he realised, bother about vows or anything. What with bosoms as well, death seemed to be an improvement.
'I didn't do it,' said the duke.
No pain, thought the Fool. Funny, that. On the other hand, you obviously can't feel pain when you are dead. It would be wasted.
'You all saw that I didn't do it,' said the duke.
Death gave the Fool a puzzled look. Then he reached into the recesses of his robes and pulled out an hourglass. It had bells on it. He gave it a gentle shake, which made them tinkle.
'I gave no orders that any such thing should be done,' said the duke calmly. His voice came from a long way off, from wherever his mind was now. The company stared at him wordlessly. It wasn't possible to hate someone like this, only to feel acutely embarrassed about being anywhere near him. Even the Fool felt embarrassed, and he was dead.
Death tapped the hourglass, and then peered at it to see if it had gone wrong.