Hogfather

     'This place is a morgue,' said Susan.

     ' 's got to  be mine, if I  do ... any more flyin' tonight,' panted the raven, as the Death of Rats got off its back'I never signed up  for all this long-distance, faster'n time stuff. I  should be back in a forest somewhere, making excitingly decorated constructions to attract females.'

     'That's bower birds,' said Susan. 'Ravens don't do that.'

     'Oh,  so it's type-casting  now, is it?' said the  raven.  'I'm missing meals here, you do know that?'

     It swivelled its independently sprung eyes.

     'So where's all  the lights?' it said. 'Where's all  the noise? Where's all the jolly little buggers in pointy hats and red and green suits, hitting wooden toys unconvincingly yet rhythmically with hammers?'

     'This is more like the temple of some old thunder god,' said Susan.

SQUEAK.

     'No' I read the map right. Anyway, Albert's been here too.  There's fag ash all over the place.'

     The rat jumped down and walked around for a moment, bony snout near the ground. After a  few moments of snuffling it gave a squeak  and  hurried off into the gloom.

     Susan  followed.  As  her  eyes  grew  more  accustomed  to  the  faint blue-green light she  made out  something  rising out of the floor. It was a pyramid of steps, with a big chair on top.

      Behind her, a pillar groaned and twisted slightly.

SQUEAK.

     'That rat  says  this  place reminds him of  some old  mine,'  said the raven.  'You  know,  after  it's been  deserted  and no  one's  been  paying attention to the roof supports and so on? We see a lot of them.'

     At  least  these  steps were human sized, Susan  thought,  ignoring the chatter.  Snow  had  come  in through  another  gap  in  the roof.  Albert's footprints had stamped around quite a lot here.

     'Maybe the old Hogfather crashed his sleigh,' the raven suggested.

SQUEAK?

     'Well, it could've happened. Pigs are not notably aerodynamic,  are  they?  And  with  all  this  snow,  you  know,  poor visibility, big  cloud ahead turns out too  late to be a  mountain,  there's buggers in saffron robes looking down at you, poor  devil tries  to remember whether  you're  supposed to  shove someone's head  between your  legs, then WHAM, and it's  all over bar some lucky mountaineers making an awful  lot of sausages and finding the flight recorder.'

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 further 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,  afterwards, 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 spreadeagled, 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 second-hand 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.'