Mort

Grouped around a table in the middle of the room was a Klatchian family of father, mother and half a dozen children of dwindling size. Eight pairs of round eyes were fixed on Mort. A ninth pair belonging to an aged grandparent of indeterminate sex weren’t, because their owner had taken advantage of the interruption to get some elbow room at the communal rice bowl, taking the view that a boiled fish in the hand was worth any amount of unexplained manifestations, and the silence was punctuated by the sound of determined mastication.

In one corner of the crowded room was a little shrine to Offler, the six-armed Crocodile God of Klatch. It was grinning just like Death, except of course Death didn’t have a flock of holy birds that brought him news of his worshippers and also kept his teeth clean.

Klatchians prize hospitality above all other virtues. As Mort stared the woman took another plate off the shelf behind her and silently began to fill it from the big bowl, snatching a choice cut of catfish from the ancient’s hands after a brief struggle. Her kohl-rimmed eyes remained steadily on Mort, however.

It was the father who had spoken. Mort bowed nervously.

“Sorry,” he said. “Er, I seem to have walked through this wall.” It was rather lame, he had to admit.

“Please?” said the man. The woman, her bangles jangling, carefully arranged a few slices of pepper across the plate and sprinkled it with a dark green sauce that Mort was afraid he recognised. He’d tried it a few weeks before, and although it was a complicated recipe one taste had been enough to know that it was made out of fish entrails marinated for several years in a vat of shark bile. Death had said that it was an acquired taste. Mort had decided not to make the effort.

He tried to sidle around the edge of the room towards the bead-hung doorway, all the heads turning to watch him. He tried a grin.

The woman said: “Why does the demon show his teeth, husband of my life?”

The man said: “It could be hunger, moon of my desire. Pile on more fish!”

And the ancestor grumbled: “I was eating that, wretched child. Woe unto the world when there is no respect for age!”

Now the fact is that while the words entered Mort’s ear in their spoken Klatchian, with all the curlicues and subtle diphthongs of a language so ancient and sophisticated that it had fifteen words meaning ‘assassination’ before the rest of the world had caught on to the idea of bashing one another over the head with rocks, they arrived in his brain as clear and understandable as his mother tongue.

“I’m no demon! I’m a human!” he said, and stopped in shock as his words emerged in perfect Klatch.

“You’re a thief?” said the father. “A murderer? To creep in thus, are you a tax-gatherer?” His hand slipped under the table and came up holding a meat cleaver honed to paper thinness. His wife screamed and dropped the plate and clutched the youngest children to her.

Mort watched the blade weave through the air, and gave in.

“I bring you greetings from the uttermost circles of hell,” he hazarded.

The change was remarkable. The cleaver was lowered and the family broke into broad smiles.

“There is much luck to us if a demon visits,” beamed the father. “What is your wish, O foul spawn of Offler’s loins?”

“Sorry?” said Mort.

“A demon brings blessing and good fortune on the man that helps it,” said the man. “How may we be of assistance, O evil dogsbreath of the nether pit?”

“Well, I’m not very hungry,” said Mort, “but if you know where I can get a fast horse, I could be in Sto Lat before sunset.”

The man beamed and bowed. “I know the very place, noxious extrusion of the bowels, if you would be so good as to follow me.”

Mort hurried out after him. The ancient ancestor watched them go with a critical expression, its jowls rhythmically chewing.

“That was what they call a demon around here?” it said. “Offler rot this country of dampness, even their demons are third-rate, not a patch on the demons we had in the Old Country.”

The wife placed a small bowl of rice in the folded middle pair of hands of the Offler statue (it would be gone in the morning) and stood back.

“Husband did say that last month at the Curry Gardens he served a creature who was not there,” she said. “He was impressed.”

Ten minutes later the man returned and, in solemn silence, placed a small heap of gold coins on the table. They represented enough wealth to purchase quite a large part of the city.

“He had a bag of them,” he said.

The family stared at the money for some time. The wife sighed.

“Riches bring many problems,” she said. “What are we to do?”

“We return to Klatch,” said the husband firmly, “where our children can grow up in a proper country, true to the glorious traditions of our ancient race and men do not need to work as waiters for wicked masters but can stand tall and proud. And we must leave right now, fragrant blossom of the date palm.”

“Why so soon, O hard-working son of the desert?”