Mort

The regulars turned back to their conversations and games of shovel-up, reassured that things were as they should be; Mort was acting perfectly normally now. The landlord, relieved that the brew had been vindicated, reached across the bar top and patted him companionably on the shoulder.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It often takes people like this, you’ll just have a headache for a few weeks, don’t worry about it, a drop of scumble’ll see you all right again.”

It is a fact that the best remedy for a scumble hangover is a hair of the dog, although it should more accurately be called a tooth of the shark or possibly a tread of the bulldozer.

But Mort merely went on pointing and said, in a trembling voice, “Can’t you see it? It’s coming through the wall! It’s coming right through the wall!”

“A lot of things come through the wall after your first drink of scumble. Green hairy things, usually.”

“It’s the mist! Can’t you hear it sizzling?”

“A sizzling mist, is it?” The landlord looked at the wall, which was quite empty and unmysterious except for a few cobwebs. The urgency in Mort’s voice unsettled him. He would have preferred the normal scaly monsters. A man knew where he stood with them.

“It’s coming right across the room! Can’t you feel it?”

The customers looked at one another. Mort was making them uneasy. One or two of them admitted later that they did feel something, rather like an icy tingle, but it could have been indigestion.

Mort backed away, and then gripped the bar. He shivered for a moment.

“Look,” said the landlord, “a joke’s a joke, but—”

“You had a green shirt on before!”

The landlord looked down. There was an edge of terror in his voice.

“Before what?” he quavered. To his astonishment, and before his hand could complete its surreptitious journey towards the blackthorn stick, Mort lunged across the bar and grabbed him by the apron.

“You’ve got a green shirt, haven’t you?” he said. “I saw it, it had little yellow buttons!”

“Well, yes. I’ve got two shirts.” The landlord tried to draw himself up a little. “I’m a man of means,” he added. “I just didn’t wear it today.” He didn’t want to know how Mort knew about the buttons.

Mort let him go and spun round.

“They’re all sitting in different places! Where’s the man who was sitting by the fire? It’s all changed!”

He ran out through the door and there was a muffled cry from outside. He dashed back, wild-eyed, and confronted the horrified crowd.

“Who changed the sign? Someone changed the sign!”

The landlord nervously ran his tongue across his lips.

“After the old king died, you mean?” he said.

Mort’s look chilled him, the boy’s eyes were two black pools of terror.

“It’s the name I mean!”

“We’ve—it’s always been the same name,” said the man, looking desperately at his customers for support. “Isn’t that so, lads? The Duke’s Head.”

There was a murmured chorus of agreement.

Mort stared at everyone, visibly shaking. Then he turned and ran outside again.

The listeners heard hoofbeats in the yard, which grew fainter and then disappeared entirely, just as though a horse had left the face of the earth.

There was no sound inside the inn. Men tried to avoid one another’s gaze. No-one wanted to be the first to admit to seeing what he thought he had just seen.

So it was left to the landlord to walk unsteadily across the room and reach out and run his fingers across the familiar, reassuring wooden surface of the door. It was solid, unbroken, everything a door should be.

Everyone had seen Mort run through it three times. He just hadn’t opened it.

———

Binky fought for height, rising nearly vertically with his hooves thrashing the air and his breath curling away behind him like a vapour trail. Mort hung on with knees and hands and mostly with willpower, his face buried in the horse’s mane. He didn’t look down until the air around him was freezing and thin as workhouse gravy.

Overhead the Hub Lights flickered silently across the winter sky. Below—

— an upturned saucer, miles across, silvery in the starlight. He could see lights through it. Clouds were drifting through it.

No. He watched carefully. Clouds were certainly drifting into it, and there were clouds in it, but the clouds inside were wispier and moving in a slightly different direction and, in fact, didn’t seem to have much to do with the clouds outside. There was something else… oh yes, the Hub Lights. They gave the night outside the ghostly hemisphere a faint green tint, but there was no sign of it under the dome.

It was like looking into a piece of another world, almost identical, that had been grafted on to the Disc. The weather was slightly different in there, and the Lights weren’t on display tonight.

And the Disc was resenting it, and surrounding it, and pushing it back into non-existence. Mort couldn’t see it growing smaller from up here, but in his mind’s ear he could hear the locust sizzle of the thing as it ground across the land, changing things back to where they should be. Reality was healing itself.