Soul Music

"There's a monkey runs this place, right?" he said. "Big fat hairy monkey, hands a couple of octaves wide?"

The wizard, a pasty‑faced post‑graduate student, looked down at Glod with the disdainful air a certain type of person always reserves for dwarfs.

It wasn't much fun being a student in Unseen University. You had to find your pleasures where you could. He grinned a big, wide, innocent grin.

"Why, yes," he said. "I do believe right at this moment he's in his workroom in the basement. But you have to be very careful how you address him."

"Is that so?" said Glod.

"Yes, you have to be sure to say, "Do you want a peanut, Mr Monkey?"' said the student wizard. He signalled a couple of his colleagues. "That's so, isn't it? He has to say Mister Monkey."

"Oh, yes indeedy," said a student. "Actually, if you don't want him to get annoyed it's best to be on the safe side and scratch under your arms. That puts him at his ease."

"And go ugh‑ugh‑ugh," said a third student. "He likes that."

"Well, thank you very much," said Glod. "Which way do I go?"

"We'll show you," said the first student.

"That's so very kind."

"Don't mention it. Only too glad to help."

The three wizards led Glod down a flight of steps and into a tunnel. Light filtered down through the occasional pane of green glass set in the floor above. Every so often Glod heard a snigger behind him.

The Librarian was squatting down on the floor in a long, high cellar. Miscellaneous items had been scattered on the floor in front of him; there was a cartwheel, odd bits of wood and bone, and various pipes, rods and lengths of wire that somehow suggested that, around the city, people were puzzling over broken pumps and fences with holes in. The Librarian was chewing the end of a piece of pipe and looking intently at the heap.

"That's him," said one of the wizards, giving Glod a push.

The dwarf shuffled forward. There was another outburst of muffled giggling behind him.

He tapped the Librarian on the shoulder.

"Excuse me—"

"Ook?"

"Those guys just called you a monkey," said Glod, jerking a thumb in the direction of the door. "I'd make them say sorry, if I was you."

There was a creaking, metallic noise, followed very closely by a scuffling outside as the wizards trampled one another in their effort to get away.

The Librarian had bent the pipe into a U‑shape, apparently without effort.

Glod went to the door and looked out. There was a pointy hat on the flagstones, trampled flat.

"That was fun," he said. "If I'd just asked them where the Librarian was, they'd have said bugger off, you dwarf. You have to know how to deal with people in this game."

He came back and sat down beside the Librarian. The ape put a smaller bend in the pipe.

"What're you making?" said Glod.

"Gook‑oook‑OOK!"

"My cousin Modo is the gardener here," said Glod. "He says you're a mean keyboard player." He stared at the hands, busy in the pipebending. They were big. And of course there were four of them. "He was certainly partly right," he added.

The ape picked up a length of driftwood and tasted it.

"We thought you might like to play pianoforte with us at the Drum tonight," said Glod. "Me and Cliff and Buddy, that is."

The Librarian rolled a brown eye towards him, then picked up a piece of wood, gripped one end and began to strum.

"Ook?"

"That's right," said Glod. "The boy with the guitar."

"Eeek."

The Librarian did a back somersault.

"Oookoook‑ooka‑ooka‑OOOka‑OOK!"

"I can see you're in the swing of it already," said Glod.

Susan saddled the horse and mounted up.

Beyond Death's garden were fields of corn, their golden sheen the only colour in the landscape. Death might not have been any good at grass (black) and apple trees (gloss black on black), but all the depth of colour he hadn't put elsewhere he'd put in the fields. They rippled as if in the wind, except that there wasn't any wind.

Susan couldn't imagine why he'd done it.

There was a path, though. It led across the fields for half a mile or so, then disappeared abruptly. It looked as though somebody walked out here occasionally and just stood, looking around.

Binky followed the path and stopped at the end.

Then he turned, managing not to disturb a single ear.

"I don't know how you do this," Susan whispered, "but you must be able to do it, and you know where I want to go."

The horse appeared to nod. Albert had said that Binky was a genuine flesh‑and‑blood horse, but maybe you couldn't be ridden by Death for hundreds of years without learning something. He looked as though he'd been pretty bright to start with.

Binky began to trot, and then canter, and then gallop. And then the sky flickered, just once.

Susan had expected more than that. Flashing stars, some sort of explosion of rainbow colours… not just a flicker. It seemed a rather dismissive way of travelling nearly seventeen years.