Mort

here. The time in this place is just a sham. It’s not real. Nothing changes. I’d rather die and see what happens next than spend eternity here.”
    Albert pinched his nose reflectively. “Yes, well, you might,” he conceded, “but I was a wizard, you know. I was pretty good at it. They put up a statue to me, you know. But you don’t live a long life as a wizard without making a few enemies, see, ones who’ll…wait on the Other Side.”
    He sniffed. “They ain’t all got two legs, either. Some of them ain’t got legs at all. Or faces. Death don’t frighten me. It’s what comes after.”
    “Help me, then.”
    “What good will that do me?”
    “One day you might need some friends on the Other Side,” said Mort. He thought for a few seconds and added, “If I were you, it wouldn’t do any harm to give my soul a bit of a last-minute polish. Some of those waiting for you might not like the taste of that.”
    Albert shuddered and shut his eyes.
    “You don’t know about that what you talk about,” he added, with more feeling than grammar, “else you wouldn’t say that. What do you want from me?”
    Mort told him.
    Albert cackled.
    “Just that? Just change Reality? You can’t. There isn’t any magic strong enough any more. The Great Spells could of done it. Nothing else. And that’s it, so you might as well do as you please and the best of luck to you.”
    Ysabell came back, a little out of breath, clutching the latest volume of Albert’s life. Albert sniffed again. The tiny drip on the end of his nose fascinated Mort. It was always on the point of dropping off but never had the courage. Just like him, he thought.
    “You can’t do anything to me with the book,” said the old wizard warily.
    “I don’t intend to. But it strikes me that you don’t get to be a powerful wizard by telling the truth all the time. Ysabell, read out what’s being written.”
    “‘Albert looked at him uncertainly,’” Ysabell read.
    “You can’t believe everything writ down there—”
    “—‘he burst out, knowing in the flinty pit of his heart that Mort certainly could,’” Ysabell read.
    “Stop it!”
    “‘he shouted, trying to put at the back of his mind the knowledge that even if Reality could not be stopped it might be possible to slow it down a little.’”
    How?
    “‘intoned Mort in the leaden tones of Death,’” began Ysabell dutifully.
    “Yes, yes, all right, you needn’t bother with my bit,” snapped Mort irritably.
    “Pardon me for living, I’m sure.”
    N O ONE GETS PARDONED FOR LIVING .
    “And don’t talk like that to me, thank you. It doesn’t frighten me,” she said. She glanced down at the book, where the moving line of writing was calling her a liar.
    “Tell me how, wizard,” said Mort.
    “My magic’s all I’ve got left!” wailed Albert.
    “You don’t need it, you old miser.”
    “You don’t frighten me, boy—”
    L OOK INTO MY FACE AND TELL ME THAT .
    Mort snapped his fingers imperiously. Ysabell bent her head over the book again.
    “‘Albert looked into the blue glow of those eyes and the last of his defiance drained away,’” she read, “‘for he saw not just Death but Death with all the human seasonings of vengeance and cruelty and distaste, and with a terrible certainty he knew that this was the last chance and Mort would send him back into Time and hunt him down and take him and deliver him bodily into the dark Dungeon Dimensions where creatures of horror would dot dot dot dot dot,’” she finished. “It’s just dots for half a page.”
    “That’s because the book daren’t even mention them,” whispered Albert. He tried to shut his eyes but the pictures in the darkness behind his eyelids were so vivid that he opened them again. Even Mort was better than that.
    “All right,” he said. “There is one spell. It slows down time over a little area. I’ll write it down, but you’ll have to find a wizard to say it.”
    “I can do that.”
    Albert ran a tongue like an old loofah over his dry lips.
    “There is a price, though,” he added. “You must complete the Duty first.”
    “Ysabell?” said Mort. She looked at the page in front of her.
    “He means it,” she said. “If you don’t then everything will go wrong and he’ll drop back into Time anyway.”
    All three of them turned to look at the great clock that dominated the hallway. Its pendulum blade sawed slowly through the air, cutting time into little pieces.
    Mort