The Last Continent

up again into the sky.
    The continent rolled below it as it returned. The light hit the waterhole without a splash but, once again, three or four ripples in something spread out across the turbid water and the surrounding sand.
    Night rolled in again. But there was a distant thumping under the ground. Bushes trembled. In the trees, birds awoke and flew away.
    After a while, on a rock face near the waterhole, pale white lines began to form a picture.

    Rincewind had attracted the attention of at least one other watcher apart from whatever it was that dwelt in the waterhole.
    Death had taken to keeping Rincewind’s life-timer on a special shelf in his study, in much the way that a zoologist would want to keep an eye on a particularly intriguing specimen.
    The lifetimers of most people were the classic shape that Death thought was right and proper for the task. They appeared to be large eggtimers, although, since the sands they measured were the living seconds of someone’s life, all the eggs were in one basket.
    Rincewind’s hourglass looked like something created by a glassblower who’d had the hiccups in a time machine. According to the amount of actual sand it contained—and Death was pretty good at making this kind of estimate—he should have died long ago. But strange curves and bends and extrusions of glass had developed over the years, and quite often the sand was flowing backwards, or diagonally. Clearly, Rincewind had been hit by so much magic, had been thrust reluctantly through time and space so often that he’d nearly bumped into himself coming the other way, that the precise end of his life was now as hard to find as the starting point on a roll of really sticky transparent tape.
    Death was familiar with the concept of the eternal, ever-renewed hero, the champion with a thousand faces. He’d refrained from commenting. He met heroes frequently, generally surrounded by, and this was important, the dead bodies of very nearly all their enemies and saying, “Vot the hell shust happened?” Whether there was some arrangement that allowed them to come back again afterwards was not something he would be drawn on.
    But he pondered whether, if this creature did exist, it was somehow balanced by the eternal coward. The hero with a thousand retreating backs, perhaps. Many cultures had a legend of an undying hero who would one day rise again, so perhaps the balance of nature called for one who wouldn’t.
    Whatever the ultimate truth of the matter, the fact now was that Death did not have the slightest idea of when Rincewind was going to die. This was very vexing to a creature who prided himself on his punctuality.
    Death glided across the velvet emptiness of his study until he reached the model of the Discworld, if indeed it was a model.
    Eyeless sockets looked down.
    S HOW , he said.
    The precious metals and stones faded. Death saw ocean currents, deserts, forests, drifting cloudscapes like albino buffalo herds…
    S HOW .
    The eye of observation curved and dived into the living map, and a reddish splash grew in an expanse of turbulent sea. Ancient mountain ranges slipped past, deserts of rock and sand glided away.
    S HOW .
    Death watched the sleeping figure of Rincewind. Occasionally its legs would jerk.
    H MM .
    Death felt something crawling up the back of his robe, pause for a minute on his shoulder, and leap. A small rodent skeleton in a black robe landed in the middle of the image and started flailing madly at it with his tiny scythe, squeaking excitedly.
    Death picked up the Death of Rats by his cowl and held him up for inspection.
    N O, WE DON’T DO IT THAT WAY .
    The Death of Rats struggled madly. S QUEAK ?
    B ECAUSE IT’S AGAINST THE RULES , said Death. N ATURE MUST TAKE ITS COURSE .
    He glanced down at the image again as if a thought had struck him, and lowered the Death of Rats to the floor. Then he went to the wall and pulled a cord. Far away, a bell tolled.
    After a while an elderly man entered, carrying a tray.
    “Sorry about that, master. I was cleaning the bath.”
    I BEG YOUR PARDON , A LBERT ?
    “I mean, that’s why I was late with your tea, sir,” said Albert.
    T HAT IS OF NO CONSEQUENCE . T ELL ME, WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF THIS PLACE ?
    Death’s finger tapped the red continent. His manservant looked closely.
    “Oh, there ,” he said. “Terror Incognita’ we called it when I was alive, master. Never went there myself. It’s the currents, you know. Many a poor sailorman has washed up