Thief of Time

were fully equipped,” said Qu.
    “But we’re traveling light,” said Lu-Tze firmly. “We’ll go out the back way, Qu, okay?”
    The back way led to a very narrow path and a small gate in the wall. Dismembered wooden dummies and patches of scorched rock indicated that Qu and his assistants often came this way. And then there was another path, beside one of the many icy streamlets.
    “Qu means well,” said Lu-Tze, walking fast. “But if you listen to him you end up clanking when you walk and exploding when you sit down.”
    Lobsang ran to keep up.
    “It’ll take weeks to walk to Ankh-Morpork, Sweeper!”
    “We’ll slice our way there,” said Lu-Tze, and he stopped and turned. “You think you can do that?”
    “I’ve done it hundreds of times—” Lobsang began.
    “Back in Oi Dong, yes,” said Lu-Tze. “But there’s all kinds of checks and safeguards in the valley. Oh, didn’t you know that? Slicing in Oi Dong is easy , lad. It’s different out here. The air tries to get in the way. Do it wrong and the air is a rock. You have to shape the slice around you so that you move like a fish in water. Know how to do that?”
    “We learned a bit of the theory but—”
    “Soto said you stopped time for yourself back in the city. The Stance of the Coyote, it’s called. Very hard to do, and I don’t reckon they teach it in the Thieves’ Guild, eh?”
    “I suppose I was lucky, Sweeper.”
    “Good. Keep it up. We’ll have plenty of time for you to practice before we leave the snow. Get it right before you tread on grass, or kiss your feet goodbye.”
    They called it slicing time…
    There is a way of playing certain musical instruments that is called “circular breathing,” devised to allow people to play the didgeridoo or the bagpipes without actually imploding or being sucked down the tube. “Slicing time” was very much the same, except time was substituted for air and it was a lot quieter. A trained monk could stretch a second further than an hour…
    But that wasn’t enough. He’d be moving in a rigid world. He’d have to learn to see by echo light and hear by ghost sound and let time leach into his immediate universe. It wasn’t hard, once he found the confidence; the sliced world could almost seem normal, apart from the colors…
    It was like walking in sunsets, although the sun was fixed high in the sky and barely moved. The world ahead shaded toward violet and the world behind, when Lobsang looked around, was the shade of old blood. And it was lonely. But the worst of it, Lobsang realized, was the silence. There was noise, of a sort, but it was just a deep sizzle at the edge of hearing. His footsteps sounded strange and muffled, and the sound arrived in his ears out of sync with the tread of his feet.
    They reached the edge of the valley and stepped out of the perpetual springtime into the real world of the snows. Now the cold crept in, slowly, like a sadist’s knife.
    Lu-Tze strode on ahead, seemingly oblivious to it.
    Of course, that was one of the stories about him. Lu-Tze, it was said, would walk for miles during weather when the clouds themselves would freeze and crash out of the sky. Cold did not affect him, they said.
    And yet—
    In the stories Lu-Tze had been bigger, stronger…not a skinny little bald man who preferred not to fight—
    “Sweeper!”
    Lu-Tze stopped and turned. His outline blurred slightly, and Lobsang unwrapped himself from time. Color came back into the world, and while the cold ceased to have the force of a drill it still struck hard.
    “Yes, lad?”
    “You’re going to teach me, right?”
    “If there’s anything left that you don’t know, wonder boy,” said Lu-Tze drily. “You’re slicing well, I can see that.”
    “I don’t know how you can stand this cold!”
    “Ah…you don’t know the secret?”
    “Is it the Way of Mrs. Cosmopilite that gives you such power?”
    Lu-Tze hitched up his robe and did a little dance in the snow, revealing skinny legs encased in thick, yellowing tubes.
    “Very good, very good,” he said. “She still sends me these double-knit combinations, silk on the inside, then three layers of wool, reinforced gussets, and a couple of handy trapdoors. Very reasonably priced at six dollars a pair because I’m an old customer. For it is written, ‘Wrap up warm or you’ll catch your death.’”
    “It’s just a trick ?”
    Lu-Tze looked surprised.
    “What?” he said.
    “Well…I mean…it’s all tricks, isn’t