Death shrugged, a particularly expressive gesture for someone whose visible shape was that of a skeleton.
I DID INDEED CHASE THEM MIGHTILY, ONCE, he said, BUT AT LAST THE THOUGHT CAME TO ME THAT SOONER OR LATER ALL MEN MUST DIE. EVERYTHING DIES IN THE END. I CAN BE ROBBED BUT NEVER DENIED, I TOLD MYSELF. WHY WORRY?
“I too cannot be cheated,” snapped Fate.
SO I HAVE HEARD, said Death, still grinning.
“Enough!” shouted Fate, jumping to his feet. “They will die!” He vanished in a sheet of blue fire.
Death nodded to Himself and continued at His work. After some minutes the edge of the blade seemed to be finished to His satisfaction. He stood up and leveled the scythe at the fat and noisome candle that burned on the edge of the bench and then, with two deft sweeps, cut the flame into three bright slivers. Death grinned.
A short while later he was saddling his white stallion, which lived in a stable at the back of Death’s cottage. The beast snuffled at him in a friendly fashion; though it was crimson-eyed and had flanks like oiled silk, it was nevertheless a real flesh-and-blood horse and, indeed, was in all probability better treated than most beasts of burden on the Disc. Death was not an unkind master. He weighed very little and, although He often rode back with His saddlebags bulging, they weighed nothing whatsoever.
“All those worlds!” said Twoflower. “It’s fantastic!”
Rincewind grunted, and continued to prowl warily around the star-filled room. Twoflower turned to a complicated astrolabe, in the center of which was the entire Great A’Tuin-Elephant-Disc system wrought in brass and picked out with tiny jewels. Around it stars and planets wheeled on fine silver wires.
“Fantastic!” he said again. On the walls around him constellations made of tiny phosphorescent seed pearls had been picked out on vast tapestries made of jet-black velvet, giving the room’s occupants the impression of floating in the interstellar gulf. Various easels held huge sketches of Great A’Tuin as viewed from various parts of the Circumfence, with every mighty scale and cratered pock-mark meticulously marked in. Twoflower stared about him with a faraway look in his eyes.
Rincewind was deeply troubled. What troubled him most of all were the two suits that hung from supports in the center of the room. He circled them uneasily.
They appeared to be made of fine white leather, hung about with straps and brass nozzles and other highly unfamiliar and suspicious contrivances. The leggings ended in high, thick-soled boots, and the arms were shoved into big supple gauntlets. Strangest of all were the big copper helmets that were obviously supposed to fit on heavy collars around the neck of the suits. The helmets were almost certainly useless for protection—a light sword would have no difficulty in splitting them, even if it didn’t hit the ridiculous little glass windows in the front. Each helmet had a crest of white feathers on top, which went absolutely no way at all toward improving their overall appearance.
Rincewind was beginning to have the glimmerings of a suspicion about those suits.
In front of them was a table covered with celestial charts and scraps of parchment covered with figures. Whoever would be wearing those suits, Rincewind decided, was expecting to boldly go where no man—other than the occasional luckless sailor, who didn’t really count—had boldly gone before, and he was now beginning to get not just a suspicion but a horrible premonition.
He turned around and found Twoflower looking at him with a speculative expression.
“No—” began Rincewind, urgently. Twoflower ignored him.
“The goddess said two men were going to be sent over the Edge,” he said, his eyes gleaming, “and you remember Tethis the troll saying you’d need some kind of protection? The Krullians have got over that. These are suits of space armor.”
“They don’t look very roomy to me,” said Rincewind hurriedly, and grabbed the tourist by the arm, “so if you’d just come on, no sense in staying here—”
“Why must you always panic?” asked Twoflower petulantly.
“Because the whole of my future life just flashed in front of my eyes, and it didn’t take very long, and if you don’t move now I’m going to leave without you because any second now you’re going to suggest that we put on—”
The door opened.
Two husky young men stepped into the room. All they were wearing was a pair of woolen pants apiece. One of them was still toweling himself briskly. They both nodded at the two escapees with no apparent surprise.
The taller of the two men sat down on one of the benches in front of the seats. He beckoned to Rincewind, and said:
“?Ty? yur ?tl h? sooten g?trunen?”