It was the clock. It was very big, and occupied a space between two curving wooden staircases covered with carvings of things that normal men only see after a heavy session on something illegal.
It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the kind of deliberate, annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life. It was the kind of sound that suggested very pointedly that in some hypothetical hourglass, somewhere, another few grains of sand had dropped out from under you.
Needless to say, the weight on the pendulum was knife-edged and razor sharp.
Something tapped him in the small of the back. He turned angrily.
'Look, you son of a suitcase, I told you —'
It wasn't the Luggage. It was a young woman – silver haired, silver eyed, rather taken aback.
'Oh,' said Rincewind. 'Um. Hallo?'
'Are you alive?' she said. It was the kind of voice associated with beach umbrellas, suntan oil and long cool drinks.
'Well, I hope so,' said Rincewind, wondering if his glands were having a good time wherever they were. 'Sometimes I'm not so sure. What is this place?'
'This is the house of Death,' she said.
'Ah,' said Rincewind. He ran a tongue over his dry lips. Well, nice to meet you, I think I ought to be getting along —'
She clapped her hands. 'Oh, you mustn't go!' she said. We don't often have living people here. Dead people are so boring, don't you think?'
'Uh, yes,' Rincewind agreed fervently, eyeing the doorway. 'Not much conversation, I imagine.'
'It's always “When I was alive — ” and “We really knew how to breathe in my day — ”,' she said, laying a small white hand on his arm and smiling at him. They're always so set in their ways, too. No fun at all. So formal.'
'Stiff?' suggested Rincewind. She was propelling him towards an archway.
'Absolutely. What's your name? My name is Ysabell.'
'Um, Rincewind. Excuse me, but if this is the house of Death, what are you doing here? You don't look dead to me.'
'Oh, I live here.' She looked intently at him. 'I say, you haven't come to rescue your lost love, have you? That always annoys daddy, he says it's a good job he never sleeps because if he did he'd be kept awake by the tramp, tramp, tramp of young heroes coming down here to carry back a lot of silly girls, he says.'
'Goes on a lot, does it?' said Rincewind weakly, as they walked along a black-hung corridor.
'All the time. I think it's very romantic. Only when you leave, it's very important not to look back.'
'Why not?'
She shrugged. 'I don't know. Perhaps the view isn't very good. Are you a hero, actually?'
'Um, no. Not as such. Not at all, really. Even less than that, in fact. I just came to look for a friend of mine,' he said wretchedly. 'I suppose you haven't seen him?
Little fat man, talks a lot, wears eyeglasses, funny sort of clothes?'
As he spoke he was aware that he may have missed something vital. He shut his eyes and tried to recall the last few minutes of conversation. Then it hit him like a sandbag.
'Daddy?'
She looked down demurely. 'Adopted, actually,' she said. 'He found me when I was a little girl, he says. It was all rather sad.' She brightened. 'But come and meet him – he's got his friends in tonight, I'm sure hell be interested to see you. He doesn't meet many people socially. Nor do I, actually,' she added.
'Sorry,' said Rincewind. 'Have I got it right? We're talking about Death, yes? Tall, thin, empty eye-sockets, handy in the scythe department?'
She sighed. 'Yes. His looks are against him, I'm afraid.'
While it was true that, as has already been indicated, Rincewind was to magic what a bicycle is to a bumblebee, he nevertheless retained one privilege available to practitioners of the art, which was that at the point of death it would be Death himself who turned up to claim him (instead of delegating the job to a lesser mythological anthropomorphic personification, as is usually the case). Owing largely to inefficiency Rincewind had consistently failed to die at the right time, and if there is one thing that Death does not like it is unpunctuality.
'Look, I expect my friend has just wandered off somewhere,' he said. 'He's always doing that, story of his life, nice to have met you, must be going —'
But she had already stopped in front of a tall door padded with purple velvet. There were voices on the other side – eldritch voices, the sort of voices that mere typography will remain totally unable to convey until someone can make a linotype machine with echo-reverb and, possibly, a typeface that looks like something said by a slug.
This is what the voices were saying:
WOULD YOU MIND EXPLAINING THAT AGAIN?
Well, if you return anything except a trump, South will be able to get in his two ruffs, losing only one Turtle, one Elephant and one Major Arcana, then —'
'That's Twoflower!' hissed Rincewind. 'I'd know that voice anywhere!'
JUST A MINUTE – PESTILENCE IS SOUTH?
'Oh, come on, Mort, He explained that. What if Famine had played a – what was it – a trump return!' It was a breathy, wet voice, practically contagious all by itself.
'Ah, then you'd only be able to ruff one Turtle instead of two,' said Twoflower enthusiastically.
'But if War had chosen a trump lead originally, then the contract would have gone two down?'
'Exactly!'
I DIDN'T QUITE FOLLOW THAT. TELL ME ABOUT PSYCHIC BIDS AGAIN, I THOUGHT I WAS GETTING THE HANG OF THAT. It was a heavy, hollow voice, like two large lumps of lead smashing together.
'That's when you make a bid primarily to deceive your opponents, but of course it might cause problems for your partner —'
Twoflower's voice rambled on in its enthusiastic way. Rincewind looked blankly at Ysabell as words like rebiddable suit', 'double finesse' and 'grand slam' floated through the velvet.
'Do you understand any of that?' she asked.
'Not a word,' he said.