Clearly a visit to the Castle of Bones was called for - and the sooner the better which in Death's case meant almost instantly. The three of them appeared - with audible pops - beneath the soaring pillars of the castle entrance. Lily, who Death had thoughtfully provided with a fur lined parka, touched a glassy, greeny-gray column with knobby ends, faintly suggestive of a femur or other long bone.
"This isn't bone, it's ice!"
THAT IS CORRECT.
The floor was also ice, like greeny smoked glass, sprinkled with salt crystals that crunched underfoot and prevented slipping. Death, frost forming on his still damp robes, stalked deeper into the castle followed by Lily and Albert. A sleigh stood, facing the doors. It was massive and crudely built of roughly squared tree trunks and either carved or knotted in strange designs that looked like faces - and not very pleasant faces at that.
Beyond the sleigh a pale throne shone down on them from a high pyramidal dais. It was empty. The vast hall with its rib-like vaulting and bony pillars was empty and silent and not a sound floated through the many soaring arches leading off to gods knew where.
"Nobody home," said Albert.
"Do you think...will his body be anywhere about?" Lily asked nervously.
NO, said Death.
"Don't look like there's anybody about," said Albert.
INCORRECT. Death turned slowly, raised a long and bony finger to point at a distant arch. THERE IS SOMEBODY THROUGH THERE. And a split second later so were they.
Four massive, bristly, red eyed and long tusked boars grunted suspiciously at the three of them from their pen in the middle of the castle yard. "Oh, look!" Lily was enchanted. "It's Gouger and Rooter and Tusker and Snouter!"
SO I SEE.
"I don't think they're going to be able to tell us much, master," said Albert.
NO, BUT HE CAN. It was only then that Albert and Lily became aware of somebody watching them from the dark doorway of the sty.
COME HERE, said Death. Nothing moved, except for the boars' heads as they turned to look over their shoulders. I SAID COME HERE!
A large and hairy figure crept cringingly from the security of the sty. There was bristly black hair on his head, but none on his chin. Deeply bronzed and heavily muscled bare arms and legs stuck out from his brief tunic of un-tanned boar's skin. Big dark eyes peered out from under the tangled bangs with white showing all the way around them. He staggered forward a few steps, then dropped to his knees with a whimper.
Lily looked up at her uncle in surprise, and was forced to admit that a seven foot tall skeleton in a quick frozen black robe might be a rather alarming sight to somebody who didn't know him well. Come to think of it, Albert wasn't what you'd call a reassuring figure either.
Similar thoughts had clearly occurred to Death. THERE IS NO NEED TO COWER, BRIEF MORTAL. YOUR TIME IS NOT YET. WE MERELY SEEK INFORMATION CONCERNING THE FATE OF THE HOGFATHER.
Lily stepped forward, reasoning that a huge man couldn't possibly be frightened of a wisp of a girl in a white parka. "I'm Lily, this is Death (1) and that's Albert. What is your name?"
NORBY, ASSISTANT PIG-KEEPER, Uncle answered for him, not helping at all.
Lily shot him a look and turned back to the quivering man. "How do you do, Norby. Please, can you tell us what's happened to the Hogfather?"
His face crumpled and for a moment Lily was afraid she was about to see a grown man - or nearly grown - cry. "I don't know!"
---
The dining room fire warmed their outsides and the hot chocolate their insides. Uncle's melting robe dripped on the Klatchian carpet as the four of them sat around the table listening to Norby's story.
It had been a perfectly ordinary day - what passed at the Castle of Bones for ordinary that is. Very busy of course, because Hogswatch was right around the corner. The pixies were putting in serious overtime in the workshops and Mrs. Hogfather and her helpers were baking and roasting up a storm in her cavernous kitchens.
Norby, a Hubland tribesman by birth, had been found as a snot-nosed boy crying in the snow one Hogswatchnight and taken in by the Hogfather. He was the only human about the place - Mrs. Hogfather being an ex-Valkyrie. It was his job to help look after the boars. Norby mucked out their pen, and carried slops and watched over them during the short Hubland summer when they were allowed to range the forests in search of food.
This morning he'd gotten up early as usual, stoked the ovens for the Missis and her crew, then carried the steaming pails of slops out to the boars. As he poured their contents into the trough suddenly everything had gone silent. The hammering from the workshops, the shouts, the singing all stopped - just like that.
He dropped the pails and ran back inside to find - nobody! Pies were baking and meat roasting in the kitchens. Tools and half-made toys littered the workbenches, the Hogfather's tankard of ale stood abandoned on the arm of his throne and everybody, down to the littlest pixie, had vanished.
Poor Norby had wandered the echoing halls and called 'til he was hoarse then finally gone back outside to comfort himself with the company of the only other living things about the place. He'd been sitting on the straw, trying to think what to do, when Death and his party had arrived.
THIS IS VERY SERIOUS, said Death, a point nobody felt inclined to argue. "NORBY, YOU WILL RETURN TO THE CASTLE AND LOOK AFTER YOUR PIGS. I WILL JOIN YOU AS SOON AS I DECIDE WHAT IS TO BE DONE.
Norby stood straight. "Yessir!"
"Will you be all right?" Lily asked in concern, remembering the huge empty castle.
"Oh yes, miss," he answered confidently. "It was the not knowing that was getting me down, if you see what I mean. Besides, it's my job to look after the boys. The Hogfather'd be pretty sore with me if I left them alone for long."
Death snapped his fingers and Norby vanished. I WILL BE IN MY STUDY, he told Albert and Lily.
----
Lily and Albert went to the kitchen for a belated lunch. "It must be some kind of magic," said Lily, swallowing a mouthful of her fried cheese sandwich. "Is there such a thing as a spell of disbelief, Albert?"
"Of course," he answered, playing with his fried slice. "But not on this scale - no wizard would have the power."
"Could you do it, Albert?"
He shook his head decisively. "Naw. A city maybe, but enough people to make the Hogfather disappear - never."
"And as everybody knows you're the greatest wizard who ever lived," Lily said thoughtfully. (2) "So it really can't be done....But then what did happen?"
"The master will find out," Albert said confidently. "Nothing gets past him."
After helping Albert wash up Lily decided to take her ride. It was late for it, but Silkie had to have her exercise - and it wasn't as if waiting around the house would do any good. It was all up to Uncle now.
She went upstairs to change into her blue and white riding habit, picked up the folded letter from the writing desk - and hesitated. She almost sat down and added an account of the trouble but even as she thought of it she got a sneaking feeling that the fewer in the know the better - so she didn't.
The skirt of the habit was overlong, so as to cover her feet when mounted, Lily carried its fullness over her arm and led Silkie by the bridle through Albert's kitchen garden, with several of the cats trailing behind or running on ahead. Girl and animals skirted the Lawn of Pitiless Infinity and Tennis and took a branching path through a copse of trees to a perfectly round depression in the blackish grass with a white hole at its center. A gentle breeze spiraled, like the path, around and - unlike the path - into the Pit of Souls
According to Uncle the spirits of the dead passed through the Pit on their way to, well, wherever they were going. If one listened carefully one could hear voices sighing on the breeze, the voices of the dearly departed faintly repeating their last words.
Lily very carefully did not listen having discovered that last words tended towards either inarticulate screams of agony, very private utterances to the near and dear, very bad language, or brief remarks that made one despair of human intelligence such as: 'Is it red and yellow kill a fellow, or the other way around?' 'The older the meat the more tender it is.' or 'No, I don't hear any rumbling.'
She took her folded and sealed letter, dropped it into the Pit and watched it flutter and spiral its way downward until it was lost in the light. Everybody went where they expected to go after death, so Uncle had told her, which of course meant that Mummy and Dads had to be in Sek's Third Heaven, the green one with the fields of flowers and the City of Emeralds. She had reasoned that the Pit must lead straight to that heaven, as well as all the others, and decided it was worth a try.
And it had worked! Her first letter had been answered by one from Mummy and Dads which had appeared mysteriously on the edge of the Pit. They wrote that the Third Heaven was just as lovely as the priests said and they were settling in nicely. The Hand maidens were very helpful and they were meeting such interesting people! She was to be a good girl, do as her guardian told her, and live a long and happy life. They would see her when it was over and in the meantime they could write each other.
It made a tremendous difference. Mummy and Dads weren't lost, they were just - elsewhere. Like the summer they'd gone to Chirm and left her with Grandma and Grandpa Tooley. She still missed them of course, but it didn't hurt as it had when she'd thought of them as dead.
After posting her letter Lily mounted Silkie and rode at a walk through the orchard, where she plucked an apple, and past the beehives where she dismounted briefly. The bees of Death's country were large and fuzzy and black and stingless. They hummed placidly around her and didn't seem to mind a bit when she took a shiny white comb of their honey. Then it was through the Winter Garden, where she lost the last of the cats who didn't enjoy cold. The fresh white snow crunched under hoof and elaborate displays of icicles glittered in the eternal starlight.
Ducking her head Lily passed under a yew arch and out onto the moors beyond Death's garden. These had had a rough, unfinished look when Lily first came, more a rolling impression of black 'surface' than anything else. But gradually, over the months, they'd come to resemble a darker version of the familiar moors near Pseudopolis with prickly black growth resembling gorse and broom and clumps of blossoming purple heather, stone outcroppings and the occasional cromlech, standing stone or barrow. There were even little pebbly brooks making a tinkling counterpoint to the constant, ocean-like rustle of wind through the heather and etc.
Lily stopped at a high, flat rock overlooking a little waterfall, just like Picnic Rock back home only black, and settled down to eat her apple and honey while Silkie browsed among the gorse and broom. The skin of Death's apples was a shiny red-black - not a dark red you understand but a black with a kind of elusive redness about it - and the flesh was shockingly white and piercingly sweet. The honey too was black, like congealed smoke, with a deep, rich sweetness that put chocolate to shame. Lily had developed quite a taste for both. Albert, rather oddly, only served ordinary red apples and pots of white honey from the Disc, presumably because he didn't like the local product. Lily had noticed he didn't have much of a sweet tooth.
Finishing her snack, she dabbled her hands in the icy stream to get rid of the stickiness, filled the tin cup from her saddle bag and drained it, then looked at Silkie. "Shall we ride a little longer or go home?" The pony raised her head at the sound of her mistress's voice and looked back intelligently but inarticulately. "We'll go back," Lily decided.
She took her time with the currying but eventually she had to go in. Albert was pottering restlessly around his kitchen dripping ashes everywhere.
"No news yet?" Lily asked, knowing the answer.
"Not a peep," Albert said. "Can't think what's taking so long. I mean you can't hide nothing from Death - I know!"
"Not even the gods," Lily agreed.
Albert sighed. "How about a cuppa?"
Lily was about to accept when the bell rang. She and Albert exchanged an eager yet anxious look before hurrying to obey the summons.
-----
1. Surely one of the most unnecessary social introductions in the history of the Disc, but Lily didn't think of that until later - much later.
2. Needless to say this opinion, sincerely held by Lily, went a long way towards making Albert feel much more friendly towards her. No man, be he ever so gnarled and crusty with age, is entirely immune to female admiration!