"SQUEAK" The rodent-reaper replied.
"Typical, just typical!"
"I told you, we should have used the Hellbringer Pendent, or the Abyssal Loadstone!" The Dean looked altogether too smug for Ridcully's liking.
"I've just about had enough of your snide comments Dean." His voice was saturated with contempt.
"Mr Archchancellor, what is happening?" This came from Kylah but her demand went unanswered.
"Well, I'm just pointing out the fact that its a good idea to use artefacts of power, the results are usually of better quality" The Dean said.
He breathed on the end of his fingers and rubbed them against his chest.
"Mr Archchancellor, I..."
"Like the time you summoned The Warhawk?" This comment from the Chair of Indefinite studies. The Dean spun around to face him.
"That was an Incarnation of Avian Rage!" He declared
"That was a large and slightly bewildered pheasant." Ridcully reminded him "Mr Archchancellor, please!..."
"Alright! But the fact remains that I try!" The Dean shouted
"You mess things up!...."
"Archchancellor, Listen to me!..."
"OK, who said that!..."
"Archchancellor!...."
"GENTELMEN..." The room fell silent, and the temperature dropped several degrees.
", IM SORRY TO KEEP YOU WAITING."
The figure drifted through the assembled crowd and it seem to Angua (who had not been listening to the angry exchange, being too lost in miserable thought) that nobody actually parted to allow passage, it just happened.
Death stalked to the middle of the scene and turned to face them all. Death'o'Rats bounded up to his shoulder, where he perched. Again there was silence.
"WELL? TO WHAT DO I OWE THIS PLEASURE?" Death stated.
Kylah stepped forward (at the same time that the senior wizards took a large step back). She was shaking. She had planned what she wanted to say, but the cold of Death's eyes made it hard to concentrate on anything (except the inevitable). She fought her fear.
"Um, I demand to, um, know where my, uh, brother. Um......is?"
She cringed, what she wanted to say was 'Avaunt dark revenant shade, tell me this, where has thou spirited the soul of my brother, answer truthfully or I shall see that the nine rings of Hell itself seal you into fiery bondage!'
“YOU DEMAND, DO YOU?"
"Um....................please?" She squeaked
"WELL, THATS DIFFERENT." Death raised himself up to his full impressive height
"My brother is..."
"I KNOW YOUR BROTHER, I KNOW WHO HE IS, AND HE IS SAFE, AS IS THE ONE CALLED CARROT."
Angua remained perfectly still, but inside, a ray of hope shined among the overwhelming and inexplicable feeling of sadness she had felt recently
"So, they are not dead?" Asked the Archchancellor.
The other wizards braced themselves for the moment the universe said 'They don't walk, or talk and Death has their soul...Oh, just a sec, that must mean....Ah, I get it!' but Ridcully was never one for tact.
"NO, THEY ARE MY GUESTS." "Well, I want them back!" Kylah's brief outburst of anger suprised her. All in the room looked to her. She bowed her head and conceded to the fact that it wasn't going to happen.
Then Angua spoke.
"Can we talk to them?" She asked clearly.
"NO, TO BRING THEM BACK NOW WOULD ENDANGER THEIR SOULS WITH WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN." Death stated.
"What's going to happen?" The Dean asked quickly. The senior wizards braced themselves again. From the light in deaths distant eyes it seemed he was grinning.
"THAT WOULD BE TELLING, I DO NOT WISH TO SPOIL THE SURPRISE."
What Angua said next was difficult. She had to overcome her fear in order to even think such a thought. She swallowed hard and said:
"If you cannot bring them here, may I see them there?" The room was again silent. Death looked deeply into Angua.
"AS IT SHOULD BE." He uttered the words like prophecy.
And the two stood for the next few minutes, looking into each other whilst the room exploded with the sound of Kylah arguing that she should go as well, Jhasi trying in vain to change her mind, one Archchancellor trying to control the situation, one phantasmal rat searching for supernatural cheese and several wizards making hurried excuses to be somewhere else.

*****

In a hall, far from Anhk-Morpork hundreds of pairs of mad bird eyes watched a gaunt figure stride out onto a high balcony. The figure looked up at the swelling sky, saturated with lightning and down at forbidding rocky earth bellow. The figure took none of it in; they were too lost in their private thoughts to notice.
'The fools I have sent have failed me, the prize which I seek has slipped through my grasp twice!' Lightning punctuated the exclamation mark. 'She keeps returning to that fetid city, I was close the second time but she returned. Something draws her back.'
'If it could be found, if she could be severed, she would drift, drift freely, and be caught by the winds of my manipulation' More lightning, this time to emphasise the point that any mind who thinks in metaphors is truly twisted. The figure turned away and strolled back through the hall. The mad bird eyes followed.

*****