Soul Music - Coming Apart

Death stared into the future.

OH, BLAST.

Things were coming apart. The Librarian had done his best, but mere bone and wood couldn't take this sort of strain. Feathers and beads whirled away and landed, smoking, in the road. A wheel parted company from its axle and bounced away, shedding spokes, as the machine took a curve almost horizontally.

It made no real difference. Something like a soul flickered in the air where the missing pieces had been. If you took a shining machine, and shone a light on it so that there were gleams and highlights, and then took away the machine but left the light . . .

Only the horse's skull remained. That and the rear wheel, which spun in forks now only of flickering light, and was smoldering. The thing whirred past Dibbler, causing his horse to throw him into the ditch and bolt.

Death was used to traveling fast. In theory he was already everywhere, waiting for almost anything else. The fastest way to travel is to be there already. But he'd never been this fast while going this slow. The landscape had often been a blur, but never while it was only four inches from his knee on the bends.

***

Soul Music - p242