Mort characters

Appears from the start

Mortimer, called Mort, a gangling, well-meaning farm boy who thinks too much to be much use at farm work. At a hiring fair his father offers him for apprenticeship, and he is taken on by Death himself to learn the family trade of collecting the souls of the dying. Awkward and kind-hearted, he is fascinated by his master's shadowy realm and slow to grasp how the duty must be done without feeling.

Appears from the start

The anthropomorphic personification of death, a tall robed skeleton with a scythe and a horse, who speaks in a voice that arrives inside the head. Ancient and dutiful, he has lately grown curious about the living he collects, and he takes on Mort partly to lighten his workload and partly to free himself to explore what it is to be alive.

First appears in chapter 2

Death's elderly manservant, a dry, cynical old man who keeps house in the domain, cooks, and grumbles about the way things are done. He has served in Death's realm for a very long time and knows its workings better than anyone but the master himself.

First appears in chapter 2

Death's adopted daughter, who appears to be a girl of about sixteen but has lived in the ageless domain far longer than that. Lonely and prone to melodrama after years with only Death and Albert for company, she is at first cool and resentful toward the new apprentice.

First appears in chapter 3

Princess Keli, sole heir to the small kingdom of Sto Lat, a sharp and imperious young woman. Fate has marked her for assassination, and it is her soul that Mort is sent to collect.

First appears in chapter 4

A young jobbing wizard in Sto Lat who scrapes a living from charms and fortune-telling. Because he can still perceive Princess Keli when the rest of the world has begun to forget she exists, he becomes her reluctant ally and adviser.

Appears from the start

Death's horse, a solid, living white stallion. Having tried mounts of bone and of fire and found them unsatisfactory, Death long ago settled on a real horse; Binky carries him, and later Mort, on the nightly rounds and between the world and the domain.

First appears in chapter 2

The abbot of a remote order of listening monks, a man who is continually reincarnated and remembers each of his past lives. Because he always knows he will be born again, he greets Death as an old acquaintance whenever the two meet.